“Those were the odds. What can I do for you, Tom?”
“Anybody saying anything yet?”
“We’re getting there.”
“You need me to back off, I know. I gotta stay right here in this tight, narrow space.”
“That tight, narrow space is you having just gotten back into our good graces.”
He took a sip of beer.
Blythe waited. “Was there something else?”
He decided it would be better to keep his thoughts to himself this time. “No. Sorry to bother you.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
He hung up and walked back into the condo. He thought about Katie, the way she sometimes liked to lie on the couch stretched out like the Venus de Milo.
“They turned someone,” he said to the empty couch.
He imagined Katie keeping her position, just watching him. “Blythe?”
“And Skokie. They’re working with the FBI. They turned someone and they’re protecting him. Mario Palumbo.”
The ghost sat up, her bare feet on the carpet. “Tom, I don’t know . . .”
“Okay. Then something else. I can feel it, like it’s inside. Like there’s a piece of my machinery turning the wrong way.” He walked away from her imaginary disapproval. “It’s all right,” he said. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
* * *
But it did. It mattered at 2 a.m. when he lay looking up at the ceiling fan, thinking about his foster home in Yonkers again. Pastor Marvin Johnson was a big man with a bigger laugh, who would listen with a steady and direct gaze. Sometimes a little white spit gathered at the corners of his mouth when he got going with a sermon. He never preached to Tom or Nick or any of the foster kids moving through his home. And he wasn’t a saint — he tried to hide his bourbon and his cigarettes, but when his breath didn’t smell like mints it smelled like tobacco and sometimes liquor. They lived next to an auto salvage yard, the sound of crushed metal and the beeping of trucks, the smell of oil on the breeze. Their small backyard was surrounded by a high wooden fence and the grass was mostly worn. A few rusted lawn chairs with the plastic straps sagged from use and it was where they’d kept the bicycles. Tom would sometimes see Pastor Johnson out there with his coffee cup of bourbon, smoking Pall Malls. Once in a while, his eyes would close, and his lips move in silent prayer.
Mrs. Johnson ran the house. Looking back, she wasn’t the apron-clad, bosomy matron you would expect. Monique Johnson was whip-thin with sinewy arms and legs, joints that looked brown and purple together. While Mr. Johnson was gregarious and stopped to talk to just about everyone he saw on the street, his wife kept to herself and a few trusted friends she sometimes talked to on the phone in the kitchen when she thought no one was around to hear her.
Tom was sometimes. Among the things absorbed into his teenaged head, to paraphrase with time and gapped memories:
Your health is not a debt you can just cancel. The body collects.
There’s no sweeter sound to anyone’s ears than the sound of their own name.
Mostly Tom remembered her eyes, and the way they seemed to appreciate him. She seldom showed physical affection, but once she put her cool hand on the back of his neck. The summer was dank and humid. He could almost hear the Harlem line train rattling past beyond the high fence.
“You have to watch for your brother,” she’d told him. “You think he’s watching you, but it’s the other way.”
But he’d failed at that. He’d grown inured to Nick at best, outright ignored him at worst. When Nick was drinking and gambling away all of his real estate gains, Tom knew, and did nothing. When he was getting into coke, Tom suspected, and kept his distance. He was a rookie cop with the FDLE, pretending to be superhuman — what was he going to do about it?
And then Mario Palumbo got a hold on Nick because Nick was into Palumbo’s organization up to his eyes in gambling debt. Nick started running dope to get out of hock. And people knew — people who worked with Tom knew. Jarvis had run the vice narcotics squad for Everglades County, but before him was Danny Coburn, who’d monitored Nick during that time. A lawyer working for the late Edgar Vasquez had been blackmailing clients into doing dirty work for the family. Palumbo’s organization had tried to make a deal with the Vasquez family who didn’t go for it and a turf war had broken out. A cold war — not the kind of overt bloody mayhem you saw with vying drug cartels in Juárez, but subtler, with infiltrators and double-dealers, all struggling to rule the drug world in southwest Florida and expand further up the Gulf.
