The Prince Of Deadly Weapons Read online

  Dane was wearing glasses and with the light coming right at his face the lenses darkened so it was impossible for Charles to read his eyes. He had been in the office for more than five minutes and not once had he asked why Charles wanted to see him. He gave off a composed self-confidence that Charles thoroughly distrusted but also understood he himself mindfully needed.

  Dane could hear a mordant disgust in Charles' voice. "Have you ever come to realize that your past was bankrupt in ways you never imagined? That you'd been compromised, literally duped, made a fool of, used by people close to you, exploited, and you had no idea? That you put your trust in the wrong people?"

  Charles looked at the guitars, glared at them really, as if they had played at his failure. "All that," he said, "was meant to gratify my impulses, like a child. It was a narcissistic way I could pretend I was going back to some place inside me that never was." He kept staring at the wall, at that lineup of instruments. "Maybe it was my drug, my way of feeling safe. Feeling in control?

  "I thought about taking them down, but I'm not. I'm going to leave them there as a reminder. A road sign."

  Charles stiffened a bit. He didn't really have the kind of face that went with anger. It was too long, too soft, the edges of bone curved rather than cut. The hair was too neat, the eyes lacked true luster. But, of course, Dane knew if history teaches us anything, it is that behind faces like that there can be headlands of despicable possibility.

  Charles turned to Dane. "And let me tell you one more thing. When you come to realize that you've been made bankrupt, it brings out a much more belligerent sense of self. It takes you right to the cutting edge."

  "All that sounds like some kind of warning."

  "Well, I guess it is. More for myself than anyone. But I don't mind you spreading the word."

  Dane said nothing. Charles said nothing. Charles sat back. On the river a great boat horn cried out. Charles finally spoke up. "It seems like you've made quite an impression on Nathan."

  "We've gotten to be good friends. And I'm happy to help him all I can."

  "It was good of you to deliver that package the other day."

  Charles wanted to see how Dane would react. He didn't.

  "That was just one of those pleasant accidents," said Dane. "Nathan was so overworked, and I was glad to do my part for charity."

  "Obviously he feels he can trust you with almost anything."

  "You'd have to ask him that."

  Charles rose and walked over to an enameled black hutch. "You haven't asked yet why I called to meet."

  "I'm game for surprises."

  "How about shocks?"

  "Shocks are just surprises spiced with a little adrenaline rush."

  Charles opened the hutch top drawer. Dane saw him remove a letter-sized leather folder. He returned with it to the desk and sat. He unzipped the folder. He removed papers, what looked to be a deed, a safe deposit box key.

  Charles pushed the deed toward Dane. "This is to the house on Disappointment Slough. It belonged to Nathan. He's turned it over to you."

  Dane removed his glasses and reached for the deed.

  "It's marked where you need to sign. There's a small mortgage on the place. Approximately sixty thousand dollars. An account is being set up by Nathan with time CDs to pay off the mortgage. The account will be in your name, but, for that one purpose."

  Dane looked through the documents and thought to himself, You can now follow the path of all that laundered money right to your own front door.

  Dane looked up. "Why isn't Nathan here?"

  "He's too… self-conscious for this kind of thing. He wanted me to handle it. I'm sure you'll talk about it later."

  "I don't know what to say. I'm overwhelmed."

  "I'm sure," said Charles.

  Dane held up the safe deposit box key and the deed. "It's like some new wave feoffment."

  Charles' eyebrows pricked a bit. "What?"

  "It's an old term. Never mind, no big deal."

  "The box key is for downstairs, so you have a place to keep the papers safe. You should get those papers signed now."

  "I'll do that."

  Dane reached for a pen and began to sign where the pages were flagged by Post-its.

  "I guess Nathan feels that you've really earned it."

  Dane looked up, he smiled. "Maybe he feels I will earn it."

  Chapter Forty-Four

  WHEN NATHAN ARRIVED at the General's Charles was not yet there. The old man was hooked to his oxygen, taking spare breaths in the sunlight a window afforded.

