The Shop

by J. Carson Black

  “Riley’s gonna kill me!”

  “This is important, Zoe. It might have to do with what happened to Luke.”

  “You mean, why he died?”

  Jolie didn’t answer.

  “Uh, well, there’s this old tunnel—it comes out by the pool, like there’s a backdoor to the cabanas. On hot nights sometimes, we sneak out there and have a smoke—sometimes we raid the liquor cabinet—and if anybody comes we’re, like, gone.”

  “Did Luke know about it?”

  “Uh…”

  “Did Luke know about it?”

  Her answer was meek. “Yes.”

  Jolie called Royce Brady again. This time she got him. She told him to meet her at the motel.

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  He showed up ten minutes later and let her into room nine. She did a thorough search. Opened the toilet tank, ran her hand behind it. Reached under the bed, especially around the casters. Checked between the bedspring and the mattress. She looked in every nook and cranny that could hold a cell phone, but there was nothing.

  “Are we done here?” Royce said.

  “Looks like.”

  “Good.” He locked the door behind them. He didn’t bother to ask her what she was looking for, just stalked to his car. He had his own troubles.

  Full dark now. Jolie went behind room nine, shined her Mag Lite up at the narrow bathroom window, which cranked outward. Nothing on the ledge. Nothing on the ground below, except for weeds and trash. She walked alongside the oleanders, shining her light through the leaves.

  Forget it.

  He probably stashed the phone in his apartment, and whoever came to the house that day found it.

  Jolie opened her car door. She stared down the road at the neighborhood where Mark Armstrong lived. There was one more place to look. The boat. The upside-down boat on cinder blocks that Luke hid under.

  This time the street was quiet when Jolie parked at the top and walked down to the house with the boat.

  The boat was in the third yard down close to the street. Jolie got on her hands and knees on the springy grass and looked under the boat. Played her Mag Lite over the cinder blocks, felt along their exposed edges. No cell phone. He could have hidden it anywhere. Maybe the FBI really did have it. One thing for sure: it wasn’t here. The only objects she found were three empty beer bottles and a snuff can—kids must use the boat as a place to party.

  She heard a door open and peered out. Someone came out onto the porch of the house two yards down. Jolie stayed under the boat, hoping they’d go back in.

  When the neighbor went back inside, she slid out and walked back up the road to her car.

  40

  Franklin Haddox tried to focus on the man sitting on the bench seat opposite him. They were still on the boat. The guy looked familiar—Frank thought he might be his cousin. Nick, the writer. But the man didn’t act like a cousin. He wasn’t dressed like a writer, either. He wore a dark blue cap pulled low over his forehead and a windbreaker. He looked deadly serious, as if something terrible had happened. Lines of disapproval bracketed his mouth. He reminded Frank of his security detail back when he was in the cabinet. Much more professional than the buffoons he had now.

  Frank understood this was official business. He decided not to say anything—he wanted to see where this was going. Plus, he had a massive headache and no memory of what he’d been doing before he found himself sitting in the galley, resting his head on his arms on the dinette table. Sleeping it off, maybe.

  The man opposite him leaned forward so their arms were touching. He smiled, which made Frank feel better. There was something confidential in the smile, as if they shared a common goal. It put him at ease immediately.

  “What do you know about the man under this seat?”

  “Seat?” The feeling that they shared a common goal vanished. Frank felt something move in his chest. He realized what it was: fear, a clump of it, dissolving quickly and shooting into this system.

  The man said, “Do you need a refresher course?”

  “Refresher course?”

  The man sighed and rose to his feet. He looked saddened, as if he carried the weight of the world on his back. He pushed the seat cushion to the floor and with one swift move opened the storage compartment. Quick—then let the lid slam back down.

  But Frank saw it all right. Mashed into the small space, fetal position, neck at an impossible angle, a human pretzel—it would be impossibly painful if the contents inside the box were still alive. But they weren’t. Even with the lid down, Frank could see the eye, fixed upward like the eye of a gaffed tarpon.

