These Mortals

by Alan Lee

  “And Carlos will have a small boat waiting nearby,” said Manny, “to pick them up.”

  “That is my guess. It happens a lot, up and down the coast.”

  “Now that we know, we’ll call the Coast Guard. They’ll be ready in Baltimore,” she said.

  Rocky remained quiet, his eyes fixed on the carafe.

  “You’re thinking like a federal agent, Beck,” said Manny.

  “I am a federal agent, Sinatra.”

  “Not right now you’re not. Or at least, not entirely. If we confiscate the cocaine, which I intend to do, our old pal Rocky and his friends are out a hundred million. And it’s Rocky’s boat. Life’s gonna get uncomfortable for him.”

  “Oh.” Beck nodded and swallowed. “I didn’t consider that angle.”

  “Drug busts happen,” said Rocky. “The risk is built into the price. This would be on a larger scale, and the burden would be on me to prove my innocence to the underworld. Clearly the MS-13 has multiple contacts aboard my boat. This late in the game, I don’t have many options. Not under the nose of a patriotic zealot like my old pal Sinatra.”

  She took his hand and squeezed. “Your hands are tied. Because of me.”

  He smiled. Thinly. But with some warmth.

  She said, “Sinatra, can we confiscate the cocaine while freeing Rocky of responsibility?”

  “Can try. If. If somehow this mess will help mi amigos, Mackenzie and Ronnie.”

  Rocky hummed, thoughtful. “I don’t see how that’s manageable.”

  “Who owns the cocaine at the moment?”

  “Los Urabeños produces the cocaine and is the owner until the moment the cargo container touches down in America or until the cocaine is offloaded at a drop. At that instant, it becomes the property of the Kings—full payment will be expected immediately. It will stay the responsibility and financial burden of the Kings until smaller wholesalers take possession.”

  “Los Urabeños are scary guys,” said Manny. “You don’t want to upset them.”

  “They are beyond scary. The Kings’ power lies within the networking of persons with vast wealth. The power of Los Urabeños, on the other hand, lies within an equal amount of wealth, but also in the immediate access to unlimited violence. The Kings would lose that war. Better to remain allies.”

  Beck said, “Let’s say the container is seized in Baltimore. That means it’s the financial burden of the Kings, and they’ll be compelled to complete the payment. They’ll be out a hundred million and you will be held responsible?” said Beck.

  “Also, señorita Beck, you will be held responsible. And me. They know about us.”

  And my parents, she thought. Her complexion was pale.

  “What if I confiscate the cocaine while it’s aboard your boat?” said Manny.

  “Los Urabeños would be out a hundred million and they’d demand answers. From me. Most likely I’d go into hiding, to avoid torture.”

  “Good grief,” said Beck.

  “So they need someone to punish.”

  Rocky did a partial shrug. “Essentially.”

  “Bien. That’s what we’ll do. I’m taking the coke and I’m giving Los Urabeños the bill. But I’m also giving them someone to blame.”

  “Who?”

  “The MS-13. It’s their fault anyway.”

  “We’d have a devil of a time proving MS-13 intended to steal the bricks,” said Rocky.

  “Not if I catch them in the act. Not if I capture the blow and MS-13 gangsters with their hands in the cookie jar. Los Urabeños wants to punish someone? They can punish those bastards.”

  “That’s…intriguing.”

  “And the best part?” Manny waggled his phone. “If Los Urabeños suspects the Kings are come fix it—”

  “Complicit,” said Beck.

  “What I said. If Los Urabeños suspect the Kings are complicit, you show them emails from Darren Robbins. He sold them out and you have evidence. It’s the truth. He’ll be dead soon, and I’ll mail them his head.”

  Rocky leaned back in his chair. With one hand, he squeezed Beck’s. With the other, he drummed his fingers on the table.

  “It could work.”

  “It will work,” said Manny.

  “It’s a gamble.”

  “Gambling is why I get up in the morning.”

