Pine Island Coast Florida Box Set, page 48
part #1 of Pine Island Coast Florida Series
His expression steeled. “Well, I know that, but what else was I supposed to tell her?”
“Why don’t you put that down and we can talk about it? Look,” Ellie pinched the edges of her t-shirt and pulled it up until he could see her waistline. She slowly turned all the way around. “I’m not armed.”
He pointed the gun to a high back easy chair in the corner. “Have a seat over there.” Ellie complied. The cabin was tiny: one room consisting of the table, a couch, and the chair, a short kitchen counter with a stainless steel sink, two double beds at the far end. A deerskin rug sat on the floor in front of the couch. Two makeshift end tables summed up the furnishings; no refrigerator, not even a fireplace.
Ronnie sat on the couch across from his unexpected guest and kept the gun trained on her. He was an average looking man. His deep brown eyes looked tired, and his scraggly brown hair was uncombed. He wore a Ron Jon tank, and a thin gold chain hung from his neck. Days-old scruff covered his face, and a round pink scar the size of a dime sat right between his eyes, reminding Ellie of the bindis that Hindu and Jain women wore, only much larger. Yesterday, before Ellie had left Jean’s house, Jean had showed her a picture of her son and had explained the scar. Ronnie had been eleven, bouncing a tennis ball on the wall of his father’s workshop while his old man, tipsy on Crown, was busy with a drill press, punching holes in a piece of pine intended to be part of a nightstand he was building. No one noticed that the press was loose, and his dad didn’t see his boy running toward him, chasing the rogue tennis ball. Ronnie’s father pulled down on the handle, the press slid off the table and right onto his kid. The boy’s face ended up wedged between the press’s table and the tip of the auger. The auger—a carbon-steel bit, its sharp point like a screw—was still spinning when Ronnie shifted and the feed level mashed onto the floor. That auger started in on him and went right to the bone, stopping just at the other side before getting into the gray matter. One in a million chance, his father had said. Ronnie, it seemed, was the one, and twenty-some years later he still had the bright scar to prove it.
“You know my mama?” he asked. “Then what’s her favorite painting in her house? One she painted herself.”
Ellie resolved herself to answering whatever questions he asked. “The Dolphin on High Seas. But I think she’s gotten to calling it The Jumping Dolphin. Her original is framed in briarwood and hangs near the back door.”
If he was impressed, he didn’t show it. “Where did she work before she became a painter?”
It wasn’t a very good question. That was public knowledge, probably on Jean’s website. “She taught at Pine Island Elementary. She was my art teacher as a matter of fact.”
He nodded like that impressed him more than her previous response. “What did she say about me?”
“You mean, did she tell me about you calling every Friday around lunchtime, that you missed a couple weeks, that you told her in code you were holed up out here?”
He still didn’t look satisfied, but he stared at the floor and nodded to himself as if someone inside his head was telling him to trust her. He lowered the weapon and set it on his leg, leaving his hand splayed on top of the steel. He kept his stare on the floor. “You can’t help me. It’s ridiculous that you came.”
“Maybe it is, but I don’t have anything better to do. So why don’t you humor me and give me an idea as to what kind of trouble you’re in. You’re shut away in here like a scared fox, so unless you think this is just going to blow over, then at least give me something. If not for me, then for your mother.” She watched him as he sat there, his nose flaring, his lips drawing a hard line while he decided whether or not to let the cat out of the bag. When he sighed and his shoulders slumped, she knew the proverbial cat was getting out of the proverbial bag.
“It’s just all messed up,” he said. “Was never supposed to be like this.” He stood up, walked a few paces to a cabinet above the sink, and took out a bottle of gold Bacardi. He set the gun on the counter and poured a generous measure of rum into a plastic cup and had it down in two chugs. He wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand and leaned back against the counter. “After Harlan died, we started selling pot.” He shifted his eyes toward her to gauge a reaction. She presented none. Ellie had already decided she was going to keep her cards close to the chest. Ronnie didn’t need to know she was DEA; not yet. It would only spook him, and she would be on the other side of his cabin door within a few seconds. She kept listening.
