by Ben Sanders
Vicki B. didn’t answer. His backup guy no longer had his hands clasped.
Asaro said, “Soooo.” Stretching it out thin, something contentious on the way.
Vicki B waited.
Asaro said, “Way we’re going to settle it all, I’m going to take your case”—he nodded at the floor—“but you’re not having mine. Okay?”
Vicki B. dabbed a sleeve to his upper lip, swallowed like he was trying to keep something down. “Tony, that’s ridiculous. I’ve got forty K here.”
Asaro nodded. “I know you do. But remember, we were talking about the Timmy Vegas approach to life, and I think this is something Tim might approve of.”
Had to hand it to him, Vicki B. knew how to roll with it. “Tone, come on. Shit was going so well, you want to end it like this? I mean, ain’t even my money.”
He dabbed his lip again. Asaro noticed and nodded at him. “Nixon had that same problem. Sweaty upper lip when he got nervous, happens to the best of ’em.”
He and Jimmy Wheels shared a laugh.
Vicki B. gave it a moment, and then he came back, still keeping things calm. “Tone, seriously. If I call the deal off, we’re going to walk out of here with our shit.”
Asaro glanced around, mouth downturned, like he really couldn’t see how that would come about. “Oh, is that right? Huh.”
Vicki B. said, “I mean, no need to get vicious about it, but I’m packing, Mikhail’s packing.”
He nodded at Marshall. “Two on one. Easy.” He laughed, bit shakier than normal.
Marshall’s pulse ramped up, because if that was the plan, he’d have some work to do.
Asaro smiled. Leaning back in his chair with his suit jacket open, it was clear he didn’t have a weapon. He said to Vicki B., “Have you heard the story about Marshall?”
“Tony, I think we’ve had enough stories.”
He leaned down for his briefcase.
Asaro said, “Vicki. You leave that seat, shit is gonna go south very, very quickly. Understand?”
Vicki held the pose a brief moment, on a lean with one hand on the case. He looked at Asaro, looked at Marshall, and then he let it go and tipped upright again, very slow.
Asaro said, “Good decision. What was I saying? Marshall. Yeah, Marshall’s got some skills on him. Fastest draw-fire you’ve ever seen on a man, swear to god.”
Vicki didn’t answer. Marshall’s heart tripping away at a steady gallop now, only thing he could picture, since Asaro had mentioned it, was the whole meeting going bad in a very bloody fashion. He glanced at Vicki’s backup guy, the kid only twenty-three, twenty-four; last thing in the world he wanted to do was put a bullet through him.
Asaro said, “And you may think that’s all very well, but.” He held his jacket gently by the lapels, spread it slowly, just crisp blue shirt underneath, neatly tucked. “You know. I wouldn’t walk unarmed into this sort of meet-and-greet unless I had someone with some pretty slick moves. Anyway.”
He smoothed his jacket back in place. “End of the day, try any funny shit, Marshall’s gonna tap the both of you.”
He mimed it slowly with a finger gun, trying a couple of options. “Easy.”
Vicki B. didn’t answer. Marshall sat there riding the blood rush, hoping there was nothing in his face other than the sense he was in his element. Which, truth be told, he wasn’t. Not because he feared his own well-being: way things were configured, Mikhail was just off Vicki’s shoulder, Marshall could draw and nail them in less than a second if he had to. The issue was more that killing two guys he’d just met was fairly frosty on the scale of cold deeds, and it would be nice to know what good or bad they’d brought to the world before he showed them the door.
They all sat there quietly, Vicki B. sizing up a few exit strategies. Jimmy Wheels still rolling through his little two-inch amplitude. Tony Asaro with his foot up on his knee, arching his instep every now and then so his new leather caught the light.
Eventually Vicki B. raised his hands slowly, palms out, fingers very slightly curled. He said, “Tony, this the way you want to play it, fine. I don’t want to end anything with guns.”
He lowered his hands. “Just bear in mind, this is not going to be the last of it.”
