DOUBLE MINT

by Gretchen Archer

  “You have me,” Conner shrugged, “so all he has left are the banks.”

  “Write them down, the banks.” I pushed a sheet of paper and a pen. He scribbled, then pushed back. Pumpkin Center, Susan Moore, Pine Apple.

  My father.

  “How?”

  “The black woman. Your friend. She’s breaking into the banks.”

  While we talked, messages had stacked up on my phone.

  From No Hair: There’d been some kind of a hellacious mix-up. The Bellissimo had Josh Groban, who was supposed to headline at Jolie tonight, and the Jolie had Dionne Warwick, who was supposed to be here.

  From Sears: Something is going on with the cat. It dragged a pair of Mr. Cole’s dress pants to the tree in the foyer. If it were him, he’d call a veterinarian.

  From Baylor: His nose started bleeding again and he called Dr. Paisley. She’s here and making him hang his head off the sofa, she needs to talk to me, and he thinks he might sneeze.

  From Fantasy’s husband: What the hell is going on? He has received two pictures of his wife, one at five, another at six, neither one of which he thinks very highly of, and she’s not answering her phone.

  From my father: Activity in Horn Hill, check. Six weeks of construction on the interior of one of the abandoned sock warehouses and, judging by what shipped in, all from one company, MedQuip, which sold nothing but medical equipment. It looked like someone built a small hospital inside a ramshackle warehouse.

  And from my husband: Help.

  His was the only message I responded to: On the way.

  When I looked up from my phone, Conner Hughes was staring at me, beads of sweat on his brow, his breath coming and going in a thin pant, and he’d run his hands through his hair so many times it was somewhere between spiked, wrecked, and ready to jump off his head.

  I sat on the edge of my seat, ready to leave this room. “Why didn’t you tell us, Conner? We would have helped you.”

  “If I’d breathed a word,” he looked me dead in the eye, “I promise you we’d all be dead.”

  The clock ticked, the hands lined up, it was six, straight up and down.

  “I have one more question.” My hand on the doorknob.

  The weary man looked up.

  “What’s he got on you?”

  “He has my cat.”

  Twenty-Three

  In all my years of working on the right side of the law, seven as a police officer in Pine Apple and now more than three at the Bellissimo as a Super Secret Spy, I’d never come across a Miles Davenport, a master criminal, a man who had, right under my nose, used his strengths and others’ weaknesses to orchestrate a con so elaborate—his tentacles reaching and wrapping around Holder Darby, Christopher Hall, Conner Hughes, Magnolia Thibodeaux, three unsuspecting small town Alabama banks, the Bellissimo, and my best friend—I felt (totally alone, with No Hair in Tunica, Baylor’s face smashed in, and Fantasy in his grips) helpless to stop this runaway train. He’d had months to put it together; I had mere hours to take it apart. My only hope was to play the game the way he played it and find some faith.

  When you do what I do, faith is something that can slip through your fingers: faith in the system, faith in justice, faith in people. When you see enough, you give up. When you see too much, you start worrying. When you think you’ve seen it all, a point I’d reached without knowing it, you freeze your life and the lives of those closest to you. You think even the mailman is out to hurt your husband. You think your father, who taught you everything you know, can’t handle a simple bank robbery without you. You think your partner, a strong, brave, fearless woman, can’t dig out of the ditch she threw herself into. You think you can’t bring a child into this cruel broken world, because it’s safer for the child to stay a dream than become a vulnerable reality. I’d lost my faith. It was time to find it.

  * * *

  I ran past Calinda.

  He met me halfway between his desk and the door and I caved. We stayed there as long as we could. Three seconds. We sat across from each other in armless brown chairs, our knees touching, both of us wide-eyed, shocked by the events of the past two hours and panicked about what might happen in the next two.

  “Where’s Conner Hughes?”

  “He’s downstairs in one of the holding rooms, across from the drunk tank.”

  Bradley nodded.

  “Where’s Miles Davenport?”

  “He’s still in his suite unless he jumped out the window.”

  Bradley studied the carpet.

  “Where is Bianca?” he asked.

  “She’s upstairs having an ophthalmologist cut off her eyelashes.”

  “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I wish.”

  Bradley pushed his sleeve cuff back and checked the time. “What’s our next move?”

  “My next move is Christopher Hall.”

  “And he’s where?”

  “Horn Hill.”

  I watched him think. We had to have Christopher Hall. And it was almost certain we’d find Holder Darby with him. We needed her too.

  “How far is it?”

  “In the Sikorsky, thirty-eight minutes,” I said. “If I drive like a bat out of hell, it’s three hours.”

  “Then the banks,” Bradley said.

  “Yes. They’ll start hitting the banks as soon as it’s dark, while we’re supposed to be at the Mint Condition finals and the concert.”

  “So you plan to go to Pine Apple after Horn Hill?”

  Without thinking, I raised my hand to my heart. “No, Bradley. I can’t be in four places at once.” I swallowed. Hard. “Daddy can handle it.”

  “How do you know it will be Pine Apple first?”

  “Because he’s OCD. He’ll go in alphabetical order.”

  Bradley shook the information into his head.

