Damaged Goods

by Austin Camacho

  “Okay, want to tell us who you are?” Hannibal asked.

  “Not really.”

  “He’s one of the Colombians, come to save this asshole,” Sarge said.

  Rod was regaining his breath. He looked at Hannibal and Sarge, and then raised a hand to the newcomer.

  “Guess I owe ya thanks,” Rod said.

  “Not really,” the newcomer said, answering both Rod and Sarge with a snap kick into Rod’s midsection. Rod collapsed back into the surf. Stealthy. Smooth. Unpredictable. Very professional. Something about the man’s movements tugged on a loose string in Hannibal’s mind. He started to stand, but the newcomer waved him back down with his gun barrel.

  “We’ve met, haven’t we?”

  “Not really,” the newcomer said, stepping into the surf beside Rod.

  “Sure, remember? Down in Grayson County. You wore running clothes, and you started jogging when I saw you, but you weren’t sweating.”

  “You are everything I was told you were,” the newcomer said, swinging his right foot in a snapping movement that bounced off Rod’s temple. Rod dropped onto his left side. Hannibal suspected steel-toed shoes.

  “How long have you been following me?” Hannibal asked.

  “Since you accepted this assignment,” the newcomer said. He stood straddling Rod, who struggled to rise until he was propped up on his elbows, still submerged except for his head and chest. He coughed hard, spitting up salt water and staring up at the man in the black suit.

  “You’re damn good,” Hannibal said. “I felt I was being followed but still couldn’t shake you. But why tail me?”

  “The formula.” He seemed to be speaking to Hannibal, Sarge and Rod at the same time. “I knew you would lead me to whoever had it. I was tasked to secure it.”

  “You ain’t no gangster,” Sarge said. “So you the feds, right?”

  “Not really.”

  “I don’t have it,” Rod said. “Somehow, one of these niggers must have stole it from me. But what do the feds want with it? What happened to free enterprise?”

  The man in the black suit looked down at Rod. Hannibal wondered if he suffered from some nerve damage that prevented expression from showing on his face. He decided the condition was more likely the result of training.

  “We are at war, a war on drugs,” the newcomer said, very seriously. “We must stop this illegal trade in our country. We believe that this formula, if put to use, would cause a runaway increase in drug use. Without the threat of consequences, meaning the possibility of addiction, there would be no disincentive for our youth to indulge in illegal drugs. I was sent to make sure the formula is never used.”

  “Well then let’s deal,” Rod said. “How do you know I didn’t make a copy? I might have the formula hidden anywhere. And I don’t give up.”

  “Yes, I know.” With passive nonchalance the newcomer raised a foot and pressed it into Rod’s chest. The big man was screaming “No!” as he fell backward, his face pushed under no more than two inches of water. Sarge leaped to his feet but the pistol centered on his chest kept him in place.

  “Now, you and I, Mr. Jones, must come to an agreement.”

  “I don’t know what I have to offer you,” Hannibal said. He watched Rod’s big hands slap against the leg holding him with no apparent effect. Despite Rod’s struggling the man in black never looked down. He locked eyes with Hannibal.

  “I’m standing on the last known holder of the formula. If the formula never surfaces again, my people will know that he never passed it on to anyone else. You understand?”

  “Perfectly,” Hannibal said, watching an enemy struggle in the surf and feeling as if he should be doing something. “I think you understand that the formula we’re discussing doesn’t belong to me.”

  Hannibal could not have explained why perspiration was bursting out all over his body. It happened when the cloud of bubbles burst to the surface just a couple of inches in front of the man with whom he was having a calm conversation.

  “I’ve arranged for compensation for the owner,” the man said, not reacting to the sudden stillness below him. “For my arrangements to be successful, you need to get back to Mantooth’s house. The police have been delayed but it won’t be long before they turn up there. You need to return quickly and get the girl before she becomes involved in all this.”

  “Girl?” Hannibal asked.

  “Marquita,” Sarge said. “She was headed there after all. I just beat her to it.”

