by Ben Sanders
He answered.
“Good you finally picked up.” The tone digitized, androgynous. Deep and echoic on the line.
Marshall said, “I only missed two calls. There’s not much finally about it.”
“There’s a finally for everything. You included.”
Marshall didn’t answer.
“I hear you’re not an easy guy to deal with.”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“So I’m told. I think I got the message: give me some answers or I’ll come and fuck you up. Am I in the ballpark?”
Marshall said, “More or less.”
“Not a very safe thing to be telling people.”
“Not a very safe thing to be refusing.”
“Safe for me I think, my friend. I can give you some advice though: looking for disappeared people is a good way to end up disappeared yourself.”
“So you know what happened.”
“It doesn’t matter. What I can say is that sometimes people go missing, and then they meet their end.”
Marshall didn’t answer. He shut off the motor.
“I think you’ve delivered a kind of ultimatum, so I hope you can accept one back. Well. Not an ultimatum, but a statement of the reality you’ve introduced.”
Marshall said, “Which is?”
“Soon you’ll be dead. Maybe you’ve been around long enough to live your dreams, I don’t know. Any case, you’ll get to live your nightmares. If not yours, then someone’s. If briefly.”
Marshall didn’t answer.
“Are you a man of principle?”
Marshall said, “Everyone is. Some people just can’t name it.”
“Would you say you have something to lose?”
“Not really.”
“Not really. Okay. But bear this in mind, because it’s important: as soon as you hold someone dear, then you stand to lose something. Do you understand? Even if you don’t value yourself, once everyone else is dead you realize how much has been taken. Wives, children, friends. Like that. Picture it, having no one. Earth with no sun, that kind of thing. Wheeling blind in the void.”
Marshall didn’t answer.
“Not to say that we won’t come for you. But just to show there are alternatives. If you’re elusive.”
“I’m not elusive. I’d quite like to be found.”
“I think you might renege on that at some point. We’ll see. I think you’re one of these people who think that because we inhabit the same territory, we also inhabit the same world. Not the case. I can live in yours, but you can’t live in mine. You don’t issue a threat from your realm into mine and expect to keep breathing.”
Marshall didn’t answer.
“Believe in God?”
Marshall said, “No.”
“What about the devil?”
“Ditto.”
“Maybe reassess that. You’ve got him on the phone right now.”
The call ended.
The world and its features slowly forming: birds above and the traffic beside him and the phone warm on his cheek. A brief quiet in the hot confines of the vehicle as he replayed it all and wondered into what madness he’d entered for the sake of someone he’d never known. His phone buzzed again. He checked the screen. An image file: two arms and two legs coarsely severed, laid out side by side. Blackened concrete beneath.
He felt the blood draining from his head, edges of his vision softening as he leaned against his door. He stretched and opened the glove compartment, heft of the Colt instantly comforting. He leaned back in his seat. Gun in his lap, smooth curve of the trigger beneath his finger.
If it was her, there was no telling. But he’d got the message:
You’re next.
NINE
Rojas
They listened to Leon make the call, sitting shirtless at his desk, a cigarette in two fingers held aloft.
Leon was IT proficient. The Marine Corps made him conversant. The phone was rigged to his computer, and there was a voice distortion applied. Everything he did was routed through some Internet substructure he called the dark web. It had been set up in the nineties by military intelligence for the purpose of safe communication, but somewhere along the line it had been hijacked for nonofficial activities:
Buying and selling porn.
Buying and selling kids.
Arranging fake IDs.
Contacting hit men.
The beauty of it was that by virtue of some complicated science, it was anonymous. Shit got bounced around through servers all over the place, and if you did things properly not even the geek kids at Fort Meade knew who you were. Leon hated the NSA. He believed eavesdropping was unconstitutional. He said the kicker about the dark web was that while one branch of the federal government was attempting to crack it, another was simultaneously bolstering its security. He called it a perfect dichotomy.
