The Carrier (4 page)

“
Half we give to Inez—that’s
for Luis—and thirty-five percent goes to me.” Danny rattled off the
figures quickly like he was giving an annual interest rate. “What
Inez is going to do is put a tracker on the car. All we have to do
is follow the car. And we don’t have to ride right up on it; we
just stay within a few miles. Then we wait for him to make the
pickup, and we find the right time to jump him. That might be the
tricky part, because he’s not going to make too many stops, but
he’s got to stop somewhere to sleep. That’s going to be when we
take him.”

“
And we don’t know where the
driver is going to pick up the money?”

“
I told you, out in the corn
somewhere. We just have to stay close enough, so we can jump him
when he stops at some motel on the way back.”

“
When you say jump him, what
does that mean?”

“
We might have to hit him
pretty hard, but we are not killing anyone. No one wants
that.”

“
Why do you want
me
for this?” Marcus
asked.

“
Come on, dog. Do I have to
get sentimental? I like you and everything, and you may dig that I
have a limited circle of friends. I know you need the money, and
you look like the kind of guy I want in case there’s
fisticuffs.”

It made sense: Marcus as muscle for a
rough job. Hell, even Saida treated him that way. She wouldn’t go
for this, though. Maybe he could say there was a weeklong
construction job down in Virginia that his cousin got him on. Could
he get away with a lie to Saida?

“
Fifteen percent of a
million dollars is fifteen thousand?” he asked.

“
No, fifteen percent of a
million is one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s what a
bone surgeon makes in one year. You’re going to make that in one
road trip.”

That was more than all the money he’d
made in his entire life. It would mean he could pay off all of
Saida’s tuition and debt, and then they could live pretty highball
for as long as he could see into the future. He was going, and she
would come around when he had money in hand, wouldn’t
she?

CHAPTER 6

Willow had two choices: either she
could get rough with Cyril, or she could put a few cards on the
table. But she didn’t know how to get rough other than by shooting
him in the leg, and that couldn’t be done quietly. She decided to
march him back to the motel room and open up a bit.

“
A little while ago, I
started dating Tony Braxton,” she said.

“
Okay, well that’s really
your business. I mean, the age difference and—”

“
See, here’s how I know
you’re lying: you don’t think I’m crazy. You pretend you don’t know
anything about money or Tony Braxton, but here you are, treating me
like a rational player. If you really didn’t know what was going on
you’d be freaking out—
this sexy girl
pulled a gun on me and said she was dating some old R&B
singer
.”

“
You don’t think I’m
freaking out?”

“
No. And I will shoot you if
I have to—probably in the leg.”

Willow lifted the gun and aimed at his
left knee—so much for conversation.

“
I’m going to count down
from ten, but I might shoot at any moment. Ten. Nine. Eight.
Seven—”

Cyril was not quite brave enough to
call her bluff.

“
Okay,” he said. “Okay. Just
calm down.”

There was a subtle shift in tone; he’d
put aside playing the innocent.

“
So where’s the
money?”

“
There is no money. I don’t
carry money. Who told you I did?”

“
Tony.”

“
You’re dating
him?”

“
Whatever you want to call
it. I can’t say I’m fucking him, because I’m not. He’s not into
that.”

“
What is he
into?”

“
He’s got these army men,
little plastic toys. What he does is first he gets naked,
then—”

“
Okay, I get it.”

“
You get it, really? So tell
me what happens next?”

“
I mean that I don’t need to
know the details.”

“
So you were on board with
the army men? It’s only when he gets naked that you can’t take
it?”

“
Pretty much. What did he
tell you?”

“
He said you were carrying
money out west.”

“
Okay. Willow. I don’t have
any money.”

“
He said you did. He also
said you were the best courier by far.”

Cyril looked annoyed at the
compliment.

“
Why is he talking about me
to anyone?”

“
So you
are
carrying?”

“
No. I have nothing with me.
If I did I wouldn’t be stopping for drinks and making new
friends.”

“
So what are you
doing?”

“
I have to make a
pickup—product.”

“
Then you must have money.
Whichever way things are moving—drugs go one way, money goes the
other.”

“
They’ve got special bank
transfers or something, better ways of moving money than putting it
out on the highway.”

“
So why does Tony say you’re
carrying cash?”

“
Because he’s an
idiot.”

“
You think?”

“
You’ve met him.”

Her stomach was starting to turn on
her—this was supposed to be easy.

“
Tomorrow I’m going to pick
up dope. Okay? I’m out here to do that. Right now I have nothing.
Would I have been so lax about letting someone follow me, or go to
a bar and leave the money unattended, or pick up a girl with a gun?
Would I have done any of those things if I had
anything
with me?”

“
Maybe. Maybe you’re
sloppy.”

“
Tony Braxton said I was the
best, right?”

“
He’s an idiot.”

“
Okay. There you go. Thank
you. Do you see how this is all a misunderstanding based on the
fact that Tony is an idiot?”

Had she come all this way on Tony’s
useless story? Was it possible that a deviant addict who called
himself Tony Braxton was capable of passing on bad
information?

