The Carrier

by Preston Lang

  Maybe it was time to leave. He didn’t have to kill Marcus—did he? For what reason? He could just leave and do his own research on Saida Brown. And then this sad bear would call her up and warn her—even though she was the one who screwed him over. Or maybe he’d call police and spill the whole thing. You never knew with a guy like this. He had to get rid of Marcus.

  Duane hated a mess, but at least he didn’t have to clean it up. One quick pop, and then take off. He’d be long gone by the time the cops arrived. But maybe it would be a better idea to strangle the guy—quieter. No, that was a bad idea. Don’t enter into a contest of strength with a polar bear. Even if the polar bear is unconscious and has given up on life, it’s not going to be easy.

  As he was making up his mind he heard a sound from behind him—low and careful. A female voice.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Put down the gun. I will shoot you if you don’t.”

  It took Duane two seconds to place the voice, and then he put down his gun.

  “How did you get here so fast?” Inez said.

  “What do you mean so fast?”

  “Before I did.”

  “I’m good at what I do.”

  “Where’s the money?”

  “It’s gold, not money.”

  “Gold is money. Where is it?”

  “Who are you anyway?”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  “But who are you?”

  Dear, sweet Inez. Who the hell was this girl? She’d gotten information out of Tony, and then sent Danny Chin out to Iowa to wreck things? Was that who she was? Why hadn’t she gone out there herself? She had to be more capable than that pervert amateur and this big mess on the floor. Or was Duane way off base? Was she something else entirely?

  “I just want my money,” she said.

  “You’re a friend of Danny Chin—is that right?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She nodded at Marcus. “He won’t tell you where the money is?”

  “He told me.”

  “So why are you still here?”

  “I was just about to leave.”

  But she was reckless—stupid and clever at the same time. You couldn’t live your life working the way she did. Luis—the guy still in prison? Was she his girlfriend? She was too young for that. Then again, he knew some gangsters took on twelve year-olds, thirteen year-olds. Once you’ve done the hard crimes, it seems a little silly not to pick up a seventh-grader if you’re into that.

  “Luis? That’s where you come from?” he asked.

  “That’s where I come from? What the hell does that mean?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out who you are.”

  “This isn’t the time for you to be solving little puzzles.”

  “Because Luis can’t help anyone in—”

  “I don’t need his help.”

  “You need somebody’s help.”

  “People act like Luis was my husband or something. How much do you think about someone you fucked when you were a teenager?”

  “Some of them I think about a lot.”

  “Well, okay—maybe you had some very profound experiences. Luis is nothing.”

  “Okay, you’re on your own, then. I’ll tell you the truth—so am I.”

  A couple of free agents with some pancakes. It was a real offer.

  “We can get it done together,” he said.

  Inez glanced around the room, finding the wall of photos—man, woman, and awkward embrace.

  “Where’s the girl?” she asked. “She took the money?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I know how to get the money back. We go together and split it.”

  “We’re not splitting nothing. That’s not happening.”

  “Fine. You ask him where it is. See if he’ll tell you. He’s pretty tough.”

  “Or I could ask you.”

  “I’ve already given you my offer. I think it’s a fair one.”

  They both heard the police cruiser pull into the parking lot, spitting sound out of the radio.

  “You had him screaming?” she asked.

  “No, we were quiet.”

  “You guys probably wrestled around the living room, shouting and breaking dishes.”

  “Do I look like I’ve been in a fight? The cops are probably here because of you. Probably following you for miles. Now we have to go.”

  Duane made a move toward the window.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “You want to explain things to police?”

  She stood directly in front of the window.

  “Take off your jacket and put him in the bedroom,” she said.

  “We have to—”

  “Do it.”

  Briefly he thought of running for the door, but she did not look like she wanted to be tested. She’d shoot him before he got a hand on the knob. What she’d do after the gunshot, he really couldn’t say. Duane lugged the big man into the bedroom and pulled him behind the bed, then threw the blanket over him. Marcus wasn’t dead, but he was out cold. When Duane came back to the living room, he saw that Inez had straightened up. It looked like a messy home and not a crime scene. The PlayStation was turned on to a single person shooter game set in the jungles of the Congo.

  “I told you to take off your jacket,” she said.

  What would happen after he got taken in by the cops? He could claim that he heard some sounds of struggle, he’d come in to investigate, and he’d seen—what? The story was bad. He was going to get in trouble for this. Maybe there was still time to jump out the window. Instead he took off his jacket, and Inez pointed to the PlayStation.

  “Can you play that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then play.”

  He sat on the couch and started to shoot at rebels hiding in trees. Inez filled a plastic bowl with lettuce, like she was making herself a big salad. The knock at the door was a cop’s thump.

  “Yeah, who is it?” Inez asked.

  “Sherriff’s office.”

  Inez opened the door to two cops: one male, one female.

