A flash of lightning illuminated the sky and was all the more terrifying for the blackness of the ocean it revealed. His head went under, and the roaring of the ocean seemed to call his name.
The sea spit him up again, and he shook his head, coughing. The side of his face bumped into the life jacket. And he knocked it away as he clawed for it. He swam after it, but it drifted farther away. All strength left him. As another wave lifted him up, he resigned himself to death.
At the crest of the wave, the wind caught the corner of the life jacket and blew it back to him.
He put one arm in, and then the other. He struggled to buckle the straps. He whimpered in rage and impotence, for he could not scream. One of the straps clicked, and then he had no more to give. He drifted as the waves turned to mountains, the wind to water, and the full fury of the hurricane hammered into the Florida coast, taking him with it.
EIGHT
Then Hobbs was on the beach. The sun was shining and he knew he was alive because he was in a lot of pain. He turned his head and watched a car go by on the other side of some scrubby dunes.
Somehow he stood. His need for water overwhelmed his need for rest. He half crawled across the dunes and managed to stand in the middle of the road. Just another piece of flotsam scattered across the tarmac. He started walking. A National Guard truck, a big deuce and a half, pulled up alongside him. One of the guardsmen called down to him from the cab, “You a looter?”
“No,” said Hobbs, because it was the truth. He’d tried. But he hadn’t looted a damn thing.
They lifted him into the back of the truck and he passed out. When he woke again, he was in a makeshift hospital in Apalachicola. He checked his stomach. It had been stitched up, messily and quickly, but somebody had operated on him. Then he passed out again. Three days later, when he could stand, he stole some clothes and slipped out of the hospital with a bottle of pain pills. An awful lot of money had gone missing, and, hurricane or no, people would start asking some pretty serious questions about a John Doe with a gunshot wound.
He stole a car from an empty house and headed north in a haze. He never would remember the path he’d taken through the twisty back roads and forgotten towns of middle Georgia. He’d just headed north until he hit US 1. Somewhere in there he had robbed a convenience store in a cinder-block building with a Laundromat. It was the middle of the night, and when he leaned on the counter, an evil-faced, chain-smoking woman asked him if he was all right. He leaned in as if he were going to tell her a secret, the reek of fifty years of Pall Malls filling his nose. The he hit her behind the ear with a left hook she never saw coming. She went down, pulling an overfull ashtray on top of her as she went.
He didn’t feel good about it, but he felt worse about the fact that the register only had sixty-seven dollars in it. He thought about getting something to eat, but the smell of cigarettes and the red, dying glow of the jar of pickled eggs next to the cash register caused his gut to do flips. He turned on the pumps and crunched the last of the pills as he pumped the gas.
He must have had some kind of a plan, but on the other side of all that fear and rage and stale, shaky adrenaline, he couldn’t have told you what it was.
He coasted into Charlotte on fumes. Feeling like an old tree that had rotted away from the inside. He eased off I-77 and headed away from the bright lights of the downtown. He pulled into the parking lot of a place with a sign that said, “Chicken and Ribs.” Food, just needed some food.
At first he had thought the gnawing pain in his gut had caused him to sweat through his clothes, but then he realized that he had bled through his bandage and the stolen shirt. Couldn’t go into a restaurant like that. Probably couldn’t hit a drive-through. He tried to think of a way around this, but even as the gears in his brain tried to mesh, his body stepped in and said, enough.
His eyes closed for him.
That was the last thing he remembered until he woke up in the rest home. Wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks, though. Somebody had rolled him for thirty-four dollars and a stolen car with Florida plates. Well, fuck them too.
PART FOUR
GIRL VERSUS BOYS
ONE
Special Agent Barry Leproate worked in the Purgatory field office of the FBI. It was hot in Jacksonville, Florida, but not hot enough to kill you. It was nicer than, say, Buffalo, he supposed, but probably less exciting. Mostly Purgatory involved paperwork. Never ending, always the same. Sometimes there were people to be interviewed, but mostly it was financial records that needed scouring.
