Not so different than the weekend scene in Hibiscus Park back in Key Largo, a district of the island that Thorn frequented as a kid to hang with Sugar and practice his skills at horseshoes and half-court basketball. The meat grilling on the barbecue pit in Hibiscus Park was usually fresh grouper or grunt, not the slab of pork whose savory scent was filling the air in this neighborhood, but otherwise it was the same make-do housing, the same bare-bones decorations, a flashy chrome hubcap propped up here, a pot of colorful flowers standing there, some shabby Christmas wreaths hanging on doors, the same stalwart crew of men and women gathered in a perpetual block party, same kids playing their games with an abandon that appeared unencumbered by the crush of deprivation and hardship around them.
Thorn pulled up alongside the aging Chevrolet and got out.
A couple of the men watched him draw near. But most seemed to be studiously ignoring his presence.
He stood at the front fender of the old Chevy, near the mechanic, who raised up to see who was casting a shadow over his work.
“I’m looking to buy a car,” Thorn said. “Know of anything for sale?”
The men looked beyond Thorn at the Cutlass Supreme.
“Looks to me you already got a car,” one of the men said. “A big one.”
“Too big and too hot,” Thorn said. “I’ll be happy to leave it if anyone wants it. It’s yours. I’m paying cash for the right car.”
The men glanced at one another but were silent.
“Three hundred,” Thorn said. “I’ll go higher for one that runs good.”
“Got this here car,” the mechanic said. “Valves are knocking, and it burns a mite bit of oil, but it’ll get you from here to there.”
“How far is that, here to there?”
“Down the road a ways, you treat her good.”
“And that’s all that’s wrong with it? Valves?”
“Smells like a rat died in the glove box. Other than that.”
“What’re you doing to it now?”
“Tuning the carb.”
“Let me hear it run.”
The mechanic waved at a gawky kid in jeans and an old army shirt.
“Turn her over for the gentleman.”
When it started a cloud of blue smoke erupted from the tailpipe and the engine knocked for a minute then smoothed out and the clatter went away. Thorn made a shut-it-off motion to the kid at the wheel.
“Got anything else?”
“All this one needs is some forty-weight oil, it’s good as new.”
“That’s not valves, that’s a rod knocking,” Thorn said. “Oil pump is working well enough because after a few seconds it circulates the oil and suppresses the knock. But that engine is about ten miles away from throwing a rod. It needs to be rebuilt. It’s not worth driving to the junkyard. I’ll go as high as five hundred for a decent car.”
“I told you it was a rod knocking,” the kid in the army shirt said.
“Shut your mouth, boy.”
Thorn looked around at the rest of the men. Nobody stepping forward.
“I could even rent something short term. I’ll pay the three hundred and bring the car back in a few days. The three hundred’s yours.”
“A minute ago you were saying five hundred,” a bald man said. He stepped away from his friends. An older gentleman, two decades past Thorn.
“You got a car, sir?”
“Taurus,” he said. “Runs a hell of a lot better than this piece of crap.”
“Five hundred for a few days.”
“How many days we talking about?”
“Can’t be sure. Soon as I settle my business here in Pine Haven.”
“I baby that car. Ain’t got no scratches on the body, mats are clean, change the oil every five thousand miles. I want it back same way it goes out.”
“I can’t promise that,” Thorn said.
“Why not?”
The mechanic said, “’Cause he’s looking to get into some kind of trouble, Eddie. Can’t you see it? Look at this man.”
The others took the opportunity to give Thorn closer scrutiny, weighing his potential for danger to Eddie’s car. Thorn tried to imagine what they were seeing, a scruffy, sleep-deprived white guy, his sandy hair grown shaggy, a three-day beard. Big through the chest and long-limbed. A scar on his cheek, another that intersected an eyebrow, his nose bent a few degrees out of line, not quite a thug, but definitely a brawler, a man who’d gone into the ring more than once and hadn’t always held his own. All in all, if Thorn had been estimating his own potential for damaging the man’s well-kept car, he would’ve said no way.
