Black Violet

by Alex Hyland

  ‘Sure.’

  I handed him the tickets, then laughed. He held them in his palms like they were sacred – feathers from angel’s wing or something.

  His dad nodded gratefully at me. ‘He’s a big tennis fan.’

  Jon smiled at the kid. ‘Who are you rooting for?’

  ‘I don’t know, I like them both,’ the kid replied. ‘It’s going to be great. I can’t wait. I just pray the weather stays good.’

  ‘Ah, no need to pray,’ said Jon. ‘God’s a sports fan too.’

  The kid smiled. ‘You think?’

  Jon winked at him. ‘Sure he is. Why do you think stadiums don’t have roofs?’

  The kid laughed. As he gazed back at the tickets, Jon watched him carefully – the amazement on the kid’s face just to be holding them. And I already knew what Jon was thinking. The kid’s T-shirt was frayed at the collar. Cheap sneakers. His dad was wearing a Timex. These two were a million miles from center court.

  The kid offered me back the tickets. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  I glanced at the tickets, then stared at Jon.

  ‘It’s your present,’ I said.

  Jon nodded. ‘Yeah, but it’s your gift.’

  I thought to myself a moment – it had been a great week anyhow.

  I shrugged at the kid. ‘Keep them,’ I said. ‘Have fun.’

  The kid stared blankly back at me.

  His father too. ‘You’re not serious?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied.

  The father looked bemused. ‘We can’t possibly accept this.’

  ‘Then just leave them on the table,’ I said. ‘Someone will want them.’ I turned to Jon. ‘Come on, let’s go get some Indian food.’

  I got my feet – and I’ll never forget the way Jon looked at me. Like I was a man for the first time in my life. Like I was someone that he was truly proud to call his brother.

  I knew then that I’d never tell him. That I could never face taking that feeling away from him. And I felt OK with it. Because there it was – the wonder on the kid’s face. The only meaning that crime could ever have. Some rich asshole loses a sports car, and this kid gets to live a little. It might have been little more than an excuse for me to continue a life that I loved, but it felt like a good one.

  Robin Hood. I could live with that.

  7

  My neck was numb when I regained consciousness. I felt like I was floating. Painkillers rushing through my veins. I reached a hand to the wound – it was dressed. I slowly hauled myself upright on a cot, and tried to get my bearings.

  I was in some kind of storage room. A caged ceiling light cast a dull glow across shelf units full of steel cases and motorcycle helmets. Radio sets and circuit boards. I blinked heavily and brought my wristwatch into focus. Nearly two in the morning.

  I could hear blues guitar drifting through the air. B.B. King. I staggered over to the storage room door and opened it. Beyond it lay a dimly lit corridor – dented steel doors all the way down. The smell of dope in the air. I followed the music toward a door at the far end, then carefully pushed it open.

  On the other side was a cavernous warehouse full of tattered sofas and tobacco fog. Open crates of whiskey scattered on the floor. A dozen people sat around, drinking. To my right, three muscular guys in their early thirties sat on a couple of sofas, watching me. Big fuckers – arms thicker than my legs. One had a black crucifix tattooed on his neck.

  ‘Where am I?’ I asked him.

  He turned to the other guys. ‘Who gives a fuck where you are, man?’ he said.

  The guys laughed. One of them, with silver rings on all his fingers, nodded toward a beaten-up sofa in front of them.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Ella?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s here. Sit down.’

  I needed to. I drifted uneasily to the sofa and slumped into it. The guy with the rings turned to another with a V-shaped burn mark on his face.

  ‘Go tell them he’s up,’ he said.

  As the guy with the burn mark headed out of the room, the guy with the rings eyed me.

  ‘You’re Jon’s brother, huh?’ he said. ‘We were sorry to hear what happened to him. Jon, well…he was a good guy. Stood for something, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. But it didn’t sound like he meant it as any kind of compliment to me. I glanced around the warehouse.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked.

  The guy with the crucifix tattoo stared at me. ‘That’s not your fucking business, boy.’

