Bossy Brothers: Alonzo

by JA Huss

  “Hey, if you don’t want to look into the Boston brothers, I’ll totally understand.”

  “No, I do. I absolutely do. I’m a natural investigator. I’m just one of those people who likes to see what’s behind the curtain. If the Bostons are up to no good, and your sister is involved, then... that’s important information. If there’s one thing this whole unexpected road trip has taught me it’s eyes wide open, right? Just understanding what you’re getting into when you make a huge decision like marriage—that counts. And even if they are up to something, she might stay with him, ya know? She might not care. Or maybe she already knows, Lons. Did you ever think of that?”

  “I think she knows some things. But not all of it.”

  “And you want her to know all of it?”

  He looks at me for a long moment. Like he’s thinking very hard about that question. “Eyes wide open, right?”

  “Yeah. OK. I’ll figure out those Boston boys. Don’t worry.”

  He’s silent. Doesn’t agree or disagree. And I’m just starting to wonder what that silence means when he points out the window. “That’s where we’re going.”

  I redirect my gaze to where he’s pointing. “What is it?”

  He cuts the engine in a small natural harbor surrounded on three sides by thick vegetation. “It’s a hidden channel. We’ll have to leave the boat here and row to where I’m taking you.”

  “Row?” I grin. “That’s kind of romantic.”

  He slaps my leg. “Come on. It’s not far.”

  He actually produces an inflatable rowboat from some hidden compartment on the back of the boat and lowers it into the water, then hops into it like he’s done this a million times. The raft—because let’s be honest here, that’s what it is—barely rocks when he steps onto it and extends his hand to help me. I, of course, almost tip us over before I instinctively fall to my knees on the soft rubber and hold completely still.

  “I got you, Tara. You’re only going into the water tonight if you choose to.”

  “So you say.”

  “Trust me. The sea is my second home.” He pauses to think for a moment. “I take that back. The sea is my first home. There’s nothing to fear out here when you’re with me. I’ll get us through any storm and past any hungry gator. I could ride waves thirty feet tall in my boat. And anyway, I’m a great swimmer. If we had to swim back to Key West, I’d let you ride on my back, sunshine. The whole fucking way. And then I’d carry you back onto dry land and set you right back on your feet. Not a hair out of place.”

  “That’s a pretty big promise.”

  He nods his head, his short dark hair lit up with moonlight. “Yeah. It is. But I don’t make promises I can’t keep.” Then he winks at me and begins to row. “So what happened to your family, Tara Tanner?”

  I shrug. “I just never had any.”

  “What do you mean? Everyone has some family. A mother, at least.”

  “Not me. I was dropped off at a fire station in the middle of the night when I was three weeks old. Then I was with my first foster family for about five years.”

  “First family. OK. So what happened to them?”

  “They died in a house fire.”

  “And you lived?” His eyebrows are up. Everyone’s eyebrows go up when they learn this about me. Like I’m that Damian kid from that devil movie, The Omen.

  “I wasn’t there. I was in the hospital with pneumonia. My mother would’ve lived because she had been staying with me all night in the hospital. But I was finally getting better that night so she was just going to sleep at home and come back in the morning. But…” I shrug. “She never came back.”

  “Fuck, Tare. That’s horrible.”

  “And then I was sent to another family. And they fell apart after a couple years. Teenage kids got into drugs, parents divorced. That kind of thing. So when I was nine I was sent to another family and they were good people, I guess. A little religious. But… OK, they were a cult.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I swear!”

  “But they were good people?”

  “I might not be the best judge of character.”

  He laughs. “OK. I need more about this cult.”

  “It was your standard End Times cult. But honestly, it was probably the most stable home I ever had. At least they were predictable.”

  “Tara.”

  “I’m kidding. They were weird. And I think they had some kind of doomsday suicide thing cooking. So, dodged a bullet there, right?”

  “I can’t with you right now.”

  “Anyway. They got caught. There was this raid on the house and the church. The mom went to prison, the dad disappeared, and the kids and I went into a foster home. But they were younger than me and we got separated soon after. I was twelve and that’s just too old for most people looking to adopt. I was in and out of about two dozen group homes after that. And then I turned eighteen and started working towards my PI license. And that’s me in a nutshell.”

  “Not quite. How the hell did you get involved in PI work?”

  “I starting looking for my real parents when I was about fourteen. Just… you know, simple internet searches. But then I stumbled on to this magazine article about a homeless woman who wrote a memoir and got it published.”

  “It was her?”

  “I don’t know. I read the book and she described dropping off her three-week-old daughter at a firehouse in LA. It was a long shot, but she still lived in Long Beach so I said screw it and followed up.”

  “What happened?”

  “She was mean to me when I knocked on her apartment door. Thought I was selling something, I guess. So I just apologized and left.”

  “Hmm. Maybe she was just in a bad mood that day? Do you regret not saying anything when you had the chance?”

  “Nope. I moved on to bigger puzzles.”

  “Like what?”

