STATE OF BETRAYAL: A Virgil Jones Mystery (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 2) (10 page)

“Cora—”

“Don’t interrupt me. I’m not done. I
wanted to have this conversation in person, but I guess we’ll do it your way. In
case you haven’t noticed, your life is spinning out of control. I’d like to
know what on earth makes you think that it is even remotely acceptable that you
can come into a state office, assault an official of the state and then walk
out as if nothing happened. Would you care to explain that to me?”

“I don’t think I can. It obviously
wasn’t one of my better moments.”

“That might be the understatement
of the decade. I’ve somehow convinced Pearson not to file assault charges
against you. I hope that wasn’t a mistake on my part.”

“Thank you.”

“Shut up. I’ve tried to be kind.
I’ve tried to be compassionate. I’ve even tried to be your friend. Now I’m
going to try the truth. You know what the difference between a victim and a
martyr is? They both eventually go down in flames, except a martyr deludes
himself into thinking that he’s done it on his own terms. By the way, I’ve got
your final paycheck in my desk drawer. You’ll get it when you fish your badge
out of that pond of yours. My God, you infuriate the hell out of me.”

She hung up before Virgil could
respond.

12

__________

A
ugustus
Pate was mad enough that he was having trouble maintaining his composure. He’d
met Pearson in a parking lot not far from his office and now the two of them
were seated in the back of Pate’s limo, along with Pate’s assistant. The
assistant was large, like a pro linebacker. Pearson had never seen him before.
“Who are you?”

“That’s Hector,” Pate said. “He’s
my assistant. Never mind him. We’ve got some things to discuss. I told you I
wanted his head on a stick. Why hasn’t that happened yet?”

Pearson was seated in the
rearward-facing seat, just behind the tinted glass partition that separated the
men from the driver. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking about any of this in
front of someone I don’t know.”

“Hector is well versed in all of my
business dealings, Bradley. All of them.”

“Still, as I said, I’m not—”

Hector leaned forward in his seat.
“Answer the man’s question please, Mr. Pearson.”

Pearson saw the look in Hector’s
eyes and decided to answer. “I got him fired, didn’t I?”

“Fired? You think I need you to get
someone fired? I could have handled that without getting out of bed. I’m not
talking about his career you idiot. I’m talking about finishing him. Do I have
to spell it out for you?”

“Don’t get your ball sack in a
bunch, Gus. If it weren’t for that degenerate son of yours, we wouldn’t be in
this mess. You said you wanted Jones taken care of, so that’s what I did.”

Augustus Pate, the late Samuel
Pate’s father held Virgil responsible for the death of his son. Virgil’s most
recent case—he’d been looking into the death of Franklin Dugan, one of
the city’s more prominent citizens—had focused almost exclusively on
Samuel Pate as the suspect. Pate had been the senior pastor of Pate Ministries,
and Dugan’s bank had just loaned Pate five million dollars. When Dugan turned
up dead, Virgil began digging into Pate’s background where he uncovered, among
other things, the junior Pate’s bloodlust for child pornography. When it became
obvious that he was about to go down for his crimes—the kiddie porn was
just part of it—Pate confessed his sins to hundreds of thousands of
faithful views on live television. Then he put a gun in his mouth and blew the
back of his head off. That was on TV too.

“Jones is responsible for Samuel’s
death. What part of that don’t you understand, Bradley?”

“Let me tell you something, Gus. I
understand exactly what you’re saying and now I want you to understand me.
First, it wasn’t my fault that your kid took the chicken-shit express to hell.
But that’s on him, not me. As far as Jones goes, the man is wrecked. He’s been
relieved of duty, fired from the department and he’s hooked to the gills on
prescription pain medicine. That’s just for starters. I’m hearing rumors that
he’s walking around having conversations with his dead father. A father, I
might add, that your son’s wife shot to death. He’s gone from one of the most
powerful cops in the state to the co-owner of a corner tavern. He is without
question coming apart at the seams. All in all, from my perspective, that’s
about as good as you’re going to get.”

