Marshall's Law

by Ben Sanders

‘No. Not right now.’ She gestured at him with the cup. ‘Why’re you out at this hour, anyway?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep, thought I may as well call you back.’

  She said, ‘How long have you been out of the police?’

  ‘Six years.’

  ‘That’s a long time to be doing nothing.’

  Marshall said, ‘I blew my cover with the Asaros, so I got sent to New Mexico.’

  He thought she’d be surprised, but she just nodded to herself, like it didn’t sound too drastic. She said, ‘What, federal protection?’

  He nodded. ‘WITSEC.’

  She took a few seconds with that, washed it down with a sip of coffee. She said, ‘I figured it was something like that. They give you a fake name and everything?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m James Marshall Grade now. But you can still call me Marshall.’

  ‘James Marshall Grade.’ She sucked her lip, like the words had a taste. ‘So what happened?’

  He looked off to his right, the buildings toward Wall Street truncated by cloud. Blue and green light diffuse in the mist. He said, ‘I had a shoot-out in Tony Asaro’s apartment.’

  ‘And killed someone?’

  ‘Not quite. I shot his daughter. Didn’t do a great job of it, though.’

  He liked how she didn’t look fazed. It seemed to invite disclosure. He felt comfortable telling her things.

  She said, ‘So why are you back?’

  ‘There’s a contract out on me. Someone kidnapped a U.S. marshal and asked him where I am.’

  That got a bigger reaction. He saw her mouth actually fall open. ‘What? Shit—’

  ‘And I want to find who’s behind it. Bets at this stage are on Chloe Asaro.’

  ‘The daughter?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Because you shot her?’

  Marshall said, ‘I imagine that has a lot to do with it.’

  ‘God.’ She took a sip and held it, looking down blankly at the traffic. She swallowed and looked up again. ‘When was this? The kidnapping thing?’

  ‘Monday before last.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Same guy in Santa Fe you talked to.’

  She ran a hand through her hair, rubbed her brow. ‘Sorry, I just. God, this is ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m sorry I called you—’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m glad you did.’

  ‘I didn’t want to involve you or anything. I just wanted to see you.’

  She waved it off. ‘No, it’s fine, I understand. It’s just, you know. I figured something must’ve happened that I hadn’t seen you, but that’s just crazy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stay in the program?’

  He didn’t want to tell her about his trouble last year, all that bloodshed down in New Mexico, so he said, ‘The marshal they took helped me out once, so I figure I owe him.’

  ‘Helped you out.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Maybe keeping safe’s the best way to repay him.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘How long have you been back?’

  ‘Almost two weeks. I was in California before that, place called Eureka.’

  ‘What’s in Eureka?’

  Marshall said, ‘Not a lot.’ He shrugged. ‘Kind of the point. Nice temperature, it’s on the coast, no one’s tried to kill me. Lot of retired people. I have an art class on Tuesdays. I don’t think my pulse has been above fifty.’

  ‘Art classes.’ She closed her eyes, shook her head. ‘No, I can’t picture it.’

  ‘My brushwork’s getting quite good. I like the actual painting side of it. Don’t have a lot of time for the theory, though.’

  ‘Like, the darkness represents his inner struggle, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Yeah. That shit. I just want to paint the fruit bowl, you know?’

  She nodded slowly, watching the traffic. Over in Brooklyn the riverfront had a lace of night-lights, like some mound of treasure out beyond the water. She said, ‘Did you know Dom Page is dead?’

  He wasn’t ready for it, going from fruit bowls to dead men like that. He said, ‘Shit. No. When was this?’

  ‘About four months ago. Murdered.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘NYPD. They thought I’d know what happened.’

  She had an apartment on Allen Street, just around the corner from Delancey. The building was an old five-story brick place with the fire escape zigzagged up the front, metal shutters covering the shop windows on the ground floor.

