Desperate (22 page)

W
e drove in silence with Roy going through toothpicks like they were M&M’s. He wove in and out of Boston streets, his eyes darting about in a predatory way, clearly on the lookout for the police. This was the quietest hour of the day, two o’clock in the morning. The bars were closed, the commuters were sleeping, no reason to be out on the road.

Unless, of course, you were involved in a drug deal gone wrong.

“Why’d you do it, Roy?” I said. My voice came out shaky, like a kid who had fallen and was doing his best not to cry in front of his friends. “Why didn’t you just do the deal straight-up?”

Roy’s face turned cherry red. “Because I needed more money!” he screamed, smacking his hand against the steering wheel. “Because you didn’t have enough. I never wanted to double-cross the Moreno brothers, but what choice did I have? Your wife and kid got killed by a drunk driver! Didn’t you get more money? How could you not have gotten more money from that?” Roy was seething, his face in a snarl.

“So this is my fault?” I shouted back at him. “You set up some crackerjack blackmail scheme but you didn’t even know if I had what you needed? That’s insane, Roy! And now I’ve got blood on my hands! I killed a man tonight. I killed him. Do you get that? I shot him.”

I was saying this to myself as much as I was saying it to Roy. The reality was sinking in. I was a murderer, forever and always.

Somehow my ire soothed Roy’s. He looked at me with a different kind of understanding. We were brothers.

“He was going to kill you. You did what you had to do.”

My hands were trembling as we drove past a shuttered pizza joint. Looking at those darkened windows, I couldn’t imagine ever eating food again. My guts were twisted and knotted. I imagined they’d stay that way forever. As we drove aimlessly around the quiet streets of Boston, past empty office buildings and darkened storefronts, I kept seeing Jorge, a bloody corpse flat on his back on the ground only a few feet away from where my gun had discharged. He was the stuff of my new nightmares. My head felt full of sorrow and gloom. This couldn’t be undone. There was no going back or making a different choice. I did what I did and would forever live with the consequences of my actions. And I hated myself for it.

“How much product did you siphon off?” I asked Roy. “How much?”

“Enough to cover my debts and get me out of town for a while.”

“You didn’t think they’d eventually figure it out?”

“I wasn’t solving my problem, Gage. I was buying myself some time.”

“Now what?”

“Now I’ve got to drop you off and go see Nicky.”

My stomach lurched at the mention of Nicky’s name. I thought back to our meeting and cringed at the memory of those hateful eyes. And then it dawned on me. We had just lost half a million dollars of Nicky’s money. Gone. Left on a dock for Lucas to carry away in his Boston Whaler, along with his dead brother.

“What the hell are you going to say to him?” My heart was hammering. I felt cold and hot all at the same time, grossly uncomfortable in my own skin. All I wanted to do was go home. I wanted to crawl into bed with Anna, inhale the familiar scent of her sleep, and feel the cottony fabric of her pajamas pressed against my skin. I wondered if Max and Karen were watching from wherever they could watch. Did they know what I had done? Were their spirits at the dock when I pulled the trigger? Was it Max who’d given me five-point-five pounds of courage to do what had to be done?

“I’m going to lie,” Roy said. “I’m going to tell him we were ambushed. That Lucas tried to kill us and so we killed Jorge in self-defense. I’m going to lie to him.”

“Will that work?” I asked.

“Will Nicky Stacks forget I owe him half a million dollars?” Roy gave me a sidelong glance. “You have a better chance of being a daddy to Lily’s baby than you do of Nicky forgetting his money.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Let me handle it.”

“And the police?”

Roy laughed, but not in a way that said I amused him. It was more like he couldn’t fathom how little of the underground life I understood.

“There won’t be any cops,” he said, snapping a toothpick in half. “There’s not going to be any reports of a shooting, either. They didn’t have any video surveillance back there. Nothing. What happened on the dock never happened. Jorge is going to drop off the face of the earth, and Lucas is going to look for retribution, either in cash or blood. That’s how this is going to go down.”

“So we go to Nicky for protection?” I couldn’t wrap my head around being a part of his world, teammates with Roy, but the blood on my hands was as binding as any legal document.

“I go to Nicky and we take it from there,” Roy said. “You lay low. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“What, like going to the cops?”

Roy took his eyes off the road so he could fix me with a baleful look. “Don’t even say that.” He wagged a finger. “You do that and we’re both good as dead. Is that clear?”

“Yeah,” I said, breaking away from his angry stare to look at whatever was zooming past my window.

