“I hope so.” The man’s voice was slightly too high, almost feminine, and it sure as shit didn’t match his alpha-dog bearing or the way he filled out that suit. “We’re trying to find the man who belongs to that truck.” He spoke properly, but there was a street cadence beneath the words that Duran knew all too well. It was like the guy had listened to a bunch of rich people on TV and was doing his best to imitate them.
Dude gave a nod to a Bronco at the end of the nearest row. Crumpled grille, bashed front panel, wires snarled out from the shattered mouth of the headlight.
Duran hoisted his eyebrows. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the black-and-white dots dancing on the security monitors. “You don’t look like no Marshals Service.”
“I know,” the woman said sympathetically. “That’s the point.”
She had a full face of makeup and was attractive at first glance, but Duran got the sense that she looked like a different human when that mask was wiped off.
“Jake Hargreave is his name,” Mr. Slick said. “The man who belongs to that Bronco. There was a shoot-out on the 110, and he crashed and abandoned the vehicle. You can see why it’s a necessity for us to talk with him.”
The man produced a badge and held it out for Duran to see, but Duran didn’t know what he should be looking at, so he just tugged at his chin and frowned as if this answered everything.
The woman unbuckled her briefcase and removed an envelope. “We pay our confidential informants,” she said. “For tips.”
She counted ten hundreds from the envelope onto the counter, fanning them like a casino cashier’s cards. Duran could feel his eyes bulging. A grand meant he’d be out from under those loans. Free and clear. That he could find his way back to his house. And then to his daughter.
The woman gathered up the bills, tapped them once on the counter to align them, and slid them into the envelope again. Neat little magic trick, making all that cash disappear.
The man ran his thumb and forefinger around his mouth, smoothing down the glistening chestnut facial hair. “Owners require an appointment to claim their vehicle, is that correct?”
Duran said, “Don’t know if they require it, but pretty much everyone calls first to make sure their car’s here, yeah.”
“When the man sets up his appointment to claim the car, we’d appreciate a heads-up,” the woman said. She raised the envelope, gave it a shake for emphasis, and put it back in her satchel briefcase. “We can take it from there.”
“Why don’t you just pull the files?” Duran said. “If you’re Marshals Service. Track him down your own selves?”
“We have,” the man said, that thin, reedy voice unexpected each time out. “He’s gone to ground. But he needs his truck.” He was smiling again, like he was the most pleasant guy in the world. “And we need him.”
Duran realized he was sweating. Like his body knew something his mind couldn’t grasp.
The man cocked his head. Not meeting Duran’s gaze, but focusing lower, the just-missed eye contact unsettling. “You broke your jaw,” he told Duran. “When you were a child.”
Duran’s hand rose reflexively, touching the spot where a punch had cracked the bone. It was just a hairline, treated with a bag of frozen peas and a paper cup to drool into, and it had left no visible imperfection. At least that’s what Duran had always thought.
“A closed fracture,” the man continued, his eyes lasering in. “Up by the temporomandibular joint. Must’ve hurt something awful.”
Duran didn’t like the look in the guy’s eyes. Like he was hungry.
Duran forced a swallow, his throat suddenly dry.
The man finally broke off his gaze, jotted down a phone number on a blank slip of paper, and handed it to Duran. “Carrot or stick,” he told Duran with that amicable smile. “You get to choose.”
They turned and walked out of the yard.
As soon as they cleared the outer fence, the security feeds blinked back online. Either those deputy marshals had some mage-level government tech skills or it was a helluva coincidence.
Duran looked at the monitors, showing nothing now but the empty lot and the midnight mist creeping in. It thickened up until the city lights winked off, until the cars barely peeked out like boulders on some desolate mountaintop. He chewed his lip and thought about the bizarre woman and the guy staring at his jaw with that odd expression. He thought about what the U.S. Marshals Service could do to him if he didn’t cooperate. He thought about that thousand dollars.
They needed his help. No—they’d demanded it.
Okay, he thought.
Why not? he thought.
What’s the worst that could happen?
