The Carrier (11 page)

“
Okay. Go and put the
tracker on their car—the Delaware car.”

“
Then what?”

“
That’s step
one.”

Danny hung up the phone, and Marcus
walked back to where the small Toyota with Delaware plates had been
parked, but when he got there he saw it was gone. He called Danny
again.

“
They’re gone.”

“
Damn it. All right. We can
do this. I’m going to get us a car,” Danny said. “Be ready to get
in.”

***

Danny watched students stagger around
Main Street—yelling, flirting, laughing. Well, who’s got a car I
can borrow? There were all kinds of vehicles parked along the
street, some of them had kids sitting inside. If this was how it
was on a Monday night, things must get way out of hand on the
weekend. Probably one of these private schools where rich people
send their bad children to keep them out of trouble; but then they
end up in one big playpen with other bad, rich kids.

Danny saw a young man, small-boned and
alone behind the wheel of a Lexus. Danny got in the passenger
seat.

“
Hi,” he said, “I’m Dr.
Chun, assistant dean of student conduct.”

“
What?”

“
What department are you
in?”

“
I—what?”

“
Drive down Main Street,
son.”

“
I’m—I’m waiting for my
friend.”

“
Are you stoned?”

“
I—what is this?”

“
Start the engine, please,”
Danny said sternly, and to his great relief, the boy started the
engine.

“
Mister, Dr. Chun, I don’t
know what this is. I’m not a—my friend and I are just going to go
to another friend’s place. We’re not—we haven’t—we don’t . .
.”

“
I see. Can you take the
next left?”

“
Please, sir. What can I
say?”

“
Stop here.”

The boy stopped the car, and Danny
gestured to Marcus to get in the back.

“
This is Dr. Fields, the
comptroller. I think you know what this is about?”

“
No. What’s going
on?”

“
What do you think is going
on?”

“
I think you’re . . . trying
to carjack me or something?”

“
Why would the dean of
student conduct carjack you? Does that make any sense? Go ahead and
call the cops if that’s what you think.”

The boy hesitated, then took out his
cell phone. Marcus grabbed it out of his hand and put it in his
pocket.

“
Keep driving,” Danny
said.

“
I don’t want to get
hurt.”

“
Who does?”

“
You’re not, like, a dean or
anything.”

“
Damn, you’ve got to be
pretty bright to get into college these days.”

Two minutes from Main Street the
stores and houses faded away and the corn fields
returned.

“
Why are there so many kids
up partying on a Monday night? Can you explain that to me, Kevin?”
Danny asked.

“
It’s Lawton’s
Day.”

“
What’s that?”

“
It’s a thing—this holiday.
There was this student in the seventies who dug a tunnel and, uh,
you know it’s kind of hard to explain.”

“
You are stoned, aren’t you?
Okay, let me give you some advice: don’t call the police until
you’re sober. Otherwise, you are just going to get yourself in a
lot of trouble. You understand that, Kevin?”

“
My name’s not
Kevin.”

“
Well, let me tell you
something—my name is Kevin. And I don’t forget a man who crosses
me. Do you understand?”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Don’t apologize to
me
. That’s the guy who’s
unhappy with you.” Danny gestured to Marcus in the backseat. “Does
he look like he plays games?”

“
Please just—let me
go.”

“
Okay,” Danny said, “stop
the car.”

The boy stopped the car. They were
about three miles from campus.

“
Get out,” Marcus
said.

The boy got out.

“
Sit down and think about
life. Do not leave this spot for an hour.”

“
Okay.”

“
Seriously. We’ll come back
to check on you in ten or twenty minutes.”

“
I won’t move.”

“
You better be exactly where
you’re sitting now,” Danny said. “You move an inch, this guy’s
going snap your neck.”

***

Danny tore off, and soon they found
the highway again. Marcus didn’t say anything.

“
Well, we’ve got a car,
let’s just floor it and see if we can pick them up out on I80. You
think it’s a Toyota with Delaware plates?”

“
You’re kidding me? You’ve
got to be kidding me.”

“
If you have a better idea,
I’ll listen.”

“
We’re not going to find it;
we’re just going to get arrested.”

“
Settle down, big man. It’s
going to be all right.”

Danny held up a fist for a bump.
Marcus just shook his head.

“
This is a pretty good
car—Lexus? I mean, I like the way it handles. I would do
commercials for this car:
high performance
and intensity of spirit
. You know how they
say shit like that?”

Danny was going over eighty as soon as
they hit the highway. They passed a few cars, but not the one they
were looking for. The police had stopped someone by the side of the
road. Danny didn’t even slow as they passed.

“
We’re not going to get
arrested?” Marcus asked.

“
Hey, we’ve got Iowa plates.
We blend in.”

“
That doesn’t make us
invisible.”

“
Were you always such a
nervous cow?”

“
Maybe you like it in
prison. I like to be free.”

“
Tell you what, if we get
caught, I’ll tell them I abducted you. I made you come out here
against your will. Happy?”

“
No, I am not
happy.”

“
How about you shut the fuck
up and be a man in this situation?”

Danny was nasty, a little demon
driving reckless after nothing, and Marcus seriously considered
hitting him in the side of the head. One blow would knock him
senseless, and then the car would just careen out of control. It
would be like a rollercoaster. There was one enormous punch
somewhere inside of him getting ready to come out. But wasn’t he
already on a kind of rollercoaster? Wasn’t this already a doomed
ride? So he sat quietly for another ten minutes, angry with his
lack of control, until they saw it—the brown Toyota.

“
There it is,” Marcus
shouted.

