The Stakes

by Ben Sanders

  Bobby said, “How long you going to keep these guys here?”

  “I don’t know. Forever, if I have to. Probably get used to it, I guess.”

  Forever—Jesus. Bobby wouldn’t last that long.

  He had his seventy-year-old mother in lockdown in his Culver City apartment. He was sick of it already. His mom thought he was a producer for Stone Studios. She’d ridden that lie so long the truth would probably kill her. She still looked for him in the fine print on posters. She’d never found his name, but it didn’t stop her telling people about his projects, films he’d never even heard of. He’d never confess he was a debt collector turned hit man.

  Charles said, “You need a drink?” He wheeled to the island counter, a glossy slab of marble like something pillaged out of Rome. “I got a ton of whiskey, beer as well if you want.”

  The Nina radar blipped. There: a framed headshot on the counter.

  Bobby said, “No, I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I had a few already.”

  Charles wheeled over and joined him at the window. He didn’t look so good close up: gray bristles and a couple of shaving nicks that had scabbed over, bags under his eyes and a lot of dangle around his jaw, like his face was trying to drip right off the bone. He wondered what Nina saw, what she felt when she heard the wheelchair inbound. Which way she rolled over in the bed.

  Charles said, “I got something I need tidied up again. Figure you’re my man, given the Garcia thing.” He sucked a breath, and his voice went tight: “Oh shit, hang on.” He made a fist and pressed it to his chest, leaned forward slowly in his chair. “Goddamn arrhythmia.”

  His other hand grabbed the Ruger. He always went for the gun when his ticker played up. He coughed and straightened. “Shit. There we go.” He dug a pill container from his other pocket.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, it just takes off every so often. Have to ride it out a few seconds.”

  Bobby said, “Where’s Nina?”

  Charles knocked a pill back, eyes shut. He said, “That’s the issue. I’m worried it’s like the other day.”

  Not too worried, or he’d have come straight out with it. Bobby waited. The kid on the sofa stirred.

  Charles said, “The Garcia thing obviously shook her up, she wanted some time out…”

  “Sure.”

  “I sent her to the New York place, let her chill for a while. Therapeutic spending, and all that shit.”

  Bobby saw it now: Nina off on holiday, and then radio silence. It’s a repeat of last time—

  Charles said, “It’s a repeat of last time. There’s no fucking word from her.”

  He wondered if the old boy had his suspicions, whether Frank Garcia passed on the message. Nina cutting side deals, out to make a buck of her own. He didn’t seem panicked though.

  Bobby said, “Where is she exactly?”

  “The Manhattan place, in theory. But here’s the thing: I got cameras in there, but I’ve got no feed. Everything’s just coming in black.”

  Bobby wondered if the vacation was a hard sell, packing her off to New York, postabduction. The kid on the couch slurred “no, no, no” in his sleep.

  Charles hiked a thumb at him. “You know that show Hooked? About the college professor, dreams up scams?”

  Bobby shook his head.

  “Well, anyway, he wrote it. Had a breakdown last week, working on this novel, can’t get past chapter three. I said to him, well, you know, what’s the issue, you just type something. He goes: none of the characters are talking.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. He tells me all the time they don’t say anything, but then all he does is watch TV all day. I said to him, You won’t make anyone talk unless you actually sit there and try and make them say something. You know?”

  Bobby nodded. He wanted to bring things back to Nina, but he couldn’t force it. He could see lights way off down the canyon, cars on a boulevard maybe. He figured traffic was the pure essence of L.A.: everyone came here because they were trying to make it, trying to get somewhere else.

  He said, “You want me to bring her back?” As if he could take it or leave it, even with the Nina radar full volume, all his dials screaming Take the Fucking Job.

  Charles said, “I don’t know what’s gone on, whether she needs bringing back, or what.” His tone still down at blasé. Maybe it was drugs.

  He said, “It’s just one more thing I gotta worry about, you know? I’ve got this Garcia bullshit to handle, and then the buyout as well.”