3
Whittled Down to Uselessness
A week later Evan is awakened by a foot in his chest. It is nothing personal. As the smallest kid, he sleeps on the mattress between the bunk beds, and this is what happens. His eyes open to a slow-motion stampede. Andre, back from another fruitless parent search, is the only one who bothers to whisper an apology.
The others are rushing quietly to the doorway, peering around the jamb with a sort of thrilled terror. The frame itself is crosshatched with countless height markers that Papa Z notched with his pocketknife this summer, another endeavor whittled down to uselessness given the turnover rates of the boys. Evan crawls over; the only space left at the doorjamb is floor-level.
From his snail’s-eye view down the long hall, he catches a partial angle of Papa Z embedded in his venerable armchair, one meaty fist clamped around a Coors tallboy. His face and neck are splotchy red; it is not the first beer of the evening.
A hushed voice emanates from the space across from him, over by the shit-brown corduroy couch with the missing cushion. “—can only take one right now. Sure it’s a way out. But he needs to show an ability to perform.”
“Charles has that,” Papa Z confirms. He draws again from the sweating can, his tree-trunk throat glugging up and down.
Van Sciver has gone stiff in the doorway. Evan can sense him above, as tense as a dog pointing to prey.
Jamal whispers, “Is that…?”
“The Mystery Man,” Ramón confirms before Van Sciver hushes them viciously.
“Charles seems the most likely,” the hushed voice says. “Or the other one. Andre.”
Andre pulls his head back slightly.
Down the hall Papa Z wipes his lips. “What about Evan?”
They strain to make out the Mystery Man’s voice. “The little one?”
“Yup.”
“Too small.”
“But willful,” Papa Z says. “So willful.”
“Nah,” Mystery Man says. “The little one’s no good.”
Muted sneers rain down on Evan. Then cease instantly as the weary floorboards of the living room creak.
Mystery Man steps into view, a facial profile over bony shoulders. Two slender fingers clamp a business card, extended to Papa Z. That gold watch glints. The Ray-Bans are on, even inside, even at night.
“Have Charles Van Sciver call,” he says.
The boys creep back to bed, buzzed on adrenaline. Whispered theories and dirty jokes fly back and forth.
“I’m gonna do it,” Van Sciver says. “Whatever the fuck it is, I’m gonna do it.”
“How ’bout Andre?” Ramón asks. “Mystery Man got his eye on him, too.”
“Oh, no, sir,” Van Sciver says. “Andre’s gonna move in with his mom and pop. Just as soon as he finds ’em. Ain’t that right, Andre?”
“What do you say, Dr. Dre?” Tyrell says. “You find your daddy this time?”
Assorted guffaws.
Andre doesn’t bother to look up from his spiral notebook, the one he draws in constantly, sketches of superheroes and soldiers and curvy girls. He hates being called Dr. Dre, almost as much as he hates being called Dre-Dre or his middle name, some crazy-ass biblical word written on his birth certificate that even he doesn’t know how to pronounce. The home is a perpetual testing ground, every insecurity
exposed, every vulnerability jabbed until it broke you or you broke it.
“Least my sister ain’t no whore,” Andre says.
Tyrell’s eyes widen, white against his shiny dark skin. “Least I know who my family is, bitch.”
Ramón laughs, claps his hands quietly, his skinny arms so thin they look like they might snap from the impact. “Always good to know ’zactly who don’t want you.”
“You wait and see, fools,” Andre says, his hand never slowing, the pencil scratching calmingly against paper. “Mystery Man’s gonna choose me, ’cuz he got some taste. Then I’ll drive a big-ass Cadillac and move to Cali. They got palm trees and shit and blond girls with juicy booties who Rollerblade in bikinis all day long.”
Evan thinks about Cali and palm trees and Rollerblading blondes, Andre’s fantasy weaving into his until it’s one big tapestry way up out of reach.
He waits silently until the voices quiet, until the sounds of breathing turn uniform, until the room is still.