Asaro smiled. “I’ll sleep with one eye open, Vicki, don’t you worry about that.”
“Sorry to rob you of a shootout.”
Asaro laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. You’re not out the door yet.”
And he picked up the teaspoon and leaned across the table and plunged the handle into Vicki B.’s right eye, deep, a solid two-inch thrust, and of course Mikhail flipped his jacket back and went for his piece, and Marshall pulled his Beretta from the shoulder rig and shot the guy through the gut.
End of show.
Vicki B. screaming and clutching his ruined eye, the spoon on the table in front of him, clots of jelly all up the handle. The backup guy fetal on the floor, retching and hugging himself, gun on the ground nearby. Jimmy wheeled over, leaned down, and picked it up.
Asaro spent a brief moment scoping the damage, and then he looked at Marshall and smiled. “Pretty fast there, kid. Maybe a record time.”
Marshall didn’t answer, shootings one of those things where the full awful gravity hit only in hindsight.
Tony Asaro leaned across and gripped his knee. “Best to tread easy now, I’d say. Bent cop isn’t a good label to be wearing at the best of times, and I’d say you’ve as good as killed a man. So.”
He stood up, put the same hand on Marshall’s shoulder, warm breath in his ear as he bent close to whisper: “I’d say I pretty much own you now.”
ELEVEN
Lauren Shore
Alvin Lemar lived in a trailer park down on Central Ave., which was the old Route 66 as it passed through town. At the gravel turn-in a low faded sign with slanted print read WELCOME TO GREEN HILLS. Opposite, a general store sat alone on a big lot and between them the road just straight and level through the tan landscape with the power lines strung endlessly pole to pole and no trees or wind to speak of.
She drove in slowly with the grit crackling under the tires and stopped at reception and the woman at the desk directed her to Mr. Lemar’s unit. She cruised slowly round toward the back of the park. A Mexican boy grinned and shot a finger gun at her and his mother hanging clothes flicked him with a wet garment.
Lemar’s trailer was olive green with some little planter boxes in the gravel out front and a Stars and Stripes on a short, sloped pole near the roofline. The flag just a lifeless sheaf in the heat. A timber deck was built off one side underneath a corrugated plastic veranda, and there was a plastic table and chairs and a few potted plants. A man, presumably Alvin Lemar, was seated dozing at the table with a magazine splayed on his paunch and a German shepherd lying beside him.
She parked behind a Kenworth tractor unit next to the trailer and the dog’s ears pricked and its head came up off its front paws. Lemar woke with her door slam, blinking hugely as he adjusted his spectacles.
She stepped up onto the deck, feeling light without the gun. She proffered a hand for the dog, hot breath at her knuckles.
Lemar stood up and dropped the magazine on the table. “Don’t worry about Maestro. He looks the part, but he’s nothing really.”
He shuffled around the table, hemmed in by his stomach, and shook her hand. “Why don’t you just sit down out here. Think we’ve got some iced tea brewing away, if you’d fancy some.”
She thanked him and took a seat, turned it so she faced the door. The car was only thirty feet away.
Relax, this is safe.
The dog took up post within petting distance, looking at her with round jewel eyes and its tail wagging gently.
Lemar called out from inside: “Popular man today. Couple of fellers were out this morning, but they weren’t drugs people. Told them what I said to you on the phone, that I just saw the before and the after and had a guess at the middle. But anyway.”
He appeared a moment later wit
h two plastic highball tumblers iced and brimming, already working up a sweat.
He sat down, slid her a drink, ice tinkling. “See how hot it is. Jeepers.” He traced a finger through the dew on his tumbler.
She said, “I appreciate your time. I understand you’re a trucker, is that right?”
“Yeah. That’s the one. Had a load I was running up from Phoenix, just to Santa Fe. Coming back and I was just dead at the wheel, you know how you get sometimes. Figured a bit of breakfast would set things straight. This was five A.M. or thereabouts I’d say.”
“Okay. And were the three men you saw already there, or did they arrive after you?”
