Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

I pushed the papers back over the table. “I guess it’s back to work today.” I wasn’t even trying to mask the sadness in my voice.

  “If I don’t get some work done soon, Spider will have a heart attack.”

  “You got in trouble for playing hooky,” I teased.

  “Yeah, Spider was pretty upset. He thought something had had happened to us.” He smirked. “But I just blamed it on you, so we’re good.”

  “Thanks.”

  With no TV and nowhere to go, I wondered what I was going to do to occupy my time. It occurred to me that I would have to be alone, which suddenly made me hyperventilate.

  “How long are you going to be gone for this time?” My voice slightly cracked, but I was trying to keep calm and brave for Cameron’s sake.

  “A day, if we leave within the next five minutes.”

  “We?”

  “I’m not going to leave you here alone. You’re coming with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I have to go see one of my distributors and check on the new shipment.”

  “Drug dealers?” All of a sudden, the thought of staying alone for a day seemed like a better alternative.

  “Distributors,” he corrected.

  “Cameron, I don’t think it’s a very good idea.” I was going to add I wasn’t like him, but we had already established that, more than once.

  “I have no choice. I don’t know how long it’ll take for things to settle down. The business can’t wait any longer,” he said.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “You have to be scary like me for a day.” He looked pleased with himself at the thought of our role reversals.

  “I don’t think I could pull that off.”

  “Actually, you’re already really good at it,” he said dismally. “Pretend that I’m standing in front of you after you just overheard me tell Manny that I don’t love you—because that reaction was pretty scary … except, without the crying … and don’t start ripping your clothes off just to prove your point. I don’t think it’ll have the same effect on them.”

  I blushed as I remembered that night. “I was feverish. I wasn’t myself.”

  “Right.” I thought I saw him roll his eyes as he turned to put the papers away.

  “You better get dressed. We need to get going if we want to be back at a decent time,” he told me.

  I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. “I forgot to pack my cocktail dress. I didn’t realize that drug dealers were so formal.”

  “Distributors,” he corrected again. “You’ll be cold if you don’t get changed.”

  It was early August. Even though it was still early in the morning, the cottage was already steaming from the sun’s rays.

  He headed to my duffle bag and grabbed the pair of jeans that was on top. When he took them out, they unrolled and out fell my Rumble Fish book, my Rumble Fish movie, and the letter I had written him. He pitched the jeans to me and picked up the letter. While I anxiously got redressed, he carefully unfolded it, read it and re-read it. Then he folded the paper several times until it was the size of a credit card, slid it into the front pocket of his jeans, and took possession of it. When he returned to me, his smile was perturbed, but genuine.

  We walked out closely together.

  Outside, Cameron’s smile had turned suspicious. This only grew as I started to walk toward the Audi.

  “We’re not taking the car,” he finally announced when I pulled on the car handle.

  He handed me a backpack and walked to the tool shed that was next to the cottage. He opened the door; my heart dived.

  Chapter Twenty-Four:

  A New Calling

  Cameron rolled the fluorescent green Ninja race bike out of the shed.

  I looked on in quiet fear while statistics for motorcycle accidents ran through my brain.

  He went back into the shed and returned with a plastic bag. He ruffled through it, took out a vanity plate and matched it to a drivers’ permit card.

  “So, who are you today?” I teased, though my brain was now at statistical data for fatal motorcycle accidents.

  I picked up the card while he screwed the plate to the back of the bike. “Melvin Longhorn from New York,” I announced. “It suits you.”

  Cameron chuckled and continued to get everything ready for the ride. He handed me a child-sized black helmet. “It’s the helmet I wore when I got my first bike. It should fit your little head.”

  “Remind me again why we’re not taking the car?”

  “I don’t use anything that can be traced back to me when I’m working. You never know who’s watching. Besides,” he said with a full-toothed smile, “this is a lot more fun.”

  Fun wasn’t one of the words that had been floating through my brain.

  I squeezed my head into the helmet. My cheeks were compressed so much that my lips were forced into a fish pucker. Cameron laughed and took advantage of my incapacitated state to pat on my helmet and steal a kiss. “This is the last one for a while,” he reminded me.

  I would have nodded or growled but I was afraid the heavy helmet would knock me off balance.

  He climbed on the bike, and I, with extreme ineptness, got on behind him.

  We zipped down the gravel driveway, leaving Meatball to eat his breakfast on the porch. I kept my eyes shut while the flying pebbles stung my face. It wasn’t until we reached the pebble-free road and I was still getting stung, that I realized that the pebbles were actually bugs, making like a kamikaze against my exposed skin. I made a point of keeping tight-lipped after that.

  Cameron skillfully weaved in and out of traffic. At some point he complained that he couldn’t breathe. I was forced to relax my death grip around his torso. I even eventually opened my eyes and watched the scenery whoosh by.

  We drove on the outskirts of the city and made our way down a country road that snaked the Callister River. The river divided the state of New York from the province of Ontario, serving as a natural border between the United States and Canada. Although a freshwater supply trickled down from the Canadian mountains into the river, it was, for the most part, sourced with salt water from the Atlantic that poured in at its basin. Because of its proximity to the ocean and its practically bottomless depths, the river was almost always congested with commercial schooners that motored back and forth from one country shore to the next and back into the ocean.

