“Hey, Jack,” Ags said, and when I turned to look toward the door, there was Jack Junior peeking in sheepishly.
“Hi, Junior,” I said. Although Jack and I tend to make up quickly, he still didn’t look thrilled to see me.
He opened the door with trepidation. “Hi, kiddo,” he said meekly in my direction.
“What’s new, Jack?” I asked, searching for but not finding the light in his eyes.
He took off his fishing cap and wrenched it in his hand. “I, uh, I don’t think I’m going to make it to dinner tonight, Aggie.”
“What? Why the hell not?” Aggie was clearly getting agitated. Having planned a feast for twenty, at the rate things were going, there’d be enough leftovers to feed a small army.
Jack glanced at me with apologetic eyes and then looked at Ags. “See, Lee said she just wouldn’t feel comfortable—“
“With me here,” I said, finishing his sentence.
Jack’s face got red. “I think she just needs a little time. You know, we talked and she knows that you know she put on that façade and she’s-she’s-she’s just embarrassed, that’s all.”
I nodded.
Ags bit her bottom lip..
“Sorry, kid. Sorry, Aggie, I, uh, I’ll see you later,” he said, and even the tone of the bell above the door suddenly sounded melancholy.
I glanced at Ags with a penitent expression. “Hey, at least the Gee Spot ladies are still here. They’ll be coming for sure.”
“Yeah, but that’s just Gladys and Ginny. Remember, Geraldine brings her own food and drinks wherever she goes,” Ags said, rolling her eyes.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. I keep forgetting she was at Jonestown. Well, I can’t really blame her for that.”
She smirked. “Anyone else you piss off?”
“Probably. Look, Ags, I’ll stay home. Let Richards, Jack, and Bugsy know I’m not coming and–“
“No way! Somebody’s got to be here to help me pack up all the leftovers.”
“Well, the least I could do is take care packages to them, TV dinner style, you know,” I said and felt the buzzing of my phone in my bag. I took it out and looked at the screen. “Johnny Fleet.”
“Alex, I swear if Johnny, his gran, and her boyfriend cancel—“
“Easy, sista, he just wants me to come over. Listen, I’m sorry about the others—“
My words were cut like a knife by the sound of the smoke alarm in the kitchen.
“Oh my God, the pumpkin pie!” Ags sprinted away and I headed out the door to see what Johnny Fleet needed.
CHAPTER 19
As I walked down the steps of Aggie’s store, I re-read the text message. “Hey come 2 the bait stand.” It was followed by a smiley face emoji, and nothing about the message looked like it had come from Johnny except the number that sent it.
Texting Traits and Techno Truths had been the alliterative lesson title of night one of the communications analysis course I’d been taking at the college. Mr. Hives, the oh-so-enthusiastic head of our class was open in his condemnation of texting, a medium he fell just short of calling the devil’s work. Iterating that if the medium was indeed still the message, the message was that it’s ok to be emotionless, curt, and impersonal. And no, emojis and gifs are not substitutes for inflection, feeling, or genuine emotion. However, Hives’ crusade would seem to be an uphill battle with Americans sending six billion texts a day, and that number is growing. The funny thing was, though, in the two years I’d known him, Johnny Fleet hadn’t once texted me. I looked at my screen again, perplexed by the message itself. First of all, Johnny has this weird affliction they call manners. If he had suddenly taken up texting, I know he’d still throw in a “please” and “thank you”. Second, Johnny doesn’t seem like the kind of kid who would be cutesy enough to use the number two instead of the word “to”, or the type to put a smiley face in his message. Finally, I had never heard Johnny Fleet refer to his operations as “the bait stand”. Not once.
