Arlen sipped his champagne, pinkie out, then stared into the glass. “Just among us at this table, I think they brought me out to woo me into pressing more money into their palms. Some people can’t get enough.”
I laughed.
“Is that why you came here, Jerry? Are you thinking about shifting some of your portfolio their way?”
“No.”
“Are you seeking employment?”
“Why would I?”
He inclined his head and scrunched his brow. “Pardon the questions, but I’m unclear as to why you’re so interested in Hildon. Does your oceanography venture have some kind of proposal for them? Do you want me to help you pitch them?”
I met DJ’s eyes, looking for his approval. He nodded once. The blonde who’d served us the champagne was hanging around near the baby grand, behind me on the right.
“This is sensitive,” I said to Arlen. “It runs… counter to Hildon’s business interests.”
Arlen sat up straighter, folding his arms and asking me a question with his furrowed brow. Before I started, he addressed the blond woman behind me.
“Christy, dear, would you please go and get the bar ready on the sundeck?”
“Right away, Mr. Burkhart.” Her voice tapped that cognitive nerve of having met her before.
She went around the table, crossing behind DJ and Arlen, giving me a strange glance on the way. Though she looked and sounded familiar, I still couldn’t quite figure out where I knew her from. She collected her tray and disappeared up the spiral staircase behind me.
I leveled my eyes with Arlen. “There’s more going on here than I’ve let on. The oceanography thing is a front. In reality, DJ and I are working for a group of like-minded people.”
Arlen put his knuckles to his chin.
“We’re law enforcement,” I said. “That’s the best way to describe it.”
“Are you federal agents?” Arlen asked. “FBI? CIA? Homeland Security?”
“No, we’re not officially with the government. We’re private,” I added. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Go on.” Keeping his eyes down, he swirled the champagne in his glass. He kept a cool exterior, but I knew Arlen must have dreamt of the day I’d come back to him with my hat in my hand. My stomach murmured, but it was too late to back out now.
“As I mentioned, we need a favor.”
“What kind of favor are we talking about? Because you know I can’t do anything that breaks the law.”
I almost scoffed. “Get us into Hildon’s party. The one tomorrow.”
Arlen shifted in his chair, bringing his eyes to mine. “You mean to say you’re acting this squirrelly because you want me to invite you to a party?”
“More or less.”
Arlen’s lower lip jutted out while he thought on that. He lifted his wrist, the sleeve of his shirt pulling back to reveal a watch encrusted with diamonds sparkling like fresh snow. “That party is eighteen hours away.”
“Can you get us in?”
“That depends,” he said.
I didn’t like this. He knew I needed the invite, and he was going to make me pay to get it. “On what?”
He nodded at Alicia. “Does she know of anyone who can get her a suitable dress?”
My brain hitched.
“There’s a strict dress code at Hildon’s kickoff celebration. I know someone in Puerto Rico, so I can get you and DJ tuxes by tomorrow afternoon. But the dress?” He tapped his chin. “Not so easy.”
“I’ve got some at home,” Alicia answered.
“Have you worn them before?”
She knotted her fingers together. “Yeah.”
“That won’t do. Has to be something new.” Arlen popped out of his chair, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt. Striding to a curio cabinet on the left, he opened a drawer and took out a smartphone. “My tailor referred me to a man in San Juan. Being a local, I assume he might know someone. If he does, then, yes, I’ll take you.”
“All of us,” I said. “To Hildon’s event.”
“Of course, Jerry.” He turned to me, beaming like I’d just signed over my soul. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to have you back at my side.”
I was afraid he’d say that, but I couldn’t let my idiotic fears get a hold on me. Gabriela and Flor both needed this done. They needed Hildon to go down. While Arlen made a couple of phone calls, I kept that in mind. Alicia picked up on my nerves silently going haywire, but she didn’t get a chance to ask about it before Arlen hung up the phone and clapped his hands.
