The Amateurs

by Marcus Sakey

  “I hear you.” There was a pause. “You think it might have a payout like last time?”

  “Hard to say. But if you help me, and it does turn into something . . .”

  Davis sighed. “All right. My wife’ll be pissed, but I could sneak away tonight. Say about nine?”

  “No earlier?”

  “It’s my little girl’s birthday, Ian.”

  “Right. Right. Nine.”

  Which left him with nothing to do but pace and stare at the carpet and try not to lick his coffee table for leftover powder.

  It was one thing to realize he’d been a fuck-up—to have his only real friends tell him—and decide to do something about it. It was another to actually have to suffer through the hours. That was the thing about decisions. The act of deciding was easy.

  The living with it, that was the trick.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE GIRL HAD HAIRLESS LEGS that flashed white as she drove downfield, the soccer ball racing ahead like a puppy. Her hair was bound in a ponytail, and her look of grim determination was visible from the stands. The first defender fell for a fake, had to turn and come back, out of the running with one bad move. The second put everything into a wicked slide-tackle, right foot out, back arched, other leg curled beneath, but was half a second late. Then the only thing between the girl and glory was one dirty kneed ten-year-old. The attacker set up with a soft left tap, wound up her right, and the ball was a black-and-white streak rocketing for the goal.

  Even knowing what he planned to do, panting under the terrifying enormity of it, Alex was caught up in the moment. The smell of grass and dirt. Team jerseys bright as candy. A coach’s yell from the sidelines. Late afternoon sun basting his shoulders.

  And especially Cassie, in the goal, making a flying leap, her arms stretched out, braids whipping behind, coming not just off the ground but near horizontal, suspended for a moment of grace as her fingers stretched, stretched, and then tagged the ball, knocking it down to bounce harmlessly in front of the line.

  The crowd exploded. It was a play-off game on a beautiful day in an expensive suburban neighborhood, and packed with parents and grandparents and siblings and friends. Even so, Alex had thought it a little too risky to sit on the home-team side. Which meant that as his heart filled with joy for Cassie, as he looked across the field and saw Trish and her new husband leap to their feet and scream, all he could do was sit among the parents of the other team as they groaned at his daughter’s perfection.

  A few minutes earlier, he’d sensed Trish’s eyes rove across him. He’d made a point of staring downfield and clapping, his baseball cap pulled low to screen his face. He’d tasted bile at the back of his throat, sure that even at that distance she not only recognized him but saw into his heart, saw what he planned to do. He imagined flyers in post offices, digital billboards on the highway flashing the Amber Alert. That weird disconnect of the pictures that would be included, snaps taken at happy times, a birthday or a vacation.

  Was he really about to do this?

  His stomach was sour, and he couldn’t stop tapping his toe. A woman muttered something as she passed, and he snarled, “What?”

  She turned, spooked. “I said excuse me.”

  “Oh.” He exhaled, forcing a smile. “Sure.”

  This was the only option. On the surface it looked foolish, but to anyone who knew the whole picture, what he was planning made perfect sense. His daughter was in danger. He was going to take her somewhere no one could hurt her. Simple as that. When it came down to it, what more important role did a parent have than keeping his child safe?

  Besides, maybe Mitch and Jenn could pull it off, and if they did, Victor would leave them alone. At that point, he could bring Cassie back, no harm done. Trish would be furious, but she might learn something along the way. Like what it felt like to be helpless while someone took your child.

  Whoa. Jesus. What kind of thinking is that?

  When Alex had arrived, he’d pulled past the neat lanes of approved parking spaces onto the grass at the edge of the lot, then did a three-point turn to leave the car facing out. It was a walk of maybe fifty yards. As soon as the ref blew the whistle for halftime . . .

  On the field, Cassie’s team had regrouped and were steadily moving the ball forward, maintaining a good passing game. Her coach was big on not cultivating stars, said that soccer was a metaphor for life; you had to work together for victory. In the opposite bleachers, Trish nuzzled into the crook of her new husband’s arm. He leaned down to whisper something in her ear, and she laughed and punched his shoulder.

