The Carrier (17 page)

“
I don’t know. That shit’s
funny. It just is,” he said. “Werewolf mooning. You know, with the
teeth and everything.”

“
How’d your parents like
it?”

“
They took it okay. I mean,
that’s war, right?”

“
I always thought that was
made up—Tony in the army. I can’t really see him in the
military.”

“
Can you see him sneaking
his ass into a video chat?”

The redhead reached under the counter.
Cyril tensed, but if the guy were going to kill him, he wouldn’t
need to draw any kind of surprise weapon. The redhead pulled out a
duffel bag and hoisted it onto the counter. It rattled hard—not
like paper money.

“
What is that?”

“
Christ, doesn’t anyone tell
you anything?”

“
No.”

“
Look inside.”

Cyril peeked in.

“
Gold?”

“
Yes.”

“
Are we pirates?”

“
Seriously, they didn’t tell
you?”

Cyril trusted the dealers not to play
games—scam or shave on payment. He would act calm and trust the
authority of Top to keep people in line; and so far he hadn’t had
any trouble. Was this part of the plan? Because this was really the
kind of thing you needed to tell your courier—it’s not money, it’s
bars of gold.

“
A guy we know used to do
some crazy jobs. He talked about grabbing, like, Egyptian artifacts
right out of museums. Or one time he dressed like a caterer and
stole a crate of Lafitte Rothschild out of the cellar during a
private party at Warren Buffet’s house with diplomats and hookers
and shit. He brings us a bottle and says, ‘This is the finest wine
in the world. Small sips, gentlemen
.
’”
The
redhead nodded out through the window toward his guys. “Rock stars
out there are chasing it with Fresca.”

“
How’d you like
it?”

“
It didn’t get me drunk.
Anyway, the gold came from that guy, and his story is that he got
it off a boat—one of those old Spanish galleons that wrecked in the
Gulf of Mexico. Discovery channel is doing a whole expedition, but
his friend and him sweep in and grab. Later they melted it all down
into bars—they don’t care about history. Probably all bullshit, but
the gold is real. Believe me, we checked on it. It’s good as
advertised. The big ones are all 32.15. Twenty-six of them, and
then a little chip.”

The redhead held up a printout. It was
the price of gold as of close of business Monday. Cyril would’ve
been happier with cash, but if this was real, it was almost as
good. Much better than drugs. Cyril studied one of the bars. It
looked a little dull, not as gleaming and yellow as he might have
liked, but he doubted anyone would have him ship fifty pounds of
worthless metal across the country just to make a point to Top. If
they wanted to do that they’d probably just kill Cyril and let his
body turn up looking ugly. No, the gold was probably real. And if
all went well, he’d be living off it for quite a while.

CHAPTER 30

When the blip on the tracker’s screen
stopped, Marcus thought it had frozen up again; but soon he saw
that it was still receiving.

“
They’ve stopped,” he
said.

“
Yeah?” Danny looked over.
“They must have arrived.”

They were about twenty minutes away.
Danny drove past the neat rows of middle class houses, past the
golf club, and stopped about a quarter of a mile short of the
narrow path that led to the house.

“
The car is in a driveway at
four in the morning. I think we’ve got our pickup,” he
said.

CHAPTER 31

Cyril drove back up the dirt
path with almost a million dollars in gold in the trunk. America
was huge: thousands of towns and millions of people. If he was
careful and quiet there was no reason he couldn’t get away with
this. For just a second he felt free and hopeful, and then he saw
Willow from a distance. He sped up. She stepped out into the road
and waved, goofy-happy at first and then big panicked sweeps of her
arms—
Don’t you see me, what’re you
doing?
She didn’t have enough time to draw
her gun.

He tried to hug the right side of the
dirt road, but she angled herself in his path. He didn’t slow the
car as he neared her, but he did try to swerve so he wouldn’t hit
her. It didn’t seem like there was enough room, but just before
contact, she jumped out of the way, and he swung all the way to the
left of the path. Then, before he crashed into a tree he swung back
onto the path and hit a log, then another, and spun off the road
and into a rut off to the side. Why were there logs in the middle
of the path—big ones? They hadn’t been there on the way in. Why
hadn’t Willow trusted him? He tried to start the engine again but
couldn’t move forward. He was about to shift into reverse when
Willow smacked the window with her gun.

“
Get out now,” she
said.

He could start the engine again, but
he wasn’t sure he had a clear way out. Carefully, he climbed out of
the car.

“
What . . . is wrong with
you?”

“
I’m sorry,” he
said.

“
You’re sorry?”

“
You put the logs out
there?”

“
Yes, I put the logs
there.”

He should have run her over. Or maybe
he should have asked the redhead if he could borrow a gun and
capped her when she wasn’t expecting it. No, he wasn’t wired for
murder. He didn’t want her dead. He didn’t even want her dead now,
while she held a gun on him.

“
I am sorry,” he
said.

“
Did you get the
money?”

“
Sort of.”

“
It’s not drugs. You were
lying about that from the beginning.”

“
Yes, I was.”

“
How much is
there?”

“
It’s gold.”

“
What?”

“
It’s not cash, it’s gold.
You want to see?”

“
It’s in the
trunk?”

“
Yes. Can we drive a bit,
and then do this?”

“
No. Open the
trunk.”

Cyril opened the trunk and took out
the duffel bag.

“
What’s it
worth?”

“
A lot.”

Cyril undid the clasp at the top of
the bag and pulled down the flap. Then he reached in, took out one
bar, and brought it closer to her.

“
Gentle,” she
said.

He tossed it forward carefully. By the
meager light of the car she seemed satisfied that it was
real.

