American Blood

by Ben Sanders

  Marshall said, “And if I get rid of him you’ll leave me alone?”

  “You don’t sugarcoat it, do you?”

  Marshall stood up. His coffee was only a quarter gone. He said, “Good seeing you, Cohen.”

  SIX

  Rojas

  More than an hour since the break, and Bolt was still bleeding. Face puffed like snakebite and the ooze spread all round. He’d been out a long time. Probably ten minutes before he could say his name.

  Rojas drove, Bolt laid out on the rear bench of the Cherokee under a blanket like some cross-border run. The state of him. Jesus, they were going to get it.

  The house was in east Santa Fe, brand-new place in a brand-new subdivision, big adobe structures on huge sections. Rojas called it Spanish pueblo revival. Vance called it pretentious fucking shit, but never in front of Leon.

  Good roads and no traffic. He could get there fast, unseen. A nudge off the curb as he turned in and Bolt swore with the impact.

  “Relax, we’re here.”

  Ascending the drive and ahead of them the house laid out in a low sweep atop its artificial rise. Straight into the garage, a plunge into cool and gloom. He cut the motor and hit the button on the visor to drop the door behind them and got out and stepped to the rear.

  Bolt shed the blanket and hauled himself upright and clambered out. Bone-white grip, clumsy from the knock. Blood streaked each side of his mouth, beading at his chin before the fall. He found his feet and pushed Rojas away, testing stability. Chin to chest, breath ragged. A good few seconds before the first lurching step. This solo horror show.

  Slow progress as Rojas followed him through into the main house. Into what Leon called the great room, though he wasn’t there. Just Vance and Dante laid out playing Xbox like a pair of kids. Vance shirtless on his side on the sofa, Dante on his stomach on the floor by the TV. Each of them fiddling with a controller, TV a split screen, a gun sight top and bottom.

  And that perpetual mess, host to all manner of things:

  Vance’s Colt Anaconda on the floor by the sofa and beside it a gaping box of .44 shells. Two Berettas in Dante’s grab range. The glass coffee table pushed aside, surface cloudy with powder. A razor blade in a field of scratch marks where they’d troweled and cut. Two tarred scraps of foil. A rubber tourniquet strap and a needle with syringe lying on a zippered pouch. A cloud of something dissipating near the ceiling and the rank smell of it still present. Windows curtained and between them the morning light slanting through in narrow rays and caught there the dust floating whitely.

  Rojas said, “Could you at least do the dishes?”

  Nothing from Dante.

  Vance looked up. “Shit. Happened to you?”

  No drugs in his voice. Vance and Dante being connoisseurs, it took a bit to shift them up or down. The gospel according to Vance: regular intake was beneficial. It bolstered mental resilience to foreign compounds and helped preclude the risk of an epic mind-fuck. They had a coke/meth combo they favored. It was called Dante’s Inferno.

  Rojas said, “Got screwed on a deal.”

  Dante said, “Your nose broken?”

  Bolt said, “Yeah.”

  Voice thick with fluid.

  He stepped across Dante and lowered himself onto the other sofa and lay down. “Holy shit. Someone set it.”

  Vance said, “How long’s it been?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Not meant to do it if it’s more than an hour or something. Can’t see what you’re doing with all the swelling and you just end up with a fucked face.”

  Dante said, “He looked half-fucked before so he may as well go all out.”

  Vance laughed so hard he had to pause the game. He was two years back from Afghanistan. Physique cut like some demigod, meth-and-bench-press his chosen regimen. He still had the tan, but he needed a UV bed for the upkeep. A maintenance zap every now and then.

  Rojas said, “Where’s Leon?”

  Vance pulled himself together. “Where do you think?”

  Which could have meant either the basement or the office. That basement an awful place: some dark-age gallows, natural light just weak through the vents, always damp, chains and anchor rings crusted with rust. Their own private Guantánamo. Vance’s quip: the perfect place to be quartered. No noise out at the road but sound still made it through the floor. Chain saws and other things.

