Premonitions (2 page)

She leaned down over his huddled form and whispered something. Whatever it was, the man huddled into a ball and whimpered.

Karyn was already moving to take Anna’s place at the
table. She and Tommy crossed the threshold, and then the cry went up from inside, inarticulate shouting echoing down the stairs and through the gallery.

Anna closed the door, and Tommy and Karyn carried the table across the lawn, as quickly as they were able, to where Nail was waiting in the van.

Anna eased into a
slick leather booth with a clear view of the door, slid a rolled-up paper bag under the table, and tried not to make eye contact with the waiter. No luck. He came over, frowned at the way she was dressed, and pretty much demanded she order something just by the way he was standing. She sent him running for a twelve-dollar beer, the cheapest thing on the menu. This place was a lot more upscale than the kind of shithole she liked to hang out at on her own time, but most of her clients didn’t want to be seen walking into
that
kind of establishment, and Clive Durante was no exception.

She was fifteen minutes early, as usual. Clive was a good client, reliable and unlikely to pull any bullshit, but that wasn’t a reason to get sloppy. She pushed into the corner, put a foot up on the bench, and scoped out the room. Not too crowded at this late hour, but busy enough that a low murmur of talk and faint, repetitive techno piped through overhead speakers made it hard to eavesdrop, if you kept your voice low. Lots of white and silver tablecloths, standing out against a backdrop of black tables and black leather cushions. She’d already managed to put a dusty gray footprint on one of the latter, but that didn’t matter. They wouldn’t throw her out for that. Wouldn’t want to make a scene.

She drank her beer and fought down a nagging unease about the swag. It had taken a hell of a lot more than ten or fifteen minutes for Tommy to kill the alarm
on the object, and they’d ended up having to take the whole mess—table and all—back to Tommy’s creepy basement workshop. When it was done, Tommy’d run a shaking hand over the field of stubble on his head. Then he’d crossed his arms, wiry and tattooed in the white tank top undershirt he always wore, and shrugged. The actual object didn’t have any more mystical powers than his gym socks, Tommy had said, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t valuable. Maybe that was why it had been all magicked up. He hadn’t said it with much conviction, though.

It wouldn’t be the first time Clive had put in an order for something that didn’t live up to its billing, and he hadn’t minded in the past, but Anna worried anyway. He’d been real good to Karyn’s crew over the last few years, and Anna would hate to burn him, or the relationship. He wasn’t the kind of connection you could replace overnight.

At nine p.m. on the dot, the restaurant door swung open. Anna got one good look at the man who walked in, and she swore under her breath. The guy’s name was Gresser, so naturally everybody called him Greaser, at least when he wasn’t around. He had a face that looked like it had been pushed in by an enormous fist, a two- thousand-dollar suit, and an attitude that could make a hyena run off to look for better company. Rooms cleared when he walked in, because anybody who recognized him suddenly remembered somewhere they had to be. People on his bad side got out to avoid getting damaged, and people on his good side made themselves scarce so that he wouldn’t be tempted to ask them any favors. It was an open question whether it was better to be in his good graces than not.

Curiously, Anna had never heard a story about Greaser so much as laying a finger on anyone. He didn’t have to. When you were Enoch Sobell’s strong right arm, fate went out of its way to smite your enemies for you.

She’d seen him once across a crowded room, just as that room started to become miraculously uncrowded.
She’d been smart enough to go with the flow and ease out the nearest exit at the time, but that wasn’t an option this time, not unless she wanted to spend the next few days trying to track down Clive Durante and do some heavy-duty explaining. She pushed against the wall and sank down in her seat, looking away from the door.

In her peripheral vision, the big man’s shape just got bigger. Silence, surrounding him like a cloud, approached—and then he sat on the bench across the table from her. She looked up, meeting a pair of small, piercing eyes.

“Anna Ruiz,” Greaser said. His voice was soft, and Anna found herself sitting up and leaning forward to make sure she heard everything. “Expecting someone?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You ain’t him.”

“You run with Karyn Ames’s crew.”

“Vice President of Business Development,” she said, trotting out the same joke she always used. It seemed a lot more tired today than usual.

“That’s good,” Greaser said. “Clever. You know who I am.”

It didn’t sound like a question, but Anna nodded just to be on the safe side. She wished the guy would break eye contact for a second. Blink, even.

“You know who I work for.”

Another nod, this one more emphatic.
Let’s make sure there’s no misunderstandings here,
Anna thought. She was surprised to note a thread of excitement in her anxiety. He was looking for her, specifically. Everybody said Greaser was bad news, but if the crew got in with him, this meeting could open a lot of doors.

Could also fuck us nine ways to Sunday if we screw it up,
she reminded herself. She glanced toward the door. Was Durante coming or what?

“Good. Then you know not to jerk me around.”

