by Kim Oh
I wasn’t going to argue with that. As dinged up as my head had gotten while doing this kind of job, I’d worked for some definite psychos, all right.
“You know – like one of those multiple personality types.” Like a terrier with a rat, he was going to keep on with the notion. “Maybe he was like one person when he gave you the job, and then he became somebody else and decided to pull the plug on you.”
“Great.” By this point, I was having second thoughts about having confided in this Mason guy. Sure, he’d operated in the same world I inhabited, but maybe there was a reason he hadn’t been as successful in it as some of the other professionals I’d known. “You know,” I mused aloud, “I bet you did a lot of reading while you were in the can.”
He shrugged. “It’s what you do. Keeps you outta trouble.”
“That’s great. Very smart of you. But I don’t have a lot of time for theory right now, if you know what I mean.” I squeezed the seat’s padding tight in my hands. “Maybe later. For the moment, I have to concentrate on the practical. Like what the hell I’m going to do.”
“Fine,” said Mason. “You want practical? Here’s practical. Instead of hanging out here and gassing with me, why don’t you get on your bike, get back on the freeway, and head for wherever you’re supposed to drop off that thing. Whatever you got there. Some people tried to take it off ya, and you handed their asses to them. Maybe that’s the end of their particular story. Just do your bit and get done with it.”
“Yeah . . . that’d be my Plan A, all right.” If nothing else, it had the virtue of simplicity. I could just shut off all the thoughts racketing around inside my head, get back on the motorcycle like Mason said, and just roll on the throttle while targeting due north on the freeway. Enough time had passed without any sign of the police looking for someone like me, so I didn’t seem to have anything to worry about on that front. “But . . .”
“Yeah.” Mason nodded. “But. What if those guys aren’t done jackin’ ya around? If whatever load you’re carrying is valuable enough for them to come after it in the first place, then what’re the chances of them giving up just ’cause their first attempt didn’t pan out? Maybe they’re out there waiting for you to pop up again, and then they’re really going to stick it to you. With the gloves off, this time.”
“Okay . . . sure.” My voice sounded bitchy and irritable, even to me. “But . . . they wouldn’t have the element of surprise on their side. I’d be watching out for them.”
“Fine.” There were a couple of missing teeth in his brownish smile. “Off you go, then.”
This guy was seriously annoying me now. Well, not him, actually – what bugged me was that I knew he was right. “Okay, so what’s your suggestion for a Plan B?”
“Well, let’s think about this, sweetheart.” He seemed to be enjoying himself, revving up his brain. He’d probably had the reputation of being the smartest guy on his cell block. For what that’s worth – if he was such a genius, what’d he been doing there in the first place? “Coupla possibilities you might want to rule out.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Just waiting ’em out – probably not such a good idea.”
“Why?” I knew the answer, but asked the question anyway.
“That package you’re hauling –” Mason pointed to the backpack sitting next to me. “I’d bet there’s some kind of tracking device in there. The guy who hired you for this job – if he was also setting you up, so that those other punks could come at ya, that’d be the best way to do it. ’Cause then they’d know where you were, and they could get their act ready.”
“Yeah . . .” My turn to nod again. “I was starting to figure that.”
“So, if you just sit and wait for things to cool down, that would just give them more time to pull themselves together, get ready for their next chance. So they’ll either be out there waiting for you on the road, when you finally start up again, or they’ll just come around here looking for you.”
He was right. I glanced over at the backpack sitting next to me – I felt a little resentful that an inanimate object could betray me so thoroughly. Usually, it takes real flesh-and-blood human beings to get yourself screwed.
“Then there’s no sense taking a different route,” I said. “If they’re tracking me, I wouldn’t be able to throw them off that way, either. Straightest shot’s as good as any other.”
“Pretty much. Plus, you stick to the freeway all the way up there to San Francisco – that’s where you said you’re going, right? Then everything’s nice and public. That’s got to cramp their style. Whereas, if you tried to take some back-road route, you’d not only take a lot longer to get there, so they’d have more time to take another shot at you, but they’d be able to do it on some stretch where you’d be out by yourself. And nobody would be able to see what they were doing. Being out in the open limits ’em – a lot.”
That was a good point. Usually, in my line of work, it’s best to keep things as secretive as possible. The less people knew about what I was up to, the better the chances I’d be able to pull it off. And not suffer any consequences, like the police grabbing me and throwing my butt in jail. So far, I’d been either lucky or smart enough to avoid that, and I didn’t want to screw up my perfect record.
“Okay, so I can’t wait them out, and it’s a bad idea to screw around with the route. I’m still not getting a Plan B here.”
“Guess it depends, then, on what you want to accomplish. You already came pretty damn close to getting killed, with all that bashing and banging on the freeway you told me about. So if you just want to stay alive, there’s your Plan B.” Mason pointed to the dumpster. “Toss the backpack in there, then get on your bike, and ride off in any direction you choose, fast as you can. Just let ’em have it.”
