Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Read online

Glory and love to the men of old,

  Their sons may copy their virtues bold;

  Courage in heart and a sword in hand,

  Both ready to fight and ready to die for Fatherland!

  “It’s the Soldier’s Chorus,” Sir Spencer said when he notices I’m listening. He is gently waving his right as if he’s conducting. “’Gloire immortelle de nos aïeux.’ It’s in Act Four. Valentin and his fellow soldiers are returning from war, singing about the glory of those who fought and died in combat. It’s moving.”

  Glory and love to the men of old!

  Their sons may copy their virtues bold,

  Courage in heart and a sword in hand,

  All ready to fight for Fatherland.

  “You’re building a private war chest?” I ask the Governor. He’s summoned another cup of coffee from Sally Anne.

  “I guess you could call it that,” he says. “A man can’t go into battle without the proper resources. Am I right, Sir Spencer?”

  “Spot on, Governor,” he says in response. “Spot on.”

  “We are warriors, Jackson. It’s a battle between what’s right for Texans and what’s not. We’re on the side of good here. Our economy feeds off the energy industry. We survived the recession in ’09 because of oil and gas production. I mean, President Obama said it, ‘We’re the Saudi Arabia of natural gas!’ We can’t let anything affect that.”

  “He meant the United States as a whole,” I say. “I don’t think he was talking specifically about Texas.”

  “Get your head out of the sand, boy,” the Governor is preaching now. “Texas is The United States if you’re talking energy of any kind. Hell, we’re ahead of the Socialist Republic of California when it comes to wind energy production. Wind for goodness sake. Our economy, the nation’s economy would be impotent without what the energy folks do for us. Those so called ‘environmentalists’ are traitors as far as I’m concerned. You can’t have it both ways.”

  Sally Anne returns with another coffee refill for the Governor. She assures him it’s without Bailey’s this time, and sways her hips back to the front of the plane. The Governor blows and sips from the new cup.

  “I’ve heard you argue these points before,” I remind him. “How does that justify your plans to secede?”

  The Governor almost spits out his coffee and he coughs at my question. “Secede?” He clears his throat and laughs. “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Secession is a key talking point on the campaign trail. You’re talking about battles and us versus them. Why else would you need billions of dollars in what you called a war chest?”

  “You called it a war chest, Jackson,” he says. “I tacitly agreed with that assessment. We could never secede. It’s a talking point to assuage the most conservative elements of the party. Wow. Secession?”

  “Don’t blame the boy for his assumption,” advises Sir Spencer. “You have made it seem as though you are on the extreme end of the Texas independence movement. You’ve often considered the costs and benefits of such an effort. I don’t think him naïve for taking you at your word.”

  The Governor sips from the cup. He rolls his eyes at Sir Spencer but says nothing.

  “What about F. Pickle?” I ask. “The security company. Where do they fit into this? They do work for you.”

  “True,” added the Governor. “I’ve used them to do some work for me in the past, some opposition research you might say. That’s purely political stuff, campaign related tasks and such. I don’t think they’re working for us right now.” He looks to Sir Spencer for confirmation.

  “Oh no,” says Sir Spencer. “We’re not using them this go ‘round, and because of our altercation in the tunnel toilet, I doubt we’ll employ them in the future.”

  “They’re working for the oil companies?”

  “Likely,” says Sir Spencer. “They’re protecting their interests, not ours. I gather someone felt you were not in their best interests.”

  “Then what is all of this about?” I ask. “If it’s not about making Texas an independent republic, and the oil companies aren’t completely on the same page, why are you doing all of this? Why is my life at risk? Is it really about money?”

  “Of course it’s about money! It’s about money and power and politics. All three of those are the same thing. I want to stay in power, the energy companies want to control the politics, Buell wants a little bit of both, and we all want MMM-O-N-E-Y.” He sings the last five letters as though he were Lyle Lovett.

  “Look,” he licks his lips and pats me on the knee, “since you’re tired, or confused, or whatever…I’ll break this down for you, Jackson.”