“Sure.”

“Your crew’s got a good reputation. Discreet, thorough, and never caught with your pants down. Is it true Ames is psychic?”

Anna kept her gaze steady. “We don’t talk about that.”

Greaser’s piglike eyes widened fractionally. His grin followed a second later. It didn’t improve his looks any. “Good. I like that.” He paused. “You have something for me?”

Anna’s heart sped up a notch. “For you? No.”

“Mr. Durante is no longer a buyer. Seems he lost interest.”

Anna ran the options. Could be a bluff, in which case she should hold out for Durante’s arrival. But Greaser knew the client’s name, knew where he was supposed to be. Most likely, then, Durante had been run off. That wasn’t gonna be good for future business. Anna steeled herself. “Price hasn’t changed.”

Greaser reached into his jacket and pulled out a manila envelope, the motion quick enough that Anna didn’t have to spend more than half a second wondering if he was going to take out a gun and shoot her right there. “Fifty thousand,” he said, and he tossed the envelope on the table. “Now, the object? Unless you want to sit here and count the cash first.”

Durante she trusted not to fuck her over, but not this guy. Still, she didn’t want to count fifty thousand dollars in the middle of a restaurant, in full view of the handful of people left in the room. She reached under the table, produced the bag, and plopped it down in front of her. Greaser unrolled the top and looked inside.

“Charming,” he said. He slid the bag out of the way, close to the wall, and produced another envelope. It was large, fat with papers. “Here’s the job,” he said, pushing it across the table.

“Job?”

“Yeah. Did you think I was here for the conversation?”

“What if we don’t want it?”

The big guy shrugged. “Don’t take it. You guys are good, but for two million dollars, I can get ‘good’ lined up all the way down the block.”

Anna’s mouth fell open. She knew she looked like a complete amateur, but she couldn’t help it.

“I’ll be in touch,” Greaser said, and he got up to leave. Anna was still speechless as he took the paper bag and walked away. He didn’t even look back, just opened the door and walked out.

As the door swung slowly shut behind him, she saw him dump the paper bag in the trash.

When Anna came out of her room,
satchel in hand, Nail felt his face shape itself into a grin.
Payday,
he thought, and not a single day too soon. Hard not to feel good about that.

“There you go,” Anna said, dropping the satchel on the table. “That’s what you get for all that clean living.”

He couldn’t miss the anticipation in the air, but nobody moved.

The satchel sat in the middle of the cheap card table that was practically the only furniture in the living room of the cheap apartment Karyn and Anna shared. The place was a testament to just how little
stuff
a couple of people could live with. There was the table, a handful of folding chairs, and, lonely in the corner, a black leather beanbag chair. The door to Anna’s room on the left, Karyn’s on the right, and only the stained gray carpet in the middle. The two women had lived like this as long as Nail had known them, going on eight years now. Karyn said it was so there was less stuff to pack if they had to leave in a hurry, and he supposed that was part of the story. She didn’t like to go into a lot of detail about her gift, but he’d seen it in action enough times to understand some of the basics. She saw things, usually things that were gonna happen in some way, and it wasn’t hard to see why she might want to keep things around her simple. Less confusing that way. Less worry about what’s real or not.

Around the table, everyone stood behind one of the folding chairs. This was part of it, a piece of the odd ritual that had developed over years of working together. Anna was at the place to Nail’s right, one hand on the back of her chair, thin as a bundle of sticks but one of the toughest people he’d ever met. Black hair fell in lazy waves just past her chin, and her dark eyes darted around the room, scanning everything, never stopping, not even here where he’d have thought she was as safe as anywhere. To Nail’s left stood Tommy, restless as always, nearly bouncing as he shifted his weight back and forth. He was like a scrappy little dog who’d never figured out that he wasn’t as big as the other dogs, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Nail had given him a raftload of shit a couple of years back when he’d taken to shaving his head, just like Nail himself, probably because he thought it would make him look tough. The result wasn’t pretty. Nail took that shit seriously—there was not a trace of stubble on the dark skin of his scalp—but Tommy half-assed it, so that his pink head was covered in very short, patchy growth, like a lawn mowed by a careless drunk. Tommy took all Nail’s ribbing in stride, and he never did let his hair grow back out. Every week he at least ran some clippers over his skull.

Across from Nail, Karyn studied the satchel, arms crossed in front of her. It had been only the last year or so Nail had noticed the faint lines at the corners of her eyes, the filaments of gray in the brown bundle of her tied-back hair. Nothing surprising about that—none of them were twenty years old anymore, and he himself had dots of white stubble cropping up on his chin on the rare occasions he let that go more than a day—but lately it was more than just getting a little older. Her eyes seemed like they peered out from dark hollows, and she was jumpier than she used to be. Every time he really let it register, it made him uneasy. She was the rock, the pillar that held this whole thing up, and he wondered about the strain she was under.

