"That's what the rich always say."
Morales smiled patiently. "Marcus, I like to think of this election as a reality show. Who do you think draws the biggest audiences? The nice guys? The strong feminist mothers in tailored pantsuits?"
Marcus shook his head. "The asshole."
"Exactly." Morales tapped his nose with a manicured finger. "The asshole, the wild card. America loves an underdog, sure. But even more than that they love a big set of balls, and Fox Wentworth has that in spades. Mark my words, he's going to win this election based purely on the size of his cojones."
Marcus grinned. "Will they measure them at his inauguration, you think? Make it part of the ceremony?"
Morales chuckled. "Do you know what I like, Marcus? I like a man who refuses to be bought. However, I believe every man has his price."
"Not this man."
"That's what I thought when I was twenty. And the next year, I was one cool million closer to becoming a millionaire."
Marcus rubbed his throat and pushed himself to his feet. Morales stayed seated.
"Marcus, I'm offering you a unique business opportunity. If you accept it, you'll take your place on the ground floor of a multi-national, multi-trillion dollar venture. The single most important enterprise mankind has ever envisioned, and it begins with this briefcase." He drew the object in question into his lap and drummed his fingers on the lid. "But if you're not interested, I'm sure you'll find another alley to sleep in for a few nights before some interchangeable thugs with embroidered badges wrangle you back into the streets."
Marcus looked at the briefcase, considering the offer. In his nine years on the streets, he'd been offered many "opportunities"—most consisting of one party or the other inserting something into one or more orifices. He had to admit, he was curious about this so-called important enterprise.
"What exactly are we talking about here? A Ponzi scheme?"
Morales flashed his perfect teeth. "I'm talking about an opportunity. That's what we all want, isn't it? A chance to roll the dice and catch a piece of the American Dream? You'd start at the bottom, of course. Delivering briefcases."
Again he drummed the lid. Clearly there was something serious inside; it wasn't just stuffed with bottles of Allen's Rub.
"Delivering what? Drugs?" Marcus asked, pacing the alley, anxiety creeping in as it often did when strangers offered help, money, blessings. It always came with a price.
"I don't use drugs, and I don't condone the use of them."
"What then? Blood money?"
Morales laid the briefcase beside himself on the sleeping bag. "It must be difficult for you, weighed down by so much cynicism."
"All right, then why me?" Marcus gestured toward the mouth of the alley. "Why not Reyes? Why not Buck? Shit, man, there's a dozen half-drunk dudes just like me on any street you walk down in this goddamn city, why not one of them?"
"As I said, I like a man who refuses to be bought."
"Oh, so it's a challenge then. You bet some other rich asshole you could turn a bum into a businessman?"
Morales laughed. "Marcus, I'm just an honest man trying to offer another honest man a hand up. But the clock is ticking. It won't wait forever."
Morales held his gaze until Mr. Clean's shout broke the silence.
"Hey!"
Marcus grit his teeth, looking around for something to defend himself with. The banged-up metal trashcan lid to his immediate left would do fine as both a weapon and a shield against the Taser gripped in Mr. Clean's meaty left hand.
"Go get your dick sucked by some other crackhead, rich boy." the baldheaded menace shot a finger toward Marcus. "This one's got something else coming to him."
Morales stood slowly, eerily calm. "Gentlemen—and lady," he added, nodding in Frizzy Blonde's direction. "Today is your lucky day. Walk back out of here right now, tails between your legs, and you get to keep your jobs, your excellent health benefits, and your 401(k)s."
Mr. Clean sneered.
"But if you push this, I guarantee a pink slip in your lockers by the end of your shift."
"Bullshit." Mr. Clean gave a menacing glance to Black Magnum and Frizzy Blonde, who each took wary steps back.
"Try me." Morales beckoned them forward with both hands. "Just one fucking step and I'll own your ass."
Mr. Clean chuckled nervously, the hand holding his Taser falling to his side. "He's lying." There was an edge of uncertainty in his voice. "He's just some rich Montgomery Street cockboy slumming for a knob job."
