by Ben Sanders
Zoe said, ‘How come you’re standing there?’
He said, ‘’Cause I like it when you’re asleep, all snuggled up. Like a bug in a rug.’
‘I’m not asleep.’
‘Not now.’
‘I was before. I heard you walking.’
‘Oh. I thought I’s a quiet walker.’
‘I heard you.’
He put a finger to his lips. ‘Shh. You’ll wake your sister.’
‘I’m already awake.’
Cohen said, ‘Well, goodness me.’
Zoe said, ‘Are you getting a drink?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Can I get one, too?’
‘I’ll bring you one. Colder’n a polar bear’s toenail out of bed.’
He went downstairs and stood in the kitchen with his palms on the counter and looked out the window. The street moulded smooth and white by the snow, thin flakes twisting in the gusts. Trees, kinked and leafless, thrust at random through the mounds.
There was a black Escalade out at the kerb, windows skinned with frost, neat black arcs where the wipers had swept. This was his backup for tonight, deterrence against kidnap round two. He ran a glass of water and sipped it slowly, watching the car, wondering if they were watching him. He lifted a hand and flicked a little salute. The SUV’s headlights flashed.
He filled a cup for Zoe and put the dishcloth in the sink and left the faucet dripping so the tap wouldn’t freeze.
Both girls were asleep when he went upstairs. He left the cup on Zoe’s nightstand and went back to his own room. The clock on the radio said 10:43. He felt around on the beside table and found his phone.
‘Now what are you doing?’
‘Just calling someone.’
He slipped away and then went down the stairs and stood in the kitchen looking out at his sentry while he listened to the ringtone. It had annoyed him at first, the fact they’d put someone out front, but given his plan now, he was sold on the merits of a watcher.
When Miriam picked up she said, ‘What are you doing calling me at this hour?’ Good-humoured about it, letting him know it wasn’t an intrusion.
He said, ‘I’m heading out of town a few days, New York City. I’ve had something come up.’
‘Oh, sure. OK.’ Then: ‘Is it bad?’
‘Hopefully not. But I think it’s worth checking out. To do with the folks who grabbed me the other week.’
‘Oh. Goodness.’
‘Yeah. I’m actually getting on a plane soon, but on my desk in a green file, there’s some paperwork on the feller I shot, and also some contact details for an FBI man up in New York City. If you could e-mail them all through to me, that would be beyond wonderful.’
That got a chuckle out of her. He could sense the brownie points accruing. She said, ‘I think I can do that. In fact, I’ve got the bureau man in my contacts here, so I can just send them through.’ ‘Perfect. Yeah, I got digital copies somewhere, and people keep telling me I can access the server on my phone, but I think it’s one of those miracles I’ll only ever hear about, and never actually witness.’
‘Mmm. I can book you in with IT next week, maybe the Wednesday afternoon? You got court in the morning, and there’s a DEA man coming in to sign off some apprehension authorities.’
‘That would be terrific, thank you.’
‘And I’ll tell Warren you’re out a while.’
‘Yeah, if you could. I’ll let him know as well, but it’ll be good to ease him into it.’
After he’d clicked off he had another drink of water, thinking about what he’d tell Loretta. It was going to be a hard sell, however he phrased it.
He went back up to the bedroom, turned on the light, opened the cupboard, and brought down his duffel. Confident and relaxed, like this was routine, not a matter for discussion.
She said, ‘You must be sleepwalking.’
‘Possible. I don’t think so, though.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’ve got to go to New York.’
That made her sit up. He didn’t look. Looking would just suck him into deeper water.
‘Lucas, you’re being funny.’
He stopped for a moment, and in his periphery he could see her squinting at him from the bed, shading her eyes against the light.
He put his hands on his hips and looked at his feet, like this was something wearisome but essential. He said, ‘There’s a JetBlue out of Albuquerque at midnight, if I recall, and I’m planning to be on it.’
She lay down again, and he hoped that meant she wasn’t putting up a fight. She said, ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you just going to take off?’
‘It’s to do with the trouble I had.’