Then he creeps out of bed and down the hall toward the blaring TV. Papa Z is snoring operatically, his last Coors nestled in his crotch. Evan peers at the business card balanced on the arm of the chair next to the remote. At first he does not understand.
The card is solid black.
But then a commercial interrupts the Doogie Howser rerun and the changing glow casts the card in a different light. Visible only now, matte black against glossy black, are ten digits. A hidden phone number.
Leaning for a better angle, hands on his knees, Evan commits it to memory.
He swivels back toward the hall, his face nearly colliding with Van Sciver’s chest.
The bigger boy stands perfectly still, arms crossed, blue bandanna perfectly in place. “Don’t even think about it,” he says. His lips move, but his teeth stay clenched, and a snakelike vein swells in the side of his neck.
Papa Z stirs. “Boys? What’s the problem?”
Van Sciver offers a wide grin. “No problem at all, sir.”
* * *
“Who is this?”
“Not Charles Van Sciver.”
“I figured that. What do you want?”
“What do you want?”
“Where’d you get this number?”
“On the card you left.”
“I told him not to give it to anyone else.”
“He didn’t. I sneaked a look.”
Silence. Then, “The park around the block with the outdoor handball courts. Last one on the south side. Behind the wall. Tomorrow at noon.”
Click.
* * *
Evan rounds the handball wall, the weight of the shade falling across him. The Mystery Man is over at the fence, smoking, those slender fingers tangled in the chain-link. He looks up, and his face flickers with disdain. “You?”
He strolls over. Suddenly Evan is acutely aware of how isolated they are here behind the last court on the south side. They face a glass-strewn alley and a burned building, the one that went down when Jalilah’s nana fell asleep smoking a blunt. The only sign of life is a black sedan parked at the edge of the asphalt plane, angled directly at them. The windows are tinted. All of them, even the windshield. Evan figures it might be the Mystery Man’s car, though no one has ever seen the guy drive.
Then again, no one has ever seen the Mystery Man this close. Sallow features, wispy hair, face unshaven enough that it seems a statement, not an oversight. He flicks his cigarette butt with a practiced air as he nears Evan.
Evan feels his heartbeat tick up a notch, his rib cage bump-bump-bumping against his worn-thin T-shirt. In the approaching Ray-Bans, he sees his twinning reflections, small and pathetic. He clears his throat to speak.
The Mystery Man backhands him.
Not with full force, but not holding back either. The blow snaps Evan’s head on the stalk of his neck, spins him down onto all fours, a cord of crimson-lined drool connecting his lower lip to the asphalt.
The voice comes from behind and over him. “Lesson one. Be ready. Now, get the fuck outta here.”
The static clears from Evan’s vision by degrees. He stands up, wipes his lip. “What’s lesson two?”
Mystery Man swallows, surprised. He glances over at the dark sedan, and for the first time Evan senses nervousness in his body language. And Evan realizes: The car doesn’t belong to the Mystery Man.
The Mystery Man hesitates, as if trying to read the dark windshield. Then he shakes his head with disgust. “All right. You want another shot? Tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
As Evan runs home, the shame burns out of him at last, hot tracks down his face. Van Sciver is waiting in the bedroom and no one else. Word has spread. He holds his belt, looped once, the ends clenched in his wide fist.
He says, “We never finished that conversation last night.”
4
Next-Level Deep Shit
Two weeks later Duran had almost forgotten about the pair of deputy marshals who’d breezed in at the midnight hour and asked him to keep tabs on the owner of that banged-up Bronco. Built dude with the squeaky voice and that woman done to a turn, all long red nails and fluffy hair—it was like he dreamed them up.
But the call jogged his memory.
Jake Hargreave phoning up to ask about his truck. He had a husky voice and a shifty temperament, and Duran could understand why he had the Marshals Service on his tail. And yes, he wanted to come now, at half past two in the morning, which seemed a sketchy time for a dude to want to reclaim his ride.
Duran reviewed the paperwork. “Okay,” he said. “But I don’t see how you’re gonna drive it outta here, condition it’s in.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that,” Hargreave said, and cut the line.
