The Buried Book (29 page)

CHAPTER 58

Can you explain why the Detroit Police Department has no record of you or Detective Russo’s alleged investigation?

“Evening. Can I help y—” The barkeep turned toward the door and stopped talking. He leaned over the counter. “What are you doin’ here, son? Ain’t it a bit late?”

“I—I need to use . . . I mean, excuse me, sir.” Jasper steadied his shaking voice. “May I please use your telephone? It’s an emergency.”

“Boy, it’s past eleven o’clock at night. You can’t be calling anybody at this hour. Where’s your folks?”

“They’re um . . . our car broke down a ways back. We—uh—saw the lights on here. I’m supposed to try to call for help.”

“You’re gonna need Tony down in Burtchville. I’ll ring him.” Clint picked up the phone and started to dial.

Jasper’s eyes circled the room, desperate for a way out of his disastrous lie. “Um . . . I’m supposed to call our mechanic in Detroit. I—uh—I have the number.”

Clint stopped spinning the dial and glanced over at Jasper’s stricken face. He hung up the phone. “Drop the act, kid. What are you doin’ here?”

Jasper glanced at the door, debating whether or not to run, but he’d come this far. “My—my mother needs my help. I can’t really explain, but please, sir, can I use your phone?”

Clint walked over and squatted down to get a look at him. “You’re Althea’s boy, ain’t ya?”

Jasper bit his tongue.

“Althea’s always been a friend. Can see her face all over yours. Your uncle know you’re here?”

Jasper shook his head.

“Who you tryin’ to call, kid?”

“A detective. From Detroit. I found something and . . . I just.” Jasper didn’t even know anymore, but she’d given the Bible to him. She had trusted him. It had to mean something. He couldn’t let her down.

“I know who you mean.” Clint grabbed the phone and dialed a number. “Pete? It’s Clint over at the Tally . . . A bit slow. You? . . . Say, you still got a Detroit cop over there drinkin’ up all your coffee? . . . That’s the one. Could you send ’im on over. He’ll know . . . Okay, see you Sunday.”

He hung up the phone. “I don’t know what your mom’s got herself into, kid, but it’s big. I’ve seen and heard a lot of strange stuff in my day, but nothin’ like this. I hope you know what you’re doin’.”

Jasper really didn’t. He stood there at the bar a moment feeling utterly lost until a thought came together.
Althea’s always been a friend.
“Mr. Sharkey? Can I ask you somethin’?”

He lowered his gaze down from the window. “What?”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Clint didn’t speak at first. He just stood there weighing his words, the way a man who rarely speaks of anyone or anything does. He finally said, “I made a promise to your mother to keep that to myself. Some pretty bad people were lookin’ for her.”

“I’m not a bad person,” Jasper whispered.

Clint smiled at him. “No. You’re not, are you? It was at the end of last summer. She walked through that door pretty shook up. Said she’d left her car somewhere. Said these people were lookin’ for her. Asked if I’d heard anything. I could tell somethin’ about her wasn’t right.”

“Did she stay here?”

“Nope. She got herself cleaned up, had a few stiff drinks, then she took off.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Wouldn’t say. I offered to drive her somewhere, but she just waved me off. Said the only thing I could do was to never tell a soul I saw her . . . so I didn’t.”

A pair of headlights pulled up into the lot. The barkeep opened the door for Jasper and said, “I hope you find her, kid.”

“Thanks,” he whispered. A black sedan was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Despite everything he’d just gone through, he felt an inexplicable urge to run the other way as the car window rolled down.

“Jasper!” the detective beamed brightly from behind the wheel. “I was hoping to hear from you. Get in.”

Jasper couldn’t believe he was climbing into the car of the very man who had chased him through the streets of Detroit. His stomach tightened as he sat down on the leather bench and closed the door, but Jasper didn’t see any other way. He couldn’t trust the sheriff or the marshal or even his own father.

“So what’ve you got for me, kid?” the detective asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.

Jasper eased the book out from the back of his pants and flipped it open. The detective glanced at a ledger page glued inside then back at the road. He was taking them north up Lakeshore. As they passed the turn to Harris Road, the knot in Jasper’s stomach twisted. They weren’t going back to the farm.

