Undercard

by David Albertyn

  “I ought to knock your teeth out, Quinn. Or throw you in jail for tampering with an investigation.”

  “What difference would that make to me now? I’ve got nothing left.”

  For the first time Fischer’s eyes soften. “Ah hell, Quinn, don’t get all mushy on me.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Fischer scratches at his unshaven cheek. “I do take all this seriously.”

  “There’s no one else to turn to, sir. I need help. I wish I didn’t, but I need help.”

  Fischer checks his phone and winces. He looks back at Keenan, debating something in his mind. Hesitantly, he says, “I might know something.” He hands Keenan his card. “This is my direct line. Call me later today.”

  Keenan is afraid to reveal the gratitude overwhelming him, for fear it might upset the precarious balance he has attained with Fischer. So he quietly nods and slips the card in his pocket. Fischer turns and lumbers down the hall, checking his phone once more.

  Keenan stands there, gathering himself, recovering from the intensity of the exchange. He watches Fischer, a distance away, stop outside a room and knock. He appears in too much of a hurry to care that Keenan can still see him.

  In the midst of all his swirling thoughts, Keenan vaguely wonders who Fischer is meeting. The door opens and Fischer goes inside. Keenan turns and heads back toward the elevators.

  He’s still got to find his father as soon as possible, but maybe with Fischer’s help he — maybe with the truth he can save . . . someone. Anyone. Do one fucking thing right.

  He pushes the button to recall the elevator. Waits. Hangs his head and closes his eyes. Feels the bruise on his shoulder blade. Feels the lump at the back of his head. Wishes he could fall asleep on the carpeted floor.

  His eyes open. He sees his reflection in the elevator doors. He looks five, maybe ten years older than he did yesterday. Has it not been five, ten years since yesterday? And still not over.

  The doors slide open, the reflection gone. He takes one step inside and his heart stops.

  A gunshot. Muffled, but unmistakably, a gunshot from down the hall.

  9:47 a.m.

  Tyron recalls marches in the Corps, heavy boots hitting the ground in unison, a firm sound composed of confident notes. It made him think of the power, the physical power, humans possess when unified. In this march the patter of so many feet is chaotic and mostly drowned out by chatter and chanting. But the feeling is similar. He feels powerful. It is the first time since he left the Corps that he has felt this way.

  But to say it’s he who feels powerful is not exactly right. It is all of them, together. He feels a part of something powerful.

  The people around him walk tall. Some have their kids with them, and the kids walk tall too. Some groups are holding hands. Others have fists raised. Signs nearby read Justice for Reggie Harrison, End Police Terror, #BlackLivesMatter. Marlon was right, he thinks. Something big is going down. It pervades the air: something is building. Every one of them can feel it. Today is important but something is growing beyond today.

  The Reef looms vast as his section of the march approaches it, and he feels a burst of shame that he is about to abandon the protesters to meet with the man who precipitated all this outrage. He wonders if he really is betraying his community to consort with a killer cop. Even if it is to enlist his help to look for Marlon. That could be even worse, asking the killer cop to help save his friend.

  Maybe he should abandon Keenan for what he has done. Maybe that’s the right thing to do. But the notion of it stabs Tyron with shame too. It’s not like he hasn’t killed people. Far more than Keenan has. And this thought brings the deepest shame of all, the thought that keeps returning to him: those men whose lives he stole, whether terrorists or insurgents or extremists or whatever else the Western world labels them, they were home.

  He can say that these men were trying to kill him and his Marines, that they were trying to detonate bombs intended to murder as many people as possible, that he was often on patrol when he came across them and not after them specifically, but he cannot escape the fact that he came, from continents and an ocean away, to their home and put them down. Places he has no connection to. Places even now he does not understand. Populated by peoples whose languages he does not speak, whose religions he does not practise, whose histories and traditions he has little or no knowledge of. And he left his home so many thousands of miles away and trained with utmost concentration, effort, and discipline, to develop himself into a killer of extreme proficiency, into a leader of proficient killers, so he could come to their home and hunt them. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Maybe so. But then why would it wreak such torment in him now? I’m always trying to do the right thing, he thinks, but somehow it always turns out wrong.

