The Gypsy Queen: A Matt Preston Novel (Matt Preston Series Book 3)

by Paul Shadinger

  Frost lifted his shoulders as if to make himself larger. “He was a rather burly man who was totally bald and somewhere during his life he had been shot and it left a scar along the top of his scalp. It left a white scar on his very tan head.”

  The room started to spin. The man Frost had just described was Bullwinkle. The man I’d just seen a while ago in a Starbucks and then in a nightclub in Seattle. Frost saw the look on my face and asked me what was wrong. “Your Hollis sounds like somebody I knew a long time ago. Not to worry.” We finished shaking hands and I left.

  When I was a few blocks away I pulled over into a parking lot and stopped. I noticed my hands were shaking and my shirt was damp with sweat. My thoughts were centered on one thing, why did Frost think Bullwinkle was Hollis? I had killed Heyward Hollis. That was a fact I was positive about. So, where did Bullwinkle fit into the equation?

  To divert my spinning thought I got out Melissa’s business card in my wallet and I decided that since I was in North Fort Myers, I would go and see the address she had put on her card. I had no idea what to expect, or what I might learn, but since I was here, why not go and check it out?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Melissa’s address turned out to be exactly what I’d expected, a big vacant field. After my visit to the empty lot, the thing I realized was she must have some knowledge of the southwest Florida area.

  Perhaps I had my priorities confused in regards to finding Melissa, and my yearning to find out about Hollis. While I was chatting with Snooker, I got a message from John telling me in exact detail how to find his old navy chief who’d served under him.

  Along with information on how to find John’s old chief, Apple told me he had emailed me a copy of the proposal the admiral wanted me to present to Ilox. I was to try and negotiate a trade for information on Melissa’s location in exchange for what I called a get out of jail free card for Ilox. If Ilox would provide information on Melissa’s whereabouts, he would be allowed to stay permanently in the US and receive a green card. The address Johnny gave me for his old chief was located at the end of Rabbit Road. Rabbit Road! I got a kick out of the name. Was it named because some guy a long time ago saw a bunch of rabbits on the road and thus it became Rabbit Road? Makes you wonder sometimes how streets got their names.

  I followed Johnnie’s directions exactly and drove to what I thought was the end of Rabbit Road, just as I’d been instructed. Now I sat in front of a stop sign. Up to this point, his directions had been spot on, and I’d faithfully followed them like I’d been told. But what looked like the end of the road, kind of wasn’t. The county-maintained road stopped. The path that continued beyond was heavily potholed and in poor shape. It did not resemble a road. I wondered what was going on.

  Johnny had told me to drive all the way to the end of Rabbit where I would find the house I was looking for, but nothing was ever said about a stop sign, or the lane that followed. And it was a very weird stop sign. Why was it weird? Well for one thing it was out here in the middle of nowhere! I could see ahead of me the one lane road stretching for at least half a mile or more. Below the stop sign was another sign warning me Rabbit Road was a dead-end road with no way to turn around at the end. And if those two signs weren’t enough to let me know I wasn’t welcome, there was a separate sign on the left hand side telling me this road was private property, no trespassing allowed and survivors would be prosecuted. To me that meant KEEP OUT! I sat for a moment and stared down the lane in front of me and looking way ahead I could see it turned off in the distance. I wondered what actually lay up ahead. Since the person I needed to see lived at the end of the road, I decided to go for it and started to drive. Trees grew so close alongside the small lane the branches formed an arch overhead, while twigs and leaves brushed the sides of the car as I passed by.

  From the stop sign to where the road turned was over half a mile and then it doglegged to the right. Just after the right turn, on my left I saw the house I was looking for. It looked exactly as Johnnie had described. It was right on the river and it appeared as if it had been built just after the war. (That’s WW II thank you!) The house was perched in the air on old 12x12 wooden posts which over the years had started to twist. In turn the posts sat on concrete pier blocks. One end of the house was starting to sag a little as the pier blocks had settled into the supporting sand. At one time the house had been tan in color with dark orange trim, but now the tan was more of a washed out antique white. Parked in the space under the shack was a rusty old MGB from the sixties with the top missing and next to that was a heavily rusted Lincoln with suicide doors.

