by Blake Banner
She was watching me. The dim light from the dash touched the planes of her face, making her look beautiful but ghostly. She said simply, “No…”
“I am not a good man, but I am not a monster and I do not traffic in drugs or human beings. I can’t explain to you why I am here tonight. It’s too complicated. But I can tell you that I am not here to hurt you, and if you trust me, I will help you.”
The only answer she could give was to swallow and keep watching me. I reached in my jacket and pulled out the manila envelope with the money in it. I handed it to her.
“Take it. I don’t need it and I don’t want it.”
She hesitated a moment, then took the money.
“Why? What do you want from me?”
Up ahead I could see the glow of Three Points. I tried to think of a way I could explain it so she would understand. I couldn’t.
“Nothing,” I said, “I don’t want anything from you. All I want is for you to make a couple of smart decisions tonight.”
“What kind of decisions?”
“Have you got family back home?”
“My mother and my brother.”
“I am going to give you an address near Boston. It’s my house. I want you to go there. I’ll phone ahead. There will be people there to take care of you and sort out your papers. If you want to go back home, you can. If you want to stay, I’ll give you a job.”
She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Why? Nobody does this for nothing…”
I felt suddenly defeated. “Maybe for that very reason, Carmencita. Because nobody ever does anything for nothing. Maybe it’s time we did.”
After a moment, I phoned Kenny. I put it on speaker and set it on the jack, so she could hear our conversation. It rang a few times, then Kenny spoke, sounding sleepy.
“Mr. Walker, sir…”
“Kenny, I’m sorry to wake you up. It’s a bit of an emergency. Everything OK back home?”
“Everything is fine, sir. What can I do for you?”
“I have a friend here who needs some help. Her name is Carmen, or Carmencita. I’m putting her on the next flight to Boston. I’d like you to meet her at the airport. We’ll put her up for a few days till she decides what she wants to do. Make her feel at home. She’s had a bad time.”
“Of course, sir. Just send me the details when you have the ticket.”
“Thanks, Kenny. Good night.”
We didn’t talk again until we got to the airport. It was cavernous and hollow and lonely at that time of night. We walked with echoing steps to the American Airlines desk and I got her a ticket. Her flight was at five-fifty in the morning, which gave her about five hours to sleep.
I walked her to the departure gates. There she stopped and squinted at me, like I was some kind of equation that didn’t work out. She shrugged and shook her head in that way Latinas do.
“What are you, some kind of weird religious freak?”
“No. And you can walk away any time you like. Keep the money. I’m just a guy who is sick of all the ugliness, and I figure if I want the world to be a better place, then maybe I have to start with me. I’m not out to help people. You just happened to cross my path. It was your lucky day. Don’t pay me back. Like the movie, pay it forward.”
She nodded a few times, like she was trying to believe me but having trouble. Finally she turned, without saying anything, and walked away into the departure lounge.
I went back across the big hall, listening to the echoes of my feet. Every damn step you take in life has an infinite number of echoes, I told myself. And they all sound empty and cold and hollow.
Outside, under the icy Arizona stars, I sat on the hood of my rental car and lit up a Pueblo with my battered old Zippo. I breathed the smoke down deep, put Carmencita out of my mind and thought about what I was going to do next.
Next, I was going to cause mayhem and murder.
The moon was high enough to throw a shroud of turquoise light over the world. And the streets were quiet enough to be able to hear all the sounds of the desert, the cries and the howls and the baying of the predators. The victims in nature are mostly silent. It’s only human victims that make a noise.
I let myself in the house and closed the door silently behind me. It was still and dark. I climbed the stairs and stopped on the landing. The door to my room was closed. Hers was open a couple of inches. I hesitated. I knew what I should do. I should go into my room. I should not get any closer to her. I should not let her get any closer to me. But I am not perfect. If there is one thing I am not, it’s perfect. And a person gets tired of being alone. I stepped into her room and closed the door. I heard her voice, sleepy and warm.
