The decoy

Chapt 15

Chapter Fifteen

Sebastian and Grace sat in the motel room and ate cold Chinese food for breakfast. She stared at the man who lay next to her and wondered if she really knew who he was. There were secrets deep inside of him, dark secrets.

"I can't believe what you have lived through," Grace said. "How could you survive? How does a boy survive something like that?"

"I lived through it but sometimes I'm not sure if I survived."

"How much did he hurt you?" She asked and Sebastian could see a tear in her eye. "I mean I know he tortured you but what did he do to the person inside? How much has that monster shaped what you are today?"

She felt terribly sorry for the child that he was but she also wondered about the man who so easily disarmed two thugs in a motel room.

            Sebastian was silent for a while.

"I don't know but he is a part of me. I read something about people who are imprisoned and how they survive. They talk about being able to get outside of your body.

That's what I did. I was just a kid but I knew I had to exist somewhere else and so I learned to leave that ranch in my head. I couldn't have survived otherwise. I hid inside my brain."

Sebastian's telephone rang and he recognized it was Robert Kelly's number.

"The bodies of two of Rappelo's men were found burned to death somewhere north of Winona,"

"We had a disagreement. They lost." Sebastian said "But they were somewhat informative. I have learned a little bit about Pezzo and Cam Starr. I have an appointment with Tim Black, the Cadillac salesman, later this morning."

"Listen. You understand that you're working in a somewhat tenuous situation," Kelly said, "I am not even supposed to employ you like this. So let's try not to kill people. Two dead bodies generate some interest but when the press learns about what these fellows do for a living they assume it was a natural part of their profession.

See what you can get on these Pezzo and Starr and then let's shut it down. I just need enough to wire tap Pezzo and maybe Starr too. Then we can nail them. You don't need to solve this thing, just give me enough to go see a judge about a wire tap. We will close it if we can get a wire on Pezzo."

"I have to go see Tim Black," Sebastian said. He folded his cell phone in half without saying good bye to his former commander and he rolled out of bed.

"You can't leave and not finish that story. I'm in shock," Grace said. "How did you survive? How did you get away?"

"I will tell you the rest some other time. It only gets worse," Sebastian told her, "let's eat now and clean up."

They finished breakfast and then showered together. Grace left for her shift and Sebastian drove to Black's Cadillac.

Tim Black had built his family business into four lots that covered acres of property between Flagstaff and Winona. His grandfather had started selling high end cars in the forties and now Tim had expanded the business to smaller cars as well. He had two dealerships which sold American made cars, one that sold high end German sedans and a huge lot that cleared dozens of Japanese cars every day.

"We sell it all. My family built a successful dealership and I made it even bigger," Tim said.

He sat at a glass desk in the original office his father had used. It was located on a half floor above the showroom. Tim had increased the size of the office so that it now was fifteen by thirty feet. His desk was ten feet long but it was empty except for a laptop, a printer and two telephone sets. One telephone had a cordless head set that would allow Black to talk on the phone and wander the office or look out onto the showroom floor.