“It was just a little at first. It’s how we started funding ourselves. I didn’t think it was all that big of a deal. It’s not like we were selling heroin to kids. But then Oswald, he called a meeting one day and said we’re going to be moving guns now. Now I know it ain’t right selling drugs at all, but I drew the line right there. See I’m not talkin’ little .22 plinksters or .410 shotguns. I mean the mothers. Military grade crap. Anti-materiel crossovers like Barrett XM500s and short-stroke SIG MCXs.”
Ellie shot up an eyebrow. She had never shot the MCX; it had been procured a year after she left Brussels. But the Barrett she had fired on many occasions. It was a .50 caliber designed to penetrate armored vehicles and concrete barriers.
“And no way in hell I’m messing with black-market firearms,” Ronnie continued. “Dawson felt the same way. That’s all a whole ‘nother level, and then you have to start dealing with the people that are willing to find that kind of stuff. I’m talking the kind of people that you don’t double-cross; and if you do, the kind of people where someone has to change out the carpet when they’re done with you.”
“Ronnie, back up for me a little bit. Who is Harlan?”
“Harlan Tucker.” He said the name confidently, proudly, like she would know who he was. When all he got back was a blank stare, he said, somewhat quizzically, “Harlan Tucker, the Enlightened Cowboy?”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry...I’ve never heard of him.”
Ronnie rolled his eyes. “Harlan was the truest purveyor of wisdom and national honor America has had in decades. He wrote this.” He stood, walked over to an end table, and picked up a paperback book. He handed it to Ellie.
She read the title out loud. “The Patriot’s Handbook of Anarchy.” The back cover had a small black-and-white photo of an older man sporting a trimmed white beard and wearing a leather vest complete with a bolo necktie. The book was dog eared and creased all along the spine, worn like it had been read and reread a dozen times.
“That there is the best book written in the last century.” Ellie wasn’t sure Ronnie had all the qualifications to make such an assessment, but she didn’t push back. He stuck his hand out, and Ellie gave him back the book. He returned to the couch.
“Harlan fought in Vietnam for a cause he couldn't get behind. When he got sent back stateside early because of a shrapnel wound—‘home alive in sixty-five’ he used to say—he realized he was a mockery to his countrymen. And after everything he saw over there, he quit life and became homeless for twenty years before some guy in a downtown mission gave him a talking-to about purpose and change. It lit a fire under him, and Harlan started speaking against the injustices of our government and the need to bring back the national pride as conceived in the early days of the Republic. After a while of leading a small grassroots movement, he wrote this.” He held the book up again. “It’s his magnum opioid.”
Ellie grit her teeth to keep from outwardly smiling at the misnomer.
Ronnie kept going. “Harlan spoke about things that a lot of us always felt but could never put words to. Like how the government keeps taking our liberties instead of being the institution that protects them. Harlan was different than a lot of these other guys like him who lead groups like ours. He didn’t hate blacks or Jews like the skinheads do. He wasn’t interested in harassing people or looting like the Hells Angels. To him, liberty was not found by getting rid of ethnic groups but by bringing harmony between them.” Ronnie lifted his shoulders, and his chin followed. He said, “‘We are a distracted people. Television, entertainment, concerts, and video games are robbing our youth of the beatific vision of our country’s founders. We were meant to make a better world for all that shall come later, not squander what we have so there is nothing left to leave behind. We must stand up and fight for righteousness, to fight for freedom, to fight for truth. Our society remains in a rapid state of decay, and men and women no longer understand how to work together for a common goal. Unless we act, no one else will.’” Ronnie looked back at Ellie with moist eyes. “That’s from the book. I memorized that last year. Page one hundred and seventy eight.”
Ellie took note of a simplicity about Ronnie. It wasn’t stupidity. Unrefined maybe, but from all she could tell, Ronnie meant well. The Enlightened Cowboy had given him something to believe in.
“You mentioned a Dawson,” Ellie said. “Who is that?”
