The Count of Carolina

  The Count of Carolina

  S. J. Varengo

  Copyright © 2018 by S. J. Varengo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To my favorite nonagenarians, Richard Nostrand and Sherry Pratt, and as always, to Littlewing

  Also by S. J. Varengo

  The Cerah of Quadar Series

  A Dark Clock

  Many Hidden Rooms

  A Single Candle

  The Clean Up Crew Thriller Series

  The Beauty of Bucharest

  The Count of Carolina

  The SpyCo Novella Series

  Assignment: Paris

  Assignment: Istanbul

  Assignment: Sydney

  Assignment: Dublin

  Contents

  1. The Nightmares

  2. A Tweak of Conscience

  3. Anniversary Plans

  4. Taking Flight

  5. Catching Sight of a Doughy Rat

  6. The Water Is Deep

  7. Easy-Peasey

  8. The Magic 8-Ball

  9. The Whole Truth… Take One

  10. The Unthinkable

  11. Staggering Into the Sleep of the Condemned

  12. Crossing A Line

  13. We Leave the Best Eggs to Hatch on Their Own

  14. Dumpster Diving

  15. A Stone, Once Started Rolling…

  16. Confirming Your Appointment With…

  17. The Waiting is the Hardest Part

  18. A Big, Brave Girl

  19. Everyone Goes for a Drive in the Country

  20. The Bonfire of the Manatees

  21. Full Kerouac

  About the Author

  1

  The Nightmares

  Dan and Nicole Porter were two weeks shy of their twenty-first wedding anniversary. As he looked over at her now in their huge, comfortable bed on a lovely Colorado springtime early morning, he smiled.

  It had been four months since Dan had learned that his beautiful wife, ten years his junior, had kept a huge part of her life secret from him. Nicole, Dan had thought, was an executive in a company called Cleanup Crew. He’d been told for twenty years that the company was a forensic cleaning service, going into crime scenes and messy suicides after the police finished their work and removing all trace of the crime. Blood and gore, yes, but it was a necessary service, and Dan had thought Nicole, having risen through the ranks to management at a very rapid pace, was insulated from the worst of it. Front office, not front lines, he had told himself many times over the years.

  But Cleanup Crew, while maintaining offices all over the world that did actually provide the forensic cleaning service, also had a separate arm, which provided a different kind of cleaning. For they also used that term with regard to disinfecting the world of human filth that they did via assassination. The company accepted assignments from a wide variety of sources. Some were official. (Or semi-official, Dan thought, remembering that many governments often reached out for help with situations that could not be formally connected to the authorities.) Some, however, fell outside the scope of governments and monarchies, and dealt with very personal, very heinous situations, such as the one that put Nicole’s hidden world onto Dan’s radar.

  In early December of the previous year, Dan had opened the trunk of Nicole’s car, ostensibly to respond to the sound of what he thought were shifting paint cans. It was a Lexus, after all, and he didn’t want the paint to spill and ruin the car’s trade-in value. Instead of spilled paint, however, he’d found the body of man, wrapped in a plastic drop cloth and sporting a very visible bullet hole in his forehead. Dan always shivered when he remembered the sight of the corpse’s still-open brown eyes, cast upward toward the wound.

  It was that Earth-shattering day that Dan learned Nicole was not, as he often bragged to friend and acquaintance alike, a high-level exec in a successful business. She was, in fact, an international assassin.

  In the whirlwind two weeks that followed, Dan had become completely immersed in this shadow world, and had been placed into situations completely out of his realm of experience. He’d recently retired from the software company he’d built from the ground up and had spent the previous thirty years in the business of video games. Nothing in all that time had prepared him for having to kill a man who was about to shoot Nicole in the back of the head, or to hold a gun to a woman’s head the following day and pull the trigger again, this time too late to keep Cole from being shot herself. Fortunately, Nicole’s wound turned out to be minor. The same could not be said for the woman that Dan had ended.

  But as she slept in the last few minutes before the sky was painted in pinks and reds with the coming of the sun, he was less concerned with all of those hijinks, from which he was now happily separated by time and distance, and thought instead about their impending anniversary.

  In most of the sources Dan had consulted about the proper traditional anniversary gift, after the fifteenth year, they tended to list a specific gift for every five years. Therefore, last year had been easy. The traditional twentieth gift was china, so instead of buying a lovely keepsake that would spend most of its time packed away or on a shelf collecting dust, he’d taken her to China.

  The vacation had occurred in May, a full six months before the world changed forever, and it had been lovely, although Dan had been disappointed to learn it wasn’t Nicole’s first time there. She’d explained that they’d opened an office of CUC in Beijing a year prior, taking advantage of the country’s growing acceptance of capitalist enterprises within their borders. She’d eventually told him that she’d been there to “clean” (Dan had taken a long time to be able to accept the use of this word as a synonym for “kill”) a mid-level official who had been using the authority of his position to get away with some very atrocious activities.