  “Good evening, ma’am. We got a call of a disturbance, coming from this apartment,” the male cop said.

  Inez laughed.

  “That would be my husband, yelling at the game he’s playing.”

  The officers could see the screen from out in the hall. Duane was under fire from child soldiers.

  “Do you mind if we come inside?” the male officer asked.

  “Come on inside. He’s a mercenary, and I think he’s trying to secure some blood diamonds.”

  Duane glanced over. Inez gave the female officer a roll of the eyes—men and their toys. The female officer smiled, but the male officer remained stony faced.

  “What—what’s going on?” Duane asked.

  “The neighbors called the police. You and all your warlord friends are just a little too intense,” Inez said.

  “Oh, God.” Duane paused his game. “I’m so sorry. I did get a little worked up. I am sorry about this. Who called?”

  “Probably the whole damn building,” Inez said running a hand through his hair. “I told you.”

  “Was there any dispute at all between the two of you?” the female cop said.

  “Dispute? He doesn’t listen to a word I say when he’s playing that game.”

  “I am sorry,” Duane said, standing up and putting an arm around Inez.

  “Is it just the two of you in the apartment? No kids, no one else?”

  “Just us.”

  “Was anyone here earlier—anyone you had a dispute with?”

  “Nope.”

  The officers exchanged a look. The female spoke.

  “Sir, you do need to keep it down in the evening.”

  “Absolutely,” Duane said. “I do apologize.”

  “People need to get up in the morning, go to work.”

  “They do. Sorry for taking up your time.”

  “All right, you
have a good evening,” the male officer said.

  Inez broke away from Duane to see the officers out.

  “Okay, so where’s the money?” she asked as soon as they were gone.

  “It’s with the girl. I’ll take you there, but I won’t tell you where we’re going until we get there.”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “I know.”

  “Then why were you still here?”

  “There’s one thing I haven’t done yet. And now that’s going to be tricky.”

  It took a few seconds before the light came on for her.

  “So, what, you were just sitting here, knowing everything you needed to know, working up the courage to finish him off? Like how you left Tony Braxton in my lobby. You think it’s my job to clean up after you?”

  The doors of the police car slammed shut, and it pulled out of the lot.

  “I know where the girl went. Even if I told you exactly where she was, you’d still need me. You make a lot of mistakes.”

  “Tell me about my mistakes. I want to know about them.”

  “You really don’t see how it was a bad idea to let a couple of cops in here?”

  “Got rid of them in two minutes.”

  “And that was cool and everything. You should do commercials where the hot chick is married to an idiot and she tries to sell us Diet Pepsi; but if the cops had really been doing their job, we’d both be in the squad car right now,” Duane nodded out the window. “Maybe Tony told you a few things in bed—that doesn’t make you smart. You point a gun at people? That also doesn’t make you smart. If you try to do this by yourself, you are going to get arrested or killed.”

  “You know who really isn’t smart? Come on, take a guess—that’s you. Tony is second place. Half his brain is junkie-roasted, and he laughs at you. You gave your own money back to your boss, because he told you it was an investment? You really did that?”

  Yes, Duane had really done that.

  “Then they played you along, waiting until they’d got the last drop squeezed out of you. Then Top sends you down to Florida because you’re the biggest fuck train he has, and he was hoping someone down there would get rid of you. I heard all about it—some kind of ice cream man bit you in the finger? That’s not a drug deal, okay? Those are games. Sandbox games. Man, the idea I could need you for anything that comes out that brain is funny—the kind of funny where I could hurt myself laughing about it. So now you got to tell me what I need to know, so I can do some real work. The girl has the money. Tell me where to find her.”

  Some of what she’d said was true, but he wasn’t the chump she made him out to be. That just wasn’t right. He wanted to get his hands around her throat. That would feel nice, but he knew by the way she moved that this wouldn’t be an easy one to get under control. Inez gestured to Saida in the pictures on the wall.

  “That’s the girl, right?” she said. “What’s her name?”

  “Esther Jones.”

  Inez studied the photographs.

  “Looks like the girl is just barely tolerating,” she said.

  Duane threw up the kitchen window and squeezed through headfirst. He landed on top of a shrub—hard and scratchy—but he was in one piece. He took off running, away from the apartment complex, toward the quarry. He’d circle around and get back to his car, which was parked near the convenience store.

  He didn’t think Inez would jump out the window, and if she went out the front door, she’d have to run all the way downstairs and then around the building. That would take a minute at least. He was rid of her for now. All he had to do was beat her to Saida and things would be all right. Relatively speaking, he was home free. Running along the back fence of the quarry he started to feel optimistic. He wasn’t the sap. He was going to be the winner. Yeah, he’d left the gold brick back in the apartment, but he was about to get the whole pile. He had the phone bill, and two of the numbers were 718. That was New York, an outer borough. He could get the addresses. Saida would be at one of those places—maybe. He hoped it wasn’t some cockroach project in the Bronx, but he could deal with that if he had to. If he carried himself like a cop, no one would get in his way. And Saida herself was just a girl who had grabbed a bag. She wasn’t dangerous, and she probably wasn’t that smart. Inez on the other hand was sharp—insane and sexy as a spear. But he would beat her to the money.

