The Carrier (13 page)

“
Sorry, she’s asleep right
now,” the buckskin woman said.

“
I can give you ten
dollars,” Cyril said.

The man was disappointed, but the
woman looked genuinely moved.

“
Bless you,” she
said.

Cyril reached into his
pocket.

“
Oh, you’ve got my wallet,
right?” he said to Willow.

“
I think I do, my
dear.”

Willow reluctantly took ten dollars
out of her pocket and handed it to the man. She didn’t give the
wallet back to Cyril.

“
That’s really good of you,”
the man said.

He and his wife sat down at the table.
The waitress came over and asked if they were ready to order. The
man looked bashfully at Cyril. Cyril nodded and Willow kicked him
under the table. The man ordered two club sandwiches with fries.
Cyril and Willow got a slice of pie to share.

“
Thank you so much,” the
woman said. “We’re just so hungry. Hard to believe you can work up
such an appetite sitting down all day, but I really needed this.
How’d y’all meet?”

Y’all?
She didn’t sound southern. With New Jersey plates and her
sixties clothes, what exactly was the story?

“
We met in a yoga class,”
Cyril said.

“
Really? Stretching on the
floor, that kind of thing?” the man asked.

“
It was kind of magical,”
Willow said.

She still sounded surly, but Cyril was
pretty sure she was a little turned on by pretend yoga.

“
She had to correct my form
several times,” Cyril said.

He was relaxed, lying just for the
hell of it, but he was still alert, glancing out the window
frequently. When the food came, the woman stood up.

“
Let me just put Maisey in
her crib. I’ll be right back.”

“
You can’t leave a baby in a
truck—she’ll freeze,” Willow said.

“
We’ve got the heater on;
she’ll be much more comfortable in the portable crib where she can
really relax.”

The woman went back out to the truck.
The rest of them ate in silence for a few minutes.

“
Jean is really too proud to
do this kind of thing,” the tall man said, “but, you know, you get
down on your luck, right? And I hate to press it, but ten dollars
isn’t going to get us a room.”

“
Just eat your sandwich,
okay?” Willow said.

“
My man?” he looked at
Cyril.

“
Don’t look at him,” Willow
said sharply.

“
Hey, she’s got the
wallet.”

“
Brother, why does she hold
your wallet? I mean, what is that about?”

“
Can you just accept the
answer?” Willow said.

“
Maybe you could quiet down
and let your man speak a word for himself.”

“
Have you ever been stabbed
in the eye with a fork?”

“
Man, I’ll shut your lady up
if I have to.”

“
Just take the sandwich and
go,” Cyril said.

“
You’re going to tell me
what to do? A dude like you?”

Cyril saw an idea forming—the man was
going to attack. Cyril just had to hope Willow wouldn’t shoot him.
The man made a fist with his right hand, but then he shrugged and
eased off. He wrapped up his wife’s sandwich in a napkin, slowly,
deliberately and then glanced at Cyril.

“
And you might want to look
into growing a sack, buddy. Comes in handy from time to
time.”

“
Go now,” Willow said, just
below a shout.

The man left the diner just as the
waitress made it to their table.

“
Is there any trouble?” she
asked.

“
That guy was a little off
the wall,” Willow said.

“
We get some odd ones in
here. You know, right off the highway. Had a guy a few years back
who walked in with an owl on his shoulder. Live owl.
Why won’t you serve me and my
owl
?”

Cyril turned to Willow.

“
It’s a good thing we left
our owl in the car,” he said.

The waitress enjoyed that; she liked
Cyril but was undecided about Willow.

“
We had a sign up for a
while—
No bare feet, No fighting, No
owls
,” the waitress said, “but it got
stolen.”

“
Of course it did,” Willow
said. “I’d steal a sign like that.”

The waitress walked away, not entirely
convinced that Willow hadn’t been the source of all the
trouble.

CHAPTER 21

Marcus saw the car, the brown Toyota
with Delaware plates, parked alone in the corner of the lot. It was
visible from the restaurant, but Marcus figured if he took the long
way around no one in the restaurant would notice him. He walked
behind a pickup truck and then stopped, peeking over into the diner
to see if anyone was looking. This was stupid, he realized,
slinking around made him look like he was up to something. Just
stride across the parking lot, slap the tracker on the car and keep
walking. When he walked out from behind the truck he saw a woman
standing on the other side. She was dressed like a hippie, and she
held a swaddled baby in her arms.

“
Where are
you
coming from?” she
asked.

“
Nowhere,
really.”

“
You just appeared out of
the dark. Nearly scared the life out of me,” she said, but she
didn’t seem scared in the least. “God damned Sasquatch shows up on
foot. Can you help me out?”

“
With what?”

“
A few dollars. We need to
get a place to sleep, to shower. You know, a room rather than just
sleeping in a car on the side of the road.”

“
I’ve got nothing.
Sorry.”

“
You just appear in a rest
stop—no car, no warning?”

“
Yes.”

Now he had no choice but to walk into
the restaurant. They wouldn’t know his face. He could walk in,
order something, use the bathroom, then walk out and slap the
tracker on? Did that sound suspicious?

“
Please can you help me,”
the woman continued. “I’m out here with a newborn baby. I’ve got to
get her out to California. That’s where my sister lives. She can
give me a hand.”

“
You’re out here all alone?
Just you and the baby?”

“
Yeah.”

“
You just drive with him in
the back? For days and days?”

“
She—her name’s
Maisey.”

“
You’re going to drive a
thousand miles with her?”

