Tracers

by J. J. Howard

  He vaguely remembered something his father had told him a long time ago—a warning that girls can make you stupid.

  On the ride across town, Cam glared at the floor of the train, making plans. He decided the first debt he needed to pay was the rent he owed Angie. She needed the money, he knew, and it wasn’t her fault she’d rented her garage to a guy who was in debt to the Chinese Mafia.

  When he arrived at the ship, Cam saw Jax sitting on the curb, legs crossed and head down. The guy was just staring at his shoelaces.

  “What’s up, man?” Cam asked, walking up to him.

  Jax looked up. “Oh. Hey, Cam. Not much. Miller was looking for you. It’s payday.”

  “So I heard. You don’t sound excited.”

  He shrugged. “I’m excited.”

  Cam sat down beside him. “Then why do you sound like somebody swiped your puppy?”

  Jax tried to smile. “Wouldn’t mind another puppy.” He shook his head. “No big thing. Just been . . . thinking.”

  “About?”

  Jax scrubbed his hand through his bright red-orange hair, making it stand up in crazy spikes. “It’s just, this guy I used to see sometimes working out . . . before I met Dylan and them. Today I see online that he’s gonna be in a movie. An actual movie. He’s tracing—like doing the stunts.” When Cam didn’t respond right away, Jax hurried on, talking fast. “It’s not like I’m jealous or anything. But it sort of makes me wonder . . . if maybe I’d gone down a different route . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “I hear ya,” Cam said, nodding. They sat in silence for a minute. “So you thinking of going straight?” he asked.

  Jax’s head twitched, and he laughed nervously. “No, man. Just having a moment. Don’t . . . could you maybe not say anything about this? To Miller . . . or anybody?”

  Cam met his eyes. “Course not. Besides, what’s to tell? You’re not the only one, Jax. I mean . . . I wish I could go straight. But I turned left when I should have turned right a long time ago.”

  Jax sighed. “Yeah. Know what you mean. See you later, Cam.” He jumped up and started walking away, then turned back. “I’m glad you’re in the group now. I mean, I’m glad . . . for, like, selfish reasons. Not that you’re in, but . . . you know what I mean.”

  Cam smiled, but Jax was already walking away. The weird part was that Cam knew exactly what he’d meant.

  Once Jax was gone, Cam made his way onto the ship. As he stepped into the clubhouse, Miller greeted him, then pulled out a stack of hundreds and counted out Cam’s share.

  “Membership has its privileges,” Miller told him, handing him the stack. Cam forced himself to smile at Miller’s comment. The guy didn’t seem to like it when people failed to appreciate his cheesy sound bites.

  “Thanks,” Cam grunted. As he walked away, he looked down at the money in his hand, imagining what it would be like to hold on to it for longer than an hour. At least he could knock another two grand off what he owed to the Tong, after settling up with Angie for the rent. But when he took the interest into account, the possibility of getting out from under the debt still seemed very far away.

  • • •

  Angie’s job made Cam’s problems look fractionally less depressing: the place was literally a sweatshop; everyone inside was constantly wiping their streaming foreheads. Angie was seated in front of a sewing machine—the factory floor was crammed so full of tables and machines that he could barely make his way through the maze to get to her.

  The moment she spotted him, Cam saw her stiffen.

  “What are you doing here, Cam? I’m working.”

  “I brought you rent money.”

  He didn’t miss her look of surprise.

  Always nice to have people’s low expectations of him confirmed.

  Cam reached for his wallet. “I don’t care what you brought,” Angie spit out.

  She got up and started walking fast, deeper into the interior of the factory. Cam followed her. Angie jerked open a door and stalked into what looked like some kind of break room. All the chairs were the plastic kind, like you find in high school classrooms. This place made Lafayette Messenger look like a country club.

  Angie whirled around to face Cam as he pulled the cash out of his wallet. “Please take it,” he pleaded. The thought of letting Angie down was more than he could take. Whenever he thought about the mess he’d gotten her and Joey into, he just kept picturing his mom looking at him in disappointment. She’d really liked Angie.

