G M Ford [Ford - Heavy on the Dead

PRAISE FOR G.M. FORD

G.M. Ford is must reading.

Harlan Coben

Ford is a witty and spunky writer who not only knows his terrain but how to bring it vividly to the printed page.

West Coast Review of Books

G.M. Ford is a born storyteller.

J.A. Jance

Hes well on his way to becoming the Raymond Chandler of Seattle.

Kirkus Reviews

G.M. Ford is, hands down, one of my favorite contemporary crime writers. Hilarious, provocative, and cool as a March night in Seattle, he may be the best-kept secret in mystery novels.

Dennis Lehane

G.M. Ford has a supercharged V-12 under the hood.

Lee Child

G.M. Ford writes the pants off most of his contemporaries.

Independent on Sunday

OTHER TITLES BY G.M. FORD

Nameless Night

The Nature of the Beast

Threshold

Leo Waterman Series

Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca?

Cast in Stone

The Bums Rush

Slow Burn

Last Ditch

The Deader the Better

Thicker Than Water

Chump Change

Salvation Lake

Family Values

Soul Survivor

Frank Corso Series

Fury

Black River

A Blind Eye

Red Tide

No Mans Land

Blown Away

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright 2019 by G.M. Ford

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542041300

ISBN-10: 1542041309

Cover design by Pete Garceau

CONTENTS

The door burst open and banged against the wall. Half a dozen men shuffled into the room, shaking rain from their coats as they jostled inside. The short man with the black rubber raincoat and Coke-bottle eyeglasses elbowed his way to the front.

Show me, he said.

Right there, Mr. Marshall. The technician pointed at his computer screen. He tapped a grainy image of a dozen or so men and women waiting in line inside what appeared to be some sort of public building. The man in question was considerably taller than the others in the line. Fishing charter T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops. Long hair and beard. Your basic turista. Extra-large variety.

Qualitys not very good, Marshall groused as he folded his coat inside out and draped it over his arm.

The technician shrugged his narrow shoulders. Mexican equipment. He tapped the screen again with an ink-stained finger. Just a second here, he said. Wait till the line turns the corner.

The tape jumped ahead. The tall man was now in full profile. Everyone in the room leaned closer to the screen, like the folding of a flower.

Marshall nearly touched his nose to the screen. Then he slowly removed his glasses, sighed, and straightened up.

Hes about the right height, I suppose, Marshall said.

Everyone waited for him to say something else. When he remained silent, someone blurted out, We need to be sure.

The little man hacked out a short, bitter laugh. The understatement of the century. He waved a disgusted hand at the computer screen. We cant have any more setbacks, he said, and a guy about the right height, in the right place, at the right time isnt gonna cut it. Thats the kind of sloppy work that very nearly... He stopped himself and massaged the bridge of his nose.

Gonna have to send some people down to Greaserville, the bald man in the corner said. They can probably.

Marshalls voice rose a full octave. Dont talk to me about probably. Probably cost us nearly a hundred men and all the material wed collected. He slashed the air with his hand. Years of work. Millions of dollars, he screeched. He gave his anger a moment to sink in. From now on, you just tell me what we know for certain, and nothing else. He looked around the room. Do you hear me? he shouted.

Somebody cleared his throat. Theres been money going in and out of his American accounts. Some of it paying taxes on his old house... insurance bills... things like that... but the great majority of it ended up right there... the Tijuana Rio branch of the BanRegio bank. We also know that in order to open a bank account in Mexico you have to show up in person. We checked the bank CC camera footage for the two weeks before the first transfer of funds. What weve been looking at here is footage from the same day the account was opened.

The technician tapped the screen again. Look at the person in line behind Waterman. Its that freak he hangs out with. Always right at his elbow, but since Waterman disappeared... He snapped his fingers. Gone. Nobody seen that pervert motherfucker for months now.

Marshall bent again and squinted at the screen. We need absolute confirmation, he said finally. And it needs to be completely under the radar. No public presence at all. We are in no position to attract further attention.

He started for the door. Stopped. Turned back around and wagged a stiff finger. But... if that is that son of a bitch Leo Waterman, I want him dead and buried. He started for the door again.

Heavy on the dead, he said.

The ocean has a primal call. A voice, deep and resonant, that beckons everyone, almost on the cellular level. The rich, the poor, the homeowner, and the homeless, it called them all, and they all came, living an uneasy cheek-to-jowl existence in Ocean Beach.

The last of the ungentrified surfer towns in California, Ocean Beach was a place defined by the variety of its lifestyles and its good-natured acceptance of all. O.B. was the kind of place where nobody was gonna bat an eye at a couple of new people in town. Or ask any questions about them either. So for a laid-back guy whod been forced to go underground, it had seemed like the perfect place to chill out and disappear for a while.

Id been holed up in O.B. for a little over seven months and had only recently stopped checking the sidewalk behind me. Truth be told, I was thinking about staying forever. Not just because of the perfect weather, although Ive gotta admit that was a major player. What really attracted me was the fact that, like me, O.B. was a perpetual outsider. The redheaded stepchild of San Diego. A onetime mudflat campground of the terminally adventurous, Ocean Beach had refused to move beyond the sixties. Gabe came down later, after months of physical therapy made it clear that the piece of shell casing that had shattered Gabes calf had healed as much as it was gonna, which, unfortunately, wasnt enough for Gabe to function as full-time muscle anymore.

To a lesser degree, the same was true about me. Gabe and I had stumbled into something we werent prepared for, and both of us had emerged quite a bit worse for the wear. Gabe moved with a perceptible limp, and three spinal surgeries later, I had all the fluid mobility of a backhoe.