‘So you’re looking for more.’
He thought about that as he folded a pair of jeans. He said, ‘No. I’m going to figure out where the trouble came from, so I don’t get any more.’
‘You going to be safe?’
‘Always.’
‘I’m going to worry anyway.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t, or I’ll just end up worrying about you worrying.’
She didn’t answer.
He closed his eyes and spoke lightly, like this was something trivial: ‘One of the guys from the other week spent some time in New York, so I just want to make sure we got all our leads squared away.’
‘Cross your T’s and dot your I’s.’ Sounding flat and skeptical.
He said, ‘I’ll take it even further, leave them with crossed I’s, too.’
‘They not have any marshals up in New York, can do it for you?’
‘They tend to be real busy.’
She didn’t answer.
He walked around the side of the bed and looked down at her. She was hiding under the covers, the sheet across her face. He leaned down and kissed her through the cotton.
He said, ‘It’ll only be a couple of days.’
She took a moment and a deep breath and said, ‘Please be careful.’
SIX
Marshall
It was good being back. Fond as he was of open spaces, he still preferred cities. Not that he had any great yearning for infrastructure, but he liked the safety-in-numbers aspect, the camouflage of millions. For the sake of protection he’d been sent to the other side of the country, but in the time he’d been back, he actually felt more secure. Crowds negated the risk of proximity. He was just one among the masses. Statistics were in his favour, most of the time.
He waited in the taxi line outside the terminal, feeling conspicuous with no luggage other than a book from an art museum. He caught a cab to Union Square, and then took a 6 train downtown. He had Lana’s message in his head, the phrase on repeat, but he wasn’t sure he should accept the offer.
‘Tell Marshall to call again.’
The clearest view was hindsight, and in the time since his first call he’d seen the downside of both alternatives, whether he contacted her or not. She was a detective with NYPD, and thus a potential source of information. But the cynic in him said he’d got this far on the power of distrust and self-reliance, and that meant avoiding even cops, ex-colleagues or not. The law could bring him trouble. He didn’t want its oversight, or the risk of someone’s testimony. Cops were hard witnesses to discredit. In contrast, the criminal was a more manageable quantity. He could ask what he liked, threats and force had payoffs, and if it all went to pieces, he could just say it never happened.
He got off the train at Astor Place and walked east on Ninth. It was 1:30 when he made it home. He’d been in a week, and it was perfect: a tiny one-room place in an old four-storey brick building, a refurbished tenement that had probably been there since 1900. He let himself in the street entrance with the key and went up the stairs and unlocked his door. He was on the second floor, above a secondhand bookstore. The store owner was his landlord. As far as neighbours went, Marshall believed he’d hit the better end of the spectrum. They’d had a poetry reading one evening, but tha
t was as wild as it got. He’d heard them through the floor, and if he hadn’t been a wanted man, he might have joined them. There were worse ways to spend an evening than eating home baking while folks recited Maya Angelou.
He’d considered living in hotels, but it was a costly habit in Manhattan. He’d spent two nights in a place off Broadway near Times Square, and landed this room on his third day. The rent was two hundred a week, versus two hundred a day at the hotel, so the move was an easy decision. Frugality was his main concern, even if it meant no-frills.
The light was already on, and he stepped inside and locked himself in again. The windows were rattling faintly, stereo vibrations from a bar over on Avenue C. The noise would be the downside of living here. You could walk into SoHo and watch live music any night of the week, but the bass would follow you home.
Space was tight as well. He had a camp bed with a sleeping bag against one wall, and there was a metal sink by the door. Some shelves above holding plates and food items left by the last tenant, and a little table and chair beneath the window opposite the entry. Outside, there was a spindly cast-iron balcony with a fire escape hanging off the wall, but he figured he’d risk the flames before the ladder. The bathroom was along the corridor.
He had a few books that he’d purchased downstairs, arranged beside the bed. Some Nietzsche in paperback: On Truth and Untruth and The Genealogy of Morals. He thought he’d try them when he was done with the MoMA book.