  Rojas went to find ice. Doors in the house more often locked than not. Leon’s doing. He had weapons, meth precursor, cash all stashed away. Rojas hadn’t known Leon long, but Vance had served with him, Afghanistan and Iraq. Vance swore Leon had two million dollars cold in the house, stolen funds from a CIA drop in Baghdad he’d been in on. Rooms full of Marine ordnance freighted back from the Middle East that hadn’t quite made it home.

  Leon himself this strange, nocturnal man. By daylight locked in his sanctum with his books and his manuals scheming god knew what. By night hunched taut and shirtless with Vance at the coffee table in that great black-curtained room, the pair of them twisted feverish from toke after toke and then, delirious, descending to join the guests, and from then no one dared listen.

  In bed one night with the noise of it filtering up from below, he realized there were scales for many things, that there was bad and there was evil, and in Leon lived proof that one was a long way from the other. The next day you could smell the aftermath, Leon reveling in it, standing there in the middle of the house with one hand lightly at his stomach and eyes closed as he slowly breathed.

  * * *

  He found a bag of ice in the freezer and gauze in one of the medic packs and took them through to the living room. Bolt got a start when he dropped them on his stomach.

  “Jesus.”

  Rojas said, “You know how to fix a nose?”

  “Not really.”

  Dante said, “Just shape it round with your fingers.”

  “How do you know the right shape when it’s all puffed?”

  “Have to guess.”

  “Shit. And then what?”

  “You pack it out with the gauze and then you use tape or something over the top and it’s fixed and hopefully only kinda fucked.”

  They all laughed.

  With his yellow jeans and green hair, Dante seemed a strange source of advice, but Vance rated him. The verdict: crystal’s fried his dress sense, but he’s still a stand-up guy.

  Vance dug around beneath him and found the TV remote between cushions. He flicked the set off. He and Dante sat watching the blank screen like some solemn remembrance, and then Vance said, “So how the fuck did that happen?”

  Rojas said, “We went out this morning to do that pickup.”

  Vance lit a cigarette. “Which one was that?”

  “We got a ring-in on the number. Some guy wanting to start up a new supply, had some sample stock for us.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “I dunno. I got some stuff you might want to look at. Something like that.”

  “And what. You met him, and it went shit.”

  “Well, yeah. Pretty much.”

  Vance said, “Why you got this thing about always going early?”

  “Because. You get someone when they’re still asleep, it throws them. It’s an actual proven thing.”

  Vance shrugged, kissed out a smoke ring. “Should have shot the fuck.”

  “Not that easy.”

  “Where’d you meet?”

  “That diner down 25.”

  “Stupidest shit I ever heard, doing it there, when it’s that quiet.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “How big was the sample?”

  “A kilo.”

  “And you didn’t guess it’s a setup. Holy shit.”

  Dante rolled on his back. “Where’s the cigarettes?”

  Vance tossed him the pack and then the lighter. Dante caught them, left hand then right. He said, “So, what. He think you’d have cash or something that he’d take off you?”

  “No. We went to his car
to do the pickup, and he nailed Cyrus in the face with a shotgun and then leveled it on me. Said he was looking for that girl.”

  Vance said, “What one?”

  “That Alyce girl.”

  Dante rolled on his side to get a smoke going and then lay back down. Portrait of an overdose with his arms and legs spread starfish and the cigarette hanging out the edge of a smile. He laughed. “Shit. Not the one Leon did, is it?”

  Vance said, “Maybe. I lost track.” He laughed, midriff tensed in a perfect six-pack. “Old Leon’s been a busy boy.”

  Rojas didn’t answer.

  Vance said, “What’d this prick want?”

  “Well. Answers. Or he was gonna come looking.”

  “Answers. Classic, I love it.”

  Dante turned his head and tapped ash on the floor. Advantage of timber, you could just sweep it up every now and then. He said, “I like that ‘come looking’ part. Imagine that.”

  They all sat quietly, absorbed by fantasy. A quiet crunching noise as Bolt positioned the ice.

