The Carrier (6 page)

“
I wish I had money. I
don’t. I’m waiting to pick up right now.”

“
Where is the
pickup?”

“
I don’t even know yet. I’m
waiting for a phone call.”

“
And how much money are you
picking up?”

“
It’s not money, it’s dope.
Look, I don’t know the whole story, but we have to move something
around, and I guess Top doesn’t want the local guys out here
getting too chummy with each other.”

“
So they have a guy drive
all the way from the East Coast to do a local courier
job?”

“
I don’t argue. I just try
to do the job and get paid. You know?”

“
How will you find out where
the pickup is?”

“
The local guys call me
direct.”

“
On this phone?”

Willow took his cell phone out of her
pocket with her non-gun hand.

“
Yeah, on that
phone.”

“
The one you left in the
car?”

“
Yeah.”

“
You’re expecting the big
phone call for the big drug deal, and you leave the phone in the
car?”

“
Yeah, that wasn’t
smart.”

“
You missed three calls,”
she said, scrolling through the phone with one hand.

“
No, I didn’t.”

“
You want to
look?”

Willow held up the phone.

“
I can’t see.”

“
Take exactly one step
forward.”

Three Missed
Calls
, he read off the screen.

“
Can you check the number.
Please?” he asked.

Willow checked.

“
Nope, no number. No
messages. You missed three important phone calls?”

“
They weren’t supposed to
call until tomorrow.”

***

It was more than a week ago
that Tony told him about this job—
go get
some money in cow country
. Tony said to
start the drive Monday and wait for the exact address on Tuesday
from the locals. Details are nice, but that was enough to get the
trip started. Cyril had called Tony from the road three times. He
wanted to know how much he was picking up, and as he made it to
Illinois he started to worry he’d overshoot the location. But Tony
wasn’t responding to anything. Next thing he knew, a girl had a gun
pointed at his chest.

Cyril looked up at Willow.

“
You’re right,” he said.
“It
is
a good
thing I met you. My whole organization is burnt up. Who knows what
would have happened if I did the pickup.”

“
No, you’re still doing it.
If everything goes smooth, I’ll let you have a few thousand
dollars. Then you scrape the tracker off your car and drive to
Canada.”

“
What do you mean? What
tracker?”

“
GPS tracker. There’s one
under the car. Tony put it there, right?”

“
Are you
kidding?”

“
What would the joke
be?”

“
Show me. You have to show
me. This is—”

“
Slow down. You can’t make
demands, remember.”

“
You saw a tracker on my
car?”

“
Yes. Do they always do
that?”

“
Never. Can you show me? Can
we go back to the lot?”

Willow didn’t say anything.

“
Please, if there’s a
tracker on my car, then we have to get rid of it,” Cyril
said.

“
And then what?”

“
Then we really have to get
out of here without anyone killing us.”

CHAPTER 10

Danny let Marcus watch the receiver
for a while. It showed a blip on a screen as it moved across the
map. The screen froze every couple of minutes and it went out
completely a few times, but it always came back and the car never
did anything unexpected during these timeouts.

“
Inez said the whole thing
costs less than a hundred dollars,” Danny said.

“
She put it on the
car?”

“
The girl knows what she’s
doing. Luis showed me a picture of her—she looked like she was
twelve. With the pigtails and everything. But I guess she’s grown
up a lot.”

“
You met her?”

“
Of course, I met her. I
mean, I’ve talked to her on the phone. She sent me the receiver in
the mail.”

“
He gets his daughter to do
this kind of work?”

“
He doesn’t have anyone else
on the outside. All his old friends have chucked him. It’s really
sad to see.”

They were still well in front of the
car they were tracking, so they coasted west and enjoyed the
scenery as Pennsylvania gave way to Ohio. Danny stopped at a place
along the highway that sold specialty candy. He bought two bags of
salty licorice and had Marcus try a bite on the way back to the
car.

“
This is disgusting,” Marcus
said.

“
Acquired taste.”

“
How did you even know that
place was there?”

“
I’ve travelled some.
Seriously, just give it a chance. Keep eating it until it tastes
good. A lot of things that feel wrong at first end up being exactly
what you need.”

When they got back to the car, Danny
took the wheel again and played R&B ballads on the radio, sweet
songs about breakups and undying love sung by men who claimed to be
irresistible.

“
You like Usher?” Danny
asked.

“
Yeah, I guess. I don’t pay
enough attention to music.”

“
Yeah, that’s a problem. If
you don’t like music, then something is missing.”

“
Saida tells me that. But I
don’t hate music. It’s just that she plays me something, and I’m
supposed to
feel
something. And she’s angry because I don’t.”

“
What do you feel,
nothing?”

“
Not enough, I
guess.”

They drove for about a minute in
silence.

“
I worry that, I don’t know,
she’s going to leave me. I mean—I know that she loves me, but I
feel like she should love me more than she does.”

“
Yup.” Danny nodded like
he’d spotted the problem. “Here’s the thing: it’s impossible for
two people to love each other exactly the same amount. That’s like
a mathematical impossibility. So, sure, you love her, she loves
you, but you love her more and that is eventually going to tear the
whole thing down. Love is never equal, and it has to be or it gets
rotten. Therefore it always gets rotten. I’m sorry, that’s just the
way it is. So all these people are out chasing love—they’re just
kidding themselves.”

