Chasing the Lost

by Bob Mayer

  Back to work.

  If you wanted to call it that.

  He took the beers, empty and full, with him, and placed them on the back of the old golf cart. He drove along the sandy road, through a tunnel underneath broad trees draped with Spanish moss. Even though he was going the length of the island, it wasn’t exactly a marathon. There were only a couple of cars on Dafuskie, the primary mode of transportation being golf cart, since the island wasn’t connected to the mainland by a bridge, and the ferry only carried people, no vehicles. There were three golf courses on the island, and Riley could totally understand how two of the three had failed. Hitting a little ball in a tiny hole. What was the point? What was the challenge? Wasn’t like the ball would explode in your face if you didn’t do it right. You just missed.

  A green from the one that still survived spread out to his right between the trees and the beach. No one was in sight.

  Riley took a turn, and a rambling “shack” overlooking a modern dock was ahead of him on the left. As much as anything in the low country could “overlook,” given the entire island was a flood zone, and the highest point was just twelve feet above sea level. Swampside looked archaic and rustic, which was part of the “charm,” which Riley also didn’t get. It was closed for the season; while winter might be Florida’s in-season, it was off-season in South Carolina.

  Riley saw that the large catamaran ferry from Hilton Head was docked. It was on half-schedule during the winter also, as everything slowed down to a quarter-beat from the half-beat that was the usual rhythm of the area.

  Riley parked the golf cart behind the Shack. A suit paced back and forth anxiously, fresh off the ferry, akin to fresh off the turnip cart. Riley got out of the cart and sighed, anticipating what was going to play out. He took his sunglasses off, and slid them into the breast pocket on the jacket he wore. He wore jeans that had seen better days, and a gray T-shirt inside his denim jacket. A pair of scuffed-up jungle boots completed his swamp-country attire. It wouldn’t make GQ or Esquire, but might rate in Maxim. He walked up, waving the man to silence as he began to babble excuses. Riley sat down in a lone, large wicker chair facing the water, leaving the suit’s scuffed dress shoes mired in the sand.

  Physically, Riley didn’t present an immediate threat. Five-seven, one hundred and seventy pounds after a few beers, he was a bit heavier than his Special Ops fighting weight, but a long way from the Hulk.

  It wasn’t his body that made the suit nervous. It was his aura. Dark-skinned, with finely honed features, his piercing black eyes reflected his training and decades of experience in the world of covert operations. Riley had briefly met his Irish father many years ago as a young child, a fleeting visit after his Puerto Rican mother’s brief marriage and long divorce. The man had never come back again and his mother never mentioned him. She’d passed several years ago, and Riley had no idea of the fate of his father, and he saw no reason to have any interest in it.

  Riley pointed at a tip jar on the outdoor bar.

  The suit’s tongue snaked across his lips, a tell Riley was all-too-familiar with. Like the twitches, the sweating, the tics, all of the signs of a man gone wrong were a cacophony of desperation that Riley was growing weary of. He used to like the excitement, the energy, but in the past year that had faded, supplanted by the air of despair and failure most clients eventually exuded.

  “You know I can get it together, Mister Riley,” the suit pleaded.

  “What ‘it’ are you referring to?” Riley asked. “The money you owe me, or your various addictions?”

  “The money.”

  “If you could, you would have,” Riley reasoned. “But here you are, and it isn’t. So your statement fails in the face of the present situation.”

  “I just need time,” the suit said.

  “We all need time,” Riley replied. “Time is more valuable than money, and you are wasting mine. I was enjoying a pleasant, solitary morning, and now you’ve disturbed it for no reason other than to report failure to comply. So on top of the five large you owe me, you owe me time. How will you repay that?”

  Riley had been bored from the moment he walked up, although his face didn’t show it. His face rarely registered emotion. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement on the Intracoastal. He pulled his sunglasses out and slid them on, so he could shift his eyes without the suit being aware he wasn’t getting the total treatment.

  The suit, as suits do, mistook the movement as a threat.

