The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  Lipsky looked down at him, hands back in the pockets of his long, dark coat. He looked different, less constrained. Not like a cop, not anymore. As if for the first time in his life he wasn’t wearing clothes that were too tight for his body.

  “I don’t think so,” said Lipsky. “You’re a Marine. That’s ordnance. It might be useful. You’ve got it hidden away.”

  Peter shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I threw it in the lake.”

  He did his best to believe it was true, but he knew Lipsky could see through him. He still had those X-ray eyes.

  Lipsky’s phone chimed in his hand. He glanced at the screen, then back to Peter. “Don’t sweat it, Peter. You’ll tell me in a few minutes. I guarantee it.”

  Peter pulled at the cuffs again. The plastic didn’t move at all. The walls were still too close. Breathe in. Breathe out. Something would happen in a few minutes. He didn’t want to imagine the possibilities. He kept talking.

  “So what’s with the video camera?”

  Lipsky smiled. “You like our little stage set? Take a look behind you.” Peter turned his head and saw a large American flag hung from the wall behind him. “You made a video, Peter. You’re going to be famous. Unfortunately, by the time it becomes public, you’ll be dead.”

  Shit.

  “I’m not naked, am I?”

  “You’ve seen these videos before,” said Lipsky. “Usually it’s some raghead with a Koran, making a speech. Death to the infidels, that kind of thing. A vest full of C-4 and roofing nails on display.” He nodded to the wiring harnesses on the table, the bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on their pallets. “But not you, Peter. You’re more ambitious. You and Felix will change the world.”

  “We the people,” shouted Felix from his chair in the corner.

  “I was passed out,” said Peter. “I must look like I’m asleep.”

  “You wore sunglasses,” said Lipsky. “Nobody will see your eyes. You had an assault rifle in your hands and wiring harnesses on the table in front of you.” He shrugged. “Maybe you looked a little stoned. But our friend Cas sat beside you and read his speech. You’ll be convincing enough.”

  Zolot had said that the perfect crime required someone else, a scapegoat, to take the blame. Peter had thought the scapegoat would be Felix, but apparently Lipsky wanted it to be a group effort. Maybe he thought it would be better as a conspiracy. So he’d signed Peter up for the job.

  “Get to the point.”

  “One explosion could be a crazy man,” said Lipsky. “But a conspiracy of war veterans? Complete with a video manifesto declaring war on the American financial system? The media will go apeshit. And the fear of the next attack? It will be like ten bombs, or twenty.”

  More than that, thought Peter. It would be another great crash. The financial system, still reeling from the last disaster, would shut down in self-defense. Maybe for only a week, maybe longer. It didn’t matter. It would do a lot of damage either way, and someone who knew it was coming could make an enormous amount of money.

  “You are such an asshole,” said Peter.

  Lipsky gave Peter a kindly smile. “It’s your parents I feel the most sympathy for. Their son the Marine become a domestic terrorist.”

  Peter felt a surge of rage, and he strained hard at the plastic handcuffs. The static rose up as the cuffs bit painfully into his wrists, but nothing changed.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Push it down, push it down. “They won’t believe it,” he said.

  Lipsky jerked his thumb at Felix on the laptop. “He’s fine-tuning the video now. We found your old e-mail address. You really should have a better password. Before we go, Cas will use your e-mail to send a copy to your mom, as well as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.”

  Peter felt that one in his gut. He thought of his mother opening the e-mail. His parents seeing his face on the national news. His father would have a stroke right there. It would kill them both.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  “What’s the point?” he said, although he knew already. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re perfect,” said Lipsky. “Homeless vet, no job, post-traumatic stress. History of violence. Look at you. Sweaty and pale. Trying to hold in whatever demons have taken root. Practically a ghost already. You’re a walking time bomb. Much better than the last guy we had.”

  “The last guy,” said Peter. And found that he already knew that, too.

