“How do you know Julian Silver?” he asked me. “Have you crossed paths with him?” he asked. I could hear the tension in his voice.
“Answer me,” I said.
Silence for a few seconds. Then “He’s a known associate of the M. T. cartel. How do you know his name?”
“For now, Eric, I’m asking the questions. What’s his role in the cartel?”
Silence again, followed by “He’s a hitter, Delorean. He makes people go away.”
I thought about whether it meant anything that Eric had answered that question honestly.
“Again, have you crossed paths with him?” he asked.
“I’m still asking the questions.”
“Well, boss man, here’s a fun fact for you. Julian Silver’s Corvette was picked up on Highway 101 near the California border. It was being driven at over a hundred miles an hour on the wrong side of the road by a couple of stoned hitch hikers. Initially the driver told the trooper a story about been given the car by someone, but he finally admitted to lifting it from a parking lot in Cannon Beach the same night you and Bonnie got there.”
“That’s a coincidence that’s pretty hard to believe, Eric. You’re saying that a hired killer from the cartel showed up at the exact spot where Bonnie and I were, right after you put her on the plane to Portland? How could that be? What are the odds?”
“What is this shit, Delorean? You think I put this guy on to you?”
“Tell me about the dude with the burn marks on his face.”
“What?”
“The guy in the bar that I burned with his cowboy hat. Who is he?”
“Lavar Macone. Another hitter from the M. T. cartel, not as far up the chain as Julian Silver.”
“Where is he now?”
“I have no fucking idea, Delorean. He walked on the weapons charges and kidnapping charges for what he did in the bar because no one wanted to testify against him, like always.”
“Let’s play a guessing game, Eric. Take a wild-ass guess where you pal Lavar is. Put a pin through a cardboard tail and then see if you can guess where the donkey is.”
“Fuck you.”
“Pretty much,” I said. “I am fucked, that’s true. However, my half of this conversation is authentic, so I have that going for me. I’m going to take some performance anxiety off of you by telling you that Lavar is in Cannon Beach, showing the locals pictures of me and Bonnie and offering a big reward for whoever finds us first.”
“Have you seen that guy? You’re sure it’s him?”
“Not many people have a scar on their face like a ninja turtle mask. One of the shopkeepers described him to me. I’m pretty sure it’s him.”
“Get out of there NOW! Go to the other safe house. The address is on your driver’s license.”
“Aren’t you even curious about how Julian Silver and Lavar Macone found us, Eric? Aren’t you going to ask if we’ve used a cell phone since we left the airport, or if Bonnie called her folks from the phone in your cabin, or if maybe we used credit cards with our name on it?”
“Hell yes, I want to know. Nobody else knew I was putting her on that plane. Nobody but you and I knew you were at my cabin at Cannon Beach. I assumed you had the good sense not to advertise your presence there.”
“You’re the common factor, Eric. And I have to say, you knew the names of those hitters without even having to look them up.”
“Listen, you paranoid moron, I’m on your side.”
“Prove it,” I said.
“What?”
“Prove you’re on our side.”
“I don’t have to prove anything, you asshole! I’m a Federal Marshal who is trying to keep you and Bonnie from getting put through a wood chipper.”
“I’m going to call you back in a few days. When I call, you better have an explanation for why Julian Silver was waiting for us at the airport, and for why Lavar Macone was looking for us in Cannon Beach. And it better be good.”
“Are you threatening me now? You’re staying in my cabin, driving my car, and you think I’m working for the M. T. cartel? You really ARE crazy!”
“I’m not staying within missile range of your cabin any more, Eric, and I’m not driving your car, either. They both seem to attract the M. T. cartel like a picnic attracts ants.”
“You’re going to have to learn to trust people, Delorean. I had nothing to do with that.”
“Great. When I call back tell me how it happened.” Then I hung up.
I pulled the phone that the hit man had used out of my pocket and powered it up.
I scanned the call log to see if there was anything directly connecting Julian Silver with Eric Fullmeyer, but didn’t see Fullmeyer’s phone number in the contacts list or message list. The phone appeared to be completely clean except for one contact and one stream of messages.
The first message Julian had received was telling him to pick up his target at bag claim 26 at the Portland airport at 2:30 in the afternoon.
The first message Julian had sent was from the airport saying that he’d had recognized me as Delorean Harper while waiting for the target.
The responding message said ‘Change of plans. Take them both out’.
Julian had responded ‘Understood.’
An hour later, Julian had sent a message saying ‘About to pull the trigger. Still the plan?’
The response was ‘Do it.’
Julian had replied ‘Understood.’
