Deception Cove

by Owen Laukkanen

  The bartender snorted. “You’re a little late, bud,” he said. “Ty drowned in the chuck about four months back.”

  “Well, dang,” Mason said. “I guess that’s that.”

  “Guess so.” The bartender moved on, and Mason nursed his beer. Wondered what he was drinking, where it had come from, whether it was branded or somebody’s basement home brew. Figured it didn’t matter; nobody who came to this place was going to be a connoisseur.

  He drank, and minded his business, and the bar was quiet, save the hushed voices of the three men in the back. There was a mirror along the back of the bar, and Mason used it to survey the room, found nothing worth writing home about. The old-timers beside him looked weathered and beaten, looked like they’d been here since the door opened, and would be until close, and back first thing tomorrow.

  The men at the rear of the bar wore flannel shirts and work boots. They had beards, wore ball caps. Every now and then they looked over at Mason, not long looks, just checking. Mason recognized the behavior. He’d done the same thing in the yard, keeping tabs on his surroundings, anyone who didn’t like him, anyone he didn’t know. A survival instinct, safety mechanism. Mason figured the men weren’t looking for trouble, but they’d be ready if trouble found them. He left them alone, avoided eye contact.

  He finished his beer, motioned the bartender for another. The bartender obliged, set his glass back in front of him. “You’re not from around here.”

  “Back east,” Mason said. “Just finished a bid, thought I’d come out this way and maybe find a boat needed crew.”

  “And you heard Ty was your man, did you?” The bartender laughed again, shaking his head. “Mister, Ty Winslow was a lot of things, but he sure wasn’t much of a fisherman.”

  “Wasn’t looking for Ty to give me work, no,” Mason said. “I heard he was the man to talk to if a guy needed something sharp to get him through the day.”

  The bartender lowered the glass he was polishing. Squinted at Mason, looked him up and down. Mason held his gaze. Finally the bartender turned around. Caught someone’s eye in the mirror, cocked his head, and Mason heard a chair push back behind him, one of the three men from the table in the corner.

  He waited. Tensed, watching the mirror, ready for the fight, if that’s what was coming. But the man slipped beside him, pulled the stool out, and sat down. Found Mason’s eyes in the mirror. “You a cop?”

  He was the youngest of the three. Late thirties, probably, though it was hard to tell behind his wiry, rust-colored beard and the sallow skin beneath. His gaze was direct, his tone no-bullshit. Mason shook his head. “Not a cop.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Whatever you’ve got,” Mason told him. “Something to pick me up, keep me going. Been on the road a long while already.”

  “How much?”

  “About a week’s worth, if you got it.”

  “Not here. Got cash?”

  Mason nodded. “I do.”

  The guy stood. “Come on.”

  The man’s friends remained inside the bar. Mason followed him out and around the side of the building, to a Ford F-150 the same color as the man’s beard.

  “How much you’re talking, I don’t have it on me,” the man said. “You want it right away, we gotta take a little ride.”

  “All right,” Mason said. He opened the passenger door and climbed into the truck. The man slid behind the wheel, turned the engine over.

  “You got a name?” he asked Mason.

  “Burke,” Mason replied.

  “Yancy,” the man said, pulling away from the bar. “You come looking for work, you said?”

  “That’s right. Thought I might try fishing.”

  “Sounds like timing just ain’t your strong suit,” Yancy said. “Ain’t been much fishing for years now. This whole town’s dried up.”

  “Used to be, though?”

  “Sure,” Yancy said. “Used to be you couldn’t throw a stone on Main Street without putting a dent in a brand-new Corvette. You had a boat and a salmon permit, you had a license to print money. But the bottom fell out; the granola types and the Indians saw to that, and now…” He gestured around. “Shit.”

  He’d driven east, away from Main Street, past a collection of ramshackle houses and down a narrow road winding through the forest, the ocean somewhere nearby out the driver’s-side window.

  “You ever fish?” Mason asked him.

  “With my dad, yeah,” Yancy said. “He was supposed to give me his boat, his license. Then the license got worthless all of a sudden, and the boat was worth more in insurance money. As luck would have it, that boat had a fire.”