  “Your friend, Mr. Johnson. He was going to be our co-conspirator, although he never made it past the planning stages.”

  Peter clenched his jaw. “Who killed him? You?”

  “It was an accident,” said Lipsky with a shrug. “There’s a reason cops don’t use that choke hold anymore. I was just trying to get him under control.”

  Now Peter understood. “The bullet under his chin was to prevent an autopsy.”

  “A good choke doesn’t leave bruises,” said Lipsky. “That’s a murder investigation. But I knew the coroner wouldn’t think twice about another veteran suicide.” He shook his head. “As it was, him dying already screwed everything up. We lost track of the contents of that suitcase.” He smiled at Peter. “Until now.”

  “I know what you wanted the plastic for. But what’s with the money?”

  “Payment,” said Lipsky. “Services rendered. I worked hard for that money. It’s not easy to bury a murder charge. I’m going to want that back, too, by the way. It’s not much compared to what we’re expecting, but it’s nice to have hard cash in hand, just in case. Always have more than one exit strategy, right?”

  “So it’s all about the money.”

  Lipsky raised his eyebrows. “Ten years in the Army, fifteen as a cop. My life on the line every day. Getting paid shit. And this is it? A pension promise that might get revoked the next time the governor gets the hiccups?”

  Peter ignored Lipsky’s whining. You signed up for it, you knew what you were getting into. “So what’s the target?” he asked. “How many people are you planning to kill?”

  The phone in Lipsky’s hand chimed again. Lipsky glanced down. “Right on schedule. In about two minutes, you’ll tell me where to find the C-4.”

  The scarred man walked through the big rusted iron door from the veterans’ center. He wore the same black leather car coat and Kangol cap worn backward. His face was a collection of mottled bruises, the skin split and raw at the lip and left cheek. He saw Peter cuffed behind the table and sauntered toward him with a cruel smile.

  “Boomer.” Lipsky’s voice cracked like a whip. It made Peter want to stand at attention, and he was handcuffed to a chair.

  Boomer’s mouth bunched like a fist, but his step faltered. “I’m just gonna hit him once.” The man’s face really was a mess.

  “What happened to you?” asked Peter with an innocent expression. “Fall off a bicycle?”

  Boomer started toward Peter again. “I’m gonna hit you so fuckin’ hard—”

  “Stop,” said Lipsky, his voice an edged weapon. The scarred man froze in his tracks. “You can have him later, Boomer. Right now you’re still working for me. So show me.”

  “Fine.” Boomer’s mouth twisted up farther, but he turned away from Peter and pulled a phone from his pocket to show Lipsky. “We’re all set up.”

  Lipsky looked at the screen. “You’ve only got one kid here. Where’s the dog?”

  Boomer shrugged. “There was only the one kid. And no dog.”

  The static flared into Peter’s brain. His arms strained against the cuffs, his gut clenched, and his chest was wrapped in steel bands. Breathe in, breathe out. I hear you, old friend. Just hold off for a few minutes.

  Lipsky gave Boomer a sour look.

  Boomer threw his hands in the air. “Hey, trust me, we looked. I wanted to shoot that dog personally.”

  Lipsky shook his head, t
hen took the phone out of Boomer’s hand and held it so Peter could see the screen. “This is why you’re going to give me that C-4. My guys went in and took them this morning.” Dinah and Miles, wearing rags as blindfolds, bound with the same yellow plastic handcuffs, sat on a bare dusty floor with a pale brick wall at their back. They were somewhere in the warehouse, maybe even the next room.

  They looked so small and helpless. This wasn’t supposed to happen. And where were Charlie and the dog?

  But this, he knew, changed everything.

  His plan with Lewis was out the window.

  37

  Peter

  Go watch the woman and the kid,” Lipsky told Boomer. “Don’t touch them. Just keep them calm and quiet. Start prepping the drums. And send Midden back here.”

  Boomer scooped up the coils of conduit from the table, glared at Peter, and walked through the door to the warehouse.

