Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  I let the farce play out. My final card turned out to be a useless four. Everyone believed I’d clinched the hand when I turned over my full house, and I waited through the groans for Rigo to turn over his cards. Queens over nines. Not that I had to look.

  “Close hand,” Gillespie said.

  Rigo reached out and plucked the vial of Trumorpha from the pot. He read the label, ignoring the people clapping him on the back in congratulations.

  He met my eyes.

  “Fortune smiles,” I said.

  Leaving his winnings behind, Rigo stepped into the surge of people, as smoothly as a dolphin diving into an oncoming wave.

  Nineteen

  Rigoberto had recognized the vial of oxymorphone immediately. And had wanted the vial badly enough to risk cheating in front of a crowd of his fellow Rangers. That required ice in the bloodstream. Or desperation.

  Rigo was buddies with Zeke Caton. Zeke had been shadowing their captain, Fain, at the saloon. None of them were large enough to be the guy who had attacked me at Erle’s shop. That made four men I could connect with one another. Rigo might be headed to meet them now. If I could catch them together it would at least confirm they were all linked to the drugs. But Rigo would be watching to see if I followed.

  Zeke said he was staying at the inn. I’d try there first after giving Rigoberto, sharpshooter and card cheat, a head start.

  “What’s going on?” Dez said, her interest in Rigo’s hasty exit apparently overcoming her distaste for me.

  “I owe you an apology,” I said, “but it’ll have to be later.” I pointed at the pile of poker chips and bills in the center of the table. “He’s donating this to the cause.”

  “Wait,” she said as I started toward the front door after Rigo. Soft enough for the milling crowd not to hear. “Lester is out there.”

  “Waiting for me?”

  “Maybe. He usually has friends with him when he’s drunk.”

  After a day of fate stomping on my toes, I was in a perfect mood for a scrap with the town bully. But I had more important things to do.

  “Thanks,” I told Dez, and changed course for the back of the bar.

  Now, how did Dez know Lester Beacham was gunning for me? She hadn’t been around when Lester had braced me on the street. Small town, yet again. Lester had probably been telling anybody within earshot he was going to kick my ass.

  The saloon let out onto a large patio, where a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke hovered like dark thoughts around the heads of the people seated at iron tables. Past the patio was a stumpy fence made of cedar slats. The fence separated the saloon from a service alley running behind the shops on Main Street. I stepped through the fence’s gate and walked north, toward the inn.

  I was nearing the end of the lonely service road when a man wearing a fisherman’s cap stepped into view, silhouetted against the light coming from the street beyond. Then a second figure, larger than the first.

  “Hello, asshole.” Lester, chuckling with delight.

  He carried an aluminum baseball bat. I turned, only to see another man twenty yards down the alley behind me, his own bat held with exaggerated casualness in gloved hands. He must have been hiding in some alcove, watching for me to leave the saloon.

  “Near got tired of waiting for you,” said Lester, “but patience is a fuckin’ virtue, ain’t it?”

  They closed in. I turned, preparing to time my dash at the man with the gloves behind me. Dodge the bat, put his head through the pavement, and run. That was my best and only option.

  “Hey,” called a voice from the street. All of us turned.

  It was John Fain, flanked by Zeke Caton and Rigoberto. They marched into the alley. Zeke and Fain faced off with Lester and the guy wearing the fisherman’s hat. Rigo came to stand next to me. He stared placidly at the man with the gloves.

  And behind Lester, a last member of Fain’s crew appeared at the corner of the building, backlit by the streetlamps beyond. I didn’t need a closer view to know this was the brute who’d nearly torn my head off the night before at Erle’s gun shop. A handspan over six feet tall, as wide as Lester, and a hell of a lot more imposing.

  “Fuck off,” Fain said to Lester.

  “This ain’t your business,” said Lester, sounding unconvinced himself.

  “Daryll,” Fain said. The huge man took one short step and clubbed Lester’s cap-wearing buddy on the back of the head with his fist. The cap flew off and the man went down.