All eyes were on Karyn, waiting. This part was as immutable as Thanksgiving dinner now. Anna always made
the drop—sometimes alone, sometimes not, depending on the client—and always brought back the cash, but Karyn gave the word.

“Everything go OK?” Karyn asked.

“We got paid, if that’s what you mean. Not by Durante, though.”

“By who?”

“Joe Gresser.”

Karyn frowned. Nail vaguely recognized the name, but couldn’t quite remember from where.

“What did he want?” Karyn asked.

“We can talk about that later. Just . . . you know. I don’t trust the guy, so you might wanna look at this one extra hard.”

Karyn studied the satchel for another moment. Nail was never sure what she was looking for at this point. The job was done and the money was here, so if they were going to get fucked somehow, that fucking would already be in motion. What would the money tell her?

She opened the bag and poured out the contents. Five thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills, rubber-banded together, fell out. No scorpions, snakes, demons, or razor blades fell out with them, at least not that Nail could see. Karyn’s face was impossible to read as she stared at the pile.

“All right,” she said. Everyone in the room let out a slight breath. Nail smiled broadly.

“Everybody got their accountant hat on?” Karyn pulled out a chair and sat, and the others followed, crowding around the table. She divided the money up into four roughly equal stacks and handed them out. A few moments later, the counting was over. Nail had a hundred too much, Anna was a hundred short, so they straightened that out. “All right. Pass ’em to the left.” An unnecessary part of the ritual these days, Nail thought, even though it had been his suggestion way back when. He took his stack from Anna and pocketed it without counting. Only Tommy ever bothered to go through the motions of double-checking anymore, and that only because he liked counting up his riches so much.

“Celebration time,” Tommy said, grinning. “Who’s got the cards?”

* * *

“I’m done. I’m done! Hell with you guys,” Tommy said, throwing his cards down.

The game had been going for hours, and thousands of dollars had moved across the table one way, then another. It was hard to tell who was up how much, but Nail didn’t need to see the dwindling stack of bills in front of Tommy to know
his
luck had been for shit all night—he’d seen it in operation, one lousy hand after another. “I keep this up, I’ll be out my whole share,” he said.

“You didn’t do shit anyway,” Anna shot back.

“Fuck that noise. You guys would be lost without my mad occult skills.”

Laughter all around, but Tommy had kicked off the wind-down, and the others started taking their cash off the table. The last shots were tossed back, the last dregs of beer drained. Even Anna, usually the last woman standing at these postscore parties, rubbed her eyes and yawned. Nail thought she had the right idea. He was worn down, too, and because he’d needed to be mindful of his cash, the game hadn’t been as much fun as usual. It would be good to get home.

“You see,” Tommy said, “this is why you don’t play poker with a—”

“Shut up, Tommy,” Anna said.

Karyn opened her mouth to laugh, then froze. It was just a moment, the pause between one movement of the second hand and the next, but Nail didn’t miss it. Neither did Anna, who turned in the direction Karyn had been looking.

Karyn’s expression had gone wary, already recovered from a brief moment of shock, but the pleasant buzz Nail had on vanished, and he found himself standing, pistol in hand.

“You OK?” he asked.

Karyn swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah. Just—hey, can you have a look outside? See if you see anything weird?”

He went to the window, peeked through the blinds.
Then he turned the dead bolt, slipped off the chain, and cracked open the door. The sounds of traffic filtered into the room, along with the shouting of the couple in 221—still at it, even at three in the morning. The stairwell was empty. Nail walked to the balcony, saw nothing unusual below, and walked back.

“Looks clear,” he said.

“It’s late,” Karyn said, shaking her head. “I must be overtired.”

“You sure?” Nail asked.

“Yeah. You guys be careful going home, though. If you see anything weird—well, just be careful.”

Nail gave her a long questioning look, but finally he put his gun back in the waistband of his cargo pants. He trusted her to know her business better than he did.

“All right. Catch you later.”

“Hey, wait up,” Tommy said. He grabbed his backpack of questionable implements and followed Nail out.

The noise of an ambulance siren swelled, screamed by, and diminished—probably one of fifteen tonight, Nail figured, but now
he
was jumpy. He descended the stairs slowly, checking left and right as he did. There was nobody out here. A sloppy-looking party had spilled out of one of the units across the courtyard, but it mostly looked like a handful of really smashed couples slow dancing, bizarrely enough, to Metallica.
Really
smashed.

Probably just a false alarm.
It had certainly happened before.

“Hey, uh, that was a pretty good game in there, huh?” Tommy said.

“It was all right.”

Tommy scratched nervously at the side of his neck. Blue-white light from the outdoor floodlights lit up the left side of his face, but the shadow of the building slashed across, leaving the other half nearly invisible. “Yeah, well, I was wondering—I kinda went a little nuts in there, you know, and I could really use a few hundred bucks. Just for a week or so. You know?”