“
Unless you’ve got a better
way to do it. Please, it’s really hard. Anything you can
spare.”

Marcus had a soft spot for beseeching
women. He reached into his wallet—one fifty dollar bill for
emergencies, one ten, a few singles, and some change. He handed her
the singles and the change, but she’d seen the fifty.

“
Thank you,” she said,
“you’re a very generous person. Hey, do you like to
party?”

“
What do you mean by
that?”

“
What do you
think?”

“
I’m just going to get a
little something to eat.”

“
I’ll do what I can to
support this kid. You understand what I’m saying?”

They stood in silence for about half a
minute, the woman smiling assertively.

“
How about you give me that
fifty I saw or I start yelling that you’re making rude comments and
licking yourself while I’m trying to breastfeed?”

This was bad—it was the last of his
real money. But Marcus reminded himself that they were almost
there: tag the car, follow it to the pickup, collect a million
dollars. He could spare the fifty if he had treasure coming. Still,
it was hard to let go, and hard to give in to such a cheap grifter.
Why hadn’t he sewn the fifty into his jeans like he’d meant to?
Maybe because he couldn’t sew, and it wasn’t the kind of thing he
could ask Saida to do for him.

And then he had a sudden impulse to
slap this woman hard, this confident little hippie who thought she
had nothing to fear from a man twice her size. Marcus had never
come anywhere near hitting a woman before. He’d had a few fights
with Saida, where she’d ripped into him pretty good, but even at
full volume, he could never think of anything but how crazy she
made him and how much he loved her.

The woman in buckskin was right: he
wasn’t going to hit her. The last thing—the absolute last thing—he
needed right now was a woman yelling at him in the parking lot. He
handed her the fifty.

“
Here, I’ll let you keep
your change,” she said and tossed him back his coins.

He reached up to protect himself as if
the nickels and dimes were dangerous. They fell to the
ground.

“
It’s just money, dear,” she
said, and then she threw her baby headfirst into the back seat.
Marcus gasped, and the woman laughed at him again.

“
Don’t tell me how to raise
my child, okay?”

There had never been a baby, just a
loaf of white bread wrapped in blankets. Why she’d hold it like a
baby, alone in a parking lot was a question he couldn’t answer. She
locked the truck and headed for the restaurant, and he walked right
to the brown Toyota and stuck the tracker back near the bumper,
more or less where it had been on the first car. He gave it a few
rough pats—it would hold.

CHAPTER 22

Whenever Top wanted to meet Duane it
was either a very good thing or a very bad thing. Duane guessed
that this was not going to be a good thing, but at least Top met
you somewhere reasonable, like New York or Boston. Duane made sure
to get there early. He sat at a bar in lower Manhattan at three in
the afternoon. It was populated mostly by young men who looked like
they worked on money all day. There was a lot of unnecessary
posturing. They had to sit in a way that it made it clear how tough
they were. In the wrong mood, this would be the absolute worst
place for Duane to spend an hour idly drinking. Anyone who even
thought of talking to him would end up with a shoe in his mouth.
Duane hated these guys, but at the same time they sort of had it
figured out, didn’t they?

So maybe Top had something really
great to tell him. Maybe Top was going to announce they were
opening a legit Wall Street branch of the organization, and Duane
was going to be the vice president of accounts. No, there would be
a few cheap insults and some unrealistic requests, but at least Top
wasn’t having him killed tonight. You don’t ask someone to meet you
at the center of the world to do that kind of thing.

Top came in like a doctor: late with
no apologies. But at least he was ready to get right down to
business. He ordered a single malt and then turned to
Duane.

“
When was the last time you
heard from Tony Braxton?”

“
Not since last week—when I
saw him.”

“
So exactly what time did
you last see him?”

“
About ten.”

“
You left first or he left
first?”

“
I left first.”

“
And he was in a
bar?”

“
Yeah. It was called
McPhail’s. I can find the address pretty easily.”

No reason to lie about what Top
already knew. He was looking at Duane very carefully, probably
using tricks of lie detection that he’d gotten from some manual of
leadership and domination. Duane could read faces better than
anyone without using silly tricks. Top relaxed his gaze.

“
You ever sell any gold?” he
asked.

“
Not since I was a
kid.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I mean that I came into
some jewelry a few times when I was young.”

“
No. I’m not talking about
snatching chains and selling them at a pawn shop.”

“
I didn’t think you were.
You’re moving into the precious metals?”

“
Nothing for sure. I’m just
trying to figure out of if it makes sense to get gold. An
opportunity has come up, and it looks like either we can punish
someone or try to make some money out of gold.”

“
That seems like an odd
choice to have to make.”

“
Not really. But I don’t
know a ton about gold. Thought I might ask you—see if you knew
anything.”

Now Duane was being treated like a
trusted insider? He really didn’t know what to think. But if Top
was trying to lull him into some kind trap, it wasn’t going to
work.

“
How much are we talking
about?” Duane asked.

“
I had a few conversations
with some people here—Wall Street, you know,” Top said. “You ever
talk to these people?”

Duane looked around the bar at the
men—and one woman—drinking cocktails. If these guys were really in
finance, shouldn’t they be upstairs working?

“
They try to act like TV
gangsters. I’m serious, one of these guys—fucking Harvard MBA—he’s
wearing a black do-rag on his head. Italian suit and loafers, but
neck up he’s some kind of Crip? Amusing. But that doesn’t mean he’s
stupid. These guys are pretty sharp. Some of the schemes they come
up with? It’s worth talking to people like this.”