by Glenn Trust
27.
Sara Jane
“You know who we are?”
Tolbert ‘Tully’ Sams eyed the short dark man with the hard eyes and the three men with him. “I know.”
“Good. Take us to the boat.”
“I’ll do that, but first you need to get out of those city clothes.” Tully opened the tailgate of his pickup, pulled out two large duffels and held them out. “Here. There's clothes inside … clothes that won’t make you stick out like a sore thumb down here.”
Esteban Moya stood in the heat of the early afternoon, regarding the bag for a few seconds, then shifted his gaze to the man. Their eyes locked. The Cessna that had delivered them to Brunswick’s Golden Isles Airport lifted from the runway and climbed over their heads, turning back to Atlanta. Neither man moved.
Tully placed the duffel on the ground. “Might as well get something straight up front,” he said his voice even and firm. “It’s my boat. I’m the captain. Keep that in mind, and things’ll go smooth.”
“It belongs to the owner. Our arrangement is with him.” Esteban replied, wondering if he should just kill the old man now and tell Ortega the deal was off.
He dismissed the thought as soon as it had come. While El Toro might be sympathetic to his desire to dispatch this shabby boat captain, Bebé Elizondo would not be. Moya did not want a visit from Alejandro Garza.
The old captain said nothing, waiting for Moya and his men to comply with his instructions. “Explain,” Moya said when it was clear they were at a standoff.
“Fair, enough,” Sams said with a matter-of-fact nod. “New crew. You got a right to know the rules.” He pointed to the south, standing up straight as if he could see over the horizon to their destination. “We’re going down to St. Mary’s. It’s a lot smaller than Brunswick and a hell of a lot smaller than anything you’re used to in Atlanta. I show up there with four Mexicans …”
“El Salvador,” Moya said. “I’m from El Salvador.” He nodded at his companions. “They are from Honduras.”
Sams smiled and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, lit one and continued, “Down here you’re all Mexicans. No disrespect intended … that’s just the way it is, so get used to it.” He inhaled deeply, letting the smoke drift away on the afternoon breeze. “Like I was saying, I show up in St. Mary’s with you all … wherever you’re from … people are gonna ask questions. It’s a small town, and everyone is in everyone else’s fucking business.” He chuckled and nodded. “You can take that to the bank.”
Moya’s eyes remained firm, fixed on the man’s face. This stupid gringo had no idea who he was dealing with and what they could do … would do … if he gave them a reason. Men had died for lesser insults than this old man’s arrogance.
“So you take off those fancy jeans,” Sams continued, “and the designer shirts and gold necklaces, high-top sneakers and you dress like y’all are itinerants, looking for work crewing on a shrimper. People there won’t care you’re Mexican or anything else. They all know how it is to need work. They won’t fault me neither for looking for some cheap crew hands … just business, is what they’ll say. But you show up dressed like that, and they’ll be asking question neither one of us want to answer.” He shrugged, flicked the ash from the cigarette between his fingers. “That’s the way it is, and like I said, I’m the captain.”
They had wasted enough time. Ortega would be waiting for a report. Moya looked at his men and nodded. “Do it.”
Tully Sams leaned against the pickup’s bed, and continued smoking. One by one, Esteban Moya and his men went into the back of the truck, rummaged through the bags of used clothing, squirmed around on the seat as they made the change.
Suitably dressed as working-class migrants, they piled into the pickup. Moya sat up front with Tully Sams. The others crowded into the crew cab seat behind.
The hour-long drive from Brunswick down to St. Mary’s passed in silence. Had they been able to land at the old general aviation airport in St. Mary’s the trip would have been much simpler, but that airport closed in 2017 after sixteen years of impact studies over security threats to the Navy’s nearby King’s Bay Submarine base.
Sams figured it was just as well. There would have been too many questions from locals who saw him pick up a load of fancy-dressed Mexicans, claiming they were deckhands.
