The Night Charter (5 page)

I
N HIS HEAD
, Parker turned over the time in the diner again and again on his way back to the house. He regretted putting his hand on her most of all. She was the kind of woman who let a man touch her only when she allowed it. He had violated an unspoken rule. They were not so close.

He imagined saying things a different way, and he considered arguments that hadn't occurred to him in the minutes he sat opposite her. Sometimes he could tell what she thought and other times she was closed. Today she had been a whirlwind of both, and he felt bewildered even trying to tell them apart. She demanded the whole truth from him. He could only give her what he knew.

Matt's Charger was on the curb in front of the house when he pulled onto his street. Parker's hands closed around the steering wheel, and the plastic squeaked in his grip. He nosed in behind the car and parked. Matt was not sitting in the driver's seat. There was no one in the car at all.

His hand shook slightly as he used his keys on the front door. He came through into the short hallway that opened onto the front room, and Matt was there on the couch with Lauren beside him. “Hey, it's the man,” Matt said.

“What are you doing here?” Parker asked.

“What kind of a question is that? I came by to talk. Lauren let me in. She's been telling me about school. Man, I don't miss school
at all
. I couldn't wait to drop out.”

Parker closed the door. “Lauren, why don't you go to your room?”

Lauren got up from the couch, and Matt reached out as if to catch her hand, but he touched only air. “Bye, Uncle Matt,” she said.

“See you later, sweetie,” Matt said. He looked to Parker. “Wow, she is really growing up, isn't she? Getting curves and everything. I don't envy you one bit, bro. Guys are gonna be all over her.”

Parker swallowed. “Do you want a beer?” he asked.

“A beer? Sure thing.”

He retreated to the kitchen and fetched two bottles from the refrigerator. Back in the front room he handed one over to Matt, and then he sat down in a chair to pull from his own. The cold, clean liquid helped clear the sticky taste from his mouth. “What did you want to talk about?” he asked at last.

Matt drank slowly, his eyes going lidded as he tipped his head back. “Last night for starters,” he said when he was done. “About that chick you said was going to work out for us.”

“About that…,” Parker said. “I think there's still a chance we can get her. I talked to her again today, and she knows the deal now.”

“But?”

“Well, I think she wants more money.”

“Don't we all.”

“I'm saying that she's taking a pretty big risk, what with it being her boat and all. It's a long way to Cuba and back, and a lot can go wrong. She deserves a little extra.”

Matt laughed a little and drank some more. “I should have known it was all about the cash. She put on that whole act last night, but it was just a chick thing. They tell you one thing, but they mean something else. Only problem is, if she gets more money then there's less to go around to the rest of us.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“But nothing. Do
you
want her to get a bigger cut?”

“I think it's fair.”

“Fine,” Matt said.

Parker stopped with the bottle halfway to his mouth. He lowered it. “Fine?”

“Sure. Fine. Only the extra comes out of your end, not everybody else's.”

“Hey, I'm not getting that much already.”

“So? You said it was fair that she get more, so you ought to pay.
I'm
not gonna pay. The deal is for ten grand and that's it. Whatever else is from your pocket. End of story.”

Parker drank. His stomach was unsettled. He had eaten no lunch, and he was now pouring beer on top of nothing. It was hot in the house. “I'll try to talk her down,” he said.

“Ah, see? When it's your money it's different, right? And tell her this, too: if I don't get a yes or no in two days, we're moving on to somebody else. She's out.”

“I'll tell her.”

Matt drained the bottle and put it on the floor by his feet. He rose from the couch. “And now I got to go. Get that bitch on board, all right? No more delays.”

“Okay, Matt. It'll be all good. She likes me.”

“It'd be better if she liked ten thousand bucks. See you around, bro.”

Parker stayed in his seat, and Matt let himself out. He finished his beer, though he had no taste for it, and then he collected Matt's empty. He put both in the recycling bin in the kitchen.

“Dad?”

Lauren appeared at the door and leaned against the frame. She played with her hair the way she did when she was nervous. Parker went to her and hugged her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I shouldn't have let him in.”

“It's all right. He didn't…do anything, did he?”

“No! Nothing. He's just a creep.”

Parker stroked her hair. “Yeah, he's a creep. I know. But he's gone now.”

I
GNACIO
M
ONTELLANO APPRAISED
the sandwich before him. It was pressed and still hot, layers of ham and roasted pork and cheese and pickles all laid in precisely as they should be. The thing was big, a two-handed affair if it hadn't been sliced down the middle, and he was prepared to wash it down with a large Diet Coke.

He sat in the detective's bullpen, his desk among a broad gathering of other desks. Most were empty for the lunch hour, but there were a few holdouts that took their meals in front of their computers, catching up on work or simply fooling around on the Internet. Ignacio was not a workaholic, so he did not touch his caseload during the appointed sixty minutes, but he felt more comfortable in the A/C in his own chair than he did eating behind the wheel of his idling car.

