I thought about it. “Maybe floating was never a consideration,” I said. “They weren’t thinking about crashing the boat. They just wanted to keep something locked up tight.”
“I wonder what’s in it?”
I looked at him. “You work on cars, right?”
“Yeah?”
“So you must have quite an assortment of tools.”
“We can’t open this.”
“I think we probably can.”
“We need to turn this over to the police.”
“We will,” I said. “Right after we open it.”
“I don’t know, Alex…”
I was standing there, soaking wet from the knees down. If I had been wavering in my reasons for coming here to see Tyler in the first place, here was a small mystery I could at least solve. This box those men had wanted to find so badly…I had assumed all along that it was filled with cash, brought along in the boat to give to someone in Canada in exchange for a large amount of prescription drugs.
But money didn’t weigh this much, not unless it was solid gold.
“Tyler, I can’t even tell you what I’ve been through in the last few days. What I’ve lost. I have nothing else to lose now, so I’m going to open up this box. You can help me or you can stand aside.”
He looked at Liz, then at me. “Sounds like if I want to stop you, I’ll have to go get one of the shotguns.”
“That’s probably what it’ll take, yes.”
“In that case, I’ll be right back.”
I watched him walk to the garage. He emerged a few seconds later. For one second I thought I saw the shotgun in his hands. But no, it was a long crowbar.
“Here you go,” he said as he handed it to me. “I’ll tell the police this is how we found it, that it must have gotten damaged in the wreck. If they look close enough to see crowbar marks, you’re on your own.”
“Thank you, Tyler. I owe you a drink.”
The front latch looked solid, so I started in on the side that was already damaged. I slipped the crowbar in through the cracked seal, working it back and forth until the opening got bigger. Some dark water came seeping out. I kept working the crowbar, bending back the lid. The plastic started to give way. I saw Liz flinch when a large piece came off with a violent cracking noise. Looking inside, I saw another box. This one was made of wood. It was stained dark from the intruding water.
I had to keep working hard on the lid until I could get the inner box out. At this point, there was no way it would look like damage from the crash, but I didn’t care. I pulled at the wooden box. It slid out. There was another box underneath it. More beside it. There had to be a dozen of them.
I held the wooden box in my hands for a moment. I had a gut feeling I already knew what was in it. I opened the box and saw that I was right.
It was a gun. Some kind of small machine pistol, like a miniature Uzi. There was black felt inside the box, molding perfectly to the gun and showing it off like it was some kind of exotic jewel.
I put the box down, took out another. When I opened it, I saw a pistol. A Colt. 45. Things were coming together in my mind now. I felt a cold, sick wave flowing right through me.
“This is some serious hardware,” Tyler said. “It explains the lock, I guess.”
“If they got stopped by somebody,” I said, “the box couldn’t be opened without a warrant. That’s enough reason right there.”
“How much do you think these are worth?”
I shook my head. “I’m sure these are worth something. But you know…I mean, how much can a dozen guns go for these days? A few thousand dollars, tops?”
“Those guys acted like they really, really needed to get this box back,” Tyler said. “I was expecting to see a lot of money. Or diamonds. You’re telling me it’s just a few thousand dollars worth of guns?”
“I bet the dollar value wasn’t the point,” I said. “They wanted to find this box so nobody else would. They didn’t want anybody to make the connection, to figure out what these guys were really up to.”
“They were selling guns, you mean. So these guns here…Hell, these were-”
“Samples,” I said. “These were samples.”
“Just like salesmen. God damn, Liz, those guys were selling guns.”
“No,” I said. “No. They weren’t selling guns.”
I was already moving. Tyler called after me, but I didn’t even turn around. After almost losing my steam, now I had a new mission. I ran to my truck, sprayed gravel as I spun out of his driveway and hit the road.
They weren’t selling guns.
They were trading them.
Chapter Nineteen
Guns for drugs. It made a terrible kind of sense. God knows, America had enough guns, in every shape and size. Legal, borderline legal, or way over the line illegal, America had them. Of course, there was no shortage of hunting rifles in Canada. But handguns, concealable weapons, little submachine guns you can tuck into your jacket…that was a different matter. If you wanted to buy something like that in Canada, you were out of luck.
What Canada did have in abundance was drugs. Especially painkillers. Hell, you could walk into any drugstore in Canada and buy Tylenol with a low dose of codeine right over the counter. The stronger stuff, the serious opiates like Vicodin, Oxycontin, sure, you’d need a prescription. But nowadays, how many Americans were doing mail-order business with Canadian pharmacies? It was a gray area in United States law, whether it was legal to fill your prescriptions in Canada. But as long as the different federal agencies were bickering about it, the gates were wide open. That meant lots of drugs being made in Canada, lots of drugs being moved around from one place to another. Some of them getting lost, maybe. Some of them not quite reaching their intended destinations.
Certain people in one country, with access to lots of drugs, needing a certain kind of gun. Certain people in another country, with access to lots of guns, needing a certain kind of drug. Both countries right next to each other, with a long, mostly open border.
Imports and exports, like Mr. Gray had said to me.
Imports and exports.
That’s what was ringing in my head as I drove down to Hessel. As badly as my first two visits to Mr. Gray’s summerhouse had gone, something told me I needed to make one more trip. Cap was probably long gone by now, but hell, maybe Brucie would still be there, hanging on to the hope that he was still working for Mr. Gray. I didn’t imagine he’d be terribly happy to see me, but that would be the least of his problems.
It was starting to get cloudy again, the sun retreating already after just a few hours of bright light, of warmth. Saying, this is all there is. See you next year if you’re lucky. I kept driving as the lead-colored sky took over again and the temperature dropped. I could feel the air itself changing.
I turned off the highway, found the road that ran down the peninsula to Mr. Gray’s summerhouse. My third trip there…The first I had parked at the neighbors’ so I could sneak up on the place. The second time I didn’t even make it to the house at all, catching Cap on his way out of Dodge and beating him half to death right there on the roadside. Now, finally, I drove my truck down the driveway like a regular human being and parked it in front of the house. Cap’s Escalade was long gone. The red Viper and the silver Mercedes were both there. I had to think back for a moment, remembering that Mr. Gray had taken his son with him, and had left Harry’s car here. The other car must have been Brucie’s, although I couldn’t picture him driving a Mercedes. He seemed more the kind of guy who’d drive a shiny new Hummer.
I stuck the gun in my belt again, just in case. For all I knew, Brucie had gotten over his little hang-up about shooting people. I went to the front door and knocked. Nobody answered. I knocked again. Nothing.
Two cars here, but no people? It didn’t make sense. I tried opening the front door. It was locked. Then I remembered how I’d gotten in the first time.