“So?” the detective said, unimpressed. “Is that all?”

“Well . . . no, there’s a lot more pages like this one, and then there’s this.” Jasper turned to the sheet full of names and phone numbers.

The detective pulled the car to the side of the road and grabbed the book. He studied the list with a low whistle. “This is the entire Galatas network.”

Jasper worked up the nerve to ask, “What’s this all about?”

“Drugs, money, women,” the detective muttered, not paying the boy much mind. He flipped through the accounting ledgers again. “I’ve been trying to nail Galatas for five years. Trafficking, racketeering, the works, but nobody will testify. I thought your mother would but . . .”

“Do you know where she is?” Jasper blurted out. “I have to find her.”

“Kid, if I could find her, I wouldn’t be here talkin’ to you. I can’t help you. Not with just this to go on.” The detective tossed the book back onto Jasper’s lap.

“But there’s more,” Jasper pleaded. “Something bad is going to happen. Tonight. Something really bad. I heard them talking. Marshal Duncan wants Sheriff Bradley to not answer the phone if it rings. Fifteen minutes, he said.”

The detective flipped off the headlights, leaving only the moon to light his face as he glared down at the boy next to him. “You need to tell me everything you know, Jasper. The lives of innocent people depend on it. We don’t want to let them down, do we?”

Jasper shook his head violently.

“So talk.”

It was a relief to tell a grown-up all the things he’d witnessed that day. Galatas and Duncan in the woods, Motega, his dead sister, everything. The detective wrote down every word, raising his eyebrows from time to time at the revelation of his dead half-sister and especially at the implication that Duncan had some sort of picture he’d used to blackmail the sheriff.

“Very good, Jasper. That’s very good. If I asked you to, could you show me where you saw Marshal Duncan and Galatas talking?”

“Yes, but—” He wanted to ask about his mother again. The detective cut him off.

“Why don’t we go take a look?”

“Now?” The rotten feeling tightened its grip. “But it’s late. My uncle and dad . . .”

“They would want you to do what’s right, Jasper. I’m an officer of the law, and it’s against the law to obstruct an investigation. You don’t want to break the law, do you?”

He shook his head again, but his gut was telling him to get out of the car. It was the same feeling he’d had when that bus driver had walked toward him. He reached for the handle, but the detective was too quick and put the car back into gear.

The road up to Black River was hard to find in the dark. Jasper was almost too late in spotting it, but the detective slammed the brakes just in time, nearly driving the boy’s forehead into the dash.

“Hold on, kid.” The detective chuckled and pulled up the steep drive with his headlights off. He cut the engine behind the rubble of the clinic and ordered him out of the car. “Okay, Jasper. Lead the way.”

His legs went numb as he led the man around the clinic and down the path toward the game house.
This isn’t right,
he thought.
This is dangerous.
But he kept walking as if he could feel the detective’s gun between his shoulder blades.

Halfway up the path, they heard voices. The detective crouched down, grabbed Jasper by the overall straps, and dragged him into the trees. Broken moonlight streamed through the branches, lighting their way as they inched closer to the sound.

“What do you mean it’s not here!” a voice bellowed. “You make me come here in the middle of the night and you do not have it? This is lies. You have nothing.”

“Have you found many bags?” a deep voice demanded. It was Motega. The detective halted Jasper behind a tree.

“We’ve just begun the search,” Marshal Duncan piped in. “We’ll find them.”

“You won’t find more than three. That is how many I left.”

“What do you mean how many you left?”

“Let this man speak, Charles.” It was Galatas talking.

The detective yanked Jasper’s shoulder straps and pushed him forward to get a closer look. Every snap of a twig stopped his heart. They would hear them. They would find them and kill them.

His father was right. The detective didn’t care.

“Do you see what is left?” Motega asked the men, motioning to the collapsed game house. “Do you see the trees? Do you see the ground?”

Jasper looked up as though Motega were commanding him. All the branches over his head still had their leaves. The fallen tree on the ground in front of him was covered in moss.

“What is it you are trying to say?” Galatas demanded.

Marshal Duncan surveyed the area, then slowly shook his head. “He’s sayin’ the twister didn’t come through here. Shit. He’s sayin’ he tore down the game house himself along with the storeroom.”