“Dawson…” Ronnie's voice trailed off. He started picking at the little fuzz balls in the fabric of the couch cushion for a little too long. Maybe the rum had kicked in. He had probably been enjoying some prior to her arrival.
“Ronnie,” Ellie said.
His head jerked up. He blinked. “Sorry. Sorry. Dawson...right?”
She nodded.
“He’s my friend. The best friend I’ve ever had. Dawson Montgomery. I was supposed to meet him at a truckstop in Arcadia a few days ago and then we’d roll out here together. But he never showed, and I’ll tell you what, Dawson always shows. Always. You could set a watch to him.” Ronnie looked at her suspiciously, as if he was deciding whether or not he wanted to tell her something more. “What I’m gonna say now you have to swear this stays here. I don’t want my mama finding out. Deal?”
“Sure. Deal.”
He sighed. “Dawson got busted last year for moving pot. They never tied it back to our group, and it wasn’t anything more serious than that, and it was only a second offense so he didn’t get the whole book. So he was out in seven months, and as it goes with parole requirements he had to get a”–Ronnie made air quotes–“‘real job.’ So he did. He got a ‘real job.’” Finger quotations again. He paused and looked at Ellie once more with untrusting eyes, then kept on. “He’s had this job at a convenience store in LaBelle for a few months now. Red Rover, they call it. Problem is not long after Dawson gets out, then he revved up the ol’ easy money engine again. Only this time it wasn’t pot, it was cocaine.” Ronnie put up two defensive hands. “I didn’t know he was. I swear. I quit dealing anything myself after Dawson got nabbed last year. Until I bolted and came out here, I’d been putting in forty hours a week doing the night shift stocking shelves at Winn Dixie. Anyway, Dawson said they had this particular shipment coming in that was hidden in repurposed dairy boxes. Cocaine at the bottom, and a layer of packed cheese—like Kraft or something—over that.” Ronnie nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “Dawson called me in a panic. Said that he had gone to the back section of the Red Rover to check the boxes and what had come in a few hours earlier had been changed up.”
“Changed up? How so?”
“So Dawson...one time every month he gets the closing shift at the Red Rover which ends at midnight, and then he has to turn around and open up at six a.m. So on that night he just stays there with the lights out, and they come in through the back and drop off the goods. Then a little while later the distributor comes in and grabs it up. But this time”–he shook a finger–“he receives the boxes then happens to fall asleep behind the front counter. He wakes up at around three and hears a sound in the back, and when he gets back there ain’t no one around. He opens the back door, ain’t no one around outside either. So for good measure he checks the boxes again and notices that the packets of cheese had been disturbed. He digs further, sees the cocaine, digs further and sees...guns. Guns. Not only that, some of the coke was gone to make room for the weapons. And that’s the moment the distributor gives their little rap on the back door. They’re there for pick-up. So he lets them in and takes them back to the walk-in cooler and tells them what’s in the boxes and can’t explain the guns or the missing drugs. Near twenty kilos, man, just—swish—gone. The distributor is pissed and doesn’t take anything. I guess them and Dawson got the ol’ bamboozle. The distributor left empty-handed.”
“So it was after that when Dawson was going to meet you at the truck stop?” she asked.
“Yeah. Right after. He calls me from the store fuh-reaking out and I tell him to just play it cool and not to saying anything until we could figure something out. But he called me back a few hours after the store opened and said he was too scared to stick around.” Ronnie had started pacing and ended up at the Bacardi again from which he proceeded to help himself to another couple fingers. “I tell him to just call Oswald and be honest and tell him what happened, and that’s what he does. He finally gets in touch with him a little after lunch, but apparently Oswald accuses him of lying and said he was sending someone up there to get him so they could have a little chat.”
“So he bolted,” Ellie said.
