33
On the way out of Panama City, just before Tyndall Air Force Base, there was a little hole-in-the-wall flower shop called Sweetheart’s. Jolie bought white roses there. She slid open the frosted glass door and picked out the bouquet, not the most expensive but not the least expensive either, and inhaled the damp sweet smell of the flowers, beaded with moisture.
She paid the clerk, a woman she recognized but did not know by name, a big woman in a flowered smock with dozens of rings on her fingers that matched her barrettes. The woman beamed, her cheeks exactly like round apples, and asked Jolie if she wanted a card to write her sentiments on.
“No thanks,” Jolie said. “He knows what I think.”
“That’s the best kind of relationship,” the woman said.
Jolie drove into the cemetery off Palmetto Road and walked to the headstone set into the grass like a paving stone. The stone was polished granite. She couldn’t really afford it, but felt she had to give him the best. He’d been denied the big send-off, with cops from all over Florida, spit-shined and stoic, tears in their eyes. The fired salute, the folded flag, Jolie in a black dress and veil. None of that. She tried to make up for it with the gold engraving of a badge cut into the stone. The dark gray granite shimmered in and out of a lone pine’s shadow, declaring itself bravely: this was a person somebody lavished money on.
Jolie set the flowers in the cup and glanced at her watch. Every month, sixteen of them, she’d come here on or around the anniversary of Danny’s death. Lately, the date seemed to slip by and she’d make it sometime during the week. Her devotion had stayed the same—forced. First it was stunned and forced. Then it was raw and forced. Then it was angry and forced. Now it was just forced. She’d skipped right past grief, and she felt guilty about that. There was nothing left to her presence here except her need to show the world that Dan Tybee was not forgotten.
Her father had taught her about solidarity early on. Hold up your side. Danny was a good cop, and he deserved a cop’s funeral. If they didn’t give him the send-off, she would. Whether or not she loved him, she would damn well give him that.
The really bad thing? She
Kay told her to let it go. “It’s time you stopped being a widow.” “You need to move on.” “Don’t be a martyr.”
She wasn’t a martyr.
Truth to tell, being a widow made things a whole hell of a lot easier. She didn’t have to even think of finding another man. That was off the table for now—no way she was ready for that. She wore the ring and she visited the grave and she refused to talk about it and that pretty much did the trick. But coming to his grave had become a chore, something she did for the sake of doing. When she stood at his grave, Jolie felt nothing but impatience. Her mind filled with other things she had to do.
But she’d keep him here. Keep his memory. He’d slipped away from her in every other way, but here, under her feet, she finally had his attention.
34
Landry went online to look for an off-track betting parlor. He found one—a ten-minute taxi ride away from Frank’s slip in the Emerald Bay Marina in Panama City, where they were currently moored.
Frank kept the slip so he could entertain guests or play golf at the Marriott.
Landry’s older brother called him early this morning with the news that Chernobyl Ant would finally run today at Hollywood Park. It would be his first race. The colt had the recurring quarter crack, but the patch on his hoof was solid and the track conditions were good, so it was a go. Earlier, Landry had clicked through the channels on Franklin’s satellite TV and discovered that Frank’s service didn’t subscribe to the racing channels.
Landry made sure the attorney general was secured in the bed—trussed up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey— and raised the level of the triptascoline drip. He closed the blinds and locked everything up tight. He had Frank’s card to get in and out of the gated marina.
The OTB was in a bar, smoky and dark and anonymous. Lots of characters. They looked as if their lives had been drifting out of them, like a slow leak in a tire. Too many beers over a lifetime, too many cigarettes. But then the horses came on simulcast and life came back to their eyes, as if these people remembered who they were. The racetrack could do that.
He took a place at the bar and looked up at the monitor. There was one race before Chernobyl Ant’s. Landry watched the horses parade down the track at Hollywood Park. Bright green grass. Palms. The California haze. Landry loved the backstretch, loved the action there. It would always be inside him. The only thing more important to him at the moment was taking care of business for Brienne and the others.
Now he knew why they died. All of them: the Egyptian professor, the Mexican pop star, the actor and his wife in Montana.
It was the result of Franklin’s “audacious plan.” “So simple,” he’d told Landry, the triptascoline working just like a truth serum.
“It didn’t bother you that they were innocent people? That you just picked them off a list and killed them for the hell of it?”
“Not for the hell of it,” Franklin said. “They were important. They were a distraction.”
And Landry had followed orders, blindly. He’d had no idea he was working for private interests, not for his country. He couldn’t bring Brienne Cross back, but he could avenge her death. Her death, and the others.
The race was coming up. He picked a powerful gray colt, and the gray won. His jockey expertly flipped his whip around and wriggled it—his version of celebrating in the end zone.
Landry knew what it was like, that feeling of athleticism, the rocking action in the stirrups as you balanced above the horse’s back, the ground rushing underneath. Pushing with his wrists on the animal’s neck, the horse quickening. The feeling when you crossed the wire in first.
He’d ridden twenty-six races as a bug boy. Then he shot up into the giant he was now.
When it was over for him, he’d closed the door. When he closed a door in his life, that was it.
Finally, it was jockeys up. The colt looked good. A flashy chestnut like his daddy. He moved with confidence, interested in his surroundings. No fear in him. He broke a step slow, but caught up fast. Too fast? Landry felt his heart thump hard. Was the jock screwing up? Bejarano—he had to know what he was doing! They’d sweated blood to get him.
Settling into a good rhythm going down the backstretch, three from the rail, the colt moving up. Well within himself. You could tell by Bejarano’s arms, following the reins in a subtle rocking rhythm, steady and relaxed, but there was coiled strength underneath. Plenty of horse. And then, right before the turn, Rafael shook the reins and Chernobyl Ant took off.
Landry didn’t know when he realized it would be a rout.
First he was ahead by a length, then widened to four, five, six, his lead growing with every stride.
Eleven and a half lengths at the wire!
The feeling bubbled up inside him. A deep and satisfying smile warmed him like a rising sun. He ignored the cigarette smoke, the dank smell of whiskey, the crowd jabbering. Walked out into the sunset, appreciating the palms fluttering against the lurid red-and-plum sky.
Eleven and a half lengths.
35
A man stood under the overhang of the gift store and bait shop, eating a candy bar. Landry had been on his way back to the boat when he spotted him.
The man was easy to make. He pretended to look at the bulletin board by the door, which was cluttered with business cards and photos of tourists holding up big fish. It was dusk, gloomy, but he could tell the man kept one eye on the AG’s boat. He looked casual, but wasn’t. For one thing, he wasn’t really looking at the photos. Landry
