by Jeff Johnson
“Her cell.” Cherry repeated.
“Yep. Don’t ask. But only her cell.”
“Mum’s the word, Trouble.”
Suzanne’s number was at home in one of my sketchbooks. It didn’t matter for the moment, but it would be important later. I put the phone in my pocket and threw all the plastic trash away, then headed for the MAX. I had to get to my storage unit and get some cash out of the safe. If someone was watching me move around Old Town and Dessel was worried that the same person had hacked my phone, then it was time to switch back to cash. I had several grand in nasty currency tucked away and it was time to get some.
The storage space was a last resort. It had been left to me by a customer who had paid it up for a year, then moved a giant antique gun safe into it, then left town and sold it all to me. I used it to store junk, mostly, but a few years ago it had turned into the secret repository of all the cash that kept coming my way. It was all stolen, and that was bad, and worse, it was all stolen from criminals, so the numbers might be on some kind of radar. Worse than worse, many of the bills had dried blood on them and some of that blood was from dead people. So I hadn’t been there in a long time. I’d gotten into the habit of never going there at all, which was good.
There was a crowd at the MAX stop, clustered under the shelters. My new phone rang as I walked up and I answered off to the side, sticking to the shadows.
“Delia?”
“Yo dude, it’s Chase.” He sounded chipper, even happy. “Delia was gone by the time Cherry dropped off this number and the cryptic message of ‘use cell only.’ Is the phone tapped?”
“Probably,” I replied, relieved. “Just got a call from one of the feds I tricked into trailing me around. I’m using this Radio Shack burner for the moment.”
“Got it. What can I do?”
“Post this number in the back in case anyone needs it. Delia with Hank when she left?”
“Yep. She waited almost an hour for him so they were fighting on the way out. Kid’s kinda shitty, you ask me, keeping her waiting like that, but whatever. I do worse all the time. But not to a woman like that.”
“Great. Okay, leave her be for the time being.” I thought. The train was just visible through the rain.
“Flaco came in a few minutes ago. He asked about Cherry’s message.”
“Flaco! Good. I might need help a little later on. Can you duck out for a sec and give him a message for me? Tell him I want to talk to Santos and give him this number. Let on that it’s nothing, I lost my phone or dropped it somewhere, that kind of thing.”
“Easy.”
“Right on, man. We’re heading into the shade.”
“Ready steady, boss.”
“Thanks.”
I boarded the MAX headed for the city center and sat in a clump of commuters. I was deep in thought and close to the lights of the skyscrapers when the phone rang. I looked at the number and tried to memorize it, then answered.
“Darby?” It was Santos.
“Hey, man. You’re back.”
“Eh. Changed my mind.” He sounded bored.
“Wanna make some money?”
“What kind?” Still bored, but incrementally less so.
“The kind with dried blood on it.”
“Huh. This is, like, a recurring motif, no?”
“I guess. But first, tell me what changed your mind. Your uncle thinks I had something to do with it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I forget.”
“Fine. So listen, I’m gonna go pick up some cash. Then I have a short sequence of moves to make. I gotta visit this waitress and give her a stack of it, encourage her to split town. That’s step number one.”
“Sounds sticky, yo.”
“It will be. Then I need a ride to Seattle.”
“Sounds boring.”
“It will be. It all has to happen tonight, too.”
He sighed. “I was gonna hook up with Cherry later. Get some. I bought flowers, dude.”
“An even grand. You can buy her a small tree.”
“She might like that,” he allowed. I rolled my eyes.
“Fuckin’ thank god. When the hell did it get so hard to give people money?” A couple people glanced my way.
“What time? Do you want to give me this money, I mean.”
“Stay by your phone,” I replied. “I’ll call you in maybe an hour, little more if I hit a snag.”
“I’ll be here.” Santos yawned and hung up.
It is possible, I’ve learned, to move about the City of Roses in secret. If you’re willing to get muddy, brave the brambles (which are impressive to the point of being actually dangerous), and endure tremendous discomfort. It helps to be impervious to cold, and to be able to see in the dark. Failing that, cursing helps.
