Jamie Garrett - Riley Reid 03 - Ends and Beginnings (6 page)

I found a nice place to park in Roanoke. It was downtown, near a fountain and a park. The weather was unseasonably warm. Lots of people were out. There was also a hot dog stand close by. That helped.

Hey baby,

I know you have some questions. Why did we leave you? Where did we run off to? Im sorry I cant tell you wear we are. And I dont think you will ever see us again. Me and your mother stole from a very bad man. He wont stop looking for us till we are dead. I know we have no right to ask you for a favor honey. But we need you to stay away from anyone that has anything to do with a man called Harlan Greene. I put a photo in this letter. I need you to look at it and then go there. You will find more answers. It is not safe to tell you what in this letter. When you get there you will know what to do.

Love your dad.

The grammar in my dad’s letter was pretty bad. That was good and encouraging. He never made it out of middle school.

There was a photo inside the envelope, just like my dad said. It was of a tall oak tree with gnarled branches that extended far out from its trunk. It was a tree that I recognized. When I was a kid, I used to climb it whenever my parents took me to Valentine Park in Stone Harbor.

I was hoping for something more. The note had no answers. But it did provide me with a name, “Harlan Greene.” I’d never heard of him before. If my dad thought it was important to mention him, then he was worth looking into.

Right there, in the car, I took out my laptop. The first thing I tried was to enter in the name into a search engine. Surprisingly, I got some results. And none of them were positive or encouraging.

The first article I opened was about Harlan Greene being arrested for racketeering. From what I read, he was suspected of having his hand in a variety of illegal activities, including extortion, drug trafficking, murder and even prostitution. He was not a nice man.

None of the other articles I read about Harlan Greene were any better than the first. They were horrific tales of violence and vice. He was believed to control the flow of drugs from as far south as North Carolina, north as far as Delaware and west as far as Kentucky. His bust by the FBI was said to be one of the biggest success stories in the long history of the bureau.

I changed the search filter in the browser so that it looked for images. There were quite a few pictures of Mr. Greene. One caught my attention. Underneath it was a name: “Harlan ‘Horror’ Greene.” It wasn’t a mug shot; it was a still from a surveillance video.

Harlan Greene was a younger man in the photo. It was taken in 1995, so he must’ve aged significantly since then. From what I saw, the crime lord had intensely blue eyes, a balding head of brown hair, and there were tattoos up and down his neck, on all sides.

Even in the captured form of an image, Harlan Greene looked fierce. His eyes seemed to look straight through me. Why my father would try and screw over a man like that was beyond me. It seemed like a very foolish thing to do. He must’ve had a good reason.

I closed my laptop. When I took a look around, something caught my eye. Next to the fountain, there was a man staring straight at me. I could have been imagining things, but he looked like the same shady man I saw when leaving Sunny View. Maybe it was a coincidence, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, and so it was time to move on.

I turned on my car, and left the park and fountain. Two states away, to the west, Kentucky awaited me. Specifically, I was heading towards Warren County. According to my research, that was where Harlan Greene was locked up. Before heading back towards Stone Harbor and Valentine Park, I’d have words with him.

I found a trashy motel to stay in for the night. Comfort was not among my chief concerns. Staying hidden was more important. Ever since Carol mentioned someone was looking for me, I’d been a little paranoid. Seeing the shady-looking man at Sunny View and near the fountain made me even edgier.

The motel I stayed at was called, “The Reservation”. It was a crude homage to Native Americans. Personally, I found the big smiling Indian Chief on its sign inappropriate, if not a little racist. Considering its location, in the middle of nowhere and hidden in the woods, they could get away with it.

My room had a small table. On top of it was a lamp and a cheap coffee maker with a stained glass pot. I made myself some coffee. In front of me was the letter from my dad. Next to the letter was the photo of Hangman’s Tree. Next to that was my cell phone.

I just sat there, sipping my coffee and staring at the letter and photo. Suddenly, there was a rumbling noise that caught me off guard and made my heart skip a beat and butterflies rise in my stomach. What the hell was it? Turns out, it was my phone. I’d forgotten it was on vibrate.

Sam was calling. I picked up. “Hello?”

“Riley? I found him. I found the arsonist!” Sam was nearly yelling.

“Sam, you okay?”

“I’m fine just…” He sound both excited and panicked. He continued, “Sorry, I needed to call. I needed to hear your voice. I needed to hear something familiar.”

“What happened, Sam? You’re scaring me.”

“I was going through some old case files. There’re boxes and boxes of them in department basement. With all the sites involved in the drug ring that we know of burnt to a crisp, I had to dig deeper. I needed to look into the past. Hold on one second.” There was a pause. All I could hear was Sam’s breathing again.