“Two thousand,” Eddie said.
The others chuckled at his audacity, but Thorn said, “All right, two’s fair. I’ll do my best to bring it back safe and sound. If I can’t manage that, the two thousand should get you into a pretty good replacement vehicle.”
“Let’s see the money,” Eddie said.
As Thorn was walking over to the Olds, a younger man came striding around the corner of the grocery. Well built, clear eyed, a tight white T-shirt and dark jeans. A cigarette tucked in the corner of his lips. The men made way for him and he could see them whispering to him, no doubt bringing him up to date on the negotiations that were taking place.
Thorn popped the trunk, kept his back to the men, concealing the duffel as he counted out more cash. When he closed the trunk, the man was standing beside him.
“Ladarius Washington,” he said. “That’s mine. What’s yours?”
Thorn told him his name.
“That first or last?”
“Works for either.”
“What’s your business around here? Besides buying a car.”
For the last hour of his drive he’d been playing around with various cover stories though none of them seemed to stand out as more credible than the others. So he decided to shade things as close to the truth as possible.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Are you now? Here in Pine Haven?”
“That’s right.”
“Who would that be?”
“Are you the mayor here, the sheriff?”
“As close to either as this broken-down neighborhood will ever get.”
“The person I’m looking for is a young man. He’s not from around here. He might be hiding out, might be camped in the woods, I don’t know. He travels with a group of his friends. He resembles me a little bit.”
“You’re his father, are you?”
“I am.”
“What makes you think he’s hiding out around these parts?”
“I heard something along the way.”
“Heard something, did you?”
“I don’t know where he is. I’m simply asking whoever I meet.”
“Not a smart approach.”
“It’s the only approach I have. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Washington, I’m in the middle of a transaction.”
Ladarius said, “You didn’t ask me if I knew anything about this man.”
“Do you?”
Ladarius held Thorn’s eyes for several seconds as if taking the measure of his secret self. He must’ve gotten a poor reading, for he turned his head away from Thorn, giving him nothing more than permission to pass.
“Twenty dollars for a shovel,” Thorn said to the gathering.
Eddie stepped forward.
“A hundred,” he said. Thorn, the easy mark.
“I got an old pressure cooker works good,” one large woman said to laughter. “I’d take fifty.”
“Fifty for the shovel,” Thorn said. “I have no need for a pressure cooker.”
After Ladarius drifted away, he asked a few of the men if they’d heard anything about some kids protesting the hog farms. But no one was talking, not one of them would even meet his eyes.
Once he had the luggage transferred to the Taurus, he headed south toward the highway and when he reached it, he pulled into the side yard of the house he’d been told belonged to Ladarius W
ashington. It faced the highway and was no better or worse than those around it. He mounted the front porch and was about to tap on the door when a young girl appeared behind the screen. She was holding a stuffed animal against her chest and was peering out at Thorn with a curious smile, as if she’d never seen his species up close before.
“What’s its name?” Thorn nodded at the stuffed creature.
“Leo,” she said.
“It’s a lion?”
“A giraffe,” she said. “Long neck, see.”
She gripped the giraffe’s head and swung it from side to side.
“Does it get dizzy when you swing it around like that?”
She tittered at the thought.
“Yes, it’s dizzy. It’s dizzy and can’t walk. It falls over on its head.”
Ladarius appeared behind the girl.
“Leo’s dizzy, Papa.” The girl swung the giraffe in a wide circle, bumping it against the floor. “See. He’s dizzy.”
“You got your car. What you want now?”
Thorn said, “I’ve got a cell phone. If you hear anything might be helpful in my search, maybe you could call me.”
The man’s eyes were stony and distant.
“Why would I do that?”
“Kindness of your heart. Or I could pay you handsomely.”
“How handsomely is that?”
“Very,” Thorn said.
“You throwing around money like you didn’t earn it honest.”
Thorn gave Ladarius the number for Tina’s cell and recited it again.
