Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel Read online

  “We don’t allow visitors after dark,” the man told him.

  “I’m not visiting … Well, I am, just not one of your guests. I’m here to see the colonel.”

  “Colonel?”

  Cort Wesley cursed himself for not being more careful, having no idea what Guillermo Paz had told those who ran the facility about himself. Certainly not the fact Paz had gained the rank of colonel in the Venezuelan army, before moving on to run the country’s secret police. Cort Wesley was spared the need to respond further when a pair of doors opened and the homeless men who’d be staying the night flooded out, each holding a brand new toothbrush.

  “I hand them out after every sermon,” Paz explained, suddenly behind him, having appeared out of nowhere. “A local drugstore’s been kind enough to donate them. Come on, outlaw, you can help me set up before the next group comes in. First service is in English, the second in Spanish.”

  “Sorry I missed the sermon, Colonel.”

  Cort Wesley followed Paz inside the chapel, a temporary altar consisting of an ornamental cross sitting atop a plain wood table situated in the front. Paz handed him a Walgreen’s bag full of toothbrushes and the two of them began laying them across every seat, row by row.

  “How much do you want to know, outlaw?”

  “Whatever you have to tell me.”

  Paz stopped dispensing toothbrushes long enough to give Cort Wesley a long look. “You’re not going to like it.”

  * * *

  “I told you,” Paz said, when he’d finished telling Cort Wesley what had transpired late that afternoon.

  “You really rained bricks down on the truck?”

  The big man shrugged. “It was either that or kill its occupants. I didn’t see a third option at the time.”

  Cort Wesley had laid the Walgreen’s bag on the nearest chair, his free hands clenching into fists. “That kid in the backseat had a shotgun aimed at Dylan?”

  “Close enough. The driver with the Magnum, too.”

  “And he still didn’t back down?”

  “It looked like he wanted to make sure he gave his coworkers the time to get clear.”

  “Kid’s never going to learn, goddamnit, not until he gets himself killed.”

  “What would you have done, outlaw?”

  “Same thing probably, now that you mention it. But that’s different.”

  “Not from your son’s perspective.”

  They went back to dispensing the toothbrushes, laying them upon each of the seats that would be filled in a matter of minutes.

  “The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that, ‘Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax,’” Paz resumed.

  “I’m going to pretend I know what you’re talking about.”

  “You look at your son and you see yourself, and it makes you realize no man is invincible. Not you, not me, not the Ranger, not Dylan. His actions force you to let loose the same nature you reject in him. You judge him, but don’t want him to judge you—that’s why you asked me to watch over the boy, instead of doing it yourself.”

  “I would have rained something other than bricks down, Colonel,” Cort Wesley conceded.

  “Of course, you would. In his writings, Plato imagined a cave where people have been imprisoned from birth, chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not look around at the cave, each other, or themselves. Thus that wall is all they know of the world, all they have to judge it by. But behind the prisoners burns a fire, and all they can see of it are the shadows cast on the wall by the fire. So all they know of the world are those shadows and to them the shadows are all that inhabit the world, because in their imprisonment they can only see what their perspective allows them. And that same perspective leaves them believing all the sounds they hear stem from the shadows.”

  “Is this the part when you tell me what you’re really talking about, Colonel?” Cort Wesley asked him.

  Paz extracted a scrap of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the black truck’s license plate number, so you can find out for yourself.”

  21

  ALAMO HEIGHTS, TEXAS

  Armand Fisker walked around the sprawling wood-paneled library in David Skoll’s gated mansion. The heads of big game animals hung from the walls, their glass eyes staring down blankly, as if to accuse anyone who met their stare of killing them.

  Fisker turned to look at Skoll instead. “This place looks like one of those hunting lodges where you can bag a lion or tiger, if you’re rich enough.”

  “I’ve been on a couple of safaris like that, one in Africa. For the right amount, they bag it for you,” the smaller man said with a smile.