Nail didn’t have to do any counting—he knew exactly how much cash he had in his wallet. He put a heavy hand
on Tommy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, man. This ain’t a good time.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah. If we hadn’t got paid today . . .”

“He’d be fucked. Again.”

The whining edge in Tommy’s voice was a little too far, especially talking about Nail’s family. “Careful.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool.”
And, yeah. “Again” is right.
“But I show up a few hundred short, somebody gonna get hurt. Maybe DeWayne, maybe a lot of other people.” More likely, his fool brother DeWayne
and
a lot of other people. “I still don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do about next month.”

“Shit.”

“How bad you off?”

Tommy put his hands in his pockets. “It’s not that bad, I guess. I’ll get by.”

“You and me both.”

* * *

Once the two men had made their exit, Karyn’s nerves toned down their jangling some, if not all the way. Nothing had happened, nothing had gone wrong. For a moment, she had seen a flash of—something. Blood, she thought, spattered all over Tommy’s face. Then it was gone so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it. Even the memory of the vision was already beginning to fade.
Probably just a false alarm.
That happened sometimes, particularly when her stash was low and the images started crowding around, possibilities overlapping with certainties overlapping with reality in a jumbled, confusing mess.

Anna sat in the chair to Karyn’s left and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Her hair hung in her eyes as she looked up at Karyn. “What was that about?”

“Thought I saw something.”

“And?”

“It went away.”

“Mm-hmm.” Anna’s mouth tightened. “And how’s your stash holding up?”

“Let’s just say it’s a good thing we got paid today.”

Anna straightened, crossing her arms like an irate mother. “You’re out.”

“See, this is the problem. You’ve known me way too long.”

“Oh,
that’s
the problem.”

Karyn managed a slight smile. “It
is
time to see Adelaide,” she admitted.

“Great,” Anna said, baring her teeth and doing a lousy job of hiding her lack of enthusiasm. “When?”

Karyn gave a half-embarrassed shrug. “Tonight would be good.”

“I’ll get my keys.”

“Not yet. First, give me the lowdown. What was the deal with the drop? With Joe Gresser? What happened?”

Anna pulled out one of the chairs, reversed it, and sat with her arms draped over the back. Karyn leaned back against the wall, swigging from a bottle of Old Milwaukee, and listened while Anna related the story.

“Two million dollars,” Karyn said, once Anna had finished. “That’s a lot of scratch.”

“Yep.” Anna looked in her eyes, briefly searching for something on Karyn’s face, then back down at the floor. She was nervous about the offer, Karyn could tell, or maybe about the job itself. That was enough to give Karyn pause by itself. Anna wasn’t nervous about much.

“Got any details?”

The worn jean jacket Anna had been wearing since forever was hung over the back of her chair. Anna reached into the inside pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. She held the envelope out to Karyn. “I haven’t looked yet.”

Karyn took the envelope but didn’t open it, instead watching Anna’s face. It had gone still, frozen and expressionless—her robot face, Karyn called it, and she’d learned that nothing else was as reliable an indicator of Anna’s anxiety as that locked-down nonexpression. Some people smoked, tapped their fingers, or, like Karyn herself, chewed their nails. Anna shut down all nonverbal cues whatsoever, a tic that Karyn had only slowly learned to
identify as a nonverbal cue of its own. “You haven’t even looked yet, and you’re this worried about it?”

“I ain’t worried.”

“Uh-huh. You know something I don’t?”

“Ha.” Anna reached for her own bottle of beer. It was empty, as far as Karyn could tell, but Anna rolled it between her palms and eyeballed it like she was ready to drain the dregs. “You ain’t the only one with the occasional bad feeling, that’s all. It’s one thing when we’re talking ten or fifty large, but when you show up with your hand out for
this
kind of money, it starts to look a lot cheaper for the buyer to just shoot you in the head and find an out-of-the-way place for the corpse.”

“You think it’s risky.”

“Yeah.”

“Five hundred thousand each,” Karyn reminded her.

“Yeah.” Anna nodded, but she didn’t take her eyes from the bottle. “It also means getting in with Enoch Sobell.”

“Might be a good thing. Lots more work.”

“I hear getting out again ain’t so easy.”

“Five hundred thousand dollars,” Karyn said again. “You seriously think we ought to pass on that?”

A long breath escaped Anna, the whispering of wind over a dry, empty place. “Maybe,” she said, the word so quiet Karyn almost didn’t hear it over her own breath.

Maybe it was the hour, or the remnants of the booze sloshing its way through her system, but a low anger flared up inside her. “Yeah,
you
can walk away from half a million dollars,” she said, the words spilling out before she’d really understood what she was about to say.