  Southern accent. He was the guy I’d heard earlier, and no fan of mine by the sound of it. He nodded toward the sofa I was sitting on.

  ‘You comfortable there?’ he asked.

  He laughed bitterly to himself and took a mouthful of whiskey.

  ‘Strange how life turns, huh?’ he said. ‘A friend of ours used to sit there. Ray Harley. He was a good man too. Died in Afghanistan three months ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I replied.

  He laughed. ‘Listen to him…he’s sorry. He was a genuine fucking hero, you got me? And look what we got sitting with us now. A worthless sack of shit thief.’

  I sighed wearily.

  He leaned forward. ‘People fighting. Dying. And why? So you can prowl around stealing cars?’

  ‘Look, you don’t like me, I get it, alright.’

  ‘You don’t talk to me!’

  ‘Leave him alone, Geary,’ Ella said from the doorway.

  Geary eyed her bitterly as she headed over to me.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked me.

  ‘Better,’ I said.

  A leather-faced guy in his fifties followed her in. Well-built, but kind of rusty looking, he had a cloud of wiry gray hair under his black beret.

  ‘This is Tully,’ said Ella. ‘This is his place.’

  Tully shook my hand. ‘It’s a pleasure, Michael,’ he said.

  Geary laughed.

  Tully shot him a look. ‘He’s Jon’s brother. We’re going to make him feel welcome, alright?’

  Geary kept silent as he stared back at him.

  ‘You need to come with us, Michael,’ said Ella.

  I nodded. As she led me away, Geary grabbed me by the arm and leaned in toward me.

  ‘You keep your hands off her,’ he said.

  ‘I might,’ I replied. ‘I’ll see how I feel.’

  He smiled coldly. I pulled my arm from his grip, then followed Ella toward another steel door at the far end of the warehouse. A couple more roughnecks stood guarding it.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked Ella.

  ‘DND Storage,’ she replied. ‘Underneath the overpass by the airport.’

  ‘Probably the most secret members’ bar in town,’ said Tully. ‘Also the shittiest. You want a drink?’

  He grabbed a bottle of water from a packing crate and handed it to me. I glanced at the cases of whiskey sitting nearby.

  ‘Maybe something a little stronger,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he replied. ‘I medicated you pretty good.’

  I rubbed the dressing on my neck. ‘You did this?’

  He nodded. ‘Eighteen years in the US army,’ he said.

  ‘Then thanks, Tully.’

  ‘Any time.’

  We stepped through the steel door and out into the shadow of a bleak industrial unit. It sat between huge concrete columns that supported the highways soaring overhead. Three scrawny-looking dogs running around in the darkness. As Tully pulled up a couple of packing crates for us to sit on, I took a mouthful of water and glanced back at the building.

  ‘They know Jon here,’ I said.

  Ella nodded.

  ‘How’s that?’ I asked.

  She and Tully exchanged a look.

  ‘How much does he know?’ Tully asked her.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied.

  Tully nodded to himself. ‘You’re in good hands, Michael, don’t worry.’

  ‘Those guys so
unded ex-military too,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, we pretty much all are here,’ he replied. ‘It’s a very private club.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘So how do they know Jon?’

  Tully smiled – I wasn’t giving up with the questions. He glanced at Ella.

  ‘You trust him?’ he asked her.

  I waited with no small amount of curiosity to see how she’d answer.

  She eyed me for a moment. ‘He’s fine,’ she replied. It felt like huge praise coming from her.

  Tully nodded – then chose his words carefully.

  ‘We’re a small group here,’ he said. ‘We do…freelance work for a number of clients.’

  ‘What kind of work?’ I said.

  ‘Unofficial,’ he replied. ‘The kind they can’t risk having on the books.’

  I nodded to myself. They sounded like mercenaries, but Jon wouldn’t have had anything to do with them if they were. They had to have been government sanctioned – some covert unit.

  ‘How does Jon fit in?’ I asked.

  ‘In the course of our work we occasionally stumble across information that’s deemed, what…beneficial to the American public? Then we’d go to Jon.’

