by Ben Sanders
The traffic cleared but he hesitated.
What if there’s surveillance he hadn’t seen? They could have witnessed his little reinvention. Could be cross hairs on him right now.
He didn’t move. The road’s edge a yes-or-no junction:
Go back to the car and continue living. Cross the street and maybe don’t.
Only death cut things so binary. It was hard to overcome: the prospect that what he saw right now could well be his end point. Thirty-five years, love and fear and all the rest of it, and this could be the dreary terminus.
Lord.
It was too much to properly consider, standing at the edge of a highway dressed as a delivery man. When the road cleared again he let his breath out through his teeth.
He started walking.
THIRTY-THREE
Marshall
Across the highway Rojas’s Jeep hadn’t moved, the blind still drawn. Marshall tensed as he heard a siren and then with little warning a state police car flashed past, headed for the interstate. Marshall held the gun behind him along his leg and stepped out from beneath the balcony, scanned the length of the upper level.
Heart thudding as he broke cover. You could lose your head doing this.
Nothing.
No faces at the glass, no twitches in the curtains.
He kept the pistol at hand and went back inside the office and moved behind the counter and started taking files from shelves.
Insurance, expenses, employment contracts, finally the guest register.
He flipped through, glancing door to page as he read. The check-in form had a box for vehicle make and license number:
There’s that GMC pickup.
Chevy sedan, times one—
And times two.
The Focus.
The Prius.
Where’s that Bronco?
He licked a finger and walked through the pages. Yesterday. Two days back. A week.
Nothing.
No Ford Bronco.
He kept his eyes on the entry and took a backward step to the office door and glanced in. Keys on a pegboard on the far wall, plastic tags denoting room number. Seven, eight, ten, thirteen, and twenty were missing.
Five legitimate guests, five keys gone. Which implied the Bronco men had taken a master, and probably the manager, too. He’d known it when he saw the empty office. Now the adrenaline caught up.
A near-dead silence, just the computer hum breaking it.
He could see it all converging: Rojas and the answers Marshall needed, locked across the street. A killer inbound.
How much time did he have?
Gut feeling again: none. Maybe these were the final seconds, break-in imminent, a sniper upstairs supplying cover.
He stepped to the desk and picked up the phone and jammed it with his shoulder so he could keep hold of the gun and dialed Cohen. No answer. He dabbed the cradle and broke the line. On the console was a list of numbers, one marked “Day Manager.” He punched it in. A short pause, and then on the desk beside him a cell phone started ringing, a cheerful little tune that was dreadful at the same time.
He put down the handset and gave himself a few seconds just to run it in his head, and then he entered the office and took key five from its peg, which he figured was ground floor, center unit. Then he stepped outside and walked along the front of the building beneath the walkway, the Colt .45 still held against his leg. Outwardly calm but as he moved he checked windows and checked the street and checked parked cars and amongst that mental threat register a catalogue of fallback tactics grew, a Plan B if he’d missed something, contingencies if things came apart.
The Bronco was parked midway along, nose-in between units five and six, almost dead-level with the Cherokee across the highway.
His footsteps on the concrete, like a countdown to something.
When he reached room five he keyed the lock and let himself in and left the door open behind him. The same tired setup that always greeted him. He was glad he wasn’t staying. He glanced around for what he needed and then checked the bathroom. Across the window a white lace blind was suspended on a plastic-coated wire maybe four feet long tensioned between two screws.
That’ll do.
He unhooked the little eyelet at each end and bunched the material in a tight concertina to keep it on the wire, and then brought it back outside.
Standing by the Bronco at its rear wheel, he was out of cover from the balcony, visible from the second floor. Chest thundering as he scanned each way. This range with a rifle, he’d make an easy target. Steady breaths. He counted to ten, just watching.
No sign of movement.
Head still turned to watch the upper windows, he trapped the blind under his arm and dropped the clip from the Colt. He found the latch edge of the fuel door by touch and jammed the steel lip at the base of the magazine into the quarter-inch gap and cranked it violently and popped the flap.
Still nothing upstairs.
Marshall unscrewed the cap. A faint sigh, a haze as the fumes wafted. Odor deep in his nose. He raised the curtain wire one-handed like a spear and pushed it halfway down the tank and withdrew it carefully, a six-inch length of curtain soaked with fuel. He inverted the wire and fed the dry end down the tank again and bent the free section out at right angles, the material wadded tightly at the opening, what he hoped was a good vapor plug.
In the room he took the fire evacuation notice from where it hung from a nail on the fake timber veneer of the bathroom wall and slipped it from its laminated cover.
Irony not lost on him as he used the gas element to light one corner of the paper. A long tongue of flame starting eagerly, dying back to smoky embers as he angled the page carefully, keep it to a slow burn.
The smoke alarm trilled.
Marshall walked outside, smoldered paper held aloft. He touched the blackened edge to the soaked blind and the flames leapt brightly for an instant and then subsided, working patiently on the white lace.
Marshall dropped the paper and walked away, gun in hand, headed for the stairs at the end of the building. A ground-floor door opened, room seven, and a young guy in a tank top stood framed there, aghast, pants gaping at an open zipper.