  Fain opened the left side of his leather sport coat, to show Lester the butt of a gun. “It can get worse.”

  The man with the gloves faded rapidly away down the service alley. Lester helped his buddy stand and totter away, sparing a second to glare balefully at me. They left the fisherman’s cap where it lay.

  Wolves frightening jackals away from the kill. Which was me.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Now we talk about this.” Fain took the vial of Trumo from his chest pocket. “But not here.”

  “I like here just fine.”

  I’d gone from being outflanked to outgunned. Rigoberto edged a little into my blind spot and I turned to keep him in sight. He would be harder to take than the guy with the gloves if I had to stick with Plan A, running for it. I steeled myself.

  “Take it easy,” Fain drawled. “There’s a better place. Public enough to suit everybody, without us jawing out in the open. Come on.”

  He walked away, and Rigo broke off to join him, along with Zeke. Big Daryll stayed where he was. After a moment, I walked past him. The laces of his boat-sized right sneaker were loose. Extra room for his bandaged toes, I guessed. As I followed Fain and the others, Daryll limped carefully toward a GMC Yukon parked at the curb.

  Our little group walked up Main Street, through the scattered knots of Rangers still enjoying the night, either on their way to another party or simply sitting on the curb. I could have made a break for it at any time. None of Fain’s team seemed concerned that I would flee, which ratcheted my curiosity about them even higher.

  Two blocks past the western façades, Fain pointed to a building made of asymmetrical bricks of gray stone, like a short castle wall. Carved into the stone above the archway were the letters b.p.o.e. no. 1891.

  “An Elks lodge?” I said.

  “It was once. Now it’s a kind of meeting house for the town selectmen. Or a senior center. Opinions vary.”

  “And it’s got a bar,” said Zeke.

  The door to the lodge had been propped open. Two old men in thick parkas and winter hats wandered out, greeting another duffer as they left.

  Fain led us inside, into a bright, cheery room large and tall enough to play half-court basketball. Past an entryway with hooks for coats, the open floor had been divided by folding screens into seating areas, with donated lounge chairs and sofas arranged in rough circles. Well-worn Oriental rugs give a little padding to the parquet floor. A couple of the circles were occupied by older townspeople, mostly wives and husbands.

  A pyramid of stacked logs burned in the oversized fireplace, emitting enough warmth to feel from the entrance. The flames reflected softly in the dented birchwood panels that covered the walls. The lodge might have been exactly the same, if a little less ragged, back when the locals were jawing about breaking news on Watergate.

  “Safe enough for you?” Fain said, removing his coat. He motioned for me to join him at the fire, as Rigo ambled to a short serving bar that was stocked with well drinks and bottled beer in a glass-fronted refrigerator. The lodge apparently ran on the honor system; Rigo dropped two twenties into a goldfish bowl on the bar.

  Zeke Caton dropped onto a couch and unzipped his yellow jacket. Fain picked up a poker, jabbing at the logs to let some air circulate between them. The crackle of the fire would mask our conversation well enough. If any of the locals were bothered by visitors horning in on their club, they held their tongues.

  Fain held up the vial of Trumo. “You tossed the morphine into the game to get a rea
ction. So here we are. Where’d you find it?”

  I didn’t answer. The logs in the fireplace popped and hissed as sap boiled over. Fain jabbed again at the blaze.

  “We searched all through the gun shop,” he said. “Sharples’s house, too. Nothing there but a lifetime of crappy choices. But you located Erle’s hiding place in less than a day. Which either means you’re in business with Erle Sharples yourself, or you’re very good at finding things.”

  Rigo brought an open bottle of Johnnie Walker Red from the bar and set it down on the mantle, along with a handful of shot glasses.

  Fain poured about two fingers of scotch into the glass with his free hand. “Here’s what I think. Your friend, Leo Pak? The Rally got him his job at the gun shop last week. Pak called you in Seattle when he got nailed. So I’m betting you never heard of Erle before a couple of days ago. Which leads me back to how in the hell you found that Trumorpha so damn fast.”