  “On such short notice, I don’t see what other options we have,” said Rocky. “If you catch members of MS-13 in the attempt…the three of us could get out of this alive, and war would be prevented between the Kings and the brotherhood in Colombia.”

  “And as a thank you, the Kings will help us with Mackenzie and Ronnie,” said Beck.

  “I’ll see to it. But perhaps we’ve put the cart ahead of the horse. My boat is at sea. Off the coast of Florida, I think.”

  “Someone aboard you trust?” asked Manny.

  “The captain. I trust him with my life.”

  “Perfect. I got the best idea.” Manny stood. “There’s not a moment to lose. Vamos, Beck.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the Coast Guard. We need a ride.”

  She rubbed at her forehead and stood. “I have concerns.”

  “You always have concerns.”

  “This is too half-baked. There’s no way this goes well!”

  “These things always go well,” said Manny. “Most of the time. And Señor Rickard, when I get home tomorrow, the Kings should be ready with a big favor. Mi amigo Mackenzie is running out of time.”

  Wednesday Morning

  Mackenzie

  Manny sent me texts.

  >> Chasing down a lead, cabrón.

  >> Might be out of cell range until tomorrow.

  Were I not a staunch and stoic investigator incapable of dewy emotion, I would’ve smiled at my phone.

  Friendship was the cement holding my world together.

  Someone important said that. Or something like it. Close enough.

  I replied, Fresh margarita waiting on your return.

  >> I drown, maybe two margaritas.

  >> And Beck a seltzer water.

  Drown? The heck were they up to?

  I was in my car. And it was time.

  I opened Darren’s texts and clicked the link he’d sent me. My screen flickered as my call was rerouted around the world a dozen times.

  And then.

  Ronnie.

  “Hello my husband.”

  “Hello my wife,” I said.

  Her voice filled the cold cabin of my car with warm vibrancy. Like she spoke with tongues of angels.

  She was outside. The light was better and I saw pine trees. She wasn’t holding the phone—someone else was and aiming it.

  “You have a bump above your eyebrow,” I said.

  “It’s nothing sinister. Truly. How is your search for Darren’s ex-wife?”

  Fruitless, thus far. If we strike out today, I’m lost. And so are you.

  My heart felt icy.

  I said, “Zeroing in. I anticipate a break today. You’re outside?”

  “The girls are getting a few minutes of much needed vitamin D. It’s heaven.”

  “You’re with other women?” I said.

  She thoughtfully pursed her lips and looked past the camera. “Maybe I shouldn’t say anything else about that. I want to stay in my captors’ good graces.”

  Give me something, Ronnie.

  I said, “Is it nice there?”

  “Yes, though I don’t know where here is. The soil and the air make me think it might be heaven. If I wasn’t in chains.”

  She raised her wrists, revealing cuffs and a chain. I bet she was attached to Mario.

  A voice said something.

  “Our time’s up.” Her voice caught. A little panic.

  I wanted to squeeze Darren until his eyes popped out from their sockets.

  “Maybe for right now,” I said.

  “I love you.”

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  The screen blinked off. Black.<
br />
  Dammit.

  Dammit dammit dammit.

  I remained in my car outside Christiansburg Elementary, a flat brick school, as an elementary school should be.

  Thinking.

  Ronnie said heaven twice.

  That was no coincidence. The soil and the air could be heaven, she said. A code safe for her to pass along.

  Ronnie was near the ocean.

  Once outdoors, she could smell it in the air. She’d seen the sandy soil. Mario had goofed—he shouldn’t have let her out.

  She loved the beach. Loved it. Heaven, for her. She knew that I knew she loved the ocean and sand and sun. She’d taken me to a beach for our honeymoon.

  The map was open on my phone. She was south of me, based on temperatures. And she wasn’t distant, because a little Cessna could only go so far. Which meant Mario was holding her on the Atlantic coast in North or South Carolina. Maybe northern Georgia but no farther.

  Near a private airstrip with no tower.

  Successive approximation.