  How had he ended up here? How had he ended up . . . this?

  Stop. You screwed up. And you’ll pay for it. But are you going to let your daughter be a chip in that game? Or are you willing to risk everything to make sure she stays safe?

  An easy choice in a hard world. When it came to priorities, he’d only ever had one.

  One of Cassie’s teammates dribbled ahead at an angle, then turned and banked it to the other forward, who fired off a straight blast, plenty of power but no artifice. The opposing goalie caught it easily, then spun and discus-hurled it down the field. As it landed, the referee blew the whistle. The first half was over.

  The world seemed to be phasing in and out. Not quite wobbling, more a wet sort of zoomy feeling tied to his heartbeat. Alex wiped his palms on his jeans, suddenly aware of the texture of the fabric. All around him happy fathers talked to happy mothers. Little boys with action figures turned the bleachers into war zones. Girls Cassie’s age had cell phones out and were texting one another. The sun beat down, hotter somehow at this hour than at noon. Hundreds of voices, the sounds of scraping shoes and clicking cameras, it all blended into a whirlpool of noise, spinning and scraping past his ears, a maelstrom he couldn’t separate into individual elements.

  It was time.

  He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Then opened them, stood up, and started down the bleachers. He pictured it all in his head—going over to the sidelines and calling to Cassie. Her delight at seeing him, the puzzled trust in her eyes when he told her that they had to go, right now, yes, right now. He wondered how long it would be before Trish would notice. Five minutes? In the confusion, he might be able to count on five minutes before the questions started. The panic. The announcement over the loudspeaker, the calls to police, the appeals on the local news.

  This is for her.

  He hit the bottom step, dropped to the faded grass. Behind him, he heard someone say, “Did you see that goalie? What a talented girl.”

  Goddamn right, he thought, and took another step before something made him freeze, literally freeze in place, one shoe arrested an inch over the ground. Something about that voice—

  “She’s truly something,” the voice continued. “A child like that, you sure hope her parents are taking care of her.”

  Alex put his foot down. He felt his hands start to shake, clenched them, but it only made his whole arm tremble. Slowly he turned.

  Victor was splayed out across the second row, feet propped below, elbows behind. With his open suit jacket and white shirt and casual posture, he looked like a Ralph Lauren ad. He smiled. “Your daughter has a lot of talent.”

  “What are you—” Alex started forward, his fists coming up. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  Victor’s smile widened. “Be careful.” He nodded his head ever so slightly to the left. Dreading what he was going to see, knowing what he was going to see, Alex followed his gaze. One of the bodyguards from earlier was on the other side of the field. His gaze was fixed on them as he stood with his hands in his pockets.

  Ten feet from the bench where Cassie and her teammates sat.

  “I’m not a father myself,” Victor said. “In my line of work, kids are at best an encumbrance. And at worst”—he sucked air through his teeth—“a man with a child, he’s at the mercy of the world. Know what I mean?”

  Alex stared, his teeth clenched so hard they ached.


  “Man with a child, he loses his head. Gets irrational. He thinks that the fact that he would give anything to protect her is actually enough to keep her safe. But it’s not. If he really wants her to be safe, well”—Victor shrugged, looked down the field—“he remembers that he’s just a man. He sets aside his ego, and he does what’s best for her.”

  “What are you talking—”

  “There’s nowhere you can go that I can’t find you.”

  “I wasn’t—I mean, I—”

  “Yes, you were.” The voice calm and certain. “You were going to run. Which makes me wonder if I should wait till Monday. Where does this leave our arrangement? Should I just start making good on my promises to you? Can you get me what I want, or is your little girl going to be doing some very fast growing up?”

  “You sick fuck, you touch her, I’ll—”

  “Daddy!”

