by Preston Lang
“Yes. And honestly, I don’t have anything against him—other than the fact that he’s a fucking moron. That’s all, really. He doesn’t understand when to shut up. And he panics and makes bad decisions. And he’s got girls around him too often. He’s probably telling them all kinds of shit. This is going to hurt you and me. I mean—more than it already has.”
“Okay. So what do you think I should do? Put you in charge of it—what do you do?”
“Honestly, I would cut him loose.”
“Okay. You want to do that?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead.”
“. . . Just so I’m sure I get it—”
Top turned hard on Duane.
“Let me say this: there’s people out there telling me the problems you’re causing. So how about you just do what I tell you, no mistakes. That’s the safest thing for you to be doing.”
He got up and walked out of the bar, leaving the bill for Duane. Yeah, I get it, you’re the big shot. Duane had another drink, and then stood up, feeling pretty pissed with the world. He hadn’t decided how he felt about the bartender yet—a man of about thirty with a few low-key tattoos—but he wasn’t in a generous mood.
“You ready to settle up?” the bartender asked.
Nope—Duane didn’t like that tone of voice.
“I’ll have to get you another time,” Duane said.
“What?”
“Another time. Never. Right after you go home and fuck your cat.”
Duane walked to the door. There was no bouncer in the place this early in the day. Duane could hear the bartender scrambling out from behind the bar, but he only made it to the doorframe. That’s where he stopped and watched Duane walk down Water Street. You want to make an issue out of it—be my guest.
Why was Duane so upset? He should have been relieved. But there had been constant reminders of how little Duane was worth, and then Top had ended the talk with a threat and that arrogant walkout. It meant Top was probably in trouble, and that wasn’t good news for Duane.
He had heard the whole Midwest operation hadn’t been a great idea. The people were hard to keep track of and a lot of the money that was supposed to come back never did. The one time he’d talked shop with his brother, Cyril had told him he didn’t even bring money back anymore. That was surprising, but Duane assumed that Top had perfected transfers in a reliable way.
Duane had only been walking for a few minutes, but he’d already hit the bottom of the island of Manhattan. The statue of Liberty stood out in the harbor, and short men dressed as the statue tried to get tourists to take their picture. He looked back at the downtown towers, billions of dollars moving right past him, right now. None of it was his. He had to work around the edges, the suburbs and the hinterlands, and he had to take care of some petty concerns for a boss who was starting to see him as expendable.
CHAPTER 23
Willow and Cyril left the diner.
“And that was a fake baby she carried, okay,” Willow said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I was about to slap it out of her hands.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Okay, fine. I was only nine-nine percent sure. And you can’t slap a baby if you’re only ninety-nine percent sure it’s fake. That’s a rule of life.”
“Sure.”
“And you just let that guy rip on you—talking about how you were missing a sack.”
Cyril shrugged.
“Look, they were just hustlers,” he said. “They don’t matter. They’re not the ones following us.”
“So where are those guys?”
“I think we lost them. I think we take to the back roads and wait for the call.”
The Call. He’d already missed three of them, but the dealers would try again. Cyril was Top’s ambassador. These smallish Iowans weren’t about to cross Top because of a few missed phone calls, right?
Some of the dealers tried to scare him a bit, but most of them were really nice. There was a guy just outside of Davenport who always wanted Cyril to listen to old jazz albums, sitting on his porch with lemonade and Bix Beiderbecke. That guy was nicer than anyone Cyril dealt with in the straight world. He would point out the constellations and talk about how shiny the stars were and load Cyril down with mixtapes for the ride home.
Willow turned on the radio. The Lite FM DJ read copy for Rite Aid.
“You don’t ever carry a gun?” she asked. “There’s going to be a lot of money changing hands.”
“A gun wouldn’t help me.”
“I just feel like you’re not tough enough.”
“How about I pick fights in diners for no good reason? How about I get all tatted up, looking like I just got out of prison? Those guys wreck pickups. And those guys get stopped on the highway.”
“You don’t get stopped?”
“Once or twice. But it’s never been trouble. A cop helped me change a tire once. And I was loaded down heavy that day.”
“He didn’t want to see ID?” Willow asked.
“He did. I showed it to him.”
Actually it had been a very pleasant young female officer who’d joked about helping out a damsel in distress. It must have been a slow morning for Indiana State Police while she helped him figure out how to use his jack.
Willow turned away from the stone buildings of town and out to a quiet single lane and open land. The voice on the radio wanted someone to unbreak her heart, and Willow sang along quietly. Her singing voice was higher and sweeter than Cyril would have expected.
“What?” she asked.
“I like hearing you sing.”
“I was singing?”
“Yeah.”
“You shouldn’t sing along with the radio. It’s an insult to the recording artist.”
