The Amateurs

by Marcus Sakey

  “Are you OK?”

  He almost laughed. Instead, he said, “Sure,” and started for the car. He had almost made it when he heard sounds behind him, Scott’s voice saying, “Cassie, wait—”

  “Daddy!”

  He turned in time to see her sprinting down the walk, bent to scoop her up into his arms and hoist her off the ground. His little girl. He could smell her hair, feel the warmth of her body.

  In that instant was every other. The way he used to sit in his beat-up chair, legs going numb, unwilling to move as she napped on his chest, her baby’s breath and milk smell. A Fourth of July, Cassie maybe six, spelling her name in the air with a sparkler. The frozen perfection of her guarding the soccer goal this afternoon, captured mid-lunge by his mental camera. “My girl,” he said. “My girl.”

  She wrapped her arms tighter around his neck. “I don’t want to go to Arizona. I want to stay here with you.”

  I want it too, baby girl. I want only that forever.

  Over her shoulder, he saw Scott hurrying toward them, his gaze wary. The front door was wide open, and Trish stepped into it, squinting to see what was going on.

  Alex allowed himself one more thought of hopping in the car with her, forgetting all about drug deals and police and dead men, just hitting the road together. Best friends and partners in crime. It was so beautiful it hurt to look at.

  He said, “It’s OK, Cass. It will be OK.”

  Scott had reached them, stood with his hands out, like he was thinking of tackling them both. Alex looked at him, saw the fear in his eyes. Realized that he was scared of exactly what Alex had been thinking.

  Alex lowered her to the ground, knelt in front of her. “You know I love you, right?”

  She nodded, eyes wide.

  “Promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll always remember that.”

  “I promise. But don’t make me go!”

  His knees felt weak. For a moment, he closed his eyes. Reached deep inside himself, not sure he had the strength to say what he knew he had to. “It’s for the best, Cass. Scott and Mom, they both love you. You can have a normal life with them.”

  “But I want to be with you.”

  “I know, baby girl. I want that too. But this is better.” He clenched his fist. “This is better.”

  Scott said, “Alex.”

  He nodded. Glanced up at the man, imploring, not sure what he was asking for. Everything, maybe. Their eyes locked, and for a moment, he forgot all his anger toward the guy, forgot all the ways he’d been wronged. Just saw a man who also loved his daughter. “You take care of her, all right?”

  “I will.” The words solemn and the gaze steady. “On my life.”

  Alex turned back to his daughter. “I have to go, sweetie. I just wanted to tell you how much I love you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have some things I need to take care of. They’re important.”

  “More important than me?”

  “Nothing is more important than you.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Nothing.”

  Then, before his will broke along with his heart, he stood and turned around. The ten steps to the car were the hardest of his life. Behind him, he heard her voice, saying, “Don’t go,” and then he opened the car door and got in. Fired it up and slammed it into reverse and spun out of the driveway fast.

  This is for you, Cass. It’s all for you.

  When he reached the end of the block, he stopped. In his rearview, he could see the three of them. Cassie staring, Trish behind, her hands on his daughter’s shoulders. Scott stood alongside, his back straight. They looked like a family. Like they would be happy.

  Time to make sure they stayed that way. He turned the corner and reached for his cell phone.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE THREE OF THEM stared into the Cadillac’s empty trunk. Mitch kept fighting the urge to close and open it again, as if the stuff would magically reappear. The rain soaked him.as if

  “Victor?” Ian asked at last.

  “No,” Jenn said. “He didn’t know about this.”

  “No one knew about it,” Mitch said, his voice hollow. “No one but us.”

  Think, think, think. What does this mean?

  Part of him felt an enormous relief. If the stuff was gone, then there was nothing they could do about it. There was also no point in turning themselves in. They had decided to do the right thing, been willing to, but circumstance had made it impossible. A lucky break.

