The Carrier (19 page)

So the plan was to get rid of body
first and then drive somewhere—California maybe—and leave the car
there. He had one solid brick of gold, which had to be worth a
lot—twenty thousand dollars, maybe? He also had some money put
away. He could move to San Francisco and really start to play the
guitar. The problem with that was if he had any success, then his
face would be out there, and it wasn’t like there was no
intersection between musicians and drug dealers.

Focus.
First get rid of the body, then become a folk music
sensation.

He left the car in a lot, making extra
sure he was legal and correctly parked, and then he walked around a
mall for a while. There was nothing particularly suspicious about
his car—a lot of people had junk in their back seats. He had a full
day to kill—wandering around, looking at jackets and belts. A
teenaged couple argued about a gift the girl had given the
boy.

“
I can’t wear it to school;
I can’t wear it to church. Where the hell am I even supposed to
wear it? I should wear it to sleep? Do you wear a friggin’ hat to
bed?”

The girl was near tears. These kids
had problems.

A Brazilian guitarist played
and sang in the main mezzanine. He’d crossed the equator to
sing
Fique tranquilo
to
Nebraskans
.
It didn’t make Cyril feel any
better, so he left the mall and drove around the rest of the day,
looking for a good spot of woods to leave the body. He’d felt as if
he could smell her from the moment he’d put her in the car, but
that was probably just his imagination. As night fell, however, the
body had clearly begun to harden. She was really dead.

Cyril was normally a rational man, but
while driving in the dark, the idea that she’d rise as a zombie and
grab him from behind felt like a real possibility. Every creaking
sound and bump from the road seemed to come from her—clearing her
voice before speaking.

“
I didn’t kill you. I didn’t
want you to get hurt,” he said, as if that was a reasonable way to
convince a zombie of anything.

In between hallucinations he had some
reasonable moments. He wasn’t going to get caught for this. Once he
got rid of the body and the car and got himself far away from them,
there’d be nothing tying him to her. They’d never find her body.
There would be no case. Serial killers usually didn’t get caught
until they’d killed lots of people, when they started to get sloppy
or fall into patterns. If you just killed one stranger, then left
her behind, chances are you’d be fine. Wait, he wasn’t a murderer.
Was he losing his mind?

Did the man at the hardware store get
a lot of customers like Cyril—dazed, inept, and in need of a
shovel—or had he known immediately that Cyril was getting rid of a
dead body? Had he called the police as soon as Cyril left the
store? What about the guy at the gas station who leered at him, or
the early morning farm kids who’d watched him drive by in his New
York plates only twenty miles from the scene of the crime? Cyril
was unraveling. He needed help, and there was only one person he
could think of to call.

CHAPTER 35

Duane drove west. Not all the way to
Kansas or Iowa or wherever Cyril might have gone, but he wanted to
get a head start in case he had to run from Top. He bought a jar of
peanut butter and a loaf of Wonder Bread. He didn’t quite have the
stomach for the peanut butter, but he forced himself to eat a slice
of bread just to put something in his stomach. You didn’t want to
get three days into a situation and realize that you had no fuel.
He was driving through Pennsylvania when he got the call from
Cyril.

“
Where are you?” Duane
asked.

“
I’m somewhere in the middle
of the country.”

“
Don’t be cute with me, fuck
monkey.”

“
I’m sorry, but
I—”

“
Did you pick up the
money?”

“
It wasn’t money,
exactly.”

“
What was it?”

“
It was a—metal.”

“
Jesus, we don’t have to
speak in code—no one is listening. What was it?”

“
Gold.”

“
Okay, gold—do you have
it?”

“
Duane, I need
help.”

“
You have to tell me
everything you know. So there’s gold? That’s what you’re
saying?”

“
You don’t have to believe
me, but I—”

“
I believe you. Do you have
it?”

“
No.”

“
Can you get it?”

“
I really don’t see how I
could.”

“
You’re a dead man,
Cyril.”

“
You want me
dead?”

“
If you were in front of me
right now.”

“
I shouldn’t have called. I
just—”

“
First you’re going to tell
me everything you know.”

Cyril paused. Duane could hear him
breathing—it was infuriating, but Duane knew he was only going to
get one chance. If Cyril hung up, he wouldn’t call back. He wasn’t
a moron.

“
Look,” Duane said, trying
to sound less belligerent without letting Cyril off the hook, “I
need to know what happened. That’s the only way I can fix
this.”

“
This Chinese guy and this
big white guy stuck us up. The white guy has the gold. I
think.”

“
What happened to the
Chinese guy?”

“
I think he got
hurt.”

“
Who’s us?” Duane
asked.

“
What?”

“
You said those guys stuck
us up. Who’s
us
?”

“
Stuck me up.”

“
You had someone else along?
Who and why?”

“
Duane. I need to disappear
over this.”

“
You can’t disappear. You
have to make this right. So a Chinese guy and a big white guy? What
else?”

“
And Tony Braxton has been
talking to people he shouldn’t be talking to.”

A hundred percent right, of course,
but how did Cyril know about these things? Duane had balled a slice
of white bread into a tiny sphere. He kept squeezing it. Who could
the Chinese guy be? He couldn’t think of any Chinese men they dealt
with regularly.

“
How do you know the guy was
Chinese?” Duane asked.

“
He was Asian. I think his
name was Danny,” Cyril said.

