Whirlwind

32

Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

All day long, after leaving Remy and the screaming brat at the motel, Mason Varno drove.

Rubbing his lips, he battled his craving, which got worse with every mile of the LBJ. Remy’s reluctance to cash in on the kid and his mounting parole issues, like missing his meeting for random drug-and-alcohol testing, didn’t help. His dream was slipping through his fingers. He was coming to the edge of a black hole. He pounded his palms on the dash and cursed.

No damned way was he was giving up without a fight.

I’ve got to come up with a way to get through this! Think!

He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

Step one: Don’t let the dream die.

He got off the expressway, pulled into a drugstore, bought a disposable phone and used it to call Garza.

After five rings it went to voice mail.

“It’s Varno. I got a new number. You’re the only one who has it. Call me so we can talk about my buy in.”

Mason then sat in his truck in the parking lot. He grabbed the small pouch with the remainder of their cash. He fanned it with his thumb. Just under nine thousand left from the original fifteen the agency had paid Remy. She’d trusted him to manage the money, believing that he’d saved it. She had no clue that he’d used up much of it to buy dope. What they had left would not last, especially since he hadn’t been working these past few weeks.

Mason tried to think, but his craving evolved into an aching. He used one hand to grip his temples, squeezing hard to keep his skull from splitting open. The tires squealed as he got back onto the freeway and headed to a place he knew at the western fringes of downtown Dallas.

It was a menacing stretch of run-down houses, condemned buildings, fortress liquor stores, hookers and the walking dead. He cruised the area for any police units, marked or unmarked, like the telltale electrician’s van they used for busts.

It looked good.

He wheeled up to the rusted newspaper boxes in front of Bill’s Second Chance Pawnshop. A kid wearing a Mavericks T-shirt, sideways ball cap and saggy pants hanging low to reveal his underwear, leaned into Mason’s window.

“Yo, how you doin’ today, sir?” the kid asked.

“I need a blast.”

The kid’s eyes took in Mason’s prison tattoos. Dealing on the street made him fast and smart. Everything was cool.

“Got nothing but the finest quality. How much you down for?”

Mason rubbed his chin hard; he needed something to sustain him and backup for later.

“Fourteen grams.”

“WE-EE!”

“That a problem?”

“I can do that, I can do that. It’ll cost you one point five large.”

Mason reached into his pocket, counted fifteen hundred dollars and held it out for the kid, letting him see the grip of his gun.

“Don’t think of fucking with me, got that?”

“Nu-uhh. I know where you comin’ from. This a straight-up deal. A good deal for you and a good deal for me.”

The kid passed him a tea-bag-sized pillow of foil. Mason opened it to inspect the crystals, touched a tiny one to his tongue. Satisfied, he drove off for several blocks, stopping at a shaded corner of a vacant parking lot.

Less than ten minutes later, he was riding a cloud of bliss and watching his troubles float around him like helium-filled balloons. He shut his eyes and smiled at the sky.

Now I can think. Review and assess.

Mason’s chief obstacle to achieving his objective was Remy.

He was convinced she was stalling on closing her deal with the surrogacy agency because she was all messed up. It started when she’d lost the baby. The doctor used all that mumbo jumbo about postpartum psychosis, hallucinations and delusions to tell Mason that she could get messed up. Well, she did get messed up, with her headaches, her crying and her spells.

Then she grabbed the new baby.

She was whacked, all right.

Yet Mason started to believe-needed to believe-that Remy’s twisted idea would work. It was the only way they would see the payoff. But now, he was convinced that she didn’t want to give up the baby, that she was forming some kind of attachment to it. He saw it in the way she was holding him, looking at him, the way she was caring for him.

Mothering him.

It was all messed up.

He had to fix it.

That baby was his forty-five-thousand-dollar ticket to the sweet life.

Mason’s new phone rang.

Startled, he tried to figure how much time had passed. Had he fallen asleep? The phone rang again and he answered.

“You called me?” It was Garza.

“I still want in.”

“You got the money?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Goodbye.”

“Hold it, hold it. I’ll get the money.”

“All you give me is talk. There’s an expiry date on this deal. People sponsored you, said you were solid.”

“I’ll get it. I just need more time.”

“The buy-in number goes up. Now it’s thirty-five.”

“What? That’s too high.”

“That’s the number. The clock is ticking.” The line went dead.

Mason ran his hands over his face.

He would work this out. He had no choice.

How? How am I going to do this? he asked himself half an hour later, when he was sitting on a stool at the empty end of The Purple Sage Cantina.

He gazed at the suds sliding to the bottom of his beer glass as he waited for his nachos and a solution on how he would convince Remy to call the agency and get the deal done.

The server set a cheesy plate before him and as Mason bit into his first chip he glanced up at the big TV behind the bar and froze.

What the hell?

The screen was filled with police sketches concerning persons of interest in the mystery surrounding a baby boy who was taken from his mother during the storm at the Old Southern Glory Flea Market in southeastern Dallas.

The TV news was quoting Newslead, the wire service, which had reported that the FBI was now investigating the case and appealing to anyone with information to call in.

Mason’s stomach tightened.

He pulled his ball cap a little tighter and lower on his head.

Oh, Jesus. The FBI.