by Marcus Sakey
Soul Patch tilted his head slightly, the smile wider. "I say anything about money?"
Jason froze. He'd never seen the man before, and didn't suspect they had much to talk about. He stood at the mouth of the tunnel, the sun roasting his back; behind him he could hear the sound of gulls calling to one another, fighting over garbage. There were always people on the beach.
Then Soul Patch narrowed his eyes. "Further than you think." His finger curled against the trigger. "You don't want to be playing."
Reluctantly, Jason stepped forward. Soul Patch nodded down the underpass. "Slow." He draped his track jacket to cover the pistol. A tattoo curled on his forearm, a six-pointed star with letters inside, a G, maybe a D. Jason's sneakers crunched sand as he walked toward the far end, Soul Patch falling in behind. The sound of their passage echoed in the closed space, scuffing back mingled with the faint rumble of cars above. His shirt went cold and clammy. Keep it easy, he thought. Get him off balance.
"You know," Jason said, voice light, "I like the Cadillac myself."
"What?"
"Saw your necklace, is all."
Suddenly, he heard voices. For a minute, he was relieved. Then two girls turned from the ramp to the hallway, their voices young, college freshmen maybe, laughing like the whole world was their keg party. Soul Patch stiffened at the sight of them. Jason's fingers tingled. One thing when it was just him on the line; this was responsibility he didn't need. He had to keep the situation under control. "Yup. Beautiful vehicles." Dry tongue forcing the words. "I got a ‘72 Eldorado. Convertible."
"Shit, one of those old boats? I don't roll that way."
"What do you like, the Escalade?"
"I'm black, I gotta drive an Escalade?"
"I don't know," Jason said. The girls were ten feet away. "Just guessing."
"Man, I got me a XLR."
Jason looked over his shoulder. "No shit?"
"Leather interior and a DVD in the dash."
He nodded, trying to ignore the tension in his muscles. "Nice." The girls drew parallel, and Jason clenched to jump if Soul Patch even looked their direction. But the blonde and brunette passed smooth-faced and oblivious. Jason let out a relieved breath, walked another dozen feet, out of earshot, and then stopped. Enough. "Listen, I've only got twenty bucks on me."
"So?"
"So, take it." He started to reach, froze when Soul Patch shook his head slow.
"Son, I wanted your money, you think you'd still have it?"
"What do you want?"
"I want to talk." He cocked his head. "About what your brother's up to."
Michael.
Jason felt his fingers go to fists. He fought the urge to jump the fucker right there. But the man's gun was steady and his smile was cruel. "What do you mean?" Jason's voice thinner than he intended.
Soul Patch cleared his throat in a sticky gurgle and spat a chunk of phlegm against the wall. "Move."
He forced himself to obey, biting at his lip, limbs raw with adrenaline. Ten more steps took him out of the tunnel, the sun landing with physical force on his shoulders, the faint burn on his neck. He walked up the concrete ramp to a two-story parking deck, most of the spaces filled, the BMWs, Hummers, and Mercedes of a class of people who saw Monday as just a quieter afternoon to take the yacht out. Soul Patch followed, gestured to the stairs.
Jason climbed, mind working furiously. What could possibly connect his brother and this man with the killer's eyes? He tried and discarded a dozen explanations with every step, but couldn't make the pieces fit. It had to be a mistake. They reached the second floor and started down the row of cars. The whole thing was funny in a dark sort of way. Used to be that every time the squad hit the street, someone might have been watching, sweaty finger on a radio detonator, waiting for Jason to step a little too close to death. It was a feeling he'd grown used to, that proximity to nothingness, the way he might just disappear in a roar of flame. Now here he was, safe and sound at home, getting hijacked by somebody who couldn't tell one white dude from another. It would have been hysterical if it weren't actually happening.
So what are you going to do about it, soldier?
A delivery truck was parked forty yards up, the angular rear jutting out past the car beside, and he began to drift toward it, rolling on the balls of his feet to fight adrenaline stiffness. Six cars to go: A couple of imports, a big SUV, one of the new Beetles, and then his truck. A lunge would get him behind it. Soul Patch might snap a shot off, but it would be hurried. And after that, it was just a matter of staying low and weaving. Killer or no, a man who held his weapon sideways didn't have the skill to hit a moving target at any distance. Just a few more steps, and he'd be clear.