Morales merely stood his ground, breathing evenly. Marcus found himself impressed, despite his doubts.
The frizzy blonde studied Morales's face. "I dunno, Chase, he does kinda look familiar."
Seeming to realize his partners weren't going to back him up, Mr. Clean holstered his Taser. He took two steps closer to Morales, knuckles cracking as he raised his fists. In one graceful step Morales reached Mr. Clean. The guard threw a punch the other man deflected it easily, like someone out of a kung fu movie.
Mr. Clean's grin twisted into a snarl, and he lunged forward with his right fist extended, hurtling toward Morales's face.
Morales sidestepped, simultaneously twisting his hand around the bigger man's wrist, grasping it, and yanking him forward, slamming the palm of his free hand into the muscular man's nose. Cartilage broke with a sickening crunch.
Before Mr. Clean could cry out, Morales had twisted his arm behind his back and pushed it upward at a painful angle.
The other guards stepped out of the way in awe as Morales marched Mr. Clean toward the mouth of the alley.
"Thank you for not intervening," Morales said as he passed. "Why don't you two head back to the office and tell your supervisor Americo Morales has authorized a two-hundred dollar bonus on your next paychecks."
Still awestruck, Black Magnum and Frizzy Blonde fell into step behind Morales and their grunting, staggering former partner.
"Yeah, that's right!" Marcus shouted after them. "Ya'll just got Undercover Boss-ed."
A moment later Marcus stood alone with his demons.
Another day to get through before the oblivion of sleep. If he was lucky, tonight he wouldn't dream. But he'd need to get stupid drunk, and for that he needed to hustle, although he supposed Buck and Reyes might be apt to share the wealth once the rally was over.
Stubborn son of a bitch, he cursed himself. Only an asshole would spit on fifty bucks.
Marcus spotted the briefcase still standing despite the scuffle, black leather still gleaming in the morning sun.
What if it's not too late to start over? he wondered.
From inside the Convention Center a massive cheer arose.
2 – AN HONEST DAY'S WORK
THE GAS STATION near the convention center had decent facilities, and Marcus went there every second morning to wash up in the bathroom sink. He'd made a ritual of it. The first part of the ritual was saving up a couple of bucks from the previous day to buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper. The guys behind the counter didn't care who used the bathroom so long as it was a customer.
Marcus poured himself a small cup of coffee at the machine. "Mornin fellas."
"Morning, Mr. Mills." It was the younger guy behind the counter today, with the shaved head and tattoos. "How you doin?"
"Doing fine, Tito. Doing fine." He topped off the coffee with a couple of creamers and one sugar, stirred it as he approached the counter. He laid a handful of change on the colorful array of scratch tickets. It'd been a while since he'd played anything but he was feeling lucky today.
"Give me one of them scratchers, will ya?"
Tito pulled out the slot and Marcus picked one.
The second part of the ritual involved bringing the coffee and newspaper to the toilet. Tito slid the bathroom key across to him, and Marcus juggled everything on his way to the doors at the back, near the storeroom. Once inside he locked the door, dumped his coffee down the sink—he hated the stuff—and placed the newspaper on the hand towel r
ack.
He usually spent a good ten minutes pretending to shit while reading the paper. What he actually did was wash himself up in the sink and clean up whatever mess he'd found. Since he left the bathroom cleaner than he'd found it and never left them with a smell—he would shit at the mall, most days—the guys who ran the place had never hassled him, and eventually had come to appreciate his visits.
At the very least it spared them having to clean the toilets once or twice.
Marcus flushed a turd and scrubbed some stubborn speckles and a few stray pubes off the bowl. He laid down some strips of paper towel and stripped down, folding his dusty clothes—but not terribly dirty, not like some guys he knew on the street—onto the toilet lid. He let the water run hot, then dunked his head into the sink, used the empty cup to soak his hair, and scrubbed his scalp. It wasn't as good as shampooing but at least it got his short-cropped hair dirt-free.