  George is still asleep. Sally Anne is leafing through a magazine at the far end of the cabin length sofa. Sir Spencer seems bored, typing into his phone. I’m dumbfounded. For some reason the Governor doesn’t seem to care who hears his psalm.

  “Don Carlos Buell is the bad guy here. He wants my job and he wants to ruin the energy industry. On both those accounts he’s interested in destroying Texas.” He laughs at himself. He’s so clever. “The energy folks hired me to help them keep their favorable environment. I hired Ripley and Buell tried to steal him. When that didn’t work, Buell had your little Nikita shoot him for sympathy and then frame Ripley’s dad. Ripley’s dad was conveniently a secessionist. If he’s tagged for the shooting, it puts pressure on Ripley and makes my rhetoric appear violence-inducing. And here we are…”

  “Do you know Ripley didn’t turn?” I ask. Charlie seemed certain he was working for Buell.

  “I don’t think he did,” the Governor says. “I don’t know. Maybe he did. It doesn’t matter. We know enough about the Nanergetix marker now.”

  “Here’s something that may matter,” Sir Spencer interjects. “Jackson, how many dead bodies did you say you’d left behind in Ft. Davis?”

  “Three in the lodge – Ripley, Charlie and Crockett – and the two Pickle guys, who may or may not be dead. That makes six dead and two hurt.”

  “As I feared,” says Sir Spencer, reading from his phone. “I’ve had a team cleaning up your mess. They report three in the lodge, Ripley, and Charlie as fatalities. They also confirm the two wounded F. Pickle employees. They didn’t find that sixth dead body.”

  “Crockett?”

  “Yes,” says Sir Spencer. “They report he is missing.”

  “I thought he was dead!” I exclaimed, the implications racing through my head. “He didn’t move. I thought he was dead.”

  The Governor tilts back the cup of coffee, inhaling the last drops. He leans back on the sofa and stretches his arms out to the side, crosses his right leg over his left and smirks.

  “You thought wrong.”

  ***

  “We are now in our final descent into Austin-Bergstrom International Airport,” the pilot says near the end of Faust’s fifth act to tell us we’re almost there. “The weather is beautiful. The winds are calm. We should have you there right on time. We’ll refuel, which should give you some time to stretch your legs, and we’ll be on our way to Houston-Hobby.”

  Sally Anne walks toward us, carrying a tray stacked with white towels. In her right hand is a set of silver tongs, which she uses to pull a wet, steaming towel from the stack.

  “Would any of you care for a hot towel before we land?” She bends at the waist as she offers. The Governor’s eyes are fixed squarely on her revealing décolletage.

  “Hot,” the Governor says. “Like I like it!” He seems unfazed by the conversation we’ve had during the flight.

  “Why did you tell me all of that stuff?” I ask the Governor as Sally Anne hands me a towel. I use it first to wipe my hands even though they’re clean. “I mean, why let me in on all of this?”

  “Mmmm,” the Governor says through the towel covering his face. “We thought you deserved to know. It’s not like you’re going to go running to the press with this. I mean, you’re up to your neck in it. You’re…what’s the word I’m looking for, Sir Spence
r?”

  “Complicit.”

  “Yes,” the Governor wads up the towel and puts it on the table next to his coffee cup. “Complicit. Furthermore, you’re in a little bit of danger. You need our help.”

  “Yeah,” I acknowledge with a nervous laugh. “I feel like I got the James Bond speech, where the bad guy tells him everything right before he attempts to kill him.”

  “What’s with you and movie references?” the Governor asks. “Zero Dark Thirty, James Bond. I don’t get it.”

  “Coping mechanism,” Sir Spencer answers. “Quite understandable, really.”

  Sally Anne gently shakes George’s shoulder to wake him. He opens his eyes and scoots up in the seat. She hands him a warm towel for his face and saunters to the wet bar.