  "Well," said Nathan, "we're in it, aren't we?"

  The old man cupped his head with both hands. There once had been a jaguar inside Merrit Hand that could measure out in exact paces the taking down of its prey.

  "Merrit, I don't like asking this way. But whatever you have left, I need. I know you have to watch out for your son-in-law. But I'm beyond trusting that flake where my life is concerned."

  A reedy length of finger pointed to the bar. "Make us both… a drink," the General told Nathan. "The pussy will be here soon… and I want to know… what's going on with you… and Rudd."

  * * *

  WHEN CHARLES walked in the room the men grew quiet. It was a tidy silence that clearly said he had arrived at an inopportune moment. Charles slipped his hands into his pants pockets, his suit coat rumpled up. He crossed the room.

  Nathan followed him with his eyes. "I'll be going to Mexico tomorrow. With a hundred thousand dollars and some hard answers."

  Charles passed both men on his way to the bar.

  "What happened with the Fenns?"

  As he eased behind the bar Charles tried physically to emphasize his composure. "The Fenns swear up and down what they got, they delivered."

  "Wellll…," said Nathan, "that sure deciphers the mystery."

  Charles reached for where the bottled water was kept. He would not allow himself to be baited.

  "The Fenns took the box from the airport to meet with this Merton. He made the count, called Mexico, then brokered the diamonds. Everything from there on is a paper-and-wire transaction."

  "Exactly right," said Charles.

  "No one else had access to the box. Just the Fenns, and this Merton?"

  "No one else at my end," said Charles.

  The General knew Charles was lying. But he'd also had more than one good glimpse into the nightmare of what would happen if Damon Romero should surface in connection with the Fenns, and it was an ultimate he was not yet prepared for.

  "The Fenns are your people. And this Merton, who I only know by a handful of phone conversations, which is how you arranged it, is also one of yours." Nathan looked back and forth between Charles and the General. "So there's only two possibilities." He leveled a stare at Charles. "One of yours gamed us." He turned his attention to the General. "Or the delivery was sent short from Mexico, on purpose."

  This drew Charles out from behind the bar. "What do you mean 'delivered short'?"

  Nathan's attention remained with the General, who conversed with himself silently while he considered. "They'd have shown… a good deal of… patience… waiting this… many deliveries."

  "I'd like this explained to me."

  "We've seen it though," said Nathan.

  The old man shook his head remembering.

  "Nathan?"

  "They could be trying their first push on the terms of the deal."

  "I… hope not," said the old man.

  "Nathan, I don't understand."

  Nathan plunked his drink down on the coffee table. "You don't understand. Back when you were Mr. Rock and Roll and the General had to buy off an indictment 'cause you were caught dealing, you mean to tell me you had never cut an ounce, or tricked out a bag to increase your profits?"

  Charles took another drink of water. After having to swallow Claudia's savaging on this very subject there was a lot of revisionism going on inside his head regarding the General's actions; past, present and future. "I wasn't in
the drug business as long as you veterans so I wouldn't have learned all the subtleties."

  The General stared at Charles. If there had ever been someone who could be incensed to death, the old man burned with the look of that someone.

  "Watch what you say in front of the General, Charles."

  Charles took another drink of water. He made what sounded like a bawdy grunt. He'd come around the bar enough so he was just across the coffee table from Nathan. The General sat between both men.

  "I won't be intimidated by this father and son head script. You're both not some colossus I have to walk under. You're just two fuckin' money launderers."

  "Why you dirty little shit."

  "Yes, Nathan, I'm a dirty little shit." Charles set his bottle of water down by Nathan's drink. He forced his hands into his pants pockets. "And I didn't do boot camp. And I didn't do special services. And I was never part of some torture squad."

  Nathan's hands locked together. His index fingers and pinkies divined out toward Charles. "Now you understand. I have to face them in Mexico. But you have to pay them."

