"Trust shmust. Who knows anymore in this business? What if I'd been picked up and what if I'd cut a deal to rat out my competition? After nine-eleven, already we were paranoid. Now…"
Jack nodded. The runners took a beating from all the post-9/11 security measures—especially the truck and van searches.
Abe said, "After La Guardia, with the feds trying to trace the Arabs' weapons, we're all running scared."
"Nobody's saying
Joey could tell Jack was a regular by the way just about everyone crowded around him, patting his shoulders and shaking his hand and saying how sorry they were about his dad.
Joey hung off to the side, feeling like he was standing there with his dick in his hand. But not for long. Jack cut it short and said thanks but he had some business. Everyone wandered back to their places.
So now the two of them sat in a back corner. A short, ripped spic brought them a couple of Rolling Rocks. Jack introduced him as the owner.
"Anything I can do, meng," he said as he gripped Jack's hand. "Anything. You just say the word."
When he was gone Joey ran a finger through the wet ring left by his beer bottle and said, "You got something shaking, Jack?"
"Not a thing. Nada. My guy's been asking around and coming up empty."
"And your guy is…?"
Jack gave him a look.
Joey smiled. This was what he liked about this guy.
"Jack the Sphinx. A
"Same here."
"The key is those Tavor-twos. They weren't bought at Wal-Mart. Can only be so many in the country. We find who sold them, we can find who they sold them to."
Joey shook his head. He'd had the same thought.
"Trouble is, no one's talking."
"That's because they're not scared of us."
"So what do we do? Brace them? Put the hurt on them?"
Jack gave him another kind of look.
"Come on, Jack. I know what you're thinking: Joey's a bidonista, what's he know about rough stuff? Maybe you don't know 'cause you've never seen, but I can handle myself."
"Never crossed my mind, Joey. No, I was thinking of a bigger scare than us."
"Like?"
"Well, I know your last name isn't Castles. What I don't know is if you're connected."
Joey wondered where this was going.
"Not directly, no, and we like to keep it that way. But you can't operate, least not for very long, you don't give the outfit a piece. Pop did it; Frankie and I been doing it."
"Can you make some calls?"
"Yeah, some. But I know someone who can talk higher up the chain." Joey was liking the idea more and more. "Yeah, by the time Pop retired, the boys had made a chubby piece from him, a piece they didn't do nothing for. Got it 'cause they fucking exist and nothing else. No reason he can't look for something back. Not a lot, nothing that'll cost them anything, just some information."
"Think he'll do it?"
"Pop? He'll jump at the chance. I'll tell him to ask the boys check around and see if anyone's sold a Tavor, or even a bunch of five-fifty-six hollow-points, to a dune monkey."
"That'll do it. But the cops might already know that."
Joey shook his head. "They don't."
"You know for sure?"
"For double sure." Here was a chance to impress Jack. "Frankie and me made us a few friends in the PD over the years." He made a motion of slipping his right hand into his waistband. "You know what I'm saying. That's how I found out about the cyanide bullets. They're keeping me posted. Seeing how much me and Frankie paid them over the years, they damn well fucking better. Time those meat eaters earned it by doing something more than looking the other way."
A smile twisted Jack's lips. Just a little. Just for a second.
"You sound like a good guy to know. They telling you anything else?"
"They hear the Homeland Security people are pretty sure the shooters had inside help."
"
Jack shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Look at me. I got out, and no one was helping me."
"Yeah, that's right. You were there. But why didn't you just—?"
"Long story. But back to our problem: Who, what, and where is Wrath of Allah?"
Joey shrugged. "Gotta be somewhere. I mean, we
"How do you stay so cool, man?"
He watched Jack's jaw muscles work.
"Cool? Who's cool? I'm so burned I want to throw something. Or break something. If the owner wasn't a friend I might be going for a twofer and toss this table through a window."
"You hide it well, man."
"Years of practice."
Joey leaned back. "So… what we do we find these
This scary look passed across Jack's face, then it was gone.
"Yeah. I know exactly what you're saying. I can hear my father's blood screaming."
