Port City Shakedown

by Boyle, Gerry

  “People like this,” she said, “they find it almost impossible to just work for a living. They might do it for a while, but they don’t have the patience. They can’t stand the routine.”

  Brandon suddenly found himself thinking, not of Lucky, but of Fuller. Never going to settle for a normal law-abiding life. Maybe Lucky and Fuller were the same type, just a different scale.

  “Anything else?” Brandon said.

  “Two things,” Rogan said, turning back to him. “One, look out for these people. They’re con men, very persuasive. They need something from you, they’ll suck you in.”

  “I wonder what they needed from my mother,” Brandon said.

  “Cover, maybe,” Rogan said. “Pretty young woman on a boat. Makes it look a little less like a bunch of pirates.”

  “I heard they wanted my grandmother to go along, too.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “But she was forty-five then. Pretty.”

  “Even better. Nice middle-aged mom on board. Coast Guard might not search so hard.”

  Brandon shrugged.

  “Of course, there’s always something else you can bring to the party,” Rogan said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Money,” she said. “If I remember correctly, your mom was sort of a wild child from a good family. Her father was—”

  “A doctor,” Brandon said.

  “And you want to be a cop?”

  “Could be.”

  “Then let me give you some more advice,” Rogan said. “Watch yourself. There’s people out there, you get in their way, they’ll take you out. Especially if there’s a lot of money at stake, or even serious prison time. Look what happened here, and Griffin was a good cop. I was a detective, ten years on the job, guy tries to blow me up. And you’re just—”

  Brandon held up his I.D. “An intern.”

  “Go to the academy, you want to go on the job.”

  She looked to the police officers getting in cruisers, the knot of family and friends.

  “In the meantime, you’re in this way deep, by the sounds of it,” Rogan said.

  Brandon shrugged. “Up to my neck.”

  “I was like that. Kind of a lightning rod, things just seemed to find me.”

  “I’m just trying to find out what happened to my mother,” Brandon said. “Or why.”

  “Well, let me warn you, ’cause I learned the hard way. The truth, it can be a very dangerous thing.”

  “But did you settle for less?” Brandon asked.

  “I didn’t back then,” Rogan said. “I do now,”

  CHAPTER 55

  There was a Land Rover with Connecticut plates in Mia’s parking space. She sighed, backed out into the street, and set off to find a space. She turned at the end of the block, drove down Exchange. There was a bakery, spaces out back for the workers, who showed up at 4 a.m. and were gone by noon. No one would notice if it were just for an hour.

  She slowed, peered down the alley. Sure enough, the three bakery spots at the end were empty. She pulled in, shut off the motor. Glanced back as a white VW drove in behind her, swung to the left. She saw the Grateful Dead stickers, dancing bears on the back window. Heard the motor running, a door open and close. She figured it was somebody running into the bakery, nobody who wanted her spot. She reached over for her bag, opened the door, and sensed someone moving to her left. Kicking her out of their spot, she thought, and started to turn to look—

  The handle jerked out of her hand. For a parking space, this was too much, she thought.

  But then someone was coming into the car, pushing her backwards, the shifter jammed into her back. It was a guy, big mirror sunglasses and a baseball cap, a ski mask. Teeth bared in the mouth hole. She started to shout, saw her face in the glasses. He pushed her head back, jammed something in her mouth.

  A napkin, it smelled like food. She started to gag, the pain in her back, then a cold sharpness against her neck.

  “Make a sound and you’re dead,” he said.

  He lifted her legs, his hand cold against the skin below her skirt. Pushed her over the console, the knife still pressed against her throat.

  “On the floor,” he said, his voice cold and angry, and she knew who it was. “Don’t open your eyes.”

  Mia slid down, curled up in a ball on the floor in front of the passenger seat. The knife moved from her throat, down her side, and came to rest with the point pressing against her bare back.

  “I’ll gut you like a deer,” Fuller said, pulling the mask off.

