“Why, then, would you lead us away from the city?”
I laid back in my chair and smiled wide. “A smart one, here, Manolo. Not just a question but the question of the hour.”
“Sorry, Mac,” Melissa said, “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or accusing or anything.”
“It’s a great question, Em,” I said. “Honestly, I was trying to think of a place no one knew about but that was fortified like a castle on steroids.”
We all laughed.
“In all seriousness, we aren’t going to stay here,” I said. “I guess that’s where I’m going with this theory. I’m done taking on these bad guys on their turf. Let them bring the hot sauce to us. We need to plan a defense strategy that has the bad guys out of their element and in ours.”
“But what is our territory?” Manny said.
“Funny you should ask that,” I said.
Jax Macaulay—or whatever he had become after the mountaintop; after directing Spencer Grant through his killing spree in his own brother’s precious city, didn’t know either his brother or the city well enough to have a decent plan as to where he should start. Well, he knew where he would start. He didn’t know where they’d gone; that was the more accurate statement. Since learning the inherent weakness in humans he always knew where to begin.
In addition to actually purchasing a police scanner, he also found a car that looked in decent shape but had not been driven in a long time and exchanged the license plates. Fortunately the owner had kept the car’s registration current. He could see in the women’s eyes he left behind that they were unlikely to report the vehicle stolen, at least until an idiot husband demanded the one do it, but that would buy him more than enough time.
It would be nearing nightfall, and he drove to the only address he knew in the city.
Manny didn’t like the plan to leave his partner and the girl behind but he had his part to play and he was more than a little proud that his heritage would contribute to Mac’s plan to end Rule’s intent and dominion over the people of Denver and, further, the world.
He arrived at Mira’s just as darkness was descending.
“Manny Rodriguez,” Mira said as he walked in and approached the bar. The place was teeming with neighborhood regulars, most of whom knew Manny but would not show respect because of the choice he had made. He would never be touched or harmed in any way; he was too close to the Colón family for that ever to happen.
“I need a sit-down with your father, Mira.”
“Oh, mijo. You know how difficult that will be, given all we’ve been through. You are guarded but not trusted, Manolo.”
“This is a matter of life and death for the neighborhood, Mira. For the whole city. I would not ask if it were not important, your father should realize that.”
“Give me a few minutes,” she said, and disappeared into the office.
Manny ordered a tequila with a beer back. He needed more courage than flowed in his veins at that moment. More than alcohol could provide him, likely, but the drink would help.
He was halfway through the beer when Mira returned.
“Papa is on his way. He wasn’t thrilled.”
“And that’s putting it nicely I’ll wager.”
“You’d win that bet, mijo. But he has always loved you. My father is an emotional man. As much as he needs you to be gone from this neighborhood—this community—he misses you dearly. This much he cannot hide from his daughter.”
“No one can hide anything from you, Adelmira Colón.”
“I have my ways just as you have yours,” she said.
Twenty minutes later a man the size and shape of a side of beef walked into the bar. All conversation stopped for a moment and then began again, much softer and more muffled than before. Hernando Colón was a King in the Puerto Rican nation of the Calaveras Street projects. His dominion extended throughout “Little ‘Rico” and he was a man who was rightfully feared.
The jefe did not acknowledge Manny as he went through the bar to the rear office even though he passed so closely the nervous cop caught a whiff of his expensive cologne. Once Jefe Colón had settled, Mira came for Manny. All the conversation would be in Puerto Rican Spanish and Manny was as nervous about that fact as anything else.
He ordered a glass of ice water to bring with him.
The sweat already ran freely down the nape of his neck.
“Why did Manny have to go?” Melissa said as Mac prepared her a ham and mustard sandwich. “I like him; he makes me feel safe.”
“Oh, I get it. Macaulay’s not enough for you. Thanks, Em. Thanks a lot.”
“Ha, ha,” Melissa said. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“I know, honey. I do. Believe me, I feel safer with Manny here. Problem is, he’s the only one that can get the approval and the backup that we need. And this is still the safest place for us to be. I haven’t even told Bum—my friend, who built this place—that we’re here.”
“Your paranoid friend,” she said with that half-joking tone.
“Bum believes the world is going to end,” I told her. “His exact words to me in building this place—the first time I saw it, feeling a bit like you do—were these: I don’t know if the end will come while I’m still alive, but it’ll be some relative of mine, and when it happens, this will become the most logical place on earth.”
“He makes a good point,” she said.
“He’s a good man,” I said. “You’d like him a lot.”
“I hope I get to meet him.”
“I do too, honey. I really, really do.”
My stomach did a cartwheel in my belly. There were a lot of things I wished for, and unfortunately there was a helluva long, gnarly road between where we were then and the place where all my wishes came true.
Jax sat outside the Macaulay residence, waiting for all the lights to go out. He needed to catch Amanda sleeping. She was too good; too much of a cop. Even he remembered that. He also knew she wouldn’t give up any information on her husband easily. It didn’t matter. The thing Jax was now—though at times it still felt human emotions like regret and guilt—was prepared to do whatever was required to get Melissa Grant back to Father Rule and his monstrous cronies.
