Mr. Gone: A Novel

By Gene Triplett

Jack Ritter was once the juvenile delinquent scourge of Oklahoma City, specializing in grand theft auto and one of the best in that criminal line of work. When the cops were getting too close and life with a drunken, widowed mother and a wild little half brother were starting to take their toll, hed fled to start a new life elsewhere as a straight citizen. But ten years later, in the awful spring of 1995 when his hometown is in turmoil in the wake of Murrah Building bombing, an unrelated murder and his own gnawing guilt have pulled him back, forcing him to infiltrate a ring of thieves thats thriving while law enforcement officials are distracted by the worst terrorist attack ever perpetrated on US soil. Ritters mission is more personaltracking down the killer of someone once close to himsomeone he felt hed selfishly abandoned a long time ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524672003

Gene Triplett

Gene Triplett is a veteran journalist who served ten years as city editor of The Oklahoman, his home state’s largest daily newspaper. He has won numerous awards for his breaking news and entertainment coverage, film and music reviews, and feature writing. He lives in Oklahoma City. Mr. Gone is the follow-up to his 2016 debut novel, Wheel Man.

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PROLOGUE

OKLAHOMA CITY

Saturday, April 15, 1995

The night was less than an hour old, and a long luminescent ribbon of cloud had drifted across the lower half of the full moon, masking it like a bandit.

It’s an outlaw night, baby, Jimmy North proclaimed, lifting his wine glass toward the eastern sky. My kinda night.

What? Madison slurred the word, plaintive and quite drunk. Sitting across from Jimmy in the hot tub, she couldn’t hear him over the roiling bubble and swirl of the steaming water, not to mention the Dinosaur Jr. album that was pumping max-volume grunge guitar through the speakers mounted over the sliding-glass patio doors.

I said, and he reached his foot out under the water and poked her gently in the crotch for emphasis, "it’s an outlaw night, you silly little twat!"

Madison jumped at the touch of his probing toe, spilling wine into the water, eyes flying open. You shit! she snapped, and she threw the rest of her drink in his face.

It stung his eyes but he just laughed, still pointing at the sky. Look up there, he urged. The man in the moon looks like Jesse James!

He watched appreciatively as Madison rose unsteadily out of the water and turned to look up at the moon; his eyes drank in her heavy, pendulous breasts surfacing to gleam and drip in the silver moonlight from above and the dim-gold glow coming through the glass doors from the living room. Diamond drops of water ran down her concave belly, the hourglass flair of her hips. The white globes of her ass were water-sequined as she turned her back to him and gazed upward.

Goddamn she was beautiful. An empty-headed, cranky little drunk sometimes – but physically, magnificent to behold. And she was his… Well, her body was, at least. That was all of her he really wanted.

She was his like this new condo was his. And the brand new Porsche in the driveway, and the $7,000 sound system that was piping music out into the starlit Oklahoma City night, where he lounged naked with his lady in his very own hot tub sunken into a custom-built redwood deck. In his own backyard.

Life was good and Jimmy felt full of himself. It was damn fine for a lowlife common thief, which is what his dear departed mama used to call him in her fits of drunken rage. Things were good and getting better all the time for Jimmy North. The bosses had given him increasing responsibility in the local operation in recent months, and a bigger cut of the take. Jimmy was prospering at last. The tangible evidence was this place he’d just moved into, and all the big-boy toys with which he’d furnished the place so far. There was a massive refrigerator in the kitchen, just delivered today, which he planned to keep stocked with plenty of beer, wine and bubbly when he got the time. But right now the fridge was empty. That’s why he was grateful for the anonymous housewarming gift of wine and fruit he’d found on the porch earlier this evening. It’d given him something with which to entertain his guest on this his first night in his new digs. There was a king-size waterbed in the upstairs bedroom, all set up and ready for action – the first necessary piece of furniture he’d purchased for the place. The rest of the furnishings he’d ordered wouldn’t arrive for a couple of days, but he had all that he needed for now.