The person he was swapping messages with was identified as only “MARCO.”
I selected Marco’s name from the contacts list and listened to the phone ring on the other end.
It was picked up quickly. I could hear a roaring sound in the background like you hear in a jet if you’re sitting close to the engines.
“Hello.” Hint of a Spanish accent. “Who is this?”
“I just found this phone and wanted to return it. Not sure who owns it. Yours is the only phone number in the contacts list. Do you know who I should send the phone to?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m a good Samaritan.”
Silence. Then he said “Mister Harper. I wondered if I’d be hearing from you.”
“Dreams can still come true,” I said.
“I assume that Julian is dead since you have his phone and the police found his car near the California border.” Clipped and aristocratic speaking style. All business and used to things going his way.
“Is that a question?”
“No. It’s a logical deduction. It would be a question if I asked how you did it.”
“Thanks for the semantics lesson, Marco. I’m humbled.”
“Why did you call me?”
“Because I wanted to know what your voice sounds like. Now I know. You sound like a prick.”
“And you sound like an unstable vigilante, as I expected.”
“Really? Why would you expect that?”
“Your reputation precedes you, I suppose.”
“How’s my reputation now?”
“More substantial than expected. I didn’t think Julian would have much trouble with you.”
“Getting Julian off my back wasn’t that hard, Marco. I can give you a demonstration if you want.”
“You grossly overestimate both my vulnerability and your skills, I think.”
“That’s what Julian thought, too.”
A short laugh from Marco. “You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that. I may remove them with pliers at some point, so you should enjoy them while you still can.”
“I’m squeezing them now, Marco. It’s pretty satisfying.”
Marco laughed hard. Then I could hear the jet engine noise in the background again.
“Why are you hunting me and Bonnie?” I asked. “Bonnie isn’t going to testify against your people, and I’ve already testified. What’s the point?”
“You made a very public example of yourself in the trial. Your girlfriend spat on one of my people and then threatened to kill him, as did you
. You set him on fire with his hat. What did you think would happen?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“I’m going to sign off now, Marco,” I said. “I just wanted to say Hi. Hope to see you soon.”
“Just a minute, Delorean. If Julian and Lavar aren’t good enough to take care of business, that’s valuable information to me. It tells me that I need to replace them with people who are better. In a way you’ve done me a favor, so maybe I can do a favor for you.”
“So instead of having me murdered, you want to do something nice for me.”
“Is that a question?”
“No. What you’re proposing sounds like such total bullshit that my brain felt compelled to eject the idea verbally. I logically deduced that there was absolutely no chance that you’re telling the truth.”
“Here’s some truth: your cell phone has a GPS tracking system on it, and when it’s turned on I know where you are, as do my associates. They’ll be there to say hello in less than a minute.”
“Why are you telling me this? What do you get out of it?”
“You amuse me,” he said. “Most things don’t.” Then the phone went dead.
I hit the power button on the phone and dropped it on the passenger seat. I started the car, put the transmission in drive, and floored the accelerator pedal in a single fluid motion. The engine roared and the tires spun on the asphalt as I launched the car from the parking lot and aimed it back down the highway towards Lincoln City.
A lowered black Chevrolet Suburban went past in the opposite direction. As they went by, I noticed that the driver was pale, with a pinched face, silver close-cropped hair, and wore a military style black sweater with a black shooting patch on the shoulder. The back seat window was down, and a bald head and a shotgun barrel protruded from the window. The gun was held by Lavar, the hitter with the ninja turtle scar on his face. He blinked into the wind as our cars passed each other, and then the Suburban receded in my rearview mirror. I continued on my way as if nothing had happened at all.
Chapter 26
Bonnie was waiting on the sofa for me when I got back to the condominium. She didn’t look happy. “You said you’d be right back, and you’ve been gone more than two hours. I was worried sick about you. Don’t ever do that again!” She stood up, scowled at me, went into the bedroom, and slammed the door.
I went out onto the porch and waited for Bonnie to cool down. It was cold but not raining on the porch. The Siletz River looked like it was flowing with black molten glass, and low altitude winter clouds made the afternoon light seem grey and dim. I didn’t care, it was quiet there. I thought about my phone conversations with Eric and Marco. If Julian’s cell phone had a GPS tracker on it and I hadn’t turned it off until I got to Eric’s cabin that could explain how they’d followed us to Cannon Beach. That still didn’t explain how they’d known that Bonnie was arriving at the airport, though. I couldn’t make sense of that part of the puzzle. Then Bonnie came out and stood beside my chair.
“I was so worried about you,” she said. “When you didn’t come back right away I started watching out the front window. I saw someone drive by slow, looking at the garage where we parked the car.”