“Lacklan, honey? Is that you?”
I smiled. What the hell. Life is too short to turn away the good stuff.
Nine
When I got up from her bed and went out to run, it was still dark. The moon was setting in the east, but the predators had gone silent. I ran hard. The icy air tore at my throat and my breath and my feet sounded loud in the darkness. I ran for half an hour, then trained hard, feeling my muscles strain, enjoying the pain and the adrenaline, trying to silence my mind.
I had a choice, and I did not want to think about it. I kicked and punched the air, controlling my breathing, focusing my mind on each death blow, remembering the feeling of breaking bones, of cracking ribs, of all the people I had maimed and killed over the years.
I had got in too deep. That was the way I had lived my whole life: in too deep.
But I had come here for Marni, to find out what she was doing, to protect her, as my father had asked me to do. Now, instead, I was driving myself deeper into a potentially lethal situation that did not concern me, that had nothing to do with me.
I kept asking myself what the hell I was playing at, and the only answer I could get was the image of Red’s face, sneering at me and at Cissy, and Arana’s face, sneering at me and at Carmencita. And the urge to destroy them was too strong. It was overwhelming. It was not a desire, it was a compulsion. It was a need.
Blindly, I delivered six punches in less than a second, and bellowed a kiai that echoed among the hills.
As it died away, I realized that the sun was rising. I had been training for an hour. I returned to Cissy’s house at a slow, loose run, allowing the blood to flow through my muscles and ease the tension. As I ran, I told myself it was time to talk to Marni; time to cut the crap and stop playing games. Either she dealt me in or I was out. She did not get to play me any longer.
When I let myself in, Cissy was in the kitchen making breakfast. She came to the door to give me a kiss. Her cheerfulness was strained.
“Five minutes, big boy.”
I went up to shower.
When I got down, she’d made a breakfast that was big enough for a main meal. Bacon, fried bananas, waffles, maple syrup. It was fine because I was hungry, but I knew it meant something. She laughed when she saw my face.
“I figured you burned so much energy last night and this morning…”
I smiled, sat and started eating. She sat opposite. I eyed her a moment and swallowed.
“It’s Friday.”
She became serious. “I know.”
“You’re wondering what’s going to happen. What I’m going to do.”
She nodded. “It’s fine. I know I started it. I came to your room. You was a perfect gentleman…”
“I’m not going to let him hurt you again.”
She tried to read my face, what that meant. “How…?”
“My life is a mess, Cissy. You don’t want to be involved with me. I’m a killer. That’s what I do. I’d like to be a better person, but it’s too late for that. I can’t change what I am or what I’ve become.”
She gave a small frown.
“A killer…?”
I smiled. “I’m not a hit man, Cissy. It’s complicated. Too complicated to explain, and in any case it’s best you don’t know. But I can’t give you the kind of life that you d
eserve…” I paused, hesitated, unsure whether to say it, whether it was honest. “…Even though I would like to. But I can promise you one thing. Red is never going to hurt you again. Not tomorrow, not ever.”
She swallowed. “Are you going to hurt him? Are you going to kill him…?”
I held her eye for a long moment. “Are you sure you want to know?”
She shook her head. “No.”
I climbed the stairs to my room and switched on the laptop. There was an audio file from the night before. I opened it.
At first it was hard to make out the voices. It was Marni and a man. I figured they were over by the door, away from the table. I heard the door close and the quality improved. Marni said, “You want a drink?”
A man’s voice, it sounded like Engels: “Yeah, what have you got?”
“Not much, beer.”
He laughed. “OK, I’ll have a beer.”
The sound of the fridge opening and closing. Some indistinct movement. Then Engels, “Cheers. You got a glass…?”
A snort from Marni, then silence while she went for a glass. I sighed, feeling strangely anxious and angry without knowing why. Then Marni’s voice said, “So, any news?”