  “I started finding other kids’ parents. Kinda opened up a little business at the various group homes. Only a few of them were true orphans like me. But they all wanted my help.”

  “They pay you?”

  “If you count graham crackers and toilet paper allotments as payment, yeah. They did. And before you ask, no, I didn’t find anyone’s parents. There were no happy endings. At least ones provided by me. It was a little depressing. But then I just figured I needed more training. That was my problem. So…” I shrug my shoulders up to my ears. “I got more training.”

  “So how did you meet Diablo? He was your boyfriend?”

  “No. No, not at all. Just some guy I knew from my neighborhood in Long Beach. I was at the docks in the harbor looking for a woman I had heard other foster kids talk about over the years. I got a tip that she would be at a coffee shop near the docks that night. All I wanted to do was interview her. See if I could help in some way. It was a total accident that I saw what Diablo and his gang were doing.”

  “What did you see, Tare? What was he doing?”

  “Smuggling people, Lonnie. Sex slaves, I think.”

  He makes a face at me. “You’re sure?”

  I’m used to this face. Tell just about anyone that there’s sex slave smuggling going on nearby and they think you’re crazy. Phoebe, you’ve seen Eastern Promises too many times. No one is selling children for sex in this country. They either don’t want to believe it or actually think it doesn’t happen. And I get it. We all want to pretend things are good. I’m sure Lonnie is no different. But I’m not crazy. I know what I saw. “They were young, Lonnie. Little girls and boys. And the men were dangerous-looking. I mean, a dangerous criminal like Diablo isn’t smuggling in kids into the US using freight containers to give them a better life. I saw how scared those kids were. They were huddled together, trying not to cry because one of Diablo’s men would poke them with the end of a rifle if they made too much noise. It just made me sick. So when the FBI asked me to testify and made all these witness protection promises, I said yes. It felt like my duty. But he got off. Somehow. An
d here I am. Sitting in this deathtrap rowboat with a hot fisherman.”

  It’s only then that I notice he’s frowning. And I only notice because he smiles when I call him hot. But then he looks past me and juts his chin forward. “Here we are.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that the channel had opened up to reveal a small island.

  “Welcome to my secret, Tara Tanner.”

  I glance at him, grinning, my troubled past neatly packed away like it should be. “What are we doing?” His lopsided smile and prolonged silence make me cock my head. “What are you up to?”

  “I just want to show you something kinda cool. It’s… maybe a little…” He sighs. “You’ll see.”

  “Oooo. Now I’m kinda nervous. Should I be nervous?”

  He steps out of the raft, drags it up the beach a little, then offers me his hand. I take it and then he swoops me up in his arms and swings me around. So suddenly and so fast, I barely have time to laugh before I am set back on my feet.

  He kneels down, his fingers sliding down my calf until he’s holding my shoe. “Put your hand on my shoulder, Tare. I’m gonna take off your shoes.” He’s looking up at me when he says this, the moon lighting up one side of his face, but leaving the other side obscured by dark shadows.

  When I touch his shoulder, I swear I feel him shudder. He slips my sneaker off one foot, then the other. And then he rolls up my pant legs until they’re cuffed just below my knees.

  Then he takes his shoes off and does the same for his pants and stands up, once again taking my hand.

  We walk across the beach like that. And for a moment I wonder what we’d look like to a voyeuristic stranger. A couple in a new relationship? Or a couple in a committed one?

  I opt for the second. Because he doesn’t feel new. We don’t feel new. Even though we literally just met for the first time this morning, our love feels old.

  Old like starlight that crosses galaxies.

  Inevitable like the straight line it travels on.

  He leads me to a path. A soft, worn path that is half smooth dirt and half blown sand. We come to a ridge, climb it—Alonzo first so he can help me—and then we’re on some kind of plateau. Not high in elevation, but higher than the shoreline. So that the tops of the small trees we just came through surround us on all four sides.

  I get caught up in the view for a moment. The carpet of moonlight sparkling across the sea. Other parts of the Keys off in the distance. A few boats and the lights of houses and businesses lining the edges of everything.

  “Where are we?”

  “My mother’s family owned this little island for centuries. It was donated to the park system many decades ago and it’s now technically a part of the naval base. But we have something here the government is not allowed to touch. Something we still own.” I’m staring up at him, still trying to puzzle those words out, when he points to the middle of the flat ground we’re standing on. “That is where my great-great-great-grandfather is buried.”

  There is a dark rectangle in the middle. Maybe twenty feet on the longest side and six on the short one. A rock, I realize. A large, flat rock, and near the top, in a long rectangle, is a plaque with an inscription.

  “Come here. I want to read it to you.”

  I let him lead me into the center of the cleaning and we stand over it, just looking down. It’s unreadable in this light, but I don’t need much light to see that the words aren’t written in English. “What’s that language? Not Spanish.”

  “No. Portuguese. My mother comes from a long line of Portuguese sailors. They would be called explorers if this were four hundred years ago, but most of the exploration business died a while back in this part of the world. So they fished, and crabbed, and dived, and did other things.”

  “What’s this say? The story of his travels?”

