I Will Find You(69)

But part of me, maybe the biggest part, is—just for this moment—letting it all go.

I hopped on this crazy ride when I broke out of prison, and the ride is going to take me where it takes me. Right now, I don’t control it and I’m accepting that.

I wouldn’t say I’m not concerned. I am just doing a major mental suppression. Maybe it’s a survival instinct. The two goons—well, I assume it’s the same two goons, I’m still blindfolded—take my arms and drag-escort me indoors. They throw me onto a chair. Like the vehicle, this room also mercifully has the air-conditioning set on Hi Frost. I almost ask for a sweatshirt.

Someone grabs my wrist. I feel the pinch before the handcuffs slide off me.

“Don’t fucking move,” Goon One says.

I don’t. As I sit in this non-cushioned chair, I try to plan my next move, but the options before me are so grim my brain won’t let me see the obvious. I’m doomed. I can hear people moving around, at least three or four from the sound of it. I still hear the awful music in the background. It sounds like it’s coming over a loudspeaker.

Then, again without warning, the black bag is pulled off my head. I blink through the sudden onslaught of light and look up. Standing directly in front of me, mere inches from my face, is a wizened old man who looks to be in his eighties. He wears a straw hat and a yellow-green Hawaiian shirt blanked with jumping marlins. Behind him I see the shaved-head goons from the plane. Both have their arms folded across their chests and now wear aviator sunglasses.

The wizened man offers me his liver-spotted hand. “Come on, David,” he says in a voice that sounds like threadbare tires on a gravel road. “Let’s go for a walk.”

He doesn’t introduce himself, but I know who he is, and he knows I know. In most of the photographs I have seen of him over the years, he’s a robust man, usually in the center of groups of men, looking more like an explosive device than a human. Even now, with the years shrinking him down, he still has that incendiary air about him.

His name is Nicky Fisher. In another era, he’d have been called a godfather or don or something like that. When I was in school, his name was whispered in the same way a later generation of children would whisper “Voldemort.” Nicky Fisher ran the crime syndicate in the Revere-Chelsea-Everett area from the days before my father joined the force.

He is—was?—Skunk’s boss.

When we step outside, I blink into the sun. I look left and right, and I frown.

Where the hell am I?

These are indeed the tropics, but it looks like Disney-Epcot built a retirement community after a few too many mojitos. I see a housing development and a cul-de-sac, but it all has a round, cartoonish feel, like where the Flintstones live. The homes are all one-level and handicap accessible and built out of some kind of too-clean adobe brick. The cul-de-sac has one of those giant choreographed fountains, forcing the water to dance to the awful music that I guess plays nonstop.

“I retired,” Nicky Fisher told me. “Did you hear?”

“I’ve been sort of out of the loop,” I say, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“Right, of course. Prison. It’s why I brought you down.”

“What did you do to my son, Mr. Fisher?”

Nicky Fisher stops walking. He turns toward me, craning his neck so that his eyes, those cold ice-blue eyes that ended up being the last thing dozens or even hundreds of people had seen before meeting their demise, bore into mine. “I didn’t do anything to your son. That’s not how we do things. We don’t hurt children.”

I try not to make a face. I despise that mob-code bullshit. We don’t hurt children, we give to the church, we look out for our neighbors, all of that sociopathic babble to justify being criminals.

“This is Daytona,” Nicky Fisher says to me. “Florida. You ever been?”

“Not before now, no.”

“So anyway, I retired here.”

We circle the fountain. The dancing water splashes onto the faux marble, gently spraying us. The spray feels good. The two men are following us at a discreet distance. There are other old people milling about, seemingly directionless. They nod at us. We nod back.

“Did you see the big sign on the way in?” he asks me.

“I was blindfolded.”

“Right, of course,” Nicky says again. “Not my orders, by the way. My guys, they always go for the drama, you know what I’m saying? And I’m sorry about Skunk too. You know how he is. He was just supposed to put you on my plane. I told him not to damage the package, but did he listen?” Nicky puts his hand on my arm. I try not to pull away. “You okay, David?”

“I’m fine.”

“And having the cops grab you—that was stupid, though you gotta admire Skunk’s flair on that one. He wanted to make you think you were going back to jail. Funny, right?”

“Hilarious.”

“It was overkill, but that’s Skunk. I’ll talk to him, okay?”

I don’t know what to say so I just nod.

“Anyway, the sign out front says ‘Boardwalks.’ That’s it. That’s the name of this village. Boardwalks. It’s kind of a dumb name. I was against it. Lacks imagination. I wanted something fancy, you know, with words like ‘mews’ or ‘vista’ or ‘preserve.’ Like that. But the whole community voted, so…” Nicky shrugged a what-can-you-do and kept walking. “Do you know what retirement village is right down the street?”