by Davis Bunn
“That’s right.”
“With me.”
“Right again.”
The chief slung one arm over the back of his swivel chair. “So talk.”
Val opened his leather portfolio and extracted a set of documents. “You’re concerned about possible financial improprieties at a major Florida-based telephone company. But you don’t have the required evidence to go in with a full investigation.”
The chief unslung his arm. “Who says?”
Val offered the papers. “These might help you move forward.”
The chief studied them intently. From behind the man’s desk, a silver-plated clock ticked precise New York minutes. That and the flipping of pages, a ringing phone, and the sounds of Wall Street traffic rising from far below were the only sounds.
“Where did you get these?”
“I’ve got eleven in the business,” Val replied. “I know all the tricks. I can help you.”
The chief picked up his phone and punched in a number. He said, “Get in here. I don’t care. Come here now.”
A harried young woman entered without knocking. “You of course realize we are due in the mayor’s office in three hours, and I am two weeks from ready.”
The chief handed over Val’s documents. “Tell me if we’re looking at the real deal here.”
The woman went through them with rising delight. “Where did you get this?”
“Is it real?”
“Looks that way to me.”
“Is it enough?”
“It’s a ton more than what we’ve got now, I can tell you that much. The rest will have to wait.”
“Call the mayor’s office and cancel. Have the team in here and ready. One hour.”
“You know the mayor. He won’t like this.“
“Move.”
The chief waited until they were alone again to say, “You’ve got an inside source.”
“One that will move from project to project,” Val agrees. “One that answers only to me.”
Val and the chief talked through the entire hour. Only when the woman returned to get the chief for the meeting did the man say, “When can you start?”
“It looks like I already have.”
The chief nodded acceptance. He shook Val’s hand, ushered him from the office, and finally said, “One thing I don’t get. What’s the motive here?”
Val did not turn back to reply, “Penance.”
an excerpt from elixir
TAYLOR AWOKE TO DARK AND PAIN AND A SEWER’S stench. He did not rise. His head thundered so that even the slightest motion nauseated him.
Even clawing his fingers through the slime caused star bursts behind his eyes. Taylor drifted in and out of consciousness. His clearest thought was that this made as fitting a place as any for his tomb.
When he next awoke, he was far more alert. Which was not altogether a good thing. Because with the keener awareness came a greater sense of fear.
Taylor opened his eyes but saw nothing. Even in the pitch black, he knew exactly where he was. The smell alone was enough to take Taylor back to earlier times. He had played here for years. He knew it well enough to know that his fear was justified. The water sloshing below his slimy perch was all the warning he needed.
He was positioned on a stone ledge scarred by decades of carvings and lumps of old candle wax. The slime came from the sea that twice each day rose to cover his shelf.
Slowly he pushed himself up to a sitting position. Everything hurt, especially his head. He touched the back of his skull and felt a sticky warmth where the attackers had struck him. But he was far more troubled by the seawater that drenched his feet when he swung his legs over the ledge.
Taylor felt along the damp wall behind him. He extracted a loose brick that had been used as a hiding place by generations of local children. He pulled out the waterproof container of matches and the larger one of candles. He struck a match. Even before he got the candle going, he knew he was in very serious trouble.
The Minorcans’ first task for their Spanish masters was to build the fort where Taylor now sat. The Castillo de San Marcos was a star-shaped masonry fortress, the oldest in America. It was positioned upon a camino cubierto, a man-made spit of land between the outer islands where St. Augustine Beach and Vilano Beach now stood. The fortress looked directly into the open waters between them, situated where it could protect the deepwater channel and the empire’s maritime fleet.
The fortress dungeons had two ways in. The main door was nail-studded and ancient. Tourists were brought to the tight stone stairs, shown the door and the rusting chains, and told of the Spaniards’ cruelty to their indentured Minorcan slaves. But there was a second way in, a tunnel whose secret was passed on from one generation of kids to the next. Three centuries back, seawater had entered the dungeons and cleared away the refuse with each tide. Nowadays, however, sinking foundations and rising tidal currents meant the chamber filled to the top. Taylor felt the water edge higher up his shins and knew the tide was coming in. Waves boomed against the outer opening, sloshing water through the chamber with the noise. It was only a matter of time.
Holding his candle high, he dropped off the ledge. The water was almost waist deep, the currents strong enough he needed his free hand to keep his balance. He waded across to the stairs leading up to the door. Of course it was locked. He turned and stared at the opposite wall. The tunnel through which tides surged was completely underwater. But he saw it anyway.
For kids of nine or ten, the tunnel was a tight run of maybe forty feet. The last time he had crawled through was at fourteen, lured by a girl who promised him enough to make him do the impossible. He had been a skinny kid, little more than bones and muscle and testosterone. Even so, he had scraped away skin coming and going.
Driven by desperation, he waded toward the opening. The closer he came, the stronger surged the currents. He found a handhold on the slimy wall. Bracing himself so as to keep the candle aloft and alight, he measured with one foot. The aperture was impossibly small. Hot candle wax encrusted his fingers as he made his way back to the ledge. He wrapped up the remaining matches and candles and fitted the brick back into place. If he didn’t make it out, he’d want to face his demise with at least a trace of flickering light.
He took another look around his prison, then planted the candle on the ledge. He forced himself forward, working against a current that grew stronger with each thunderous wave. His breath was a heaving bellows fueled by fear.
He submerged and checked out the opening with his hands. The tunnel’s confines made him gag. The next booming rush of water was strong enough to dislodge his hold and push him back ten feet. He came up into utter dark and realized the tide had surged over the ledge, extinguishing his candle.
The blackness was suffocating now. He breathed deep. Over and over. He pushed away the fear as best he could. When the current began sucking back, he went down, extending one arm above his head and clenching the other by his side. Even so, he had to jam himself in.
He clawed his way forward. There was just enough room for him to crawl slightly with wrist and elbow and knee and ankle. He scrabbled inch by inch, jamming back with his feet, scraping with his toes, reaching forward with his one hand. He stared bug-eyed at nothing.
Midway through he became jammed so tight he could not move at all. Not an inch. The harder he struggled the tighter he was trapped. He could not move either forward or back. Taylor opened his mouth and screamed his frantic fury. He broke free because the expelled breath shrank him just enough.
Only now his lungs were heaving great reflexive lunges for air. His entire body burned with the need to breathe.
He became wedged tight a second time. Then his forward hand felt the sharp-edged stone border. The tunnel’s end was just ahead. He ripped and twisted and finally caught a fraction of a ledge with his toes. He pried himself forward two more inches. He took a firmer grip on the ledge and hauled with all his might. One leg of his trousers ripped as he sc
rambled out.
His arms reached together toward the silver illumination overhead. He kicked and swam with his back arched like a bow, his mouth already opened to take the breath he had to have now.
He exploded into the air, flying up so hard he emerged almost to his waist. He shouted gulping gasps of breath. The fortress was a looming shadow cut from the stars.
Perhaps he saw a human silhouetted on the ramparts. He could not be sure. When his vision fully cleared, the image was gone. The old place was said to house an army of ghosts.
