There were trees, at least, patchy attempts at landscaping here and there, kids' bikes sprawled on the dirt. Not that many people outside. Maybe it was still too hot.
At the end of the road was her destination: #52.
It looked like most of the others. Single-wide, two-toned, in this case cream with ochre trim, rusting here and there around the edges. A Harley and some kind of late-model Ford sedan were parked on a tiny patch of asphalt next to the entrance. A flag fluttered from a skinny pole stuck into a stanchion mounted on a wood beam holding up the canopy that shaded the door. It was one of those flags with a black coiled rattler on a yellow background with the legend
don't tread on me
.
Please don't let there be a pit bull, Michelle thought.
She parked. Took a deep breath, then another. Thought, I'm not going to get killed here, that wouldn't make any sense, this whole setup with Caitlin and Safer America is too elaborate, there's more at stake, this is just Gary fucking with me, because he can.
She got out of the car, stood by the door for a moment.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Get it over with, she thought.
She walked past the Harley, up four mold-stained cement steps, paused on the landing. Listened for a moment. Voices. A burst of laughter and music. Something on TV.
She knocked on the door.
Chapter Ten
An explosion of barking
greeted her knock: high
-pitched yapping.
That doesn't sound like a pit bull, she thought.
Though had she ever actually heard one bark?
She could hear movement behind the door: a scrabbling of blunted claws on linoleum, more barking, then a heavier, human tread.
She smoothed the wrinkles in her black silk T-shirt and ran her fingers through her hair. Because I want to look my best for whatever maniac Gary sent me to meet, she thought briefly.
The door cracked open.
“Yeah?”
In his late fifties or early sixties, thinning gray hair combed back from his forehead, falling over the collar of a short-sleeved button-down checked shirt. A smallish man with a round gut that made him look almost pregnant.
Behind him, she heard more high-pitched yapping and nails scrabbling on linoleum. “Get back, Roscoe,” the man snapped.
For a moment, her mind went completely blank. A fresh wave of sweat broke out on her forehead and back. Gary hadn't told her what to say. Gary hadn't told her anything.
“I'm here for the pickup,” she said.
The man's head tilted back. He looked her up and down. “Come in.”
A small dog with
long cream-colored hair scampered around her feet, rearing up on its hind legs and barring its overbite of tiny fangs with a high-pitched growl.
“Shih tzu,” the man said. “They're very loyal. Chinese.”
She nodded.
Past the small rectangle of linoleum of the entrance was a stretch of rust-colored pile carpet. The living room. The TV she'd heard, a large flat screen, took up most of the narrow end of the rectangle. It was playing a reality show.
The Bachelor
. An overwrought woman in a Little Bo Peep costume and lots of lip gloss wrung her hands at another woman dressed up like a cowgirlâthat is, if cowgirls wore short shorts and crop tops with their cowboy boots.
The man aimed a remote at the TV and muted it. He indicated a loveseat-sized brown and gold upholstered couch across from a leatherette recliner with a TV tray table parked at its side.
Michelle sat.
“Something to drink? Water? Sweet tea?”
“I'm fine, thanks.”
He shrugged. “Be right back.”
As he headed down a truncated hall, the dog skittered over, sniffing at her ankles with bared teeth and quivering with barely suppressed canine rage.
“Roscoe! Go sit!” the man yelled over his shoulder.
The dog retreated with one last outraged trill, and hopped up onto the recliner.
She heard metal catch on metal: a key, sliding into a lock. A door opening. Her mouth was dry. I should've taken that water, she thought. She stared at the Remington print framed in battered walnut, a cowboy on a bucking bronco, hung on the opposite wall.
All this place needs is a wagon-wheel lamp, she thought.
The man hobbled back into the living room, a canvas duffle bag on each shoulder, laboring under the weight. He lowered them down onto the shag carpet, the longer bag on his right shoulder landing with a solid thud. Muffled metal.
“Everything's there,” he said. He leaned over, stiffly, and unzipped the larger bag. “Check it if you want.”
She didn't want. Not at all. But maybe she was expected to.
She stood. Looked into the bag.
Bubble-wrapped objects. About three feet long. Rifles.
“Four Colt AR-15s, two Bushmasters, six Sig Sauer 226s. Good condition.” He shrugged. Or maybe he was just working out a kink in his shoulder. “I threw in a couple of Colt full auto kits.”
“Oh,” she said. “Great.”
“You need a hand out to the car?”
“I
. . .
”
She thought about it. There was something she needed, all right.
“Do you have any revolvers?” she asked. “Any .38 specials?” She smiled. “For me. I'm new in town.”
His name was Terry.
He tried to talk her out of a .38. “Wouldn't you rather have a nice semi-auto? I have a sweet nine-millimeter Beretta you might like. Fits great in a purse.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I'd rather have a .38.”
Something small, reliable and that she already knew how to shoot. She'd spent a lot of hours on a gun range with her .38, back in Arcata.
“Well, I do have a Smith and Wesson Chief's Special. Really nice piece. And clean. I can let you have it for four hundred. That's a discount.”
She paid him cash
for the pistol. He threw in a cheap nylon concealment holster (“So you aren't carrying it naked”). He never said anything about payment for the rest of the guns. Already taken care of, she had to assume.
Terry insisted on helping
her out to the car, wobbling under the weight of the duffle bags, the little dog dancing around his heels.
He slammed the hatchback shut. Took a moment to smooth out his plaid short-sleeved shirt. Like she'd done when she'd stood at his door.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” he said. “You're a nice change from the usual suspects.”
Fucking Gary.