  I called Sheriff Stackhouse’s personal cell phone. She answered quick.

  “Give me good news, babe,” she said.

  “I need you to narrow down some airports.”

  “I can try. But I’d rather shoot someone for you.”

  “You and Manny, so violent,” I said.

  “Because we both know you’ll go soft on Darren. You’re a more wholesome human than we are, kid. I’m a sheriff. I can kill him.”

  “That’s not how that works,” I said.

  “It is today.”

  “I think Ronnie’s being held south of us near the coast. Probably North Carolina or South, maybe the northern part of Georgia. She was flown to an airport without a tower, which allowed the little airplane to stay off the grid. I’d bet she isn’t far from a decent-sized city like Charleston or Myrtle or Wilmington. Possibly Savannah. Can you use your law enforcement powers to search for airports matching that description?

  “Little. Near the coast. In the Carolinas or Georgia. Sure, I’ll assign a couple deputies to the task,” she said.

  “I owe you.”

  “Aren’t you running low on time, babe?”

  “In fact,” I said, opening the car door. “I am.”

  Neither the receptionists nor the administration at Christiansburg Elementary recognized the photos of Darren’s ex-family.

  I drove to Auburn Elementary—same story.

  Nor at Belview.

  Nor at Eastern Montgomery.

  It neared 10:30 a.m. and I was jumpy. The schools were getting farther apart, the deeper I drove into the country. A constant trickle of adrenaline was being fed into my veins.

  My heartbeat Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie.

  What if this didn’t work? A rare moment of self-doubt for Mackenzie August. I got by in the world through determination and persistence and a code about the correct way to behave. What if, in this instance, it wasn’t enough? What if, in this instance, I wasn’t enough?

  I sat in the Eastern Montgomery parking lot, willing my hands to stop shaking. I needed to turn the key. I needed to gun the engine. I needed a miracle. I needed to go…where…to Falling Branch Elementary, where I would be told sorry, no one had seen them. I needed—

  My phone rang.

  Timothy August calling.

  He said, “How far are you from Bedford Elementary?”

  “I dunno. Where is that?”

  “Right off 460 near the D-Day memorial,” he said.

  “I’m an hour away.”

  “I’m standing with two nice women who recognize the woman and the boy in the photo. John used to attend school here.”

  I left the school parking lot in a squeal of tires of which Manny would be proud, blinking away tears.

  Rita Wilkerson, the attendance secretary, was in an absolute tizzy over her sudden importance.

  Jeanne Butler, the assistant principal, was less so. She seemed sweet on my dad, though. That was something.

  We conferred in Ms. Butler’s office. She half sat on the edge of her desk, her bare calves pointed at Timothy. “You know, Mackenzie, your father is a celebrity among elementary school principals.”

  “Even with all the gray hair?” I said. I was in a good mood, relief pumping endorphins.

  Finally. Progress.

  “Especially with,” she said.

  “Even though you’re forty years younger?”

  Both she and my father sat a little straighter. He was sitting in a chair near her knees and trying to avoid her eye contact.

  “Forty?” said Jeanne Butler.

  “He’s ninety.”

  My old man smiled at his shoes.

  “You think I’m fifty?” asked Jeanne Butler. She’d been quickly brought to the precipice of outrage and panic. I was definitely in a good mood.

  I waggled my phone. On screen, the woman and boy smiled in the photo. “Tell me about them.”

  “Yes, I knew them,” said Rita Wilkerson. Her hands wrung each other in her lap. “That’s John Douglas, without a doubt. Cute little boy, but so quiet. I registered him myself, didn’t I, Ms. Butler? I did. He never got into trouble but I think his grades were poor.”

  “John Douglas. His mother was Stephanie Douglas?”

  “Yes, that’s right!”

  Stephanie and her son John were still using their first names.

  The assistant principal frowned. “Ms. Wilkerson, we don’t discuss student grades with anyone except a parent. Even former students.” She glanced at my father for approval.

  “John doesn’t go here anymore?” I said.

