Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (42 page)

“Are you?” he demanded, yelling directly into my ear. I remained silent, still looking at the wall.

“What difference does it make?” Shin demanded finally, putting a gun to my head.

“’Cause what we don’t need,” Litman barked angrily at him, “is the entire DOJ on a mission of vengeance.”

Shin lowered his weapon. Litman stepped away and pulled out his phone, dialing a number.

“I’ll make a call,” Litman said, more calmly this time. “We’ll find out.”

The Tanigawas separated me from Barbara, Kenji pushing me toward the back wall without smiling now, and Shin forcing Barbara to go to the end of the walkway. Pulse surging, I realized he was pushing me toward the table strewn with old, discarded tools. Barbara must’ve realized it, too, because she shot me a significant look and then suddenly began creating a distraction.

“You won’t get away with this!” she yelled at Shin, struggling to break free.

Discreetly, I reached around behind me for a wrench or knife or screwdriver that I could use as a weapon. My fingers closed around something that felt like a small fish scaling knife, and I tucked it up into my sleeve just as Kenji turned and jerked me away, closer to him.

“The police boat’s got a GPS radio signal!” Barbara continued. “They’ll find us before you can escape.”

“Then I guess we’d better hurry,” Shin said calmly. He pushed her to the edge of the dock and pulled out the switchblade-type knife Murdock had described: long and curved and deadly-looking. No wonder Eddie Ray had run away from it in the bar.

Barbara struggled valiantly, so much so that Shin yelled for his brother to help him. Tia took over guarding me, and, without a qualm she put a semi-automatic pistol to my head.

Quickly and smoothly, as Kenji held Barbara still, Shin plunged the long knife blade into her abdomen. Then he pulled it out and pushed her forward into the water.

Barbara’s body landed with a splash and then bobbed back up to the surface. Thrashing. Gasping. Choking for air. I started to go to her, but Tia pressed the gun more firmly to my scalp and told me to freeze. Helpless, tears streaming down my face, I had to watch as the current pulled Barbara away from us and into the dark, black river. When she was gone, I tried to meet Tia’s eyes
with my own, but she was staring firmly at a point beyond my right shoulder.

“Why are you a part of this?” I cried. “Did you see what they just did?”

“Comes with the territory,” she replied coldly.

“What about Russell?” I said.

She feigned innocence, putting one hand to her mouth in mock surprise.

“Oops. He got caught. He’ll go to jail. Meanwhile, I get away with the money.”

“You helped set him up,” I said incredulously.

“He’s an idiot and a cheat. He deserved it.”

My mind reeled. The sheer heartlessness of it all was astonishing. Suddenly I gasped as realization struck me.

“You
killed Eddie Ray,” I said. “You killed him and then set it up to look like Shayna did it.”

“The backstabbing little sneak was playing around with my husband.”

“Russell told me that affair was over and done with.”

“Maybe done but not forgotten,” she said. “This way, I got two birds with one stone.”

“Eddie Ray had to die just so you could frame Shayna for murder?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped. “Eddie Ray had to die because he was nosing around in our business, threatening to ruin a good thing. Do you know how much money we’ve made in the last year? Just for Russell and me alone, we’re talking over a million dollars. And then Eddie Ray shows up, thinking he can worm his way in, get in on the action. We killed him on Litman’s orders. Framing Shayna for the murder was my own doing, just a nice little touch on the side.”

“A nice little touch?”

“Why not? All Eddie Ray brought to the table was that place, that Advancing Attire. Otherwise, he was just trying to get rich off of
our
backs.”

“Advancing Attire?” I asked. “What did Eddie Ray have to do with Advancing Attire?”

Tia rolled her eyes. “Litman had us looking for a local charity, something small, preferably run by someone who wouldn’t pay much attention to how the fund-raising was being done. When Eddie Ray showed up talking about the wooden nickel and this charity that gave his girlfriend free clothes, we decided to give the place a look. Considering the idiot who runs the joint, it seemed like a perfect choice.”

