Hades (2 page)
The truck was on its side, the wheels still spinning, when the police arrived, maybe ten minutes after the accident. A couple of state troopers. One of them, Wade Turner, was thirty-eight years old, had seen plenty of accidents, been next to his share of dead bodies. His partner, though, Morgan Lanier, was only twenty-four, and this was his first.
The Caddy had never stopped, the driver didn’t even slow down and think about it—just tore the hell out of there to wherever he was headed—but the Taurus was damaged, and sat sideways on the road, half in the right lane, half on the narrow shoulder. Turner went to check on the driver, a woman in her late twenties who had used her cell to call in the accident. She was not at all bad looking, could’ve been a cheerleader—maybe UT, not the Cowboys, not that good-looking—and luckily she wasn’t hurt. She’d been wearing her seat belt and was a little hysterical but no serious injuries. Turner assured her that she was fine and that everything would be all right. “Just a little accident,” he said, “and you’re fine.” Then he went to the trunk of his car, got a flare and lit it, stuck it on the road side of the car—if anyone else drove by they wouldn’t hit the Taurus again by mistake.
The woman in the car had been too frightened to check on the driver of the small truck—she hadn’t even gotten out of her car—so Turner nodded in that direction and he and Lanier left the woman and went to see the extent of the damage.
Wade Turner didn’t pay much attention to Teddy Angel. There wasn’t any question the guy was stone-cold dead. As Turner bent down over the body, he recoiled at the stench of bourbon. And he shook his head when he removed the headphones that were still covering Teddy’s ears, startled by the music blaring. The older trooper reached over Teddy’s body, picked up the white iPod, lowered the volume. He put the headset on his own head now, smiled, and nodded at his younger partner.
“Stevie Wonder,” he said. “Great fucking album.”
Lanier, partly to get away from the dead body, partly to get away from his partner, walked away from the cab and crawled into the back of the truck. A minute or so later he heard Turner say, “Anything back there?”
“Not much,” Lanier answered. “Looks like he was logging sporting goods. Baseball gloves, team shirts—shit like that.” He reached into a box that had split open, picked up a leather outfielder’s mitt. “How the hell’d Matt Lawton get his own glove?” he asked, but his partner didn’t answer. Turner wasn’t into baseball much. Just college football. He probably didn’t even know who Matt Lawton was.
If it was possible, the rain seemed to be coming down harder now. It made Lanier feel claustrophobic in the back of the truck, as if someone were hammering on the walls, telling him to get the hell out.
“Ambulance’ll be here in a few,” Turner said from outside. “Probably catch pneumonia by then with my luck.” He started to head to the Taurus, check back on the second-rate cheerleader, but he stopped when he heard Lanier call out, “Hey, Wade?”
“Yeah?” Turner said.
“I think maybe you should take a look at this.”
“I’m fuckin’ drownin’ out here, Morgan. What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Lanier said, “but you better come here.”
Turner sighed; felt the heavy rain pelt against his neck and down his back despite all the weather gear; and then he climbed into the back of the truck and pulled out his flashlight, pointing it toward his partner, who was crouched in the far corner.
“Check this out,” Lanier said. “It’s like some kind of secret compartment thing. Built-in.”
Turner crawled over to the boxes, pushing aside the loose sporting equipment and clothing that had spilled out. He shone his light where Lanier was pointing. His partner was right. Some kind of wooden cabinet had been built into the paneling in the truck. Turner moved the light, saw that the cabinet went around three quarters of the space. The wood had splintered in several places, the result of the accident. Lanier reached inside, started to slide out what looked like some kind of lead weight.
“Jesus Christ,” Lanier said. “It weighs a ton.”
“Looks like a gold bar.” Turner spoke quietly now. Almost reverently. “Like what they got at Fort Knox.”
“Isn’t gold kind of . . . you know . . . yellow or . . .
gold
. . . or something?”
“I think so,” Turner said. “I’ve only seen it in the movies. That James Bond movie, the one with Sean Connery.”
“
Goldfinger,
” Lanier said.
“Yeah. It was yellow in
Goldfinger.
”
“Maybe it’s silver. Silver bars. It ain’t yellow, so maybe it’s silver.”
“Maybe,” Turner said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Whatever the hell it is, this nigger sure as shit shouldn’ta had it.”
Two ambulances arrived, about ten minutes later. One took the blond woman to the nearest hospital, the other carried Teddy Angel’s body to the nearest morgue. A local tow-truck service arrived another forty-five minutes after that and, after getting the truck upright, towed it back to Turner’s and Lanier’s station.
