Fair Trade

by Dustin Stevens

  “No,” Marsh replies. “Odds are, he isn’t here, and if we arrive with a force, it’s only going to escalate things. Let’s just go in, ask if they’ve seen him.”

  “But his bike is parked right there,” Tinley replies, raising a finger and extending it toward the row of motorcycles parked along the front.

  “Don’t point,” Marsh says, feeling his frustration with his young partner rise, “and don’t call them bikes.”

  Without waiting for a response, Marsh steps out of the car. He checks either direction before stepping across the street, a thin plume of dust kicking up, blowing across his body as he walks.

  A moment later, the sound of a car door slamming shut behind him can be heard, Tinley jogging to catch up with him. For perhaps the first time ever, the younger man has the good sense to remain quiet, the two ascending the trio of steps together.

  The front entrance has been formatted to mirror an Old West saloon, an actual door replaced by a pair of swinging gates. Careful to hide the eyeroll he feels at seeing them, Marsh pushes through, taking no more than a step inside before stopping.

  An instant later, Tinley appears beside him.

  Sliding his sunglasses down off his face, Marsh takes a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkened interior of the room. As he does so, he makes a quick scan, the place confirming what the outside hinted at, in lockstep with every preconceived notion he had before entering.

  Nothing more than a single room, the place has one roughhewn bar along the wall and some remainder furniture spread throughout the rest of the room. On the walls are an odd assortment of neon beer signs and mounted animal carcasses.

  None of them are wolves.

  Despite the number of motorcycles parked out front, there is no more than a half-dozen people inside the place. All male, all white.

  All looking directly at them.

  “Help you with something, officers?” the man behind the bar asks. A thick older man with white hair and paunch, he stands leaning against the front of the bar, a towel over his shoulder.

  Despite his genial expression and non-threatening tone, Marsh recognizes what the opening question was really meant to relay instantly.

  They were pegged as law enforcement the moment they entered, if not before. They are not welcome, which is why the bartender is the one talking to them.

  Reaching to his hip, Marsh forces a smile into place. He hates the awkward feeling of it, even more the fact that he has to ask nice, pretending to kiss these ignorant redneck’s asses.

  They are trained detectives. He has a law degree. His partner has a BA from San Diego State. And yet they have to play the part if they want any sort of cooperation.

  Disgusting.

  Extracting his shield, Marsh says, “Detectives, actually.” He puts the badge away, motioning from himself to his partner. “Marsh and Tinley, SDPD.”

  The bartender says nothing, doesn’t move an inch, merely staring back at them.

  Taking a few steps toward the bar, Marsh says, “We need to speak to a Mike Lincoln. We understand he frequents this place.”

  The man’s eyebrows rise, faux surprise coloring his features. “Frequents? I wouldn’t go that far. He stops in from time to time, same as anybody else.”

  Flicking a glance to the corner, Marsh can see the quartet of men that had turned and openly stared upon their arrival have since shifted their focus. None are looking over, though they don’t appear to be in conversation either, no doubt listening to every word being shared.

  “When was the last time you’d say you saw him?” Marsh asks.

  “Couldn’t, really,” the man says, playing the part of ignorant rube to perfection, “been a while, though. Maybe a couple of weeks?”

  Marsh hasn’t been inside this particular place before, but he’s been inside enough like it to know how things work. Things are predicated on a hierarchy, a single person in charge, things filtering down in order from there.

  Right now, the head guy is probably one of the two large guys in the corner, either with the long hair or the bald head. The others would be his deputies.

  In no world does the bartender even make the list. He is so far down, he is essentially a dog, something that is seen but never speaks. The fact that this one is doing so now, without so much as consulting the others, tells Marsh that everything he is being told is bullshit.

  Whether that’s because they have something to hide or that is simply how they deal with law enforcement, he can’t be certain.

  “Weeks?” he asks. “But isn’t that his Panhead parked outside?”

  “I don’t know,” the guy says, “maybe. A lot of the guys leave their rides here sometimes. Certain neighborhoods have noise ordinances and such, so they park them here during the week.”

  The answer is just the sort of canned crap Marsh expects, close enough to reality to maybe be true, while more likely being a complete fabrication. Either way, it is fast becoming apparent that they won’t be gaining anything useful from sticking around.

  The only thing they’ve picked up for certain is that Lincoln isn’t present, none of the men in the place even close to the picture from Balboa Park or the mugshot he has on file.

  “What’s this all about?” the barkeep asks, his brow coming together slightly. “Mike in trouble for something?”

  Flicking his glance to the side again, Marsh can see just the tiniest move from one of the men. Coming from the man on the left edge, a tangle of teeth jutting out over his bottom lip, he leans a few inches to the side, as if trying to listen a little closer to whatever is being said.

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” Marsh replies. “We just needed to get a witness statement from him about something is all. I’ll be sure to stop by again in a day or two, try to catch him then.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The house isn’t nearly as big on the inside as it appears from the outside. A simple one-bedroom affair, the entire first floor is nothing more than the room I had been in the night before. A large living room that feeds directly into an open dining room. Behind it is the kitchen, the only thing to offset it from the rest of the space being a metal strip on the floor separating hardwood from linoleum.