Because whatever they had, it was never enough. And the law had to keep up and, yeah, that sometimes meant coloring outside the lines. Add in one monster hurricane, banishing cops to shelters, flooding the streets, shredding the fauna into salad and you had a giant mess.
In the middle of that, people were hanging on for dear life. Operations had been ongoing up until the point Hector made landfall. The Vasquez family had been preparing for stone crab season and packing their shipments of claws with kilos of coke and heroin. Pedro Vasquez had purportedly made a death threat on the statewide attorney from his cell at Jerome Correctional. Palumbo was waiting for his day in court, but the dog track was still running and the game-room dealers still served the cards, existing in that gray space outside of the law that no one could seem to get a handle on.
* * *
Tom went to the track at noon the next day. He watched the dogs running without placing any bets and drank a Pilsner in a cold, perspiring glass. The sun beat down on the stands and the announcer’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. He focused on feeling closer to Nick, imagining his brother as he would have sat here. It lasted for fifteen minutes until a guy in a dark security uniform showed up.
“Mr. Lange?”
Tom shielded his eyes and looked up.
“That was fast.”
The security guard, young but tough-looking, rumpled his brow in confusion. “Sir?”
“Someone saw me on camera? Thinks I’m stinking up the place.”
“No, sir — well, we saw you on camera . . .” The guard stuck a cordless phone in Tom’s face. “This is a courtesy, sir. Someone trying to reach you.”
Tom sat up straighter, took the beer off his lap and set it on the concrete. The guard said, “They tried to reach you on your cell.”
“I turned it off.”
He pushed the phone closer and lifted his eyebrows.
Tom took it from him. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me,” Katie said. “I’ve been trying to call you all morning. ROC said you didn’t come in today.”
“Yeah. Blythe keeps putting Baby in the corner.”
“I checked with Rhodes and then I thought you might be at the track. Today it’s been a year since Nick.”
Tom got to his feet and started up the stairs toward the pari-mutuel bet monitors and concessions, the security guard trailing him. “That’s not why you’re calling . . .”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Jack is in the hospital. He went in to have gallstones removed. It’s not good.”
“Where? He called you?”
“He did. He’s been trying to reach you, too. He has something he wants to tell you or show you. Naples General.”
“Are you coming?”
“I can’t right now. Maybe later today.”
“Okay.”
He looked around at the expectant security guard still hustling along beside him. “Thank you, Katie,” he added and hung up.
He handed the security guard the phone and moved quickly for the doors.
* * *
“Jack, old boy, what’s going on?”
“Tommy.” Vance was in a hospital gown. His bed was near the window. He lay in the afternoon light recovering from surgery and looked like he was about to get sucked up into the afterlife at any second. He raised a hand trailing a tube and pointed a finger toward the corner. “My bag over there.”
“This one? This m
anly leather satchel right here? This stylish, I’m-retired-but-my-junk-still-works bag in the chair? The one signaling to all the lady nurses?”
Vance smiled. Another tube bridged his upper lip, shooting oxygen up into his nose. His eyes were dark and hollow, and his smile faded. “Pull out the binder — no, the other one . . . the red one. There you go. I printed that out off of the internet.”
Tom read aloud what was there. “Okay, Citizen’s News out of Polk County. Interesting. Nice pink highlighter — I like it. Ah . . . According to the complaints, Veterans Affairs police began investigating in October—”
“That’s October three years ago,” Vance said from the bed.
“Gotcha . . . police began investigating in October after workers began finding discarded drugs and paraphernalia in an employee parking lot. Among the refuse were heroin bags, insulin needles, Suboxone strip packets and more than eight grams of cocaine, the charges say.”
Tom whistled. “Okay. Interesting.” He kept reading aloud.