  “You two had better get going,” the man standing in the ocean said. “I’ll clean up here.” He crouched and pushed his left hand into the water.

  Hannibal stood for a moment, staring at Rod Mantooth’s hair waving in the surf. The hot breath of evening blew in from the horizon, and a random line drifted into his mind like flotsam on the ocean’s surface.

  “The heat smells like Eternity,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What?” Sarge asked.

  “Maybe I could get poetry after all.”

  While he stood there the first sliver of sunlight peaked up over the end of the Atlantic. Its brilliance lanced into Hannibal’s eyes. With his back to the sun, the newcomer’s face was still hidden in shadow.

  “Hang on. You’ll need these.” Hannibal turned as the man in black tossed something toward him. Hannibal caught it before he realized what he had. It was Rod’s key ring. After slipping the keys into his pocket, Hannibal took Sarge’s arm and pulled him toward the street.

  Battling both physical and emotional exhaustion, Hannibal and Sarge covered the distance to Rod’s house with far less speed than they had used to reachthe beach. Each block seemed longer than the one before it. On their way they began to see people in motion and cars moving on the roads. At dawn on Monday, the world was beginning its day.

  Sarge was dragging a little behind Hannibal but less than a block from Rod’s rental he surged forward, passing his friend.

  “Markie!” Sarge swept her up in his arms, holding her so tightly she gasped for breath. Hannibal didn’t want to disturb the moment, but he had a sense that time mattered.

  “Marquita what are you doing here? I know you started down here to find Rod, but I’m sure that after we left no one answered the door.”

  “He told me to get to safety,” she said. “The man in the black suit. But when I told him I couldn’t go without knowing what had happened to you and Archie, well then he told me to wait for you here.”

  “Well we’re here now,” Sarge said. “Hannibal, let’s get the hell out of here, man.”

  “I’ve got one more errand to run,” Hannibal said. “You guys wait here. I won’t be a minute.”

  Hannibal climbed the steps to the porch half waiting for someone in uniform to stop him. A bullet hole in the door reminded him of just how long a night it had been. In his mind this was the scene of a vicious firefight, but as he stepped inside and pulled the door closed he felt as if he had stepped into a mausoleum. The air was too thick to breathe and the smell of death was almost overpowering. It seemed the cleanup man had been there too. The blinds were closed again, but now sunlight poured in through the thin spaces between them. The scene it revealed was not exactly what Hannibal had left behind.

  Yes, Derek was exactly where Hannibal had seen him last, face up and spread eagled on the floor. Sheryl also lay where Hannibal expected. She must have been hit in the crossfire and, judging by the size of the red pool beneath her, she had bled out.

  The others were a surprise. The Colombian boss was back in his chair. One of his bodyguards sat against the wall behind his boss’ chair. His partner lay draped over the edge of the sofa. Hannibal got close enough to each of them to see that they had been killed very efficiently, execution style with a single bullet in the head. None of them had died in that room. Hannibal’s memories aside, there was not nearly enough blood present.

  Hannibal had no trouble imagining the chain of events. Someone had met them after they left the house, when they were feeling s
afe and secure and comfortable. That person, or team, had taken them out in rapid succession before they even knew they were under attack. Then the shooters had returned them to the house, perhaps to simplify things for the police who would soon arrive and would be inclined to ask few questions.

  Because of his own federal government experience, Hannibal felt only a low level chill at the power the man on the beach was showing him. It wasn’t just the death sharing the room with him, it was the casual way in which the local police had been diverted and delayed until he could finish his business there. He wasn’t going to waste time being chilled by the people who would perform such executions to get their way. Later he would take a moment to remind himself how good it felt to no longer be connected to them in any way. Right now he had to kneel at the end of the couch and reach under the corpse on its arm. He locked his throat to keep his empty stomach from purging itself while he teased the cloth open to retrieve his prize. The disc, he realized, contained a great deal of power. No one should discover it by accident.

  Hannibal didn’t breathe again until he was past the door, past the porch, and leaning against the vehicle in the cement driveway. Squinting against the bright morning sun, he waved to Sarge and Marquita to join him there. Sarge walked in front of Marquita to within ten feet of Hannibal.