  There were stairs leading up to a deck surrounding the house. When I stopped my car, I could hear a dog barking inside. My leg was healing and walking was easier now, but stairs still made things ache. I climbed up the rickety stairs and came to what had once been a screened front porch but was now bereft of any screening.

  The front door beyond was standing open and the barking was now standing in front of me. The dog was small, brown and light tan with a really cute face. It was a mutt with a great, intelligent expression and its hair was clipped very close. The dog kept barking and from the back of the house I heard a male voice, “Shut up! God damn it, shut up!” The dog totally ignored the voice. “Rascal, stop barking!” The dog still ignored the voice.

  Since the dog’s tail was wagging I bent over and held out my hand so he could smell the back of it. I held it in such a way that if the dog made any sudden moves I could quickly snatch it back. The dog immediately stopped barking and started sniffing at my hand. The voice came from the back of the house. “What is it Rascal? Who’s here?”

  The man came forward and then stood in the opening between the dining room and the living room. He glared at me for a second and then snapped, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”

  The gentleman before me appeared to be very old. He was a diminutive wizened man, small of frame and bent with age. The top of his head was bald with a white fluff of hair around the tops of his ears. His face was heavily lined from years spent staring out across the ocean. The blue eyes were slightly clouded but they looked alert and he seemed to know exactly what was happening around him. His voice was high pitched and came out as kind of a whine. The once white shirt was heavily discolored and his tan pants were stained in front. He asked, “What are you, deaf boy? I asked you who you are?”

  “I’m sorry sir. Are you Bill Richardson? Master Chief William Richardson?”

  The old fellow squinted at me as he asked, “Why? Who’s asking?”

  “Sir, my name is Matt Preston and we have friends in common. I believe you know John Orchard.”

  The old man snorted. “You mean ol’ Captain Apple?” I tried not to smile but I couldn’t help it.

  I hated to interrupt the old fellow, but I did, “Sir, Captain Apple is now an Admiral.”

  “Well shit!” The old fellow said. “What’s the Gol durned Navy coming to, promoting that idiot to admiral. I had to tell him every morning which side was port and which side was starboard.” He shook his head. “Well, what does ol’ Admiral Apple want with me now? Did he forget port and starboard again?”

  “Well, what does the old fart want now?” he repeated.

  “Sir, he sent me here to ask if you would help me see somebody.”

  “What? See somebody? What the fuck does that mean?” the chief snapped back.

  “It means I’m trying to find Mr. Ilox and the admiral believes you can help me. Can you help me sir?”

  “Why?” he asked belligerently.

  “Why what, sir?”

  “So help me God, if you ‘sir’ me one more time I’m going to go and get one of my canes and beat the ever livin’ shit out of you. Hear me boy?” Bill’s pattern of speech seemed to vacillate between some old redneck and an old black man. I assumed with so many years in the Navy he had been exposed to a lot of different ethn
ic groups and he assumed whatever was easiest for him to use at the moment.

  “Sorry, s—” I stopped myself just in time.

  The old man shook a finger at me. “Thirty-four years in this man’s navy and I worked for a living. I ‘twernt no officer! I was enlisted and I was a Master Chief and I’ll be damned if yur gonna ‘sir’ me. Do you understand, young man?”

  It took every ounce of will power not to say, “Yes sir!” I managed to say the “yes” part and stop. Even though the conversation was not going as planned, I found myself enjoying this old fellow.

  Bill closed one eye and squinted up at me. “Let’s try this one more time son, what’s you want with Ilox?”

  “The admiral and I have questions we would like to ask him.”

  “What kind of questions?” he asked.