  Little by little, the evergreens turned into cornfields and farmland. There was something exhilarating about being exposed and open to the elements and about holding onto Cameron for dear life. After a couple of hours, Cameron turned onto a farm road. My hips, legs, and arms were starting to cramp up and I had to close my eyes as rows of corn hypnotically whipped past us. When we finally came to a stop and I opened my eyes again, what I saw was not what I had expected to see.

  There, in the middle of a field, stood a slanted wooden barn … and nothing else. There were no ten-foot-high electric fences, goons with machine guns, or man-eating dogs—just an old barn, barely big enough to fit a tractor. And there was a lot of corn around us. My first experience with the drug world was, so far, extremely disappointing.

  When I got off the bike and tried to put my full weight on my frozen legs, I almost fell on my face.

  “Ready?” Cameron whispered anxiously. I wasn’t sure if he was checking with me or himself.

  I yanked the helmet off my head—it was like sucking a strawberry through a straw—and struggled to put the escaped hair locks back into my ponytail.

  “Leave your hair down,” he commanded.

  “I hate having my hair down,” I whined.

  “That’s the point. It’ll force you out of your comfort zone. Make you look like you’re on edge.”

  Like most things, what he said made no sense to me. I didn’t think that now was the right time to argue with Cameron about my follicle insecurities. I grudgingly obeyed and pulled my flattened helmet-hair out of its comfort zone. Cameron gave me a quick once over.
I thought for sure I had spied a hidden smile in his eyes and couldn’t help but feel like I’d been duped.

  With one head nod, he indicated that it was time. I watched his face expertly turn to stone. He stepped away from me like I no longer existed. Even if I knew that this was just an act, it still stung.

  Cameron coolly walked toward the barn, and I not-so-coolly followed not-so-closely behind him. He opened the barn door, and a shadow moved within the darkened barn. My eyes anxiously tried to adjust to the barn’s obscurity as we stepped through the threshold.

  “Ginger!”

  My heart leapt. The voice that, until then, I had assumed I, or anyone else on earth, would never hear again.

  “Geez, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he told me. I could finally see Griff; he had jumped off the table he was sitting on and grinned from ear to ear as he marched toward me, ignoring Cameron.

  Cameron turned to glance at me just as Griff walked past him. From the sour look on his face, I knew that he was, one, extremely jealous, and two, warning me to stay in character. With extreme difficulty, I glanced away from Griff and kept moving with Cameron.

  It was painful to watch Griff’s face wince at my snub.

  “Open the hatch,” Cameron ordered him impatiently.

  “Yes, sir,” Griff bitterly obeyed. He walked to a bale of hay that was loosely strewn in the middle of the wooden planked floor and pitchforked it to the side, revealing a square door within the floor. He pulled on the exposed cords and the hatch-door opened. Stairs led down the uncovered hole to a darker hole under the floor.

  Cameron strolled past Griff and started to climb down the stairs.

  Griff uncomfortably shifted, deliberating. When he decided, he called after Cameron. “I heard what happened to your brother,” he said softly, genuinely. “I’m sorry for your loss. He was a really great kid.”

  “Thank you.” Cameron almost looked surprised, but his still harsh voice did not betray him.

  I followed him down the stairs and waited until I was sure he was out of sight before quickly turning to Griff. I smiled at him, only for a moment. The effect was instantaneous—Griff’s face instantly lit up. He understood the game.

  The hatch closed above us, and we walked through a doorway that had been carved out of the ground. The barn’s floorboards above were soon replaced with rock and dirt as we walked further into the cave. A few feet ahead was a stainless-steel door. Cameron pressed the yellow button next to it, and we waited in silence.

  A million questions were speeding through my head. Most of which involved Griff’s new job location. With every inch of my self-control, I resisted the urge to ask any questions. Like he could sense my fraying composure, Cameron cleared his throat to get my attention, and his brown eyes quickly glimpsed above. There were glass globes above us with cameras scanning back and forth. We were being watched.

  The door finally opened into a compact elevator. We stepped in and were plunged deep into the ground. My ears kept popping from the increasing pressure. I had to swallow repeatedly to prevent the pressure that was pushing against my skull from forcing my brain through my nose.

  When the elevator door opened, two men stood to greet us. The man in front was tall and sturdy. From the wrinkles that were starting to line his olive skin, I guessed that he was in his mid-thirties. His demeanor was grave. His black hair and dark facial features only enhanced his severity.

  The man who stood behind him was older—much older. Although he had similarly dark features and skin, he was shrunken by two or three inches, and his face was leathery and worn. Except for the few black strands that remained on his head, his hair was grayed and went straight down to his elbows, like dead straw. His tired eyes twinkled—and stared at me without abandon from the moment we stepped out of the elevator.

  “New bodyguard?” said the young leader with a grimace.

  Cameron didn’t flinch. “I brought my accountant.”

  I almost choked and hoped with every fiber of my being that I wouldn’t be asked to test my fictional mathematical skills.