  I poured myself a drink. The scotch tasted pretty good, combined with the hint of smoke from the fire.

  “I ran your name past a friend of mine,” Fain said. “Your service record is . . . impressive. More than one officer specifically requested that you be assigned back to their unit when you redeployed. They wanted Donovan Shaw around when shit went down. That’s faith.”

  “The thing about having a face full of Bioglass,” I said. “It’s hard to blush.”

  “I’m saying I want you on our side enough to trust you with sensitive intel, Shaw. I need to know you’re worth that trust.”

  In other words, don’t tell the cops about the drugs, and we can negotiate.

  “I’ll go along if it helps Leo,” I said.

  Fain nodded. “That’s fair. Let’s start here: I know you found one red box with one hundred and forty-four vials of Trumorpha narcotics. Erle bought that box for us. To make sure that the sellers had exactly what we were looking for.” He waved a hand. “We aren’t drug pushers. Neither was Erle. But he was our middleman.”

  “In the middle of what?” I said.

  “That box you found was one of two dozen stolen,” said Fain. “Recalled stock of injectable oxymorphone pulled from hospitals across the nation. The manufacturers cut their losses before their product created more negative headlines about accidental addicts. The recalled stock was sent to a lab to verify the contents before being destroyed, one of their FDA regulations. But the lab got ripped off. We’re trying to recover the drugs. Before they hit the streets, and preferably before word gets out that they’re gone.”

  I didn’t have to say anything for Fain to read my disbelief.

  “The theft was an inside job,” he continued. “Somebody knew about the stock of drugs, sitting in a closet until the lab got around to testing it, and they fed the information to a partner. What makes this unusual is that the inside man had a change of heart afterward. Visions of ODs and drug babies plaguing his conscience. He told his boss. The company hired us. Here’s a copy of their original shipping record for that specific box.”

  Fain took a white piece of paper from his coat pocket and unfolded it to show me. Whatever pharma logo or title had been at the top had been blacked out on the copy, along with two or three lines that might have been the address or receiver’s name. The readable portions of the page noted the oxymorphone dosages and brand name and quantity of vials contained within one box.

  “You understand why I won’t reveal the name of our client,” Fain said.

  The shipping record wasn’t what I would call proof. It could be a fake, or even stolen along with the red box of Trumo. Still, if Fain was telling me the truth and Big Pharma truly was hiring private military, I wondered if the company had even bothered to notify the cops.

  “Thanks to the inside man, we know who stole the drugs,” Fain said. “We offered to buy them back, at better than street value. Erle Sharples was our front man. He bought that specific box on our orders. A down payment. Proof that they had the stuff, and we showed that we were willing to pay.”

  “Why use Erle at all?” I said.

  For the first time, Fain’s face was tentative.

  “Because the thieves are a bunch of fucking Nazis,” said Zeke.

  “A white nationalist group,” Fain said, recovering. “Not Aryan Brotherhood but bad enough.”

  Jesus. No wonder the pharma company wanted it hushed up. The media would eat them alive.

  And dollars to donuts I could guess which of the hate groups Fain was talking about. The same First Riders who had plagued Mercy River before Macomber had come along.

  “There’s no way that one of our team could cut a deal with the skinheads,” Fain said.

  “Especially me,” Rigoberto murmured.

  “They’d make us for law, or close enough. Erle was . . . not a supremacist like them. But he was known. They’d at least listen to the offer.”

  “What do you mean, Erle was known?” I said.

  “This town used to have a problem with the white power types.”

  Zeke chuckled. “Not anymore, they don’t.”

  Fain ignored him. “A bunch of the skinheads liked to play soldier and go shooting in the hills. Erle didn’t take sides. He’d sell them whatever they could pay for, and maybe not worry about the paperwork.”

  It jibed. And Fain being up front about the Riders gave his story a little more credibility.

  “What was the deal?” I said.

  Fain took a slug of his scotch. “Our first priority was making sure the gang still had the drugs. If they’d already found a buyer, or started distribution themselves, we were out of luck. Erle offered the skinheads ten grand for one box. If the box contained the real goods, we’d pay the same price for the rest of the stock.”