  The realization slammed down on him with its full weight. His face radiated heat. “You don’t think I would…I couldn’t do something like that.” But he knew people who could. Surely there was a way to sort this out.

  The man stood over him like a stern father.

  Frank’s vocal cords barely gained purchase, and his question came out in a squeak. “Who are you?”

  “Special Agent Eric Salter.”

  “FBI?” A fresh bolt of terror shot through him.

  “Correct.”

  Stall him. “Can I see some ID?”

  Salter reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out his wallet badge, and flipped it open—he was FBI, all right. He put it back, plucked at the dark slacks above his knees, hunkered down beside the offending bench seat, and looked into Frank’s eyes. “What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing!”

  “There’s a dead man in your bench seat. You’ve been lying here with your head on your arms for approximately—” he stared at his expensive diver’s watch, “—twenty minutes. Sleeping it off?”

  “No—I mean yes.”

  “Do you know this man?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  He reached for the lid. “Refresh your memory?”

  “No! Please, no!”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing! I swear! I couldn’t…” He stopped. Knew full well he could order someone killed. Order it and sit on his boat and clink glasses as it was carried out. But it was for a good reason—

  Special Agent Salter slammed his hand down on the dinette. Nonsensically, Frank thought: Careful of the wood!

  “Did you kill this man?”

  “No!”

  “Did you kill this man?”

  “No! Are you crazy? I couldn’t, I can’t. Someone must have—”

  “What? Sneaked in here while you were sleeping? Right here, with your head on the table?”

  Then he hammered Frank with questions. Where was he going? Who was on board? Did he know this man? The questions came in a rapid-fire sequence, like a drill sergeant. Frank didn’t have a chance to answer them fully.

  Finally he managed to say, “I want my lawyer.”

  The agent rose to his feet and stood over him. His face stormy, the anger building up in his chest, his shoulders. He was massive, like a boulder about to roll downhill and crush whatever lay underneath. “Get up.”

  “Up?”

  “Get up now.”

  Frank started sliding across the seat.

  “Do it now!”

  He scrambled out so quickly he banged his knee on the bench. He registered the throbbing pain, but it was second to the pure adrenaline of his fear, hurtling through his veins. He stood back. Legs shaking.

  The agent shoved the cushion to the galley sole and flung open the lid.

  The burst of adrenaline was so hard, so explosive, that Frank felt his heart seize. He stared down at another man, this one mercifully head-down, pressed into the box like a broken toy.

  41

  “So you’re saying they’re Cardamone’s people?” Frank asked. He’d recovered nicely, after a glass of Remy, especially after Agent Salter told him he knew Frank wasn’t responsible for the dead men in the bench seats.

  “If we’re correct, their allegiance is to Mike Cardamone.”

  “And Cardamone�
�s people are watching me? And Grace?”

  He nodded to a bench seat. “There’s your proof.”

  “But they weren’t here to hurt me?”

  “We don’t believe so, no. Not at this juncture. But that could change.”

  Frank ducked his nose into the snifter and inhaled. Swirled the glass, took a small sip. He still had the headache, but the Remy seemed to have quieted it somewhat. “So you’re saying if I fired my security, I’d have less people to worry about.”

  “Fewer.”

  “Fewer?”

  “Fewer people to worry about.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry, grammar was never my strong suit. I can’t believe you know all this.”

  “We’re the FBI.”

  “Well, that explains it. Mike was number three at the CIA, you know. He thought the Fibbies were like the Keystone Cops. But now I’m getting the idea it’s the CIA that’s incompetent.”

  “That would be a dangerous assumption to make,” Special Agent in Charge Salter said.

  “So the whole cousin thing—you made it up? You posed as Nick Holloway to get on this boat? So Nick Holloway isn’t my cousin after all?”