His office was full of books. Floor to ceiling on his shelves, great tomes lying open on the desk. Anatomy was his present interest. Vance said he liked to know exactly what he was cutting.
When he put down the phone Leon sat a moment with his back to them and then he swiveled smoothly in the chair.
He said, “Boy has to die.”
He thought a moment.
“Probably best you all go. Take two cars, but not that Jeep he’s already seen. I’ll stay here with the guests. We might need to free up some living space.”
* * *
Afternoon now as they readied the cars. First-aid kit for each, a ram for the door, a couple of M1s with spare thirty-round clips, backup Glocks, fake ATF badges and IDs Leon had procured online. Anyone stopped them, first glance they’d look like feds headed for a bust. Further checks and they’d just have to kill someone.
They donned Kevlar vests to wear under their jackets. Killing time before the roll-out, Dante and Vance did a few lines, standing there tensed, neck veins bulging, head-banging and screaming at a drum-bleed pitch, amping themselves up for the trip.
TEN
Marshall
He drove down onto East Alameda. This quiet residential street with the river reserve on the south side, just a shallow creek bed and in the curve of it the ash trees standing thin and gray. The river itself a weak dribble in this heat, like a drip line from a bygone passing.
Half a mile from the house the road split to either side of the reserve. He took the south route, rolling at walk speed, looking across through the trees. A few cars parked at the northern side. Light traffic. Nobody on the sidewalk, nothing really amiss. Felix’s Saab station wagon parked straight out front of the house, the man himself in the driver’s seat, hand on the wheel, nodding along to something. Marshall swore quietly and stopped abreast of him across the river and put the Corolla in reverse and with the engine in a high whine backed up fast all the way to the fork and came along the road on the north side and parked behind him. The Colt in his belt. He got out and stepped to Felix’s window and tapped a knuckle one-two on the glass.
Felix got a start. He wound the window to half-mast. The rear of the car brimming with junk, boxes within an inch of the roof, his long board stuffed in there somehow. Felix in an orange Hawaiian shirt of all things, Fleetwood Mac on the stereo.
Marshall said, “I told you to go up the street.”
“I am. Kind of.”
“I’d describe this more as directly out front.”
“Yeah, well. I watched for you. Why you all pale, dude?”
Marshall said, “Get out of here.”
“Are we square?”
“Yeah. Get out of here.”
* * *
He watched the car recede into the distance, and in the quiet he could hear the tone of the engine for a long time. He walked over to the garage and used his key to unlock the door and swung it up and open. Then he stepped back to the Corolla and started it up and reversed inside and shut off the engine. The Silverado was in the adjacent slot. He got out and looked left and right along the street and then lowered the door aga
in, a dull boom as he shut himself in the shadows. Musty odor of concrete dust and cardboard. He popped the Corolla’s trunk and removed the 870 shotgun and pushed the lid quietly closed and unlocked the Chevy and laid the gun on the rear bench and covered it with a drop sheet from the floor. Then he locked the truck and circled round to the internal door and entered the house.
He doubted he’d find the place clean, and he wasn’t wrong. Empty beer cans through the kitchen, no flat plane spared. He resisted the urge to tidy. The cans irked him especially: he hated those ripped pull-tabs, all sitting up at different angles. It was a grating aesthetic. The clean, consistent geometry of a bottle was far preferable.
Open mail on the table, all bills addressed to him. Their arrangement was that Felix paid. The method could withstand a routine check of occupancy, and it meant Marshall didn’t have to actually live there. He was inured to the idea of flawed systems. He believed that if his old life wanted to find him it would. No witness protection program would keep him hidden indefinitely. Hence this current initiative: sublet the dwelling the feds had provided, and rent a cheaper place elsewhere. All cash payments, the kind of anonymous economy folks like Felix appreciated. He was Californian, or so he said, and for crimes unspoken he was headed east in an effort to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Los Angeles Police Department. He’d been a tenant three months now, ever since Marshall had sat beside him on a stool in an Albuquerque bar and heard a tale of this great eastward trip that had been undertaken for unconvincing reasons. That the law was after him was the most detail he eventually gleaned, but Marshall figured that was perfect. When New York sent the cleaners, he didn’t want mom and dad and the kids having to explain Marshall wasn’t home.
