Mike and Emma looked at each other. “About that,” she said.
“What?”
Emma said, “That was a good move turning Hammond’s webcam around.”
“I was trying to keep you in the loop, in case things went south.” I gestured to my supine form for emphasis.
Mike said, “It did more than that; she recorded everything. Morris may not have admitted to robbing container ships, but he’s on tape murdering Hammond and planning to frame you for it.”
“Then they must have Don on there as well,” I said. “Why isn’t he in custody?”
Charlie clucked her tongue. “Tragically, the feed cuts out right after Morris outlined his devious plan to set you up.”
“Technology,” Emma said, shaking her head ruefully.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually show him shooting you,” Charlie said. “But the end results aren’t difficult to extrapolate.” She mimicked my gesture at my inert form.
“Where’s Morris now?” I asked.
“In a very dark hole.” Jim’s voice blared from an iPhone next to my mother.
“Sorry,” she said. “I should’ve told you he was on speaker.”
I said, “Hey, man. Did your State Department sources tell you that?”
Jim didn’t take the bait. “Standard FBI procedure for a suspect who is a high-ranking government employee and happens to be an extreme flight risk is to immediately ship them to Washington, DC. Director Morris isn’t going to see natural light until his trial, assuming there is one.”
“You think he’ll cop a plea?” Charlie asked.
“Depends on how far up the chain this goes,” Emma said. “If someone else is pulling the strings, maybe he flips and goes into WITSEC. If he’s the top dog, and he’s on tape murdering Hammond, maybe he admits to everything to avoid getting the death penalty.”
All of us in the room looked at each other the way we always did when Jim explained things to us.
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“It’s all public information.”
Mom said, “It was nice of you to check in on your brother, dear.”
“No trouble whatsoever,” Jim said. “But now that it looks like you’re out of the woods, I need to be going. Let me know if I can be of any help, Cy. And good work, to all of you.”
“Thanks for checking in, spook,” I said.
He hung up.
Charlie looked at me. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Now we know why the CIA was sniffing around,” I replied.
“It’d explain how he stays up to date even when he’s 3,000 miles away.”
“If he’s even in Europe,” I said.
Mom cut in, “Enough of that. Your older brother is an … interesting person.”
EPILOGUE
In the end, the FBI never arrested me or Charlie.
Houston police detective Roy DeSantos did indeed end up getting official credit for Morris’s arrest, after Charlie’s phone call. This not quite anonymous tip led Roy to discover a dead Hammond and a concussed Morris (turns out Don thumped him a lot harder than I thought), and landed him on the front pages of those papers nobody reads for a couple days. All the local networks referred to him as a “hero cop,” which he’ll undoubtedly make sure I never hear the end of.
Charlie still hasn’t agreed to a date with him, though she appears to be softening her stance on the issue.
Clarke & Clarke Investigations is still going strong out of my old ramshackle house. Although Roy received all the attention for the DHS case, word of mouth got around about Charlie’s and my role. We weren’t going to be driving Ferraris ourselves anytime soon, but I’m only eating Top Ramen once a week now.
Don’s still doing the executive security thing. I’m not sure why he never gets any shit from Mom about the dangers of his job — escorting kidnap-prone oil company big shots to the Middle East and South America carries some risks, after all — but I’m half-convinced it’s because Don had convinced her “executive security” means he works the door at ConocoPhillips headquarters like a nightclub bouncer.
Whatever, it’s not my job to rat him out. Until it’s advantageous for me to do so, that is.
Mike stayed with the Department of Homeland Security and was actually promoted to associate director (which may or may not have been a backhanded apology for almost getting murdered in the line of duty by his boss). He and Kayla are still up in The Woodlands, meaning I still hardly ever see him.
It turns out Morris wasn’t the only one involved in the trafficking ring, though he may have been the highest ranking. The FBI investigation is still proceeding, and happily, both the Feds and the DHS are satisfied no one in the Clarke family was involved.
Jim was as good as his word and has been overseas ever since he called me at the hospital. The odds on what his actual job is have pretty much leveled out, with “CIA” being the favorite by a wide margin, though Charlie still has a theory he’s working for a foreign intelligence agency like MI6 or Interpol. Whatever the case, “State Department” is about tenth on the list of likely candidates and falling.
I healed up as well as can be expected. Since the bullet didn’t hit any “major organs” (thanks, Charlie), I was released from the hospital after about a week and told to “take it easy.” Given the frenetic pace of the previous couple weeks, the instructions weren’t hard to follow.
Which means I’ve been watching a lot of James Bond movies and going nuts with boredom.
Oh, and Emma and I are officially back “on.” I took longer to ask her out than I care to admit, until Charlie politely told me that if I didn’t quit hemming and hawing about it and ask her out already, she’d shoot me again.
Emma told me she wants to go sailing some time. Maybe I can convince Steranko to let me borrow his boat.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Vonder Haar is 23 years into his starter marriage and has three starter kids (he also may not know exactly what the word "starter" means). His work has appeared in the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and the Houston Press.
Lucky Town is his first novel.
Lucky Town Page 24
