Body Broker Read online

  Copyright © Dan Ford 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ford, Daniel M., 1978- author.

  Title: Body broker : a Jack Dixon novel / Daniel M. Ford.

  Description: Santa Fe, NE : Santa Fe Writer’s Project, 2019. | Series: Jack Dixon

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019009898 (print) | LCCN 2019012109 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781733777704 (ebook) | ISBN 9781939650993 (paperback)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Traditional British. |

  GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3606.O728 (ebook) | LCC PS3606.O728 B63 2019 (print) |

  DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009898

  Published by SFWP

  369 Montezuma Ave. #350

  Santa Fe, NM 87501

  (505) 428-9045

  www.sfwp.com

  Author’s Note:

  Jack Dixon inhabits an imagined world of violence and, in some cases, geography. Furnace Bay is a real geographical feature in Cecil County, Maryland, but not a real town. Neither is Farrington Academy a real school, nor reflective of any schools in the area.

  Chapter 1

  The first notes of “L.A. Freeway” pulled me out of sleep. I had the phone in my hand and was fumbling it to a stop before Guy Clark could start telling his wife to pack up the dishes. Kind of a shitty division of labor, I thought. “Man just sings about getting off the highway and his wife’s got to do all the work. Figures.”

  Once I blinked my eyes clear I tapped the passcode into the phone. Two tries, after I fat-thumbed the first. Then I hauled myself to my feet, the deck pitching just a little under me, and flipped open my work email, which, surprisingly enough, had a couple messages in it.

  One was the Under Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security requesting my assistance in the transfer of the money fund account in the amount of $5,750,000 into my bank as soon as I produced a routing number.

  I flicked “report spam.” The other was a furniture and home goods catalog trying desperately to sell me a dining room set. I looked at it with a bit of suppressed nesting-instinct-longing before tossing the phone on my unmade bed.

  I could hear a few gulls, some people stomping around on the docks. I shuffled over to the fridge and looked inside.

  A long-neglected can of Guinness, cold and seductive. Milk. One last jar of fancy almond butter sitting in front of a jar of plain, workmanlike organic peanut butter. Cocktail ingredients, neatly marshaled along the door. I grabbed the jar of almond butter and a tablespoon from the basket on top of the mini-fridge and walked topside while I had breakfast. I may have turned my alarm off but the song was in my head, and I murmured the chorus while I looked over the water.

  “If I can just get off of this L.A. freeway without gettin’ killed or caught…”

  It was mid-September and the river was holding on to summer’s heat, if not its humidity. The early morning sunlight — 8:30 a.m. was early in my world — shimmered off the brown and gold water. A heron knifed into the shallows from the bank, then took off with a speared fish.

  “Show off,” I muttered, out of spite, as I chewed through a stubborn hunk of vanilla and whey-protein almond butter. I’d describe the flavor as “whey-protein forward.” It had probably been shown a bottle of vanilla extract or a painting of a vanilla bean at some point in its manufacture.

  I polished off the two remaining tablespoons in the jar, stuffed it into a plastic bag that served for garbage, and set about putting a gym bag together.

  The marina was in a small riverside town, and full of recreational boats that were more often lovingly washed and cleaned up than they were taken out into the river or the Chesapeake Bay beyond. But there were usually people moving around it, starting a camping vacation, or heading to a bay island, loading folding bicycles and coolers in.

  I lived here. Usually. For an extra few bucks a month in slip rent, the manager, a guy named Marty, let me hook up to the electric and the water. I gave him a hand with manual labor whenever he could catch me.

  I kept a pretty close watch on Marty’s comings and goings. Closer than he was able to keep on mine.

  Coast looked clear, so I set out for the gym. It wasn’t too long a walk from the marina to Pulaski Highway, then just a few minutes walking along the side of it like a hobo, in sweatpants and Converse.

  I was about halfway there, starting to work up a sweat, when I heard the brief flare of a siren and the tell-tale sound of Interceptor wheels on gravel.

  “Goddammit.” I started to put my hands up when I heard a thick voice say, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jack, get in the truck. We gotta talk.”

  I dropped my hands and turned around, taking in the Cecil County Sheriff’s black SUV and the wall of blue-shirted deputy standing behind the open door.

  “Jaysus, Bob,” I sputtered, “you could’ve just called,” I said as I scuffled along the gravel to his empty passenger side.

  I slid in and he shut the doors, flicking the lights back on to merge back into traffic.

  “I was driving to the marina to look for you,” he said. Bob Sanderson — Corporal Sanderson — looked far too constrained by the driver’s side of his car. “Manager told me you’d already taken off for the gym. Before nine a.m., too. Real dedication, getting out this early.”

  “Well, you know me. Rise early, shut the alarm off, have brunch, think real hard about the squat rack.”

  “Yeah. Look.” Bob had something he wanted to tell me, that much I knew. The way his jaw clenched, the way his hands settled on the wheel. Something he wanted help with. I was eager; my last paycheck was dwindling fast and I needed work. But the key with a guy like Bob was giving him the space to figure out how to ask.

  “Might be something you could look into.”

