Authors: James W. Hall
It was nine-thirty when he located Sonesta Drive, hung a left off Crandon Boulevard on Key Biscayne, drove a few blocks toward the Atlantic, all the way to the end, and pulled into the empty parking lot of the Silver Sands Motel, hidden in the shimmering shadows of two thirty-story glass cylinders. The motel had an impressive hundred yards of oceanfront with a few dozen coconut palms stirring in a trickle of morning breeze.
Sugar climbed the outdoor stairway and got halfway down the hall when he saw an open door and smelled fresh paint. He rapped on the door.
“Go away, I’m working.”
Sugarman came inside and Frank Sheffield craned around a corner, held up a paintbrush, and said, “You handle one of these? Don’t need to be Rembrandt.”
“This won’t take a minute. Just a question, I’ll be out of your hair.”
“How about a beer?”
“It’s not even ten o’clock.”
“But it’s Saturday,” Sheffield said. “That’s got to count for something.”
Frank wiped his big paws on a rag and they shook hands and Sugarman admired the paint job for a minute, said he liked that particular shade of blue, though in truth he thought it was way too purple, more like the walls of a strip joint than a family motel at the beach.
“So what’s with Thorn? He start another world war yet?”
“I believe he might be working on it.”
He watched Sheffield examine some recent brushstrokes that were lit by the sunlight streaming through the front window. Sugar was trying to get a fix on Frank’s mood. He’d worked alongside Sheffield a few times, knew he was about as laid-back as a federal agent could be and survive in an uptight agency like the FBI, but Frank was also a canny son of a bitch who had made a career of hiding that shrewdness behind an amiable facade.
“Madeline Cruz,” Sugar said. Springing it on him. Test the reaction.
Sheffield picked up a brush and touched up a spot on the wall. Face empty, studying the wall like Sugar hadn’t spoken.
“Five seven, dark hair, pretty, carrying FBI ID. She consulted with you about the case she’s working, one that involves Thorn and Flynn Moss.”
Frank lowered his brush and turned to Sugar. Still giving away nothing.
“Madeline Cruz?”
Sugar said, “Yeah, that’s right.”
“How pretty?”
“Slim and trim,” Sugar said. “But businesslike, with brown eyes. Probably Mexican descent, a little Aztec too, I’d guess.”
“Never met her, never heard of her.”
“Look, Frank, I understand. If you can’t talk about the particulars of the case, fine. You have to keep things confidential. All I need to know is that this woman is genuine. She can be trusted.”
Sheffield’s mouth flattened like he was disappointed in Sugarman’s approach, treating Frank like a goddamn civilian.
“Well, granted,” he said, “my memory is getting spotty, but damn, I believe I’d remember a pretty woman named Cruz discussing Thorn and Flynn Moss. I’m not that far gone.”
“Tell me you’re kidding. You never heard of her?”
“How many ways can I say it?”
“Shit.” Sugarman stared out the window at the silver glare of early morning sunlight on the ocean. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“You sure you don’t want a beer?”
“She had to know I’d check, find out she was lying.”
“Maybe you and I should sit in the shade, you can lay all this out. I’m intrigued by what I’ve heard so far.”
Down at a concrete picnic table that faced the beach, Sugar told Frank the story while Sheffield guzzled his first beer quick, then opened another. Sugar explained how Flynn had been sending regular postcards, his way of keeping Thorn apprised of his journeys, then a postcard came yesterday, the Neuse River, no postmark, a call for help, and they’d set off for Carolina, and how they’d stopped at the gas station along the interstate, Cruz appeared, badged them, and Tina, coming back from the restroom, saw what was going down and made a run for it, stole a car, and fled. Guns in a duffel, a mess of cash.
How Cruz pressured them to continue up I-95, stringing them along with bits and pieces of a story, saying if they were going to find Flynn, they’d need her help because there were dangerous people up on the Neuse River, and she was running a larger federal operation, and it was Tina’s job to deliver Thorn into some kind of trap, and if he and Thorn barged into Pine Haven without knowing the cast of characters, Flynn was a dead man. Then in the early evening Cruz steered them to a motel near St. Augustine, sent Sugarman for takeout dinner, ten minutes later, when he returns with the food, she’s convinced Thorn to cut Sugarman loose.
Finished with the retelling, Sugar slumped forward and said, “I hear that story coming out of my mouth, and Christ, it sounds totally batshit crazy.”
