Death Mark (Mason Dixon Thrillers Book 2)

by Nick Thacker

  Most of the time they were dead already.

  I focused again on Frey, who was busy pouring himself another glass. This time I joined him, while Joey watched on. “So,” I said to Frey. “Whatever happened to the investigation?”

  He winked at me. “Seems like the police lost interest when they figured out who the guy was. There wasn’t anyone losing their mind over a dead schmuck, so I guess they buried it.”

  They buried it because they knew who he was, I thought. They knew they were better off without a guy like that running around.

  “And the world’s a better place without him around,” Joey added.

  “Seems like the world’s been getting a lot better lately,” Frey said.

  “You being poetic or cryptic.”

  “Yes?”

  I sighed. “Frey, we really do need to know about Elizondo.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking nicely.”

  I wasn’t trying to threaten him — that would just add to his suspicions and it would certainly turn him on the defensive, but I was starting to get tired of the games.

  “You don’t have to tell me your business,” Frey said, “but I do want to know why you want to know about him. He’s one of my best suppliers. Always on time, and always trustworthy. If anything happened to him…”

  “We’re trying to make sure nothing does happen to him, Frey.”

  Joey shot me a glance. I nodded, once.

  “Why? Someone else have it out for him?”

  “Something like that. What do you know about him? His shipping schedule, routes, daily routine?”

  “Shit, man,” Frey said. “He’s not my wife. I don’t know what he does day-to-day. But he’s coming in Friday.”

  I nearly dropped my glass. “He’s coming in tomorrow?”

  Frey nodded. “Yeah, had a shipment coming in Sunday that I was going to intercept and help with — he told me he’s bringing me forty barrels that I wanted to try packaging myself. I got set up with a —”

  “Frey,” I said, purposefully interrupting him. “Why’s he coming in a day early? I thought the shipment was scheduled for Sunday?”

  “It was,” Frey said, nodding. “But haven’t you been watching the weather?”

  18

  FREY WAS REVERTING BACK TO his edgy nervous self the more he told us. Joey and I had leaned in a bit, once again ratcheting up the tension in the room, and it must have caused the poor guy to feel like he was on the hot seat.

  “So there’s a hurricane?”

  Frey laughed, a violent, nervous hiccupy sort of thing. “Yeah — about four of them. You guys seriously don’t watch the news?”

  We both shook our head, but Joey spoke. “Doesn’t really affect us much. People are in a good mood, they come here to celebrate. World goes to hell in a hand basket, they come here to commiserate.”

  I beamed. I’d told Joey that same thing verbatim the day he started working for me. It was true — people typically needed their vices more than ever when they were in a good mood, but they were just as loyal to their sinful desires when times were tough. Alcohol and hospitality weren’t the fickle masters industry pundits would have us believe — both were in steady demand, it seemed. It had been that way in my experience behind the bar, and I had a feeling it would take a lot more than a slight recession to fuel a mass exodus from nightly haunts.

  “Well, you boys are missing out,” Frey said. “Cat-4, Joanna, is making her way here by way of the Bahamas, and it’s expected to be a Category 5 by landfall. It’ll back off some, they’re saying, but it’s going to be a doozy. And then there’s a couple big tropical storms spinning up down in the Caribbean, and it’s anyone’s guess where those will end up.”

  This was typical talk for this time of year — hurricanes and tropical depressions were commonplace, but they were more common south of us. The locals and oldies talked about ‘the big one’ like it was only a matter of time, but the truth was we were pretty safe from anything devastating.

  “It’s going to get bad here?” Joey asked.

  “Well,” Frey said, “probably not terrible — nothing we ain’t seen before, at least once a season, but for the shippers…”

  I nodded. This is starting to make sense.

  “It’s heading straight across their main lanes. The bigger guys can wait it out farther east, but the smaller vessels and midsize lines can’t do anything but speed up and try to beat it.”

  I nodded again. “They’ll try to tie up somewhere in the bay, or maybe down in the sticks.” It was common practice to bed down for a hurricane by letting the boat float, albeit in a place that was largely protected on all sides to break the wind. The natural rise and fall of the seas wouldn’t do any harm to the vessel — it was the battering winds and possible rains that caused the problems. During hurricane season it wasn’t uncommon to see dozens of small sailboats and catamarans poking out through the mangroves in the backwater areas and behind the larger islands.

  “Right, but if Elizondo’s ship does that, they’re marooned out there for a week, maybe two.”

  “So he’s hustling in, trying to beat it?”

  “That’s the idea, anyway. They’ll at least be docked, so when it hits they can’t blame the shipper for missing his target. Who knows if they’ll get it all unloaded by then, or if they’ll have to wait until after.”

  “What’s on the boat, Frey?” Joey asked.

  “Usual fare — like I said, I’m waiting on forty barrels so I can —”

  “Forty barrels of what?”

  “Oh, uh, rum.”

  “What else is on the ship?”

  Frey frowned, deep in thought. “It’s a typical run, I guess. I usually get rum — that’s their main import — but I’ve seen tequila, Caribbean whiskeys, lots of wine, that sort of thing.”

  “Always alcohol?” Joey asked.