  This year, without the assistance of any website or book, he’d decided upon a gift. He was buying Nicole a new car. She was still driving the same black Lexus that had been the hiding place of the man with the neat but fatal forehead tattoo, and although Dan had begrudgingly accepted Nicole’s secret, he hadn’t been able to open her car’s trunk for four months. He’d lost his initial revulsion to Cleanup Crew, but he hated that car now.

  Dan had been awake for several hours. He’d roused from a nightmare in which he was once again in the catacombs of Bucharest, Romania, looking for Nicole. He could smell the aged musty walls, feel the heaviness of the dank air as it groped his body. He turned a corner and saw Nicole on the floor, a brutish man holding a handful of her hair, his pistol cocked and in the other hand. It was exactly as he’d remembered on that cold Bucharest morning. The only disparity between dream and reality was that, in the dream, he was a second too late to save her, and his eyes had shot open at the sound of the hitman’s pistol report.

  His first act upon awakening was to reach over and gently touch Nicole. She was warm, and he felt her breathing, so he chalked it up to another in a series of dreams that he assumed would haunt him for a very long time.

  As he looked at her once more, tinted now by those inevitable first rays of light insisting on passing through the window, he realized she was dreaming as well. Judging from Nicole’s accelerated and somewhat erratic breathing and by the jarring motion of her arms and legs, he first thought she might be having a sex dream, and considered gently waking her to see if she was interested in making her dream come true.

  But just as he started to move to plant a gentle kiss on her cheek, her movements became even more agitated, and she began to talk.

  “No,” she moaned, obvious pain in her quiet voice. “No, I don’t want to!”

  Dan’s brow furrowed in concern, as he realized she, like he had hours earlier, was having a nightmare. Even though morning sex was now off the table, he kissed her cheek anyway, hoping a tame gesture might help her to break out of the dream peacefully. He was in for a surprise.

  Instead of a gentle fluttering of eyes and a languorous stretch as she came out of the dream, Nicole whirled and grabbed Dan’s throat with a force that belied the slim, graceful structure of her hand. “I SAID NO, CONRAD!”

  Dan gasped for air as her steel-like grip constricted even tighter. His vision began to fade as the oxygen supply to his brain went from “not enough” to “none.” He managed to gargle out three words: “Cole, it’s me!”

  Suddenly, he saw his wife’s eyes come into focus. She pulled her hand away from Dan’s neck as if the touch was now burning her.

  “Oh my God, Danny. I’m so sorry,” she said, bringing the hand that had nearly caused Dan to pass out to her mouth in shock. Seeing it do that struck Dan as very paradoxical. It was a perfect microcosm of Nicole in a simple gesture. The same hand that could kill could also remind him yet again how beautiful she was, and how very much he loved her.

  “It’s fine,” he managed to say after gulping in a deep breath. “There was a warm, comforting light and I saw my grandma.”

  “Oh stop, you big faker. You know as well as I do that your grandmother wouldn’t be waiting to welcome you into heaven. Especially if they have whiskey there.”

  Fully recovered and reassured by Nicole’s teasing, Dan smiled. “She might still greet me, but she’ll probably be carrying a bottle. You’re right about that.” After Nicole’s answering laugh quieted,
Dan asked, “Who’s Conrad?”

  He saw Nicole’s demeanor change instantly at the mention of the name. She seemed to be drafting the correct response in her mind. Finally, she said, “Conrad Birdie.”

  “You were fighting with the guy from Bye Bye Birdie?”

  “He was trying to kiss me, and I didn’t want him to, although his gold lamé suit was pretty slick.”

  Dan frowned. “Coley, I love you, and you’re obviously not the world’s crappiest liar. After all, you kept up a pretty good one for twenty years. But I still can tell when you’re trying to get a fib over on me. You weren’t dreaming about Conrad Birdie.”

  “Yeah. He was even singing ‘You’ve Gotta Be Sincere!” she said, settling into her story comfortably.

  “Cole. Who is Conrad?”

  Again her face changed as she realized he wasn’t going to let it rest.

  “I don’t know, Danny. It’s just a name. It doesn’t mean anything. I probably was fighting in my dream, and the dude’s name happened to be Conrad. It could have been anything. Jake, Slim, Aloysius…”

  “I see,” Dan answered, still skeptical.

  “Just a dream. Just a name. It meant nothing. Thank you for waking me up, though. The dream is fading, and I’m a little foggy on the details, but I don’t think I was winning the fight.”

  “Well, good news. You started winning once I woke you up.”

  She rolled, in a single fluid motion that reminded Dan once again that she was only in her forties and could still manage fluid motions, until she was sitting on top of him. He smiled as he realized his original plan might come to fruition after all. She put her hands on his naked chest and leaned down until her face was inches from his. “Let me give you something else to think about,” she whispered, pulling off her nightgown.

  Dan, who slept year-round in only his boxer briefs, reached down to remove them, but she stopped his hand.

  “No. Let me,” she said huskily. She slid backwards, off Dan’s body, pulling the briefs down as she did. “Oh,” she said, casting them aside. “I see you’re rising to the occasion.” She repositioned herself slightly as she took him into her mouth.