“Your men ran like scared children when the great winds came.” Motega grinned at Galatas. “I did not.”

“I see.” Galatas nodded and went quiet for a moment. “Charles tells me you want us to leave Black River. This is right, yes? This we can do. You deliver what you stole, and we leave. Do we have a deal?”

“You do not honor deals. I have seen this. Besides, I already have what I want.”

“I do not understand. What is it you have?”

“You.” Motega pulled a knife from his waistband. “You are here.”

“Charles?” Galatas took a step back. “I have no more time for these games. Will you please make this one talk?”

Marshal Duncan pulled his gun from his holster and pointed it at Motega.

Jasper lurched back only to have the detective clamp hands hard over his mouth and arms. He whispered in his ear, “Shh, kid. Galatas will burn for this. Just watch. Watch and remember it all for the jury.”

The hot breath in his ear made his whole body recoil.
Stay down, boy. This isn’t going to get any better for you.
Jasper shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He strained against the detective’s grasp, and a pain shot up the arm held in by the sling. He was pinned.

Motega’s voice did not waver. “I am not afraid of death, and I will not live without justice. Shoot me.”

Jasper’s eyes bulged open.

The marshal cocked his gun and glanced at Galatas.

The old man was the one smiling now. “First things first, Charles. We must have back what he stole. Shoot him in the foot. Shoot him until he talks.”

Motega laughed. “You can bleed me all you want. I will die happy. Your Mexican friends will kill you for me. And they will kill you slow. My blood will be your blood. So shoot me.”

The marshal fired a warning shot, and Jasper let out a muffled scream into the detective’s palm and tried to kick free.

Galatas turned to Marshal Duncan. “Did you hear something?”

Marshal Duncan lowered his gun. “There’s no one else here, Perry.”

The detective wrestled Jasper to the ground in a crackle of leaves as Galatas called out into the trees. “Taki? Did you hear that?”

Detective Russo and Jasper froze. Heavy footsteps approached them from behind. The detective released Jasper and turned, but the sound of a pump shotgun loading a round stopped him. It was only then that Jasper noticed the gun in the detective’s hand.

“Drop the piece, Russo,” a low voice growled, and a dull thump hit the dirt by Jasper’s feet. The voice called out, “I got something over here, boss.”

“Let us see who you found.”

“Move,” the voice commanded.

“Just everybody stay calm,” Detective Russo warned, but the authority had gone out of his voice. He grabbed Jasper by the overall straps and marched him out into the clearing. “This has nothing to do with either of us, Perry. I wasn’t even here. Besides, I know we can work something out. I have friends over in Narcotics.”

Jasper’s eyes locked onto Motega. The man shot him a look of bewildered fury, then hung his head.

“Hello, John. It is so nice to see you again.” Galatas smiled, then nodded his head at Taki.

The blast of the shotgun split the air. The ground crashed into Jasper’s face as the man gripping his shoulder straps hit the dirt. Another blast of the gun drove a gurgling sigh through the detective’s mouth.

A hand yanked Jasper up off the ground. Detective Russo didn’t move.

“Jesus, Perry,” a distant voice protested.

Galatas kept talking to the back of Russo’s corpse, but Jasper could barely comprehend the muffled words through the blasts ringing in his ears. “Tell your Italian friends back in Detroit not to fuck with me. Now, Motega, you will show us where you’ve buried my product, or we will dig three graves tonight.”

Motega answered in a voice too soft and defeated to hear.

Jasper was dragged through the woods, his mind beating its tiny wings against the bars of its cage.
Uncle Leo will never forgive me. When will they find out I’ve gone? The book is still in the detective’s car. My mother will be furious I left it behind. I’m sorry, Mom.

His captor kept a tight grip on the back of his neck even when they finally stopped moving. Jasper gazed down at his clothes, stained red with the detective’s blood.
I’m so sorry.

“So where is it?” Galatas demanded. Marshal Duncan trained his flashlight on Motega’s grim face.

More muddled words were followed by the sounds of a shovel lifting dirt.
They’re digging my grave.
Jasper’s thoughts fluttered and fell. He felt himself falling too. There was no ground to catch him.
This is where they’ll bury me.