The Living Blood

  All at the behest of a client he’d never met, and all under the guise of doing legal business.

  No, Justin knew he wasn’t just a lawyer anymore, not by a long shot. He was crossing lines that had never even crossed his mind.

  • • •

  Justin had read The Dogs of War, so he’d expected Baylor to look like a pro, not a ragged-toothed thug with a Glock shoved into his belt. Still, he was surprised at his . . . normalcy. Justin walked past him two or three times on the crowded patio of The Ancient Mariner because he didn’t look the way he’d expected. Baylor was sitting alone at a table closest to the thick, nautical-style rope separating the patio from the marina’s waters, his eyes glued to the pages of a paperback. He was wearing a Cuban-style, white guayabera shirt and cheap reflective sunglasses. He was lean, almost wiry, with neatly clipped black hair. And he was tan enough to look like a local Cubano, so he’d barely registered to Justin’s eye.

  “O’Neal?” It was Baylor who spoke first, glancing up at him over his sunglasses.

  “Oh, hello!” Justin said, feeling foolish. He thrust out his hand in a greeting, and Baylor obliged with one firm pump.

  “The conch chowder’s good today,” Baylor said, sweeping his arm to invite Justin to sit. He sounded true-blue American, but his vowels were so flat that Justin suspected he was masking an accent. In fact, he’d been told Baylor was an Englishman. On the table in front of Baylor, Justin noticed a near-empty glass of lemonade and an empty bowl of what must have been chowder, along with several plastic saltine wrappers.

  “Am I late?” Justin asked, checking his watch. But, no. It was only 12:20, which meant he was a full ten minutes early. Still, Baylor had apparently been here some time.

  “I sit and read,” Baylor said, indicating his paperback. It was a Kafka novel, Justin noticed with more surprise.

  “You like Kafka? I wrote my senior paper on him in college.”

  “Ahead of his time. This one’s my favorite, The Trial.”

  “Poor guy got executed and never did find out what he did wrong, did he?”

  “Well, that just goes to show you, doesn’t it? What does punishment have to do with right and wrong?” Baylor said this with impatience. No time for chitchat, Justin guessed.

  Since the tables were full and customers were lined up outside for choice waterfront seating, the teenaged waiter descended quickly to ask for Justin’s order. Justin asked for a diet Coke and a fried-catfish sandwich. Baylor refilled his lemonade.

  Justin and his wife brought their twins here on weekends once in a while, and he usually enjoyed the laid-back maritime motif on the wood-plank patio, which was trussed in fishnets, conch shells, and life preservers. But he couldn’t relax today. He found himself having difficulty staring Baylor in the eye, which he didn’t like. The man’s manner had been fine so far, but on closer examination there did seem to be something lying in wait that made Justin nervous. He noted the three-inch scar almost concealed just beneath Baylor’s right eyebrow and wondered how close he’d come to losing that eye, and how.

  “What’s that you drive? A Bronco?” Baylor asked.

  “Good eye,” Justin said, turning over his shoulder to see if he could even see as far as the parking lot. Barely. But somehow, Baylor had seen him drive up.

  “That’s a tough vehicle. Four-wheel drive. Good for tough terrain.” Baylor said this with a hint of mockery he hadn’t bothered to disguise.

  Justin felt his ears burning. Was this guy making fun of him? “Well, my Bronco’s never seen anything more challenging then the highway,” he said lightheartedly. “But you know how we Americans all like to fantasize we’re still cowboys, stealing land and slaughtering savages.”

  At that, Baylor laughed, and Justin allowed himself to ease back into his chair. He’d learned a long time ago that a little self-deprecation could go a long way. Despite how well Baylor had nailed the American accent, Justin would bet he didn’t care for Americans much. To him, seeing a guy in a suit climb out of a Bronco probably just fed his contempt for men who touted the trappings of hardiness without the lifestyle to match.

  “I have good news,” Baylor said, his tone shifting to business. “That’s why I wanted to fly out to meet with you face-to-face. I don’t believe in doing business with people whose hands I haven’t shaken.”