  He fumbled into his pocket and pulled out a roll. “I’ve got one.”

  Riley cocked his head as if perplexed. “But you didn’t offer the money initially. So that will be the payment for my time which you’ve wasted today.”

  The suit’s mouth opened to protest, but snapped shut as the smarter part of his brain put a stranglehold on the stupid part. He stepped forward to hand it to Riley, but Riley waved a hand. “A donation.” He pointed at the tip jar on the outdoor bar. The suit scurried over and deposited the money.

  Riley noted all that off-center. The incoming boat had his attention. It was old, painted a spotty, dirty, flat black, and moved slow, the engine sounding a beat off.

  All that was a show. Riley knew the boat and who was driving it. Who he didn’t know were the man and woman next to the driver. And that man emanated the same kind of potential trouble Riley reflected.

  “Go,” Riley said to the suit. “Three days. All of it plus the vig. Or the title to your Range Rover.”

  The man’s jaw dropped and his mouth flapped.

  “I know you bought a used one two weeks ago,” Riley said, “and I should hurt you for all the lies you’ve told and done. No more. And nothing on the Super Bowl,” Riley warned. “I’ll know if you lay action anywhere on it. You pay me before you place another bet. And that bet will never again be with me.”

  Stupid won this tussle in the suit’s brain. “But it’s the Super Bowl! Tomorrow!”

  Riley got to his feet, really to see the boat and its passenger better, but it served a dual purpose. The suit backed up, hands held up in defeat. “Yes, sir. Three days.” He paused. “I know some people who need to lay some action, if you’re interested. Maybe get a finder’s fee? Cut back on my vig some?”

  “‘People?’”

  The suit shifted his feet uncomfortably, not meeting Riley’s sunglasses. “They usually do their action online, but they’re worried.”

  “SAS?” Riley asked.

  The suit nodded. “Went wonky during the conference championships. Some bets were lost, and some people were really pissed.”

  Only the ones who had bet correctly, Riley knew. Those who’d missed the numbers were relieved their wager was lost in cyberspace. “I’ll pass,” Riley said. “After all, if they’re friends of yours, and you’re an indication of what they’re like, it wouldn’t be a prudent business move, would it?”

  The logic of that struck home, and the suit nodded. “I’ll get the money.”

  “Yeah,” Riley said. “You know, you ever think of stopping? You do know the house always ultimately wins, right?”

  The suit seemed puzzled that he’d even suggest that; a dealer telling an addict to get clean.

  “Get out of here,” Riley said.

  He scurried toward the dock.

  Riley tried to figure what he was going to do with a Range Rover on an island that didn’t allow cars as he watched the old boat slide up to the dock, so smoothly it came to a stop less than two inches away from the bumper. Riley knew the appearance of the boat and even the sound of the muffler was a façade. It was one of the fastest boats in the low country and the twin engines underneath the wood deck were in mint condition, in better shape than when they shipped from the factory. The hull meeting the water under the surface was smooth as a baby’s ass, able to cut through water like a knife. The muffler was warped to produce that stutter, but the rumble from the engine was a sonata to an expert mechanic.

  “Don’t poke the crazy person,” Riley said to him
self, a habit he was falling into more and more. It was the advice his uncle had given him when he was fourteen, and heading off to commute to high school in the Bronx via the subway. He was here on Dafuskie because of that uncle, his mother’s brother, Xavier. The old man had been the only family Riley had left when he finally decided to stop traveling around the world and shooting at other people. That wasn’t the irksome part; it was that those people often shot back that had begun getting old. A man can think he’s invincible, but Father Time has a way of putting him in his place.

  Xavier had lasted a year after Riley arrived before succumbing to cancer. Enough time to teach Riley his business. Riley hadn’t made a conscious decision to take over his uncle’s booking; it just seemed to flow, and there were times he wondered when he’d made his last conscious decision. Riley did enjoy doing the numbers in his head, the odds, the over and under, who owed what. He’d never gambled in his life and he found those that did interesting, or at least he used to. It was as close as most of them would ever get to a real adrenaline rush, watching the scoreboard, knowing how much they had riding on a result they had absolutely no control over. The latter was the part Riley didn’t understand, although he knew many clients believed their knowledge of the game, whatever game it was, gave them some control, but Riley knew there was a huge difference between knowledge and control.