  A massive sigh escaped Angie’s lips as she accepted the stack and quickly counted the bills. “This is too much.”

  Cam let out his breath too, in relief. She was going to take the money. “It’ll hold you until you find someone else to move in.”

  Angie looked up at him. “Oh, Cam. Your mom always told me what a good kid you were. I thought . . . forgive me, but I knew about . . . some of what you’d gotten into. I thought she was probably a little bit blind when it came to her baby. But she was right after all. You are a good kid.”

  Cam swallowed hard. Her words about his mom sliced through his heart. It hurt to breathe, all of a sudden.

  “What kind of trouble are you in?” Angie asked, in a quiet voice.

  Cam sighed. Jerry and the always-charming Hu had picked up Angie’s kid and delivered him home as a warning to Cam. He owed her an explanation of why he was in trouble, at least.

  He recited the bare bones of the story, fighting to keep the emotion out of his voice. He couldn’t bear for her, or anybody, to pity him. What was done was done. “After Mom got sick, I borrowed some money off the street to try and help her keep the house. It wasn’t enough. The bank foreclosed on it a week before she died.”

  Angie took a small step closer to him. Just as he’d feared, her eyes were filled with pity now, and it was almost worse than the distrust and anger from a few minutes ago. “You got a good heart, Cam. But you gotta be careful. The farther you go down the wrong road, the harder it is to find your way back.”

  Her words struck him like a slap. His mom had said almost the exact same thing to him in the last week of her life. No wonder they had gotten along so well.

  And, to his shame, this past week had been all about finding a new road to lead him out from under his debt. An illegal road.

  Another wrong path.

  “I gotta get back to work,” Angie told him.

  Cam reached into his bag and pulled out a new skateboard. “Can you give this to Joey? You don’t have to tell him it’s from me.”

  He saw tears well up in Angie’s eyes. “He misses you. I wish . . .”

  “Me too,” Cam said. “Hey . . . Ang . . . I’m sorry. About everything. I won’t bother you guys again.”

  She touched his arm for just a second, smiled sadly, and then Angie was gone.

  Cam saved the train fare by walking home.

  ELEVEN

  @%&#!!!

  There it was, parked outside the fish store: Cam’s GTO. Or at least what used to be his GTO. Now it was all fixed up—new paint (silver instead of black), fourteen-inch rally wheels, new rims shining in the sun.

  Of course. The bastard didn’t just take the car, he didn’t just sell it. No. He had to twist the knife.

  And it hurt. A lot.

  “Hey!” The knife twister was getting out of the car, hailing Cam like an old friend. “What do you think, man?”

  Cam was thinking about getting behind the wheel of the GTO, running over Jerry (and then Hu, for good measure), and driving away as fast as those new rally wheels would take him. So he chose not to answer the question; he just handed Jerry the envelope. Hu emerged from the storefront, stone-faced as always.

  Jerry thumbed through the stack of bills. “Uhhhhh . . . there’s only two grand here, man. Where’s the rest?”

  “Give me a few more weeks. I’ll get it to you.
”

  “That’s past the deadline, Cam.”

  Hu sidled up to his partner and crossed his arms: the nonverbal equivalent of adding “yeah” to the end of Jerry’s sentence. In a way, that was Hu’s entire function: being nonverbal.

  With difficulty, Cam tore his eyes away from the GTO in all its renewed glory. “I was hoping we could renegotiate. I have a new job. Look, you can raise the vig if you want to. But this is all I can do right now.”

  “I can raise the vig?” Jerry repeated, as though Cam had said something unbelievably stupid.

  Hu continued to be nonverbal and then punched Cam in the gut.

  Cam doubled over; he couldn’t help it. The guy knew how to deliver a hit that made it seem extremely challenging not to hurl. Hu followed up with a choke hold. Next Cam got to check out the car’s new paint job close-up, as his face was smashed into the hood.

  It was one thing to beat on him, but Hu was really crossing the line mistreating the car like this.