  “Speaking of the press,” the Governor says in George’s direction, “George Townsend is it? Channel 4 in Houston?”

  “Uh,” George pulls the towel from his face and looks at the Governor. His eyes are wide. He looks around the plane and back at my boss. “Yes, sir. I’m George Townsend.”

  “Well, George, your narcolepsy notwithstanding, this entire trip has been off the record. Am I right?”

  George looks at me and I nod almost imperceptibly. “Sure, Governor,” he says. “May I get a comment when we land?”

  The Governor tilts his head as would a confused dog. “A comment about what exactly, George?”

  “The debate tonight?” George answers after a beat. “What else would I want to ask you about, sir?”

  “Ha! Good one, George. I like you.” He wags his finger at the reporter and winks. “You’re a quick thinker. Good on your feet, right?”

  George doesn’t answer. He pulls my phone from the desk and puts it in his lap.

  “You gonna take notes, George?” the Governor asks.

  “I have a video camera,” he says. “We can do it right after we land, before I hop back on to fly to Houston.”

  The Governor looks like he’s weighing whether he wants to do that. “All right. That’s fine, but we only talk about the debate.”

  The landing gear hits the tarmac in Austin. The plane lurches when the pilot applies the brakes.

  “Welcome to Austin!” he exclaims over the speaker system. “A couple of minutes and we’ll be to the general aviation terminal. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay in your seats until Sally Anne has opened the exit door and lowered the steps for you.”

  The plane slows and the pilot guides the jet to the left toward a series of hangars. I gather my backpack and think about the task ahead. My trip to Charlie’s apartment is all the more important now that Crockett is alive. As much as I want to know more about who she really was, I need evidence of her involvement with Crockett, Buell and Ripley. It’s bound to be somewhere in her place.

  If I can find enough material there, I can get everyone off of my back. I can break my deal with the devil and move along. It’s what I’m best at doing anyhow.

  “Hey, Jackson,” George snaps me from my mini-trance. “Here’s your phone.” He tosses me his phone, giving me a look that tells me he knows what he’s doing. “You’ve got a message.”

  I look down at his phone and the MESSAGES icon reads “1”. I click the button that takes me to the message screen. Neither the Governor nor Sir Spencer is paying attention to me. They’re engaged with their own phones.

  “I love Twitter,” says the Governor, thumbing the tiny keyboard on his iPhone. “Gives me a chance to connect with the people.”

  “I don’t follow social media,” says Sir Spencer. “I don’t get the narcissism of it all. I couldn’t care less what you ate for lunch Governor.”

  “C’mon, Sir Spencer, it’s the proletariat connecting with the bourgeois. You should appreciate that, given your French opera blasting in the plane the whole trip.”

  I ignore the irony.

  On George’s phone, there’s a single message, sent from my phone.

  i need ur phone. trade w me. k? wasnt asleep. awake whole trip. ur phone recorded everything.

  I erase the message and click the phone back to the home screen.

  I look from the screen to George. He smiles.

  Wow. Now that’s a reporter for you.

  ***

  Blair Loxley sat next to me in the vice principal’s office. His hand was wrapped and his thumb splinted after a trip to the nurse. Neither of us looked at each other or said anything. The vice principal was on the phone. He’d already called Loxley’s mother, and now he was talking to mine. I could hear her worried voice through the receiver as the vice principal explained the basics. When he hung up, he took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “I’m not going to candy coat it for either one of you,’ he said. “There’s a good chance you’re both going to be suspended, maybe expelled.” He leaned forward from behind his desk and adjusted his nameplate.

  “I need you to tell me where you put the gun, Jackson.”

  I said nothing.

  “The police will be here before your parents arrive and they’ll find it,” he warned. “If that happens before you tell me where it is, this is only going to get worse.”

  Too late.

  The door behind us opened and in walked two uniformed police officers. I remember both of them being tall with thick, rounded shoulders. They looked like the guys who participated in those strongest man competitions on cable. Neither of them smiled as they walked around to the front of the vice principal’s desk.