“
Danny? Why do you think
that?”

“
That’s what the other guy
called him.”

“
Danny. Danny
Chin?”

Okay, maybe they were getting
somewhere.

“
I don’t know. He didn’t say
a last name.”

“
How tall was
Danny?”

“
I don’t know—it was
dark.”

“
You knew he was Asian. You
knew the other guy was big.”

“
Danny wasn’t
big.”

Yeah, it had to be Danny Chin. Duane
wanted points for this. They’d gotten one message from Luis about a
Danny Chin getting out of prison—was there anything they could do
for this Danny Chin? That was a year ago and Duane remembered the
name. Duane deserved a medal for this one.

“
What was the big white
guy’s name?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Anything else you can tell
me about him?”

“
No, I don’t—I don’t
remember.”

“
This is really important.
Really, really important.”

“
I don’t know. I think they
were close. You know, when Danny got hurt, the other one seemed
pretty upset. Then again, he took off alone with all the gold. He
left Danny lying there.”

“
Where’d he go?”

“
I just don’t
know.”

“
You didn’t
follow?”

“
No.”

“
Why not?”

“
I’m really sorry
if—”

“
Cyril, you don’t have to
disappear. You just have to help me get this back.”

“
I’ll tell you anything else
you think would be useful right now. But that’s all I can do. I’m
not going back home.”

Duane was ready to punch a hole
through his own windshield, but he had to keep on
pushing.

“
Who was in the car with
you?”

“
I told you—”

“
Cyril, you said
us.
There was someone
else in the car with you?”

“
Just a girl. She had a
great voice. She lied to me about a lot of things.”

“
Who was she?”

“
Don’t worry about
her.”

Let’s say Duane could bring
in Cyril’s head—
here, Top, I’ve got him
for you.
No money, just his brother. Would
that save Duane? Probably not. Cyril was right to
disappear.

“
The money is with the big
white guy,” Cyril said. “Last I saw, anyway. I don’t know where he
went, but I think Danny Chin is—gone.”

“
You killed Danny
Chin?”

“
I didn’t kill anyone, but
the girl is gone too. I mean—she went down.”

“
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Now
go back home and wait for me.”

“
Duane, I think this is
it.”

“
If I see you I’m going to
kill you. You understand?”

“
Then I really shouldn’t go
home and wait for you, should I?”

Yeah, that threat hadn’t made a ton of
sense. Cyril always had a good ear for illogical
statements.

“
You’ve fucked me over, C.
You even think of that?”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
After everything I did for
you.”

“
Maybe you should take off,
also.”

They were at the end of the
conversation, but neither wanted to hang up.

“
Can I ask you a question?”
Cyril asked.

“
Go ahead.”

“
I’m wondering if you’ve
ever had to get rid of something. Like a . . .”

Duane put the phone down and
laughed—two quick, hacking bursts.

“
You’re riding around with a
dead body in your trunk? If you didn’t kill it, why not leave it
where it was?”

“
I had good
reasons.”

“
So while I have you on the
phone—
How do I get rid of the
corpse?
That’s what this just turned
into?”

“
Please.”

Now that Duane was on solid ground, he
felt a little better. It wouldn’t help him any, but it was
something to work on, to feed his mind. Some people dealt with
stress by doing Sudoku.

“
You got a shovel?” he
asked.

“
Yes.”

“
Okay. Well that’s really
most of it. That was going to be my big piece of
advice.”

“
Where do—”

“
This is the girl? The girl
you killed?”

“
I didn’t kill
anyone.”

“
If you knew what you were
doing, I’d suggest finding a cattle farm out there. They’ve got
these decomp pits for their dead cows. If you could manage to drop
her in and cover it up like nothing happened, that would be the way
to go. But my guess is you’d either get caught trying to dump her,
or the farmer would notice something wasn’t right with his pit.
Next morning—
Gruesome Discovery by Local
Cowman
. I’d just bury her out in the
woods.”

“
Have you done
this?”

“
You want to drive some
distance away from where it happened and then see if you can bury
her fairly deep. Rain can come in and wash surface dirt around.
Animals can smell something unless it’s a few feet down there.
You’re a strong kid—put some back into it. And try not to leave
anything behind. That’s mostly about being careful beforehand
rather than after.”

It was good advice, simple and clear.
Duane was starting to regret that he hadn’t spent more time with
his brother.

“
Thank you,” Cyril said.
“How should I get rid of the car?”

“
How about I come out there
and do it for you? Then we’ll stop at Dairy Queen and I’ll buy you
a training bra? I’m done helping you.”

“
I appreciate all
of—”

“
Just never get comfortable,
okay,” Duane continued, “because there’s lots of ways people can
find you. If you’ve got an account somewhere, take all your money
out immediately, and then get out of that town. Get rid of your
phone. I mean like right after you hang up here. And if you start
to think you’re somehow invisible, like people have just let go of
. . . Hello?”

***

Cyril had hung up the phone. In fact
he’d hung it up and thrown it off a bridge into the middle of a
dark river named for a betrayed Lakota warrior. He’d hung up on his
brother because he’d started crying, slowly at first, then
uncontrollably, but he didn’t stop driving. A crying man on the
side of the road would attract attention. He cried for about five
minutes, steering through sparsely populated stretches of land.
Finally he pulled it together. He had to do this, and then he had
to get himself lost.