  Donut shortage? Run out of K-Cups and nobody in the station’s got the IQ to operate a real coffee maker? Got to find your asshole and only have a map and a flashlight? Old lady’s cheating on you again and you need to narrow the suspect pool down from the entire 7th Fleet?

  Bob looked down at me. “No jokes?”

  “Discretion seems like the better part of valor here, Bob. You could disappear me on the side of Route 40 and nobody’d know.”

  “Too much of you to disappear,” he said, poking a finger disapprovingly into my arm, which was maybe not quite the sculpted rock Bob’s was. But there are Greek marbles with a higher body fat percentage than him.

  “Seriously. Got a lady looking for her son.”

  “That seems like the kind of thing the cops normally do,” I said carefully.

  “Yeah, it is, except this kid’s not a minor. He just turned eighteen. Mom thinks he wasn’t happy in school, wanted to drop out. Kinda looks like that’s what’s happened.”

  “Kid becomes an adult, takes off, not a crime, so…”

  “Not my circus. Mom’s desperate to find him, doesn’t seem to have a clue how to start.”

  “Dad?”

  “Didn’t talk to him. Doesn’t seem to be in the picture.”

  “First place to look then,” I said.

  “See? You’re already developing theories.” By now, the SUV had pulled up in front of Waterfront Fitness. In the front window, a bevy of Lululemon and Under Armour-clad folks worked diligently and miserably
on the treadmills and ellipticals. “Where do you want to meet her?”

  “I suppose my home office is out?”

  “I ain’t sending her to the marina.”

  “Coffee shop, then.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one closest to the marina, whichever that is. I haven’t got endless money for Lyft.”

  “Jesus, Jack. You gotta be the only PI ain’t got a car.”

  “It’s an aesthetic.”

  “A what?”

  “I can’t afford one, Bob.”

  “Give up the boat and you’ll have the money.”

  “Death first,” I said. “What’s the lady’s name?”

  “Susan Kennelly. I’ll text you her info,” he said, slipping his cell out of his pocket.

  “I thought Maryland was cracking down on hand-held cell phone use while operating a vehicle.”

  Bob glared at me while he thumbed at his phone, which looked comically tiny in his oversized hand. “One p.m.?”

  I nodded as I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I popped open the door and swung halfway out of it. “I appreciate you sending work my way. If I can help her I will.”

  “That’s why I came looking for you. Now go try and do a real workout, huh?”

  “Only because you inspire me, Bob.” I shut the door, adjusted the gym bag on my shoulder, and shuffled reluctantly into the gym.

  Chapter 2

  Waterfront Fitness was a lie. It wasn’t on the waterfront; it wasn’t within a half-mile of the water in any direction. But it had its advantages. Walking distance from the marina. Twenty-five dollars a month for 24-hour service meant I could afford it and it worked with my hours.

  Lastly, and most importantly, all of the regular staff had long since given up on trying to talk to me.

  Or at least I’d thought so.

  I spotted a disgustingly slim-hipped, close-bearded, hair-gelled new kid in a tight orange staff shirt walking directly into my path.

  “Hey, Mr. Dixon,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m Nick. The other staff told me to make sure to introduce myself to you, ask if you needed any help or a check-up on your form or…”

  I resisted, with an effort of will that could well have been called heroic, the urge to take his proffered hand and squeeze it a little too hard. He was wearing a big class ring with a glittering blue stone. It would’ve hurt like hell.

  I did not like it when pleasantries and small talk stood between me and my workout.

  Instead I gritted my back teeth and shook his hand. “I’m good.”

  “Are you sure? How about I just check out your form for a minute? Mr. Vachess was really insistent that I try to talk with you.”

  I’m the hazing ritual for the new kid. Okay then. Let’s haze.

  I brushed past him and went up to the squat racks, the gloriously empty squat racks.

  I am one of perhaps a dozen clients of Waterfront Fitness who come there to use the squat racks. I never have to wait. Another reason I loved it here.

  I adjusted the height; I like it pretty low so I’ve really got to get under it. Plus, the kid had the audacity to be a solid three inches taller than me. Then, looking Nick dead in the eye, I put two plates on either side of the bar. I got under it, backed out, and banged out five reps that all fell somewhere on a rising spectrum of mediocrity, barely getting parallel. When I’d racked it, I looked at Nick and said, “Maybe you could give me some form pointers.”

  “No problem, Mr. Dixon.”

  He expertly settled under the bar, lifted it clear, and slowly went down into a perfect below-parallel squat, chattering about the width of my stance and where to point my feet and the importance of keeping the abdominal muscles activated. Five more reps followed, and for all the effort he showed the bar might as well have been made of plastic. All the while he chattered about placement of the feet, how I held the bar too high on my back, and other shit I didn’t listen to.

  * * *

  Two hours later, I wasn’t sure who hazed whom. Nick was not, in fact, the reedy-legged poseur I’d taken him to be. Well, reedy-legged, maybe, but I couldn’t find a way to slow him down. Little bastard just about did my legs in on the squats. Then he followed me all over the joint. I finally bested him on the deadlift, where I was certainly lifting twice his bodyweight. My legs were letting me know it, but I’d always felt that a workout wasn’t over if I didn’t want to collapse.