It took the Texas State Police three days to prove Wade Turner correct in his assessment. Teddy Angel sure as shit shouldn’t have been carrying his cargo. In those few days, they were able to determine that Teddy’s truck had been reported stolen three months earlier in Cincinnati, Ohio. It had been refitted completely—repainted and given false license plates. The name stenciled onto the side of the truck—Hirshey Sporting Goods—belonged to a nonexistent company. The permit found in the glove compartment, the one that would have allowed the truck into Mexico with its sporting goods cargo, was a forgery. The Mexican company listed as the recipient of the goods, El Sportiva Mexicana, was also nonexistent.
Teddy Angel’s driver’s license was not in the name of Teddy Angel. Or even Edward Anjule. It had been issued in the name of an Easton, Pennsylvania, male who had died at the age of two, just over eight years ago. Teddy’s fingerprints had been “interfered with”—those were the words used by the forensic expert who worked on Teddy’s body. It meant that someone had operated on Teddy’s hands, cut the tips of his fingers so he could not be identified using his prints. Teddy had also clearly never had his teeth so much as cleaned, so nothing came up when a search for his dental records went through the computer. The Texas police had no clue to his true identity.
As near as could be determined, there was absolutely nothing real about either the truck or its driver. At least nothing that the police—or the FBI, who had been called in—had much hope of finding.
The contents hidden in the built-in wooden compartment of the truck
were
real, however. The metal bars.
Wade Turner’s and Morgan Lanier’s captain called them into his office four days after the truck had driven off the side of the highway. He told them that he figured they deserved to know the result of the investigation up to that point, not that the result was going to add up to much because they were pretty well stymied. But the captain told them all about the stolen vehicle and about Teddy Angel’s nonexistent fingerprints. And about the bars they’d found just sitting in the back of Teddy’s truck.
They weren’t gold. They weren’t silver.
They were platinum.
Solid, pure, unidentifiable and untraceable platinum bars.
Three million dollars’ worth.
Justin Westwood was experiencing a combination of emotions he was not particularly used to, and he wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about it. For one thing, he was relaxed. For another, at least for the moment, he was content. If push came to shove, he realized, he might even describe himself as happy. He was well aware this was not his normal state of mind, and he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was going on.
The good feelings came partly from the very cold Ketel One vodka martini he was sipping, his second in the past half hour, each with two spicy jalapeño-stuffed olives filling up the bottom of the glass. He’d also indulged in a few hits of a superb joint. He wondered what would happen if one of East End Harbor’s young police officers happened to walk into his house sometime to find him happily getting stoned. Probably nothing, he thought. It was one of the few advantages of being the chief of police.
Things had been quiet in the small Long Island resort town for nearly a year now. And quiet was good. Teenagers had gotten drunk and turned over a few garbage cans. Three houses had been broken into: someone had stolen food out of one refrigerator; another master thief had broken a window to climb into a bedroom and had cut himself so badly he called the hospital to send an ambulance; and the third break-in was an ex-boyfriend trying to get a piece of jewelry back, an earring. It turned out the earring had cost all of forty-seven bucks—not quite the expensive diamond that had been promised in happier times—so the victim was more than willing to let it go and forget about pressing charges. And even more determined to keep the “ex” in any references to the would-be burglar.
Justin was getting used to the peace and calm. He had had enough turmoil to last several lifetimes. One of the things that had helped him put the turmoil in the past was the naked woman on the bed next to him. She was lying on her right side, propped up on her elbow, also sipping her second martini. Justin would have settled for straight vodka—he probably wouldn’t have even bothered with the ice—but she had insisted on bartending. She’d shown up with the dry vermouth and the olives and even supplied the martini glasses, divining that his kitchen cabinet stock went only as deep as four or five Kmart water glasses, if that. She’d also shown up with two thick sirloin steaks, saying that if she had to settle one more time for pizza or the dreadful East End take-out Chinese food he usually ordered, she wouldn’t be held responsible for her actions. She also made it clear that she provided groceries when needed, but she hadn’t actually cooked anything since she was twelve years old and had no intention of starting now. Justin had looked through his cupboard and asked if spaghetti with garlic and oil and hot red pepper flakes would satisfy her as a side dish, and she had said absolutely, as long as they got to do certain things close up before the garlic took over. He was happy to oblige. They didn’t make it halfway through the first martini before her clothes were off and he was putting Sticky Fingers in his CD player—he was really in the mood for the driving beat of “Moonlight Mile” and the sweaty feel of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”—and she was pulling him onto his bed, and they were making love about as well as love could be made. No, not exactly accurate, he thought. What they had really done so far that night was screw their brains out. And that was definitely satisfactory.
Justin smiled at the memory of what had transpired maybe twenty minutes ago, realized she thought he was smiling at her, and then he
was
smiling at her. She was something to smile at.