The idiot she was referring to was Verlene, I supposed. A part deep inside of me laughed, for they had underestimated Verlene by far. Maybe she came across as a bit flighty, but she was smart enough to leave the decision about signing with CNA to her board of directors, smart enough to ask me to investigate. Of course, considering the situation I found myself in now, maybe
I
was the real idiot. Soon I would be dead, the same as Hank and Barbara. My only hope was to keep Tia talking and maybe seize a chance to escape when her attention was diverted.

“So how did you get Eddie Ray to pull over to the side of the road way out here in the middle of nowhere?” I asked.

“We told Eddie Ray to meet us out here. He thought he was getting his piece of the pie. Instead, I distracted him while Shin gave it to him with the tire iron. It wasn’t much trouble to load him in the trunk and drive the car back. Shin met me at the dock in town with the boat. Then we sailed away into the night, nobody the wiser.”

Tia’s face was hard and ugly in the dim light. She dug in her pocket for a pack of cigarettes and managed to get one out and light it with one hand, the other still holding the gun that was trained firmly on me. I thought about the little knife in my sleeve, and I wondered if I would be any match for these people when it was my turn to die.

“What about the next night?” I asked. “When we found Eddie Ray’s body and I came out here to the scene of the crime?”

“We were supposed to have a shipment that night,” Tia said. “Return one container and pick up another. But then we saw all the cop cars and flashing lights in Kawshek and decided against it. We came here instead, watching from the roof to see if or when they might discover the place in the road where we killed Eddie Ray. Thanks to you, soon this whole place was crawling with cops.”

“And the bleach I smelled?”

“Bleach?” Tia asked. “Oh, that was probably the container. Russell cleaned it out before we left the farm.”

“How about later, at my house? I smelled the bleach again.”

“I made Russell go check things out, see if he could figure out who you were and what you had to do with all of this.” She laughed out loud. “You pretty near scared him to death! He heard the dog barking, but he didn’t expect you to come charging out the back door in the middle of the night. He almost didn’t get out of sight in time. Don’t you know you can get killed doing something stupid like that?”

I looked into her mocking eyes, thinking that
she
was the killer in that marriage, not Russell.

“So how did your husband feel when he found out you helped murder his friend Eddie Ray?” I asked.

Something flashed in Tia’s eyes, a mix of anger and guilt that told me Russell probably didn’t know that his wife had been involved.

“Why don’t you shut up and quit asking questions,” Tia hissed, jerking my arm and dragging me toward the worktable in the corner. Once there, she tied me to the old, rusted motor that hung from the winch over the table. I could tell she’d grown up near the bay, because the knots she used were boating knots, sturdy and tight. My only hope at this point was the little knife that remained securely up my sleeve.

“They have to call me back,” Litman said, hanging up his phone.

“Fine,” Tia snapped.

Once I was securely tied, she reached for a switch on the wall and flipped it upward. Suddenly the winch overhead sprung to life. Creaking and groaning, it raised up the motor—and me with it—and then swung it out across the floor. I kicked and twisted and struggled, but it was useless. I was swept out over the water. Finally, Tia turned off the winch and I hung there, suspended, my arms straining, my heart pounding in my head. Below me and off to one side, I could hear the Tanigawas laughing at my predicament.

Litman barked at them to get the other boat ready to roll, shouting in Japanese that they needed to get out of there fast, that the sun would be up any minute. Watching them work, I thought of Harriet, chasing the paper trail of Manno Seafood, and suddenly I understood how the company had known to cross all of their “t’s” and dot all of their “i’s” with taxes and I-9 forms and all of that. As a bureaucrat, Litman knew exactly what needed to be done to legitimize a business. He was the one who kept Manno Seafood flying under the radar.

“How can you do this?” I yelled to Litman. “You’re supposed to be one of the good guys.”

He walked to the edge of the cement and spoke in a voice that was eerily calm.

“I
was
one of the good guys,” he said softly. “For thirty-two years, I was one of the good guys. I may have been surrounded on all sides by ineptitude, sloppy work, and bad attitudes, but I did my job. And I did it better than anybody else in that bureau. It wasn’t much of a leap to see that I could work the system just as well for my own benefit.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “How could you become a part of the very thing you were fighting against?”

