Desperate (21 page)

R
oy was right about Eagle Square at this time of night. It was really quiet. Thanks to the moonlight, I could see the dilapidated school buses parked in the adjacent lot. The top of the oil tanks were just silhouettes, but if I strained my eyes I could make out darker splotches where rust had won out over paint. One white cargo truck, maybe twenty feet long, was parked in the loading zone in front of the red brick building. The leaves on the trees lining the chain-link fence were still as the night. Everything looked familiar but different at this hour. It was eerily quiet, and the air felt thick with menace.

I could hear our footsteps as we entered the alley. Roy walked ahead, swinging the case of pills in his hand. The gun, tucked securely into the waistband of my jeans, felt like a tumor on my skin. I watched as Roy vanished into the darkness of the alley. Following, knowing this was unwise, I kept to the plan. Between my nervousness and the Adderall, I wondered how Roy thought I could hold a gun, let alone fire it straight if I had to. As we walked, I reconfirmed my vow to see this through. To save Anna, to save myself from Lily and Roy, the deal would go down.

Roy strode ahead of me, quickening his pace, moving in a nonchalant manner. Maybe he emboldened himself by acting as though he had nothing to fear. From here I could smell the brackish water of the Chelsea River. I continued down the alley, past the warehouse, into a much wider enclosure.

In front of me were stacks of wooden pallets and a Jenga puzzle of square-shaped containers stacked some fifteen feet high. Farther down were a number of truck trailers, varying in length between twenty and fifty feet or so, and a couple flatbeds with some cargo already loaded. The Dumpster was overflowing with trash, mostly brown paper wrappings and cut-open cardboard boxes. An open-ended storage unit, shaped in a semicircle, was filled with blue plastic barrels. They must not have contained anything valuable, because I couldn’t see a single security camera. We were invisible here.

Roy walked to the water’s edge. This wasn’t the plan. We were supposed to meet the Moreno brothers in the alley, not in this open area. I could hear the small river waves lapping gently against the rocky shoreline. The river itself looked like a thick, black line cut into the earth separating Boston from Chelsea. An L-shaped dock jutted out into the water.

I quickened my steps to catch up with Roy.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, my voice quavering.

“This is where they want to meet,” Roy said.

I looked at him, incredulous. “What about the sight lines?” I asked. “What about the quick escape? I thought we had this worked out already.”

Roy tossed my concerns aside with an indifferent shrug.

“This is the new drop zone,” he said. “Take up position by the storage shed over there.” He pointed to a twenty-by-twenty-foot white clapboard shed topped by green shingles.

I wasn’t budging—not yet, anyway. The change in plan sent a fresh surge of fear rolling through my gut.

“We didn’t talk about this. This wasn’t the plan. What about the escape routes? What about all the precautions we reviewed?”

Roy shot me an irritated look. “I got a text. They want to do it by the water. Faster out for them. Everything looks good, so the drop happens here. Get in position. Just stay out of sight unless something goes wrong.”

“How will I know it’s gone wrong?”

Roy kept his head down, his gaze fixed to his feet, but the arc of a smile creased the sides of his mouth, as though my ignorance amused him.

“Trust me,” he said, making eye contact, “you’ll know. Now get in position.”

Roy pulled out his gun, checking it over. He didn’t threaten me with the weapon, but I got the message. I scuttled across the enclosure, feeling diminutive against a backdrop of towering stacks of containers and supersized truck trailers.

I reached the side of the shed feeling like a shipwreck survivor who’d just found the life raft. Here I felt sheltered. I couldn’t speak even if I had something to say. My focus was on controlling my breathing.
This will soon be over,
I kept saying to myself, taking in a long breath and letting it out slowly. I concentrated on the sounds, the waves lapping, a car driving somewhere off in the distance, the scramble of Roy’s feet scraping on the blacktop.
This will soon be over and Roy and Lily will be gone and Anna and I can start anew. This will soon be over . . .

Soon, I heard the whine of a small craft’s engine on approach.

F
rom the side of the shed it was impossible to see the water, so I leaned my body out just far enough to expose my head but nothing else. The boat glided along the dark water leaving behind a thin wake that lapped against the shoreline. It looked like a Boston Whaler, an open cabin sport fishing boat. I could also see the outline of two shadowy figures with heavyweight builds. One of them cut the engine, and it sputtered to silence as the boat sailed toward the landing on fast-moving water.