The biggest issue was paying for it all. He was limited to cash-only. He still had a bank account with his NYPD savings, but electronic transactions meant a record, an invitation to be found. Even prepaid credit cards required proof of ID and a social security number. To use one was to waive privacy, let some corporate system catalog your details, purchase by purchase. So he paid with hard currency, funds he’d stolen the day his undercover work came apart. Down to a hundred-odd grand now. The duffel growing slowly lighter.
It wasn’t the most practical system, but he was used to it. He’d grown up around secrecy. His mother had dealt heroin and crystal meth out of their trailer in Indiana when they’d lived south of Gary. The supply truck heading through to Chicago used to stop on I-65 to off-load stock, the little diner there just outside Merrillville. He had an old 200cc Suzuki he used to ride down on, sit beside the driver at the counter and swap bag for bag. It wasn’t until he was sixteen that he had his doubts about the ethics of it all, but he liked the finance side of things. Anonymity.
He placed the ruined book on the desk and put Perry Rhodes’ phone on top of it. The gun was in a river ten minutes south of Darien on Route 1. He didn’t want it found on him if Perry had been shooting people with it.
He sat down on the bed and put his ankle on his knee and pulled his boots off, one then the other. The windows had stopped rattling. He lay down, memories and people coming back to him. He rubbed his face and thought about what he should do.
Perry
Tolson had a diner out in Bushwick, a two-level clapboard thing renovated from a house into a general store into what was now branded the Tol Booth. The adjacent lot was vacant, good for quiet drop-offs, especially at this time of night.
Perry parked and got out, walked around the front and knocked at the door. Not the classiest neighbourhood, but that was the idea. Shops were all shut up at this hour, no one on the sidewalk, hardly any traffic.
He had to wait a while, jiggling one knee in the cold. After a couple minutes he heard the locks sliding back, and then finally the door opened, just enough for him to slip through.
‘What’re you doing here?’
‘Knew you’d be in late with the delivery.’
‘Yeah, but I mean.’ Fixing the locks again. ‘I see you drive up, park by the side door, and then what do you do? Come around the front. Said to myself, I bet that’s what he’s going to do. And you did.’ Shaking his head, like it was all really sad and disturbing.
Perry didn’t answer, let him say his bit. He took a stool at the counter that ran down the right-hand side of the room, tables and chairs along the wall behind him, the diner too narrow for booths. Tol had a cloth spread out by the register, an AR-15 assault rifle and two magazines lying on it. A dog-eared booklet that must be the operating manual. Strange contrast with the coffee machine and milkshake flavours on the bench behind, faded Polaroids on the wall above. And then this machine gun just lying there.
Tolson said, ‘Don’t stare, you’ll make it embarrassed.’
He was Perry’s half-brother. Their fathers had visited the same Boston bar, up in Charlestown, and hooked up with the same woman. Perry’s dad first, whoever he was, and then Tolson’s a year later. Tol said in a way it made them full brothers: same mother, and the same drunk mistake.
Perry said, ‘Just gathering my thoughts.’
Tol didn’t answer. Guns had been his sideline for a while now. He’d been a quartermaster in the army, out of the service about fifteen years, but he still had some phone numbers, people who helped him acquire certain items. Not that he’d planned on these kinds of sales. The diner on its own did OK, but things got tight enough during the last few years, he had to diversify. So he got into sales. Not a bad earner, especially when he supplied in bulk.
Perry said, ‘You stripping it down?’
Tol shook his head. ‘Only just managed to get Humpty Dumpty back together again.’
‘So why’d you even bother taking it apart?’
‘Part of the look. People ask questions and you don’t know the answer, you start losing customers.’ He took the next stool, sat half on it, one foot on the floor, and said, ‘What’re you doing out here?’
Perry gave it a moment, leaning on the counter, like he was waiting for food. It’d take some effort to work himself up to storytelling. He jutted his chin and ran a hand around his jaw. ‘I saw that guy tonight.’
Tol didn’t answer. Then he clicked his fingers. ‘Say it fast, Pere, c’mon.’