***

Cyril had been such a good
courier for three years. He even worked a real job—part-time web
design—just to make it all look good on paper. But the driving was
changing him, and tonight was the worst kind of proof. It had been
coming on for a while. He’d cursed out his noisy neighbors, and
he’d almost attacked a guy at work. A few weeks back a programmer
named Larry had gotten in his face about some bad code. Cyril
stared at the guy—
Do you understand that I
just dropped off thirty kilos of heroin, and you’re a 108-pound
desk jockey with an M.C. Escher poster on your wall?

“
Why don’t you just worry
about yourself?” Cyril had said.

“
Because—you—affect—me. I
have to work harder for same money when there is you on job,” Larry
said, breaking it down like a really smarmy kindergarten
teacher.

“
Talk to me like that again
and I’ll break your stapler.”

“
I would never talk to you
at all if you could actually get your work done in any kind of
reasonable timeframe. I don’t talk to you for fun.”

Cyril broke Larry’s stapler. He
snapped it back against its natural direction and then slammed it
on the desk. Larry retreated behind the black mesh of his Aeron
chair, and Cyril came very close to lifting the chair and crushing
the little programmer with it. The fact that he hadn’t made him
feel like he’d failed, like he had unfinished business. So now to
compensate he was acting tough in bars and picking up dangerous
women? Sloppy, so sloppy, because this dangerous woman had his
wallet, his passport, his car keys, and his cell phone. And he
really needed that phone. Maybe he should just make a break for it,
abort the mission. That wouldn’t make anyone happy, but it wouldn’t
get him killed. Or would it? Maybe couriers were like resumes: one
mistake and you tossed them?

“
Are you even listening to
me, honey?” Willow asked.

“
I’m listening.”

“
Here’s the thing you have
to realize: even if I hadn’t showed up, you were already in a whole
lot of trouble.”

“
We’ve all got
problems.”

“
No, but you really have
some serious crisis. In fact, meeting me may have been the luckiest
thing that ever happened to you.”

It sounded unlikely, but Cyril was
willing to hear her out.

CHAPTER 7

Saida was lying on the couch, frowning
over a textbook when Marcus walked in the room and hovered. She
lost her place.

“
What?”

“
I got to tell you
something,” he said.

“
Hmmm,” she mumbled, looking
back at her book.

Saida was always mad with
Marcus these days. She blamed him for bringing her out to this
wasteland and then losing his job. He hadn’t found anything
permanent in almost a year. The best he could do for right now was
some part-time landscaping, which was embarrassing for her to have
to tell people.
Yeah, sometimes Marcus
mows a lawn.
So she didn’t. She told her
sister Margaret that Marcus drove a forklift now. Saida even
researched the kinds of licenses forklift operators needed to get.
Marcus needs me to help him study for the OSHA test, she’d say to
her sister and then get off the phone.

“
I have a job,” Marcus said.
“Saida, can you listen to me?”

“
Okay, what?”

“
It’s going to take me out
of town for a few days, maybe a week.”

“
What kind of
job?”

Saida put down her book. What was the
big deal, an odd job out of town? Why was he acting so bizarre? He
was going to Pittsfield to clip a hedge? Why the big
announcement?

“
It’s just a job,” he
said.

“
Is this a landscaping
thing?”

“
No, it’s a—it’s a little
bit different.”

“
How?”

“
I can’t tell you too much
about it, but it’s—it’s not completely . . . with the
law.”

Marcus made circular gestures with his
hand.

“
Are you doing a magic
trick?”

“
No, I’m just trying to tell
you—so you know—there’s risk in it.”

“
What are you doing? What
stupid shit are you about to start?”

“
The less you know, the
better. Right? I can’t tell you any of the when and where and who,
but I should tell you the basic truth of it. Because you have a
right to know that I’m putting myself on the line—for
us.”

“
Who got you into
this?”

“
Never mind
that.”

“
It’s the—that pervert, that
little guy? You’re working with him?”

“
No comment. Okay. No
comment at all.”

“
What kind of work does he
want you to do? There’s no money in groping ladies on the bus—none
at all.”

“
It’s just some
work
. Okay? So what do
you think?”

“
I think . . .”

Saida let her sentence die. The
concern that she should have felt for Marcus heading out to do
something dumb just wasn’t there. He was about to rob a liquor
store or ship meth to Alabama or something even more stupid. If he
was lucky he would end up in jail. But Saida surprised herself by
how little she cared.

“
How much do you figure to
make?” she asked.

“
A lot.”

“
What’s a lot?”

“
I should come back with
200,000 dollars. Around there.”

He had to be making that up—just
picked a really big number out of the sky. She wished he’d said
something smaller, more believable.

“
You think you’ll be safe
doing this?”

“
I think so.”

“
Well, all right,
then.”

“
You’re okay with
this?”

“
Am I okay with this? No,
but you’re going to make up your own mind, right?”

Did she think Marcus was going to
succeed with his little caper? No, probably not. But Saida had
known crack dealers riding in fifty thousand dollar SUVs who were
at least as dumb as Marcus. Maybe he’d pull it off: a one-time
thing could happen to anyone. Maybe the sex criminal was smart. You
had to be at least a little smart to get away with being a pervert,
right? And that’s where it started to fall apart. Danny Chin hadn’t
gotten away with anything, had he?

“
I’m doing it for us,”
Marcus said. “Because I haven’t taken care of you like I should. I
was supposed to be bringing in more while you were going to school.
But now finally I think that can happen.”