Welcome to Cooper

by Tariq Ashkanani

  “I figure you didn’t want to risk putting my name out on the wire. You have a warrant to search my yard?”

  Mansfield rolled her eyes. “You trying to argue the twenty-five grand I pulled out of the ground is inadmissible?”

  “You counted it.”

  “You’re short. Spent some already, pretty sure I can guess where.” She smiled thinly. “And I won’t need your name for that search warrant.”

  “This is bullshit.”

  “This is how I can end you, understand? You think packing up and heading to another shithole town is the worst of your problems? You wear the wire or you go to prison. Grand larceny, armed robbery, aggravated assault. I tie you to Foster and that’s murder one.”

  We stared at each other. Mansfield’s face was flushed, her breathing fast. I thought about the photographs in my pocket. Thought about the choices people kept asking me to make. Seemed like I kept making the wrong one.

  My mother was released from prison when I was fifteen.

  She’d had a rough go of it inside. Being sent away for cold-blooded murder didn’t exactly make you popular. Least not with the inmates you wanted to get friendly with. The women in for fraud or tax evasion. White-collar criminals who just wanted to serve their time quietly and get the hell out. Exactly the sort of people who tended to keep their distance once they found out my mom had shot a guy in broad daylight.

  And look, I don’t know for sure what it was like. But I know my mom wasn’t a psychopath. Wasn’t some jilted lover who had tortured her ex for three days before mailing his fingers through his new girl’s letterbox. Seriously, some of these women were nuts. Sure, my mom was a murderer. But what she’d done? It had been a public service.

  Nancy and Eddie never took me to visit her. Never let me speak to her on the phone. Did their best not to mention her if they could, like I was some sort of Immaculate Conception. Looking back now though, maybe I’m glad. You’ve already heard about my messed-up childhood. I’m not sure driving twenty hours west to sit in a room full of jittery wackos would have done me any favors.

  Anyway, I was fifteen when she got released. Nancy and Eddie weren’t happy to see her, that was for sure. Happier less to see her take me away. I sat upfront in a faded red SUV and we drove for hours across a flat, uninteresting land. Dusty town and shimmering horizon; we were the last people alive in all the barren world.

  She didn’t talk much as she drove. At one point we had to pull over so she could cry. I wondered if she’d always been like that or if being in prison had changed her. I wondered if being in prison was like the red room.

  But I didn’t care about any of that. I would have taken a lifetime of silence in that passenger seat over one more day with Nancy and Eddie. We drove north for nearly ten hours straight, through Des Moines, through Minneapolis. For a while I thought we were going to keep on driving until we reached Canada. Ended up in a place called Duluth, on the shore of Lake Superior. It was the first proper city I’d ever seen. Compared to Eudora, it might as well have been another planet.

  Now my mom, she was damaged goods. Whether I realized it at the time or not doesn’t matter. She was off-kilter, but then I was maybe off-kilter too, and in the stories when two off-kilter people find each other it’s a happy ending, cue the lights and don’t leave behind your popcorn for the cleaners. But in reality it’s a little different.

  Rookie comes to collect me. Cuffs my good arm to my belt buckle. Silver key with the black trim. I talk as he leads me back to the others. About my life in Duluth. Was it better? Sure it was. I didn’t get hit, for starters. My mom was many things, but she wasn’t violent. Matter of fact, the only violence I remember from that time was some guy at school.

  Little Jesse Kane. That was his name. People called him a nerd or a geek. Labeled him a weirdo because he wore glasses and read books at lunchtime instead of making out with girls or getting stoned. Jesse was a sensitive kind of guy, the sort you knew just by looking at that they weren’t going to make it in this world. He got upset with the little things, which was just no good. You can’t get upset with the little things, because then what do you do with the big things?