  “We’ll take the helicopter.” He summoned it with one text.

  “You can’t leave, Bradley.”

  “I won’t let you go alone, Davis.”

  I opened my spy bag and only hesitated a little when I passed my husband a Remington 1911R1 Carry Commander and two extra magazines. He tucked the gun at his back and dropped the mags in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Are you good, Bradley?” I grew up with guns. For me, carrying a gun was no different than carrying a purse.

  “Davis,” he said. “Have a little faith.”

  We took the private elevator behind Bradley’s office to the roof where the helicopter was waiting and roaring. The second I stepped out, it tried to blow my clothes off. Bradley shielded his face with a hand against the prop blast and stepped in front of me to block it. I burrowed into him and raised my voice to tell my father that Fantasy was on her way to rob the Pine Apple Savings and Loan vault. “She’s only after one thing, Daddy,” I yelled. “The platinum. And she’ll be there at exactly eight o’clock. She’ll have muscle with her, so use your best judgment. Don’t try to stop her, but somehow get a message to her that we’ll be waiting for her at midnight at the First Bank of Susan Moore.”

  * * *

  The Sikorsky is the delivery van of the Bellissimo fleet, used for short runs to pick up bluefin tuna, cuddlefish, and squid hitting New Orleans ports, and this for a resort already on the Gulf. Fresh seafood isn’t good enough, go figure. (Sushi changed the whole world. And not necessarily for the better.) The helicopter had twin turbine engines, four-bladed main and tail rotors, leather seating for eight, and Sirius XM. It’s sleek, black, and quiet after the doors close, but once you’re locked in, it has a little bit of a fishy smell. Or maybe I imagined it. I sat in the copilot seat so I could use the radio. The cockpit dash looked like Christmas on Mars.

  Up, up, and away.

  It was a clear night, not a cloud on t
he weather radar or in the sky, and the pilot, Dewey, wearing a navy blue flight suit with Bellissimo Whirlybirds embroidered above his name, grinned from ear to ear and welcomed us aboard. He showed me how to switch the radio from navigation to communication. It was all so Buzz Lightyear.

  The closest hospital was Andalusia Regional, fifteen miles from Horn Hill, and I radioed Andalusia Emergency Services first. The switchboard and I repeated the same lines several times.

  “Yes, a liver transplant.”

  “In Horn Hill.”

  “Yes!”

  “In a warehouse.”

  “Yes!”

  She put me on hold and a man picked up. “This is Dr. Ingram.”

  I went through it again. Same questions.

  “Is the surgical team with him?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Is someone monitoring his fluids, electrolytes, and kidney function?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Okay.” This doctor had about had it with me. “What are the results of his last LFT?”

  “What’s an LFT?”

  “Lady,” Dr. Ingram said, “really. You say you have a transplant patient in the middle of nowhere, in a warehouse, and that’s truly all you know?”

  “Correct.”

  “I’ll put a team together and meet you there, but I want you to know if I had so much as a kid with a bee sting in the emergency room right now, I’d hang up on you and try to forget you called.” Beside me, Dewey the Whirlybird pilot, with the bearing of a man behind the wheel of his Roadster on a Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside, casually glanced across the colorful cockpit dash, checking this and that—altimeters, transponders, the Dow. All he needed was a driving cap, a cocktail, and a wicker picnic basket.

  “You can’t bust in, Dr. Ingram. It’s a volatile situation,” I said to the radio. “You have to wait on my team.”

  “When does ‘your team’ arrive?”

  I looked at Dewey, chewing a toothpick and humming. “ETA twenty-two minutes.”

  “I heard him,” Dr. Ingram said. “One more question. Do you know if the patient is on immunosuppressives?”

  “I don’t even know what immunosuppressives are.”

  “Do you even know which warehouse?” he asked. “There are four buildings in Horn Hill. One factory, three warehouses.”

  “Look for signs of recent traffic, activity, lights,” I said. “I’ve truly told you all I know.”

  My next radio shout out was to Emergency Services of Covington County. I had as much credibility with them as I had with the good doctor. Same questions.

  “A liver transplant?”

  “Yes.”

  “In a warehouse?”

  “Yes.”

  “In Horn Hill.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ma’am, you do know that filing a false report is at best a misdemeanor and at worst a federal offense.”

  “I’m well aware.” My cell phone was in my lap. At the altitude we were flying—we were probably grazing treetops—I still had good cell service. It was six minutes after seven. I twisted in my seat to give Bradley a glance, who looked up from his phone and shook his head. Reggie hadn’t contacted me or Bradley and we could only assume that meant he hadn’t received a seven o’clock picture of his wife with her long legs in the air. Taking it from there, we could only assume Fantasy was cooperating.

  “We’ll meet you at the junction of Eighty-four and Three thirty-one,” the man said, “and be ready to go to jail if we don’t find a guy with a new liver in a warehouse.”

  No, thank you. I’d had enough of that this week.

  “Ask him where I can put down.” (Dewey the jaunty Whirlybird pilot.)

  The Covington County dispatcher heard him. “Anywhere,” he said. “It’s no-man’s land. Wide open.”

