by Chuck Dixon
“I need someone with your knowledge. I need someone to find my daughter,” Joe Bob said.
“I’m not a detective,” Levon said.
“Don’t you think I hired a detective? A private outfit that came highly recommended. They told me they’d exhausted every lead. Didn’t find Jenna. Didn’t send my check back either.”
“What do the police say?”
“They tell me she ran away. They tell me she’s shacked up with some dude. They say there’s no evidence of foul play. I know every parent says this but my girl isn’t like that. She’s serious about her classes. She’s engaged to a nice local boy here in Huntsville. She’s not some tramp who’d run off.”
“Like I said, sir. I’m not a detective.”
“I know that. That’s not what I need. I’m figuring you didn’t spend your time in uniform repairing air conditioners at Fort Bragg. The story all those blanks in your record tells me is that you were some kind of badass.”
Levon took a pull of the flat beer.
Joe Bob removed his tinted glasses and leaned over the table to look into Levon's face. The older man's eyes were rimmed red. His skin was dry as paper. His chin bunched and quivered as he spoke in a whisper.
“I have the reports from the Tampa police and the Hillsborough County sheriff. I have the papers from the agency I hired. Timelines and witnesses and all that. They take Jenna up to a little past midnight on a Friday three weeks ago and they end. I flew down there, I’ve lived there for the past few weeks. And all anyone can tell me is that there’s nothing they can do to follow this any further. There’s nothing the law can do. You understand me, Cade?”
“You said this was nothing illegal, sir.”
“There’s the law and then there’s law, son. I’m talking justice.”
“Excuse me, sir, but you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about my girl. My little girl. You have a daughter.”
“I can’t say I understand what you’re feeling, sir. I can say I’d imagine I’d feel the exact same as you about now.”
“But what would you do about it?” Joe Bob said, eyes shifting, searching into Levon’s.
Levon’s eyes remained still pools gleaming from the surrounding scar tissue.
"Fifty thousand. Cash. Tax-free," Joe Bob said in a whisper.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Please,” Joe Bob said. He enclosed his hand around Levon’s, pressing it to the smooth glass.
“Drive me on back to the site or fire me, sir,” Levon said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m just not in that line of work anymore.”
Joe Bob released the other man’s hand.
“I’ll meet you at the truck. Take you back to the site for your shift,” Joe Bob said. He seemed to shrink, to recede into a smaller space than he occupied before.
One of the men at the bar started to make a remark as Levon made his way to the door. Something about two men holding hands and this wasn’t that kind of place. He was heading for his punchline until Levon met his gaze for a second in passing. The wag turned back to the bar and drained his Bud instead of finishing his sentence.
Joe Bob dropped him at the office shack. There was no talk on the drive back.
Levon worked his own shift. When Wayne Spinelli called in to say his wife was sick and couldn’t watch the kids on her own Levon agreed to work a double and was on the site until morning.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Heroes die. I need you to kill. I don’t need you to die. I want guys who can die I can pick ’em on any street corner. Heroes. Who needs ’em? Nobody’s asking you to look for grenades to jump on. If you do and you live you need to know that I will personally kick your ass until all the shrapnel pops out.”
6
The judge reached for the hockey puck he used for a gavel in place of a hammer. It was autographed by Bobby Orr and encased in Lucite. The judge was a Philadelphia transplant. Each time he brought the puck down he imagined he heard the score buzzer going off at the Spectrum in South Philly.
“I am granting a continuance in this matter until . . ” The judge held the paper it in his hand and lowered his eyes through the bottom portion of his glasses. “February the twelfth, ten AM in this courtroom. Until then, happy holidays.”
The puck came down. He shoots. He adjudicates. The crowd roars.
“Another fucking continuance,” Matt Torrance said with some heat once he and Levon were out in the courthouse lobby.
“He didn’t even show up,” Levon said.
“Your father-in-law? The prick? Why should he show up? He already paid for the continuance. Why waste his own time?” Matt’s nose wrinkled in disgust.
“Matt, I know you’re my advocate but you don’t need to get this pissed off. It’s not like I’m going to pay you extra for giving a shit.”
“I need a drink. You need a drink?”
“Coffee. I have a shift later.”
They picked a place within an easy walk of the county courthouse. A faux-Irish bar that had been a real Irish bar before the neighborhood gentrified. They snagged a couple of stools at a bar packed with lawyers, clerks and other cogs in the machine of county politics.
“Is there anything we can do to stop these continuances? This is the third one,” Levon said.
“The good doctor is going to continue to drive you into the poorhouse. He’s running the clock out on your finances. And, no, there’s not a damned thing I can do but stamp my loafers.” Matt sighed.
“I’m not getting any closer to custody. Once a week visitation isn’t cutting it. Being without Merry is killing me.”
“You know if he crushes you on custody he’ll move to curtail visitation or try and limit it further.”
Levon nodded over his coffee.
“What did you do to make this guy hate you so much?”
“He blames me for Arlene’s death.”
“Cancer, right? How’s that work? How’s he blame you for that? He’s a doctor, for Christ’s sake.”
