by Ben Sanders
Neither of them answered. Rojas reached up and took a napkin from the stainless-steel holder on the windowsill and balled it and dabbed his mouth.
He said, “We don’t really check stuff out in this sort of environment. Public’s not a good idea.”
He gestured vaguely, like dispelling fumes. “And we’re just talking in very general terms here. We haven’t got down to discussing anything specific.”
Bolt said, “Not that it’s on record or anything. We just like to point out that at this stage we could be talking about anything here.”
Marshall nodded and swept an upturned palm, conceding the merits of cautiousness. Beside him the windows were just a long bank of mirrors. A slight tilt the only flaw in that inverse world. He said, “So what do you want to do?”
Rojas said, “We can head somewhere a bit quiet. Or just … You know. Private.”
Marshall said, “We could have gone straight there and avoided the preamble.”
“Well. We like to get a sense of what our potential colleagues are like.”
Marshall nodded slowly. “And your rivals?”
The tabletop was faded laminate, milky orbs where the neon was reflected. Rojas thrummed his nails a couple of times. “Coffee for the first meeting. Maybe something a little sharper for the next.”
Bolt smiled.
Rojas smiled, almost lascivious.
Marshall smiled. He grasped the implicit warning, but he didn’t think they were going to give him any trouble. It wasn’t arrogance, just a calm certainty gained from experience. He’d met very few people who shared his faculties.
He said, “We don’t have to dig around in the back of my car and make a scene. You can just take what I’ve got and do what you like with it. If you want to talk some more you’ve got my number. If you don’t want to talk, that works, too.”
Rojas thought about that. Marshall slid toward the aisle a fraction and laid an arm along the back of his seat. The waitress circled back around. Bolt waved off the offer of a refill.
Rojas said, “How much have you got?”
“A key. As requested.”
Rojas didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “Like I told you. You can do with it whatever you want. If you want to take things further, it’s entirely up to you.”
“This your standard practice?”
Marshall thought a bona-fide purveyor of illicit substances probably wouldn’t make a habit of dispensing one-kilo product samples too regularly. But he wanted to leave the right impression, so he looked calmly down the barrel and said, “Yes.”
“That’s quite an expense.”
He shrugged. “We don’t do it every week. Like I said, we’ve got a lot of stock. Our issue is more to do with distribution as opposed to supply.”
Rojas looked at him and nodded sagely, like this was a dilemma they were accustomed to resolving. He said, “Okay. Why don’t we go outside.”
Marshall patted the back of the chair slowly, like comforting a ghost. “All right. Let’s do that.”
He nodded at the trio of mugs. “It’s on me.”
He dug in his pocket. He had forty-seven dollars: two twenties, a five, and two singles. The five being the middle made it an easy find by touch. He laid it on the table and paired up the corners precisely and creased a sharp transverse fold, dead across the center, a perfect bisection.
Rojas and Bolt watched like it was street magic, some sleight of hand imminent. Marshall trapped the bill squarely under his mug and slid to the edge of the seat, stood up, and waited in the aisle.
Rojas nodded toward the door. “After you.”
* * *
The waitress smiled as they went out and told them to have a nice day. Marshall reciprocated. He figured at the very least they were good for one out of three.
They’d been seated when he entered which meant it had been difficult to establish if they were armed. Walking ahead of them the situation was no better.
Out the door and the bell dinged merrily. Highway noise borne easily on the cool air. He could see headlights sliding across the gloomed distance. All motion rendered gradual by that huge landscape.
His choice of parking space was slightly problematic, because he wanted them behind him as he opened the trunk. The present configuration meant a straight path from the door to the car would put them on his left. A serviceable prospect, but not really ideal, because he wanted their view obstructed.
He dug the Corolla’s keys from his pocket and spread them on his palm and pretended to search through them as he walked off to the right, toward the Cherokee parked in the corner. Six o’clock darkness, a plausible mistake for a preoccupied man.