Roy walked the length of the dock with the attaché case of pills in his hand, and caught a mooring rope as it was tossed to him. He slid the looped end of the rope around a wooden piling. My ears picked up the clang of the boat softly smacking against the dock, but I couldn’t hear any words exchanged. The tide was high, so the Moreno brothers climbed onto the gunwale and jumped onto the dock without needing to use the ladder. Each brother carried an object. One had a duffel bag that looked to be stuffed with something—money, I suppose. The other carried a steel Halliburton attaché case.

More money?

Roy turned his back to the brothers—
Shoot me if you dare,
or so his gesture conveyed. He displayed no fear or agitation; his movements were lithe and confident, like a panther’s. He completed his walk down the dock, never once glancing over his shoulder.

The brothers followed, bags and cases in hand. Football players stuffed in crisply pressed suits, with swarthy complexions, square shoulders, square heads on tree stump necks, and chests threatening to pop the buttons on their white oxford shirts. I didn’t know what one normally wore to a major drug deal, but it seemed to me that Roy and I were underdressed.

Stay out of sight,
I reminded myself. My job was not to be seen but to be present. Nicky Stacks thought of me as added security, vouched for by Roy as someone who could handle himself in a scuffle, who knew his way around crime, and could recite gun stats off the top of his head. Roy had me pegged as something quite different—his free pass out of a death sentence. He knew my skills were sorely lacking, so he opted to do the deal alone, with me an added measure of protection relegated to the shadows. If Johnny (the guy who I replaced) were here, he’d probably be standing right beside Roy, one itchy hand hovering a wrist snap’s length from his gun. My orders were to come out from my hiding place only if needed, like a fire ax with instructions to break glass in case of emergency.

Stay out of sight unless something goes wrong.

My breathing came in shallow bursts.

Nothing will go wrong. This is the right thing to do. There was no way out, no other choice to make.

My mind was a powerful deceiver.

The deal was happening, but nothing was said. This was a sort of dance, no speaking required. Everyone knew the movements, exactly how to hit their marks. Roy raised his case and popped the latches, holding it in such a way to show each brother the contents within. The Moreno brother with the duffel unzipped the bag, and I caught the flash of paper inside as he hefted it up to show Roy. Roy nodded, still no words exchanged, the dance macabre continued.

When Roy reached for the duffel of cash, however, the dance moves turned to the unexpected. The Moreno brother who was literally holding the bag pulled the cash away, out of Roy’s reach.

Roy spoke, his first words of the rendezvous.

“What’s going on?”

The other Moreno brother set the metal case on the ground. He popped open the latches, each one coming undone with an audible click. From within he took out a device, flat and square. It took me a moment to recognize its form and function.

A scale.

“What the hell are you doing?” Roy asked. I detected deep concern in his voice as it carried across the enclosure.

“We were told to weigh the delivery,” the brother with the scale said in a thick Hispanic accent. I watched him set the scale on the ground.

“Lucas,” Roy said, “what are you talking about? Who told you to weigh it? Come on, guys. We’ve done business before. Why waste the time? Let’s get this done and get out of here.”

The other brother reached into his jacket. His meaty hand momentarily vanished inside a curtain of finely tailored fabric. It came out holding a gun made of black steel. It looked a lot like the weapon Roy had given me.

My heart shot up into my throat.

“Jorge,” Lucas said to the man with the duffel. “Ask Roy to hand me the case.”

Jorge raised his gun and trained the barrel of the weapon at Roy’s head.

“I’m asking,” I heard Jorge say, also in a thick accent.

Roy glanced over his shoulder toward the shed where he knew I was hiding out. One look told me all I needed to know:
get ready, Gage, you’re going to have to make an appearance.

I had no intention of coming out from my hiding spot. This was way beyond my pay grade. These two guys, Lucas and Jorge Moreno, were killers, cold souls stuffed inside fancy suits. I was a quality assurance engineer whose only experience firing a gun was limited to playing the arcade game Big Buck Hunter at the local Cineplex. My feet were rooted to the ground and I didn’t think I could move them even if I wanted to.

“Put the pills on the scale,” Lucas said. “We have the number. We know what this should weigh.”

“Come on, guys,” Roy said.

Jorge moved fast for such a huge man. In a blink’s time, he’d come around behind Roy, locked one beefy arm around his neck, and in the same movement managed to get the gun pressed up against Roy’s temple.

“Weigh it,” Lucas said. “That’s the order.”

“Nicky wouldn’t stiff you guys,” Roy said.

“Nicky isn’t who we’re concerned with,” Lucas said. “Don’t you know our network extends way past D.C., hombre? We’ve got the whole East Coast, asshole, so we’ve heard things about you, money you owe. We agreed to let Nicky send you on this drop, but let’s just say the level of trust here is below our standards.”

