The Carrier (15 page)

“
I’ll put it on speaker,”
she said.

She held the phone up in the
air.

“
Hello?” Cyril
said.

“
Yeah, where you been?” a
rough voice asked.

“
I was told the call
wouldn’t come until Tuesday.”

“
It’s Tuesday now, isn’t it?
Been Tuesday since midnight.”

“
So you’re supposed to call
Tuesday and you call 12:30 on Monday night?”

“
It says Tuesday on my
phone. You really want to argue this?”

“
No, tell me where I’m
going.”

“
Where was your
phone?”

“
I was asleep.”

“
Christ. Okay. Who are
you?”

“
I’m Chub,” Cyril
said.

Willow gave him a look and
mouthed,
who’s Chub
?

“
Okay, right. I heard of
you.”

“
Let me know where you are,
please.”

There was a pause.

“
You have me on speaker,
man?”

“
I’m driving.”

“
How close are
you?”

“
I don’t know where you
are,” Cyril said.

“
Oh, right,” the tough guy
was off balance for just a moment. “Listen good, because it’s not
that easy to find.”

He gave Cyril the
directions.

“
You staying up late?” Cyril
asked.

It was already past two AM.

“
We’ll be up. Get here soon
as you can.”

He hung up the phone and Willow
checked the map. They were about fifty miles away.

“
Who calls you
Chub?”

“
One of the dealers out here
called me that. I stuck with it.”

“
You’re not fat or thin, how
does it make sense?”

“
I don’t know. But I don’t
need any of them knowing my name.”

“
I know your
name.”

CHAPTER 24

Danny worked his way back around the
highway and picked up Marcus about half a mile from the
diner.

“
Good work, my brother,”
Danny said, motioning to the tracker. “They’re taking the back
roads, which is good for us, because little Kevin probably called
campus cops by now, and they may be looking for our Lexus on the
highways.”

“
You think they’re looking
for us?”

“
Or maybe that poor kid is
still sitting next to the corn, waiting for us to come back. Look,
we’ve got to take a few risks, dog. But you did real good. We’ve
got them on the screen again.”

They drove in silence for a few
minutes. Marcus picked up the tracker and watched it like it was
his daytime soap.

“
They’re about ten miles
from us. They just did a loop,” he said.

“
Yeah?”

“
What do you think that
means?”

“
Making sure no one is
following them.”

Danny stopped the car beside an open
field.

“
You ever do any cow
tipping?” he asked.

“
What’s that?”

“
Run out and shove a
sleeping cow.”

“
Why would you do
that?”

“
Okay. So you’re very
mature. I just thought it might be a way to kill some
time.”

“
That’s a real
thing?”

“
Probably not. I’ve never
done it. But if our friends are just doing circles, what are we
supposed to do with ourselves? We don’t want to ride up on them
just yet.”

Danny stepped into the middle of an
empty road. The moon was just over half full and it slid out from
under cloud coverage. They hadn’t run into any rain as they’d made
their way into the middle of the continent, but now it looked like
it might get a little wet.

CHAPTER 25

With Marcus out of the house, Saida
had gotten a lot more studying done, but she was still fed up with
school. Her courses were pointless, and she wasn’t doing as well as
she pretended. She lied about her grades to Marcus, just like she
used to lie to her sister Margaret. Of course, Margaret found out
the real grades when the report card came, whereas she didn’t have
to show Marcus anything. Still, she lied to him because she liked
that he thought she was really smart—super brain.

Maybe it made sense to leave while
Marcus was still on his mission, his ridiculous job. She could
clear out everything at her leisure and drive somewhere. But if she
felt like she had another option she’d have dropped out of school
and left Marcus months ago. Where was she going to go? Well, she
could always go back home. Her sister ran a daycare out of the
apartment back in Brooklyn. Margaret would always take her back
in—with a smile and some talk about responsibility, maybe a little
Jesus too. It was a pretty small price to pay. Saida could help
look after the kids during the day and sleep on the couch at
night—plus all the juice boxes she could handle.

But she wasn’t going to take
off on Marcus just yet. She was going to wait and see. As absurd as
his plan must be—whatever it was—there was always a chance. Someone
wins the Megamillions, and it’s never been a genius. Not once. She
looked at her text book—
Marketing Research
Methods
. The front of the book had an
aggressive exclamation point falling out of the sky, which Saida
supposed was an example of dynamic marketing. She couldn’t bear to
read the assigned chapters, and so, before she knew it, she’d
dialed her boyfriend’s number. He answered on the first
ring.

“
Hey, Saida. I miss you,” he
said.

“
How’s it going?”

“
Really good. But, uh, I
really can’t talk right now.”

“
Where are you?” asked
Saida.

“
Don’t worry about that.
It’s all going real well. I can’t wait to see you
again.”

“
When are you coming back?”
she asked, like a teenager, disgusting herself.

“
Soon. Real soon. Saida,
things are going to be good. Just wait.”

“
Okay. I just—I wanted to
see how it was all going.”

“
And it’s going great. Look,
I wish I could talk to you all night, just lie back and tell you
everything, but I’ve got to get this done.”

“
Okay, yeah. I get it. I
just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“
I am. Good night,
sweetheart. I love you.”