“Sorry, I thought I heard someone coming.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m downtown, on Main Street, in the Roxy.” The Roxy used to be a theater in Stone Harbor. Back in the town’s heyday, it showed movies and hosted plays and concerts. I’m pretty sure Vaudeville passed through at some point. But it had been abandoned for decades, much like the rest of downtown. Why was Sam at the Roxy?

“What are you doing there?”

“In the old records I noticed something unusual. Back in my father’s day, there were an unusual amount of arrests around the vicinity of the theatre. There was everything from drug dealing and possession to loitering, soliciting and public intoxication.

“The sheer volume of crime in the area was staggering. It’s a wonder that no one looked into it more. Or perhaps it was no wonder. Perhaps someone made sure that no one looked twice at the Roxy. With that in mind, I went to investigate.

“When I got there, the place was surrounded by bums. I had to shoo some of them away. They scattered like stray cats. The front door was boarded up, so I had to find another way in.

“Out back there was an entrance. There was evidence that the door was chained shut, but squatters had cut them a long time ago. That was how I got in.

“I’ve only been to the Roxy once, as a kid. My dad took me there to watch some Christmas themed movie. I don’t remember which one. Inside the Roxy looked just like I remembered, except with a hell of a lot more dust, dirt and rodents. It was as if the owners, the Lazios family, just locked up one day and never came back.

“After some looking around, I found an office. Like the showroom, everything in it was left behind. So I started going through the drawers and file cabinets. I was hoping to find something, anything.”

“I’m guessing you did?” I asked.

“So … what did you find?”

“Pictures … actually photos to be more accurate. There were a lot of them. Mostly they were of the owners with different acts that came through Stone Harbor. Some were with guys I recognized as local hoods and mobsters from Norfolk and Richmond. Others were a little more … disturbing.”

“Disturbing?”

“Let’s just say some of them were of illicit and very illegal activities. My father, he was…” Sam didn’t want to say what I already guessed. “My father was in some of the photos.”

“Which ones? And who was he with?”

“It’s best you don’t know what he was doing in some of them. But in one of them he was with Pritchard, Dominick Lazio and a fourth man I didn’t recognize.”

“Can you send me the photos?” I was hoping Sam could take a picture of the photos or scan them and send them to my phone.

“No problem.” Sam was quiet for a moment.

My phone beeped. There were incoming picture messages. I took a quick glance. They were pictures of pictures. I’d go through them later, on my own.

Sam started to talk again. “Hold on one second. I’m not alone. Don’t hang up.”

I heard a sound like fabric against a receiver. It was a rough sound. Sam must’ve put his phone in his pocket.

Muffled noises cold be heard from my end of the phone. There was a lot of movement. Not being there, I could only imagine what was happening.

“Stop, police!” I thought I heard Sam yell. It was hard to tell for sure through the filter of his pants pocket.

I jumped when I heard gunshots from Sam’s line. What was happening? Fear for the well-being of my friend jump-started my heart.

Suddenly, Sam hung up. It was so abrupt and unexpected that it worried me. He was the one who had asked me to stay on the line. There were only a few reasons that I could think of for that to happen. And none of them were good.

Before I could hit the redial button, I head a beeping from my phone. Then there was an exclamation point above my video chat app. When I checked it, I was getting messaged by Sam for a live video communication.

“Are you okay?” I asked Sam as soon as I saw his face fill the screen of my cell phone.

Sam looked a little spooked. He was also a bit sweaty. Something was a little off. “Me? I’m fine. I can’t say the same about him.”

The focus of Sam’s phone camera shifted to a person lying on the theater stage floor. They had on a white plastic rabbit mask. God, I was sick of seeing those damn masks. There was a pool of blood forming underneath the person wearing the mask. And from what I could see through the video connection, they had been shot in the chest.

“I caught him trying to light on of those thermite bombs. Guess I was right for coming here. Someone wanted to destroy the evidence. Let’s see who.”

Through the video chat, I could see Sam’s hand reach for the white rabbit plastic mask. He took it off, revealing the arsonist’s identity. It was Officer Rodriguez

I was shocked. And from Sam’s silence, I figured him to be, too. Seeing him there on the ground, I was remembered Pastor Pritchard’s first interrogation. I remembered Rodriguez claiming not to be able to get the monitor’s recorder to work. At the time I thought nothing of it.

The focus of the video chat turned back to Sam. He tried to look calm and even happy. But he was faking it. He’d just shot a man. That would be disturbing for anyone with a conscience.

I heard what sounded like a cough. Sam’s eyes quickly faced down. Was that Rodriguez coughing? He wasn’t dead.

“I’ll call you right back, Riley. I need to … secure the scene.” And with that, Sam hung up, again.

