The Carrier

by Preston Lang

  “Gentle,” she said.

  He tossed it forward carefully. By the meager light of the car she seemed satisfied that it was real.

  “He paid you in gold?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is he a king from a fairytale?”

  He liked this: she was making jokes. He could repair this. They’d get to Belize and sort it out, and she would model all kinds of modest swimwear for him.

  “You tried to kill me,” she said.

  “I tried not to kill you.”

  “You almost did.”

  “You’ve had a gun on me all night. Can you blame me for trying to break out?”

  “That’s a good point you make,” she said, holding the revolver steady in her hand.

  “We go out west, turn it into cash, then we go to Belize. We can live forever on this,” he said.

  “You tried to run me over.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  She shot. He felt like someone had shoved him, but he hadn’t been knocked over. It must have been a miss. He reached into the bag and hurled a solid trapezoid of gold at her and scrambled behind the car. And that’s when he saw a small man charge at Willow. Two shots rang out and the man fell. The next thing Cyril knew an enormous creature had grabbed Willow from behind and lifted her off the ground. No, it was just a very big man. He wrenched her back and forth, finally turning her upside down. She squirmed a leg loose and kicked him in the side of the head, but then he slammed her to the ground head first and crushed down on top of her, driving his full weight straight down. The big man hopped up quickly and grabbed the gun. Willow lay still. Cyril made a dash for the duffel bag, but as soon as he reached it the big man turned to him.

  “Give it to me,” he shouted at Cyril. Cyril held the duffel bag close to his chest, thinking it would keep him safe. The big man didn’t even point the gun at him, so Cyril tried to bargain.

  “We can work something out.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “You don’t understand. If you try to sell this on your own—”

  “Give it to me.”

  The big man raised the gun.

  “I think you killed her,” Cyril said.

  “What?”

  “I think she’s dead.”

  The big man looked dazed. He spun, looking for the girl whose neck he’d just snapped. He couldn’t find her in the dark. Instead, he saw his little friend, lying in dark liquid death. Cyril had a chance to jump him, but he didn’t take it.

  “She shot Danny,” the big man said, turning back to Cyril. More than anything, he seemed upset by the death of his friend.

  “Who’s Danny?”

  The big man shook his head.

  “No.”

  “We’ve both got to get out of here,” Cyril said, taking a step back toward Willow’s car. It looked like he might be able to slip away while the big man struggled with questions of mortality and justice. But the guy snapped out of it.

  “Give it to me. Give me the bag,” he said and took a big step toward Cyril. It was clear he had never held a firearm before, but that wasn’t any kind of comfort. Cyril tossed the bag in front of him and started to back away. The man grabbed it by one strap and lifted it over his shoulder—it seemed a lot lighter for him than it had been for Cyril.

  ***

  Marcus jogged back to his car and threw the bag in the backseat. He watched his own hands shake on the steering wheel, expecting something to come from outside: someone should shoot him, or shatter his window, or the car should simply explode. His legs started to twitch, and he couldn’t think of any way to stop it, so he started the car and eased it back onto the dirt road. It didn’t explode, and nothing prevented him from rolling out into the wet roads of a very early morning.

  CHAPTER 32

  Cyril’s first instinct was to run into the woods, fairytale woods with friendly animals and witches who were easily duped by clever children. But the authentic fairy tales were always brutal and bloody, littered with flesh-devouring birds and severed hands. Cyril was a reasonable man. Why was he thinking of fairy tales? It was time to get his head together. First of all what was on the ground?

  How was Willow? She was now unarmed, not as dangerous. The small man was dead. Almost certainly. And if he wasn’t, Cyril couldn’t save him. Next he found a bar of gold. It was something. If only he’d thrown more of them at Willow, he’d have more of them to keep. Willow—he’d told the big guy that she was dead, but he didn’t know for sure. She could be fine, briefly stunned by a fall but now ready to figure out the next move. He hadn’t wanted to spend his life with her in a Central American beach house, and he had double crossed her, but he didn’t think he’d been lying when he said he loved her.