He spread his arms. “Dude, the hell you doing?”
Maybe he couldn’t see the gun.
Marshall glanced behind him, improvised fuse making steady progress. He said, “Might be best you went back indoors.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Lucas Cohen
Walking across the highway, over the shoulder, he could feel the point on his spine where the gun sights surely settled. Eyelash to the lens. Aim quivering on each heartbeat. The smooth and gradual tightening of a trigger.
Don’t think about it.
Into the motel parking lot. The guy in the passenger seat of the Tahoe glanced at him and then away. He was just a pizza guy. But he saw the front windows were down. It would make things easier.
He looped around the nose of the Tahoe, careful not to look at them, and headed for one of the end rooms. There was a Ford Taurus sedan parked out front. Cohen balanced the box on one hand and knocked on the door. A man in his sixties answered. A lean, tan guy, bespectacled and combed over, neck and waistline just starting to slacken.
Cohen said, “Sir, did you order a double, extra-large pepperoni pizza with mustard crust?”
The guy said, “No, I didn’t.”
Lucky he’d found someone honest or it might have got interesting. The lid was already unzipped, and he lifted it and peered in, perplexed, like he might be checking an order or something.
“Funny. Told me it’s a motel pretty close, but guess they had a mix-up.”
All the while wondering how the man would react if he tried for a glimpse of the good stuff and saw only guns. It would take some smooth talking to placate.
The guy nodded across the street, closed the door a little. “Could be that place over there.”
Cohen glanced behind him, like noticing the other motel fo
r the first time. “Oh, thanks. I’ll check it out.”
The guy gave him a nod and a sort of thin parting smile and Cohen turned and the door was closed before he’d even stepped away.
Now it got tense. Just keep everything steady.
He kept the lid up, head slightly bent like he was grappling with something tricky. He walked back across the lot toward the highway, coming up on the driver’s side of the Tahoe. The pair of them were still fixed on the Cherokee. As he drew closer the car blocked the view of the motel across the street, and he reached beneath the lid and put one hand on the Glock .40, and then two paces from the truck he let go of the box completely and in a deft move caught the SIG as everything fell. He raised both guns and aimed through the driver’s window.
“Gentlemen.”
They weren’t looking his way, but they didn’t get a fright. They both had pistols held low between their knees: the passenger a .357, the driver a Colt M1911 like Marshall’s.
The driver had a thin scar down his neck, looked like pink melted plastic. He smiled a little, and Cohen saw he had some gold caps up front. “What you want, pizza boy?”
Cohen said, “Deputy U.S. marshal, actually.”
“Not what your hat says.”
“I’m what’s called undercover. Drop the guns and get out of the car and you can have a look at my ID.”
The driver put the Colt up on his knee, very slowly. Then he thumbed the hammer back, just as gentle. No expression, like the hand was doing its own thing. He said, “How dudes get hurt, doing silly shit like this.”
Cohen said, “You’ll learn.”
No answer.
Cohen said, “That thing comes off your knee I’m going to put one through your nose.”
“Then maybe take a step back. Less you want my brains on your face.”
Cohen said, “Don’t push me. I killed a guy a few weeks back, I’m happy to make it three for the year.”
Which was a long, long way from the truth, but acting soulless and trigger-happy struck him as tactful, given this was something of a life-or-death matter.
They didn’t move. The passenger hadn’t spoken. He was tattooed from jaw to wrist, white tank top stark on the ink, prison art by the looks of it.
Movement across the highway: Cohen glanced and saw a black Chrysler 300C with black-tint windows ease out of a parking space and turn onto the road. It slowed as it drew level with his Town Car and then accelerated again and came smoothly along the street and switched lanes and pulled in at reception. Then it rolled quietly through the lot and stopped just short of the red Jeep.
The Tahoe driver saw him looking and smiled, and Cohen hadn’t met many people who could do that to a .40-caliber Glock.
He could almost read the guy’s mind: Didn’t you know we had backup?
The driver said, “Deputy, this isn’t something you want to be a part of.”
The Chrysler still idling and Cohen saw the driver’s door open and as the guy put a foot on the ground something across the street exploded.
A colossal, shaking boom.
He glanced across to the other motel in time to see a blue Ford Bronco leaping off its back axle, a cushion of yellow flame beneath it. A mushroom of black smoke already rising, and as the truck crashed to earth he heard the tinkle of shattered glass, and the guy in the passenger seat of the Tahoe lost some color, ink on his neck gaining definition.
Cohen said, “Drop them, or I’ll start counting.”
The driver said, “Counting for what?”
Cohen didn’t answer, and he could see in his periphery the window of the open door of the Chrysler slowly lowering and when he next looked a man was crouched there with a gun leveled at him two-handed.
The driver drew the Colt slowly up his thigh. “Back off, pizza man.”
“And then what? You murder Rojas?”
The guy smiled. “You’re first on the list. I wouldn’t worry about who’s next.”
Cohen didn’t answer.
The driver said, “Five.”
Enunciating clearly, big lip movements the Chrysler guy could read.
