Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6)

by James W. Hall

  Across from the Casa Marina, Thorn rolled his chair into the shade of a royal palm, and watched a series of taxis and Mercedeses and BMWs come and go, noting each of the walkers, the runners, the early morning golfers heading out for their play. Not a single Echeverria among them.

  For the third time that morning he reached into the pocket of his blue work shirt and drew out the snapshot he'd found in the desk drawer of his room. A handsome blond woman was squatting beside an eight-or nine-year-old girl who looked very much like the woman's daughter, both of them laughing wildly as a silvery wave crested above them, about to crash onto their backs. The woman was wearing a black one-piece and her daughter was in a polka-dot skirted two-piece. Blond pigtails on the girl, a cute nose, a splash of freckles across her forehead. Mother with beautifully muscled legs.

  Thorn had decided it was Greta Masterson, the woman who'd preceded him in that dark narrow room at the Eaton Street clinic. The woman who Brad Madison had sent to get the goods on Bean, the same woman Brad had now lost contact with. Thorn promised Brad he would sniff around among the other patients in as quiet a way as he could to see if any of them knew what had become of the woman. He'd sworn to be extremely careful, agreed to relay everything he learned, no matter how trivial it might seem, vowed not to freelance this in any way.

  Brad and he had shaken hands on the bargain. Thorn, suddenly a deputized DEA agent. But already he'd violated his oath. He'd found the photograph of the woman he believed to be Greta, and he'd told no one about it, nor did he intend to. He'd rolled out of the clinic this morning as soon as he'd received his steroid injection from the morning nurse, without questioning a single other patient. And now here he was, positioned outside the Casa Marina, determined to freelance the hell out of the situation.

  For the next half hour he watched the hotel and took occasional peeks at the photograph. There was something haunting about the beach scene that kept bringing his eyes back. The woman was beautiful, but that was only part of it. She had the delicately balanced features and immaculate skin Thorn associated with Alpine milkmaids. All the elegant angles of her face were measured out with the classic precision of a Swiss watch. But there was something complicated about her exuberance in the shadow of the crashing wave, her arm locked securely around the shoulders of her child, as if she were trying to show the young girl how to defy the ocean's strength without losing sight of its danger.

  Brad had told him almost nothing personal about Greta Masterson, but what he saw in that photograph he liked a great deal. This was a woman for whom surrender was not an option. And it struck him now, that most likely she was also a woman with sufficient foresight not to have left behind such a snapshot unless her departure was sudden and unforeseen.

  "Cute, huh?"

  Thorn jerked to his right and there was Ginny, the young blond woman from the clinic. She was wearing gray leggings, purple running shorts, a halter top with a Nike logo, and a black baseball cap.

  "That's Greta Masterson," she said. "But I guess you knew that already."

  "I found it in my room."

  "Yeah, that was Greta's room. Till she left."

  Ginny smiled at him, and repositioned her wheelchair so she was in the sunlight. A man walking a rottweiler down the sidewalk had to step into the street to get around them. He looked away as if he expected them to try to hit him up for a dollar.

  "I'm taking my morning roll. You too?"

  Thorn nodded.

  "Want to learn how to do a wheelie?" Ginny said. "It's harder than it looks. Helps build up your arms."

  She tipped herself backward, got her footplates up in the air, and held the wheelchair steady with tiny movements of her push rim.

  "Maybe later," Thorn said. "At the moment I got my hands full just rolling along, point A to point B."

  "What're you doing out here?"

  "Taking a breather."

  "Waiting for somebody?"

  "Just a breather," Thorn said.

  "Bet you're waiting for your contact."

  Thorn looked at her.

  "Contact," she said. "As in pharmaceuticals."

  "No," he said. "I'm not waiting for my contact."

  "I got a pretty good connection myself, if you're interested. Just grass, but it's good shit. Hydroponic stuff. I can give you a joint, see if you're interested."

  "My drug days are long gone."

  "Don't be so sure," she said. "Drugs are the name of the game around here."