  The blue glass windows of the Reef shimmer in the sunlight like the ocean on a cloudless day. It’s now or never: he leaves the march or he keeps on walking. Either way he’s letting someone down.

  He looks at the protesters around him, and at Auntie Trudy, Tara, and Ricky beside him, and he wonders if he has a right to count himself among these people. So determined, so hopeful and good. He has been gone too long. Seen and done too much. If they knew . . . would they still want him to be a part of this?

  Perhaps he belongs with guilt-ridden Keenan, a man with innocent blood on his hands. The blood Tyron spilled directly came from enemy combatants, but what about the mistakes he made? He was lauded and decorated as an officer, but with that much time in the desert it was impossible not to make any mistakes. Impossible to pick the safest route every time, impossible to be everywhere, protecting his men and civilians always. He never spilled innocent blood, but he would often lie awake at night thinking of how he could have saved it, what he could have done differently. Years of that and it began to feel like not preventing death was the same as causing it.

  Tyron doesn’t know, rent as he is, how he can live up to the faith Marlon has put in him. How he can contribute, here, to this cause or any other.

  Marlon’s still missing, he reminds himself. That’s how you contribute. You find Marlon. Worry about the rest later. Do your duty, Marine. Loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms. Your brothers and sisters in struggle. That’s how he rationalized his role in the Middle East. That’s how he’ll rationalize his role now. Honour, courage, commitment. He’s still a soldier. He’s still a Marine. Only instead of the Corps, this community is his family now.

  Your service doesn’t end, he tells himself. You’ll go mad if you try to live for yourself. Your service never ends. It evolves, but it never ends. Whatever I’m needed for, wherever I can help, that will be my mission.

  Right now, Marlon needs my help. And Keenan does too. He committed a terrible crime, but I won’t abandon him. I won’t abandon anyone.

  With that, Tyron turns to Trudy, Tara, and Ricky, hugs each of them in his strong embrace, and says, “I’ll catch up with you later. There’s something I have to do.”

  9:48 a.m.

  Frozen in the threshold of the elevator, Keenan knows instinctively where the gunshot came from. Terror seizes him. He cannot move. Cannot turn to face this latest threat. Until the elevator doors close on him. Jolt him into action.

  He seems to skip moments in time: suddenly he is loping down the hall. His gun is out. Oh Christ, Fischer, are you dead too?

  Don’t stop. You stop — doubt, fear, common sense, they’re going to catch up to you.

  But Keenan does stop, just outside the door Fischer went into, and the menace closes in around him. He wishes his hands weren’t so sweaty. He wishes they were steadier. He wishes his heart would quit pounding for a fucking second so he could focus.

  Another gunshot. So much louder than before. Undoubtedly fired from inside this room.

  Keenan experiences a split second’s hesitation, a fractional moment of horror at what lies beyond this door. H
e doesn’t overcome it, merely doesn’t act on it, doesn’t try to halt his police training kicking in, compelling him to literally kick in the door. He throws his full weight behind his outstretched foot. Jabs his heel as hard as he can. Wood splinters with a crack. A lock snaps off and the door crashes open.

  Keenan advances, weapon poised. He sees a familiar face at the back of the room. Standing over the legs of a motionless body, recovering from his surprise, pivoting toward the door with a smoking pistol in his hands, is Thompkins, Fischer’s right-hand suck-up. Fucking Thompkins, what the fuck is he doing here?

  Thompkins lines Keenan up. He’s going to kill me, Keenan thinks. What the fuck is going on?

  Even as Keenan registers all this, he is pulling the trigger of his own gun. He is aiming and squeezing and exhaling as he fires his own pistol, blasts deafening in the enclosed space. He pulls again. And again.

  Thompkins lets off an errant round as he jolts backward. Blood sprays out the side of his neck and from the centre of his chest. Keenan keeps pulling the trigger, advancing as he does, until Thompkins is lying spread-eagled on the ground, pistol still in his hand but cast limply out, blood seeping into the carpet all around him.

