Free Fire jp-7

by C. J. Box

  “You’re right,” McCann said, “this has nothing to do with me. I could care less about the SEC, or your company. I want my money. I did my part, you need to do yours.”

  “Look,” Barron said, an edge of panic entering his voice, “I think they’ll be gone by the end of the week. I really do. We’re clean, I swear it. It’s just that some of our accounting looks a little,well, optimistic. I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out and when those assholes leave, I’ll get that transfer to you within the hour.”

  “Not good enough,” McCann said. “I need it now. Tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “You have no idea what it’s like for me,” McCann said. “If Pickett and Demming start connecting the dots, I’m just sitting here.”

  “Can’t you be more reasonable?”

  Yes, McCann thought, the panic in Barron’s voice was real. He’d cracked him.

  “Listen to me,” McCann said, pressing, deciding to show his hole card, “if I don’t get my money, I’ll go to the FBI and sing in exchange for immunity. They’ll give it to me, I promise you. I’ve worked with them and they’d rather nail somebody high-level-somebody like Layton Barron of EnerDyne-than put me back in jail.”

  “My God, you can’t be serious.”

  McCann nodded. “I’m serious.”

  “But I told you, I can’t move the money. The SEC-”

  “Then send me some of your money, you twit,” McCann said. “Sit down at your computer and wire at least a ten-thousand-dollardown payment to my account tonight. I put my career and my life on the line for you. I expect some consideration.”

  He could hear Barron swallow. “But you wouldn’t really go to the FBI, would you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay,” he said in a whisper, “I can do that.”

  “And you need to keep it coming,” McCann said. “Ten thousandtonight, ten thousand tomorrow, ten thousand the next day until you can pay the balance from your company, whenever that is. It’s not my problem, it’s yours. I’ll talk with my banker every morning. If you miss a single day, I sing. Got it?”

  Silence.

  “Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  McCann felt some of the burden lift from his shoulders. “That’s not all,” he said, liking the way the power had shifted to him.

  “What else?”

  “It’s time for you to contact your man on the inside,” McCannsaid. “Tell him what’s going on and see if he can do something about it. He’s the only guy close enough to the situationon the ground to steer it away from us. It’s time he got his hands dirty.”

  Barron moaned, as if McCann were torturing him. “He’s not going to like it.”

  “I could give a shit,” McCann said, starting to feel, finally, that he was making things happen in his favor. “He’s had a free ride so far. Tell him to act or he’ll be implicated as well. Tell him I’m serious.”

  “I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Barron said, his tone strangely resigned, as if seeing McCann in an all new light as his enemy. Good, McCann thought. It’s about time.

  “All you had to do was your part,” McCann said. “I did mine.”

  He hung up the telephone, sat back in his chair, looked at his reflection in the glass doors of his bookcase, and fell righteouslyback in love with the man who grinned at him.

  He’d let the locals get to him. He’d even let one old cow whack him on the head with a telephone receiver. The power he’d built up since his time in jail had been pouring out of him since he’d returned, puddling at his feet. Now it felt like the wounds had healed. He was recharging.

  “Jeez,” he said, “I missed you.”

  He was still smiling when Sheila D’Amato opened his door without knocking and leaned against the jamb with her hand on her hip and a sly smile on her face. Her eyes sparkled.

  “You son of a bitch,” she said with admiration.

  “Don’t tell me you listened,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Ten thousand a day,” she said. “Damn, you’re a better earner than the crooks I used to hang with.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, maintaining the grin somehow while part of his brain raced, trying to process the magnitude of what she’d done, how he would deal with it.

  “I’m still confused,” she said. “I don’t get what it is you guys are trying to hide. I mean, it obviously has something to do with some Sunburst thing, but I don’t get how that has anything to do with those four dead people.”

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “I’ve got all night.”

  “Let’s go have some dinner,” he said. “I’ll fill you in.”

  She beamed, and he was surprised how attractive she looked when she was full of joy. He hadn’t known because she’d never been so happy in his presence before.

  They stepped onto the sidewalk to go to Rocky’s for dinner.He held the door open for her and smelled her as she came through. A nice scent. He liked the way her heels clicked on the pavement. It was rare to see a woman in the West in a dress and heels, and he found himself lagging behind her a little so he could look at her strong calves through the nylons.

  “I’ve got to say,” she said, shooting a come-hither look over her shoulder, “I’m more than a little surprised that you didn’t bite my head off for listening in.”

  “I thought about it.”

  “But you didn’t,” she said. “I guess that means we really are in this together.”

  “I need allies,” he said.

  “I’d like to think I’m more than that.”

  “You are,” he said.

  “This all has to do with that company, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “What company?”

  "EnerDyne. I saw the binder on your credenza. You work for them, right?”

  He whistled. “Boy, you don’t miss a trick, do you?”

  “I haven’t yet,” she purred. She’d knocked another $50 off her legal bill before they went out on the street. He still felt a littlelight-headed.