Three cars short of the delivery truck, a man leaned out from behind the big SUV and slammed his fist into Jason's stomach. Breath exploded from his lungs. He doubled over, hands flying out for something solid, coming to rest on the SUV. Pain blossomed in his gut, a warm and living thing. As his body fought for air, his mind raged, telling him to take the pain. He struggled to straighten, one hand against the rear door, the other up in a clumsy defense.
The man who'd hit him stood five and a half. Elaborately muscled shoulders tapered directly into his shaven head. He wore a spotless white T-shirt that hung almost to his knees and ornate gold rings on every finger of his punching hand. Soul Patch stood beside him, chuckling, the gun steady on Jason's heart.
Every breath was razors in his belly. Slowly, he forced his shoulders back, took the hand off the SUV. He glanced at it as he turned away, did a double-take, then looked at Soul Patch.
"I thought," Jason said, "you didn't like the Escalade."
The man smiled, his tooth gleaming. "I was just playing."
"No DVD?" He struggled to stay cool, to show that he wasn't panicking, that they didn't need to jump him.
"Oh, I got the DVD. You can watch it in back."
A shiver ran through Jason's belly. This couldn't be happening, not really. "Listen man, you've got the wrong guy."
"I feel you. Hop in, we'll discuss." He gestured, and the wrestler stepped forward to open the back, standing like a limo driver on the other side of the car door.
Jason could feel the blood vibrate through his palms, pound in his neck. In the truck he'd be trapped. That action movie stuff about people rolling out of moving cars and walking it off, that was crap. Bail out of a car going faster than twenty miles per, you weren't walking anything off. Plus, here, in a public parking lot, he had some hope. A single bullet might be dismissed, but a firefight would attract attention. He hesitated.
"I said get in." Sun made Soul Patch's eyes glow yellow.
"Okay." Jason held his hands up. "Easy. I'll come." Electricity burnished his skeleton as he started for the car. Then, for the first time, Soul Patch made a mistake. He stood still.
It was as much of a window as Jason could hope for. Continuing his forward motion, he stepped into Soul Patch like they were dancing, right hand closing on the guy's wrist to lock the gun in place. But instead of grappling for the weapon, he spun, planting his back against the man's chest, the gun arm now in front of both of them. The wrestler startled awake with a snort. Soul Patch gave a surprised yelp, struggled to free his hand. Jason continued his spin, remembering this fucker talking about Michael, threatening his brother. He yanked, and as he felt the man come off balance, he kept turning, transforming the fall into a throw that hurled the gangbanger against the half-closed car door. It flew open and slammed into the wrestler, the frame catching him square in the face with a meaty thump. The double impact knocked the wind out of Soul Patch, and the gun clattered from his hand.
The moment it did, Jason shoved away. Two awkward steps and he had his balance. His heart screamed to run, but his head was cool. They were enemy combatants. He didn't want to leave them armed. The grip of the pistol was warm and slightly sweaty as he snatched it from the concrete.
Then he took off in a sprint, knowing that he hadn't incapacitated eith
er man. His legs pumped clean and strong. He crossed the open asphalt to the next row, then planted his left foot and lunged behind a car. A window exploded with a sharp crack. All the old energy came back. He jerked to the side again and broke from the row, then poured it on in a straightaway to the boundary of the lot. Leapt for the concrete abutment, planted one foot, and sprang off the second-story parking deck. In the endless instant he floated through the air, Jason Palmer realized he was smiling.
Then he hit the soft earth of the park. He kept the fall going, tucking one shoulder and rolling it off the way he'd seen Jump School candidates do it. He was back on his feet and moving in a fraction of a second, knowing he was clear but running anyway, loving the rush, the gun part of his hand. A copse of carefully arranged trees lay twenty yards away, and he angled for them. The wind on his face cooled the sweat, and as he dodged branches he could smell the fetid dampness of the earth, a good clean scent like sex. After another thirty yards, he risked a glance back.
