Hard Cold Winter (7 page)

H
OLLIS BRANT KEPT HIS
powerboat the
Francesca
moored in one of the bigger marinas of Shilshole Bay, one pleasure craft among hundreds. Raindrops pinged off aluminum masts and brasswork. Tiny puddles had formed wherever the dock’s planks were warped. Our steps made slapping sounds on the sodden wood as we walked. Leo stayed a step or two behind me, scanning each boat as we passed. So alert that I could feel his gaze when it swept across my back.

I knew the slip number, but I hadn’t seen the boat before. All of Hollis’s boats had been named
Francesca
, without any trailing roman numerals to let you know how many vessels had come before. Hollis once said that slapping a number on the name would be like asking a lady her age.

The latest incarnation of the
Francesca
was a fifty-foot Carver. I guessed it at about a dozen years old. A hell of a lot sleeker than his previous Nixon-era Chris Craft. But maybe a little less personality, too.

I rapped on the hull, and heard the cabin door thump open at the stern.

“Come aboard, for savior’s sake!” Hollis called. “It’s raining, or haven’t you noticed?”

Leo and I each made one high step up, and climbed over the rail to shuffle sideways back to the enclosed aft deck. Leo had to take his backpack off to squeeze through.

Hollis clasped my right hand as I shook the water off my cap with the other. With his round face and long, muscular arms, Hollis would have looked simian even without the orangey curls that reminded me of an orangutan. He was dressed in madras shorts and a blue-and-white-striped Ballymena United jersey that had been new around the same time I’d started preschool.

“Hollis Brant, Leo Pak,” I said.

“You’ve finally come to visit,” said Hollis. He gestured expansively to invite us into the cabin. I entered. Leo stayed in the open doorway. The main salon was a showpiece of teak cabinetry and tan leather settees. Because the boat was newer, the surfaces were shiny and without stains. Because it was Hollis’s home, it was untidy.

Hollis lived aboard, and sometimes worked aboard as well. He was a smuggler, and a scrounger. While most of his work wasn’t as directly larcenous as Dono’s, or as prone to violence as Willard’s, he was still a long throw from being a straight citizen.

“It’s got class,” I said.

“Doesn’t she?” said Hollis. “You should feel her take the swells. I’ll give you the tour.”

“I’ll hang here,” Leo said, angling his head at the aft deck.

Hollis looked uncertainly at me. I nodded. Leo staying outside would allow Hollis and me to talk business without couching any words. I fished the folded alarm schematic out of the messenger bag and set the bag outside by Leo’s backpack. Leo tugged a chair over to where he could see the dock through the glass.

Hollis led me below and I made approving noises over the staterooms and the engines. I was curious what compartments he had built in for smuggling, but I didn’t ask. Bad form.

“Your man, there,” Hollis said softly before we went back up to the main cabin. “Am I right in guessing he’s a soldier, too? Or was?”

“He turned up at the Morgen today,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in three or four years.”

“And home safe, like yourself. That’s a blessing.”

“Better than the alternative.”

“Coffee’s on, if you’ll have some. Or something stronger?” I stuck with coffee, and brought a mug out to Leo. He nodded and went back to watching the rain.

Hollis swept some half-folded laundry off one of the chairs and sat down.

“Got your message,” he said. “What’s this about Willard?”

I filled him in on the sad fate of Elana. Hollis had been my grandfather’s closest friend, and he knew Willard well enough. He seemed to know someone everywhere.

“Poor bastard,” Hollis said, “and those poor fucking kids.”

“That about sums it up.”

“You and Miss Elana, you knew each other. Or am I misremembering?”

“You’re not.”

“Ah. And you want me to do what, now?”

“Two things. First I want the police records for Elana and for Kend. They may come up blank, but it’s better to check. We know part of Elana’s history. I don’t know about Kend.” Maybe whatever burglary Kend was planning with his alarm schematic wasn’t his debut.

Hollis pushed against the floor with his bare calloused feet, letting the round chair swivel from side to side. “This, ah, isn’t something I should tell our large friend about, I’m guessing.”

“No.” Willard was torn up enough about Elana’s death without telling him I was looking into her life. “Elana Coll, and Kendrick Haymes.” I spelled them out for Hollis.

“What’s the second thing?”

I unfolded the schematic and spread it out on the table for him to see.

Hollis whistled. “I don’t know such things as well as you and your
granddad. Wasn’t he a wizard? But this looks like serious business to me.”

