Terrapin Sky Tango

Chapter 2

2

I freeze like a tiny bug pinned to an endless beige display board.

The back of my neck flashes with heat as the first edge of the sun cracks the rounded mountains.

The text message’s three words crank my headache up to eleven to thud in my temples. My parched eyes should tear up from the thunderous pounding. No, I probably have tears, but the ridiculous dry heat is sucking it away before they can run. My mouth is somehow even more arid, though.

How could Dad be dead?

I hadn’t seen him since I started college, fourteen years ago. He’d tried to see me when I graduated with the triple bachelor’s, but it hadn’t gone well. And Father had been well on his way down Cirrhosis Highway back then, racing pedal-down towards Lung Cancer Junction.

I’d always imagined Cirrhosis Highway looked a lot like this barren desert, with straggly shrubs barely hanging on and a few grains of loose sand skittering across the hardpack. Father’s road had Jack Daniels bottles instead of useless storm drains, though, and ditches full of Marlboro stubs.

Okay, I know perfectly well how he can be dead. Dumb question.

If he was that sick, though, why hadn’t William let me know earlier? The i***t was supposed to be watching over Father.

“What’s wrong?” Lou says.

I feel dizzy.

Breathe. I need to breathe.

Father’s death had to be an accident.

Or slow alcohol-and-tobacco suicide.

I push the air out of my frozen lungs and deliberately pull in a deep breath. “Nothing.” Another breath. The flat smell of drought-scorched earth fills my nose. “Nothing.”

“Billie?” Deke says in my ear.

“Later,” I hiss.

For Father, there is no later. There’s only never.

A voice in the back of my head screams that I should have taken a chance to ‘set things right’ between us. But there wasn’t anything to set right. Father is, was a drunk. He’d chased Mom off the Christmas I was ten, and she hadn’t taken anything but her remaining teeth. Without Uncle Carl and Aunt Pat, his drinking would have taken me down with him.

I could have changed nothing.

I should have changed everything.

“Beaks!” Lou hisses.

I jerk.

A cargo van slows as it approaches the intersection, its pristine windowless white flanks glaring with early sunlight. The words TERRAPIN TRANSPORT gleam in bright blue on the flank, atop a grinning green turtle. A tinted windshield conceals the driver, but that’s not suspicious. Scottsdale’s in the running for Tinted Glass Capital of the United States.

I will myself to breathe. Inflating my paralyzed lungs takes concentration.

A couple yards short of the stop sign, the van pulls to the side, blocking my view of the drab gray utility box sticking out of the opposite lot.

The exchange is on.

Focus, woman! I fumble at my pants. The radio beacon makes a thin rectangular shape in my pocket. I push the “on” button through the smooth cloth and hear a low-pitched beep.

We’re ready.

I deliberately relax my shoulders and unclench my hands. Father isn’t a problem anymore. Hell, now that I’m not supporting him, I can keep all the money from this gig.

The thought doesn’t help the voiceless burn in my heart.

Besides, there’ll be funeral expenses. It’s not like my brother has that kind of money. Or any money.

The van driver opens his door and hops out.

He’s a stubby man, with baby-smooth skin above a harsh black five o’clock shadow, broad muscular shoulders, and a ghastly pale complexion that almost mirrors the sizzling sunlight. Dressed for the office, complete with a ridiculous short-sleeved white button-up shirt and fire-engine-red tie, he steps towards me with an incredibly well-balanced stride. It’s like he expects an earthquake, but doesn’t want it to knock the invisible ledger off of his head. His hands are open, relaxed, and empty. A bright red baseball cap with a white eagle-head logo on the front casts a vital line of shade over his naked eyes.

Basically, he’s the exact opposite of Father.

Focus, focus, focus. “Stabinowitz.” I raise my voice to carry the words across the intersection. “I thought I’d see you.”

His toothy white grin reflects the sunrise almost as well as a mirror. “We’ve been around too long to stand on formalities, Miss Beaks. Please call me Joe. And what was your first hint?” He sounds like he’s been awake for hours, and waiting all of them for a chance to strike up a conversation with a pretty blonde.

Fortunately, I’m a brunette today. “Joe it is, then. And it’s just Beaks. Last night we came across a gentleman who’d had a butter knife inserted into his brain through his eye socket, and I asked myself ‘who could do that?’”

Joe raised his shoulders and spread his hands. “Guilty. To be fair, he was trying to shoot me.”

“I assumed as much.” Stabbity Joe’s skill with knives is both legendary, and his weakness. He’s faster than me, and he practices with knives the way Father practiced with Pabst—no, no, no. You just yelled at Lou to stay in the moment. Take your own advice.

Stabbity Joe’s hands are empty. He’s wearing short sleeves, so the most obvious knife cache is gone. They’ve got to be in his pockets, or maybe down the back of his collar—no, that collar looks tight underneath his tie.

A gust of wind skitters sand past us. Joe’s tie doesn’t flutter.

That’s one knife, then. He’ll have a bunch more, hidden somewhere nastily clever.

Not as nasty as when Father got mad at the neighbor and—no, stop it stop it stop it.

“Who’s your friend?” Stabbity Joe says.

