Marshall said, “Especially like people coming.”
“All right. For how long?”
“Not long. I’ll be back in about an hour.”
“What if I see something?”
“If you see something you call me. But do not go back into the house. Is that clear? Do not go back into the house.”
“Uh-huh. House off-limits.”
“I’ll be round in an hour or two. You need to get out of there in the next five minutes.”
He ended the call and just sat there quietly, coming down off the tension of it. Then he got out and locked the car and walked back up the street. On his right the plaza was still green coming into summer, tourists with cameras out in force, buskers and the odd junkie looking for change. An old guy in a huge feathered hat was sitting on a bench, watching traffic slip by.
Marshall walked another block and made a left into the Starbucks on San Francisco Street. Lucas Cohen was seated at the table facing the window, reading
The New York Times
. Marshall ordered coffee and brought it over and sat down beside him, on the far side so he could put his back to the wall, keep the door in view.
Cohen said, “All the places in town we coulda met, you pick this.” Running the words together in his Texas drawl, all part of being a smooth lawman. He closed the newspaper and held it at the centerfold so it fell together.
“What’s wrong with Starbucks?”
Cohen raised his eyebrows, inoffensive. “Nothing. But there’re parks, museums, got the cathedral just there. I don’t know, some nice options.”
Marshall tried some coffee. He said, “Did you want it like one of those spy movies, meet on a bench in the plaza, talk out the corner of your mouth?”
Cohen nodded. “Yeah, something like that. Both of us looking different ways. Maybe next time.”
Marshall didn’t answer. Cohen was wearing a yellow polo shirt tucked into tan trousers, razor-sharp down the creases. Folded sunglasses hanging in the neck of the shirt.
Marshall said, “I get you on your day off or something?”
Cohen set his coffee on the newspaper, looked down at his attire. “No. We got some Nazi wacko, skipped a court appearance for firearms in Dallas, had a tip-off he’s working as a golf caddy down Sandia Heights.”
Marshall said, “So you’re going in undercover?”
Cohen nodded. “Yeah, swap my putter for a shotgun, that sort of thing. Trying to think of some good golf puns for the ride home.” He smiled. “Actually picked him up once before, working at a course just up the 77. Coupla years back now. Funny how people have these instincts, you know? This guy, gets a bit of trouble, comes down here and does some caddying.” He had a mouthful of coffee. “Anyway, should be good. Got along okay with him last time, he’s a Texas man, I’m a Texas man, so we kinda bonded over that. But we’ll see.”
Marshall said, “Why do you keep calling me?”
Cohen glanced behind him, just regular coffee shop bustle. People lining up for caffeine, peering at cell phones while they waited. He said, “If you ever answered the phone I wouldn’t have to.” He unfolded the shades and slipped them on, the street getting pretty bright this time of morning. “But it’s like asset management, good to check our witness protection folks aren’t getting murdered.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
Cohen tipped his cup high, getting the last mouthful. “If this tenant of yours was removed from the equation, I might be disinclined to doubt you.” He liked a long-winded phrase every so often, take it slow, really play up the accent.
Marshall said, “It’s extra security. Have him in the WITSEC house, keep myself somewhere else.”
“Yeah. Thing is, when I drove past just now and ran his plates, they didn’t actually match his car.”
“How’d you know it was his?”
“It was parked in your driveway, so I put two and two together.”
Marshall was quiet a second. He said, “So, what?”
“So, it tells me he’s not exactly the most scrupulous individual. And the idea of being in federal protection is you try not to attract any attention.” He leaned forward on folded arms and smiled out at the view. “Whereas people like whatshisname, Felix, can sometimes undermine that.”
Marshall didn’t answer.
They sat there a while, not talking. Cohen watched the window, oddly engrossed, like the street was careful theater. He said, “Looking forward to a bit of Albuquerque, actually. Might drop in at Tim’s Place, grab a burger.” He clucked his tongue. “Risky though. Mrs. Cohen gets sorta riled if I don’t leave room for dinner.”
Marshall said, “I think Felix is an acceptable risk.”
Cohen looked at him. “Yeah? What exactly do you know about him?”
“Not much. But I’m a good judge of character.”
Cohen kept watching him, Marshall just sitting there quietly, drinking his coffee. Traffic gliding by slowly on the narrow road, pedestrians chatting mutely beyond the glass.