Once again, I found myself in limbo, not knowing what was going on. And that second time, Sam didn’t call back for almost ten minutes. All the while I was sitting on pins and needles, waiting to hear what happened.

I got up and paced back and forth, biting my nails as I often did when anxious. When I tried to call him back, I got no answer. He took so long I had time to brew a pot of the disgusting motel coffee. Then my phone rang. It was him.

“Sorry about that. I had to secure the scene and had a little chat with the late Officer Rodriguez. He confessed to the fires at the marina, Sister Mary’s and Fresh Horizons. Before he died he told me he worked for a guy named…”

“Harlan Greene,” I answered.

Sam sounded surprised. “How’d you know that?”

“He’s a crime lord that got locked up years ago.” I didn’t answer Sam’s question. And I hoped he hadn’t noticed. “The guy’s bad news. He’s involved in drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion and basically anything else against the law that you can think of. Right now, he’s locked up in Big Sandy Federal Prison, in Kentucky.”

“Riley, how do you know all that?”

“Because I’m going to visit him tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Riley. Why don’t you come home? Or I can come down there and we can go together.” Sam’s offer was tempting. It would be nice to have someone with me when I went to meet with Harlan Greene. I certainly would feel safer. But I was determined to go about it alone.

“I want to go by myself,” I told Sam. “It has to do with my dad, so I think I need to go alone.”

Sam was silent for a few moments. I think he knew better than to argue with me. “Fine, but I’ll call ahead for you, otherwise you might not even get past the front gate. Be careful. From what you say about this Harlan Greene character, he’s dangerous, even behind bars.”

I’d spent a little too much time in jails that fall. Not too long before coming to the federal prison in Martin County, I was in the Fairfax County Jail to visitor Pastor Thomas Pritchard. Just being a guest was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine how bad it was for the actual prisoners.

I didn’t have a badge or police credentials, so I wasn’t allowed to question Harlan on my own like with our interview with the Pastor. Instead, I had a guard standing in the corner of the room, who would probably be watching every move made by me, as well as Harlan.

There was one window in the room. It had iron bars on one side (the inside) and thick fencing on the other. For good measure, there was metal mesh embedded in the glass to make it nearly impossible to break and remove.

I heard the sound of rattling chains, and the guard in the corner snapped to attention. Another guard entered the room, accompanied by a heavily tattooed man in a beige jumpsuit. The tattooed man was walked around to his side of the table, and the guard attached the chains around his wrists and ankles to the floor and table.

“Fifteen minutes,” said the second guard, before nodding to the other in the corner, and leaving. I could feel the first guard’s eyes on me.

The inmate’s hair was grey and cut extremely short. Wrinkles on his face conveyed a life hard-lived. He had grey stubble that would have formed a full beard if left unshaven. His eyes were fierce and blue.

Harlan stared at me for a few moments, then opened his mouth. “What the fuck do you want?” His voice was deep and scratchy.

“I’m…”

“I know who you are, Riley Reid. What do you want?”

“I wanted to ask you some questions about my father, Troy Reid.”

Harlan smiled, then took out a cigarette. He also had a box of matches that he retrieved from his prison pants pocket. I didn’t think that was allowed in jail. When I glanced over at the guard, he now seemed to be purposefully looking anywhere but at the crime lord.

“You didn’t come here to tell me where my money is?” asked Harlan. He leaned back in his chair.

“Your money?”

“The money that your old man stole from me. I want it back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I knew my dad had stolen something from Harlan Green from his note. I didn’t know how much money he’d taken, but if Harlan was still after it, then it must’ve been quite a bit.

“Sure, you don’t. Why should I talk to you, girl? What’s in it for me? For all I care, you never learn anything about your piece-of-shit thieving dad.”

I let the insults slide. Getting lippy with a crime lord was not a good idea. No matter what he said, I’d have to stay calm and composed. Otherwise, I’d never get the answers I wanted.

“Well, Mr. Greene…”

Harlan interrupted me. “Harlan.”

“Well, Harlan, if you tell me about my dad it might give me some clues about where your money is.”

“And you’ll just give it to me once you find it? Is that what I’m supposed to believe?”

“I don’t give a damn what you believe.” I thought back to the man I’d seen at the fountain, and then looked again at Harlan. An idea occurred to me. It was worth a shot.

“Anyway, I know you have people following me. So if I find it, so do they, right?”

Harlan leaned forward. He flicked off the ashes of his cigarette on the table top. “I suppose you have a point. What is it you want to know?”

Well, at least I knew who was following me now.

“I want to know who my dad was. I want to hear it from you.”

Harlan smiled again. “If you insist. Your daddy, Troy Reid, was a thief and a drug dealer. He worked for me. I didn’t know him all that well. He was small time. I had him flipping dimes and dubs to high schoolers and college students. Or at least, my man in Virginia did.