“Sounds to me like you’re still
playing in the minor leagues, Bradley. I would have thought you could do better
than that.”

“Think what you want, Gus. If you
want the man ‘finished’ as you say and make no mistake, I completely understand
what you mean by that, you’ll have to do it yourself. That was not part of our
deal.”

Pate waved his words away like the annoyance
that they were. “What about the funding? Where are we with that? The union
people are breathing down my neck and the investors are starting to get jumpy.”

“There’s been no change. The
legislature passed the bill. The rest of it is on autopilot.”

 The passage of the bill had
cost Pearson dearly, politically speaking, but the payoff had the potential to
be massive. Pearson had set up a blind trust and the trust had then made an
investment in Pate’s corporation, Augustus Pate International. API was nothing
more than a holding company, but its holdings were substantial. Among them, a multimillion
dollar company called Pri-Max, a construction firm that built state-of-the-art
prison facilities all over the world. Pearson’s blind trust held stock options that
if exercised would net him millions of dollars. But his options could only be
exercised if certain conditions were met, chief among them, the passage of a
house bill which stipulated that unclaimed lottery winnings would be
appropriated into a fund designed to match—dollar for dollar—the
completion of the state’s first private prison. The unclaimed funds were
starting to trickle in, but the big one, the three hundred million dollar
unclaimed prize was the one they were after and the time frame for anyone to
claim that prize was just about to expire. Once it did, the funds would revert
back to the state. After that, the bill would kick in and the money would be
distributed into a discretionary fund, a fund that was by its very nature,
discretionary.

Pate wouldn’t get the money
directly. That would be completely illegal, but Pri-Max would. They’d get
subsidized by the state—dollar for dollar in matching funds—to not
only build, but also run the prison. Pri-Max would turn the money over to API
and from there it would get shuffled, rounded, disbursed and eventually distributed
back to Pri-Max to cover cost overruns on the operational side and as dividends
to their primary shareholders.

Of course Pri-Max had inflated
their numbers almost beyond belief when it came to construction costs, ongoing
maintenance, staffing and direct operating expense projections. So with the
inflated numbers—just shy of twenty-million dollars—and the state’s
generous matching program, Pate was looking at a massive influx of capital that
was his to spend as he saw fit, and Pearson, or more specifically, Pearson’s
trust, would walk away with almost twenty percent of the take.

“What about Monroe?” Pate asked.
“At least tell me you’ve got her in line.”

“Of course she’s in line. Abby does
what I tell her.”

“Your use of Ms. Monroe’s given
name in the abbreviate suggests a certain level of familiarity that might
extend itself beyond the normal boundaries of a working relationship. Is there
something I should know, Bradley?”

“Gee, that’s a lot of fancy words,
Gus. I’m having a little trouble keeping up. If you’re asking me if I’m romantically
involved with her, I can honestly say, no, I am not.”

“Good. See that it stays that way. What
the fuck is going on with this Pope kid? Was that your doing?”

“I wasn’t anywhere near that. The
police are just as clueless.”

“Good. Do whatever you have to do
to make sure it stays that way. We don’t need any more complications.” Pate
pressed a button on the center console next to his seat. When he did, the limo
pulled to a stop and the doors unlocked automatically. “I’ll be in touch,
Bradley. Be sure to contact me immediately if anything else arises. And if I
were you, I’d distance myself from Jones.”

“As I indicated, I already have.
But let me give you a bit of advice, Gus. You’re not the first guy to come
along and try to take him out. If you’re not careful, you won’t be the last.”

Pate had already lost interest in
Pearson’s words of warning, his gaze directed at nothing outside the limo’s
tinted window. When he didn’t respond, Pearson got out and walked away.

Hector stared at his boss until he
was sure he had his attention. “He is going to become a liability.”

Pate didn’t answer. He pushed
another button on the center console and the limo pulled out into traffic.