  Except that one drop could kill, and they had hidden a gallon of the stuff. Not taken it to the police, or called the FBI. And now it was gone. How many would die because of that?

  “Oh my God.” Jenn put a hand to her face. “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, it’s”—she looked up at them, her face pale—“it just slipped out.”

  “Huh?”

  “I didn’t tell him on purpose. He came to see me this afternoon. To apologize, and we were talking, and I just said it without thinking. That it was in the trunk of the car.”

  Mitch stared. “Who? Who did you say that to?” But in his heart, he knew the answer already.

  “Alex.”

  IT WAS ALL FALLING APART.

  Not, Ian reflected, back in Jenn’s kitchen, wet suit plastered to wet skin, that it had ever exactly been together. Everything about their situation had been screwed pretty much from the jump.

  OK. So things are bad. What do you do?

  Only one answer. The same one he’d always fallen back on. Think about it like a game.

  Not gambling or one of the political modeling games. Strategy, then. Like the battlefield sims he’d played in college. Balance strengths and weaknesses, figure the goal, and then move toward it. Meanwhile, try to forget that you have a phone number memorized, that relief from sickness and doubt is one call and a stop at an ATM away. It was only midnight. He could be the proud owner of an eight ball by 12:30—

  A game.

  Right. OK, then. Strengths.

  “I can’t believe he took it.” Jenn was twisting a lock of hair like a phone cord.

  “I can,” Mitch said.

  “I know, you hate him—”

  “No, I don’t.” Mitch sighed. “I don’t. I was trying to become him, I think. But you had it right from the beginning. His daughter. He wouldn’t be thinking about anything else.”

  “But to give Victor chemical weapons—”

  “He didn’t know what they are, remember? Maybe on some subconscious level, he suspects. But he’ll be ignoring that, same way we did. Telling himself that it’s just chemicals to cook up drugs. Set against Cassie, that won’t mean much.”

  Strengths. Well, they knew what the bottles held. Neither Johnny nor Victor would expect that. What else?

  Nothing leapt to mind.

  Against that, the weaknesses. Victor and his bodyguards and their guns and easy violence. Alex’s head start. Nothing to take to the police now, no bargaining chips. The fact that the four of them couldn’t manage to have each others’ backs for half an hour.

  Who was he kidding? They were fucked.

  “You know how I said this wasn’t our fault?” Jenn’s voice pitched like she was talking to someone who wasn’t there. “That’s not true, is it?”

  “Well, you were right, we didn’t make it—”

  “Mitch.”

  He sighed. “Yeah. It’s our fault.”

  “And a thousand people could die because of it.”

  Her words hit Ian hard, took him back to September. No matter how many years passed, he would always think of it simply as September. How he had watched TV for hours, the towers falling over and over. That terrible video of the second plane, the way every time it ran you prayed that somehow this time it would happen differently, that it would slide sideways, miss by inches. That there would be a Hollywood ending.

  The sick feeling when it didn’t. Over and over again.

  He’d just been starting out then, wor
king from a half cube under fluorescent lights. But trading was a virtual gig. He spent all day on the phone, on the computer, talking to people all over the world, but especially in New York. He’d had friends in those towers. Every time he’d watched people jumping, that agonizing footage, too grainy to tell anything, he’d wondered if the body plummeting through the air was someone he knew.

  Now they would have to live with the fact that the next time they turned on the TV, it might have another ungraspable story of broken bodies and mass panic and that sudden awareness that they were not invulnerable, that there were people in the world who wanted to hurt them, and that those people could.

  Only this time, he had helped them.

  MITCH FELT A SCREAM building inside. All that time they could have done right. Not just when they had the chemicals. Before then. When they sat around and bullshitted each other about what mattered, when all the time in the world lay splayed at their feet.

  And worse, this final irony. By giving Victor the bottles, Alex had made them safe. It was over for them. No one would come after them. The police would never know. They could go on with their lives. With a lot more money.

