The Shop (16 page)

Cove Bar was heating up. Scott pushed through the crush, Jolie in his wake, and called out over the thumping bass to a man in a white tee and jeans. “Brock?”

The man moved slightly, under the arm of his taller boyfriend. Pantomimed: “Me?”

Scott said to Jolie, “Brock attracts men like flies. If Blazer Man was trolling, trust me, he’d start with Brock.”

Jolie motioned toward the door. “Can we talk outside for a minute?”

“Sure thing, hon.” They filed out into daylight, Brock’s lover holding on to his belt like the caboose on a choo-choo train.

The sun hit them, bright and hot. But at least they could talk out here. They stood in the shade of the sign’s big round shadow sprawled on the sidewalk like a reverse spotlight.

Jolie described the guy, Rick. Asked if he had tried to pick Brock up. Brock’s boyfriend, Roger, straightened, glared at her.

Brock said to Roger, “You remember, I told you about him.”

Roger glowered.

Brock said, “He’s mad because when he was visiting his sister in Tampa, I went to the bar. I mean, where else would I go? These are my
friends
.”

“You could have stayed home. I was only gone three days.”

“The guy,” Jolie reminded them. “Rick.”

“Ah, yes, I remember him. He seemed dangerous.” Gave a delicious shudder, and Jolie thought Roger was about to deck him. “Oh, come on, Roger! Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

“Dangerous how?”

“Just kind of…he had a vibe. I got the feeling he could be brutal.”

A feeling. Great. “What specifically made you think he could be brutal?”

“His eyes. They were like stones. Nothing in them.”

“How did he approach you?”

“He just came up and started talking. Not flirting, he wasn’t even all that friendly. He might as well have been picking a lobster out of a tank.” He put his hand in Roger’s back jeans pocket.

“What did he say?”

“He told me he liked the bar, asked if I came here a lot. He said he was new in town, and he was going to a party and asked me if I was interested.”

“He came
on
to you!” Roger said.

“Oh, don’t be such a bitch. I didn’t go, did I? Guy gave me the creeps. It was like, I said no, and he just crossed me off his list and went on to the next one.”

“The next one?”

“There’s this blonde Adonis, his name is Jimmy, but he’s taken, big-time. This guy, Rick, saw him across the bar and made a beeline straight for him.”

Jolie asked, “Did he tell you where the party was?”

“Cape San Blas. I think it was a club.”

“A club?”

“I don’t know Cape San Blas that well, but it sounded like a club, or maybe a gated community.”

“How did you get that impression?”

“Because I overheard him talking on his cell a little later. He said something about ‘Indigo.’ I thought it was a club.”

Jolie stared at him. “Indigo?”

“I think that’s what he said.”

Jolie thanked him and started for her car. The sun seemed to bear down on her, crushing in its intensity. She heard Scott behind her. “You going to drop me off?”

“Sure.”

“Well, thanks.”

Jolie registered the sarcastic tone, but her mind wasn’t on Scott Emerson or his hurt feelings. Her mind was on Indigo. Maybe there was a bar or a club or a gated community on San Blas named Indigo. Maybe.

But in her heart, Jolie knew the truth: there was only one Indigo.

Cyril Landry said to Frank Haddox, “If you’ll forgive me for saying so, it sounds like your father was threatened by you.”

The attorney general snorted. “You’ve got that right.”

“As you said, he was a senator. But you were in the cabinet, the inner circle.”

Lazy grin. “You know what they call the attorney general? America’s Top Cop. That’s what I was. I still am. When you address me, you call me the attorney general.”

“Top Cop. Imagine. All that power in one man’s hands. I wish I knew what that felt like.”

“It’s…like a drug. You’re flying so high…you never want to die.” He seemed to lose focus, rubbed at the tube in his arm.

Landry adjusted the drip upward. “No one understands what it takes to protect this country.”

“That’s certainly true. Most people don’t know half of what it takes. Not a
quarter
of what it takes.”

