“I think I need a drink,” Dwayne said.
“She needs a drink.” Jimbo nodded toward Caroline, who was waving her arms and shouting a string of Einsteinian gibberish.
“Well, she’s passionate.” Dwayne shrugged.
All was eventually ready for them to up anchor and make way out into the Med. Parviz and Quebat had still not shown up, but the pair assured Caroline that they would be along somewhere between Alexandria and their destination in the Aegean.
Two weeks behind schedule, Dwayne and Boats made a final round to deliver the payoffs needed to see them away. Customs were cleared and their course logged, and the tugs and pilot were hired to see them to open water. It took most of the day but finally they bade farewell to the pilot and Boats took the helm and steered them north for the Cyclades to intercept the odyssey of Praxus of Thrace.
19
Alabama
Charles Pierce Raleigh was feeling good.
He was dripping with sweat in the Alabama heat. His knees hurt. The backs of his calves were on fire. But he was past the wall of pain. He knew he was hurting, but he didn’t feel it anymore.
Chaz was at the halfway point of the ten-mile circuit he’d devised. It went from his Uncle Red’s farmhouse along the half-mile gravel drive to Indian Ford Road to County Line to a fire road cut through the woods by the forest service that joined Indian Ford again and back to Uncle Red’s.
His uncle’s place was home for now. He had no desire to start spreading that tax-free cash around. The sweet relief of knowing it was there in the safe deposit box in Huntsville was enough. Laying up at Red’s kept him off the grid and focused on staying in shape. Fuck Jimbo. That Indian’s jokes about golf were bullshit. Chaz was sworn to stay hard.
Uncle Red liked the company. He was the only person on Earth who still called Chaz by his childhood name of “Chip.” What kind of name was that for a black man? “Chip.” Sounded like some redneck used-car salesman or somebody’s spotted dog. But Uncle Red was Old School, a broke-up ’Nam vet who still got up before dawn and tended to his truck garden and his hogs. An old Marine, he was down with Chaz doing PT and long runs. But Red thought a man should have a J-O-B.
He realized his nephew had plenty of cash. Chaz bought him a brand-new F-150 in exchange for staying in the back bedroom awhile. But a man needed something to do; needed a purpose to keep his spirit together. Chaz promised Red he would look into, some kind of work when the time came.
He ran in the evenings when it was cooler. The air was still damp with humidity. Sometimes it felt like he was breathing through a straw. His t-shirt and shorts were soaked through within a quarter-mile. By the mile mark, even his socks were squishy. When he got back to Red’s, he’d throw the socks in the trash on his way to the shower. It was a little luxury the cash allowed him. He’d never again wear anything but new socks as long as he lived.
The waxing and waning buzz of cicadas was joined by the sound of a car engine. A vehicle had turned onto the fire road behind Chaz. It was making its way through the pitch-black toward him. The high beams limned him. It wasn’t hoopies looking to jacklight deer in the off-season. They’d ride dark and slow. He stopped to watch the lights approach. A mud-spattered SUV with Idaho plates pulled even with him and drew to a stop.
“You lost?” Lee Hammond said from behind the wheel.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Chaz said.
“Why don’t you let me give you a lift back to your uncle’s?”
“I’m committed now. You drive on. I’ll meet you there.”
“Fine with me. I’d never get your funk out of my interior anyway.”
“Go to hell,” Chaz said and resumed his pace as Lee pulled away down the fire road. The red lights grew smaller and smaller, and soon Chaz was alone again in his own universe.
The SUV from Idaho was pulled up in front of the feed shed between Chaz’ Explorer and Uncle Red’s shiny new pickup. Hammond sat in the shadows on the porch of the dark farmhouse. He had a pitcher of sweet tea by him. Red made it for him before heading to bed.
“You drove here,” Chaz said. He leaned on a peeling porch post, cooling down.
“Yeah. I had some trouble. Had to get away.” Lee tinkled ice in his tumbler.
“This have anything to do with me and the other guys? This about Nevada?”
“All about that. You hear from Dwayne?”
“Yeah. I lamped the cash. Found a few inked stacks. Sent ’em on,” Chaz said.
“Well, I’m the only contact they have. Turns out Russians bought our gold. They gave up my guy, and he gave me up.”
“What they do to your guy?”
“Same thing they were going to do to me, I guess. He turned up dead in a canal.”
Lee didn’t feel it necessary to tell his friend the condition that Don Brinkley’s body was found in. The man had held out as long as any man could.
“What’s next?” Chaz said.
“I was hoping I could shack up here and keep my head down,” Lee said. He set the empty tumbler on the table by the pitcher.
“You have to ask my uncle.”
“I can pay my way.”
“Shit,” Chaz snorted. “You better not let him know how much you can pay.”
20
Ship Shape
Dwayne and Caroline gave up all pretenses and moved into the largest of the passenger cabins together.
“If I’d known, I would have brought a date,” Jimbo said.
It was no honeymoon cruise. They all worked sixteen-hour days on board the Ocean Raj, preparing for what was ahead. Boats anchored the ship well off the southern coast of Crete where he knew the sea to be generally
