Chapter Twenty Seven
We were at the Sea Breeze restaurant in Newport, Oregon. The restaurant has a platform dining area that puts you over the water, giving you the sensation of being out at sea. It’s so far out of my price range that ordinarily I wouldn’t consider eating there. However, I knew that Anthony Peck would be there that night, so I didn’t worry about the cost. I also felt like I had a lot of ground to make up with Sandy, so I’d taken her shopping that afternoon at one of the finer dress shops on the Oregon coast. She was wearing a blue silk off-the-shoulder dress with buttons up the back and slits on the sides of the mid-thigh hemline. She looked fantastic.
Eccles and I were both dressed in formal evening attire. I’d rented a suite at a hotel near the restaurant, and the three of us had spent several hours getting ready for dinner.
We’d arrived at the restaurant early for the dinner seating, and I’d slipped the waiter a hundred dollars to seat us as far out over the water as possible. The table was up against the glass and was accessible only by a narrow aisle between two large circular tables. Those tables also had nice views, but not quite as nice a view as our table had.
Peck had arrived with an entourage a few minutes after we’d been seated. He hadn’t known that I’d be there, and he’d looked talkative and self-confident before he and the others in his group had taken seats at a horseshoe-shaped table on the far side of the room. There was a black tie dinner for the gaming commission at the Sea Breeze that night, and as the man with the plan to reform the economy of the Oregon coast with a mega-casino, Anthony Peck was the celebrity guest. The members of the gaming commission fluttered around Peck like moths around a streetlight. I had a visceral reaction when I saw him having casual conversations with other people in business suits.
I felt Sandy’s hand on mine. “Easy, superman,” she said. “We’ve got this. All you have to do is keep it cool and let us take care of it.”
The waiter came and took our orders for drinks. I had a stout beer. Eccles had an inch of whiskey over ice. Sandy had a glass of club soda with lime.
“I haven’t been dressed like this since senior prom,” Eccles said.
“You clean up very nicely, Bernard,” Sandy said.
Eccles beamed.
Sandy had taken to calling Detective Eccles by his first name. We’d spent the day together getting ready for the big event, and Sandy and I had both come to appreciate what an intelligent, pleasant, and funny guy Eccles was. If things went badly wrong during dinner, at least I’d be going out with my friends by my side. I didn’t know how much security Peck would have with him, or what he’d be willing to do in public to punish me. I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.
Bernard had ordered salmon, Sandy ordered cod, and I’d asked for rib eye. We had a pleasant wait with our drinks until our meals came, and we’d already started eating our meals when Peck finally looked over in our direction. I returned his stare for a moment and then I went back to eating. Peck waived over the huge bodyguard who’d been standing by the main entrance to the dining area. Peck stood from the dinner table when the bodyguard arrived at his side.
Peck was wearing a grey silk suit with a white shirt and pink tie. The fabric on the suit was shiny as if it were made to reflect light. Peck’s bodyguard had on a white dress shirt over black pressed slacks. I guess they don’t make tuxedo coats that big. He followed Peck over to our table, staying one pace back and one pace to the side like an obedient pet gorilla.
I’d been waiting to confront Peck for twenty years, to be able to slaughter the man who’d haunted my dreams since I was twelve years old. Somehow, seeing him up close in his shiny suit diminished him in my eyes to the point of caricature. He was shorter, fatter, and older than I thought he’d be. In the pictures I’d seen of him, he looked youthful, barrel-chested and virile. Maybe the fact that he always appeared at public functions with a beautiful woman on his arm imparted the impression of youth, power, and attractiveness. In person, he looked like a rich old guy who was fat but knew how to hide the weight. He was shorter than I thought he’d be, and his skin had the grey pallor of a lifetime cigarette smoker. He looked human and vulnerable, and I felt my anxiety and fear begin to fade.
Sandy stood up from her chair as Peck and the bodyguard arrived. Peck looked her up and down with the practiced gaze of someone who was used to evaluating people’s worth and then trading away their future without emotion or concern. Sandy leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Back in a minute, dear,” she said. She walked by Peck closely enough that her shoulder bumped into Peck’s shoulder, knocking him off balance. The security guard started to reach for her, but Peck waved him off. Sandy kept walking, heading for the far side of the room where the gaming commission members had set up a podium, a projector, and a screen. A young man who I took for a member of the restaurant staff was connecting a laptop computer to the projector.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Peck asked me.
“I’m eating dinner, short stuff,” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m conducting business. And you damn well better not disrupt it.”
“Then go conduct it,” I said, “fatso.”
When I said that, Peck’s security guard stepped past Peck and stood very close to my chair.
The bodyguard was bald and closely shaved. Aside from his jet-black eyebrows, he appeared to be hairless. He leaned over and put his face quite close to mine. I could see the individual pores in the skin on his nose. “You do not speak to Mister Peck like that,” he said. “Do. You. Understand?”
“You want a piece of me?” I said. “Put your hands on me and watch what happens.”
Eccles stood up from the table and opened his coat to show his gold detective’s badge. He pointed his finger at Peck and said in a conversational tone “Call off your boy, Peck. Right now.”
At that point, another man moved quickly past Peck. I saw a huge hand grab the shoulder of the bodyguard. The knuckles on the hand were as wide across as golf balls, and I watched the fingers disappear into the trapezius muscles of the bodyguard in the way that the bucket of a steam shovel disappears into soft dirt. The fingers dug deeper and deeper, and I saw the bodyguard wince.