  All they had to do was nothing.

  “Goddamn it.” He hit the counter with the flat of his palm. The sting was sharp and clean, and reminded him, for a half second, of what it had felt like to hit Jenn. He pushed the thought away. One more sin. “I’m not going to let this happen.” He rubbed his hands together. “Jenn, call your detective. The two of you go meet him. Tell him everything. The robbery, the guy in the alley, the DF, everything. Tell him that I’ll turn myself in soon.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going after Alex. I’ve got a guess where he’ll be.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Where this all started.”

  “Johnny’s restaurant?”

  “Victor isn’t going to invite Alex over to his house. But they need a place where they can be alone. It’s after midnight. Johnny’s is closed. It’s safe ground. No risk of being seen, and no chance Alex can have cops with him.”

  “If he’s there, then so is Victor,” Jenn said. “You’ll just get yourself killed.”

  “Maybe not. If I can get to him first, I can tell him what he’s carrying. Alex is stubborn, but once he knows, he’ll come with me to the police, and we can end this thing.”

  “And what if you can’t get to him before Victor does?”

  “Then I’ll just have to try anyway.”

  “That’s suicide.”

  “I don’t care.” He stepped closer to her, took her hands in his. Looked her in the eye. “Jenn, I have to do this.”

  “Why?”

  For my sins. For a body in an alley and the lie that was my life and the lie I tried to turn it into. But what he said was, “You know why.” He thought about trying to kiss her. Instead he turned to Ian. “Can I borrow your car?”

  The man dug in his pocket, pulled out a slender ring of keys. Mitch took them. It felt good to be moving, to finally be acting instead of letting life happen.

  “This is stupid,” Jenn said. “You’re feeling guilty, so you’re just walking into this?”

  “If there’s even a chance to stop him, I have to take it. Besides,” he said and forced a smile, “I have insurance. You two.”

  “Why don’t we just call the cops and tell them to go there right now?”

  He shook his head. “They wouldn’t believe us. You’ll get transferred around, have to tell your story over and over. Eventually maybe they would send someone. But it will be too late.”

  “I could call Detective Bradley and tell him—”

  “You’d just be a voice on the phone. No, you have to go and turn yourselves in and tell him enough details, in person and in his custody, to convince him. It’s too big a risk otherwise. You have to convince him. And do it fast, all right? I’m depending on you.” He took a deep breath, held it for a moment. It took all his strength to make himself look calm, like fear wasn’t scrabbling inside of him, a living thing. “OK.” He started down the hall.

  “Mitch.” It was Ian’s voice.

  He turned. Ian opened his mouth, closed it. Finally he said, “We won’t let you down.”

  Mitch looked at them. Two of the three friends he’d once considered the only people who knew him. Torn apart by stupidity and selfishness, and now responsible for something more horrible than they could imagine. Average people, each weak in their own way, all afraid and lost and lonely.

  “I know,” Mitch said. “I trust you.”

  Then he turned and headed for the door.

  THE DETECTIVE ANSWERED on the fourth ring. It was after midnight, but she supposed Saturday night was prime time for a homicide detective.

  “This is Jennifer Lacie. You came by my house—”

  “Yes, Ms. Lacie. What can I do for you?”

  She took a deep breath. Once she said what she had to say, there was no going back. No return to safety.

  You have to convince him. And do it fast, all right? I’m depending on you. Mitch’s voice in her head.

  “Remember how you said that if I remembered anything else, I should call you? Turns out I have a lot to say.”

  There was a pause. “Go ahead.”

  “I lied to you. About, well, everything.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I know exactly who did the robbery. And everything that happened after it.”

  “And who’s that?” His voice curious, but not excited.

  “I did. Me and three of my friends.”

  He laughed.