  Peter pulled hard at the plastic cuffs. “What did you do?”

  “We took them,” said Lipsky. “Your other friends are dead. Collateral damage. I believe you know the term.”

  “If you harm them, either one of them,” said Peter, “I will kill you in the most painful way possible.”

  Lipsky didn’t seem to notice. His X-ray eyes were focused on Peter, and his voice was calm. “Here’s how it is, Peter. You and I are men of the world. We’ve been to war. We’ve killed other men to protect our friends and our own skins, and to do our job. So I’m going to be honest with you. You’re going to die. There’s no way around that. You can’t save yourself.”

  Lipsky held up the phone with the picture on it. Reached out and cleared a space in the bomb parts on the table, and set the phone where Peter could stare at it.

  “But you can save that woman out there, and her son. They haven’t seen anyone’s faces. They don’t know where they are or what’s going on. They won’t be touched. You can save them. If you give me that C-4.”

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  The door to the veterans’ center opened again, and the man in the black canvas chore coat came through.

  Peter watched him read the room in a single silent glance, including Peter cuffed to the chair behind the desk, the flag on the wall, the video camera on its tripod, and Felix working feverishly at his laptop. There was a kind of empty, coiled stillness to the man, like some purpose-built mechanism awaiting only the triggering of his function. But he looked at Peter with a kind of curiosity.

  To Lipsky, Peter said, “You’d kill an innocent woman? A child?”

  Midden’s head swiveled to stare at Lipsky.

  The detective just shrugged. “Collateral damage? That’s up to you.”

  “Not collateral damage,” said Peter. “This is taking hostages. Killing hostages. For money.”

  “I don’t want to kill them,” said Lipsky, sounding like the voice of reason. “I hope I don’t have to kill them. But again, that’s up to you. Where’s the C-4?”

  38

  Midden

  Midden looked at Lipsky, trying to gauge his seriousness. Was he bluffing?

  Midden had killed many people in war, and more after. So many he’d long ago lost count. Even women, when he’d had to.

  But he’d never killed a child. Not knowingly.

  Was this the man he had become?

  Midden knew there was a point of no return. He thought he’d gone past it long ago. That he was past any salvage, let alone redemption.

  But he understood now that there were additional waypoints on the path to hell that would change him further. Beyond his own recognition of even this damaged version of himself.

  Would he become a man who would kill a child?

  39

  Peter

  Peter looked at the image on the phone on the desk in front of him. On the small screen, Dinah sat on the dusty floor with Miles on her lap, her arms wrapped protectively around him. Their torn blindfolds gave them a ragged, haunted air. He knew hostages were almost never set free.

  He thought of other times when he’d needed to make a similar decision.

  It was different with his own men. It was part of the job to send his Marines into the fight. Knowing that men could be injured or die. It was part of the job. Part of what he had signed up for, what they all had signed up for.

  Peter wasn’t a lieutenant who hung back, who directed his men from the firebase. Peter went to the fight with them. His job was accomplishing the mission, yes, but his job was also protecting his men, making their jobs as safe as he could. Which didn’t include leading from behind. The risk of his own injury or death should be no less than that of his men.

  And men had died at his orders. As a direct result of his orders. Of his mistakes. That was part of his life now. Living with it. Those consequences. Those sacrifices.

  Dinah and Miles had been drawn into this battle despite everything he had done to prevent it. Whether they would die as a result of his decision was still undetermined. But if he handed over the C-4, the odds were good that more than two would surely die.

  So the answer was no.

  He wasn’t going to give up those beige rectangles.

  Lipsky must have seen the result on his face. Because as soon as Peter reached this final point of reasoning, Lipsky’s eyebrows popped up. As if the conclusion was unexpected. His X-ray eyes hadn’t been able to see as deeply as he had thought.

  Or maybe Lipsky simply couldn’t imagine sacrificing anything he cared about for a larger cause.