“Yeah. So he bolted; rings me up right before, and I tell him where to meet. Dawson didn’t have a car, so I don’t know what he was talking about when he called again and said he ran out of gas and now he had to walk it. I think his phone died in the middle of him talking. Anyway, he doesn’t show. I wait a few hours and he still doesn’t show and I think the worst and jet. My car is in the shop, so I hitched a ride to the exit and walked out here and haven’t heard anymore from Dawson. I put the battery back in my phone and walk toward the highway every morning so I can get reception and check voicemail, but I haven’t gotten any calls except from my mama and my landlord.” Ronnie stopped pacing and sat on the edge of the couch. “They got him. I know it. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“Tell me about this Oswald fellow you mentioned?”
Ronnie blinked a couple times, and a light entered his eyes. “Wait, you said you brought smokes?”
“I did.”
He walked over to the brown bag on the table. Peering in, he stuck his hand down and brought out the carton of Marlboros. “Damn if I forgot you said these were in here.” He popped the flaps, drew out a pack, and went over to a drawer near the sink and pulled out a blue Bic lighter. He opened a pack, withdrew a stick and lit it up, and closed his eyes as the nicotine hit his blood. He breathed out a thin haze and plopped back onto the couch.
“So toward the end Harlan—Harlan died a couple years ago—he took Oswald under his wing and spent most of his time with him, grooming him as it were to carry the torch once he was gone. But as it turns out Oswald wasn’t too keen on any of Harlan's beliefs. He just liked the idea of being able to rally people to a cause. So when Harlan died, Oswald pulled all literature—posters, pamphlets—and canceled campus gatherings and rallies. He’s a smart guy. Smarter than I gave him credit for at first. He sifted us until only the faithful were remaining. Those faithful to his new vision.”
“Which was what?”
Ronnie drew down on his cigarette again. “Pretty simple now that I look back on it. He said that in order to really change things you have to have influence and that the surest way to have influence is to have money. Money and power get things done. The quickest way to get the most money the fastest is on the black market. He’s eccentric and a little weird sometimes, but he’s,” Ronnie tapped his head with a forefinger, “a really smart guy. Most of us just fell in line. You know the whole, ‘the ends justifies the....the…things’?”
“The means?”
“Yeah. That. The means. He wanted to turn things around and start building cash flow, so he started kicking people out of the group and only inviting those of us to the meetings who were willing to put the old ideas on pause for a season so we could have more influence later. And Dawson, he kept on— say, you want a smoke? I haven’t even offered you one.”
“Thanks. I don’t smoke.”
“Okay. Sure. So Dawson, he kept on believing. I got out a few months ago. Started seeing it for what it all was—that ol’ Oswald had no interest in returning to Harlan’s ways.” He picked the book back up and stared at the small author photo on the back, then turned it over and clutched the book hard, like it was his best friend in the world, holding onto it as if it were a Bible, he a preacher criss-crossing the sawdust trails, prepared to hail the faithful word underneath the windswept flaps of a makeshift tabernacle.
Ellie remembered what Jean had said about her son. How his father had never been there for him. Ellie had seen the negative effects of such relationships up close when she was in Albania five years ago. She was three weeks into an insertion, gathering intel on a shoemaker suspected of being a middle man; selling U.S. secrets on behalf of the highest bidder. During her time there she’d seen the many teenage boys and young men with an eagle’s wing tattooed on the top of one hand; the mark of the feared Lushnja Gang, one small appendage of the country’s growing mafia presence. Albania was known to have one of the highest crime-generating elements in the world, and they stuffed their ranks with young, fatherless men looking for meaning, purpose, and a sense of belonging.
Ellie never would forget the snowy evening she was in Tirana, walking back to her flat with a takeout bag of tavë kosi—baked lamb with rice—when a young man stepped from an alleyway, jabbed a gun into her ribs, and told her to keep walking. Ellie got a look into his eyes and saw the fear in them. He was probably no older than sixteen. She could feel the muzzle of the gun vibrating in her ribs as his hand shook nervously. It was a rite of passage for this boy. If he brought her back to their lair, he would be in; one of them. They would let him have his way with her, and then the rest of them would too. Then they would sell her into another country as a sex slave, or possibly cut her open and harvest her organs on the black market. The boy barked at her in his native tongue and kept an arm across her shoulders to make it look like he was a loving boyfriend shielding his girl from the cold. “You don’t want to do this,” Ellie whispered.