  He bent down close to her face—she wasn’t breathing. There didn’t seem to be a pulse. He’d heard once that CPR was a sham, just something to keep you busy in a tragedy. At any rate, it wasn’t a cure for a snapped vertebra. For the first time he realized it was raining.

  CHAPTER 33

  All Duane had to do now was kill a man who most likely was already dead. If someone asked you to get rid of Bin Laden, you might make some phone calls, talk to a few old guys with beards, but you wouldn’t drag the entire ocean to make sure the body was really down there. Duane checked all the obvious places and didn’t find Tony. But there also hadn’t been any reports of a gross, panda-looking corpse turning up in Newburgh, so Duane went to Delaware on the word of a high-functioning junkie who said he’d seen Tony in a car with a girl, a girl Tony had been spending a lot of time with lately. The junkie was mostly sure about the day—a day that would put Tony alive after Duane had split his head open with a metal slat.

  The girl was named Willow. Duane had met her once, a dark-haired number with a low, sexy voice. One night Tony had called him from her landline, high as a god, and asked if Duane knew where to find a maquisapa monkey. So now Duane had her address. He kept pieces of information like this; they came in handy sometimes and helped you catch people unprepared.

  He circled the house, a small A-frame just outside Wilmington. Through the window he saw a man and woman, slumped on the couch while the TV flickered black and white. The woman wasn’t Willow. Duane went back to the front of the house and knocked. It took a while, but the woman finally answered, still getting her arms into a flannel shirt that didn’t quite cover the tracks.

  “Hey, is Willow around?” Duane asked.

  “No. She’s been gone a while. What do you need Willow for?”

  “Just wanted to say hi. See if she wanted to party.”

  “She’s the only one who likes to party? You can’t bring something for me?”

  “I don’t have anything. That’s why I was looking for Willow. What about her man—what’s his name, Tony? Has he been around?”

  “I wish. I love that man. He says a lot of ignorant shit, and he smells like an animal, but he pulls smack out of his pockets like it’s loose change.”

  “Yeah. So let’s find that guy.”

  “Who the hell are you?” the man asked coming up from the couch.

  He was slim and washed out in the eyes, but you never knew what that type might decide to use as a weapon. They’d throw a TV or a litter box, set a grease fire in the kitchen. You had to stay awake.

  “Easy, baby,” the woman said. “He just wants to know where Willow is.”

  “And you just decided to answer any question he has, right? Think, Tess—just for once. This prick comes to our door—let’s tell him all our business.”

  “Sorry to disturb you,” Duane said. “I’m just wondering if you’d seen Tony around.”

  “Yeah, I saw him,” the man said. “He was jerking off your dad. Your dad was like—Oh, that’s so nice; you’re a real pro.”

  “It’s good to know my dad’s got people willing to take care of him.”

  “How about you get the fuck out of here?” the man said.

  Duane shoved the woman out of the way hit the man in t
he face. He went right down, and Duane put a foot on his windpipe and pressed. He gave it a ten count and then released the pressure just a bit.

  “Talk.”

  “Jesus. Please. We haven’t seen Willow in almost a week. And that guy Tony—we haven’t seen him in forever, right Tess?”

  “I haven’t seen him since, like, Labor Day maybe. Willow did that funny song about fireflies.”

  The woman talked like it was all normal, like a foot on her boyfriend’s neck wasn’t a particularly strange turn for a conversation to take.

  “I mean it. If he was around, we’d know it,” the man said. “If you’re really hard up, we’re meeting a guy later. Might be bullshit, but he works in eldercare, so he said he could score some fentanyl patches. Probably taste like some old man’s chest hair, but we’ll let you in on that. Really. Just, you know, ease up.”

  Duane turned to the woman.

  “Willow’s not in town at all?”

  “No. I mean, her car’s gone and everything.”