“Screw that,” I said. “That’s not a plan. That’s just giving up.”
“Sure – but you’ll be fine. They’re not after you, they’re after the bag.”
“No, I wouldn’t be fine.” I shook my head in disgust. “I wouldn’t get paid – and that’s the main thing. I don’t make the delivery, then I would’ve done all this for nothing. If I were just going to flake out and hand over the bag, I could’ve done that back on the freeway. Would’ve saved myself a lot of trouble, not to mention maybe getting killed.”
“Oh, I get it now.” Mason’s discolored smile widened. “You got a pretty good idea that the guy who hired you for this job, back in L.A., already screwed you over about it. Set you up for those guys who tried to get it off you, stuck a tracker in there so they’d know where you are – but for some reason, you trust him about getting paid if you do manage to pull it off. You’re going to turn up at the drop-off point, hand over the backpack, and this guy will have your paycheck all filled out and waiting for you.” The smile tautened into a thin, grim line.
“Really believe that? People who screw over other people – they usually don’t stop at one time. Sorta becomes a habit with them, if you catch my drift. How do you know your payout will be waiting there at the end of the line? Instead, it’ll be some other guy that’s been hired, with a piece even bigger than that cannon you’re carrying around. And he’ll just cook one between your eyes, sweetheart. ’Cause that’s the way the fellow who hired you was planning on paying you off, all along.”
“Then I’ll just have to be ready for that little eventuality, won’t I?” I focused a slit-eyed glare at this Mason guy. “You might not be aware of it, but I’ve actually got a pretty good track record of icing people, before they’re able to ice me.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re a real hard case. But if that’s how it finally winds up going down . . . you still won’t get paid.”
“I’ll take the chance.”
I know that sounded bullheaded on my part, but there was a reason I said it, which I didn’t bother explaining to him. Strictly business on my part, and a cold calculation. I’d been steered onto this job by Morton – and while I had my suspicions about him as well, the hard f
acts were that right now, I was getting most of my business from him. Yeah, he was a mysterious sonuvabitch, who I’d never actually met face-to-face, but I was making a living from the gigs he sent my way. If I botched one up – not just failed to deliver the package, but gave up and walked away from it because things had gotten tougher than I’d expected – what were the odds I’d get another assignment from him? Even if he wanted to give me one – that’s the kind of screw-up, word gets out. Good luck getting another job, from Morton or anyone else – in this business, reputation is everything. I’d be better off getting killed, or close to it, rather than going all gutless. It’d been hard enough, showing everyone that a girl could do this job. If I bailed, there’d be a bunch of people – including some of my friends – who’d be shaking their heads and thinking that it really did depend on what you had between your legs, rather than what was in your head.
So one way or another, I was stuck with seeing this one through. Even if I wound up not getting paid for it. Or iced.
I figured I’d think about all that later, if there was a later. Right now, I was still dealing with the practical matter of what, specifically, I was going to do.
“Okay . . .” Mason had gone on thinking about that. He pulled something out of the pocket of his grease-stained jeans. “Here’s something you might try.”
I watched as he flicked open a cheap little pocketknife. Its skinny blade glinted blue in the light shading over from the strip mall parking lot.
“What?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding? Cut it open? I told you already – it’s got to be delivered intact. That’s the terms of the assignment. Which is also why it’s all sealed up, the way it is. So whoever’s at the receiving end would know if I got into it or not. Even if we were able to find the tracker device in the bag and throw it away, that would still screw up the job. And I wouldn’t get paid.”
“Not what I’m talking about, sweetheart.” Mason raised the little knife higher. “Yeah, we get into the bag – but not for some stupid tracker. We cut it open and find out exactly what it is you’re carrying. And why it’s so valuable that somebody would pay that much to get it delivered.”
“I told you that, too. It’s some kind of tech thing, like a portable hard drive, with info on it. That’s so important – you know, for some deal this guy’s putting together – he couldn’t risk sending it any other way.”
“Yeah . . .” Mason nodded slowly. “Right. That’s what he told you. You know that for sure?”
“Actually – no, I don’t.” I hadn’t had any reason to doubt Dalby about the matter. At least until now.
“So what if it’s something else?”
“Like what?”
“If I knew that,” said Mason, “I wouldn’t be talking about cutting the bag open to find out, would I? But we don’t know. Which means it could be something else altogether. Something that might be valuable to a whole lot of other people. If something’s so hot that you could get killed for holding it, which usually means it’s fenceable. You can find a buyer for it.”
“I’m getting the picture, that’s the sort of business you used to be in. Finding buyers for stuff.”
“I’ve moved a little merchandise, now and then. Among other things.”
Wondering out loud about how good he’d been at it, considering the amount of time he’d obviously spent in the can, probably wasn’t a good idea.
