27 Days by Patrick H. Moore

Author:Patrick H. Moore [Moore, Patrick H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Two

Five thirty, Friday afternoon. Carrie and I driving through the South Carolina Lowcountry on our way to Montage Palmetto Bluff, five miles from Hilton Head Island. Strapped. FBI standard-issue 9 mm Glocks and clip-on tactical flashlights. And a Walther P22 strapped to my ankle. Seventy-two degrees. Humidity already off the charts. The sense of being surrounded by endless water and marshland. No longer wearing my rag of a suit. Jeans and my usual denim shirt. We drove up to security in a rented black Range Rover. Carrie flashed her ID. The woman at security looked surprised and made a phone call. Five minutes later, an unctuously polite, middle-aged man wearing khakis and a red, white, and blue windbreaker drove up in a golf cart. Carrie got out of the vehicle and explained our mission. Took a while but he finally grasped the fact we weren’t there to arrest anyone. Wearing a frown, he waved us on through.

Jethro Shimanski and his son were lodged in a charming, two-story cottage a stone’s throw from the Wilson Lawn and Racquet Club. We knocked on the door and waited. No sign of our target so we wandered around the grounds. Found our way to the general store where I treated Carrie to coffee and a banana walnut muffin. Strangely, the whole resort had a vaguely California feel.

Still no Shimanski. We motored over to the main hotel and wandered around for a while. Drank a Heineken at the rosewood bar and drove back to the tennis cottage. Bingo. Shimanski and son were standing just outside the tennis courts watching two teenage girls bat a gallon of bright orange tennis balls back and forth across the net. Sun lowering in the western sky. They’d apparently been at it for a while, and one of the girls soon dropped her racquet and clasped her bare arms across her chest. The other girl began gathering up the balls. Her companion stirred herself and pitched in to help. Shimanski and son watched until the girls left the court and started walking back toward the hotel. Man and boy then walked to their cottage and disappeared inside. Five minutes later, we knocked on the door.

“Who’s there?”

“FBI. We need to talk to Mr. Shimanski,” said Carrie.

Silence. I counted to three. “Well then, I guess you better come in.” The door swung open, and we walked inside. He was a big guy. As advertised. Big gut, big thighs, big chest, big shoulders. Big rectangular face, thick lips, close-set pale blue eyes and the short, carefully tonsured hair that politicians and business types favor these days. And two or three days of dirty white scruff. After we introduced ourselves, Jethro told his son Benjamin that we needed privacy.

The boy, who was a younger, thinner version of his father, looked at us. “Why?”

“Why do you think? Use your head. ’Cause we need to talk privately.”

“I thought we were going to go to the movies over on the island.”

“We are. Later on.”

“Screw that,” said the kid under his breath.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.