  Dewey sat it down seven minutes later in an empty field. Several cars were waiting, and by the time we’d untangled ourselves and stepped onto solid ground, the slicing blades above our heads slowing and quieting, patrol cars from Opp, Gnatt, Babbie, and Onycha had arrived.

  Who named Alabama? Really, who came up with all this? It’s embarrassing.

  The officer in charge quickstepped to meet us, two deputies on his heels, the rest standing back and admiring the Sikorsky. The front man took a look at us—big burly pilot wearing a uniform, six-foot-tall two-hundred pound blonde man in a power suit, and me, all of five-foot-two, red hair pulled back in a ponytail, jeans, white t-shirt, red flip-flops, pink toenails—and asked who was in charge. I raised my hand.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Bradley whipped out his business card and we were awarded instant credibility.

  “What’s going on?” Front Man asked.

  I started with the SparkNotes, but boggled his brain at the eyelash transplant. He held up a stop sign. “Okay,” he said. “That’ll do.”

  The medical team, Front Man said, was on the other side of Horn Hill.

  “How far?” I asked.

  He turned and pointed. “Over that hill. You’ve never been to Alabama, have you?”

  “I have,” I said. “Yes, I have.”

  We caravanned to the collection of dilapidated warehouses, the ambulance and a white SUV bringing up the rear. We approached from the south, and went dark when we got within shooting distance. We had the cover of late dusk, a clear sky, and a rising crescent moon to sneak in by. Front Man put it in park, pulled night vision binoculars from his console of goodies, his crackling service radio the only noise in the car other than Bradley shuffling in the back seat of a police car, a place he didn’t know well and I knew too well, when Front Man said, “There.” The warehouses formed a sloppy U at the end of a road paved by the Romans. “We’ve got something.” He pointed to the left of side by side buildings; both looked about thirty feet tall with close to two hundred thousand square feet of interior space.

  “Looks like three levels in the building, and there’s infrared coming from the second level.”

  “How many people?” I asked.

  The binoculars fell to his lap and he turned to me. “Lady. We’re a thousand yards away. I can’t really take a headcount.” Front Man’s arm shot out of the driver window, and he issued hand-signal orders I couldn’t see. We crept closer. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see every vehicle in the caravan behind us riding their brakes, glowing red, red, red. We looked like Amsterdam sneaking up on Armageddon. When we were within a few hundred yards of a receiving bay, Front Man’s arm shot out the window again and the patrol cars behind us spread out. He turned to me. “Ready?”

  I was locked and loaded.

  Every single bit of me wanted to ask Bradley to stay in the car.

  The grounds surrounding the building were spotty islands of pavement in wide cracked chunks, loose gravel, and weeds up to my knees. The area was littered with broken glass, trash, and saber tooth tigers. (Probably.) Night fell around us as we breached the building from the four original entrances and three unoriginal gaps in the metal siding large enough to drive cars through. We stepped into the pitch black interior.

  I could barely hear the buzz of a distant generator over the blood rushing through my temples and roaring in my ears. We moved through the building stealthily, silently, communicating with head jerks and hand signals, and this, from a collection of rural Alabama cops whose biggest busts this year had no doubt been expired tags and teenagers drinking Jungle Juice.

  As my eyes adjusted, I saw rusty factory equipment, weed gardens decorating them at intervals. We were coming from all directions of the building, our mutual destination a stairway made of steel in the middle of the room. Corrosion had eaten through the grate in places large enough for me to fall through and several rusted steps were completely gone.
>
  We reached the top of the stairs and flanked the door, all guns drawn. Front Man checked for booby traps and didn’t find any. We went in on Front Man’s finger count, and once in, bumped into each other staring at the surreal scene in front of us. It was exactly what I expected and the shock of seeing something so totally unexpected took my breath away.

  A ten by twelve sterile surgical suite covered with industrial plastic had been dropped into this ravaged building. Large generators on both sides gave it a glow and operated the ventilation system, a series of overhead cylinders wrapped in silver insulation that snaked to an exterior wall.

  Front Man and I looked at each other curiously, as, clearly, the occupants of the room had to know we were there, yet there was no movement, aggressive or otherwise, inside the plastic clinic. He and I inched forward, found the break in the plastic and pushed through.

  I found Holder Darby.

  She was stretched out in the hospital bed beside Christopher Hall, who had a white sheet pulled up to his chin. His face was the color of a storm sky, his black lips parted, one eye open, one eye closed.

  Front Man hit his radio. “I’ve got a four-one-nine in Horn Hill.”

  “What’s that?” My husband whispered.

  I stood on my tiptoes to get to his ear. “A corpse.”

  Holder Darby scanned the intruding faces and found mine. “You.”

  Twenty-Four

  Holder Darby was cuffed to the gurney in the back of the ambulance on her way to Andalusia Regional Hospital. I climbed in the back and sat on the EMT bench. She stared at me for a long minute, then turned the other way.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Holder.”

  She spoke to a defibrillator. “You have no idea.”

  “I do, Holder. I love my husband very much. I never want to lose him.”

  She turned back to look at me, her dark hair matted, her gray eyes dead, her pale lips dry and cracked. “I want you to know it was worth it to me to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him.”