The first bite was perfection, flavors blending into flavors, the sour pickle kick-starting a new flow of saliva. He chewed thoughtfully, in no hurry to see the moment pass, before finally swallowing. A hit from the straw in his Coke cleansed his palate for the next mouthful.

He saw Pool coming with a plastic bag from Subway. Pool caught his eye and angled his way. “Hey, Nacho,” Pool said. “How's it going?”

“Fine,” Ignacio said. “How about you?”

“Good, good. You know, if you keep eating stuff like that, you're gonna pop.”

“I have a good healthy weight.”

“Yeah. Okay. Listen, I didn't catch you this morning before I had to head out on that robbery-homicide with Elmore. I had something I wanted to tell you.”

“What?” Ignacio asked.

“You'll never guess who I saw yesterday when I was on my way home.”

“Who?”

“Matt Clifford.”

Ignacio put the sandwich down. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Oh, definitely. I saw him walking out of a 7-Eleven with a Slurpee. He could use the sugar, too, because he's as thin as he always was. Hasn't put on a pound as far as I could tell.”

“Whereabouts did you see him?”

“I can write down the address for you.”

“Yeah, would you do that?”

“No problem.”

Pool left him, and Ignacio turned to his computer. He plugged in CLIFFORD, MATTHEW, and after a second he was looking at the booking photo of the man himself. Matt stared out of the screen as if he was challenging the camera, and maybe he was. He was that kind of guy.

A string of charges and convictions stretched out beneath his vitals. Ignacio scanned these, less interested in the closed cases than in the one left open. He found it and clicked the folder open. Immediately details leaped to mind, though they were four years out of date. The pawnshop and the three dead men inside: Joel Berlanga, Gerard Castanada, and Julián Moscoso. Berlanga was the one found by the open and empty safe, a single bullet in the back of his skull. Moscoso had been bludgeoned to death with a heavy object, probably a baseball bat. And Castanada had been shot through the heart. Three gone and no witnesses. Even the security cameras' tapes had been taken.

Pool returned with an address scribbled on a Post-it. Ignacio looked at it. “This is way out in Hollywood,” he said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Now I have to get them involved.”

“Not if you're only asking around. Besides, I have one better.”

“What?”

Pool produced a second Post-it. “This is Clifford's address, fresh from the DMV. He registered a 1970 Dodge Charger and listed this as his place of residence. I don't know where a guy like him gets the money to buy a classic like that, but I can guess. You want it?”

“Of course I want it,” Ignacio said. “Give it to me.”

Pool held the paper out of Ignacio's reach. “I want you to pick up a shift for me on the weekend. It's my nephew's birthday, and I want to be there for a change. You'll have to pull a double.”

Ignacio scowled. “You want to skip out for a kiddie party?”

“I told you: it's my nephew. He's nine.”

“Okay, fine. Give it here.”

The Post-it swapped hands, and Ignacio looked it over. “This isn't anywhere near Hollywood. What's he doing at a 7-Eleven over that way?”

“I heard Jackson Dewey has a place there. Clifford might be putting the old gang back together. Worth checking out.”

“Yeah,” Ignacio said absently. He folded the Post-its in half and put them in his breast pocket. “Thanks, Brady.”

“Anything for Nacho. Enjoy the sandwich, pal.”

“Right.”

When Pool left, Ignacio turned back to his meal, but his eyes drifted away to the computer monitor, where Matt Clifford kept on staring. Ignacio made a gun with his thumb and forefinger and mimed shooting the man in the face. Click-click. Boom.

The sandwich tasted that much better when he took another bite.

S
HE DID NOT
have any charters that day, so Camaro slept in before going for her workout. When she was done, she looked out over the lawn and made up her mind to see to it. After changing into work clothes, she hauled out the old gas-powered lawnmower the landlord included with the house and pulled the starter cord a dozen times before the engine caught. The mower was junk when she found it, and it was hardly better now, but time with a tool kit had coaxed it into some semblance of life. Camaro started in the back and then, in a fit of ambition, mowed the front yard, too.

When she was finished, Camaro went inside and stood in front of the air-conditioning unit in the window until she stopped sweating. After that she went to the little room she'd made an office and sat at her computer. It was locked with a password and she punched it in before navigating to the Internet. A search turned up a long list of sites that did background checks. She chose the top hit and clicked through.

It was as simple as inputting the name
Parker Story
in the search box and weeding out the ones that clearly weren't right. There was only one Parker Story in Miami. The site promised her a photograph and a full report on the subject if she paid twenty-five dollars. Camaro arranged for a debit from her bank account, and then she was in.

His full name was Parker David Story and he was thirty-four as he said. His former spouse was Melanie Artis Story and the grounds for their divorce had been abandonment. There was only the one child, Lauren Victoria Story, and she was fourteen.

