J. Black - The Shop

“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.

32

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?”