Bad Company

by P A Duncan

  After an hour, she checked her watch and looked at the bank of pay phones. With a sigh, she went to one and dialed the house, hoping Olga would answer; she did.

  “I don’t have long, but I wanted to check in to see if the temper tantrum had abated,” Mai said.

  The extended silence wasn’t unusual for Olga, but it became protracted.

  “You need to remember she was still upset about grandfather,” Olga said. “Then, you leave.”

  “I explained to her there was nothing I can do about it. I have a boss.”

  “She is fourteen.”

  Mai sighed and asked, “Is she there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  Mai heard murmuring, enough to know Olga was pleading and Natalia was complaining.

  “What?” Natalia said.

  Mai counted to twenty. “Let’s watch the attitude, or I’ll ground you for half the school year.”

  “That’s so not—”

  “Natalia, please. Let’s not argue over the phone. I didn’t decide to leave to upset you. I work for someone, and my job requires me to be elsewhere for right now.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Her tone remained surly but not petulant.

  “A week, perhaps two. I’ll call if I’ll be longer than that.”

  “Are you going to where Popi is?”

  “No. He and I are working on different things. But, who knows? Maybe he’ll beat me home.” If we’re lucky, Mai thought.

  “Okay,” Natalia said, with a hint of a whine.

  “I wanted…” Mai stopped, pushing aside her feelings. When had she gotten so good at that? “I didn’t want to go off on this assignment without checking in. Do what Olga asks, and, by the way, I left an extra credit card with her if you want to do additional school shopping. Just you. Not you and a few dozen of your friends. All right?”

  “Yes, Mums. Thanks.” Silence again. “Mums? I love you.”

  “Me, too, Nat. Be good.”

  Natalia hung up, and at once Mai missed her, almost as much as she missed…

  No. No time for that.

  A little after five p.m. Carroll’s car roared up the access road and slammed to a halt at the double doors. Mai exited, and he was out of the car. Two, long strides later, he was at her side, staring with such intensity a lesser woman would have squirmed.

  “Did you grow wings, then?” she asked.

  He blushed and smiled at her. “I may have exceeded the speed limit.” He picked up her duffel. “Is this all you have?”

  “That’s it.”

  He stowed the duffel in the backseat and opened the door for her. Behind the wheel, he looked at her. “You’re really here,” he said.

  “That I am.”

  “I was beginning to think…” He blushed again and started to drive, his pace more sedate, however, than his arrival.

  “I hope this isn’t a bad time for your friends,” Mai said.

  “I told Jerry you might be coming, and, uh, he’s cool. I can sleep anywhere, so you’ll have the spare room. You don’t mind little kids, do you?”

  “When you’re from a good, Irish Catholic family, there’s always babies around. How many do they have?” She knew, of course, but this was small talk.

  “One… Well, they had two. The baby, Angela, is eight months old. Jared would have been three. He…” He swallowed hard, blinking fast. “He passed away last year.”

  She knew that, too, but wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to gauge his emotions. “How tragic. What happened?”

  “He, uh, he woke up in the middle of the night and fished a plastic bag from the trash. He…suffocated.”

  “Jesus Wept, I’m so sorry.”

  Moisture had pooled in his eyes, and he sniffed. “Corazon still cries about it. She wants to go home to the Philippines. Jerry will do anything to keep her here.”

  “He loves her, I’m sure.”

  His eyes were clear now, and he gave a snort. “She’s a mail-order bride, one of those women who’ll marry any American guy because they think we’re all rich or for the green card.”

  “Why’d your friend do that, then?”

  He flushed again. “Uh, he was tired of American women with minds of their own and wanted someone he could train.”

  “Train? Like some dog?”

  “Hey, that’s Jerry. Not me. I, uh, I should tell you something.”

  Mai didn’t get her hopes up. “What is it?”