Rojas and Bolt walking abreast behind him, trailing tight, maybe two feet. Halfway there and Bolt pulled him up.
“Wrong car.”
Marshall glanced up and stopped. “Oh. Yeah.”
He turned on his heel and threaded between them and headed back over to the Corolla. A slight arc so they would approach the trunk square. He heard them fall in behind, one or two feet, very close. Bolt on his right, Rojas left. This tight little procession. Breath rising palely like their own spirits departing.
He reached the Corolla. Morgue-cool to the touch. Rojas gave him no space. He stepped up tight against the taillight, close to his left shoulder. Trunk lid up and he’d have as good a view as any. Bolt was hanging a couple of steps back, off to his right. The low hum of the air-con and a softer, lonely note off the highway.
Marshall faux-searched his keys, the bunch on his palm again, that gentle chime of metal. Their positioning wasn’t stupid. Rojas was near enough to be trouble. Bolt could shoot him in the back if things got difficult.
Rojas dug his hands in his pockets and tensed against the chill. He jiggled one knee. “Let’s not make an event of it.”
Marshall abandoned the ruse. He selected the correct key and inserted it in the lock. The metal grated gently. The sound of it so clear on that huge stage it seemed for a moment the focus of everything.
A quarter-turn.
The mechanism thunked cleanly. The lid popped up an inch proud. Marshall shifted his stance fractionally so his back was to Rojas. Crunch of gravel as he turned on the balls of his feet. And then he swung the lid up, just sudden finger pressure under the flat of the key, like flipping a switch.
The set dressing was good: the duffel’s zip was open, clear baggies of white powder visible within. They drew Rojas’s attention.
In a single easy motion Marshall leaned down and picked up the Remington 870 shotgun from where it lay against the bottom lip of the trunk and took a swift shuffle-step toward Bolt and smashed him in the face with the butt of the gun.
Bolt didn’t even raise a hand.
The shotgun butt broke his nose. His head snapped back in a whiplash motion. He went down bleeding and Marshall, pulled by the momentum of the follow-through, stepped toward him to give himself space and brought the gun up and sighted on Rojas.
“Don’t move.”
Rojas was crouched in the gravel beside the car, one hand on the fender to steady himself, the other at the small of his back.
Marshall said, “What are you hiding back there?”
Rojas didn’t answer. Quiet now in the aftermath. Just the three of them privy to the skirmish and in that hushed vastness it was as good as never happened. Rojas hunkered in the dust. Bolt fetal, hands to his face, blood seeping between his fingers. Marshall looming over him.
Rojas rose to full height, the hand still hidden. He stepped slowly away from the car, giving himself some room. Marshall tracked him with the gun barrel, nothing in his face.
“You’re going to bring that arm round where I can see it and you better make sure there’s only fresh air at the end of it.”
“How old are you?”
“I’d say that’s the very least of your worries.”
“You’re not old enough to be playing with guns.”
Marshall prepped the trigger, took t
he slack out of it. “Playing or not. I’ve got pretty good at it.”
Rojas didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “Your friend here will attest to that.”
“This is not the sort of thing you want to do.”
Marshall said, “I wouldn’t take your advice on things I would want to do. So I think we’ll just carry on.”
“You’ll end up regretting this.”
Marshall sighted down the barrel. Rojas’s chest neatly centered. “Well. You just keep that hand hidden and we’ll see where the balance of regret ends up.”
Rojas nodded at the shotgun. “Haven’t pumped a round yet.”
“Take my word that I have.”
Rojas didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “It’s your life you’re betting. And I don’t think I’m going to miss from this range.”
No answer. They stood there a moment. Rojas locked on the bore and he could have been reflecting on things been or looking for a way out. Marshall moved a fraction closer. Six feet between them, a vaultlike silence, that gun their whole world.
Marshall said, “If you’ve got something back there, I’d drop it.”
Nothing.