Roy grabbed my shirt and pulled me toward him. The sudden movement caused the Camaro to weave a bit, but nobody was on the road. “I’m not kidding. Don’t you get any whistle-blowing ideas. I’ll take you down myself. You’re a murderer now. Don’t forget that.”

“No body,” I said. “No cameras. No crime.”

“Trust me, if you bring the heat on Lucas Moreno or any of his associates, or me, or Nicky Stacks, we’ll produce a body and it’ll be yours. Trust me on this. Now where am I dropping you off?”

I gave Roy the address for the Hyatt Harborside hotel, about half a mile from Logan, which I had reserved in advance. Roy didn’t speak for the remainder of the drive. He was busy chewing on toothpicks, probably thinking about his next move, what he was going to say to Nicky Stacks. He just stopped talking, turned up the radio—we were listening to classic rock—and followed my directions.

When we reached our destination, Roy followed the curved driveway and pulled to a stop in front of the hotel entrance. He left the car idling while I grabbed the bag I’d packed from the back seat of the Camaro. I headed to the glass doors, but before I got there, Roy rolled down the window and whistled for me.

“Not a word,” he said. “I’ll be in touch. Just lay low and we’ll get through this together.”

We. Together. Like we were a pack now. Roy the alpha dog, and me his bitch.

I nodded, trying to ignore the rush of blood to my head.

We.
Yes, Roy. I’ll be a good boy. I’ll be quiet. I turned my back to Roy and his Camaro, leaving the murder weapon in his possession.

I gave the surprisingly chipper attendant my real name and my real credit card. I wasn’t in hiding. The police weren’t after me. Following the directions, I took the elevator to the eighth floor, found my room, and went inside. My clothes started to itch and burn. I pulled them off of me, and before I knew it I was naked in the shower, with beads of warm water cascading down my back. But I couldn’t stand, my legs wouldn’t hold me up, so I sat in the tub, curled in a ball with my back to the water, letting it rain on me, washing my guilt down the drain.

T
he phone woke me. It took a moment to figure out where I was, and for a second I thought I was in bed with Anna. Then the strange and musty smell of an unfamiliar room hit my senses, along with the feeling of too-tight sheets and a comforter about as comforting as an X-ray room’s lead apron.

I was in a hotel room in Boston. It wasn’t a dream, and neither was the man I’d gunned down at the waterfront. The last time I’d woken up I wasn’t a murderer. It was something I could never say again.

The curtains in my room were drawn, so I couldn’t tell if the sun had risen. My eyelids, heavy with the kind of sleep only coming down from a double dose of Adderall can provide, came open with the ease of two rusted hinges. My head throbbed in a hangover way, while my body felt as depleted as my spirit.

8:45
A.M.

Had I scheduled a wake-up call?

The phone kept ringing. I picked up the receiver and said, “Yeah.” That syllable encapsulated the extent of my conversational ability. I didn’t bother to think about who would be calling, or why.

“Gage, it’s Roy. We gotta talk. Can I come up?”

Roy’s nervous voice jolted me awake with all the gentleness of a slap across my face. I wanted him to be a bad dream, too, but here we were, the blackmailer and the quality assurance engineer-cum-killer tethered to each other like Siamese twins. His anxiety was my anxiety. His terror was my terror. As far as Nicky Stacks was concerned, we were both involved, a couple of partners in crime, literally, and there was not a thing for me to do but let Roy come on up and tell me about our shared fates.

I gave Roy my room number, something the front desk attendant would not have done. I had just enough time before Roy knocked on my door to rip open one of those complimentary in-room coffee packets using my teeth (a habit I’d sworn to both Karen and Anna I was going to break, knowing I’d continue to break that promise), fill the little coffeepot that probably never got properly washed, and get the brew switch flicked on.

When I heard the knock I checked the peephole first, instinctively, even though I knew who was there. It was the way a murderer might act.

Through the peephole’s fish-eye lens, I saw Roy dancing on his feet, calling to mind the old adage
ants in his pants
. Whatever he had to say, he didn’t want to waste time. I started to open the door, but someone other than Roy, someone who had been standing in the hall out of my view, pushed it open with a good degree of force. Roy came stumbling into the room, evidently shoved inside by the same individual who threw open the door. Following closely on Roy’s heels, and closing the door behind him with a quick click of the lock as he entered, was Nicky Stacks.

Stacks struck an imposing figure in a dark blue suit, lighter blue oxford shirt, and no tie. I hoped Nicky wouldn’t want to get his nice clothes covered in my blood, but the smoldering fury in his eyes didn’t make me optimistic. Roy worked his way over to the far corner of the hotel room, where a small desk might provide momentary shelter from Stacks if the rhino-sized man decided to charge.