  “Well, they’re not getting along well right now. If she stays here she wants to go to college. Jerry doesn’t want that because she’ll be around guys her age. Things are tense. Don’t be mad. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to come. I mean, it doesn’t bother me much. It’s like how things were between Mom and Dad. I’m used to it.”

  “Jay, if it’s not a good time for them, I don’t want to impose.”

  “It’ll be okay. I promise.” He glanced at her and frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look tired.”

  “Working hard, lad, is all. And you. You’re thin as a rail.”

  “Corazon’s not the greatest cook, and I work it off pretty quick.”

  Or you’re high on meth and forget to eat, Mai thought. “Well, then, we’ll be arriving late, and I don’t expect my hosts to feed me at that hour. Is there somewhere along the way we can stop?”

  “There’s a decent truck stop nearby. The food’s kinda heavy, but if you’re hungry…”

  “That I am.”

  Jay’s camo pants and jacket fit in well with the crowd in the truck stop. The waitress cooed over Mai’s accent, and Carroll smiled like a proud kid. The menu was enough to cause her mostly vegetarian stomach to churn, but she settled for a chicken breast sandwich and fries. They ate for a while in silence, and Mai decided to push a bit more at his psyche.

  “You said earlier being with your friends reminded you of troubles at home,” she said.

  He looked up at her. “Yeah?”

  “It didn’t seem to bother you much. When my ma and da got into it, we’d all cower in a closet. Cups and saucers would fly.”

  He gave her a worried glance and replied, “It was never that bad with them. Mostly, they didn’t talk to each other. I mean, it wasn’t great they didn’t get along, but after she left my dad always expected her to come back.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “The first couple of times she did.” He shrugged and toyed with his food. “Then, she didn’t. It started when she got a job in a travel agency. I was nine.” He looked out the window, eyes narrowed, mouth turned down. “She had to travel a lot because of the stupid job, and I guess things started to look more interesting beyond home. I missed having her to come home to after school.” His mouth turned down more. “One winter a blizzard trapped my mom at her office. Four days. No phones. I was scared something bad had happened to her. We couldn’t get out to go get her.” When he looked at her, she saw the dark emptiness she’d noticed at Killeen. “Turns out she didn’t mind at all being stuck there with her boss,” he said. He looked away, and when he looked back, it was as if he’d flipped a switch from psycho to normal. “Sorry. That must have sounded way bitter.”

  Mai pulled a vague memory from childhood and put it to good use. “I’d sit on the front steps and wait for my mam to come back,” she said. “Da would have to call me in after dark.”

  He dipped a French fry in some catsup and doodled with it on his plate. “Did you ever ask your mother why?” he asked.

  “No. Did you?”

  “I was afraid…” He jammed the fry in his mouth and chewed.

  “That you were to blame.”

  Carroll blinked in surprise but nodded.

  “I thought Mam had left because I hadn’t made up my bed like she kept telling me to,” Mai said. That much was real.

  “Uh, how’d you figure out it wasn’t you?” he asked.

  “I got older, saw the pressures life puts on you, especially where we lived. The need
to escape becomes powerful. You do what you must to survive.”

  Carroll sat back in the booth, eyes on his plate. “But she couldn’t make up her mind,” he said, the bitterness creeping back. “She’d move out but always be at the house. She had an apartment down the street from us, then she moved to Florida. Alone. She came back for my sisters, so it was Dad and me. But, you know, he worked nights. In summer when I was out of school, I’d have to be quiet so he could sleep. So, mostly, it was just me.”

  Not a lone wolf, she thought, but a lone cub, growing up on his own, an adult before his time. “Your grandfather was around, right?” she asked.

  Carroll sat up straight, his smile bright. “Oh, yeah. That big blizzard? He was totally prepared. He always thought there’d be this nuclear war, so in his basement he had canned goods, dried foods, water, ammo, a generator, everything you’d need in a crisis. I tried to talk my Dad into at least a generator, but he wouldn’t go for it.” He laughed and shook his head. “I was such a dorky kid.” He lined up his unused silverware so that his place setting was neat and asked, “How old did you say you were when your father…uh, died?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “What happened with your family?”

