by Matt Rogers
‘So they’re still there?’ King said. ‘I take it they’ll get up, go inside, and warn Mickey.’
Slater shook his head. ‘Not likely.’
‘What’d you do?’
‘Talked some sense into them. Just like we’re going to talk some sense into their boss later tonight. It’s as simple as that.’
‘It’s never as simple as that.’
‘You need to change your mindset,’ Slater said. ‘If we’re going up against insurmountable odds, then of course it’s smart to sit it out given what you’ve got waiting back at home. But things like this? You can keep doing this as much as you like.’
‘Says you.’
‘We have a considerable advantage over almost everyone we go up against. You know it, I know it. If we leave Mickey alone and he ends up taking over Walcott’s loan shark scheme, then it means we didn’t help anybody. If we talk him out of it before he gets there, we’ve directly helped dozens, maybe hundreds, of hurricane victims who have nothing left. And all we have to do is rough him up in a dark alley and make him understand what’s what. You’re telling me you’re not willing to do that? Low risk, high reward. I’ll handle the high risk business.’
King stayed silent for a while, then said, ‘Sometimes you’re persuasive.’
‘I know. One of my many talents.’
‘You’re starting to convince me … you and your bootleg therapy. Maybe you should take over from Dr. Phil when he calls it a day.’
Slater said, ‘That’d go well.’
‘You’ve got the face for TV.’
‘And the personality for sending guests to psych wards.’
They waited thirty long minutes. No one materialised from round the side of Holt’s. The guy Slater had spoken to must have deduced the entrance was being watched, and done what he’d been told. He and his buddies were probably in the hospital already, with their phones resting at the bottom of the ocean.
Truth was, Slater had no way of following up with them. He hadn’t bothered sifting through wallets, finding IDs, taking notes for later. They weren’t worth it, and anyway, he knew they’d listen to him. It would take an incredibly courageous and foolish person to ignore that warning. The three Aussies were tough, but deep down they knew what was best for them.
If they’d contacted Mickey, the small-time gangster would be long gone. He’d have slipped out the back, vanishing into oblivion.
Another hour passed. Conversation was sparse. They instinctively saved their energy in case something spiralled out of control later, which things had a habit of doing when they were involved.
Eventually Slater said, ‘You ready to be a father?’
King didn’t answer for a long beat.
Then, still staring forward, he said, ‘Yeah, I am.’
‘Was it planned?’
‘No,’ King said, then a look came over his face. ‘Well…’
‘You were open to the possibility.’
King nodded. ‘We didn’t expect it to happen. But we were careless with birth control, and that had to be deliberate. There aren’t many things we’re careless about. If we are, it’s always for a reason. So … it wasn’t discussed, which means it technically wasn’t planned, but I think we both knew what we were doing.’
Slater said, ‘What are you going to do when the kid’s born?’
‘Same thing we’re doing now.’
‘No,’ Slater said, shaking his head. ‘You’re already on the fence. And this is the first trimester. When there’s a living, breathing child in your arms, it’s going to change everything.’
‘Maybe,’ King said. ‘Right now, I don’t know what that feels like. For a child to be … mine. And I’m not going to pretend I’ll know what to do until the day comes. So what’s the point of wasting time overthinking? I’ve done all the thinking I need to do, and the rest is in fate’s hands.’
‘You believe in fate?’
‘I don’t know,’ King said.
The honest answer.
‘I do,’ Slater said. ‘Guess I considered it wishy-washy bullshit before New York went dark. But of all the people who opened their doors for me when I was being hunted through that apartment building, it was Alexis. Of every situation that could have played out…’
King said, ‘Every time I find myself thinking along those lines, I tell myself only fools see connections that don’t exist.’
‘Maybe,’ Slater said. ‘But in the end, all of this is just stuff we tell ourselves before we inevitably die. That makes it a little easier to believe. Helps me take life less seriously.’