“So you think maybe there’s the Hope Diamond or something like that in the bag.” I set my hand on top of the backpack. “And instead of delivering it, there’d be more money in selling it to somebody else. And easier, too.”
He shrugged. “Just a suggestion.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but no thanks. I’ve already made my mind up.” Frankly – something else I wasn’t going to tell him – this struck me as short-term thinking on his part. Pretty clear he didn’t have the same concern about my career prospects as I did. Something a guy like him would come up with – sure, I’d get a quick cash infusion from fencing off the backpack’s contents, whatever they were. But just as I’d figured before, I’d have screwed up my chances of getting any more gigs routed my way. FedEx doesn’t stay in business by having that kind of flexible attitude about making deliveries or not.
“Your call.” He tried not to show his disappointment as he folded up the knife and slid it back into his pocket. “So what’re you gonna do?’
I could tell he was sulky about missing out on what would’ve been his cut, if we’d gone ahead and cut open the backpack, then fenced whatever was inside it.
“Guess I don’t have a Plan B.” I shrugged. “Thanks for talking it through with me –”
That got a little smile from him. “Any time, sweetheart.”
“I’m just going to run for it.” I realized I had known that from the start. “That’s all I can do.”
PART TWO
All sorts of things catch up with you eventually. Unless you catch them first.
– Cole’s Book of Wisdom
EIGHT
“Here you go.”
I took the plastic shopping bag from Mason – it had the store’s logo on the side, a stylized motorcycle racer dragging his knee through a sharp curve.
“That took a while,” I said.
“They were closing up early.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of the faded denim jacket – before setting out on his errand, he’d fetched it out of the restaurant kitchen. “Usually they stay open ’til nine. I had to pound on the door to get ’em to let me in.”
From the bag, I extracted a motorcycle helmet – plain white, full-face, size small. The one I’d lost in all that action on the freeway had been a nice, top-of-the-line Shoei – this was just a cheap-o HJC, but it’d do for now. Annoyed me that I’d had to send Mason to buy it for me – one more little tick off my profits for this job – but California’s a mandatory helmet state. Last thing I wanted right now was to have some Highway Patrol unit pull me over for riding bareheaded while I made my way up to San Francisco.
“There’s your change.” Mason handed me a couple of wadded-up bills – but no receipt. He probably had screwed me out of a couple bucks, but I wasn’t going to say anything about it.
“Thanks.” I shoved the cash inside my jacket, in the little pocket below the one in which I carried the .357. “I mean – for everything.”
“Like what?” He scowled, momentarily puzzled. “Didn’t do squat for ya.”
“Well . . . you helped me talk it out. What I’m going to do.” Granted, it was the same thing I’d been doing before, and there wasn’t any Plan B, but still. At least I knew that now. “Plus, there was the lasagna.” Before heading off to buy the helmet, he’d brought that out to me in a Styrofoam take-away box. “I was starving.”
“You must’ve been, to eat that crap.”
I’d already tossed the box and the plastic fork into the dumpster, so there was nothing left but to wipe my hands off on the napkins he’d also brought, then zip up my jacket and climb onto the Ninja. I slung Dalby’s bag onto my back – while Mason had been running his errand, I’d fixed the broken strap by loosening it a bit, then tying the ends together.
“Oh –” Mason suddenly remembered something else. He fumbled around inside his own jacket, then pulled out something small, black, and plastic. “Here. Take this.”
I looked down at the cheap cell phone lying in my palm. “What am I supposed to do with this?” It was another indication, beyond the jailbird tattoos on his arms, that he’d been in the life, doing stuff that solid, boring-type citizens don’t do. Low-level crooks and mules always have dozens of those cheap little burner phones around – they just throw ’em away as soon as they have reason to believe the police are onto the number. Beats me how they keep track of them all.
“I got the number for it. So if something comes up – like if I hear something, you know, about what’s been going on around here – I’ll give you a call.”
That wasn’t likely, I f
igured. By this point, I was pretty much humoring the old guy. Granted, he’d helped me sort out my options, or at least get me to the point where I admitted I didn’t actually have any options. Sure, I would’ve gotten there by myself – eventually. But in a business like this, let’s face it, I didn’t often get a chance to do something nice for somebody. I already was concerned about the, um, corrosive effects that doing this kind of stuff was having on me. I didn’t want to wind up as hard and bitter as some of the people I’ve had to work with. When you’re in that bleak, dead-end zone, you’re basically waiting for someone to come along and kill you. That’s if you’re lucky – bad luck is when you have to stick your gun in your mouth and take care of the job yourself.
So I’d let some old guy – who’d been too long in the life himself and wound up with nothing to show for it but a work-release kitchen-monkey job and a parole officer checking up on him if he so much as sneezed in the wrong direction – I’d let him talk and scheme and mull things over, just as though he were still a hooked-up bad boy, running numbers on the straight world. Reliving his youth – that’s the sort of little kindnesses you do, figuring you might want somebody to do them for you one day.