  Upstairs is the single bedroom with a pair of beds, both twin sized, with a full bathroom carved out in the corner. Like my first impression of the place downstairs, everything looks to have been remainder from the seventies, as if the place was rented furnished from an older couple that had been there for most of their lives before being shunted off to a nursing community somewhere.

  The walls on all four sides slope inward, accommodating the pitch of the roof. Light filters in through a single window in the bathroom and along the front wall. It is at least ten degrees hotter than the first floor, sweat dripping off my nose.

  Painfully aware of each second that slips by, I stand in the tiny bathroom. A plastic sack in hand, the vanity mirror in front of me has been flung open, standing perpendicular to the wall. Behind it is row after row of medicine vials, most with names I don’t recognize.

  I have no doubt where many of them came from.

  None of them have a prescription label, or even a patient name, on the side. All of them have been expired for at least a couple of months.

  The gun is stowed back behind my hip as I work, the sack in one hand, my phone in the other. On the screen is a list of medicines needed for Fran, Valerie having sent it over a while before.

  One at a time, I scroll down through, matching names and dropping them into the bag. Thus far, I have seven already accounted for, at least as many still remaining.

  Flicking my gaze back and forth, I check the label on a bottle before me. Sliding back to compare it to the list, the screen dissolves, replaced by an alert letting me know I have an incoming call.

  Wendell Ross.

  Thumbing it on, I press it to my face, my pulse increasing just slightly. “Yo.”

  “Far side of the street,” he says. “Two guys, both in thei
r thirties, white. Small tan sedan. Couldn’t get a plate.”

  My first impulse is to go to the front window and peek out, to see the bastards, or more importantly, let them see me.

  Just as fast, it passes. This is no time for anger to cloud my judgment. Not with the medicine Fran needs in hand, certainly not with Ross out on the street to run interference.

  Even if it does still piss me off.

  “They make you?” I ask, realizing how foolish the question is even before I’m done asking it.

  If it offends him in the slightest, he doesn’t let it show.

  “Negative,” he replies. “We must have caught them at shift change. Street was clean on first sweep. Second pass turned up these two.”

  “They moving at all?”

  “Negative,” he repeats, “but their target is obvious.”

  He adds nothing to it, but he doesn’t need to. Already I am aware that I have been inside for ten minutes, that every additional second I spend increases the chances of somebody seeing me or something bad happening.

  “Two minutes,” I say. “Opposite end.”

  “Roger that,” he answers, not challenging me in the slightest on the timing or the location.

  Cutting the call, I slide the phone back into my pocket. Giving up on the list, I grab everything I can see, snatching the vials up two and three at a time and depositing them in the sack.

  They’ll know what they need. Better to have too much than not enough.

  Wiping the tray clean of everything, I close the mirror and give a quick scan of the bathroom. Standard tub, toilet, sink arrangement, nothing else visible beyond the cup with a pair of toothbrushes. Grabbing both, I deposit them into the sack, exiting back into the bedroom.

  If I had more time, I would put together a go-bag for them. I would snatch up handfuls of clothes, anything else they might need.

  But not now. Not with two men sitting on the curb, waiting for me to make a mistake. Not with a sack full of needed medicines and a handful of other places I still need to be getting to.

  I don’t bother extracting the Mark 23 as I ease my way down the stairs. Ross has already made the surveillance team, would have alerted me if there was any danger. Instead, I move as quickly as silence will allow, heading out the back door and locking it in my wake.

  Every part of me would rather be going through the front. I would prefer to throw open the door and step onto the concrete landing, letting them see me plain. Slowly, I would turn and lock the door behind me before shifting and looking straight at them.

  Maybe I would wave. Maybe I would wag my gun at them.

  Maybe I would jog right over and do to them what I did to their cohort the night before, flailing away until whatever tensile strength remains in my right hand is shattered.

  But I don’t, for a variety of reasons. While doing all that might make me feel a little better, it would present a litany of problems. Onlookers. Law enforcement. Tipping off the Wolves.

  Destroying my already aching hand.

  Choosing to hang onto the key, I lock the rear door and walk across the backyard. Plastic sack in hand, I swing through the rear gate and exit in the opposite direction, never once moving too fast or appearing to be a in a hurry.

  My face is sweaty and my senses are heightened, but to the average observer, nothing is out of the ordinary.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Myles Morgan can smell blood. Like a shark attracted to chum in the water, he can pick up the scent of a single drop floating in an ocean. Entering through his nasal passages, it goes straight to his brain, processed and sent to every nerve ending in his body.

  Bordering on euphoric, it is the reason he is in the position he is, has ascended as fast as he has.

  Leaning forward, his elbows resting against the front edge of his desk, it is all he can do to keep the smile from his face. His tongue flicks out over his bottom lip, glancing between the two men across from him, their heightening discomfort only adding to the moment for him.