“I’m sorry, Gage,” Roy said as he shuffled past me. “Nicky made me bring him to you. He wants to talk.”

“I can speak for myself,” Stacks said, hovering by the door. It was not lost on me that he was blocking my only way out.

As if Stacks could read my thoughts, he put his finger to his lips in a stay quiet gesture, then pulled open his suit jacket just enough to flash me the gun holstered there. It was an impressive showing and secured my full cooperation. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the gun in Stacks’s holster hadn’t recently been pushed into Roy’s face.

“Sit down,” Stacks said, pointing first at me and then at the bed.

I caught the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee.

“Do you want a cup of coffee? I have enough for two,” I said.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Stacks said.

“Do you mind if I have one?” I asked. I didn’t need the coffee to wake up. I wanted something to do with my hands.

“I think you need to just sit and listen,” Stacks said. “You too, Roy. Pull up a chair.”

Roy grabbed the wooden desk chair and pulled it over to the bed. Nicky took up roost on the edge of the dresser directly across from the bed and eyed us both. I’d met him only once, but Nicky’s massive head appeared to have grown in size since then. It was a boulder stuck on a meaty neck. For a while he just glowered, saying nothing, and then he leaned back slightly. As he did, he touched one of his thick fingers to his eye as if he were trying to make sense of what he saw and couldn’t believe people like us actually existed. I could have said the same thing about him. Roy sat beside me as if we were siblings being scolded for some offense. It didn’t take an advanced degree in materials science to know that Roy’s little talk with Nicky hadn’t gone very well.

“Do you want to tell me what happened out there?” Stacks asked.

I looked to Roy, my partner, the leader of the pack. Roy didn’t even gesture for me to answer, so I took it upon myself to tell our side of the made-up story.

“We were ambushed.” I tried to sound tough, because Nicky still thought I was Roy’s ne’er-do-well cousin from Florida, a genetically related badass. To my ears I sounded pretty unconvincing.

“It all happened really fast,” I continued. “I shot Jorge and Roy knifed Lucas, and we had to run because otherwise we’d have been killed.”

I looked to Roy, but he didn’t seem at all pleased, which was alarming. Wasn’t I corroborating our story? Roy’s body language, chin to his chest, face buried in his hands, implied this was far from over.

“Are you checking with Roy to make sure you two clowns have your story straight?” Stacks asked me. “Because if you are, don’t bother. Now, do you feel like telling me what really happened out there?”

I didn’t say anything, not sure I could if I tried. Dread constricted my windpipe.

“No? Not the talkative type? Well, that’s okay, because I know what happened, so let’s just move on.”

I continued to remain silent.

“I’ve been on the phone with my business associates for an hour since you two jackoffs screwed everything up,” Stacks said. He pointed a wagging finger first at Roy and then at me. “It would appear we hired four of the stupidest assholes to handle this drop.”

I was a bit surprised because Stacks implied the Moreno brothers were at fault as well.

“Here’s the thing, Gage,” Stacks said, looking directly at me. It felt incredibly unsettling to hear him say my name. “I’m sure Lucas Moreno wants to kill you for killing his brother, but I told my associates, in very clear language, that it wouldn’t be right. If what Roy finally confessed to me is true, and I believe it is, then Lucas had no business taking matters into his own hand. If there was a shortage on the drop, it should have been brought to
my
attention. That’s the way we do business. He had no authorization to execute anybody. None!” Stacks slapped the dresser with the palm of his hand. It made the mirror on the wall shake.

“The good news is, my associates agree. Lucas should not have threatened Roy, period. We have protocols for this sort of thing, ways of handling problems that don’t attract so much attention as an all-out gunfight. It should have been up to me to make the deal whole and decide if I should put a bullet in your stupid heads or not. Do you two understand me?”

We both nodded like a pair of charmed cobras.

“Now, this might sound all well and good to you,” Stacks continued, “but there has to be retribution paid for what happened, something to set things right between my associates and me.”

“Nicky, I’m sorry,” Roy said, shaking his head. He sounded on the verge of tears. “I screwed up, man. I’m sorry. I was desperate.”

“Shut up!” Stacks snapped. “Just shut the fuck up! Don’t speak. Don’t say a fucking word until I ask you to say something. Let me be very clear about this. Don’t interrupt me again.” Stacks’s voice came out as a low rumble of thunder.

“The retribution I must pay is the money Lucas took from the deal, which means your little gunfight at the O.K. friggin’ Corral has cost me five hundred large.” Stacks paused. His eyes locked on me, two black beads cold as death, making me feel incredibly small under his gaze. Microscopic, even. “Because of you”—Stacks pointed his thick finger first at Roy, then to me, keeping it steady as an arrow in a bow—“I don’t have the pills and I don’t have the cash.”