He’d met Abby Harmon four months ago. In Duffy’s, not a bar where you’d expect to meet someone like Abby. She confessed later that she’d come in looking for him. She knew it was where he went to drink, and she’d heard so much about him she decided she had to see the real deal for herself. For a stretch of quite a few months, she couldn’t go to a party where people weren’t talking about Justin Westwood. His background. His aloofness. His lack of interest in just about everything that everybody at those parties was interested in. She wanted to see him for herself, see what made him tick. So she pulled her Mercedes CLK550 convertible up to the old-fashioned blue-collar hangout at ten-thirty at night, walked in, and ordered a glass of their best red Bordeaux. Their best red Bordeaux was six months old, from the North Fork of Long Island, and cost three-fifty a glass, so she went instead for a Sam Adams on draft. Donnie, the bartender, nodded in silent approval when she’d switched her order. A much better choice.
Justin had recognized her as soon as she’d walked in, of course. It was not hard to recognize Abigail Harmon. There were plenty of rich women coming in and out of East End Harbor. And there were plenty of sexy women. But there wasn’t anyone who was quite as rich and sexy as Abigail. Certainly no one who also had her kind of reputation.
Justin knew a horse trainer, a fairly placid guy, who’d done work at the stable where Abigail kept her two horses. “The meanest bitch I’ve ever met,” is the way he had described her. Justin had seen her once, striding out of the mayor of East End Harbor’s office. When Justin walked in, the mayor, Leona Krill, looked as if she’d gone ten rounds with the young Mike Tyson; when he’d asked her if she was okay, Leona had said, “Jay, I feel like I’ve just been bitten by a rattlesnake.”
But he also knew that Deena, his ex-girlfriend, gave Abigail Harmon private yoga lessons. Deena went up to the Harmon mansion—the only way to describe it—three times a week. She was very well paid, but she wouldn’t go there just for the money. Deena would never do anything just for the money. She liked Abigail Harmon. She told Jay, during their once-every-three-or-four-months lunch date, that Abby—it was the first time Justin had heard anyone refer to her as “Abby”—was “incredibly smart and really comfortable in her own skin and about the only person I teach around here who doesn’t treat me either as the help or as if I’m some kind of kook. And she’s incredibly nice to Kenny.” Kenny was really Kendall, who was Deena’s now twelve-year-old daughter. Justin was once the love of Kendall’s life. Of course, she’d been nine years old then. Now he was almost but not quite yet just a grown-up to be tolerated. He took Kendall out to lunch every three months or so, too. And every so often out to dinner. He figured he had until she was fourteen for the dinners. Then she’d dump him for some pimply-faced teenager who, sooner or later, Justin would have to talk to about getting drunk in public and knocking over garbage cans.
That night at Duffy’s, Justin had been drinking with Gary Jenkins and Mike Haversham, two of the young cops who worked for him. When Abby walked in, Gary and Mike stared in awe and disbelief. When she sauntered over to their table and asked if she could join them, they looked as if they might faint. After a few sips of her beer, she leaned over in the direction of both young men and said softly, in that voice of hers that somehow managed to be both fire and ice, “Could I ask you guys a real favor?” When they nodded, she said, “What I really want to do is have a drink with your boss. Would you mind giving us some privacy?”
The two cops practically fell over themselves to comply with her wishes, and suddenly Justin felt as if he and she were the only two people in Duffy’s wood-paneled room.
She didn’t say anything for a fairly long while and neither did he. Not speaking was one of Justin’s better things. He was comfortable with silence. More comfortable than he usually was with conversation. He’d seen something once, when he was a kid, still in college and traveling for the summer in Europe. It was some ancient aphorism—his memory told him it was Turkish—and it said, “With language began all lies.” He had liked the thought then, and now that he was grown-up and a cop, he liked it even more. So he was in no rush to interfere with the quiet that settled in over the table at Duffy’s. Finally, Abby just introduced herself. And smiled. He thought he’d never seen anything quite as perfect as her white, sparkling teeth. Unless it was her shoulders, which he could see because she was wearing a sleeveless shirt; and they were tan and perfectly round and so smooth he thought someone must have oiled and polished them before she stepped out. Her eyes weren’t too shabby either, he had to admit. They were big and almond shaped, brown with tiny specks of yellow. It was the floating specks that were so hypnotic, and they made him think of a song lyric he’d heard long ago, when he was a teenager and his parents had taken him to Manhattan to see Bobby Short sing at the Carlyle. He didn’t remember all the songs he’d heard that night, but he did remember Short crooning about a woman whose eyes were open windows and when you looked in, there was a party going on inside.