“He can get us a few dresses,” he said beaming. “He’ll bring them aboard Heart and Soul when he comes tomorrow, and you’ll pick out the one you like best, sweetheart. Now, how’s about we all head up to the sundeck, and have a couple drinks in celebration of reuniting old family?”
Refusal wasn’t an option. For one, we couldn’t risk Arlen taking the invites back. For two, he grabbed Alicia by the hand and led her out of the chair before I got a chance to tell him to buzz off. DJ didn’t put up much resistance, either.
“Last one up’s a rotten egg!” He hop-skipped in Arlen and Alicia’s trail.
We took a set of spiral stairs to Heart and Soul’s sundeck. Yet again, the sundeck had a table with chairs, and beyond it a semi-circular bar staffed by the same blond crew member with the champagne glasses, now mixing a drink for a woman sitting at the bar. Must be Arlen’s guest.
First glance, I could tell she probably wasn’t a hooker. Her dress looked too new, her makeup too light, and even at the bar, she had a way of sitting as if her spine were reinforced with a confidence I had never encountered in the few prostitutes I’d met while working for the Newport Beach PD. She was a light-skinned black girl, slender, pretty hair with wavy, loose curls. She wouldn’t have to turn tricks to get men to give up their cash. There was a quality in her bearing that told me she didn’t need their cash.
“Mr. Snyder.” She looked right at me.
I recognized her voice. “I didn’t expect to meet you here, Tamara.”
“That another long-lost family member from back home, Dep?” DJ said quietly to me as we walked toward the bar.
“Nope, she can’t even try to claim me. She’s a new one. Watch yourself around her.”
I sidled up next to her, DJ next to me.
“As I recall, you owe me a laptop, Mr. Snyder,” she said, as I pulled in my bar stool. “I’m assuming you have it on your catamaran. Beautiful boat, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I said. “And I still don’t know what laptop you’re talking about.”
“Jerry.” She tilted her head toward me. She didn’t like my answer, but what was she going to do about it?
I shrugged.
“I don’t see why you want to keep playing this game. I’m on your side. We both want Gabriela out of jail.”
“True. That’s something we both want. Except you also want to take over Hildon—even after you knew your company poisoned Flor. Or did you forget to mention Poraxim when we talked?”
Tamara’s eyes opened wide. If it were possible, I’m betting her hair would’ve stood on end. Instead, her posture sagged, as the smug self-assurance fizzled out of her. I enjoyed seeing it.
“That’s—no. That couldn’t have—” Tamara Price didn’t strike me as a woman who often had trouble expressing herself. “Where did you hear that?”
“Read about it on the laptop I don’t have,” I said. “A few internal memos passed around Hildon.”
She pressed her fingers to her eyelids, hiding her face, playing guilty. She was putting me on. These big corporate types were unfeeling automatons, powered by tax evasion and the wails of the small folk. Did she care that her company gave a little girl a deadly disease?
I couldn’t be sure. But I know I saw a teardrop hit her knee.
“I didn’t know about it,” she said, almost too quietly to understand. “I never would have gone along with them if I did. Excuse me, I should go.”
She hop
ped off her barstool and hurried past Arlen, who looked her way, then looked off when he saw she was upset. She disappeared down the steps, and the sense that I’d been a complete asshole lingered on.
“Good thing you’re already married.” DJ slapped my back and laughed.
I ignored him.
“Now that you two have finished charming the room,” Christy, the bartender said, “how about a couple of drinks?”
“Gimme a little charity. What kinda drink is in style?” DJ turned and gave me a knowing look.
Then, realization whacked me like a jibing boom to the head. Christy was with Armstrong Research. I couldn’t remember her real name, but I was sure I had seen her on Ambrosia, talking with Stockwell. What the hell was she doing on Arlen’s boat?
I looked toward the stern. Arlen had his back to us, his arm draped over my wife’s shoulder, pointing at Bluebeard’s Castle up the hills in Charlotte Amalie.
“Is Armstrong investigating Arlen?”
“I’m working, sir.”
DJ punched my elbow. “The hell’s wrong with you?”