  The VW had backed out, was starting down the alley. Fuller put the Saab in reverse, backed out, and turned around. He put the car in gear and gave Mia’s bare back a jab. She cried out.

  “Shut up,” Fuller said. “’Cause I’ll take you down with me.”

  The VW had turned right on Exchange. Fuller followed down the hill toward the waterfront, driving with one hand, the knife clenched in the other. At the corner of Fore Street, a couple was in the crosswalk. Fuller stopped, smiled, waved them across. He pressed the knife harder against Mia’s spine.

  The couple passed and Fuller took a quick right. The white VW was at the intersection of Commercial Street, on the waterfront. It took a left and Fuller followed.

  Two blocks north, he swung down one of the wharves, the VW ahead of him. It slowed before a row of garage bays, took a right. Fuller followed, taking the right, then a left. There was an open garage bay and Kelvin pulled in. Fuller drove in behind the VW, then stopped. It was a dim warehouse room, the floor wet, fish boxes stacked along the walls.

  Kelvin put on his mask, walked to the passenger side of the Saab, opened the door and, putting his hand under Mia’s arm, pulled her out. He led her to the VW, opened the trunk, and told her to please get in.

  She shook her head. Fuller came up behind her, gave her a shove, and holding her by the thigh and arm, wrestled her into the cramped space. He pulled her hands behind her and roughly tied them with twine. Then he looped a rag over her head and yanked it tight, knotting it from behind. She shrieked, the sound muffled by the rag and the napkins. The trunk lid slammed shut.

  Darkness, suffocating. Mia screamed again, a wave of panic sweeping through her. And then there was silence, until she screamed again.

  CHAPTER 56

  Brandon stood by the entrance to the church and waited. The hearse had been followed by the limos, then by the police motorcycles and cruisers, their blue lights flashing. Some people followed the motorcade to the cemetery, taking a left onto the main road. Some cars took a right, toward Portland. The governor, in a black Lincoln, headed back to the capitol.

  There were a few stragglers, mostly people connected to the church. An old Irish-looking man came through, picking up programs left on the seats. Two women came out with vases of flowers and loaded them in the back of a Mercedes station wagon. They drove away. Brandon leaned on the stair rail and waited.

  He was trying to think what might have happened. Maybe she’d stopped to get something at Wild Oats to bring back to Nessa’s. Maybe Nessa had gotten talking again and Mia hadn’t been able to extricate herself.

  Brandon took out his phone, was about to turn on the ringer when the phone vibrated. The number was Mia’s. Brandon smiled.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “She’s safe and sound.”

  A man’s voice. A jolt, a sinking feeling, before Brandon said, “Who’s this?”

  “Wrong question,” the guy said.

  Brandon thought he could hear another guy in the background, his voice muffled.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘How much?’”

  “What is this? Put Mia on.”

  “She can’t come to the phone right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean twenty grand. Cash.”

  “What?”

  “To get her back.”

  “Where is she? What are you talking about? Where’d you find her phone?”

 
; “It was in her hand,” the guy said.

  More muffled talk, someone telling the guy what to say.

  “Put her on. I want to talk to her.”

  Voices, a clatter, scratching sounds. Then a small voice saying, “No. Get your hands off me.” She came on the phone, said, “Brandon.”

  “Baby.”

  “They want money.”

  “I’ll get some.”

  “You don’t have it,” Mia said.

  “Have they hurt you?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Are you in Portland?”

  A clatter, and the guy back on the phone.

  “You know the price.”

  “I don’t have it. I can’t get it.”

  “Your friends have it. That rich dickhead and the Russian bitch.”

  “They’re sailing. They’re out at sea someplace. I can’t find them.”

  “Not our problem.”

  “How long?”

  “Forty-eight hours.”

  “What if I can’t find them?”

  “You will, if you want to see blondie here again. And no cops. Not a word. If we get so much as—”

  He paused, covered the phone. Came back.