  “My mam came back for the younger ones, but she figured I was old enough to fend for myself.” Mai leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “I had only one real family. The IRA fed me, clothed me, taught me how to survive so the Brits and the RUC wouldn’t find me.”

  “RUC? Oh, the Northern Ireland police, right?”

  “Police? More like a fucking army.”

  “Like the FBI at Killeen.”

  Exactly how she’d thought of it at the time. Well, she thought, let’s push those buttons a little harder.

  “You Americans,” she said. “You have it good.”

  “What makes you think that?” he asked, his tone edgy. “The government is taking away our right to defend ourselves. You can’t even carry Mace most places. If we worship a different way or believe in something not politically correct, they send in tanks. That’s not what this country is supposed to be about.” He hadn’t raised his voice, but the thumping of his forefinger on the table made their plates shake.

  “But sure, that’s only a few people,” she said. “Not the whole government.”

  “No. Our whole government is corrupt now. No one in the government cared when a government sniper shot a woman holding her baby or when the government burned people to death. Look, I volunteered for the Army. I didn’t have to, but I did. Even though I thought we had no business going over to Kuwait, I went, not like the bozo draft-dodger in the White House.”

  She’d heard this before; it was one of Edwin Terrell’s major complaints.

  “Let me guess. You’re a Republican,” Mai said.

  “As if you can tell the difference. They’re all corrupt. They only want power and money. Crime’s going up, and they do nothing. They pass stupid laws full of pork to get re-elected. It’s all meaningless. A vote doesn’t even matter anymore.”

  “All right, then, what’s your solution to rising crime?”

  He leaned toward her. “What you and I do. Carry what we need to protect ourselves.”

  “No one’s stopping us from doing that, are they?”

  “Let a cop walk in and suspect one of us is armed, even if we’re sitting here doing nothing. Off to jail, in violation of our constitutional rights. You’d get deported and put on a terror watch list, and you’d never be able to come back.”

  “I’m guessing I need to be careful, then.”

  The waitress approached to offer coffee and dessert. Mai asked for tea, remembering to specify hot since this was America, the land of iced tea, that abomination. Jay ordered a slice of apple pie, warm, with ice cream.

  While they waited, Mai looked around the restaurant. A number of patrons had left, and the counter was almost deserted but for one man. With a familiar profile. Mai shifted in her seat to catch a glimpse of him in the mirror behind the counter area. Terrell. And he wanted her to see him. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have.

  She managed some non-political banter with Carroll until the check arrived. Carroll took it, and they headed for the cash register, passing within inches of Terrell.

  “I need to use the loo,” Mai told Carroll, so Terrell would hear. “I’ll meet you at the car.”

  “Sure.”

  One of the waitresses was inside the restroom, reapplying her lipstick. Mai dropped both her accents and asked, “Is there a back way out?”

  The older woman’s face moued into concern. “What’s wrong, honey? Is that guy you’re with bothering you?”

  “No, he’s fine, but I thought I saw my ex’s car outside. I don’t want a scene.”

  “Honey, ain’t that the truth? I got two of ‘em myself. Turn left outside the door here and go out the employee door at the end of the hall. It ain’t alarmed or nothing. Take care, now.”

  At the rear of the truck stop, next to the dumpsters of rotting garbage, Mai crept to the corner of the diner and peered into the parking lot. A lorry parked close to the diner blocked Carroll’s car. Terrell was at the far end of the lot, leaning against a late model sedan and smoking.

  When she was a few feet from him, he flicked his cigarette away. “I figured you made me,” he said.

  “Bollocks. You wanted me to see you. What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Funny thing about that.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “Alexei would want me to watch your back.”