  The next thing Duane knew he’d been knocked to the ground by the force of a bullet. One in the back. He got up, stumbled, and heard another shot. A miss. He tried swerving, but instead he just staggered and collapsed. It felt like an hour, lying on the ground, not really in pain, before he saw the shoes and faintly smelled gum, candy, a bad imitation of fruit.

  CHAPTER 42

  Saida was back in Brooklyn for the first time in almost three years. It hadn’t changed much. The first night away from Marcus with all the gold, she’d stayed in a motel in Springfield, lying next to the duffel bag like it was a lover, listening to a man cough all night in the next room. The next morning she bought a bus ticket for New York City, instead of somewhere chosen at random where no one could even think of looking for her. It was a little risky, but she just had to see her sister again.

  If anyone deserved a twenty thousand dollar brick falling out of the sky and hitting her in the head, it was her sister Margaret. She could buy a new rope for those toddlers she watched, get herself some decent clothes. It wasn’t right that a woman who worked as hard as Margaret should ever struggle for money. Saida always felt warm and sentimental and generous toward her sister until she actually had to see her.

  Saida knew she couldn’t stay in Brooklyn too long: there were bound to be people interested in getting their gold back. But it would take those people more than a day or two, wouldn’t it? Saida wasn’t stupid: she’d just be in and out. A hug and I love you, then hide one of the bricks, maybe two, for Margaret to find later on. Tuck it in her bed or in the medicine cabinet—Margaret, you’ve done so much for me, let me ease your burden. Some hallmark bullshit like that, except she really meant it.

  It put a smile on her face thinking of it. The best part of lugging fifty pounds of bricks into Brooklyn was the idea that Margaret might get a little bit of a cushion.

  “Gorgeous, slow down. Talk to me, gorgeous.”

  A middle-aged man eating from a box of cheap Chinese takeout. Saida simply gave him the finger and kept on walking.

  “Saida Brown?”

  Saida glanced back but didn’t stop.

  “When did you get back? Come, talk to me,” he said, now speaking without the leer.

  The man looked familiar—sad old lush sitting on the steps—and he knew her name. Great, she was famous.

  “I’m not Saida. Saida went to jail for cutting a man.”

  As she approached Margaret’s building she saw the rope and the line of toddlers—staying together, singing about the wheels on a bus, or some such nonsense. Where was that going to get them in life? They waddled in their little down jackets, like they were going to their job.

  Margaret was doing it alone today. She usually hired help to take care of her kids, but for the most part they didn’t work for more than a few months. Either they quit, or they didn’t live up to Margaret’s standards—no hitting children, no blank stares, no drugs. Saida watched from the street as the kids were led into the building. She watched as the moms came for pickup—the last of them was more than half an hour late. She waited in the cold with her heavy duffel bag until she’d seen all fourteen of the kids leave the building. Then she went in. Margaret didn’t say anything, just threw her arms around her sister and hugged her like she was someone from the Bible, returned home. There was a story in there about return, right? Saida never had much time for church business.

  “You should have told me you were coming today,” Margaret said, still with a little bit of her toddler voice on.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Yeah. I’m all
right.”

  “Everything all right with Marcus?”

  “Well, I’ve left him.”

  Margaret nodded—no surprise there.

  “He was cheating on me. And that I will not allow. This waitress—cheap dyed hair, thick ankles like a . . .”

  Saida got tired of this invented adulterer. Margaret continued to nod.

  “And I just needed to come back home.”

  “That’s right. That’s all right. What about your studies?”

  Your studies? Who talked like that? Ancient people, people on Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman might talk that way.

  “How about you? The kids—it’s all going well?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s a great group of angels.”

  Angels. Yeah, Margaret called them angels. Saida had forgotten about that also.

  “Now, tell me why you aren’t at your college.”

  “I came down to—observe some marketing firms here in the city.”

  “Saida, I don’t like it when you aren’t truthful with me.”

  “In what way am I not truthful with you? How you going to tell me I’m not being truthful with you?”

  “Better not to say anything.”

  “I’m in marketing, right? The marketing capital of the world is right here.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, but I can’t have dishonesty.”

  Sometimes it was insufferable to hear her talk. Keep this up and you won’t get your bar of gold. Come to think of it, Margaret probably wouldn’t even cash in the brick. She’d assume it was stolen and turn it in to police. Then the police would ask questions, and that would be a profoundly unnecessary headache.

  “I want you to hold my hand, Saida. And I want you to just listen to a few words.”

  And here she went—using some Jedi-Jesus tricks on her little sister? That’s where Saida stepped off this bus.