The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  “I got it,” he said.

  Diaz dropped a five on the bar for the beer. “I’m splitting now,” he said. “Hang tight for ten minutes.”

  “In case somebody checks the tapes,” Lindstrom said, like it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard.

  Diaz headed for the door. A chill had settled over the town while he’d been in the restaurant. He’d parked at a Verizon store across the road rather than in the Applebee’s lot, and he hugged himself as he hurried back to his rental. The sign at the Hyundai dealership flashed forty degrees, but it seemed colder. Diaz unlocked the car and got inside, then had to figure out how the heater worked. He had a heavier coat back in his room, a nice down parka, but he’d hate to mess it up doing what he was going to be doing later.

  The trail at the park was actually a paved path, ten feet wide. It followed the west bank of the Cape Fear River, crossing a few creeks and a marsh. During the day it was crowded with joggers and bicyclists and dog walkers. When the gates closed at dusk, the deer came out, and raccoons raided the trash cans.

  Diaz arrived an hour before he was supposed to meet Lindstrom and parked a couple blocks from the trailhead. He pulled on a pair of gloves, hopped a waist-high fence, and set out to scramble cross-country to the bridge. It was his mistrust of Lindstrom that kept him off the main trail. For all he knew the fucker was lying in wait there, ambush on his mind.

  Bushwhacking turned out to be more difficult than Diaz had expected. In the dark, in the cold, through the mist rising from the black swirl of the river. The duffel bag stuffed with newspaper he was carrying didn’t make the going any easier. He started in a stand of tall bare trees but soon found himself sliding down a steep slope that ended in a bog. He paused there to slap wet leaves from the seat of his jeans and get his bearings before continuing across the quagmire. Despite his best efforts to place each step carefully, he slipped a couple times and ended up ankle-deep in ooze that sucked at his feet like something hungry.

  When he got close to the bridge, he scrambled up to the pavement, surprising a skunk. The skunk raised and fanned its tail, and Diaz almost tripped as he backed away. He moved as quickly as he could down the path. His shoes were caked with stinking mud, and his socks squished when he walked. Every twenty yards or so a dim light, low to the ground, illuminated the trail, but Diaz stuck to the shadows at the edge. The ghostly whinny of a screech owl made him reach for his knife; the bony scrape of branches stopped him in his tracks. He’d decided to go back to the hotel for his parka after all and was now sweating under it.

  By the time he reached the bridge, the mist had thickened into a low, dense fog. He squatted, trying to peer through the murk. No sign of Lindstrom or anybody else. Still, he opened his knife and held it in front of him as he stepped onto the span. The twenty-foot wooden bridge hung above a deep, fast creek that tumbled down to the river. Diaz could hear the water but not see it. He’d wait on the far side. When Lindstrom approached from the nature center, he’d step out of the dark and show himself, walk out to meet him. How you doing? This goddamn fog. Sorry about the rigmarole. And then he’d kill him and have one more share of the money to himself.

  The owl bleated again. Diaz squelched across the bridge and sat on a boulder to wait. He could barely make out where he’d come from. The world over there was turning to smoke, dissolving into nothing. He checked his watch: 11:30. Half an hour to go. By then, who knew? The fog might have swallowed the trail, swallowed the bridge, swallowed him. He was happy to have the parka now, zipped it all the way to his chin.

  Just before midnight he heard footsteps on the pavement. If it was Lindstrom, he definitely wasn’t trying for stealth. Diaz slipped the knife into his coat pocket and moved to the middle of the trail, duffel bag in hand. A figure solidified out of the soup. Lindstrom it was, wearing a green army field jacket and a black stocking cap. He stopped at the end of the bridge and stared at Diaz like he wasn’t sure it was him. Diaz motioned him forward.

  “Come and get it,” he said.

  They walked toward each other, boards creaking beneath them. When they were ten feet apart, they stopped. Diaz held out the duffel. Lindstrom didn’t move to take it, kept his arms at his sides.

  “What about Keller’s share?” he said.

  “What about it?” Diaz said.

  “I should get a cut.”