  “As luck would have it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Yancy drove a few miles, drove in silence, the only sound the Ford’s engine and the squeak of the wipers, the tires on uneven pavement underneath.

  “Ty didn’t fish, though?” Mason asked after a while.

  Yancy slowed the truck, pulled over; it looked like the middle of nowhere. At the last minute Mason saw a dirt road coming up out of the rain forest, mostly mud and washed-out gravel, and that’s where Yancy pointed the tires.

  “He tried,” Yancy said. “Ty’s dad was about the biggest highliner the town ever saw, back in his younger years. Supposed to run in the family, but Ty never had the knack. He’d go out on that boat of his every now and then, try and catch something to sell to Tim down at Spinnaker’s, a nice king salmon or a halibut, whatever, but it wasn’t his game. It ain’t anyone’s game.”

  The road dropped ahead, following the general declination of the land. Mason let the conversation die, watched out the window as the road narrowed and curved through the rain forest, lush green all around, moss and ferns and tall pines and spruce. In some places the forest was so dark it looked night black, in others it opened up into swampland, big skunk cabbages and reeds growing out of the mud. Yancy had his window cracked, and the air was cold and damp, refreshing after the stale air in the bar.

  Yancy let his foot off the gas, let the truck coast down the last of the drop, rounded a corner and the road petered out into a small clearing and the ocean beyond, a narrow, half-sunk dock leading out over the water, the remains of a derelict freighter going to rust at the far end.

  Yancy stopped the truck. Killed the engine. “Here we are,” he said. “Come on out.”

  Mason opened his door. Stepped out onto a carpet of pine needles, smelled wet earth and low tide and something else, something chemical.

  He walked around the front of the truck, surveyed the clearing, a few rusted cars and some junk alongside, and then the ship out on the water. It couldn’t have been more than 150 feet long, rust red and faded, filthy white, no nameplate visible. The wheelhouse at the stern, windows dark, the hull secured to the dock and the shore by a collection of mismatched and fraying lines. The dock looked well used, though, and there was a rope ladder down the hull; Mason surmised this was where Yancy cooked his product.

  The sound of a hammer cocking back chased the notion from Mason’s mind, and shortly thereafter the barrel of a gun pressed into the nape of his neck.

  “You sure ask a lot of questions, Burke,” Yancy said from behind him. “Are you sure you ain’t a cop?”

  Thirteen

  Mason made his body relax as Yancy prodded him again with the gun. “I’m not a cop, Yancy,” he said calmly. “You’re seeing this situation all wrong.”

  “Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not.” Yancy was scared, Mason could tell, though the dealer was trying not to show it. “And maybe I just drop you right here and walk away with your cash and it doesn’t matter if you’re a cop or you’re not.”

  He pushed the gun harder into Mason’s neck, and Mason laughed, a little bit. “What the fuck is so funny?”

  “I’m about the furthest thing from a cop you can think of,” Mason said. “And I can’t say I’m too big on our having this conversation with that gun of yours at my back.”

  Now
it was Yancy’s turn to laugh. “Man, fuck you. Maybe you don’t fully understand the situation here, but I—”

  Mason ducked down and to the left, swung his right arm up and knocked Yancy’s pistol hand away from his head. Yancy squeezed the trigger but not nearly in time. The pistol fired, loud, above Mason’s head, the shot somewhere high and wide, nowhere near its target.

  Before Yancy could recover, Mason swung around, tackled him in the midsection, driving him back across the clearing and into the hood of the Ford, Yancy hammering down on his head with the pistol the whole time. Mason ignored the blows, launched Yancy hard against the front of the truck, and swung him around. Crashed down to the ground, landed on top of him and knocked the wind from Yancy’s lungs. Pinned the drug dealer’s pistol hand to the mud and focused on prying the weapon out of his fingers, while Yancy focused on battering Mason’s face in with his free hand.

  But Mason had taken worse shots, and Yancy wasn’t much of a fighter. In short order, he had the pistol prized free, and he squared it at Yancy and watched him quit fighting, just lie there and breathe heavy and glare at the gun.

