The Carrier (22 page)

“
How did you get here so
fast?” Inez said.

“
What do you mean so
fast?”

“
Before I did.”

“
I’m good at what I
do.”

“
Where’s the
money?”

“
It’s gold, not
money.”

“
Gold is money. Where is
it?”

“
Who are you
anyway?”

“
You don’t remember
me
?”

“
But who are
you?”

Dear, sweet Inez. Who the hell was
this girl? She’d gotten information out of Tony, and then sent
Danny Chin out to Iowa to wreck things? Was that who she was? Why
hadn’t she gone out there herself? She had to be more capable than
that pervert amateur and this big mess on the floor. Or was Duane
way off base? Was she something else entirely?

“
I just want my money,” she
said.

“
You’re a friend of Danny
Chin—is that right?”

“
Don’t worry about it.” She
nodded at Marcus. “He won’t tell you where the money
is?”

“
He told me.”

“
So why are you still
here?”

“
I was just about to
leave.”

But she was reckless—stupid and clever
at the same time. You couldn’t live your life working the way she
did. Luis—the guy still in prison? Was she his girlfriend? She was
too young for that. Then again, he knew some gangsters took on
twelve year-olds, thirteen year-olds. Once you’ve done the hard
crimes, it seems a little silly not to pick up a seventh-grader if
you’re into that.

“
Luis? That’s where you come
from?” he asked.

“
That’s where I come from?
What the hell does that mean?”

“
I’m just trying to figure
out who you are.”

“
This isn’t the time for you
to be solving little puzzles.”

“
Because Luis can’t help
anyone in—”

“
I don’t need his
help.”

“
You need somebody’s
help.”

“
People act like Luis was my
husband or something. How much do you think about someone you
fucked when you were a teenager?”

“
Some of them I think about
a lot.”

“
Well, okay—maybe you had
some very profound experiences. Luis is nothing.”

“
Okay, you’re on your own,
then. I’ll tell you the truth—so am I.”

A couple of free agents with some
pancakes. It was a real offer.

“
We can get it done
together,” he said.

Inez glanced around the room, finding
the wall of photos—man, woman, and awkward embrace.

“
Where’s the girl?” she
asked. “She took the money?”

“
Sort of.”

“
What does that
mean?”

“
I know how to get the money
back. We go together and split it.”

“
We’re not splitting
nothing. That’s not happening.”

“
Fine. You ask him where it
is. See if he’ll tell you. He’s pretty tough.”

“
Or I could ask
you.”

“
I’ve already given you my
offer. I think it’s a fair one.”

They both heard the police cruiser
pull into the parking lot, spitting sound out of the
radio.

“
You had him screaming?” she
asked.

“
No, we were
quiet.”

“
You guys probably wrestled
around the living room, shouting and breaking dishes.”

“
Do I look like I’ve been in
a fight? The cops are probably here because of
you
. Probably following you for
miles. Now we have to go.”

Duane made a move toward the
window.

“
Don’t do it.”

“
You want to explain things
to police?”

She stood directly in front of the
window.

“
Take off your jacket and
put him in the bedroom,” she said.

“
We have to—”

“
Do it.”

Briefly he thought of running for the
door, but she did not look like she wanted to be tested. She’d
shoot him before he got a hand on the knob. What she’d do after the
gunshot, he really couldn’t say. Duane lugged the big man into the
bedroom and pulled him behind the bed, then threw the blanket over
him. Marcus wasn’t dead, but he was out cold. When Duane came back
to the living room, he saw that Inez had straightened up. It looked
like a messy home and not a crime scene. The PlayStation was turned
on to a single person shooter game set in the jungles of the
Congo.

“
I told you to take off your
jacket,” she said.

What would happen after he got taken
in by the cops? He could claim that he heard some sounds of
struggle, he’d come in to investigate, and he’d seen—what? The
story was bad. He was going to get in trouble for this. Maybe there
was still time to jump out the window. Instead he took off his
jacket, and Inez pointed to the PlayStation.

“
Can you play
that?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Then play.”

He sat on the couch and started to
shoot at rebels hiding in trees. Inez filled a plastic bowl with
lettuce, like she was making herself a big salad. The knock at the
door was a cop’s thump.

“
Yeah, who is it?” Inez
asked.

“
Sherriff’s
office.”

Inez opened the door to two cops: one
male, one female.

“
Good evening, ma’am. We got
a call of a disturbance, coming from this apartment,” the male cop
said.

Inez laughed.

“
That would be my husband,
yelling at the game he’s playing.”

The officers could see the screen from
out in the hall. Duane was under fire from child
soldiers.

“
Do you mind if we come
inside?” the male officer asked.

“
Come on inside. He’s a
mercenary, and I think he’s trying to secure some blood
diamonds.”

Duane glanced over. Inez
gave the female officer a roll of the eyes—
men and their toys
. The female
officer smiled, but the male officer remained stony
faced.

“
What—what’s going on?”
Duane asked.

“
The neighbors called the
police. You and all your warlord friends are just a little too
intense,” Inez said.

“
Oh, God.” Duane paused his
game. “I’m so sorry. I did get a little worked up. I am sorry about
this. Who called?”

“
Probably the whole damn
building,” Inez said running a hand through his hair. “I told
you.”