  Dinner took hours. McCann ordered too many martinis.She looked good in the light from the single cheap candle on the table, which took ten years off her face and made her skin seem smoother and whiter and her lips more lush and red.

  “Tomorrow we’ll drive to Idaho Falls,” he said. “We can check on flights, do a little shopping. You’ll need some things to wear on the beach, I would guess.”

  “It must be nice to have money,” she said. “Ten thousand a day.”

  “That’s just a fraction of what they owe me.”

  “You turned that man into a quivering little squirrel,” she said, holding her hand out toward him and pulling her sleeve back. “I got goose bumps listening.”

  He shrugged, flattered.

  “Who is the man on the inside?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll fill you in tomorrow. . if you’re a good girl until then.”

  “When I’m good, I’m very good,” she said. “That’s what they used to tell me. .”

  “And when you’re bad. .” he said, letting it trail off.

  “I’m really fucking bad.” She grinned.

  He ordered another martini for both of them. He had to look down to see if he’d finished his steak. Nope.

  She favored him with a smile so full-bore he could see her back teeth. “We really are partners in crime, aren’t we?”

  “We are,” he said. “You now know more than anyone else.”

  “I’ll keep my mouth shut,” she said, “except when, well, you know.”

  It was as if she were melting for him before his eyes.

  He’d never been with a woman like her, he thought. Too bad about tomorrow.

  16

  It was obvious to joe when he saw george pickett waiting for him at a back table in the near-empty employee cafeteria that the old man had cleaned himself up. George looked dark and small, birdlike, fragile, his thick black hair slicked back wetly in jail-bar strings and hi
s hands entwined in front of him. A tray of food sat off to the side. He wore a dingy but clean white shirt buttoned all the way up and dark baggy slacks Joe recognized from years before, which gave Joe an uneasyfeeling and caused a hitch in his step that he powered through, as if his legs had thought better of the reunion and decidedto flee.

  The closer Joe got to his father, the angrier and more confusedhe became. The emotions came out of a place he didn’t know still existed, as if a long-dormant tumor had ruptured. He felt eighteen again, and not in a good way.

  Joe sat down across from George. They had the table to themselves. Outside the murky, unwashed windows, the last moments of the sun died on the pine boughs.

  “You can grab a tray and get some dinner,” George said, gesturingtoward the buffet line at the front of the room.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ve got to eat something.”

  “No.”

  George slid his tray before him-slices of dark meat coveredwith brown gravy, a mound of mashed potatoes with a hollowed-out, gravy-filled pocket on top. Joe remembered watching his father do that growing up-hollowing out the potatoeswith the heel of his spoon, pouring gravy in the depressionso it looked like a volcano about to erupt gravy.

  George halfheartedly cut a forkful of beef and raised it to his mouth. He chewed slowly, painfully, as if his gums hurt. Joe noticedthat his hand holding the fork trembled as he raised it.

  When he was through chewing, George washed it down with half a glass of ice water and winced as he drank. “You sure you don’t want something?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Just so you know, I haven’t had a drink all day.”

  “That’s why you’re shaking and drinking water,” Joe said.

  “I did it for you. It wasn’t easy.”

  Joe nodded. He could not make himself thank his father for not drinking for the day. He couldn’t think of a good thing to say about anything, and regretted that he’d come.

  “It’s good to see you, Son,” George said softly, holding Joe’s eyes for a fleeting second before looking away. Joe noticed George was having trouble keeping his mouth still, as if his teeth wanted to chatter.

  “I guess I’m supposed to say it’s good to see you too,” Joe said.

  “But you can’t say that.”

  “I can’t say that.”

  Still not meeting Joe’s eyes, George nodded as if he understoodhow things were. He tried to eat a forkful of mashed potatoesbut it hung there, inches from his open mouth. With resignation, he dropped the fork to his plate. “I can’t eat this.”

  The silence eventually turned into a kind of roar, Joe thought. He couldn’t hear his father when he broke it.

  “What?”

  “I said I thought about giving you a call lots of times.”

  “But you never did.”

  “Tell me about my grandchildren,” George said, his first genuine smile pulling at his mouth. “My daughter-in-law. What’s her name again?”

  "Marybeth.”

  "How old are my granddaughters?”

  “Getting older all the time,” Joe said.

  His father stared at him. Joe remembered that stare, those eyes, that set in his mouth that could curl into a grin or, just as easily, bare and reveal tiny sharp teeth.

  “You don’t want to tell me about them,” George said.

  “They have nothing to do with you. You have nothing to do with them.”

  “I had hoped it wouldn’t be like this.”

  Joe wanted to reach across the table, gather the old man’s collarin his fist, and bounce him up and down like a rag doll. “At one time, I had a lot to say to you. For years, I rehearsed what I was going to tell you if I ever got the opportunity I have now. I’d go over it when I was by myself like it was a speech. I had sectionsabout what you did to my mother, my brother, and me. It was a pretty good speech, and I’m not good at speeches. But now that you’re sitting right there, I can’t remember any of it.”