  Wearing blue jeans and a white button-down shirt, Echeverria came striding out the double front doors of the hotel and walked briskly down the driveway. Thorn swung his chair out of Echeverria's line of sight, and backpedaled behind the shrub.

  "Hey," Ginny said. "Where you going?"

  Thorn waited till the big man turned the corner and started down a side street, then he rolled forward and out across the broad avenue. Ginny tagged along.

  "I lied when I said I was out for my morning stroll. Actually, I been following you since you left the clinic. You interest me, Thorn. You're not like those other guys."

  There was no ramp on the opposite sidewalk, so Thorn stayed on the edge of the street, a few inches out of the gutter.

  "Truth is," she said, "I got a thing about older guys."

  "I'm not interested, Ginny. Drugs, romance, any of it."

  "What I find is, older guys take their time. They're more appreciative. They don't have so much to prove. Of course, I like younger guys too. They have their virtues. And then there are guys my own age, they aren't all that bad either. In general, I guess you could say I just like guys."

  Echeverria turned the next corner and headed toward Louie's Backyard and the Reach, Waddell Avenue, a shady street that was rank with mildew and expensive garbage.

  "You gay, Thorn?"

  "No."

  "Whew," she said. "In this town, that makes you eligible for minority status. You can park in the special zones. But then, you can park there anyway, what with the fucking wheelchair, right?"

  Losing sight of Echeverria around the next corner, Thorn wheeled himself faster. Ginny stayed with him.

  "So you're not a vet, huh?"

  "No."

  "You got the phantom pain?"

  "No."

  "Wow, a lucky guy."

  Echeverria halted at the corner of South Street and Vernon. He stood for a moment staring down South. A moment or two later a red Cadillac swung to the curb and Echeverria got inside. Unless there was a candy-apple red hearse dealership in Key West, it was the same car he and Bean had been driving in the day before.

  "That was nice, what you did yesterday."

  "Forget it."

  "I bet that's the kind of guy you are. Find a bird with a broken wing, you stop what you're doing, take it somewhere to get it fixed. I bet you're like that, huh?"

  "Not usually."

  "No, really. It was nice. Above and beyond the call. Hardy can be one mean son of a bitch. If Pepper hadn't stepped in, man, I wouldn't want to see the mess you two would've made. I don't care what kind of kung fu you know. Hardy's got some heavy-duty hours in that chair, and he knows how to fight. I've seen him take on two guys at once, two healthy guys. Beat the ever-loving fecal matter out of them."

  A shirtless guy on a rickety red bike was coming down Vernon. Big blue milk crate fastened onto the back of the bike, a white terrier riding inside it. Thorn rolled forward down the incline and into the street and the guy on the bike steered wide around him.

  "I need a ride," Thorn called out to the guy. "It's an emergency." He had long reddish hair and a scraggly Chinese mystic's beard that looked like he'd been working on it for years. He brought the bike to a squeaking stop a few feet away and looked back. Thorn rolled over to him.

  "What kind of emergency?"

  "Catch up to that car, the red hearse."

  "What car?"

  "Just go," Thorn said. "Take this right, then the first left. Come on, we're losing him."

  He gripped the blue basket
. And the guy shook his head and made a little sigh like he'd been waylaid like this a few times before—price you paid for living in paradise. He stood up on the pedals and muscled the bike forward. Skinny guy, looked like he might be surviving on one grain of rice a day. As they picked up speed, the white terrier stared at Thorn's fingers curled over his blue basket. The bike weaving a little from the strain of pulling the wheelchair.

  "Left here," Thorn said. "Left, left."

  The guy wheeled the bike onto Simonton. He was breathing hard, still standing up on the pedals. The wheelchair bumped over a couple of smallish potholes and Thorn nearly lost his grip.

  "We're losing him," Thorn said. "Come on, man, pump. You can do it."

  The terrier was licking Thorn's fingers, brown bulging eyes fastened to Thorn's as if maybe he liked the way Thorn tasted so much, he was toying with the idea of switching masters.

  Thorn saw the hearse turn left a half dozen blocks ahead.

  "Faster, man, faster."