  The stairwell was warm and smelled of cigarettes on the ground floor, and then chili one flight up: a door was ajar, cooking odours and a blade of yellow light escaping. It put him back in Santa Fe for a moment, the cuisine down there the upside of being a ward of the government.

  Her place was on the third floor, and it was only slightly larger than his. There was a bathroom to the right of the entry, and a kitchen beyond that, just before the living room. A bedroom, presumably, behind the wall on the left.

  Lana shrugged out of her coat and hung it on the back of the door, sat down at a desk against the far wall in the living room. The window above it looked out over Allen Street. She parted two stacks of books and pulled a laptop computer toward her, opened the screen. She logged in and the desktop began to load, the hard disk groaning as it woke up, icons blinking to life, as if wincing with the effort.

  She said, ‘I don’t have the hard copies, I’ve just got photos of photos.’

  ‘Why’d they even show them to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess because they thought if I was dirty and Page was dirty then I’d know all about it.’

  ‘So what did you tell them?’

  She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t really help them. They wanted to know if I knew about him not logging evidence, that kind of thing. But I don’t know, it’s all hearsay. I never saw anything.’

  She clicked through some directories, opened a folder containing five image files.

  ‘I took them on my phone, so they’re kind of blurry.’

  He drew a quiet breath and said, ‘Show me.’

  She opened a slide show. The first image was a close-up of a hand, three fingers missing, the thumb and pinkie curling together, not quite touching. Pools and lines of blood in the creases of the upturned palm.

  He said, ‘God.’

  ‘There’s more like this. The other hand, and his feet.’

  He turned away slightly, watching in his periphery, sparing himself the details.

  He said, ‘It’s definitely him?’

  ‘Yeah. The last photo’s his face.’

  ‘I don’t need to see it.’

  He could feel the blood pounding in his head. He looked out the window, an oblique slice of Allen Street, tried to focus on the view.

  He rubbed his face. ‘Did they tell you who they’re looking at?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Who interviewed you?’ Speaking through his hands, his voice muffled.

  ‘I didn’t know them. Couple of Homicide guys from Seventy-eighth, and someone from IA.’

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, ‘Come in.’

  ‘Where did they find him?’

  ‘They wouldn’t tell me. In fact, they actually said, “We’ll ask the questions.”’

  He folded his arms and looked down at her.

  She said, ‘Are you all right?’

  He nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’

  She said, ‘I wouldn’t have showed you—’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I asked to see them.’

  ‘But I just thought, if someone went after Page, maybe that’s why you’re in trouble as well. I don’t know.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Twenty-ten. Last time I saw everyone, basically.’

  ‘So do you know what’s going on?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not yet. But I will.’

  ‘But do you think the t
hing with Page has something to do with you?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  She waited. Then she said, ‘You can talk to me about it.’

  ‘I know.’

  He was watching the street again. It was a nice effect, traffic caught there for a glimpse. You could probably film it, put it in the MoMA, though they’d probably want to say something fancy. How the city’s indifferent, but the window makes you stop and think. Something like that.

  He said, ‘How much did they say your payoff was?’

  She was quiet a little while, turned away from him and watching the screen. She said, ‘Twenty grand.’

  ‘All they had was hearsay?’

  ‘They had a grainy film of me talking to a guy. He said I was asking for twenty grand.’

  Marshall said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. No one did.’

  He didn’t answer. He moved books from one stack to another so the piles were the same height. She had texts on quantum mechanics, special relativity, quantum field theory. He said, ‘There’re far worse things than payoffs. Especially if you helped your dad.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Maybe I should have taken the money then.’

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, ‘Did you ever do it?’

  ‘What? Take drug money?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He nodded. ‘Technically, I did.’

  ‘But there was more to it?’

  He didn’t answer. She got up and went and sat on the couch against the left-hand wall. She said, ‘What did you do in New Mexico?’

  He watched the desk chair as it swivelled, seeing if it would stop in the right position, facing her. It was about ten degrees out, so he had to help it. He sat down and said, ‘Not a lot. I did construction labour, did some welding. Moved around a lot.’