  The buyout: Charles’s business partner was selling his share. Charles wanted to bring in clean money, turn the business honest. He’d started the studio with mob cash, but now lawbreaking didn’t hold the same appeal. Bobby figured Charles wanted stress-free retirement.

  The old man popped another pill. He cracked it between his molars and said, “I don’t know whether she just wants no phone for a while, or whether someone’s followed her up there. I’ll email you some stuff.” He nodded at the entry. “These guys got ears that go round corners.”

  Bobby said, “When did you last hear from her?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Bobby didn’t answer. He wanted a copy of the photo on the counter. But he knew he could tip this in his favor—

  He said, “The Garcias have a contract out on me. I can’t risk a job unless it’s going to set me up for a while.” His voice almost caught in his throat, the risk of missing out, losing another brush with Nina.

  Charles took his time, and Bobby knew he was on the cusp of telling him Too Bad.

  Four seconds.

  Five.

  Charles said, “Two-fifty. But for that, you fucking tidy up anything, on your own.”

  Bobby kept his eyes on the view, all those vast offerings out there in the dark, and he said, “Three.” Knowing he was right out on the razor’s edge now.

  Charles rolled in close, shin-strike range. “Two-eighty. And that’s my absolute ceiling. Even two-five’s extortion.”

  Bobby said, “Fine, two-eighty,” and felt his blood pressure nosedive.

  He took his phone from his pocket as he turned from the window, stepped in close by the Nina photo on the counter. She’d been touched up slightly—stunning, coaxed to flawless. He snapped a picture. The flash leapt off the marble.

  Charles saw him do it, but didn’t ask. He said, “You fly out tomorrow morning. I’ve got you booked at five A.M. out of Burbank.”

  So the old boy knew he’d do it.

  Charles said, “And it’s a hundred percent on delivery—I’m not doing anything up front on those sort of numbers.”

  Tight bastard.

  Bobby snapped another picture, HDR this time. He wanted to blow it up double size. Charles threw back another pill, and the kid on the sofa mumbled “no, no, no” as Bobby headed out.

  SIX

  NEW YORK, NY

  Miles Keller

  His room had no view—nothing to see other than the brick wall of the adjacent high-rise. There were still some windows lit, and now and then a human silhouette would pause, as if people could see him looking back.

  It was far from perfect, this Nina situation, the main problem being that it was only with her out of sight that his logic started working. She seemed to cause a block on basic observation, inhibit the safety reflex that was finally yelling: big money means big risk. For half a million dollars, he was probably facing death or prison if things went south, but he didn’t even know his obligations. How did she even do that: tell him nothing but the payoff, and still pique his interest?

  Five hundred K and Nina. Maybe that could buy anything.

  He’d walked away from bigger money on nothing more than a bad feeling, because he didn’t like the guys involved, or some minor blemish on a résumé told him the risk wasn’t worth it. His rule was to work with contacts of his own, or people Stanton vetted. By those standards, Nina was a bad idea. But every worry that arose had an image as a counterpoint—fatality was
abstract, maybe a long way up the road, whereas Nina was right-now and real: Nina walking in the room, Nina with that bounce in her hair, Nina with her head back, laughing.

  He opened his valise and took out an old business card. He’d had to surrender his badge, but there was no return policy on stationery. He stepped outside into the corridor and let the door tick gently shut behind him.

  It was empty and quiet: just the dull sound of the elevators—the building’s stomach-rumble. He walked three doors down, and stood outside Nina’s room.

  There was a soft edge of yellow light along the bottom of her door. He could go in, take up the conversation where they’d left off. See where they ended up, second time around. He raised a hand to knock, but caught himself an inch short, a sudden gut instinct saying:

  Don’t.

  His knuckles hovered at the panel.

  If he couldn’t even knock, why take this any further?