"Okay. We find them, we waste them. Deal?"
Jack hesitated, then nodded.
They sat and sipped in silence for a moment or two, then Jack cleared his throat.
"How're you doing without Frankie?"
Joey didn't answer right away. Couldn't. How to explain? He hadn't lost a brother, he'd lost a piece of himself. He'd be less torn up if it had been the old man.
When he finally spoke, he had trouble getting the words out. His voice sounded thick.
"It's tough, Jack. Real tough. I miss him. We was always together. Maybe that's why we fought so much. Like a couple
He managed, "Gotta go, man. Talk to you later."
And then he was heading for the door, keeping his head down so no one would see him crying.
"Have you given any more thought to helping Tom?"
"A little."
"And?"
"I don't know."
She squeezed his arm. "Jack, if he goes to jail, how will you feel, knowing you could have helped him and didn't?"
The old saying,
"Not so stupid. It's the same with my folks. If your parents are in decent health, I think we all feel that way."
"Well, anyway, he's gone." Jack snapped his fingers. "Like that. My mother died in my arms. Kate died minutes after I let the EMTs take her from me. And my father's body was still warm when I found him. Too much deja vu. It's got me all twisted up."
"That's why you should go, Jack. It's not a long time, but it'll get you out of this city, away from the airport, the constant reminders. A little time at sea doing next to nothing might help you get a new perspective. Maybe you'll come back right-side in."
He knew she was right, as usual. But he wanted that time away with Gia, not Tom.
He wished he felt different about Tom. He wished he had the kind of relationship Joey had described with Frankie.
But Joey no longer had his brother. And Joey had said that blood cries out for blood.
Tom was blood… maybe Jack owed Tom the chance.
Joey had the ball now and he'd be running with it. If the gun guys decided to talk, they'd only want to talk to someone connected. That meant Joey.
And that meant Jack would be something of a fifth wheel for a while.
He didn't like that. He preferred to do things on his own. His business was the sole-proprietor type. He never worked with anyone, didn't know if he could. And Joey… he didn't know Joey all that well.
But what choice did he have?
Gia had said she'd be fine for the four or five days he'd be away, and he knew she was right.
And it would be at least four-five days before word filtered down from the outfit and Joey got anything going.
And Dad would have wanted him to help his brother.
Jack sighed. Maybe it was time to call Tom.
Sombra
nao
Saying a prayer that he'd be successful in his deception, he strode up the gangway.
As he stepped upon the deck he looked around for a familiar face. He spotted an older man in his forties—perhaps ten years older than he—with a stubbly beard and a mild limp moving toward him. Francisco was startled to recognize Eusebio Dominguez. He looked so different with a beard.
They'd met a week ago. Eusebio had been sent by the Vatican and was to be their man among the crew. Francisco knew nothing about him other than the fact that he had been a seaman in his younger days. As for his present circumstances, for all Francisco knew he could be a cardinal or a chimney sweep.
Francisco was glad he had not been assigned the role of a sailor. He was too slight of build to pass for one. His neat black clothes, his shaven cheeks, and long black hair better suited him to the role of navigator.
As arranged, Eusebio gave no sign of recognition. Instead, he made a show of a smirk and a surly tone as he eyed Francisco's Valencian clothing.
"What do you want?"
"To see your captain."
"Do you? And who shall I say is calling?"
"Your navigator."
The smirk turned into a grin. "You are on the wrong ship, sefior. Sergio Vazquez is our navigator." He shrugged. "Of course he has been ill—"
"Senor Vazquez died in his sleep in Compano last night. I have been sent by the ship's owner to replace him."
Now the smirk disappeared. "Vazquez… dead?"
Nearby, two seamen paused in their labors and looked up, echoing Eusebio.
Francisco feigned losing patience. "The captain?"
"He is ashore but he will be back soon. You can wait outside his cabin."
He followed Eusebio up the steps to the aftcastle.
"Here," Eusebio said, pointing to a spot in front of the door to the officers' quarters. Then he wagged his finger. "Not inside."