“Confidential informants told police that Guttridge and Hinkley were partners in a drug ring, and that Guttridge had been delivering marijuana to Trafford and Goins at the VA campus. An informant also told investigators that Guttridge had been dealing Adderall, Xanax and marijuana, and that he had a marijuana growing operation in his basement, police said.”
Tom paused to look at Vance, who dipped his head, keep going.
“A hospital employee told investigators that he had bought amphetamines from Hinkley on several occasions, including at the hospital’s maintenance shop, and that Hinkley had overdosed on the drugs in September, the charges say. During a search of Guttridge’s locker, police found a bottle of urine that could be used to pass a drug test, as well as about two grams of marijuana, according to the complaint. Police also found Guttridge in possession of the anti-psychotic drug quetiapine and money orders totaling $1,200, the complaint says.”
Vance said, “Sounds like something, doesn’t it?”
“It does. Sounds like . . . well, it says they’re all veterans. And the informant is, or he just works at the clinic. But Guttridge and Hinkley are selling drugs to their fellow vets, Trafford and Goins. Hinkley is dead of an overdose. Guttridge . . . doesn’t say if he’s in jail or what. I’ll call Hendry County and the paper too.” He shook the binder gently. “Thank you, Jack.”
“Just keep that. I’ve got a few other things in there I found.”
Tom approached the bed. It was awkward seeing Vance like this. So vulnerable. “How you, uh, feeling? Can I get you anything?”
“You could — I was wondering if you could get me a few things from home.”
“No problem. Of course. How long you gonna be here? They keeping you overnight for observation?”
Vance nodded but his eyes stared off into space. “Well, no, they’re keeping me to run more tests.” His eyes found Tom’s. “They’re pretty sure it’s cancer. Gall bladder cancer — they didn’t catch it early enough and I’m up there in the stages. Single digits in the survival rate.”
Vance was typically candid, but right now his words were like blows to the stomach. Tom stared into a corner for a moment then marshaled the will to make eye contact again. “Jack, I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve got family coming. My daughter is coming from San Francisco with her kids.”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
“She’s about Katie’s age. She teaches. Anyway, they’re getting a flight — the doctor called them. Next of kin, I guess. They’re saying things like ‘end-of-life care.’ You know. That I’ve got a month, tops.”
Tom opened his mouth but could only breathe.
“So the keys to my place are in the bag there. I hate to ask, but—”
Tom turned back to the bag and started riffling through it, grateful to have something else to do besides just stand there and absorb the news.
“Say no more,” Tom said when he had the keys. He held them up and jiggled them triumphantly, feeling a brick settle over his heart. “Whatever you need. Magazines, stuffed animals, you name it.”
“Hey, Tom.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s gonna be all right.”
Tom felt the shaking come up through him from the ground up. He fought an overwhelming urge to run from the room. Who was Jack Vance? Some guy who used to be his neighbor in Naples? An old bachelor from the Air Force who went around checking on people’s homes when they sallied north for the summer? They’d played cards together a few times, Tom and Jack with Nick. They’d gone out to dinner once or twice with Katie. Now he was dying.
Sickening, trying to rationalize it away. Trying to pretend Vance wasn’t a close friend because he was too chickenshit to feel the pain. Too scared of his own emotion.
Stay, he said to himself. Just stay put.
“Hey, Tommy. You told me the other day — you shared something with me. About your past. The juvey thing.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll meet you halfway.”
“Okay.”
“A while back, whenever it was — half a year ago or something, you asked me what I did in the Air Force. I told you I had a special duty position. But I didn’t tell you what it was.”
Tom nodded, and then he reached out and grabbed Vance’s hand and let the tears fall. Let them fucking fall. So what. Tom tucked his head down against his chest.
“I was a PJ,” Vance said. “In Vietnam I was a PJ and we rescued downed pilots. 1972 was the last really hot year of the war. I was twenty years old. Ground war was winding down and air power was coming on strong. We used helicopters to rescue our guys. Go into the jungle and get them out. That’s it. That’s what I did.”
