by Alan Lee
These Mortals
Alan Lee
Sparkle Press
These Mortals
by Alan Lee
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Alan Janney
First Edition
Printed in USA
Cover by Sweet N Spicy
Formatting by Vellum
Paperback ISBN: ***
Sparkle Press
Created with Vellum
Contents
Author’s Note
Saturday Morning
Saturday Morning
Saturday Afternoon
Saturday Afternoon
Saturday Evening
Saturday Evening
Saturday Night
Sunday Morning
Sunday Afternoon
Monday Morning
Monday Morning
Monday Evening
Monday Evening
Monday Night
Tuesday Morning
Tuesday Morning
Tuesday Morning
Tuesday Noon
Tuesday Afternoon
Tuesday Night
Tuesday Night
Tuesday Night
Wednesday Morning
Wednesday Morning
Wednesday Afternoon
Wednesday Evening
Wednesday Night
Thursday Morning
Thursday Morning
Thursday Morning
Thursday Afternoon
Thursday Afternoon
Thursday Night
Friday Morning
Friday Afternoon
Friday Afternoon
Friday Evening
Friday, 8:45 pm
Friday, 9:00 pm
Friday, 9:15 pm
Friday, 9:30 pm
Friday, 10 pm
Friday, 10:15 pm
Friday, 11:30 pm
Friday, 11:45 pm
Friday, 11:59 pm
Saturday, 2:00 am
Saturday, 2:05 am
Saturday, 8:40 am
Saturday, 8:45 am
Saturday 8:45 am
Saturday 8:55 am
Saturday, 9:00 am
Saturday, 9:01 am
Saturday, 9:02 am
Saturday, 9:05 am
Saturday 9:06 am
Saturday, 9:15 am
Epilogue
Dear Reader
Author’s note.
In the previous novel’s epilogue, Darren abducts Ronnie inside a coffee shop in Washington. Darren is assisted by a large man. The author, prone to making a mistake but once a decade, referred to him as a man of Asian descent. He is not. The giant is of Hispanic descent. A distinction that becomes important soon, as you’ll see, during this week of Mackenzie’s life.
Also, it is not necessary to have read Supremacy License before enjoying this novel. (SL is the first book in the Manny Martinez thriller series) However, a few scenes will make a little more sense if you have.
Enjoy.
Saturday Morning
Mackenzie
I was great at weekends. You could ask anyone.
I slept in until seven. Made a full carafe of Peet’s Coffee. Cooked bacon and left grease in the pan for the scrambled free-range eggs. Kix and I went to church on Sundays—whether or not you’re a believer, if you aren’t attending some kind of sanctuary on the weekends then I don’t know what keeps you going. Recently we’d been taking Ronnie. Afterwards we played at a park. After that we lunched, and after that we took a nap.
It was important, I thought, to imbed supernal things into our days, otherwise we were monkeys orbiting the sun until we died. Sabbath on the weekend with style and tradition and purpose.
But not this Saturday.
Ronnie hadn’t come home.
She’d texted she was staying a few days in DC. She touched base the next day. And the next. And then quit answering her phone. Same with Fat Susie.
She didn’t respond in the next hour, I was headed north to DC to break it in half.
Kix ate Cheerios and eggs in his chair, watching with worry, his hair like thin grass. Timothy August mopped the hardwood, a habit when nervous. Georgina Princess—I had a dog—was curled around a heating vent, sad eyes on the front door.
A waiting game from hell.
I finished my coffee. Stood and checked my phone. Checked the front yard. Transferred my son to his playpen.
I watched his youthful toil. He stacked large alphabet blocks and shouted when they tumbled. In the quiet, his raised voice sounded obscene and he seemed to know it.
I watched cars on Windsor, motoring at a slow Saturday pace. Their ignorance of my raw hurt felt deliberate and personal.
I tired of watching. I went upstairs to shave and when I returned Georgina Princess August was up and growling at the front door.
Ronnie.
She had returned.
She used her key and came inside. She still wore the outfit I’d seen her in last Tuesday.
Timothy and I stood in the kitchen and didn’t move. My gun was upstairs.
The man following her was a giant. Hispanic, thick dark hair, he wore two long sleeved t-shirts layered, tight around the shoulders. He forced Ronnie to pivot so I could see—he held a sawed-off shotgun in his right fist. The shotgun was double-barreled and the wooden stock was duct taped to his hand. The silver tape started at the wrist, partially covering a tattoo, wrapped around his hand over and over like a bandage, ending past the guard. The gun barrels were duct taped to Ronnie on the other end, pinning the two open muzzles flat to her spine. She was stuck—attached to the gun and the gun to the giant’s trigger hand—and it’d take five minutes of careful work to unwrap her. If he fired, her lower half would be separated from her upper half.