  “You decided that?”

  “It’s what’s right.”

  “I’m the one who put this together,” Diaz said. “You were working for me.”

  “You couldn’t have done it without me,” Lindstrom said.

  He was ready for a fight, fists clenched, neck tensed. He’d been ready for a fight since the restaurant. Diaz pretended to consider the guy’s point.

  “That’s an extra hundred fifty, hundred sixty thousand,” he said.

  “One hundred sixty-six thousand and sixty-six dollars,” Lindstrom said. “Give me just the thousands. You can keep the change.”

  His smirk widened briefly into a smile. Laughing at his own joke.

  “Fair enough,” Diaz said. “Do you want to take what I have here for now, or do you want to wait until I get it all together?”

  “I’ll take what you’ve got for now,” Lindstrom said.

  Diaz couldn’t hear the creek anymore, couldn’t feel the cold. His whole world was Lindstrom. He set the duffel down in the space between them and took two steps back with his hands in the air.

  “All yours,” he said.

  Lindstrom kept his eyes on him as he moved forward and bent to the bag. He picked it up and couldn’t resist, set it on the bridge railing and unzipped it. Diaz made his move when he turned away to look inside. He was on him in an instant with the knife.

  He stabbed as hard and as fast as he could, aiming for the big man’s chest. Something was wrong, though. Lindstrom didn’t yell, didn’t fall. The knife blade skidded off him like he was made of ice. He was wearing Kevlar under his jacket, a vest. He reached out for Diaz and caught him by the throat, lifting him in the air.

  Diaz hung there for an instant, stunned, but snapped out of it when Lindstrom punched him in the head with his free hand. He slashed at the big man’s arm, slicing through fabric to reach flesh. Lindstrom hissed in pain and dropped him. As soon as Diaz’s feet hit wood, he sprang at Lindstrom again, blade held high. The bridge shuddered when he slammed into him and drove him back against the railing. The duffel fell into the creek and was carried away by the current.

  Lindstrom threw his giant arms around Diaz and squeezed hard. The air whooshed out of Diaz’s lungs, and he thought his spine would snap. He stabbed Lindstrom in the neck. The blade went in deep, and a jet of hot blood warmed Diaz’s fingers even through his glove. Lindstrom’s hold on him relaxed. His arms still encircled him, but all the strength had gone out of them.

  Diaz stabbed him two more times in the neck, withdrew the blade, pulled it back, and buried it to the hilt in the guy’s temple. Lindstrom’s knees buckled, and he dropped to the bridge in a sitting position, his back against the rail, the knife sticking out of his head. Diaz backed away. Lindstrom’s chest rose with a wheeze. One breath plumed out of him, another, then no more. His eyes stared at nothing. His blood was blacker than the night.

  When his own breathing had slowed, Diaz pulled out the knife and tossed it off the bridge. He then tried to lift Lindstrom over the railing. No way; the guy was too heavy. There was enough space under the bottom rail, though. Diaz laid Lindstrom flat and used his feet to push him. It was a tight fit, but he managed to squeeze him through. The body splashed into the creek and sank immediately. There was so much blood on Diaz’s gloves that he worried he’d cut himself during the fight. A quick check showed he was fine. As for the blood on the bridge, he couldn’t do anything about that, so he headed out, back across the bog and up the hill to his car.

  18

  THERE WERE A FEW QUERIES ABOUT THE CONDOS WHEN PETTY woke early Saturday morning. He responded with the burner number, and the first
call came at 8:00 a.m. He pulled on his sweats and stepped out onto the walkway to take it. The woman on the line was suspicious. She asked why there were no reviews for the unit she was interested in on Airbnb. Petty told her it was because this was the first time he’d listed it. And why, she asked, did he want her to wire the money to him instead of paying through the site? “I don’t want to pay taxes,” Petty said. “The less I have to deal with the IRS, the better.” The woman said she’d think about it and call back. Petty doubted that, writing her off as a stroke, a waste of time.