Again Roy glanced my way.
Get ready,
his eyes were saying.
This is about to get very ugly.
I imagined Roy’s pulse was hammering as fast as mine.

“Okay, okay,” Roy answered in a strangled voice. “Tell your boy to let go of my neck and we’ll weigh it, no problem.”

Lucas nodded, and Jorge slowly uncoiled his arm from around Roy’s throat. Roy rubbed at the spot where the pressure had been most constricting. Then, looking deflated, he handed the case to Lucas. From inside the Halliburton case, Lucas removed another duffel bag all crinkled up, along with a pen-sized flashlight.

“I know how much this bag weighs,” Lucas said, unfurling the duffel with a flick of his wrists. He dumped the pills from Roy’s case into the duffel and then placed it on the scale.

“Get on your knees,” Lucas said.

Roy hesitated. Jorge, who had remained standing behind Roy, put one hand on his shoulder. He raised his other arm until the barrel of his gun was pressed up against the back of Roy’s head. Roy was shaking violently like a chill he couldn’t warm.

“Come on, boys,” he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly. “Let’s be reasonable here.”

“We’re just following orders,” Lucas said.

Studying his face, I imagined what Lucas was seeing—digital numbers showing on a small display screen, illuminated by the penlight in his hand. Meanwhile, Roy looked like a man aware he was taking the last few breaths of his life.

And that was when I knew the answer to the money question that had been troubling me. Twenty thousand from me, along with whatever Nicky Stacks was paying for this deal, did not equal the debt Roy owed to his smoke-smuggling buddies down in D.C. He needed more money. That was why he was so upset about working for Nicky. He’d never intended to make a clean exchange. He’d brought me along instead of some guy named Johnny because I wouldn’t have known better. He knew the risk going in, and was betting the Moreno brothers had no reason to weigh the drop.

But from the get-go, they were on the lookout for the swindle, the cheat, the double cross. Roy was a dead man regardless, so he’d skimmed the pills, accepting the risk, and planned to sell what he siphoned off on his own.

And Lucas and Jorge were about to find out what he’d done.

A
yellowish beam shined like a spotlight on the scale’s display. Roy was still on his knees with Jorge standing behind him. The gun in Jorge’s hand was no longer pressed up against the back of Roy’s head, but it was only a few inches away. Roy’s shoulders sagged.

“I think we have a problem,” Lucas said. He elongated the word
problem
like Ricky Ricardo would if he were scolding Lucy.

Jorge looked over at his brother, while Roy took the opportunity to turn his head and look at me. His pained expression cleaved my heart. He was a hard man, a tough man, a blackmailer, but I felt deep compassion for him. Sympathy for the devil. I didn’t approve of Roy. I would never extol his virtues. He was depraved and poisonous, but I didn’t want to watch him die.

Something else was happening here. Something I almost didn’t pick up on because my thoughts were gummed with terror. He wasn’t calling out for me. He wasn’t going to make my presence known. Whatever was going to happen, it would be the force of my will, my conscience, my decision to leave these shadows or to stay concealed.

Roy already knew what I had just figured out. My only chance to save him was the element of surprise. If he called for me, Jorge would shoot Roy and surely the two of them would hunt me down and I’d become a one-day news story. I could see the headline now: Q
UALITY
A
SSURANCE
M
ANAGER
M
URDERED IN
D
RUG
D
EAL
G
ONE
W
RONG
. For all of Roy’s detestable qualities, he was not going to panic. No, he was going to give me the choice. Would I be willing to risk my life to save his?

“Roy,” Lucas said, stepping away from the scale. “You’re short. You’re very short on this delivery.”

Roy was shaking his head.

“That’s impossible,” Roy said. “All I did was bring the case.”

Jorge came around front and, with a sweeping motion of his arm, pistol-whipped Roy in the side of the head.

Roy’s face contorted as he fell to the ground. When he rose, I saw the gash on his cheek and a thin trickle of blood.

Lucas took two steps toward Roy and hefted him up by his shirt. He got him steady on his knees once more. As he did this, Jorge lifted the back of Roy’s shirt and removed the gun from the waistband of his black jeans. He tossed the weapon onto the duffel bag of cash, where it landed with a soft thud. Still kneeling, Roy’s head bobbed forward as he fought to stay conscious, and just when I thought he was going to pitch headfirst onto his face, he snapped it violently back. He reminded me of people I’d seen nodding off in a meeting, who for some reason were suddenly jarred awake.

Jorge held onto Roy’s shirt to keep him upright, while Lucas holstered his weapon and paced in front.

