American Blood (3 page)

“Take my word that I have.”

Rojas didn’t answer.

Marshall said, “It’s your life you’re betting. And I don’t think I’m going to miss from this range.”

No answer. They stood there a moment. Rojas locked on the bore and he could have been reflecting on things been or looking for a way out. Marshall moved a fraction closer. Six feet between them, a vaultlike silence, that gun their whole world.

Marshall said, “If you’ve got something back there, I’d drop it.”

Nothing.

Marshall moved closer again, just a step. The 870 was a long weapon, and he couldn’t afford to put it in grab range. He could sense Rojas willing the opposite. Marshall counted himself in, backward from three, and then he kicked him left-footed in the groin.

Rojas retched and doubled over, but kept his footing. Marshall moved in close and kicked him again in the gut, a big blow off the left instep. Rojas dumped his breath and fell prone. A nickel-plated .38 in his hand. Marshall stepped on his wrist and stooped and pried the gun from his fingers and slipped it in his belt.

“You carrying anything else you want to tell me about?”

Rojas gasping. Legs pulled double and an arm across his stomach, trying to pry his other wrist free. The skin all bunched and twisted where Marshall’s sole had bit and turned. “No. Jesus, get off.”

“What about Mr. Nose?”

“He’s not carrying.”

Which Marshall thought was probably untrue, but not problematic given Bolt’s present condition. He said, “I see him hanging on to anything but his face I’m going to pop both of you.”

Rojas still trying to jerk his wrist free.

Marshall said, “That’s only going to make things more uncomfortable, doing that.”

He checked the windows. No faces hovering there. His little reckoning still a private matter.

He dropped to his haunches and bridged the shotgun across his knees. “You should have done as you were told.”

Rojas didn’t reply. He seemed to have given up on the hand, like he’d accepted he wasn’t getting it back. His breath was shallow, whistling.

Marshall said, “Sorry about the misdirection. But I’m not really in the business.”

“What do you want?”

Marshall glanced back at Bolt to make sure he wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t. The only nonconforming article was his nose, which was bleeding a lot.

Marshall said, “I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“A young lady.”

“What’s her name?”

“Alyce Ray. Alyce with a Y.”

“Never heard of her.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“I haven’t.”

“Right. Well, either your boss or one of your colleagues or someone you sell to knows what’s happened to her.”

Rojas didn’t answer.

Marshall said, “Point is someone’s got answers, and I think you’re in a good position to get them for me.”

Rojas didn’t answer.

Marshall scanned the distance. This light and this sparseness, he’d see red and blue a long way off. He said, “You can ask some questions. You’ve got my number.”

“Get fucked.”

“Yeah, well. Have a think about it.”

“What are you, like a PI or something?”

“No. Just a concerned gentleman.”

“You just made a pretty stupid mistake.”

Marshall said, “Probably two of them. If you count him as well.”

Rojas said, “How guys like you end up dead.”

Marshall stood up. The windows still clear. “We’ll see. If I don’t hear from you, I’m going to have to come looking. And it’s going to be the something sharper rather than the coffee. If you know what I mean.”

Rojas smiled up at him. This awful grimace. “You don’t have to come looking. I wouldn’t fucking worry about that.”

“Speed things up if I do. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”

Rojas didn’t answer. Marshall could see him battling the urge to cradle the wrist. He laid the 870 in the back of the Corolla and took the .38 from his belt so he had a gun at hand. Then he closed the trunk lid and took the key from the lock and stepped over to where Bolt was lying. Still not a sound from him. Half-lidded and half-conscious. Marshall dragged him by his collar a few paces so he was clear of the car.

Marshall said, “I wouldn’t hang around.” He nodded at Bolt. “That’s not the kind of face you get from walking into a door.”

And then he got back into the Corolla and drove away.

TWO

Marshall

It had started like this:

He had a job down in Albuquerque, a half-million-dollar build in North Valley. Two-way, two-story frames, three days’ worth of welding.