“I stressed her. I wasn’t there. Neglect. I don’t know. Grief doesn’t have to make sense,” Levon said.
"I have to be honest with you; I am not optimistic. At the risk of my own job security I have to tell you it doesn't look good," Matt said. He swirled a stick in his highball.
Levon sipped coffee.
“Your father-in-law draws a lot of water in this county. He’s got money and friends and one hell of a reputation as a neurosurgeon. He’s a generations-long local and you’re not. Me, I never met a neurosurgeon who wasn’t some kind of weirdo but people actually like this prick. Plus he has the cash to nickel and dime you on legal fees forever. I mean, you’re making maybe thirty kay a year? Less? You’ll wind up with nothing and still not be allowed to see your little girl.”
“That bad?”
“Worse. Like I said, I feel it. Which means I know it but I can’t say how I know it. He’s going to win custody and come after you even harder to take away all your parental rights. You live alone in a one-bedroom going paycheck to paycheck. He’s not only going to show that you can’t support a child but that you shouldn’t have access to Mary.”
“Merry.”
“Say again?”
“Merry, not Mary. Her name is Meredith.”
Matt waved that aside.
“Right. Right. Right. What I’m saying is that this doctor won’t be happy until you look like the lovechild of Ted Bundy and Tonya Harding.”
“Tonya—?”
“Before your time. Generational thing. The important thing is that you have to ask yourself what you want to do now. Do you stop here and be happy with seeing her on Saturdays or go on and have no money and risk never seeing her again until she’s eighteen and emancipated.”
“She’s nine. That’s nine years of Wendy’s and hugs in parking lots.”
“Right. And you leave her with Gramps and he has nine years to turn her against you. I
get it. I’ve seen this all before. The choice is a shitty one. It’s extortion. It sucks.” Matt took a gulp of highball.
“What would it take to beat this?” Levon said.
"Money. Enough money to overcome the doc's old boy influence and bring this to court for a ruling. Enough money to let the other side know you're all in so they stop slow-walking. Do you have the kind of money?" Matt shrugged and took another long pull.
“I know where I can get it,” Levon said and walked from the bar, leaving Matt choking on his last swallow.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You can’t go dying on every hill. There’s no honor in it. Custer’s famous. For what? For all the times he won? No. For the one time he fucked up. You want to be famous and dead? Your name on a wall? Or do you want to win? You have to know when it’s time to back off and when it’s time to go grizzly. You have to know when winning the hill is worth the blood and when the hill is just a pile of shit. Sometimes it’s not your day to win. Every day is your day to die.”
7
“You said you wanted printouts,” Joe Bob said and slid a stack of paper folders across the counter.
Levon riffled through them. Neatly typed reports from an investigation firm in Tampa. Less neatly typed county papers with handwritten notations. There were maps and lists and an envelope packed with an inch-thick stack of bills.
“Expenses. Jabroni money. Whatever you need it for. It doesn’t come off the fifty thousand,” Joe Bob said.
Joe Bob called it his man cave. It was a daylight basement in his six thousand square foot house in Liberty Park. There was a home theater and a matched pair of pool tables and a wall of vintage pinball machines. The wall opposite was a gallery of photos, framed jerseys, footballs and helmets from Joe Bob's storied past. They were sitting at a granite-topped table set by a fully stocked wet bar.
“What do you want for your money?” Levon said.
“Excuse me?” Joe Bob said.
“I need to know what we’re talking about here. You want her found. I get that. What if she can’t be found? What if I find her and it’s not good news?”
“That’s cold talk, son.”
“I need the terms. Your terms.”
“The money’s yours. All of it. No matter what. I need commitment. You’re my last play.”
“Good news. Bad news. No news. The fifty is mine. That’s a lot of trust, sir.”
“It’s a lot of pressure, is what it is. If you’re the man I think you are, Cade. And I know you are. You won’t stop until you’ve earned every dollar.”
“Fair enough, sir.”
“When can you start, son?”
“If you can cover my shifts this week I’ll head down to Tampa tomorrow first thing,” Levon said and dropped the sheaf of files into the waiting satchel and the envelope of cash into his jacket pocket.
“Hell, if I can’t I’ll walk the site myself,” Joe Bob said standing.
They shook hands and Levon left the house.
And went on the hunt.
8
“That was Levon,” Marcia Roth said, setting the cordless down on the kitchen table.
“What did he want?” Dr. Jordan Roth said without looking up from his open laptop.
“He said he’ll be away this weekend. Something with work. He won’t be able to take Merry.”
The doctor said nothing. He was reading and scrolling.
"She'll be broken-hearted." Marcia sighed.
“Hm,” the doctor said.
“She needs those visits, Jordan.”
The doctor looked up at her over the screen. His eyeglasses had dropped over his nose and he was looking at her over the top of them. It was a look she was certain sent interns and surgical nurses away crying. After thirty years of marriage, she was used to it.
“You know it’s true. We’re her grandparents but he’s her father,” she said.
“How many times must we have this conversation, Mar?” He set the laptop, still open, aside.
She shrugged and waved a hand. Dr. Roth sighed.