  "Me? Even if they're scamming us?"

  "You get the money. If they're scamming us, that's one thing. You're clear then. Otherwise, the Fenns have to go. This Merton has to go. After… I handle everything. Otherwise, strap on a backpack."

  Charles looked at the General. The white tumulus of his bones protruded through the skin. He sat there like some bitter enemy backing Nathan all the way, but Charles knew the old man was too riddled with ghosts to be much more than a compromise waiting for the last rites.

  "I'll get the money. But remember, Nathan, this deal was not my idea. I told you the night of the tribute—"

  Nathan stood. "Don't go there!"

  Charles backed off. Nathan reached for his drink and walked to the bar. Charles followed him with his eyes.

  "You haven't asked how it went with Rudd."

  Nathan emptied the remains of his glass into the bar sink. "I gathered we would get to it later."

  "Why this sudden urge to play benefactor?"

  Nathan started up another stronger drink. First came the ice, then the scotch, a stare for Charles while he went along, a sip, and finally— no answer.

  "How much does he know?"

  Nathan stirred the drink with his middle finger.

  "You can't keep this from me. Not this. You don't want me stumbling into a mistake that could cost us all, do you?"

  Nathan glanced at the General, who responded with a meager nod.

  "He doesn't know everything," said Nathan.

  "I thought so. He was just too fuckin' underwhelmed in my office by the whole thing. So perfectly aloof and polite about everything I asked him."

  "Maybe that has more to do with you."

  "Right, okay. But I guess he's not the portrait of innocence that you've been building up all these months."

  Nathan came out from behind the bar and walked up to Charles. "But he does have some allegiance to my dead son, of which I am benefiting. And so you're benefiting. Don't forget it."

  Nathan went to sit down, the ice in his glass clacking as he did.

  "How did he come to join"— Charles waved his hand despicably—"our little family of man?"

  Again Nathan looked to the General; again the General gave a meager nod.

  "It was my fault. He delivered the box by accident. He was trying to do me a favor and just took off with it while I was in my office. He dropped it in the parking lot. He opened it to make sure nothing was damaged. He told me later."

  Charles stood there silently and compared what he just heard to what he knew. "I think you might be lying to me, Nathan."

  Nathan eyed him with a clipped stare. "How am I lying to you?"

  "It's odd, but the same week we get ripped, you start playing benefactor. Maybe it was you who opened the box. You had it in your office. Maybe you did a little skimming to try to hook me with the blame."

  The ice in Nathan's glass stopped clacking. He set the glass down on the coffee table. "You better explain that paranoid chatter so I can understand it."

  "All right, okay. I think maybe you and Rudd are working me."

  "Are we?"

  "Yeah. 'Cause if what you said about Rudd was true, how come he had a completely different story for the Fenns about that box?"

  The old man didn't understand. He looked to Nathan for an answer. The palm of Nathan's hand came up and rubbed across his chin as he said, "Go on."

  Chapter Forty-Five

  ESSIE WAS AT the yacht club office waiting on a reply from the Coast Guard documentation service as to whether they could track an owner for the PLYMOUTH ROC when Dane returned with news.

  Nathan was not at the office but Essie felt vulnerable talking out in the open and took Dane by the hand and led him to a conference room at the end of a long hall.

  She closed the door behind them. It was a small and windowless room and before turning on the light they just held each other. They kissed and held each other and stayed that way in the dark, sharing the silence of their intimacy from the night before.

  "I have to tell you what happened at the bank."

  Conscious of the strange tone in his voice, she leaned past him and turned on the light. He explained about the house on Disappointment Slough, and the small account that had been set up in his name to pay the mortgage.

  When she heard, it was as if another part of her had been scored by what she could only describe to herself as a deformed act. "If he loved his son at all, how could he just give up that piece of him?"

  "He wants to make sure my compromise is well kept by actually proving that he has compromised me. That he is actually bringing me into the inner circle of his feelings. I know it's that way with him."