  True to her prediction, Dan quickly forgot about Conrad, whoever the hell he was.

  2

  A Tweak of Conscience

  An hour later, as Nicole brushed her teeth, she thought about the dueling emotions she was experiencing. On the one hand, her entire body tingled in the afterglow of their lovemaking. On the other, she felt a twinge of guilt about how easily she’d manipulated Dan into changing the subject. Even after twenty-one years, she could still wipe his mind clean with a simple blowjob. (To be fair, there’d been much more than that, as Dan was a thoughtful and reciprocating lover.)

  But she couldn’t tell him about Conrad. Not yet. Because in order to do that, Nicole would have to strip bare the last remaining shred of her hidden past. Telling him the truth about Cleanup Crew had been hard enough. She’d cursed herself for months for leaving the body in the trunk, planning on swinging out to the farm to see Wally and his handy-dandy wood-chipper later in the day. Alone.

  But sweet Dan didn’t want her trunk to get all paint-stained, and the rest was… what it was. Still, there was far more of this ancient history that she was working through herself. She needed to get a handle on it all herself before she could even consider opening up to Dan about it.

  And that was going to be a tall order. It was going to be difficult because she was a long way from having a handle on it. A long way. She couldn’t yet even see a handle to grab.

  She didn’t even like thinking about it, so for the most part, she utilized the intense mental discipline she’d taught herself and just… didn’t. Unfortunately, her sleeping brain was unconcerned with and immune to her discipline. The dreams came anyway, and they were horrible. There wasn’t just one recurring dream, but rather it was like seeing episodes of a long-running television series about the worst childhood ever.

  She spit into the sink and peeked out of the bathroom to see Dan, sleeping buns up and snoring like a buzz saw. Another thing she could always count on. After using sex to get Dan’s mind off whatever it was she didn’t want him thinking about, she knew she had a solid four hours to herself. She wiped her lips on a hand towel (which was part of the reason she made sure Dan was sleeping… toothpaste on the hand towels was one of his pet peeves) and tiptoed back into the bedroom, collecting a bra and panties, which she carried out of the bedroom and began to slip on in the hallway.

  “Wow, Mom. Just… wow.”

  “J.J. I keep forgetting that you’re home. Tell me again why you’re in Colorado for spring break and not Daytona like normal kids?”

  “Well, first of all, I’m your kid, so normal is kind of out of the question, nudist.”

  “I’m not a nudist. I just didn’t want to wake your father.”

  “So you were just going to hang out in your undies till he woke up, then?”

  “No, J.J. Porter, cub reporter.”

  “Ha! You haven’t called me that in years.” J.J. laughed.

  “Well, you haven’t been as quizzical lately. No, to answer your question, I was going to the laundry room because I have jeans and a tee shirt in the dryer. I’m going for a drive,” Nicole said as she made her way to the alcove that housed the washer and dryer.

  “Where to? Do you want some company?”

  “Not this time, sweetie. I just need a little alone time. Got some work stuff on my mind that I need to think through.”

  “That’s cool. Maybe I’ll call Fran,” the young woman said, naming her best friend since kindergarten.

  “Franny didn’t go on spring break either?”

  “No. We made a pact. Since we both hate Daytona and most of the people we knew who were heading there, we decided to come home and just chill. I don’t see her very often since she decided to go to Fordham.”

  “Yeah. New York is a long way from South Bend. It still cracks me up that you both picked Jesuit schools, and you, at least, have been inside a church exactly forty-two times in your life.”

  “Yup. Christmas and Easter without fail. A solid spiritual upbringing.”

  “I have failed your immortal soul.”

  “Besides, there’s a lot more to Notre Dame than its Catholic foundation.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as humiliating Syracuse in basketball every year.”

  “Aww,” said Nicole, pulling on the warm tee shirt. “Why you wanna pick on Otto the Orange?” A framed diploma from Syracuse University indicated that Nicole Jacks had earned a bachelor’s degree from that esteemed institution. Of course it was a fake, as her higher education had taken place in darker halls. But she still had to keep up the appearance, and she was pouting at the slight when her head reappeared from within the tee.

  “Stupidest mascot ever,” J.J. said.

  “Yeah, while I’ve always thought your fighting Irishman looked a little like a punk.”

  “BLASPHEMY!” the girl shouted.

  “J.J.! Shh. Dad!”

  “Yeah. Dad. You came out of your bedroom naked, and he’s sleeping. Putting one and one together, I’d say he’ll be comatose for a solid four or five hours.”

  “Maybe less. After morning mommy-daddy time, he often wakes up sooner.”

  “‘Mommy-daddy time.’ It cracks me up that you still call it that. At school, we call it ‘fucking.’”

  “Jennifer June!”

  “Just sayin’.”

  Nicole grabbed her keys from the raku bowl on the cherry table by the front door. “Just saying you’re a potty-mouth.”

  J.J. laughed heartily. “You’re my mother, but you’re not Mother Theresa. I don’t think you can lecture me about swearing.”