A year and a half ago he had gotten to slap cuffs on a suspect while he was trying to shred evidence. He had joked with his boss that he should have gotten hazard pay due to the risk of paper cuts. His boss had almost laughed. The FBI was not known for a sense of humor, but when the work was this dry and boring, you did what you could to get through.
It was all pointless in the way that only the machinations of large bureaucracies can be pointless. Leproate knew there were criminals out there. People stealing and swindling from the American taxpayer on a scale that boggled the imagination. There still had been no prosecutions from the 2008 financial crisis. Leproate didn’t know which bankers were guilty, but he knew some of them were. Maybe all of them were. Maybe it was just too big, too horrifying to uncover? Steal a dollar and it’s a crime. Steal a few trillion and it’s a statistic?
Leproate tried not to think about things like that. But in Purgatory he had a lot of time on his hands.
It hadn’t always been this way. Leproate had once been a rising star, hot shit with a federal badge. But he’d screwed up. And they’d sent him to Purgatory. He tried not to think about that either. In fact, he tried not to think of anything but the top piece of paper on his desk and going home and enjoying the weekend with his wife and two kids.
It was, Leproate imagined, like doing time. You kept your head down and one day they would let you go back to the world. Getting excited about that would just make doing time more agonizing. Don’t hope. Don’t dream. Just do the time.
Most of the time, this strategy worked for him. But his old partner, Dan Tunks, had just gotten reassigned to San Francisco. A beautiful city, a paradise of a place, and all manner of real and interesting cases to work on. Not interstate wire fraud. So every time he looked up, Tunks’s empty desk served as a reminder that escape was possible, but denied to him. And worse, the pile of paperwork on his desk had grown as a result. Same workload, but only one agent until the FBI saw fit to send him a new partner. How long would it be before someone screwed up badly enough to get stuck with this job? It took about two weeks.
His new partner was a woman. Blond, and would have been attractive, except for the rage in her eyes. Tight, angry eyes you wouldn’t be surprised to see behind the bars of a cage. Her name was Wellsley, and even though he didn’t know the particulars, he knew she had screwed up somehow. Maybe worse than he had, if such a thing was possible. She didn’t seem to know she had screwed up. In fact, he could see she thought she had done the right thing. He read her as hell-bent on self-destruction.
Worst of all, she was young. Had she really been out of the academy long enough to screw up that badly? Evidently. Maybe she’d fuck up again and make him look good by comparison. Maybe she’d fuck up again and drag him down with her.
Leproate decided to let her have all the rope he could. He played it cool in the initial meeting. He was a quiet man anyway. He shook her hand. He said it was nice to be working with her, even though he could feel the floor sinking under his feet. The ASAC did most of the talking. He finished up with as much of a pep talk as he could muster: “I’m not going to tell you it’s exciting work, Agent Wellsley—but it’s important, and it needs to be done right.”
When they got back to their desks, Leproate said, “Here we are. Give me a couple of minutes to straighten this out and I’ll take you to lunch.”
Wellsley stood there, bathed in the pale fluorescent light, staring at the gray-green industrial desk,
and becoming well and truly whelmed by the magnitude of paperwork on it.
“Welcome to hell,” she muttered.
“Oh no,” said Barry Leproate, closing a folder, “this is Purgatory.”
When Wellsley didn’t smile, the bottom fell out of Agent Leproate’s sinking feeling.
TWO
A Catholic school upbringing had taught Leproate that nobody stayed in Purgatory forever. So he bided his time and maintained his condition. Every working morning, he got up early (before the heat, but never early enough to beat the humidity) and ran sprints. In his neighborhood of identical houses on identical streets all named for trees that would not grow naturally in Florida, he would sprint one block on, one block off. He would run as fast as he could, putting all the passion and the rage into one explosion of motion, then jog a block and hope he wasn’t having a heart attack.