His new-to-him truck was parked in the driveway. I pushed open the front door of the store, expecting to see him, but he wasn’t at the counter. “Hey! Since when did you start texting?” I shouted. “Hey, Johnny!” I bellowed and waited for an answer. I looked out the front window toward his new boat and, seeing no one aboard, I proceeded behind the counter toward the back room. As soon as I pushed open the door, I found Johnny. Sitting in the corner by the refrigerator. He was bound by ropes and had a rag stuffed in his mouth. The pleading expression he gave with his eyes registered a moment too late, and Earle Davidson yanked me by my arm into the room and slammed the door. My breath caught in my throat and my heart began to thump rapidly. I looked down at Johnny—no blood and he didn’t look like anything was hurting but his pride. He looked back at me with remorse. I looked at Earle. And his gun—likely the one Aggie’d been holding for Carlos.
“Nice to see you again.” Earle’s expression oozed anger and confidence at the same time. “What was your name again? Euphegenia? What’s that, Latin for nosy bitch?” He smiled at his own comment he must have found clever.
I smirked. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Well, Blondie, you and I are going to go for a little boat ride.”
“What’s the occasion, Zane? Or should I say Earle?”
“Oh, I think you know. In fact, I think you know more than you’re letting on. Just figured I’d get to you before you spill your guts to that cop who brought Lisa in. The one hangs around you,” he said, and his eyes bored through me. “Lives in Brentwood Court.”
Earle had been busy spying on me, Hagen, and who knows how many others. “Look, I’m really not as much fun as you probably think, so why don’t you just take the boat and go?”
“You may not be fun, but I hear you’re worth a pile of money and somebody’s gonna pay to get you back.”
“You don’t know me very well. Nobody’ll care if I’m gone. They’ll probably have a parade,” I said, trying to win over Earle with my cynicism and self-deprecation. He didn’t fall for it.
“Move,” he barked, and with the gun in his hand he motioned me toward the door. “Wait a second,” he said, and I froze while he proceeded to cold cock Johnny Fleet.
I flinched and sucked in through clenched teeth and, when I looked down to see Johnny, I was relieved when I saw his fingers move and, as Earle shoved me through the doorway, I prayed that Johnny would be ok.
Earle and I proceeded toward the Fleet’s In, Johnny’s baby, the new name freshly applied by Armstrong Signs just two days earlier. With our steps nearly knitted together, Earle pressed the barrel of the gun into my side and I slowed my gait, hoping that someone would notice what was going on. “Start the boat,” Earle grumbled, handing me the key, and I complied while he quickly untied the bow and stern lines and then hopped aboard.
“Ok, get us out of here, nice and easy,” he said.
I nodded, the gun pointed at me tending to make me agreeable, and we motored out between the piers, at a casual pace so as not to arouse suspicion. I looked over my shoulder back at Aggie’s place and, a minute later when her Christmas lights flicked on and they outlined the profile of the store in white, my hopes flicked off.
Once we were out of the piers, Earle used the gun in his hand to point to the passenger seat he wanted me to take, like he was some usher at a play for Mafioso. “Give me your cell phone,” he barked over the sound of the twin Yamahas, his palm up, his tone demanding.
“I don’t have it. It’s in my bag and my bag’s in Johnny’s place,” I said, but he patted me down anyway. “Hey, watch it!” I gave him angry eyes for the way his hand lingered on my behind, and he chuckled until the boat thudded against a wave and he resumed his place at the controls.
“Where are we going?” I asked, looking across at him while I rubbed my arms with my hands. The chill of the night was already upon us.
“Haven’t decided yet.” His face was hardened by concentration.
“What if we don’t have enough ga
s to get there?”
“What if you shut up?” he groused.
“I’m just saying, maybe you should slow down so we don’t burn all our gas so quickly,” I said, looking through the dark expanse ahead of us. A shiver ran down my back as I felt some spray when we thudded down on a wave.
Earle cut back on the throttle a little. “You, uh, you’re not half bad, ya know.”
Hmm, another glowing endorsement.
“Maybe when we get where we’re going, you’ll be a little nicer to me.”
“I doubt it,” I was quick to say.
“Smart too,” Earle flitted his eyes at me.
“Oh, not that smart, trust me.”