  Rita shook her head and made a mm’mm noise. “No. No sir. Not last year either. I’ll check my records, but I’m fairly certain he attended first grade and second grade, and then withdrew. I’m positive. Or almost positive.”

  “At which subsequent school did he register?” Timothy asked. For my benefit, he said, “In order to withdraw legally, he should be registered elsewhere first. Schools track that, as best they can.”

  “He registered at homeschool,” said Ms. Wilkerson.

  “Damn. Hard to track.”

  “I remember it perfectly. Homeschool.” Ms. Wilkerson smiled with some nervousness.

  I said, “Why do you remember it?”

  “Because she didn’t seem like the homeschool type. No sir, no good will come of that, I thought. If his grades were bad before, then whoooo boy, they were about to get awful,” said Ms. Wilkerson.

  “Tell me about Stephanie Douglas,” I said.

  “Quiet. Very quiet, like her son. They both seemed out of place. Didn’t hardly speak to no one.”

  “That’s no reason why she couldn’t homeschool.”

  “She was hard. Does that make sense? Distracted. She didn’t seem—”

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this questioning,” said the assistant principal. “We’re breaking rules of confidentiality.”

  Timothy smiled and patted her hand, which was on her knee.

  “Trust me. John’s in trouble, we think.

  This is off record and it’s for the greater good. In this room, we all care about students and we can work together.”

  Ms. Butler seemed pacified by the celebrity’s reassurance.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “You know what it is, Mr. August? Stephanie seemed like a big city girl. Like she wouldn’t know how to homeschool, even if she had to.”

  “What did you mean, when you said she was hard?”

  Ms. Wilkerson glanced at the assistant principal and back. Wrung her hands some more.

  “Just that…maybe she hadn’t grown up with a good momma. Like life had been mean and she’d gotten hard. She was pretty, though! Don’t get me wrong.”

  Ms. Butler agreed. “Very pretty.”

  “But in a hard way. I know I’m not making sense. Her clothes were more expensive than ours. Her hair took longer to fix up than ours.”

  “Ours?”

 
; “Us Bedford County girls, I mean,” said Ms. Wilkerson. “We spend our money on more sensible things, I suppose?”

  “Was she close with anyone?”

  “As best I remember,” said the assistant principal. “Stephanie Douglas had no friends.”

  “Oh! But she was friendly with…no, actually, never mind,” said Ms. Wilkerson. She wrung her hands like trying to break them.

  “Friendly with who?”

  “Well…Stephanie was friendly with Abigale Holloway. Or she used to be.”

  “She’s not anymore? How do you know?” I said.

  “Well, because…because…” Ms. Wilkerson’s mouth kept moving but quit producing sound.

  “Because Abigale Holloway is in prison,” answered Ms. Butler. She looked at Timothy August like this should earn her points. “Stephanie and Abigale were friends, that’s right, but Abigale will be in prison the next five years.”

  Oh my.

  Darren Robbins ex-wife had made one friend in Bedford, and that friend had gone to jail.

  Timothy August called Sheriff Stackhouse and she accessed Vinelink to get the details.

  Abigale Holloway was not, in fact, in prison.

  She was down the road in the Bedford Adult Detention Center. It was like nerf jail, a point between prison and a halfway house. You were locked in, unable to leave, but also you didn’t have to eat with hundreds of screaming violent offenders.

  Abigale had been caught making meth in a trailer last year, her first major offense. The Commonwealth of Virginia would keep her in custody so as to fix her.

  The security officer at the Bedford Adult Detention Center’s check-in looked at my credentials. A younger guy, maybe twenty-two. Absolute children worked many of our nation’s correctional posts. His head was shaved.

  “Mackenzie August? I heard about you,” he said. “The private in Roanoke?”

  “The private,” I repeated.

  I didn’t love it.

  It was 12:30.

  “You’re the guy beat up Wayne,” he said.

  Embarrassing.

  Good thing my father was waiting in the car.