He never stopped. He rarely walked. Stopping just made it harder not to throw up in the intervals. Not that Leproate would have minded. That was part of the game, but he didn’t want the embarrassment of throwing up in front of a neighbor’s house. Still, sometimes it happened.
Sometimes—when the early morning was still, and the air was cool, and it seemed as if all of life had been put on pause—he thought that he might be able to outrun the past. The shame and stupidity of what he had done. But it never worked. No matter how far or how fast he ran, his memory never changed.
When he got back to the house, Jennifer was cleaning up from breakfast and the daily tornado of getting the boys out the door to the bus stop.
Jennifer said to him, “When are you going to bring your new partner home for dinner? I want to meet him.”
“Her,” said Leproate, trying to not to wince in anticipation.
“Her? You didn’t say anything about a her last night!”
“I did,” he lied, “you just didn’t hear me.” Jesus Christ. Nobody on Earth can outrun this.
“Well, now you have to bring her.”
“OK,” said Leproate, putting the empty glass in the sink, “but you won’t like her.”
“Don’t you like her too much either,” snapped Jennifer.
“Honey, hand to God, I hate her already.”
Jennifer held his gaze, then turned back to the garbage can. As she pulled the drawstrings on the trash bag tight, she muttered, “I don’t know why any woman would want to join the FBI.”
Neither did Leproate. Neither did most of the guys they worked with, but, political correctness being what it was, everybody tended to keep his mouth shut about it until after the third beer.
When the dinner finally happened, it was horrible. Wellsley dressed like a soldier who had been deployed for so long she had forgotten what civilians wore. No makeup. Jeans and a polo shirt. Not a girly thing about any of it, but somehow that only served to make it worse. Trying not to call attention to how beautiful she was just amplified the youthful, animal beauty of her athletic body.
She moved with all of the grace and rhythm that Jennifer lacked—had never had, in fact. Jennifer took it, and everything else, personally. Especially the fact that the boys were fascinated by Agent Wellsley.
“Have you ever shot anybody?” Rob asked.
“Have you ever killed anybody?” demanded John-Matthew, always trying to outdo his older brother.
Wellsley paused as if she was afraid of the attention, and looked to Leproate for an answer. He just smiled and shrugged. Do what you want. He was amused to see his angry new partner show her humanity for a change.
As Wellsley opened her mouth to speak, Jennifer snapped, “Young men, we don’t talk about things like that with our guests. Now go wash your hands.”
As the boys scampered off, Wellsley, said, “Oh, it’s OK—” but she was cut off.
“Well,” asked Jennifer, “have you?”
This time Wellsley did not look to Leproate for guidance. “Yes,” she answered. “Does that make you feel better, or worse?”
“Better. I wouldn’t want my husband to have a weak partner.”
Wellsley said, “I’m not weak,” in the same way that she might have stated any other obvious fact. Like, “It’s raining” or “That door opens outward.”
Jennifer looked away first. She muttered, “Better than the last one,” as she padded back into the kitchen, but she didn’t sound as if she had convinced herself.
Afterward they finished the uninspired meal of pork chops and pasta. Well, everyone except Wellsley had pasta. When Jennifer had set the bowl down, she had said, “Nothing fancy,” in a way that fished for a compliment.
Wellsley said, “I’m sorry, I don’t eat pasta.”
There was an awkward good-bye at the door. Wellsley tried, “You have a lovely family,” but it was such a strain, Leproate thought he heard one of her molars crack with the effort.
When the round, sedentary softness of his wife slid into bed next to him, she said, “That woman has to be a lesbian. She didn’t have a stitch of makeup on.”
“Whatever she is,” said Leproate, “I can tell you one thing, she hates men.”
“Lucky you,” Jennifer said. And soon after, her breathing changed and Leproate knew she was asleep. He lay awake for a long time, thinking of what Jill Wellsley looked like naked, and hating himself for it.