  Zeke agreed. “That’s why I went to the gun shop Wednesday morning. Erle told us he had acquired the box. But as I’m walking by, there’s the constable and old Henry slinging bullshit to each other. I can’t shake Henry from tagging along with me to the shop. We found Erle and his guts on the floor.”

  So Fain and his team were suddenly left without the first box of Trumorpha, or their middleman.

  As if he were thinking the same thing, Zeke’s lip curled. He looked even more like a fox when he snarled. “Now we’re up shit creek. If the Nazi fuckers killed Erle, it was because they smelled a rat. Even if they didn’t kill Erle, we don’t have a backup for him. They’re probably hunting for another buyer already.”

  “We have to find the man Erle was in contact with. Quickly,” said Fain. “And you, Shaw, have a knack for finding things.”

  “When I want to.”

  “What if I could give you solid evidence that Leo Pak didn’t kill Erle? Would that be enough incentive?”

  I stared at Fain. What could he be holding? I had a moment to think about the implications of his offer, as Daryll limped ponderously through the door of the lodge. He attracted attention. In addition to his size, his mop of russet hair was striped with black dye, and he wore two earrings in his left ear. His nose had been squashed and knocked crooked by old untended breaks. To the senior citizens of Mercy River, he might as well be a space alien.

  Zeke made room on the couch and Daryll eased himself down.

  “That was you,” Daryll said, glaring at me, “last night at the gun store, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You broke my toes, man.”

  “I could have stabbed your neck instead.”

  He grunted, still not mollified. Ingrate.

  “Sorry for that,” Fain said to me. “We figured anyone breaking into Erle’s must be with the skinhead gang.”

  “Do you know who killed Erle?” I said.

  Fain shook his head. “No details without something in return. I need to find the guy who sold the drugs to Erle.”

  “Then what? One of you will suddenly claim to have seen Leo across town when Erle died?” Perjury wasn’t going to help our case. “Forget it.”

  “I don’t mean another witness. Zeke being interviewed by t
he cops has already put us closer to this whole mess than I like.” Fain frowned past me at Zeke. “No. I’m offering you physical evidence pointing to a different killer. Reasonable doubt, right in your hands.”

  “And if I don’t play, you’ll let Leo burn.”

  Fain crossed his arms and leaned back against the black bricks of the fireplace. “Desperate times, Shaw.”

  I thought about it. The story about the pharma company hiring them could be pure fiction. Fain’s team might be aiming to score the Trumo for themselves. And I wondered how they knew Erle’s shady background, to use him as their go-between. What other deals had they made, before this problem had come along?

  But if Fain’s story was all horseshit, it was awfully ornate horseshit. I’d been hunting for someone with motive to murder Erle. If Fain and his men had been using Erle Sharples as a pawn to reacquire the drugs, then maybe all of us were trying to find the same person. Fain believed I could be his bloodhound to find Erle’s contact. There was no reason to talk him out of it.

  I pointed to Fain. “The man Erle was dealing with, the one who stole the drugs in the first place. The lab’s inside man must have known his name.”

  “You’ll take the job?”

  “We’re still talking.”

  “Jaeger. That’s the name that the inside man knew him by. The leader of the skinhead group. Jaeger might be a gang handle. No first name, no address.”

  “Did the inside man meet Jaeger in person?”

  “Fifty years old,” Fain answered immediately. “Medium size, medium build. With a mustache. Not much to go on, I know. And scary. That was the main thing. The pharma guy said Jaeger was scary.”

  Daryll snorted at that.

  I stood up. “I’ll find him. The box of Trumo stays with me until Leo’s free. If this is a scam, you’ll have bigger problems than some missing dope.”

  Zeke grinned in amusement. Fain returned my look without blinking. Then he handed me a business card with a phone number written on it.

  “And if you pull any tricks,” he said, “if you give us information that doesn’t lead anywhere, we’ll have to create some problems for you in return.”