The bodyguard and I both rotated our heads slowly. Eric Fullmeyer stood behind and to the left of the bodyguard, his right hand clamping down on the bodyguard’s shoulder with iron force. Eric was dressed in a black tuxedo with a white dress shirt, and his yard-wide shoulders made his tiny waist seem even smaller. Apparently they actually did make tuxedo coats for people with torsos that large.
Peck’s bodyguard winced a second time before he got out of my face and stood upright. Eric let go of the bodyguard’s shoulder and took a smooth step back to a distance just out of punching range.
The bodyguard and Eric eyed each other across three feet of carpet. It was like watching a pair of giant monsters confront each other across the Golden Gate Bridge. Destruction of nearby landmarks seemed imminent.
Eric pulled his coat back slowly so the bodyguard could see Eric’s Marshal’s badge hanging on his belt.
“Back down and walk away,” Eric said. “Unless you want to try for the title. That would suit me fine.”
“It’s easy to be tough behind that badge,” the bodyguard said.
Without losing eye contact with the bodyguard, Eric reached down and unclipped his badge. He tossed the badge onto the dinner table.
“It’s easy for me to be tough without it too, princess,” Eric said. “If you’re still here in ten seconds you’ll find out just how tough that is.”
The skin on the neck of the bodyguard flushed bright pink.
I stood from my chair. I was about two feet from the bodyguard and five feet from Peck. I heard a buzzing noise in my ears, like my blood pressure was too high. I considered jumping Peck, his bodyguard, or possibly both. I could see Sandy talking to the kid who was setting up the projection system. She rested her ha
nd on his shoulder, smiled, and handed him something small. Her smile was dazzling.
I heard Peck tell Eric “I’m going to have your job for this.”
Eric said “Take your best shot,” without taking his eyes off the bodyguard.
“What do you want me to do, boss?” the bodyguard said.
I was aware of how quiet the room had become. The other customers seated nearby were watching our table intently to see if there was going to be a brawl. No one was using their cutlery or drinking from their glasses. People who were seated with their backs to us had twisted in their seats to watch the show.
There was a squeaking noise at the front of the room as the public address system came on. Sandy stood at the podium and tapped the microphone several times. She had put her hair up in a chignon, wore dark red lipstick, and she’d chosen pale blue eyeshadow that mirrored the color of her dress. She looked stunning. People looked in her direction, then looked back at Eric and the bodyguard as if they were unsure of which show to watch.
“I’d like to make a testimonial speech about what a fine man Anthony Peck is,” Sandy said. “I hope no one minds.”
“Oh my God,” Peck said. “Get her off of there.”
The bodyguard turned to head for the dais, but Eric was blocking his path. The only alternate path for the security guard would require him to climb across the top of one of the adjoining tables.
“Move,” the bodyguard said.
“Make me,” Eric said.
“Let me take you back twenty years,” Sandy said through the public address system. “No one could have guessed that Anthony Peck would someday be the important man he is today. Let’s talk about his roots, where this fine man came from.”
At that point, Sandy nodded to the skinny kid working the projector, and the screen to the right of Sandy illuminated with a picture of the house I’d lived in when the home invasion occurred. Earlier that day Sandy had found a picture of the house on a real estate web site and put the picture on a USB drive. It hadn’t seemed likely to me that we’d get the chance to use the picture, but she’d proved me wrong.
“Oh. My. God,” Peck said. “I’m going to kill you for this. Every one of you. I mean it. I’m going to have you cut into pieces. You’re going to wish you were never born.” He said the word ‘born’ like ‘bone.’
“If I’m dead,” I said, “thinking about being bone is at the bottom of my to-do list. You can’t have it both ways.”
I held my right hand up high, with the thumb and first finger in the shape of an “O” to indicate “OK” to Sandy. Sandy leaned into the microphone. “I’m so sorry. I got the schedule mixed up. I’ll be back for Mr. Peck’s presentation later.” Then she turned off the microphone and left the podium. The kid working the projector shut it off.
Detective Eccles held up a cell phone for Peck to see.
“You just threatened to kill four people, including me, and I recorded the audio and video,” Eccles said. “That’s enough for me to go forward with my investigation of you in Oklahoma City, and to talk to a district attorney here about you threatening the lives of two civilians, a federal marshal, and a police detective. I wonder if the gaming commission and your investors would care. Let’s find out, shall we?”
Eccles gave Peck a pleasant smile.
Sandy had come back from the podium, moved carefully around Eric and the bodyguard, and said “Did you enjoy the show, Anthony?” as she moved past Peck. If Peck had laid a hand on her, I would have killed him then and there.
Sandy took my hand and whispered into my ear “C’mon, superman. Let us take care of this. You have to stay out of it for this to work. Let’s sit down.” She took a seat, tugged on my hand, and I sat down beside her. Eric stepped around the bodyguard and took a seat across the table from me.
“You were brilliant,” I told Sandy. “You had them in the palm of your hand.”
Eccles sat back down in his chair, too. That left Peck and the bodyguard standing by themselves in the narrow aisle that led to our table.
“I meant what I said,” Peck repeated. “You’re all dead. That’s not an empty threat.”
Eccles held up his phone a second time and said “Duly noted. Video recorder is still going. You reiterated your threat to kill four people and said that the threat wasn’t a joke. Anything else you want to say?”
“What should I do, boss?” the bodyguard said. “Do you want me to take the phone from him?”
Eccles said “I sure as hell hope that you try, pumpkin.”
Sandy gave Eccles a peck on the cheek. “Nice work, Bernard,” she said.
Bernard blushed.