  “I am not really at liberty to discuss this with you.”

  The old man closed one eye and squinted at me. When I said nothing more, he turned his head and hollered towards the back of the house, “Nicola.” The word sounded like “na-colla” but I couldn’t be sure. When nothing happened, he called out again, “Nicola, damn it, get your fat ass out here. Now!” I was starting to wonder if the old man was a bit more senile than John had told me. Was there even a Nicola, whatever that was? This time the old fella’s voice was frightening with its volume, “NICOLA!”

  From the back of the house came a woman’s voice. “Would you shut up! I’m coming as fast as I can, old man.” The voice was lightly accented and when a woman stepped out of the hallway and into the room, for a moment I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. There was an angel standing before me. A barefoot young woman entered the room, wearing skimpy shorts and a torn t-shirt that barely made it over the tops of her breasts and exposing a flat, tanned tummy. Her dark brown hair was long and done up in a ponytail. Her eyes were a startling blue. She didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup. She was stunningly attractive. A beautiful, wholesome young woman. Her voice was low and she spoke to him softly in a language I didn’t understand.

  “Speak English,” he growled at her. He pointed at me as he told her, “I want him to understand what we’re talking about.”

  She smiled at me and then looked back at Bill. “If that’s the case, why aren’t you using my American name? Remember, we agreed you would call me Nicky? And don’t shout at me, old man. You’re the one who is going deaf, not me. Now, what do you want?”

  “I want you to make this asshole leave. Now!”

  With a twinkle in her eye, she looked at me and said, “Oh! And what has this asshole done that he needs to leave? Now!”

  “He wants me to tell him where Ilox is and he won’t tell me the reason why. I say fuck him.”

  Nicky hung her head and slowly shook it, her ponytail swaying back and forth. “Bill, maybe he isn’t interested—”

  Bill interrupted crossly, “That ain’t the kind of ‘fuck him’ I mean and you know it.”

  Her voice was patient as if explaining something to a child. “Bill, you can’t run off everybody that wants to talk to Ilox. If you won’t tell him, I’ll tell him how else he can find out the information.”

  “Nicola…” Nicky held up her hand and Bill started over, “Nicky, if you tell him I’ll fire you.”

  “Oh really? Again? What is that today, fourth or fifth time?”

  “God damn it woman, are you making fun of me?”

  “I don’t have to. You do an excellent job without my help.”

  I butted in, “Look, I don’t want to break up the Battling Bickersons here, I’m enjoying the show, but I need to talk to Ilox and it’s very important I do it sooner rather than later.”

  Nicky looked at me and smiled. “Why do you want to have a chat with him?”

  I was starting to get peeved and I countered, “Tootsie Bell, if I didn’t tell gramps here, I’m sure as hell not going to tell you. Besides, I have no idea who you are anyway.”

  Nicky started to walk towards the front door and when I didn’t follow her, she motioned for me to come. Bill called after us as we stepped out onto the porch, “You tell him girl. No butthead is gonna’ come here and pump me for information.”

  Once we were outside the young woman turned to me and with a smile, asked, “What happened to your ear?”

  “I got shot and they sewed it up.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “More when it was shot than when they sewed it up.”

  “Oh! Sorry about that. Do turtles really have wings in Alaska?” she asked me.

  When she first asked me, I was shocked. We were carrying along a normal conversation and then the crazy question. That was a recognition code. Even though I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever done, I answered, “You’re mistaken, San Diego always has fog this time of year.” I felt really stupid, but she was telling me she worked for Orchard.

  “Sorry about all this, but Bill has no idea I work for the admiral. I’m Nicola, Bill’s… ” she paused, “ah, nurse among other things.” I told her my name. “Look, Bill doesn’t have much longer to live and he refuses to go to a home. He has more than enough money to be in a very nice place but he wants to live here. He has Rascal and he’s on the river and he’s content. Considering all he’s done over the years, the Admiral and I think he has every right to do what he wants. Because I speak Armenian and sometimes Bill forgets and speaks in Armenian, Admiral Orchard gave me this assignment. I’m also here to protect him. I know you don’t know a thing about me, but I am quite capable of protecting Bill and myself.