“Really?”
The cell phone rang in her pocket.
“Let me have it,” Cyril said.
“Nope.”
“Please, before it goes to voicemail again. I have to answer it, and you can’t talk.”
Willow took the phone out.
“I’ll put it on speaker,” she said.
She held the phone up in the air.
“Hello?” Cyril said.
“Yeah, where you been?” a rough voice asked.
“I was told the call wouldn’t come until Tuesday.”
“It’s Tuesday now, isn’t it? Been Tuesday since midnight.”
“So you’re supposed to call Tuesday and you call 12:30 on Monday night?”
“It says Tuesday on my phone. You really want to argue this?”
“No, tell me where I’m going.”
“Where was your phone?”
“I was asleep.”
“Christ. Okay. Who are you?”
“I’m Chub,” Cyril said.
Willow gave him a look and mouthed, who’s Chub?
“Okay, right. I heard of you.”
“Let me know where you are, please.”
There was a pause.
“You have me on speaker, man?”
“I’m driving.”
“How close are you?”
“I don’t know where you are,” Cyril said.
“Oh, right,” the tough guy was off balance for just a moment. “Listen good, because it’s not that easy to find.”
He gave Cyril the directions.
“You staying up late?” Cyril asked.
It was already past two AM.
“We’ll be up. Get here soon as you can.”
He hung up the phone and Willow checked the map. They were about fifty miles away.
“Who calls you Chub?”
“One of the dealers out here called me that. I stuck with it.”
“You’re not fat or thin, how does it make sense?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t need any of them knowing my name.”
“I know your name.”
CHAPTER 24
Danny worked his way back around the highway and picked
up Marcus about half a mile from the diner.
“Good work, my brother,” Danny said, motioning to the tracker. “They’re taking the back roads, which is good for us, because little Kevin probably called campus cops by now, and they may be looking for our Lexus on the highways.”
“You think they’re looking for us?”
“Or maybe that poor kid is still sitting next to the corn, waiting for us to come back. Look, we’ve got to take a few risks, dog. But you did real good. We’ve got them on the screen again.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Marcus picked up the tracker and watched it like it was his daytime soap.
“They’re about ten miles from us. They just did a loop,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“What do you think that means?”
“Making sure no one is following them.”
Danny stopped the car beside an open field.
“You ever do any cow tipping?” he asked.
“What’s that?”
“Run out and shove a sleeping cow.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Okay. So you’re very mature. I just thought it might be a way to kill some time.”
“That’s a real thing?”
“Probably not. I’ve never done it. But if our friends are just doing circles, what are we supposed to do with ourselves? We don’t want to ride up on them just yet.”
Danny stepped into the middle of an empty road. The moon was just over half full and it slid out from under cloud coverage. They hadn’t run into any rain as they’d made their way into the middle of the continent, but now it looked like it might get a little wet.
CHAPTER 25
With Marcus out of the house, Saida had gotten a lot more studying done, but she was still fed up with school. Her courses were pointless, and she wasn’t doing as well as she pretended. She lied about her grades to Marcus, just like she used to lie to her sister Margaret. Of course, Margaret found out the real grades when the report card came, whereas she didn’t have to show Marcus anything. Still, she lied to him because she liked that he thought she was really smart—super brain.
Maybe it made sense to leave while Marcus was still on his mission, his ridiculous job. She could clear out everything at her leisure and drive somewhere. But if she felt like she had another option she’d have dropped out of school and left Marcus months ago. Where was she going to go? Well, she could always go back home. Her sister ran a daycare out of the apartment back in Brooklyn. Margaret would always take her back in—with a smile and some talk about responsibility, maybe a little Jesus too. It was a pretty small price to pay. Saida could help look after the kids during the day and sleep on the couch at night—plus all the juice boxes she could handle.
But she wasn’t going to take off on Marcus just yet. She was going to wait and see. As absurd as his plan must be—whatever it was—there was always a chance. Someone wins the Megamillions, and it’s never been a genius. Not once. She looked at her text book—Marketing Research Methods. The front of the book had an aggressive exclamation point falling out of the sky, which Saida supposed was an example of dynamic marketing. She couldn’t bear to read the assigned chapters, and so, before she knew it, she’d dialed her boyfriend’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey, Saida. I miss you,” he said.
“How’s it going?”
“Really good. But, uh, I really can’t talk right now.”
“Where are you?” asked Saida.
“Don’t worry about that. It’s all going real well. I can’t wait to see you again.”
“When are you coming back?” she asked, like a teenager, disgusting herself.
“Soon. Real soon. Saida, things are going to be good. Just wait.”
“Okay. I just—I wanted to see how it was all going.”