I couldn’t say. I don’t know why I bothered asking. Guess the whole thing with Tamara had scrambled my brains. If I needed to know why “Christy” was here, Stockwell would’ve told me. I needed to keep my cool.
“Yeah.” Then I turned to DJ. “Take it easy on the booze. You lost a lot of blood.”
“Don’t that mean I need to give my body some fuel to make more?” He winked at me, then motioned at his sling. “I’m only looking to take some of the pain off my shoulder. I’ll keep myself neat.”
“We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
“I could shoot a bird’s beak with a pint in me. But don’t worry, you’re not the only one with skin in this game, man. My head stays on my shoulders.”
Christy, or whatever her name was, slid a drink to DJ. The smell of alcohol peeled off it like paint fumes. DJ toasted me, then sipped. His eyes rolled into his head, white as cue balls.
“A beak, huh? Must be a big bird.”
He shrugged and laughed. “Good rum’s worth more than the fuel it takes to ship it. Can’t waste it now, Dep.”
He nodded his head toward the aft rail and pushed away from the bar. I followed him.
When he reached the rail, he turned toward me, careful to keep his voice low. “The bartender—her name’s Charity Styles. She joined Armstrong the same day me and McDermitt did.”
“Is she checking up on us?”
“Doubt it,” DJ replied, seeming suddenly more sober. “Big Daddy Arlen might have some dirty laundry and she’s here for a totally unrelated reason. Remember, our assignment’s across in Puerto Rico.”
I couldn’t forget if I tried. The fact that I lived on St. Thomas didn’t preclude other Armstrong investigators from working there. We returned to our barstools, where I nodded at Charity.
Arlen’s hand landed on my shoulder.
“She’s a hell of a catch, Jerry,” he said, referring to Alicia. “That’s the kind of woman you have to keep an eye on. Know what I mean?”
I knew what he meant, but he didn’t know a thing about my wife. Alicia leaned her elbows on the port side gunwale, the lights of Charlotte Amalie twinkling around her shoulders and the wind playing in her soft hair. She was as beautiful and unaware of me as the moment we’d met.
“I don’t have the problems with Alicia that you had with your wives. I can trust her.” His fingers constricted on my shoulder as if he wanted to rip my collar bone free. I slid away from him.
“Jerry, men who insult me find themselves pushing against the boundaries of their own mortality.” His eyes coated with a vicious sheen. I didn’t doubt what he said, but I wasn’t afraid of him.
“Too bad for them.”
For a moment, it seemed his muzzle would slip, and he’d try to come at me, snapping his teeth and howling for his rented crew to boot me off his rented ship. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed, clapping my shoulder.
“Oh, come on now. You know me better than those rumormongers out there. Hell, you know me well enough to see I was never good at picking my women. I sorely missed a straight talker like you, Jerry. Took me until my late forties to accept I was deficient with women—all the money certainly didn’t fish up the honest ones.”
He put his hands in his pockets and sighed. I wasn’t sure if he was gawking at Alicia or at Charlotte Amalie.
“What about Tamara Price?” I asked.
“You two know each other?” he answered. “Isn’t that a funny thing?”
“Don’t act surprised.”
He chuckled. “You were asking me a lot of questions about Hildon over the phone, and I thought we might benefit from a true insider’s perspective—she’s next in line for the big job.”
“CEO?” I asked.
“The papers are all but signed, once Rachel Little is out, Tamara is in,” he said. “Where did she run off to anyway?”
“She needed a moment. I told her some upsetting news.”
“It’s not easy to do the hard things, is it?” He nodded sagely. “You know, I’m glad you called me.”
I grunted. I’d be second-guessing myself about that phone call for a long time to come.
“I’m a changed man. At the time, you were right to walk away, and I’m glad of it.” He set his eyes on me, earnest as a beggar’s. “When you left Orange County, I got my first wake-up call since Jeff. I realized that if I stayed on the path of self-interest, not only would I lose everyone I cared about, but I’d also lose myself too. So, I got right with God.”