  “You haven’t seen the need to bring an accountant before. Why now?” the young leader continued to probe.

  “Things change,” Cameron said plainly. And then, in a haughty-tone, he said, “I’m a busy man, Hawk. If you don’t want to talk business, I’ll take my business elsewhere. I don’t like to waste my time.”

  While Cameron and Hawk stared each other down, the older man continued to look intently at me—like he was waiting for me to make a mistake. I was trying hard to ignore his stare and keep my facial muscles tensed and expressionless. But I could feel the corner of my mouth starting to twitch as the exerted muscles of my face were slowly surrendering. I had no idea that being purposefully uptight was so much work.

  Hawk finally acquiesced and hesitantly turned on his heels to have us follow him and his older counterpart. They led us through a pearl white marble tunnel. Because of the narrowness of the tunnel, Cameron and I were forced to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, which made it even more difficult for me to neglect him. I focused on looking ahead.

  Unlike the cave tunnel under the barn, the winding tunnel was sparkling clean and tailored with silver lanterns on the walls and expensive-looking cameras on the ceiling. Every few feet, we awkwardly brushed past armed guards that would look me over as we passed by.

  Hawk and the old man continued to move ahead of us. I could hear their echoed voices as they started discoursing in French. Though the men’s dialect was definitely different, with a little concentration, I could understand most of what they were saying. My mom had grown up in Marseille, France, and was, by no stretch of the imagination, a proud Frenchwoman. Of the few childhood memories I had of my mother, almost all of them included her correcting my French.

  Suddenly aware that I had been intently staring at the back of the men’s heads, I averted my eyes just as Hawk anxiously glanced back. He thankfully didn’t notice, or at least I didn’t think that he had. He turned back to his partner, while I continued to eavesdrop with my eyes on my feet.

  “Why the hell would they bring a girl like that here?” Hawk exclaimed in French to the old man, “The crows are hiding something, Pops. I can feel it.”

  “I don’t know about the boy, but I think you are right about the girl. She is without a doubt hiding something,” croaked the old man.

  “Like what?” Hawk asked nervously.

  “I’m not sure yet, but I sense something distinctive in her.”

  “Do you think she could hurt us?”

  “How much harm could one young girl do?” the old man said pensively, like he was talking to himself rather than his partner.

  “I don’t know. There’s definitely something strange about her,” the young leader continued.

  “There’s something strange with all the crows, son,” said the old man. He chuckled hoarsely. “At least the girl is easier on the eyes than the unpleasant baldheaded crow they call Spider.”

  Hawk groaned in annoyance and wondered, “What should we do?”

  The old man paused before answering. “Call the guards. Tell them to be on high alert. We’ll see where this goes.”

  Hawk took out his shortwave radio, and his uneasy voice reverberated within the marble tunnel through the radios that were holstered on the belts of the tunnel guards. While I was growing nervous, Cameron remained unchanged. I doubted that he had understood any of the men’s discussion and wished that I could warn him. But I knew that if I could so easily hear the men ahead of us, they would just as easily hear me if I spoke. I remained silent, for now.

  A pungent smell had started to seep into the tunnel. By the time we had reached the end, the stench was unbearable. I understood the source as we stepped out of the passageway and into a large greenhouse. Fluorescent lights were hanging low from the ceiling, acting as artificial sunlight to the illegal plants. People in white coats were moving about the room, tending to them. Lined up against the walls were more armed guards, all
of whom were glaring in our direction—now on high alert.

  Cameron and Hawk met up and walked ahead between the tables, while the old man joined me behind. Cameron spied the plants and disapproved. Their color, their size, and their quality were, apparently, unsuitable. This, of course, sent Hawk into an uproar, and the two business men commenced arguing over proper pricing of the crops. While I fixed on the argument, I could feel the old man studying my every move. That was when I realized that, in an unconscious response to the overpowering smell, my face had recoiled into a grimace. I corrected this immediately, but not before the old man had noticed and smirked at his detection of my defection.

  I was starting to feel sick from the reek of the plants. Eventually Cameron and Hawk were able to agree on a price that neither seemed pleased with. I was really glad when we continued to move forward. The old man had rejoined Hawk ahead, and Cameron was back at my side, continuing to artfully ignore me.

  Hawk turned to the old man—his face was red and sweating. “That insulting … How dare he attack the quality of our work? We have been growing for generations, before that kid was even born.”

  The old man was calm. “You know as well as I do that it’s a bad crop. The boy is smart, and he’s a good businessman. You shouldn’t be severe with him for doing his job.”

  Hawk huffed. “Well, whatever his reasons, I’ll make sure to give him the worst of all of the plants. Maybe next time he’ll think twice about insulting us.”

  The old man quickly peeked back and caught me looking at him. I veered my eyes away and felt my cheeks burning. He only smiled and kept walking.

  We passed the endless tables of plants and headed into another marble tunnel. Large vents were churning out fresh air over our heads. I cheerfully took several large inhalations.

  I could see the old man’s mouth moving but couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the noise from the vents. This was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I waited until I was certain that they weren’t watching then I turned to Cameron with urgency, unsure as to how long I would have before they noticed us talking.