  Vance said, “Guy give a name?”

  Rojas said, “Marshall.”

  “Marshall, eh.”

  Rojas said, “I got his plate number.”

  “You called him since?”

  “He’s not picking up.”

  Vance grinned around the cigarette and spread his arms along the back of the sofa. He said, “Maybe Leon wants to try.”

  SEVEN

  Lauren Shore

  One of those mornings.

  One of those mornings when she woke and it was nearly twelve. Still dressed and laid diagonally on tangled sheets, her feet at the pillow and a thin stripe of sunlight across the darkened room. Somewhere her phone was ringing.

  She swept an arm and found where it had nested amidst the covers. It was Martinez.

  She said, “Hey.”

  “Hey. You sound like you just woke up.”

  She laughed croakily, coughed. “If you hadn’t called I’d still be asleep.”

  She rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up and found her feet. The room tipped one way and back the other. She crouched and steadied herself on the edge of the bed.

  He said, “You doing okay?”

  She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, finger-combed her hair. She put an inch of water in the glass that stood at the basin and knocked it back like a shot. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  He said, “You sound like you just ate gravel for lunch or something.”

  She perused the medicine cabinet. No aspirin. “Ha. Yeah, I’m fine. Just, you know. I thought stress leave was meant to be relaxing. This is worse than being at work.”

  She walked down the hallway to the kitchen. The world steadying. Past the other bedroom door. Windows to the right, and on the left-hand wall these off-shade squares where the photographs had stopped the paint from fading.

  He said, “Yeah, well. You gotta give it a bit of time. What’s the doc been saying?”

  “She says I’m not a nutcase.”

  “Really? You’d better go to someone else then.”

  “Hilarious.”

  In the kitchen she lifted the kettle, gauged it half full, and set it boiling. She leaned against the edge of the counter. “So what’s happening? You got good stuff cooking, or did you just want to shoot the shit?”

  He laughed. “I always want to shoot the shit. But I thought I better give you a ring. Even though I probably shouldn’t.”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “Probably shouldn’t. I’d better hear what it is then.”

  “Yeah. I thought you might say that.”

  She could picture him reclining side-on to his desk, kids’ drawings all lined up in their frames.

  He said, “Got a call from the staties this morning. Had a guy ring in a nine-one-one from this diner just off the 25, kind of up past Algodones.”

  She walked through to the living room to escape the kettle roar. “Okay. And?”

  “Guy was a trucker, eating early breakfast or something, said the only other people in there were these three guys having a sit-down and a coffee. In there about fifteen minutes or whatever and then they just up and left. Anyway. He thought they were being kind of quiet, but didn’t really make anything of it, so he pays and goes outside to the lot and two of the guys are laid out in the gravel, and the other one’s gone.”

  Her files and news clippings and printouts spread on chairs, the coffee table, everywhere. She sat sidesaddle on the arm of the sofa. “What do you mean, laid out. Like dead?”

  “No, not dead, just beat up. He reckoned one of the guys was on his back with a broken nose, blood everywhere, and the other guy was on his side and then sort of got up on all fours when the guy helped him. Wheezing away like he’d been kicked in the balls or kicked in the guts or something.”

  “Anybody say what happened?”

  “No, but I mean, pretty clear the third guy nailed the other two and then hightailed it.”

  “Deal gone bad, maybe.”

  “That’s what the truck driver thought. State police didn’t think it was much of a trafficking area, but the descriptions this guy gave sounded like Troy Rojas and Cyrus Bolt. The beat-up guys, I mean. So they ended up calling the marshals because there’s a BOLO on Bolt, and the feds put them through to our missing persons guys, because apparently there’s some angle where they’re connected to a missing girl. Anyway, then they called us just as a courtesy thing, too.”

  She said, “Quite the phone tree.”

  “Yeah.”

  The kettle clicked. She headed back to the kitchen. “So who was the third guy?”

  “Umm, hang on. Yeah. Tall, well-built blond guy. Early to mid-thirties. Probably six-three, the guy reckoned, maybe two hundred.”