He surprised me by turning and kicking the nearest bench with a vengeance. It clattered across the cement, a couple of screwdrivers flying across the pavement and into the water. Even Tia looked startled at his loss of calm.

“It’s
my
system!” he yelled, a vein throbbing at his neck. “
I
put the policies into place.
I
traced the smuggling routes. In thirty-two years of doing my job, I brought down the Herraras and discovered the Valparaiso connection and turned up the Chengdu family. I’ve had a whole career of righting these kinds of wrongs!”

“So what happened, Litman?” I asked. “How could you cross over?”

“I finally realized,” he hissed, pulling out his gun and pointing it at me, “that I could use my skills just as well on the outside, for myself. I knew those idiots would never catch me. I was smarter than anyone in that agency.”

Regaining his calm, he lowered his gun and slipped it into his waistband. Then he walked over to the switch on the wall and turned it, kicking the winch to life again. Slowly, it began lowering me toward the water.

“Frankly,” he added, “I don’t know what took me so long. The benefits are much better on this side of the game.”

Our eyes locked and held. I could see a coldness in his heart, a total lack of conscience. I wondered if he were a sociopath or merely a man who had lost his soul, swept away by the temptations of his own knowledge. Breaking our gaze, he turned to Tia.

“Don’t worry about her connections to the AG,” he said, walking to the door. “Just kill her.”

I heard the bullet from Tia’s gun before I even had time to flinch, and then, instantly, pain seared across my side. The force of it set the motor to spinning as it continued to lower me toward the water.

“Did you get her?” I heard Shin ask.

I felt a warmth spread over my right hip, though the sharp pain of the bullet had quickly faded to a dull throb.
Did
she get me? Judging by how I felt, my guess was that I had only been grazed.

“Of course I got her,” Tia barked. “Look at all the blood.”

Despite my terror, despite my pain, as the motor spun on its cable I knew my only chance at this point was to let them think I was injured worse than I was, to let them think that I was dead. I forced myself to go limp, the full weight of my body hanging from the ropes that bound my wrists.

There were no more shots fired. I remained still, wondering how much I was bleeding, how long I could wait before it would be too late. Surely, they would leave now. Surely, they would give me up for dead and go away.

Eyes closed, I strained to listen. I could hear Tia and the Tanigawas untying the boat. I stopped spinning when my feet reached the water, though it took all the strength I had not to flinch from the icy cold.

How I dreaded that cold! Even the other night when I had worn my dry suit, the freezing water had been nearly unbearable. Now I was to plunge into it without any special protection at all! I shuddered at the thought and then realized that after a few minutes the cold wouldn’t matter anyway. I would have drowned by then—if I hadn’t already bled to death.

As the water reached my knees, only a supernatural, God-given strength kept me from moving, kept me from screaming. I could hear the boat starting as the water climbed to my hips. By the time the water reached my waist, I heard the boat leave, gunning its motor and speeding away into the dawn.

I was alone.

I opened my eyes, pulling myself higher on the motor, trying to get my hands free from the ropes. It was no use. Instead, I carefully worked to dig the fishing knife out of my sleeve. By the time I got it out, the water was up to my shoulders and I was trembling so hard it felt as though I were in spasms. I needed to move fast, but not so fast that I would drop the knife. Despite my violent trembling from the cold, I went to work cutting at the rope, inadvertently slicing my palms and wrists with the knife as I worked.

Soon, the water had reached my chin. I took a deep breath and let myself go down. As the water closed over my nose, my eyes, the top of my head, I could feel the ropes giving way, one by one. Counting in my mind, I kept cutting, kept slicing. I had been holding my breath for 40 seconds when, suddenly, my hands were free! I pushed off toward the surface, only to realize that part of my hair had come loose from my chignon and was caught in the engine.

No! I nearly choked from the shock. Screaming into the water through my open mouth, I gripped the knife and began hacking away at my hair. It was no use. It was too tangled and caught. I was starting to lose control. I needed to breathe! I wanted to breathe! Then the knife slipped from my frozen hands and it sank down in the murky, dark water.