  Good policy, Justin thought. His own client was too far removed from him, he thought; only Justin’s father had any direct contact with the mysterious man, passing messages between them. The client had deep pockets—deep enough not to hesitate to fly this Baylor guy all the way from South Africa just to have lunch—and that was all Justin knew. The secrecy pissed Justin off, but there was nothing he could do about it. His father had always treated information as a commodity, using it to exert control. Growing up in the O’Neal household had definitely been a lesson on life on a need-to-know basis, and nothing had changed.

  “Hope I’ll suffice,” Justin said. “My client wishes to remain anonymous. As you know.”

  “You’ll do fine. A lawyer is the next best thing to a live person. Just tell your client we’ve identified our Blood Drive courier.”

  Blood Drive. That was the code name Justin’s father had coined, and that was what Justin had passed on to Baylor. Their client had done some experimental work with a blood-based drug, and quantities of it had been stolen from him. He wanted it back, period. And he was willing to pay whatever it took. He also wanted to personally interrogate the people who were responsible for its theft and distribution, to find out how much they knew about its composition. And since legal channels were out of the question, the only alternative would be to abduct them. The client wanted them brought to Miami.

  “The courier’s name is Stephen Shabalala.” Baylor lowered his voice slightly. “We traced him from a source in Cape Town. He’s planning a delivery in the next week, and he’s making plans now to retrieve it. He’s going to Botswana.”

  “Retrieve it? So this guy’s probably just a delivery boy,” Justin said, informed by his own experiences with the sale and distribution of illegal drugs. “That’s not good enough. We have to get to the principals who are manufacturing this blood drug, or whatever it is.”

  “Understood. We’ll bring in your principals for questioning, don’t you worry. But I want it made clear that my men are of a certain temperament. They’re not patient people. So we’ll get to the blood, but it may not be neat and clean. I consider the courier expendable, for example, and there may be others. I hope you read my meaning.”

  Justin was grateful for the arrival of his lunch, because he had time to swallow back a bilious-tasting substance that had begun tickling his throat after Baylor’s words had made his heart leapfrog. He ate one of his thick, steak-style fries before answering. “This isn’t a war. We expect you to control your men, Mr. Baylor.” The words, at least, sounded firm.

  Baylor leaned back in his chair and gazed at him with something like a smirk. “Well, then . . . if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. O’Neal . . . it might be your firm has hired the wrong men for this job.”

  Oh, goddammit. Baylor was playing for position. Next thing he knew, Baylor would be hitting them up for more money to minimize bloodshed. “Don’t you think you’re being just a little rigid here?” Justin said.

  Baylor’s smirk vanished. “We’re not a detective agency, Mr. O’Neal. We’re professionals. We’ll get you your blood, but don’t expect it to be painless. So I’ll say it again—if a lighter touch is what you’re looking for, you’re better off hiring elsewhere. And if that’s what you decide, I’ll walk away with my payment today and consider it a kill fee. No hard feelings. Clarify this with your client if you want. My flight isn’t until morning. I’m at the Marlin Hotel on South Beach. You can call me there.”

  Justin sat and stared, momentarily captivated by Baylor’s cold, unreadable mask. Who was this guy? When he left here today after casually discussing taking people’s lives, was he heading straight for the beach? Wo
uld he down a bottle of tequila at a reggae club? Get laid? Right now, he was a careful enigma.

  Feeling as if he’d stumbled into a scene from Miami Vice, Justin reached into his inside breast pocket and pulled out the envelope with Baylor’s $10,000 cashier’s check. This was only the second payment, and one of the smallest. In all, when this job was finished, Baylor and his men would have a quarter of a million dollars in exchange for the missing blood drug, which Justin’s father liked to call the Miracle Blood.

  “I’ll speak to my client and call you by eight o’clock,” Justin said. “He’ll be glad to hear the news about your progress. As for the other part, I guess it’s a good idea to clear this up.”

  Baylor stood up, took the envelope, and slid it between the pages of his paperback. Then he shook Justin’s hand, a single pump yet again. From his demeanor, Justin decided this visiting mercenary wasn’t going to spend his day doing any of those predictable, touristy things Justin had fantasized for him; Baylor was going back to his hotel room to read his book and wait for his phone to ring. That was it.

