Suicide Squeeze

28

Toshi stood at the bow of the small, rented speedboat. Itchi piloted. The boat motored slowly along the shore, the night deep and dark, stars fuzzy behind low clouds. Toshi fished around with a handheld spotlight.

After ten minutes of violent coaxing, the Folger woman had offered precise directions to where Conner Samson had hidden the sailboat. She’d eagerly spilled the information, hoping it would purchase her life. No sale.

To Toshi, one patch of steaming swamp looked much like another, so he and Itchi had been searching for nearly two hours.

A glint of white among the cypress.

Toshi swung the spotlight back like a pistol, aimed down a narrow inlet that at first seemed too small to accommodate a large sailboat. “Back up. Turn us around.”

They swung the speedboat into the inlet, and the Electric Jenny’s stern hove into view. Toshi ordered Itchi to cut the engine. They drifted in silence toward the Jenny, bumped the hull gently. They leapt aboard with lethal grace, intending to move through the boat quickly, subduing Samson or whoever else might be aboard.

Nobody was home.

Toshi ordered the boat searched. When Itchi couldn’t find the DiMaggio card, Toshi flipped open his switchblade, tore into the cushions and the bedding. No sign of the card.

Toshi had not really expected to find it. His feeling was that Samson had the card. Rather than search further, Toshi would much rather find Samson and make him tell where it was.

“Itchi.”

“Hai.”

“Stay here,” ordered Toshi. “Lie in wait for Samson in case he should return. You know what to do.”

“It shall be done,” Itchi said.

“Do not let him throw you off the boat this time,” Toshi said.

Itchi reddened but kept silent.

“Remember to restrain yourself,” Toshi said. “Samson will die soon enough, but we must make him talk first.”

Joellen Becker had made half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s disappear a little at a time with a shot glass shaped like a shotgun shell. The evening had started with her chewing through Folger’s insurance file. She read and reread every line, looking for some hint. Anything. Did he have another property, an office someplace? A safety-deposit box? Folger had no friends, no living relatives. And Folger himself wasn’t talking.

It was useless. Hell, maybe the card had burned with the shop. More likely, Joellen admitted to herself, she’d simply come up empty. She had not found the card, nor had she any leads where it might be. She hadn’t found Folger in time to ask him any useful questions. Then she’d called Samson twenty-five times. No answer. He was a bust too. Useless. All useless.

She twirled her father’s Old West-style six-shooters. She always brought them out when drinking, not often but once in a great while. The general had been a George Patton worshipper. The pistols were so corny, gleaming nickel, ivory handles, but Becker had to admire the craftsmanship. This is what washed-up spooks did, she imagined. Drink into oblivion, play with guns and wonder where everything went wrong.

She remembered that day she resigned from the NSA. It had been a bad day.

She stood at the foot of his bed, watched him while he slept, a cigarette dangling unlit from her lips. She would wait until he awoke. There was no hurry and nowhere to go.

Her father, the retired three-star army general, looked sallow and shrunken, dark circles around his hollow eyes, face pinched. The cancer had eaten its way through most of the major organs, spreading suddenly and rapidly and without mercy. In six short months, Joellen had watched him deflate, this man who’d once been like some ferocious god.

The television above her head blared a cable channel Western. She reached up, flipped it off.

The old man’s eyes flickered open. “I was watching that.” He produced the remote from beneath the bedcovers, turned the film back on. “It’s John Wayne. The Searchers.”

“At least turn it down.”

He thumbed the remote again, cut the volume to almost nothing.

He shifted in bed, only slightly, but it looked like his bones would shatter, like they couldn’t possibly support the weight of his slack skin. He grunted, moved his legs.

Joellen did not offer to help.

He finally found a comfortable position, sighed, exhausted, and closed his eyes. For a moment, Joellen thought he’d fallen back to sleep. But he opened his eyes again, and said, “I hear you got fired.”

“I just came from the meeting,” she said, plainly irritated. “How did you find out?”

“I still know people in this town,” he said. “A few who still respect me enough to keep me in the loop.”

“You already know, then.” She shrugged. “There it is.” She took the lighter out of her purse, almost lit her cigarette but remembered she was in a hospital. She put away the lighter, didn’t know what to do with her hands.

“What will you do now?”

“Go someplace,” she said. “Get my head together. Figure things out.”

“I know someone at Langley,” the general said. “And there’s always consulting. I have a few names.”

“I don’t need any of your names, Father.”

He frowned. “Don’t you?”

“No.”

A long pause, then he said, “I suppose you don’t. Or, if you did, you wouldn’t say.”

“No.”

“Fair enough.” His eyes shifted to the small table under the window. “Your inheritance is over there.” He closed his eyes again.

She went to the table, opened the highly polished wooden box. Two pistols inside, spotless, nickel six-shooters. In their hometown library, there was a picture of her father in Korea wearing the pistols. To the best of Joellen’s knowledge, the revolvers had never been fired in combat. Her father was simply a ridiculous show-off.

“The brilliance of John Wayne in The Searchers,” her father said, eyes still closed, “is that he clings to his quest even when it’s obvious his quest is doomed. What else is there for him to do? He has come home in defeat, a Confederate who’s refused to surrender his sword. He has no cause. What else can he do but invent a new one for himself?”

“What are you telling me, Father?”

He said, “I’m just telling you about a good film. His quest becomes his life.” He opened his eyes, looked at his daughter. “Goals are nothing. That you pursue them is everything.”

Somehow, Joellen doubted that was what John Ford had in mind.

“I’m leaving the house and the money to Eliot.” Joellen’s brother.

“It’s yours,” Joellen said. “Do as you wish.” You rotten old bastard.

A thin, weak smile spread on his face. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking that you’ve complained for years about Eliot wasting his life as a painter and wasting your money studying in Paris and Rome where he was doing a lot more screwing and drinking than painting. So naturally you want to reward him with a big inheritance.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “Eliot doesn’t stand a chance. The world would eat him alive. It’s the only way.”

“I know.” She put her hand on the rail of the hospital bed, touched his thin arm with a finger.

“I’m going to die now,” he said.

“I know.”

“Don’t leave, please.” He put a frail hand over hers. “I might fall asleep again, but don’t go. I don’t know why, but I hate the thought that I’d die and nobody would be here. The doctor gives me fifty-fifty on lasting the night. I’m full of narcotics.”

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“I’ll see your mother soon,” the general said.

“I like the pistols, Father. I’ll keep them. If I move somewhere with a fireplace, I’ll put them on the mantel.”

“Do you remember that dog we had in Virginia? What was it? When you were a teenager. Some kind of terrier.”

“It was a Jack Russell terrier,” Joellen told him.

“Yes, I remember. That was a damn fine dog.”

And five minutes later he was gone.

Joellen understood she was drunk, pushed the bottle away, and it tipped over, spilled the remainder of its contents across the table. She left the mess. To hell with it.

She pushed herself away from the table, stood on rubbery legs. She made it as far as the couch and fell asleep with her clothes on.