  “Detective, I’m not kidding, I—”

  “Ms. Lacie, I’m flattered, I am, but I’m also very busy—”

  “The men who went into Johnny’s office used duct tape to tie him and the bartender up. The bartender, Alex—who’s in on it, by the way—threw a punch and got hit in the head. We did that to keep him above suspicion. The man in the alley was shot twice, once around the shoulder, once in the chest, with the same gun.”

  There was a long pause. “Maybe we better talk.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll have some officers come by your place in the next few minutes to make sure you’re safe.”

  “Wait, what? I need to talk to you.”

  “You will. I’m on a scene right now. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “When?”

  “When I’m done.”

  “No. It has to be now. Right now. It’s a matter of, well, life and death.”

  “Ms. Lacie, you need to understand, you’re in very serious trouble—”

  “Detective, you need to understand that if you don’t meet me right now, I won’t be here when the officers arrive. And I’ll deny everything I’ve just said.”

  When Bradley spoke again, his voice was steel. “All right. If you’re in that kind of a hurry, why don’t you come into the station? I’ll head there now. I’m in Rogers Park, so we’ll be meeting halfway.”

  Damn it. She could hardly refuse, and at the same time, once she was in the station, it would be easy for them to detain her. Still. What choice did she have?

  “All right. I’m leaving now. But, Detective?” She took a breath, let her emotions show in her voice. “Please hurry. I’m begging you. There are a lot of lives at stake.”

  “This had better not be some sort of a joke.”

  “I’ve never been this serious in my life.”

  She hung up the phone. Ian said, “I guess blowing this off and heading to Disneyland is out of the question, huh?”

  “Kinda.”

  “OK. Let’s grab a cab and go to jail instead.” He held out a hand, and she took it. His palm was sweaty, but it was comforting.

  Walking out the front door felt surreal, a routine she’d done a hundred times rendered strange. There was a habitual urge to check that she had everything, pick a coat, take a last look in the mirror. But none of that mattered. She just grabbed h
er purse and opened the door, and they headed down the stairs.

  “I wasn’t sure you were going to tell them about Alex.”

  “We have to,” she said. “Mitch is depending on us. We can’t risk any lies at this point.” They stepped onto the porch.

  “Yikes,” Ian said. “The whole truth? Not my specialty.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Ms. Lacie?”

  The stranger had the kind of face that always seemed familiar, a bland average of decent looks. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but her first thought was that somehow Bradley had managed to get an officer over to her house in that short a time.

  Then she saw the gun pointing at her.

  TWELVE THIRTY on a Saturday night. Plenty of places would just be getting started. In Wicker Park, the bands would have wrapped up, and Estelle’s and the Violet Hour would be mobbed. Down on Rush Street, the Viagra Triangle, wannabe sugar-daddies would be putting moves on administrative assistants. Even here on Lincoln, a mile in either direction the bars would be full, music pounding out open windows.

  But the stretch where Rossi’s was located was quiet. Not dead; a few revelers strolled the sidewalks, cabs cruised, and in an apartment up the block, a party was winding down. Mitch had driven as fast as he dared and had made good time. As he passed the restaurant, he felt a weird shiver at the sight of the place. So many events, good and bad, all clustered into one small space.

  Focus.

  Though they thought of it as a bar, Rossi’s was primarily a restaurant, and the cursive neon sign was turned off, the building radiating that closed energy. There was just enough light for him to see chairs up on tables as he passed. No sign of anyone inside. What if he’d been wrong? Mitch had dialed Alex’s cell phone half a dozen times on the drive over, but the guy either didn’t have it or wasn’t answering. Mitch was betting on the latter.

  He turned down the side street, then into the alley, pulling the car up to the same place they had parked the rental. Dread hit as darkness flooded into the car. Ten feet from where he sat, he had murdered a man.

  The air was cool and smelled of rotten milk. A scrap of yellow crime-scene tape was still attached to the Dumpster, stirring in the breeze. He walked out of the alley, forcing himself not to glance at the place, not to look for a dark stain or a chip in the concrete.