  Well, everyone found out what it was you did do with the big things when Jesse’s parents got divorced and Jesse hung himself in his room with his belt. I think his little sister found him, or at least that’s what they used to say. I always thought it was a pretty shitty thing to do to someone—leave yourself there for them to find. His sister was, like, ten years old. Can you imagine walking in and seeing that sort of shit at ten years old? That kind of thing stays with you. I tell Rookie I have no problem with people killing themselves, I just wish they’d go do it in private.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was late, and I was tired. It was just after midnight and I was sitting in my Impala with the engine off, so I guess I was cold, too. A thermos of coffee only goes so far.

  Snow drifted lazily through the empty streets, not slowing for stop signs or speed bumps. Every now and then it would catch on my windshield.

  Just after midnight meant I’d been here nearly three hours. Another hour and I’d head home. Same as last night, and the night before that. I poured myself a cup of lukewarm coffee and stared up at Joe’s apartment and watched his shadow glide across the glass.

  Come on, I thought to myself. Give me something.

  Three nights I’d been sitting there. Three nights I’d gone without sleep, three days without stamina. Avoiding Joe when I could. Burying myself in paperwork and long lunches, snatches of shut-eye in my back seat. I’d stayed away from Stingray’s, too. I couldn’t face Mary, not right now. I needed something to focus on. Something I could control.

  I took a sip of coffee and winced. Even the brew at the station was better than this, and that stuff was pure liquid shit. I’d been drinking so much of it lately it was probably giving me cancer. I stretched across to the glove compartment and rummaged around for the bottle of whiskey I kept for special occasions. It wasn’t fancy, just a cheap blend. But I guess that was the point. Anything nicer and it’d be long gone.

  I could feel it now, and not the bottle. Ice-cold and making the hairs on my chest rise.

  Mansfield’s wire.

  It was running into a hard drive strapped to my belt. Thing was so old it was like wearing a ’90s Walkman. A cassette player in my pocket; the height of espionage.

  Pulling out the bottle, I went to add a couple of spoonfuls when the light in Joe’s apartment went out. I sat up. Last two nights he’d gone to bed about one. Could be tonight he was just tired.

  Then the main door opened and he emerged onto the street, a black duffel bag in each hand. Our haul from last week’s robbery. I slid down, watched him scan the area as a car swung around the corner. Headlights washed over me. It pulled in across the street and the trunk popped. Joe dumped the bags inside, then climbed in the back.

  I waited a full ten seconds after they’d passed me before starting up my Impala. Debated downing the coffee in one, decided to toss it on the sidewalk. I kept my lights dimmed as I swung a U-turn.

  Up ahead I could see Joe, taillights glinting red in the worsening snow. I squeezed the wheel and turned the heater up to full.

  We drove for twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes. After the first ten I didn’t recognize where I was anymore. I tried to read the signs but my headlights were too dim and the only streetlights that worked flickered like strobes. Cooper wasn’t on my side tonight.

  Then we were heading out of town. The buildings were shrinking, the gaps between them growing larger. I ignored the unease mounting steadily in my stomach as we drove farther and farther into the wider expanse. The snow had let up, a sudden glint of reflected moonlight on my right; a river, maybe. I wished I’d brought a map.

  Now I’m sure all you listening to this don’t need me to keep talking about the land around here. You’ve seen it. Some of you have seen it all your days. A bareness, like what was there before had been stripped away. Sh
allow fields of broken corn flanked both sides, and every so often the scattered light of a farmstead. An all-too-scarce reminder that even out here, life existed.

  Ahead of me the red lights blinked out. I slowed. Headlights raked scrubland to my left. Joe’s car had turned off the road. A dirt track through the corn stalks. Past a deserted-looking farmhouse, toward a couple of large barns by the edge of the fields.

  I let my Impala roll quietly off the road after them and pulled up snug behind the farmhouse. Killed my engine and climbed out into the cold air. Wrapped my coat around me. Peered around the edge of the house and tracked Joe’s car as it continued over uneven ground.

  Lights from the farthest barn—a second vehicle starting up. I crouched down by the side of the house. Watched through the shaky zoom of my cellphone camera as three men climbed out. The driver, the muscle, and a man in the front passenger seat I recognized as Demyan Marchenko. Same guy from the police station parking lot. The head of the Omaha cartel.