The sweet, heady smell of marijuana in the living room, together with Felix’s principal means of income: stacked cardboard boxes of stolen electrical equipment, DVD players, microwaves, hairdryers, all sorts. Marshall hoped this was just storage and not the showroom. He flicked on the light and then went upstairs and did the same in the bathroom. No effect now, but come sundown it would be perfect.
Back down the stairs. He stood at the front door for a minute and looked out the narrow strip window to the street. All clear. He went through to the garage and raised the door for the Silverado and got in and drove it out onto the driveway and set the brake. Then he closed the garage door again and slid into the truck and drove it up the street toward the fork in the road. Way up there in the blue a jet contrail like a stitch line across the crown of the earth. He took a left where the road split, and drove back along the south bank of the river. He stopped at a T-junction one hundred yards shy of the house and backed into the cross street and parked at the curb. Across the reserve and through the trees he had an oblique view of the front of the house.
From the glove compartment he took his Nikon Monarch binoculars and set them in his lap and took the Colt from his belt and laid it at his feet. He reached under his seat and found the little Ziploc bag of emergency cash, two grand in twenties, and folded it and slipped it in his back pocket.
Northward the mountains. Seeing them he could never forget the scale of the world, and he knew that no trial was unique. Somewhere out there amongst the billions, someone else shared this same trouble in this same instant.
He waited.
2010
The back room of a restaurant down on Third Avenue, Gramercy Park, just a couple of blocks from the NYPD academy on East Twentieth. Marshall was at a table next to Mr. Asaro, seated opposite them a Russian guy in his late thirties, one Victor Bradlik, who Mr. Asaro called Vicki B. Kitchen had wound down for the night, but out here the air was still warm and close, fragrant with Italian cuisine.
Vicki B. saying, “And of course we appreciate the business opportunity, good to be back dealing with you. Lot of guys we’ve done this’n that with but, you know. Just not the same.” All the right sentiments, a bit of ego preening for old Tony.
An interesting guy, this Vicki B. He’d been born in Russia, spent the first seventeen years of his life there, but his accent was all Brooklyn: A cawse we appreciate da business awpachoonity.
Vicki said, “What we’re really after is to get our relationship back to where it was originally. You know. Before all this other shit went down.”
Asaro smiled as he listened, the picture of serenity. He sat with his chair pushed back and at an angle to the table, hands linked behind his head, one foot laid across the other knee. The pose helped showcase his new footwear: leather boots by Gucci, laceless, a gleaming jet-black to match his hair.
He said, “That’s good, Vicki. That’s what we like to hear.”
He spoke in a quiet voice that wasn’t quite his norm: almost a whisper, let you know there was menace lurking behind the velvet.
Going on eleven P.M. now, nobody out front, traffic on Third Ave. the only action. Just the one table in the back room they were in, not much else either: green paint, black-and-white checkerboard linoleum, curved up a couple inches where it met the walls. The place belonged to Tony’s brother Danny. He’d been gone about thirty minutes, happy to serve coffee and then call it a night. A good decision given the nature of Tony’s meetings. In the door to the kitchen Vicki B.’s backup man stood with his hands clasped in front of him. This huge, square guy in a dark suit and tie, hair buzzed so short it was like dust on his scalp. Over to Marshall’s right one of Mr. Asaro’s guys, Jimmy Wheels, rolling himself back and forth a few inches in his chair, not anxious, just idling away the time.
Mr. Asaro leaned forward and took a sip of his double espresso, set the cup back in the saucer, not a sound, even in the quiet room. Vicki B. and Marshall just had regular coffee, Vicki’s almost gone, Marshall’s untouched.
Asaro said, “Vicki, I’m pleased everything’s getting under way with the right intentions this time.”
