Jeff Abbott - Black Joint Point

‘That was from a Pepsi, thank you kindly.’

‘I’m glad you’re feeling okay,’ Alex said.

‘I never said I was.’

‘Well. Okay. I got to go, Dad. I got an early, early morning.’

‘Yeah. You got pottery shards calling your name.’

‘Okay then. I’m gonna be there soon. Promise.’

‘Don’t take too long.’

Christ, what did that mean? ‘Dad. Are you worse?’

‘I just want to see you soon. Good-bye, son. I love you.’

‘Yeah, back at you.’ He did not want to think of his father wasting away in a hospice bed, the cancer he’d ignored for too long seeping through his body like rot. Big Bert belonged on a boat, diving for galleon treasure, hauling up lost Spanish coins. But always just to have Florida bureaucrats snatch them out of his hands. Bureaucrats had ruined him slowly with promises while breaking him on the rack of their antiquity laws. Here, go get yourself an ice cream, Big Bert would say to Alex as a little boy, handing him a piece of eight from 1690 or a doubloon from 1712. Knock yourself out with a double scoop. Funny, yes, but then the state government would take most of the gold, the IRS would sniff around Big Bert’s boat, squatters would try to maneuver their boats over his dive spots, the treasure would be nibbled away by a thousand grasping hands more clever than good-natured Big Bert’s.

His way was better, Alex knew, but he didn’t want to discuss it with Big Bert. Let his father think he still scrabbled through the loam for pottery and beads and crap. He’d sell much of the treasure quick. He’d go to that hospice – such a nice crisp word for a death place – grab Big Bert, fly off to Costa Rica. Let him die in blue splendor under a bright, forgiving sun. Die happy.

Every day you waste with Stoney is a day you don’t have with your dad. Tomorrow he’d get it sorted out. Find the Eye, eliminate Stoney. Screw Stoney’s threats of posthumous exposure. He was tired of this game. He needed his money, he needed it now. He’d made new identities before, he could do it again. No one in Costa Rica would give a crap about him. And he could stay there for ever.

Alex clicked on the television, waited for the ten o’clock news out of Corpus Christi. First story was a dramatic hostage standoff at a church in Dallas, two people killed. Then the news was all Port Leo: a boat wreck in St Leo Bay, a Port Leo police officer rescued from out in the Gulf, Ben Vaughn’s face on the screen as a kidnapping victim. Then Stoney’s face, also described as possibly missing. At the least the authorities wanted to ensure he was well, considering his brother had been kidnapped.

Shit. Claudia Salazar was alive. But there were no other details offered, no mention of a connection to the deaths at Black Jack Point. At the end of the newscast the pearl-toothed anchor broke in to say that Ben Vaughn had been found in Encina Pass, alive and well, no details yet on his missing brother, financier Stoney Vaughn.

He picked up his cell phone, called Stoney at the fishing cottage.

‘Your brother’s alive,’ Alex said. ‘Congratulations.’

‘I just saw on the news.’ Stoney’s voice sounded a little funny. Like he was surprised to hear from him. ‘Where you at?’

He suddenly didn’t like the question. ‘Just around. Keeping a close eye on you.’

‘So how long do I need to lay low? I can’t stay holed up here for ever.’

‘I suppose that depends on what your brother says,’ Alex said. ‘He accuses you of anything, you’re fucked.’

‘Ben would never do that to me.’

‘You just fucked him over royally, Stoney. You might have lost that old brotherly love.’

‘Ben’s not like that.’

‘You mean he’s a better person than you,’ Alex said. ‘I think you want to stay there a couple more days, Stoney. Let them get good and worried about you. Maybe we’ll make a fake ransom demand to your brother, just for show. Then you can crop up, no worse for wear.’ Yeah, right, dream on. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Stay low.’

‘I will.’

Alex got up, packed his bag. He liked knowing where Stoney was but didn’t like Stoney knowing where he was. He checked out of the Sandspot, drove across town to a smaller motel, the Surfside – did every coastal hotel have to have an S in the title? – checked in, got settled.

On the way over Alex didn’t notice the little Chevy, gold and violet and amber crystals dangling from the rearview mirror, following him.

Whit awoke early Saturday morning, Lucy shaking his shoulder. She still hadn’t been home when he returned from the hospital, but he was exhausted. So he ate a sandwich, curled in under the sheets, felt her arrive next to him and spoon into him, felt her kiss on the back of his neck, and fell back asleep.

‘Phone call,’ she whispered into his ear. He hadn’t even heard the phone ring. ‘Guy sounds like he’s squeezing coal into diamonds using his ass.’

Whit picked up the phone, listened, said, ‘Uh-huh’ and ‘Okay’ a couple of times, hung up, rolled under the covers.

‘Who was that?’

‘The FBI.’

‘The FBI?’ Lucy’s voice rose an octave.

‘Hoover doesn’t run it anymore. You don’t have to be afraid.’ He wriggled his face deeper into the pillow. ‘They want to talk to me about Stoney Vaughn. I guess I really was one of the last to see him before he vanished, or took off, or whatever.’ He told her a highly abbreviated – and edited – version of Claudia’s kidnapping. He sighed as she ran her hand along his back.

‘What do they think happened to this guy?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe the kidnappers that took his brother went after him.’ He didn’t want to talk about Danny Laffite or Gooch’s trip or any of the rest of it with her. Lucy couldn’t keep her mouth shut, he thought, and all of it might upset her needlessly.

‘So was this Stoney guy involved in Patch’s murder or what, Whit?’ She was whispering into his ear, running a hand along the flat of his belly. ‘I thought it was Jimmy Bird.’

‘Stoney knew your uncle. That was the only reason I went to see him. His brother’s kidnapping, it may have nothing to do with your uncle’s death.’

She ran fingernails along his ribs; he loved that. He wriggled and smiled. ‘No time, babe. I got to get showered for the Feds.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

He opened an eye, looked at her. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. Tired.’

‘Your errands took a long time.’

‘No, I got back and you were gone. So I ate a quick dinner and then went back over to my apartment, to get some fresh clothes.’

‘Okay.’ He got up from the bed, started up the shower.

‘Whit?’ Lucy stood in the doorway, in a T-shirt and thin little white panties.

‘Yeah, babe?’

‘You’re doing an inquest, what, next week?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Why, if it was Jimmy Bird? He’s dead.’

‘It’s just a formality, I guess. And maybe by Tuesday we’ll know more. But I don’t think he acted alone. That might be where David and I differ.’

‘David’s the cop, though, hon.’

‘That he is.’ Whit shucked his boxers, stepped into the hot spray. ‘An inquest is just a format for determining if one person caused the death of the other. If I put it on Jimmy, it still doesn’t explain the why of what happened.’

She kept standing in the bathroom, watching him shower.

‘You find any insurance on those coins?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t had time to look,’ she said, and as he shampooed, he heard a brief flash of anger in her voice. ‘Maybe they weren’t Patch’s. I really don’t know. Could I look at the coins?’

‘I’ll see what I can arrange. I didn’t mean to piss you off.’