  The guy was a stone killer, Justin thought with a dope-enhanced sense of awe.

  “In future, Mr. O’Neal, you might want to remember it’s always a good idea to know exactly what you’re paying for. Cheers,” Baylor said, and walked away.

  • • •

  “Gramps! Gramps!”

  Even from upstairs, Justin could hear the twins’ excited chorus ringing throughout the house, which told him his father had just shown up at the front door. Holly’s voice crackled over the intercom box beside the desk in Justin’s study. “Speak of the devil,” she announced.

  “About time. Be right down,” he told her.

  Justin had been leaving messages at his father’s houseboat and on his cell phone’s voice mail all day. Since his retirement last year, his dad was almost impossible to find during daylight hours, whether he was fishing in Biscayne Bay, snorkeling in the Keys, or manning his new airboat in the Everglades. Justin had started to fear he’d have to embarrass himself by calling Baylor to tell him he couldn’t get in touch with his client. He hadn’t been looking forward to that.

  As Justin descended his winding staircase, he swelled with the lord-of-the-manor pride he’d felt since he and Holly found this colonial-style beauty three years ago. Their Lincoln Park brownstone had been nice enough, but the Miami house felt like the kind of place people work toward their entire lives. Five bedrooms, a swimming pool, a recreation room with a home theater, a garden tub on the master-bedroom deck. And a living room with such a high ceiling that he could literally park a couple of sailboats inside and still have room to spare. He and Holly both loved the spacious feel of the place so much that they’d left all of the walls a stark white and only used the furniture that was absolutely necessary: an L-shaped leather sofa set, a coffee table and towering planted palms in the living room, a dramatic black lacquer dining-room table with chairs for eight and nothing else in the dining room; and only large pieces of art on the walls. Justin was especially proud of the original O’Keeffe they’d picked up at their first honest-to-God art auction in New York last year, a swirl of brooding colors that made the living room’s Spartan decor all the more dramatic.

  His bonuses at Clarion were higher each year. What was that song from The Jeffersons? They were movin’ on up.

  Downstairs, the house was engulfed in the scent of the paella Holly had been working on all afternoon, from a recipe she’d picked up from the family from Spain who lived next door. Chicken. Shrimp. Mussels. Oysters. Green olives. Justin’s taste buds flooded.

  “Look at these little sprites the wind blew in,” Patrick O’Neal was saying, hugging one twin in each of his broad arms. His face and arms were bright red from the sun, the closest he ever got to a tan. Typical of his dressing habits of late, Justin’s father was wearing multicolored, surf-style shorts and a faded Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt; he looked as if he could pass for an aging rock star, especially with his thinning, white hair growing longer in the back. “You’re all wet!”

  “We’re swimming! Come outside and watch! Please, Gramps?” the seven-year-old girls implored. Sometimes, Justin wondered if Casey and Caitlin sat up all night practicing ways to synchronize their speech. As usual, Holly had dressed them in matching flowered bathing suits, and their wavy blond curls were tied up with identical pink barrettes.

  “Girls, you’re tracking water in the house. Go back out to the patio before somebody slips,” Holly said, sticking her head out of the kitchen. “Pat, will you take them back outside?”

  “My pleasure,” Patrick O’Neal said, lowering his tousled hair in a mock-bow. Then, Patrick finally noticed Justin and grinned. “There he is! Tell me about your meeting.”

  “You’d know all about it if you’d answer your messages,” Justin muttered, nodding toward the patio. “Let’s get the girls back in the pool first.”

  On the patio, the glossy pebbles on the tile sparkled with water light-snakes in the waning sunlight. While the twins competed for attention—“Okay, now watch me jump in! Are you watching?”—Patrick O’Neal poured himself a glass of Scotch at the wet bar, then reclined in the lounger next to Justin’s. Holly began piping out classical music, as she always did at dinner. Holly was a good flautist who’d played second chair with the Chicago Symphony right out of college; she was determined that the girls would grow up loving classical music as much as she did. Justin was proud of himself when he guessed she was playing the chorale from Beethoven’s Ninth. He knew the lyrics and licks to every Zeppelin song ever recorded, but he couldn’t fill up a postcard with what he knew about classical music.