“Industrial,” I said, “and expensive.”

“What was it for?”

“That’s the question,” I said. “The pencil notes tell me somebody planned to grease the system. But I don’t know if it was ever used, or if they were successful. The design looks American—see the way the zeroes are made, and the wireless frequencies noted here—but I couldn’t swear the score was even in this country.”

“And if I may ask,
who
was it for?”

“I found it in Kend Haymes’s apartment.”

“Did you now?” He looked up at me. “I’m feeling better about our decision to keep this from Willard.”

“Yeah.”

Heavy rain always sounded different inside a boat. The hollow shell of fiberglass and teak trim making a drum that bobbed gently with the beat of each gust.

Hollis felt the corner of the schematic with his fingertips. “Is this a blueprint?”

“It’s blueprint paper, I think. Maybe that has something to do with it, too.”

“So you want to know if there were any break-ins, or attempted monkeyshines, at larger businesses that involved cutting an alarm. Maybe in the U.S. and maybe not. That’s pretty damn wide.”

“I figured it was a stretch.”

“I said wide, not unworkable. We can start asking locally and see if anything matches. If we find a lot, maybe that’s good, maybe that’s bad. Would you like SPD, King County, or State?”

“Show-off.”

“Times are tight, lad. There’s always a friend willing to make a few extra dollars, so long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”

“How many dollars makes a few?”

“Their sheets shouldn’t run more than a bill apiece, with some bargaining. I’m not sure about the other. The schematic.”

I had taken my roll of fifties from its hiding place in the truck, where I kept it for emergency gas money, or whatever. Bribery counted as whatever.

I tossed the roll to Hollis. “Here’s five hundred. If you need more, let me know.”

My cell phone buzzed as he was happily pouring himself a second round from the coffee pot.

“Would this be Mr. Shaw?” Female. The barest touch of an accent, maybe British.

“It would.”

“This is Carissa Lee, calling from the office of Maurice Haymes, sir. Mr. Haymes would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience.”

Maurice Haymes. The late Kend’s father. The twelfth-richest man in Seattle, if Channel 3 news had it right.

“Would nine o’clock tomorrow morning be acceptable?” she continued, managing to imply that turning down such an offer would be unthinkable.

“I think I can rearrange,” I said.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Our offices are in Columbia Tower. Do you know where it is?”

Everybody in Seattle knew where it was. Columbia was the tallest building north of Los Angeles. It took up most of a full block of downtown.

“We’re on the thirty-fourth floor,” said the assistant. “The reception desk downstairs will have your name.”

I stifled a wiseass urge to ask her if the event was white tie, and said I’d be there. She thanked me again and the line clicked off instantly. Efficient.

“Who was that?” said Hollis.

“I’ve been granted an audience.” I told Hollis about Kend’s family. He hummed softly.

“Elana didn’t aim low, did she?” Then he grimaced. “Sorry. I’m speaking ill of the dead. If there’s a service for the girl, you let me know.”

I hadn’t even thought about whether Willard would be holding a
funeral for Elana. Even Hollis Brant was ahead of me when it came to social niceties.

He slapped a hand to his forehead. “Christ, I’d nearly forgotten again. My mind these days. Here.” He handed me a small key attached to a plastic disk. “Locker twenty-four, up at the office.”

“What is it?”

He grinned. “Presents. Some items of your granddad’s. He asked me to hold them, years ago, and it wasn’t until I was cleaning through all my things to move aboard the new
Francesca
that I even remembered I had them tucked away in storage. I brought ’em here for you.”

He wouldn’t say more.

When I opened the door to the aft deck, Leo was looking at Kend Haymes’s bank statements, lost in thought.

“Hey,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said, not glancing up. “I was looking for something to read. Got distracted. These aren’t yours, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Good,” said Leo. “’Cause this guy is shit at managing his life. And that’s coming from me.”

That was the first joke Leo had made today. I was a little pissed at him going through the messenger bag, but counted any humor as a good sign.

Hollis peeked around my shoulder, curious. “Those are young Kend’s?”

“Dude needs to stop partying and pay his bills,” Leo said, shuffling the papers back into a stack.

“Partying?”

“Yeah.” Leo picked up the first credit statement and handed it to me. “He’s taking rides everywhere he goes. See?”

