Fathers

by Matt Rogers

  ‘Probably not. Myles was fired for taking bribes. I’m sure that meant he was in an exclusive club of dirty cops. He knew who he could control. He probably went for the easy pickings.’

  ‘What’s he been doing this whole time if he’s not—?’

  King interrupted. ‘I just told you.’

  She was stuck on autopilot. She shook her head and blinked and looked at the floor. Like it was ritual. ‘There’s no way…’

  ‘There’s a way. There always is.’

  ‘He still has the uniform. The badge.’

  ‘Either he stole a spare before he was kicked out of the Mattapan station house, or he got Dwayne to import fakes. There’s good ones on the market these days.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I’ve seen it all.’

  She sat where she was standing. Just leaned into the wall and slid down it, slumping to the floor with her knees tucked up, her mouth agape. He let her compose herself.

  When she was ready, she said, ‘I used to justify it to myself. Like, I knew he was doing bad things. I could tell from the way he came home each night. He drank and drank because he couldn’t deal with sober thoughts. And the only reason you can’t stand being sober is if you’re torn up inside about who you are as a person. So I knew he was in some shit. But I always told myself, “Rebecca, he’s a cop.” I think I convinced myself that surely the good was outweighing the bad. The cases he solved, the people he helped, the city he protected. And now it’s all … what? What even is it? What is he?’

  ‘A civilian. A lying criminal.’

  She slapped herself in the forehead with her palm. Not gently. ‘I’m so fucking stupid.’

  ‘Hey…’

  ‘It was so obvious. Maybe I saw right through it. I must have. Then I didn’t like what I saw so I pretended it wasn’t there.’

  King let the words hang there.

  He asked, ‘Do you still want me to give him a chance?’

  She looked up. ‘No.’

  The shrill of her ringing phone made her stiffen. Probably because she already knew who it was. She held the phone up above her head, offering it to King without looking at the contact information.

  He asked, ‘You want me to handle it?’

  She nodded.

  As he took the phone, King saw the contact name — MYLES — with the love heart.

  King answered. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I knew it’d be you,’ Myles hissed. ‘Have you fucked her yet?’

  King kept quiet.

  Myles sounded venomous as he said, ‘You must’ve. Only reason someone like you would get involved in something that’s none of your business. You pathetic little child. That’s what you fuckin’ are. A child. You want your grubby hands on her, don’t you? Because your pregnant wife wasn’t giving you any. And I bet Rebecca didn’t let you. Because as ugly as she is, you’re more of a loser. You deadbeat motherf—’

  ‘Where are you?’ King interrupted.

  ‘No deal, friend.’

  ‘You’ve got a problem with me. Where should I come so you can solve it?’

  ‘Not you. What do you think I am? You think I’m a fucking moron?’

  King bit his tongue.

  Just didn’t answer.

  Myles said, ‘Put her on the line.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not happening.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Myles spat. ‘Ask her if “The Point” means anything to her. Then put her on the line.’

  King hated the confidence in his tone. He thumbed the “mute” button to silence his end of the call, then looked at Rebecca. ‘“The Point.” What’s that?’

  Her eyes went so wide they boggled, and she gasped, ‘No.’

  She shot to her feet and reached for the phone.

  King held it up high, out of reach. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Quincy Point,’ she gasped, short of breath. ‘The suburb. My parents live there. He knows their address.’

  King felt rage he thought he’d rid himself of long ago.

  62

  Tyrell leapt backward at the noise, maybe worried the shack would collapse, but it stayed standing.

  Slater heaved the desk back into place and noted the damage he’d done. Splintered wood rippled like jagged spiderwebs across the surface. He panted for breath from the exertion, but he barely noticed. His focus rested solely on the task at hand. He reached into the shredded cracks and simply a section of the desktop off, exposing the drawers to the weak light.

  He studied the left-hand drawer first. In front of a huge cigar humidor which seemed grossly out of place there were smooth manila folders stacked neatly in a pair of piles. The right-hand drawer was identical — two stacks of folders — minus the humidor. Dusty smartphones, SD cards, and even a couple of physical hard drives were scattered around them in no particular order, like whoever had organised the drawer had OCD about the folders alone.

  Slater took the folders out and fanned them out on one of the floorboards. There were twelve in total, less than he first thought. They were thick with contents, bound tight so they hadn’t strewn everywhere when he hurled the desk. A drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and fell off, making a miniaturised splash on one of the manila covers. More salt donated to the marsh.

  Inside the front cover of each folder was a name, neatly handwritten.

  He read them all.

  Kian Grant. Curtis Dunlap. Dominique Newton. Sebastian Day. Donald Ayers. Valentino Moretti. Myles Vaughan. Aiden Hall. Frankie Booth. Jacob Khan. Jaxson Hoffman. Robert Holland.

  He just scanned them, breezing through, but as he placed the last folder down something flared in his mind and he went back for the seventh.

  Myles Vaughan.

  King’s psycho cop enemy.

  He started flicking through.

