by Mike Nappa
“Ten thousand.” He looked at his left hand. “Well, nine thousand now, I suppose.”
“And let me guess: They’re willing to cancel that ‘debt’”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“in return for my logbook. Is that the way this is going down?”
He nodded. Then he stood up so quickly that Bliss almost reached into the desk drawer to retrieve her gun. But she decided to wait him out instead and relaxed after only a few seconds. He was standing, but the boy wasn’t moving anywhere beyond that.
“Well,” he said, “if this is my last day, then I’ve got a few things to do. A few people to apologize to.”
“A girl?”
“Yeah, that’d be one of them. We had a date, and I stood her up while this”—he raised his left hand—“was going on. But, you know, that could have been avoided, I guess.”
“Sit down, Raven.” She reached into the desk drawer and pulled out the Beretta, after all.
“I thought you’d decided not to shoot me. I really am sorry about breaking into your office.”
“Just sit down. I like you, boy. Maybe I’m going to help you.”
He said nothing but let himself slowly down into his seat.
Bliss set the gun on the desk. “How many come after you?”
“Two,” he said. “Well, three at first. Then two.”
“You can’t run,” she said. “Once they got you, they keep eyes on you. You know that?”
“Yeah, that’s what they said.”
“You try to run, it gets worse for you, for anybody you care about. That girl you talked about? You run, and they involve her in this too. You understand?”
“I’m not going to run.”
“And even if you give them what they want, they’ll always come back. Sooner or later, they always come back. Maybe they leave you alone for a year, maybe two. But they got you now. And when they need whatever it is you got to offer, they come back.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You hearing me, boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The look on his face was that of a former drunk wishing he could find a few dollars to buy a bottle of cheap wine. Sober, and sorrowful about being sober.
Bliss pushed her chair back and ducked her head under the desk. She slid aside a false panel to reveal a small, sturdy metal safe behind it. Thirteen, one, eleven, she recited to herself as her fingers twirled the lock, and then the door opened. From inside the safe, she pulled two stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills and a logbook with a dull red cover.
When she came up from under the desk, she could see The Raven craning his neck, trying to see what she was doing. She slapped the money down with her left hand, and with her right hand, she put the logbook in between the cash and the gun.
“Come here, Raven,” she said. He obeyed, standing in front of her desk, looking curious and confused at the same time. “You got three choices,” she said.
“One: You take this gun. It’s got eight bullets in it. You go home, you wait for Max Roman’s people to come visit, and then you shoot them dead, dead, dead. Make sure you put at least two bullets in each man if you really want to kill him, but don’t do it randomly. If they send three soldiers, you shoot each one first, disable them at least. Then go back for the dead shot after they’re all wounded and trying to survive. When you can take time to compose yourself and shoot to kill. Understand?”
He nodded, but the color drained from his face.
“You’ll probably go to jail,” she said, “unless you run. But with those guys dead, at least you’ll have a chance to run before they can regroup and start chasing you.” She shrugged. “Or you can turn yourself in and see what happens, but that still means jail time, even if you cooperate with the authorities, so you’d better be ready for that.”
“And the second choice?” he said. She noticed his voice sounded dry and scratchy, like sandpaper on a wood table. Bliss pointed to the logbook.
“Two: You take the logbook. This is what Max Roman asked you to get. Take this logbook, and you make yourself my enemy. You don’t yet know what that means, and I don’t feel inclined to tell you. Just be prepared for Mama Bliss if you take it.”
“How do I know you’re not giving me an empty logbook?”
“You don’t, do you?” She was glad to see he wasn’t dull-minded. That made the third option more appealing to her. “Maybe it’s got what Max Roman wants, maybe it doesn’t. You’ll have to walk out of here with it and see for yourself, won’t you?”
He sighed. “What’s the third option?”
“Three: I’m hiring a new security guard, night shift.” She gestured toward the cash on the desk. “Comes with a ten-thousand-dollar signing bonus for a minimum four-week commitment. You quit before the month is up, and you have to pay back the bonus. You stay with me for one month, and the signing bonus is yours to keep.”
He licked his lips. “And?”
“You pay off your debt to Max Roman. That will at least buy you some time to figure out something.”
“What about choice number four?”
Bliss looked at him hard. What was he up to now? “What’s that?” she said.
“I just walk out of here, alone, with nothing. I hurt no one, take nothing from anyone, make no new enemies. I let myself be extinguished like a candle in a rainstorm.”
She searched his eyes and saw he was serious. If he walked out of this office without taking anything, suicide was his next destination.
“Take the job,” she said quietly, “and I’ll protect you. From Max Roman. From the police. From everybody. I’ll keep you safe until you’re able to keep yourself out of trouble.”
“Why?” It was a whisper.
Because I miss my grandson, she wanted to say. Because I see you taking the same road he did. Because it will hurt me to see another young man disappear with nothing to show for his life but empty promises and broken dreams.
Out loud she just said, “Why not?”
26
Raven
Atlanta, GA
Little Five Points
Friday, March 31, 12:33 a.m.
14 days to Nevermore
What would Jesus do?