He had Madison. Dumb but funny and oh so classy-looking Madison, whom he’d met in an upscale Bricktown eatery where she worked as a hostess. Paradise complete.

If Ma could see him now. Hell, if brother Jack could see him now. But Ma was dead, and Jack’d been gone a long, long time. Ah, hell, neither one of them would’ve approved of the way he’d made it anyway.

He shook off the melancholy and refocused on his company. Whattaya think, hon? he asked, heart breaking at the sight of her in spite of himself. Whattaya think of that moon?

Thass really nice, baby, she said, half-heartedly lifting her empty long-stemmed glass toward the clouded yellow orb in the sky. Then she turned back to face him, wobbling, giving him that wonderful frontal view again, almost stumbling and falling on him. She caught herself and held out her glass.

Gimme s’more, honey, please? she asked in her whiney-drunk little girl voice.

Jimmy reached back and picked up the wine bottle from the basket on the redwood deck. Empty. It was the second of two bottles that had been left in the fancy basket of fruit and flowers on his doorstep that afternoon. No card included, but Jimmy had a pretty good idea who’d left it.

Madison, who’d picked up a little knowledge of fine vino in her restaurant experience, had said the stuff probably cost $200 a bottle. It was something called Chateau Haut Brion, vintage 1977.

Irritated that it was all gone, he tossed the second empty out into the dark lawn, heard it thump and bounce in the grass. He leaned back with his elbows propped on the deck and glared at Madison.

Haven’t you for chrissake had enough? he said. You can’t even stand up. If I wasn’t here to watch ya, you’d probably drown. Sit down, dammit.

She made a pouty face at him with her full lips and her big blue eyes as she went down on her knees and waded over to him, nudging between his legs and getting up close enough to lay the upper half of her body against his.

He felt the heat of her breath on his neck as she whispered, Are you really a criminal, Jimmy?

Huh? He was mildly taken aback. She lifted her face and he tried to focus his eyes on hers, but she was too close, the tip of her nose almost touching his. He gripped her roughly by the shoulders and lifted her off of him just far enough to that he could focus on her. He saw the starry, sleepy look of arousal in her eyes.

Hell, he had to laugh, that’s the reason you took up with me in the first place, ain’t it? ’Cause you thought I was some kinda gangster or somethin’? Isn’t that what gets you all juicy, makin’ it with a bad boy like me?

So I’m queer for criminals, she giggled, wrapping her arms around his neck. So shoot me.

He released her shoulders and she slumped against him again, snuggling her face against his neck, and he felt her whole body rippling with subdued laughter. He could tell she was starting to fade on him, getting a little too silly, so he wrapped his arms tight around the small of her back, hitched her up so that she was straddling him, and stood up with her, his muscular legs lifting them both out of the water. He turned and sat her down on the edge of the deck.

What’re you doin’, Jimmy? she muttered. I’m cold…

I got somethin’ to warm you up and wake you up to boot, honey-bunch, he said.

Her head dropped forward as if she were falling asleep, but then she looked down and saw what he was talking about. Mmm, baby, she cooed, it looks so angry.

She grasped his erection in her soft but firm hand and guided him into her. And as he began to move inside her, gently at first, then with slowly escalating urgency, he imagined all of his newfound power centering in his loins, building and growing to the point of bursting, the force threatening to inflict awful injury – well, at least a lot of redwood splinters in Madison’s tender ass – until he finally exploded inside of her. But when the explosion came, it elicited only a sleepy moan from Madison and an involuntary shiver from his own body that fell far short of spectacular.

Such were the depressing results of too much alcohol and weed where sex was concerned, Jimmy was finding out these days.

As he withdrew from her he felt strangely drained and fatigued – not like the sweet tiredness of post-coital exhaustion – but a light-headed, heavy-limbed weariness.