The message was clear. She dies first.
The blue of her eyes had darkened, I thought.
Darren Robbins came in, tugging off brown leather driving gloves. A final man entered and closed the door softly, eyes on me.
Three men and Ronnie.
Timothy and me and Kix.
GPA was growling, hackles raised.
Darren said, “August. Good to see you, champ. Let’s all be veterans about this. No rookie mistakes, yeah?”
“No mistakes.”
Timothy August asked me, “What do I do?” His voice was tight and high.
“Take Kix. Take the dog. Go upstairs.”
“Should I call the police?”
“Only if someone fires. Don’t call the sheriff either.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked me.
“Stay calm.”
“Good,” said Darren. He shot me with his finger. “You’re using your head. Keep doing it.”
Timothy gathered Kix, grabbed GPA by the collar, and took them up the back staircase, the dog straining in protest.
Now there was only me in the kitchen.
Darren said, “Where’s the marshal?”
“He’s out.”
“Nearby?”
“I don’t know. He left yesterday.”
“Are you carrying a gun?”
“No.”
“You understand what’s going on here?”
I nodded.
“You want to talk. I do something you don’t like, and the ball goes up, she won’t survive.”
“So you’ll play ball?” he said.
“I’ll play ball.”
Ronnie closed her eyes and tears leaked from both.
“They killed Reginald,” she said.
“Who?”
“Reginald, Fat Susie. They killed him.”
“Big guy wouldn’t cooperate.” Darren shrugged and sat in the leather love seat. “Sit down, August.”
I sat on the leather couch.
Fat Susie had been my friend.
“Do you know why you’re still alive?” he said.
“I’m well connected.”
“Bingo. The political connections you possess, August, are infuriating. Little cop like you shouldn’t have the friends you do.”
“Manny and Stackhouse and Marcus.”
“And Christ I’m pissed about it. No one wants to touch you. We’d have to kill you and Manny both, and that means tangling with the marshals. Marcus Morgan is respected and he vouches for you. You have the most popular sheriff in the country in your corner. Plus, half the Kings are in love with Ron, here. It’s the biggest fucking kangaroo court I’ve ever seen. And then you win the tournament in Naples—what a sham that was. Now you’re notorious. You understand how this is a nightmare for me.”
“Because I’m going to kill you, and you know it and you deserve it. But you don’t know how to prevent it,” I said.
“Somehow, someway…you steal my girl, collapse my enterprise, tell everyone you’re going to kill me, and my business associates take your side. I can’t wrap my head around it, August. The whole thing, it’s unprecedented.”
“Be sure your sin will find you out.”
“My sin?” he said.
“Your sin.”
“Cut out the wise cracks, little cop. Do you know who that is standing by the door?”
“I don’t know him,” I said.
“That’s Hal New.”
“Hal New looks like a gunner.”
The man at the door didn’t seem to care if I knew him. He had an M1911 pistol strapped to his right thigh. He had high cheek bones and kept his head shaved. Thin like a runner. No tattoos. No emotion.
“US Marine Corp Sergeant Hal New. Two tours in Iraq. Fifty confirmed kills. Discharged in 2010 and freelancing since. I asked around, August. I said I wanted the best. So I paid Hal New two hundred thousand dollars and put it on record. It’s a continuing contract. He is to execute both you and Manny the marshal if I die within the next five years. It’s the only way I could open a contract on the celebrated winner of the Naples tournament; this way, if you die it’s because you deserved it. He’ll kill you long range and disappear again. Are you following all this?”
“I am.”
“I live, you live, August—it’s that black and white. He’s insurance. I want you to understand the stakes. To understand the regulations of our game. It’s about to get more complicated, but that’s the most fundamental mandate. I live, you live.”
“Ronnie dies, you die, I die. I recognize the threat.”
He withdrew a cell phone and set it on the table between us. “Read.”
I picked it up and scanned the screen. A news bulletin about the death of esteemed Assistant U. S. Attorney Darren Robbins.
I said, “I read this article. Yesterday, when I started to get worried.”
“I died in a private airplane crash two weeks ago. But you aren’t surprised to see me here?”
“I guessed the news of your demise was being greatly exaggerated.”
“Why?” he said.
“You are a man with good reason to evanesce and mislead the world about it. Plus, Ronnie was gone.”
“The engine fails on a private jet over Pennsylvania, my remains are found, and you don’t believe it. Quite the cynic, August.”
You’re quite the lying asshat, I didn’t say.