  He also knew there was a big difference between betting money on something and betting your life on it.

  Riley walked toward the dock. He stopped in the shade of a palmetto, just short of the wood planking. The two men and woman disembarked and headed toward him, Kono in the lead.

  The Gullah halted ten feet away, folding muscular black arms, his eyes hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses. He wore a red Hawaiian shirt, untucked, over worn jeans that made Riley’s seem new, and was barefoot, his feet callused and hard. His skull was shaved, and gleamed in the sunlight. He had a machete dangling off his left hip, and Riley knew he usually carried a pistol in the small of his back underneath the shirt. There were undoubtedly more lethal weapons onboard the boat.

  The white man came forward, stopping about six feet away. Out of reach of immediate physical attack, but close enough that an exchange of gunfire would most likely be mutually fatal. The woman stood by his side, close but not too close, indicating a relationship Riley couldn’t quite decipher. She wore a big rock of an engagement ring, nestled next to a wedding band. Bagged and tagged, most husbands thought, but while they were cavorting here on their golf trips, it never seemed to occur to them to wonder what their wonderful wives were doing back home in Ohio with the tennis pro at the country club. He wondered what this wonderful wife was up to, because it was obvious the man with her wasn’t her husband. Plus, she didn’t have that bagged and tagged look; she was someone who was still out there in the wild.

  And not as prey.

  Riley waited. They were on his turf, they had to lay down first.

  “Dave Riley?” the man asked, but his voice indicated he was pretty sure who he was talking to. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses. The bulge under his jacket indicated he was strapped. So much for a quiet day drinking beer, watching the tide.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Horace Chase.”

  “What can I do for you, Horace Chase?” Riley asked.

  “Call me Chase.”

  “If there’s a need to call you,” Riley replied, “I might do that.”

  “There some place we can talk?” Chase asked.

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  “A little more private, please.”

  “I know who he is,” Riley nodded at Kono. “And you’re ...” Riley kept the definition open as he nodded at the woman.

  “This is Sarah Briggs,” Chase said. “Her son is the reason we’re here.”

  “Don’t know her son,” Riley replied.

  “He’s been kidnapped.”

  Riley sighed and headed to the Shack at an oblique angle, keeping both men and the woman in view. He had no idea why Kono would be with buckra. The Gullah boatman was infamous throughout the area for his distaste of white people. Given his own genetic makeup, Riley understood racism in all its directions.

  Riley pulled a set of keys out and unlocked the front door. He walked inside and went behind the bar as Chase and Sarah entered. Kono also came in, sliding to the left, as if the two were quartering the room.

  Riley grabbed a bucket of beers resting in ice. It was off-season, but this was Riley’s home for the winter. He carried the bucket to a table overlooking a panoramic view of the Intracoastal. Chase sat down across from him, pulled out a beer, and offered it to Chase, and then one to Sarah.

  “A bit early?” But Chase took it, twisting off the top.

  Riley glanced at Kono, holding up a bottle.

  Kono didn’t move. Riley shrugged and put it back in the bucket.

  “I gave you a beer,” Riley said, “you owe me a story. But first, what ODA were you on?”

  “Zero-five-five.”

  “No shit?” Riley was surprised, and immediately suspicious of the coincidence. For him, coincidences were either fate or more likely danger-close, someone trying to ingratiate themselves. “I was on zero-five-five a long time ago.”

  “I know,” Chase said. “I saw your name in the team room, carved into the table.”

  “You guys did that Op where you almost got Bin Laden at Tora Bora, right?”

  “No,” Chase said, side-stepping the trap. “We were in Kapisa Province doing other things.”

  He had that fact right, at least. “That was a while ago. And since?”

