you the chance to walk away,” he said, “before things get sticky.”
And that was how the truth came out. He’d been smuggling since college, he told her, turning serious right about the time he lost his scholarship in water polo, the result of blowing out a knee in a motorcycle accident. He’d earned a nickname from his former teammates, some of whom remained customers. He was Bad Dan, The Man Who Can.
He ran the stateside crews, hiring the boys on the beach and managing distribution, while his partner, Steve Cadaret, worked up the loads in Bangkok. Over the preceding three years, the Cadaret Company had brought in two hundred tons of premium Thai pot. They landed it on remote beaches, in abandoned quarries, along heavily forested riversheds. For transport, they used anything that would float, from garbage scows to an old fruit freighter they’d salvaged from a shipyard in Panama. They’d formed a nexus of dummy companies to hide the money and mastered the ancient art of bribery.
For all that, he assured her, he and his buddies did their best to avoid the gaudier macho baggage. From the time he and Cadaret had started out, they’d lived by the credo: No guns, no gangsters. It’s only money. Because of that, and a number of other factors- philosophical, socio-legal, what have you- he resisted conceding that what he did made him a criminal. A character, sure, deviant probably, maybe even an outlaw (“Got a nice, old-timey ring, that one,” he said). But criminal, no. He knew criminals. At the age of nine he’d watched his father disappear with three enforcers from a local loan shark. He’d grown up with guys who’d later be in and out of prison like it was a combination trade school and fraternal lodge. And, of course, he dealt with criminals in the business- the worst could be avoided if you used good sense. Regardless, he felt no kinship with such men.
In truth, he said, he was nothing more than one more aimless brat, born into a generation that dismissed the two core tenets of the American creed: Family and Honest Work. To his mind, families meant guilt, scheming, envy. That was his experience, at any rate. As for work, it amounted to little more than a lifelong resentment stoked by spineless greed. Friends alone legitimize duty. Only a dream makes work bearable, and nothing makes it honest. He held himself accountable only to the bond he felt for those he loved and the thrill of peering over the edge.
Shel heard him out, swishing her feet in the salt water as, every now and then, a crab crawled up onto the sun-bleached dock, or a spate of laughter erupted from the hotel bar.
“And that,” she said, “in the immortal words of Paul Harvey, is the rest of the story.” She looked up at him, trying to subdue the despair and panic and fury inside her. Too good to be true, she thought, should’ve known. Another handsome, sad-eyed liar. “So all that about being an
“No,” Abatangelo told her. “All that was true. It’s just not how I make my money.” He gestured to include the surroundings. “If it were, I could hardly afford this, believe me.”
True enough, she realized. He wasn’t really lying. And regardless what word got used to describe him, he wasn’t evil. Well then, she asked herself, what’s the problem? What did you expect, who are you to judge- more to the point, what is there to go back to that beats this? Dealing cards to drunks? You love him. Deny that, you’re the liar.
“Overall,” she said quietly, “it’s a lot less twisted than I’ve got a right to expect. Not like I’m some virgin bride. I like the part about no gangsters. No guns.”
“Me too,” he admitted.
“I see guns, I’m gone.”
Part I
chapter 1
Abatangelo stood on the porch of a safe house in western Oregon, watching with foreboding as an old Harley- Davidson shovelhead thundered up the winding timber road. The motorcycle turned into the long, steep drive to the house, spewing gravel and dust as it charged uphill beneath the pine shade.
Behind him, footsteps approached from inside. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched as Shel materialized through shadow at the porch door screen.
“Kinda early,” she said, nodding down the hill.
“Isn’t it?” he replied.
Abatangelo recognized the bike. It belonged to a man named Chaney, one of the local throwbacks he’d hired for the beach crew. Not the brightest bulb, but he wasn’t alone in that. This was probably the sorriest bunch Abatangelo had put together in years, comprised of Chaney and his wanna-be biker pals, plus an unruly and utterly toasted squad of pillheads from Beaverton and a few swacked Chinooks who at least knew the area. It underscored how right it was that this should be the last catch ever, a final nest egg against the looming unknown.
Chaney took the final crest of the hill at full throttle. The dogs, three spirited black Labs, barked from inside the fenced-in backyard as the bike left behind the thick shade of the drive and entered the hardpan firebreak surrounding the house. Chaney came garbed in denims and cowboy boots and aviator shades, with a black watch cap pulled down low on his head. Maybe all of twenty years old. Give him three years, Abatangelo thought, he’ll be punching a clock for the timber companies, or whining because he isn’t, same as everybody else up here.
Revving the throttle three times, legs sprawled for balance, Chaney walked the hog up to the porch. Abatangelo waited till he killed the engine, then waited a little longer for the dust to settle. Pines on all sides of the house swayed in the morning breeze. In the distance a lumber truck broke the valley-wide silence, groaning in low gear up a steep grade.
“What an unexpected pleasure,” Abatangelo said, making sure Chaney caught his tone. This location wasn’t common knowledge, not among the hirelings. Only the Company captains knew where to find each other.
“Yeah, well,” Chaney said, clearing his sinuses of dust. “Eddy gave me directions.”
Eddy was Eddy Igo, the Company’s transportation chief. He was also Abatangelo’s closest friend.
“He’s in trouble,” Abatangelo guessed.
Chaney lifted his shades, rubbing his eyes. “We were out last night,” he said, “put a serious package on. Eddy was driving. Got pulled over on the lumber road to Roseburg. Trooper made Eddy get out and do the stunts. You can pretty much imagine how that went.”
“Roseburg,” Abatangelo said. “Kinda far afield. You were over there why?”
“Truck hunt,” Chaney said.
It was Eddy’s job to assemble the fleet of trucks they’d need to move the load off the beach to the remote barn they’d be using for temporary storage.
“Eddy in Roseburg now?”
“Drunk tank,” Chaney confirmed. “He was getting cuffed, said, ‘Tell the family for me, will ya? Have ’em make bail.’ I figured he meant you, ’cuz I got no idea where his people are.”
“And he gave you directions here.”
“Kinda vague and cryptic, you know, hush-hush,” Chaney said. “Not so the trooper caught on. Don’t think so, any rate. If I didn’t live around here, I’d a been clueless, too.”
Abatangelo looked off, scanning the forest as he thought things through. The story could be horseshit. The locals may have turned the boy already, sent him out here to lure the next man in. Me, he thought. Worse, Shel. There was no way to tell without taking the next step, heading into Roseburg. If the kid was telling the truth, Abatangelo knew he had to get Eddy out soon, before the law caught on to who he was.
“I appreciate your bringing the news,” he said finally. A display of gratitude was called for, in the event Chaney was being straight with him. “You want to come on in? Stretch out, maybe have a bite?”
Shel recognized this as a cue. Opening the screen door, she stepped on out to the porch, dressed in a tartan lumberjack shirt and blue-jean cutoffs, barefoot, her red hair still tousled from sleep. Chaney, blinking, broke into a lovestruck smile.
