The Carrier (10 page)

Trying to distract him with talk of
panties—not going to work.

“
Why do you have a
gun?”

“
I don’t.”

He believed there was a gun in the
apartment, but it was probably better to do the job with blunt
force. Guns were loud. She handed him the pizza menu.

“
It’s your show,” she
said.

He picked up the phone.

“
What do you want?” he
asked.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
On your pizza.”

“
I’m not hungry,
pendejo
.”

“
Half mushroom?”

Duane waited until she’d closed the
door before dialing. They made him give his address and phone
number before he could even start to order. Then there was some
trouble with half mushroom. The menu offered half toppings, but the
kid on the phone wouldn’t do it—late night rules.

“
Fine, whole mushroom. But
let me tell you something, Spiderman, there better be beau-coup
mushroom on this pizza.”

Inez walked back into the room and
giggled.

“
Why you call him
Spiderman?” she asked.

“
Because he was acting like
a prick.”

“
But Spiderman is a great
hero.”

“
No, he isn’t.”

Duane was now fully dressed—shoes and
jacket. She fussed with the collar of his shirt.

“
You have to decide if it’s
up or down. And the answer can’t be up. So make sure your collar
stays down.”

He let her fiddle with his shirt, but
he wasn’t sure he liked it. It was one thing to go to bed with a
girl you don’t trust, but playing little domestic games was another
thing entirely.

“
You like mushroom?” he
asked.

“
No. I don’t eat
fungus.”

The staircase was set back about
twenty feet from the front door. There was a landing in the middle
of the first flight that turned back in the opposite direction,
hidden from the lobby. Duane waited there, just a few steps up from
that landing. He was actually looking forward to it now: taking a
full swing on the head of that disgusting fool. Disgusting fool,
not a sweet village idiot. Tony deserved whatever he had coming.
Duane wasn’t one of those froth-at-the-mouth human missiles, the
kind of guy who prays for a fistfight every morning. Okay, maybe
he’d once been like that, but that was as a kid, a teenager. Guys
who kept that up were put away for the safety of everyone. That’s
what prisons were for.

Duane was hoping he wouldn’t
smash in the face of some poor pizza deliveryman, some sucker
working an overnight for eight dollars an hour. But if it
happened—if he hit the wrong man—well, a lot of people had some bad
luck. Duane’s father had choked on a barrette—choked to death. Two
AM at the home of Mrs. Fanchetti, a friend of Duane’s mom. Duane’s
dad had a tendency to put things in his mouth: pens, buttons,
bottle caps. At the hospital in the insane hours of the morning,
the nurses treating Mrs. Fanchetti like she was the wife of the
deceased, Cyril crying like a baby, Duane’s mom sitting quietly way
up on the cloud, Duane had to take control.
Mrs. Fanchetti, you go home and stop being a slut; Cyril stop
crying and be a man; and mom, your husband is dead, how about you
let that seep in?
Duane hadn’t thought
about any of this in years. There was no point to it. He had to get
his head back in the game.

He heard the buzz of the door release.
In came the footsteps, not too fast. It sounded like someone had
put down a box—cardboard on the hardwood. It didn’t sound like he
picked it up again. It was Tony Braxton—had to be.

CHAPTER 15

Cyril walked two paces in front of
Willow like it was the custom of their people. There was no traffic
along the road and no one else walking along the
shoulder.

“
Do you think there’s anyone
following us right now?” Willow asked.

“
Maybe.”

“
What do we do?”

“
We should split up. You go
ahead, and I’ll see if anyone follows you.”

“
I don’t think so, my
dear.”

“
You have my cell phone and
I don’t have a car. I can’t take off.”

No, Willow couldn’t let Cyril out of
sight. That wouldn’t work.

“
No, we’re not doing that,”
she said.

A car approached from behind them, and
they walked away from the road. As it got closer they could hear
music, loud metal. The car had Iowa plates and at least six college
kids inside. This was not the Death Car. It rolled past.

“
If they are out there, why
don’t they just jump us?” Willow asked.

“
Because
they
know I haven’t picked up
yet.”

“
Who are they?”

“
I told you I don’t know.
They could be anyone.”

Another car drove past them. This one
was driven by a single woman, but it also had Iowa plates. Not it
either.

***

“
You’re absolutely sure it
isn’t your boss’s tracker?” Willow asked.

For the first time Cyril really
considered this possibility. Maybe they’d decided to keep tabs on
him. Maybe Tony was sitting in a bar, watching the car on a screen.
But if that was true, why hadn’t anyone told him anything about
what was going on? Usually Cyril got the precise location and
amount when he went somewhere. Other times he didn’t get an
address, just a city and instructions to wait for a call. This time
he knew he was going to the Midwest and there was nothing to drop
off. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get him moving on Monday
morning. He’d called Tony a few times but didn’t get any answer.
Maybe they’d called the whole deal off and forgotten to tell him.
Here he was in Iowa without a clear idea of what to do, and now he
was walking two paces in front of a gun.

A third car, a Ford, drove past them,
with a single driver, a wide-shouldered man who glanced over twice.
The license plates were Massachusetts.

“
That’s got to be him,”
Cyril said.

“
Maybe.”

“
You saw him, the way he
slowed and looked at us.”

“
Just one guy,
though.”

“
That doesn’t mean he’s
alone.”

