Wicked Break

by Jeff Shelby

  I stood, the grains of sand rough between my bare feet and the concrete. Liz had given me an opportunity. She told me what she needed from me and it was up to me to follow through. If I didn’t, I had no one to blame but myself.

  “Okay. It’s on me, then. It’ll change.” I pointed at the file. “I’m gonna finish this. Soon. And then it’s just me and you. I promise.”

  Her eyes searched my face, maybe attempting to see if there was anything but sincerity in my words.

  I knew there was nothing else for her to find.

  “Okay,” she said. She walked toward me, touching my arm lightly as she went by.

  I watched her walk down the boardwalk toward the roller coaster, turn left at the corner, and disappear, leaving me with all the incentive I needed.

  Thirty-six

  After Liz left, I paged through the file she had given me. It confirmed all of what she had told me, but didn’t really provide any more new insights. Still, I was energized by the fact that I could fit Linc, the skinheads, and the gang into the same puzzle now and I decided to drive up to Linc’s apartment.

  My conversation with Liz had made me anxious to see the end of the case, so I could get on with my life. I’d been to Linc’s during the day and hadn’t learned much of anything and I wondered if the evening would show me something else.

  It didn’t.

  Three hours of sitting and watching gave me no Linc, no gang members, nor any skinheads. As I headed home to bed, that rush of energy I’d gotten from Liz was turning into frustration.

  I got up early the next morning, my body feeling refreshed from the tough session the day before in the water and my mind feeling clear from Liz’s visit. I was disappointed by the fruitless time I’d spent outside Linc’s apartment, but I was determined not to let that slow me down.

  I was pondering how to be more fruitful when the phone rang.

  “I know where he is,” a female voice said after I picked up.

  I didn’t recognize the voice. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Dana. I know where he is,” she said, rushing her words.

  “Linc?”

  “Yeah. I’m in Ocean Beach. Can you get here?”

  “Tell me where.”

  I took I-8 to the point where it ended, down past the Sports Arena and south of Quivira Basin. Robb Field, normally packed with soccer players and their families on the weekends, stood eerily empty on a weekday morning as the freeway dumped me onto Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

  Dana’s call had surprised me, to say the least. I was skeptical as to what I’d find when I met up with her, but it was better than sitting around and doing nothing. And she had sounded pretty sure of herself on the phone.

  I hung a right on Narragansett, then a left on Bacon, taking me into the heart of Ocean Beach.

  OB prided itself on being different than the other San Diego beach communities. No beachfront hotels, no chic eateries that hung out over the cliffs, and no signs that they had bowed to the commercialization that had overwhelmed many of the other seaside areas. Locals only. Local eateries, local merchants, and local residents. Nobody got into anybody else’s business and as a result, the neighborhood had become an eclectic mix of aging hippies, college students, artists, and folks who viewed society with a skeptical eye.

  I turned left at Santa Cruz and spotted Dana’s Xterra just past the stop sign. I pulled in behind her and she jumped out and ran to the passenger side of my Jeep.

  “I think he’s in there,” she said, out of breath, pointing up the block and across the street.

  It was an old bungalow, the exterior weathered by the proximity to the ocean. A dilapidated wooden deck fronted the house, decorated only with a red sofa that had seen better days. There was no yard to speak of, just clumps of bushes that had taken up residence. The shingled roof was in disrepair, with rotting corners and a sagging middle. Still, the place wasn’t much different than the others around it.

  Character, I believe the residents called it.

  “You think?”

  She nodded. “This morning I heard some banging around in his apartment and it woke me up. I got up and looked out the window and I saw him getting into that car.” She pointed again and I saw the brown pickup in the driveway. “I waited until he pulled out of the lot and then I followed him.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “Yeah. But he was already out of the car when I pulled up. I didn’t want to get too close. But I’m guessing he’s inside.”

  “Any idea whose house this is?”

  “No.”

  It occurred to me that Dana was really eager to play junior detective and I thought I knew why.

  “Did you call Carter first?” I asked.

  Her face reddened. “Yes. But he didn’t answer. Then I called you.”

  Impressing Carter had become a priority for Dana.

  “Stay here,” I said, getting out of the Jeep. “I’m going to go up to the house.”

  “Wait—he had a bag with him,” she said.

  Wellton told me the apartment had been cleared out. “Guns?”

  “I couldn’t tell. But why else would he have been back at his apartment?”

  I nodded and closed the door.

  Walking up the sidewalk, I came to the front edge of the house and moved carefully along the porch. I stepped onto it gingerly, hoping to avoid creaks and rattles. Nothing emanated from the wood, so I continued up, moved next to the screen door, and listened.

  Quiet.

  I grabbed my gun from my waistband, held it at my side, and knocked on the door.

  Nothing.

  I tried the screen, but it was locked. Moving down off the porch, I retraced my footsteps to the fence and looked over it. An empty backyard.

  I put my gun back in my waistband and hoisted myself over the fence. I fell to the ground and rolled close to the house and pulled my gun out again, creeping low next to the home until I came to the edge, and peered around the corner.