“Yeah, I told you I have some contacts in Washington. I spoke to them and heard back yesterday. There is a senator. I can’t tell you his name yet, but he is willing to talk to us.”
“What do we know about him?”
“He’s one of the good guys. He has a long track record of fighting in the environmental corner, even at the expense of his own financial benefit. He has lobbied on behalf of conservation and environmental protection against large corporations and the petrochemical industry. He is squeaky clean.”
“What’s his background? Where does his money come from?” I nodded. That was the right question to be asking.
“I’m coming to that. For the last five years, he has been campaigning quietly, behind the scenes, to get Congress to look at the issue of overpopulation and climate change as the biggest threats facing humanity in this century. He is our man.”
There was silence for a couple of beats. Then she asked again, “Where does his money come from?”
Engels’ voice again, a little strained. “It’s old money. His family came over from Wiltshire, in England, in the seventeenth century, escaping from Cromwell. They brought their fortune with them.”
She was quiet for a long time, then asked, “You trust him?”
“I do, yeah.”
“What’s his idea?”
A loud sigh from Engels. “He has the connections in Congress and in the media. He knows who we can trust and who we can’t. You know as well as I do that the media is controlled by four or five major interests, what we don’t know is which of those interests is in bed with this Omega organization. It may be all of them for all we know. He will be able to guide us. We need him as an ally.”
All the hair on the back of my neck bristled. I could smell a trap and even though the conversation had happened almost twelve hours earlier, my mind was screaming at Marni not to trust him. Why the hell had she cut me out?
She was saying, “When does he want to meet?”
“Tomorrow evening.”
I was on my feet, swearing violently, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I grabbed the pants I’d been wearing the night before, searching through the pockets, grabbed my jacket from the back of the door, found the tracker and stared at the screen. There had been no movement. She was still in the house. I ran, grabbing my Sig and jamming it in my waistband, taking the stairs three at a time.
I vaguely heard Cissy’s voice calling after me as I wrenched open the car door. The tires squealed as I pulled away. I cursed myself for not bringing the Zombie as I screeched onto Camino de La Tierra, speeding north toward Valencia Road. I cursed myself for going against my instincts and trying to play smart, give her space. I double-cursed myself for not confronting her head-on.
The lights were red at Valencia, so I hit the gas, accelerated over the sidewalk and cut the corner across a patch of dirt. Horns blared at me but I didn’t give a damn and floored the pedal west for twelve miles, to Kolb Road, cursing myself every inch of the way for a damned fool, pounding the wheel with my fist. What the hell had got into me? What the hell had possessed me to get involved in Cissy’s damn fool relationship with Red? Pissing around like some damn jackass with Arana and Carmencita, while Marni was slipping through my fingers!
Sergeant Bradley’s ugly face loomed large in my mind, “It’s a bloody dereliction of duty!”
I threw the car left onto Kolb, corrected some violent under steer and hit sixty going north for three miles. Then I screamed right onto Stella and left onto Cordova, and skidded to a stop, blocking her drive on Brooks. Her gray Ford Focus was still there. I scrambled from the car and ran to the door, still swearing at myself. I should have been here last night. I should have been sitting on the house. More than that, I should have been a part of the damned conversation!
Why had she cut me out? Why? Why? Why?
I hammered on the door and rang the bell. There was no reply, no sound. I reached in my pocket and pulled out my lock picks. In fifteen seconds, I was in.
“Marni! It’s me, Lacklan!”
The silence was an empty silence. I knew as I stood by the door that she was gone. I ran up the stairs and wrenched open the wardrobe. Her rucksack and her boots were still there. Obviously she had gone with Engels in his car.
“Fuck!”
I went to the bedside table. The fake ID was gone. I kept hearing Sergeant Bradley’s voice, his raw Kiwi rasp, “Fuckin’ dereliction of duty!”
Duty. Loyalty. Fidelity.