He pointed to an entry from a company called Faregame. The entries repeated, sometimes three or four times a day. The amounts were small, less than twenty bucks each. In Kend’s overcrowded credit statement, I hadn’t noticed.

“He doesn’t have a car,” I said. “Faregame must be a taxi service, or some kind of ride-sharing deal.”

“I figured he was drunk off his ass all day, with that many rides,” Leo said.

Maybe he was. And I’d seen Faregame before. I pulled out my phone to look over the list of names and numbers I’d copied from Kend’s.

There it was. Selbey Faregame. Likely it was Selbey
at
Faregame, instead of firstname-lastname. Selbey could be Kend’s favorite driver.

“Leo,” I said, “you’re hired.”

“Hired? For what?”

“I don’t know yet, but you’re already earning your keep. Come on.”

Leo and I bade farewell to Hollis and walked up to the marina office to use the key Hollis had given me. Locker 24 was large, big enough for sail bags or fishing rods. Inside it was a rolled-up Persian rug.

“Your friends are strange,” Leo said.

The rug was a lot heavier and lumpier than it should have been. We carried it out to the truck, and I opened the tailgate and canopy to lay the rug on the truck bed.

Nobody was nearby. I unrolled the rug to reveal two long guns in soft carrying cases, three pistols wrapped in oiled cloths, and a cotton drawstring sack. The handguns turned out to be two Smith & Wesson Sigmas and a larger Glock, all with the serial numbers etched away. The long guns were a Mossberg 12-gauge pump shotgun and a very nice Merkel .30-06 rifle, with a burled wood stock and a Nikon scope. The drawstring sack was full of plastic baggies, sorted ammunition for all the guns, including a few non-lethal rubber shells for the Mossberg.

Leo looked at me, expressionless. “What kind of work did you say your grandfather did?”

T
HE RIDE-SHARING COMPANY FAREGAME
had an online app. The app allowed you to request specific drivers. It showed Selbey, Kendrick Haymes’s regular guy, coming on shift in half an hour.

I didn’t want to give Faregame my own name, so while Leo was still outside, scouting the outside of the house, I opened Dono’s hidden compartment in the pantry. He had kept his false IDs and credit cards secreted there, among other useful items. I picked one Washington State driver’s license under the name Varrick, and used it to book Selbey for a pick-up on 24th, going down to the Market. Hopefully no one would notice the thirty-year age difference between me and what the license claimed.

Leo came in through the open front door.

“Big place,” he said, looking around the rooms of the house he could see from the foyer. “You guys build it?”

“Restored it. Dono was a general contractor, part of the time.” In between his less legitimate and more profitable jobs. Contracting work and owning a bar had mostly been convenient ways for Dono to launder his money.

“I’m still getting used to being back,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” Leo didn’t show any signs of removing his pack. He’d slung it over both shoulders the moment we got out of the truck. “But you like being home?”

The heavy cloud cover outside wasn’t allowing much daylight through the windows. I set the case of beer down and flipped all of the switches on the wall. The first floor flared to sudden color.

“I like coming and going whenever I want,” I said. “I haven’t had time to figure out much else yet.”

He nodded. “I looked at the calendar a hundred times a day the first week, like I was counting down to the next deployment. Gearing up, you know?”

I knew. Some rotations, the op tempo was so high we’d break a hundred missions in ninety days. You learned to hit the ground running.

“I keep waking up startled, thinking I’ve missed my report date,” I said, trying for a joke.

Leo just nodded. He took his pack off, almost reluctantly, and leaned it against the wall.

I was hungry. Hunting around the kitchen, I found a full box of pasta left in the cupboard, and an unopened jar of red sauce. I put on a pot of water to boil and the sauce on simmer, and opened the refrigerator to see if there was anything like a vegetable.

“I used to take Prazo,” Leo said, looking out the window. “And Ambien. And some other shit I forget.”

I looked up. “But you don’t now.”

“No.” He turned away from his reconnaissance of the trees. “You ever?”

“Clone.” I said. Clonazepam. Antianxiety. “And sleep aids.”

“Man, they had me on all kinds of crap at the V.A.”

“It wasn’t Army for me. I picked a city doctor off base, when I was on rotation back at Benning.” I had decided to keep my troubles to myself. Seeing Army shrinks couldn’t do my career any good, no matter what they decided to put on their reports. What the brass didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.