THREE
The next day Leproate skipped his run and got to the office early. Wellsley had a deposition that took all morning. When she finally got done, it was after lunch. Leproate said, “I’m sorry about last night.”
“What? Why?” asked Wellsley, all business.
“I hate those fucking pork chops.”
For the briefest of instants, Wellsley smiled. But it was interrupted by ASAC Harberg. He didn’t say a word. He just pointed at the conference room. They followed.
The first thing out of his mouth was, “Pack your shit, you’ll run it out of Tallahassee.”
Wellsley asked, “Run what?” but Leproate already knew. Hot damn.
“Somebody flipped an armadillo,” said Harberg.
“What?” asked Wellsley, totally perplexed.
“We think somebody hit an armored car. Twenty-three million dollars,” said Harberg.
Leproate whistled low. “We have the truck?”
“No, it’s gone. Moonis-Brainerd lost contact with it about an hour and a half ago. It’s twenty minutes late to its first stop in Apalachicola.” He slid the folder across the table toward Leproate. “You’ll run it. You want back in the bureau’s good graces, this is your shot.”
“Why is he in charge?” Wellsley asked.
“Because I said so,” said Harberg.
“Is this discrimination?” Wellsley asked, not veiling her threat very much. Leproate rubbed his eyes.
Harberg considered Wellsley for a moment. “The word’s out about you, Agent. I don’t know if the word is right, but I’m gonna tell you two things anyway. One, if you decide this job isn’t for you, you can quit anytime you want, and it might be better for everybody if you did. Do you want to work for the FBI?”
Wellsley, sounding small, said, “Yes, sir.”
“Two, this broken-down old wreck of a partner of yours may quite possibly know more about armos than anybody else we’ve got. There was a time, before he shot himself in the foot, when he was the go-to man. So if you shut up and follow his lead, you just might learn something.”
Wellsley shut up. Nobody was convinced that she was going to follow Leproate’s lead.
As they packed up, Harberg pulled him aside. “Look, if she goes all Billie Jean King on you, you let me know and I’ll pull her.”
Leproate said, “Boss, Billie Jean King could play.”
“You know what I mean. If she ain’t FBI, she ain’t. Nothing you can do about it.”
“I know, but let’s give her some rope and see where she goes.”
“Just make sure she doesn’t hang you with it,” said Harberg.
On the ride to Tallahassee, Leproate felt the anger radiating from W
ellsley. He avoided the matter by spending most of his time on the phone. For a second he thought about telling her that she was hot when she was angry. Not because it was true, though it was, but because it might be fun to see her blow her stack. But then again, the car might not survive the explosion.
When they got to the Florida Highway Patrol HQ in Tallahassee, it already had a war room set up. And ten minutes after they walked into it, it was standing room only and Leproate was giving the rundown.
“I am Special Agent Leproate, this is Special Agent Wellsley. We will be coordinating this investigation and are grateful for all the assistance you have just been ordered to provide.” This got a chuckle out of the room. Leproate had seen other agents come down all Charlie Hard-Ass in situations like this, but he believed that people would try harder for you if you weren’t an asshole to them.
“We have a missing, presumed stolen, Moonis-Brainerd armored car. Last we knew of it, it passed through Medart headed south on 319. It never made its first scheduled stop in Apalachicola. Giving us a search area from Panama City east to Branford and north to Thomasville, Georgia. Somebody keep an eye out the window, they might drive by.
“We’ve got three coast guard cutters on patrol in the Gulf and an E-2C plane on loan from Miami. Nothing gets on the Gulf without being searched.
“FBI evidence techs are working on stoplight cameras and surveillance footage and tracker data from the truck itself. But y’all know better than me, once you get south of here, it gets pretty wild.
“I’ve got a list of people we want help questioning. And I want a sweep of the area. It’s late for roadblocks, so we’ve got BOLOs clear across to Texas and all the way up to Atlanta just in case. There’s twenty-three million dollars out there somewhere. And the people who stole it. Let’s go find them.”
The Soak Page 14
