The Lost Prince Page 20

  Whatever Mal had edited during that hesitation raised Cat’s hackles. Still, it was a matter to be taken up later. Extra bodies for the cause meant a more liberal distribution of the burden. That had to be a step in the right direction.

  CHAPTER 18

  CHESS IN THE PARK

  Sawmill Creek Park off Dorsey Road consisted of four baseball fields that were empty at this time of year. Dretch asked to meet there, but wasn’t specific as to where in the park. He only said the open area. Cal pulled the Explorer into the parking lot and he and Seth surveyed their surroundings. A young man played Frisbee with his golden retriever in one of the outfields, in the far distance. He looked too carefree to be part of this conflict. Seth tugged Cal’s sleeve and pointed to a man in a trench coat, sitting serenely with a steaming cup of coffee, thirty yards away at a picnic table under a tree.

  Cal’s disposable cell rang to the tune of Liza Minnelli’s “New York, New York”—Cat’s tone. He tensed, imagining his wife was in danger and would require him to return immediately.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Surprise,” she answered in a cheery tone. Cal didn’t realize he’d been clenching his jaw until he released. “Guess what?”

  “I’m about to meet Dretch,” he said, throwing a wet blanket on her exuberance.

  “Are you in danger?”

  “I don’t think so. We’re in a park. Not too many places to hide.”

  “Well, I have some good news … Say hello to an old friend…”

  “Good afternoon, Captain MacDonnell.” Cal’s heart lifted at the sound of Malcolm Robbe’s velvety tenor.

  “Malcolm!”

  Catherine reclaimed the phone and brought her husband up to date. She was in Malcolm’s limousine heading to his suite at the Waldorf Astoria in Midtown. Malcolm’s business partner drove Lelani in the rented van. Robbe had apparently become filthy, stinking rich while in this reality. Cal wasn’t a jealous person by nature, nor was he motivated by money—so why did he feel a tinge of regret at the discovery of Malcolm’s success on this side of the pond? Cal didn’t want to spook Colby and promised to call back soon with details.

  When he ended the call, Seth said, “Liza?”

  “Huh?”

  “‘New York, New York’—you picked Liza over Frank for your ring tone?”

  “Catherine’s in New York—she’s a woman, Liza’s a woman.”

  Seth stared at him frozen with disbelief. “That’s some pretty fucked-up linear thinking, man.”

  “They play Liza at Yankee Stadium,” Cal argued.

  “When they lose!” Seth pointed out.

  Cal mentally kicked himself for wasting time with Seth’s nonsense. Was he hesitating—nervous about meeting Dretch. This was it … the first substantial contact with the enemy.

  “Stay here until I figure out what’s going on,” Cal said.

  “What should I do?”

  “Whittle. At least you’ll be holding a big stick and a knife if things go south.”

  Cal reached into his jacket and released the safeties on his Glock 9 mm. The clip was loaded with Speer Gold Dots, and there was one in the chamber. He took a deep breath and marched toward the dick.

  Dretch was fifty-two, but looked older. He divorced eight years back and had a twelve-year-old quadriplegic son. He’d been a beat cop at the 79th Precinct in Brooklyn before earning a Medal of Valor and a promotion to homicide detective in Manhattan. Five citations for exceptional duty later, he took early retirement to go private. The gumshoe was under indictment in New York for extortion, tax evasion, illegal wiretapping, and failure to report abuse of minors by very wealthy clients. Dretch had fallen far because of greed; now he’d graduated to kidnapping and murder. He was looking for the lost prince so that Dorn could kill that innocent boy. Cal wasn’t sure what the next step was as he approached the picnic table. Dretch couldn’t possibly think Cal would help him in any way.

  Dretch’s bare hands were folded on the table next to the coffee. A cell phone with the battery removed lay next to them—a sign that the detective didn’t want anyone to know his location. Cal took a whiff of something not entirely fresh—almost foul—and on top of it, the smell of aftershave as though to conceal it. Colby looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, but there was no one else around from whom the smell could have come. Maybe the guy couldn’t find time to shower.