13

__________

L
ate
in the afternoon Murton showed up at the bar and Virgil poured two cups of Blue
Mountain coffee and carried them over to the same table where they’d been
sitting before. “If we keep sitting at the same table all the time we’re going
to end up looking like a couple of goombahs or something.”

Murton ignored his attempt at
levity. “I shouldn’t have said what I did the other day. Any of it. I’m sorry.”

“Ah, me too. Forget about it.” They
were both quiet for a beat before Virgil went on. “Look Murt, you had a rough
go of it for a while a long time ago. You might have drawn a shitty hand, but
I’ve never seen anyone walk away from the table with their head held higher.
I’m proud of you, brother.”

Murton chewed at his bottom lip
before he spoke. “I don’t really remember my parents. Isn’t that something?
It’s almost like I don’t have any memories before that summer. Boy, I’ll tell
you, after I busted that window at your house I thought your old man was going
to take me to the woodshed. Instead, he and your mom gave me my life back. The
way they took me in? The way they raised me like I was their own? Who does
that? It was foreign to me. In many ways it still is. I guess that’s why I sort
of freaked out there for a second. They gave me more than I ever deserved and
now, even though they’re both gone, the only real parents I ever had, they’re
still giving to me.”

“They loved you, Murt. You were
every bit as much their boy as I was.”

Murton grinned, then shook his
head.

“What are you thinking?” Virgil
asked.

“I’m thinking it
is
a pretty
nice house. Say, will you help me move?”

“Hmm. I can’t.”

“Well why the hell not? Isn’t that
what friends do for each other?”

“Yeah. But the doctor told me no
strenuous activity for another two weeks, so…”

__________

Virgil took the pill
bottle
from his pocket and downed another dose of
Oxycontin. After he swallowed the pills, even after he felt the euphoric rush
of the chemical bombardment, he had to admit that his father—or the part
of his brain that manifested his apparition—was right. He was hitting the
pills too damn hard. But he also felt like he was past the point of no return.
He simply didn’t know if he could stop. He didn’t even know if he wanted to
try. And if he did, could he do it? It was a question he was not prepared to
answer in the moment.  As it turned out, someone else answered for him,
just not in the way he expected.

During the course of the rest of
the evening Virgil noticed that his partners seemed to take some sort of pity
on him. Robert brought him a plate of food, Murton worked doubly hard behind
the bar, Delroy seemed to sing just a bit louder along with whatever song was
playing on the jukebox and all in all, with the exception of Sandy not being
present, Virgil found himself having a good time.

But things have a way of coming
around as his grandfather used to say and when they came around for Virgil, he
wondered at the state of his being, the people he loved and the events of his
life that had yet to take place. He could feel a dull throb deep inside his leg
and just as he reached into his pocket to retrieve his pain pills, Delroy walked
over and stood next to his chair.

“Hey, Delroy. What’s happening?”
Virgil said.

“Ha. Plenty. Too bad you’re not
noticing.”

“Pardon?”

He pulled out a chair and sat down.
“What you tink you know about Jamaican people, you?”

“I’m not sure I understand the
question, Delroy.” Virgil began to twist the top from the bottle of pain pills
when Delroy’s hand clamped down around his wrist.

“Your leg? It hurts, no?”

“Yeah, it does. Plus, it’s time for
the medicine anyway. If I get behind…”

He waved Virgil’s words away like a
fly that hovered over a bowl of soup. “Yeah, yeah. Delroy heard it all before,
mon. Mostly from you. You get behind on da medicine and it start to eat you up.
You tell Delroy this one ting: What I ever ask of you before?”

The look on his face was one Virgil
had never seen. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me, Delroy.”

“Don’t you insult me, you. You tink
when I walk into our bar and everyone shouts, ‘Yeah Mon!’ you tink I don’t know
what dat is? It respect, mon, plain and simple. How many conversations have we
ever had about your grandfather, you and me? Delroy know somewhere deep down
you tink in some way he live inside me. I tell you someting else, mon…maybe he
do, but it not for me to say.
If
he do though, it up to you to honor and
respect what come your way. Now, you tell me I’m wrong.”