‘You’re in this profession and you haven’t gone insane,’ King said. ‘I’d say you’ve mastered the art of making light of turbulent situations.’
They went quiet again.
Then King said, ‘You know what? I just missed out on a fight, and I didn’t like it. Guess I have at least one addiction after all…’
Slater smiled in the dark.
King said, ‘It’s nearly been two hours.’
‘If he’s not out in fifteen minutes, I’m going in.’
‘What if he’s in there? You think it’s wise to confront him in public?’
‘I’m sick of waiting,’ Slater said. ‘We might not have a choice. And if he doesn’t back down, he might have to disappear.’
King said, ‘Fine. Wanting a hiatus doesn’t mean I’ve lost my nerve.’
Slater nodded. ‘Just checking.’
King turned his attention back to Holt’s and grimaced. ‘Here he is.’
7
Mickey stepped out of the speakeasy and swaggered east.
His stomach home to one too many beverages, he walked with the unique focus of inebriation, treating the rest of the world like it didn’t matter. There was no concern for his blind spots, no pause to consider whether he should watch his back. He’d already been stood up on a date and lost contact with three of his buddies. He’d felt alone, isolated, and he’d turned to the drink to anaesthetise his mood.
Alcohol makes us far more carefree than we deserve to be, and that comes with a price if you work in Mickey’s world.
King said, ‘We take him now.’
Slater said, ‘You sure?’
King said, ‘You were right. This is a simple job.’
‘That’s what we always say.’
King looked over. ‘No it isn’t.’
He got out of the car before Slater could say another word — Mickey was disappearing fast, becoming a tiny silhouette between the seafront establishments and the dark blue ocean itself. It was a picturesque night, and Mickey slowly vanished under a blanket of stars, his clothes buffeted by a warm sea breeze.
King pursued on foot.
Slater reluctantly followed.
They didn’t draw their weapons — they were sure Mickey was alone. He was a rote amateur in comparison to Dylan Walcott, and they’d outsmarted Walcott and his entire extended family only a couple of weeks prior. What did a gangster straight out of the Prohibition Era have to offer that a financial titan couldn’t?
Nothing.
So King and Slater advanced, walking fast, bearing down on Mickey’s drunken form stumbling left and swaying right across the sidewalk. The gangster stopped and put his palms on the seafront balustrade separating the street from a stretch of beachrock. At regular intervals, white foam washed upon the rocks, rearing up from the sea and spewing across them before receding in anticipation of the next wave.
Mickey watched the foam in a trance.
On the other side of the street, King made to cross.
Slater put a hand on his shoulder.
King looked over, but didn’t speak. His expression asked the question. They were too close to Mickey to converse — there were only a dozen or so feet of asphalt between them, and the laughter and conversation from a nearby Italian restaurant was too muted, too distant, to serve as a distraction.
They were frozen in shadow, well away from the closest streetlights, which did nothing to illuminate the
stretch of sidewalk they occupied. Dark silhouettes against a dark backdrop of trimmed hedges. If they spoke, Mickey would hear, but if the gangster turned around, he wouldn’t see anything.
Slater hadn’t yet responded, so King mustered the nerve to hiss ‘What?’ under his breath.
Slater stared off to Mickey’s right, where Bay Street followed the shoreline, twisting into the gloom. He gestured with his chin.
King studied the darkness.
A man stepped out of it on Mickey’s side of the street.
Well, barely a man. The kid couldn’t have been more than a couple of years out of his teens, at best, and he carried himself with all the anxiety of youth. It’s hard for twenty-somethings to keep their intentions off their faces, and this guy was no outlier. He blinked a dozen times as he closed the gap, both hands stuffed in his pockets, his eyes darting in every conceivable direction with less than half a second’s pause between each look. Mickey didn’t notice, because Mickey was blind drunk. Drunker than King and Slater anticipated, because if he had a semblance of his wits about him he would have noticed the angry young man making a beeline for him along the promenade.
