by Ben Sanders
He lay on his back and waited. A pine-tree pattern out the window. Snow-heavy limbs against the grey sky, sharp leaves peeking through the starch-white. He stretched again, flushed and straining, gripped the end of the Velcro tab. His old one would have been perfect, straight off with barely a whisper, but Loretta made him ditch it, on account of it leaving marks on his socks. Bless her soul, but this is where obedience got him.
‘Come on, get out of the car.’
They were talking in low voices, words masked by the blood rush in his ears. Doors opened, not quite in unison. Two slams.
He jerked the tab, and his fingers slipped free.
He gnashed his teeth, strained, arched his back, gripped the tab again. They were coming around the back of the truck, still talking, arguing about something.
Do it now—
He ripped the thing hard. One long, clean stroke, and the holster came free. A balaclava at the glass.
Shit, don’t let him—
The rear door swung open. Polar cold, and a faint pine smell.
‘The fuck are you doing, why’re you all twisted up?’ A different voice, more local.
He feigned incoherence, mumbled something. The holster was out of sight, behind his leg.
The East Coast guy, farther off: ‘You want to torch it now, or wait?’
The man at the door turned away. ‘No point burning it till he gets here, I don’t want to be stuck out in the cold. And plus it’s like a perfect smoke signal.’
‘So how long’s he gonna take?’
The guy at the door took a step away from the truck. ‘I don’t know. Did he text back?’
Cohen felt around beneath him, found the holster.
‘Not sure.’
‘You could check the phone, that’d be a good start.’
‘You are actually allowed to do some things yourself.’
Cohen pushed the holster in through the gap, the Velcro strap sticking out. Get it all in there—
The guy at the door grabbed his ankle, yanked him out of the truck. Cohen thumped down onto gravel, solid with frost, like landing on concrete. He gasped with the impact.
‘Shut up.’
Cohen looked up at him, the guy looking back through the balaclava, a gun in one hand.
Cohen said, ‘This is a kidnap.’
Both of them laughed. The other guy was about twenty feet away, hand to hip, looking out through the trees.
The near guy said, ‘We noticed.’
Cohen said, ‘Sort of thing that lands you in all kinds of trouble.’ Trying to sound calm and understated, a veteran of trunk rides.
The near guy said, ‘We’re committed a little too far to back out.’ No mouth hole. His lips moving behind the wool. He dropped to a crouch. ‘Sorry to tell you, there’s nothing gained by letting you go now.’
‘Other than ten years off your sentence.’
‘If we get caught.’
Cohen said, ‘Do I know you?’
The guy shook his head slowly. ‘Nah. You don’t know us. We’re just guys.’
‘But I probably know who hired you, right?’
The guy didn’t answer.
Cohen said, ‘Can you take the cuffs off? My shoulder’s killing me.’
‘Too bad.’
The guy leaned closer. An inch of dark hair curling out the bottom of his mask. He said, ‘You’re going to answer some questions for us.’
‘Sure. You want to join the marshals, you need four years of college plus some prior law enforcement experience.’
‘Yeah. You’re real funny.’ He put the gun against Cohen’s knee.
‘What do you want?’
‘Your voice has cleared up pretty quick. You were all mumbly before.’
‘What do you want?’
The woods dark and brittle, silenced by frost. The branches all snow-daubed. The guy said, ‘The Santa Fe division of the Marshals Service has an ex-NYPD officer in witness protection. The guy’s name is James Marshall Grade. He normally just goes by Marshall.’
Cohen didn’t answer, the fear coming back now. They didn’t want him. He was just the means to an end, an expendable informant. He glanced around. The track terminated just in front of the truck. He guessed it was a fire road, which meant the chance of someone coming by in December was about zero.
The guy stood up and aimed the gun at Cohen’s head. He said, ‘This is the part where you start talking.’
‘I don’t know where he is.’ Trying to keep his voice even.
‘I know you’re lying.’
‘Take the cuffs off.’
‘Start talking and I might think about it.’
‘If I’m lying here cuffed, I’ll freeze to death and you’ll never know anything.’
