They were bumping along the road in her beat to shit Mazda pickup. Heading for San Felipe to pick up mail, get supplies, and so Sophie could visit one of the local doctors. She hadn’t been feeling quite up to snuff lately, feeling very fatigued and nauseous in the mornings. Jake attributed it to the local food, she had built up an incredible appetite for the fare of the area restaurants, and too much sun, she had become obsessed with losing her northern skin tone. Sophie was attributing it to something else, but had kept her tongue so far.
Jake pulled into a parking spot, walked Sophie to the clinic, and then headed down to the post office. Dawn received a monthly disability check, Jake had been awarded a thirty percent disability from the government, and her father had been sending her a monthly check as well. Between the three checks and the cash that Jake had stockpiled while he had been under the control of Jerry Banks, the three lived quite comfortably in the Baja economy.
The mail box was jammed. He only checked it when payday rolled around and then maybe again halfway through the month, if he was in the area. All three checks were there, some junk mail, and a letter from her mother and Jake's Sports Illustrated. Jake leaned against a counter and fanned through the magazine, the NFL season was getting ready to start up, one of Jake's favorite times of the year. A good share of the local cantinas would be carrying the games on their satellite dishes. It was fun as hell to gather with the Baja locals and American expatriates on Sundays to eat good seafood, drink beer, and cheer on their teams.
Their was a postcard stuck inside the magazine. The picture was of a beautiful topless woman with incredible tits. She was standing under a waterfall with her arms stretched up towards the heavens. Jake flipped the card over. The stamp was US. The message was hand printed with a feminine touch.
Jake,
Call me as soon as you get this. Collect if you have to. J.
The number was printed on the bottom of the card. It was a Las Vegas area code.
Glancing at his watch to see how long it had been since he had dropped off Sophie, he headed off to the downtown square and stopped in front of a bank of phones. He hadn’t picked up a telephone since he had been in Mexico. His hands were shaking so badly he slammed the receiver down and walked over to a cantina and bought a beer. It went down in three long gulps.
Jake bought another for the road and walked back to the phone. He picked it up and punched in the numbers. Collect.
Someone picked up on the second ring. A woman. Very familiar. It had to be her.
The operator was Mexican. “Collect call from Jake. Will you accept the charges, please.”
“Certainly.” There was a pause. “Hello, Jake.”
“Jasmine?”
She laughed. “Who else would it be?”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Too long, Jake. Too long.”
It sounded like she might be sitting by a swimming pool. “You never came back for me, Jake. You said you would.”
Jake took a swig of Corona and leaned his head against the phone.
“I know I did, but I couldn’t, Jasmine. You know that. They would have killed me. Or worse.”
“Jerry knew that I warned you, Jake. For me, it was worse.”
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Do you know what he made me do, Jake? He put me out on the Chicken Ranch to punish me. I must have had to suck off or fuck twenty scumbags a day.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
He heard ice clinking in a glass.
“Oh well, it doesn’t matter anymore. The bastard is dead. I hope he rots in hell.”
“Are you free, Jasmine? Or is it Rachel?”
“I’m very free. And I stayed Jasmine. She’s more fun. The agent who replaced Banks really enjoys me in the sack. He’s got a little church going wife back in Wisconsin that doesn’t do the things that I can do. So I’m a one man woman now. He’s got me put up in a suite in town and everything. Even got a promotion.”
“What about your son? Do you have him?”
“Oh, Jake. I wanted to, but in the long run I decided that he’d be best off with his granny. I send him money every once in a while.”
“What about getting your husband out of Leavenworth. Banks is dead. Morgan is dead.
The story was all over the fucking place. Now is the time to try to spring him.”
“And what good would that do, Jake? He lost his mind in there. The last I heard they had him locked up in some federal prison hospital out east.”
Jake finished his beer and grabbed a boy walking past him. He handed him ten pesos and pointed to the cantina. He mouthed “Corona.” The boy scampered off with the money in hand.
“You sound a lot different than the last time I saw you, Jasmine.
Jake felt a poke in his side. The boy was standing there with his cervaze. Jake took the beer and handed the boy five pesos and waved him away. He took a hard pull on the cold bottle of brew.
“Jasmine, why did you want me to call?”
“I could just say that I missed you and wanted to hear your voice. That I wanted to know if you missed those nights when you would come back after a hit all pumped up with adrenaline and would fuck me until dawn. Or if you realized that I almost told you I loved you that night in Las Vegas. That after Banks was killed, I did wait for you. That I thought you might keep your promise.”
“Why did you call, Jasmine?” The beer wasn’t working. It was just making him feel irritable. He just wanted to get this shit over and hang up. Go pick up Sophie. Get back to his life.
“Because your time is running out, Jake.”
“What the hell are you talking about? My time? I’m out. The dumb shits even send me a paycheck every month. I’ve got them by the balls. They’re not gonna try shit with me.”