  “—a whiff of cops, we’re gone. And we leave her right here.”

  “Don’t hurt her.”

  “We don’t hurt her. We don’t do anything. We just walk out the door. She’ll die of thirst. They’ll find her ’cause of the smell. Too bad, ’cause she’s real pretty. Got a nice little butt, too.”

  “I’ll kill you.”

  “Get the money, college boy. No cops. Don’t mess it up.”

  He hung up. Brandon stared at the phone, looked up at the parking lot. The last car drove out. The white-haired priest.

  Brandon was alone.

  Fuller and Kelvin. Forty-eight hours. Lucky might be back. He might not. The storm, the wind. Brandon found himself thinking of the forecast, fifteen to twenty knots, shifting to the southeast. Mia in a room with them, the two of them.

  He looked around the empty lot, heard sparrows chirping over his head on the church roof. Punched in a number.

  “Nessa,” Brandon said.

  “Brandon. Where are you?”

  “At the church. Listen, Mia can’t come get me. Can you drive?”

  A long pause.

  “I’ve had a glass of wine.”

  “How many?”

  Another pause.

  “Two.”

  “Two as in two or two as in five? Tell me the truth.”

  “Really, two. I didn’t want to open a new bottle until tonight. I don’t want the police officers to think I have a problem.”

  “Can you come get me?”

  “I guess so. Are you okay? You sound funny.”

  “I’m okay. Just come soon. But go slow.”

  “I could send Jackie the detective.”

  “No. Don’t do that.”

  “Brandon, what is it?”

  “Just come. Be careful, but come as soon as you can.”

  It was nineteen minutes but it seemed like an eternity, Brandon’s watch standing still, his mind racing. And then there was Nessa, sitting upright behind the wheel of the old Volvo. A hundred yards behind her was another pickup with the two cops from the house.

  Nessa turned into the lot, pulled up, stopped, the car still covered in dust. Brandon half ran to the driver’s door, opened it. Nessa, in black slacks, a white sweater, brown leather driving moccasins, slid over and turned to look at him.

  “What is it?”

  “Something happened,” Brandon said, wheeling the Volvo around.

  “What?”

  “They took Mia.”

  “Who took her? Took her where?”

  “Fuller and his buddy. They want twenty thousand.”

  “Ransom?”

  Brandon was out on the road, passed the cops coming in.

  “My God,” Nessa said. “They can’t do that. It’s—”

  “They did. They have.”

  She turned in her seat, looked back at the police.

  “Stop and tell them.”

  “No police. They said they’ll—”

  “Hurt her?”

  “Just leave her.”

  “Leave her where?”

  “Wherever they are. Leave her tied up.”

  “Where will you get the money?”

  “I don’t know. Lucky, maybe.”

  “I’ll sell the house,” Nessa said.

  “You can’t sell the house in forty-eight hours.”

  “I’ll get a loan on it.”

  “You’ve already got loans on it, Nessa. And that takes weeks.”

  “It’s an emergency. They’ll understand. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “I’ll go Monday morning.”

  “And say what? You need money for ransom?”

  “Tell them to wait. Tell them not to hurt her.”

  “There’s no time for that.”

  “There has to be. Oh my God, the poor girl. You don’t think they’d—”

  “This guy Fuller, it’s like he’s decided this is his last stand.”

  “Tell the police.”

  “They won’t be able to find him. They’d be knocking doors down and if Fuller found out—”

  They were driving into town, following a slow-moving Mercedes, a white-haired man behind the wheel. Brandon slammed the wheel, barely resisting the urge to put the pedal to the floor, the need to scream.

  “Oh, Brandon, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Nessa paused.

  “They know about Lucky?”

  “Yeah. I think that’s what they’re after. They think he has money. A lot.”

  Another pause, Nessa’s eyes welling, her long, thin hand gripping the door handle, houses passing but her eyes unseeing. “It is my fault. That he came back. To Portland, I mean.”