  “Is that supposed to impress me?” Fisker said, not bothering to hide his disgust at the notion.

  “Hey, I bought this place fully furnished. The animal heads came as part of the package.”

  Fisker had forgotten that. He knew the previous owner had fled the country, leaving a mountain of debt and an army of ruined lives behind. The state had seized and sold off his assets, this estate being prime among them. Nearly fifteen thousand feet of living space spread over four levels along the posh Alameda Circle in the tony subdivision of Olmos Park. The ornate staircase spiraling upward reminded him of some European palace, the entire mansion built around a sprawling, banquet hall–sized room that could accommodate upward of a hundred guests at a time. Seven bedrooms and seven baths, he remembered Skoll telling him. A whole bunch of fireplaces to warm those cool Texas nights, a pool, statue-laden landscaping, and a guest cottage more than twice the size of the home in which Fisker had been raised.

  “How’s your asshole feel?” he asked Skoll.

  “Sore.”

  The man had the boniest shoulders Fisker had ever seen and had squeezed his thin frame into a pair of even thinner jeans that looked more like a second denim skin. The jeans looked stiff and starched, and Fisker had the notion that Skoll was more likely to discard a worn pair than wash them.

  “But I imagine you’ve got a drug for the pain, don’t you, Davey?”

  “I was going to ask you for one.”

  “That supposed to be funny? You shouldn’t joke with a man you’re in to for over a hundred million dollars.”

  Skoll’s plump, unmarred face crinkled in a mixture of surprise and condescension. “Check your balance sheet, Armand. The number of prescription pain pills I’ve peeled off the line for you.”

  “I took that as a gesture of goodwill on your part, Davey.”

  “Goodwill? Under the watchful eye of FDA inspectors? Do you know what the penalty is for moving this level of prescription pain meds?”

  “Do you know the penalty for not honoring your debt to me?”

  “We had a deal, Armand,” Skoll said, directly beneath a buffalo head that looked to be snorting.

  Fisker took a step closer to him, just enough to make Skoll flinch. “Let’s rewind a bit to you bleeding cash from this Ponzi scheme you’ve been running out of the hedge fund that bought you this place. You were about to jet off to Bolivia, when you had the good fortune to learn of my interest in your services.”

  “Ecuador,” Skoll corrected, “where there’s no extradition treaty with the United States. And my cash flow issues remain only a temporary setback, caused by the boycott of some of Redfern Pharmaceuticals’ most profitable drugs.”

  “You mean the ones you raised the prices on a million percent or something?”

  “What the market will bear.”

  “And how’s the market been bearing? Not very good, since the only thing keeping you afloat right now is my cash and good graces. I save your ass and you balk at this one small favor?”

  Skoll pawed at the Persian carpet that cost more than Fisker’s first house with a pair of custom-made cowboy boots that added two inches to his meager height. “How much of an increase are we talking about?”

  “Double.”

  “Double? Remember those FDA inspectors I’ve go
t crawling up my ass? You think it’s easy hiding case lots of narcotics that vanish into the wind?”

  “You want me to take my business back to Canada?”

  “You struck a deal with me when they couldn’t keep up with demand, so go ahead. Maybe you should think about putting your people back in meth labs where they can blow themselves to shit.”

  “How much you lose on that Alzheimer’s drug that went bust?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I’m curious, that’s all.”

  “A hundred million, give or take.”

  “Nice round number. Pretty much what you’re in to me for, right? You know how many pills that is exactly? The answer is not enough, not even close. That’s why you’re going to double production in that manufacturing plant you got running up in Waco. Put on an extra shift if you have to. I need to move the pills into the streets in a month’s time.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I don’t think you understand our problem here. If I can’t deliver the goods, consumers will find somebody who can. That’ll leave me with a turf war on my hands you can bet will grow into a shooting war, which is bad for business. My business, as well as yours. Guess you might say we’re joined at the hip now.”