“What happened then?”
“They drove on. I didn’t see them come back.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“It was one of those big white ones like the police use, but it didn’t have lights on the roof.”
“How long ago was that?”
“An hour. Maybe more.”
“Did they check to see if the garage door was unlocked, or just drive by slowly?”
“They stopped outside the garage. I could see the driver’s window go down. Then the window went back up and they drove off.”
“Have you seen them since then?”
“No. Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Bonnie, if we think we were followed here then the smart thing is for us to pack up and go.”
“Where would we go? We just got here.”
“To the safe house that Eric told us about.”
“Does that mean you trust him now?”
“Not really, but more than I did before. If we get to the safe house and there’s no one else there, then maybe he really is on our side. If we get there and Eric and the cartel people are in the hot tub together then we’ll know Eric’s dirty,” I said.
“I don’t think this is funny.”
“Me either. Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from going crazy, though.”
“We only had one night here.”
“If the safe house really is safe, we’ll just let ourselves in and live there like squatters for a while. I’ll mail Eric the keys to the Camry and tell him where it’s parked. I don’t think he wants to talk to me right now.”
“Why?”
“I spoke with him on the phone and asked him how it was possible for a hit man to be waiting for you at the airport and then track us to Cannon Beach. He said it wasn’t his fault. I told him that he needed to come up with a better answer than that, or we were finished talking to him.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m still not convinced that it isn’t his fault that the people at the M.T. cartel knew where you were going, intentionally or not. If it wasn’t Eric, then they would have had to follow you to the airport, follow you inside, get through security somehow, which means they would have needed their own airline ticket, and then follow you all the way to your boarding gate so they’d know where you were going. Right?”
“I guess so. I still can’t believe that Eric is a bad person, though. I think he really cares about me, and about you, too.”
“I thought so, too,” I said.
“Do you think those people in the white car are part of the cartel, too?”
“Not sure. It could just be someone looking for a place to rent.”
“Can’t we stay here a little longer? If we see that car again, we’ll go. I promise. Okay?”
I thought about it. “Okay.”
Chapter 27
We settled into a routine in our apartment on the Siletz River. Days came and went. We stayed inside, read paperbacks left behind by the previous renters, and spent afternoons walking along the banks of the Siletz River. We’d been out shopping for groceries one afternoon and were driving back to the condominium when I noticed a white sedan trailing us that looked like an unmarked police car. I’d left my guns at the condominium, and I didn’t want to scare Bonnie, so I didn’t say anything. The car followed us to within a quarter mile of the condominium before pulling onto a side street.
We still had enough groceries that we were able to make a simple dinner without going out. We browned some ground beef and mixed it with shredded cheddar and diced onions. Bonnie had finished setting the table when she put her arms around me and reminded me that we had each other and she loved me, whatever happened. I felt her hands slide to the base of my back, and she felt the pistol I’d put there when we got back to the condominium.
“You haven’t worn the gun for a while. Did something happen?” Bonnie asked.
“I saw a white unmarked car like police use in traffic today. Looked like it might be the same one you saw earlier outside the garage. It seemed to be following us. Then it pulled off onto a side street. I’m spooked, but at this point I’m starting to think that I’m imagining things. And I’m tired of running.”
“Do you think I should be worried?”
“I just don’t know, Bonnie. Maybe you’re right and we should call Eric.”
“I told you that if we saw that car again, I’d be okay with leaving. Why don’t you sleep on it, Del? If you feel like we should leave tomorrow morning, we’ll go.”
“That’s fair. Let’s pack up tonight so we can leave while it’s still dark if we decide to go.”
Chapter 28
That night I barely slept. I’d spent the half hour before we went to bed checking the door locks, window locks, and wedging the shower curtain ro
d into the sliding glass door rail so it couldn’t be opened from the outside. I had the shotgun I’d taken from Julian Silver leaning against the wall by the bed and Silver’s pistol on the nightstand. The gym bag containing the cash and my clothes was by the bedroom door.
Bonnie and I lay spooned together under the comforter, her breathing a combination of a very quiet snore and a purr. We had gotten into bed with our clothes on so we could leave at a moment’s notice.
A winter rainstorm that night brought pea-sized hail mixed with heavy rain, punctuated with lightning strikes that lit up our bedroom. Bonnie managed to sleep through it. I couldn’t. Finally the rain and hail stopped, but the lightning strikes didn’t.
Half-asleep, I got out of bed to close the bedroom window drapes, hoping that it would finally become dark enough and eventually quiet enough that I could get some sleep.