Madison, meanwhile, was listing slowly to her right, her chin on her chest, out cold. He caught her and eased her down onto the deck, lifted her legs out of the water and covered her with one of the big beach towels they’d brought out with them.

What gives? he wondered as he climbed shakily out of the tub and picked up the other towel, wrapping it around his shoulders against the chill of the night breeze on his wet skin. He no longer felt full of piss and pickle juice, nor did he stand on the legs of a stallion. He looked down at Madison, now in a fetal curl beneath her towel.

They’d shared one joint of good Okie homegrown and two bottles of fancy wine in the last two hours, and they’d made love twice. Madison never held her booze or her dope very well, but she wasn’t this much of a lightweight, and Jimmy sure wasn’t. There was no reason in hell he should feel this woozy and queasy. No reason for Madison to be passed out this early in the evening.

He needed water. He dried off and knotted the towel around his waist as he made his way uncertainly through the sliding glass doors into the living room, a high-ceilinged expanse of white carpet and walls with a tall, gray-stoned fireplace on the east wall to his right. The room was barren of furniture except for the stack of stereo components in the corner near the entrance hall, and the dozens of boxes of old record albums and new CDs piled along the wall, and the towering Norman Lab speakers that flanked the patio doors inside.

He weaved over and punched the STOP button on the CD player, silencing Bob Mould in the guitar-thundering middle of Black Sheets of Rain.

The sudden quiet left a roaring in his ears. He leaned against the wall for a moment, hoping his equilibrium would readjust itself. He looked around the room, trying to get his mind off his growing dizziness and paranoia. He admired the beamed cathedral ceiling and the stone fireplace – imagined what it would be like with a fire in there when autumn rolled around – thought about how this was far and away the best place he’d ever been able to afford as an independent adult. He was 27 now. He felt like he was running late. Still not close to the luxury he’d experienced in his formative years, before his father had spent a fortune in an unsuccessful fight against a federal gambling indictment and gone away to die of a heart attack in prison.

Memories of low-rent apartments, juvenile halfway houses and his mother’s dead-end alcoholism came rushing back at him now like some kind of careening ride through a house of nightmares.

With herculean effort, Jimmy shook himself out of his paralyzing reverie and turned toward the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a ten-foot mahogany bar. He caught himself at the corner of the bar, fell to his knees painfully on the Berber carpet.

The place was spinning; he swallowed hard the urge to puke. He thought again of the two bottles of wine left on his doorstep. He was certain now who’d left the basket. When he’d first seen it, he’d thought it was a gesture of forgiveness and well-wishing. Now, he knew different. It wasn’t the dope he and Madison had been smoking. He’d grown that shit himself along a lonely stretch of the Cimarron River. He always smoked his own dope.

It had to be the wine. It was doctored.

Now he was scared. The last time he’d felt so out of control of himself was years ago, when he was a stupid kid and someone offered him a little pink tab and a lot of tequila, and he’d taken a hurling, 24-hour dive into psychotic hell, and a hangover that lasted two days more.

He’d never been dumb enough to ingest unknown chemicals again – until now. For all he knew, he could be dying right about now…

Jimmy struggled to his feet, feeling like a weakling, his muscles like mush, and made it to the sink, where he managed to grasp the cold water knob and turn on a nice face bath.

When he shut off the water he heard a low, hollow, thumping sound from out on the deck. He heard it once, then again: a louder, wetter sound this time, like a melon bursting against a hard surface.

He looked toward the patio doors but saw only darkness beyond the glass. Panic welled up in his gut, but his muddled brain was slow in coming up with a plan of reaction. Something was really wrong outside and he felt a chilling rush of impending disaster.

He knew that he had fucked up badly. His loaded .45 automatic was upstairs, under his pillow, and he was too trashed to climb the stairs and get to it in time.

He shook his head rapidly from side to side, flinging water from his face and hair, trying to get a grip.