‘So you do have things to tell me.’
‘Take the cuffs off.’
The guy kicked him in the gut. Cohen retched, hunched into it. He panted through his teeth, wheezing, tasting road dirt and smelling frost.
‘Start talking.’
‘Take the cuffs off.’ Gasping as he spoke.
‘C’mon, man, just take them off. He’s probably all chewed up from the crash.’
The near guy said, ‘Chrissake.’ But he knelt and patted Cohen down again. Nothing in his jacket, nothing in his trouser pockets. He ran a hand up and down each leg.
‘Roll over, asshole.’
Cohen rolled over. A sound like keys being sorted, the guy taking a while, probably not that dexterous in the gloves. A moment later he felt the bracelets being jostled, two clean little clicks as the locks opened. He rolled onto his back and massaged his wrists, the guy still standing over him, the gun lined up with Cohen’s head. A good incentive to behave.
‘Start talking.’
Cohen said, ‘I know the guy.’
‘Yeah. I know you know him.’ The muzzle lined up on his nose, like some kind of lie detector.
Cohen said, ‘I don’t know where he is. Nobody does. He’s never used the address we set him up with. He’s always sublet it.’
‘But you have contact with him.’
Cohen shook his head. ‘Nobody knows where he is.’
No reply. The woods in stunned silence. Frosted beauty a strange backdrop to their Q-and-A. The guy said, ‘There was a hit man from New York down here last year. He found him in Santa Fe.’
‘And Marshall killed him.’
No answer.
Cohen said, ‘And now he’s gone.’
The guy stood looking down at him, no waver in the gun. He said, ‘There’s a friend of ours on the way. You can either talk to us now, or you can talk to him later. But I warn you, he likes things pretty messy.’
Cohen said, ‘I need a piss.’
The guy thought about that. He looked at Cohen hard, like weighing up some business offer. Wary of being scammed. Then he stepped back and gestured with the gun. ‘If you run, I’m going to shoot you in the leg. So I’d take it nice and slow.’
Cohen turned on his shoulder and brought his knees to his chest, rolled over into a crouch. He rose cautiously, one arm outstretched, trying to look unsteady.
‘Six feet ahead at all times.’
Cohen lined up a tree and headed over, favouring one leg, swaying a little as he walked. He settled into a good stance, knees slightly bent, one arm propped on the cold bark. He urinated and shook off, got everything back where it should be. Not easy with one hand, but the one-arm lean was a nice touch. His piss wending a few different ways through the gravel.
He turned around and the guy moved back out of his way, the gun at arm’s length, sighted on Cohen’s head. Cohen started over toward the Suburban, moving more freely now.
‘Back on the ground, pal.’
Cohen didn’t answer. Almost there—
‘On the ground—now!’
Sharp enough to make his spine tingle. He said, ‘Prefer it in here. I don’t want to freeze.’
He climbed into the rear of the truck, brought a knee up, reached for the back of
the seat—
‘Asshole. I didn’t tell you to get in the car.’
A hand on his collar and the guy hauled him backward, kicked his legs out from under him. Cohen fell hard on his stomach, arms trapped under him, and the guy kicked him in the ribs, a sharp blow that made him groan and writhe.
‘Dumb-ass. Stay on the ground.’
Cohen counted to five, getting his breath, blood pounding at full force, and then he rolled over and shot the guy through the head with the .38.
There was a nice moment, a brief instant really, with the guy’s brain matter in a pink mist behind him and the corpse beginning to topple, the guy twenty feet away looking back aghast over his shoulder, slightly crouched and with one arm raised, shocked at the sound. He had a gun, but he didn’t raise it. He was running by the time Cohen brought the Airweight around to aim. He squeezed off three more rounds, all of them wide, crash and kidnap stress skewing his aim. The guy made the ridge and kept going, out of sight now, just the sound of him crashing in panic through the frozen brush.
The keys were still in the truck. Cohen found a cell phone in the dead man’s pocket and drove back down to the highway, more comfortable now that he wasn’t cuffed in the back. He didn’t see his runner. He didn’t see anything. It was a winter landscape, dead and birdless.