“And it’s going great. Look, I wish I could talk to you all night, just lie back and tell you everything, but I’ve got to get this done.”
“Okay, yeah. I get it. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I am. Good night, sweetheart. I love you.”
Saida felt ashamed of herself. What was she going to learn by calling him? Was he going to say, I’ve got the cash in the trunk and I’m driving it home? Had she just need to hear his voice?
***
“She called you,” Danny said.
“Yes, she did.”
“She was worried?”
“I guess. A little. I think she just missed me.”
“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s going to work out for you kids after all.”
“I just feel like if the two of us could get a little breathing room—I mean with the money—that would change things.”
“Money does change things. Just be careful she’s not, you know, a gold digger.”
“If she were, would she have stayed with me all this time? The girl is true.”
“Yeah. I really like her. I know she hates me, wants to get rid of me and all that, but I think you should hold onto her.”
Marcus nodded.
“Are you supposed to let a woman go up the stairs first?” he asked. “Like if the two of you come to the stairs at the same time—what is a man supposed to do?”
“A gentleman let’s a lady go up first. Because if she falls, you can catch her.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Saida fell off a ladder once.”
“Did you catch her?” Danny asked.
“Yeah, I caught her.”
Marcus smiled.
CHAPTER 26
Willow and Cyril were getting closer to the pickup, but they hadn’t talked about what they’d do when they got there. Cyril was happy to put that conversation off as long as possible.
“I’ve got a house in Belize,” Willow said.
“That’s terrific.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
Willow opened the glove compartment and rummaged through some papers and wrappers. Cyril saw a few bottles of prescription pills and a lot of gum before she shut the compartment and handed him a picture of herself, standing outside a house on the beach. She was wearing one of those modest one piece bathing suits with the skirt, like a grandmother might wear.
“You see,” she said.
“I believe you once went to the beach,” he said, eyes back on the road.
“That’s the house.”
“I like the bathing suit.”
“There’s a lot of Mennonites in the area, so I like to keep things covered.”
“Okay, so, let’s say you do have a house in Belize—”
“It belonged to my dad. It’s the only thing I got to keep—everything else got seized by the government, but this was out of country and he hid it.”
“What was your dad that he had to hide property?”
“He had projects, you know? We all have projects.”
“How would we get there?”
“You got your passport, right?”
“You have my passport.”
Was there anything he’d really miss? There was nothing compromising on his hard drive at home. His car was old—it could sit in front of the Firstway Inn forever as far as he cared. He could always get a new guitar. Sitting out in front of that house in Belize with a twelve-string, acting like Jimmy Buffet. It made him cringe.
“We sell the car, and fly down to Belize,” Willow said.
“With a suitcase full of heroin?”
“I wonder if they’re really that serious about stopping drugs sneaking out of the country.”
“I’m not getting on a plane with drugs.”
“Okay, I’ve got an idea then: let’s say we really are picking up drugs and not money—just like you say.”
“We are.”
“Then we sell it. People sell drugs.”
Cyril picked up the photograph and gave it another look.
“You own the place? You have legal ownership?” he asked.
“Let’s say for a second that right now we are going to get money and not drugs.”
“I knew it,” Willow beamed.
“Just for the sake of discussion. So then what? We fly down there with the money and live on the beach?”
“That doesn’t sound good to you?”
Swim, make love, eat good, cheap seafood. You could live on, what, ten dollars a day? Easily hide out until everyone stopped looking for you. Cyril drove in silence for a while, past a tall grain silo and ghostly cows, eyes bright and open, peering out from behind their fences.
“It’s really drugs? That’s what we’re picking up?” Willow asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay. How about we take the drugs west, set ourselves up somewhere, sell the batch off, and then head down to Belize?”
“Are you a drug dealer? Because I’m not a drug dealer. I don’t know how to do that.”
“We go to a ski resort, okay. Colorado or something. Ski season has got to be starting just about now. We hang out at lodges. We ski a little and we have a nice vibe—as a couple just in from LA. And we start to sell to skiers.”
Cyril laughed.
“It’s not a joke—skiers like to party. That’s why you go on a ski vacation,” she said.
“We’d probably get ourselves killed. Not definitely, but probably.”
“I think you’re overestimating the people you work for.”
“It’s not just them. You can’t open up store wherever you want.”
“Just a little bit at a time. We make some friends and sell to them. We’re not standing out on the corner with bindles. It’ll work.”
“Because we have a nice vibe?”
“We have a great vibe. You like to ski?”
“I’ve never skied—it looks stupid,” Cyril said.
“It’s not. It’s great. You can’t dismiss something as stupid when you’ve never done it. Anyway, we’ll be selling mostly, not skiing. And next thing you know—we’re in Belize. No one is going to look for us there.”