“
So you should just feel up
women on the train? That’s what you should go for?”

“
No. Meet women, make love
to women, but you can’t expect to build a real life with them. It
can’t ever work.”

“
What you should do is have
a column, like a love column, where you give love advice to
people.”

“
You laugh, but I’ve got a
much clearer view than just about anyone else out there. You said
it yourself—she doesn’t love you enough. You think by staying
together, she’ll start to love you more? For what
reason?”

“
Let’s talk about something
else.”

Usher sang of regret, how he wished he
could change the past, and that’s when state police pulled them
over.

“
Stay calm,” Danny said.
“Just stay calm.”

The cop had a hard, weather-beaten
face. He was an unsmiling mid-westerner with the name Tasker on his
badge. He let them appreciate his stern saunter as he approached
the car.

“
Do you know how fast you
were going?”

“
I believe I was going 55,
officer.” Danny said—it was the truth.

“
Where are you
headed?”

“
Yosemite National
Park.”

“
Where’s that?”

“
That’s in
California.”

“
Are you an American
citizen?”

“
Yes, I am.”

“
Can I see your license and
registration?”

Danny had everything within easy
reach. He was relaxed. The cop looked at Marcus.

“
Your ID, too.”

Danny gave Marcus a smile and a nod
and Marcus handed over his driver’s license.

“
Stay here and wait. Do not
get out of the vehicle.”

The cop took the IDs back to his
car.

“
So he’s going to run our
IDs, find out I’m pretty unsavory,” Danny said. “Then he’s going to
ask to search the car, and I’ll say go ahead. After that he’ll
probably let us drive.”

The cop was gone about ten
minutes.

“
You heading to
Yellowstone?” he said when he returned.

“
Yosemite. It’s beautiful.
Breathtaking. Have you ever been?”

“
Will you step out of the
vehicle while I search the car?”

“
Sure,” Danny
said.

He and Marcus got out. The cop
searched the interior for a few minutes; he found the bag of
licorice.

“
What’s this?”

“
It’s licorice.”

“
Yeah?”

“
It is licorice, sir,”
Marcus said, speaking for the first time, hoping the policeman
would respect him as another large, serious white male.

“
Are you his boyfriend?” the
cop asked Marcus.

“
Excuse me?”

“
I asked a simple
question—is this man your lover?”

“
No. Sir.”

Now Marcus was furious, but Danny was
still light and amused.

“
Just friends? Sharing a
car, driving out to California?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
You also into the things
he’s into?”

“
What—do you
mean?”

“
You a sex criminal like he
is?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Let me make this clear to
the both of you—you’re not welcome here. Just keep driving. We
don’t want scum like you in our state. You belong out in
California. Not here.”

“
Have a good day, officer,”
Danny said.

Tasker walked back to his cruiser. He
never wrote them a ticket.

“
I like the stripes on the
pants. It made him look real sporty,” Danny said.

“
I don’t find this
funny.”

“
Any time you’re sure a guy
is trying to get you worked up, make sure that you don’t get worked
up. I mean, it’s such a cheap trick.”

“
Yeah, a cheap trick.
Doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have his ass beat.”

“
No doubt. But when he’s
baiting you like that, it means he doesn’t have anything. If he
starts acting like your friend, that’s when you should be
worried.”

They drove into the bright peach
sunset over flat land. Danny wore shades and Marcus didn’t. On the
radio was more love, eternal pledges, passion without limit. The
passenger seat didn’t have a visor, so Danny handed his sunglasses
to Marcus, who wondered whether he’d ever had a friend as good as
Danny Chin.

CHAPTER 11

Duane checked his metal baton—not a
dent in it. He’d bought the weapon for forty dollars a few years
back—money well spent. Tony sometimes called him The Majorette and
made stupid jokes about parades. It would be nice to use the thing
on Tony someday.

Duane’s car was out near the Denny’s;
that was at least a quarter of a mile away from the bar. Unless
there was a clear reason not to, he always liked to have some
distance between his car and where he was going. It was a chilly
night but just about right for walking and trying to figure some
things out. Was Top just a little annoyed with him, or was his life
in danger? And if it was, why? For that mistake in Florida? That
was Tony’s fault. Like almost everything else lately, it had been
caused by Tony Braxton and his inability to keep his God damn mouth
shut. Jesus, how could Top not know this?

And if Top was going to kill
him, he wouldn’t send a couple of meatballs like the guys in the
bar—
I’d like to talk to this Latino
lady?
Come on
.
Top had two soulless Turkish
brothers and a former US marine with some very frightening home
videos working for him. What had happened back in the bar had most
likely been something Tony came up with—for some stupid Tony
reason.

Or maybe it went the other way: Tony
was using Duane to handle some personal trouble. If Tony had come
to him and said, Duane, can you help me fix these two local
douchebags, Duane would have been happy to do it. As much as he
hated Tony, he liked the chance to deal out punishment. Yeah, he
still got off on the occasional bar fight, but only up to a point.
He didn’t look for trouble anymore. Still, the crack of bone had
felt so right.