I don’t look at Lou, but he doesn’t answer. Just like I told him.

“My problem,” I say.

“Nice to meet you, My Problem.” Stabbity Joe grins like that’s funny.

“If you want to banter, Joe, then let’s get this deal done and go to a bar,” I say. “Ten minutes from now, this place is going to be even more of a hellhole.”

His grin grows. “Don’t tell me our desert is too much for you?”

Our? He’s from a desert—maybe this desert. Or is he playing at leaking information? “You and I both know Phoenix was founded because this is where the settlers’ last camel died. We stand here twenty minutes, we join it.”

I need to seem impatient, but not too impatient.

This conversation needs to stretch until I get Deke’s signal.

“Indeed.” Joe slowly rotates on his axis to scan the horizon, pointedly spreading his arms farther as he turns his back to me. “I do believe we are quite alone, Beaks.”

“Then bring it out.” Those stupid verbal games would remind me of family any day, not just today, but my voice is still harder than it should be.

Cool, girl.

Collected.

Present. In the moment.

“Candy!” Stabbity Joe calls.

The van clanks.

I sense Lou’s weight shift and suppress a wince. If Lou freaks out and starts anything, I’ll have to put him down before Joe gets a chance to go all stabbity.

The side of Joe’s van slides smoothly open, the sound of its motion barely audible above the breeze. I’m watching the dark interior, but also keeping an eye on the edges of the van and trying to peer into the shadowed space beneath it. Deke will warn us about another car coming in, but if Joe had seen Cape Fear one too many times and arrived with a shooter dangling from the undercarriage, this would be a good moment for him to strike.

Stabbity Joe was mostly honorable. In this business, freelancers who are willing to blow up the exchange pick up the kind of nasty stink that’s real hard to get rid of. Don’t get me wrong, he’d kill you if that was the job, but he’d do it properly. From behind, when you weren’t expecting it.

But still, I had to be as watchful as when I’d been a kid and—

No.

That was petty s**t. It’s done. I’m the best in my business now, and Father’s a lump of meat.

The hammering heat-headache threatens to knock my noggin off my neck. Better to think of that. Better still to watch the van. Just because Stabbity Joe was known to be basically okay didn’t mean that he couldn’t be offered enough to mow me down.

And Lou, yeah.

But mostly me.

Someone faintly says oof.

A scrawny woman with a tangle of dark hair flowing down past her shoulders clambers out of the van’s dim interior. She turns her back to us, reaches inside, and heaves out a cardboard box plastered with the sss logo.

I hear good things about sss, but I’m never home to get packages.

Maybe Deke and I should steal a home one day.

“Prime Pantry,” Stabbity Joe says. “The greatest boxes made today.”

What? “The box is fine. What’s in the box is the question.”

Stabbity Joe steps aside, leaving room for Candy to pass.

She looks too scared to be a professional freelancer. Those denim shorts are too short, and the Arizona State T-shirt is way too tight. And any double-D needs to be wearing a bra—

Realization slaps me. “Joe, I thought we were professionals.”

Joe gives that annoying pick-up smile. “She is a professional.”

How dare he bring some random civilian into this? Is he really that stupid? “Not that sort of pro and you know it.”

“It’s an easy job,” Joe says. “I’ll eat my second-best Bowie if Mister My Problem there is any less green than my Miss Candy. And don’t worry, she’s being very well-compensated for her time.”

Candy squints against the light at my back, and I feel like an asshole. Yes, I’d chosen to put the sun at my back as an advantage during the exchange, but a pro would have brought eye protection. She only has an arch of purple above each eye, making the sockets seem huge. At each sun-pained blink, glitter flashes on her darkened eyelids. Her lips are a tight line of fire engine red.

Candy’s pretty clearly accustomed to working nights, when the artificial light and pancake makeup can hide the bruise on her left cheek. There’s another on her left temple.

I’m not one of those moralizing assholes who thinks that women shouldn’t do whatever they must to survive.

I’m one of those moralizing assholes who thinks you shouldn’t beat people who are willing to sleep with you, even if they do it for money.

Mom covered up her bruises like that.

Fury blazes.

No, not now.

Survive the swap.

An hour from now, you can break down and scream and cry and whatever you need to do.

But right now, survive the swap.

Candy’s slow pace doesn’t come from her ghastly do-me glitter heels. She’s terrified.

“You can’t tell me she wants to be here,” I say.

Stabbity Joe says, “You remember the gentleman with the butter knife?”

Candy flinches.

Stabbity Joe says, “He incapacitated my partner. I was forced to find a substitute, at short notice. That’s far enough, Miss Candy.”

Candy finishes her step and halts, square in the middle of the intersection. A racing car coming from any direction could mow her down.

Fortunately, the endless empty road stretching in all four directions would give her plenty of warning.

I wave Lou forward, into the intersection.

Candy hands Lou the box.

Lou sits on his heels so he can inspect the contents of the box. Counting should take between four and five minutes, but his impressively deft fingers finish leafing through the Panamanian bearer bonds in maybe three and a half. I hope it’s because he’s good, not because his attention slipped partway through. He folds the top of the box shut and stands to give me a nod.

“Good,” I say. “The Duke’s in the trunk.”