Mackenzie August, master of unspoken wise cracks in times of crisis.
Ronnie’s eyes were still closed.
“That was a cumbersome project. Porcelain veneers are not inexpensive to duplicate, August. It cost a hundred thousand to prepare the evanescence, to borrow your term. The DNA and the bodies. My life insurance policy, however, was for ten million. I came out in the black.”
“The policy pays into a private fund that you can draw on, posthumously,” I said.
“I’m deceased, wealthy, and I’m starting over. A home run. Plus, if I’m dead, Ron’s threat of blackmail has no power. I took away the ace up her sleeve. It’s a whole new ballgame.”
“Why do you have my wife taped to a shotgun?”
Darren picked up a framed photo from the end table. Ronnie had taken it with her cellphone. A selfie. The photo was of us, and she was kissing my cheek. She’d said she always wanted a photo like that, since she was in high school.
Darren tossed the frame into the corner and the glass broke. Upstairs GPA barked.
“Don’t call her that. She’s not your wife. That’s bullshit. She’s your whore. You’re the John but you don’t pay in cash. Let’s be real about the con you’re running.”
Ronnie let a deep breath out slowly and silently.
“What’s with this house, anyway? Why’s it so clean? Do you have a maid?” he said.
“No. I have style.”
“Whatever, I digressed. So I’m deceased, wealthy, and free. On Thursday, I’m gone. Potentially I’ll never set foot in the continental United States again.”
“And yet you’re in my living room.”
“I need you to do something,” he said.
In my periphery, I saw Manny’s Camaro drive by on Windsor.
He wouldn’t come in. But he was nearby and that was comforting.
“I used to be married, August. A real marriage, not contrived. We met in college and fell in love. An actual ceremony, actual happiness. Until it was gone. Nothing in this world lasts. I started playing ball with the Kings. She objected. We were headed toward divorce. It was as amicable as these things can be. Following?”
“You ruined the life of a girl with common sense. Carry on.”
The giant Hispanic gave a little push with his shotgun, forcing Ronnie forward, like she was a puppet. The core muscles of my abdomen shivered and tightened.
“Watch your mouth, August,” said Darren.
Ronnie’s eyes were still closed. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
I wasn’t. Everything felt delayed and distant, I was so far from control.
He said, “To continue. Why’d we divorce? I started getting death threats because I was a federal prosecutor working exclusively against organized crime, and also because…I’d taken sides, as it were. The death threats included my family. Asshole I may be, I didn’t want my family hurt.”
“Family?” I said.
“My wife and my young son. She agreed to enter the witness protection program. She’s not the perfect candidate, but close enough for me to force the marshals to agree. We finalized the divorce and she vanished with their help. New life, out of harm’s way. The Russians can’t find her, the Hispanics can’t find her, the Italians can’t find her—them, I should say, because she took my son—and I could rest easier.”
“Okay.”
“My wife, she was supposed to call. Or write. Something. She was supposed to let me know she’s alive. That was eight years ago, and I never heard from her. I got two birthday cards from my son. That was all.”
To his credit, Darren Robbins paused to quell some human emotion. Blink away the mist and clear his throat. For an instant he wasn’t a corrupt lawyer, wasn’t a mafia stooge, wasn’t a pimp. All the layers of decay and detritus parted to admit a broken soul beneath.
He said, “Two birthday cards written to daddy for his birthday. Even though the boy deserved a real father and got me instead.”
He took two birthday cards from his jacket pocket. Crinkled and worn. He dropped them on the wooden coffee table. I ignored them.
“Find my family, August. I want to make things right.”
“You want me to find your ex-wife and son, who disappeared into the witness pr
otection program years ago.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Marshals got a good track record.”
“I know.”
“They’re experts at making people vanish.”
“The first letter was sent from Roanoke, according to the postal markings. Your home turf, August. Start there. I’m taking Ron with me. You want her back? Find my family.” He removed another letter from his pocket and placed it with the birthday cards. “Give my ex-wife this letter. You have to put it in her hand personally. That’s important. It instructs her to call me. She can call from a burner phone or from a pay phone, if those still exist. I’m not trying to force a meeting or trap her. As soon as I hear her voice, I’ll take it from there. And Ron will be a free girl.”
“Until then?”
“She’s guarded by Mario, who has orders to kill her if necessary.”
“Where?” I asked.
“I’m not telling you where, August.”
“How do I contact you?”
“I’ll come back in two days, without her. We’ll talk it out then, and you and Ron can video conference. But like I said, I’m leaving soon. Thursday morning. So play it safe—find my family by Wednesday. Can you do this?”