“What’d it do for you?” Leo said

“Cognitive therapy. It gave me some coping tools, when my heart rate would go crazy or when I had nightmares. Some of them worked.”

“Nightmares.” It wasn’t a question. But it needed answering.

I used the pot lid to keep the noodles from sliding into the sink while I poured out the boiling water. Steam snaked along the upturned lid, the hairs on the back of my arm catching scalding droplets from the air.

“I was a brand-new sergeant and fireteam leader,” I said. “We were just part of two platoons sent to raid a Taliban village. The locals had left, and the insurgents had hunkered down in the houses during bad weather.”

“Wintertime?” Leo said. There was something in the way he said it, something hesitant.

I nodded. “First storm of the year. No visibility, and too much wind. Enough that our air support was cut way back. Our squad was covering one side of the village, in case any bad guys ran to hide and attack from the hills nearby.”

Leo waited. I put the pot down. I hadn’t even told Luce this story.

“Somebody in our group spotted a cave,” I said, “way up above the village. There was movement around the entrance. We got the signal to climb the hill and secure it, in case they had heavy weapons they could use to make it rain down on the village.”

“I hate caves.”

“This one wouldn’t have changed your opinion. We called inside for surrender, and threw in grenades when there was no reply. Still no sign of the enemy. The cave turned out to be a long son of a bitch. It went back into the hill and broke up into side tunnels and dead ends. The Taliban had turned it into some kind of depot for old AK-47s and other junk. So we had to go through it one yard at a time with our night optics on, checking every twist and turn in pitch-black.”

Leo’s eyes flickered. As a sniper, he might not have dealt with as many holes in the ground as other Rangers. But we all knew that clearing a cave of hostiles was like chasing a cobra down its den. “Was there another exit? Did they rabbit?”

“We thought maybe. Our team just kept going deeper into the mountain, tossing a grenade around every blind corner and clearing more ground. Then we came around one bend and everything went to hell on a rocket.”

“How many were there?” His voice sounded tight.

“Five. One of them fired a burst in the dark.”

Three shots. The same three flashes that I saw every time I had the dream.

“Then the rest of them just panicked. They were shooting anywhere, and the whole place lit up like it was noon. Bullets and rock pieces off the walls and I was sure the whole damn cave was coming down around us. We took them all out in thirty seconds, but—”

I stopped.

“You thought you were done,” Leo said.

I’d had close calls before that day, wounded and knocked unconscious, shocked when I woke up alive. This firefight hadn’t been like that. It had its own surprises, especially when our team checked ourselves for casualties after, and were astounded to find only a few deep cuts and one guy with rock fragments in his leg.

During the fight, I had felt aware of everything. The way the dirt crunched underfoot. The blurred ghost of my rifle’s reticule dot in the green night vision, as I moved it across targets. The thud of a ricochet hit on the armor plating of the guy next to me.

I hadn’t believed I was dead in those moments, like Leo assumed. I had felt more alive than I ever had before.

It was what came after that night which had seemed so unreal.

My phone buzzed with a message. It was an automated text from Faregame, telling me that Selbey would be at the top of the block to pick me up in five minutes.

“Look,” I said, “my offer still stands. Hang with me for a while.”

“I don’t need watching.”

“Okay.”

“I just like it better outside.”

“So camp in the backyard if you want. I gotta go. There’s a lady
down the street named Addy. Tougher than stale jerky. I’ll write down her number. If you need to find something and I’m not around, you call her. Understood?”

It was my command voice, back again. Leo grinned for the first time I’d seen since Kandahar.

“Roger that,” he said.

I jogged up the street to the corner, wishing Selbey had been a little slower to reply to my ride request. Leo had been ready to talk. Maybe not about everything that was weighing him down, but it was a start.

Then again, I hadn’t been completely truthful with the former Specialist Pak myself.

It wasn’t really the gunfight in the cave that still lurked in the back of my brain, after so many years. It was how I had felt in the days after the fight.

Separate. Insensate. Going through all the motions of walking and talking and even thinking as an outside observer.

The feeling of distance had faded eventually, buried under the constant pressure of new missions, new dangers. Then one night in a dream, months later and back stateside, I saw the three muzzle flashes at the right edge of my peripheral vision, and somehow all the fear I hadn’t felt on that day came in like a howling banshee. I woke in a panic. And for the rest of the next day, I felt that same disconnection again, shrouded from reality.

Like I wasn’t meant to be on the Earth anymore.