  ‘Deemed beneficial by whom?’ I asked.

  ‘People in big houses,’ he said. ‘Fountains in the front yard. Not really my kind of folks, but they serve one hell of a cocktail.’

  He leaned toward me. ‘We all liked Jon here a lot, Michael,’ he said. ‘Whoever’s behind this, I’m going to see them well and truly fucked.’

  I believed it. A cold intensity in his eyes now – and it started to add up.

  Tully.

  T.

  I eyed him carefully. ‘You’re the guy who saved Jon in Mexico, aren’t you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Whoever killed him, we’re going to find them, don’t worry,’ he said. He glanced at Ella. ‘Tell him what you found.’

  ‘There’s a set of GPS coordinates hidden in the book,’ she said. ‘They were encoded in the text…hidden in spelling mistakes, the book’s full of them.’

  She handed me a folded sheet of note paper and an iPhone. The note paper had the coordinates written on it – two long lists of numbers.

  ‘It’s in Bitterroot National Forest,’ said Tully. ‘Deep on the Idaho side.’

  I stared at the phone. Its screen was displaying a map with a GPS point flashing on it. It was in the middle of nowhere – mountain country – just dense forests.

  Tully nodded toward the map. ‘Whatever’s there, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to make sure no one finds it.’

  I nodded. ‘Something buried?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Ella.

  ‘Miranda?’

  She shook her head. ‘I doubt it. If you were going to hide a body, why keep the coordinates?’

  ‘Why bury it at all?’ Tully added. ‘Cut it up. Burn it. Dissolve it.’

  He shrugged breezily like he was talking on a cooking show.

  ‘The nearest city to the coordinates is Hamilton, Montana,’ said Ella. ‘There’s a flight out of SFO in the morning.’

  ‘Then we’re on it,’ I replied.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  The guy with the rings on his fingers appeared at the shutter door behind us.

  ‘Evan’s on the phone,’ he said.

  ‘Alright,’ said Tully. He turned to Ella. ‘We’ll see what Evan’s got.’

  He headed back inside, leaving Ella and me alone in the shadow of the overpass. The gentle rush of cars high above us. I watched as she lit a cigarette. The glow warmed her ghostly face for a moment – and I thought about the hotel. Her scars.

  ‘You’re ex-military too?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I just do recon for them.’

  ‘Recon,’ I said. I eyed her curiously. ‘So...you go in early, and grab what, laptops, phones?’

  She nodded. ‘Any information I can find.’

  ‘And these operations are against?’

  ‘Terror groups, drug cartels, whoever’s got their sights aimed at the country.’

  I nodded – fair enough. ‘Stealing from the bad guys,’ I said. ‘Not the same thing, is it?’

  She smiled.

  ‘Did you always do this?’ I asked.

  She said nothing – just took a pull on her cigarette.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Or were you a thief like me once?’

  ‘Would it make you feel better if I was?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Why, are you thinking of a career change?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Because Tully could use someone like you.’

  I laughed. ‘One of the good guys, huh?’

  ‘Why not?’

  I sighed heavily and gazed up at the over pass. ‘Because I’m not a good guy, Ella.’

  She took the necklace from her pocket. She watched the pendant dangle between her fingers, then stepped over to me. She took hold my hand and placed the necklace in my palm.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said.

  She kept hold of my hand. Her delicate fingertips resting warmly against my skin. A whisper of intimacy – but only for a moment. She stepped away from me as Tully appeared at the warehouse door.

  Tully shook his head as he walked over. ‘Evan pulled up the traffic cam footage on Market Street,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t make out the license plate on the Mercedes or the Lexus. Probably fakes anyhow.’

  The Mercedes. I shot Tully a look as images of the car flashed through me. It felt like I was remembering a bad dream.

  ‘What?’ said Ella.

  I tried to grasp at the indistinct images in my head – tried to remember what I’d seen.

  ‘The Mercedes,’ I said.

  ‘You got a look at him?’ said Ella.

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t see his face. But he was with someone. A woman. It was weird, she was wearing a veil, I think.’