I stared at him. Arlen was a man who loved his vices, and judging by Heart and Soul, he hadn’t abandoned them. There was the time, when, after learning of his son’s death, Arlen had gotten blind, stinking drunk. When my mother called him to extend her sympathies, she suggested her church as a venue for the funeral—knowing that Arlen didn’t belong to a religious organization of any kind. He declined, saying an old man in a robe would not restore his only son to life, and letting one mutter over Jeff’s lifeless body would be a betrayal. Reciting nonsense from a book of magical stories would do nothing to ease the pain he felt. Arlen ended the conversation after calling my mother a papist wop bitch.
“You don’t believe me—I can read it in your eyes,” he said. “But I want you to know that since you left, I’ve had time to think. I’ve re-evaluated what’s important to me, and what I want people to say about me when I’m gone for good. Legacy is what matters to me, Jerry. And I’m using the last of my time to repair the damage I’ve caused. Why, I even started my own charity.”
Charity? Legacy? When I was ten, Arlen had told me that when a man dies, he doesn’t care about the worms gnawing holes in him. A nihilist doesn’t pull substance from a void. Arlen hadn’t changed.
“You started a charity?”
“Mostly housing for low-income families. I’ve also funded a scattering of non-denominational churches, both in SoCal and West Texas. But you know what? When I’ve been on shore around here in these Virgin Islands, I’ve seen downtrodden people of a sort I cannot ignore. Their bellies are empty of substance, their faces don’t shine with the light of God’s love, and I ask myself, what is faith without works?”
“You’re just the guy to help out,” I said. “How many churches could you have built for the cost of renting this boat?”
“I can’t help that God chose to bless me with more money than I could possibly spend in two lifetimes,” he said.
“You sound defensive.” I faced him and inclined my chin, looking down my nose. “Why’s that, I wonder?”
Fissures began to pop beneath his mask. He maintained his affable smile, his well-meaning body language, but I knew what was going on inside. I wish he would have lost his temper, if only for half a second. I wish Alicia and DJ could’ve glimpsed the rage I’d seen from Arlen Burkhart.
Instead, he rubbed a vein in his forehead, calming himself, and then came closer to me.
“I’m a
changed man. You’ve got to believe that.”
“That’s great,” I said flatly. “I’m happy to see you’ve reformed yourself, Arlen. All of your churches are going to change a lot of lives.”
His eyes scoured over me, anger hissing through like steam in old pipes, until he clamped his emotions off with a quick laugh, and a swat on my back.
“That’s the plan, Jerry. I’ve got a lot of things to atone for, and I’m gonna give it my level best,” he said. “Now, how about you sit and have a beer with me? We can talk about tomorrow.”
Good. The sooner we were out of here, the better. I took the barstool next to DJ.
“Hey, sweetness?” Arlen called out to Alicia. She turned around; brow furrowed. “How about you come over this way and help us boys put our party plans together?”
My wife looked to me as if I’d told him to say that. I shrugged with my eyebrows, and she grimaced, but took the stool on DJ’s right.
Arlen’s eyes met the bartender’s. “Say, Christy, the four of us have another round of personal matters to discuss. I hate to send a beautiful woman away, but would you please see yourself out?”
“Of course, Mr. Burkhart.” She picked up a tote full of ice, then turned for the exit when Arlen stopped her with a wave of his hand.
“Just a minute, sweetie.” He looked at us. “Anyone care for another drink before little Christy leaves us?”
“I’ll take another one of these,” DJ said, holding up his glass, apparently intent on getting ripped. Charity put down the ice and got to work.
“Jerry?” Arlen asked. I shook my head. “Alicia?”
“Something fruity.”
“Painkiller, coming up,” Charity said, as she refilled DJ’s rum.
Within a minute, Charity had Alicia’s painkiller made, and she poured a glass of rum for Arlen—the same stuff as DJ had. Her work done, she took the tote full of ice and disappeared down the aft staircase.
Wayward Sons Page 38