  “What do you mean, Nessa? You didn’t know he was coming.”

  “But the boat, talking to you. He knew I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Tell them what? That he was alive?”

  “Tell them anything.”

  “What are you talking about, Nessa?”

  She swallowed. The tears spilled over, running down her papery cheeks.

  “It was about drugs, Brandon. It was. They were taking the boat down south. They were picking up a load of pot.”

  “You knew that then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still let her go? She could have been arrested. She could have ended up in prison. With a little kid? How could you—” Brandon nearly gagged on it, his mother killed on a marijuana smuggling run. Not just a cruise to see the south. Not a jaunt with her friends. A drug run. Her friends all drug smugglers. Her mother in on the secret.

  Nessa was crying now, starting to talk, then stopping.

  “I couldn’t … I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to think—

  “ Brandon had turned off, was wending toward Nessa’s house, trying not to speed, trying not to let the cops behind him know something was wrong.

  He pulled up to the house, went through the stone gates, pulled in by the garage. The brown pickup drove past on the road. Brandon jumped out of the car, hurried to his truck. Nessa followed, unsteadily.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The boat.”

  “I’ll call the bank.”

  “They’re closed.”

  “I’ll find out who works there and call them at home,” she said.

  “Don’t let the police know.”

  “I won’t. I’m good at—” Nessa paused. “Hiding things,” she said.

  “Don’t drink, Nessa,” Brandon said. “I may need you.”

  “Okay. I won’t. Nothing but coffee.”

  “How many times had he heard that in his life. Had it ever been true?

  “Really. Promise me.”

  “I do promise, Brandon. I�
��m here for you.”

  He’d heard that, too.

  CHAPTER 57

  On board Bay Witch, Brandon at the navigation table. He had a chart out, Portland to Sheepscot Bay, a map of the Atlantic Provinces, a piece of paper with the coordinates from the GPS on Ocean Swell. The last trip they’d sailed due east to a point fifty miles west of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, then turned back, sailing west by northwest back toward the Maine coast. The last leg of the triangle was the run down the coast to Casco Bay. The last coordinate was at the Falmouth house, just offshore.

  But the wind that trip had been from the southeast when they’d left, had shifted to the northeast as they’d returned. That made it efficient to make that northwestern swing, then run with the wind for the last leg. This trip it was blowing much harder, seas were higher, and maybe they’d cut things short. The wind was still from the south, making it less likely they’d make that long northwesterly run.

  Brandon could see them coming back running due west. That would mean a shorter trip, even if they went the same distance to the east. He had a feeling they’d be back sooner.

  He hoped. He prayed. He choked the engine and turned the key. It coughed. Once. Twice. Started and stalled. Started again and sputtered.

  “Come on, baby,” Brandon said, and the engine settled into a rough idle.

  It was almost two o’clock. Brandon stepped out onto the dock, tied the dinghy to the stern davit, started undoing the dock line. He looked up to see a couple, young with a toddler, a four-year-old. They were coming around the dock, headed for him. He thought of Nessa, the drug run, the little boy left behind.

  What had they been thinking? Why take the chance?

  “Money,” Brandon said.

  But to make money on something like that, you had to put money down. You had to—

  “Hey there,” the guy said. He was smiling, the wife, too, the guy saying, “A woman up by the gate said you’re the person to talk to about a slip. We have a twenty-one-foot Grady White.”

  Brandon gave them the rates, said there were two slips available. He moved back to the bow of Bay Witch while he talked. The guy said he’d take the slip for the rest of the season, his checkbook was in the car. Brandon shook his hand, said he could pay after he had the boat in.

  A handshake and they headed for the ramp, the kid skipping in front. Brandon felt a wave of déjà vu, skipping along the wharf himself, not realizing that his mother was going alone, that he wasn’t going out in the big boat, too. A crushing, suffocating feeling, squeezing the tears out of him.