Senator JJ Sillman had picked Tully Sams for a reason. Unlike Wilson Bettis, whose primary concern was the promise of riches, Sams was completely uninterested in money, but he was absolutely loyal to Sillman and only wanted the chance to get back out on the ocean.
Their relationship extended back to the days when Sillman was a teenager assigned by his father to work on Captain Sams’ boat. The shrimper had been a mentor to the boy, letting him sit in the cabin and drink beer with him when they were in port, talking about life and shrimping. Over the years they remained close, and Sams took particular pride in Sillman’s success, bragging to friends at the local St. Mary’s taverns how he’d been there when the senator was only a boy just out of short pants.
As for this venture, Sams was thankful for the opportunity to repay a debt that had been weighing on him. After retiring from the Sillman Shrimp Company ten years earlier, he had planned to live out the rest of his life in St. Mary’s with his wife, Sara Jane, traveling to visit their grandchildren around the country. They even bought an RV trailer to tow behind the old pickup so they’d have a place to stay on the road and for extended visits to the children.
The retirement hadn’t lasted long, and the dreams of a peaceful old age disintegrated when Sara Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer five years after Sams retired. The bills mounted.
Sillman helped cover the expense and had paid for the funeral when Sara Jane’s misery finally ended. After, he sat with Sams while the old man wept and begged to go back to work for free to repay Sillman for what he had done for them. Sillman refused, mostly because of their friendship but also because a good politician knows it is always preferable to have someone indebted to them, and Senator Sillman was a good politician.
When the deal with Bebé Elizondo came along, Sillman decided it was time to collect the debt. Sams was grateful. Besides, the money that Sillman was offering was more than he would make in a year of hard shrimping.
Sillman explained what they required and why, leaving nothing out. As far as Tully Sams was concerned, if people wanted to burn up their brains with drugs, who was he to say they couldn’t. The world was full of fools.
Besides, his grandfather had told him stories about running rum up from Cuba during the prohibition days. People weren’t going to stop drinking then, and they aren’t going to stop using drugs now he figured. He was just holding up a family tradition.
As they approached St. Mary’s, Moya noticed a sign along the highway.
“King’s Bay,” he read and looked at Sams. “A Navy base?”
“Yep.”
“We are taking a boat out to smuggle drugs right next to a Navy base?”
“It’s a sub base, super-secret … never see the subs. They stay under until they get to Fancy Creek off the St. Mary’s River. Then cruise on up to King’s Bay.”
“Submarines … and we will have …” Moya was incredulous. “Are you loco … estúpido?”
“First off,” Sams began. “We won’t have any drugs when we leave St. Mary’s, unless you and your boys are carrying any. Once we have your cargo on board, we’ll be offloading at a private dock up one of the creeks that come into the sound between here and Brunswick.” He turned and grinned at the nervous drug dealer. “Trust me. We’ll just be another shrimp boat heading out. Doing it right next to a Navy base … hell, no one will ever suspect. Couldn’t be safer.”
“And when the boat comes back without shrimp? What will others say?”
“Already took care of that,” Sams replied, with a confident nod. “Spread the word I got a special deal with Sillman, a private customer we sell to and offload somewhere else before w
e come back to port.”
The look on Moya’s face was doubtful. Border crossings in the desert, ferrying across the Rio Grande, those were things he knew about. Boats heading out onto the open ocean were something else. He’d seen movies about submarines, peeking through periscopes at boats on the surface. The thought of a big eye watching them from beneath the waves made him uneasy.
“Relax,” Sams said, puffing his cigarette. “Everything will be fine.”
“It better be.” Moya stared at the turn-off to the Navy base as they passed.
They drove through the small St. Mary’s town center to the docks along the river. Sams parked in a dirt lot made of crushed shells and sand.
He led the way across the street to the boat Sillman had provided for their enterprise. A couple of deckhands on a nearby trawler looked up and then went back to inspecting nets, ignoring Sams’ new crew members. Moya breathed a little easier.
