cigarettes were sold in their cartel-owned black-market malls, completing the laundry.
Chapter 36
LOOK'T THAT RUSTING bastard,' Jody said to Shane. They were standing on the duty-free pier, studying the old Venezuelan freighter being loaded with containers of cigarettes. It was four P. M. that same afternoon. The only paint on the vessel's brown steel hull was some fresh white lettering on the stern that read Subu Maruy which Papa Joe had explained meant 'bright star.' Shane thought the rusting bucket looked more like a falling star. They had been told the ship was leased by the King Trading Company: a Mantoor-controlled Venezuelan shipping line.
'This rusting piece a'shit only handles contraband for the drug trade,' Jody said.
The Subu Maru was at the end of her days, stuck in the service of the devil, making the short, twenty-five- kilometer run from Aruba to the port of Maracaibo, which sat just inside the Gulf of Venezuela.
As they stood on the dock, watching their containers of cigarettes being lowered into the black hold, something strange happened to Shane-a darkening of Shane's spirit, worse by far than any of his other episodes. It kept building throughout the afternoon, until his chest was tight with anxiety and he was short of breath. Suddenly, he felt he couldn't stand to go on for even another hour.
Although the rest of the Vikings had left the pier, Shane and Jody watched until the last containers were loaded on board. The sun had begun to set, treating them to a luscious, multicolored sunset, before slipping below the surface of the Caribbean Sea, bringing down the curtain of night.
'I'm gonna see if I can find a woman,' Jody said with a grin. 'How 'bout it? Wanna come? No pun intended.'
'No… No… I think I'll get something to eat at the hotel, walk around a little,' Shane said as a frightening notion began to haunt him.
'If you change your mind, call me.'
'Gimme your cell-phone number,' Shane said as he picked up a Spanish newspaper off the dock and handed it to Jody, who wrote down his number and handed it back. Shane folded it carefully, then put the newspaper in his back pocket.
He caught a cab to the hotel but didn't want to go to the room for fear that Lisa would be there, stripped down to her high heels, waiting to destroy what was left of him. Shane got out of the cab, and as he walked through the lobby, he knew that he was at the end… Knew he couldn't go on. Spiritual darkness overwhelmed him. All of his thoughts, no matter the content, just served to drive him lower.
He wandered toward the pool, looking for something, anything, to free him from this suicidal grip. It was a few minutes past eight. Nobody was out there. The lights in most of the cabana suites were on. He could see guests moving back and forth in front of the curtains, getting ready to go out, their lives full of adventure and romance, while his was now only about loneliness and despair. He sat in a pool chair and rubbed his eyes.
There was nothing that mattered to him anymore-not even his pledge to destroy Jody. There were Jodys everywhere, men who lived violent lives without remorse. What was one Jody, more or less?
He felt himself sink deeper.
In desperation, he tried to lock onto something positive.
Chooch.
He focused on the feelings of love for his son. He loved Chooch desperately but now began to realize that his son would be better off without him. He sat on the corded pool chair, wondering how he had become so completely lost.
He got up suddenly and walked into the lobby. 'Could I have a piece of paper and an envelope, please?' he asked the pretty island girl at the concierge desk.
'Of course, sir,' she said, handing it to him.
He walked across the lobby, then sat at the small writing desk and began a short letter.
He couldn't address it to anyone in particular, because he had no one left at the LAPD whom he trusted, so he began:
TO WHOM IT MA Y CONCERN: The following facts have been obtained regarding a massive money- laundering scheme involving the illegal sales of parallel-market V-5 All-American Tobacco products into Colombia…
Then Shane laid out the entire scheme, with every detail he could remember. The letter went on for three pages. He named all of the Vikings and included Jody's admission that he had killed the two heads of the Detective Services Group. Shane wrote about Leon Fine, dead and buried on the beach up in Oxnard; he named the All- American Tobacco executives: the Prussian general, Lou Petrovitch, and his two helpers, Chip Gordon and Arnold Zook. He described the Mantoors, how they used their power and influence in Aruba to subvert their own dutyfree zone for illegal profit. He named the five San Andresito families, spelling their names as carefully as he could, hoping he had them right. Then he confessed to pulling the trigger on Alexa Hamilton in the Tony Filosiani- supervised plot, intended to set his cover for the Vikings, explaining how he fired, not knowing Jody had reloaded his gun with a Black Talon. Finally, he wrote about Lisa St. Marie, who probably, more than even Jody, had presided over his ultimate corruption. He asked the LAPD Scientific Investigations Division to scan the enclosed newspaper for Jody's fingerprints, proving that he was still alive at the date of publication.
He ended the letter with a message to his son:
Forgive me, Chooch. You will be better off without me. I did the best I could, but it was not enough.
He signed it:
LAPD Sergeant
Shane Scully
He put the letter into an envelope along with the dated Spanish newspaper containing Jody's cell number and fingerprints. Shane sealed the envelope, then walked back to the concierge, bought two stamps, affixed them, and addressed the envelope:
LAPD INTERNAL AFFAIRS DIVISION COMMANDING OFFICER LAPD INTERNAL AFFAIRS DIVISION 304 SOUTH BROADWAY LOS ANGELES,CALIFORNIA 90007 U.S.A.
'Would you please mail this for me?' he asked the concierge.
'Of course, sir,' she said as she took the letter. 'I'm afraid it won't go out till the morning…'
'That's fine,' he said.
She dropped it into a mail slot and smiled at him. 'Have a nice evening.'
'Yes,' he said. 'Of course.' He turned and headed back out to the pool, but he didn't stop there. He continued toward the lagoon, walking on numb legs.
When he reached the beach, he turned right. It was deserted, no longer the colorful playground of a few hours ago.
He felt the weight of the Beretta on his ankle, heavier with each step. He walked almost a quarter mile from the lit seaside cabanas before he sat down and began untying his shoes.
I'm taking off my fucking shoes just like eighty percent of the dumb-ass suicides I worked, he thought.
He finished removing his shoes and placed them neatly beside him. Then he peeled off his socks, the weight of the Beretta heavier with each passing second.
His mind was lasering back and forth across this final decision, searching for one last handhold-one positive emotion that would save him.
But when he really examined it, there wasn't anything left for him. Chooch was going to be in college in eighteen months. With no one to vouch for him, Shane would be vilified by the LAPD and eventually caught and convicted of Alexa's murder. He couldn't face Chooch's reaction to that.
He had no friends left on the department. Alexa had been the last, and he had killed her.
He had once felt brotherhood and love for Jody, but now he knew that Jody was a sociopath and had just been using him all these years, pretending love and friendship but feeling nothing. Worse than that was the realization that Shane was becoming more like Jody every day.