  “I was explaining to the boys how much trouble they’re in,” said the administrator. “But neither of them seems to grasp it.”

  “Who brought the gun?” one of them asked. “Where is it?”

  The vice principal nodded in my direction. “That’s Jackson. The gun is his. He won’t tell me where he put it.”

  “How do we know there’s a gun at all?” asked the second officer. “Since nobody’s seen it.”

  “Somebody reported seeing Jackson with it this morning on the way to school,” he said. “An anonymous tip that came in late today. They said he was carrying it under his coat.”

  “Why’s the other kid here?” asked the first officer, his Popeye arms folded in front of his chest. “What did he do?”

  “They were in a fight. We’re holding both of them here until their parents arrive.”

  The second officer knelt known in front of me and looked me straight in the eyes. “Where’s the gun, kid? If you brought a gun to school we need to know where it is.”

  I said nothing.

  “Why would you bring a gun to school?” asked the first officer. “You know that’s against the law.”

  “Where’d you get the gun?” said the second officer, inching more closely to my face. “You know if you got it from a parent, that parent can get in trouble too.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. My stupidity was putting my parents in jeopardy. I couldn’t stay quiet.

  “He was bullying me,” I nodded toward Loxley and it came pouring out. “I brought it to scare him, but there was a big crowd of people around. I knew I shouldn’t do it. I left it where I put it. It isn’t loaded. It’s hidden. I didn’t point it at anyone.”

  The second officer looked at his partner and back at me then stood. With his hands on his hips he walked to my side and put his meat hook of a hand on my shoulder. “Come on kid, show me where it is.”

  “Don’t you care that he was bullying me?” I asked. “I mean he beat me up and busted my knee.”

  “I care,” said the second officer, “but that’s not what we need to deal with right now. We need to get the gun so somebody doesn’t find it and take it.”

  “He beat me up! I was defending myself,” I pleaded. “I was trying to scare him into leaving me alone.”

  “I understand,” the officer squeezed my shoulder. “We can talk about that after you show us where you hid the gun. Now what kind of gun is it?”

  I sat there, my throat aching from the thick lump that had formed at the base of it. I w
as doing everything I could not to cry in front of Blair Loxley. A single tear would’ve undone the victory I scored that afternoon. I remember blinking and swallowing to fight it.

  “What kind of gun is it?” the second officer repeated. He’d softened his tone again. He knew I was trying not to break down in front of my tormenter. He had to know.

  “It’s a rifle,” my voice was barely above a whisper. I swallowed hard.

  “What kind of rifle?”

  If I told him what it was and where it was, I would lose my rifle. I would lose the prized possession my father had handed down to me. I’d betrayed myself.

  Why did I bring the gun? Why did I do this?

  “What kind of rifle?” the first officer said, stepping closer to me. “We need to know so we can help you. You don’t want your parents to get in trouble do you?”

  I shook my head and blinked. They’d found my weak spot.

  “The more you help us,” he added, “the less trouble for your mom and dad.”

  “It’s a Henry lever action,” I whispered. “It’s not loaded.”

  “Where is it?” the second officer asked again. “Can you take us to it?”

  Weak kneed, I led the two officers out of the office and toward the shed near the track.

  ***

  I unlock the door to Charlie’s apartment with the key she’d given me a couple weeks earlier and swing it open to the smell of the citric perfume which intoxicated me the first time I met her.

  The sofa in front of me reminds me of the last time I saw her, casually dressed in her Bush-Cheney T-Shirt and those hip-hugging jeans. Inhaling, I remember the taste of her lips, the smell of her hair.

  She played me. I was a pawn.

  On a glass computer desk across the room, sits her laptop. I cross to the desk, drop her duffle bag on the floor, and slip into the heavy wooden chair in front of the desk.

  While the computer hums to life, I open the bag and pull out the iPad, the iPod, and the small laptop. I sit the small laptop next to the more substantial one already on her desk and flip it open to turn it on.