“You figured out who I am, didn’t take long either.” He looked at me with almost a congratulatory expression.
“How did you know that I figured it out?”
“That little program at the college library? I built a code into it that lets me know every time someone hits on my name.” He smirked proudly. “You can learn anything in prison.”
I shook my head. I can’t even set the alarm on my phone and the guy across from me is coding. “So, tell me this. I get that you robbed the bakery and pharmacy because you wanted to get back at the jury for putting you away, right? But the jewellery store? And Aggie’s?”
“I needed some things to fence. The jewellery store was good for that, and I knocked over your friend’s place for lying to me with those fake names.”
I smirked. The worst I’d ever done to someone for lying to me was rat them out to the IRS.
“And you drugged my dog…”
“Well, duh. What do you think the nutmeg was for, my oatmeal? You bought that superfood garbage?”
“So, instead of going to jail for robbery, you think kidnapping is going to get you off scot free?”
“I’ve already done my time for those jobs. Did ya know I had nothing to do with those bank jobs way back?” He looked at me. “Hey, I saw that.”
“What?”
“That eye-rolling thing—that’s a nasty habit.”
“I know, I need a twelve-step program. Look, Earle, everyone ever accused of anything always says they didn’t do it.”
“But I didn’t. My ex-friend threw me under the bus. You know his old lady.”
“I know lots of old ladies, Earle.”
“The one and only Lisa.”
“Lisa Claire? She was married to your friend?”
“Lisa King. Claire’s her middle name and she was married to my ex-friend. The both of ‘em pointed the finger at me. And I lose twenty years of my life, and my relationship with my kid.”
“Michael?”
Earle turned his scowl on me. “How’d you know that?”
“I’m nosy, like you said.”
“Anyway, all the money’s spent and her old man croaks and she comes looking to me for sympathy. Says it was all his idea to lie to the cops. So, I’m a soft-hearted guy—“
“No kidding.”
“Anyway, I give her this place to live at the dump I bought. The Vine. So I can keep an eye on her, mess with her life for a change.“
“And you just happen to get the security codes to a few places you can knock over, plant the goods in their room, and frame Roddy for it.”
“They had it comin’. Nobody gave me a fair shake. I spent twenty years in the pen while they lived high on the hog with the money her old man stole. She gets to watch her kid grow up. What a loser.”
“That why you tried to frame him?”
“Why not? The best way to hurt his mother is to get him sent to jail.”
I nodded.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin. Maybe growing a beard was going to be part of a future disguise. “Didn’t count on a goody two shoes like you, though.”
“I’m far from that.”
I scanned the lights on the shoreline. “Look, Earle, there’s a cove over there. Just take me in and drop me off and I’ll get a ride back to the marina. You don’t even have to take me all the way into shore.”
“No. I’m not going back to prison.”
“What? You think I’d rat you out? I can keep a secret, and I’m really a pain in the ass. You don’t want to hang around with me.”
“You’ll do for a while. Are you really a screamer or was that thing with Andrew Jackson a lie?”
“Andrew? Oh, look, that’s Doctor Richards. He’s a good guy, he was just playing along.”
“Well, you and I are going to play along for a while too,” he said and put his hand on the gun that was tucked into his waistband as if to remind me it was there. Like I could have forgotten.
I sat with my knees tense, and I felt ready to spring from the cushion any moment like I’d go through the roof of the cabin. My eyes darted around the boat like a pin ball machine. I had to find a way out of this. Damn me anyway. Why couldn’t I have kyboshed Johnny’s desire to buy this boat?
The further we got from shore, the more I felt my stomach churn. Would I ever see my friends again? I looked up to the radio affixed to the ceiling of the boat. It was directly over Earle’s head. Even if I did get on the radio and call for help, it’d be a long time coming. That idea was out. I looked around for another way out and, there, in the glow of the dash of controls, I spotted the kill switch. If I could just pull it and cut the power, we’d at least stop moving farther from home.