  Mason stood, kept the pistol trained. “Get up,” he told the dealer.

  Yancy stood, and Mason kept a couple of yards between them. Caught his breath and let Yancy catch his.

  “I’m not a cop,” Mason said again. “But I’m not here to buy your crank, either. I just have a couple more questions for you. You think we can have an actual conversation?”

  Yancy nodded, his eyes still on the gun. Mason tasted blood, touched his mouth; the drug dealer had busted his lip.

  “That ship back there,” he said, gesturing to the water. “I guess that’s where you cook.”

  Yancy spat some blood of his own. Nodded again.

  “Ty cook there too?”

  Yancy studied the gun for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Ty had his own setup inland, up in the hills a ways,” he said. “Somewhere off the main-line logging road, tucked behind some old clear-cut. Wasn’t nobody but Ty knew the actual location.”

  “Ty ever come around here?”

  “Maybe once or twice. Would have been a social call, though; we didn’t never do business together.”

  “What about Harwood?” Mason asked. “He come up here?”

  “What, the deputy?” Yancy laughed. “Shit, every now and then.”

  “You all do business?”

  “Me and Harwood? That depends on your definition of ‘business,’ I guess,” Yancy said. “He come around when he wants some shakedown money, make sure we know we only exist ’cause of his good graces.”

  “Same with Ty?”

  “I assume so,” Yancy said. “There’s not much goes on in Deception Cove that Kirby Harwood doesn’t know about. I don’t imagine Ty Winslow would constitute an exception.”

  “Yeah,” Mason said. “All right.”

  Yancy cocked his head. “What’s with all the interest in Ty Winslow, man? You go through all this shit just to ask me about a dead man?”

  “Just trying to get a clearer picture,” Mason said. “You think Harwood could have killed Winslow?”

  “What, over a few points on some fucking crank?” Yancy laughed again. “Listen, Burke, I’m telling you, Harwood and his boys don’t give a shit about small-time like us. Even when he comes around, it ain’t about the money, it’s about proving he’s the biggest dick swinging in this town. We’re just a game to that man.”

  Mason considered this. It fit with what he’d seen of the deputy. Unless the whole of Makah County subsisted on crank alone, Harwood hadn’t bought that truck or his fancy boat with shakedown money from outfits like this. Mason didn’t figure Ty Winslow’s setup in the woods would prove otherwise, though he would have to check.

  But none of this explained why Harwood was so damned determined to muck up Jess Winslow’s life. The deputy may not have taken Yancy’s operation seriously, but the marine’s husband had put a bee in his bonnet, that was for certain. And Mason still didn’t have a clue how he’d done it.

  “So what’s the story here?” Yancy asked. “You Ty’s kin or something? Why are you so interested in what he was up to?”

  “It’s not Ty I’m concerned with,” Mason told him. “It’s his wife.”

  Yancy blinked. Mason watched a slow smirk spread over the dealer’s face. “Well, shit,” he said. “You could have saved us a whole lot of trouble if you’d opened with the fact that you’re trying to get laid.”

  “It’s not like that.” Mason gestured around the clearing, the dock, the rusted machinery piled up along the margins. “You got any wheels that still run in this place?”

  Yancy surveyed the clearing like he was seeing it all for the first time. Scratched his head. “I might got a dirt bike with a little life left in her,” he said. “Assuming we can agree on a price.”

  The bike was a thirty-year-old Yamaha, mud spattered and banged up almost beyond recognition, but the engine turned over, and Yancy swore he’d taken her for a ride just a couple of months back.

  “Ain’t going to get you to Denver,” he told Mason, “but she’ll get you around town, anyway.”

  They settled on $350, three bills for the bike and fifty for Yancy’s time.

  “And your rounds,” Mason said, dropping the magazine from the pistol and racking the slide to clear the chamber.

  “What about the piece?” Yancy asked. “You can’t just…”

  Mason held it out to him. “You aren’t going to shoot me, are you?”

  Yancy looked at the gun. Looked at Mason. “Now, why would I go and do that?”

  “Kicked your ass, didn’t I?”