  The guy was working now, sweat running down his bare back. The dog rested his chin on Thorn's knuckles. Thorn didn't see it coming and neither did the guy: a big limb in the street, a couple of feet long, probably fell off somebody's lawn service truck. The front wheel hit it and the bike veered hard to the left into an oncoming station wagon. The skinny guy sailed right, tucking and rolling onto the grass beside the sidewalk, and Thorn kept on going straight for about ten feet, tilting up on one wheel, then slamming back down before he brought the chair to a halt.

  On the roof of the station wagon, the terrier was barking furiously at the young girl in a white uniform who stood beside her door looking at Thorn, at the bicycle, and at the bearded guy in the grass.

  Thorn stared down Southard, the hearse long gone. If he was going to tail Echeverria, he was going to have to get a turbocharger for his goddamn chair. He rolled over to the guy in the grass and asked him if he was okay, and the guy mumbled that he was fine, Jimmy crack corn, fine and dandy. He didn't seem to be bleeding, no bones poking through, so Thorn left him there and rolled back into the street.

  "Lost him, huh? The guy you were shadowing."

  Ginny rolled up next to him. Only took her half a minute to catch up. Not even out of breath.

  Thorn sighed.

  "Yeah," he said. "I lost him."

  "With a little practice, you can crank it along fast enough, just about stay up with cars. I'll show you some tricks if you want. How to get maximum horsepower out of these things." She patted the side of her chair. "Like most things, it's all technique."

  He rolled ahead a few feet, then stopped. The woman in the station wagon was trying to get the terrier off her roof, but it was dodging away from her.

  "You're not the friendliest guy I ever met," Ginny said. "Which is fine. I've always had a special fondness for unfriendly guys."

  Thorn rolled ahead a few more yards and stopped in the shade of a poinciana. He swiveled around to face Ginny.

  "What do you know about Greta Masterson?"

  Ginny made a scornful smile.

  "Man, you bozos. You're all tuned to the same damn channel, aren't you? Greta, Greta, Greta. Big breasts, Christ, all they are is some extra fat cells gooped together in the same sack of flesh, but you guys don't care. You can't get enough of that breast shit."

  Ginny wasn't more than twenty-five. Monica's age. But she had the shadows and puffiness around the eyes of someone twice that. Living hard, not counting her fat grams anymore. Not counting much of anything.

  "I'm not interested in her breasts. I was wondering why she left the clinic."

  "Who knows?" Ginny cranked herself around Thorn and headed slowly up Southard. Thorn caught her at the corner.

  "Did she have the phantom pain?"

  "All of us do," Ginny said. "It's required for membership in our happy little club."

  An empty Old Town Trolley passed by, heading toward Duval to start its daily tourist rounds. Shuffling toward them a barefoot man in cutoff jeans and a ragged T-shirt grinned and halted briefly, bleary eyes loose in their sockets. He seemed to be ready to ask them for a handout, but he took a second look at Ginny and headed off. The long-haired bicyclist retrieved his terrier from the roof of the car, picked up his bike, and pedaled off.

  "Did you know Bean Wilson suffers from phantom pain too?"

  "Doesn't surprise me," she said.

  "Has he done you any good, eased your pain at all?"

  "Not a fucking bit. My legs burn twenty-four hours a day. Never quit."

  "So whatever Bean's doing doesn't work."

  "Not yet, but hey, the guy's trying. That's a shitload more than I can say for the other twelve doctors I had. Those worthless assholes told me it was all in my head."

  "And Greta? Was hers particularly bad?"

  "Chronics don't talk about the pain. It's there, you can see it in somebody's face if you know what to look for, but we don't talk about it."

  "You're all vets, you all have phantom limb pain. There anything else?"

  "Else what?"

  "Anything else you all have in common?"

  "Besides all of us being cripples, you mean?"

  Thorn nodded.

  "Well, we're all fans of Jack Daniel's, Robert Mitchum, and Dire Straits. That's about it, far as I know."

  Ginny watched a black German shepherd work his way up the block, lifting his leg at every tree. The dog eyed the guy in cutoffs on the opposite sidewalk, sizing him up as a breakfast possibility. The guy noticed and hurried on.