  “Hello,” Dretch said politely. They could have been friends meeting for a beer.

  Cal nodded, but made no sound.

  “I’ve been looking forward this,” the old dick added.

  “I find that hard to believe,” Cal said. He surveyed the park for signs of an ambush. The table was at a good vantage to spy the area around them.

  “We’re quite alone,” Colby confirmed. “Please sit.” He offered the bench opposite him. The table beckoned for a chessboard, though their game had far more serious ramifications.

  “Where’s the prince?” Cal asked.

  “Someplace safe. Neither you nor Dorn will find him.” It came out: Neetha you noahr Doan will find ’im. Dretch was a Brooklyn boy to the core.

  Cal raised an eyebrow. “Dorn hired you to kill him,” he said.

  “He hired me to find him … I’m not a killer.”

  Cal let loose a sardonic snort.

  “What’s with the attitude?” Colby asked.

  “A trail of corpses all over upstate New York everywhere you’ve been.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Dretch insisted.

  “Sweeny. Nathan Dumont. Erin Ramos.” Cal threw his partner’s name on the list, though Dretch wasn’t even in the Bronx when she was killed.

  Dretch was genuinely put off by the news. “Sweeny and Dumont were alive when I left them. I never even heard of this Ramos.”

  “How can I believe someone who helped a Hollywood producer secretly diddle young boys for years and swept the evidence under the rug, strong armed the parents, then blackmailed his client?”

  Colby shifted in his seat, then leaned forward looking genuinely disturbed. “I’ve got a lot to answer for,” he admitted. “But what I did, I had good reasons for. My boy has special needs that insurance don’t cover. But I swear, with God as my witness, as far as Sweeny and Dumont, the last thing I wanted was to bring the law down on top of me. They were both alive when I last saw them. I wanted you on my tail.”

  Colby held his cup with both hands without taking a sip. “Dorn’s been sanitizing the trail,” he realized. “How did you find me?”

  Cal ignored the question. Gloria Hauer had suffered enough without killers coming after her family. “Why would you want me to find your trail?” Cal asked. “There’s no payday if the prince survives.”

  Dretch took a sip of coffee and looked off toward the man playing with his dog. “Looks like a fucking Cialis commercial,” he said pointing at the scene.

  “Answer the question.”

  “I agreed to the job before I knew what I was signing on to,” Colby confessed. “I thought it was a rich mob father trying to find his son in witness protection. The money they were offering … it was obscenely generous. All my lifelong instincts that warn me when something’s too good to be true got trounced by the answer to all my prayers. My kid … he needs … but…” Colby paused, gazing again into the distance, looking to all the world like a man that wanted to switch places with that boy and his dog.

  “They took my heart,” Dretch said in one raspy breath. He waited for it to sink in.

  “Sucks for you,” Cal said evenly.

  “I’m pretty sure they’re lying about putting it back.”

  “When you sleep with dogs…” Cal struggled to remain civil, but he really didn’t like the guy; and besides, there was little he could threaten a walking corpse with anyway. “What do you want from me, Dretch? How do I get my prince back?”

  “You got a magic guy?” the dick asked.

  “Of course,” Cal exaggerated, like this was par for the course. As far as C
olby knew, Cal had a platoon of wizards at his disposal. Dretch didn’t need to know it consisted of a student and an idiot.

  “Here’s how I see things,” Dretch continued. “Either I can’t be fixed, in which case, nuts to all you fuckers; or I can be made normal again and I want to hear your best offer.”

  Dretch looked vulnerable, desperate. The dick had one foot out the door toward abandoning his master. Dretch broadcasted too much—he was probably better at negotiating when the stakes weren’t so personal. Something didn’t jibe here … why would it be nuts to all you fuckers if no one was able to fix him? There was still the payday … he could hand over the prince and get his money and at least his heart back? Cal suspected more than just self-preservation prompted Dretch’s shift in loyalties.

  Cal played a hunch.

  “I’m not sure he’s worth the effort or the risk,” Cal said. “The prince is a delinquent: assault and battery, destruction of property—patricide. His having been raised away from his guardians has tainted him. I’m having a hard time imagining him running an empire.”