  A small patio. An old hibachi barbecue sat on the ground. No tables or chairs.

  I moved near the sliding glass door on the back wall of the house. Taking a deep breath, I crouched down, raised my gun, and pivoted so I was looking straight in through the door.

  No Linc.

  I rose up slowly and tried the slider. It started to move, but then caught. An old lock making it a little loosey-goosey.

  I was starting to doubt Dana. Maybe she’d smoked a little too much pot the night before.

  I rattled the door some more, seeing if I could shake it loose.

  A figure darted out from the hallway on the other side of the door and sprinted for the front of the house.

  I spun and ran back the way I’d come, throwing myself over the fence. I came around the corner of the house to see a young man sprinting parallel to the property in the opposite direction, glancing back at me.

  Which explained why he never saw Dana step out from the side of the house and clothesline him with a straight right arm.

  The guy fell to the ground in a heap.

  Dana looked down at him, then at me. “This is Linc.”

  Thirty-seven

  Dana had stunned him and he was a little woozy, so I picked him up off the ground.

  “I got bored waiting in the car,” she said.

  I was annoyed that she had ignored my directions, but it wasn’t the time to argue. “We’ll discuss it later.”

  I set Linc on the couch. I sat down in a ripped leather chair across from him and Dana stood next to me.

  Linc looked a lot like the photo Peter had given me and, in person, a lot like his older brother—same dark hair and intense eyes—just a little rougher around the edges. Dirty jeans and a black T-shirt hung listlessly on his body.

  His eyes cleared and he looked like he had shaken off the blow.

  I was so angry with this kid I didn’t know where to start.

  I glanced at Dana. “You heard him in his apartment this morning?”

  She
nodded, staring at him. “The walls are thin. The noise woke me up.”

  “I dropped something,” Linc said.

  I turned to him. “You can feel free to shut the fuck up until I tell you to talk.”

  He didn’t flinch, just returned my stare as his mouth closed into a tight line.

  “Who the hell are you?” Linc asked, moving to the edge of the couch.

  My right fist clenched and if I’d been closer, I would’ve punched him.

  “I’m the guy that was hired to find your sorry ass,” I said. “Both your aunt and your brother asked me to figure out where the hell you’ve been because for some unbelievable reason, they seemed to give a rat’s ass about you. And if you speak again before I ask you a question, I’m going to choke the shit out of you.”

  “He’s an investigator,” Dana said.

  Linc finally wavered and he slid back into the sofa.

  I took a deep breath, summoned up a little composure, and looked at him again. “Let’s start with Rachel. What do you know about her?”

  He looked at me for a moment, maybe wondering if I was setting him up to say something so I could jump down his throat again.

  He chewed on his lip for a moment. “I know she was shot.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  He hesitated. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  I felt my blood pressure spike. Wouldn’t look good to murder the kid I was hired to find. I tried a different approach to see if I could get a straight answer.

  “What do you know about your brother?” I asked.

  His expression soured and it was clear he was in the dark. “Peter? What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  His features drooped and the sour expression morphed into confusion, the first sign that the tough façade had a real weakness. “What are you talking about?”

  Part of me felt bad for dropping the news on him. But the other half of me recognized that he was indirectly responsible for Peter’s death.

  “He hired me to find you,” I said. “He was found in a canyon the next day.” I paused. “Killed by a couple of other guys looking for you.”

  He looked away from me, his eyes focused on the floor. His shoulders bunched, the weight of what I’d said taking him out of our conversation for a moment.

  Then he lifted his head up.

  “You and I need to talk,” he said, then nodded at Dana. “Without her.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Linc,” Dana said, irritated.

  He didn’t look at her, just at me.

  There was something in his eyes that I hadn’t expected to see. It was the same desperation I had seen in Peter’s face the day he hired me to find Linc.

  “Dana, please. Go wait outside,” I said.

  “Fuck you, too,” she said. “I helped you find him.”

  “Dana, this isn’t the time. You’ve been a huge help, but right now I need you to give us a few minutes, alright?”

  She gave an exasperated sigh and threw up her hands like a great stage actress. “Fine. You don’t need me? Then I’m outta here. I’ll go someplace I’m wanted. You two dickheads have a great time.” She spun on her heel and walked out the front door, slamming it behind her.

  I looked at Linc, at this kid who I’d been pursuing for what felt like too long, and thought about how ugly the situation had become. I thought about pulling out my gun and putting a bullet in his chest.

  But that wouldn’t have given me the answers I wanted.

  “Talk,” I said.

  Thirty-eight

  “My brother’s really dead?” Linc asked.

  “Yeah. You want the details?”

  He thought about that for a moment, indecision lingering in his eyes before he finally nodded.

  I told him about Peter hiring me, then finding the skinheads at his house, and how they’d killed him. I left out the specifics of what they did to me.

  Linc leaned back in the sofa, his face heavy with something between sadness and anger. “It all blew up on me. And now I’m totally screwed.”