Her hands gripped the wheel, so tightly that her wrists were aching. His directions had led her somewhere northeast. She had no idea where, what kind of place it was. Just street names that didn't mean anything. Anonymous broad avenues with beat-up convenience stores, an occasional gas station, a stucco hospital complex. Skinny condos where the faded paint was peeling off the wood siding. A lot of chain-link fencing, graffiti sprayed on beige-coated brick.
It had to be a bad neighborhood, she thought. Because, fucking Gary. She'd bet anything he was sitting back with a scotchâwell, maybe not, given his health kickâbut she'd bet he was laughing his ass off right now, thinking about the situation he'd put her in. He got off on it.
Why do dogs lick themselves, right?
she heard Danny say.
Given that she was using the GPS on her iPhone, Gary probably knew exactly where she was.
“Fuck you, Gary,” she muttered, in case he was listening.
“In four hundred feet, turn left,” her phone said.
She'd turned into a housing tract. Late 1950s, she guessedâsmaller ranch-style homes, single story. Run-down, most of them, from what she could see in the dark and the few sputtering streetlights. Dead lawns.
for sale
signs here and there,
bank owned
slapped on some of them.
Boarded-up windows. Junked cars.
Abandoned.
“Your destination is on the right.”
A brown stucco house with a darker brown paint trim, a withered oak tree in the front yard and a bug zapper by the door doubling as a porch light.
She pulled over to the curb. Sat there for a moment with the engine running, breathing hard.
Deep, calming breaths, she told herself. Think about what you're going to say.
Like what, she thought? What could she possibly say? “Hi, I'm here with your guns”?
If she'd been sweaty before, she was drenched now, shivering in the chill of the air conditioner, stomach clenched and roiling.
She turned off the engine, killed the power. In the silence that followed, she could hear faint strains of
ranchera
music coming from the house, the scrape and chirp of crickets.
It's a long game, she told herself, Gary's playing a long game. He doesn't want to see me dead, not yet. Not so soon.
That wouldn't be fun for him at all.
She took one last deep breath. Got out of the car. Locked it, put the keys in her purse. Put her hand on the butt of her new revolver, tucked in the concealed holster in her purse, next to her wallet, comb and lipstick. Stupid, she told herself. What good would that gun really do her if she was walking into a house full of the type of people who would buy illegal weapons?
Still, she kept her fingers wrapped around the rubber Pachmayr grip. It felt like muscle and bone, hard beneath a slight yield. You know how to shoot this if you have to, she told herself.
You're not going to die.
The doorbell didn't work.
She knocked. Rapped
three times, the first one tentative. The second two, harder.
The music quieted. She waited.
She didn't hear footsteps, just the sudden scrape of the deadbolt as it retracted into the door, then the rattle of the chain lock, pulling taut.
“Yes?”
She could see a slice of his face: smooth brown skin, short black hair, a dark eye.
“I have your delivery,” she said.
It was the best she could come up with.
“Delivery?” he asked, in accented English.
“You're expecting something, right?”
A pause. “Excuse me. One moment.”
The door closed.
She stood there, heart pounding, hand clutching the .38 in her purse, mouth so dry the sides of her throat stuck together as she swallowed.
The chain lock rattled again. This time, the door opened wide.
“Sorry,” he said. “We did not expect
you.
”
He wasn't that young. In his thirties, at least. Short, barrel chest, close-cropped hair, round, full cheeks. Not quite baby faced, but close. He wore a green-striped polo shirt and jeans. She could see the blurred blue ink of a tattoo on his neck, disappearing into his shirt collar. The letter L, and a number that she couldn't make out.
“It's in the car,” she said.
The man in the
green-striped polo shirt and another younger Latino wearing a white undershirt and baggy shorts followed her to the curb.
She popped the hatch. Gestured at the duffle bags. “There,” she said.
The man in the green striped polo shirt stepped up to the bumper while the younger man in the white undershirt waited behind her. Watching her. She could feel it. She relaxed her hand that rested on the edge of her purse, poised above the pistol. Don't make him nervous, she thought.
The man in the green striped shirt leaned over and unzipped the larger duffle. Took a quick glance. Zipped it up and nodded.
The younger man trotted forward and hoisted the two duffels onto his shoulders, then turned and jogged slowly across the dead lawn to the front door.
She and the man in the green striped shirt stood across from each other. Close enough now that she thought she could make out the number tattooed on his neck, in an elaborate font that reminded her of medieval manuscripts.
73.
His face, with its smooth, round cheeks, showed no expression. He stood there, seeming to stare at a point just past her.
I just want to get in the car, she thought. Get in the car and drive away.
But she was supposed to get her money. Wasn't she?
Fucking Gary, she thought. Of course he wouldn't make it clear.
Should she ask?
Something in 73's expression suddenly changed, a sort of wince. He shifted back and forth on his feet. Then his face turned hard again.
What did it mean?
She let her fingertips slip down and graze the grip of her revolver.
“Sorry,” he suddenly said. “For making you wait.”
She felt a sudden
flush of sweat, of something close to relief. “Oh. That's all right. No need to apologize.”
A moment later, the younger man in the white undershirt came trotting back, pulling a navy-blue wheeled suitcase behind him. Too big for a carry-on.
He pushed the handle into the suitcase, hoisted it up and laid it in the trunk of her Prius.
The man in the green striped shirt gestured at the suitcase.
Was she supposed to inspect it? Like she did the guns?
She leaned over and unzipped suitcase. Lifted up the flimsy canvas.
Money. Banded bundles of it. Hundreds and fifties and twenties. She had no idea how much it was. But it looked like a lot more than fifty thousand dollars.
She zipped the suitcase shut. What was she supposed to do? He had to know how much money was in there. She couldn't exactly tell him he'd made a mistake.
Something of her confusion must have shown on her face when she looked up to meet his eyes.
He nodded slightly. “Our
. . .
donation.”