Marshall moved closer again, just a step. The 870 was a long weapon, and he couldn’t afford to put it in grab range. He could sense Rojas willing the opposite. Marshall counted himself in, backward from three, and then he kicked him left-footed in the groin.
Rojas retched and doubled over, but kept his footing. Marshall moved in close and kicked him again in the gut, a big blow off the left instep. Rojas dumped his breath and fell prone. A nickel-plated .38 in his hand. Marshall stepped on his wrist and stooped and pried the gun from his fingers and slipped it in his belt.
“You carrying anything else you want to tell me about?”
Rojas gasping. Legs pulled double and an arm across his stomach, trying to pry his other wrist free. The skin all bunched and twisted where Marshall’s sole had bit and turned. “No. Jesus, get off.”
“What about Mr. Nose?”
“He’s not carrying.”
Which Marshall thought was probably untrue, but not problematic given Bolt’s present condition. He said, “I see him hanging on to anything but his face I’m going to pop both of you.”
Rojas still trying to jerk his wrist free.
Marshall said, “That’s only going to make things more uncomfortable, doing that.”
He checked the windows. No faces hovering there. His little reckoning still a private matter.
He dropped to his haunches and bridged the shotgun across his knees. “You should have done as you were told.”
Rojas didn’t reply. He seemed to have given up on the hand, like he’d accepted he wasn’t getting it back. His breath was shallow, whistling.
Marshall said, “Sorry about the misdirection. But I’m not really in the business.”
“What do you want?”
Marshall glanced back at Bolt to make sure he wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t. The only nonconforming article was his nose, which was bleeding a lot.
Marshall said, “I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“A young lady.”
“What’s her name?”
“Alyce Ray. Alyce with a Y.”
“Never heard of her.”
“I thought you might say that.”
“I haven’t.”
“Right. Well, either your boss or one of your colleagues or someone you sell to knows what’s happened to her.”
Rojas didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “Point is someone’s got answers, and I think you’re in a good position to get them for me.”
Rojas didn’t answer.
Marshall scanned the distance. This light and this sparseness, he’d see red and blue a long way off. He said, “You can ask some questions. You’ve got my number.”
“Get fucked.”
“Yeah, well. Have a think about it.”
“What are you, like a PI or something?”
“No. Just a concerned gentleman.”
“You just made a pretty stupid mistake.”
Marshall said, “Probably two of them. If you count him as well.”
Rojas said, “How guys like you end up dead.”
Marshall stood up. The windows still clear. “We’ll see. If I don’t hear from you, I’m going to have to come looking. And it’s going to be the something sharper rather than the coffee. If you know what I mean.”
Rojas smiled up at him. This awful grimace. “You don’t have to come looking. I wouldn’t fucking worry about that.”
“Speed things up if I do. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”
Rojas didn’t answer. Marshall could see him battling the urge to cradle the wrist. He laid the 870 in the back of the Corolla and took the .38 from his belt so he had a gun at hand. Then he closed the trunk lid and took the key from the lock and stepped over to where Bolt was lying. Still not a sound from him. Half-lidded and half-conscious. Marshall dragged him by his collar a few paces so he was clear of the car.
Marshall said, “I wouldn’t hang around.” He nodded at Bolt. “That’s not the kind of face you get from walking into a door.”
And then he got back into the Corolla and drove away.
TWO
Marshall
It had started like this:
He had a job down in Albuquerque, a half-million-dollar build in North Valley. Two-way, two-story frames, three days’ worth of welding.
He found a motel close by, his favorite sort of place, the desk guy content with fifty bucks as the price for no ID. There was a diner across the street. Seated one night at the counter where he could see the door, odor of cut steel still in his nose, fluorescent worms of arc flash in the darkness when he shut his eyes.
The guy beside him was a basketball fan, evidently a beer fan too, Marshall getting a detailed but drunken forecast of how this year the Mavericks would win that second championship. The TV was playing local news, good as mute due to his neighbor, but he watched anyway, indifferent to the content, hoping to convey disinterest as he waited for a meal.
