by Alan Lee
“Of all the gin joints in all the world…”
“Mack. That’s it. August. Mack August, how’s it going.”
I shook his hand. Too limp. Did no one tell this guy how kick-ass federal attorneys were supposed to be?
The bartender gave me another and wandered off.
“Bill,” I said. “I hope you had a full day of defending the American way.”
“Not exactly. I’m a prosecutor.”
“Then your soul to the devil, sir.”
He grinned and drank more scotch. “Still working with Calvin Summers?”
“I am. What a pain in the ass that guy is.”
“Damn right. I mostly worked with Ronnie but one time I met with him? Guy asked me to get him a coffee.”
“What’d you say?”
“Fuck you, is what I said.” He twitched his shoulders and picked up his phone. “I told you to be careful with him, right?”
“You did. And it was good advice. Calvin’s better connected than I assumed.”
“I told you.”
“You told me,” I said encouragingly.
He finished the scotch and waved for another. “Well. No offense, Mack. But I hope you don’t find his informant. Some rocks remain better unturned.”
The bartender set another down.
“Too late, I’m afraid.”
That stopped him. His refreshed glass paused halfway to his mouth.
“You did it?” he asked.
“I did it. Pretty sure.”
“How sure?”
“Seventy-five percent.”
“Huh.” He set the glass down and stared into it. Hunched over the bar a bit.
“Haven’t told Calvin yet.”
“Huh.”
“I asked one of Calvin’s connections about what Calvin would do once he found the informant.”
“And?”
“Chainsaws and an ax, is what I was told.”
“Jesus Christ. What, like in Scarface?” he blurted.
“That’s what I said. Great minds, you know?”
“Mack. Let’s be serious for a minute. If Calvin kills the informant, you could be charged as an accomplice. Shit, I’d do the work pro bono. I’m not trying to be nasty but…”
“You’re just flattering me,” I said.
“I’m not saying the charges will stick. Up to a jury. But you’d at least be charged.” His face had gone a little white. “Jesus. A chainsaw? Prissy old Summers?”
“I was told a much larger man would hold the handle.”
“Shit,” he said.
“It took me longer than I assumed. To find the informant.”
He didn’t respond.
I continued, “Because I’d been looking for a male.”
He still didn’t say anything. But he’d been kinda rocking with his weight leaning against the counter and he stopped.
“Just my natural masculine prejudices,” I said. “You know?”
He took a drink. Turned his eyes to the television. Back down to the drink. Picked up his phone. Set it down again. The muscle in his jaw was flexing.
“Responsibility is a heavy thing,” I said. “You’re feeling it.”
“Of course I am.”
“Now you know what I’m feeling. They’re going to kill her, Bill. With a chainsaw.”
“A chainsaw,” he repeated softly.
“And you won’t be able to pin it on him.”
“You told me you wouldn’t reveal the informant’s identity to Calvin,” he said.
“I did say that.”
“You told me you were doing this only to take the fucker’s money. And to warn the informant that he or she had been found out.”
“More or less,” I said.
“Because you’re one of the good guys.”
“I even wear Superman boxers. But it’s complicated. Like you said, he’s better connected than I assumed.”
“You were at this bar waiting for me,” he realized. “Weren’t you.”
“Brad Thompson told me you come here.”
“What do you want me to do? My hands are tied. I could lose my job. Lose my bar card. You don’t need my help. Just go warn…the person you suspect.”
“I’m going to. But I need some assurance I got the right person.”
He twitched his shoulders. “I can’t help you. Maybe just let the thing drop. Tell Summers you can’t find the informant.”
“Bill, it’s taken me less than a month. It wasn’t that hard. If I don’t report, he’ll find someone who will. Your informant is going to be found. Calvin’s a man bent on revenge, a man with money and dangerous colleagues in his corner. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Jesus.” He went back to staring into his drink.
“Tell me who it is.”
“I can’t.”
“Then take a ride with me. We’ll go warn her together. We’ll figure something out.”
He finished his second scotch. Tilted the glass up until the lone ice cube dropped into his mouth. Crunched it noisily. Waved for another. The bartender brought a new glass and took the old one away.
He said, “Chainsaws, huh.”
“And an ax,” I reminded him helpfully.
On screen the Cubs were congratulating each other on field. They’d beaten the Yankees 5-2.
He gulped half the glass and said, “I can’t tell you a thing.” He picked up his phone and ran his finger across the screen for sixty seconds and set it down without turning it off. He’d set it halfway between us. “What I’m going to do is go to the bathroom, Mack. Then I’m coming back to get my phone and go home. Because I’m not telling you a thing. You understand?”
“I understand.”
He shoved away from the bar and walked toward the back. He moved like a man who’d consumed two and a half scotches in ten minutes.
It had to be Mrs. Hunt. Had to be. Bill hadn’t argued with my implication that the informant was a woman.
I picked up his phone. He’d opened an email and left it on screen. The email had been sent months ago. I scanned.
