Wicked Break (14 page)

“You believe him?” Carter asked, stretching out on one of the plastic resin chairs on my patio.

We had made our way back to Biddly's after Wizard kicked us out. Moreno and Wesley were gone from their perch in front of the liquor store and, with Wizard's warning fresh in our heads, we drove back to Mission Beach and settled under the hazy late-day sunshine.

I yanked the caps off two Red Trolley Ales and handed Carter one as I sat down in the chair next to him. “Yes and no.”

He put the bottle to his lips and waited for me to continue.

“I think he knew about the hit down here,” I said, squinting into the orange and yellow hues above the water. “Something like that, no way it happens without his okay. They had two cars with at least four guys. It was organized. That was crap about Moreno and his initiative.”

Carter nodded. “It's a smart play on his part. He may have known who we were, but he doesn't know if we're tied to cops or feeding somebody info on him. He admitted nothing, basically.”

“I think he knew about Rachel, too,” I said, watching two bicyclists cruise by on the boardwalk, the bike tires sounding like zippers on the pavement. “He may not have known why, but I think he knew it happened.”

“Why did they go after her?”

“I'm not sure,” I said, frustrated that I hadn't been able to come up with an answer for that. “Maybe they thought she told me something.”

“Nah, man, that doesn't make sense. You'd just talked to her. How could they have put that together so quickly?”

He was right. I was starting to think that I had the reasoning backward. I'd been operating under the idea that Rachel had been shot because I'd talked to her. But it was beginning to look more like I'd been attacked at the SandDune because I'd witnessed her shooting by coincidence.

I drank from the beer and then set it on the table between us. “I don't think he was lying about Moreno and Linc, though.”

“You mean that he didn't know they had something going?”

“I think he knew something was happening. Would seem reasonable that he lets Moreno buy from whomever. But I don't think he knew exactly who Moreno was dealing with. You see his reaction? It was the only time he stumbled. And he was pissed.”

He nodded. “Yeah, he didn't seem too happy about having an association with the California coalition of white sheets. And if that's what was going on—Moreno buying from Pluto—Matellion is not gonna like how that looks, even if Moreno didn't know that Pluto was a hater. In which case, you may have just ended Deacon Moreno's life.”

I nodded, not really feeling one way or another about that possibility. I found it hard to drum up sympathy for someone who had been an active participant in trying to end my life. If he wanted to work for Wizard Matellion, he would have to live with the consequences.

I remembered the scene outside the liquor store. “What was that shit with you and Wesley?”

A slow grin emerged on Carter's lips as he pulled the bottle away from his mouth. “About a year ago, I was doing some recovery work for a guy in Tucson.”

“Recovery work?”

“Finding a guy who owed my guy some money,” he said, waving the bottle in the air. “You don't wanna know. I go down to Ensenada to find this guy and the guy that hired me says another dude's meeting me there, in case I need some help.” He smirked. “I was polite and didn't tell him that wouldn't be necessary.”

“Big of you.”

“Very. Guess who my help was.”

“Wesley?”

“Yep. Met him at the house where the dude was hiding.” He shrugged. “We exchange hellos and then we go into the house, grab the dude, and lucky us, we find a big-ass duffel bag of money, too.”

“Lucky.”

“So we do our thing with the guy and I grab the bag of cash to take back to my employer.” He shook his head, his eyes somewhere on the horizon. “Then old Wesley grabs it from me, says that
my
boss actually owes
his
boss and that's why he took the job.”

“Wizard?” I asked.

“I guess,” Carter said. “I didn't know it at the time, but that makes sense now. So he wants the money, says he's taking it with him.” His mouth slithered into a grin. “And I said no.”

Carter raised the bottle to his lips and drained it, then set the bottle down on the table.

“I drilled him in the ribs and put him on his ass and he dropped the bag,” he said, still smiling. “I know I broke a couple of them because I felt those fuckers crack. Then I bend over to pick up the bag and he catches me flush in the jaw with his foot.”

“Oops.”

He rubbed his jaw. “I had to get two teeth put back in. Anyway, we heard sirens, figured the
federales
were on their way, and got the hell out of there.” He paused. “And I, of course, left with the money.”

“Of course.”

“Hadn't seen or heard from the guy until today.”

I shook my head. Carter lived in a comic-book world that the rest of us thought couldn't possibly be real. He enjoyed proving otherwise.

“Great story, but none of it helps me,” I said.

“You asked, and I didn't say it would.”

The more I worked over what we'd learned, the more I thought Moreno had made a simple mistake. He knew a guy who could supply him with guns. But he hadn't checked him out. If he had known that Linc was tied to National Nation, he probably would've flat-out tried to kill him.

Carter sat up in the chair. “Dollar drafts down at the Pennant tonight. Wanna go over?”

“Dollar drafts?” I said, a tiny bell going off in my brain. “That would mean today's Saturday.”

“Uh, yeah. All day, I think.”

The pounding in my head turned into an ugly jackhammer.

I stood up. “I can't.”

“Why not?”

I watched the sun fight with the horizon, trying to squeeze out a few more minutes of daylight before it disappeared for another night. I stared at it for a moment, watching the water swallow the last few rays, silently pleading with the water to take me as well.

“Because,” I finally said, wishing hard that it were already Sunday, “I'm having dinner with Carolina Braddock.”

Carter left without saying much, knowing that my anxiety level was skyrocketing by the second.

I changed into a pair of shorts and a collared Quiksilver pullover and headed out. I walked up Mission to the small Italian restaurant I'd told Carolina about on my message. I'd been standing out front for about fifteen minutes, wondering if she'd gotten my message, when she came strolling up the sidewalk.