“Anyway, I heard he started robbing other drug dealers. I didn’t give a shit. They were the competition and like everything else, I got a kickback from it. That’s all I knew of him before he decided he wanted to rob one of my poker games.”

“Poker games?” I asked. I had my notepad out at that point and was trying my best to record every word Harlan told me.

“I used to go around to the different cities I had business in. It was a chance for me to make sure nobody was skimming and get some face time with the people running my franchises. One night, I had a game over in Richmond.

“Don’t get shit twisted. Your daddy wasn’t invited. I’d never play cards or spend any time with someone like that. He was a leech, a parasite. But he showed up anyway. And when he did, it was with a ski mask and a shotgun.

“The idiot started waving his gun around demanding our money. He had the drop on us, so we had no choice. We gave our shit up. The little weasel had some inside info, though.”

“From who?”

“Shit, I don’t know. It don’t matter, I guess. What did matter was that he knew where we kept the real money. And he walked out with it.” Harlan put out his cigarette then lit up another one.

“Once he walked out that door, your daddy was a dead man. I had everyone out looking for him. For a little while, the sneaky little fuck managed to stay hidden. But no one hides from me forever. I got cops, judges, bondsmen and even toll booth workers on the payroll. The moment he showed his face, I found out about it.

“He and your mommy were at some trash dump off the highway. I sent some guys over there.” Harlan was looking me in the eyes. He wanted a reaction from what he was going to say next. But he got nothing from me.

“My boys told your folks to come on out and give themselves up. They didn’t want to. So there was a fire fight. You should be proud. Your mommy and daddy managed to clip a couple of my boys. But they weren’t no fighters. Eventually they got themselves overrun. And your momma, she got a bullet to the neck.”

I kept telling myself not to get angry. Was what he was saying true? Was my mother dead? And was that how she went? All of those questions and feelings were buried deep. If what he was saying was true, then I’d deal with it later.

Harlan continued. “From what I hear, she bled out right there on the carpet. Your chicken shit daddy ran away. He left her to die. That’s the kind of man your daddy was… a coward.”

Another grin from the drug lord was meant to upset me. Again, I kept my cool. “I hoped your daddy would show up to your momma’s funeral. Sure enough, he did. It was a dumb move on his part, but I guess it was a little admirable. There at the graveyard, me and my boys picked him up.”

I gulped hard. It was a struggle to keep myself from trying to strangle the man across from me. He was so happy with himself, so proud.

“What graveyard?”

“You mean where’s your momma buried? She’s over in Charleston at a place called Ravenswood.” Harlan was halfway through his second cigarette. There was a tiny pillar of ash on it.

“And my dad? What did you do to him?” My legs shook as I asked the most important question. I was genuinely scared of what his answer would be.

“I guess there’s no harm in telling you what we done. After all, I’m already in here for life. What more can they do to me? We tortured him for about a week. We pulled out his fingernails, burned him, broke bones, beat him. Basically, we did whatever we could think of. It wasn’t for fun or revenge. We wanted to know where the hell my money was. But he didn’t break.”

My bottom jaw shook a little bit. As I pictured my dad bloody and broken in my head, tears started to form in my eyes. I didn’t let them fall. Harlan couldn’t see me break down. He couldn’t be allowed to win.

“Where…” Despite my best efforts, my voice broke a bit. “Where is his body?”

Harlan laughed. His cackle was like nails on a chalkboard. God forgive me, I wanted him dead so badly. If the guard hadn’t been in the room, I swear I would’ve gouged his eyes out.

The second guard returned. “Two minutes!” he barked at me.

“Where is he buried?” I asked again.

“Tell you what, you give me my money, or tell me where it is. Then, I’ll tell you where your dad is. Deal?”

I got up out of my chair. “No, no deal.”

“How about you tell me where my money is and I don’t have my man kill you? Or maybe I get someone closer to you to get the job done?”

Someone closer to me? What did he mean by that? At the moment I didn’t care. I was simply sick of talking to the vile piece of trash. It was time to end our conversation.

“I don’t know where your money is, and I don’t care! You’re never going to get it. For me, it’ll be enough to know that you’re rotting in here for the rest of your life. A true scumbag like yourself deserves nothing less.”

Before leaving the room, I added in one more jab. “When you’re taking a shit in the same ten by ten cell with your cell mate watching, remember one thing. The small time, cowardly, lying, thieving weasel beat you. My daddy may be dead, but he still won. Remember that!” I dropped the phone and walked away.

Harlan started pounding on the table, straining at his chains, as I walked out. He was really pissed. I couldn’t help but take a glace back. The guards were restraining him, violently. It made me smile.