by Mark Stone
A vice grip seemed to tighten around my heart. The idea of either Boomer or I losing each other was something I had entertained, of course. As a police officer, you put yourself in the line of fire everyday. It’s your duty. It’s the job. Still, ever knowing all of this never made the idea of having to wake up to a horrible phone call in the middle of the night any easier to swallow. It was one of my worst fears, and the fact that Boomer had experience with something similar to it broke my heart.
‘I do,” I answered quickly. ‘I mean, I obviously don’t know it in the same way that you do, but I get what you’re saying and I’m really sorry that happened.”
“Yeah,” Boomer said, nodding firmly. ‘So am I. He was a good man, and Wes wasn’t much more than a baby when it happened.”
“What was it, Boom? What happened to him all those years ago?” I asked, my heart filling with hurt for my friend.
“Something I’d rather not revisit,” my friend said. “Needless to say, I made a mistake, and a good man lost his life because of it. A woman lost her husband, and a son lost his father.” He shook his head. “I tried to go to his wife afterward, actually. I tried to apologize and try to make things right, but she wasn’t ready to hear any apologies, and I can’t blame her for that. There are some things that no amount of ‘I’m sorry’ can fix. There are things you can’t set right, no matter how hard you try. I might have done right by Hector. I might have given him a helping hand when he needed one, but I did the opposite for Wes. I took his future away from him, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.”
“Maybe not,” I answered, sure that whatever my friend did wasn’t intentional and probably not as destructive as he was saying. I was sure something horrible happened to Wes’ father all those years ago, but I really doubted Boomer was as responsible as he thought he was. He was a good man, and he laid a lot on his shoulders that didn’t belong there. “But ever if you hold yourself responsible, that boy doesn’t seem to. That tells me that his wife, even if she wasn’t ready to talk to you after it happened, doesn’t hold you responsible either. I’m not trying to dig up old wounds, and I would never want to unearth something that you want to keep buried. So, if you tell me to shut my mouth about something, I’ll certainly do that. But you shouldn’t carry some burden that isn’t yours.”
“And if it is? Then what do I do?” Boomer asked. “I’m not some kid, Dil. I know what you’re trying to do, and I know you think it’s for the best. I don’t hold myself to impossible standards, though, and I don’t rewrite history, even when it would be in my best interest to do so.” He shook his head firmly. “I know what happened that night,I know what part I played in it, and no amount of well-meaning speeches can change that. So, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna head home.”
“Home?” I asked, my eyebrows knitting toward. “But we literally just told hector and the others that we’d meet them for dinner.”
“So do that,” Boomer said.
“He’s not my godson, Boom,” I answered. “I’m not the one he wants there.”
“I get that,” Boomer said. “And please apologize to him for me, but I just can’t do this tonight. I can’t look in that boy’s face, a face that looks for all the world like his father’s, and pretend that I’m okay. Maybe on another day, but not tonight.” He took a step forward and patted my shoulder. “Tonight, after a gut punch like that, all I want to do is remember my friend and feel sorry for myself.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. Handing it to me, he muttered, “But make sure that dinner is on me. It’s the least I can do.”
And, with that, my friend walked away.
“You don’t want to do that, Son,” I said, staring at Wes from across the table as he pushed another drink in my direction. He’d been trying to keep up with me all night, and regardless of how many different ways I phrased it, I just couldn’t convince him that it was a bad idea. “I’ll tell you one more time, trying to drink me under the table is a losing proposition. I’ve got about fifteen more years of tolerance built up for the stuff than you do. It’s just not fair.”
Wes shook his head and grinned. “Would you look at that? The dude actually found a reason for me to want to get old.”
I chuckled and bristled at the same time. “I’m not sure ‘old’ is the word I’d use, but thanks, I guess.”
“You’re cool, dude,” Wes said, slamming another shot of tequila and shaking his head. “I hope I’m that cool when I get...not old.”
“There we go,” I said, grinning at the man. I shot the waiter a look meant to let him know there would be no more drinks around the table tonight, regardless of how many minor league baseball players asked for them. He nodded, telling me he understood, and then scurried off. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying myself. In fact, to say I was having a bad time would be to completely miscategorize things. These kids were fun and they seemed to like me a lot. I was having a hell of a time with them. I had no desire to be responsible for a handful of young guys too drunk to take care of themselves, though. So, to that end, I decided it was time to cut them off.
As my eyes scanned the restaurant, moving over the ballplayers who had split into various sects, I noticed someone was missing.
“Where’s Hector?” I asked, looking over at Wes, who had his his hands stretched out in front of him, explaining a play that happened in the game today to one of his teammates as though the man wasn’t also there. “Wes,” I said, pulling his attention back to me. “You seen Hector?”
“He said his girlfriend was going to meet him here,” Wes answered. “I think he went outside to wait for her.”
“Really?” I asked, narrowing my eyes as I stood from the table. As far as I knew, Hector didn’t have a girlfriend. In fact, as far as Boomer was concerned, the young man was footloose and fancy free. He’d even talked about setting him up with one of the younger ladies from the church.