I needed to create a distraction. Seducing Earle was out—that was a given—and so I thought to rely on annoying the piss out of him. The build up was swift but subtle. I shrugged my shoulders and rubbed my arms with my hands, shrinking myself into a pathetic, sniffling mess. Heavy on the sniffling. A constant, urging, agitating sniffling that would drive any man crazy. Earle glared at me. It was working. I replied with a sheepish expression and got to my feet.
“What are you doing?”
I reached over the console. “I need a Kleenex—cut me some slack, it’s getting cold out” I looked down into his eyes to say. I put my hand on his shoulder and steadied myself, planting my legs like trees. I let my hand appear to move clumsily over the dash and, in the process, I pulled out a tissue and then removed the kill switch. The engines died almost immediately and the boat coasted a few feet before the only forward movement was caused by the waves. The only sounds were the thudding of the hull followed by Earle’s expletive outburst.
“What’d you do?”
“Got a Kleenex, what do you think I did?”
“You cut the engine! Fix it!”
“You’re gonna need this,” I said, waving the kill switch I’d palmed in my Kleenex.
Earle grasped my arm and squeezed it hard until, in the face of unbearable pain, I let the kill switch fall, swallowed in the darkness of the floor of the boat.
“Move!” he shouted at me, flicking on the cabin light and frantically searching on his hands and knees.
I had seconds, a minute maybe, before he figured out how to restart the boat. I backed my way toward the stern and looked into the inky black water, and then in the distance, at the faint dark red of the last buoy we’d passed, and when Earle finally exclaimed that he’d found the switch on the floor, I jumped overboard.
✽✽✽
When I surfaced, I saw the lights on the boat fading into the distance, and I heard the whir of the motors. I was alone in black water. Or was this my dream? If I sat up or opened my eyes, would Pepper be lying beside me in my king-sized bed? I shut my eyes tight and opened them. Nothing changed. I did it again, shutting them harder this time. Nothing. Nothing but cold black water. My teeth chattered and my heart pounded. I could feel the pulse in my ears, the sound of my own panicked breathing. I could tread water only so long. I had to get to the buoy.
My legs were heavy in my jeans, my arms felt constricted by the jacket I wore, and I thought about removing it but it might provide some warmth if I made it to the buoy. The red light of the beacon mocked me and wobbled with the low chop. I didn’t feel like I was making any progress, gaining an
y distance. What was worse: being tired in cold black water or being on that boat with Earle Davidson? Too late now. I had to think about something else. It was Thanksgiving. Were they all sitting at Aggie’s enjoying turkey and the trimmings? Would this be my last Thanksgiving? Would they even come looking for me? I had to get to the buoy.
As I swam toward it, there were moments when it looked like the light had gone out, just as the light in me was fading. If I let go now, I’d see my father again, my husband, everyone who had gone before me. Maybe even Nat. It was tempting. If I fought, I’d see Ags, Bugsy, Hagen, and Richards. I’d see Jack and the gang again. I’d have a heck of a story to tell them at the next poker game. I had to get to the buoy.
Closer now, I reached out and grazed it with my fingertips. My fingers smooshed into the algae below the water line and my hand slipped off the steel. My fingers were so cold I could barely feel them, barely grasp when I reached out. I needed something to hang onto. Salvation felt so close and yet so far away. I could literally reach out and touch it. I’d seen seals on these things countless times; they had no trouble getting on top. Tired, cold, angry, I lunged up to grab the metal angle iron and my hand, half numb, became pinched in the frame. Dammit. The pain was excruciating, and I let out a primal scream that morphed into crying. I bobbed there for what seemed like an eternity, one hand pinched in the metal frame of the buoy, the weight of the water pulling the rest of me down. I built up for one last try. “You can do this,” I told myself, and in the next moments, as though I were being pulled up by my beltloops, I found myself on the platform of the buoy. I let out another scream from deep within, extracting my hand that had been caught in the metal. I brought it to my mouth and huffed on it. I crawled into the framework, the cold steel warmer than the water. I had made it to the buoy.
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