A rage that was less than human welled up in my gut, a rage against myself, but a rage also against the whole damned human race. And a rage against Marni, the one, the only person I had ever trusted.
Duty is born of loyalty. And loyalty is a two-way damned street. I went down to the kitchen and found the keys to her car in the fruit bowl. I also found a spare set of house keys in a kitchen drawer. I put them in my pocket, then I went outside, opened the hood of the Focus and removed the sparkplug wires.
After that, I locked up the house and drove at a more sedate pace to the School of Natural Resources. Five minutes on the university website told me where Engels had his office, and I walked there feeling kind of sick.
His secretary managed to combine friendliness, impatience and surprise all into a single smile as I stepped in to her domain. She didn’t say anything, like she was waiting to find out if she actually needed to talk to me. Maybe she didn’t talk to anyone below a PhD. I tried to smile like a PhD and said, “I’d like to talk to Professor Engels. Is he in?”
I knew he wasn’t, but I was hoping she’d tell me where he was. She didn’t.
“Have you an appointment?”
“No, but it’s kind of urgent.” I repeated the question, “Is he in?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s out of town for a couple of days.”
“A couple of days?” I felt a hot twist in my gut. “Can you tell me where he’s gone?”
She smiled like I was sweet but kind of sad. “I’m afraid not.”
“As I said, it is urgent. Is there any way I can contact him?”
“I am sure it is, but I am just not in a position to hand out his contact details to anyone who turns up claiming to have an urgent need…” The smile she gave me was not warm. “I can try and get a message to him, if you’d like.”
She raised an eyebrow, like she already knew I was going to say no.
I smiled back at her with dead eyes. “Thanks, I don’t need you to talk to him. I need to talk to him. You understand the difference?”
“I can’t help you…”
But I was already on my way down the stairs as she answered. I was wasting her time, and she was wasting mine.
I wasted a few more minutes sitting in the car, smoking and swearing at myself. I had let her slip through my fingers in the most negli
gent, amateur way. But self-recrimination would not fix anything. I had left myself just one option. I had to wait for her to get back. But when she did, I would not let her get away again.
I would be there, at her house, waiting for her.
Ten
I drove back to the bed and breakfast telling myself I had to get back on track. I had to disengage from Cissy, Red and Arana. I had made a mistake in getting involved, now I had to cut my losses and get out. I had thought I could bring down Arana and Red’s operations as a sideline while watching Marni with one eye. It was my stupid arrogance I believed I could do anything—with a gun and a knife and a pack of C4, I was invincible. I had been arrogant and rash, and wasn’t that exactly what my father had always complained about in me? Wasn’t that exactly what he had tried to tell me in Colorado, at Rho’s ranch, before Marni shot him?
Now I had to make it right. I’d move out of Cissy’s and into Marni’s house, and wait for her there. I felt a bitter twist in my gut. It was the best thing for Cissy anyway. The last thing she needed in her life after Red was me.
Red.
I pulled up outside her house and let myself in with the key she’d given me. I knew straight away that things were not going to work out as I had planned. She was sitting at the table sobbing into her hands with the phone beside her. She looked up as I came in. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and the makeup she’d used to hide her bruises was streaked down her face.
“What happened?”
“He’s coming.”
“Now?”
She shook her head. “Tonight. After the club. He said he wanted…” She bit her lip and the tears started flowing again. “He wanted a special party.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, but I knew what it meant. She just closed her eyes and her cheeks shone wet, streaked with makeup. And here I was again, with my arrogance, starting wars and leaving the innocent, broken and weeping, to pick up the pieces of their lives. I had marched into her house, taken on her boyfriend because I didn’t like him, taken on Arana because it would be good to bring down the whole damn set-up in one flaming, bleeding mass; play judge, jury, and above all, executioner. But when it no longer suited my plans, I walked away, leaving Cissy defenseless and broken. Just like I was ready to walk away from Marni. Just like I walked away from my home when I was nineteen, to join the British SAS, to go and make war.
