Sallow City

by Jim Heskett

  Plenty of people who’d stepped off the plane from Fresno had talked about suing the airline. Micah had no interest in joining that insanity. He wanted to put those thoughts behind him, nightmares or no.

  Besides, he couldn’t have two near-crashes in the same week, could he? That didn’t seem possible.

  He stepped up to the front of the TSA line and handed his license and boarding pass to an inattentive woman standing behind the podium. She flashed a miniature blacklight over the license and flickered her eyes at him. The license wouldn’t raise any flags since the federal government had issued it to a man named Michael McBriar, who then immediately became Micah Reed. It was as genuine as anyone else’s in the TSA line.

  “Any liquids over three ounces?” she said.

  Micah shook his head.

  She eyed him, gave a dramatic pause, and then scribbled a circle around the destination on his boarding pass.

  Flint, Michigan. Then, the morgue, where a dead body waited for him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Olivia parked the car a half a block down the street from the Pink Door strip club and killed the engine.

  Jeremy pointed to the gun range across the street. “Shooting over here, boobs over there. Classy neighborhood.”

  “We’re not here to take in the local culture.”

  “Denver acts like it’s such a whitewashed and hip place, but it has crime and ghettos just like every other big city in the world. I hate this town.”

  “I suppose it’s not New York or Paris, but I don’t mind it. What’s gotten into you?”

  He leaned back against the headrest. “We still haven’t had that conversation you promised me.”

  “Soon, Jeremy. Can we please stay focused for right now?”

  He popped the glove box and retrieved his pistol, then took out a noise suppressor from his jacket pocket. “Yeah, I suppose I’m good with that. We going in strapped?”

  “You better believe it,” she said.

  They left the car and approached the strip club. Her shoes splashed in tiny puddles from a spring rain. A neon sign over the club’s door blasted her eyeballs, and cast a wide aura of tawdriness. The door to the strip club was literally pink.

  A muted whump whump of bass reverberated through the walls of the building and out into the street. Inside the club, they paid the admission price and stepped into the blacklight-tinged glow of the main room. Dancers on poles, sexy waitresses hustling drinks, lonely men thrusting dollar bills at g-strings. Teeth glowing white from the light.

  Olivia hadn’t been to one of these places since college, for a friend’s bachelor party. Not her kind of scene, with the dancers throwing themselves at her, as if somehow they were as into her as they pretended to be with the men. She knew even then it was just a marketing strategy. If the dancers appeared to be bisexual, they doubled their potential customer base. Simple math.

  Olivia snapped her fingers in front of Jeremy’s face since he’d become eye-locked with a stripper across the room who couldn’t have been much over eighteen years old. He gave Olivia a sheepish grin.

  If she slept with him tonight, he’d be thinking of that baby-faced stripper, and Olivia didn’t like that. Didn’t like competing for attention.

  She flashed her eyes to a table at the back of the room, lights hanging low to obscure the faces of the men seated around it. Two bouncers stood nearby the table, further obscuring the occupants.

  Definitely, where they needed to be.

  She unbuttoned the top button of her shirt, allowing a hint of cleavage to poke through. Then she strutted toward that table as if she had every right to be there. She threw her sex out in front of her like a lasso, because she knew from experience that even trained soldiers would overlook the most lethal woman when they had a pair of tits shoved in their faces.

  Jeremy tottered behind like a puppy. That was just as well, because if he appeared to be subordinate, he wouldn’t seem threatening.

  As she approached the table, the two bouncers slinked closer together, blocking her view. Tits or no, they weren’t going to let her stride up to that table. They guarded him like a government asset, when Olivia already knew this man was far from legit.

  And she’d already seen him; the chubby man at the table with the banana-shaped scar underneath one eye. She heard him bark something, and the bouncers parted. Grin on his face a mile wide, and that lustful look in his eyes. He waved her forward.

  “Hi,” he said, nearly shouting over the music. “I’m Tyson. Welcome to my club.”