  The folder was made up of sheets of thick paper, all the same size. A handful were written documents but most were printed photographs. The first dozen sheets were all photos, blown up to A4 size, taken from long-range on a good camera. They showed Myles on different days in the driver’s seat of an undercover car, with an assortment of scared, intimidated men beside him. Most were African-American, a couple Hispanic, a couple white.

  Each stranger’s face was circled with a red marker, and their full names were written beside the circles.

  Slater’s gut twisted, his palms leeched sweat. He couldn’t shake the suspicion that the passengers were no longer around, that this was proof of their final moments. Whether Myles had killed them or simply passed them off for someone else to handle, he was still implicated in all of it.

  After those photos came a slightly blurry printed scan of police paperwork. Most of it was legalese, but Slater could still decipher the fact that Myles hadn’t been a cop for a shade over two years. The date he lost his badge was circled in the same red marker, and next came a series of surveillance photographs taken by long-range cameras, showing Myles in a handful of compromising situations still wearing the uniform. In one he was at a club with a half-naked stripper on his lap, in another he leant against his car in broad daylight, staring wide-eyed into the distance, waiting for someone. In that photo there was a packaged brick of drugs in his hand. Crack or heroin or fentanyl. No way to know for sure, but it carried disastrous implications all the same.

  Slater flicked through a couple of the other folders out of morbid curiosity. Sebastian Day’s, and Jaxson Hoffman’s.

  They contained dozens of photos each, and they were far worse. Sebastian Day was a judge, and Jaxson Hoffman was a state prosecutor. They were snapped doing despicable things. Slater had a stomach of steel, but he still felt it turn.

  Hoffman’s was the worst.

  By far.

  He snapped the folders shut when he realised Tyrell had stepped into the shack, moved closer to the desk.

  Tyrell said, ‘What’d you find?’

  ‘Dirt.’

  ‘On who?’

  ‘Cops, judges, lawyers.’

/>   ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  Slater looked at the boy. ‘I’m going to piss off your uncle.’

  63

  King was a rationalist, so he handed Rebecca the phone.

  He didn’t have a choice.

  He thumbed the “speaker” button before he passed it across, so he could hear what was said.

  She took it in a trembling palm. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is it better?’ Myles spat every syllable. He sounded disgusted.

  Her throat spasmed as she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Is the sex better with him? It must be. That’s the only reason I can think of. For why you’d betray me like this.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything—’

  But she cut herself off, and King swelled with pride.

  Because maybe for the first time she’d realised she didn’t need to apologise to him.

  She didn’t owe him a thing.

  Fury laced his tone. ‘Are you going to finish?’

  Her jaw worked left and right as she tried to find a confidence that was only in its foundational stages. ‘It’s none of your business what I’m doing.’

  ‘It is now,’ he said. ‘Because you betrayed me, you bitch.’

  ‘Betrayed who?’

  A pause. ‘What?’

  ‘Who did I betray?’ she asked. ‘Myles Vaughan, the Boston PD officer?’

  Silence.

  She said, ‘Or Myles Vaughan, the unemployed liar?’

  ‘Your new squeeze has been feeding you lies.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘What about the Mattapan station house? Have they been feeding me lies, too?’

  ‘You’re delusional.’

  ‘Are you a cop?’

  ‘I didn’t ring to talk about—’

  ‘Are you a cop?’

  King winced, and he wasn’t sure why. Later he’d realise it was because he could feel the moment a man had reached the edge of his limits. When your life is one big hoodwink, a giant woven lie because of your fragile ego, everything becomes chaos when the bubble bursts.

  The second time Rebecca asked the question, Myles’ bubble burst.

  After King had winced, Myles shouted, ‘Guess what?! It doesn’t fucking matter anymore. You know why? Because I’m sitting here with Mr. and Mrs. Templeton. They’re not as happy to see me as when you first introduced me. In fact I’d say they’re positively shitting their pants. So if I were you, Rebecca darling, I’d get over here if you want to talk this through. And if I hear a siren or see your big scary friend, this gun I have to your mother’s temple goes off. Do not doubt me on that. I have literally nothing left to lose.’

  Rebecca looked like she might vomit, but she still summoned the courage to say, ‘You’re bluffing.’

  Myles grunted with exertion and a second later a soft cry sounded.

  An elderly woman in pain.

  King reached out and snatched the phone and crushed it.

  Rebecca jumped back at the sight, and screamed, ‘What are you doing?!’

  King let the broken pieces fall between them and gripped both her shoulders, holding her in place so he could look her in the eye. ‘You need to trust me.’

  ‘He’s going to kill them!’

  She writhed in his grip.

  He held tight.

  He said, ‘Nothing you said after that would have changed anything. He would have kept making the same demand until you agreed. But you need to listen to me. He’s not going to do it now. The call just died. His racing mind’s going to make all sorts of excuses. Maybe the reception dropped out. But he’s going to hold onto any last bit of hope because he’s weak enough to think this situation can be fixed. He wants you to go there and he wants to convince you to come back to him. I’ve dealt with many men who’ve lost everything, including their minds. They don’t see reality the same way anymore. He thinks there’s a way out. That’s the only thing stopping him from turning the gun on himself. It’s his brain playing tricks on him. Do you understand?’

  Slowly, she nodded.