  He spent the rest of the morning replying to e-mails and answering the phone. Tinafey went out and came back with coffee and a bagel for him from the chintzy breakfast buffet the motel provided. He was so busy that he managed only two sips of the coffee before it got cold. By the time he was ready to turn off the burner and leave for the hospital, he thought he might have a couple of fish on the line, but he wouldn’t know for sure until they sent their MoneyGram transaction numbers.

  He asked Tinafey if she wanted to come with him again to check on Sam.

  “You need to learn to talk to her on your own,” she said.

  “Fine,” Petty said, “but she’ll be disappointed not to see you. She likes you a lot more than she likes me.”

  “Maybe so,” Tinafey said, “but she loves you.”

  He walked to Good Samaritan, down the street of tenements. It was the weekend, so the neighborhood was much livelier. More people hanging out, more music. The same women and kids were on the same stoop as last time. They passed around a plastic bag of pineapple chunks and a fork. A little girl skipped down the steps to block Petty’s way. She stared up at him with a defiant pout until one of the women hissed her back to the group. A wreath strung with lights blinked in the window of an apartment; a cardboard Santa hung in another. Petty hadn’t noticed them before. Christmas kept creeping up on him.

  His phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it. Someone calling from Miami, but not Avi. This unnerved him. He let the call go to voice mail. Whoever it was didn’t leave a message. Petty wondered who it could be but didn’t press Call Back. If it was nothing, it was nothing; if it was trouble, no sense running toward it.

  He heard a commotion in Sam’s room as soon as he stepped off the elevator. Mrs. Kong’s family was visiting. Old people, kids, babies. They’d lined up all the chairs in the room next to the woman’s bed. She was asleep, but they carried on anyway, eating cookies from a pink bakery box and passing around a photo album. The conversation was in Chinese, which sounded like stones clattering down a shallow stream. A Mexican woman lay in the middle bed now, a bandage wrapped around her throat. She ignored the party and stared at her TV, listening to it through headphones.

  Sam was reading an astronomy textbook. She raised her hand and told Petty to hold on while she finished a paragraph. Her tone irked him, but he let it go.

  After a minute or so she closed the book. She had big news to share: her friend Jessica had managed to get the two of them tickets to a concert that had been sold out for months.

  “Have you heard of him?” she asked Petty about the guy who was playing.

  “I don’t follow music,” he said.

  She pulled up a song on her phone and insisted that Petty put in her earbuds, enthusiastic about hipping him to something she liked. It was electronic stuff, dance stuff, the shit they played in all the clubs in Vegas, the shit that made him feel old and out of it. He didn’t tell Sam that. He kept his mouth shut and listened to the music while watching a cartoon on the TV, an orange elephant eating ice cream. When he felt enough time had passed, he handed the phone back.

  “Sick, right?” Sam said.

  “Sick,” Petty said.

  An argument broke out among Mrs. Kong’s family about how to arrange all the flowers people had sent her on her single shelf. Granny had a boy set them up one way, but then a young woman jumped up and repositioned the baskets and vases.

  “I really liked Tinafey,” Sam said.

  “She liked you, too,” Petty said.

  “How long have you guys been together?”

  “Not long.”

  “Is she bad like you? Or good?”

  “She’s good,” Petty said.

  Sam’s phone dinged. She picked it up, checked the screen, and started texting. Petty’s first instinct was to be angry at how quickly her attention had shifted, but again he kept his cool. Nothing would change between them if he blew up every time she irritated him. He went back to watching the elephant.

  “Sorry about that,” Sam said when she finished. “I had to tell Jessica where to buy Sherman’s food.”

  “Do you remember that cat in Cancun?” Petty said.

  During one of their summer trips she’d made friends with a stray cat that hung around their hotel in Mexico. By the time they left, the mangy thing was eating out of her hand, and it tried to jump into the cab taking them to the airport. Petty knew he was treading on dangerous ground by bringing up the past, but some of the best times they’d had with each other had come during those trips. He was hoping she’d recall them as fondly as he did.

  A smile spread across her face.

  “I loved that cat,” she said.

  “What was its name?”

  “Letty,” Sam said. “They called it Letty.”

