Bad Things (35 page)

understood that this was over.

Outside the sky was low and hard and cold, with a matte texture I rec-

ognized from when I’d lived around here. The weather was consider-

ing getting serious. As I stepped into the wind Bill spoke again.

“That other thing get straightened out?”

“What thing?”

“Something about Ellen Robertson. It got lost in the undertow

last night.”

“It’s done with,” I said. “Or at least, I’m walking away from it.

Ellen’s gone AWOL anyhow.”

“Sounds wise to let it go.”

“Yep. I’m growing up all over the place.”

“Let me give you a piece of advice, John. Okay?”

“I’m listening,” I said, assuming it would be along the lines of

letting the past be the past, letting go and moving on, stepping on

the stones of tarnished yesterdays toward brighter tomorrows. I was

prepared to hear him out. It was counsel I needed to hear, as many

times as necessary.

“Don’t fuck with Brooke Robertson.”

B A D T H I N G S 251

Not what I was expecting. “I’m leaving today,” I said. “But as a

matter of interest, why?”

“Back at school, I knew those two passing well. I even stepped out

with Brooke for a few weeks, back when we were, like, fourteen. But

you know me—I’m just a big, straightforward lunk.”

“No one thinks that.”

“Yeah, they do, and they’re pretty much right and I don’t mind

the hand I got dealt in terms of personality. There are worse guys

to be, most of the time. I’m just saying Brooke got her cards from a

whole different deck.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s real smart, but broken. We stopped hanging out and it

was me who ended it, though she was cute, gave every indication she

might put out, and was actually interesting to talk to. A couple years

later there was a rumor of something between her and one of the

English teachers. She got a huge crush, he wouldn’t play along, some-

thing like that.”

“And?”

“He died.”

I laughed. “What, with Brooke’s hairbrush found stabbed through

his heart? Come on, Bill.”

“He got sick. One day he’s the fi ttest guy in the place and second

in command of the basketball team. Six weeks later, he’s dead from a

stroke. Brain just blew his lights out.”

“Which happens. And what would Brooke possibly have to do

with it? Jesus, Bill.”

“I guess you’re right. But what was that other thing you always

used to say? Dots freak people out. So they join them with lines that

aren’t there.”

“I was right.”

“Statistically
everyone’s
bound to be right, once in a while. Even a

fuckwad like you.”

I smiled. “You were Brooke Robertson’s sweetheart? Really?”

252 Michael Marshall

“No,” he said patiently. “That’s my point, John. I don’t see her

often these days, and when I do, I don’t enjoy it. I don’t know if there

was ever a heart there to be sweet over, but there sure as hell isn’t

now. She’s got it into her head that she has to hold the fort against

the Mongol hordes, and whatever girl once lived in her head has

been taken out and buried in the woods—by Brooke herself. She’s a

Robertson now.
The
Robertson. Nothing else.”

“It’s certainly clear who wears the pants.”

“Yes and no. Cory may like it round the back, but he’s not a com-

plete pushover, either.”

“Cory’s gay?”

“Christ, John, ain’t no closet deep enough,” Bill said, as if pained.

“I admit, he’s kept a tight lid on it, and you’d need your ear close to

the ground to have heard anything, but . . . well, yeah. Funny you

didn’t get that. You’re normally pretty sharp.”

“I try not to make simplistic judgments on people these days.

Especially over matters as trivial as where they hang their sexual

hat.”

“One day we may all be so evolved,” Bill said. “Until then, well,

fuck you, Gandhi.”

I laughed, looked at his big, open face, and wished a lot of things

had not happened.

He stuck out his hand, and I shook it.

“You take care,” he said, went back inside.

C H A P T E R 3 4

About halfway back to the motel I became aware that I was being

followed. In the rearview mirror I saw a large black SUV maintain-

ing a consistent distance about eighty yards behind me.

I cut my speed in half. It did the same.

I took a turn off the road into Black Ridge, onto one that ran by

itself with forest either side. The black car followed.

So I took my foot off the pedal and let my car roll to a halt, right

in the middle of the lane. The SUV dropped its speed, too, stop-

ping twenty yards behind me. I gave it a minute for the driver to

start leaning on the horn, but it didn’t happen. Whoever was in the

vehicle was not on his way anywhere other than to a conversation

with me.

I got out of the car, leaving the engine running, both hands out

and empty by my sides.

The windows of what I now confi rmed was a large GMC were

heavily tinted, giving no clue as to who or how many were inside. I

walked around to the rear end of my own car, leaned back against it,

and lit a cigarette, looking straight at the windshield.

After about two minutes the doors opened.

A guy got out either side. Both black. One had the bunched

254 Michael Marshall

shoulders and neck of someone who’d punched a lot of bag, and a

wide, impassive face. The other was wiry, his skin a little paler and his

hair sticking up. Their Nikes were very clean indeed.

“Boy, are
you
lost,” I said.

They came and stood at the front of their car. The big guy glanced

me up and down. The thinner one just looked me in the eye.

“Know who we are?”

“I can guess.”

“So don’t fuck with us, yo.”

“Not considering it. You’re serious people, I can see that. Soldiers,

right? Professionals.”

Both watched me without saying anything.

“Otherwise you wouldn’t have stopped at beating up on the girl.

That was you two, yes? Righ teous job you did. You beat up a woman,

she looks beat.”

Something fl ickered across the face of the heavier one, and for

maybe a nanosecond he looked uncomfortable. Most of these people

have declared boundaries, however fl imsy and/or subject to nego-

tiation. For some it’s refusing to kill on a Sunday, for others it’s not

breaking the limbs of anyone over seventy. It’s how the ones who still

care prove to themselves they have their actions under control, that

they’re not animals who do whatever they’re told. For the bigger guy,

it looked like beating up a woman wasn’t business as usual. The thin-

ner guy’s face didn’t change at all.