“Roy, Roy, Roy,” Lucas said in an admonishing tone. “Listen to me carefully. I am not going to beat a confession out of you. Do you understand what that means?” He waited for an answer. “No? Let me tell you then. It means I am going to kill you. Those are my intentions. But I will give you one chance. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be lenient.”

Could I watch a man get murdered in cold blood and do nothing to intervene?

“Where are the drugs you took?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Roy said. Nobody looked convinced, even Roy. Jorge let go of Roy’s shirt and backpedaled a couple steps, as if he wanted to get some distance from the splatter zone. He retrained his weapon on the back of Roy’s skull when he felt he’d gone far enough away.

“Let’s try again,” Lucas said. He squatted in front of Roy, grinning like a happy jack-o’-lantern. “Where are the drugs? Now, we also kill your girl. You understand me? Maybe you have hard time with my English.” Lucas pantomimed the action of shooting Roy with his fingers. Then he trained his make-believe weapon on an invisible target—Lily, presumably—and made another gesture of firing a gun, his wrist rising slightly to signify the kick from a discharge. “Product is missing. Where is it?”

“It’s . . . it’s in my car,” Roy said, panting hard, the breath leaving his body to make room for the relief of his confession. “It’s in my car . . . it’s in my car.” He bowed his head, chin to his chest, evidence of his shame.

“And where is your . . . car?” Lucas said without standing, delaying the word
car
, for effect.

“I parked it at the end of the alley,” Roy said. “It’s a Camaro.”

“Good,” Lucas said, rising, using his hands to brush clean his suit pants. “Jorge, kill this son of a bitch.”

Roy looked up at Lucas, confused and terrorized. He thought he’d bought himself more time.

“I don’t care if you’re lying to me,” Lucas said. “Either we find the pills you took or we don’t. Figured I’d at least give it a shot to get back what you stole. But Nicky, Nicky Stacks needs to be sent a message: he needs to hire better help, and you will be a very bloody telegram.”

Lucas nodded to Jorge, who stepped back to take better aim. Roy cowered, hands clasped over his head.

My eyes went wide. This was going to happen. I was about to witness an execution-style murder. Everything slowed down. Jorge raised his gun higher. He widened his stance as he readied his hand. Lucas gave Roy a look of resigned remorse.

I don’t remember taking those first few steps, coming out of my hiding place, but that’s what I did, and I wasn’t empty-handed. The gun, all nine hundred and ten grams of it, had the weight of an anvil.

I heard myself shout, “No! Don’t!” The echo of my voice carried across the river in the stillness of the early morning hour.

Lucas turned to look at me, his brown eyes cooking with rage.

Jorge looked at me, too, but that wasn’t all he did. He moved the barrel of his weapon away from Roy’s head and aimed it directly at me. Inch by inch, Jorge raised the gun higher until it became level with my face. Then he came toward me, gun hand outstretched, closing the distance between us with long, quick strides.

Instead of retreating, which my instincts begged me to do, I came out a bit farther, abandoning the relative safety of the shed for the zero safety of the open area. If I turned, if I ran, Jorge would shoot me in the back. At least this way I had a fighting chance, a little sprig of hope I might see my way out of this calamity alive.

In my peripheral vision I caught sight of Lucas reaching inside his jacket, presumably for his gun. Jorge continued to close the gap, but he wasn’t firing. Maybe he couldn’t make a kill shot from a distance, or perhaps he was just waiting for Lucas to give the command.

In the meantime we were both on the move, two ships on a collision course. Jorge’s steps were assured and practiced, while mine were tentative, like a man walking the ledge of a high-rise building. We got to within twenty feet or so of each other. My gun was pointed at Jorge’s chest, but then, because my hand kept shaking so badly, it was pointed at his arm, and then it was his other arm, and then maybe the bullet would have struck him in the leg.

Meanwhile, Jorge’s gun was pointed at my face and only my face. I figured I had a breath or two between Jorge firing and me dying.

In that instant, Roy fell sideways, reaching for something as he dropped to the ground. The movement must have caught Jorge’s attention. He turned his body to look at Roy. I heard Lucas shout, “Shoot him!” but I didn’t know if
him
meant me or Roy.

That answer came quick. To my wide and increasingly horrified eyes, the whole series of movements happened like a scene from a Sam Peckinpah western. Jorge’s waist pivoted in super-slow motion as his torso swung back in my direction. His left arm rose above his shoulder to help stabilize his right arm and, more important, the gun in his right hand. I watched the barrel of the weapon travel from my navel, up to my ribs, next to my throat, until it came to a stop between my eyes.