When Mickey finally sensed movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned.
The kid was practically on top of him by then.
Mickey saw the flowing brown hair, the pale skin, the strong cheekbones, the thin lips, and probably figured the kid was eighteen or nineteen.
He started with, ‘The fuck you doing—?’
He didn’t get any further.
One of the kid’s hands came out of his pocket grasping a switchblade with white knuckles and he thrust it all the way to the hilt into Mickey’s stomach.
Mickey looked down at the knife’s handle, smacked his lips together, and looked back up at the kid. ‘Shit.’
The kid’s eyes were wide as saucers, fearing the worst.
Fearing that Mickey was invincible.
His words slurred, Mickey mumbled, ‘What’s that for?’
‘F-f-from Mother Libertas.’
‘What?’
The kid made to let go of the knife and run.
Mickey grabbed the boy’s wrist with an iron grip and kept it on the handle of the blade lodged in his gut. ‘Stay right here, kid. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. You committed to this, son. Best tell me what the fuck you’re talkin’ about.’
‘You tried to take Dylan’s throne,’ the kid stammered. ‘Dylan was funding us. You cut off our cash flow.’
‘Oh,’ Mickey grumbled. He let go of the boy’s wrist, who backed away. Mickey turned back to the balustrade, now using it to keep himself standing. Blood ran down his legs and into his shoes. ‘You know what? Fuck Dylan Walcott, and fuck you, kid. I didn’t kill him. You got it all wrong.’
Across the street, King and Slater were frozen.
Mickey looked down at his shirt, now coated crimson. Slater hadn’t seen the knife fall, which meant it was still wedged in his abdominal wall.
Mickey said, ‘Guess right and wrong doesn’t fuckin’ matter anymore.’
He pitched forward and toppled over the railing.
Hit the beachrock and slid limply into one of the foamy crevasses between them.
The boy stared down with saucers for eyes, separated from reality by a profound sense of detachment. Had he really just done that?
Wind blew off the ocean, whipping his face. It felt incredible. Everything did. His dopamine receptors were firing.
He heard the slightest sound behind him.
Chalked it up as another figment of his imagination.
Then a very real, very deep voice said in his ear, ‘Looks like you lost your knife.’
8
The boy tried to run.
King caught him by the wrist and spun him like a top, and Slater grabbed his other wrist and slapped upon it the cable tie meant for Mickey. King fed Slater the other hand, and Slater cinched the plastic cable tight over his wrists, the coarse edges biting into the boy’s skin, pinning his skinny forearms together.
They led him out of the streetlight and into the shadow.
King thought about sitting him down on the sidewalk in one of the empty streets between seafront establishments, but Slater shook his head. They walked him back to their car under cover of darkness and Slater manhandled him into the rear seats. Sat him up in the middle seat, made sure the cable tie wasn’t going anywhere by cinching it tighter until it was just shy of cutting off his circulation, then frisked him.
In the boy’s jacket pocket Slater found an old-school Ruger Speed-Six with a pair of extra moon clips for holding additional ammunition.
Slater held it under the interior light for King to see.
King shook his head. ‘Why didn’t you use that, kid? Would have been a whole lot easier.’
The boy smiled. ‘Mother said make it personal. Mother said make it hurt.’
King didn’t offer a response. Just looked at Slater with a wince.
Slater shrugged.
Trust our luck to wind up with a lunatic.
Instead of drawing further attention to themselves, King and Slater piled into the driver and passenger seats respectively, and King killed the interior lights as they slammed their doors. The darkness enveloped them all, so when they turned in their seats to look over the centre console at the boy, all they saw was a silhouette still smiling.
King muttered, ‘What do we do with him?’
‘You let me go,’ the boy said. ‘Or it’ll be very bad for you both.’
No one spoke.
Slater elected to begin the makeshift interrogation. ‘Who’s Mother?’
The boy looked at him like he was stupid.
Slater said, ‘The only way you’ll get home safe, kid, is if you open your mouth.’
