MIDNIGHT QUEST: A Short 'Men of Midnight' Novel (14 page)

Constable swallowed, tried to steady his voice. “I understand full well. But you will not be disappointed.”

“Bueno. Write down this address.” He dictated a Gmail address. “I will wire the money. Stay at this number.”

Both of them knew that was the only money Constable would see. But that was okay. If he got paid the full price, and for some reason the tracker he’d put on Jackman’s vehicle came loose and they lost him or they were unable to take this Jackman guy down —and he looked really tough and perfectly capable of handling himself—then they’d come back to him and take their frustrations out on his hide.

The tracker on the vehicle was the only thing Constable could give. His fucking video cameras didn’t work. Hadn’t worked in years and the county was too cheap to replace them. Luckily, he’d gotten his secretary to take photos with her cell phone of Jackman’s face as he was getting into his vehicle. He tracked down the vehicle tags. They were Oregon license plates but were registered to some company headquartered in Delaware. So God only knew where that SUV was going.

If he only got half the reward money and they botched the grab and snatch, they’d consider it a fair deal. At least they wouldn’t come after him to dismember him and scatter his parts all over the county.

So okay.

“Now give me your bank info.”

Constable gave it to him.

God. Fifteen years ago, when the sheriff who had taken over from Pendleton handed him the keys of the sheriff’s office and told him about how Gustavo Villalongo had been taken down by a DEA special agent, he’d also told him how Villalongo had a reward on the agent’s head. A big one.

“Write down this number,” the sheriff had told Constable, “memorize it, then burn it. And get yourself a bank account outta the country. In one a’ them tax havens, where no one can get to your money. Because if you come across any info about where that agent went to, you’re gonna rake it in. Man, Villalongo’s got a hard-on for this guy, and he’ll have it till he goes to his grave.”

So Constable had memorized the number, burned the piece of paper and opened an account in the Caymans. Hadn’t been easy, no sir. Rich guys did it all the time but for someone like him, he’d had to travel there and deposit five thousand dollars, just to open a fucking account. It burned him, but now look. He was ready. The brass ring had fallen right into his hands.

The old sheriff had made him promise he’d get a percentage of the take if he cashed in, but Constable reckoned he’d keep the whole thing. No reason to share.

In the movies, bank transfers were instant. On the screen was the bank account, a big line arcing over to it, numbers rolling. Insta-money.

Nope. The freaking thing had been inactive so long, when he finally found his password he discovered it’d been deactivated. So he tried online and finally had to call the frigging bank. And got frigging voice mail.

When he finally saw his bank statement he just stared at the numbers. One hundred grand. Plus the five grand he’d deposited years ago.

Five minutes later he sent the tracking coordinates.

Laredo, Texas

Carlos Villalongo picked up the photograph that had been emailed to him, together with coordinates from the tracker that idiot sheriff had put on the guy’s vehicle.

Dante Jimenez. Only not. Younger than Dante. So—Dante’s son, under the cover name of Jackman. Get the son, get the father.

Dante Jimenez. The name was enough to send his blood pressure soaring. Jimenez had posed as a drifter with a taste for violence and a deep knowledge of weaponry called Juan Diaz. He’d been perfect. Jimenez had pushed his way up through the ranks through intelligence and ruthlessness until he’d been his father’s right-hand man. His father had defeated the Guadalajara cartel and was busy sweeping up the smaller gangs, consolidating them, making them part of his efficient system. In 1979 he’d taken in a billion and a half dollars, at the time a fortune so large it rivaled the big family fortunes of the east coast.

Gustavo was starting the move to distance himself from the day-to-day operations, leaving everything in the capable hands of Diaz/Jimenez, starting to plan his son’s college education—Harvard or Yale, and he was perfectly prepared to make a huge donation to ensure his son’s acceptance—when it all blew up in his face.

Because the man he knew as Juan Diaz, the man he’d considered his natural heir, was a famous undercover agent, a legend in the DEA. And the man who’d engineered the cartel’s downfall.

His money confiscated, tried as a US citizen and condemned to forty years in a maximum-security federal prison, Gustavo’s fall was complete. Carlos didn’t go to Harvard and didn’t go to Yale. He barely finished high school and he’d spent his adult life trying to piece together the remnants of his father’s empire.

But even from prison, Gustavo had made sure Jimenez paid a heavy price. He had two of Jimenez’s cousins shot dead and he’d targeted a woman Jimenez cared about. After which Jimenez disappeared from view, though he was still hunting them. Jimenez knew all the Villalongo secrets.

So Gustavo put out a big reward for news leading to Jimenez’s whereabouts because he wouldn’t rest until he had Jimenez’s head. Sent to the Washingtom office of the DEA in a bag.

But Jimenez disappeared, and not all of Gustavo’s dwindling resources could bribe, extort, or beat the name out of anyone. Gustavo’s heart had exploded in his chest in prison from rage and confinement. Carlos had barely survived the attack on his cartel upon his father’s death.

What should have been one of the great, historic cartels, more powerful than governments and almost more powerful than God, sputtered and almost died.

But now, he had leverage over Jimenez.

Find the son, find the father.

Green Orchards Rest Home

Henderson, Nevada

The rest home was just outside Henderson, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas. Felicity found it in the time it took him to get behind the wheel of his SUV, bless her. It was called
Green Orchards,
and it specialized in caring for sufferers of Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.