Manny walked out of the office as nervous as when he went in. His Spanish had sucked, he stumbled again and again trying to decide how much to tell and how much to keep hidden. In the end he told Jefe Colón this: No matter what, jefe, you trust me. I know this to be true. I am telling you there is a terrible plague that will befall this city and, eventually, every other city in the world—which means every Puerto Rican in the world, too. What I ask is more dangerous than anything any of us ever faced growing up on these streets. YOUR streets. But who better to defend the world, since it’s come to that, than the proud nation of Puerto Rico?
“And?” Mira said as he passed her, placing a hand on her shoulder and leaving a lingering kiss on her rose-colored cheek.
“He agreed to help.”
Amanda tossed and turned. Normally she did not struggle with sleep, but with Bobby gone God knew where, she’d been on edge every minute of every day it seemed. She dropped a fork feeding the girls that morning and just about gave herself a heart attack.
Woman dies in front of children; cause: a fork.
She had just fallen deep asleep when something pulled her—no, eased her—out of her extremely unconscious state. When her eyes opened, she knew she was dreaming still. Jax stood beside her bed, looking down on her with loving eyes.
“Jax,” she said softly. “We’ve all missed you so.”
“I’ve never been far,” he said. “Watching over you all.”
Amanda smiled. A good dream.
“I’ve wished so many times I could have been with you on that mountain—with Bobby. That somehow we could have helped you.”
“I know you have,” Jax said, smiling. “But you can help me now.”
“How can I help you, Jax? You’re gone, sweetie.”
Ja
x sat on the bed and stroked her gossamer hair.
“Where is my brother? I want to visit him, too, but he’s not with you, where I thought he would be. I want to tell him how much I miss him.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Amanda said.
“The limitations of the dream and spirit world,” Jax said, feigning a goodness he did not feel. “Even in finding our loved ones—those we left behind—we are not all-knowing. Not as people seem to think.”
“I would tell you, Jax. Bobby misses you so much and his dreams of you are so awful. They torment him. For you to visit and express your true feelings—if you could forgive him.”
“I would tell him there is nothing to forgive, that I know more than anyone he did what he always does—everything possible to him.”
“There is a place,” Amanda said sleepily, drifting back into unconsciousness again.
“Where?” Jax whispered into her ear.
“Bum Garvey…..”
Jax stood and released his hold on her and Amanda fell back into a thick, dreamless sleep, unaware that she had just doomed her husband and his best friend.
12
MELISSA’S FAVORITE book in the world, Watership Down, happened to be in Bum’s massive collection kept in his den in shelves that covered three of the four walls. She was curled in a chair, reading the book for what she said was the eighth or ninth time. I remembered loving the book back in school when we read it, but had not looked at it since.
“I love rabbits,” Melissa said. “I once had three—I named them Fiver, Hazel, and Bigwig.”
I looked up from my own reading—some scratch paper upon which I had been doodling some of my thoughts, links, probabilities, and other things that had occurred to me that I did not want to forget or overlook.
My phone buzzed and I answered it. It was Manny. He was on his way back to the compound but said he needed me to remind him where to turn because in the dark everything had taken on a completely different look.
Dark in the wilderness is not like the darkness I have seen anywhere else in the world except upon the ocean. People that have grown up and never been far outside the city tend to scoff at people who admit they are “afraid of the dark”, but take one of those people and drop them in the middle of the woods at night and at the very least they’d come back with a new appreciation for the ominous potential of true darkness.
I talked Manny in and then handled the various security safeguards for him as he brought the car back into the compound.
“So?” I said once we sat back down. “Did you meet with the big guy?”
“Yes. I felt like a dunce—a court jester dancing before the king—but yes, I was able to talk with him and convince him that to help us would not only be smart, it would forever cement the importance and valor of the proud Puerto Rican people.”
“So tomorrow, we leave here after getting some much-needed rest. I’m taking the risk that we can sleep here safely. It won’t be much longer than that, though, before Rule finds this place, too.”
“Mac, will you stay with me?” Melissa said.
“As if you needed to ask. I told you, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“Mira asked about you,” Manny said. “Ooh, did those ‘Rican eyes dance for her Bobby Mac.”
I frowned at him and Melissa asked, somewhat dejectedly, “Who’s this Mira?”
“I promise, you’ll like her,” I said. “And Manny needs to tell Mira that Bobby is married. To a cop, no less.”
“You’re married to a cop?” Melissa said.
“FBI,” Manny said before I could answer.
“You’ll like her, too,” I said.
“I like you,” she said and went back to reading.
Manny raised his eyebrows at me and I pointed a finger right between them.
Bum Garvey was reading the newspaper in his plush outdoor lounger under the light of the porch, sipping a single malt with a Cuban Montecristo number 4 cigar roasting in the ashtray at arm’s length on the table beside him. His Smith and Wesson .357 lay on the table, too, also within arm’s reach.
“Now you see, that’s what I’ve always hated about this country,” Jax said from the shadows, nearly killing the old CBI agent with a jolt to the ticker.