  “Why’d you call us back here?” Sarge asked. “Markie, she don’t want to get no closer to this house. What’s here for us anyway?”

  Hannibal waved the set of keys with one hand and patted the bright red paint of the Corvorado with the other. “Our getaway car.”

  Hannibal walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. He was about to comment to Sarge about the case on the passenger seat but he was too surprised to see Sarge waving Marquita back as he stepped closer to the car. Hannibal waited to hear what had to be said outside of Marquita’s hearing. Sarge moved close to his friend and looked down at his hands with an expression of disbelief.

  “I really was going to kill him, Hannibal.”

  “I know,” Hannibal said. “But it didn’t go that way.”

  “No. You stopped me, and then he gets killed anyway.”

  “Well, I guess it was going to happen, one way or another,” Hannibal said with a nod.

  “So maybe he did have a destiny after all.” Sarge smiled, and Hannibal didn’t think he was smiling at a man’s death. No, he was sure that smile was for the odd sense of humor the universe sometimes has.

  “Damn, I must be tired.”

  -26-

  The sun blazed so brightly that Hannibal could feel it, even through his Oakleys. He slipped the shifter up into third, eased down on this new gas pedal and slipped past a Lexus whose driver wasn’t paying attention to the flow on the beltway. It hardly seemed possible that only hours, not days, had passed since he watched Rod’s hair floating in the water at land’s edge. The pleasing thrum of his turbocharged five-cylinder engine gave him another opportunity to consider how quickly things can happen in this world when a person with real money calls for action. That lesson started almost as soon as he had driven away from Rod’s last home.

  Knowing how conspicuous Rod’s car was, Hannibal drove directly to Huge’s studio. The crew had been up all night working on a new track, but they welcomed Hannibal and his friends. Huge was there in minutes, offering aid. Hannibal recalled that when Huge saw that fire engine red Corvorado he declared it the shiznit (whatever that was) and demanded to know whose it was. Hannibal was quite certain that the owner would not come looking for it, and was happy to trade it for a ride home. Huge assigned a member of his posse to that task right away.

  Hannibal managed to make the two necessary telephone calls from the passenger seat of a black Cadillac Escalade before his eyes drooped. Sarge and Marquita collapsed together in the back seat and all three of them slept solidly for the three hours it took them to reach Hannibal’s building. Sarge and Marquita hurried up to his apartment, while Hannibal went to his own for a quick shower and a change into his regular black working suit. He chose one of his shirts with French cuffs, the silver cuff links and a textured silk tie. After checking himself in the mirror he scooped up the diamond ring that held his future and slipped it into his pocket. The case was over. This would be the day.

  Hannibal had invited Huge’s man in, but he waited outside in the Escalade until Hannibal returned. The driver dropped Hannibal at the Volvo dealer on Wisconsin Avenue. When he had given Ben Blair his report of the previous twenty-four hours, Blair never commented on the deaths, the apparent conspiracy or Hannibal’s injuries. He simply stated that Hannibal needed a car. He insisted that Hannibal tell him what he wanted to replace his destroyed Volvo 850 GLT with. Hannibal’s answer had surprised him. Still he told Hannibal to go straight to the dealer in question and he would find what he wanted ready and waiting.

  Despite his skepticism, Hannibal had walked into the dealership as directed. The general manager recognized him somehow, and showed him to his new Volvo S60, a sleek, black, sporty four-door sedan loaded with every available option, and a couple he didn’t think were normally available. Much less boxy than his previous car, the S60 reminded Hannibal of a stalking jungle cat with its nose down, ready to pounce.

  After his recent experience, Hannibal was naturally concerned with safety features. This car’s seats would rock back in a crash to absorb whiplash and even had overhead airbags in case he decided to roll another car over. He was sold. Except that the car was already paid for, and registered in his name.

