T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality (32 page)

He pushed his empty dishes back and drummed some fingers in thought. “Tell you what. I’ll authorize you as a bidder on any current auction vehicles. Get what you want, but you pay out of your own pocket.”

“Floyd still running things there?”

“Affirmative. I’m sure he’ll take good care of you, just like he did with the Mercedes.”

“At least buy me a set of new run-flat tires with Uncle Sam’s checkbook.” When the set that came with the Benz wore out, I replaced them with much cheaper, regular passenger tires. But I’ve since decided that there is no use tooling around in an armored car if your tires could easily be shot out.

Frowning, Ashton shook his head.

I twirled a strand of hair around my forefinger, arched out my chest, and produced a sexy bimbette look, complete with fluttering lashes. “Pulleeeze?”

Ashton held my raised eyebrow stare. He nearly smiled. “I taught you that look and it doesn’t work on me. You report for work on Monday. Your name is Jill Burns.”

“Can’t it be something a little more exotic like Marilyn Tulika or Giana Brenneka?”

He dropped some bills on the counter and stood to leave. “Good to see you again.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“When are they
gonna haul away that damn hunk of junk, for crying out loud?” Spud complained, asking nobody in particular. People think he looks like a much older, shrunken version of Wolfgang Puck. Except my father’s demeanor is much different than the famous chef’s, and right now, agitation was the flavor of the moment. “That stupid car is still causing me headaches.”

Spud and Bobby, one of my father’s poker buddies, had joined Ox and me for a midday snack at the Block. It was well past lunchtime and too early for the happy hour crowd, and a smattering of low-maintenance customers sat around eating peanuts and drinking beers. Ruby tended to everyone and still had plenty of time to catch up on local gossip with some of the regulars.

“The insurance adjuster was a young kid, and once he took a look at your Chrysler, he wasn’t sure how to write up the report.
Said he had to send a senior adjuster out,” I explained to my father for the third or fourth time. “Should be sometime this week.”

After deteriorating eyesight claimed Spud’s driver’s license, he’d embarked on a mission to get rid of his Chrysler LHS. Unfortunately, his valuation of the vehicle was much higher than anyone else’s and he couldn’t sell it. Mad at the state of North Carolina and obsessed with getting rid of the car, he’d schemed ways to lose it so he could collect the insurance money, right up until a local cop offered to buy it. When Spud finally snagged a buyer with cash in hand—a buyer willing to pay the full asking price—my father had an epiphany to keep the car so his friends could tote him around in it. Minutes later, somebody drove a garbage truck into the Block, ripping right through one of the giant metal garage doors. Spud’s car was parked outside said garage door and the truck’s huge front-end forks had pierced it like toothpicks going through a fat olive. After being forked and crushed, the Chrysler was peppered with incoming rounds from no less than twenty handguns. When the firestorm ended, the tow-truck driver couldn’t figure out how to safely haul away the garbage truck with Spud’s car attached—and suspended a foot off the ground. A forward-thinking kind of guy, he’d called a welder to cut through the metal prongs, effectively amputating them from the truck. Victorious, he towed the garbage truck away, leaving the impaled, smashed, shot-up Chrysler sitting in a patch of grass outside my bar, two long forked rods protruding through its belly.

Spud retrieved his walking cane so he could poke it into the concrete floor a few times. “Well, I’m tired of waiting! It’s been almost a month now. That car was fully insured and I want my money. Any idiot can see that it’s totaled, for crying out loud.” That was an understatement. Demolished would be more like it.

I bit a hushpuppy in half and let it melt on my tongue. “Calm down, Spud. They’re probably just reviewing the police report.
Maybe they found out that the car had been sunk, burned, and almost stolen during your failed foray into insurance fraud.”

“Yeah,” Bobby spurred it on. “Maybe they’ve launched an official investigation.”

“Well, the insurance company can launch this.” Spud shoved his cane in the air, in lieu of an arthritic middle finger.

Before he could get into a full-blown tirade about the insurance industry, Hal and Trip showed up. My father and his three poker friends—after much old-age shuffling and grunting—headed upstairs to Spud’s kitchen table for a round of Texas Hold ’Em.