Jimmy then remembered the .22 revolver he’d stashed in the back of the silverware drawer earlier that day, when he’d been unpacking what little kitchen stuff he had to his name. He stumbled to his left and yanked the drawer open, pushed his hand far into the back and grasped the skinny little weapon. In his haste to withdraw the pistol he pulled the whole drawer out of the cabinet and the contents cascaded to the floor in a silvery clatter. A falling steak knife gouged his bare right foot, but he hardly felt the pain of it at all.

Who’s out there? he yelled, his voice echoing off the high ceiling. Madison?

He shakily thumbed back the revolver’s hammer, almost dropping the weapon in the process, holding the towel around his waist with the other hand as he staggered toward the glass doors.

Then it dawned on him that he would have to free one of his hands in order to slide the door aside, and he laughed out loud in spite of himself when he realized that, in the midst of this dire predicament, modesty was still at work – he was hesitant to let go of the towel.

But what difference did it make if he exposed himself to whoever was out there? They weren’t out there to cop a gander at his dick anyway.

And he was pretty sure about who was out there.

Might as well go out of this world the same way I came into it, he muttered as he dropped the towel and rolled the door aside, in my ever-lovin’ birthday suit.

He stepped out onto the deck, holding the revolver ready but feeling resigned to what was coming. He was sure the drug that had been in the wine – whatever it was – was enabling him to accept this situation so calmly. As his eyes readjusted to the dim silver moonlight, he saw Madison, still curled up under the towel on the deck. The difference now was that her head was a misshapen lump of dark, gleaming ooze, surrounded by a thick, spreading pool of blood, the slimy tendrils of her hair, and the glittering shards of the wine bottle that had been used to bludgeon her.

Oh, Jesus – Jimmy wretched, dizziness and horror engulfing him, and something heavy clipped his right forearm, knocking the gun out of his hand.

A booted foot kicked his legs out from under him and he fell headlong into the hot tub, swallowing hot chlorinated water as he went under, smashing his nose on the marble bottom. Miraculously, Jimmy hung onto consciousness, the pain reawakening his survival instinct, and he thrashed to a kneeling position, coming out of the water coughing and gagging, finally managing to suck in a greedy chest-full of air. He rubbed his stinging eyes with the heels of his hands, gasping and cursing, and looked up and recognized who was silhouetted against the light behind the patio doors.

And he knew for sure now that it was all over.

Just when life had begun to turn sweet for him at long fucking last… He should’ve known someone would come along and snatch it away again. And he should’ve known it would be these assholes…

He looked over again at what was left of Madison, felt a flood of remorse, revulsion, then fury.

You didn’t have to do that, he sobbed hoarsely. "She never hurt anybody. She just picked the wrong loser to hang out with. That’s all she did. She didn’t know anything about – anything! Or anybody."

He turned his bitter gaze back, saw the working end of a long silencer pointed at him. This is a little drastic, don’cha think? Considering the offense…

Nobody bones me, Jimmy, said the voice behind the gun. "Least of all you. Or should I say most of all…"

Jimmy North lunged to his feet, splashing and bellowing rage: You’ll suck my dick in hell, you fucking –

The loud pop of the silenced nine-millimeter automatic cut off his curse.

And blew out the back of his head.

CHAPTER ONE

Friday, May 5

When Jerome dropped him off at the corner, Jackson Ray Jack Ritter flicked his cigarette into the flowing gutter, took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and started walking west on Sheridan.

It was a nice spring evening for a stroll, even in downtown Oklahoma City, where walks at dusk used to be risky at best, until the citizens had voted for a new sales tax to slick things up a bit. Now there was a brand new baseball park just three blocks behind him in Bricktown, said to be one of the very best in the minor leagues. There were new upscale restaurants and night spots as well, in the former deserted factory district, reborn as an entertainment destination.

To Ritter’s left, directly across the street, tiers of scaffolding were the visible evidence of major renovations underway on the Myriad Convention Center, the town’s largest event center, where most of the major touring rock and country concerts were held.