Landry said, “You know what my dad’s favorite Bible quotation was? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You’re like that shepherd.”

Haddox pointed at Landry. “Exactly! That’s it, exactly!”

Too much triptascoline. The man would be singing beer hall songs if Landry kept it up. He dialed it back.

“The scope of what you’re doing,” said Landry. “It’s breathtaking.”

“You know about it?”

Landry shook his head in admiration. “Brilliantly audacious.”

Haddox winked. “No one’s supposed to know about it. It’s our little secret.”

“No one does. Just you, me…” Landry ticked their names off on his fingers as Haddox watched.

“The executive director of the CIA,” Haddox said, then frowned. “He’s not executive director anymore. He left, and then I left later, almost two years to the day.”

“A lot of money to be made,” Landry said. “But that’s not the reason.”

Haddox nodded sagely. “That’s not the reason. But you’re right, a
lot
of money. This kind of thing is expensive—specialized—and there aren’t many people in the world who can do it. But it’s worth it! To protect this country, to make sure we’re free.”

“So the executive director—help me out here—what’s his name again?”

“Cardamone.” He spat the name. An adrenaline spike. Landry turned down the juice, jotted down the name, and led Haddox away from that subject and back to safer ground. “What did you say the name of your island was?”

“Indigo. It was named after a plantation we had in East Florida back in the early eighteen hundreds. Before my great-great-grandfather made his fortune in paper, our family grew indigo. Stinking stuff, killed everybody. The slaves—killed ’em in five years, on average. Not the proudest moment in Haddox history.”

Now that Haddox had calmed down a bit, Landry led him back to where he wanted to go. “But
this
. The scope of the operation, it’s breathtaking. How did you do it?”

“What?”

“How did you stay under the radar?”

“You mean what I think you mean? We’re not supposed to talk about that. I told Grace—”

He stopped. His eyes fearful. “Oh God.”

Landry remained stock-still.

“Nobody knows Grace knows.”

“It’s our secret,” Landry said.

For the first time, Franklin Haddox started to struggle. “What’s this in my
arm
?”

“It’s the cord to the blind, see?” Landry said quickly, turning up the drip.
Talk him down
. “What’s it like, living in an octagon house?”

“We don’t
live
there.”

Testy.

“My mother wanted it kept a certain way,
preserved
. No kids playing cowboys and Indians on her expensive old moth-eaten oriental carpets. She and my father built two freestanding houses to
live in
, back in the fifties. Painted ’em yellow to match the Wedding Cake. That’s what we call the…octa.” He paused. “Octagon…al. House.” He looked up at Landry, seeking approval. “I bet you don’t know about the secret passageway.”

“Secret passageway?”

“It was built in the twenties, during Prohibition. Those were wild days—my great-grandfather knew a lot of movie stars, had an affair with one of them. Can’t remember who. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks came down here for R and R. Lot of people came down here to let off steam. Valentino. Clark Gable, in the thirties. They wanted to get away from all that
scrutiny
.”

“Tell me about the passageway.”

“It’s a secret.” He winked, a broad stage wink. Landry didn’t like the wink, and he didn’t like Haddox.

“Passageway?” Landry reminded him.

“Goes from the Wedding Cake to the cabanas and comes out by the old boathouse. The pool was built in, oh, 1922? They’d bring the booze out on boats and take it through the tunnel. Just a precaution—my great-grandfather bought off the local constabulary, used to hunt ’gators with the sheriff. Ironic, huh? Sheriff probably enjoyed Great-Granddad’s bootleg booze on a number of occasions. Now one of the family’s in the sheriff’s office, did I tell you that?”

“Your niece?”

“Don’t really know her—long story. Her only claim to fame was being the Petal Soft Soap Baby. Her mother—” He stopped himself. Got that sly look in his eye. Something there. Landry doubted it was relevant to what he needed to know, but he asked anyway. “Her mother?”