That wasn’t too odd, though. Just because Boomer was close to Hector didn’t mean he knew everything about his life. Maybe the ballplayer wanted to keep some things secret. A relationship would certainly fall into the category of something a young man might want to keep from his makeshift uncle. That probably meant he’d doubly want to keep it from a perfect stranger like me. Unfortunately for Hector, he had indulged in a few drinks himself, and I wasn’t about to let him wander off too far by himself for too long. He might want privacy with his girlfriend, but he was going to have to prove to me that he was safe and sober enough to be left alone before he could get anything like that.
I motioned for the waiter to bring the check, and as I walked toward the door, I met him with Boomer’s credit card. The bill was probably a little steeper than Boomer’s usual, but my friend made a hell of a lot more than me, and he offered to pay. Who was I to stop him?
Nodding at the waiter, I walked to the door and pushed through it. The air was warm tonight, and the breeze coming off the Gulf gave a salt scent to everything. It was a smell I knew well, a smell I loved. This was the smell of home. In fact, I could have stood right there in front of the door, basking in the warm night air and taking huge whiffs of the salty breeze if I didn’t have something to do.
Looking both ways, I saw that Hector was nowhere to be found. THe parking lot was full tonight. Boomer’s favorite seafood place was more popular than I remembered it being, and because of that, there was no shortage of folks driving back and forth. Headlights danced back and forth in front of me, obscuring my vision and making walking out into the parking lot a more treacherous thing than usual.
Taking a deep breath, I thought about yelling for Hector. I wasn’t sure he’d recognize my voice but surely the guy would answer to his own name, right?
Before I could do that, I heard a woman’s yell off in the distance. My head snapping to the source of the noise, I saw a figure a few hundred yards away from me. A man without question, though I couldn’t make out anything about him, he had a woman slung over his arm. He was running, and behind him, anothe
r man ran after him.
My body jumped into action, pulling for my firearm and running toward the situation. As I did, I noticed the guns. They were in the hands of both the man carrying the woman and the man chasing him.
“Stop!” I yelled, instantly aware of all the civilians in the parking lot right now. In an instant, they could all become fodder to gunplay.
As if to intentionally disobey my order, the man following lifted his firearm and took a shot. He must have missed, because the man carrying the woman spun quickly, raised his own gun, and fired twice.
This man did not miss and the man chasing him fell to the ground, dropping his weapon.
“Stop!” I repeated. The man didn’t listen though. He walked up to the man on the ground and pointed his gun point blank at his head. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but I wouldn’t watch someone be executed. I’d have to put a stop to it, but I couldn’t shoot the man to do it. He had a woman in his arms. I was too far away and moving too quickly to be sure I could get a clean shot. Shooting at him would put her in danger, but making him think I was shooting at him wouldn’t.
I took a shot, aiming high enough so that I knew it would miss. Still, it did the trick. The man looked over at me and started to run.
By the time I reached the man on the ground, the other one was already gone, taking the woman in his arms with him.
Pulling out my phone, I called 911, and looking over the man on the ground, bleeding profusely from the chest, I saw with shocked horror that it was none other than Hector.
Chapter 33
“How the hell did this happen?” Boomer asked, ducking as he moved under the caution tape and into the area where Hector had been shot. His rage didn’t surprise me. In fact, if anything, he was more put together than I imagined he would be when he saw me. After all, if this had happened to someone I cared about as much as Boomer cared about Hector, I wasn’t sure what I’d have done in response.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I said, keeping my voice firm, but flat. “I’ve been interviewing people in the parking lot, anyone who might have seen anything before I walked out of the restaurant. I have Hector’s teammates sitting inside the restaurant, and I’ve got squad cars patrolling the perimeter, looking for the car the guy who shot Hector drove off in.”
“And do you have any idea what kind of car that is or do you have my men running around in the dark, jumping at every shadow they see?” Boomer asked, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at me. His use of the phrase ‘my men’ told me everything I needed to know about his demeanor. While Boomer had been my boss ever since I moved back to Naples all those years ago, he had always been my friend first and jumped through hoops as not to make me feel inferior. That wasn’t happening tonight. In the wake of this tragedy, Boomer was subtly pulling rank, and he wanted to make sure I knew as much.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t see what kind of vehicle the suspect left in,” I admitted. ‘The parking lot was crowded, and my attention was on your godson. I do know that, whoever the man is, he took a woman with him. I have reason to believe that woman is Hector’s girlfriend, and it looks as if she’s in danger.”
“Hector doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Boomer answered kurtly. “I just asked him about that the other day, and he said he hadn’t met the right person yet. He wouldn’t have lied to me about that.”
“I get that,” I answered, shuffling uncomfortably. “But Wes told me a different story. He said Hector did have a girlfriend and he was waiting outside to meet up with her. That’s why I went out there. Like the rest of them, Hector had indulged in a couple of drinks, and I wanted to make sure he was-”
“You let him get drunk?” Boomer asked, his eyes getting as wide as I’d ever seen them. “You let my godson get drunk and this is what happened to him.”
