“That’s good,” I said, and then I lapsed into silence.
“What?” he asked.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“I’m not going to tell you,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t want to know. Why the hell would I? But the thing is, you can’t afford to know either.”
“How can I not know?”
“That’s the exact problem,” I said. “This guy Octavian’s going to see it in your eyes. He’s going to see you
“What’s he going to see?”
“He’s going to see you holding out and thinking,
“So what should I do?”
I finished the last of my beer. Warm and flat. I considered ordering two more but I didn’t. I figured we were near the end. I figured I didn’t need any more of an investment.
“Maybe you should go to L.A.,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“So you should let me hold the stuff for you. Then you genuinely won’t know where it is. You’re going to need that edge.”
“I’d be nuts. Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t. You don’t have to.”
“You could disappear with my two million.”
“I could, but I won’t. Because if I did, you’d call Octavian and tell him that a face just came back to you. You’d describe me, and then your problem would become my problem. And if Octavian is as bad as you say, that’s a problem I don’t want.”
“You better believe it.”
“I do believe it.”
“Where would I find you afterward?”
“Right here,” I said. “You know I use this place. You’ve seen me in here before.”
“Method acting,” he said.
“You can’t betray what you don’t know,” I said.
He went quiet for a long time. I sat still and thought about putting one million dollars in cash and ten keys of uncut cocaine in the trunk of my car.
“Okay,” he said.
“There would be a fee,” I said, to be plausible.
“How much?” he asked.
“Fifty grand,” I said.
He smiled.
“Okay,” he said again.
“Like a penny under the sofa cushion,” I said.
“You got that right.”
“We’re all winners.”
The bar door opened and a guy walked in on a blast of warm air. Hispanic, small and wide, big hands, an ugly scar high on his cheek.
“You know him?” my new best friend asked.
“Never saw him before,” I said.
The new guy walked to the bar and sat on a stool.
“We should do this thing right now,” my new best friend said.
Sometimes, things just fall in your lap.
“Where’s the stuff?” I asked.
“In an old trailer in the woods,” he said.
“Is it big?” I asked. “I’m new to this.”
“Ten kilos is twenty-two pounds,” the guy said. “About the same for the money. Two duffles, is all.”
“So let’s go,” I said.
I drove him in my car west and then south, and he directed me down a fire road and onto a dirt track that led to a clearing. I guessed once it had been neat, but now it was overgrown with all kinds of stuff and it stank of animal piss and the trailer had degenerated from a viable vacation home to a rotted hulk. It was all covered with mold and mildew and the windows were dark with organic scum. He wrestled with the door and went inside. I opened the trunk lid and waited. He came back out with a duffle in each hand. Carried them over to me.
“Which is which?” I asked.
He squatted down and unzipped them. One had bricks of used money, the other had bricks of dense white powder packed hard and smooth under clear plastic wrap.
“Okay,” I said.
He stood up again and heaved the bags into the trunk, and I stepped to the side and shot him twice in the head. Birds rose up from everywhere and cawed and cackled and settled back into the branches. I put the gun back in my pocket and took out my cell phone. Dialed a number.
“Yes?” the Martinez brothers asked together. They always used the speakerphone. They were too afraid of each other’s betrayal to allow private calls.
“This is Octavian,” I said. “I’m through here. I got the money back and I took care of the guy.”
“Already?”
“I got lucky,” I said. “It fell in my lap.”
“What about the ten keys?”
“In the wind,” I said. “Long gone.”
Public Transportation
He said he wouldn’t talk to me. I asked him why. He said because he was a cop and I was a journalist. I said he sounded like a guy with something to hide. He said no, he had nothing to hide.
“So talk to me,” I said, and I knew he would.
He scuffed around for a minute more, hands on the top of the bar, drumming his fingers, moving a little on his stool. I knew him fairly well. He was edging out of the summer of his career and entering the autumn. His best years were behind him. He was in the valley, facing a long ten years before his pension. He liked winning, but losing didn’t worry him too much. He was a realistic man. But he liked to be sure. What he hated was not really knowing whether he had won or lost.
“From the top,” I said.
He shrugged and took a sip of his beer and sighed and blew fumes toward the mirror facing us. Then he started with the 911 call. The house, out beyond Chandler, south and east of the city. A long low ranch, prosperous, walled in, the unlit pool, the darkness. The parents, arriving home from a party. The silence. The busted window, the empty bed. The trail of blood through the hallway. The daughter’s body, all ripped up. Fourteen years old, damaged in a way he still wasn’t prepared to discuss.
I said, “There were details that you withheld.”
He asked, “How do you know?”
“You guys always do that. To evaluate the confessions.”
He nodded.