  “The vig’s already raised. Go ahead and add another five percent. You keep acting like I’m the boss, Cam.” Jerry put his head down close to Cam’s. “I’m not, all right? Chen is the boss. The money you owe me, I owe Chen. You put me in a tight spot here.” Hu’s hold slackened a bit, enough that Cam could turn his head. Jerry had stepped back a little; he was smiling down on Cam, pretending to be a concerned friend. “I don’t want to see anything happen to that friend of yours and her little boy,” he said softly. “But if you don’t make this right, it will. Those are the rules.”

  Hu released Cam, giving him a push as a parting shot. Cam lay on the sidewalk and watched the two of them drive away. In his car.

  “Two weeks. Get us the money, Cam,” Jerry called out the window.

  Cam tried to get up, but he was feeling the combined effects of the sucker punch and choke hold. For the moment, he settled for crouching on all fours, coughing as he tried to regain the ability to breathe.

  It was a definite low point, even for him.

  He raised his head and looked in the front window of the fish store. The dark, silent forms of huge, predatory fish swam excitedly through the water of a tank. Through the watery glass, he saw a set of human eyes watching him. The older Chinese lady who worked there—she seemed to always be there—met his gaze.

  She blinked at him once, the expression in her black eyes impossible to read, and then calmly finished feeding the fish and walked away from the window.

  Cam heaved himself back to vertical and hobbled down the block toward a bodega. He reached into the ice chest outside the store and grabbed a bag of ice, shoving it up against the side of the building to break up the chunks.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Dylan.

  “We’re going out tonight,” he said. “Wanna come?”

  “Work?” Cam asked, feeling tired.

  “More like play.”

  Suddenly, Cam felt less tired.

  “Where should I meet you?” he asked, already walking toward the subway.

  • • •

  Cam smiled as he stepped off the elevator. He was meeting his friends at a rooftop club in the East Village; the space was filled with torches, and a lot of very pretty girls wearing very little clothing. On a raised platform in one corner, a DJ stood in front of an impressive bank of mixers. The steady thrum of a trance mix filled the air. The speakers were loud enough that Cam could feel the beat through his feet. Dylan caught his eye right away, and Cam strode over to join the group. Everyone but Miller was there, sitting around a big table, drinking and talking.

  Cam had almost forgotten about the bruises blooming on his face from his run-in with Jerry and Hu . . . until he saw Nikki’s eyes as he sat down.

  “Hey.” She pointed to her own face. “What happened here?”

  So now she cared about him and his face? Cam stared back at her. He was a guy who’d always prided himself on being fast, but even he didn’t downshift that quickly.

  He tried to make out whether Nikki was wearing the necklace he’d given her, but if she was, it was hidden under the collar of her shirt.

  Looking away, Cam lied. “Biffed a wall trick.”

  Tate snorted. “How’s the wall?”

  Cam rolled his eyes. He spotted a waitress circling near their table. “Can I have a water?” he asked.

  The girl nodded and gave him a wide smile. “Sure thing, doll.” With a wink, she disappeared back toward the bar. Nikki rolled her eyes.

  Cam grinned, his mood suddenly lifting a notch.

  “I got this on a broken railing,” Tate was saying. Cam forced himself to pay attention to Tate as he peeled back his shirtsleeve to reveal a short, jagged scar.

  Cam nodded in approval. It did look nasty. “That’s nothing,” Dylan interjected, pulling up a leg of his pants. “Razor wire.”

  With a grimace, Cam acknowledged that Dylan’s was the worst. “Why don’t you show them what happened here?” Nikki was pulling her brother’s face around toward Tate, Jax, and Cam. There was a scar there, over his left eye.

  Dylan shot her a look, batting her hand away.

  “That from a curb?” Cam asked.

  Tate laughed. “No. Older lady.”

  “Hello, Grandma.” Jax whistled.

  Dylan shook his head and held up a hand. He clearly wanted to be the one to tell the story. “She was a nice Chinese girl—real smart. I met her on the subway . . . whatever, whatever . . . Anyway, I see her walking down the street one night with this guy I assume must be her cousin or something, so I go up to her, give her a big hug and a kiss, and she freaks out, like she’s never seen me—goes totally crazy. Turns out, because . . . it was her husband.”