“You see it last season?”
Marshall glanced at him. “Sorry?”
“I said, did you see it last season?”
“I don’t think I saw it any season.”
Back to the TV. It was the evening standard, crime scene tape and talking cop heads. He tried to lip-read as a distraction. A long shot of a house from the street, patrol cars in attendance. Tired clapboard and a dirt yard, chicken-wire fencing. His neighbor was still going, right in his ear. Marshall leaned away for some space—
Then:
An image of a young woman, maybe twenty years of age, dark hair and blue eyes. The beginnings of a smile that stirred memories, took him back a long time. He stared at the photograph through a slow zoom. No sound, but he guessed the gist of it.
You don’t get news time unless you’re dead or missing.
A cut to the next story and he blinked and lost the reverie. Returned to the diner, the talk beside him still in full flight and his plate now before him as if conjured, and the warm evening hubbub restored in full. A question in his ear:
“Don’t you think it’s gone downhill since they dropped him? It’s fucking stupid, right?”
Marshall said, “Yes.”
He replayed the image, tried to view it in detail. It felt like déjà vu, but it was false recall. He didn’t know her. He’d just got the jolt, face and memory wrongly paired.
He dismissed it and started eating. The man beside him was gesturing widely as he spoke, warm beer breath on Marshall’s cheek. Marshall offered a yes or a no when prompted. He’d ordered a burger and fries, but he didn’t really taste them. The issue was their harmlessness: his attention was with those around him, and in a packed venue the known quantities didn’t register. Years ago it had been a necessity, and he’d retained the habit. The result was inverted priorities: his focus th
e periphery, the minutiae of backgrounds. Everything others missed.
“But nobody beats Jordan, don’t give a shit what they say, he’s still the man. You know what I mean?”
Marshall said, “Yes.”
It was ten P.M. In his pocket he had three twenties. He always used cash. It was a caution born with the move. He hadn’t used a credit card since New York. He hated the notion of a trail. The driver’s license and other ID the marshals had supplied were locked in the document safe. He never used them, complete anonymity preferable to a false identity.
He folded a bill crisply on the transverse and arranged it squarely beneath his mug and left, basketball man turning to address a new patron without missing a beat.
Outside it was cold and windless. A thin rain white as cut glass falling dead straight.
He stood at the curb a moment. His motel was across the street, lit windows a long and random sequence.
You don’t get news time unless you’re dead or missing.
He scrubbed his face with his hands. That slow zoom replayed.
Dead or missing.
“Shit.”
He turned and walked up the gleamed street through the neon dark. A truck passed in a gust of road spray. At a gas station he bought a copy of the Albuquerque Journal and then he walked back across the street to the motel.
Hand shaking as he keyed the lock. He told himself it was the cold. He brushed rain from his hair and clicked on the light and locked the door behind him. That smell of inked newsprint. He laid the paper on the bed and scanned the front. Nothing. He turned the page, and there she was on A2. That same image that had grabbed him. Those eyes and her face on the brink of laughter. He’d never met her, but there was something in the photo. That false link to a former life and the better moments of a bad time.
He read the accompanying article. It was just a sidebar piece, probably a follow-up, light on hard content. Her name was Alyce Ray. She lived with her mother in a house on Comanche Road, just north of central Albuquerque. Mother had woken one morning and found the daughter gone. Any sightings please call this number.
She’d been missing five days.
He closed and folded the newspaper and smoothed it to its original condition and lay on the bed, fingers knitted behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle, just quietly thinking. Outside, the traffic passed as a smooth hiss on the wet road. After a minute he got up and swept change from the table into a cupped palm and pocketed it and took his keys and went out. There was a pay phone at reception. The room a pale red from the vending machine light. Behind the desk a young guy sat nodding to headphone music, a camera up in a corner behind him. Marshall went to the phone and fed change in the slot and dialed a number.