  George shook his head. “It wasn’t all bad. I wasn’t a monster.”

  Joe didn’t disagree.

  “Your mom and I, we-”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Joe snapped. “What’s done is done. You can’t justify it now.”

  “It was never about you,” George said. “You probably think that. It was about your mother and me. I never had anything against you or Victor.”

  “You’re right,” Joe said. “It was never about us. Not a thing was ever about us.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  His father took a deep breath. Joe could hear it wheeze into his lungs. “Can’t we put that all behind us now? You’re a grown man. We’re both grown men. I was hoping maybe we could talk.”

  “I’m not a big talker.”

  “I’ve got some things I’d like to say.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like when I left, it was the best thing for all of us. Would it have been better if I’d stayed and continued to make everyone’s life as miserable as mine?”

  Joe said, “At least that would have showed that you tried to think of someone other than yourself.”

  “You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” George said, a familiarphrase from his father. What it meant to Joe was, You’re not agreeing with what I say, you’re defective.

  “I needed space,” his father said, “I needed to find out why I was put on this earth.”

  Joe stared at him with bitter contempt. “What a load of crap that is,” he said.

  George was startled.

  “I get pretty sick of hearing people like you try to find good reasons for acting selfish,” Joe said. “It’s not about what you say, it’s about what you do. You cut and ran.”

  “How did you get so hard, Son?” his father whispered.

  “A few months ago,” Joe said, “I put the muzzle of my Glock to a man’s forehead and pulled the trigger. I think about it all the time, just about every night. I justify it to myself that he was threatening my family, which he was. That if I let him go he’d figure out a way to come back for me, which he would have. But it doesn’t matter what I say to myself, I still did it. I didn’t have to do it, I chose to. My words about it mean nothing, just like yours.”

  George sighed and it was as if all of his spirit was being expelled.He seemed smaller than when Joe sat down. Joe watched his father think. He knew he’d made him angry. Fine.

  George looked up. “I might have done some stupid things, but at least I never killed a man.”

  Joe thought of Victor. “In a way, what you did was worse.”

  “And here I thought tonight might be nice,” George said sadly.

  “I’ve got a great wife and two great kids,” Joe said. “I learned how to be a good father and a husband from them. Without them I’d fly off the planet.”

  “When Victor died-”

  “Without them,” Joe said, refusing to let George turn the conversation, “I might have turned out to be like you.”

  He stood up and walked out of the cafeteria. Joe wasn’t sure why he’d confessed, and it confused him as much as anything. George didn’t call after him.

  Marybeth was cleaning up after dinner when Joe called, and the first thing she said was, “Three more days.”

  Which reminded him he needed to make arrangements for them, reserve rooms or a cabin in the only place that would still be open, Mammoth.

  He asked her if she could get on the Internet and research some companies he had learned about but hadn’t had the means to check out. She eagerly agreed, and he read them off: Allied, Genetech, BioCorp, Schroeder Engineering, EnerDyne.

  “I’ll see what I can find,” she said.

  He told her about George Pickett, putting a gloss on the meeting. Already, he was feeling guilty for being so hard on the old man. Too much had spilled out and too quickly.

  “Joe,” she said, “does he want to meet us?”

  “I’m sure he
does. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I’m tough,” she said. “Your girls are tough. They can handleit.”

  “But why should they?”

  “Kids are always curious about where they come from,” Marybeth said. “This is an opportunity for them to meet their grandfather.”

  Joe laughed nervously. “You’re supposed to be the one with good judgment. Why should we introduce them to a sick old drunk who thinks the world will end any minute?”

  She paused. “Honey, are you okay?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  Joe sat in a rocking chair in front of the four-sided fireplace with the purpose of making notes for his report to Chuck Ward but finding himself staring at the dying flames until late into the night. The inn had the feel of melancholy and abandonment on its last night open, which precisely matched his mood. He could not get the image of his father out of his mind-sitting there in his shirt buttoned to his neck, eyes rheumy, hands shaking, saying,“How did you get so hard, Son?” At one point, from out of nowhere, he fought the urge to cry.

  Nate arrived holding two stout logs, which he tossed into the fire after stepping over the railing designed to prevent visitors from doing exactly that. The lengths of soft dry pine took off as if they were angry, throwing heat and light. Joe snapped out of his reverie and sat up.

  Nate asked, “How’d dinner with Pop go?”

  Joe said, “Badly.”

  “I had an interesting day,” Nate said, settling down in the chair next to Joe. “But first, tell me about yours.”

  After Joe was finished, Nate slowly nodded his head. “I rememberthe hot pot at Sunburst,” he said. “Nice place. I took a girl there once.”

  “I’m guessing that’s where Hoening went also,” Joe said, making a mental note to himself to try to contact several of the girls Yellowdick had corresponded with. As far as he knew, the investigators hadn’t followed up with any of them because there appeared to be no reason to do so. But if they could tell Joe anything about trips to the hot springs, it might shed some light. Or, Joe thought, simply make the murky even murkier.