“Leo’s dizzy, Papa. See how dizzy.”
With a gentle touch, Ladarius Washington steered his daughter aside and shut the door in Thorn’s face.
On the drive back toward Pine Haven, he pulled onto a road he’d spotted earlier. An asphalt street that ran straight into a wooded area for at least two hundred yards then ended. The concrete slabs and foundations of five houses had been laid out, but the development had failed, and weeds had overgrown the slabs and broken through splits in the asphalt and were thriving.
The green-and-gold sign out front said, DOBBINS COURT.
The street halted in a cul-de-sac, where he found the largest foundation. A monster house had been planned, a palace that would preside over the lesser homes of Dobbins Court. Beside the foundation a yellow Port-O-Let had tumbled onto its side and had been sprayed with layers of graffiti.
He parked, took the shovel and duffel from the trunk. He removed a few hundred dollars of the cash for incidentals that might arise and left the rest of it along with the automatic weapons inside the duffel and hauled it over to the Port-O-Let.
He pried open its door, startling a family of field mice. After taking out the three cartons of ammo packaged in a heavy Ziploc bag, Thorn zipped up the duffel and propped it upright against the edge of the toilet seat.
At the western edge of the palace’s foundation slab, he picked an open area at the base of some slash pines, cleared away the layer of pine needles, and dug a hole and buried the Ziploc bag of ammo. He scuffed up the dirt then scattered the pine needles over the hole. Even if someone stumbled on the shotguns, they’d be useless without the exotic ammunition.
He was no pacifist, but until he understood exactly what danger he was facing and had a plan to combat it, he’d rather keep the big guns in reserve.
Back at the car, he hauled out the luggage. He started with X-88’s fake leather case. Its contents were minimal. A man traveling light. T-shirts, underwear, a shaving kit with a single throwaway razor, a toothbrush, a motel-size tube of toothpaste, and a travel-size deodorant stick. Nothing else. He wasn’t planning a long voyage. A night or two.
He looked at Pixie’s pink roll-on, thought of his rearview-mirror glimpse of her as he was fleeing the gas station. Not Cruz’s nitwit black-sheep daughter blathering about her bawdy history for the last few hundred miles. But an active player in Cruz’s crew.
He lay her suitcase on the ground at his feet and unsnapped it. Clothes neatly organized. Jeans, shirts, basic undies, a pair of plain leather walking shoes, no cosmetics in her toiletry bag, not even lipstick. Organized, methodical. No crotchless panties, lacy bras. Nothing to indicate the floozy she’d made herself out to be.
Cruz’s backpack was a fancy model with straps to wear the usual way and an extension handle and wheels to roll through airports. He unzipped the main compartment and found a couple of changes of casual clothes, gray jeans, two identical black long-sleeved T-shirts, pajamas, underwear, a small cosmetics bag, some wires to recharge her cell phone, a pair of running shoes with socks stuffed inside. The outer zippered compartments were empty.
As he was tucking her clothes back in place, his hand bumped a bulge where the retractable handle was anchored. It might have been a part of the assembly, but something about it seemed out of place.
He emptied the bag again and ran his finger around the inner edges of the pack, tugging on the seams until he discovered a Velcro strip, an access point for servicing the retractable handle. He peeled open the slit and slid his hand under the lining, felt around till he came upon a plastic bag held in place by duct tape.
He peeled the tape loose, drew out the object, and held it up to the winter sunshine. Inside the plastic bag was a bright orange T-shirt. Thorn didn’t open the bag. He didn’t need to. Whoever folded it to fit inside the plastic container had left a large portion of the front exposed. There was a logo in white, a round sun halfway buried into the waterline, and printed in bold white letters: CARIBBEAN CLUB, KEY LARGO, FLA.
Thorn had given Flynn a shirt exactly like this one as a silly gift the day he and his mother had come down for a visit. The day when Flynn was cool and distant and acting disinterested in Thorn’s house, his boat, his lagoon, and most of all his presence. A gift the boy took reluctantly and without comment, then set on the fish-cleaning table as he wandered aimlessly around Thorn’s property.