Sheffield took the last slug of his second beer and set it aside.
“That it does, my friend. That it does.”
Sugarman stared out at the Atlantic, at the mild surf lapping the beach, at the weekend sun worshipers arriving, rolling out their towels.
“She kept dropping your name, Frank. Said you advised her Thorn might be willing to help her out. She quoted you verbatim, about Thorn being a social misfit. She was very persuasive.”
“How hard would it be to know my name? Last twenty years I was a public figure, head of the regional field office of the FBI. Anybody who read the papers knows Thorn and I had a couple of encounters. And you can take one look at Thorn and tell he’s a misfit. Tell me this, she say anything might be considered private information about me?”
Sugarman sighed. Shook his head.
“She sold us this twaddle, we swallowed it like a couple of schoolboys.”
“A woman shows you a badge, she’s a slick talker, you trust her story, not so surprising. Maybe you were a little gullible, yeah.”
“Thorn was worked up. Getting that postcard, a call for help. He was emotional, off balance. Primed and ready to head off. I got swept up in his fever.”
Sugarman came to his feet.
“Now where do you think you’re going?”
“Fly up there. See what I can do.”
“Sit down, big fellow. Being rash, that’s Thorn’s bailiwick. You’re the levelheaded one, remember? Think this through. Say you go driving into this hayseed town, what if no one’s heard of Cruz or Thorn, they’re nowhere to be found? This whole Pine Haven thing, it’s a fake-out, Thorn and this Cruz woman are somewhere else entirely? Hey, you’ve just wasted a lot of time and money and you don’t know one thing more than you did already. So relax. Take twenty-four hours for Tina to check in. Maybe she’s embarrassed, hiding out somewhere, licking her wounds. Meanwhile, do your research. Give me Tina’s vitals, I’ll call in to the office, have them put her in the system.”
“I should’ve been tougher, more suspicious. Tina’s disappeared, and Thorn’s walking into some kind of setup.”
“Easy does it, man. There’s no need to worry about Thorn. That guy’s luckier than a two-dicked tomcat. And he’s got twice as many lives.”
“And he’s used up more than his share already.”
Down on the beach an elderly couple in swimsuits had begun to dance with graceful and unembarrassed intimacy. No earbuds, no boombox playing nearby, just swaying to the music of the natural surroundings. They moved together like old lovers, each step and swirl and dip synced with the roll and crash of the surf, the beat of a passing speedboat, its hull hammering the chop in rhythm with their waltz, and the sweet soaring flights of a pair of gulls that were rising and plunging in time with the dancers.
“You okay, Sugar?”
He blinked his eyes clear and smiled quietly at Frank.
“Thorn’s saved my life a half dozen times.”
“Yeah? And how many of those times did he put your life in danger to begin with?”
“Thorn’s in trouble. Big damn trouble.”
“Give me Tina’s info. I’ll get that part started.”
“Thought you were retired.”
“Still got a friend or two at the bureau. Sit tight, let me find out what I can. Give me one day.”
PART TWO
FOURTEEN
PASSING THROUGH SOUTH CAROLINA ON
I-95, the car was quiet. Pixie had run dry of stories. Napping. From the glances Thorn took in the sun visor mirror, Cruz seemed to be reading texts or e-mails on her phone, answering some.
Thorn was looking out at the forest of pines along the interstate when a phone rang somewhere deep in the car.
Cruz craned forward over the seat.
“What the hell?”
“Sounds like a ringtone,” X said.
It rang three more times, distant, muffled. Then stopped.
Cruz sat back in her seat.
“Next stop,” she said to X, “find it.”
The phone started to ring again. It rang five times, then ceased.
“La Marseillaise.”
To arms, to arms, ye brave. March on.
Thorn stared out at the pine trees flashing past. The doubts he’d been having about Cruz and X-88 were gone. He sat quietly, unmoving, trying to breathe.
An hour later, sometime after three in the afternoon, X-88 exited I-95 onto a two-lane highway, US 13, heading north and east. Miles later at a crossroads called Spivey’s Corner, X pulled into a Citgo station and the women got out to pee.
“And you, Thorn?” Cruz said through his open window.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I can wait.”
“Watch him,” Cruz said to X.