The pistol was in Garvey’s hand almost without him realizing he’d swiped it up when he stood, so keen and worn in were his instincts. “GodDAMN it, you scared the holy fuck out of me. Who the hell is that? Show yourself or I’ll open a hole in you so big the coroner won’t have to make a single cut.”
“That’s funny,” Jax said, and stepped out into the light of the back yard. “But you’re still a damnable hypocrite, old man.”
“Good Christ, man. What in fuck’s sake are you babbling about and who the hell are you?”
“I’m talking about that cigar. You are perpetrating a felony, sir, and you are a law enforcement professional. And who I am won’t mean a thing in a few minutes. In fact, it’s better for you if you don’t know.”
Garvey took off the reading glasses from the bridge of his nose and stepped a bit closer to the intruder. “Sweet Jesus, you look just like Bobby Macaulay’s brother, Jackson.”
“Most folks—especially good old boys such as yourself—call me Jax.”
“That ain’t possible,” Garvey said, “except—”
“Except my brother has shared his innermost secrets with you, just as you’re going to share yours with me.”
“You must’ve missed the part about a hole big enough to play a game of Texas Hold ‘Em in.”
“I have a special affinity for the overconfident.”
“I’m the one standing here with a gun, bud—”
Jax moved so fast it really could not be classified as movement. He had disarmed Garvey, put him to his knees, and locked him in a sleeper hold so quickly the CBI agent didn’t have time to be surprised.
Then it was—lights—out.
Bum came to tied to one of his own high-back kitchen chairs. He attempted to move his arms and legs—testing the binding job for loose places or weaknesses. He was one hundred percent immobilized.
“I know how to secure someone,” Jax said as he reentered the room and retrieved the fileting knife that was lying on the counter.
“Goddamn if you aren’t the twin of Jax Macaulay,” Garvey said. “I never had the chance to meet him but Bobby keeps a picture of the two of them on his desk.”
“You speak of me both as if I’m not standing in front of you and in the past tense, as if I don’t live and breathe.”
“Jax Macaulay wouldn’t have his brother’s best friend and a fellow lawman bound in his own kitchen under threat of stabbing.”
“You’re not under threat of anything,” Jax said. “Not yet. If you tell me what I need to know, we’re just two good old boys catching up on lost time and this is just a plain old kitchen knife that ended up in my hand by mistake.”
“That so? And if I don’t tell you what you want me to?”
“Then the threat is nothing nearly as simple as stabbing.”
“Like I said, not something Jax would be doing.”
“You said you never even met me.”
“I knew Jax through his brother, and the person in front of me is not him.”
“Fair enough. If it helps make things easier to digest, think of me as Jax version two. Kind of like software.”
“They usually make improvements in new versions of software.”
“I can see why my brother likes you so much,” Jax said. “I already do, too. Bobby told me one time when we were fishing about this incredible cabin you built in the woods. I mean if he was to be believed and wasn’t exaggerating, this place rivaled any compound I know of.”
Garvey remained silent, staring straight ahead.
“Tell me where it’s located,” Jax said. “That’s it.”
“No way.”
“If it’s as impenetrable as my brother made it sound, I’d think you’d relish the challenge.”
“You’re right,” Bum said. “You’ll find it one way or the other and there’s no way you’re getting through to my cabin whether Bobby’s there or not.”
“So tell me where it is and we’re done.”
“Maybe I want to call your bluff on just how good you are at torturing a man.”
“Bobby told me you were brave. In fact, I’ve known too many men like you. You’d be too hard to break. Or you’d tell me the wrong location. You got your Jack Russell, what, two months after Bobby bought his—I’m talking about the cute little guy outside in the garage with the impressive pen you built for him to keep him warm in winter and cool in the summer—what’d you name him? Rogue. Love that name and for you, perfect.”
“You son of a bitch,” Garvey said.
“Here’s how it works, Bum: Rogue and I are taking a little trip together. We’re going up to your summer cabin. If we get to the cabin, I’m betting Rogue has his own quarters and everything, and that’s where I leave him. Food, water, the whole shebang. You keep refusing to answer me, we start off by seeing if Rogue makes a good three-legged dog. You can count backwards from there. If you tell me the wrong directions, on my way back, on the interstate, going seventy miles an hour—Rogue gets to play fetch.”
It was three in the morning when I heard the vehicle crunching up the special gravel Bum had covering the last hundred yards into the cabin. Didn’t matter how slow you drove—it was annoying as hell.
I silently thanked my friend for his tenacity and genius.
“Melissa, wake up, honey.” I’d been snoozing in the uncomfortable chair next to her bed.
“I heard it, too,” she said in the near-darkness. “Who is it?” Obviously good quality sleep was still a few years away for her.
“Someone who we’re going to be ready to deal with.” Just then Manny came silently through the door, gun drawn.
Garvey had installed under-lighting strategically throughout the house. It provided a low-key, ambient light to make your way around at night and see shapes just fine, but did not emanate at all through the one-way glass windows.
R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning Page 13