“She’s dead.” He focused on Landry. “Long, long story. Her daughter… Did I tell you we have a cop in the family? A
detective
. Real small potatoes—my guess is she spends all her time investigating bicycle thefts, things like that.”

Landry turned the subject to security. Specifically, what kind of security they had on the island.

“You won’t believe this, but when I left? They said I was on my own—no more security detail. Just like that.”

“But you have security now?”

“Rent-a-cops. But the place is secure, you’d better believe it. The VP comes down here a lot, so everything’s in place, paid for by the U.S. government—motion sensors, cameras, all sorts of stuff. You should see it when Owen comes. Snipers on the roofs, Coast Guard, one if by land, two if by sea. It’s like a traveling circus, only real buttoned-down, you know? All those guys in suits talking into their wrists. Reminds me of when I had my own motorcade. Nobody appreciates how important I was to this country.”

Diatribe time. Landry let him ramble. Finally he wound down. “I did a lot for the people of the United States.”

Landry held Frank’s wrist up and checked his pulse rate. He said, “I know you did. The average American Joe doesn’t understand that, but I do. I admire you.”

“You admire me?”

“I like the way your mind works. But I’m curious. What gave you the idea?”

“The idea?” Haddox looked at him, confused.

“Aspen. Brienne Cross. It was brilliant.”

“Oh, that. Aspen wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, either. You remember the Mexican singer? What’s her name? And a bunch of others—you wouldn’t believe how easy it was—how well it’s worked. Talk about ‘thinking outside the box.’ Simple but brilliant. Brienne Cross is just the tip of the iceberg.” He smiled.

Landry smiled, too.

On the way out of Panama City, just before Tyndall Air Force Base, there was a little hole-in-the-wall flower shop called Sweetheart’s. Jolie bought white roses there. She slid open the frosted glass door and picked out the bouquet, not the most expensive but not the least expensive either, and inhaled the damp sweet smell of the flowers, beaded with moisture.

She paid the clerk, a woman she recognized but did not know by name, a big woman in a flowered smock with dozens of rings on her fingers that matched her barrettes. The woman beamed, her cheeks exactly like round apples, and asked Jolie if she wanted a card to write her sentiments on.

“No thanks,” Jolie said. “He knows what I think.”

“That’s the best kind of relationship,” the woman said.

Jolie drove into the cemetery off Palmetto Road and walked to the headstone set into the grass like a paving stone. The stone was polished granite. She couldn’t really afford it, but felt she had to give him the best. He’d been denied the big send-off, with cops from all over Florida, spit-shined and stoic, tears in their eyes. The fired salute, the folded flag, Jolie in a black dress and veil. None of that. She tried to make up for it with the gold engraving of a badge cut into the stone. The dark gray granite shimmered in and out of a lone pine’s shadow, declaring itself bravely: this was a person somebody lavished money on.

Jolie set the flowers in the cup and glanced at her watch. Every month, sixteen of them, she’d come here on or around the anniversary of Danny’s death. Lately, the date seemed to slip by and she’d make it sometime during the week. Her devotion had stayed the same—forced. First it was stunned and forced. Then it was raw and forced. Then it was angry and forced. Now it was just forced. She’d skipped right past grief, and she felt guilty about that. There was nothing left to her presence here except her need to show the world that Dan Tybee was not forgotten.

Her father had taught her about solidarity early on. Hold up your side. Danny was a good cop, and he deserved a cop’s funeral. If they didn’t give him the send-off, she would. Whether or not she loved him, she would damn well give him that.

The really bad thing? She
had
loved him. She’d loved him unreservedly, up to the moment the gunshot reverberated through the air of that deserted cabin.

Kay told her to let it go. “It’s time you stopped being a widow.” “You need to move on.” “Don’t be a martyr.”

She wasn’t a martyr.

Truth to tell, being a widow made things a whole hell of a lot easier. She didn’t have to even think of finding another man. That was off the table for now—no way she was ready for that. She wore the ring and she visited the grave and she refused to talk about it and that pretty much did the trick. But coming to his grave had become a chore, something she did for the sake of doing. When she stood at his grave, Jolie felt nothing but impatience. Her mind filled with other things she had to do.