  She understood.

  King said, ‘So you need to trust me.’

  ‘I already do.’

  ‘You need to trust me more than you’ve ever trusted anyone before.’

  She gulped. ‘Okay.’

  ‘You give me your parents’ address,’ King said, ‘and I give you a promise that he won’t lay a finger on your family.’

  ‘He already has.’

  ‘That’ll be the last of it.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I just can.’

  ‘Tell me who you are. Then I’ll trust you more than anyone.’

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘I killed people for the government for fifteen years.’

  She looked into his eyes.

  Yesterday morning she’d been a nurse pulling twelve-hour shifts and watching bad TV in her downtime.

  Today she had to put her family’s lives in the hands of a man she barely knew.

  After scrutinising his face she said, ‘Okay.’

  She gave him the address.

  He said, ‘I’ll drop you somewhere en route. There’s no knowing what’ll happen to this place. You can’t stay here.’

  She nodded. ‘Just one thing…’

  ‘Yeah?’

  She took a breath. ‘Think of me when you kill him.’

  64

  Inside the safe house the air was a physical thing, like a solid wall, and now Slater felt the discomfort.

  He could almost taste the form of the air with each breath. Humid, thick, heavy as it snaked its way down his throat.

  The sweat droplets coating his upper back latched onto his shirt, sticking the damp material to his skin. The sensation was never pleasant, but Slater was about done feeling pleasant. He stood over the printed photographs, wondering why they weren’t digitised. Then it made sense. Dwayne didn’t know what sort of access Myles had to his old police resources. Cop technology is sophisticated these days. It had to be, to keep up with the enemy. So he was probably paranoid Myles would slink back to his old connections and find a way to use them to erase whatever dirt Dwayne was storing in the cloud.

  Hence the physical evidence on everyone he held sway over.

  Myles, and eleven other unfortunate souls.

  Or Dwayne was a relic of the past, firmly of the belief that something you could hold in your hands trumped anything on the net. That was just as likely.

  Slater gripped the manila folder tight. ‘Tyrell.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Slater asked, ‘Remember when Dwayne called you?’

  Tyrell bit his lower lip to stop it quivering.

  ‘Relax,’ Slater said. ‘You’re not in trouble.’

  ‘I thought you were mad at me about that.’

  ‘Never think I’m mad at you. I’m mad at the piece-of-shit uncle of yours that’s trying to find you.’

  ‘He can’t be worse than my other uncle.’

  ‘Did Jeremiah try to kill you to shut you up?’

  Tyrell furrowed his brow, at first wondering if it was a serious question, then understanding it was rhetorical. But he answered anyway. ‘No.’

  ‘Then he’s not worse than Dwayne. Have you actually met the guy?’

  ‘Once.’

  Then Tyrell shrank inward again, turned his attention back to the files even though there was nothing he cared about in them. It was merely an attempt to get away from the conversation.

  Slater asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘He slapped me.’

  ‘Hard?’

  Tyrell scrunched his face up, battling down tears. It made Slater hesitate. Maybe he hadn’t interpreted “slap” correctly. Maybe it was more serious than he thought.

  ‘He was arguing with Dad,’ Tyrell said. ‘Something about business. You probably know more about that than I do. I was younger, like ten. I was tryna be sneaky about listening, crouched up against the door. He must have seen the tip of my head
or somethin’, cause he came striding in and hit me in the face. Open-palm, but across my eyes. Man, I never been hit like that. Whole face puffed up like one of them fish. I couldn’t see shit for like a week. That was the first proper time I been hit. But…’

  He trailed off.

  Slater asked, ‘But what?’

  ‘It shut me up,’ Tyrell said. ‘And I think that gave Dad ideas. Cause after that, he started—’

  Slater held up a hand. ‘I don’t need to hear anymore.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tyrell mumbled.

  The boy sat down in the swivel chair with those skinny arms hunched by his sides. Defeated. Destroyed.

  Slater bristled with rage he hadn’t felt in some time. ‘This isn’t going to stop, Tyrell. You know about what happened to your dad and Jeremiah. You know what your other uncle does. He has no allegiance to you. He’s met you once, and that one time he assaulted you. So he’ll have no problem killing you, Tyrell, family or not. You understand?’

  Tyrell was shaking. ‘Why you telling me this, man?’

  ‘Because I’m going to end it,’ Slater said, ‘and I know I’ve already told you this, but I need you to understand.’

  A slow, tentative nod.

  Slater said, ‘Take your phone out and read me his number.’

  Tyrell was twelve but he was faster with a smartphone than Slater. It was indicative of the way the world was heading. His thin fingers flew over the touchscreen and within a few seconds he was rattling off a string of digits.

  Slater added them into his own phone as a new contact, then said, ‘Get up. Step away from the desk.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  He opened the camera application, readying it for what came next. Then he opened the cigar humidor up the back of the lefthand drawer. Sure enough, he found a black chrome cigar lighter beside the half dozen Cubans. Maybe Dwayne came here for the nicotine buzz, to stare out across the salty marsh and unwind.

  When Slater fished it out, flicked it open and fired it to life, the flame glowed blue.