“They came in afterwards. I guess I sat down and had a bit of a ponder over the menu and said what I’d have. This place does twenty-four hours, but don’t ask me how they turn a profit because hand to heart, I was the only one in there except the Mex lady. Waitress, I mean.”
She sipped her drink. Just off to their right a timber fence and beyond it the road with cars back and forth every now and again. “How long before the others came in?”
“Not long. I’d say twenty minutes or close to it.”
“They come in separately or together?”
He looked at the dog and sucked his lip as he remembered. “Separately. Well, I mean. The two guys who almost got their ticket clipped came in together. Mex feller and this ratty-looking guy. Nothing really funny about them I guess, other than that they seemed pretty grim sorts of characters you wouldn’t want to argue with. You know how you get that sense. Anyhow, they just came in and sat at a booth. Mex feller made a call at one point, and then I guess the third guy came in maybe fifteen minutes later. Something like that.”
“This is the blond guy?”
“Yeah, tall, good-looking kid. Very confident I guess, not hurrying along. Always liked folks like that. Used to say to people in a rush: What will you do with the time that you save?”
The dog nudged her wrist with a wet nose. She petted its head. “And he went and sat down with them?”
“Yeah. He sat down. That’s right, the other two had some coffee and the new guy got some as well. Guess they talked for twenty minutes maybe. I mean, not causing a scene or anything, but you have to wonder when you get a kinda discreet-looking meeting like that at a funny hour of the day whether it’s wholly honest business. I don’t know.”
“What did you think they were doing?”
Lemar squinted and tipped his chair back a fraction and then down. “At the time, nothing. But then when I went outside and saw the two of them in the state they were, all the bits clicked together pretty well. Only imagine they came inside for some negotiating and arranging prices or whatever, and then when they headed out to do the swap the blond character duped them and took off with the lot. Funny business. You look at a nice feller like that and you’d never know. But I mean, everyone on earth has got a private dimension, and the case with some people is you can’t just look them in the eye and guess the nature of it.”
He chuckled, patted his shirt pocket as if looking for cigarettes, came up empty. “Those other two looked like pretty capable characters, so to be done by some guy like that they must have thought they’d ventured into bad luck of a whole new kind. Slick-looking job, too. Like, they weren’t all pummeled. It just seemed like bam, bam, and he was out of there. Not that they said anything. I told them, ought to get the law out here and press charges, but they wouldn’t hear it. Had that sort of look where if you got police out there they’d just end up defending more claims than they could actually lay. Which I suppose might be pretty accurate because the drugs guys that came this morning said them two are good with their chemistry. If you follow.”
She said, “What age would the blond man be?”
“Well. I wouldn’t put my livelihood on it, but I figured he’d be nigh on the same as my boy Casper. Call it thirty-five.”
“He use a credit card or anything? How’d they pay for the coffee?”
“Not sure, to be honest with you. Got the impression they just left money, but I couldn’t swear by it.”
“You see what sort of car he was driving?”
“Didn’t see a car. Like I said, I just saw them come in the door and then walk out of it again. Them other two had a Cherokee that I saw when I came outside, but the boy I don’t know. Not the sort of place to have a camera either, so unless he stopped for gas I don’t know how you’d find him.”
TWELVE
Rojas
They got his details through an online database Leon subscribed to. Just enter the license plate and it returned all kinds of personal information. Address, phone number, DUI history, nationwide felony arrest record. Not only was the government spying on people, but for an affordable monthly installment, people could spy on each other.
The guy’s name was James Marshall Grade and he did in fact live in Santa Fe, in a place on West Alameda. They drove out there at a little after seven thirty, once Leon and Vance had been down to see the guests.
The sun had set. They were into the gloaming. Light traffic on Alameda as they cruised west, the trees along the river a twisted pale bonework in the headlights. Rojas and Bolt up ahead in the Chrysler 300C, Vance and Dante tailing in the Audi Quattro.