Soul Patch stood at the edge of the parking lot, his face twisted into a furious snarl. The wrestler leaned beside him, chest heaving, a pistol in one hand, the other clutching his nose. Blood seeped between his fingers.
Jason couldn't resist. Smiling, he stood at attention and threw them a salute. The pure hate on Soul Patch's face was the most beautiful thing he'd seen in days.
With a laugh, Jason tucked the pistol into his pants, dropped his shirt to cover it, and set off at a gentle jog. Just another guy working out on a beautiful day. When he reached the edge of the grass, he crossed the street and cut into the neighborhood.
He knew a bar two blocks away, thought about heading there to call the cops, decided against it. If he'd had his cell on him, maybe; those two stood out in white-bread Lincoln Park. But by the time he reached a payphone, they'd be rolling down Lake Shore Drive.
Anyway, there was Michael to think about. Jason turned right, digging for the keys to the Caddy. Forget the police. He had to check on his brother, just to be sure. No way this had anything to do with Michael—you could take the boy out of the choir, but never the reverse—but no harm in being certain. They'd probably share a laugh about the absurdity of the thing, a gangbanger tying to hijack him. But Jason doubted he'd ever know what it had really been about.
He was wrong.
GOOD PEOPLE
An irresistible temptation.
A split-second choice.
A dangerous decision.
A family, and the security to enjoy it: that’s all Tom and Anna Reed ever wanted. But years of infertility treatments, including four failed attempts at in vitro fertilization, have left them with neither. The emotional and financial costs are straining their marriage and endangering their dreams.
Then one night everything changes. Offered a chance at a future they'd almost lost hope in, they seize it. One simple choice. A fairy tale ending.
But Tom and Anna soon realize that fairy tales never come cheap. Because their decision puts them square in the path of ruthless men. Men who've been double-crossed, and who won’t stop until they get revenge.
No matter where they find it.
"Gleefully dread-filled, mercilessly tense, and moves with the speed of something
fired from a sawed-off. Based on his first three novels, one can't help but feel
Marcus Sakey is exactly the electric jolt American crime fiction needs."
Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
"Sakey creates a moral dilemma fit for an advanced ethics class...I felt the
protagonists' pain to the point of flinching."
Chicago Sun-Times
"A terrific read...Sakey's best book yet."
Chicago Tribune
Excerpt from Good People , Copyright 2008, Dutton
Available as an e-book or wherever books are sold
When the smoke alarm started shrieking, Tom was reading in the den again, and again she was locked in the bedroom. Same house, different worlds. They both had their escapes.
The suddenness of the alarm made him swing his feet off the desk, the chair rocking forward as he did. It was a sound he associated with cooking more than anything else — Anna was a great chef, but their ventilation was for shit, and whenever she pan-seared something, she ended up smoking them out of the kitchen and setting off the alarm.
But tonight’s dinner had been cans of Campbell’s nuked and eaten separately. The remnants of his beef stew were cold in the bowl, alongside a novel, the spine cracked so the book laid flat.
Once the panic faded, he realized that the sound was different, muted. Like it was coming through walls, he thought, and on the heels of that, realized that it must be from their tenant’s apartment. The ventilation on the first floor wasn’t any better than theirs.
Tom sat back down, pinching the bridge of his nose. Muted or not, the screech wasn’t helping his headache. One of those lingering mothers that hung behind his eyeballs. When he moved them, it felt like something tugging at his optic nerve, a cold nauseous ache that made him want to close his eyes. While he was at it, open them to find himself somewhere else. Somewhere warm, with a soft breeze and a hammock. Maybe the smell of the ocean. Sometimes he pictured Anna with him, lying against him: The old Anna, the old him, fresh and in love, before their dreams became a burden. Sometimes he didn’t.