  “You believe everything you read?” Dretch said.

  “He must be a handful. Aren’t you worried he’ll lift your wallet and cut your throat while you sleep? I know you wouldn’t die, but he doesn’t know that and it could get pretty annoying walking around with your head in your arms.”

  “About as annoying as it is for you to walk around with your head up your ass,” Dretch said. “I trust that kid more than half the priests in Brooklyn.”

  “That a fact?”

  Dretch was about to respond when the realization that Cal had outmaneuvered him filtered into his expression. MacDonnell smiled and wondered if he should have gone down the homicide track instead of ESU.

  Dretch wore the grin of the defeated. “Danny’s smarter and tougher than either of us,” he said. “Staked out that kid for twenty-four hours after I came down here, trying to figure out my options.” Dretch talked at length about the profile he scraped together. The gumshoe had seen his share of deadbeat drunken dads and mentally short mothers in his line of work over the years, but Clyde and Rita were real pieces of work. “No one gave him any breaks,” the detective said. “But he stands up for what he believes. The kid has heart.

  “Daniel stood up for his friends and never cared about the odds … yet most of the adults in his life, especially the ones that were supposed to be looking out for him, were MIA. That sheriff tried to help, but it was too little too late. Total system failure. I didn’t expect Danny to kill his old man, though. The crazy sot made it hard for him not to.”

  The detective stopped talking. Cal looked up to find a victorious Cheshire grin on the man. It was Cal’s face that now betrayed him, revealing his thoughts to the detective, beaming with pride and even some moisture around his eyes. Danel—Daniel’s character had been tested through hardship and tragedy and came through intact.

  “He’s a lot better off with us,” Cal said.

  “Bunk. He’s better off with neither of you,” Dretch insisted. “If Dorn doesn’t kill him, his reward is to become the bull’s-eye in a political battle back in never-never land. The other side will never stop trying to kill him. His own people will prop him up and try to control him—tell him what to eat and who to fuck. They won’t even let him pick his own wife. Who in their right mind would ever want to inherit a throne? The only king who ever has fun on a throne is the one who earned it—by sword or cunning. The hand-me-downs are just grief for the heirs.”

  “His parents would be touched by your concern,” Cal said.

  Dretch was right, though. Daniel’s life would not be his own. Still, he was the only prince Aandor had, and it needed to be the boy’s choice. If the detective had formed a fondness for the boy, then Daniel meeting his true parents was something Dretch couldn’t deny him. Not after the life he’s had.

  “I have to look out for myself,” Colby said, getting back to basics. “Just meeting with you can get me killed. Look,” he said, pointing to his disassembled phone, “I have no idea what tricks these wizards can pull. I only risked this because my guys seem off balance at the moment, and they’ve left me a long leash. Who knows when that could change? I’m meeting with them tonight—I have to tell them something. Do you have what I need?”

  Cal looked toward Seth, who was whittling intently. The witless whittler—so much for a lookout, he thought. He whistled to get Seth’s attention. Cal met him halfway, out of Dretch’s hearing range.

  “S’up,” Seth said, failing to be cool.

  “They took Dretch’s heart,” Cal said.

  Seth looked at Colby in the distance and then to Cal. “He’s one of those guys?”

  “Yeah. Wants to know if we can put it back?”

  “How should I know?” Seth said.

  “Call her, idiot.”

  Seth dialed Lelani and explained the situation. He listened to her response and hung up. “A wizard can’t undead somebody,” he said.

  God! Cal thought. How do I leverage a desperate pissed-off dead man? He fingered the butt of his pistol more as a nervous habit than a call to action.

  “But…,” Seth continued, “in theory, a wizard working with someone called a prelate or an augur can do it. What the heck’s an augur?”

  “You could have started with that information,” Cal said, irritated.

  “That’s how they talk on CSI.”

  Cal returned to Dretch.

  “Does Dorn have a cleric with him?” he asked.

  “Not following…”

  “A priest. A druid, a prelate, an auger?”

  “There’s no one remotely priestly in that lot.”