I got off the MAX at the first stop on the east side, then went to the nearest bar, a place called Mex’s, and called a cab. While I waited, I drank coffee and prepared myself for what was about to come. The rain was coming down a little harder and I didn’t have gloves. An umbrella would have been useless, but I wanted one anyway.
“Where to?” the driver asked when I hopped in.
“The Montage.”
“You got it. Oyster shooters? The alligator?”
“You bet. Someone’s birthday party.”
I watched the city go by as he droned on and on about food. The Montage was a barn of a French place under the Morrison Bridge. The original owners were a couple of cool guys who hit the grand prize in the early Portland food scene by serving two-dollar bowls of mac and cheese alongside bigger ticket items like blackened oyster salad and alligator fritters. It was open seriously late too, and soaked up the boozy after-hours crowd.
I got out and looked through the windows. Packed. The dinner rush was on, but as a solo diner I had a shot at the bar. I smoked a cigarette out front and admired the view. The Montage was close to the train tracks. A block down, they ran under the bridge between the restaurant and the water. The place was at the edge of industrial no man’s land and that was a huge part of its charm. Above, the underside of the Morrison Bridge sheltered anyone standing out front, but it dripped.
Just after nine I ducked in and went to the bar, grabbed one of the vacant stools. It was loud inside, and steamy. I ordered a beer and the mac and cheese and ate and drank slowly, killing time. Then I had one more slow beer for good measure. Then a few more to blend in. Just shy of eleven I paid and left.
It was colder, and I could see the rain was coming down harder. Like a sated diner having an after-dinner smoke, I drifted a little closer to the train tracks. Still empty, and across from them, after a two-block stretch, the river began, a dark thing shimmering with the lights from downtown. I drifted a little closer. A low rumble filled the night followed by the bleat of a whistle. I moved closer still.
The train was headed north, the direction I was going, and it was moving slow as it passed through the city. It would begin to speed up as it passed under the Burnside Bridge, and somewhere between there and the Steel Bridge, where my storage unit was, it accelerated even further, becoming too fast to jump off of without risking your skeleton.
I turned and looked back at the Montage as the train hove into view. A small cluster of people stood chatting by the door, none them looking my way. The engine passed and I waited until it had curved away, far enough so that the conductor couldn’t see me, and then I ducked under the traffic arm and ran up to it, then alongside until I came close to matching its speed. A ladder passed, one of the metal ones welded to the side, and I grabbed a rung and pulled myself up. Then I looked back to make sure no one was following me.
I was clear.
The wind and rain whipped at me and the ladder was slimy with oily grime, but I felt like I always did when I was dangling from the outside of a moving train. Like dogs feel when they have their head outside a speeding car’s window. Free and elated, for reasons I didn’t care to understand. I tilted my head back and let the rain smack my eyelids.
I couldn’t kill Hank. But I could bribe his junkie girlfriend. Then I could take a “vacation.” Split town until whatever was going on blew over. Hang out with Suzanne and read books while she was at work, cook food in her little kitchen. Watch old movies. Drink. It was giving up in a way, but this time I wanted to. There was no reason to fight anymore, no reason to keep on fighting. I didn’t even want to open my eyes.
When I finally did open them, it was because the sound of the train had changed. The rhythmic surge was louder and faster, the knocking of the rails more intense. We had passed underneath the Broadway Bridge and were headed for the Steel Bridge, then after that, the long hard pull into the east. I looked down at the passing rock and gravel. The longer I stayed on the shorter the walk to the Steel Bridge would be, but the train was a swinging hammer now, getting faster by the minute.
I passed a giant metal box with unknown train crap inside it, and it marked the farthest I’d ever made it when I figured out how to get to my storage unit from the Montage over a year ago. We were really moving by then and the gravel had given way entirely to jagged rocks interspersed with flattened trash and patches of rusty metal. I looked up and I could see the lights of the bridge a quarter of a mile away. I closed my eyes again.