  “Seriously, you’re guilt-tripping me? And, no, he wouldn’t. Not you, at least.”

  “Had to try.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I get a call from Nelson. Come have lunch, he says. So, it seems like The Directorate’s shrink almost has him convinced you’re a walking time bomb. He asked me to observe and assess.”

  “What’s your assessment?”

  “You look fine to me. Anything you need to talk about?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “You sure? Like, maybe, two summers ago in Yugoslavia.”

  “That’s what this is about?”

  “Not exactly. It’s about some geek you roughed up at the airport. Nelson had to buy him off.”

  “The geek was being an SOB, much as you are.”

  Terrell smiled at her. “I’m not scared, Baby. One-armed, one-legged, and dickless, I could put you on your ass, but, hell, I’d probably have kicked his balls, too.”

  “I didn’t do that. I sucker-punched him in the solar plexus and left before he puked on the carpet. You would have beaten him to a bloody pulp.”

  She glanced over her shoulder as the lorry’s engine came to life and it pulled away. Carroll stared at the diner’s entrance, but eventually he’d look this way. Shite. To Terrell, she said, “I’m a tad stressed, emphasis on a tad. I told you, Alexei’s in some extremist’s wet dream of a compound, and we’re out of contact.”

  “Come on, your old man is like me. Old, wise, and invincible. I let you see me so I could tell you what Nelson thinks. I’ll tell him you made me so I broke off observation. Just don’t, you know, kill anybody and live up to his deepest fears.” He smiled again. “Unless, of course, they deserve killing.”

  “Siobhan?”

  Shite, again. Carroll had spotted her.

  “He’s headed this way,” Terrell murmured.

  “Snake, go along with me here.” She drew the Beretta and pointed it at Terrell, who smirked at her. She called to Carroll, “Jay, I’ve got it under control.”

  “Siobhan…”

  “Jay, go back to the car. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Siobhan,” Terrell said. “Well, that’s old, old baggage.”

  “Shut up, get in the car, and leave.”

  “All right, I’m outta here.” He pointed a finger at her. “You. Be careful.”

  He climbed in the car and sped away. Mai holstered her gun, bringing her dissatisfactio
n with Nelson under control. Carroll reached her side and took her by the arms.

  “Are you okay? What was that?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. He’s someone from some dealings in Europe. He must have followed me.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks I owe him money for a, uh, a deal.”

  “Do you? I can get—”

  “No, no. The middle man shorted him and blamed me. I’ve had it too easy here. I let my guard down.”

  He stepped closer and embraced her. “I got a good look at his car. I’ll keep an eye out. Let’s get to the farm. We’ll be protected there.”

  Mai almost laughed. From Edwin Terrell? Not bloody likely.

  39

  Down on the Farm

  Near Enid, Oklahoma

  The neat, clean farmhouse was perhaps testimony to how well Gerald Parker had trained his young wife. Perhaps it was more her desire to make a good home for her infant daughter. Corazon Parker was small and pretty, her large brown eyes expressive, if not weary. She looked as if she’d cried recently. Her midsection bore the swell of another pregnancy. If the infant was eight months old, and Corazon was showing this much… Jesus Wept. Parker had impregnated her again right away.

  Bastard.

  When the baby in Corazon’s arms saw John Carroll, she cooed and smiled, chubby arms held out to him. Carroll scooped the baby up and held her high over his head.

  “Look at you flying!” he said, his smile broad and, well, happy.

  The baby laughed at him, a sound that brought Mai the memory of Natalia’s early months. Given what Mai and Terrell had discussed, she put thoughts of babies out of mind.

  Carroll settled the baby on his hip. “Siobhan, this is Angela. We call her Angie.”

  Mai brushed the smooth, soft skin of the baby’s cheek and looked at Corazon with a smile. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you, and welcome to our home,” Corazon said, sounding as if she’d practiced until she got it right.

  “Thank you for having me. I hope not to be much trouble.”