“
Was there any dispute at
all between the two of you?” the female cop said.

“
Dispute? He doesn’t listen
to a word I say when he’s playing that game.”

“
I am sorry,” Duane said,
standing up and putting an arm around Inez.

“
Is it just the two of you
in the apartment? No kids, no one else?”

“
Just us.”

“
Was anyone here
earlier—anyone you had a dispute with?”

“
Nope.”

The officers exchanged a look. The
female spoke.

“
Sir, you do need to keep it
down in the evening.”

“
Absolutely,” Duane said. “I
do apologize.”

“
People need to get up in
the morning, go to work.”

“
They do. Sorry for taking
up your time.”

“
All right, you have a good
evening,” the male officer said.

Inez broke away from Duane to see the
officers out.

“
Okay, so where’s the
money?” she asked as soon as they were gone.

“
It’s with the girl. I’ll
take you there, but I won’t tell you where we’re going until we get
there.”

“
You don’t know, do
you?”

“
I know.”

“
Then why were you still
here?”

“
There’s one thing I haven’t
done yet. And now that’s going to be tricky.”

It took a few seconds before the light
came on for her.

“
So, what, you were just
sitting here, knowing everything you needed to know, working up the
courage to finish him off? Like how you left Tony Braxton in my
lobby. You think it’s my job to clean up after you?”

The doors of the police car slammed
shut, and it pulled out of the lot.

“
I know where the girl went.
Even if I told you exactly where she was, you’d still need me. You
make a lot of mistakes.”

“
Tell me about my mistakes.
I want to know about them.”

“
You really don’t see how it
was a bad idea to let a couple of cops in here?”

“
Got rid of them in two
minutes.”

“
And that was cool and
everything. You should do commercials where the hot chick is
married to an idiot and she tries to sell us Diet Pepsi; but if the
cops had really been doing their job, we’d both be in the squad car
right now,” Duane nodded out the window. “Maybe Tony told you a few
things in bed—that doesn’t make you smart. You point a gun at
people? That also doesn’t make you smart. If you try to do this by
yourself, you are going to get arrested or killed.”

“
You know who really isn’t
smart? Come on, take a guess—that’s you. Tony is second place. Half
his brain is junkie-roasted, and
he
laughs at you. You gave your own money back to
your boss, because he told you it was an investment? You really did
that?”

Yes, Duane had really done
that.

“
Then they played you along,
waiting until they’d got the last drop squeezed out of you. Then
Top sends you down to Florida because you’re the biggest fuck train
he has, and he was hoping someone down there would get rid of you.
I heard all about it—some kind of ice cream man bit you in the
finger? That’s not a drug deal, okay? Those are games. Sandbox
games. Man, the idea I could need you for anything that comes out
that brain is funny—the kind of funny where I could hurt myself
laughing about it. So now you got to tell me what I need to know,
so I can do some real work. The girl has the money. Tell me where
to find her.”

Some of what she’d said was true, but
he wasn’t the chump she made him out to be. That just wasn’t right.
He wanted to get his hands around her throat. That would feel nice,
but he knew by the way she moved that this wouldn’t be an easy one
to get under control. Inez gestured to Saida in the pictures on the
wall.

“
That’s the girl, right?”
she said. “What’s her name?”

“
Esther Jones.”

Inez studied the
photographs.

“
Looks like the girl is just
barely tolerating,” she said.

Duane threw up the kitchen window and
squeezed through headfirst. He landed on top of a shrub—hard and
scratchy—but he was in one piece. He took off running, away from
the apartment complex, toward the quarry. He’d circle around and
get back to his car, which was parked near the convenience
store.

He didn’t think Inez would jump out
the window, and if she went out the front door, she’d have to run
all the way downstairs and then around the building. That would
take a minute at least. He was rid of her for now. All he had to do
was beat her to Saida and things would be all right. Relatively
speaking, he was home free. Running along the back fence of the
quarry he started to feel optimistic. He wasn’t the sap. He was
going to be the winner. Yeah, he’d left the gold brick back in the
apartment, but he was about to get the whole pile. He had the phone
bill, and two of the numbers were 718. That was New York, an outer
borough. He could get the addresses. Saida would be at one of those
places—maybe. He hoped it wasn’t some cockroach project in the
Bronx, but he could deal with that if he had to. If he carried
himself like a cop, no one would get in his way. And Saida herself
was just a girl who had grabbed a bag. She wasn’t dangerous, and
she probably wasn’t that smart. Inez on the other hand was
sharp—insane and sexy as a spear. But he would beat her to the
money.

The next thing Duane knew he’d been
knocked to the ground by the force of a bullet. One in the back. He
got up, stumbled, and heard another shot. A miss. He tried
swerving, but instead he just staggered and collapsed. It felt like
an hour, lying on the ground, not really in pain, before he saw the
shoes and faintly smelled gum, candy, a bad imitation of
fruit.

CHAPTER 42

Saida was back in Brooklyn for the
first time in almost three years. It hadn’t changed much. The first
night away from Marcus with all the gold, she’d stayed in a motel
in Springfield, lying next to the duffel bag like it was a lover,
listening to a man cough all night in the next room. The next
morning she bought a bus ticket for New York City, instead of
somewhere chosen at random where no one could even think of looking
for her. It was a little risky, but she just had to see her sister
again.