  “Oh, he’s your cousin, all right. We intercepted your e-mails.”

  “You can do that? Wait, of course you can.” Talk about irony. “Our lawyers had to construct new language to make that happen—it was pretty fancy footwork, let me tell you—a real bitch to do. Jesus, that’s ironic. So Nick meant it when he said he was busy. When he first wrote me back.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Why the charade? I don’t understand—”

  “We wanted to see if Cardamone was keeping tabs on you. As it turns out, he is. It’s clear he sent these two men to keep an eye on you.”

  “Whatever he’s involved in, I have nothing to do with it. We’re friends, and that’s the extent of it.”

  “You’re more than that. We have the wiretaps to prove it. We’ve been monitoring Cardamone for some time.”

  Franklin had been a prosecutor for a long time. He knew the outlines of a potential plea bargain when he heard it. Time to lay the groundwork. “You know none of this was my idea—what Cardamone and the president were doing.”

  “I didn’t think it was. So to review, it was just you three who knew about the program. Cardamone, President Baird, and yourself.”

  “That’s right. Just the two of us now that Baird is dead.”

  “Then it comes down to you or Cardamone.”

  “That’s right.”

  Special Agent Salter let it sit there between them for a minute. Then he said, “You could be a big help to us.”

  “Turning state’s evidence, right?”

  “It’s a good deal.”

  “But there’s my reputation to think of. I was the Top Cop. The attorney general of the United States of America. It would kill Grace.”

  “Better than the alternative.”

  “What alternative?”

  The special agent said nothing.

  Frank shuddered. “He’d kill all of us.”

  “You’re the only witnesses. You and Grace.”

  “But Riley’s innocent. And my dad—”

  “You know Cardamone. You think that will stop him?”

  All of a sudden, the Remy didn’t taste so good. Frank swirled the glass again, his heart speeding up. He did know Cardamone. He knew what the man was capable of. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. They’d been standing up, off and on, for the last week. But still, it was impossible for him to grasp this concept completely. “How would he get away with it?”

  “How did you get away with Brienne Cross?” Salter looked down at his notes. “The Egyptian professor from Berkeley—?”

  “Okay, okay, I see your point. But won’t Cardamone suspect something if I fire all my security?”

  Salter said, “I’m sure you can finesse it. This is going to happen fast. If you can get him to come down here—”

  “I can get him to come down here, don’t you worry about that.”

  “If you can get him to come down here,” he repeated, “we’ll take it from there.”

  “You’d be putting my family in danger.”

  Salter just stared at him.

  “My family’s already in danger.”

  “Correct.”

  “You have people there now?”

  “We have the island under surveillance.”

  Frank sighed. “Any way you look at this, I’m lucky if I escape jail time.”

  Salter’s face was impassive.

  “I don’t want Grace exposed.”

  “I can’t promise anything. You know that. But if we can get Cardamone to admit what he’s done…we may not need her.”

  Frank had a truly lucid moment. He looked straight at Agent Salter. “That’s bullshit.”

  Salter stood. “Your choice. Somebody’s going to pay for all those deaths. Conspiracy’s a federal crime, and the death penalty will be enforced. We’d rather it be Cardamone.”

  Frank’s future was bleak, any way you looked at it. There was very little wriggle room. He would have to convince Cardamone to come down here. He would have to get him to talk. Never easy—the guy was wary as an ibex.

  Maybe there was a way out of this, but right now he couldn’t think of one. There were two dead bodies aboard, and the FBI knew about it. He didn’t think he could have killed them—that just wasn’t part of his makeup—but he couldn’t account for a few hours. He’d had something to drink, and he supposed he could have blacked out. It was within the realm of possibility.

  At any rate, they were here, on his boat.

  For a while now he’d been afraid that Cardamone would come after him, and worse, he’d come after his family. Special Agent Salter offered a way out, and he’d damn well take it.

  For now.