  He has them. They know it. And now he knows it.

  There is no better feeling. Not drink or smoke or even sex.

  Power, raw and unbridled.

  “So, gentlemen, do we have a deal?”

  The pair glance between one another. Spitting images of each other thirty years apart, they are a father and son team, the sort of duo that thought they could get into this business and hang with the larger players in the market.

  And now they were getting their asses handed to them as a result.

  The question was phrased to make it appear like the men had a choice, but it was anything but. They were going to take pennies on the dollar for their tiny operation, and another annoying burr was going to be out of Morgan’s hair, gone forever.

  All they had to do was agree and sign.

  “Well, we’d really like a bit more time to look this over,” the younger of the two says. A snotty kid name Bret, he isn’t a day over thirty, appearing as if he doesn’t need to shave more than a time or two a week.

  His very presence annoys Morgan.

  “And people in Hell want ice water,” Morgan replies, the comment drawing stares from both men across from him. “If you guys want to receive even a nickel for the time and energy you’ve spent building this thing, you’ll sign right now.”

  The time for niceties is passed. He gave them a moment to save face, but it is gone. Now it is time for them to be on their way.

  He has dinner plans to soon be getting to.

  “I just think-“ Bret begins, still trying to save face.

  Morgan will have none of it.

  “And I think it is time for the grown-ups in the room to do the talking.” Shifting his focus to the elder of the two, he says, “Don’t you, Brent?”

  Across from him, the younger man looks incredulous, like he might again make the mistake of opening his mouth.

  His father has no such problem, his face defeated, his features ashen as he stares down at the documents in his hand. He is going to sign. He sees there is no way around it.

  Nothing can save him now.

  The knock on the door is short and terse, just two quick taps, but it is so unexpected it might as well have been a percussion grenade. Snapping Morgan’s attention away from the desk, his eyes blaze, ready to fire his secretary the instant this meeting is over.

  Her rich city councilman uncle be damned.

  “Mr. Morgan?” she says, sticking just her head in through the door, nothing visible save the chin up.

  “What?” he replies, his gaze hard, the look alone letting her know she has messed up beyond repair.

  For the first time, she seems to have received the unspoken message, her body language relaying she isn’t completely oblivious. “Um, you have a visitor.”

  Nostrils flaring, Morgan glances to the men. Just two feet away, the older of the two still stares dejectedly at the pages in his hand, his son watching the back-and-forth with something bordering on amusement.

  An expression that just cost them both another ten thousand dollars.

  “I’m in a meeting.”

  “I know, sir, but it’s her.”

  The next response was already lined up, resting on the tip of his tongue, ready to be fired off. With just one single word, she manages to shove it aside, saying the only thing in the world that could possibly justify her behavior.

  Not that he’s any happier about it.

  “Gentlemen, excuse me a moment,” Morgan says, standing and exiting the room without so much as a glance their way. Striding for the door, his secretary is gone by the time he gets there, completely out of sight as he steps into the reception area outside his office.

  In her stead is a single person, someone Morgan could go a lifetime without ever seeing again.

  “What do you want?” he snarls. “I’m in a very important meeting. I’m about to-“

  “I don’t care,” Elsa Teller replies. Dressed in a sleeveless black dress and heels, she waves a hand at
him, the French tips of her fingers flying by. “Whatever it is can wait.”

  A flush of heat rises to Morgan’s cheeks. He can feel his face glow red, sweat threatening to ooze from his forehead and upper lip.

  Nobody speaks to him that way, not even her. Especially outside his own office.

  “Now you listen here-“ he says, raising a finger before him.

  “Clady found Hoke.”

  For the second time in as many minutes, Morgan is cut off mid-sentence, whatever he was about to say rendered moot. A puff of air passes over his lips as he stares at her, trying to compute what she is telling him.

  “And you might want to put that away before you hurt yourself,” she adds, glancing down to his finger still extended her way.

  Ignoring the barb, Morgan slowly lowers his hand to his side. He draws in a pair of deep breaths, computing what she’s just told him.

  “He...how do you know?”

  Raising her eyebrows slightly, Teller glances around the lobby. Nobody else appears to be nearby, not even the receptionist that seems to have apparated from the office.

  “You really want to do this here?” she asks.

  “I don’t want to be doing this at all,” Morgan snaps. His office is being used. Already he’s excused himself, no way is he going to ask them to exit. “How credible is it?”

  “Eyes on him sitting down with the doctor.”

  “In person?” Morgan asks, his eyes bulging slightly.

  “Be kind of tough to sit down with someone otherwise, wouldn’t it?” Teller counters.

  Bitterness rises like bile along the back of Morgan’s throat. If he could, he would cut ties with her in an instant. He would make sure she never worked on the west coast again, preferably anywhere in the country.

  He’d ensure he never so much as heard a whisper of the name Elsa Teller again.

  But the decision to go with her was made a long time before at the only level that was above his. Getting rid of her would have to do the same.