Jacko shuddered as he put his truck into gear. God. One of his worst nightmares, losing his marbles. All through his childhood, with no support, no family to speak of, nothing to his name, at least he’d always had his brains, and it had been enough. He’d pulled through, done well by himself.

All you really needed was right between your ears.

Once you lost that, you lost everything.

By the time Jacko was on the road that would take him to Las Vegas, Felicity had sent him all of Pendleton’s info. When he’d been admitted, his clinical diagnosis, a list of the physicians and nurses who dealt with him, mini-mental tests administered over the years.

According to the files Felicity had, Pendleton’s dementia was slight, stage two, which was one of minor memory impairment. According to Felicity, who’d done some background digging as only she could do, it was Pendleton’s son who’d had him admitted to the special care facility.

Jacko could read between the lines. Old Pops was getting forgetful, had been pushed into retirement, the obvious thing was moving in with Junior or at least close enough for Junior to look after Pops.

But Junior—in the person of Tom Pendleton, Esq, with a thriving law practice in Connecticut—had no desire to be a caregiver and had rushed Pops into a well-known facility, which cost Pops his entire pension and big chunks from the sale of his house.

Jacko pulled over and, out of curiosity, opened the file Felicity had put together on Tom Pendleton. Christ, Jacko hated him on sight. Tall, thin, a thousand-dollar haircut and a five thousand-dollar suit. Partner in a big law firm. Tenth largest law firm in the country.

No, Tom Pendleton wouldn’t have time for a father who needed a little help.

Jacko sighed. That had been his knowledge of the world before Lauren. Dog eat dog. Look out for yourself because no one else is going to. Lauren had taught him about love, had taught him that no sacrifice was too big for someone you love.

He got it.

Till death do us part.

When they got married, when he said those words to her, it would be heartfelt, meant with every fiber of his being.

Tom Pendleton lived in another world, a different one from the one Jacko now inhabited, where commitments were total and lifelong.

He wanted to call Lauren but…he was done with phones. Henderson would be his last stop on this trip down memory lane. Soon he’d be on his way home and he wouldn’t have to listen to Lauren’s voice over the airwaves, he could listen to her voice directly. Holding her tight, never letting her go.

For the first time since leaving Portland, Jacko could breathe. That band of barbed wire wound so tightly around his chest was gone. He was on his way home. One stop and then he was heading straight back to Portland, to Lauren, to his child. To his job, to his buddies, to his
life.

It was late afternoon when he stopped just outside Henderson. He was traveling west and the sun was shining directly into his eyes.

He hadn’t heard Lauren’s voice today. He missed it. He missed
her
. He told himself he was done with phones, but that was bullshit. Even Lauren’s voice over his cell was better than nothing.

Maybe he could talk to her now, finally. That huge boulder in his throat that had stopped him from talking to her was gone. But at this point, there was so much to say and he wanted to say it with her wrapped in his arms. Once he finished here, it was about a fifteen-hour drive back up to Portland, if he wanted to respect speed limits. No use getting pulled over and hassled. Fifteen hours was a long time, if you counted how much he missed her. But nothing compared to the rest of their lives.

Get this over with, put it behind you and go home.

The GPS brought him right to the sloping lawn of Green Orchards, a little oasis in the surrounding desert. There was minimal security at the gate. Jacko leaned out, pressed a button and a disembodied voice asked him his business.

“Visitor for Kurt Pendleton,” he said, fully prepared to show documents. But nothing was necessary. He was buzzed in.

There was easy access to the patients, too. It was a weird feeling for him. Jacko had security tattooed on his brain. It was a vital part of him, like his hands and feet. He frowned at the lack of security. But…there was staff everywhere and a lot of the patients had visitors. From the happy glow on many wrinkled faces, the visitors were very welcome. So maybe making a visitor to someone in a home jump through security hoops every time they came would make for fewer visitors.

Huh. Security as a bad thing. That was really hard for him to wrap his head around.

Pendleton was in room 212, Jacko found out by asking the nurse at the desk. The nurse also told him Mr. Pendleton moved in and out of focus, like a shortwave radio. She used longer words, but that was the gist of it. His hold on reality could at times be “delicate” and “sporadic”.

Ah, Kurt,
Jacko thought sadly as he walked down the corridor. The Pendleton he knew had been sharp and present in the moment, and had had eyes in the back of his head. Back in the day, there wasn’t anything happening in Cross, Texas that Pendleton didn’t know about.

Room 212. The door was ajar and Jacko nudged it open with his knuckle. Pure habit, not leaving fingerprints. The room was nice, the last rays of sun shining in on a slant. A man was sitting in a chair with his back to the door, looking out the window.

At the sound of the door opening, the man turned around.

Kurt Pendleton. Jacko would have recognized him anywhere. He hadn’t aged much. Jacko suspected that when he was younger, he looked older than he was, simply because he took on so much responsibility. And now he looked younger than his years, maybe because all of that responsibility was gone.

Pendleton stood and looked at Jacko, puzzled. Frowning, as if seeing him from a thousand yards. Then his face cleared and joy lit it up.

Jacko wasn’t a smiling kind of guy, but he could feel a smile coming on. After all these years, Jacko was talking to someone who’d known him when he was a youngster. Everyone Jacko knew he’d met after he was eighteen, as an adult. It was weird to think of Kurt knowing him when he was young. Like he was reconnecting to his younger self through Kurt.