  “That’s what he does. He’s a shipper for a company that trades in spirits and fine wines. Specifically from the Caribbean.”

  I was taking it all in meticulously, making sure I was repeating every word he was saying and translating it into understanding as it bounced around in my brain.

  Rockford Elizondo was a shipper — that much was clear. I didn’t know if that meant he was the captain or just a high-ranking crew member, but Jonathan Frey made it sound as though our pal Rockford was going to be on this boat when it arrived in port to deliver its wares. It was loaded down with barrels and bottles of alcohol and wines, and my guess was that there was quite a bit of it.

  And it was going to be coming in a day early.

  “Joey,” I said. “We need to get up there.”

  He nodded, finally turning to the back bar area and grabbing at a bottle of bourbon. He poured himself a shot of liquor, neat, and down it in one sip.

  “Yeah boss,” he said. “I agree.”

  Frey looked at each of us once more. “Okay, boys,” he said. “I’ve said my piece, and I have my opinions. Time for you guys to return the favor. What’s up?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring him in, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to let him know the basics. I looked at Joey for confirmation, but he was shrugging up a storm, looking like an idiot.

  “Fine,” I said, making the call. “You’ve been helpful, Frey. Thank you for that. We never would have known the boat was coming in a day early, and it could be life or death. Glad we know now — I’ll drink to that.” I raised a glass, and we all clinked them together over the bar.

  “We’re trying to track down this Elizondo character because we think he’s in trouble.”

  Frey raised an eyebrow. I could tell he was trying to put things together, things like why we knew about Elizondo’s trouble and what a bartender and his cook thought they were going to do about it. I didn’t want to give him any wiggle room to make wild-ass assumptions, so I just told him.

  “We think he’s been targeted, and his life’s in danger.”

  Frey nodded. “Right, so why no
t go to the cops?”

  Joey jumped in. “Well, for one, we can’t proved anything, and if we tried to it’d look pretty bad. We’d be under just as much scrutiny.”

  “And what else?”

  “For two,” I added, “we were sort of told not to go to the cops.”

  Frey laughed. “You guys probably know the same guys I know.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We know the same guys you said you didn’t know.”

  “I don’t know them,” he said. “More like know of them.”

  “Anything about these guys neither of us know you’d want to tell us?” Joey asked.

  Frey thought for a moment, nursing his melting ice cube, then looked up. “They’ve been trying to build a small importing empire for a while.”

  “Importing?”

  “Yeah, liquors and stuff they can’t easily make here without a ton of regulation and oversight.”

  “Which would explain why they would want Elizondo dead,” Joey added.

  “Eh, sort of,” I said. “It would be helpful to not have someone as distinguished as Elizondo hanging around, hogging all the attention and new business. But it doesn’t make sense just to off him. It’s way too difficult logistically, too.”

  Joey looked straight at me. “Unless you got someone else to do it,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Well yeah, that makes it logistically easier — their hands are clean, then — but it still doesn’t add up. What’s the payoff? Why can’t someone else equally as knowledgable and equally as experienced as Elizondo just head down here and take his place? It’s a big company, after all. Why Elizondo specifically?”

  Frey looked at both of us. “You — you guys really don’t watch the news, do you?”

  I frowned. “I have a feeling you’re about to tell us something you should have told us about ten minutes ago.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know if it would be relevant then.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, Rockford Elizondo’s sort of been a media darling, a poster child for small business in the area lately. He’s a well-known philanthropist, and while he’s pretty rich and out of reach for most of us, they’ve painted him as sort of an Everyman.”

  “And he’s a shipper?”

  “Well, yeah,” Frey said. “That’s the thing. He’s currently a shipper. Everyone thought he was just a business guy. You know the type: fancy parents, fancy education, fancy everything. Basically a ticket to the top, doing whatever you want.”

  “So it’s weird that he chose shipping,” Joey said. “Not exactly a sexy career path.”

  “No, not really,” Frey said. “But that’s part of his appeal, I think. He’s thorough. Studious, smart, good intentions.”

  “I’ll bet he’s good-looking, too,” I said.

  Frey made a face that said, ‘yeah, pretty much.’ “So he didn’t just ‘choose’ shipping. He’s making a move.”

  “Making a move?”

  “Yeah,” Frey said. “The local news did a thing about him a few years back, and they hyped him up quite a bit. He bought a country club or something not too far from here, but they gave him a lot of credit for how he did it: he bought the place, but only after working there for a year. Spent a month as a groundskeeper, then a few months at the pro shop, then finally the last few months tailing and shadowing the managers.”

  “So he could learn the ropes,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Wow,” Joey said. “I didn’t know anyone was that patient.”

  “Well, money wasn’t an issue with him,” Frey said. “But it’s a pretty ingenious, if labor-intensive, way to insure you’re getting a good investment. And to truly understand the business.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “So he’s in shipping now?” I asked. “And that means he’s making a move?”

  “Well that and his announcement a few months ago.”

  I cocked an eyebrow.

  “He told everyone he’s going down to Jamaica, to source rum for a new venture, and that he’d be coming back full of ideas and a ‘new vision’ for the enterprise.”