Virgil looked at the bottle of
pills in his hand and then did something he thought himself not capable of ever
doing. He tried to hand Delroy the bottle of pills. But Delroy sat back in his
chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Those pills, day don’t belong to
me, mon. Problem is, day don’t belong to you, either.”

“So what should I do?”

Delroy laughed. “Come on. Let’s
take a little ride, you and me.”

“Where?”

“Don’t you worry about it, mon. I
introduce you to someone. You tank me later.”

__________

Virgil let Delroy
drive,
and if asked, would have
admitted it might not have been one of his better decisions. They left the city
and took the loop north, which took them about an hour out of the way, though
Virgil didn’t know it at the time. Jamaicans were odd drivers. They use the
horn as much as the gas and the brake pedals and to sit in the passenger seat
of a vehicle driven around the city of Indianapolis by someone from a small
island nation is somewhat akin to taking a flight in a hot air balloon with a
student pilot. In other words, things will probably be all right, but in the
end, you never really know. An hour later they finally turned into Virgil’s
driveway and parked the car. Delroy looked over at him and said, “Whew. Dat’s
some traffic, no?”

Virgil swallowed instead of
answering. They got out of the car and walked up toward the front porch, but
instead of going inside Delroy pulled Virgil by his arm and led him around to
the back of the house. When they turned the corner what Virgil saw made his
heart skip. Tiki torches had been erected around the perimeter of the pond,
their flames reflecting across the water. Sandy stood next to the willow tree
dressed in a long white gown that flowed with the evening breeze. Murton and
Robert were there as well. Robert walked over and placed his hand on Virgil’s
chest before he spoke. “It time to come home now, mon.”

Sandy came from under the willow
tree and kissed Virgil hard on the mouth and didn’t say anything. Murton put
his arm around Virgil’s shoulders and said, “Welcome home, brother.”

Everyone in Virgil’s life was there
at that moment. When he looked at the willow tree, he saw his father. His arms
were crossed over his chest, his head tilted to one side, the look on his face an
odd combination of sorrow and hopefulness. For a moment Virgil felt so dizzy
and lightheaded he thought he might pass out. It was deathly quiet for an
indeterminate amount of time before anyone spoke again. When someone finally
did, it was Delroy.

“You hear me now…there is nothing
wrong with your leg. The doctor say it healed and he right. It not your leg
that hurts, mon. It your heart. They don’t make no pill for dat, no. What you
do right now, right this very moment, Virgil Jones, it define the rest of your
life.” Then he swept his arms wide and said, “Maybe ours too. So, what you do,
you?”

__________

Virgil looked at Sandy
and walked toward her, but he was so heavily
focused on the vision of his father under the tree that he almost walked right
past her. She held out her hand and stopped him.

“He’s here, isn’t he? Your dad.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“I believe you, Virgil, I do. But
the rest of us? We’re here for you too. We love you and we’re not ready to let
you go. You’re killing yourself with those pills, baby. Do you hear me? You are
literally killing yourself. You don’t need them anymore. What Delroy just said?
He’s right. You’re leg is healed, Virgil. It’s your heart that’s broken.”

Virgil opened his mouth to say
something…he wasn’t sure what, but closed it again before he said anything that
might cause more hurt or damage to the woman he loved and the three men who
stood by her side. Then something odd and beautiful happened. Robert walked
away from the rest of the group and over toward the pond, removing his shirt as
he did. His brown skin was taut with muscle, his shoulders almost twice as wide
as his waist. He dropped his shirt in the grass and waded hip deep into the
pond. He cupped the water in his hands then raised them above his head and let
the water trickle down each arm. As he did, he began to chant something, his
Jamaican accent so thick and strong Virgil could not make out his words.

Delroy looked at Virgil and said,
“He pray for you.”