I was going to ride it out. If it looked like certain death when I opened my eyes again, I’d just keep going and live out the dream I’d been having, of going anonymous and starting over from scratch, free of every last connection in the world. If I could survive it, I’d jump and fight for one last night. An image of Suzanne, laughing and reaching out to touch my face, slammed into my guts and in that instant, in the hurricane of cold wind, I could smell her perfume.
I blinked and looked down into the blur of gray and shadow. Then I took a breath and gritted my teeth, flexed, and dropped silently into it.
The impact almost tore my boots off. I was tumbling, end over end, once and then twice and then I was on my feet, skidding to a halt. The train roared past and I stepped away from it and the fearful sucking wind around it. It was so loud at ground level, so much louder than it had been when I hung from the side, that I could barely think. I staggered, then began my limp. I raised my hand to my face and saw in the dim light that it came away red. My nose was bleeding. Something warm touched my neck and I probed my scalp with my other hand. It came away red, too. I wiped my hands on my pants and lurched into the lee of a brick wall, slunk along it until I found an opening, and then went through.
In that dark alley I lit up a smoke and took stock. The tumble hadn’t broken anything, but I was going to feel it in the morning. I clamped my smoke in my teeth and rinsed my hands off in the spill of a nearby rain gutter, then peeked out at the rails. The train passed and then it was gone, some kind of crazy hope with it. The lights of the Steel Bridge were less than a quarter mile away. I started walking.
The river in this stretch smelled like eggs and abandoned bird nests. The rain was reasonably bad, but I was already soaked and freezing so it didn’t matter. When I finally got to the underside of the Steel Bridge I almost breathed a sigh of relief. It was lit with orange municipal halogen, and the muddy stretch hadn’t changed much. I walked past clumps of rusted metal machinery and piles of rotted concrete and came to a point where I could see the garage doors of the storage units on the far side of a hurricane fence.
It was dead quiet.
I paused. I couldn’t tell what it was, but something inspired me to crouch down and watch. Once, I had been inspecting some old flash inside my unit when a car pulled up and I was trapped inside. It wouldn’t do to have anything like that happen again. I listened then, straining my senses, and willed my breath to slow.
There.
Someone was standing on the other side of the fence, just outside the edge of the halogen, a dark, motionless figure. It was a profile shot. A man. Tall. Facing the road.
Riley Wharton.
I was sure of it. He knew I was coming here, and that meant he also knew why. But he’d expected me to drive or take a cab. Holding my breath, I backed away into the shadows. The figure didn’t move. I considered, my heartbeat loud in my ears. I’d been so paranoid since the whole mess began that it was hard to make a call and not second-guess it instantly. I could, possibly, circle up behind him and maybe take him out. If he didn’t have a gun. Which he certainly did. Then again, I might get lucky and carry out a successful assault on a stranger who was waiting for his ride. The odds were high that it was him, however. The guy had my number. I’d need to make another attempt in any case. I couldn’t make a late-night withdrawal in front of a witness. I started back down the tracks. An hour later, I had Santos pick me up in front of a 7-Eleven on Broadway. He didn’t wish me luck when he dropped me off in front of the Federal Building. He just shook his head.
Dessel looked up at me in genuine shock. Pressman grunted and spun his clipboard into the cluttered mess on the table. There was a tidy window of space and a third chair where Lopez would be, but no sign of her. The meeting table had the foul aura of an all-nighter, just as it always did, and Pressman and Dessel looked like the guys who’d pulled it. But there was something worse in the air than usual. They looked especially terrible. Dessel looked like he needed to shave, possibly for the first time in his life. Pressman looked like he’d died and been electrocuted back to life in the last ten minutes.
“Where’s what’s-her-name?” I crashed down in her chair.
“Darby, I’ve been calling and calling.” Dessel blasted me with his smile, huge as always, but it did nothing for his eyes this time. “You either found your way here out of habit or you’re drunk. Maybe both.” He sniffed. “Bob, check the drunk box. Now, what happened to your face this time, and”—he laughed and leaned back—“what happened to your head! This has to be good.”