  “I have no idea how much you know about Bill, but there are a lot of different government agencies around the world that would love to get him alone somewhere and debrief him. He worked briefly for a general named CV McDonald,” I hoped my surprise didn’t show. “And then he served under the admiral for many years. I don’t want Bill to know what’s going on with me and the admiral so that’s why I asked you why you needed to know about Ilox.”

  I was totally confused. Does this young woman work for John? Why not have her ask Bill where to find this Ilox guy? “I don’t understand why can’t you ask Bill about Ilox. What am I doing here?”

  “Besides not wanting Bill to know about a relationship with the admiral, there are lots of things Bill hasn’t told anybody and we would like to get as much of that information from him as we can before he, well, you know. Back in the day, Bill was one of three spymasters working around the border areas of Turkey and Iran. Bill has deep family roots around the border area and he speaks many of the languages better than most natives. Because of those contacts he has been a very valuable asset.

  “Today he may not look like what you think a spymaster should look like, but back in the day he was something else. Even today, he still knows a lot of the interworking’s of several complete setups over there. He may act like the tottering old man, but his mind is still as sharp as it ever was. He’s just playing a game with you. I see through his game now and each day he tells me a little more. Basically, he is just a lonely sweet old man and this is his way of having somebody to talk to. Other than his dog, Rascal, he has nobody.”

  “Other than speaking the language, how did you draw this assignment?”

  “Lucky I guess.” Nicky smiled at me. “And there are other reasons too. Kind of part of paying a debt.”

  “By the way, what does Nicola mean?”

  She laughed and replied, “It means gorgeous, elegant, a magnificent lady.”

  “It fits!” I know it sounded corny, but it fit! I could not believe how much I liked hearing her speak. I’d never heard an accent quite like hers and when she spoke her words were almost musical. Between the timbre and tone, I could listen to her all day, but that wasn’t getting me to see Ilox.

  “Thank you.”

  I asked, “What’s your last name?”

  “Zadian. A good Armenian na
me.” She laughed.

  “Why are Bill and Ilox so close? What’s the tie between those two?”

  “Ilox worked for Bill when they were in Turkey. Early on, Ilox saved Bill’s life and I know Bill later saved Ilox’s many times as well. The story goes that Ilox was actually standing in front of a firing squad. He was going to be executed. Bill and a few other special types broke into the prison just in time and saved him. Because of that, Ilox will do just about anything Bill asks him to. They go a long way back.”

  Now I understood why John had been so adamant I go and see Bill to find Ilox. I said, “I still need to get Bill to tell me how to find Ilox.” I explained.

  “I understand but can you tell me why?”

  “The admiral and I believe that Ilox knows the location of a woman we need to find. Right now we believe she’s in danger. We want to help her.”

  “Come on, let’s see what we can do.” Before we entered the house, I pulled a business card from my wallet and handed it to her. “Here, keep this. If there’s anything I can ever do to help with Bill, or if you need anything, please let me know. I may not look like much, but I’m not without resources.”

  Her eyes widened and she smiled at me. “Even with half the ear gone, you look just fine to me.” She winked and laughed as she put her hand on my arm. I saw her mouth the words, “Thank you,” and I grinned at her in return.

  We went back into the room to find Bill sitting in an old recliner with Rascal curled up in his lap. I heard something growl and I assumed it was Rascal. I faced Bill and held out my arms from my body a little with my palms towards him; a sign of submission. I spoke as humbly as possible, “Bill, perhaps I got off on a bad start with you. I know some of your past. I know you worked with Ilox in the Muddle East.”

  Bill’s laugh was a snort when I said that and he nodded his head. “Yep, that’s just what it is. Muddle East.”