He found a motel close by, his favorite sort of place, the desk guy content with fifty bucks as the price for no ID. There was a diner across the street. Seated one night at the counter where he could see the door, odor of cut steel still in his nose, fluorescent worms of arc flash in the darkness when he shut his eyes.

The guy beside him was a basketball fan, evidently a beer fan too, Marshall getting a detailed but drunken forecast of how this year the Mavericks would win that second championship. The TV was playing local news, good as mute due to his neighbor, but he watched anyway, indifferent to the content, hoping to convey disinterest as he waited for a meal.

“You see it last season?”

Marshall glanced at him. “Sorry?”

“I said, did you see it last season?”

“I don’t think I saw it any season.”

Back to the TV. It was the evening standard, crime scene tape and talking cop heads. He tried to lip-read as a distraction. A long shot of a house from the street, patrol cars in attendance. Tired clapboard and a dirt yard, chicken-wire fencing. His neighbor was still going, right in his ear. Marshall leaned away for some space—

Then:

An image of a young woman, maybe twenty years of age, dark hair and blue eyes. The beginnings of a smile that stirred memories, took him back a long time. He stared at the photograph through a slow zoom. No sound, but he guessed the gist of it.

You don’t get news time unless you’re dead or missing.

A cut to the next story and he blinked and lost the reverie. Returned to the diner, the talk beside him still in full flight and his plate now before him as if conjured, and the warm evening hubbub restored in full. A question in his ear:

“Don’t you think it’s gone downhill since they dropped him? It’s fucking stupid, right?”

Marshall said, “Yes.”

He replayed the image, tried to view it in detail. It felt like déjà vu, but it was false recall. He didn’t know her. He’d just got the jolt, face and memory wrongly paired.

He dismissed it and started eating. The man beside him was gesturing widely as he spoke, warm beer breath on Marshall’s cheek. Marshall offered a yes or a no when prompted. He’d ordered a burger and fries, but he didn’t really taste them. The issue was their harmlessness: his attention was with those around him, and in a packed venue the known quantities didn’t register. Years ago it had been a necessity, and he’d retained the habit. The result was inverted priorities: his focus the periphery, the minutiae of backgrounds. Everything others missed.

“But nobody beats Jordan, don’t give a shit what they say, he’s still the man. You know what I mean?”

Marshall said, “Yes.”

It was ten
P.M
. In his pocket he had three twenties. He always used cash. It was a caution born with the move. He hadn’t used a credit card since New York. He hated the notion of a trail. The driver’s license and other ID the marshals had supplied were locked in the document safe. He never used them, complete anonymity preferable to a false identity.

He folded a bill crisply on the transverse and arranged it squarely beneath his mug and left, basketball man turning to address a new patron without missing a beat.

Outside it was cold and windless. A thin rain white as cut glass falling dead straight.

He stood at the curb a moment. His motel was across the street, lit windows a long and random sequence.

You don’t get news time unless you’re dead or missing.

He scrubbed his face with his hands. That slow zoom replayed.

Dead or missing.

“Shit.”

He turned and walked up the gleamed street through the neon dark. A truck passed in a gust of road spray. At a gas station he bought a copy of the
Albuquerque Journal
and then he walked back across the street to the motel.

Hand shaking as he keyed the lock. He told himself it was the cold. He brushed rain from his hair and clicked on the light and locked the door behind him. That smell of inked newsprint. He laid the paper on the bed and scanned the front. Nothing. He turned the page, and there she was on A2. That same image that had grabbed him. Those eyes and her face on the brink of laughter. He’d never met her, but there was something in the photo. That false link to a former life and the better moments of a bad time.

He read the accompanying article. It was just a sidebar piece, probably a follow-up, light on hard content. Her name was Alyce Ray. She lived with her mother in a house on Comanche Road, just north of central Albuquerque. Mother had woken one morning and found the daughter gone. Any sightings please call this number.

She’d been missing five days.