  ‘No family?’

  He shook his head. ‘I dated a doctor. She broke it off. And then I dated a police detective for a while. Albuquerque PD.’

  ‘Didn’t work out?’

  ‘She had a dead son. So between us there was some baggage.’

  ‘What about with the doctor?’

  ‘She said I wasn’t a good talker.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet.’

  ‘She knew there was stuff I wasn’t telling her. And she’d ask, and I still wouldn’t tell her.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like about what happened when I was undercover. And not just in broad terms.’

  ‘Right.’

  He looked up at the architrave and swivelled in his chair, choosing his words. He said, ‘I used to stay awake all the time, worrying about Chloe, whether or not I should’ve shot her. I mean, objectively I know that she pulled first, but it doesn’t stop you thinking about it.’

  ‘But you kept all that to yourself, I take it?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. It wouldn’t be great pillow talk. Chloe and I were an item, so I didn’t think they’d want to hear about me shooting ex-lovers.’

  ‘Oh God, you were together? While you were undercover?’

  He’d told himself in the diner he wouldn’t talk about it, but somehow she’d moved his dial from privacy to candour. He said, ‘Yeah. Love is blind and all that. Bit of a drastic swing, though, now that she wants me dead.’

  ‘God. Didn’t it like . . .’

  ‘What?’

  She paused, lips ajar, maybe waiting on the right term. She said, ‘Screw you up.’

  He ran a hand through his hair, trying to seem indifferent, detached from the whole thing. ‘Probably. I don’t know, I don’t think there’s any great emotional torment. I felt terrible when I thought she was innocent, but now that she’s trying to kill me, it’s like, I don’t know. It sounds bad, but it’s like she’s fair game. Like this is the kind of interaction I’m used to.’

  ‘People trying to kill you.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe it’ll be different when I see her again, get all the memories crashing back. But they haven’t yet. I don’t feel like I’m in the middle of a tragedy. Or maybe I’m just emotionally deficient or something.’ He squared up another stack of books, giving himself a moment. He said, ‘We used to meet in hotels. Started out as just fun, but I think it ended up something more. I had this idea just to abandon the op, disappear somewhere. Actually asked her to come with me, couple times. Don’t know where we’d be if she said yes. Funny thing to think about, though. Send yourself off the rails, trying to map out what might have happened, look at all the crazy contrasts.’

  Lana didn’t answer, and he looked at the desk, wanting a change of direction that wasn’t Dom Page. He said, ‘That’s some heavy reading material.’

  ‘Yeah. I was going to be a physicist. But it didn’t quite work out. Ended up as a bartender instead.’

  ‘What’s quantum field theory?’

  ‘The unification of quantum mechanics and special relativity.’

  ‘Right.’

  She said, ‘Did you know if you could fold a newspaper one hundred times, it would end up as thick as the universe?’

  ‘Is that quantum field theory?’

  ‘No. I just thought of your newspaper, and it made me remember.’

  He watched the street again, looked back at her. She was at one end of the couch, a leg tucked under her, an elbow up on the backrest. The wall behind her was just painted brick, pipework for the heating standing in the corner. It ticked and hummed occasionally.

  She said, ‘Do you miss police work?’

  He rocked his head. ‘Not really. Some of it was OK. I didn’t like the narc unit. I don’t know. Who am I to tell people what they can or can’t put up their nose. Or inject, or whatever. It just seems pretty straightforward. That people can do to themselves what they like.’

  She didn’t respond to that. She waited a long moment and then she said, ‘I’m not sure I miss it. But it’s one of those jobs where you want to get out, and then you do, and you realise you have nothing left.’

  ‘You got plenty of time to start something new.’

  She looked away and then back at him. ‘I guess. Where are you staying at the moment?’

  ‘Not far from here.’

  She nodded slowly. Something on her mind, the way her mouth was slightly pursed. She said, ‘Do you ever think your life’s just this bizarre thing? Or do you not notice?’