The boat was an old one, and like Sams, had been retired by the Sillman Shrimp Company several years earlier. While Sillman made his arrangements with Bebé Elizondo, Sams saw to making the boat seaworthy and renamed it the Sara Jane.
“Down Below.” Sams pointed to the passage to the galley. “Sit tight. I’ll get things ready on deck. Don’t need you up here stumbling around like tourists or people will figure out quick you’re not real deckhands. I’ll get things organized. You can help me cast off the lines, when we get underway. Until then stay out of sight.”
Moya could think of nothing to say. He was out of his element and knew it. He led his team out of sight.
Tully Sams puttered around the deck, straightening things up, checking nets as if they were going out for shrimp that night. Satisfied that everything was in order, he pulled a beer from an ice chest he kept in the deckhouse, sat back in the cracked leather chair, and patted the bulkhead beside him, smiling.
“It’s good to have you back, Sara Jane.”
28.
Heads or Tails
They sat huddled over Travis’ desk eating McDonald's Quarter Pounders that Sole had picked up on the way in. Notes they had made on Luis’ tip were scattered before them.
“First off,” Sole said around a mouthful of burger. “Do we have a name for the assistant that Luis saw?”
“Sillman’s got several aides and assistants,” Travis said. “A small staff stays here and works out of his Atlanta office full time, handling issues with constituents, granting favors, that kind of stuff. Most of his staff works out of his Washington D.C. office. One of those is his senior aide … the one at the press conference this morning. His name is Wilson Bettis.”
“Bettis? Anything on him?”
“Usual. No criminal history … not even a traffic ticket since he was eighteen. Appears to be a wonder boy … gets things done for the Senator … the kind that never stands in the spotlight but gets close enough to feel the glow and bask in the sidelight. That’s why he was at the presser this morning. He’s pretty much always there with Sillman when the cameras are rolling.”
“So the question,” Sole said, crumpling the Quarter Pounder wrapper and sending it in an arc into the trash can beside Travis desk, “is why he was meeting with a reported drug lord at Eruptions.”
“Reported but not proven drug lord,” Travis reminded him, adding, “And that is, if he actually met with him and Luis is not full of shit.”
“Good point,” Sole agreed.
“So what do you think? We go over to Sillman’s Atlanta offices and meet with Bettis?”
“No. There’s a better way. Right now we know nothing, just acting on a tip from a shaky CI.” Sole shook his head. “Bettis might have been looking to score cocaine and saw Ortega at the club. Illegal, but no big deal, and if he was after coke, Bettis gets a slap on the hand, and that’s the end of it. Sillman gives him a tongue lashing, makes a big deal about it to the media, says that’s why he is leading the charge against drugs, etcetera.”
Sole leaned forward resting his chin on his hands as he thought it through. “On the other hand, Bettis might have been up to no good, into something that required a head to head with El Toro. It might involve Sillman or maybe not. We don’t know that either. Seems we need to find that out too, if there is anything to this at all.”
“Agreed.” Travis nodded. “So we meet with both alone.”
“Correct. Separate and without warning. That way they can’t get their stories straight between them.”
“I like it.” Travis nodded. “You want Sillman or Bettis?”
“Flip you for Sillman, partner.” Sole grinned and pulled a quarter from his pocket. “Heads or Tails.”
“Heads,” Travis called out as the coin flipped in the air.
Sole let it hit the floor and looked up grinning. “Looks like I get to meet a real live senator.”
The next step was trickier than flipping a coin. The challenge was to time the interviews without tipping off either Sillman or Bettis and not give them the chance to coordinate their stories.
Bettis was simple. Travis called Senator Sillman’s office and scheduled a meeting with his aide under the pretext he represented law enforcement officers interested in possibly supporting the Senator’s anti-drug efforts.
Scheduling a concurrent, meeting with Sillman took more creativity. Sole picked up the phone and made a call.