  She sat at the table and tried to take stock of the two men on either side of Tyson. They were wearing sports coats, and she couldn’t see a gun bulge from shoulder holsters on either, but she had to assume they were packing. Because of the vents in the back of their blazers, they wouldn’t have pistols in their waistbands. Too awkward to draw quickly. No, had to be wearing armpit holsters. She would need to watch for any cross-body movements.

  “I know who you are, Mr. Darby. I’m a big fan of your business.”

  He tilted his head and picked at a plate of french fries on the table. He had equal piles of ketchup and mayonnaise for dipping. “Are you? You like the adult entertainment industry? Or is it my lawnmower repair shop you’re referring to?”

  “Neither.”

  His smile faltered a bit, and then he flicked his head at Jeremy. “That guy with you?”

  Jeremy was still outside of the bouncer wall beyond the table. “Yes,” she said. “He’s just here to make sure I don’t get into any trouble, which I sometimes do in these places.” She could tell from his expression that he liked this kind of innuendo, and she filed that away in case she needed to use it later. Men are such simple creatures. Sex, violence, approval. Some combination of the three would earn their heart every time.

  “What kind of trouble would you get into?”

  She shrugged. “The night is young, so we’ll see. In the meantime, we can talk business.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  She shook her head. “Like I said, just a fan.”

  “Well, then,” Tyson said. “What can I do for you? Are you interested in applying for a job?” His eyes drifted to her cleavage. “You appear to be qualified, and I am in fact looking for a new girl right now.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’m not here on a job search. I want to talk to you about Micah Reed.”

  His expression dimmed as she could see him process the information. A spark of recognition lit up his eyes, and then his face darkened further. He was bordering on a scowl. “I might know who that is.”

  “What’s your relationship with him?”

  “Why should I tell you that?”

  “Because I work for some people who are interested in knowing more about him. That’s all.”

  Tyson sat back and tugged at the wiry goatee sprouting from his chin. She scooted her chair closer to the table and slipped a hand into her purse, without breaking eye contact. Tyson and the men on either side of him hadn’t seemed to have noticed.

  “Micah Reed visited my establishment not too long ago,” Tyson said. “He walked around, stared at the girls, and didn’t order anything to drink. Didn’t spend a dime. I don’t trust people who don’t drink, so I asked him to leave. That’s all I’m willing to say about it.”

  Olivia was taken aback and had to close her eyes for a second to compose herself. “He doesn’t work for you?”

  “No, he does not.”

  Could Tyson be lying about this? She didn’t like having bad information.

  While she was considering this new angle, Tyson’s eyes snapped to the bouncers beyond the table, and Olivia slipped the gun from her purse.

  “I’m not sure I’m interested in talking to you more about anything,” Tyson said. “It’s time for you to tell me who you work for. New York? Chicago? If someone important in Denver employed you, I would have known about you. I know everyone in this town.”

  Olivia narrowed her eyes. “My empl
oyers are my business, so we’re not going to discuss that.”

  Tyson leaned a little closer and popped a french fry in his mouth. “What you want to tell me and what you will tell me are very different things. Maybe you think you can just get up and walk away, but now you’ve piqued my interest. Flashing your tits and batting your eyes. You assume I’m some horny teenager? I am not someone you want to underestimate.”

  She wrapped her finger around the trigger. “Mr. Darby, I’ve got a 9mm with a noise suppressor pointed right at your crotch. With this loud music, I can squeeze off half a dozen shots before anyone even notices.”

  The guards on either side of Tyson slipped hands into their jacket pockets. She’d been right. Armpit holsters.

  “Is that right?” Tyson said, grinning. “My men here will notice. Between you and any door to the outside, you’ll find ten men with semi-automatic weapons ready to cut you into pieces. You can try batting your eyes at them, but they’ll kill you anyway.”