  "Maybe you shouldn't do it, take it, I mean. The house."

  "The more he compromises me, or thinks he compromises me, the more he compromises himself with me."

  "But what about you?"

  The question was like looking into an endless depth of tilted mirrors. Destiny was spinning out pathway after pathway joined at troubling angles and he was not sure which led where now, but he told her, "If I go back and turn Nathan down, what will he assume? What would Charles assume?"

  She didn't answer. The enormity of what they confronted lurked inside her. Everything was going through a swift and exigent metamorphosis. Even themselves, who they had been before last night would become someone else today, and someone else tomorrow, and the day after that.

  The fax line rang.

  "It might be the Coast Guard with news," she said.

  * * *

  IT WAS.

  Six pages of boat names and owners came through. A list that read as if someone had scoured the depths of creative banality in their attempts to be clever: PLYMOUTH ROCK III, THE PLYMOUTHS ROCK, PLYMOUTH ROCK-ON, PLYMOUTH ROCK CHICKS, but no PLYMOUTH ROC.

  Essie tore the pages up and flung them at her desk. Dane knelt down and began to pickup the shredded bits of paper, looking out toward the receptionist's desk, then over toward the bookkeeper's office to see if anyone had noticed Essie's outburst.

  She was glad Dane had said nothing when he looked up, as there was nothing he could say that fit. At the core of her rage was more than a fact of simple failure. After what Nathan had done, on some submerged and chaotic level, she wondered just how much more awful the world could be.

  The phone at her desk rang. The answer to her questions would become clear soon enough.

  "Nathan," she said, "… yes, he's here. Yes," she said again, with collected politeness, "… he's deeply moved by what you did for him. Yes," she said again, "… you're right, it will give him a chance to make a life for himself. Taylor would think it a good idea. Yes," she said again, "… I know you meant well by it."

  Her face looked like death many times over, but her voice was the image of an oblivious servant. When she handed the phone to Dane he pressed the snowy clots of paper into her hand, then squeezed the hand
into a fist.

  As she listened to Dane go through a composition of brief but "deeply felt" thank yous she tore the crumpled paper angrily into smaller and smaller pieces until each was no bigger than the pupil of an eye.

  Finally after a short silence, Dane said to Nathan, "Of course I'll come. How do we get there?"

  When Dane hung up Essie noticed he tried to down play any manner of concern. "Get where?" she asked.

  "Mexico. Someplace far down Baja called Punta Final. We leave in a couple of hours."

  "How are you getting there?"

  "Shane Fenn is gonna fly us."

  * * *

  IVY KNEW as soon as Nathan explained that morning's conflicts at the General's that it wouldn't be long before Charles made his odious presence felt.

  The first thing Charles said was, "I have to find out about Rudd from Nathan and not you!"

  "Things were happening so fast—"

  Charles screamed at her. "I'm not some fuckin' sales pitch you can afford to scam!"

  Ivy retreated from her living room to the kitchen as if she would not be assailable there. Charles stepped into the doorway.

  "What do you think is gonna happen if Nathan finds out—"

  "Stop." She turned away. Everything had become such a complication of disparate stresses. She wished there was a world where no memory existed. Or at least a twilight room where you could disappear and whisper away your misdeeds and no one ever heard and you were never held accountable.

  "If you think what would have happened was bad had Taylor talked with that Federal agent, get a good handle on reality now if Nathan learns the truth."

  She wanted a drink of water but her hands were trembling so. She could see Taylor crying, disgusted, not truly believing or wanting to believe what he'd discovered, confronting her for confirmation or denial his father was—

  "Taylor might have gotten his old man some form of immunity for rolling over. And the General would be dead by the time an indictment got to him."

  If only she could undo the calamity she set in motion.

  "But they'd run up the score on you and me and Merton."

  "I'm such a coward," said Ivy.

  "And good thing you were and came to me instead of going to Nathan."

  Trembling hands and all, she reached for water.