But she’d keep him here. Keep his memory. He’d slipped away from her in every other way, but here, under her feet, she finally had his attention.

Landry went online to look for an off-track betting parlor. He found one—a ten-minute taxi ride away from Frank’s slip in the Emerald Bay Marina in Panama City, where they were currently moored.

Frank kept the slip so he could entertain guests or play golf at the Marriott.

Landry’s older brother called him early this morning with the news that Chernobyl Ant would finally run today at Hollywood Park. It would be his first race. The colt had the recurring quarter crack, but the patch on his hoof was solid and the track conditions were good, so it was a go. Earlier, Landry had clicked through the channels on Franklin’s satellite TV and discovered that Frank’s service didn’t subscribe to the racing channels.

Landry made sure the attorney general was secured in the bed—trussed up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey—and raised the level of the triptascoline drip. He closed the blinds and locked everything up tight. He had Frank’s card to get in and out of the gated marina.

The OTB was in a bar, smoky and dark and anonymous. Lots of characters. They looked as if their lives had been drifting out of them, like a slow leak in a tire. Too many beers over a lifetime, too many cigarettes. But then the horses came on simulcast and life came back to their eyes, as if these people remembered who they were. The racetrack could do that.

He took a place at the bar and looked up at the monitor. There was one race before Chernobyl Ant’s. Landry watched the horses parade down the track at Hollywood Park. Bright green grass. Palms. The California haze. Landry loved the backstretch, loved the action there. It would always be inside him. The only thing more important to him at the moment was taking care of business for Brienne and the others.

Now he knew why they died. All of them: the Egyptian professor, the Mexican pop star, the actor and his wife in Montana.

It was the result of Franklin’s “audacious plan.” “So simple,” he’d told Landry, the triptascoline working just like a truth serum.

“It didn’t bother you that they were innocent people? That you just picked them off a list and killed them for the hell of it?”

“Not for the hell of it,” Franklin said. “They were important. They were a distraction.”

A distraction
.

And Landry had followed orders, blindly. He’d had no idea he was working for private interests, not for his country. He couldn’t bring Brienne Cross back, but he could avenge her death. Her death, and the others.

The race was coming up. He picked a powerful gray colt, and the gray won. His jockey expertly flipped his whip around and wriggled it—his version of celebrating in the end zone.

Landry knew what it was like, that feeling of athleticism, the rocking action in the stirrups as you balanced above the horse’s back, the ground rushing underneath. Pushing with his wrists on the animal’s neck, the horse quickening. The feeling when you crossed the wire in first.

He’d ridden twenty-six races as a bug boy. Then he shot up into the giant he was now.

When it was over for him, he’d closed the door. When he closed a door in his life, that was it.

Finally, it was jockeys up. The colt looked good. A flashy chestnut like his daddy. He moved with confidence, interested in his surroundings. No fear in him. He broke a step slow, but caught up fast. Too fast? Landry felt his heart thump hard. Was the jock screwing up? Bejarano—he had to know what he was doing! They’d sweated blood to get him.

Settling into a good rhythm going down the backstretch, three from the rail, the colt moving up. Well within himself. You could tell by Bejarano’s arms, following the reins in a subtle rocking rhythm, steady and relaxed, but there was coiled strength underneath. Plenty of horse. And then, right before the turn, Rafael shook the reins and Chernobyl Ant took off.

Landry didn’t know when he realized it would be a rout.

First he was ahead by a length, then widened to four, five, six, his lead growing with every stride.

Eleven and a half lengths at the wire!

The feeling bubbled up inside him. A deep and satisfying smile warmed him like a rising sun. He ignored the cigarette smoke, the dank smell of whiskey, the crowd jabbering. Walked out into the sunset, appreciating the palms fluttering against the lurid red-and-plum sky.

Eleven and a half lengths.