Cohen said, “Problem is, if you’re driving a car with swapped plates, chances are you’ve broken a law at some stage. Now if you want a tenant, I guess that’s your prerogative, strange as it is. But bottom line is, you’re going to have to find someone a little less. I don’t know.”
“Dubious?”
Cohen nodded. He tipped his cup back and forth, probably watching the last bead of fluid circle the base. He said, “Yeah. Dubious. Or even if it’s just in the interests of irony. Like, bad PR if someone finds out we’ve got a wanted felon in a safe house, you know what I mean?”
“Right. So why’d we have to talk about this face-to-face?”
Cohen blew air through his teeth, a very faint whistle. “Because I wanted to make sure you’ll do it.”
Marshall said, “And if I get rid of him you’ll leave me alone?”
“You don’t sugarcoat it, do you?”
Marshall stood up. His coffee was only a quarter gone. He said, “Good seeing you, Cohen.”
Rojas
More than an hour since the break, and Bolt was still bleeding. Face puffed like snakebite and the ooze spread all round. He’d been out a long time. Probably ten minutes before he could say his name.
Rojas drove, Bolt laid out on the rear bench of the Cherokee under a blanket like some cross-border run. The state of him. Jesus, they were going to get it.
The house was in east Santa Fe, brand-new place in a brand-new subdivision, big adobe structures on huge sections. Rojas called it Spanish pueblo revival. Vance called it pretentious fucking shit, but never in front of Leon.
Good roads and no traffic. He could get there fast, unseen. A nudge off the curb as he turned in and Bolt swore with the impact.
“Relax, we’re here.”
Ascending the drive and ahead of them the house laid out in a low sweep atop its artificial rise. Straight into the garage, a plunge into cool and gloom. He cut the motor and hit the button on the visor to drop the door behind them and got out and stepped to the rear.
Bolt shed the blanket and hauled himself upright and clambered out. Bone-white grip, clumsy from the knock. Blood streaked each side of his mouth, beading at his chin before the fall. He found his feet and pushed Rojas away, testing stability. Chin to chest, breath ragged. A good few seconds before the first lurching step. This solo horror show.
Slow progress as Rojas followed him through into the main house. Into what Leon called the great room, though he wasn’t there. Just Vance and Dante laid out playing Xbox like a pair of kids. Vance shirtless on his side on the sofa, Dante on his stomach on the floor by the TV. Each of them fiddling with a controller, TV a split screen, a gun sight top and bottom.
And that perpetual mess, host to all manner of things:
Vance’s Colt Anaconda on the floor by the sofa and beside it a gaping box of .44 shells. Two Berettas in Dante’s grab range. The glass coffee table pushed aside, surface cloudy with powder. A razor blade in a field of scratch marks where they’d troweled and cut. Two tarred scraps of foil. A rubber tourniquet strap and a needle with syringe lying on a zippered pouch. A cloud of something dissipating near the ceiling and the rank smell of it still present. Windows curtained and between them the morning light slanting through in narrow rays and caught there the dust floating whitely.
Rojas said, “Could you at least do the dishes?”
Nothing from Dante.
Vance looked up. “Shit. Happened to you?”
No drugs in his voice. Vance and Dante being connoisseurs, it took a bit to shift them up or down. The gospel according to Vance: regular intake was beneficial. It bolstered mental resilience to foreign compounds and helped preclude the risk of an epic mind-fuck. They had a coke/meth combo they favored. It was called Dante’s Inferno.
Rojas said, “Got screwed on a deal.”
Dante said, “Your nose broken?”
Bolt said, “Yeah.”
Voice thick with fluid.
He stepped across Dante and lowered himself onto the other sofa and lay down. “Holy shit. Someone set it.”
Vance said, “How long’s it been?”
“Dunno.”
“Not meant to do it if it’s more than an hour or something. Can’t see what you’re doing with all the swelling and you just end up with a fucked face.”
Dante said, “He looked half-fucked before so he may as well go all out.”
Vance laughed so hard he had to pause the game. He was two years back from Afghanistan. Physique cut like some demigod, meth-and-bench-press his chosen regimen. He still had the tan, but he needed a UV bed for the upkeep. A maintenance zap every now and then.