  He saw the light interrupted, a shadow and its twin, feet crossing the doorway. The light died, and he heard the faint click of the switch. She was standing there in the dark on the other side of the door. He pictured her with wet hair, maybe in a white hotel robe. Nothing wrong with that image, and not a bad starting point if he entered. She’d probably leave the light off, greet him with something wry and half-amused, maybe a question. He couldn’t hear the words, but he could hear the rhythm of it, and she’d call him Detective: Something, something, something, Detective? Playful and rhetorical.

  But he still couldn’t knock.

  He lowered his hand. Her door number showed a brass reflection, a skewed analogy of motion. He walked away quietly and pushed 1 on the elevator panel, rode down to the lobby with the same tune he’d had coming up.

  The staff hadn’t changed yet—still the same two guys he’d seen when Stanton dropped him off. The concierge was pacing in slow motion just outside the door, looking at his clasped hands like he was on the brink of some profound announcement. The deskman glanced up as Miles approached.

  “Hello, sir.”

  Miles said, “Hi. I have a couple of colleagues booked on my floor. I just need to check if it’s Nina Stone in fifteen-oh-three.”

  He knew immediately that she’d checked in as someone else. The guy didn’t recognize the name. He looked at his computer and frowned and clicked and scrolled.

  “No … we’ve got a Joan Ryder in fifteen-oh-three.”

  Miles put his business card on the desk, slid it forward with an index finger. The guy’s eyes dropped to it for a long moment and then he raised them again, knowing an instruction was coming.

  Miles said, “I need to see the ID she checked in with.”

  The guy sucked air through his teeth as he looked away. “Yeah, man, I don’t know…”

  Miles said, “What happened to ‘sir’?”

  The guy made a little shape with his mouth, trying to broach something delicate. He said, “Look…”

  Miles waited.

  The guy said, “That’s not a badge or a warrant, is it?”

  Miles said, “She told you herself, we’re colleagues. So we know each other, and you can show me what you have on file. Or, if we don’t know each other, why’d you tell her I was in the building?”

  The guy didn’t answer.

  Miles hadn’t moved yet, still standing there with his finger on the card like it needed anchorage. He said, “You called her thirty minutes ago, told her I’d showed up. Which is fine if we know each other. Serious breach of my privacy if we don’t. I’m sure management would agree.”

  The guy looked out at the concierge, still pacing. He said, “Look, I gotta get approval.”

  Miles shook his head. “No you don’t. You didn’t need approval to tell her I was in the building, you don’t need approval to show me her ID.”

  The guy wasn’t sold on it, but Miles could tell he was almost there. He said, “It’s easy. Either I make a complaint that includes your name, or we can tidy this up right now and go our separate, happy ways.”

  A minute later he was in the elevator, a folded sheet of paper in his hand. Back in his room, he sat down in the armchair—Nina’s armchair—her perfume in the air, her water carton on the floor beside him, still covered in a light sweat. His printout from the desk showed the New York State driver’s license and Visa she’d checked in with, both in the name Joan Ryder. It was definitely her face in the photo, and the date of birth was about right. The license was seven years old, only ten months from expiry. He wondered if it was fake, or if she had more of a story.

  He picked up the bedside phone and dialed his NYPD partner, Pam Blake. He figured she’d still be up. Either she worked overtime, or she worked on her retirement scheme, a script for a TV show about a one-legged ex-cop she’d told Miles was destined for HBO.

  She said, “Shit, you’re still in that hotel.” Seeing the caller ID.

  He pulled the console across to his lap. “How did you know it’s me, and not someone else, happens to be staying here? Call up hoping for a soothing voice, get greeted with obscenities.”

  “Yeah, well. They call me up at one A.M., they deserve it.”

  Miles said, “Thought you’d be burning the candle at both ends.”

  “Yeah, I was. Just got home.”

  “From what?”

  “From surveillance you could’ve helped me with if you’d stayed in FID’s good books, stopped shooting people.”

  Oh God. He didn’t want to run through this.

  She said, “Where’ve you been, man? Why you living in hotels?”