  “Could she be holed up somewhere?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  He’d learned all there was to know at this house. He could drive around Delaware checking cheap motel rooms, but that would almost certainly lead nowhere. It was more than likely that he’d come down on bad information. Tony was dead and the tip he’d gotten was just rotten-headed noise. But what had happened to Tony’s body? Had Inez shoved it in the incinerator? Stuffed and mounted it over her bed? What?

  If Tony never turned up, Top would assume Duane got the job done and the world would be a happier place. Back in the car, he should’ve been in a good mood, but he wasn’t. He’d hit the skinny addict with his bad hand, and it really woke the pain in that little, bitten-up finger. When his phone buzzed, he had a feeling it was bad news.

  “Where are you, Duane?”

  It was Top.

  “I’m on the road.”

  “Have you heard from your brother?”

  “My brother? No.”

  “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “I don’t know—maybe last Thanksgiving.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “No, we don’t talk much.”

  “Has he called you?”

  “Why would he be calling me?”

  “It looks like he took off on us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He hasn’t checked in like he was supposed to.”

  Duane didn’t think Cyril would take off with company property, but it was possible he’d had been picked up by the police or gotten himself shot by some crazy heartland dealer, one of those rabid farmhands who just stood around with a gun down the front of his pants.

  “Is he meeting you somewhere?” Top asked.

  “What are you talking about? This is the first I’m hearing about any of this.”

  “Okay. Let’s say that’s true.”

  “It is. I haven’t even—”

  “Fine, we’ll say it’s true. I’m sure you know that you haven’t been carrying your weight lately.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This is not open for discussion. So here’s what I need you to understand: you’re on the hook for your brother’s money.”

  “What?”

  “You need to get it back. However you need to do it.”

  “I told you when he first came to—”

  “Yeah, you told me a lot of bullshit, but the only part that matters now is you need to bring him in, with the money.”

  “I have to bring him in, too?”

  This was robbery; this was Top holding a gun to his head and saying, empty your pockets.

  “How much is it?”

  “It’s 940,000 dollars-worth of gold.”

  Is this what Top had felt him out about before? He was converting everything to metal and going clean? Go legitimate and sit on a big pile of gold like a dragon. That was Top’s big idea? There were people who thought he was some kind of genius—saw everything coming, had master plans and infallible judgment. But Top made mistakes, trusted the wrong people, miscalculated. There was the distinct possibility that Top had no clue what he was doing.

  “All the drops that my brother made for you, did I get a commission on that?”

  “You don’t think you’ve gotten paid?”

  “Not for anything my brother did, and I don’t see why I should get blamed if he does something wrong.”

  “I’m trying to give you a chance to save yourself.”

  “How are you giving me a chance to save myself?”

  “By getting me the money your brother took.”

  “Where was the pickup?”

  “It was Arthur—Red Arthur.”

  That crazy animal? The scope of the failure of this Midwestern enterprise was starting to become clearer to Duane. Top had slept while Tony ruined the whole region, and now Top was hoping that by handing Duane a death sentence he could still turn a profit.

  “Those guys probably jacked my brother,” Duane said. “Most likely he’s hanging from a hook right now. Red Arthur has your money.”

  Duane didn’t really believe this, but it wasn’t completely implausible.

  “No. I know they handed the money over. I had eyes on it.”

  “My brother is not the kind of guy who’d do this to you.”

  “You have to fix it. Can you?”

  Duane didn’t answer right away. He stared at his phone for a second like it was rotten meat—but then he spoke.

  “Yeah. I can fix it. I know how to get Cyril.”

  He surprised himself at how convincing that had sounded, like he’d thought about it and come up with the beginning of a plan.

  “Okay then.”

  “It’s going to take a few days.”

  The beginning of the plan that Duane had come up with was stalling Top and driving far away. That’s all it was. Duane had about seven thousand dollars cash and a car that he’d probably sell off quickly for another two grand. Then what? He didn’t know anybody outside of work, and he didn’t have any real skills. What could he do? Take a bus to Memphis or Oakland or Fort Worth and apply to work at Burger King? No, he couldn’t do that. He had no choice but to see if he could find out what had happened to the money.

