Liquid Smoke

EIGHTEEN

The lights on the Coronado Bridge shone brightly in the early evening. The long gone sun had forgotten to take the heat of the day with it, and the wind blowing in my window as I crossed over to the island felt like an industrial-strength hair dryer.

Liz’s house was perched on a nice little curve of street that fronted San Diego Bay. She was on the rooftop deck when I pulled up, and she waved me in the front door.

She was sitting in a beach chair, facing the lit-up buildings across the water. Her long, tan legs were stretched out in front of her, and she wore an old Chargers T-shirt and blue running shorts. She motioned with her beer to the small fridge on the corner of the deck.

“I splurged for you,” she said.

I opened the fridge and found a bunch of Red Trolley bottles. I grabbed one and sat down in the empty chair next to her. “Thanks.”

We sat in the dark for a while, drinking but not talking.

When it came to our relationship, Liz being a cop had a lot of drawbacks. But one of the things I appreciated most was that she understood silence was a necessary thing. It didn’t mean anything was wrong or one of us was mad. It was just a way to decompress. Most people didn’t understand that.

“Was it odd?” she asked as I grabbed us a couple of new beers.

I knew she was talking about Simington.

“Yes and no,” I said. “In a lot of ways, it was like going to see someone I didn’t know. Someone who wanted to hire me or something. Detached.”

She nodded.

“But it was strange that he looked so much like me,” I said, shaking my head. “Some people think Carolina and I look alike. But this was like looking down the road thirty years.”

“Except you won’t be in jail,” she said.

I didn’t say anything and took a drink.

“You know that, right?” she asked, glancing over at me.

I kept drinking.

“Don’t confuse what he looks like with what he is, Noah. You’re not him.”

I’d said as much to Simington through the window, but that had been more of a defense mechanism than true belief. It was hard for me to separate the two.

“I’ve killed people,” I said.

She pulled her legs in and sat up in the chair. “You think that makes you like him?”

“I think it means we share some of the same … abilities.”

“No one has ever hired you to kill anyone. And if they tried, you wouldn’t do it.”

I shrugged, watching the lights bounce off the water.

“You were on the right side when those things happened,” she said. “You never set out to kill them just for the sake of killing them. Or for money.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed trivial to distinguish between right and wrong when a life ended because of something I’d done. I wondered if there had been underlying reasons for the things I had participated in. Had I been more of a willing participant than I’d realized? Maybe sought out those situations to enact some sort of latent feelings I had? I’d killed when I thought my life was in danger, but now I was second guessing whether killing had really been necessary.

“Simington killed for a paycheck,” Liz said. “I did some checking this afternoon. He was a brutally cold killer. Putting a bullet in the back of a head is a barbaric way to take a life. He’s done it. You haven’t. And he did it for no other reason than someone paid him to. He wasn’t making a moral choice. He was doing his job.”

I appreciated her belief in me, and while it didn’t satisfy me, I didn’t want to spend the evening dissecting my screwed-up psyche.

I reached over and held her hand. “Anything interesting in what you found on him?”

She hesitated. “You sure you wanna hear it?” “No. But tell me anyway.”

“What Darcy told you was basically true,” she said. “The arrest reports made him as a hired gun. He drove these two guys out in the desert and took ‘em out. The two vics had just crossed over a few days earlier.”

“Was Simington a coyote? Bringing them over the border?”

She nodded. “At one time, it looks like. But a lot of that was guesswork because Simington wouldn’t give up any names.”

That didn’t surprise me. The stoicism and calm I’d seen in him at the prison weren’t fake. He seemed at ease with where he’d ended up, with no need to take anyone else with him.

“He was also in debt,” Liz said.

“Surprise.”

“Huge debt, though,” she said. “Half a million.” “Wow.”

“Appears he had a nasty gambling habit.” “Darcy mentioned he worked in some casinos.” “Yes, he did. And I did find one interesting consistency.”

“What’s that?”

“All three casinos that employed him are owned by a guy named Benjamin Moffitt. He owns Bareva out in Lakeside and a bunch of others.”

“Any mention of a Landon Keene?” I asked. “Nope.”

I felt her fingers fold into mine, and we lapsed into silence again. The black water rippled in the distance, warped images of the skyline floating on top of the bay.

I didn’t know what Liz was thinking about. But I knew where my thoughts were.

Benjamin Moffitt would be my starting point.