Murton stepped up close and cupped
his hand on the back of Virgil’s neck. “I’ll do anything in the world for you,
brother, except continue to look the other way.” Then, as if he hadn’t made his
point, or perhaps to make sure he had Virgil’s full attention he added, “Stop
jerking me around. You’re the only family I’ve got left.” He sounded pissed. Then
he walked over and picked up Robert’s shirt and held it open for him as he came
out of the water.

When Virgil turned back to Sandy it
was clear to him how much damage he’d managed to inflict on the people he loved
the most. “I’m afraid if I stop, I’ll never see him again. He died for me.”

“He died for us, Virgil. You
remember what he did just before he passed? The way he put your hand on top of
mine? The way he looked at me until he was gone? You said something to me the
day we planted this tree. You said he was telling you he loved you…that he
didn’t say those exact words, but that was what he meant. I’m telling you,
baby, in that moment behind the bar, when he put your hand on top of mine and
looked at me until he passed, he was telling me that he trusted me to take care
of his boy. So that’s what I’m doing. That’s what we’re
all
doing.”

“What if I stop and I don’t ever
see him again?”

“Then he was never really there,
was he?” Sandy took his hand and led Virgil away from the weeping willow and
closer to the edge of the pond. When Virgil looked back over his shoulder, he
could still see his dad under the tree, but Mason seemed focused on someone
else. It was then that Virgil reached into his pocket and grabbed the bottle of
pills. He twisted the lid open, poured them out in his hand and threw them into
the water. When he did, two things happened almost simultaneously.

Murton laughed and said, “Wow,
those are going to be some fucked up fish for a while.”

Robert moved away from the water
and over to Virgil’s side. His shirt was damp, his pants clung to his legs and
his shoes made little squishing noises when he walked. “Maybe you lend me some
clothes?”

“You bet,” Virgil said.

But it was what he said next that
caused Virgil’s throat to constrict and his heart to skip a beat. “Your father…he
look happy. Everyting gonna be irie, mon. You wait. You see.”

__________

They all walked up to
the house
and when they got
inside, Virgil wasn’t too surprised to see his old family physician, Dr. Bell,
waiting in the kitchen. He was dressed casually, his black bag in one hand, a
glass of water in the other. “You’ve been better, I understand?” he asked.

Virgil looked at Sandy, Murton,
Delroy and Robert. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. How’d they get you
here?”

Dr. Bell began pulling supplies out
of his bag. ‘Ah, I bought a Porsche earlier this year…”

__________

“So…a little trouble
with the pedals?” Virgil said.

Bell chuckled. Just the one in the
middle. Can’t seem to get to it quick enough when the radar detector goes off.
Sandy and I made a little deal.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Let me just say it wasn’t the deal
I would have liked.”

Sandy said, “Bell!”

He laughed and then looked at
Virgil. “Sandy has agreed to take care of the next ticket, that’s all.” He
pulled out a chair and sat down and as he did, the smile left his face. “Come
on and sit down. Let me have a listen.” He took Virgil’s pulse, blood pressure,
listened to his heart and lungs, checked his reflexes, looked inside his ears,
nose and throat and generally gave him a complete physical. When he finished
the exam, he started on the questions. How long had he been on the narcotics?
What dosage? Had he been taking any extra? Did he really want to stop? And on and
on...

__________

“Any more pain meds
in the house?” he asked.

Virgil hesitated, but in the end he
told the truth. “Top shelf of the kitchen pantry, behind the noodles.”

Murton shook his head, reached into
the counter and rooted around until he found the bottle. “At least you’re
finally using your noodle,” he said.

Doctor Bell looked at the bottle
and then put it in his pocket. “Don’t throw any more pills of any kind in the
pond. Your fish will be all fucked up.” He pulled three vials of drugs from his
bag, lined them up on the table and then began to fit needles on the ends of
three syringes that looked big enough to put down a horse with a broken leg. “I
have to tell you, Virgil, you appear healthy enough.”