Tom lifted his head up and looked at Vance through blurry eyes.
“I appreciate that, Jack.”
The old guy shimmered there for a second, two of him superimposed, one version of Vance already dissolving, dancing. Then Tom blinked and the image was gone.
* * *
Back home, he called the newspaper. The reporter on the VA clinic drug bust article no longer worked there. Everyone else he talked to referred him to the Veterans Affairs police for available information.
Tom finally got on a line with a guy named Pembry.
“That was really all there was to it,” Pembry said. “We got the initial tip on contraband found in the parking lot around the clinic. Some kind of altercation, maybe — couple of guys arguing and there’s a fight . . . someone loses some of their stash. We got to looking into it and found out there’s these guys selling their own prescriptions. They’d kind of teamed up, the two of them. Protecting each other, I guess.”
“Which one was being prescribed the quetiapine? Was it Guttridge?”
“Uh, I’ll have to check — but no, I don’t think so. He was busted with it, but Hinkley was the one with real problems. Guttridge had, you know, PTSD, but he was a little better off.”
“Would you have a full name for Guttridge?”
“Gimme a sec.”
Tom waited until Pembry came back on the line. “Francis. Francis R. Guttridge.”
The hairs stiffened on the back of Tom’s neck. “And the two other guys, Trafford, Goins, they weren’t dealing? They were buying.”
“Believe so, yes.”
“What happened to Guttridge? He still around?”
“Well, Polk County worked on it with us. Once we completed our investigation — it’s in the Army’s interest to try and keep these things internal. But that only extends so far. Guttridge got eighteen months, served eleven.”
“Was he on probation after that?”
“Home monitoring, yeah.”
“Where was the home monitoring?”
“Right here in Lakeland.”
“You got that address?”
“He doesn’t live there anymore. Not for a couple years.”
“You know where he went?”
“Not for sure, no. Lakeland is in Polk County but right
on the western edge of the line. It’s the Tampa Bay area, so he slipped away.”
“How about a vehicle?”
“Uh, I’ll have to check on that. You got a number where I can have someone reach you?”
Tom relayed his number. “Last question . . . you get any kind of . . . well, you ever deal with anyone named Vasquez?”
“That would be a question for County, or maybe the narcotics squad over in Tampa.”
“Thank you, sir. You’ve been a big help.”
* * *
He stood over the empty unmade bed and loaded his gun into the holster behind his back. In jeans and white t-shirt, his badge clipped to his belt, he thought about Vance. Then he left the room, took the truck from the garage and headed out.
The preacher on the radio quoted from Proverbs: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.”
That was the thing with scripture. Maybe it was no different than horoscopes — just broad enough to see yourself in it, see some divine wisdom guiding your life. Or maybe it was like targeted marketing. A kind of cosmically guided target marketing. Tom was still of two minds about a lot of things. But maybe that’s where reality settled in, right in between.
The Veterans Affairs police had called him back with information on Guttridge: the make and model of the vehicle he’d owned at the time of his arrest, a Toyota Highlander. The vehicle had not been impounded. Tom started calling wrecking companies, salvage yards — places where vehicles went to die, get resold for parts and scrap metal. There were at least a hundred of them in the area. He started close to Everglades City and worked his way north up the Gulf Coast. The first sixteen hadn’t scrapped or salvaged any Highlanders that week. The seventeenth one had.
Aardvark Wrecking Company covered three acres, a mountainous landscape of flattened cars and trucks. A kid of about twenty came over with grease smeared on one cheek, wearing dirty denim coveralls, his black hair sticking up to the side. He looked at the wound on Tom’s face, then his eyes dropped to Tom’s badge.
“Help you, officer?”
“Hey, I called.”
“Oh, right. Yeah.”
“I need to see your past weeks’ intake.”
Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set Page 75