The site went on to list Parker's convictions, up to and including his time for motor vehicle theft. It even provided the locations where he'd been incarcerated. His current address was listed, as were the registration of his beater of a pickup truck and his employment record, which was patchwork.

Camaro leaned back in her chair and looked at Parker's driver's license photo once again. He looked disheveled and half-awake. There was no photo for Lauren because she was a minor, so there was no telling what the little girl on the beach had grown into.

After a while she got up and paced the small office, pausing only to nudge the mouse when the computer went to a screen saver. She looked at Parker's image from all angles before sitting down once more and reading through all the information the site provided, including every address where he'd lived for the past fifteen years. He never stayed in one place for long. He had been sued for back rent in civil court ten times.

“Goddamn it,” Camaro said out loud.

She closed the browser and left the house with the keys to her bike in her hand. Out on the road with the wind in her face she could think a little better, away from the stuffiness and the closed walls of the office. Maybe she would go out on the boat, though the day was already more than halfway gone.

Parker tagged along in the back of her mind, with the sad, sorry tale of his life drifting out behind him.

“B
E SURE YOU
eat all those green beans,” Parker told Lauren.

Lauren poked at the French-cut green beans on her plate, and her expression was doubtful. “Why are they so
crunchy?
”

“It's because they're fresh,” Parker said. “I didn't get them out of a can this time.”

“I like them out of the can.”

“There's too much salt in that. This is healthier. Eat. And don't forget your meatloaf, either. I gave you the end-piece special.”

“Okay.”

They had spent the day trapped in the house, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Parker considered the beach because he always enjoyed the beach, but Lauren had shut herself up with her journal and said she wasn't interested in getting skin cancer. That had been enough conversation.

He escaped only once, to walk to the local convenience store and get the day's paper. He spread the classifieds out on the table and pored over them with a ballpoint pen, looking for likely listings and circling them, no matter what they might be. Only when he was done with that did he turn to the rest of the paper and read the actual news. None of it pertained to people like him, and even sports news did not excite him the way it used to. He read only to have something to do and not because it held any real meaning.

Eventually, he told Lauren he would be back, and he went to the grocery store. He bought the little bit he could afford with cash and his allowance from SNAP. In a moment of something like responsibility, he chose the green beans Lauren would later complain about and got a cheap metal steamer to prepare them in. The ground beef for the meatloaf was going to expire that day, so the store had it marked down. It was good enough for him.

The smells of food lured Lauren out of her room at last, but there was little talking at the table. Parker knew she wanted to ask him about jobs, and he knew he didn't want to talk about it. Tomorrow he would make all the calls, drive to all the places, fill out all the applications. Whatever it took. Today he wanted time.

“Did Uncle Matt call?” Lauren asked him.

“No,” Parker said.

“Good.”

There was nothing else to be said about it. Lauren finished the rest of her green beans with reluctance and cleared her plate of the meatloaf. She went to the kitchen and put her dishes in the sink, then went to the front room to watch television. Parker was alone at the table. He did not want to eat the last of his green beans, either, but he did it anyway.

He rinsed the dishes and dried them and put them away. His phone vibrated in his pocket and then rang. It was not Matt. He answered and Camaro spoke. He felt a sudden lightness at the sound of her voice, and he tried not to let it seep into his. “I wasn't sure you'd call,” he said.

“I'm calling,” Camaro said.

“Did you give any thought to what I said?”

“I did.”

“And what do you say?”

“How much do you love your daughter?” Camaro asked him.

Parker walked to the kitchen door. From here he could just see the television, but not Lauren on the couch. “More than anything,” he said. “She's my life.”

“Then what are you doing? Do you
want
to go back to prison?”

“I'm not going back,” Parker said. “Never.”

“You act like you get a choice,” Camaro said.

“Right now the choice is yours. Are you going to help me or aren't you?” A long silence carried over the phone. Parker checked to see if they were still connected. “Hello?”

“I'm here.”

“I have to know,” Parker said.

“I'm going to do it,” Camaro said.

“Thank you, I just—”

“I'm not finished. I know you're in a spot. I've been in a spot before, so I know what that's like. But that's not why I'm going to help you. I'm helping you out because of your daughter. That's all. I'm not a part of your crew or whatever you have going on. I do this and then I'm out. I don't want to know anything about what happens after that, and I don't want to hear from you again.”

“You're saving my life,” Parker said.

“You need new friends,” Camaro told him. “The ones you have are going to bring you down. If you love your daughter as much as you say you do, you're not going to let that happen.”

“Never,” Parker said.

“I'm going to hang up now. You call me when you have a date and a time. If you make me wait too long, I'm out. You try to add anything new to the job, I'm out. I take you to Cuba and back, you give me ten thousand dollars. Understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good-bye, Parker.”

“Good-bye, Camaro,” Parker said, but she had hung up already.