"Very well."
"As soon as he gets back I will tell him you are here."
Francisco nodded and placed his belongings on the deck: a cloth sack with his clothes and personal items, a mahogany box containing his astrolabe—which he would not need until they were out of sight of the coast—and his oilcloth-wrapped portolano.
He gazed out over the main deck, bustling in the dawn. Three masts, naked now, but soon to be rigged square and lateen. But what lay belowdecks interested him more: a secret nestled among the cargo bound for the New World.
It was that secret that had brought him here.
It had to do, in a way, with King Philip, old and sick and not long for this world. Perhaps it was the humiliation of three failed attempts to invade England, the most recent just last year when the third Armada was turned back by heavy seas. Philip ruled the most powerful nation in the world, yet his heavy taxation threatened Spanish hegemony; he would be leaving his successor an empire in crisis.
Perhaps Spain's day had passed. The thought saddened Francisco. He had sailed in her navy as a younger man, and had piloted the
Despite his failings, Philip remained favored by the Vatican as a loyal member of the Catholic League in the wars against the Huguenots, and as a staunch defender of the faith against the rising Calvinist threat.
This was why the Church was maintaining the utmost discretion as it dealt with the theft of a valuable relic from its proscribed vault deep below the Vatican. The cardinals still did not know how the thief had eluded detection by the Swiss Guard and gained access to the vault, but there was no doubt about his identity: Don Carlos of Navarre, King Philip's beloved nephew.
Six weeks ago his Holiness Pope Clement VIII had summoned Father Claude Aquaviva to the Holy See. There, behind the locked doors of the innermost sanctum of the Vatican, the Father General of the Society was charged with the retrieval and disposal of the purloined relic, with no harm to Don Carlos in the process, and no connection to the Vatican. In fact, if the object's loss appeared to be an act of God rather than man, so much the better.
Francisco found it astounding that an honor of this magnitude would be bestowed upon such a young order. A former soldier named Ignatius Loyola had founded the Society of Jesus fewer than six decades ago, but since its inception it had proved a magnet for some of the best minds in the civilized world.
That Francisco, a yet-to-be-ordained Jesuit brother, should be chosen for the mission… well, it seemed beyond belief.
Could it be but three weeks since Father Diego Vega, the Father General's second in command, had stepped into his quarters, closed the door, and told him what he must do?
Francisco understood that he had been chosen because of his nautical past and his interest in astronomy. And of course, because of his devotion to the Society.
His head was still spinning. He had spent the last three years in Greece studying their ancient texts on the stars, and had only recently returned. He was still recovering from the disorienting experience of seeming to lose ten days of his life because of Greece's refusal to give up the Julian calendar. Spain had been utilizing Pope Gregory's new calendar for decades.
And now this.
The world was changing too fast. Ah, but the stars… one could always count on the stars.
He had joined the King's Navy at a young age and learned navigation by trial and error. Before too long he was assisting the pilot, honing his skills as he sailed the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, staying mostly within sight of shore as did most navigators, but unafraid to leave the comfort of land on the horizon and strike out into open water.
Not a terrible risk in the Mediterranean. If one set sail from its African shore and held to a northerly course, soon enough one would spy Europe.
But the Atlantic… now that was a different matter. The swells, the storms, the space between its shores. Not a place for the faint of heart.
Francisco remembered the first time he had piloted a galleon through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic. The captain had wanted to test the seaworthiness of his vessel as well as Francisco's skills. They traveled west-northwest for two days, then south for one, and then the captain told him to guide them back to where they had begun.
Using his astrolabe and cross staff, Francisco piloted the ship with such accuracy that their first sight of land was the high cliffs of Gibraltar.
He would have had a future in the navy, but instead he obeyed a higher calling.
He looked now again at the main deck of the
Santa Ines
But why had the new owner changed the ship's name from something holy to something unquestionably dark—from a saint to a shadow? Why would anyone choose such a name for a ship?
And why would it be sailing without escort through waters infested with pirates and British privateers?