But when he left later that afternoon, Flynn had walked over to the fish table and picked up the shirt and carried it to his mother’s car. It was the same T-shirt Flynn had changed into the last night Thorn saw him a little more than a year ago as he climbed into the Ford van and drove away with Cassandra.
How had Cruz come by the shirt? Why had she taken such care to protect it and to secrete it in her luggage?
He set the backpack on the ground and stood at the open trunk trying to piece this mess together. Lies jumbled with more lies. Were they all lies or was there truth blended in? The Snitches Web site? The red Xs across their faces, the story of Cruz’s own daughter. The postcard with no postmark, Sugarman’s address printed in block letters that were different from Flynn’s handwriting. Tina’s emergency bathroom stop, directing them to a particular Shell station and fleeing in that conveniently available car. If it was all as choreographed as it appeared, and Tina had been part of the scheme from the start, why had she been locked in the trunk?
He slowed down, then walked through it again.
For some reason Cruz had lured Thorn to Pine Haven, summoning Sugarman in order for Tina to join the party, then discarding both of them along the way. If true, it was an absurdly elaborate ploy to get Thorn engaged. Why hadn’t she simply shown up at his house, laid out the scenario one-on-one? Flynn was in danger and in hiding. Then explain her plan to use Thorn as bait to convince Flynn to reveal himself. Why the convoluted scheme with so many moving parts?
Maybe it was all a magician’s trick. Misdirecting his attention with shiny objects, the duffel and the shotguns and the cash, then distracting him again with Tina’s flight and with the Snitches Web site, the red Xs. All to confuse him, keep him off balance, moving forward. Because if he’d stopped to question her, stopped to do due diligence, he might’ve balked. Might’ve suspected she was hunting down Flynn to capture him and throw him in jail, and simply using Thorn to accomplish that objective.
The more he considered it, the more muddled he got. Where was the proof of a single thing she’d said? If she’d
been lying about the real reason behind this journey, then perhaps she was lying about Flynn’s wounds as well.
God, how he wanted to believe that.
But the sad truth was, logical reasoning had never been Thorn’s strong suit. Puzzles confounded him. Riddles left him irritated and bewildered. His customary method for solving problems was simply to trust his gut, and if his instincts failed, his next reflex was to start kicking down doors, a monkey wrench in each hand.
He returned the T-shirt in its plastic bag to the slot in her backpack and retaped it in place, then he repacked her clothes as neatly as he’d found them. He set X-88’s bag back in the trunk in exactly the same position. He shut the trunk and took a deep breath, then took another. He looked off at the clear blue December sky and tried to read some message there. But as usual, the sky was keeping its advice to itself.
So on his own he decided.
For Flynn’s sake he would keep the monkey wrenches holstered for now. He would calm down. He would drive to town, present himself politely to the fine folks of Pine Haven, spread around his name and his Florida charm, and he would watch with great attention to see whose hackles began to twitch.
EIGHTEEN
THE HAPPY BISCUIT CAFÉ WAS a modest white storefront with a picture window that stretched from the front door to its far wall. A smiling caricature on its sign showed a biscuit with flaky layers shaped into a pair of smiling lips surrounding a neat row of teeth. A weird and unappetizing logo.
He wasn’t hungry, but decided to make it his first stop. He’d save the pool halls and bars in case things got desperate. Over the years Thorn had found that diners and luncheonettes had far more reliable local intelligence than bars and pool halls, where, in addition to an inebriated and hence less trustworthy clientele, an outsider could easily ask one question too many and find himself departing the premises headfirst.
He parked Eddie’s immaculate Taurus across the street from the diner and tried calling Sugar’s cell phone. Again the call failed. Only one signal bar was flickering. Either Tina had chosen a cut-rate phone plan that didn’t have coverage beyond South Florida or else Thorn had chanced upon yet another dead zone.
The Big Finish Page 14