  “Then Dorn’s bullshitting you. He can’t reverse your condition. Any wizard can take away your life, but only a wizard working with a cleric can put you back together.”

  Dretch looked forlorn, very much as Cal imagined he would at the news.

  “Do you have a priest?” Dretch asked, desperately.

  “Yes,” Cal lied, though it was only a half lie. They just hadn’t seen him in thirteen years. “On that list Dorn gave you to track us down … Allyn Grey is Prelate Grey of the temple of Pelitos.”

  “You’re not lying, are you?” Cal didn’t feel the need to work too hard trying to convince the man. Dretch had suspected this all along or he wouldn’t be in this park talking to them.

  “What do you think?” was Cal’s only response.

  Looking into Colby’s cold dead eyes, he knew the detective believed him. Now, if they could only confirm that Allyn was still alive.

  CHAPTER 19

  OFF THE PONDEROSA …

  Jeb’s general store at the entrance of the trailer park was the only one within walking distance of Bev’s home. They were in the middle of farmland, miles from the closest town. Daniel intended to make dinner that night as a way to thank Beverly for her kindness—and in a sick, guilty way, for the affections of her daughter, though Bev hadn’t a clue. He left the safety of his “home” and took a long route winding through the park to stretch his legs, the coolness of the weather tempered by the late afternoon sun. Seeing the different nooks and circles in the park gave him a good sense of who his neighbors were. More importantly, it got him away from Luanne for a spell. His brain was still floating from her scent—she was the living embodiment of nitrous oxide. He was so stupidly happy around her, breathing in everything and ogling her bumps and curves that he was grateful he was not going to school down here for fear of ending up in remedial classes from lack of focus.

  Making dinner served a second purpose … it also ensured their meal would be palatable. On this last thought, Daniel realized his actions were self-serving on every level. Was that what drove everyone?

  Clyde, Rita, Principal Conklin, Katie Millar, Luanne—everyone’s first impulse was to do for him- or herself. Satisfaction was the product of selfish acts. So was safety; the tribe demanded it. An unselfish act on behalf of his friend is what caused him more trouble than
he ever imagined. Fighting Adrian’s battles for him cost him his freedom and future. Arrested at thirteen for battery and sued by the Grundy boys’ trashy parents. That mess, combined with discovering his stepfather’s affair because he went to help Katie Millar, despite her rejection of him, escalated into Clyde wanting to beat the crap out of Daniel when he got home—and that incident led to Clyde’s death. It was a simplified account of events, but his thoughts looped over those last few days, wondering what might have been if he’d just minded his own damn business.

  Maybe Clyde was right to get upset at the way Daniel poked his nose into everything. Adults seemed to know that self-interest and minding your own business were the cornerstones of cohabitation and self-preservation. It made Daniel suspicious of Colby’s motivations for helping him. Friendship was becoming a thinner excuse the more time passed. They’d only met a few days ago … How could they possibly be friends? Why would Colby risk jail to help Daniel avoid capture? What was in it for him, if not a way to use Daniel at some future point?

  Jeb’s was a ramshackle, hastily slapped together structure of wood and aluminum sheets, about as big as a double-wide, just inside the gate of the park. The park’s fence only extended about fifty yards in each direction, backed by some sorry-looking bushes that ran along the inside of it. All someone had to do to get into the park was walk toward the farm next door and around the end of the fence. The blacktop from the state road ended at the gate—the trailer park roads were dirt and gravel, lined with weeds. The more industrious residents had gardens around their homes.

  A dusty police cruiser sat parked in front of the store. Daniel hovered back behind a trailer waiting for the cop to leave. Colby assured him being two states away and in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere was relatively safe, but there was no point in taking chances. All he needed to ruin his life was one ambitious country cop looking for a promotion. He studied the trailers on this side of “town” while he waited, kicking the occasional large pebble from its bed. Some took pride in their dwelling—decorating their home with curtains, gardens, fresh paint; they lived beside folks for whom a pigpen would be a step up. These were mostly single trailers around the park entrance—where the po’ folks lived, as Luanne would say. Daniel had forty dollars left to his name, so he must be one of the “po’.” These were his people.