  Keenan distantly recognizes that he has ended the life of a second human being; nevertheless, his training has him swiftly scanning the rest of the room. He sees Fischer’s brains spattered on the floor-to-ceiling windows, marring the view of the Vegas skyline. He sees Fischer’s stretched-out body on the floor, immobile but for the blood leaking out the back of his skull and the front of his belly. Then he sees, huddled in the corner, a large, thickly built, bald man, bound and gagged, staring at him with wide eyes. Keenan sees all this and what his mind is consumed by is his own heart and its pummelling contractions. He never knew it could beat so loud.

  By the time he has cleared the bathroom his heart’s beating has begun to slow, and he starts to hear the thoughts in his head. By the time he is back in the bedroom, fatigue is already hitting him. He moves to ungag the man in the corner, then drops to one knee. Tries to catch his breath. He shifts his gun to his left hand and dries his right against his pants. Then wipes away the perspiration he hadn’t realized had beaded on his forehead and upper lip.

  What the hell is going on?

  He looks up. The man is still staring at him. His skull looks like a shiny dome. His eyes are set deep. There is recognition in them. Probably knows who I am, Keenan thinks. Probably hates me.

  Keenan heaves himself up. Lungs sucking in big gulps of air. He can rest when all this is over. Rest for good.

  He puts his gun in its holster and removes the gag from the man’s mouth. The man grimaces and topples over with his wrists and ankles bound behind him by zip cuffs. Keenan helps him upright.

  “Argh, that motherfucker,” the man growls. “That motherfucker! He set me up. That punk. He set me up. Stuck a suicide note in my pocket. Thank God you got him. I’m glad you did. I know who you are. I know . . .” The man’s fury has him out of breath. He slows his panting. Grimly sets his jaw. His eyes narrow, conflicted.

  “What happened?” Keenan asks.

  “That motherfucker set both of us up. A murder-suicide, that’s how it was supposed to —”

  “Police! Everybody down!”

  Keenan dives into the prone position, hands over his head. He hears a flashbang grenade bounce into the room. The explosion rocks his ears like somebody cuffed them, and sears his eyes even though his lids are closed. Smoke fills his mouth and nostrils and then his lungs, which contract with deep coughs. His head is swimming. He tries to resist the animal urge to bolt. The stomp of rushing boots is muted beneath the whine in his ears, and then he feels a knee in his spine and strong hands wrenching his wrists down to his lower back to cuff them. Multiple voices yell at him not to move.

  At last he opens his eyes. The tactical officers are everywhere. They fill the hotel room, each one looking vast in all-black ballistic body armour. Helmets, automatic weapons, tactical gear, they are huge. They are terrifying. Lying on the ground, Keenan wonders if they might shoot him, execution style.

  One of them removes Keenan’s gun and another pulls him to his feet. They are doing the same to the man in the corner, whom they cut loose of his bonds, then cuff again with their own.

  Keenan’s skin prickles all over. His hands are shaking. They would be shaking more if they weren’t cuffed behind his back. He can’t stop blinking his eyes. It is the first time in his life that he has been at the mercy of the police. His mind retrieves the sight of that boy on the ground after he shot him. Keenan keeps blinking, although now it is to hold back tears.

  One of the cops gets out of the way of someone new entering the room. He wears no tactical gear, just a plain grey suit. Detective Miles. He quickly surveys the crime scene, then lets his eyes rest on Keenan. His thin, parched lips pull into a sneer. A sneer not of anger or horror but annoyance. Annoyance so potent it has grown into disgust. Disgust for Keenan Quinn.

  “What the fuck did you do?” he asks in a withering tone, and all Keenan can manage in response is to drop his head and weep.

  11

  10:09 a.m.

  Tyron paces in the entrance lobby of the Reef. Keenan is nowhere to be seen, nor is he responding to his calls or texts. What is more, there is a surprising amount of police activity. No public alerts have been given, and patrons of the resort continue to go about their business, but everyone is staring at the variety of police officers — uniform, plainclothes, and tactical — hustling back and forth, in and out of doors, elevators, and stairwells.