  “Bullshit,” Yancy said, nodding to Mason’s busted lip. “I got you just as bad as you got me. Maybe better.”

  He took the pistol back. “Shit, Burke, if you were a cop, you’d be the most fucked-up cop I ever met, you know that?”

  “I’m not a cop, Yancy,” Mason said. “Now give me those keys.”

  It had been a long time since he’d been on a dirt bike. Hell, he’d been fourteen, maybe fifteen, visiting cousins on the Upper Peninsula. He’d bailed within a half a mile, nearly killed himself. Busted that bike bad enough that his cousin kicked his ass, and that had been that.

  He managed to ride out of the clearing without causing a crash. Waited until he was out of Yancy’s sight to try changing gears. The engine ran, anyway, just as the man had said, and Mason found if he took the gravel road slow, but not too slow, he could get along fine.

  He pulled off every now and then, paused and tried to listen, half expecting Yancy to come flying down in that truck of his, pistol loaded and blazing. Had he made the right choice giving the dealer back his weapon?

  But you had to give respect to get respect, and Mason wasn’t one to make enemies of men who had no cause to hate him. He figured he’d earned Yancy’s trust when he hadn’t shot his ass, figured the dealer cared more about keeping his business afloat than measuring whose dick was bigger.

  Mason took the magazine from his pocket, chucked it deep into the rain forest. Pulled out again onto the rough road, took it down to the pavement, and followed that pavement east until the road widened out and the rain forest parted, and he was at the blacktop of the highway.

  Now what?

  He could try to find Ty Winslow’s setup, or he could try to find where Harwood was keeping Lucy. He figured he’d turn the bike back toward town, grab something to eat at the gas station, and then see if Hank Moss knew anything. But before he could fire up the dirt bike again, Mason heard tires on wet pavement approaching, saw headlights reflected on the blacktop. In short order a car appeared and blew past Mason, and as it did, he saw it was a Makah County sheriff’s Ford Explorer. The SUV’s brake lights came on about ten yards past Mason, and as Mason watched, the SUV came to a stop, made a quick U-turn, and idled back to where he waited on the bike.

  The driver’s door opened, and one of Harwood’s deputies climbed out. “Well, hot damn,” the d
eputy said, adjusting his Stetson and grinning at Mason. “I thought that was you.”

  Fourteen

  “License and registration?”

  Mason watched the deputy walk slowly up the gravel shoulder toward him. The rain had started again, that fine, insidious drizzle, and it had seeped under the neck of Mason’s slicker, soaked through his jeans and his boots and socks, chilling him with that damp that somehow seemed colder than any Michigan winter.

  The deputy was the younger of Harwood’s two buddies. SWEENEY, it said on his jacket. As he approached Mason, his right hand crept down toward the holster on his hip. He glanced up and down the highway; the road was deserted. The lights from his truck smeared blue and red reflections against the wet pavement.

  Mason said nothing as the deputy approached. Thought about the pistol he’d given back to Yancy, and decided for once in his life he’d been smart about something. No way he’d walk out of here if the deputy found a gun on his person; not a free man, anyway. These Deception Cove lawmen were itching to be rid of him. Heck, the deputy might well have shot him dead, claimed self-defense.

  He still might, Mason thought.

  “You hear me, Burke? License and proof of registration for this bike.” The deputy stopped a few feet away. Kept his right hand at his hip, eyed Mason over.

  Mason shook his head. “No registration. I just bought this thing.”

  “Driver’s license?”

  “No, sir.”

  The deputy’s lip twitched. “Proof of sale?”

  Mason laughed. “Come on.”

  “Yeah, okay.” The deputy took a step back, drew his pistol. “I’m going to need you to come on over to that truck with me.”

  “Are you arresting me?” Mason asked.

  “Now, Burke.” The deputy drew a bead on Mason’s forehead. “It wasn’t a suggestion.”

  Second time in an hour that someone had drawn a pistol on Mason, and he figured this deputy wouldn’t be quite so easy to shake as Yancy had been. He climbed off the bike, kept his hands visible and his movements slow, walked up the edge of the highway to where the Explorer sat parked.