  Olivia couldn’t see Jeremy, but she had to hope he’d been following the conversation well enough to have drawn his weapon. If not, she probably wouldn’t make it out of this club alive. “That may be true, but I’ll shoot both of your balls off before they can do anything to stop me.”

  Tyson paused, then clapped his hands together and laughed. Wiped a smear of mayonnaise off his lip.

  She hesitated. Didn’t know what to make of this guy.

  “Okay, little lady, there’s no need for that. You don’t have to tell me who you work for. I have a pretty good idea already. But tell me one thing: why are you so interested in Micah Reed?”

  Some of the tension rolled out of her shoulders as she released her grip on the trigger. Pursed her lips. She considered how to phrase her answer to Tyson’s question.

  “Because,” she said, “there are some open loops that need to be closed.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Micah stepped off the jetway and lumbered into the Bishop Airport in Flint. Felt the difference in humidity immediately as he drew in his first breath of local air. He had to push and pull just a fraction harder to work his lungs.

  As he entered the building, he glanced back at the airplane, hooked to the jetway. A giant steel torpedo that soared through the air, hundreds of miles per hour. No major turbulence, although his heart had been racing the whole time, waiting for it. No sudden bolts of lightning. No oxygen masks descending from above. No screaming passengers preparing for death with prayers or curses.

  But halfway through the flight, his jaw ached from the constant tension. His jeans wore dark patches of sweat from where his hands had been gripping his thighs. The lady sitting next to him kept tossing looks, frowning at him.

  But that was over now. He was in Flint, on the ground, alive.

  The whole of the airport possessed half a dozen gates. The interior was steeped in gray tones as if someone had put a filter on everything. As he wandered toward the baggage claim, hunting for the car rental desks, Frank appeared from behind a sunglasses kiosk next to the business center. Arms crossed, a scowl on his face.

  Micah waved. “Hey, Frank. How did you know?”

  “I was a cop, or did you forget? I could hear it in your voice that you were going to do the most stupid thing possible and hop on a plane out here.”

  Micah hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder. He wasn’t too surprised since Frank knew him better than most people. He could have even predicted the angle of the scowl on Frank’s face.

  He wondered if Frank could see the patches of palm sweat on his jeans. Could detect the lingering hangover of tension on his face. “I’m here now. I want to help.”

  Frank chewed his lip but did not respond.

  Micah watched people walking to and from gates. He never knew how to judge a city by the content of its airport people. They could be from anywhere.

  “Yes, you’re here now,” Frank said. “So, let’s get out of this public space before anything strange happens.”

  They walked along the path of the terminal, toward the exit. “This is your town, right? You lived here.”

  “A little closer to Detroit, actually, but I know the Flint area. Spent some of my best cop years here and in some of these nearby towns.” Frank held up a flat hand and pointed on his palm, below his thumb. “We’re here, on the hand. Do you know about the hand? Some people call it the mitten.”

  Mitten?

  Micah thought about it for a second, and then the answer seemed obvious. “Mitten. Because of how Michigan is shaped?”

  “You got it.”

  “That’s clever. I can’t wait to learn all about the state lore from a local. We’ll take selfies together at all the sights.”

  Frank scowled. “This isn’t funny, kid. If you’re going to stay here, you’ll need to shave your head and grow a mustache or something.”

  “Shaving the head I can do, but the mustache… not so much. That’s my one-sixteenth Cherokee blood curse. We don’t facial hair so good. But I suppose that’s what I get for being born in Oklahoma, of all the dumb luck. I don’t remember anyone giving me a choice in the matter.”

  Frank didn’t seem to be in the mood for witty banter. He waved Micah toward the airport exit, and Micah followed, navigating through the crowd of commuters with their pressed suits and roller bags. When they stepped outside, the humidity kicked it up a notch. Like walking through a damp curtain.

  “Then we’re going to get you some fake prescription glasses,” Frank said as he pointed to a rental car parked in short term parking.