  Tyron recedes far out of the way, against a side wall over the flowing image of a diving dolphin. He wonders if this still has to do with Antoine’s murders, but no, the action has a liveliness and uncertainty to it that suggests something more immediate. There is even a look of shock and horror in the police ranks that gives Tyron a sense of foreboding. He watches closely, but can’t pick up any additional information until a SWAT team marches through the lobby in a convoy, surrounding a few plainclothes officers and a pair of handcuffed prisoners. Tyron’s breath stays. Trudging along in the midst of all the commotion are Keenan and Marlon. Tyron looks to the heavens and says a quick prayer of gratitude, then pushes off the wall to intercept the convoy.

  Both Keenan and Marlon look physically intact, but they are clearly dazed and exhausted. Marlon looks unbroken, stooped but unbowed. He acquiesces to the authority of the police, but otherwise he plods along with a steady stoicism. Keenan, meanwhile, looks lost. His head hangs heavily, eyes on the ground, face emptied of any hope or fight. Whatever happened has broken him, Tyron thinks, as he hurries toward them.

  “Marlon,” he says as he gets close, and the entire convoy, except Keenan, rotate to face him.

  The look on the cops’ faces makes Tyron hold his hands up and shout, “I’m a veteran”; it is the look people give when they want to shoot someone. The information dilutes, but doesn’t vanquish, their contemptuous stares. Tyron moves closer anyway.

  “You all right?” he says loudly, through the men in his way.

  “Yeah,” Marlon says, his voice gruffer than usual. He glances at Keenan shuffling ahead of him, who still hasn’t looked up. “Look out for your boy,” Marlon says to Tyron. “He saved my life.”

  One of the SWAT police advances on Tyron. “Back up.”

  Tyron takes a step back. “What are they being arrested for, officer?”

  “You know them?” the cop asks. He is as big as Tyron, but looks bigger with his gear and body armour. Both hands are on his submachine gun, pointed down — for now. The man seems dangerously jacked up and he keeps inching closer like he wants an excuse to bring some pain.

  Tyron looks from the cop’s tense grip on his weapon up to his face. “I’m unarmed,” he says.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Yes, I know them. I’m a captain in
the Marines. Honourable discharge a few days ago. That man is a friend of mine. He went missing earlier today.”

  The cop stares at him, seeming unsure how to process Tyron’s statements. He looks back at the convoy, moving on without him, and an older plainclothes officer in a grey suit, who walks beside Keenan, motions for him to rejoin the group.

  The cop looks back at Tyron. “Back up, I said.”

  Tyron backs away slowly. “Where are you taking them?”

  “You ain’t in Baghdad anymore . . . captain.”

  The cop turns away and catches up to the convoy, exiting out the Reef’s main doors. Tyron whips out his phone and calls Tara.

  “Get out of the march,” he says, “and get your car. I found Marlon.”

  10:17 a.m.

  Breaking news. Breaking news.

  The words keep flashing on the screen in gigantic letters. Two more dead — the reporters seem to relish saying it — killed in the Reef just half a day after the murders of Norman Bashinsky and Raymond Monk by Antoine Deco. It’s almost too delicious for the reporters to maintain their practised air of sobriety. All the crews covering the march have abandoned it to swarm the casino.

  Naomi and Rosie watch in silence. There is a sense, unspoken but palpable between them, that the world has spun off its axis.

  “At this time, we still don’t know if today’s shooting is connected to the Bashinsky-Monk murders, but we do know that the police have two men in custody.”

  Naomi stands and paces to the window. The parking lot tarmac shimmers like water in the heat. Cars whisk by on the street beyond. The city is careening out of control, and where is she in all this? Holed up, hiding, no use to anyone.

  “This just in, the police are coming out now with the apprehended men. We should have a visual momentarily.”

  Naomi turns to Rosie and asks, “Should we try him again?”