He relented. ‘Mother is everything. The whole universe.’
Silence.
The kid said, ‘Gaia.’
King said, ‘Did the voices tell you to kill that guy?’
Even in the dark, the kid’s eye-roll was visible, and suddenly he seemed a lot older.
Slater said, ‘You think we’re dumb?’
‘You think I’m dumb,’ the kid said. ‘No, I’m not schizophrenic, if that’s what you’re wondering. Mother speaks to us through Maeve.’
‘Who’s Maeve?’
‘Maeve Riordan. The messiah.’
‘You’re in a cult?’ King said. ‘That’s what this is? Telling Mickey that Dylan cut off your cash flow while you had a knife in his gut. He was funding you, right?’
‘It’s not a cult,’ the boy said.
‘Sure sounds like one.’
The boy got starry-eyed. ‘It’s much more than that.’
‘Where are you from?’ Slater said. ‘Can’t place your accent.’
‘Wyoming.’
‘Doesn’t sound like it.’
The guy’s accent was halfway between Australian and American. It combined the guttural twangs of each, strangely pleasant to listen to.
The boy said, ‘I was born in Wyoming.’
‘Okay.’
‘In my past life I lived in Sydney.’
King glanced at Slater.
Slater sighed. ‘You mean you were born again in Wyoming, right?’
‘Right. Reborn.’
‘Where specifically?’
‘Why?’
‘Tell us, kid. You’re not ready to die.’
‘I am.’
Silence.
For an indescribable reason Slater believed it. Something about the tone…
King said, ‘We’re just curious. You tell us and we’ll leave it alone. You keep stringing us out like this and we’ll start digging. Protect your brothers and sisters.’
Reverse psychology, but the kid couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, and he was susceptible.
He rolled his eyes like he was superior, like he wanted all this questioning to hurry up and end. ‘Fine. Thunder Basin. Good luck finding it. And if you do go looking … well,
you’ll see.’
King recognised the name. ‘“Thunder Basin.” The Grassland? That’s where this cult is?’
‘Stop calling it that.’
‘Or what?’
‘Look,’ the boy said. ‘I’m eighteen, right? And it’s plain as day you ain’t gonna kill me. You’re both like twenty years older than me.’
‘You just killed Mickey,’ Slater said. ‘An eye for an eye. You heard that expression?’
‘Course I’ve heard it. Doesn’t make you any likelier to act on it. You work for Mickey, right, and you saw me do that, so if you were going to kill me you would have done it as soon as he went over that railing.’
‘We don’t work for Mickey,’ King said.
The boy hesitated.
Saw his situation in a new light.
He said, ‘Shit. What is this?’
Slater placed the Ruger Speed-Six on the centre console, in full view of the kid. No matter how fast he moved, he had no hope of picking it up and getting a shot off with his hands cable tied so tight they were turning white.
Slater said, ‘You’re in deep trouble. Start by telling us where you got this, and maybe we can work something out.’
‘You from a rival gang?’ the kid said, but he was fishing.
The boy had a narrow scope of experience in the world and, though he could kill, he couldn’t hold his own in an interrogation. Slater watched him squirm in his seat, on the edge of breaking down. Negotiating for his life was something he had little skill at.
Slater asked another question instead of answering the boy’s. ‘What’s your name, kid?’
‘Jace.’
‘Jace, how’d you get this gun into Nassau?’
‘I didn’t, obviously. I picked it up over here.’
‘From who?’
‘Some guy. I didn’t plan any of this. Mother Libertas handled it. Maeve just told me where to go and what to do.’ He stopped talking abruptly, trying to suppress all the emotions brought about by cortisol, and he looked out the windshield with damp eyes.
King said, ‘“Mother Libertas.” That’s what you said to Mickey. That’s your cult?’
‘Don’t fucking call it that.’
King raised an eyebrow. ‘Mother Libertas? I thought that was the name.’