I had to be right. My heart betrayed me and quickened slightly, the coward.
The email concerned the Calvin Summers case. I scrolled down. Kept reading.
Bingo.
There it was. In black and white.
The informant.
I set the phone back onto the polished bar and turned it off and finished my glass of gin.
Huh.
What do you know.
I was wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was after six o’clock. Probably too late to catch anyone in an office. But I knocked on Ronnie’s heavy office door anyway. It was open.
Natasha Gordon, the receptionist, said, “Sorry sir, but the office…Oh. It’s you.”
“You could pretend to be excited. Beautiful people like myself have fragile egos,” I said.
“I’ll do better next time.”
Natasha was closing up shop. She had dark circles under her eyes and much of her pretty brown hair had pulled loose from the…whatever it was that kept her hair up in the back. Her desk had been organized into neat piles and she was shrugging into a dark blue cardigan.
“Is Ronnie in?”
“Ms. Summers has gone home for the day. Can I take a message?”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m here to talk with you.”
“With me,” she said and a little color drained from her face.
“Mind if I sit?”
She didn’t answer.
I sat.
“You found Mr. Summers’s informant?” she asked.
“I have.”
Natasha picked up her purse and set it in her lap and held it like a shield. “How?”
“I met Mrs. Hunt in Franklin Country. Boyd’s wife. We talked.”
“Oh?” she said.
“She hates me, though, which boggles the mind. I also met Alicia Gordon.”
Natasha stayed quiet.
“I like Alicia She’s got spirit,” I said.
She nodded.
I set my hand on the desk and twisted Natasha Gordon’s nameplate around until it faced her instead of me. “I’m embarrassed it took me that long to connect the last names.”
Natasha Gordon’s hands went to her mouth and the rest of the color drained from her face.
“Alicia Gordon is your sister,” I said.
“Yes.”
“She is a prostitute.”
“Yes. And she won’t quit,” Natasha said.
“Won’t or can’t. Some things aren’t easy.”
She nodded and refused to look away from my eyes. “We’ve talked to her. A hundred times. My mother and I, both. She’s dating a worthless man. She has no future. No plans. She’s stopped taking my calls.”
“I see the resemblance between you two but it’s faint.”
“We have different fathers. Mine is still in Franklin County but hers is long gone.”
“Gordon is your mother’s last name.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You told me that you knew Mrs. Hunt from childhood. You grew up near her and she became a surrogate grandparent. Looked after you and Alicia?”
“We’ve always been close. Mrs. Hunt’s youngest daughter was a few years older than me but we were friends and I played on the dairy farm.”
“And then you grew up. No more innocent halcyon days. Got a real job. But Alicia can’t get her act together. Has no fatherly influence. She starts sleeping with guys for money and you can’t make her stop and her mother can’t make her stop and Mrs. Hunt can’t make her stop.”
“Alicia’s boyfriend truly doesn’t care, as long as she makes enough to keep cable television.” She didn’t speak with anger or frustration but rather with a resigned exhaustion. I’d heard that tone before, from families exasperated with loved ones. It was a lonely sound.
I continued, “Let me guess about the rest. One day you discover Alicia works the trailer parks owned by Calvin Summers. And that she isn’t paid by the customers but rather by someone in charge. And you assume that someone is the owner.”
“Of course. The bastard is into everything, from what I can tell.”
“And you found yourself in a serendipitous situation. Because your sister’s pimp, let’s call him, is Calvin Summers — who is the father of your employer, and he’s in this office consistently and he’d accidentally sent an email disclosing his illegal tax evasion.”
Natasha had begun to cry. The muscles around her mouth quivered and her eyes reddened and moistened. Her breaths came in gasps. She looked tiny, as though her physical dimensions had shrunk.
“You’re going to be okay, Natasha. I promise. I need to get the facts straight first. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, though she didn’t believe me. She wiped at her nose with her sleeve.
“You examined the Calvin Summers financial email and spotted the tax evasion.”
“It’s my job to look through emails.” She shrugged. “Of course I found it.”
“And armed with this ammunition you spotted a possible salvation for your sister. You could put her pimp into jail. So you contacted a commonwealth attorney who put you in touch with Bill Osborne, a federal prosecutor, and you gave him the evidence. Right?”
“It didn’t work. Mr. Summers went to jail and Alicia kept whoring herself.”
“That’s because you assumed Calvin was her pimp. But he’s not. In fact, I don’t think Calvin knows a thing about the prostitution.”
Her face was blank. “What.”
“Calvin Summers is very hands-off. He gives his underlings space to operate because he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. Within this margin, Wayne Cross initiated the prostitution side business. He sees himself as an up-and-comer, skimming off Calvin’s marijuana plants and his moonshine stills, and he hired prostitutes without consulting his employer.”
“I didn’t know any of that.”
“I know. I’m fitting the puzzle pieces together out loud for both our benefits,” I said. “Point is, you sent the wrong man to jail. Even though Calvin deserved to be there.”