  He gave himself a moment, looking for the way through. He said, “Because I’m facing difficult circumstances.”

  Quiet on the line, and he knew he was stuck in the weeds now. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  She said, “Can you just tell me one thing?”

  “Depends on the thing.”

  “I keep hearing shit…”At least she was struggling to say it. “Like, that your shooting wasn’t clean—”

  “Oh Christ. Who’s saying that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve just heard it. Look, I just…”

  He waited.

  “I heard they pulled bits of paper out of the guy’s wound, but they couldn’t tell where it had come from. Like he had paper in his pocket or something…”

  He was still pinching the bridge of his nose, and he closed his eyes, too.

  She said, “Look, however it went down, I don’t care, I honestly don’t give a shit. But you can tell me about it. People say you were waiting for him…”

  Miles sighed, looked at the window and then looked around his bare hotel room. He said, “I got a call, totally out of the blue, this old CI I used to run, woman named Lucy Gates. Had her for a while when I was with the narcs, down at Brooklyn South…”

  Even with all he’d been through with Force Investigation, writing up the report in the most cautious language, he still wasn’t sure how to put it to her. He decided to go with the moral summary, give her the right spin on everything.

  He said, “Way I see it, it’s kind of like splitting hairs, whether I lay in wait or I didn’t. This guy, he flew all the way from L.A. to kill her. That’s a six-hour flight, plus a solid drive for him to actually think it through. You know: whether shooting someone’s a good idea. But he didn’t. So why does it matter who was there first: me or him?”

  Pam didn’t answer.

  Miles said, “Anyway, that’s me. How’s things with you?”

  He normally steered clear of that question. She had a husband with debts and bowel cancer. Miles had given her ten grand toward one or the other. She thought it was honest profit, but he’d taken the money from a crime scene in Astoria, and then swapped it for chips at Caesars in Atlantic City. He spent a couple hours at the slot machines to give the right impression, and then banked the remaining ninety-eight hundred dollars as clean gambling profit.

  He heard a light click on at her end. She said, “I’m doing okay.” Drawing it out slow, reluctant
to come away from his story. “Gonna call the show Moonlight. ’Cause of the whole nighttime thing, but also the guy’s working unofficially, you know? Like, moonlighting.”

  “Nice.” He held his printout by the fold and waved it up and down, bird wings in slow-mo.

  She said, “Main dude’s a real lazy-ass, doesn’t give a fuck, but now he’s finding because of the amputation, can’t be a cop anymore, he’s actually got his passion back, being real diligent. Kinda cool.”

  “Yeah, nice.”

  She said, “So what do you want?”

  He held his paper still, looked at the Visa and DL copies. He wanted her to run the details, check out this Joan Ryder moniker. But he couldn’t pull her into it. What if they had something on file—Joan Ryder, wanted for grand theft? He’d have to admit how he came by the name, and then say good-bye to half a million bucks and a sweet retirement. He shouldn’t have picked up the phone. It was a common theme with Nina business: you do the thing, and then wish you hadn’t, wish you’d thought about it more.

  He said, “Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  She coughed soggily and said, “And you like the sound of my voice, right?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “What do you want, Keller?”

  “I told you what I want.”

  “What’s on the piece of paper you’re holding?”

  Idiot. She’d heard the flapping.

  Miles said, “Nothing. It’s hotel stationery.”

  “Your voice sounds different when you lie.”

  “I didn’t want to admit to my paper-dart hobby.”

  She said, “Makes you seem more suspicious, you don’t even tell me what you want.”

  Miles figured that was still no reason for total honesty. He said, “I’ll see you, Pam.”

  SEVEN

  Bobby Deen

  LOS ANGELES, CA

  Here was his problem. He got swept up in The Life before he could assess the cost of it.

  The Life:

  Charles described it as the B-list. You hang out with bagmen, bent cops, blackmailers, B-and-E artists, bone breakers, numerous bastards. He said Bobby would be the perfect fit.