  “No. It’s a story called Vasco and the Siren.” He looks down at me and smiles. “It’s a story about a man—my great-great-great grandfather, Vasco—and the woman who ruined his life.”

  The guffaw comes out unexpectedly, too loud and too harsh. “Wait. He’s bitching about a woman on his gravestone?”

  “Not just any woman. The siren, Adrienne.” He says it with an accent. Ad-ree-en-ee. “She was my great-great-great grandmother. Their relationship was… well, when a sailor marries a siren things get interesting.”

  “Apparently.” I laugh. “He wrote on his grave.”

  “Wanna hear it?”

  “For sure.”

  “We have to lie down on top of the grave. Because it’s part of the story.”

  “Ummm… OK. I’m game.”

  He leads me over to the rock and as soon as my feet touch it I suddenly understand why he took off our shoes. Because it’s warm. It’s not cold tonight—maybe low seventies—but this rock is still holding the heat of yesterday’s sun.

  My toes soak up this warmth like they’re starving for it. “God, that feels good.”

  “Yeah,” Alonzo agrees. “This rock, according to the story passed down by my grandpop, was where the sailors of long ago would come to celebrate after a day of good luck. There was a period of time in the seventeen hundreds when my mother’s family were pirates and this is when it was turned into a grave.”

  “Wait, how is this guy buried under this huge rock? How did they lift it?”

  “No one really knows for sure. But the plaque was already in place when people started asking questions about this little island. And my mother’s family held the deed. Or at least a deed. And people respected that piece of paper so the land was just ours. There used to be a shack here. I’ve seen pictures of it. When the Navy took over, they tore it down but they are not allowed to touch this rock.”

  “Well, you haven’t even told me the story of the siren yet and I’m thoroughly intrigued.”

  “We have to lie down for that part.”

  He lets go of my hand and sits down, patting the hard stone to his left. I sit next to him and then we lie back at the same time. The combination of leftover heat and flat, uncompromising rock hit my spine at the same time. And I hold my breath as I let the feeling of hard warmth sink in.

  It’s like a spa experience waiting to be discovered.

  “The story goes like this,” Lonnie says. “Vasco was sailing along a dangerous reef because he had heard that rival pirates stashed booty there. His ship was too big to traverse the shallow water so he and a few of his men got into a rowboat and waited for the tide to go out. When that happened part of the reef was exposed and they saw a cave. But the cave was being guarded by a beautiful naked woman.”

  “The siren Adrienne.”

  “Exactly. And of course, everyone knows that sirens live to kill sailors. She called them towards her with a song. And one by one, Vasco’s men jumped into the water and swam to the reef near the cave. And one by one they were pulled down by some unseen monster in the water. But Vasco knew better than to go near the siren. So he kept his distance and sang a song back to her instead. Calling her off the rocks and into his boat. They fucked, of course.”

  I laugh.

  “He didn’t find any treasure, but the following year he came out to this rock just before dawn like he always did, and found a baby boy. He named him Alfonso. He knew the siren Adrienne was the baby’s mother. He had charmed her that day they had sex, but she had charmed him too. He never went back to the reef. Though many others did, and died when she called them to the monster that lived in the water. But he dreamed of her every night after he took the baby into his home.”

  “Were they sexy dreams?” I waggle my eyebrows at Alonzo.

  “Very,” he confirms. “But they weren’t just dreams. Because the next year she brought him another baby boy. And the next year she brought him a baby girl. The next year, another boy.”

  “Wait…” I turn over on my side so I can look down at Lonnie’s face. “Two boys, a girl, and a boy. Isn’t that…”

  “Yup. That’s my family. It’s said—and actually recorded in m
edical records—that every woman descended from Adrienne gives birth to babies in this order and of these genders. Just one girl per generation. But she keeps the line going with those boys.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It kinda is, right?”

  “So what was Vasco’s beef with the siren? Why did she ruin his life? She gave him four children.”

  “Yeah, but he had no wife. So he had to pay local women to take care of his children while he worked all day. They took all his money and he never owned anything expect this tiny island in the channel. Even when his sons grew big enough to help, they left him for better jobs with other pirates. The youngest son left to join the American Revolution. So that only left the daughter. She married and had four children. Two boys, one girl, and another boy. But she was too busy with her own family to take care of Vasco. So he died alone on this island. Poor and with no family or friends.”

  “Then how did he get this amazing gravesite? Who did this?”

  “No one knows. One day the girl came back with her children and found the marking on the rock.”

  I sit up and look around. “What markings?”

  “You can’t see them. They’re under the plaque now. But it said, ‘Here lies Vasco, devoted husband of the siren Adrienne.’ There was a threat there too. A curse for anyone who dared look for his remains. And there was an impression of a fin in the rock.”

  I lie back down. “What a sad, odd story.”

  “That’s how it’s been told, anyway.”

  I turn on my side again so I can see his face. “What do you mean? It was a lie?”

  Alonzo laughs. “A siren? Of course it’s a lie, Tara. Sirens don’t exist.”