  As they slid into the car, Frank said, “happy birthday, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Was it a good one, your trip?”

  “Yeah. I spent my actual birthday in the Tuolumne area of Yosemite, hiking around some lakes there. Hardly saw any people on that side of the park. It was wonderful.”

  “Bears?”

  Micah shrugged. “Saw a few. None that came close or bothered me.”

  Frank put his hand on the key in the ignition. “That’s good. I’m always worried about bears whenever I leave the city.

  “But that’s what makes it fun.”

  Frank sighed and shook his head. “You shouldn’t have come, kid.”

  Part II

  IF YOU SEEK

  A PLEASANT

  PENINSULA

  CHAPTER TEN

  Micah stood in front of the mirror in the motel room bathroom, barely able to recognize himself. A few tiny patches of stubble that he’d missed with the razor were all that remained of his hair. The black-rimmed fake prescription glasses he was wearing veiled his eyes, but even those didn’t look the same. Blue contact lenses masked his normally brown eyes.

  He wasn’t the same person. Not Micah Reed. Not Michael McBriar, who he used to be before all this mess with the cartel and the trial. He was someone new, someone nameless.

  He stared at the head of Boba Fett, sitting on the soap tray underneath the mirror. Boba didn’t recognize him anymore. But the little space bounty hunter would forgive him, as always. Boba was like that.

  “Is your sister still here?” Micah called out.

  “What?”

  “Anita. Is she still in town?”

  In the main part of the motel room, Frank switched on the TV. “She went back to DC this morning. She can maybe come back later in the week, but she has meetings she can’t miss. Wheeling and dealing and all that.”

  Micah left the bathroom and joined his boss/AA sponsor. They had opposing double beds in their cheap motel room, covered with floral print bedspreads. “Big trees here.”

  “Trees where?”

  “The trees here, in Michigan. They’re massive, like big green knives trying to stab the sky.”

  “You noticed those trees right away, did you?"

  “I sure did. It’s what makes me a great skip tracer. My attention to detail.”

  Micah ran a hand over the hairless surface of his head. The hand traced a cool line against hi
s skin. The shape felt weird, not quite round, as he would have expected.

  Frank hit mute on the TV remote. “Something on your mind?”

  “I met a woman on the plane. Not my flight here, but the flight from Fresno to Denver. Flat-out gorgeous, as in, way out of my league. Red hair, green eyes, named Olivia. A year or so ago, I wouldn’t have even been able to say three coherent words to her. But I had some kind of moment of clarity and managed to snag her phone number.”

  “You going to call her?”

  Micah thought about it. “It’ll have to wait. I don’t know if I want to tell her I’m in Michigan, looking into a dead body that has my face. Might be a little too personal up front. We were on the plane together. I mean, when all that trouble happened.”

  “You’ve barely said a word about it. Maybe it’s time we had a talk about your experience in being in that situation. You know, how you’re doing with it now.”

  Micah sat on the bed opposite Frank’s, not liking how far down he sank when he put his full weight on it. Too soft beds equaled a bad night’s sleep. “It was wild. Terrifying, exhilarating, draining. I don’t know how else to describe it. I guess I didn’t think we were going to die, but I wasn’t as scared as I maybe should have been.”

  “Did it make you want to drink?”

  “That’s the thing, Frank. I didn’t experience any cravings at all. I don’t think taking a drink popped into my head once during that insanity.”

  Frank scratched fingernails through his gray hair. “You’ve been sober seven months now, right?”

  Micah didn’t have to do the math. His sobriety date was etched into his brain, along with the daily count since his last drink. Two hundred and seven days since he’d woken from a blackout near downtown Denver, the last time he’d swallowed any alcohol. “Yes, give or take.”

  “Living a sober life means a lot more than not drinking. It bleeds into everything you do, just like the drinking bleeds over into everything. You can’t… ahh, what’s the word? Segment. You can’t segment your life into buckets. It’s all one big stew, basically.”