Things had changed a bit since Ritter had left.

The brief thunderstorm just ended had cleansed the air of exhaust fumes, left the heady scent of fresh rain, made the pavement on Sheridan shine in rippled colors from the late sunset, the car head beams, neon signs and tall vapor streetlights.

He checked out the cars parallel-parked at the curb as he strode along, at the same time watching the people he passed on the sidewalk. He moved at a casual pace, hands in his pockets. Nobody paid much attention to him: tall, clean-cut, blond-haired white guy in a light-brown silk sport coat, white button-down shirt, no tie, faded Levis and green-on-white Reebok track shoes. He looked yuppie, law-abiding, harmless, and a decade younger than his actual thirty-four years – the way he wanted to look at the moment.

He had a flat strip of flexible alloy up his right sleeve, 20 inches long, three-quarters of an inch wide, half a millimeter thick, notched on one end – a tool commonly known among car thieves and cops as a slimjim.

Thunderheads billowed high above the tall buildings as he moved west, the formation colored deep purple and limned with gold by the sun that had already slipped below the horizon. It was about 8:30 on a Friday night, and there was an unusually large number of cars parked along the downtown street, for this time of the evening – unless, of course, there was a bigtime rock or country concert going on in the Myriad.

Or, a regional church conference, complete with Christian-rock concert, which was in progress in the Myriad right now.

Ritter glanced across the street at the sprawling concrete and glass structure that stretched for a block along the south side of Sheridan, saw late-arriving people hurrying across the wide street toward the Myriad entrances. Tonight’s flashy holy business was already underway in there; muffled sounds of pipe organs and choir pushing against the high rafters of the arena.

The Myriad’s underground garage was already full, the entrance guarded by striped sawhorses and rent-a-cops. But nobody was tending the overflow parking on the street, except for the occasional passing prowl car. Ritter had read in the papers that a portion of the proceeds from the event were going to the families of the dead and also the injured survivors of the Murrah Building bombing, which had taken place just over two weeks ago, turning the city, the state and the nation on its ear. The worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the history of the country – an estimated 168 dead, including 19 children. He counted himself lucky that none of his relatives or friends were on the list of dead. His loss had occurred four days prior to the bombing, completely unrelated.

He came up alongside the automobile he wanted, the one he’d spotted a few minutes ago when Jerome had driven him by here, scouting for jewels. This jewel – a black 1986 Buick Grand National.

He stopped and fished around in his jacket pockets, like a man digging for keys or cigarettes, came up with cigarettes and lighter, fired one up while his darting eyes checked both sides of the street and both ends of the block. He put Marlboros and Zippo away, stepped down off the curb and walked around to the driver’s door of the Buick, took a drag on the smoke with his left hand while dropping his right arm down his side, letting the slimjim slip out of his sleeve and into his grip, hanging down along his leg. He took another look around and slid the slim down between the metal and the glass of the door, moved it back and forth like a pendulum until it caught where he wanted it to catch. He pulled up slightly, felt and heard the satisfying click, pulled the tool up and out, reached down with his other hand, grasped the handle and opened the door.

He accomplished all of this in less time than it took most people to unlock a car door the regular way, with a key.

Tossing the slimjim into the passenger seat, he got in and chunked the door shut, closing out the sounds and smells of the street. Now he was in the hushed confines of someone else’s private, mobile domain. Another person’s ride.

An old feeling charged his senses. Stealing a car was like slipping into someone else’s clothing, being enveloped in the scent, the body-mold, the very essence of another human being; finding articles in the pockets that provided clues about the owner. It was a mental and sensory exercise he had always enjoyed when boosting automobiles – a means of income he’d given up several years ago, when he’d left Oklahoma City to establish a straight life elsewhere.

It was nice in here, smelled like leather and a young woman’s expensive perfume. There was also the fainter smell of fancy after-shave, but a musky female scent was most prevalent.