“Got in a hornet fight.” I picked up the lukewarm coffee in front of me and drained it, smacked my lips. “Then I was riding around on a train. But that’s not why I’m here. I got a lead.”
Pressman whistled. Dessel’s eyes went impossibly wide and he crowed with a hollow delight.
“The clouds have parted! The bees have finally told their secrets!” Dessel clapped his hands together. “What did they say? Ooh, make the buzzing sound, too! And the choo-choo whistle! Please. I—I need that.”
“Let’s talk about your information first.” I lit a cigarette and stabbed it at him. “Then maybe you get your buzz.”
They looked at each other. I waited. Pressman took point.
“Not the way it works, Holland.” Pressman got slowly to his feet and walked to the window, opened it. Slower than usual. Arthritic. “You tell us your shithead theory about Martians or cavemen tracking you with a butt probe and then we decide if we tell you a goddamned thing.” He lit a cigarette of his own. “I think calling you in was a mistake and you fucking showed up anyway. Not my day. Night. Morning. Whatever.”
“Bob also has colitis, as I mentioned,” Dessel said primly. He pointed a sympathetic expression at his partner. “Maybe you should go first, Darby.”
“Fine.” I blew smoke. “I was right about my stalker with that fishing story. Most gnarly monster in the history of bad news. Genius, and we’re talking your high school chess club-level genius here, Dessel. Tougher than I am, too. Faster. Meaner. The iron will of an Olympic distance runner and the resources to get anything from a vial of plague to an endangered spider on a Tuesday night.”
“Putin,” Dessel breathed. “You’ve done it at long last.”
“Nah.” Pressman turned away from the window. “Bigger. He’s talking Wells Fargo.”
“Wrong on both counts.” I dropped my butt in Lopez’s cup. “Cokehead stripper. I might have pissed her off, we just don’t know. But my people are terrified. You guys are barking up the wrong tree with your wacko reality TV theory.”
Pressman turned back to the window. Dessel stared at me. I looked at the new dirt under my fingernails. Dessel was trying to read my mind, and he was so
bright that it sometimes seemed like he could. Eventually he caught a glimmer of something and rooted through the papers in front of him, came up with a page of glossy photo print and showed me the back. Watching my eyes, he snapped it around. It was a photo of Oleander, the Mineral Man.
“I bet you killed this man. Recently.”
I leaned forward and studied the picture. He was in front of the insurance office across the street from my drinking alcove in front of the shoe shop, facing the neon. Watching me. It was on a different night than when he’d visited disguised as a hobo. In this picture, he was dressed as a passing office grunt.
“No,” I said slowly. “No. I’d remember if I killed that guy.” I looked up at Dessel. “He owes you money, I’d flash your badge. But don’t shave. You almost look like a grownup right now.”
“Amazing.” Dessel set the photo down without taking his eyes off mine. “You’re my natural enemy, Darby. Nature designed us to oppose each other. You ever think about that?”
“Get out.” Pressman said it without turning. “Just get out. Walk out that door and don’t look back.”
Interesting. Bad interesting. I changed tactics.
“Arrest me.”
Pressman turned and glared at me, a red stare of murder. Dessel finally looked down. His eyes refocused on the photo in his hands. He stared at the dead man whose body he would never, ever find, knowing exactly what he was looking at.
“No,” Dessel said softly.
“Then how about if I straight up beat the shit out of you guys? Then you’d arrest me. You’d have to. I got better odds doing time for beating on pussies than I do walking like you want me to, right?”
Dessel put the photo down, then wiped his hands on his pants like he regretted ever touching it. Disgusted, and not with me. I’d never seen him like this.
“He’s an animal. Midnight Rider Productions. They make a kind of . . . pornography, maybe. We’re not sure what to call it.”
“Dark web.” Pressman said it like his mouth was giving birth to a lamprey.