“Why don’t you put that down and we can talk about it? Look,” Ellie pinched the edges of her t-shirt and pulled it up until he could see her waistline. She slowly turned all the way around. “I’m not armed.”
He pointed the gun to a high back easy chair in the corner. “Have a seat over there.” Ellie complied. The cabin was tiny: one room consisting of the table, a couch, and the chair, a short kitchen counter with a stainless steel sink, two double beds at the far end. A deerskin rug sat on the floor in front of the couch. Two makeshift end tables summed up the furnishings; no refrigerator, not even a fireplace.
Ronnie sat on the couch across from his unexpected guest and kept the gun trained on her. He was an average looking man. His deep brown eyes looked tired, and his scraggly brown hair was uncombed. He wore a Ron Jon tank, and a thin gold chain hung from his neck. Days-old scruff covered his face, and a round pink scar the size of a dime sat right between his eyes, reminding Ellie of the bindis that Hindu and Jain women wore, only much larger. Yesterday, before Ellie had left Jean’s house, Jean had showed her a picture of her son and had explained the scar. Ronnie had been eleven, bouncing a tennis ball on the wall of his father’s workshop while his old man, tipsy on Crown, was busy with a drill press, punching holes in a piece of pine intended to be part of a nightstand he was building. No one noticed that the press was loose, and his dad didn’t see his boy running toward him, chasing the rogue tennis ball. Ronnie’s father pulled down on the handle, the press slid off the table and right onto his kid. The boy’s face ended up wedged between the press’s table and the tip of the auger. The auger—a carbon-steel bit, its sharp point like a screw—was still spinning when Ronnie shifted and the feed level mashed onto the floor. That auger started in on him and went right to the bone, stopping just at the other side before getting into the gray matter. One in a million chance, his father had said. Ronnie, it seemed, was the one, and twenty-some years later he still had the bright scar to prove it.
“You know my mama?” he asked. “Then what’s her favorite painting in her house? One she painted herself.”
Ellie resolved herself to answering whatever questions he asked. “The Dolphin on High Seas. But I think she’s gotten to calling it The Jumping Dolphin. Her original is framed in briarwood and hangs near the back door.”
If he was impressed, he didn’t show it. “Where did she work before she became a painter?”
It wasn’t a very good question. That was public knowledge, probably on Jean’s website. “She taught at Pine Island Elementary. She was my art teacher as a matter of fact.”
He nodded like that impressed him more than her previous response. “What did she say about me?”
“You mean, did she tell me about you calling every Friday around lunchtime, that you missed a couple weeks, that you told her in code you were holed up out here?”
He still didn’t look satisfied, but he stared at the floor and nodded to himself as if someone inside his head was telling him to trust her. He lowered the weapon and set it on his leg, leaving his hand splayed on top of the steel. He kept his stare on the floor. “You can’t help me. It’s ridiculous that you came.”
“Maybe it is, but I don’t have anything better to do. So why don’t you humor me and give me an idea as to what kind of trouble you’re in. You’re shut away in here like a scared fox, so unless you think this is just going to blow over, then at least give me something. If not for me, then for your mother.” She watched him as he sat there, his nose flaring, his lips drawing a hard line while he decided whether or not to let the cat out of the bag. When he sighed and his shoulders slumped, she knew the proverbial cat was getting out of the proverbial bag.
“It’s just all messed up,” he said. “Was never supposed to be like this.” He stood up, walked a few paces to a cabinet above the sink, and took out a bottle of gold Bacardi. He set the gun on the counter and poured a generous measure of rum into a plastic cup and had it down in two chugs. He wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand and leaned back against the counter. “After Harlan died, we started selling pot.” He shifted his eyes toward her to gauge a reaction. She presented none. Ellie had already decided she was going to keep her cards close to the chest. Ronnie didn’t need to know she was DEA; not yet. It would only spook him, and she would be on the other side of his cabin door within a few seconds. She kept listening.