  Skoll stepped out from the shadows cast by the buffalo head. The recessed lighting above struck him in a way that made his face looked shiny, a man approaching forty trapped in a sixteen-year-old’s body with hair that looked like a boy’s hanging down over his face. Fisker watched Skoll toss it aside with a flick of his head and then mop the rest into place with a hand.

  “You buy those jeans in the boy’s department, Davey?”

  “They’re custom-made,” Skoll said, with a smirk.

  “Custom-made to look like you’ve outgrown them? Now, that’s truly something. Way they’re hugging your crotch, it looks like you’re dating them.”

  “I’ll up the production,” Skoll relented, “but it’s going to take more than a month.”

  “Is it now? Well, then, maybe I should take this fancy house as collateral. See what it’ll fetch on the open market. Hell, I’ll even throw in the animal heads for free.”

  “The fuck you will, Armand. The fuck you—”

  Fisker’s fist smashed into Skoll’s face. His head whipsawed to the right, the spittle flying from his mouth trailed by teeth when Fisker hit him again. The second blow was so hard, it actually lifted Skoll’s boots off the ground and dumped him atop the carpet, the blood pouring from his mouth and soaking it in a widening pool.

  Fisker wondered if the stain would ever come out as he bent over Skoll, hands placed casually on his knees, the one he’d hit him with twice already beginning to swell and throb. “Now you know what it feels like to be helpless, like animals from those dime-store safaris. Like shooting birds in the backyard, Davey. You know what isn’t? Hunting men. There’s places you can do that. I know because I’ve done it, and I hold you in the same esteem as those hapless fucks I’ve bagged. I can’t remember a single one of their faces, but I remember yours, with and without the teeth you just spit out. What’s gonna happen from here, is that you’re going to have production doubled within the month. I don’t care if you have to disguise my Oxy as aspirin tablets or allergy pills.”

  Skoll tried to say something, but only a frothy gurgle emerged.

  “You wanna try that again, Davey?”

  Gibberish this time.

  “See, you might be able to hide from the United States government in Ecuador, Bolivia, or wherever it is you intend to flee. But you can’t hide from me, because I’m not in this alone. Look at France, Germany, Russia, Italy, even jolly old England. We are goddamn everywhere and where we ain’t yet, we will be soon. See, Davey, our time has come.”

  Skoll tried speaking again, almost managing a few words.

  “One more time, son.”

  “What if…” Skoll managed, before his words dissolved anew.

  “What if what?”

  “What if I … had something else?”

  “Something else?”

  Skoll nodded desperately, so fast it looked like his head might shake itself off. “Something else you could use, something a lot more valuable than Oxy,” he managed, and spit out a huge phlegm-soaked wad of blood.

  Fisker put a hand behind Skoll’s head and eased him to a sitting position, then gave him a handkerchief he kept stuffed in his pocket to press against his mouth. “I’m all ears, Davey. But let’s see if we can find those teeth you spit out first.”

  22

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

  Caitlin had just sat back down on the front porch swing of the modest two-story home, when Cort Wesley’s truck pulled in to the driveway. With his younger son Luke at a posh boarding school in Houston and older son Dylan away at college most of the time, they’d found themselves with the house to themselves on the nights she stayed over. Then Dylan had elected to take some time off from college at Brown University—still undecided when, or even if, he was planning to go back.

  “Looks like you had the same kind of day I did,” Caitlin said, rising as he headed up the walk toward the stairs.

  “Remind me never to have another kid, Ranger,” he said, letting out some breath.

  “Dylan?”

  Cort Wesley nodded. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I’m going upstairs to check his closet for a black rubber suit because I believe he thinks he’s Batman. Protector of lost souls.”

  “I don’t think that was Batman, Cort Wesley.”

  They embraced when he reached the porch and settled onto the porch swing together, which rocked back and forth under their weight. Caitlin leaned over and picked up a bottle of Freetail Brewing Company’s Original Amber Ale, Cort Wesley’s favorite craft beer made right in San Antonio, and handed it to him.