“Of course she’s happy seeing him. He spoils her with junk food and cheap toys. This isn’t about what Merry wants. It’s about what’s right for her. Do you want to see her end up like her mother?”
Marcia turned away from him. He went on.
“And don’t tell me he’s changed. And so what if he has? One dead-end job after another. He has no skills. No trade. Except for the one the government taught him. We don’t even know who he really is. All we know is what Arlene told us and that’s not a fraction of what he told her. And how much is there that he didn’t tell her?”
“So he was a soldier,” Marcia said.
“You make it sound like he marched in parades. He was a killer. He killed men for the government. He killed in secret and he must have at least been good at it. He stayed in their service for twelve years. Most of those years he was married to our daughter. Can you imagine the stress she was under? The constant strain of the life he chose?”
“It’s over now. He’s away from that.”
“It’s not over for him. That’s not something you walk away from.”
“He told us, he talked to you, about the PTSD. He was getting treatment, talking to people,” she said.
“He was following protocol. Like a soldier. Doing what they told him to do. See a therapist. Take the pills. Stay the course.” He snorted.
“Levon is trying.”
“You know what I do, Mar. I operate on the brain. That’s my trade. But you know what the brain is? It’s three pounds of greasy fat. But it holds within it the invisible organ of the mind. And no one can know what’s in another person’s mind. Not really. All I know is that Levon is unstable. Not today. Maybe not ten years from now, he’s going to have an episode. He’ll return to the feral state, to the wild. I don’t want our granddaughter around him when that happens.”
She said nothing.
“End of story,” he said and pulled the laptop back in front of him.
“You want more coffee?” she said.
“No thank you, Mar. I’m up at six for a procedure. I’ll be heading for bed when I finish reading this review,” Dr. Roth said and allowed the words on the screen to absorb him once more.
Marcia left the kitchen and made her way back to Merry’s room, the room that once belonged to her own daughter. She checked on the girl throughout the night every night just as she had for Merry’s mother when she was still a mother herself.
Merry slept in the muted glow of a snowman nightlight that Arlene once treasured; it had somehow survived all these years. She was sound asleep in the bed her mother once occupied that was now fitted out with Dora the Explorer sheets and pillowcases. The little girl slept sound, her arms around a teddy bear wearing a camouflaged army uniform and cap. A gift from her father.
As much as she loved having this little treasure around every day, Marcia Roth wished that all was as it should have been. Her granddaughter asleep in her own room, in her own bed, with her mother and father asleep in the next room.
And as much as Jordan’s reasoning made all the sense in the world, and was the result of his expert and learned opinion, she couldn’t help but think that they were stealing time from their granddaughter. Precious time that should be spent with her own father. And, once again, Marcia felt a pang for Levon who was losing his place in his daughter’s childhood just as she had lost seeing her own little girl grow to middle age.
She closed the door of the room, leaving it open only a crack, then went down to the family room where she could read where the light would not disturb the doctor’s sleep.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Know the ground. Know it like it’s yours. Know it like you know whatever ghetto or dogpatch or holler you came from. Know it like your old lady’s ass. Know it till you can walk it in your sleep. Till every blade of grass has a name. Till you own it. Till you know what’s going to happen before it happens.”
9
> The guy was new at Skip’s.
Johnny knew most of the regulars, walk-ins from the surrounding neighborhood. There were always fresh asses on the stools and in the booths come nighttime. But Johnny knew this guy was a first-timer.
First off, he was a little older than the usual evening crowd. Not by much. Or maybe it was the way he carried himself. Most of the nighttime crowd were on their third or fourth adolescence. This guy was more together than that. It was like he was turned inside, keeping to himself. The rest of the crowd was there to be seen. This guy just nursed a draft at the stool farthest from the register.
He was dressed in clean cool-weather clothes. The weather was turning cold at the start of what passes for winter in Florida. Jeans, a button down shirt and a light jacket. He was wearing what might have been the first pair of actual work boots Johnny had ever seen in Skip’s. The drinkers here were either unemployed, retired or slumming students from the colleges. Nobody was spending a paycheck.
Maybe a soldier over from MacDill. The guy had that look. But they seldom made it this far off Dale Mabry. And when they did it was always in a group. Same for Canadians which this guy could be. They travelled in packs. It was the right time of year for snowbirds down from Ottawa and Toronto. Only they were usually older than this guy and came in couples.
Could be a cop or someone looking to hold up the place. In either case, they'd give themselves away pretending not to be looking around. This guy only seemed interested in his beer with an occasional glance up at a football game playing muted on the screen over the bar. He made a single visit to the men's room. Johnny tried to keep track of how long he was gone but there was a rush after ten. The guy was back at the stool gesturing for a fresh draft without Johnny noting his return.
The guy nursed the second beer. He didn’t speak to anyone except to nod at a dude asking if he could take the bowl of mixed nuts from where they rested, untouched, by the stranger’s elbow. The crowd went from rowdy and dancing to sullen and serious as the tides of beer and cocktails washed over them. The same tide carried them away in twos and threes as closing time approached. The stranger in the work boots wasn’t the last to leave but close to it. He left what remained of a twenty for two beers.