“I want to talk to him,” Gerald said.
“You get five seconds,” Ike said. Buddy Lee ripped the tape off Gatsby’s mouth. Ike held the phone to his face.
“Gerald!” Gatsby said. Ike pulled the phone back and Buddy Lee slapped the tape back over his mouth.
“He’s alive. Arianna better be, too, or you’re gonna have to bury your daddy in a coffee can,” Ike said.
“You bring him and Tangerine to—” Gerald tried to say but Ike cut him off.
“No. No Tangerine. Just your daddy and Arianna. That’s how it works. We’ll call you back in one hour,” Ike said. He hung up the phone.
“You pushing them hard. What if they hurt her?” Buddy Lee asked. Ike put his phone in his pocket.
“They won’t. We got to his daddy. Right now, they know we willing to do anything. They hurt that girl, they don’t know what we’ll do next. Now we gotta find a place to meet them. And we gonna need guns. Lots of guns,” Ike said. Buddy Lee sucked his teeth.
“I think we can kill both them birds with one stone. But we gotta go talk to some folks. What we gonna do with him?” Buddy Lee asked.
“We’ll chain him to the sink in the bathroom,” Ike said.
“You came up with that quick,” Buddy Lee said.
“This ain’t my first rodeo.”
“I know, mine neither. You got a talent for it, though,” Buddy Lee said.
“Unfortunately,” Ike said.
* * *
“Turn here,” Buddy Lee said. The rising sun bounced light off the metal sign attached to the chain-link fence. The sign said MORGAN’S MARINA in big bold black letters against a white background. Ike drove through the open gate and pulled up to a narrow building with board-on-batten siding. Beyond the building a long salt-treated dock extended into the Chesapeake Bay. On each side of the pier were about a dozen slips with boats and yachts of various sizes and levels of ostentatiousness. Ike put the car in park.
“Alright. Now it’s your turn to stay in the car,” Buddy Lee said.
“You gonna be alright in there by yourself?” Ike asked.
“He might be a gunrunner and crazy right-wing militia maniac, but he’s still my half brother. I’ll probably be alright,” Buddy Lee said. He climbed out of the truck and headed for the office of the marina. A sleigh bell clanged as he entered the building. A couple of good ol’ boys were paying for some bait at the counter. Chet rang them up, glanced at Buddy Lee, then handed them their change. The men nodded at Buddy Lee in an almost unconscious gesture of southern hospitality. When the men left, he and Chet were alone.
“You should know better than to bring somebody like that to my shop,” Chet said. He gestured to the parking lot. Ike was standing next to the truck talking on his cell phone.
“Oh, I forgot you don’t like Virgos,” Buddy Lee said. Chet grunted.
“What you want, Buddy?” he asked. Chet was tall and rangy like Buddy Lee, but he had a thick mop of white hair and wisp of a beard to match. A LIVE FREE OR DIE tattoo undulated on his bicep as he flexed his arm. His gray T-shirt already had sweat patches under the arms. It was only 8:30.
“I need a favor,” Buddy Lee said. Chet came from behind the counter. They were only a foot apart.
“I told you the last time you came out here I’m fresh out of favors for you. You know how much trouble you and Deak got me into? Chuly sent Skunk Mitchell up to talk to me about it. The Skunk Mitchell. They thought I was a snitch because you and Deak couldn’t keep it under sixty. That deal cost me a shitload of money and many a sleepless night, but you want a favor,” Chet said.
“It cost me five years. It would have killed Deak if he had gone inside. But since you brought it up, didn’t the state drop them weapons charges against you after me and Deak got pinched? Huh, ain’t that a coincidence?” Buddy Lee said. Chet glowered at him, but Buddy Lee hit him with his ten-kilowatt smile.
“Don’t worry, I never mentioned that to anybody. I mean who would believe it, anyway? Wouldn’t no man worth a damn drop a dime on his own brothers to save his own worthless hide, right? We’re all blood. Might be rotten blood but it’s blood all the same. But that’s water under the bridge now, ain’t it, hoss?” Buddy Lee said.
Chet pulled a container of Skoal out of his back pocket and put a chunk in his cheek.
“Ain’t nothing I can do for you, Buddy,” Chet said. Buddy Lee fingered a bright orange-and-red lure hanging from a carousel near the cash register. It became a poor man’s kaleidoscope as it spun.