  She paused, midstride. “Huh. Shit.”

  “What?”

  She kept walking. “Nothing.”

  “You know him or something?”

  She laughed. “No. I doubt it.”

  He didn’t answer. She rolled open a drawer and found a spoon and took a mug from a shelf and rinsed out the dust. “What did the staff think?”

  “Couple of cooks out the back, didn’t see a thing. Mexican waitress not too great with English. Cruiser went out but I mean, shit. Nothing to see, other than a bit of blood here and there.”

  “Truck driver still around?”

  “Yeah. He’s got a place here. Missing persons went out this morning, and I was going to have a word too, but I don’t really have the time.”

  She tilted her head to hold the phone against her shoulder, spooned instant coffee into the mug. “So you thought…?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. So I thought if you felt up to it there’s nothing says you can’t just call round and see a truck driver for a chat. If you want to.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “You want to?”

  She watched water in the mug swirl as she poured. “Yeah. I’ll go see him. What’re his details?”

  “Got a pen?”

  She did. That marker for the whiteboard by the fridge they’d used to schedule out their week. She bit her lip a second. “Yeah. Go.”

  “Guy’s name’s Alvin Lemar.”

  He gave her a phone number and address. She scrawled in huge letters, trying to fill the space. Martinez thanked her and they traded some tail-off small talk, and then the good-byes, and then it was just her in the quiet house.

  She set the phone on the cradle, resisted the urge to check the front door. It was locked when she went to bed, and she hadn’t touched it since. No need to confirm. The windows were secure.

  She sipped coffee, concentrated on staying still. The alarm had been useless during the break-in, so she’d left it unrepaired. To an extent, that felt empowering, as if the system was unneeded, but in practice she’d struggled. For weeks, unexplained sounds meant a check of all entries, and only in the past few days had she started to relax. She no longer carried the gun in the house, and daytime noises c
ould sometimes be ignored. Nighttime was a different story, but she was getting there.

  These were the hardest moments, though. Solitude felt most acute with no task at hand, no avoiding the fact that someone was gone. Work helped. Focused on a file, she was less prone to tearful lapses. She could disappear into others’ misery, and it helped to keep her functional. It helped to hide her own tragedy.

  She sipped coffee, tears making the kitchen blur.

  Don’t lose your grip.

  She wiped her eyes hurriedly, trying to keep the Lemar guy front and center. She imagined what she’d say to him, running questions and answers in her head, keep her mind off other things. She tipped the coffee in the sink and dialed the number Martinez had given her.

  He took a long time getting to the phone. She was thankful for the noise though, even just the ringtone.

  When he answered she said, “Mr. Lemar, my name’s Lauren Shore. I believe you spoke to my colleague Detective Martinez from the Albuquerque Police Department Narcotics Squad.”

  “I talked to a few people. I don’t know about a Martinez. You a police lady, are you?”

  She said, “I’m a colleague of Detective Martinez.”

  Voice shaking a little. Come on. You’ll be all right.

  He said, “Well, sure.”

  “Sir, I was hoping to come by and ask you a few questions about the incident you witnessed this morning, if that’s okay.”

  “Well, sure. I mean, I didn’t really witness anything. I just saw the start and the finish and made a good stab at what happened in the middle.”

  “I understand. That’s fine.” She read him back the address Martinez had given her.

  Lemar said, “That’s the one. You just come on round any time. We’ll have a drink or something.”

  The sooner the better. She didn’t want to face the quiet. She said, “I’ll be there in about forty minutes.”

  EIGHT

  Marshall

  Early afternoon. The car so hot he could barely touch the wheel. At the bottom of Garcia Street his phone rang again. Blocked number. He turned right and put the car against the curb. Above him across the junction the power lines strung like the tatters of some great web, and higher still the birds cloak-black and jagged in their circling. Northward the land so flat the houses across the street obscured all but the distant hills. As if idling phone-in-hand he sat at some frontier.