  I almost did collapse in the shower, and took my time getting dressed. I had a little time on my hands so I pondered walking back to the marina, but that would waste the shower and the primping I’d done. So I thumbed open the phone, ordered up a ride, and awaited it in the parking lot.

  Sure enough, in a few moments a silver Corolla rolled up and bore me a few miles to a shopping center in air-conditioned comfort. I checked the time on my phone: 12:15.

  “Well,” I said after I tipped my driver, “here’s hoping I don’t alienate the staff enough to get kicked out.”

  I went in, dumped my bag on a table right in front of an outlet, ordered coffee, and settled in.

  I pulled a tablet from my gym bag — I always bring it, in case the spirit moves me to mount a treadmill at the gym. As much as I wanted to open a book and grab some reading time, I decided to do just the tiniest bit of quick snooping on Susan Kennelly.

  * * *

  By the time I was done my second cup of coffee and pondering the lunch options — which is to say, pondering the salads, because I have a policy of avoiding joy at lunch — I knew that Susan Kennelly used “Ms” but had kept her husband’s last name. I had looked at her divorce records — five years ago, with full custody to her, which seemed largely uncontested. Irregular visitation with the dad, whose name was Tom. Only the one kid, Gabriel, who had turned eighteen just a week prior.

  I was able to look at most of Ms. Kennelly’s Facebook page. Lots of vaguely spiritual memes, photos of Thanksgiving centerpieces, Jack-o-Lanterns, and Christmas trees of years past. A few of her kid. He was the athletic type; hard to tell how tall he was, but he had young man’s muscle on his frame. Dressed nicely in the photos, some in a school uniform, complete with crested blazer. Even outside of that, polo shirts, khakis, sharp jeans, belts, that kind of thing. Clean-shaven, no visible jewelry, looking directly at the camera and occasionally even smiling. A couple of him in a track or cross-country uniform in mid-stride.

  I had just about talked myself into ordering a chicken Caesar, hold the croutons, dressing on the side, when my phone buzzed with a text from the number Bob had given me. I slapped the case closed on my tablet and looked to the entrance of the store.

  A woman, a few years older than me but bearing them well, neat bobbed hair, flat shoes. She was dressed in anticipation of the season rather than for the weather, in the way so many people around here are: a light blue scarf draped around her neck, jeans, boots, a half-sleeve sweater, Vera Bradley bag.

  I stood up and offered her a low-key wave, suddenly feeling underdressed in a blue-and-white raglan, khaki shorts, and bright blue-and-neon green running shoes.

  “Mr. Dixon?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said as I pushed out a chair for her. She extended her hand and I took it, carefully, while she introduced herself. Her palm was a bit clammy, but her handshake wasn’t limp. I stood, waiting for her to sit, which she didn’t, so we both awkwardly stood for a while.

  “Oh,” she said, with a nervous laugh, before she finally sat. “You’re being a gentleman.”

  “Only just.” I sat back down, back straight, feet resting on the legs of the chair. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

  She shook her head, clasped her hands on the table, and looked at me again.

  “You’re not what I was expecting.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “I suppose I was thinking, you know…a detective.
In a suit with a gun on his belt And…maybe a hat?”

  “Well, I didn’t expect to be meeting any potential clients today.”

  She nodded, tapping her wrists on the table. “You work independently, or…?”

  “As much as possible. Technically, I’m an employee of the Dent-Clark Agency but they allow me a lot of latitude to operate independently.” I chose the words carefully; they were as many syllables as I’d said to other people in the last three days combined, I think.

  When I wasn’t working I didn’t get out much, and the places I did go, folks generally didn’t talk to me.

  “Before I start, how much did Bob tell you?”

  “Corporal Sanderson only told me that you were worried about someone,” I said, dropping my voice a bit. Clients typically wanted to be discreet.

  She nodded. “Yes…would you mind, maybe…telling me a little. About your experience.”

  “I’m licensed in the state,” I said, “and I can show you my license if you’d like. I’ve been with Dent-Clark for two years and change.”

  “And before that, you were a cop, Bob told me?”

  I nodded. “For a couple of years, yes. I was with the Department of Natural Resources Marine Police.”

  “Two years here, two years there…you’re not one of those sorts who has to quit and start over every so often, are you?”

  “I’d like to think not, ma’am.”

  “You were military, maybe…keep calling me ma’am, sit up straight.” She pointed a finger at me. “One of those special forces types, I bet…that’s the beard and the loner thing.”

  I shook my head gently. “You’re halfway right, Ms. Kennelly. I was in the Navy, but the closest I ever got to any SEALs, or any other special forces types, was when I was slopping food on their tray.” I cleared my throat and resettled on the chair. “This isn’t getting us any closer to what I can help you with.”

  “Yes. Well…my son. Gabriel.” She paused, pressed her lips together. “How much did Bob tell you?”

  “Corporal Sanderson said your son hadn’t had any contact with you in a couple of days. I assume this is unusual behavior, and that you haven’t been able to locate him.”