She wore a yellow-and-white-striped cotton sundress, her hair falling on her bare shoulders. A simple gold watch on one wrist and a matching bracelet on the other. White leather sandals glowed against her tan feet.

“You found it,” I said.

“I did.” She hesitated for a moment. “I was surprised at your message. I thought we were going to have dinner at your home.”

“Nah,” I said, putting a hand on her arm and guiding her toward the door of the restaurant. “This'll be better.”

I avoided her look. I knew she was thinking I was keeping her out of my life. But I didn't feel like explaining that we might be in danger at my place.

“Whatever you say,” she said.

The hostess took us to a table on the restaurant's patio that faced the boardwalk.

As Carolina walked by me to her chair, I reflexively sniffed the air for alcohol, but came up empty.

“You live so close to the water,” she said. “What a wonderful view you must have.”

“Yeah, it's not bad.”

“You always did love the beach.”

“Yep.”

The waitress arrived at our table. “Can I get you all something to drink?”

“Water's fine,” Carolina said without looking at me.

“Me, too.”

The waitress disappeared.

“You've lived down here a long time, haven't you?”

“Since college.”

She nodded, as if she knew that already. She turned to me. “I should've come down to see you.”

I shrugged, not wanting to get angry.

“I should be familiar with my son's home,” she said.

The waitress came back with our water and we ordered our food.

After she'd been gone for a few minutes, Carolina said, “I'm sorry.”

I sipped the water. “Don't be.”

A faint smile appeared on her lips. “Thank you.”

“I didn't do anything.”

“Thank you for inviting me here, Noah,” she clarified, her thin eyebrows rising just slightly. “For inviting me to your home. Or at least, to where you live.”

I looked across the table at her. As far as I could tell, she arrived sober and she was making an effort. I was straddling the line somewhere between indifferent and asshole, and that probably wasn't fair.

“You're welcome,” I said.

When our food came, we ate quietly, the clinks of the silverware on the plates interspersed with the soft falling of the waves out beyond the boardwalk. The silence brought back memories of quiet evening meals when I was growing up, as Carolina more often than not was suffering through a hangover after an alcohol-drenched day. I managed to quell the anger and bitterness that threatened to spill out of my mouth, trying to simply enjoy the moment for what it was.

After we finished, she ordered coffee and we sat there in the still evening air.

“How is your job?” she asked, her voice sounding foreign after the long period of silence.

“It's good,” I answered. “I like my boss.”

“Who's that?”

“Me.”

She smiled. “Of course.” Her smile faded to concern. “You wouldn't tell me about the bruises on your face the other day.”

“It's no big deal.”

“Do you get hurt often?”

“I try not to,” I said. “But sometimes it happens.”

Her hazel eyes focused intently on me, as if she were trying to figure out where a puzzle piece was meant to fit. “You were always tough. Even as a boy.”

I didn't say anything, not knowing whether her statement was a compliment or criticism.

“But I guess you didn't really have a choice,” she said. “I made that choice for you.”

I stared at the black edge of the water, trying to find the waves. “Yeah, probably.”

She shifted in the chair and I felt her eyes leave me.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“And I'm sorry that I'm always saying I'm sorry,” she said, her voice catching just slightly. “I wanted it to be different. I always did, but I could never get it right.” She paused. “I'd look at you and know that I was screwing up, but I just couldn't fix it. I wanted to, you may not have known that, but I did.” She turned back to me. “And then you were eighteen and gone. My tough little boy out of my house and out of my life.”

I looked at her, not necessarily surprised by the words, but maybe by the sincerity. I remembered leaving the house the summer after I graduated from high school. I managed to talk my way into the dorms early at San Diego State, negotiating a move-in right after the Fourth of July. I'd taken two surfboards and a duffel bag full of clothes. I left the rest behind, not needing or wanting anything else out of that house or that life. I'd seen her twice since that day, both times inadvertent and uncomfortable.

“I am sorry, Noah,” she said, her voice catching again. “I really am.”

“I know.”

“I'm not asking to come back into your life,” she said. Then she laughed, the lines around her eyes tightening. “That's a lie. That's exactly what I'm asking for. But not all at once. I don't want to come in and try to make up for lost time, for the years that I failed you. I can't and I know that.” She stopped for a moment, then reached across the table and put her hand on my arm. “I just want to know my son again.”

I looked at her hand on my arm, surprised that I hadn't pulled away. Her nails were neatly manicured and it was one of those obscure things that takes you back to childhood. I had loved the smell of nail polish as a kid and I remembered sitting next to her as a seven- or eight-year-old while she painted her nails.

“I can't do the drinking thing,” I said, still looking at her hand. “I just can't.”

“I haven't had a drink since you brought me home the other day,” she said.

It wasn't defensive and it wasn't angry. She was just letting me know. And I'm not sure whether it was the clarity in her eyes or the sincerity of what I was hearing or the memory of the nail polish.

But I believed her.

I moved my eyes from her hand to her face. When she had come up the alley, I thought she looked as young as she always had. But up close, I could see the fine wrinkles on her face, the faint gray in her hair, and the exhaustion of someone much older in too many ways.

She wouldn't be there forever.

“Alright,” I said.

She tilted her head, tiny tears in the corners of her eyes. “Alright?”

If she could try to give up the alcohol, I could try to give up the bitterness.

“The bruises,” I said. “I got them from a guy named Mo. And he's the reason we're at this restaurant rather than my place.”

I saw the tension that she'd been carrying in her shoulders since she arrived slowly inch away. She blinked twice, like she was making sure that whatever invisible barrier had been between us was gone. “Mo.”

I nodded and spent the rest of the night letting my mother get to know her son again.