When she and Pixie were inside the station, he got out. X-88 was watching the numbers fly by on the gas pump, holding the nozzle in place. Thorn put his palms against a supporting beam, bent forward, and pretended to stretch his back. Positioned to block X’s path back to the pump.
The Olds’ big tank filled slowly. A minute, another minute. Thorn continued to stretch.
Back in the station, Cruz finished in the bathroom and was standing at the checkout counter with a Coke and a bag of chips. Beside Thorn the pump’s numbers whizzed by, fifteen gallons, sixteen.
He looked back at Cruz. She was talking to the clerk and Pixie was beside her, Pixie looking out the station’s front window at Thorn, her big sunglasses gone, curious. He’d seen Pixie before somewhere.
The pump bell dinged.
Thorn stretched some more.
X-88 stepped over to him.
“Hey, asswipe,” he said. “Move aside.”
Thorn broke his pose, turned to X, and held out his hand. The helpful passenger—doing his part, returning the nozzle to its slot.
X gave him a leery look, then handed it to him, and Thorn moved toward the pump, then waited till X had turned back to screw on the gas cap.
He took a quick half step, raised the nozzle, and hammered the trigger guard against the back of X’s head. The big man collapsed against the car, but didn’t go down. Thorn thumped him again above his right ear, and when he’d crumpled to his knees, Thorn squeezed the fuel trigger and drenched his clothes with gasoline. That should slow them down.
X sputtered, flung out an arm to defend himself, and tried to roll over. Thorn kicked him in the side of the head. X groaned, breathing hard, shaking. Thorn crouched beside him and dug the car keys from his pocket, hopped over his quivering body, and hustled to the driver’s side.
Cruz had spotted the action and was sprinting out of the store. She’d drawn her weapon and had it aimed his way. Twenty yards off.
Thorn was quiet inside. All the overheated fury and pain he’d felt a hundred miles ago had turned to a block of ice. He’d finished brooding and no longer cared about Cruz, about her gun, the bullets, he didn’t care about any of it. He started the car, eyes locked on Cruz. She shouted at him to halt. Took a shooter’s stance.
Thorn slipped the shifter into drive, hit the gas hard, smoked the tires, swung the wheel to the right, and veered toward the highway.
She didn’t fire.
In the rearview mirror, he watched the three of them. Cruz lowering her weapon and trotting over to X, who was on his knees, struggling to rise. Off to the side, Pixie stood alone, arms folded across her chest, her eyes following Thorn’s flight. Striking the same pose as yesterday, the girl whose car Tina Gathercole had stolen.
A half hour later Thorn pulled into the gravel parking lot of a general store with a single gas pump outside. A rusty Dr Pepper sign hung cockeyed above the screen door, and next to the metal sign was a hand-stenciled placard that said
GREAT HOPE SUNDRIES
.
He parked, got out, opened the backseat driver’s-side door. The floor mats were clean. Pixie and Cruz had taken their handbags into the gas station restroom, but Pixie left her baseball hat behind. That’s all he found. He dug his fingers between the seats, worked his way down its length and encountered grit and a couple of old coins, sticks of gum, a bobby pin, and a Metallica CD. He crouched down and peered under the front seats, knowing this was useless.
Yesterday when he’d first heard Tina’s phone ring, the volume was set on high, but this last time, the sound was heavily muffled. Still, he was trying to be systematic, hoping to find the phone lodged between the seats, or under the armrests or in the door pockets, which would suggest that X had been a party to stopping Tina on the highway after she fled the gas station in Vero Beach. That she’d ridden for a while in the backseat until she’d been deposited at some law enforcement facility. It was the reasonable, legitimate explanation. The other, darker alternative, however, was becoming inescapable.
He repeated the search of backseat, again found nothing.
He shut the door and went to the trunk and unlocked it. He moved the luggage aside, but didn’t see her phone. He ran his hand around the outer edge of the spare tire. Nothing.
Piece by piece he removed the luggage and set it on the gravel behind the car. Cruz’s backpack, a battered fake leather suitcase he assumed belonged to X-88, and a pink hard-sided roll-on that must’ve been Pixie’s. He hauled out the heavy duffel with the automatic weapons and the bricks of cash.
He removed some old ropes and a roll of duct tape and assorted bungee cords and a leather packet of tools. When the trunk was empty, he patted the carpet from one side to the other and found nothing. He did it again, working methodically, and again felt no bulges or anything out of place.