He sighed, took a sip of bourbon, and turned back to his book, a novel about twenty-something American expatriates living in Budapest. They were looking for themselves, and for their fortune, and they were beautiful, and so heartbreakingly young it hurt to read not because Tom couldn’t believe he had ever been that age but because he couldn’t believe he wasn’t still. In that secret center that he thought of as himself, he was in his mid-twenties, astride the intersection of freedom and responsibility. Old enough to know who he was and what he wanted, but young enough he didn’t owe anybody or need to get up twice a night to take a leak. A good age.
He planted elbows on either side of the book and rubbed sore eyes. Mid-twenties…D.C., the apartment in Adams Morgan, a second-floor unit above a bar-and-grill. He’d still been harboring dreams of being a novelist, worked in the evenings to the smell of hamburgers drifting in the open window. Anna had her own place, but slept at his most of the time. They’d thrown a Halloween party one year, and she’d gone as an abstract painting, naked except for a flesh-colored bikini and swirls of fluorescent body paint. When they’d made love that night, the paint smeared the sheets with flowers, and she’d laughed about it, thrown her head back and laughed that good laugh, then wrapped her painted arms around his back and rubbed color onto him.
He took another sip of bourbon.
There was a tentative knock at the door. He said, "Yeah," and Anna stepped in. She wore cotton pajamas and no makeup. Her eyes were round and puffy.
"Do you hear that?"
The smoke alarm was perfectly clear, but he fought the smart-ass remark, and just nodded. "Bill’s, I think."
"It’s been going for a while."
"Just a minute or two." Even as he said it, he realized that this wasn’t like an alarm clock, something to ignore. Stood up. "I guess you’re right." He stepped past her, tracing one hand along her hip as he did.
She fired a tired smile at him. "You want me to come?"
"Nah. Go back to bed." He walked the creaking hardwood hall to the kitchen and grabbed the keys to the bottom unit. He and Anna had fallen in love with the building the moment they’d seen it: A brick two-flat, almost a hundred years old, in Lincoln Square near the river. The neighborhood was great, safe and full of families, and the house backed up to a park they had imagined taking their own children to someday.
Of course, the building ran two-hundred grand more than they’d anticipated spending. But renting out the bottom floor let them swing the house payments, more or less. More or less: The modern way. Tom opened the front door and started down the steps. Mortgaging the present to afford the future.
The smell of smoke pulled him fro
m his reverie. "Shit." He hustled down, yelled over his shoulder. "Anna!" The door to the foyer stuck, and he yanked hard to open it. Behind him he heard her footsteps, but didn’t stop, just stepped into the narrow vestibule. A trickle of gray slid beneath the door to Bill Samuelson’s apartment. Shit, shit, shit. Tom banged on the door, feeling silly, like the guy was going to hear knocks but not the smoke alarm. He fumbled with the keys, trying one and then another before he got the deadbolt open. Tried to remember everything he’d learned about fire. Touch the door, he thought, see if the flames are on the other side, if you’re going to feed them oxygen. But the wood was cool. Anna stepped behind him.
Tom twisted the knob and cracked the door. The front room was a haze of smoke, the aftermath of a rock concert. The alarm screamed panic. "Hello?" He couldn’t see any flames, so he opened the door all the way and stepped in. The room was spartan, just a battered easy chair and a big television propped on a particle-board entertainment center. A halo of swirling yellow clung to the top of the lone lamp.
The décor reminded Tom that he was in another man’s apartment, but he pushed the thought aside. This was his house, his building. Damned if he’d let it burn to uphold courtesy. He quickstepped down the hallway. The smoke grew thicker and darker. He pulled the hem of his shirt up over his mouth, sucked hot air through it.
The kitchen overheads drilled tunnels of shifting light. Tom could sense heat before he saw flame, primitive instincts feeding dread as he moved toward the stove, where spikes of yellow and green danced. The flames wrapped a blackened teakettle, cloaking it in fire, and for a split second he imagined that the kettle itself was burning, and then he realized that the fire was coming from the gas jets. He lunged forward, spun the knob to kill the gas, feeling the fire like a wave of heat. Nothing happened, and he realized the gas wasn’t the source, that the fire came from below and around the metal ring. Months of dribbled grease had caught and pulsed with a sweet black smoke. The wall behind the stove was blackened.