  “You know, Dad, I don’t get it,” Justin said, watching his father sip from his tumbler. “After your quadruple bypass, you swore to your doctor you’d give up the booze, and now every time I see you, you’ve got a drink in your hand. The point of retirement is to enjoy life, you know, not to cut it short.”

  “Quit your preaching, Justin. Believe me, I’m enjoying life plenty,” Patrick said with a good-natured wink. “How’d it go today?”

  “Daddy! Gramps! Watch this!” Caitlin shouted from where she stood at the edge of the pool, then she leaped up, wrapping her arms around her legs, and splashed into the water.

  After the appropriate applause, Justin sighed and faced his father’s too-cheerful eyes. “These guys mean business, Dad.”

  “They damn well better, for what they’re charging. What did he say?”

  Justin kept his voice low. “They found a courier who’s making a delivery in about a week. But Baylor all but promised things will go violent when they try to get to the source. And I think we need to consider whether or not that’s what we want.”

  Patrick’s bushy eyebrows lowered in confusion. “I don’t get you.”

  Justin spoke even more softly, from behind gritted teeth. “The question is, are we willing to have people die?”

  Patrick gazed into Justin’s eyes for a moment. Then, inexplicably, he began to laugh, a sound that made Justin’s stomach flip. Seeing Justin’s face, Patrick only laughed harder, covering his mouth as he tried to force himself to stop. “I’m sorry. The way you said that . . .”

  Early in life, Justin had pretty much decided his father was a bastard. He didn’t like the way he spoke to his mother, or the red marks he’d sometimes seen smarting on her cheeks after their arguments. He didn’t like the smug way he held on to his secrets, dangling them like bait. And generally, Justin had never thought his father was an honest person. In fact, he knew he wasn’t. Still, watching his father laugh, Justin was overwhelmed by the certainty that his father was a bigger bastard than he’d ever thought.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” Justin said.

  Patrick shook his head, still chuckling. “Sonny boy, you just don’t get it. It’s not your fault, I know. But you honestly don’t get what this is all about.”

  “Feel free to enlighten me,” Justin said dryly.

  Patr
ick gazed skyward, his expression positively beatific. Not for the first time, Justin puzzled over what had come over his father since his retirement. It wasn’t just his uncharacteristic lust for outdoor living he’d never cared about when Justin was younger, but he even looked more hale, somehow. His face was ruddy even when he wasn’t sunburned, and his walk had lost its sluggishness. He seemed . . . younger. He was like a man who’d discovered a rejuvenating religion.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Patrick said. “ ‘What the fuck is wrong with Dad?”’

  “Bingo. Congratulations. You’ve been very weird. And I don’t mean just today.”

  “I’ve had some major changes in my life, Justin. Big changes. And I know you don’t like to hear me say this, but I can’t discuss too many details with you. I’m not at liberty. Not yet. But I promise you, if you just hang tight, you’ll know as much as I know. You’ll learn all about our client and this blood.”

  Justin sighed. “I’ve heard that one before, Dad. Sorry.”

  Patrick looked at him, his eyes suddenly burning with earnestness. “No, son. Believe me. You’ve never heard anything quite like this before. This isn’t bullshit. This will change your life.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Patrick took another swallow of Scotch. “You asked me a question before, and I was rude. I laughed. You were asking me what this blood is worth, whether it’s worth the cost in human lives our friend outlined to you today.”

  Something uncharacteristically somber in Patrick’s voice made Justin feel a desperate urge to ask him not to say another word. You want out of this, his mind told him. He’d learned long ago that some lines, once crossed, changed everything. For good.

  “You wondered where I was today? I was up in Boca. I wanted to see some specialists.”

  “Dad, why?” Justin said, grasping his father’s wrist. “Your heart?”

  The strange, inspired smile returned to his father’s lips. “I just wanted proof, that’s all. I know how I feel, but I wanted to know from an expert. I went through the whole shebang—blood tests, heart, liver. I got the best tests I could buy. And you know what?”