  “What’s Dylan gotten himself into this time?”

  Cort Wesley realized the cap wasn’t a twist-off and used his thumb to flick it up into the air, just like his father had taught him when he was eleven. “Protecting his Latino coworkers at Miguel Asuna’s auto body repair shop.”

  “From what?”

  “A new racist element to hit San Antonio,” he told her, taking a sip of his beer.

  Caitlin snatched her bottle of genuine, old-fashioned root beer from the porch’s plank floor.

  “Since when do you drink root beer, Ranger?”

  Caitlin took a gulp and ran it around in her mouth, before swallowing. “There was a time when I used to mix root beer with bourbon. Funny thing is it tastes the same either way.”

  Cort Wesley looked at her over his beer bottle. “You were a drinker?”

  Caitlin drank some more root beer, the words she’d been rehearsing suddenly eluding her. “There’s something I need to tell you, Cort Wesley.”

  “Likewise, Ranger.”

  “You go first.”

  “Let’s flip for it,” he suggested instead.

  “Got a coin?”

  He scooped the cap he’d popped off his beer bottle from the plank floor. “How about a bottle cap? Up side or down, you call it.”

  “Down.”

  Cort Wesley flipped the bottle cap in the air. It clacked back down to the porch, bounced a few times, then settled with the company’s logo shining straight up in the porch lighting.

  “You get to go first, Ranger,” he told her. “Why do I think this has something to do with what went down in Austin last night?”

  “Maybe because it does.” Caitlin rolled her root beer bottle between her hands, so Cort Wesley could see the rest of the contents sloshing around. “I didn’t come to drinking these with bourbon out of nowhere.”

  “That’s the way it usually is, isn’t it?”

  “But I had a special kind of motivation, back when I was in college.…”

  23

  KINGWOOD, TEXAS; 1999

  “How come you’re not drinking?” the young man, holding a red Solo cup, said to Caitlin, amid the swarms of peopl
e brushing past them in the jam-packed town house.

  “Maybe because I don’t drink,” she responded, instantly regretting the fact that she’d come to the party in the first place.

  “The bar’s downstairs.”

  “I’ll see you when you come back up.”

  “Come on, keep me company. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Caitlin.”

  “I’m Frank.”

  “You look old to be a Lone Star College student, Frank.”

  “I did four years in the army before I enrolled. ROTC’s paying my way.” He scowled at a floppy-haired kid who bumped into him and didn’t bother to apologize. “That’s why I look so much older than these kids. Being out in the world does that to you. You look older, too.”

  “I’m not,” Caitlin said, not elaborating further on the fact that she’d just turned twenty, about the average age of the people in attendance.

  “I didn’t say you were, only that you looked it. That’s a compliment, in case you didn’t realize.”

  Frank flashed a friendly, comfortable smile that put Caitlin more at ease. She hadn’t been making friends any better in college than she had in high school. So when a couple of fellow second-year students told her about the party at another friend’s house and insisted that she come, Caitlin promised she’d be there. Of course, initially anyway, she had no intention of going. But then those girls would go the same way the friends she’d never made in high school had, and Caitlin thought this was a fine opportunity to begin working on her social skills.

  Caitlin felt Frank take her hand and didn’t pull away, because the gesture felt more natural and friendly than flirtatious. He had sandy brown hair, deep brown eyes, and a lean, hard body made for the tight, faded jeans he had fitted over his worn boots. She had to admit she’d noticed him earlier in the night, a few times in fact, kind of fantasizing about the notion of him coming up to her.

  And now he had. Now, here she was with a young man a few years her senior who hadn’t spent the last hour bro-hugging other guys after racing through beer chugs with them. There was also the fact that the two “friends” she’d met up with here had already disappeared into the room that had been emptied of furniture and turned into a steamy dance floor, smelling of stale sweat.