  I tried to snap a couple of photos, my cellphone barely able to make out the details this far away. Figures framed in the headlights’ crossfire. Marchenko, his arms open wide, pulling Joe into an embrace. Leading him to the trunk of the car. To the money.

  There was a faint yapping sound in the air. A dog’s bark, high-pitched and rapid. Marchenko turned behind him, shouted something I couldn’t quite catch. Movement by his legs. A small shape running around his feet.

  Then Joe was hauling the bags out. Marchenko rifling through them. Saying something, shaking his head like he was pissed. Was this why he was here? Making sure his money was safe? I thought back to what Joe had told me before the heist. How the cartel used Cooper to hold its product. I wondered what was being stored in those barns.

  Next: more hugging, more raised voices. Everyone retreating to their cars. I slid my cellphone into my pocket and got to my feet. They were leaving. Both cars heading out the way Joe had come in. They stuck to that route, they’d never spot me.

  I moved to my Impala. One hand on the door handle and a hard click from behind my right ear.

  “Easy there, boy,” came a male voice. Deep, gruff. “Now, you better have a damn good reason to be creeping around my house this time of night.”

  I guess it’d only looked deserted.

  “I was just leaving,” I said, standing up straight, but slow. “Relax, I’m a cop.”

  “That don’t mean shit. Not out here. Not anymore.”

  Thinking fast. One eye on the departing cars. “Not anymore? Since when? Since the cartel moved in?”

  “Thought you said you were a cop.”

  “I just transferred in. Let me guess. Local law looks the other way, lets these guys run roughshod out here.”

  “You’re a fast learner.”

  “Way I heard it, you all were happy enough to take their money.”

  A pause. “You got any identification on you, boy?”

  “Inside pocket.”

  “Just keep it slow.”

  I reached into my jacket and pulled out my badge. Held it up. A rough, calloused hand snatched it from me. The brush of a shotgun barrel against the back of my neck.

  “What’s the deal anyway?” I said. “They pay you to store drugs and guns in those barns?”

  “Toss your weapon.”

  I did as he asked. Up ahead I could see taillights bouncing onto the main road. Both cars headed back to Cooper.

  “I think I better call this in,” the man said.

  “You think that’s a fake? Ask the cop on the front desk, he’ll tell you who I am.”

  “I ain’t calling your station.”

  It took me a beat to get his meaning. Must have looked like I was about to jump him, because he jabbed the barrel into my back. I kept still. Listened to the flat tones of a cellphone as he dialed a number.

  The cars were on the road now. Growing fainter in the dark.

  “I’m not after you or whatever’s in your barn,” I said quickly. “I don’t care how you make your money.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You make that call and I’m a dead man.”

  “I’m a dead man if I don’t.” Then, into his cell, “It’s Noah Johnson. Listen, you fellas know you had a tail on you tonight?”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” the man continued, “I got him here. Reckon you might want a look at him though. Badge says his name is Thomas Levine. Detective.”

  He said the last word like it was dirty. I watched those faint taillights. Saw them brighten as the cars slowed. Headlights slicing across the cornfields as they turned back.

  I thought about the wire running under my shirt. Whether Joe would check for it. I had to dump it somehow.

  “You think they’ll be happy you called this in?” I said. “You can scratch your barn off their storage list. How much is that worth to you?”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “Or did they sell this as a partnership? You know they’ll burn you in a heartbeat if they have to.”

  The shotgun barrel pressed harder into my back. “Don’t start pretending like you understand what it’s like out here. People make the deals they have to.”

  The cars were moving through the fields now. I was out of time.

  “You better hope Marchenko shoots me,” I said quickly. “Because otherwise I’ll be back tomorrow morning with a goddamn warrant, you hear me? I’ll tear every inch of this place apart if I have to. Whatever you’re hiding, I’ll find it. I’ll ruin you.”