I tried to focus on the information in front of me but couldn’t help looking at Ox instead and wondering—if my budding retirement hadn’t been so rudely interrupted—whether we might have finished what we started. The night of the shootout at the Block, he had stayed with me and I distinctly remember the glorious sensation of being enveloped in his arms as I drifted into the deepest sleep I’d had in a long time. Physically and emotionally drained from the week’s events and relaxed by too much alcohol, my body wouldn’t cooperate with my mind’s desire to ravage Ox’s body. Awakening beside him the next morning, I quickly came to my senses. He was certainly willing, but sex with my best friend could change everything. There might be no turning back. Ox is tall and has traditional Native American features with some surprises tossed into his DNA, such as the dimple set into a square chin and a unique cinnamon eye color that changes with his mood. Just hearing him speak sometimes drives me crazy. A Lumbee can be anywhere in the country and immediately recognize another Lumbee, simply by hearing the other speak. Their unique dialect is sort of southern, but influenced by several ancestral sources, and Ox retained the distinctive manner of speaking even though he’d led a mobile military life. When he first appeared in Wilmington, I didn’t fall into bed with Ox because he needed time to heal after a nasty
divorce. In the years to follow, he always had a gorgeous woman on his arm and I always had a somewhat-steady male companion. The timing had never been right. Either that, or the spirits had different plans for us.

“What’s on your mind?” he said.

“Oh, uh, nothing really.” Just thinking how good it would feel to press our naked bodies together. “I’m still blown away by this assignment. I feel like a commodity, like they own me or something.”

“You’re mad because you are accustomed to doing things your own way, on your own terms.” He had a knack for seeing through bullshit. Hopefully, though, he didn’t know what was
really
on my mind. Him. Naked.

“I suppose.”

“Let’s get you in place and get this thing figured out so we can be finished with it. Then you can go play on your boat and ponder life after retirement.”

I smiled. “We?”

“I’ve got a feeling you may need me on this one.” He looked outside at the placid river. “Oddly, I’ve got a feeling that we may need each other more than usual in the coming weeks.”

Ox’s predictions were always right on target. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“I don’t, either.” He opened the file and together, we scoured my notes and the computer printouts.

In typical covert fashion, an envelope had been delivered earlier by a woman I thought was a tourist. She handed it to me personally, saying only, “Don’t leave this shit lying around.” Inside I found a dossier containing detailed information on all Sunny Point personnel, or in government lingo, “the population served.” There are soldiers and Army reserve units, as expected, but few in comparison to the more than two hundred civilians who work at the facility.

The packet also contained general operating info on Sunny Point and a fairly detailed blueprint. Built along Highway 133, it is surrounded by a huge buffer zone of undeveloped land and large sand berms, and at sixteen thousand acres and more than two hundred thousand square feet of buildings, it is the largest ammunition port in the nation. The facility receives ammunition, explosives, and various other hazardous cargo by both train and truck, and loads the stuff on outgoing ships.

We went over the report detailing possible terrorist scenarios and potential weak spots in MOTSU security. Nothing jumped out and said, “Look at me! I’m an open invitation for a terrorist!” Other than familiarizing myself with the information, there wasn’t anything to do except park the roach coach as scheduled and cook some eggs.

“I don’t even cook breakfast for myself and now I’m supposed to go cook for a bunch of strangers every morning?”

“Least they didn’t make you a janitor,” Ox said.

The Block had slowly filled up while we concentrated on the task at hand, and another server and bartender arrived for the evening shift. The noise level climbed accordingly and soon leveled off to a steady hum of good-natured chatter. All heads suddenly swung in Ruby’s direction when her entire body erupted into a loud, jiggling belly laugh. Two confused tourists stood by her side, and like the rest of us, didn’t understand what was so funny.

Ruby stopped laughing and pointed at me. “That there is the Block’s owner, Jersey, and the manager, Ox. I’m sure one of them can help you out.”

I stood to greet the couple, reminding myself to let Ruby know that Ox was an owner, too. I’d finally gotten him to agree to accept fifty percent ownership in the Block, which I took as a good sign. It meant that he didn’t have plans to leave Wilmington anytime soon.

“What can we do for you?”

“We’d like to find out who the artist is,” the man said.

“Artist?”

He pointed outside, at the pathetic remains of Spud’s car. “It’s a really incredible piece. Makes a statement, you know?”

Stupefied at their interpretation of art, I forced myself to nod.

“I just love the way he patterned all the bullet holes,” the woman chimed in. “And the giant fork prongs must symbolize that humans are really insignificant in the overall scheme of things. Like maybe we’re really
not
at the top of the food chain.”

“Right,” the man agreed. “Anyway, we couldn’t find a signature plate on the sculpture and my wife wants to know who created it. Does the artist have a gallery around here?”

I looked at the twisted, impaled monstrosity that used to be Spud’s car. “It was a coordinated effort by a group of local artists.”

“They’re actually law enforcement officers who dabble in art,” Ox confided to the couple with a straight face.

“Really? Wow. That would make a great story.” The woman pulled a camera phone out of her handbag. “I’ve got to tell my editor about this. I write for
Eclectic Arts & Leisure
magazine. We have a national subscriber base.”

The man led his wife outside, where the couple started taking digital photographs of the Chrysler from various angles. Ox let loose with a deep throaty laugh.

“Think they’ll notice that Cracker uses the sculpture as his personal fire hydrant?” I said.

He laughed harder.