He parked at the shoulder and called for backup, hearing the shake in his voice, the operator hearing it too, telling him sugar-sweet there’d be help in no time. He clicked off and dialled Miriam at the marshal’s office.
She said, ‘Whatever you called about, it’s caused some fuss.’
‘I’m a fuss-worthy man, Miriam, I’ve always said it.’ Too breathless to sound genuinely upbeat. He said, ‘I’ve got an incident out here could take me a while, but would you be a darling, let my Mrs. Cohen know I’ll be late this evening? I’d tell her myself, but I’m sort of gathering my thoughts.’
‘Of course. Are you all right?’
He said, ‘Yep, I believe I am.’ But he did have to think about it.
It took them twenty minutes to arrive. First thing he wanted to know was if Karen was all right, but no one had a straight answer. Last they’d heard, she was critical, and Tommy Lee Warren was clinging on by a thread. He borrowed a cell phone and made another call sitting in the back of an ambulance, paramedics taking his blood pressure, sticking thermometers in his ears.
He hadn’t lied about Marshall. Nobody knew where he was. All Cohen had was a phone number, and all he ever got was voice mail. This time was no different, straight to the beep.
Cohen said, ‘Call me when you get this. People are looking for you, and they want you dead.’
TWO
Marshall
He met Henry Lee in the parking lot of the Galaxy Diner, just off the Merritt Parkway in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They hadn’t seen each other in six years. Marshall was happy to keep it that way, but he figured if people were trying to kill him, Henry was a good man to ask about it.
Marshall said, ‘Last time I saw you, you weren’t calling yourself Henry Lee.’
They were in the back of Henry’s Cadillac Escalade, the thing done up like a private jet: a bone-white leather sofa down the left behind the driver, an armchair and a minibar opposite. The rear door supported an LED television, CNN playing on mute. Marshall was in the armchair with a cup of take-out coffee from the Galaxy, Henry on the couch with a coffee of his own, supplemented with some Jack Daniel’s No. 7. He was dressed in a suit, a cream or eggshell colour, probably trying to look like his car. He put an ankle across the other knee and jiggled the foot. He said, ‘Yeah. I went away, got out, thought, Time for a clean slate, need a brand-new everything.’
‘Name included.’
‘Yeah, name included. Chose it for that Nick Cave song, you know the one?’
Marshall nodded. ‘Next time around, should call yourself “Abattoir Blues”. Keep with the theme.’
Henry winked and tipped his cup forward slightly. He was about forty now. They’d met when Marshall was still at NYPD, the narc division at Brooklyn South. Henry had been up on a cocaine possession charge, pled down from trafficking in exchange for testifying against some colleagues. He said, ‘Heard you might’ve got a new name, too.’
Marshall put his cup on his thigh, nice and balanced so he could hold it with a light touch. He looked out the windshield, still pebbled with rain. The Caddy was in the rear lot behind the diner, but he had a view of the street. He said, ‘Who told you that?’
Henry took a sip. The Jack quotient was pretty high, and it made him wince a little. ‘Oh, you know. Piece things together from all the little snippets.’
Marshall didn’t answer. Two weeks ago he’d been in Eureka, California, very happy with his life. Then on a Wednesday morning he visited his local Starbucks and read in Section A of a discarded New York Times that a federal marshal had been kidnapped down in Santa Fe, two days earlier. He’d started calling old numbers, and Henry Lee was one of the few who answered.
Henry said, ‘Heard that thing you had with Tony Asaro went south in a big way.’
Marshall didn’t answer.
Henry said, ‘Something like, they thought you were bent, turned out you were just a plain old undercover cop.’ Smiling now, looking wolfish.
Marshall kept his eyes on the street. No snow but it was blizzard-cold, a bright stream of traffic out on Main. Low-rise concrete office space and a tyre shop opposite, both parking lots almost empty. He’d already been here three hours, watching from inside to make sure the rendezvous was just the two of them.
He said, ‘Something like that.’