“It was just a little at first. It’s how we started funding ourselves. I didn’t think it was all that big of a deal. It’s not like we were selling heroin to kids. But then Oswald, he called a meeting one day and said we’re going to be moving guns now. Now I know it ain’t right selling drugs at all, but I drew the line right there. See I’m not talkin’ little .22 plinksters or .410 shotguns. I mean the mothers. Military grade crap. Anti-materiel crossovers like Barrett XM500s and short-stroke SIG MCXs.”
Ellie shot up an eyebrow. She had never shot the MCX; it had been procured a year after she left Brussels. But the Barrett she had fired on many occasions. It was a .50 caliber designed to penetrate armored vehicles and concrete barriers.
“And no way in hell I’m messing with black-market firearms,” Ronnie continued. “Dawson felt the same way. That’s all a whole ‘nother level, and then you have to start dealing with the people that are willing to find that kind of stuff. I’m talking the kind of people that you don’t double-cross; and if you do, the kind of people where someone has to change out the carpet when they’re done with you.”
“Ronnie, back up for me a little bit. Who is Harlan?”
“Harlan Tucker.” He said the name confidently, proudly, like she would know who he was. When all he got back was a blank stare, he said, somewhat quizzically, “Harlan Tucker, the Enlightened Cowboy?”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry...I’ve never heard of him.”
Ronnie rolled his eyes. “Harlan was the truest purveyor of wisdom and national honor America has had in decades. He wrote this.” He stood, walked over to an end table, and picked up a paperback book. He handed it to Ellie.
She read the title out loud. “The Patriot’s Handbook of Anarchy.” The back cover had a small black-and-white photo of an older man sporting a trimmed white beard and wearing a leather vest complete with a bolo necktie. The book was dog eared and creased all along the spine, worn like it had been read and reread a dozen times.
“That there is the best book written in the last century.” Ellie wasn’t sure Ronnie had all the qualifications to make such an assessment, but she didn’t push back. He stuck his hand out, and Ellie gave him back the book. He returned to the couch.
“Harlan fought in Vietnam for a cause he couldn't get behind. When he got sent back stateside early because of a shrapnel wound—‘home alive in sixty-five’ he used to say—he realized he was a mockery to his countrymen. And after everything he saw over there, he quit life and became homeless for twenty years before some guy in a downtown mission gave him a talking-to about purpose and change. It lit a fire under him, and Harlan started speaking against the injustices of our government and the need to bring back the national pride as conceived in the early days of the Republic. After a while of leading a small grassroots movement, he wrote this.” He held the book up again. “It’s his magnum opioid.”
Ellie grit her teeth to keep from outwardly smiling at the misnomer.
Ronnie kept going. “Harlan spoke about things that a lot of us always felt but could never put words to. Like how the government keeps taking our liberties instead of being the institution that protects them. Harlan was different than a lot of these other guys like him who lead groups like ours. He didn’t hate blacks or Jews like the skinheads do. He wasn’t interested in harassing people or looting like the Hells Angels. To him, liberty was not found by getting rid of ethnic groups but by bringing harmony between them.” Ronnie lifted his shoulders, and his chin followed. He said, “‘We are a distracted people. Television, entertainment, concerts, and video games are robbing our youth of the beatific vision of our country’s founders. We were meant to make a better world for all that shall come later, not squander what we have so there is nothing left to leave behind. We must stand up and fight for righteousness, to fight for freedom, to fight for truth. Our society remains in a rapid state of decay, and men and women no longer understand how to work together for a common goal. Unless we act, no one else will.’” Ronnie looked back at Ellie with moist eyes. “That’s from the book. I memorized that last year. Page one hundred and seventy eight.”
Ellie took note of a simplicity about Ronnie. It wasn’t stupidity. Unrefined maybe, but from all she could tell, Ronnie meant well. The Enlightened Cowboy had given him something to believe in.
“You mentioned a Dawson,” Ellie said. “Who is that?”
“Dawson…” Ronnie's voice trailed off. He started picking at the little fuzz balls in the fabric of the couch cushion for a little too long. Maybe the rum had kicked in. He had probably been enjoying some prior to her arrival.