Saida felt ashamed of herself. What
was she going to learn by calling him? Was he going to say, I’ve
got the cash in the trunk and I’m driving it home? Had she just
need to hear his voice?

***

“
She called you,” Danny
said.

“
Yes, she did.”

“
She was
worried?”

“
I guess. A little. I think
she just missed me.”

“
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s
going to work out for you kids after all.”

“
I just feel like if the two
of us could get a little breathing room—I mean with the money—that
would change things.”

“
Money does change things.
Just be careful she’s not, you know, a gold digger.”

“
If she were, would she have
stayed with me all this time? The girl is true.”

“
Yeah. I really like her. I
know she hates me, wants to get rid of me and all that, but I think
you should hold onto her.”

Marcus nodded.

“
Are you supposed to let a
woman go up the stairs first?” he asked. “Like if the two of you
come to the stairs at the same time—what is a man supposed to
do?”

“
A gentleman let’s a lady go
up first. Because if she falls, you can catch her.”

“
Yeah, that’s what I
thought. Saida fell off a ladder once.”

“
Did you catch her?” Danny
asked.

“
Yeah, I caught
her.”

Marcus smiled.

CHAPTER 26

Willow and Cyril were getting closer
to the pickup, but they hadn’t talked about what they’d do when
they got there. Cyril was happy to put that conversation off as
long as possible.

“
I’ve got a house in
Belize,” Willow said.

“
That’s
terrific.”

“
You don’t believe
me?”

“
I’m sorry, I
don’t.”

Willow opened the glove compartment
and rummaged through some papers and wrappers. Cyril saw a few
bottles of prescription pills and a lot of gum before she shut the
compartment and handed him a picture of herself, standing outside a
house on the beach. She was wearing one of those modest one piece
bathing suits with the skirt, like a grandmother might
wear.

“
You see,” she
said.

“
I believe you once went to
the beach,” he said, eyes back on the road.

“
That’s the
house.”

“
I like the bathing
suit.”

“
There’s a lot of Mennonites
in the area, so I like to keep things covered.”

“
Okay, so, let’s say you do
have a house in Belize—”

“
It belonged to my dad. It’s
the only thing I got to keep—everything else got seized by the
government, but this was out of country and he hid it.”

“
What was your dad that he
had to hide property?”

“
He had projects, you know?
We all have projects.”

“
How would we get
there?”

“
You got your passport,
right?”

“
You have my
passport.”

Was there anything he’d really miss?
There was nothing compromising on his hard drive at home. His car
was old—it could sit in front of the Firstway Inn forever as far as
he cared. He could always get a new guitar. Sitting out in front of
that house in Belize with a twelve-string, acting like Jimmy
Buffet. It made him cringe.

“
We sell the car, and fly
down to Belize,” Willow said.

“
With a suitcase full of
heroin?”

“
I wonder if they’re really
that serious about stopping drugs sneaking
out
of the country.”

“
I’m not getting on a plane
with drugs.”

“
Okay, I’ve got an idea
then: let’s say we really are picking up drugs and not money—just
like you say.”

“
We are.”

“
Then we sell it. People
sell drugs.”

Cyril picked up the photograph and
gave it another look.

“
You own the place? You have
legal ownership?” he asked.

“
My Dad’s girlfriend still
lives there, but she knows the place is mine. It’s got four
bedrooms.”

“
Let’s say for a second that
right now we are going to get money and not drugs.”

“
I knew it,” Willow
beamed.

“
Just for the sake of
discussion. So then what? We fly down there with the money and live
on the beach?”

“
That doesn’t sound good to
you?”

Swim, make love, eat good, cheap
seafood. You could live on, what, ten dollars a day? Easily hide
out until everyone stopped looking for you. Cyril drove in silence
for a while, past a tall grain silo and ghostly cows, eyes bright
and open, peering out from behind their fences.

“
It’s really drugs? That’s
what we’re picking up?” Willow asked.

“
Yes.”

“
Okay. How about we take the
drugs west, set ourselves up somewhere, sell the batch off, and
then head down to Belize?”

“
Are you a drug dealer?
Because I’m not a drug dealer. I don’t know how to do
that.”

“
We go to a ski resort,
okay. Colorado or something. Ski season has got to be starting just
about now. We hang out at lodges. We ski a little and we have a
nice vibe—as a couple just in from LA. And we start to sell to
skiers.”

Cyril laughed.

“
It’s not a joke—skiers like
to party. That’s why you go on a ski vacation,” she
said.

“
We’d probably get ourselves
killed. Not definitely, but probably.”

“
I think you’re
overestimating the people you work for.”

“
It’s not just them. You
can’t open up store wherever you want.”

“
Just a little bit at a
time. We make some friends and sell to them. We’re not standing out
on the corner with bindles. It’ll work.”

“
Because we have a nice
vibe?”

“
We have a great vibe. You
like to ski?”

“
I’ve never skied—it looks
stupid,” Cyril said.

“
It’s not. It’s great. You
can’t dismiss something as stupid when you’ve never done it.
Anyway, we’ll be selling mostly, not skiing. And next thing you
know—we’re in Belize. No one is going to look for us
there.”