Duran unzipped his pouch—$128.95—and took out that phone number the deputy with the high-pitched voice had scrawled down. Staring at it, he chewed his bottom lip. Something felt wrong. But it felt just as wrong to not call.
For all Duran knew, Hargreave was a Ten Most Wanted fugitive, and contacting the authorities right now was the only way to stop him from shooting up a mall or Silence of the Lambs–ing some lady in a basement well.
Plus, the thousand dollars.
Which was pretty much all that was standing between him and his little girl, who was becoming less little every day his sorry ass couldn’t get his shit together.
He dialed.
A woman picked up. “U.S. Marshals Service.” In the background he could hear music playing, Rihanna asking some lucky fool to stand under her umbrella, ella, ella.
“Hi … uh. I was asked to call this number—”
Rihanna cut off abruptly. Then the woman said, “Yes, that was us.”
Now he recognized the voice: Ms. Red.
It occurred to him that neither of the deputies had given him their names. Looking down at the scrap of paper, he wondered why they hadn’t left an official business card.
But the conversation was already proceeding without him.
“Well?” she repeated impatiently.
“Sorry,” he said. “What?”
“I said, did the owner of the Bronco call?”
Duran thought about how the security feeds had gone to static when the deputies made their appearance and then magically restored themselves after they’d exited the yard.
“Mr. Duran,” she said firmly.
He felt himself sweating. He hadn’t given her his name. Ms. Red had clearly done some digging in the federal databases.
“Yeah,” he heard himself saying. “Yeah, he did.”
“He’s coming in to get it now?”
“That’s right.”
The line clicked off.
Perspiration cooled on the side of Duran’s face. He set the phone down on the counter and stared at it. The chill of the yard crept into the kiosk, fogging the window. The November wind kicked up, howling through the hull of a burned-out Mustang.
From its spot in the nearest row, the Bronco stared back at him.
; He recalled the male deputy’s words: He needs his truck. And we need him.
Why did Jake Hargreave need his truck?
Duran got out of the kiosk, stepping onto ground crusted with broken glass. The toe of his sneaker caught a smashed bottle cap, sent it skittering across the asphalt.
Approaching the truck, he shone his flashlight through the spiderwebbed windshield. A scattering of safety glass across the dashboard. A plastic parking permit hooked over the rearview mirror, along with a bouquet of Little Tree air fresheners. A dark smudge on the black webbing of the seat belt—dried blood?
The driver’s door was caved in, but the rear gave with a creak. Duran searched the backseat, the cargo area, the floorboards—nothing but a few more glass pebbles and a stray quarter. He crawled through to check the glove box. Totally empty.
Someone had been thorough.
Duran backed out and squatted, chewing his lip.
He felt out of alignment, a snow-globe storm of instincts and impressions flurrying inside him, refusing to settle. Every time he reached for a thought, it twirled away, lost to the squall.
Rising, he cracked his back and decided to patrol the property to clear his head. He passed a motorcycle with a pancaked front wheel that had undoubtedly cost a life or two. He passed a forty of King Cobra, a crumpled paper bag slumped around the bottle’s midsection like a skirt. He passed the hole in the chain-link that the possums were fond of sneaking through, pale vagabonds with marble eyes.
Behind him the motion-activated light in the kiosk clicked off, bathing the lot in semidarkness. He pulled the company Maglite from his pocket and clicked it on. Weaving through the dark outer edges of the labyrinth, he let the flashlight pick across all those vehicles. Cracked windshields fragmented the beam, sent it kaleidoscoping across the rows of battered cars. Atop the chain-link fence, security cams peered down at intervals, robots noting his progress. The whole scene felt eerie and otherworldly, an urban landscape from a dystopian future.
He wondered what kind of deputy marshal was up at 2:30 A.M. listening to Rihanna.
No business cards. The woman who’d answered the phone generically, still not giving up a name. The dude with the crazy voice and the crazier suit. Duran had seen plenty of deputy marshals, but never one who dressed like that.
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