“
What did I tell
you?”

“
No way,” Marcus laughed in
spite of himself.

“
The First
State
,” Danny read off the license plate.
“Number one in my heart. We’re back in the game.”

And Marcus’s friend Danny was back
too, the even-tempered joker with a few unconventional ideas in his
head.

“
Where are they going?”
Marcus asked.

“
I hope they’re getting the
money right now, but—who knows?”

“
Maybe they’re going to call
the whole thing off.”

“
No, it’s too much money for
them to just leave on the table.”

It was still a very difficult job,
Marcus realized. Even if the courier and his armed girlfriend were
making the pickup, it was going to be tough to track them, and even
if they could be tracked, how were Marcus and Danny supposed to
disarm the girl and grab the money? It was clear Danny was
thinking, but Marcus had learned that not all of Danny’s plans were
simple and safe.

CHAPTER 17

Duane heard the steps coming up the
stairs, and then the man appeared on the landing: Tony Braxton.
Duane took an overhand swing, like splitting a log, and felt the
solid contact with a skull. He swung again, and then kicked the
body down the stairs and sprang on top of it. Tony’s gun was about
ten feet away, on the floor of the lobby. The motionless body was
now a problem for Inez. Duane picked up the gun, left the building,
and walked back to his car.

***

Five minutes after she’d heard the
thump, Inez walked down the stairs carefully, gun in hand. When she
got to the lobby, there was the mess. Tony lying flat—dead?—on his
stomach. She kicked him once, and he didn’t move but he didn’t feel
dead. She stooped over him—he was breathing.

Great, just skip out on your
responsibilities, Duane. But you couldn’t really hold it against
him, though. What did she want from him, exactly? They should play
house in this stranger’s apartment? No, she’d taken Duane home
because she’d gotten pretty sick of games with plastic toys. With
her gun tucked in her pants, she dragged Tony out of the apartment
building. He wasn’t heavy.

***

Later, still very early that morning,
she collected her possessions—a laptop, a change of clothes,
toiletries—and she left Newburgh for good without anyone ever
learning her name.

She’d thrown out Tony’s wallet, but
she held onto his cellphone, checking the messages as she drove.
She didn’t have a clear destination yet, but she wanted to put a
few miles between herself and this town before she had breakfast.
She’d only eaten half a pancake the night before, and it had her
thinking about how tasty a real breakfast can be.

Inez was not a good driver, and she
nearly drove over the center line while operating the phone. There
was a good reason they told you not to text and drive, and she
decided to wait until she stopped for breakfast before checking the
messages. She didn’t actually have a driver’s license. Growing up
she took the subway everywhere—who needed a car? A written test? A
road test? For the time being, she just had to hope she didn’t get
stopped.

She had breakfast in
Connecticut, a few miles across the border. Pancakes—a whole stack
that belonged to her, no sharing. Next she checked Tony’s phone.
There were a few cryptic texts and two voice messages. The newest
one was from Duane calling from the Denny’s—
Hey, call me if you need me.
The
other was also from Duane, but he sounded a lot less
tough.

“
Hey. I’d just like to know
what’s going on. Because I’m going to move soon. So . . . please
call me back,” he said.

She listened to it again.
No, it wasn’t Duane, but, damn, it really sounded a lot like him.
Who was it? And who talked that way—
So
please call me back
. This was the business
phone, so it had to be someone on Tony’s payroll. Could it be the
driver he was going to use? A driver who sounded a lot like Duane.
That was something. She’d hang onto the phone a while longer and
see who else called.

In the next two days the driver called
back twice. He wasn’t stupid enough to call from a phone registered
in his own name, but the third time he called a number popped
up.

“
The trip is on Monday. So
please let me know what you can before that day,” he said in his
message.

This was a lot more specific than a
message should be. She called the number back about an hour later.
It rang and rang, until finally someone picked up, an older
woman.

“
Hey, is the boss in?” Inez
asked.

“
What boss?”

“
The boss.”

“
This is a payphone,
dear.”

“
Okay. Where is this
payphone?”

It was in Poughkeepsie, New
York. Jesus, the names of these upstate towns—
Poughkeepsie, Fishkill, Beaverdance.
At least it wasn’t too far away. On the way up, she had a
sudden inspiration: it was Duane’s brother. Had to be. A lot of
brothers sound alike. She couldn’t tell her own brothers apart on
the phone—not that she talked to those moody bitches anymore. But a
lot of people trusted family when it came to crime. And here’s
where it paid to have done her homework. She’d asked Tony who Duane
was, and he’d given the full name—Duane Smrekar. He’d said
Smrekar
twice—making a
joke of the sloppy swirl of consonants. Soon after that she’d left
him alone in that loud sports bar and went to fuck his enemy—not
all bad memories. She’d meant to get a look at Duane’s wallet to
double check, but she never got the chance. Duane was a careful man
when it came to where he put his pants.

It took Inez a while to get the
spelling right, but finally Poughkeepsie information found exactly
one Smrekar—Cyril. She went by his house, a modest place with a
gray Toyota Camry parked in front. Thank you Cyril for being so
easy to work with.

She knew he was picking up
money—that’s what Tony had indicated in a few long, stupid
speeches. She would have to use Danny Chin for this job. Luis would
think she was still working for him, and she wouldn’t have to drive
a thousand miles. Not only that, she wasn’t sure how dangerous the
trip would be. Inez was a confident woman, but she wasn’t about to
enter a gunfight if she could avoid it. This way, the worst thing
that could happen would be for Danny to get himself shot out in a
flat state.