  The voice came from thirty yards away, maybe more, but rang like a bell in his soul. Alex whirled, saw Cassie sprinting across the field toward him. Her hair fell in unruly braids, there was a smudge of dirt on her chin, and her jersey was grass-stained. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  He opened his mouth to yell at her to stay away, to get back, and then caught himself. Victor was right. A man with a child was at the mercy of the world. He had to play cool.

  She didn’t slow as she drew near, and hit him like a wave. “You came!” Her hair smelled of sweat and sunlight. “Did you see my save?”

  “I did, baby. It was amazing.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “It was something,” Victor said. “You’re an absolute peach.”

  Cassie looked at him, then at her shoes, gone suddenly shy. “Thank you.”

  “It’s Cassie, right?”

  Alex glared, shook his head. “Don’t you—”

  “I’m Victor. I’m a friend of your dad’s.” The man leaned off the bleachers, held out one hand. Still looking the other way, Cassie shook it formally. “I came to talk to him, but when I saw you playing I had to stay and watch.”

  “Daddy, why are you shaking?”

  “Huh?” Alex tore his eyes from Victor, made himself smile for his daughter. “I’m—I’m just so excited for you.”

  “Well.” Victor stood, brushed the knees of his suit. “I’ll let you two be.” He winked, started away, then snapped his fingers and turned. “I almost forgot. You never answered my question. About whether we could work together?”

  Alex stared at him, his lips turning up in a snarl. He thought about launching himself at Victor, tearing the guy’s throat out with his bare hands, and knew that if a lifetime in prison would be the only cost, he would have paid it gladly.

  Man with a child, he loses his head. Gets irrational. He thinks that the fact that he would give anything to protect her is actually enough to keep her safe. But it’s not. If he really wants her to be safe, he remembers that he’s just a man. He sets aside his ego, and he does what’s best for her.

  Victor’s words in his head. But that didn’t make them wrong. He couldn’t keep Cassie safe by wishing it so. He couldn’t keep her safe by taking her away, or by wrapping her in his arms and making promises.

  But there was a way. A way to be sure. To go not around, but through. What you’re thinking, you can’t take it back.

  Alex took a deep breath, then said, “We can work together.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “I’ll call Johnny soon. In the meantime,” he said, gesturing at Cassie with his eyes, “you keep your end.” Because so help me, if you so much as touch her hand again, this earth isn’t big enough for you to hide, motherfucker.

  “Fair enough.” Victor smiled. “Nice to meet you, Cassie.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” she said, very properly.

  Alex stared until the monster had walked away.

  “Who was that, Daddy?”

  “He’s . . . my boss’s boss.”

  “He was handsome.” She turned to Alex, beamed up at him. “So I was good, huh?”

  Something was eating him from the inside out. Alex smiled through it, said, “Not good, baby girl. The best.”

  CHAPTER 29

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG DAY.

  Ian made it through by relentlessly cleaning his already spotless place. A bit after seven he took a long, long shower, hot enough to slough the skin from his shoulders. Dried off, then spent an hour getting dressed. His best suit, tie crisply Windsored, hair gelled into submission. A little cover-up for the yellowing bruise under his eye, a little cologne. When he looked in the mirror, he almost recognized his old self. Thinner and older, but filled with restless purpose. He still felt awful, but at least he had a plan.

  He met Davis at a martini place in River North. Pale amber light splashing on polished wood, soft trip-hop in the background. The woman tending bar wore boots that came halfway up her thighs. The chemist looked just the way Ian remembered: a short-sleeved oxford tucked into his slacks, a haircut his wife had obviously had a say in. Add a pocket protector and a pair of Coke-bottle glasses, and he could have worked for NASA.

  “There’s the man! Look at you, Ian. Still conquering Wall Street, huh?”

  “Doing my best.” He ordered a Glenlivet, neat. “How was the party?”

  “Expensive. The clown smelled like marijuana. But Janie loved it.”

  “She’s six, huh? Crazy how time flies. When we did Hudson-Pollum, I think she was four.”

  “I want to thank you again for that.” Davis glanced around, then said, in a low voice, “I made a killing. You really helped me out.”