Ritter decided, as he slammed his fist down on the plastic casing of the steering column, breaking it apart with a loud snap, that the Buick belonged to a young Republican couple who believed in God, favored American muscle cars, and occasionally – and just recently, in fact – enjoyed having sex in their automobile.

He pulled a short flathead screwdriver from his side pocket, used it to pop the chrome façade off the ignition lock, then pressed the tip of the screwdriver against the exposed switch. The 3.8-litre SFI turbo roared to life and hummed like a chorus of contented bears under the gleaming, droplet-covered black hood.

Ritter smiled to himself around the cigarette that dangled from his lips, pushed the button that made the driver’s window go down, looked over his shoulder for a break in the traffic, pulled the console lever into DRIVE and snaked the Buick out from the curb.

Yeah, a young, conservative married couple with strong Christian beliefs. No psychic feat figuring that one, with the fish-outline decal and the little red-white-and-blue flag sticker displayed side-by-side in the lower center of the rear window, and the gawdawful Christian rap music that started thumping bass-heavy through the surround speakers when Ritter switched on the high-powered stereo that was crammed into the dash. He found Christian rock music offensive enough – like when Ronald Reagan once quoted from a Bruce Springsteen song, as if the old squareheaded Gipper really had a clue what the Boss was really singing about the good old U.S.A. But Jesus gangster rap? Talk about your contradiction in terms.

He walk on the water

Give sight to the blind

Make a cripple man walk

With his powers devine

Yo, all the little homies know Jesus is the way

All the little homies know Je-Je-Jesus –

He hit the eject button as he angled into the left-turn lane at the Robinson intersection and stopped for the light. He tossed the cassette into the handy trash barrel on the median, no longer feeling bad about stealing a young couple’s flashy ride.

When the green arrow flashed he turned south on Robinson, stabbing his cigarette out in the ashtray, watching the rearview mirrors and side streets until he was climbing the curving ramp up onto the eastbound Interstate 40 overpass. He began to open it up then, racing away from the wild purple-and-orange sunset and the sparse cluster of skyscrapers silhouetted against it.

It had seemed so easy, but Ritter never allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of confidence. He held the brawny Buick at a safe 60 all the way out past Del City, Midwest City and Tinker Air Force Base – all the metro satellites that surrounded Oklahoma City on its southeast edges – and when he was beyond the gravitational pull of OKC and its adjuncts – out in open country, rolling green pastureland turning blue-black in the gathering night, he turned on the radio. Big surprise, it was tuned to a conservative call-in talk station, and he heard some half-wit (or half-drunk) air conditioner repairman defending all the conspiracy idiots’ paranoid idea that the government had had prior knowledge of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown OKC, and didn’t do anything to prevent it.

Ritter cranked the dial over to 100.5 FM, zipped up the volume in time to hear Robert Plant’s wailing cover of Your Ma Said You Cried in Your Sleep Last Night. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, nodded his head in time to the raunchy shuffle. He found, to his surprise, that he was pumped. The apprehension he’d felt earlier, riding around with Jerome, had melted away.

It had been a long time since he’d committed grand theft auto. He was walking the wrong side of the line again and liking it more than he wanted to.

It had also been years since he’d left Oklahoma behind, along with its mixed bag of memories.

He reminded himself of his reason for returning, plus his immediate destination, which was cause for utmost caution and concern.

He had an appointment – set up by Jerome, shifty kind of a goof he’d met only a few hours ago at the airport – to deal with some dangerous people. This stolen car was a required part of Ritter’s introduction to these folks.

And from what he’d been told, if he didn’t make just the right first impression on this bunch, they might just kill him.

Nice homecoming, he thought. Haven’t even had time to stop by the cemetery and pay respects to his mom, with Mother’s Day only a couple of days away.

He drove deeper into the night, as it grew darker.

CHAPTER TWO

Following Jerome’s directions, Ritter took a rural-road exit off the interstate and ended up in the dark