“Four.”
Jesus.
“Three.”
“Two.”
Crack.
They all looked.
Across the street on the balcony of the motel he saw a figure with a rifle, smoke from the gutted Bronco a roiling black pillar adjacent, and when he looked back the guy at the Chrysler was slumped dead across his door and blood was running down the paintwork.
That awful sight drew him, and he stayed with it a fraction too long, so when he turned back to the Tahoe the driver’s gun was coming up and Cohen fired, hit something nonvital, the Colt still rising and the passenger’s .357 coming for him too, and he fell backward and fired and fired and fired, pockmarks in the polished sheet metal, and finally just lay there with both weapons raised and the gun smoke drifting white and acrid. He heard a door slam, but by the time he looked the red Jeep was already speeding backward out of the lot, and shit that’s Troy Rojas at the wheel.
THIRTY-FIVE
Marshall
The rifle was a Springfield M25, box-fed with .308 Winchesters. Marshall stayed on the balcony and watched through the scope as Rojas made his getaway, tearing for the interstate. He couldn’t risk another shot. He swung back to the Chrysler. Vance was slumped dead on the door. Marshall recognized him from last night. In the short time it had taken him to sight and fire, Rojas had made it to the Jeep.
He scanned left and found Cohen getting to his feet. People were screaming, here and across the highway. The two guys in the Tahoe were motionless and the windshield was cracked and bloodied. This picture of godlike ruin and he’d played a hand in it.
He stood watching for a few seconds, and then he lowered the gun and went back into the motel room where the two men from the Bronco lay dead and the duty manager was bound and gagged in the bathroom.
Marshall checked the bodies. No phones. They were probably in the truck. The first guy had some cash and a set of keys and a canvas pouch of lock picks. He found a knife on the second guy and used it to cut the masking tape securing the manager’s wrists. The man spat his gag and lay gasping with weak relief and Marshall knew his frame of reference for terror had been skewed a long way.
“Thank you. Thank you so much. They were going to kill me. Oh, man.”
Marshall wondered why they hadn’t. He said, “It’s okay. Can you stand?”
He helped the guy to his feet.
“Just close your eyes. I can lead you out. Are you okay?”
“Yes. Just get me out. Please.” Shaking and pale.
“It’s okay. You’re safe. Shut your eyes now.”
Marshall took him by the elbow and with the man shuffling like an invalid they left the room. The sliding window above the bed had been opened to permit a clear shot, and the table had been moved to the center of the room to support the rifle on its bipod.
Outside, the smoke from the burning truck was blowing in a loose and noxious skein across the front of the building and a few cars had stopped at the edge of the highway. Guests in the other units were at their windows and a woman came out to take the man’s other elbow, and Marshall walked with them a few steps and then turned back to the room.
He could hear sirens, several cars inbound. He stood by the table and made a last brief scan. Their final seconds chronicled in blood. Marshall knelt and pocketed the canvas lock pick bag and crossed the unit to the bathroom. He lowered the seat on the toilet and stepped up and pushed the window wide and put one leg outside so he was straddling the sill. The ground-floor units were stepped beyond the line of the upper-level wall, forming a lower roof. He gripped the sash and pulled the other leg through, and then lowered himself carefully. He crouched at the gutter a moment, gauging the impact, and then he jumped down and walked away.
* * *
There was a Denny’s farther up the highway, a few places past the Chevron station. The motel action had it l
ow on patrons. Marshall went in and checked faces and saw that everyone’s attention was with the blue and red lights down the road. He leaned on the counter.
A waitress saw him and smiled. “Hon, you go round wearing pink glasses, people’ll wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
She shrugged. The gum she was chewing smacked wetly. “I dunno. Something.”
“Do you have a phone I can borrow?”
“Yeah. But you got to buy something.”
He ordered coffee and paid with his breakfast change. Once she’d poured him a cup she brought him a cordless handset, smiling as she chewed, like there’d been something flirty in the request.
“Thanks.”
“You know what’s going on down there?”
He looked out the window. Three state police cars and a sheriff’s unit over by the Tahoe. Smoke from the Bronco was blowing across the highway. He said, “Car on fire, I think.”
“Quite a turnout, whatever it is.”
Marshall didn’t answer. He sipped the coffee, standing side-on to the counter so he could see the door, and when she moved away he called Cohen.
“Gather it was you who incinerated that truck I’m lookin’ at.”
Marshall said, “Had to get them out of the room before they shot someone.”
“And I imagine that would’ve done the trick.”
“Yeah.”
Cohen said, “Where are you?”
“I’m at that Denny’s you can probably see.”
“You going to come back and give a statement?”
“No.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m going after Rojas.”
“You know where he’s headin’?”
“No. But I’m good at making guesses.”
Cohen didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “You going to keep the pizza uniform?”
Cohen thought about it. He said, “Maybe just the cap. For when I’m cooking homemade.”
“You kill those two guys in the Tahoe?”
Cohen took a moment, like it wasn’t quite reality until you put it into words. He said, “Got the driver over the line, but the other one’s only halfway there. Just have to hope.”