He stood again and washed his armpits, crotch and ass. The first few times he'd done this had been somewhat humbling. Now it was just another part of the ritual.
The second to last step was drying himself. This part often chafed because of the rough paper towels but air-drying in front of the sink didn't always get him fully dry and he'd ended up with a rash on his ass the few times he'd tried. So he patted himself down, got dressed, dried the floor with the used scraps of towel, and packed up.
In the final step he flushed the toilet and washed his hands in case one of the guys happened to be standing outside the door with the mop or stocking the fridge.
When he emerged with the empty cup and the newspaper tucked under his arm he felt fresh and energized. It was a great way to start the day, and Marcus wondered why more guys sleeping on the street—instead of the multiple homeless shelters across town because the Christian organizations who ran them wouldn't allow booze—didn't do likewise.
"You want the sports pages?"
Tito shook his head. "What, so I can read about how much ass the Clippers ate last night? No, thanks."
"All right. You have a good one, Tito."
"You too, Mr. Mills."
Marcus left the store. He gave the paper to the straggly-haired white dude panhandling outside—he could never remember the guy's name but he didn't want to be rude and ask after all these years.
The man gave him a virtually toothless smile. He had a serious meth problem but for some reason he still liked to read the stock quotes, like they made any difference in his narrow little world living one hit to the next.
Look who's talking.
"Hey, if you win any on that scratcher, gimme a buck or two."
"Will do, man."
He was at the corner when he realized he'd forgotten the briefcase in the bathroom.
"Shit!"
Running hurt his tired, achy joints and breathing fast made the injury to his throat worse but he couldn't risk someone else picking it up. The bell dinged as he burst through the front door and Tito looked up wide-eyed from serving a uniformed cop.
The cop turned and eyed Marcus suspiciously.
Tito smiled nervously. "Hey, Mr. Mills! You forget something?"
The cop's stern expression evaporated and he returned to his purchase of a stack of Slim Jims.
"Forgot my briefcase in the toilet."
"Dang."
The cop watched Marcus over his shoulder as he got the key from Tito.
The briefcase was exactly where he'd left it, on the floor beside the door. When he came back out the cop was out front talking sternly to the guy panhandling.
Marcus handed the key back to Tito. "Thanks again, brother."
"Stay cool, Mr. Mills."
Stay cool, he thought, passing by the cop and meth-head who'd started raising their voices. That's good advice.
It took all his nerve not to intervene.
The public library was one of the only places Marcus felt completely safe these days. In the back, past rows of stacks of books gathering dust, he sat in front of an ancient PC, scrolling through the archives. He'd come here often to read the archives—more often than he should, really. Felicia had called it an obsession, back when they'd still lived together.
This obsession and the alcohol that both fueled and suppressed it were the main reasons they'd split.
"Hey."
Marcus looked up from the computer to find a balding, red-faced man standing over him, arms crossed over the chest of his fuzzy grey sweater.
"Can I help you?"
"You can't loiter here."
Marcus hurriedly clicked off from the photo of a plane crashed in water with the headline FAULTY BOLT TO BLAME IN FATAL CRASH.
"I'm not loitering, man. I'm reading."
His accuser gave him a dubious look. "There's a shelter down the road. This is a library, not a flophouse."
"I know where the shelter is. I'm reading."
He tried to keep a measured tone and not escalate but just looking at the man's pudgy red face and beady dark eyes irked him.
Stay cool, Marcus.
"Seems like you're actually the only one loitering here," he said calmly. "Everyone else is reading quietly, like I was before you came over. So just let me get back to it, okay?"
The man narrowed his eyes and stormed off.
Marcus sighed deeply and returned to the computer, but it had frozen, and he'd have to reboot. Probably for the best—he'd beaten himself up enough for one day. If his latest encounter with middle-class prejudice had taught him anything, it was that it was Miller Time.
Marcus stood, reaching for Morales's briefcase. Turning, he found himself face to face with the librarian, a redhead in her early to mid-twenties, with pinup girl hair and an eyebrow piercing poking out above her cat's eye glasses.