She laughed.
Jake shivered. It must have been close to ninety degrees out.
“Some little homo who had a lover that got whacked has been making waves, Jake. Writing congressmen, newspapers, magazines, anyone he can. He’s a regular little shitpot stirrer. And he’s been naming you, Jake. Personally. Said he saw you down in Mexico. And that you talked.”
“I didn’t fucking talk,” Jake yelled. “I met him while he was down here windsurfing. He recognized me from the article in Newsweek, he told me his sob story but I didn’t talk.”
“You broke your uncle out of prison.” Oh fuck. He had never mentioned Billy to Jasmine.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Jake. You broke your uncle out of prison in Minnesota. You paid a guard who was a member of the same biker gang as your uncle to give you the time and date that he was going to be transported to another facility.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Because another prisoner in Stillwater talked when he got busted for smuggling drugs inside the joint. He used to be your uncles cell mate.”
“Not that, Jasmine, goddamn it! How do you know all of this?”
He heard people splashing in the pool and the ice in her glass as she took another drink.
Gin and tonics. She had always talked about drinking gin and tonics while laying by the pool.
“Because I’m the one they want to go down there to take you out, Jake. Because of our history together, they figured that it would be easy for me to get to you. That was my promotion that I was talking about. They figure that a good looking broad can get closer quicker and easier to her mark than a man can. I’ve even done a woman. Lot of kinky things go on in this business, Jake. I fit right in. I can see how you got so turned on doing it.”
“Holy shit,” Jake croaked.
“Don’t worry, Jake. So far they’ve been able to bury any negative information before it becomes too public. But if the shit keeps hitting the fan, they may want me to come pay you a little visit. You’ve become a major boil on their ass, a real hindrance.”
“What we had was real, Jake. I really did love you then. But now this is my life so I need you to tear up that postcard and forget you ever made this call.”
Sweat was pouring off Jake’s face and running down the phone. His legs felt like giving out.
“So this is it, Jake Morrow. I hope that fifty years from now, when your wife asks you what’s on your mind when she sees you sitting there smiling, that it’s been me that you’re thinking about. About that night in Vegas when we went to see Duran fight.”
The line went dead.
Jake hated getting up in the morning when it was that cold. He padded into the kitchen and looked at the thermometer. Holy fuck! It was thirty degrees below zero. No wonder when the alarm went off, Sophie had rolled over and buried in her head under the blankets. Coffee was already half brewed. Thank God for automatic timers. He poured a cup as he finished getting dressed in the kitchen so he didn’t disturb Sophie getting those last precious moments of sleep. Jacob Jr. was in the midst of the terrible twos and was wearing her ragged. She could use the extra sleep.
He walked into Jacob’s rooms to check his blankets. He was going to be a big kid, that was for sure. He damn near filled the crib. Snoring like a little horse. Jake looked up over the crib at the big blown up picture of Jacob being held by Dawn. That idiot Ozzie sitting next to them with a big shit eating grin on his face. Ozzie, his soon to be step uncle.
Five minutes after Jake had hung the phone up after talking to Jasmine, Sophie had told Jake that she was pregnant. They were married one week later and had stayed in Baja until Jacob was almost a year old. Sophie had wanted him to be raised in the states though, so they had returned, and they had been in Story for just over a year. Her father through the many connections that a minister has, had gotten Jake a county job on the road crew. It snowed like hell there, so Jake was up early in the mornings so he could get out and get the plow rolling early. He actually enjoyed racing through the mountains in the early morning darkness behind the wheel of that gigantic plow, the pine trees covered in snow flying past the truck as it screamed down the mountain road, sparks flying off the blade as it made contact with the pavement.
Jake walked back into the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee. He glanced over the letter from Dawn. She really seemed happy with life. Ozzie really loved her, in fact he worshipped the ground she rolled on. And she seemed to genuinely love him. Good for them, thought Jake.
Better go out and start that truck up. Jake hated getting into a cold vehicle and at thirty below that son of a bitch was going to be cold. He threw on his parka and walked out through the snow to the garage,
The inside of the garage was like a refrigerator. The door on the truck groaned in agony when he pulled it open.
The lights came on. Jake whirled around. Their was a man standing there dressed in a snowmobile suit and one of those hats you always see people in those sled dog races in Alaska wearing.
“What do you want? What the hell are you doing in my garage?
The man slowly raced a pistol at Jake so that it was aimed at his chest.
“I know it wasn’t you, but it was someone just like you,” the man said.
“Someone has to pay.”
He sounded familiar. The man reached up with his free hand and pulled his hat off. It was Robert, the wind surfer from Michigan.
“Robert! What the fuck? Hey man, I’m sorry about what happened to your friend in the navy, but I had nothing to do with that.”
“The bastards wouldn’t listen to me. Typical government bullshit.” He pulled the trigger.