  “The husband: mixed martial artist,” Tate added.

  Jax slapped Dylan on the shoulder. “Bad news for the lady-killer here.”

  Cam laughed. “So is that why we can’t cut through Chinatown?”

  Dylan shook his head. “Nah, that’s all Miller, man. He’s got bad blood with the gangs there.”

  “The Tong?” Cam asked. He didn’t miss Nikki’s raised eyebrow.

  Nodding, Dylan said, “Yeah. Some business went sideways. He had to cut a deal. Promise to stay away.”

  Nikki wasn’t saying anything—not out loud anyway. But her eyes were sure saying a lot. Cam just wished, as usual, that he could figure her out. The waitress came back with his water, brushing his arm as she leaned in (closer than necessary) to hand it to him. Cam turned the full wattage of his grin on the waitress, whose cheeks flushed with pleasure at the attention. He forced himself not to look over at Nikki.

  But then he had to look, as Dylan pointed at his sister. “You know, Nikki’s got some battle scars.”

  She frowned and pushed Dylan away. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. Not happening.” She turned to Cam. “If I showed you, I’d have to kill you.”

  But for some reason she was actually smiling at him over her beer bottle.

  “Don’t sling it if you can’t take it,” Dylan told her.

  Jax groaned dramatically, then pointed across the roof. “There she is: the future Mrs. Jackson Smith. Right there.”

  “Oh yeah?” Cam replied.

  “That’s gonna be my future wife. Yeah, we’re gonna move to the country, make lots of sweet ginger babies every night of the week.”

  Everyone was laughing, but Jax continued undaunted. “I know. You’re jealous.” Tate laughed harder, and Jax frowned at the group. “You guys know nothing about women,” he said, shaking his head.

  Nikki ruffled Jax’s hair, then headed toward the dance floor.

  Cam slapped Jax on the back. “Hold on to the dream, buddy,” he told him.

  Tate and Dylan wandered off, and Nikki disappeared, leaving Cam and Jax alone at the table. It soon became clear to Cam that Jax had been drinking more
than he’d thought.

  “You get it, don’t you, Cam?” Jax asked, looking up from his beer. “I mean, you’re right—it is a dream. It’s my dream,” he added in a stubborn voice, as though Cam had been arguing with him. “All that stuff I was saying was true. Even the ginger babies. I wasn’t lying. I actually want that. You get it, right?”

  “I totally get it, man.”

  “You want that someday too? Wife? Little Cams jumping off the furniture?”

  Cam laughed involuntarily at the image Jax conjured. “Actually that sounds sort of terrifying. Imagine a little kid learning parkour.” Cam shuddered. “Imagine the doctor bills.”

  “You could teach them to be careful. Put lots of mattresses on the floor,” Jax said, slurring his words so that the last part came out math dresses on the four.

  Cam smiled at him. Jax was one of those guys who got all moody and pensive about life when he’d had too much to drink. That was one reason Cam was strictly a water guy these days. If he started down that path, he might never stop. Better to keep compartmentalizing (and stay hydrated, as a bonus).

  “We have to get out of this life first,” Jax was saying. He raised his blue eyes to meet Cam’s. “It’s no life for a kid.”

  Cam thought about Miller’s cold eyes and probably colder heart and wondered how he’d react to a member of his “family” getting distracted by marriage. “You got that part right,” he told Jax.

  “Maybe someday,” Jax said.

  Cam lifted his water bottle and held it out to Jax, who, after a few seconds of delay, raised his bottle and accepted the toast. “To someday.”

  Jax wandered off a few minutes later, having imbibed enough liquid courage to approach his future wife.

  Cam stayed. He had a good view of the dance floor from where he sat.

  This was important because Nikki was dancing.

  And Cam was staring—but she didn’t notice. Nikki danced alone, in the center of the floor, moving from firelight to shadow and back, completely oblivious to anyone or anything except the music.