  ‘A veil,’ said Ella. ‘What do you mean, like a burka?’

  ‘No. White lace, like a wedding veil.’

  She kept her eyes on me for a moment, then glanced uneasily at Tully.

  She took a long pull on her cigarette. ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked me.

  I nodded.

  ‘Was she wearing gloves?’

  I tried to remember. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘You didn’t see her face, how old she might have been? In her forties, maybe?’

  Tully glanced at her. ‘Why, what are you thinking?’

  ‘Who do we know that wears a veil, Tully?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Lizzie? Come on, no way, she’d have nothing to do with this.’

  ‘We don’t know what this is though.’

  ‘Not a chance. They’re strictly global. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘Who’s Lizzie?’ I asked.

  ‘Elizabeth Brager,’ said Tully. ‘She and her brother, Marcus, they’re arms dealers. A right pair of nasty fuckers.’

  Ella stared intently at him. ‘She was wearing a veil, Tully.’

  ‘That don’t mean nothing.’

  ‘Why the veil?’ I asked.

  Tully sighed. ‘Lizzie’s got some skin disease, wears veils or something when she’s out...which is never, by the way.’

  But Ella kept her eyes on him.

  ‘Forget about it,’ he said. ‘Look, they rarely come inland, OK. They stay on the yacht.’

  ‘Marcus was seen in Kinshasa three months ago.’

  ‘Marcus comes in maybe, but Lizzie, never. For her to be in the back of a car, throwing bullets at you, it would have to be fucking huge.’

  Ella shook her head. ‘I don’t like it, Tully.’

  He eyed the necklace for a moment, then produced a hip flask from his jeans and took a deep mouthful.

  ‘This guy called you, did he?’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘Fucker wanted me to l
eave the necklace for him somewhere.’

  ‘He have an accent?’

  ‘Uh-huh. European, I think.’

  ‘The Bragers are Norwegian.’

  I tried to remember the guy’s voice – his gentle tones.

  ‘Yeah, it could have been,’ I said.

  ‘Not could have been! Was it a Scandinavian accent or not?’

  I gazed into the darkness and replayed the conversation in my head as best I could. He wasn’t French or German, I knew that much. He didn’t have the lilt of Spanish of Italian either. Eastern Europe, maybe. But Scandinavian felt closer.

  I stared at Tully and nodded. ‘If I had to say, then yeah.’

  He stared uneasily at Ella, then took another sip from the flask. He tightened the beret on his head.

  ‘Alright, look,’ he said. ‘Go to these coordinates and find whatever’s there, then I want you to come straight back. I don’t care what you find, I mean it, Ella…straight back.’

  ‘What about going to the authorities?’ I said.

  Ella shook her head. ‘If Lizzie’s got anything to do with this, we can’t trust anyone. Not the police, nobody’

  ‘And you’re taking Geary with you,’ said Tully.

  I shot him a look. ‘That tattooed asshole?’

  ‘He may be an asshole, but he’s a well-trained one.’

  He shouted back to the security guys at the door. ‘Get Geary out here!’ he said.

  He turned to Ella. ‘I know there’s some history between you two. Are you OK with this?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied.

  I stared at her. Ex-boyfriend?

  Geary appeared through the door and headed over to us. I couldn’t believe that Ella had been involved with this guy. I paid more attention to him now. He looked like a thick-necked country boy – all rosy cheeks and mean eyes. The kind whose tattoos were less likely to be a military insignia, and more likely to be a present from his grandma.

  He arrived in front of Tully.

  ‘You know what’s going on here?’ Tully asked him.

  ‘A little,’ Geary replied.

  ‘You’re going to Idaho with these two,’ said Tully. ‘You keep them safe, you got it?’

  As Geary nodded, Tully turned to Ella.

  ‘If it’s the necklace they’re after, you might want to leave it here,’ he said.

  ‘Where is it?’ asked Geary.

  I opened my hand and held up the necklace.

  ‘It might be Lizzie Brager,’ said Tully.