  Or maybe the smart move was to take out Top. How about that? Clearly his operation was falling apart, and it might not be all that hard to pop him. It was an appealing idea, but then what? Search his house for cash? Crawlspaces and floorboards? And Top was probably taking precautions these days.

  Still in the car, Duane called Cyril’s cell phone; it went right to voicemail. Duane couldn’t get internet on his phone, so he had to drive to King of Prussia and find a web café in a Mexican restaurant. These were the kinds of towns where he had to do most of his work, and he hated them. They were ugly and boring. He bought a soft taco and sat down on a couch to work. The place was full of pillows and stuffed animals. That’s the kind of idea people came up with in a town like King of Prussia: pillows, internet, tacos.

  First he checked some news sources online for a big drug bust in the Midwest, but there was nothing. And there was definitely nothing about gold turning up in an abandoned Toyota Camry. These things would have made the news fairly quickly—lawmen love to brag. The big question was did Cyril have the gold? He wasn’t the kind of guy who would burn his organization for money. Then again, greed was kind of an entrance requirement for the game. Duane called Cyril’s cell phone a second time and it went right to voicemail again.

  “Call me, man. You really need to do that.”

  Duane stared at his taco, and it made him sick. He wouldn’t be able to take a bite. When he was in real trouble his stomach gave out on him and wouldn’t take in food. It was embarrassing to have to admit to himself that he was nervous, but it was better than being one of those guys who got shakes or tics or something else obvious to everyone in the room. He left the uneaten taco on a cushion and went back to his car. And all this time Cyril was
riding around with a million dollars in gold. Either that or he’d already been fed to the animals at some dealer’s hog farm.

  CHAPTER 34

  Cyril walked into a large hardware store in Omaha, Nebraska. He picked up a flashlight and a case of Gatorade and then walked over to the shovels. He chose a big silver model and swung it around a little, without much practical purpose.

  “It’s going to be a cold one this year,” said the man in the blue tee shirt.

  “What?”

  “Lot of snow coming this winter. Smart to get your shovel early.”

  “Oh, this is for snow?”

  Cyril realized he was talking to a floor salesman—middle-aged, friendly, and competent. His nametag said Gene.

  “That’s not what you wanted?” Gene asked.

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “All right, then. Let’s get you what you need. What are you digging?”

  “I just have some projects. It’s at my aunt’s house. She just said I’d need a shovel.”

  “Are you digging pits? Are you doing some light gardening? What are we looking at?”

  “Pits probably. Something like pits. Deeper holes.”

  Gene took a shovel with a red handle and flat tip off the wall and handed it to Cyril like it was a sword.

  “This is a good one, and I won’t lie to you, you could get something a little cheaper, but it won’t last as long. I’ve seen cheap ass shovels punk out in the middle of a job. If you will excuse my language.”

  Gene also got Cyril to buy a pretty nice pick ax, and they shook hands manfully before Cyril went up to the register.

  Back in the parking lot, he put the shovel, ax, flashlight, and Gatorade in the trunk. The tarp he threw over the lifeless body in the back seat. The body was already covered in cardboard, but a big tarp made him feel like it wasn’t about to pop loose at any moment.

  Was it a good idea to drive around with a dead body? Yes, it was. The decision made in haste and panic had been smart. As things stood, this body was filled with all kinds of evidence of Cyril. It would have been found and tested, and he’d be the one they’d want for it. But now what was there to find back at the scene? A single body, a small man he’d never known and never touched. As long as he hadn’t left anything stupid at the site—a wallet, a cell phone—he didn’t figure to be much of a suspect. The only problem was this woman in his car—her car, that is. At first he’d considered dumping girl and vehicle together, but that would probably make the body easier to find, and it would leave him stranded near the evidence. No, he had to bury the body.