“Ronnie,” Ellie said.
His head jerked up. He blinked. “Sorry. Sorry. Dawson...right?”
She nodded.
“He’s my friend. The best friend I’ve ever had. Dawson Montgomery. I was supposed to meet him at a truckstop in Arcadia a few days ago and then we’d roll out here together. But he never showed, and I’ll tell you what, Dawson always shows. Always. You could set a watch to him.” Ronnie looked at her suspiciously, as if he was deciding whether or not he wanted to tell her something more. “What I’m gonna say now you have to swear this stays here. I don’t want my mama finding out. Deal?”
“Sure. Deal.”
He sighed. “Dawson got busted last year for moving pot. They never tied it back to our group, and it wasn’t anything more serious than that, and it was only a second offense so he didn’t get the whole book. So he was out in seven months, and as it goes with parole requirements he had to get a”–Ronnie made air quotes–“‘real job.’ So he did. He got a ‘real job.’” Finger quotations again. He paused and looked at Ellie once more with untrusting eyes, then kept on. “He’s had this job at a convenience store in LaBelle for a few months now. Red Rover, they call it. Problem is not long after Dawson gets out, then he revved up the ol’ easy money engine again. Only this time it wasn’t pot, it was cocaine.” Ronnie put up two defensive hands. “I didn’t know he was. I swear. I quit dealing anything myself after Dawson got nabbed last year. Until I bolted and came out here, I’d been putting in forty hours a week doing the night shift stocking shelves at Winn Dixie. Anyway, Dawson said they had this particular shipment coming in that was hidden in repurposed dairy boxes. Cocaine at the bottom, and a layer of packed cheese—like Kraft or something—over that.” Ronnie nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “Dawson called me in a panic. Said that he had gone to the back section of the Red Rover to check the boxes and what had come in a few hours earlier had been changed up.”
“Changed up? How so?”
“So Dawson...one time every month he gets the closing shift at the Red Rover which ends at midnight, and then he has to turn around and open up at six a.m. So on that night he just stays there with the lights out, and they come in through the back and drop off the goods. Then a little while later the distributor comes in and grabs it up. But this time”–he shook a finger–“he receives the boxes then happens to fall asleep behind the front counter. He wakes up at around three and hears a sound in the back, and when he gets back there ain’t no one around. He opens the back door, ain’t no one around outside either. So for good measure he checks the boxes again and notices that the packets of cheese had been disturbed. He digs further, sees the cocaine, digs further and sees...guns. Guns. Not only that, some of the coke was gone to make room for the weapons. And that’s the moment the distributor gives their little rap on the back door. They’re there for pick-up. So he lets them in and takes them back to the walk-in cooler and tells them what’s in the boxes and can’t explain the guns or the missing drugs. Near twenty kilos, man, just—swish—gone. The distributor is pissed and doesn’t take anything. I guess them and Dawson got the ol’ bamboozle. The distributor left empty-handed.”
“So it was after that when Dawson was going to meet you at the truck stop?” she asked.
“Yeah. Right after. He calls me from the store fuh-reaking out and I tell him to just play it cool and not to saying anything until we could figure something out. But he called me back a few hours after the store opened and said he was too scared to stick around.” Ronnie had started pacing and ended up at the Bacardi again from which he proceeded to help himself to another couple fingers. “I tell him to just call Oswald and be honest and tell him what happened, and that’s what he does. He finally gets in touch with him a little after lunch, but apparently Oswald accuses him of lying and said he was sending someone up there to get him so they could have a little chat.”
“So he bolted,” Ellie said.
“Yeah. So he bolted; rings me up right before, and I tell him where to meet. Dawson didn’t have a car, so I don’t know what he was talking about when he called again and said he ran out of gas and now he had to walk it. I think his phone died in the middle of him talking. Anyway, he doesn’t show. I wait a few hours and he still doesn’t show and I think the worst and jet. My car is in the shop, so I hitched a ride to the exit and walked out here and haven’t heard anymore from Dawson. I put the battery back in my phone and walk toward the highway every morning so I can get reception and check voicemail, but I haven’t gotten any calls except from my mama and my landlord.” Ronnie stopped pacing and sat on the edge of the couch. “They got him. I know it. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“Tell me about this Oswald fellow you mentioned?”