  “Listen here—”

  “You got a wife? She ever been in a federal prison? Shit, I hope she’s not a looker. Not that it matters. You spend thirty years inside, you take what you can. They’re going to be all over her like a—”

  The butt of the shotgun cracked against the back of my head. Pain exploded, running down my jawline. I fell to the dirt, momentarily hidden behind my Impala from the oncoming cars.

  “I told you to shut up,” the man said.

  Bent over on my knees, I reached up under my shirt and yanked the wire out. A button popped, the tape on my bare chest taking a patch of hair with it. I let it all drop into the darkness. If he noticed any of this, he didn’t let on. I guessed he was watching the approaching headlights. When I got to my feet, the cars were pulling up.

  Doors opened and Marchenko emerged. His eyes found mine and he broke out into a nasty smile, his lips curling back to show off his missing tooth.

  “Detective,” he purred in that stupid accent of his, “what a surprise to see you again.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I found Joe among the men. Stance lit up red in the scattered glow of brake lights. His face hidden in darkness.

  “You really need to be more careful,” I said. “It wasn’t hard to find you.”

  Marchenko let out a bark of laughter. “Almost as hard as it was finding you,” he said. He turned to the farmer behind me. “You did good to call me, Noah. I will not forget this.”

  Joe caught Marchenko’s eye and put a finger to his lips. Walked over without saying a word and pressed his palm flat against my chest. I felt his index finger on my skin, slipping through the gap in my shirt from the missing button. His gaze went to it.

  “You think I’m wearing a wire?” I said to him.

  “Not now I don’t,” he said, finally looking at me straight on. Fury danced behind his eyes.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  Joe stepped back as Marchenko considered me for a moment.

  “You follow your partner here from Cooper?” he said.

  I kept quiet.

  “Clearly I need to have a word with my men,” he murmured. “Tell me, do you have backup, Detective? Or are you out here all alone?”

  “If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” I said.

  Marchenko fell silent. He took in a deep breath, clasping his hands together in front of his chest as he breathed out slowly. Then he opened his jacket and I
braced myself but all he pulled out was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He tilted the pack toward me and I shook my head. He lit up.

  There was the patter of light footsteps and the small dog appeared once more. Its fur was jet black, with streaks of brown and white. It trotted up to Marchenko’s feet and stood there, staring up at me. The thing was tiny, barely reaching the top of his boots. Its large eyes bulged from its face somewhat, its little ears perked up high. There was a snarl and it pulled its lips back to reveal rows of miniature, jagged teeth.

  Marchenko ignored it. His attention was trained on me. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re Demyan Marchenko,” I said. “You head up a cartel working out of Omaha.”

  “That’s right. And you are Detective Thomas Levine.” He bent down and picked up the small dog. “And this is Rocket.”

  Right on cue, Rocket fired out a series of rapid barks, twisting and writhing in his owner’s hands. Marchenko laughed and ran his hand roughly over the dog’s head, dancing his fingers between Rocket’s snapping jaws.

  “He’s a Jackhuahua,” he said. “His Mexican blood keeps him fiery.” He placed the dog on the ground and watched him affectionately as Rocket ran over to the driver’s loafer and started gnawing on it. The driver barely flinched.

  Marchenko turned to me. “He belongs to my daughter,” he said, sighing. “I don’t see her as much as I would like. Me and her mother . . . it is a long story.” He almost looked sad for a moment. “I bought her the dog for her birthday. To bond over, father and daughter. But her mother, she says my daughter hates dogs. A lie, yes? A lie to keep me from her. Her own father. So now I have Rocket, and I see him more than my daughter. Rocket, he is like a son to me.”

  He shook his head. Took a breath and brought himself back to the present. A snap of his fingers and the driver picked up the yapping dog. Rocket fell silent as he was carted off. His bulging eyes on me all the way to the car.

  “You know, it has been a while since I was back here,” Marchenko said. “I try to stay away from Cooper, if I can.”