It’s after midnight. I’m staring at a desk with a gun, a logbook, and ten thousand dollars in cash on it—and that’s what pops into my mind. What would Jesus do?
When I was just a kid, maybe five or six, that was a big fad, everybody wearing cheap cotton bracelets with the letters WWJD embroidered in them as a reminder to live life trying to figure out what Jesus would do and then doing it, I guess. My dad was all-in on that little craze. He bought a bunch of the bracelets and gave them to my mom and me to wear, then spread them out around the neighborhood and gave them to any kid who asked for one at church. I managed to “lose” mine after I got in trouble for fighting at school and my teacher said solemnly to me, “Is that really what Jesus would do?” WWJD was too much pressure for a six-year-old like me.
“You shoot each one first, disable them at least,” Mama Bliss is saying. “Then go back for the dead shot after they’re all wounded and trying to survive.”
Is that what Jesus would do? is my first thought, followed pretty quickly by, This old woman, she knows something about killing. That’s a little scary.
So what would Jesus do? I mean, assuming he got caught trying to blackmail a mob boss and then had his finger amputated as retaliation. And assuming he then tried to break into a big retail store and steal a mysterious logbook. What would he do?
I have no idea. I don’t know him well enough for that. My dad would know.
So what would Daddy do? WWDD?
For starters, he never would have become a pickpocket and petty thief. But that’s not playing by the rules of this little game I’ve set up in my head. What if Dad and I miraculously switched places? What if he found himself suddenly with only nine fingers, facing a brutal deadline, and staring at the items on Mama Bliss’s desk right now?
What would you do, Pops? I
sigh. I know. You’d do whatever Jesus would do.
“. . . still means jail time,” she says to me, “even if you cooperate with the authorities, so you’d better be ready for that.” She says it like she’s talking about carrying an umbrella because it might rain, or warning you not to eat the second piece of pie because it’ll go straight to your hips.
“And the second choice?” I say. My voice sounds raspy, like my throat’s been rubbed with sandpaper. It’s distracting, and I’m kind of wishing she’d offer me a bottle of water from that mini-fridge by the wall, but I don’t want to push my luck. I tune in again midway through her speech.
“. . . Take this logbook and you make yourself my enemy . . .”
Okay, choice number two is out, I think.
I don’t know too much about Mama Bliss, but I’ve seen enough to know I do not want to be her enemy. She’s an old, crippled woman in a wheelchair, and yet she’s got my knees knocking harder than when I first saw Scholarship and Pavlo standing in my doorway. For those guys it’s all about business, all about the money. For Mama Bliss? Well, I don’t think I want to find out what matters to her, especially if I’m on the wrong side of that equation.
Also, how do I know I can trust this woman? Would she really give me exactly what Max Roman sent me to steal? If I were her, I’d keep more than one logbook in that safe. A decoy. Something I could hand out in an emergency and never miss because it would be blank, or it might have sketches of fruit bowls in it, or whatever. But it definitely wouldn’t have whatever it was that Max Roman wanted it to have.
What happens to me when I give Scholarship a bogus logbook?
Now she’s got a third choice, and with the stack of money she’s waving, it seems like this could be the one that Jesus would do. Or at least, the one I’d want Jesus to do.
“I’m hiring a new security guard, night shift . . .”
A job? She’s offering me a job?
“Comes with a ten-thousand-dollar signing bonus . . .”
A low-wage job with an abnormally large signing bonus. No way this is real. What’s her angle?
“You pay off your debt to Max Roman . . .”
Maybe she just feels sorry for me. Maybe she really wants to help. Or maybe she’s just as bad as Max Roman and she wants to own me so that he can’t. Either way, I’m still a slave.
“What about choice number four?” I hear myself saying. I know I’ve been thinking about it all week long, even though I keep trying to push that plan to the back of my mind. Maybe choice number four is the only one. Maybe it’s the only way a slave really gets free.
“What’s that?” she says.
I feel a sense of relief at finally admitting out loud what I’ve been thinking. And sorrow. Twenty-two-and-done seems like a disappointing life, like barely enough time to do anything at all.
What would Jesus do?
Well, not this. I know that much. What will I do? That’s a different question. And what happens after . . . ? That question I don’t even want to think about.
If you can’t even think about the afterlife, I scold myself, how can you think about ending the present life?
Mama Bliss is looking at me like she sees inside my head. Like the way my own mother used to look at me when she knew I needed something more than kind words or a spanking.
I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry, both mamas.
“Take the job.” She says it so quietly I almost don’t make out her meaning. “And I’ll protect you. From Max Roman. From the police. From everybody. I’ll keep you safe until you’re able to keep yourself out of trouble.”
Something about her makes me believe she can keep the promise she’s making. Something tells me this crusty old lady knows how to fight a war. But my war? Why fight that when I’m ready to surrender?
She’s watching me closely. Inspecting me. I think she knows I’m not breathing right now.
There’s a gun, a logbook, and ten thousand dollars on the desk in front of me.
“Why?” I say.
I am here in this quiet moment, my life weighing in the balance. Here with Mama Bliss. Her eyes search mine. I see the pain now. I missed that before. Is that her answer? Then the curtain falls and her face becomes a mask.