Ronnie blinked a couple times, and a light entered his eyes. “Wait, you said you brought smokes?”
“I did.”
He walked over to the brown bag on the table. Peering in, he stuck his hand down and brought out the carton of Marlboros. “Damn if I forgot you said these were in here.” He popped the flaps, drew out a pack, and went over to a drawer near the sink and pulled out a blue Bic lighter. He opened a pack, withdrew a stick and lit it up, and closed his eyes as the nicotine hit his blood. He breathed out a thin haze and plopped back onto the couch.
“So toward the end Harlan—Harlan died a couple years ago—he took Oswald under his wing and spent most of his time with him, grooming him as it were to carry the torch once he was gone. But as it turns out Oswald wasn’t too keen on any of Harlan's beliefs. He just liked the idea of being able to rally people to a cause. So when Harlan died, Oswald pulled all literature—posters, pamphlets—and canceled campus gatherings and rallies. He’s a smart guy. Smarter than I gave him credit for at first. He sifted us until only the faithful were remaining. Those faithful to his new vision.”
“Which was what?”
Ronnie drew down on his cigarette again. “Pretty simple now that I look back on it. He said that in order to really change things you have to have influence and that the surest way to have influence is to have money. Money and power get things done. The quickest way to get the most money the fastest is on the black market. He’s eccentric and a little weird sometimes, but he’s,” Ronnie tapped his head with a forefinger, “a really smart guy. Most of us just fell in line. You know the whole, ‘the ends justifies the....the…things’?”
“The means?”
“Yeah. That. The means. He wanted to turn things around and start building cash flow, so he started kicking people out of the group and only inviting those of us to the meetings who were willing to put the old ideas on pause for a season so we could have more influence later. And Dawson, he kept on— say, you want a smoke? I haven’t even offered you one.”
“Thanks. I don’t smoke.”
“Okay. Sure. So Dawson, he kept on believing. I got out a few months ago. Started seeing it for what it all was—that ol’ Oswald had no interest in returning to Harlan’s ways.” He picked the book back up and stared at the small author photo on the back, then turned it over and clutched the book hard, like it was his best friend in the world, holding onto it as if it were a Bible, he a preacher criss-crossing the sawdust trails, prepared to hail the faithful word underneath the windswept flaps of a makeshift tabernacle.
Ellie remembered what Jean had said about her son. How his father had never been there for him. Ellie had seen the negative effects of such relationships up close when she was in Albania five years ago. She was three weeks into an insertion, gathering intel on a shoemaker suspected of being a middle man; selling U.S. secrets on behalf of the highest bidder. During her time there she’d seen the many teenage boys and young men with an eagle’s wing tattooed on the top of one hand; the mark of the feared Lushnja Gang, one small appendage of the country’s growing mafia presence. Albania was known to have one of the highest crime-generating elements in the world, and they stuffed their ranks with young, fatherless men looking for meaning, purpose, and a sense of belonging.
Ellie never would forget the snowy evening she was in Tirana, walking back to her flat with a takeout bag of tavë kosi—baked lamb with rice—when a young man stepped from an alleyway, jabbed a gun into her ribs, and told her to keep walking. Ellie got a look into his eyes and saw the fear in them. He was probably no older than sixteen. She could feel the muzzle of the gun vibrating in her ribs as his hand shook nervously. It was a rite of passage for this boy. If he brought her back to their lair, he would be in; one of them. They would let him have his way with her, and then the rest of them would too. Then they would sell her into another country as a sex slave, or possibly cut her open and harvest her organs on the black market. The boy barked at her in his native tongue and kept an arm across her shoulders to make it look like he was a loving boyfriend shielding his girl from the cold. “You don’t want to do this,” Ellie whispered.