Henry kept at it, wanting the details. He said, ‘And something about a Dallas hit man feller going after you, wound up dead in Albuquerque.’
‘Santa Fe.’
Henry gave a little upturned-palm gesture. ‘Santa Fe, right.’ Watching him carefully.
Marshall took a mouthful and held it, deciding how much to share. He didn’t want to tell him anything, but the risk of saying nothing was that Henry might reciprocate. And Marshall wanted information. He looked at the wet bar, where as a courtesy he’d left his pocket contents: his wallet and keys, and the iPhone he’d bought that morning, stacked neatly on his little book of exhibits from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He said, ‘Things got a bit tense with the Asaro crowd, Marshals Service packed me off to the desert.’ He mirrored Henry’s pose, brought a leg up. ‘I got caught in some stuff, ran into one of Asaro’s cleaners.’
‘The Dallas guy?’
‘Yeah. The Dallas Man.’
‘And you whacked him?’
Marshall shook his head. ‘Would’ve liked to. He tried to clip me, wasn’t as clean as he planned. Deputy marshal ended up shooting him.’
He showed the place with his thumb, just off centre on his chest.
Henry winced again. ‘Feds’ve got those Glock forties. Pretty solid.’ A quick sip. ‘Last words, or was he straight off?’
‘He had some things to say. But he didn’t hang around for long.’
Henry didn’t answer.
Marshall said, ‘You still in the same business as when I last saw you?’
Henry watched some CNN, choosing his words. ‘Guess I’m in the same circles. Wouldn’t comment as to the nature of my business.’ Eyebrows up as he spoke.
Marshall said, ‘I’m not looking to make anything of it. I just figured given we’re all the way up in Connecticut maybe you still got reason to be cautious. And the fact we’re sitting in the parking lot and not a booth is sort of a symptom of a lifestyle.’
Henry didn’t answer.
Marshall said, ‘Maybe. I’m just speculating.’
Henry said, ‘I’m headed back from Boston, so this is a good stop-off point.’ He nodded at the Galaxy. ‘And even if this place was Michelin-star I’d probably still sit out here.’ He cast a hand around. ‘I mean, this is luxury.’ He laughed. ‘I was worried people might think this is too opulent or over the top or whatever, s
o I make sure I always got the TV playing news or something, remind people I take things serious.’
Marshall nodded, checked the street again. The view wasn’t great. Cabin reflections spoiled clarity.
Henry said, ‘Have to admit, when you called I wondered if you were playing some kind of angle. Like, maybe you’re still tight with the cops, I don’t know.’
Quiet a few seconds, Henry’s foot no longer in motion. The car’s heater a gentle background hum. Marshall shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’m on great terms with NYPD.’
Henry watched him a while. Mouth sort of pursed and a narrow look in his eye like he had questions he wasn’t sure he should ask. In the end he went for it and said, ‘Story is you blew your cover when you shot Asaro’s son.’
Marshall didn’t answer. The car smelled like new leather. Too long and it would make him dizzy.
Henry said, ‘He draw on you or something?’
‘Kept pointing it at me was the main issue.’
Henry waited, but Marshall left it at that. Henry made a little dismissive gesture, like waving off any tension, and said, ‘Not that it matters. I was just curious.’ He took a drink and said, ‘Anyway. What can I do for you?’
Marshall put his cup up on the corner of the bar, turned it carefully so he could see the label straight on. ‘You know anything about a U.S. marshal getting kidnapped in New Mexico?’
Henry Lee whistled quietly, looked down as he smoothed his coat. ‘Yeah, saw it in the news. Pretty heavy shit.’
Marshall said, ‘Mmm. It is.’
Henry watched some TV. It seemed like quiet reflection rather than taking anything in. He looked back at Marshall and said, ‘So what was the story?’
‘I just want to know if you know about it.’
Henry frowned and shook his head. ‘Long way off my beat.’ He eyed the bottom of his cup, only the dregs left. ‘Why’re you worried about it?’
Marshall said, ‘Because they asked the guy where I am. Which means whoever’s behind it probably wants me dead.’