The cars had been a real slick move: Leon had found a guy online with direct access to New Mexico MVD. For a small fee you could nominate a plate number and associated details for inclusion in the state database. The practical benefit being you could boost any car you liked, swap out the tags, pay the guy to upload the information to MVD, and voilà, legit transport.
The Marshall guy’s house up ahead on the right. There was a light on upstairs. They glided past. Looking back, a lit window at the rear of the house was visible, too. They continued a few hundred yards up the street and swung to the curb. They’d already scoped the place on Google Earth. The plan: leave the cars a little ways east and west, respectively, walk in, take the guy hostage at gunpoint, and then bring the Quattro into the garage and load him up.
Home for fun and games.
Vance called it Having One in the BAG.
Basement Abu Ghraib.
For coms they had earpieces rigged through digital radio. High-tech encrypted shit Leon had pilfered during the Iraq drawdown. It would help with the ATF cover story, if it came to it.
Vance radioed from the Quattro: “I think we’re good to go. But we need to clear that street on the other side. He could have set it up so he’s waiting out there with a long gun and then nail us when we hit the house.”
Bolt said, “Nobody fucking long guns someone who comes to their house. That’s fucked up. We could be anyone.”
“You still need to do it.”
“Why me?”
“Dante and I are hitting the house, you can clear the street.”
“You guys are meant to be the fucking black-ops, you do it.”
Vance said, “Listen, dipshit. I didn’t spend six years wasting dudes in Sandstown on your behalf just to come back and be told what to do. You fucking owe us your liberty, and you can start repaying by walking along the street and checking it’s clear. I don’t give a shit who does it, all I know is it’s not me, and it’s not Dante.”
Classic Vance, that hair-trigger temper. Crystal probably didn’t help. Behind them the Audi’s high beams came on and it U-turned and prowled back the opposite way.
Vance again: “Just call in when it’s clear. It’ll take two seconds.”
Bolt said, “Jesus Christ.”
But he wasn’t going to argue it, not with Vance. He and Rojas had used him as backup when they were doing imports up from Coahuila. These dead-of-night cross-border runs in a Bronco, the two of them up front, Vance and a hundred-odd pounds of brown heroin in back. They’d been pulled over one night by two ICE guys and Vance had just stood up through the sunroof with a .357 and nailed the pair of them with a headshot each, and ten minutes later he was dozing in the backseat.
And with that in mind, on
e did not force the point, especially now the dynamic had shifted, and Leon was in charge.
Quiet as those realities settled. Gloom of the cabin and the smell of new leather and the dials all lit up like a flight deck.
Rojas said, “Just do it. Take that spare key.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Like some petulant kid, packing heat and false ID. He opened his door and slid out of the car.
THIRTEEN
Marshall
Between the trees he could see the black Chrysler and tailing it the white Audi SUV. Almost predatory in their smooth and quiet glide, sharp headlight beams cast narrow and suspicious.
There was a bit of traffic so two cars in tight succession weren’t that unusual. The only standout aspect was they were both late-model vehicles with tinted windows, and Marshall’s grasp of likelihoods said that if the two most expensive cars he’d seen all afternoon came through as a pair, there was probably something to it.
He waited.
Very quiet on the street. He checked the river reserve. Darkness now between the trees. Nobody on his little side road. His own car plus a couple more. He dropped his window an inch. Cool evening air. A faint light throwing shadows in the woods and then the Audi slipped back along the street, no engine noise, the softest hush off the tires.
And he knew.
They’d cruised past for a once-over. The Chrysler had stayed west, now the Audi was moving back east.
They were setting up a perimeter.
If they were thorough they’d check the south side too, where he was, across the river reserve.
He listened. A gentle rustle as a breeze passed through the trees. In his mirror a lone streetlight framed there at the curb. His bathroom window growing brighter amidst the shadows.
He leaned and placed the binoculars in the glove compartment and picked up the .45 from the floor. There was a round already chambered. He reached up and set the dome light so it wouldn’t come on, and then he slid out and pressed his door shut gently until he heard it click.