  “That was the same trip I got stung by a scorpion.”

  “On the beach. I remember.”

  “You couldn’t stop laughing.”

  “Come on! You hopping around on one foot, yelling ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ It was hilarious.”

  “My lips went numb. I thought I was a goner.”

  “You wanted somebody to pee on the bite. The guys from the hotel were cracking up.”

  “Hey, though,” Petty said. “One hour later I was back on the beach.”

  “Because you saw me talking to a boy there,” Sam said.

  “That was the dad in me coming out,” Petty said.

  “What, for the first time?” Sam said.

  Petty tried not to let her see that her jab had connected, but some flicker, some pulse, gave him away. Her mean grin softened.

  “I’m kidding,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I get it.”

  The silence that followed stretched into something awkward. They both focused on Mrs. Kong’s family, watched them straighten her blanket and wipe her face with a damp cloth.

  “I don’t know anything about you,” Sam finally said. “I mean the big things, yeah, but not much else.”

  “What do you want to know?” Petty said.

  “Did you ever have any pets?”

  “My mom had a dog, but it didn’t like me, went crazy every time I got near it. After that I was always moving around too much to keep an animal.”

  “What’s your favorite food?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Don’t have one of those, either.”

  “That’s weird,” Sam said.

  “Why?” Petty said.

  “Why wouldn’t you have a favorite color?”

  “I’m not picky. It makes things easier.”

  “It makes things weird,” Sam said.

  “What’s your favorite color?” Petty said.

  “Green.”

  “And your favorite food?”

  “Cheese enchiladas.”

  They went on like that for a while, Petty asking what she liked and she answering. He’d never remember all her preferences, wasn’t even listening, really. What was important to him was that they were talking and she seemed to be enjoying herself. That was a step forward, an accomplishment, and he felt pretty good about it, like he’d pulled off something slick.

  He went back to the motel and spent the afternoon replying to queries about the condos and answering calls. When he wasn’t on the phone, he watched TV with Tinafey. She did a good job of hiding her boredom, but Petty noticed how quickly she said yes when h
e asked if she’d run out and get him something for lunch.

  “Did you like your sandwich yesterday?” she asked as she changed out of the Hard Rock T-shirt she’d taken to lounging in and into a red tank top.

  “A sandwich’ll be fine,” Petty said.

  “Or they have salads,” she said. “Like Caesar and spinach.”

  “You know what? A salad sounds better—spinach,” he said and handed her forty dollars. “Get whatever you want, too.”

  As the door closed behind her, the thought flashed in his head that she wasn’t coming back. She’d found a cockroach in the sink that morning, and the noise from the bus stop in front of the motel had kept her awake all night. He wouldn’t blame her for rethinking sticking around. Her current situation was a step up from working the street, but a pretty girl like her could do better.

  When she returned forty-five minutes later, saying the spinach salads looked nasty so she’d gotten him a Cobb instead, the intensity of his relief shocked him. He was more stuck on her than he’d thought. And while that wasn’t a bad thing, it also wasn’t entirely good, because he wasn’t at his best right now, not by a long shot, and he wanted to be at his best for her.

  He e-mailed and talked to twenty-three people over the course of the day. Five said they’d send money, and two actually e-mailed confirmation numbers: a woman from Toronto paid five hundred dollars for three nights on Napili Bay, and a man from Seattle transferred twelve hundred dollars for a week at a place in Lahaina. Petty sent them both bogus receipts. There was also another call from Miami, from the same number as before. Again Petty let it go to voice mail. Again no message.

  Toward dusk Bernard and Patricia returned from a day of sightseeing. Tinafey was sitting out on the walkway, texting. Petty heard her greet the Frenchies and ask where they’d been. He had a grinder on the phone. The dude had spent twenty minutes trying to chisel down the price of a two-bedroom unit at the Eldorado in Kaanapali. Petty had offered it to him for two hundred dollars a night, and the guy had immediately countered with nine hundred for a week. After too much back-and-forth, Petty finally said he’d let him have it for eleven hundred.