“
He paid you in gold?” she
asked.

“
Yes.”

“
Is he a king from a
fairytale?”

He liked this: she was making jokes.
He could repair this. They’d get to Belize and sort it out, and she
would model all kinds of modest swimwear for him.

“
You tried to kill me,” she
said.

“
I tried
not
to kill you.”

“
You almost did.”

“
You’ve had a gun on me all
night. Can you blame me for trying to break out?”

“
That’s a good point you
make,” she said, holding the revolver steady in her
hand.

“
We go out west, turn it
into cash, then we go to Belize. We can live forever on this,” he
said.

“
You tried to run me
over.”

“
I’m sorry, I—”

She shot. He felt like someone had
shoved him, but he hadn’t been knocked over. It must have been a
miss. He reached into the bag and hurled a solid trapezoid of gold
at her and scrambled behind the car. And that’s when he saw a small
man charge at Willow. Two shots rang out and the man fell. The next
thing Cyril knew an enormous creature had grabbed Willow from
behind and lifted her off the ground. No, it was just a very big
man. He wrenched her back and forth, finally turning her upside
down. She squirmed a leg loose and kicked him in the side of the
head, but then he slammed her to the ground head first and crushed
down on top of her, driving his full weight straight down. The big
man hopped up quickly and grabbed the gun. Willow lay still. Cyril
made a dash for the duffel bag, but as soon as he reached it the
big man turned to him.

“
Give it to me,” he shouted
at Cyril. Cyril held the duffel bag close to his chest, thinking it
would keep him safe. The big man didn’t even point the gun at him,
so Cyril tried to bargain.

“
We can work something
out.”

“
Give it to me.”

“
You don’t understand. If
you try to sell this on your own—”

“
Give it to me.”

The big man raised the gun.

“
I think you killed her,”
Cyril said.

“
What?”

“
I think she’s
dead.”

The big man looked dazed. He spun,
looking for the girl whose neck he’d just snapped. He couldn’t find
her in the dark. Instead, he saw his little friend, lying in dark
liquid death. Cyril had a chance to jump him, but he didn’t take
it.

“
She shot Danny,” the big
man said, turning back to Cyril. More than anything, he seemed
upset by the death of his friend.

“
Who’s Danny?”

The big man shook his head.

“
No.”

“
We’ve both got to get out
of here,” Cyril said, taking a step back toward Willow’s car. It
looked like he might be able to slip away while the big man
struggled with questions of mortality and justice. But the guy
snapped out of it.

“
Give it to me. Give me the
bag,” he said and took a big step toward Cyril. It was clear he had
never held a firearm before, but that wasn’t any kind of comfort.
Cyril tossed the bag in front of him and started to back away. The
man grabbed it by one strap and lifted it over his shoulder—it
seemed a lot lighter for him than it had been for Cyril.

***

Marcus jogged back to his car and
threw the bag in the backseat. He watched his own hands shake on
the steering wheel, expecting something to come from outside:
someone should shoot him, or shatter his window, or the car should
simply explode. His legs started to twitch, and he couldn’t think
of any way to stop it, so he started the car and eased it back onto
the dirt road. It didn’t explode, and nothing prevented him from
rolling out into the wet roads of a very early morning.

CHAPTER 32

Cyril’s first instinct was to run into
the woods, fairytale woods with friendly animals and witches who
were easily duped by clever children. But the authentic fairy tales
were always brutal and bloody, littered with flesh-devouring birds
and severed hands. Cyril was a reasonable man. Why was he thinking
of fairy tales? It was time to get his head together. First of all
what was on the ground?

How was Willow? She was now unarmed,
not as dangerous. The small man was dead. Almost certainly. And if
he wasn’t, Cyril couldn’t save him. Next he found a bar of gold. It
was something. If only he’d thrown more of them at Willow, he’d
have more of them to keep. Willow—he’d told the big guy that she
was dead, but he didn’t know for sure. She could be fine, briefly
stunned by a fall but now ready to figure out the next move. He
hadn’t wanted to spend his life with her in a Central American
beach house, and he had double crossed her, but he didn’t think
he’d been lying when he said he loved her.

He bent down close to her face—she
wasn’t breathing. There didn’t seem to be a pulse. He’d heard once
that CPR was a sham, just something to keep you busy in a tragedy.
At any rate, it wasn’t a cure for a snapped vertebra. For the first
time he realized it was raining.

CHAPTER 33

All Duane had to do now was kill a man
who most likely was already dead. If someone asked you to get rid
of Bin Laden, you might make some phone calls, talk to a few old
guys with beards, but you wouldn’t drag the entire ocean to make
sure the body was really down there. Duane checked all the obvious
places and didn’t find Tony. But there also hadn’t been any reports
of a gross, panda-looking corpse turning up in Newburgh, so Duane
went to Delaware on the word of a high-functioning junkie who said
he’d seen Tony in a car with a girl, a girl Tony had been spending
a lot of time with lately. The junkie was mostly sure about the
day—a day that would put Tony alive after Duane had split his head
open with a metal slat.

The girl was named Willow. Duane had
met her once, a dark-haired number with a low, sexy voice. One
night Tony had called him from her landline, high as a god, and
asked if Duane knew where to find a maquisapa monkey. So now Duane
had her address. He kept pieces of information like this; they came
in handy sometimes and helped you catch people
unprepared.

He circled the house, a small A-frame
just outside Wilmington. Through the window he saw a man and woman,
slumped on the couch while the TV flickered black and white. The
woman wasn’t Willow. Duane went back to the front of the house and
knocked. It took a while, but the woman finally answered, still
getting her arms into a flannel shirt that didn’t quite cover the
tracks.