“John Sole, how in the hell are you?” Jimmy Cutshaw answered. He was a friend and retired APD detective sergeant who now ran security for the building that housed Sillman’s condo.
“Doing good, Jimmy. Wife and kids okay?”
“They’re fine. Jim Jr. graduates UGA next year. Maria’s teaching school in Augusta. Your family?”
“All fine. Growing up too fast, and we’re getting old.”
“I hear that.” Cutshaw paused, knowing Sole hadn’t called to chat about their children. “So, what can I do for you, John?”
“I need to talk to someone … a tenant in your building.”
“Who?”
“James Jadyn Sillman.”
“So why are you calling me? Call his office and schedule an appointment, or get his cell number and call him direct.”
“It has to be impromptu … no advance knowledge.”
“Meaning you don’t want him talking to anyone about why you might give him a visit.”
“Meaning I want to hear what he has to say, not what some aide told him to say.”
“Mind if I ask what this is about?”
“Could be nothing,” Sole said. “But we have to run it down and put it to rest. You know the drill.”
“I know the drill.” Cutshaw had policed for twenty-three years before pulling the pin and retiring. He understood the workings of investigations and the reality that most leads went nowhere. “So again, what do you need from me?”
“Just need to know when he’s in the building.”
“He’s here now.”
“Alone?”
“For now. Showed up after the press conference show he put on down at the capitol this morning. Hasn’t come down for his car or been out since.”
“Good. So one more favor then.”
“Shoot.”
“If I show up unannounced can you get me up to his penthouse? Figure if I show up at the door he’s got to talk to me or look like he’s got something to hide.”
“Might be a brief visit,” Cutshaw chuckled. “But yeah, I can get you up to his door. After that, you’re on your own.”
“Perfect. You won’t catch any heat for helping out?”
“None I can’t handle. Detective shows up and wants to speak to a resident. I show him where the resident lives. That’s within building policy. I mean I’m not breaking and entering for you.” Cutshaw paused before adding, “Am I?”
“Nope,” Sole assured him. “I’m just going to ring the bell and give him my best smile when he opens the door.”
“You’ve learned how to smile?” Cutshaw chuckled. “Damn, if Shaye hasn’t been good for you.”
/>
“She has for a fact,” Sole agreed. “I’ll be there within the hour. Let me know if he leaves before I get there, will you?”
“No problem. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Thanks Jimmy.” The call ended. Sole turned to Travis. “We’re set.”
“Good.” Travis stood. “Let’s make like horse shit and hit the road. My meet with Bettis is in thirty minutes. You should be standing in front of Sillman’s door about then, ready to flash that smile I heard you brag about.” He gave Sole an amused look. “By the way, let’s see it … the smile … sort of give it a test drive before you use it on Sillman.”
Sole’s face twisted into a lopsided smirking grin. “How’s that.”
“Scary as hell.”
“Perfect.”
29.
On the Big Water
Tully Sams stopped and looked into the galley cabin below the deckhouse and called out, “Hands on deck!”
Esteban Moya looked up from a video of Mexican singer Thalia he was playing on his cell phone. “¡Ándale! Vamonos,” he called out to the others, sprawled on the bench and chairs around the galley table.
Sams didn’t speak Spanish, but he didn’t have to. It was clear that their leader had told them to get their asses in gear. He moved out on deck as the men jumped to their feet, looked around for direction and then followed Esteban up to the deck.
“Okay, we’re gonna cast off,” Sams said when they, had gathered in front of him. He eyed his crew and wondered just how they would react once they were out on the ocean swells. “Follow me.”
He stepped along the narrow planks between the deckhouse and gunwale. Behind him, Moya spoke in staccato Spanish.
“I’ll show you how it’s done.” Sams reached for the line on the stern cleat.
“No. Permítame por favor señor.” One of Moya’s men rushed past him to leap to the dock and loosen the line, leaving a turn on the cleat to hold the boat in place.