“Why not?” she says.
And now it’s time for me to choose.
What would Jesus do? What would Daddy do? What would Mama Bliss do?
I hear a gunshot ring through the night air, coming from the direction of the warehouse where I entered this place. Mama Bliss’s head snaps to the left, following the sound. She swears under her breath and rolls her chair expertly toward the office door.
“What’s an old woman got to do to get a good night’s sleep around here?”
In a second, she’s gone, leaving me alone, breathing stale air, still with a choice to make.
Next to the money on the desk, I see she’s left a picture.
27
Trudi
Atlanta, GA
Little Five Points
Friday, March 31, 12:28 a.m.
14 days to Nevermore
“He’s been in there a long time.”
“I clock him at twenty-six minutes now,” Samuel said.
“Why so long, do you think?” Trudi said. “If you’re there to steal something, wouldn’t you get in and out faster?”
“You’d think.”
Trudi shook her head. The Raven’s promises had seemed so sincere a week ago. I’m a new man, he’d said. Cross my heart. Watching him sneak into Mama Bliss’s warehouse, though, she wondered how much she could believe about anything he said.
About ten minutes ago, the security guard had finally satisfied his nicotine craving and gone back inside the warehouse. A few minutes later, the other guard had returned from his perimeter walk and also gone inside, leaving the warehouse door slightly ajar. Trudi wondered why there wasn’t a third guard that stayed outside but decided that was irrelevant to her. What mattered was that the outside of Mama Bliss’s warehouse was quiet, and she knew that an intruder was roaming around somewhere inside.
“Maybe he’s just sightseeing,” Samuel was saying. “Or maybe he got trapped inside when Smokey Smokerson went back inside. And honestly, he could have left a long time ago, gone out through a different exit. Maybe we’re waiting for him to come out this door and he’s already gone.”
“Too many maybes.” She paused. “You think we should call someone?”
Samuel sat up. “Like who?”
“Police?”
“I am police now, remember?”
“You’re a plainclothes detective on a stakeout. You’re not here to arrest someone for illegal entry. I mean maybe we should call 911 and report a break-in? Get the uniforms out here. At least then we’d find out what’s going on in there.”
“Trudi, it’s never a good idea to call in the Blues to Mama Bliss’s warehouse.”
The way he said it made her understand that he knew something she didn’t, and that it was all part of a bigger something she didn’t want to know about. Still, it made her uncomfortable to sit there and continue to do nothing.
“Okay,” she said. “What about Mama? Why don’t you call her?”
Samuel chewed on the inside of his cheek. Then he said, “What do you know about your boyfriend?”
“Would you grow up and stop calling him that?” she snapped. “He’s a thousand years younger than I am.”
He raised his palms in surrender. “Sorry, I carried it too far. My bad. What do you know about Marv Deasy?”
“He’s a street magician. Works Freedom Park and Piedmont Park. Petty criminal, pretty good as a pickpocket.”
“This is the guy you told to call me? Who turned in a few stolen items over at the station?”
“Yeah.”
“There were a few nice things there, but they were all minor thefts. A bracelet or an Apple Watch, those kinds of things. Nobody has even claimed them yet, and nobody reported them stolen, either.”
“
Yeah. He struck me as a steal-to-pay-rent kind of guy. Not so much a hardened-criminal type.”
“So why break into the Secret Stash all of a sudden? Why change your mode of operation?”
Trudi let that question linger for a moment. Why would he do that? And could that be connected to the reason he’d stood her up for their date at Eclipse di Luna?
“We’re going to have to talk to The Raven sooner or later,” she said.
Samuel didn’t reply.
There was a long moment of silence between them, then Samuel spoke softly, keeping his eyes trained on the warehouse doors and away from Trudi.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry about that whole boyfriend-stalking thing. It was juvenile, I know. I just, well . . .” He stopped and collected himself. “When Eulalie told me you were meeting Marv Deasy for dinner, I guess I was a little jealous, and that was my way of dealing with it. I’m sorry.”
Trudi felt her heart tighten. Part of her loved that he was jealous, and part of her just still loved her ex-husband and wished that they could be together again. Wished that she could go home again. But she knew that wasn’t an option. He’s got a wife and child hidden away in the Middle East, she reminded herself. That thought used to make her angry. Tonight it just made her feel tired.
“Samuel—” She started to speak but then was interrupted by a gunshot echoing from inside the warehouse.
Samuel sprang upright and kicked open the car door.
“Stay here,” he ordered, climbing out onto the pavement. She reached for her cell phone, but before she could dial anything, his head was back inside the car. “Don’t call 911. Not yet. Just trust me. Don’t. If I’m not back in five minutes, then you can call the police. But give me five minutes to check things out first.”
“Samuel—”
He grinned, and she could see that he loved this part of his life. The risk-taking, the danger, the chance to be a hero. That was what he lived for. It must’ve been really hard when the CIA dumped you back in the States and said, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” she thought. He saw the look on her face and maybe misinterpreted her thinking, or maybe not.