I had one instant to react. One second left to breathe. Five-point-five pounds of pressure needed to save my life.

I didn’t think. I reacted. It was fear, the survival instinct kicking in. My finger pulled the trigger mechanism. A flash, bright and blinding, a flare in the dark erupted from the barrel of the gun. My hand lifted skyward from the recoil. The echo of gunfire rang out, creating a fading ghost of what I’d done.

A small hole opened in Jorge’s chest right where his heart would be. Blood exploded out from the wound in a quick and violent burst. Jorge’s eyes rolled into his head as he fell. The bullet’s impact pushed his body backward, but then he came forward again as his weight shifted. The gun dropped from his hand as he crumpled to the ground.

Lucas screamed, “Jorge!”

As this was happening, Roy had reached into his boot and his hand came out wielding a six-inch knife. Lucas didn’t see this new threat. He was too busy gaping wide-eyed and horrified at his fallen brother.

Even with my hand shaking—I’d probably just killed this man—somehow I managed to hold onto the weapon. But I wasn’t thinking about using it again. Cemented where I stood, my body was frozen except for my quaking hand.

Lucas didn’t waste time profiting from my momentary paralysis. He took careful aim with his gun, but never got a chance to set his sights on me. Roy lunged at Lucas like a coiled-up snake making a fast strike. The blade tore through the fabric of Lucas’s suit, buried to the hilt at midthigh. The shriek of pain that followed may have echoed at the same decibel level as my gunshot.

Lucas, holding onto his leg and yelping, dropped to his knees at the same instant Roy scrambled back to his feet. The danger wasn’t over. Far from it. Lucas still had a gun. He could still shoot me, and that seemed to be his intention as he re-aimed the weapon in my direction. Jorge was no longer a threat, judging by the large swath of crimson spreading from the hole in his chest, but I thought for sure Lucas would get off a shot if he could.

I dropped into a crouch and covered my head with my hands. Obviously, I hadn’t done much military training, or I would have known the maneuver wasn’t going to stop a bullet from burrowing into my skull.

Before Lucas could fire his weapon, Roy kicked him in the side of the head with his big, heavy boot. Lucas fell sideways and landed hard. I heard a clatter as the gun dropped from his hand and skidded a good distance across the blacktop. The contact created a small opening for Roy to make a dash for the duffel bag of cash, but Lucas was able to move with surprising speed considering his injured leg. He grabbed his gun in a movement best described as a slide into first. Flipping onto his back, Lucas got off three shots at Roy, all in quick succession. Bullets sparked against the blacktop, landing near enough to force Roy into a change of direction.

Lucas was on his feet, charging at Roy, putting himself between the duffel bag of money and the other bag of drugs. If Roy went for either, Lucas would have a clean and easy shot. Roy must have known it, too, because he broke for the alley and screamed at me to run while he sprinted past.

I didn’t hesitate. I sprung up from my crouch, still holding the gun, and made a frantic sprint for the alley entrance falling into step behind Roy, who was maybe ten feet in front of me. My arms were flailing and my spindly legs kicked out like a deer venturing onto an ice-covered pond before I finally got some traction. I heard a pop—no, make that two—but didn’t feel the sting of any bullets.

Roy gave one last look over his shoulder, and I saw him hesitate. Did he want to go back? He thought about it, but Lucas and his gun must have made him think otherwise.

Sprinting, my arms pumping, I wouldn’t dare risk looking behind me as Roy had done. I imagined Lucas on approach, his suit jacket flapping like a cape, his gun hand extended out in front of him and pointed at my back like death’s long finger. I raced by the wood pallets and stacked crates and soon I was at the opening to the alley. Roy had already vanished into the darkness in front of me.

I listened for the footfalls, for another pop of gunfire, but everything was silent now. Where had Lucas gone? Did he decide to give up the chase? Was he back trying to triage his brother?

I spilled out of the alley just as Roy was pulling the Camaro away from the curb. I caught up to him in time to slam my hand against the car in frantic, rapid succession.
Don’t leave me!
My hand was saying. Then I did the strangest thing. I pointed the gun at the windshield because I worried Roy wasn’t going to let me in. But he did. He even leaned over and opened my door.

“Get in!” he yelled.

I clambered into the front seat as Roy pulled away from the curb. The squelch of tires gave off an angry hiss and the sour odor of burning rubber. Roy was looking down the alley as we sped by. His eyes were distant, vacant even. It was as though he could see all the way to the dock, where a duffel bag full of money and another bag full of Oxycodone would be found, along with a dead man I had just murdered.