  "Oh, yeah, and we're all castaways," she said. "If that's what you mean."

  "Castaways?"

  For the first time since he'd met her, the sneer disappeared from Ginny's face.

  "Loners, outcasts, however you want to put it. No friends, no family. Bunch of sad fucking lepers. Two rungs down from the hoboes. No phone calls, nobody gets any mail, nothing. Only friends we got are right there on Eaton Street. One of us were to die, you could toss the carcass in the nearest Dumpster, nobody in the world would care."

  "You don't have a mother, a father?"

  "People like me and Hardy, we died a long time ago. Only people know we exist is the other losers in the clinic. And they're so shitfaced, they can't remember my name half the time." Thorn started forward, but Ginny blocked his way.

  "So what's this bullshit about? Who the hell are you?"

  "My name is Thorn."

  "What's with the questions?"

  "I'm trying to figure things out," he said. "Why I'm here. Why I was invited to the party."

  She snorted.

  "You're some kind of innocent, aren't you?"

  "First time anyone's called me that."

  "You don't know what's going on around the clinic?"

  "I've been there a day. I know what I've seen so far."

  She shook her head and started back down Southard.

  Thorn caught up, grabbed hold of her chair and stopped her.

  "What is it, Ginny? What do you want to tell me?"

  She kept her face away from him.

  "You'll figure it out. Just stick around."

  "Talk to me, Ginny."

  "It's not my place. I don't even know who the hell you are. You might not even be paralyzed, for all I know. Those legs you got, they look fine to me."

  "Try me," he said.

  Ginny looked at him and grinned. She drew close. Peered up and down the empty street. Then she reached out, slid her hand up the bottom edge of his shorts, and took a pinch of the hairs on his inner thigh and twisted. She pulled her hand out, held up the cluster of blond hairs. A dab of blood on the roots.

  "Satisfied?"

  "You could just be good at not flinching."

  "What do I have to do, cut off a toe?"

  She took another look down the street and reached her hand up the leg of his shorts again. Thorn looked down at his indifferent crotch as her hand groped. She drew herself closer and kept her hand inside his shorts for half a minute. Enjoying herself.
/>   "Now, there's a fucking shame," she said as she pulled her hand out. "Goddamn fucking shame."

  "You're telling me."

  She rolled back from him.

  "Do I pass?"

  She swiveled her chair around, took a careful look at Thorn. "You're not a cop?"

  "Not now, never have been."

  She sighed and shook her head. The sun was up now, coming over the oaks along Southard, starting its slow burn. Sky still pure blue, weeks and weeks of perfect days that anywhere else in the world would be called a drought. But in South Florida the tourist board had outlawed such terms.

  A couple of loud-talking female joggers passed by. Across the street an old man was walking his tiny black poodle. Ginny gazed up the street at a bakery truck double-parked outside a small motel restaurant.

  "What's going on, Ginny? Talk to me."

  "We're the chimps," she said.

  "What?"

  "The chimps. The experimental subjects."

  Thorn said nothing.

  "You ever realize the big drug companies do some of their testing in third world countries?"

  "No, I hadn't heard that."

  "Apparently, what's happened, it's gotten too complicated and too damn expensive to go through all the bullshit rigmarole to get approval in the U.S., so some of the pharmaceutical companies go down to Ecuador, Colombia, into the barrio, they find people with whatever illness they're working on, and they give them the latest drug. They can rationalize it by saying this is the only way these poor people would ever get drugs of this type, but the assholes aren't down there to do charity work. They want to know the side effects, so they find a group of people nobody gives a shit about.

  "Way the laws are, it's easier to get permission from the Ecuadorian government to run drug trials on its citizens than it is to get permission in the U.S. to use goddamn chimps, so they go down there to do their trials. It's legal. Just one country using another country as its own special primates. No big deal. And looking at it from the sick people's point of view, it's okay too. Is it better to take the risk of some side effect to get a pill that maybe cures your illness, than just to stay sick the rest of your goddamn life?"