  “Wow,” I said. “So he’s back now.”

  “Yeah, coming in soon. But that’s not even the best part. He bought the ship outright before he left, and made sure that everyone he worked with — myself included — knew that he was starting up a new venture, and that he wanted our loyalty to lie with him, not his previous distribution company.”

  “My god,” Joey said. “The guy’s been orchestrating a brand-new distribution chain? Publicly?”

  Frey nodded. “Sort of. Most of the fanfare has been publicized — like I said, he’s a media darling, so they’re all eating it up. But anyone who cares, like me, is pretty much out of the loop. We all just knew he was leaving, then coming back, supposedly with a new batch of product and a new company.”

  I was finally starting to put all the pieces together, and I was finally starting to realize why the guys up in Charleston thought I didn’t need any more information than they’d given me. They figured I’d already known about all of this — it was, after all, my industry.

  I looked at Frey and Joey simultaneously. “So you’re telling me that Rockford Elizondo is coming back to Charleston in a day, loaded down with brand-new product, a brand-new company, and that he owns all of it outright?”

  Frey nodded. “Yep, exactly. And if I was going to target someone’s business for a hostile takeover, that’d be the one.”

  “You got that right,” Joey said. “And I think we’re about to be dealing with a very hostile takeover.”

  19

  “LISTEN,” JONATHAN FREY SAID. “I really appreciate you guys letting me help you —”

  “You’re not helping us out,” I snapped. “You’re just along for the ride. Just like we discussed.”

  He nodded, but I could see the smile still plastered to his face.

  What we’d discussed was simple: we needed to get to that ship, if only to follow behind it and help guide it in. Joey and Frey did an hour or so of searching to figure everything out: they’d either have a state-of-the-art navigation system or, if it was an older vessel, which was likely, they’d be lucky to even have a mechanical barometer. Either way, my boat did have a top of the line nav and comm system, and Joey and I like to joke that if a nuclear submarine decided to park off the coast of South Carolina, we’d be the first to know about it.

  Elizondo’s vessel was a Handysize, a small freighting and cargo ship, capable of being loaded down with an impressive amount of transportable goods yet probably on the lighter side for this voyage. Their captain might know this area well, or they might not. We planned to go find out.

  If we left early afternoon, we predicted we’d be able to intercept them sometime late evening or just after midnight.

  There were a lot of guesses, which caused Joey a lot of grief, but I reminded him of my mantra: plans were made to be changed, because they always changed.

  He tended to believe that because that mantra was generally true we should over plan, but I always won out and forced his hand. We’d go in just like we always did: ready for anything, expecting nothing. It was a dangerous game, but there wasn’t much about any of this that wasn’t dangerous.

  The biggest wildcard, then, was Frey. Jonathan Frey had insisted on helping us out, and we eventually agreed to let him come aboard and play navigator while we worked out what to do next. Joey made the argument that he would, if nothing else, be someone else to talk to.

  I didn’t like having another life to worry about, but I made it clear to Frey that he wasn’t there to help us with any fighting that might come our way. He was to keep our drinks full, provide assistance when it made sense, and, above all, stay out of our way.

  He’d agreed too quickly, and I could tell he thought it was all just a speech I’d prepared to make him feel special. He probably thought we were just playing around, heading out into a literal storm to just throw a fist up at life and shake it around a few
times, then head back in, drink and cuss like sailors, and laugh about the adventure.

  I didn’t tell him about Hannah, and Joey didn’t tell him about Shalice.

  Joey had done a pretty decent job hiding it, but I could tell he was pretty ripped up about it. He missed her, sure, but more than that was the guilt. It was heavy, like a literal weight on top of you, and I could see it pressing down on him. They’d killed people that way, back in the day. Put a bunch of weights, like rocks or something, on your chest, one at a time, until you just died. Quit breathing altogether, or your ribs were crushed and everything inside you just collapsed. I figured guilt was pretty much the same thing. Guilt had a weird effect on people, and I’d seen it and experienced it first hand more than I cared to admit.

  So I didn't. I didn’t talk about my past with anyone, not even Joey, even when he asked. I had never told him about my late wife, or any of the other woman who’d come and gone before or after her. I didn’t talk about my family much at all, and Joey respected that.

  I hoped Frey would stay off that topic as well.

  He was back to his nervous self, but in a decidedly more giddy way. He was bouncing, literally jumping up and down just a bit as he walked onto the Wassamassaw and onto the deck. My reminder that he was just along for the ride seemed to have absolutely no bearing on his attitude.

  I stepped into the bridge and started her up while Joey untied her moorings and prepared for the journey. We had her at a boatyard for the time being, but the plan was to come back in to Hannah’s old place after our excursion, if the weather allowed. It was a larger dock, private, and it was far enough from any civilization that we could camp out there for an indefinite amount of time if the need arose.

  My bar was closed, again. The oldies would be upset, but they’d get over it, and the other regulars would just head up to Charleston or down to Habor Island if they needed a fix that badly. We’d reopen soon enough, just like always, and they’d all come back and cash in their free drink coupons. The ones who hadn’t gotten one from Joey would get a free drink anyway.