  Hannibal christened his new ride with a drive-through lunch and a short but nimble hop down the beltway to Blair’s house. He wasn’t sure how many Bang and Olufsen speakers were thumping Aerosmith from the satellite radio, but he was childishly pleased to be able to turn it down without moving his hands from the steering wheel.

  From the number of vehicles gathered outside of Blair’s townhouse, everyone he asked for had come to meet him. The face he most wanted to see smiled at him from the front steps. She had waited outside for him.

  Cindy met him at the car door and he wrapped her in a crushing grip. After the hug he pulled away and held her at arms length, just to look at her. Her beauty still hit him like a tsunami and he wanted so badly to end the suspense between them but he knew that business must come first.

  “Let me get this case out of the car, baby, then we’ll talk through it all together, close out this ragged case, and be able to get on with our lives.”

  Inside, an air of tension charged the atmosphere. Ben Blair’s living room felt more like a conference room to Hannibal. This was partly because it was larger than any room in a townhouse had a right to be. Adding to the conference room feel, the group gathered there was arrayed around the room with him as its focus, as if they were awaiting a briefing. Everyone had taken a champagne glass from a tray near the door, drinks probably poured by Anita Cooper. Standing in front of the big screen television, he felt as if he should thank the Academy.

  His eyes went across his audience, noticing how they had arranged themselves. Cindy sat on his right in one of the armchairs, her fingers tapping the handle of the briefcase Hannibal brought in with him. She beamed up at him, sending out waves of support for what she knew would be a difficult task. Sarge and Marquita shared the loveseat, with Sarge being the only other person present who knew what was coming. Benjamin Blair had the sofa to himself. He sat directly in front of Hannibal, smiling but seeming wary all the same. His elbows rested on his knees with his fingers loosely laced in front of him, but his right heel bounced on the carpet.

  Anita occupied the chair on Hannibal’s left, with Henry standing beside her. Her right hand crossed her body to hold Henry’s hand on her left armrest. She appeared ready for whatever came, as long as it meant an end to this business once and for all. That much, Hannibal knew he could promise. After a small sip, he raised his glass toward his host.

  “Before I say anything else, I want to thank you, Ben, for being one of those rare clients who pays p
romptly. And also for the very nice bonus I drove up in.” He paused a moment for Blair to nod but, he noticed, not blush. “I hope you don’t regret it when I give you the rather disappointing news.”

  Blair didn’t react at all, his poker face probably honed from years of business dealings. It was Anita who gasped, “I don’t understand. Didn’t you get it?”

  Hannibal moved closer to her and looked into her brown eyes. He dropped his report quickly, wording it with great care, working to remain truthful, if incomplete.

  “I’m afraid the formula is lost to you, Anita.”

  “Lost?” Blair asked. “Didn’t this Rod Mantooth have it?”

  “Yes he did,” Hannibal said. “When I arrived he was about to sell it to a Colombian drug cartel. But there was a conflict, as you might imagine. That led to a gunfight. When it all ended, the Colombians were all dead, and so was Rod. Neither had the formula on them. It wasn’t on Mantooth’s computer either. Frankly, I can’t say that it even exists anymore and I don’t think it will ever surface.”

  Of that much Hannibal could be sure, since he erased, degaussed and reformatted the disc himself in Huge’s studio. Someday, some kid would be listening to music on that once-valuable CD.

  “So, you failed to return Ms. Cooper’s legacy,” Blair said in a cold voice. Everyone else was silent for a beat.

  “But the monster who hurt Anita is gone,” Henry said. There was no confusing his priorities.

  “Yes, he is,” Hannibal said. “Rod Mantooth died an ugly death. And, while Anita doesn’t have the formula, she will still profit from it.” Hannibal pushed the case toward Anita. “This is in fact the cash value of your father’s formula, Anita. This case contains the money the cartel was prepared to pay Rod for the information he stole from you. I couldn’t resist counting it. It’s eight hundred thousand dollars in used, unmarked bills. And I can say with confidence that no one will ever come looking for this money. So, in my mind, this makes you whole. Along with finding Rod Mantooth and making sure he won’t bother you or any other women again, I think this fulfills my contract.”