  “Glad to hear it. Couldn’t have done it without you.” Which was true. The Hudson-Pollum Biolabs buy had made Ian. On the surface, HPB had looked like a loser; a small company with a long-delayed patent and serious cash-flow problems. But something about it had caught Ian’s eye, and he’d worked it hard. The breakthrough had come when he stopped talking to analysts and traders and started talking to chemists. It had been Davis who had explained how revolutionary their pending patent could be. It didn’t seem sexy—a complex process for manipulating volatile organic compounds—but Davis lit up as they’d talked. With proper financing, the thing had potential to become industry standard for certain segments of the pharmaceutical industry. Most of what the man had told him had flown several miles over Ian’s head, but the essence had hit him square, and over the next weeks he’d quietly put together a major buy. When the patent cleared review, he’d gone from a junior trader to a respected wunderkind with a private office.

  And in the time since, you’ve gone from a wunderkind to a fuck-up. Ain’t life a card.

  Ian took it cool at first, keeping the conversation on innocuous subjects so Davis had time to get a martini down and order another. Felt good to be maneuvering again, going after what he needed. It was only once the chemist was halfway through his second drink that Ian began to broach the subject.

  Davis’s cheeks were reddened by booze. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Which part?”

  “You want me to figure out what something is by description? It’s just, I don’t see how this fits any sort of investment. Is this one of your games?”

  “No,” Ian said. “No, it definitely is not.”

  “What are you, doing research for a screenplay or something?”

  “Can you just trust me for now?”

  “There are a million possibilities.”

  “You know what? Pretend it is a game. You’re not writing an article for Nature.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “It’s a thick fluid. Dark-colored.”

  Davis shrugged. “Crude oil.”

  “It looks like that, yeah. But even smelling it causes massive headaches. Trouble breathing. Clenched muscles.”

  “Some kind of industrial solvent.”

  “But extremely valuable. Four quarts are worth, say, a quarter of a million dollars on the black market.”

  “The black market? What
the hell?”

  “Assume it’s illegal. For the sake of discussion.”

  “Tell me again how this will help my portfolio?”

  “Davis . . .”

  The man sighed. “OK. A dark, viscous, illegal liquid. You said four quarts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not a gallon.”

  “Aren’t they the same?”

  “Yeah. But you said four quarts. Why?”

  “Oh. Separate containers. Four one-quart containers.”

  Davis nodded, and Ian could see him starting to get engaged in the problem, enjoying the intellectual exercise. “What kind of container?

  “Plastic.”

  “Any seal?”

  Ian wasn’t sure, but figured Jenn and Mitch would have mentioned that. “Let’s say no.”

  “Chemicals are most commonly stored in glass or metal. Since it’s in plastic, it’s probably something that reacts with them. That narrows it down some.”

  “Drugs? Or something for cooking up drugs?”

  The man shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why?”

  “Do the math. Four quarts of the stuff are worth $250,000? It would have to work out to a huge pile of drugs. Or else a drug that was worth an unbelievable amount. Unless a gallon of this stuff makes, you know, pounds and pounds and pounds of cocaine, it doesn’t make sense. Plus, most drugs aren’t that hard to synthesize. You hear stories every now and then of chemists who wash out, it turns up they’d been cooking their own heroin. The ingredients are easy enough to come by if you work in a lab. So the math doesn’t make sense.”

  The simple logic smacked Ian hard. This whole time, they’d been assuming that this was a drug deal. They’d taken it as a base assumption—Johnny used to sell drugs, and what else was worth that kind of money? But now that seemed silly.

  “I guess it could be some sort of superdrug we haven’t heard of,” Davis said, “but Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is the right one.”

  “So what is the simplest explanation?”

  “It’s not drugs. It’s illegal and moving on the black market, so it’s not likely for industrial uses. It’s not radioactive, or it wouldn’t be in plastic. It reacts to glass and metal, and just smelling it results in a headache and clenched muscles. My best guess?”