  42

  By the time Landry and Franklin were through with their talk, it was going on eleven p.m., and Landry had some things to do. He decided to anchor out in the bay just off Panama City and put in to Cape San Blas early in the morning. One reason for this, Landry anticipated trouble when Franklin fired his security team. There might be unpleasantness. No one enjoyed losing a lucrative contract. Unlikely it would come to anything, but the one important lesson Landry had taken from his Boy Scout years was the motto, “Be prepared.”

  He wasn’t tired, but he wasn’t at his best, either.

  Franklin was still feeling the effects of the drug. The triptascoline, in combination with the Remy Martin, rendered him incoherent. He seemed content to drift off. Good for him and good for Landry.

  Landry went up on deck and made his nightly phone call. For the call he used a throwaway cell phone he’d bought at Target for $29.95 plus tax—it didn’t have to be expensive to preserve his anonymity. A friend of his, a fellow racehorse owner who was also a tech genius (he’d named one of his horses Phreaker), had created an invisible voice mailbox for him. The mailbox was situated inside a major phone system, but no one knew of its existence. Landry’s contact number remained the same, but the box had been designed to erase itself every twenty-four hours, then migrate to a different location. Even Landry had no clue where the voice mail was. It could be in Vegas. It could be in Keokuk. All he knew was that it worked. It was the perfect way for him to contact the Shop every night without revealing his location.

  Usually, he received an automated response. “There is nothing at this time. Please check back tomorrow. Thank you, and have a nice day.”

  The “have a nice day” line was a little over the top in Landry’s opinion.

  But tonight, he did not receive that message. Tonight, the message was different.

  He closed the phone and thought about it for a minute. It was a beautiful night. Warm, but there was a breeze. Panama City stretched out before him like a diamond-studded crescent. He looked east, toward Cape San Blas, a black spit of land that jackknifed out into the Gulf and created the bay. He could see a smatte
ring of lights there too, up to where St. Joseph State Park started and the private houses ended.

  He didn’t spend time pondering the deeper meaning of the message. Right now he needed to make arrangements. He opened the phone and called his younger brother.

  Gary answered on the second ring. “Did you see him? Eleven and a half lengths! Jesus! Rafael was wrapping up on him at the end. Could have been twelve, thirteen lengths if he’d let him go.”

  “The foot okay?”

  “Colder than Cruella De Vil’s titties. Did you see the way he exploded when Rafael asked him? Did you see that? Holy Jesus take-me-to-the-ballgame-and-buy-me-a-fucking-hotdog Christ, he’s the real thing. The Kentucky Derby, man. The First Saturday in May.”

  For a moment, Landry let that hang in the air. It was like the notes of a distant trumpet calling soldiers to battle, sweet and pure.

  A thrumming started up in his gut, a combination of excitement, anguish, and desire. The First Saturday in May was like the Holy Grail, except the Holy Grail wasn’t anywhere near as good.

  He tried not to think about it. “Hey. You like Ocala?”

  “Ocala?”

  “You want to go to Ocala and check out the stud farms? All expenses paid?”

  Skepticism crept into his brother’s voice. “What are we talking here?”

  “All you have to do is fly in to Panama City and rent a car.”

  It took him a moment, but then he said, “Sure, I can do that.”

  “Use the Amex. Try Orbitz first. You have to be in Panama City by four p.m. tomorrow at the latest. Don’t forget to use—”

  “Your driver’s license, gotcha.”

  “The one for Peters. That’s important, it’s got to be under that name.”

  “Hey, bro, haven’t I done this before? I know what I’m doing.” A pause. “So, what kind of car? It’s a long drive to Ocala.”

  His brother. Always pushing the envelope. “Anything you want.”

  “A Hummer?”

  “Almost anything you want. I’m paying for the gas, so be considerate.”

  “A Caddy, then. I guess I could get away. A week?”

  “If you want.”

  “Shandra won’t be happy.”