Rojas said, “Where’s Leon?”
Vance pulled himself together. “Where do you think?”
Which could have meant either the basement or the office. That basement an awful place: some dark-age gallows, natural light just weak through the vents, always damp, chains and anchor rings crusted with rust. Their own private Guantánamo. Vance’s quip: the perfect place to be quartered. No noise out at the road but sound still made it through the floor. Chain saws and other things.
Rojas went to find ice. Doors in the house more often locked than not. Leon’s doing. He had weapons, meth precursor, cash all stashed away. Rojas hadn’t known Leon long, but Vance had served with him, Afghanistan and Iraq. Vance swore Leon had two million dollars cold in the house, stolen funds from a CIA drop in Baghdad he’d been in on. Rooms full of Marine ordnance freighted back from the Middle East that hadn’t quite made it home.
Leon himself this strange, nocturnal man. By daylight locked in his sanctum with his books and his manuals scheming god knew what. By night hunched taut and shirtless with Vance at the coffee table in that great black-curtained room, the pair of them twisted feverish from toke after toke and then, delirious, descending to join the guests, and from then no one dared listen.
In bed one night with the noise of it filtering up from below, he realized there were scales for many things, that there was bad and there was evil, and in Leon lived proof that one was a long way from the other. The next day you could smell the aftermath, Leon reveling in it, standing there in the middle of the house with one hand lightly at his stomach and eyes closed as he slowly breathed.
* * *
He found a bag of ice in the freezer and gauze in one of the medic packs and took them through to the living room. Bolt got a start when he dropped them on his stomach.
“Jesus.”
Rojas said, “You know how to fix a nose?”
“Not really.”
Dante said, “Just shape it round with your fingers.”
“How do you know the right shape when it’s all puffed?”
“Have to guess.”
“Shit. And then what?”
“You pack it out with the gauze and then you use tape or something over the top and it’s fixed and hopefully only kinda fucked.”
They all laughed.
With his yellow jeans and green hair, Dante seemed a strange source of advice, but Vance rated him. The verdict: crystal’s fried his dress sense, but he’s still a stand-up guy.
Vance dug around beneath him and found the TV remote between cushions. He flicked the set off. He and Dante sat watching the blank screen like some solemn remembrance, and then Vance said, “So how the fuck did that happen?”
Rojas said, “We went out this morning to do that pickup.”
Vance lit a cigarette. “Which one was that?”
“We got a ring-in on the number. Some guy wanting to start up a new supply, had some sample stock for us.”
“What’d he say?”
“I dunno. I got some stuff you might want to look at. Something like that.”
“And what. You met him, and it went shit.”
“Well, yeah. Pretty much.”
Vance said, “Why you got this thing about always going early?”
“Because. You get someone when they’re still asleep, it throws them. It’s an actual proven thing.”
Vance shrugged, kissed out a smoke ring. “Should have shot the fuck.”
“Not that easy.”
“Where’d you meet?”
“That diner down 25.”
“Stupidest shit I ever heard, doing it there, when it’s that quiet.”
“Yeah, well.”
“How big was the sample?”
“A kilo.”
“And you didn’t guess it’s a setup. Holy shit.”
Dante rolled on his back. “Where’s the cigarettes?”
Vance tossed him the pack and then the lighter. Dante caught them, left hand then right. He said, “So, what. He think you’d have cash or something that he’d take off you?”
“No. We went to his car to do the pickup, and he nailed Cyrus in the face with a shotgun and then leveled it on me. Said he was looking for that girl.”
Vance said, “What one?”
“That Alyce girl.”
Dante rolled on his side to get a smoke going and then lay back down. Portrait of an overdose with his arms and legs spread starfish and the cigarette hanging out the edge of a smile. He laughed. “Shit. Not the one Leon did, is it?”
Vance said, “Maybe. I lost track.” He laughed, midriff tensed in a perfect six-pack. “Old Leon’s been a busy boy.”
Rojas didn’t answer.
Vance said, “What’d this prick want?”
“Well. Answers. Or he was gonna come looking.”
“Answers. Classic, I love it.”
Dante turned his head and tapped ash on the floor. Advantage of timber, you could just sweep it up every now and then. He said, “I like that ‘come looking’ part. Imagine that.”