“You know how she be, means you seen her since.”

“Sharp,” I said. “Your boss evidently put this matter in good

hands.”

“No doubt. So where they at?”

“Even assuming I knew where they were, I’m not just going to

hand them both up to you.”

“Don’t care about the girl. It’s your boy we have to talk to.”

“He’s not my boy.”

“Whatever. We talking to him one way or another.”

B A D T H I N G S 255

“Your boss—” I started to say.

“He ain’t our boss.”

“The man who contracted you. What does he want? The money,

or to show the world he’s tough?”

The larger one spoke. “You a cop?”

I shook my head. “Don’t give a shit about you or your business,

except how it relates to my girl. Whom you have mistreated. But ten

thousand isn’t shit, and so basically you’re set to drop Kyle, right?”

The smaller guy moved his shoulders about a quarter of an inch,

looking back at me with the calm surety of someone who’d commit-

ted all his worst deeds on purpose.

“In which case I can’t help you,” I said. “If it was just about the cash,

maybe we could do something. Maybe
I
could do something. But if

you’re going to whack the kid regardless, there’s nothing in it for me.”

The smaller guy started to reach a hand around his back, presum-

ably to where he had a weapon stashed down the back of his jeans,

under his baggy shirt.

“There’s something in it for you,” he said tightly. “Like you could

not get your fucking—”

“You’re not from Portland, right? He hired you from over east?”

The guy kept his hand where it was, but nodded.

“And what are you getting? A couple thousand each? Five between

you?” No response, which meant I was in the ballpark. “There’s an-

other way of handling this. Call your boss, tell him you got the money

off the kid, how about you just leave it at that. See what he says.”

“He’s—”

“—still going to want him dead. Right. So instead you say you

couldn’t fi nd him, and you don’t take the man’s money, but you split

ten thousand dollars between you.”

“Where’s the ten come from?”

“Me.”

The two guys glanced at each other.

“That ain’t going to play,” said the small guy, when he looked

256 Michael Marshall

back. “Our job is to drop people, yo. We don’t do it, where we at?”

“So, what? Guy who hired you—he pay enough for you to be

the Terminator? Are you supposed to drive around the whole of the

United fucking States until you fi nd this kid? For how long? A week?

Two weeks? A month?”

The smaller guy kept looking at me.

“Right. So instead you tell him he disappeared in the woods up

here, maybe he got some friends or something, he’s gone. You scared

the crap out of his white ass anyway, and he isn’t coming back. You

tell your boss that if the kid ever
does
show his face in Portland, you’ll come back and do it for free. Otherwise . . . you’re soldiers and grown-ups and you got other business to attend to.”

A thoughtful head shake. “The guy’s real pissed behind this boy.

He ain’t going to let it go at that.”

“He’s pissed this week. Next week something else will mess with

his head and he’ll be all over that instead. You know what these people

are like.”

The larger guy sniffed. “What if the kid talks up how he got away

with this shit, when he back at the beach?”

“He won’t. There’s a line to teach that little asshole how to be-

have, and I’m way ahead of you. Ten thousand ahead, which the fuck

will now owe
me
.”

The smaller guy fi nally brought his hand back out from behind

his back, and folded his arms.

“I’m thinking,” he said.

“Do that. I’m leaving town in about an hour,” I said. “Call me

before then and we’ll organize how you get the money. You don’t, I’ll

assume you want to take the loss.” I reeled off my cell number. “And

now,” I said. “It would be necessary for you guys to leave fi rst.”

“You run out on us, and we’ll come for
you,
” the thinner guy said.

“And we’ll sure as shit be doing
that
for free.”

“Understood. Matter of interest,” I asked, “who pointed you in

my direction?”

B A D T H I N G S 257

“A police.” The guy smiled. “Who else?”

They walked away and got into their car.

Right,
I thought.
Who else
.

On the way back through town I made my final stop, parking outside

the Mountain View. I hadn’t banked on it being open, but it was, so

I went inside.

The young bartender I’d seen before was behind the counter,

cleaning down the surface in a tight white T-shirt and covertly en-

joying the way this made his biceps move. I asked him if Kristina was

in, and he shook his head.

“Supposed to be, but she hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Any chance of you giving me a phone number for her?”

He looked at me with both eyebrows raised, and I realized from

the skin around his eyes that he was a little older than I’d thought.

“Yeah, right.”

I found a scrap of paper in my wallet, wrote my name and num-

ber on it. I folded this over and held it out. “Will you give this to her

instead?”

“Look, sir, aren’t you kind of—”

I stepped up to the counter and smiled.

“Here’s the thing, muscles. I don’t know Kristina that well, but

I suspect if she wanted to be dating you then she already would be. I

also believe that if it came to a fi ght, she could absolutely kick your

ass. I
know
I could.”

He blinked at me.

“So how about you drop the attitude and answer my question in

two words or less? Will you give her this note, or what?”

“Yes.”

“Good man. Something else. Yesterday morning, when the thing

happened opposite? There was a guy drinking in here. In his fi fties.

You came out together.”

258 Michael Marshall

The man nodded cautiously.

“He a regular?”

“Never seen him in here before.”

“See him talking with anyone?”

“Not in the bar.” He hesitated. “But I noticed him up the other

end of the street, fi fteen minutes before, about. Talking with Jassie.”

“You’re sure it was her?”

“Her hair was kind of blue, dude.”

“Did it look friendly? The conversation?”

“Too far away to tell. Guy drank two large Bushmills in half an

hour afterward, though.”

“You mention this to the police?”