“
We’ll go straight to my car
and get out of here.”

Cyril and Willow were now
closer to the center of town. They passed a frat house, blasting
out Atlanta rap for white Iowans.
Put a
Tec-9 up in his face
, the kids sang along
with the chorus. The sound system was not equal to the bass in this
song.

“
Where are you parked?”
Cyril asked.

“
Close to
Ridley’s.”

“
What’s
Ridley’s?”

“
You know, that magic place
where we first met?”

Walking down Main Street of a small
college town, Cyril had an easy opportunity to take off running,
but he didn’t do it. He still thought he could have it all. Greedy?
Was he getting greedy? Not giving up on a payday is not the same
thing as being greedy.

Willow decided they should walk one
block north of Main Street, instead of walking down the central
strip of town. She spotted the Ford with Massachusetts plates
parked just off one of the side streets.

“
There’s his car,” she
said.

“
Where’d
he
go?”

“
You set off his alarm. When
he shows up, I shoot him.”

“
You’re serious?”

She’d drawn on silly frat boys who
weren’t likely to hurt them too much. It wasn’t a stretch to think
she’d shoot someone sent to kill them.

“
You don’t think that’s a
good idea?” she asked.

“
There’s a hundred kids out
on the streets. They’ll all hear it.”

“
I’m parked two blocks from
here. If we run as soon as I drop him, we’ll be in my car and gone
before anyone sees the body.”

“
What if the guy has a
partner?”

“
He’ll be angry, but he
won’t be any more dangerous, will he? We head right to the highway,
and we are miles away from this cow town before the police even
know they should be doing anything.”

The plan wasn’t bad, but it was
frightening. Cyril had seen a lot of guns, even had a few pointed
at him to read his pulse, but he’d never been around when the guns
went off.

“
If you start shooting, I’m
running away as fast as I can,” he said.

“
Wow, you’re really against
violence.”

“
I’m just—”

“
You went Dalai Lama on me
all of a sudden.”

“
Can’t we just slash out his
tires?”

“
Go ahead, but if he shows
up while we’re doing it, then I’ll shoot him.”

The driver couldn’t be too far away.
Cyril would have to work quickly. He’d watched Duane slash tires
before—five times in a row to the neighbor who’d moved in on their
mom just after she’d been widowed. The neighbor kept buying new
tires, and he never got anywhere with their mom. Duane had always
kept his knife sharp, and Cyril worried his would be too dull after
all that scraping at the tracker. But he slashed right through the
sidewall of the front left tire. It gave a satisfying hiss. Then he
made his way clockwise to the others. He finished the job in less
than a minute.

“
Okay, let’s go,” he
said.

“
So you were a juvenile
delinquent?”

They walked away quickly, past the bar
where they’d met, to Willow’s car, a Toyota like Cyril’s, but a
little older and shabbier with Delaware plates. Less than fifteen
minutes later they were rolling west down Interstate 80.

CHAPTER 16

Marcus parked just off Main Street. On
the very next block he saw a small Toyota with Delaware plates. It
was the first car he’d seen that didn’t have Iowa plates or a
Graham College sticker. He peeked inside, but there was nothing
remarkable. It felt like a woman’s car to him, though, so he tried
to memorize the license number.

He walked back to Main Street along
this side path. He had a decent place to wait, just outside a bar,
where a few other people—some townies, some students—stood smoking.
He wasn’t a real smoker, but he asked a student for a
cigarette.

“
Yeah. How about I just give
you a dollar? I mean—this is an expensive habit,” the student
said.

“
A dollar?”

“
I don’t get them
free.”

“
Here, bud. I’ll give you
one,” an older man said.

“
Thank you, sir.”

Marcus took a Camel and realized that
it might make him sick. The student walked back in the
bar.

“
These kids. Spoiled
rotten,” the older man said.

“
Yeah, I know
that.”

Marcus’s phone rang.

“
Okay, what’s going on?”
Danny asked.

“
I think I found the
car.”

“
What’s it look
like?”

“
Another Toyota, Delaware
plates. No college stickers. Looks like a woman’s car. Light green
air freshener.”

“
Did you put the tracker on
it?”

“
Not yet.”

“
Why not?”

“
I’m not even sure it’s the
one.”

“
Light green air freshener?
Jesus. Okay. Delaware. Well, we got to bet on something: put it
on.”

“
Okay. I got to go back to
our car to get it.”

“
You don’t have the tracker
on you?”

“
No, I—”

“
Okay, hurry up.”

Marcus hung up the phone.

“
You wouldn’t be law
enforcement, would you?” the old townie asked.

“
Maybe you shouldn’t listen
in on people’s private phone calls,” Marcus snapped.

When he got back to his car he could
tell something was wrong, even in the dark. The car looked shorter
somehow. The tires. He called Danny back on his cell
phone.

“
The tires are slashed,” he
said.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I mean, they’re slashed—all
of them.”

“
On my car?”

“
Yes.”

“
How did they—you left the
car?”

“
You said to get the
tracker.”

“
They just slipped behind
you, slashed the tires?”

“
I don’t know who did it.
All these college kids running around.”

“
Okay. All right. Can we
drive it?” Danny asked.

“
No, we can’t drive
it.”

Danny made some odd grunts into the
phone. He didn’t have a quick answer for this one.

“
Danny?”