Roy again hung his head in shame while I stared blankly ahead. This was my new reality. Thanks to the crying woman, Roy, Nicky, and Lucas Moreno were all part of my life now.

Stacks went silent, pondering how to phrase what he wanted to say to us next.

“The bottom line is that the five hundred grand I should have made from the drop is now the property of my associates. The good news is that I’ll continue to do business with them, but not with you two mules. You two are dead to me. No more work, no more deals, no more nothing.

“As I see it, my associates have been made whole for their loss, but me, Nicky Stacks, I’m out five hundred grand. Now, my associates consider this matter closed. They’re not going to punish Lucas for going rogue because one dead brother appears to be punishment enough. But they aren’t going to make me whole for my loss, either. They’re kind enough just to let me keep working in this town. So I’ve decided you two fuckheads
are
going to make me whole.”

“What do you want us to do, Nicky?” Roy asked.

There it was again: us, the proverbial we. We were a pack of two. I was with Roy, and Roy was with me.

“What I want you to do is get me one million dollars,” Nicky said. “Let me repeat: you owe me one million dollars.”

Roy blanched. His hands came up to his face and froze there, as if Nicky’s words were a punch he had to deflect. He tried to speak, but his voice was stuck in his throat.

“I’m going to give you two weeks,” Nicky said. “Two weeks to come up with the money. I don’t care how you get it. Gamble. Play scratch tickets. Beg, borrow, or steal. You owe me this money. Now, Roy, if you run, I’ll find you, and if I can’t, as a gesture of goodwill, my associates will help. We’re quite resourceful. We’ll know where you’d go to get a new identity. We’ll know how you’d go about disappearing. We’ll know all the underground routes you’d take to drop off the grid. There’s no place you can hide from us.”

“But . . . but . . . we don’t owe you a million, Nicky,” Roy stammered. “We only lost half that.”

“You owe me for pain and suffering,” Stacks said, with just the whisper of a smile.

“How are we supposed to get that kind of money?” Roy asked.

“You should have thought about that before you tried to steal from me.”

“And what if we can’t get the money?” I asked softly.

Nicky reached inside his suit jacket. I almost jumped to my feet, ready to duck for cover if he came out wielding what I thought he might. But instead of taking out his gun, Nicky withdrew an overstuffed business envelope. I looked at it, puzzled by its contents.

“I don’t know what you are all about,” Nicky said, slapping the envelope repeatedly against his beefy palm. “But I know you’re not cousins. I got that much out of Roy. Shame on me, because I should have done my background check on you before, but I did it after.”

Roy and I exchange anxious glances as Nicky tossed the envelope over to me like a Frisbee. It landed on my lap.

“Go ahead and open it, Gage,” Nicky said. “Roy gave me your address. It was all I needed to do my digging.”

Nervous as I was, I managed to unseal the envelope without it tearing. I pulled out a stack of trifolded papers from within. My body stiffened.

“That’s your wife, Anna, right?” Nicky said. “I printed out her picture from her website. Man, she’s beautiful.”

“What are you doing?” I asked in a voice steeped with alarm.

“Go ahead and flip through the other pages. I’ve got your parents’ address in there. I know the nursing home where Anna’s mother lives. I’ve got it all. I’ve also got a gun with your fingerprints on it that will be a match for the bullet inside poor Jorge’s chest. So if you run, my buddies with the police, and I do mean my buddies, will find Jorge’s body, which we’re keeping on ice for now, and they’ll come after you. Meanwhile, I’ll take a knife to your precious family and carve them up piece by stinking piece.” Nicky reached inside his suit jacket pocket once more. This time he removed a six-inch switchblade knife, which he unhinged with the push of a button. The blade shot out like a viper’s strike.

“You two clowns have two weeks to save your worthless lives and come up with my money,” Nicky said, as he hopped down from his perch on the dresser. The wood creaked from the release of his weight. “Like I said, if you run, I’ll find you. If you screw up, I go after your family. If you don’t deliver, you’re all dead, and by all, I mean Anna, Lily, and you two assholes.”

Nicky walked to the door and paused before opening it. Meanwhile, Roy and I didn’t budge. We were frozen where we sat.

Nicky turned his eyes on me once again. “You think losing your wife and kid in a car accident hurts?” he said. “Well, let me tell you something, Gage Dekker. You don’t know pain.”

He walked out the door, leaving Roy and me just two weeks to come up with one million dollars.