Sitting at the table with her, he decided he wouldn’t mind an invitation to the party that was going on inside Abigail Harmon.
“Is there something in particular you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked.
She shook her head. Her straight brown hair moved in sync with the motion, rolled left and right, then settled back easily, still and soft and glistening. Her hair was pretty damn perfect, too.
So they started talking about the town. She told him about her dealings with some of the younger cops, one of whom—she thought maybe it was Mike—had once tried to give her a speeding ticket.
“What do you mean ‘tried’?” he asked.
She waved her hand, as if brushing aside a gnat. “Oh, I talked him out of it.”
“How fast were you going?”
“Eighty-five.”
“And what was the speed limit?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Jesus Christ.” He rolled his eyes. “What the hell did you say to him?”
But she just smiled and shook her head. “Sorry,” she told him. “I might have to try it on you if you ever give me a ticket.”
Then they spoke about the Hamptons and a little bit about Rhode Island, which is where Justin was from. Abby had spent time there. In college she’d dated someone who went to the Rhode Island School of Design. The fact is, he didn’t really remember much of what they’d talked about. It wasn’t her words that were so beguiling. It was her voice and her manner and her legs, which kept crossing and uncrossing, and looked so muscular and firm and inviting. And it was definitely her eyes, which hinted at all sorts of pleasures and an equal number of dangerous things. And which were vulnerable. And even a little bit sad.
They talked until he looked around and realized that almost everyone else in Duffy’s was gone. There was one drunk regular, who had passed out at a table and was left to fend for himself, and Donnie, who was busy wiping the scarred wood bar down with a damp cloth.
“Look—” Justin said, not exactly sure where the rest of the sentence was going, but it didn’t matter much because Abby cut him off.
“I know,” she said. He wasn’t sure how she managed to interrupt him. She didn’t speak loudly and her words weren’t rushed. Somehow, though, when she spoke, the right thing to do seemed to be quiet. “I know about your wife and I’m sorry. I know about Deena, too. Well, enough to know that there’s something inside you that frightens her, which is why she broke it off, and she feels as bad as a person could feel about that. And I know about that woman police officer who was here last year. I don’t know what happened—I’ve just heard rumors—I figure it was bad and complicated and now she’s gone. All I want to say is what happened to your wife happened a long time ago, and maybe one of these days you’ll let go—or maybe you won’t. But, just so you know, I don’t frighten so easily. And I don’t want any complications in my life. And, best of all, I’m not gone. I’m right here. So you wanna go someplace a little nicer than this and have a real drink?”
Justin hesitated just a split second before he nodded. He didn’t know why he hesitated. He was never going to say anything but okay. “Got somewhere in mind?”
“How about your place?”
“The bad news,” he said, “is that my place isn’t any nicer than here.”
“What’s the good news?”
“There isn’t any good news.”
“Let’s go,” she said, “sweet talker.” And it was the “sweet talker” that did it. He saw her sense of humor and her toughness and her soft spot at exactly the same moment.
That first night was sensational. He wasn’t at all surprised at how sexy she was, how uninhibited and demanding she was in bed. He
was
surprised at her tenderness and the way, after sex, she kind of rolled into him, collapsing, drained, as if it wasn’t just about the pleasure and the physical relief but also about getting rid of anger and shaking off the outside world and all sorts of things that didn’t have anything to do with him or what they’d just experienced together.
After that, they began seeing each other. Not constantly. Sometimes once or twice a week. Occasionally even three times. They’d have dinner, usually in his small, Victorian house on Division Street at the end of East End Harbor’s historical district. They watched a few DVDs, mostly old movies. They drove into Manhattan one night, had dinner at Barbuto, way west down in the West Village, and spent the night at the Soho Grand Hotel.
And now here they were sitting on his bed, eating the steaks and pasta he’d cooked up, finishing off their martinis. He didn’t even mind that he knew one of the reasons she was smiling and shaking her head affectionately was because she was enjoying the fact that he was a clumsy oaf.
He’d come back into the bedroom with the food and a pained expression on his face, and as soon as he’d set the plates down, he began looking at his right hand with his eyes narrowed. She didn’t have to say a word, just gave him that look, that cocked head, and he said, “I have those stupid electric burners on my stove. You can’t tell if they’re on or off—”
She’d interrupted him, saying, “You mean
you
can’t.”
He gave her a mock scowl and said, “Okay,
I
can’t.” And then he said, “But what I
can
do is burn myself every damn time I go near the stove because I can’t even remember to turn the thing off.”
She’d laughed—laughing at the big tough guy who couldn’t handle a small burn—and she’d taken his hand and softly kissed the blister that was forming, letting her tongue linger and gently lick the heel of his hand until he didn’t really care about the minor burn.