The young woman seemed genuinely troubled. "Sir, I'm terribly sorry but I have to ask you to leave."
"I was just leaving." Marcus glanced over her shoulder, saw the balding man paying them keen interest over his newspaper. "You know, I don't want to make a point of this but I come here almost every day. You've seen me, we've said hello. I always make sure everything's nice and neat when I leave the computer. Suddenly one guy complains, a guy I'm sure neither of us has seen before, and I gotta leave?"
"We have to take all complaints seriously."
"So if I was to complain about that man." He pointed toward the prick, who looked around himself innocently, as if he'd been fingered by the Defense. "You'd have to ask him to leave."
"It doesn't work that way."
"That's what I thought. I'll just be on my way then."
The man jerked up from the table with a loud squeak of his chair. "That's not his briefcase!"
The librarian gave it a quick look before turning her attention to Marcus. Even Marcus felt like he looked guilty.
"Yeah, it's mine. I mean, it's not mine… I'm holding it for someone."
"Tell him to open it," the loudmouth snapped. "What if it's a bomb?"
This got a few of the others at the long wooden table interested. A teenaged girl removed a single earbud to figure out what was going on.
"It's not a bomb." Marcus felt like an idiot for even dignifying the accusation. "Like someone's really gonna bomb a public library, like that makes sense."
"Yeah well, what's in it then?"
"I don't know." He gave the librarian a pleading look. "Look, it doesn't belong to me but I'm returning it to the owner right now."
He hadn't been planning on it, but now it seemed inevitable. With his dusty, dirty clothes nobody would believe the shiny leather case belonged to him.
Best to be rid of it.
The pudgy loudmouth approached them. "Give me that. If it's not yours, I'm taking it to the police."
As the man reached his chubby fingers toward the briefcase, Marcus hugged it to his chest.
"Now come on, you got no right—"
"It's not yours!"
The man snatched at the handle. Marcus pulled back, playing tug of war. The loudmouth fought for it,
hard.
Obviously fearing her safety, the librarian stepped back from them. "Please, there's no need for violence—"
A lock snapped.
Startled into action, Marcus struck out with his free hand and hit the guy in the gut. The man doubled over and let go, sending Marcus reeling backward into the large oak reading table. A lamp toppled, carnival glass cracking. The teenager, who'd been surreptitiously filming with her cell phone, yelped and leaped back from the table. An old man shielded his face. The prick staggered back, gasping for breath and holding his stomach.
Every one of them looked at Marcus as the problem. Even the librarian, who'd smiled every time he came here, would only remember violence when he returned.
Fumbling with the clasp on the briefcase, Marcus fled.
The Trimaricorp building loomed above him like an extraterrestrial monolith. Now that he stood before its revolving doors, he realized why he'd been reticent to return the briefcase. He had a very important decision to make. The last time he'd made a life and death decision, it had literally cost lives.
Take the job, or keep wallowing in self-pity.
Are they mutually exclusive? he wondered, a part of him—the part that used self-pity as an excuse to drink—hoping they weren’t.
"Have to cut down on the booze," he said aloud.
A blonde woman in a form-fitting navy blue pantsuit who happened to be walking by startled. "Gee! You think?"
The response caught him by surprise and he laughed aloud.
At reception, the short female security guard stepped around the desk to greet him, puffing out her chest like a dominant gorilla. "Sir, you can't be in here."
"I'm returning this," Marcus blurted, holding up the briefcase in front of himself, as much for protection as evidence. "To Americo Morales."
"Sir, I can bring that to him for you…"
"No! He was very specific." Marcus stepped back out of the guard's reach, eyeing the Taser on the short woman’s belt. "I have to bring it to him myself." This was a lie, but he hoped it would convince the guard, who still seemed wary. "It's for the Fox Wentworth campaign."
This seemed to appease the woman. She allowed herself to exhale and picked up the phone. The conversation was brief, but the shock at the reply was evident in her expression.
HARBINGER Deliver Us to Evil Page 2