  Marshall said, ‘I try to just live it. But then again, I don’t want to keep doing this. So maybe that’s a yes.’

  She didn’t answer.

  He said, ‘What about you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think it’s bizarre. But then you showed up, and nothing’s surprised me too much. So maybe it is.’

  Marshall didn’t answer. Then he said, ‘Do you really have a gun?’

  She nodded. ‘Uh-huh. Glock nine. I’ve had it since I heard about Page.’

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, ‘You want to stay here tonight?’

  ‘On the couch?’

  She shrugged, still looking at him. ‘Wherever you want.’

  NINE

  Perry

  They took 278 southbound and exited in Bay Ridge. Dexter was on Eighty-sixth Street, at the western end a few blocks from the water. It was quiet and suburban, civilised but not too flashy, lots of flower beds and well-tended lawns. It struck Perry as an odd neighbourhood for a gangster, hard to picture Mr. Vine out pulling weeds, clearing the gutter in the fall. He had a two-storey brick place with a garage dug in on one side, a little shell path through his shrubs marked out with solar lights.

  Ludo rolled in slowly to the curb, eyes on a black Lexus that was parked diagonally opposite. He watched it a moment, leaning forward with an arm draped on the wheel, the Caprice’s V8 rumbling quietly.

  He shook the stick into neutral and killed the engine. ‘All right. Let’s go.’

  Perry slid across to the kerbside and Tol came around and opened his door for him. A small dog was yapping. Ludo spent a moment at the drive
r’s side, fussing with his keys, and then he followed them up the shell path to the front door. He pushed the buzzer, and a sequence of church bells played inside the house.

  Ludo said, ‘Pretty little tune, isn’t it?’

  He stood between them, his presence heavy enough it was as good as leaning on them.

  He said, ‘Wondered if you might run, have a midnight pursuit on my hands.’ He looked back at the car. ‘Would’ve been interesting. With it all slippery. And me in my boots. I don’t lace them that firm. Nowhere to go though in the suburbs, is there?’

  Footsteps from inside, and then the door opened to reveal Dexter in jeans, and a shirt that was skewed down the front, the buttons not matching the holes. In his heyday he would’ve been one of those short, stocky guys, but now all the heft was going to his gut. His hair was fanned up along one side, like he’d been sleeping.

  Ludo said, ‘Sorry for the intrusion.’ Sounding amused, like this would be worth it.

  ‘Yeah, come in. Don’t mind the dog. Yeah, you. Piss off.’

  He stepped aside and Ludo ushered them through. The dog looked like a Chihuahua, turning dizzy circles as it yapped.

  Dexter leaned out and looked at the Lexus, and then shut the door and locked it. ‘Oh, Christ sake. Shut up.’ He opened the door to the living room and kicked the dog through, a scooping motion with his instep that made the thing yelp and tumble. He gestured to the three of them. ‘We’ll talk in the kitchen.’

  He led them down the hallway to the rear of the house. He had a pistol in the back of his jeans, the shirt hem riding up over the grips.

  The lights in the kitchen were on already. There was a long granite island counter in the middle of the room, bar stools along the near side. A big stainless-steel stove behind it, knives and utensils hanging on the adjacent wall. At one end of the counter was a leather armchair in a reclined position. Dexter stepped around it and patted the headrest on the way past. ‘Had some dental work done today.’ He snarled his top lip back, revealing a gap behind a canine. ‘Had a root canal that didn’t take, told the guy, Whatever, just rip it out. So he did.’

  He moved behind the counter and rolled open a drawer, metal items sliding with the sudden motion. He gestured absentmindedly with his other hand, a vague motion at the stools along the counter.

  ‘Might as well have a seat.’

  Perry scraped a stool back. As he glanced down he heard another drawer roll open, and then the next thing he knew, Dexter had him by the jaw, pulling him across the counter and saying, ‘Easy, easy, easy,’ as he pushed a hypodermic syringe into his cheek.