  “I went from Tenth to Delta. I was part of Task Force Eleven in Afghanistan.”

  “And after Delta?”

  “I went into the FLI program.”

  “Heard about that clusterfuck. Good idea. Poor execution. How’d that work out?”

  “Not well.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m retired.”

  Riley leaned back in his seat, always aware of Kono’s presence. “How’s that working for you?”

  “It’s only been two weeks.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Riley said. He glanced at the woman, who was showing a bit of anxiety at the credentials grilling. “Then again, maybe you won’t.”

  “We’ll see,” Chase said. Sarah was following the conversation, but not entering it, eyes shifting back and forth between Chase and Riley as if evaluating both men.

  “‘We?’” Riley shook his head. “Why would I care, and what will I see?” He didn’t expect an answer.

  “Are you going to ask me what color the boathouse at Hereford is painted?” Chase asked.

  Riley laughed. “That was a good movie. Hell, I’ve never been to Hereford, but fought beside some Special Air Service fellows. Tough men.”

  “They are. I passed through Hereford briefly. There’s no boathouse.”

  “And now you’re here,” Riley said. “With my friend over there. And Ms. Briggs.”

  “Mrs. Briggs,” Sarah corrected.

  “Where’s Mister Briggs?” Riley asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Last I heard he was in Antigua, running SAS.”

  “You know my husband?” Sarah was surprised.

  “I know of him,” Riley said. “Online gambling is an odd thing. Most gamblers want the face-to-face, the handling of the cash. It’s personal for them. People who go online are hard-core. They’re after something different.”

  “What’s that?” Chase asked.

  Riley shrugged. “I’m not a shrink.” He shifted attention. “How do you know him?” He nodded toward Kono.

  “I spent summers on Hilton Head when I was a kid,” Chase said. “I met Kono and we became friends.”

  Riley shifted his attention to the Gullah who had yet to utter a word. “He your friend, Kono? A buckra?”

  “He my friend,” Kono said.

  “Then why don’t you act friendly?” Riley asked.

  Kono unfolded hi
s muscular arms. He walked to the table and pulled back a chair, and joined the three. Riley retrieved a beer and held it out to Kono. The Gullah took it and twisted off the top. He pulled his shades off, revealing startlingly gray eyes.

  “Lay it on me,” Riley said to Chase as he took a deep draft of his beer. He noted that Chase had not partaken of his yet. Nor had Sarah.

  Chase quickly laid out events from the time Sarah pounded on his door to the present. It was a succinct briefing, one people in Special Ops were trained to give. When he finished, silence ruled as each person digested the information.

  “So all you have is Karralkov’s name from Parsons,” Riley said.

  “And my husband’s suspicion,” Sarah added.

  “You know Parsons?” Chase asked Riley.

  “I’ve met him.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Not really.” Riley shrugged. “It’s not up to me. You’re the one who talked to him. You were a cop, too, weren’t you?”

  “Briefly.”

  Sarah jumped in and made her point again, an unnecessary play among these men. “My husband said it was the Russians who took down SAS just two weeks ago.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” Riley said. “If there’s a way to make a buck, Karralkov will be in on it. I stay clear of them. What’s your plan?” he asked Chase.

  “Find Karralkov, see what he says.”

  “Finding him isn’t the problem. Seeing what he says is.”

  Chase arched an eyebrow. “What’s your take on the situation?”

  Riley rubbed the stubble of beard on his chin. It all grew out white now, a foreshadowing of what the burgeoning grey on top of his head would develop into. He glanced over at the wall, where a drawing of Xavier was mixed among the cluster of images of notable locals. Nefarious was more like it, but Xavier had boasted a full head of silver hair to the day he died. Riley hoped he’d be as lucky.

  “I’ve met Karralkov a couple of times,” Riley said. If you think you can take Kono and do a show of force to intimidate Karralkov, forget about it. Gators will be dining on you.”

  “I’ll ask him nicely,” Chase said. “Do you think Karralkov would kidnap a kid?”