“I didn’t let him do anything, Boomer,” I said sternly. “Hector is twenty three years old. I can’t tell him what he can and can’t do.”
“I could have,” Boomer answered.
“No you couldn’t have,” I said. “You could have suggested, and maybe he would have listened. But if you thought that, then you should have stayed with him.”
“I never dreamed something like this would happen,” Boomer said, tears filling his eyes.
“And neither did I,” I said, sighing heavily. “Look, you need to be at the hospital. You need to be there when he wakes up.,”
“If he wakes up,” Boomer said. “My wife’s there right now, and she says things aren’t looking too good.”
My heart dropped. I had seen my fair share of tragedy, and Lord knows I had been around enough death in my day, but the idea of a kid as vibrant and full of life as Hector had just been not two hours ago dying so horribly was enough to give even me pause.
“Even more reason that you should be there,” I answered, my heart breaking at the sight of my best friend in the whole world in so much pain. “You’re the closest thing that kid has to a father. You’ve been there with him through everything, all the bad and the good. If he’s going to make it through this, and I pray to God he will, he’s going to do it with you at his side, just like always.”
Boomer shook his head hard, and I knew he was trying to keep the tears at bay. Though I could only imagine what he was going through, that push and pull between wanting to do your job and being there for the people who needed you was a familiar sentiment to me. You wanted, more than anything, to bring justice to the person who had been wronged. And of course, we did. As cops, it was what was baked into our DNA. Still, you could only be as good as your mind and heart would let you. So, I decided to do what Boomer had done so many times for me when the situations were reversed.
“You have to do what’s best for yourself and best for your family, Boom,” I answered. “You’re mind is a wreck right now. You’re not thinking clearly and no one can blame you for that.”
“I can’t go to his mother,” Boomer said. “I can’t go sit with that woman after I left her son, after I let this happen to him.”
“You didn’t let anything happen to him,” I said. “This was a tragedy, and it’s somebody’s fault, but that somebody is not you. It’s the sonofabitch who shot him, who kidnapped his girlfriend. Now, I’m going to go in there. I’m going to question his teammates, and I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s going on here. But I need to make sure you’re doing all you can do as well. And, right now, that means getting your ass to the hospital and being there for Hector and his mom. I know it’s hard, but the reason it’s hard is because it’s right.” I nodded, patting my best friend on the shoulder. “I’m going to get this done, Boom. I promise.”
“Okay,” Boomer answered, looking up at me with tears and fury shining through his eyes in equal measure. “But that’s a promise you’d better damn well keep.”
“Always,” I answered, my jaw tightening. “I always keep my promises.”
And, with that, I went to work.
Moving back into the restaurant, I walked back up to Hector’s teammates. Having been told, like the rest of the crowd here tonight, about Hector’s condition and how it came to be, they sat stunned and quiet as I neared them.
Only Wes spoke as he saw me, his eyes rimmed in red and his hands shaking at his sides. “Is he okay?” the man asked, his voice trembling.
“I don’t have any information about that,” I admitted, and said a quick, silent prayer that Boomer’s godson would pull through. “All we can do is hope and pray.”
“What about the bastard who shot him?” Wes asked, rage filling is eyes. “Did you catch him?”
“We’re working on it,” I answered. “Which is why I’m here. I need you guys to give me as much information as you can about Hector’s life. I need to know if he had any enemies, any crazed fans, or anyone you think might have any motive to hurt him.”
“No one would hurt Hector,” Wes said quickly.
“Somebody did,” another player, a
shorter man with red hair and a scruffy beard said, standing to meet me as well.
“I know that, Dirk,” Wes said. “I just mean I can’t imagine who might want to do it. He’s a good guy, and totally harmless. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, that one.”
“And what about his girlfriend?” I asked, looking from Dirk to Wes and then to the rest of the bunch, leaving out the fact that she had very likely been carted away by whoever did this to Hector.
“His girlfriend wouldn’t hurt him. She’s crazy about him,” Wes said, shrugging. “Besides, didn’t you say a dude did this? I distinctly remember someone saying it was a dude.”
“I meant what can you tell me about his girlfriend,” I answered. “As far as I can tell neither Boomer or his mother even knew he had one.”
“Sounds about right,” Wes said, shaking his head.
“What does that mean?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Means Hector’s mom is super religious. If she found out he was this serious about a girl without even introducing them, she’d flip out. It doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t tell her. And if his godfather is as close to his mom as he lets on, then I’m not surprised he didn’t tell her either.”
While that made sense to me, it didn't’ make my job any easier. A woman who I knew nothing about other than the fact that she seemed to have a relationship with hector, had just been carted off to parts unknown and I hadn’t even got a good enough look at her to be able to say what she looked like for sure.
Fortunately for me, Wes had.
“You’ve met her a couple of times,” I said, nodding at Wes as I spoke. He nodded in return, confirming what I’d just said. “Good. Then you can come down to the station and give our sketch artist a description of her. Hector’s phone was damaged when he was shot and we can’t get into it. We need to know what she looks like.”
“What?” Wes said, taking a step back from me instinctively. I can’t.”