  I had a million questions I wanted to ask Linc. But his body language indicated that he seemed on the verge of unloading his story—where he’d been, what he’d been doing—and I didn’t want to get in the way. Sometimes, the best way to get answers is to shut up and listen.

  “Maybe that’s what I deserve.” He shifted his eyes toward me. “You know about our parents?”

  “I know they’re dead.”

  “My mom died of cancer.” He looked out the window. “It sucked.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He studied the window for a moment. “I need help. I don’t know how to get out of this on my own.”

  I wasn’t willing to commit to anything yet. “Then you better keep talking.”

  He drummed his fingers on his thigh, his anxiety trying to work itself out. The anger was now removed from his expression, replaced entirely with a look of desolation and dejection.

  “My dad died in a fight,” he said with a twisted smile. “He was a skinhead. But he hated that term. He liked Aryan Warrior or Caucasian Centrist.” He shook his head. “So fucking stupid.”

  “You don’t believe in that stuff?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you’ve heard, right? That I followed in his footsteps?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have to be really fucked up to believe in that shit,” he said. “I’m not.”

  I resisted the urge to point out that non-fucked-up college students didn’t usually sell guns.

  “Then why did your aunt tell me you were involved?” I asked.

  He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. “I wanted to know my dad. After my mom died…I needed to know him. It was the only way I could figure out how to get close to him.” He paused. “I thought if I understood it better, I could find a way to pull him out of it.” He paused again. “Peter wanted no part of him. He had just written our dad off, but I couldn’t do it. I thought maybe he could still end up being a regular dad. Or at the very least, a dad who was pretty much normal.”

  Peter had told me about the rift between him and his brother. Peter had probably taken Linc’s ideas as lunacy and Linc had obviously taken Peter’s resistance as cowardice. Both of them had been half right and all wrong.

  “You can’t fake it,” Linc continued. “To really be accepted, I had to act the part. To everyone, even my family.” His eyes shifted away from me again. “And I thought it was the only way for me to really understand what he thought was so great about hating people.”

  He rubbed his hands together like he was cold.

  “But it was…awful,” he said. “And I didn’t understand why my dad believed in it.” He leaned forward. “And it just hurt that my dad was such a piece of crap.” He looked up, embarrassment and sorrow shaping his face. “Because he really was. Peter was right all along.”

  I thought about my own parents. I knew next to nothing about my own father, something I had learned to conveniently compartmentalize out of my life. I wasn’t close to my mother and I still didn’t understand why she couldn’t pull herself out from the boozy haze that had become her life.

  He was telling me a story I knew pretty well.

  “I was trying to figure out how to leave National Nation when my dad was stabbed outside a bar,” he said, his voice cracking. “A couple of black guys gave him what he deserved.” He paused and cleared his throat, tears clinging to the corners of his eyes. “Only he was my dad, you know? He was an asshole, but he was still my dad.”

  I stayed quiet, giving him time to compose himself.

  He wiped the tears away. “And then I just got pissed at the world. Peter for not trying to help, my friends for not really understanding. My dad got me involved in some hateful shit, but I didn’t tell anyone because I was sick of everyone telling me what an asshole he was. I learned that the hard way. I didn’t need to be reminded.”

  He sat up a little straighter. “My dad used my place
to stash and sell guns.”

  “Why your place?”

  “He lived out in Bonita and he was worried that his neighbors would get suspicious if they saw too many people coming and going,” he answered. “Anyway, after he died, I wanted to get rid of the guns. All these gang-looking guys were hanging around my apartment. It didn’t take much to figure out who they were. I knew Lonnie from the group and he told me what to charge and to give the money to him after they were sold. It wasn’t hard to hook up and before long I was dealing with them. What the fuck else was I going to do with a dresser full of guns?”

  I thought of a lot of things but said nothing.

  “I figured I’d just get rid of them and be done with it,” he said. “But Moreno and those guys bought a lot. When I turned the money over to Lonnie the first time I sold, he freaked because it was so much. So instead of only selling what I had, Lonnie kept giving me more. I didn’t know how to say no. That guy scared the shit out of me.”

  I knew the feeling.

  Linc shuffled his feet on the floor and the soles squeaked on the wood.

  “Then I got sort of comfortable with it,” he said, shaking his head. “I was friendly with the gang guys. Lonnie acted like I was his best friend. It was easy. Easier than telling the truth, anyway.”

  Linc had jumped into something that had overwhelmed him. He’d forced himself into believing that going along was better than getting out. It may have been easier, but it wasn’t better.

  “But then it changed,” Linc said, his eyes moving away from me. “It all completely changed and I had to get out of it.”

  “What happened?”

  He sat still, his eyes focused on the window. “I knew it was wrong, you know? I really did. I knew I was being a coward, and for a while I thought I could live with that. But then…I realized I couldn’t.”

  “How were you planning on getting out of this, Linc?” I asked.

  “I was just gonna go down to Mexico or to Arizona and lay low for a while,” he said. “I figured I’d sort it out when I got out of San Diego.”