He closed and folded the newspaper and smoothed it to its original condition and lay on the bed, fingers knitted behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle, just quietly thinking. Outside, the traffic passed as a smooth hiss on the wet road. After a minute he got up and swept change from the table into a cupped palm and pocketed it and took his keys and went out. There was a pay phone at reception. The room a pale red from the vending machine light. Behind the desk a young guy sat nodding to headphone music, a camera up in a corner behind him. Marshall went to the phone and fed change in the slot and dialed a number.

“Hello?”

“Hey. It’s Marshall.”

“Marsh. What’s happening?”

“I think something’s come up. I’m not going to be able to finish this one.”

He laughed. “You think something’s come up, or something actually has come up?”

Marshall said, “Something actually has come up.” He paused. “Just personal stuff.”

“Oh. Okay.” Quiet. “Didn’t know you had personal stuff.”

Marshall didn’t answer. The door was open and he could hear the rain in its soft patter on the concrete outside. Smell of wet earth in the rain.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it. Just, you know. Everything all right?”

“Yeah.”

He could have explained, but it wouldn’t have sounded rational. I want to find a missing girl, because she looks like someone I used to know. There was no way to pitch it as sensible.

“All right. Well. Why don’t you just come by sometime when you’re ready and get your pay? You did a couple of days, right?”

Marshall said, “Yeah, a couple of days. Thanks.”

“Take care now.”

The tone in his ear again. He fed some more change. It was a long time, but he still remembered the number for the apartment on Central Park West. For a few years he’d tried, and it would just ring and ring. Now just the tone. Every month another fruitless call and with them his faint hopes slowly dying.

Nothing.

The kid’s foot was up on the desk, dipping back and forth to some tune. Marshall hung up the phone and stepped back out into the rain.

*   *   *

A storm that night. He lay listening to it. Still no wind and through the window he’d left ajar came the clean smell of rain. Periodically the curtains backlit by lightning and then the crump of thunder lagging the flash.

New York memories welling up, and he couldn’t keep them down. In bed with her, the pair of them lying tangled. Her hand slightly curled, a light touch on his chest, her hair splayed out finely.

Marshall said, “We could leave.”

Her smile just above him in the dark as she rolled toward him. The pause long enough he had time to hope. She said, “I told you I’d think about it.”

“We could just do it.”

She put her head on his shoulder. Warm breath as she laughed, a butterfly feeling, like it was too great a fantasy. “I promise I’ll think about it.”

He put his hand on hers. She made a fist, perfect in his palm. He said, “What if something happens?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. What if something did.”

Her face above him again. The quiet room even quieter with her hair touching him. She said, “Nothing’s going to happen.”

Rain on the motel roof. He sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, tried to focus on it. White noise to flood his recall. It took a long time. He thought about trying the New York number again. He didn’t, but it made the memories re-loop.

Nothing’s going to happen.

It was always the line he circled back to. He lay down again, hands over his eyes, as if blocking one sense might block the others.

Far from home and a woman on his mind whom he’d never see again. He felt very alone. He knew this life was never the ambition.

*   *   *

Gray the next morning but no rain. He had the Silverado pickup with his site gear in the tray. He drove south on I-25 and exited near the center of town onto Comanche Road and turned east through light industrial. A quirk of perception had the road ahead terminating on a low rise at the very foot of the mountains. Cresting it, he grasped the true geography: mile upon mile of suburb lay ahead on the plain.

Prosperity seemed to ebb as he worked east. Tired houses on dirt sections turned cracked and barren. Cars beset by rust parked in yards. He drove slow and scanned frontages as he went.

It took him forty minutes to find the house. He recognized it from TV footage. Mustard-colored clapboard with a carport to the left with an old maroon Impala parked inside. A yellow knot of crime scene tape at one of the columns. Another in a branch at the other end of the yard. Blinds drawn behind the windows. He parked a hundred yards up the street on the opposite side and crossed on the diagonal.

The front door was open behind an insect screen and beyond that a short corridor led into the house. Smell of cigarettes. He pushed the bell but it made no sound. He rapped on the siding near the doorframe.