Perry didn’t answer. The photos were getting curled with age, people in them going yellow, like they all had kidney failure. There was one of the Kennedys: Jack and Jackie in a diner, the Prez reading the paper. Perry said, ‘I saw the Marshall guy.’
Tol didn’t answer. That was almost worst than a blind rage. When he sat there all still, that cold look with a tight jaw, you knew he was working up to something. He ran a thumb through one side of his hair, real slow, like he didn’t even know he was doing it.
Perry said, ‘That dealer Henry Lee. You know who I mean? With the white Caddy?’
‘Yeah.’ He wiped a mark on the counter, frowning at it, trying to seem levelheaded. ‘You mean the guy you robbed?’
‘Yeah, hold on—’
‘Christ. What, you call him up or something? “Hey, I did two years for boosting your shit, but let’s grab a beer anyway”?’
‘It’s not that bad. I hadn’t seen him since I went inside, so I thought, well, you know, call him up, see if he knows anything about this Marshall guy. Kinda like a bygones-be-bygones thing. This was a couple weeks ago.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Fuck off, it was fine.’ He jiggled his knee a little, getting momentum for the next bit. He said, ‘So we talked, and I told him like, no hard feelings and that sort of thing, and then just a couple of days ago he calls up, says he’s meeting the guy in Connecticut. The Marshall guy.’
Tol didn’t answer.
Perry said, ‘Don’t be pissed off.’ He risked a glance at him. Tol was looking kind of pale, arms folded, staring at the machine gun. Lucky he’d managed to get it back together or it’d be a real bad night.
Perry said, ‘Anyway, so like, the guy was meeting Henry, probably to ask him if he knew anything about guys trying to kill him or whatever. And you know, Henry’s sitting there shaking his head, saying no, no, no, haven’t heard anything about that. And meanwhile I’m parked across the street, waiting to nail the guy. Kinda perfect, you know?’
‘Yeah, except you dropped the ball.’ Tol ducke
d his head, screwed the heels of his hands in his eyes.
‘Yeah, well, ’cause the guy sorta knew what he was doing.’
Tol looked at him, bloodshot from rubbing. ‘What happened?’
Perry told him. How he’d followed the guy south out of Connecticut, easiest tail job of your life, stopped at that diner off 95, guy goes to take a leak, and then, yeah.
Tol watched him as he listened. Very still, eyes narrowing every now and then, getting it all on board. He said, ‘So he’s got your gun and your phone.’
‘Yeah.’ Trying to sound unbothered, but he drew it out too long, made it sound dejected.
Tol put an elbow on the counter, looked at the door. His fingertips doing little fidgety things, tapping each other. ‘Whyn’t you tell me about it?’
Perry spread his hands on the counter, sat staring at them like he could read his fate. He said, ‘Wasn’t time, he just called me that day and said come up—’
‘No, you said before, he called a couple days ago.’
Perry couldn’t match his stare. He looked at his hands, but they didn’t have much to offer. He closed his eyes. ‘I dunno, I just get kinda confused.’
‘No you don’t, you just start talking kinda bullshit.’
‘Look. I thought I could fix it, but I couldn’t, all right? I thought it’d be easy, just do the guy, and then everyone would be like, Whoa, Perry. I just wanted a little bit of that . . . I dunno. After the New Mexico thing. I thought if I clipped the guy now, it’d make up for pulling out with the other thing. But you know, it’s just so goddam hard. When you actually think about doing it. When you’re actually like, Right, I’m going to shoot this guy.’
He mimed it, squeezing the trigger while he aimed at Jack Kennedy with his paper.
Tol still had his arm up on the counter, barbed-wire tattoos all the way around, like holding the muscles in. He’d lost some weight, had a sort of lean, feral look going. Like the surface fat had been worked off, left him all sharp and square-jawed.
He said, ‘No, I know you. You thought you could handle it solo, so you didn’t have to split the hit fee. Extra profit, right? Well, fuck you, pal. Now I have to bail you out.’