“So what happens now? Mr. Summers will kill me. You’re not going to tell him?”
“I have a responsibility to my client. I will do what I was hired to do and I will tell him you’re the informant,” I said. “And you need to be long gone by then.”
“But…” The color in her face had gone past white. Now she looked gray. Or purple. Or green. All of it. “But…this is my whole life…what do…what will…”
“No matter what I do, you need to run. He’ll find you sooner or later. Probably sooner, even without my help. Trust me. You didn’t cover your tracks well enough.”
“Run where?”
“Does Calvin keep any cash here? Perhaps inside the safe in Ronnie’s office?”
A pause. Her hands stopped fidgeting with her purse. “He does.”
“Do you know the combination?”
“I do. Ms. Summers gave it to me just last month.”
“Steal it. All of it. Get in your car and go. Pick up Alicia and get out of here and don’t stop until you get to the Florida Keys. Or to Coronado Beach in San Diego.”
She was holding her breath. “And do what?”
“You and Alicia get a place to stay and you both wait tables at a restaurant on the beach. You enroll in college and become a paralegal. Should be easy for you after this job. Just an idea.”
“Wow.” She drew a shuddering breath. “Wow. Okay.”
“This is happening fast, I know.”
“He’ll be mad. He’ll come after us,” she said.
“I’m going to give him someone else to be mad at.”
“Who?”
“Me. Or Wayne Cross. Depends on how smart Wayne is. Calvin Summers will be so mad at one of us or maybe both that he’ll forget you. He’ll see you the same way he sees the federal prosecutor — an asshole he can’t do anything about.”
“Will Mr. Summers kill you?”
“Maybe. He might try.”
“You’ll do all this? For me?”
“For you and Alicia, yes. And for myself too. If it makes sense, I need to do right by me. I voluntarily stepped into this mess.”
Natasha rose. Took a moment to steady herself. She went into Ronnie’s office and I heard the heavy machinery of her safe followed by a dull thud. She returned, her purse overflowing with green.
“You sure this is a good idea?” she asked.
“It’s the only idea. Or at least the only one I can think of on short notice. I think Wayne’ll be busted by the Franklin County sheriff soon and you need to be long gone by then.”
“So…I just…go?”
“Withdraw all the cash from your accounts. Pack as much as your car will hold. Go get Alicia. Don’t tell her where you’re going. Stuff your trunk with her things, if she has any. Fill your tank with gas. Don’t stop until you’re in North Carolina, and then only for coffee and gas. Don’t use your cards. Don’t tell your mom where you’re going. She can move out with you once you’re settled.”
“I can do that.”
“I know. You’re the strong one in the family. And it’s about to pay off.”
“You can tell I’m the strong one?”
“That’s obvious. Your sister thinks so too. But remember, you can’t make people change. Alicia won’t suddenly heal. We can only love people as best we can,” I said.
“And hope.”
“And pray.”
“I see why Ms. Summers likes you so much,” she said.
Yowza.
Was I a lesser mortal I’d have grown ten-feet tall. Ronnie liked me so much. But I stayed calm. “Well. Yeah.”
She took a deep breath and said again, “I can do this.”
“Bill Osborne is outside in his car. He approves of the plan. He wants a few words before you go and he’s going to follow you until you’re at the Virginia border, even if it takes a
ll night. I don’t think he trusts me.”
She bent and kissed me on the cheek. A long kiss. And then another one, softer, on my temple.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome. Before you go, I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
* * *
I sat on Ronnie’s couch for thirty minutes in the semi-dark. Thinking about Natasha and Ronnie and about Calvin Summers. I enjoyed the smell of her office. Because I enjoyed everything about her.
I was tempted to go through her personal things and see if she wrote my name in hearts over and over, but I decided against it. I was a professional after all.
Kristin Payne texted me.
>> hey stranger
>> dinner tonight?
>> following by second base at my place
>> lol
I texted back.
Can’t tonight.
Dinner soon.
Free later this week?
Then I called Ronnie.
She answered on the second ring. “Hello Mackenzie.”
“Hello Ronnie.”
“Do I have a good phone voice? I can speak huskier, if it means you’ll call more often.”
I said, “Are you coming to your office tomorrow?”
“I am. Will you be there? If so I might wear a robe only.”
I stayed quiet a long time. So did she. I even liked how silence sounded if it was her making it.
She said, “Mackenzie?”
“Yes Ronnie.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“You.”
“What about me.”
I said, “That I’m lonely. But when I talk with you it’s not so bad.”
Another long hush.
When she finally spoke it began with a shudder. The flirt was gone, replaced with raw emotion. “I feel it too. I think about you. All day.”
“Cancel your appointments tomorrow morning. Don’t come in until after lunch.”
“Why?”
“I need your office early.”
“Mackenzie,” she said. “You’re making me nervous. Can I trust you?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good. I won’t let you down.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll arrive at one.”
“I’ll be here. And I’ll explain.”
“Will you be wearing a robe only?”
