Sacred

“Everett,” I said, “if you could just—”

He shook his head. “I can’t discuss any aspects of Trevor Stone’s case or Jay Becker’s disappearance with you, Patrick. I simply can’t. I can only tell you to remember what I’ve said about honor and the people without it. And to fend for yourselves with that knowledge.” He walked back to his chair and sat in it, turned it halfway back to the window. “Good night,” he said.

I looked at Angie and she looked at me and then we both looked at the back of his head. I could see his eyes reflected in the glass again, but they weren’t looking at my reflection this time, only his own. He peered at the ghostly image of himself trapped and swimming in the glass and the reflected lights of other buildings and other lives.

We left him sitting in his chair, staring out at the city and himself simultaneously, bathed in the deep blue of the night sky.

At the door, his voice stopped us, and it bore a tone I’d never recognized before. It was still rich with experience and wisdom, still steeped in lore and expensive brandy, but now it carried the barest hint of fear.

“Be careful in Florida,” Everett Hamlyn said.

“We never said we were going to Florida,” Angie said.

“Be careful,” he repeated and leaned back in the chair to sip from his glass of brandy. “Please.”

PART TWO

SOUTH OF THE BORDER

15

I’d never been on a private jet before, so I really had nothing to compare it to. I couldn’t even make a leap and compare it with being on a private yacht or a private island because I’d never been on one of those, either. About the only “private” thing I owned was my car, a rebuilt ’63 Porsche. So…being on a private jet was a lot like being in my car. Except the jet was bigger. And faster. And had a bar. And flew.

Lurch and the Weeble picked us up at my apartment in a dark blue limousine, which was also a lot bigger than my car. Actually, it was bigger than my apartment.

From my place, we drove down Columbia Road past several onlookers who were probably wondering who was getting married or which high school was holding a prom in mid-March at nine in the morning. Then we glided through rush hour traffic and the Ted Williams Tunnel to the airport.

Instead of entering the traffic heading toward the main terminals, we looped around and headed toward the southern tip of the airport landmass, drove past several freight terminals and food packaging warehouses, a convention hotel I’d never even known was there, and pulled up in front of the General Aviation Headquarters.

Lurch went inside as Angie and I rifled the wet and dry bar compartments for orange juice and peanuts, stuffed our pockets, and debated whether to clip two champagne flutes.

Lurch returned, followed by a short guy who jogged to a brown and yellow minivan with the words PRECISION AVIATION on the side.

“I want a limousine,” I said to Angie.

“Parking in front of your apartment would be a bitch.”

“I wouldn’t need my apartment anymore.” I leaned forward, asked the Weeble, “Does this thing have closets?”

“It has a trunk.” He shrugged.

I turned back to Angie. “It has a trunk.”

We pulled in behind the van and followed it to a guard kiosk. Lurch and the van driver got out, showed their licenses to the guard, and he noted the numbers on a pad and handed Lurch a pass, which Lurch placed on the dash when he got back in. The orange barrier arm in front of the van rose and we drove past the kiosk onto the tarmac.

The van pulled around a small building and we followed, and cruised along a path between two runways, with several more spread out around us, the pale bulbs of their lights glistening in the morning dew. I saw cargo planes and sleek jets and small white puddle-jumpers, fuel trucks and two idling ambulances, a parked fire engine, three other limousines. It was as if we’d entered into a formerly hidden world, which reeked of power and influence and lives so important they couldn’t be bothered with normal modes of transport or something so banal as a schedule designed by others. We were in a world where a first-class seat on a commercial airliner was considered second-class, and the true corridors of power lay before us dotted with landing lights.

I guessed which was Trevor Stone’s jet before we pulled to a stop in front of it. It stood out even in the company of Cessnas and Lears. It was a white Gulfstream with the thin slanted beak of the Concorde, a body as streamlined as a bullet, wings tucked tight against the hull, a tail the shape of a dorsal fin. A mean-looking machine, a white hawk in holding pattern.

We took our bags from the limousine and another Precision employee took them from our hands and placed them in the luggage compartment by the tail.

I said to Lurch, “What’s a jet like this run—about seven million?”

He chuckled.

“He’s amused,” I said to Angie.

“Busting a gut,” she said.

“I believe Mr. Stone paid twenty-six million for this Gulfstream.”

He said “this” Gulfstream, as if there were a couple more back in the garage in Marblehead.

“Twenty-six.” I nudged Angie. “Bet the salesman was asking twenty-eight, but they talked him down.”

On board, we met Captain Jimmy McCann and his copilot, Herb. They were a jolly pair, big smiles and bushy eyebrows raised behind mirrored glasses. They assured us we were in good hands, don’t you worry, haven’t crashed one in months, ha ha ha. Pilot humor. The best. Can’t get enough of it.

We left them to play with their dials and their torques and think up amusing ways to make us lose bowel control and whimper, and we headed back into the main compartment.

It, too, seemed bigger than my apartment, but maybe I was just star-struck.

There was a bar, a piano, three single beds in the rear. The bathroom had a shower in it. Plush lavender carpeting covered the floor. Six leather seats were spread out along the right and left side and two of them had cherrywood tables riveted to the floor in front of them. Each seat reclined like a BarcaLounger.

Five of the seats were empty. The sixth was occupied by Graham Clifton, aka the Weeble. I’d never even seen him leave the limousine. He sat facing us, a leather-bound notebook in his lap, a closed fountain pen on top of it.

“Mr. Clifton,” I said, “I didn’t know you’d be joining us.”

“Mr. Stone thought you could use an extra hand down there. I know the Gulf Coast of Florida well.”

“We don’t usually need extra hands,” Angie said and sat down across from him.