Vicki B. spread his hands, face solemn. Least I can do, Mr. Asaro, sir. In appropriate mobster fashion, a black leather briefcase leaned against his chair, a second identical number on the floor between Asaro and Marshall, but the swap was yet to happen.
Asaro made a little gesture with one hand, like striking a cymbal, remembering something. He said, “You ever hear the story of how Jimmy ended up with fucked legs?”
Vicki B. raised his eyebrows a fraction, like come to think of it, no he hadn’t. He glanced over at Jimmy in his wheelchair and said, “No.” Stretching the word out a bit, like he’d be interested to know.
Asaro said, “Must’ve been a good fifteen or so years back now, would you say, Jim?”
Jimmy Wheels said, “It was that Jersey City shit, so yeah, fifteen.”
“Right. So anyway, Jim was running a drop-off to a guy, Timmy Vegas, you know him?”
Vicki B. did not know Timmy V.
“Doesn’t matter. So Jim shows up at Timmy’s, and the load’s what, ten thousand short, something like that?”
Jimmy Wheels said, “Nine six.”
“Nine six short.” Asaro laughed. “Which turns out to be a bit of a problem, because Timmy Vegas hasn’t heard that Don’t Shoot the Messenger saying. You know? Because Jim’s just the fucking delivery guy, don’t have a clue why it might be nine six down. Or even nine six up, if it came to it.”
Vicki B. nodded, frowning slightly, a polite display of rapt attention.
Asaro leaned and picked up the teaspoon from his saucer and stirred his coffee gently, a delicate movement in the little espresso mug, laid the spoon down again. Vicki B. on tenterhooks, or so it seemed.
Asaro said, “So, a bit of a problem for old Jim. Or, I guess young Jim, at the time. Everyone’s like, where’s the rest, you musta took it, ra-de-ra. And anyway, long story short, they laid him out in the back of a pickup, facing upwards with his top half hanging out past the fender, and a coupla guys held his legs down, and Timmy and someone else jumped on his chest and—wham, broke his back. Prrrck.”
Vicki B.’s eyebrows were up again, like he’d have to try it sometime,
Asaro looking across at Jimmy Wheels, as if seeking corroboration. Jimmy Wheels nodding to himself with a far-off look, maybe reliving the magic.
Asaro said, “You’re probably thinking, Yeah, yeah, Tony, good story. But what I’m getting at is, I’ve been pretty flexible and tolerant in business so far, and people have taken advantage of it. I’ve lost out to an extent. So you could say, with that in mind, I’m planning a more Timmy Vegas–type approach to doing things. If you follow.”
Vicki B.’s backup man had been leaning gently on the doorframe, and he took a small step away from it, hands still clasped.
Vicki B said, “I’ll bear it in mind, Tony.”
Tony Asaro gave him the serene look again. “Terrific. That’s great.”
Vicki B. didn’t answer.
Asaro had some coffee. He nodded at Marshall’s mug. “Marsh, you haven’t touched yours.”
Marshall said, “I think I’ve had my fill for today.”
“All right. Suit yourself.”
He stirred his espresso again. He said, “So now really, we get down to it. Because the problem I’ve got is that you and I, Vicki, had some business go south a little while ago, and you’ve ended up owing me a bit of money.”
Vicki, nodding as he listened, rolled with it pretty smooth. He said, “Sure, Tony, but that was six months back. And I’d sort of thought that what we’re doing here today was like a good faith sign we’re happy just to move on, kinda let it be.”
Asaro said, “Vicki, time doesn’t make debts go away. If anything, makes them bigger, appreciation ’cause of your interest and shit. So I’d say if there’s any kind of good faith move being made, it would be me letting you know all’s okay, not the other way round. That’d just be dumb.”
Vicki B. looked set to say something, but drew a blank. He had some coffee to cover it.
Asaro said, “So by my estimate, you owe me about sixteen grand. We’ll ignore the interest, because it’s only six months, but we still need to square it. Because it’s decent money, isn’t it?”