  “Huh,” said Lipsky. “You are full of surprises. Okay. So who should we kill first, Peter? The woman?” Peter didn’t answer. Lipsky kept talking, now to himself. “No, then the kid will become uncontrollable. And Boomer will have to be a babysitter. Definitely not.”

  He turned to the man in the black canvas chore coat. “Midden, kill the kid.”

  40

  Midden

  No,” said Midden.

  It came out before he knew he would say it.

  He said it again. “No.” With an odd sensation he couldn’t place. An internal tug. Like his organs were trying to realign themselves.

  He said, “I know where he’s hidden the plastic.”

  41

  Peter

  Lipsky ground his teeth in frustration. “Why the fuck didn’t you say so?”

  “I just figured it out,” said Midden. “He’s living out of his truck, so it’s got to be somewhere in that vehicle. At some point he was overseas, and probably working a checkpoint, searching cars. He knows all the best places to hide something. But I had that duty, too. And I used to have a truck like his, a ’67 Chevy, although mine was a short bed. I know that truck inside and out.”

  He took Peter’s keys from the table and headed toward the door. “Give me twenty minutes.”

  “You’re killing me, Midden,” Lipsky called after him.

  Breathe in, Peter told himself. Breathe out. He tried to relax in the chair and live with himself for another day. He thought of Lewis, waiting outside. He closed his eyes and reached for another plan.

  Lipsky’s phone rang. He took the call, walked away, and began to talk.

  Peter opened his eyes and turned to Felix, still working furiously at his laptop.

  “Hey, Felix.”

  “They call me Cas.” The skinny kid didn’t look up. “I’m not Felix anymore. They call me Cas.”

  The missing Marine was impossibly skinny. Shoulders like a coat hanger. Damaged somehow, and exploited by Lipsky.

  “Your nana is worried about you, Felix. She asked me to find you. She wants you to come home. She’ll take care of you.”

  At the mention of his grandmother, Felix’s head jerked up from the laptop. But he wouldn’t look at Peter. He looked at the bare brick walls, at the heavy wood ceiling timbers, at the pallets of fertilizer.

  “Your nana loves you more than anyth
ing,” said Peter. “She’s afraid for you. She wants you to come home.”

  Felix’s voice was loud. “There is no more home. The bank is taking her house.” Shouting now, his gaunt face contorted with pain. “The banks are taking everything.”

  “Your nana is moving in with her sister,” said Peter. “There’s room for you, too, Felix.”

  “I’m not Felix, I’m Cas. I’m Cas.” He rocked his body back and forth, eyes fixed and staring. The kid had his own white static, and it was worse than Peter’s. Maybe he was just off his meds. Or Lipsky gave him something to keep him off-balance.

  “You can stop this now,” said Peter. “Walk away. Close up your computer and go home. Your nana loves you. She’ll forgive you. She’ll forgive anything.”

  Lipsky walked over, phone call finished, the hard soles of his shoes scraping on the floor. “He doesn’t care about you, Cas.”

  He stood behind Felix and put his hands on the man’s impossibly skinny shoulders. He winked at Peter and kept talking in a low, soothing voice. “He doesn’t understand the plan, Cas. He doesn’t understand what you’re about to accomplish. You’re going down in history, Cas. You’re going to change the world.”

  Peter kept pushing. “What about your nana, Felix? When this comes out it’s going to be very hard for her. What’s going to happen to her?”

  Felix shook his head wildly and rocked in his chair, the veins in his forehead and neck standing out like snakes under the skin. “I’m already dead! Watch the video! I’m already dead!”

  Lipsky bent so his lips were at the younger man’s ear and talked. He spoke slowly, softly, lower than Peter could hear, and all the while working his hands gently on the younger man’s shoulders, calming him, soothing him like a wild animal caught in a trap.

  Peter saw Lipsky in a new light.

  It wasn’t only about the money.