THREE

 

Inside Deria’s tiny apartment, Vern’s eyes zeroed in on the Jack Daniels bottle on top of her refrigerator. He strode across the room, opened a cupboard, removed two small glasses and filled one. “You drinking?”

“Sure.”

He handed her the first glass, filled the second and drained it, poured himself another. “I’ll be up early. Put out your coffee stuff tonight. You got a laptop?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Bring it to the living room, keep it plugged in, write down the password and your address. I gotta map some shit in the morning.”

“You’re leaving in the morning.” There was a tremor in Deria’s voice.

“I’d leave right now if I knew where to go. There’s a guy I gotta see. But I ain’t looking for him in the dark.”

“So what are we doing?”

“Drinking, I hope.” Vern picked up the bottle of Jack Daniels. “You got any smoke?”

“Weed?” She shook her head. “And that’s the last of the hard stuff.”

He drank the end of the bottle. “I hope that means you have beer.”

“There’s some in the fridge. If you’ll settle for something good.” She got up and walked into the kitchen. She opened two beers, handed one to Vern. They walked back to the living room and he sat on the couch. She sat on one of its arms.

Vern took a drink. “Jesus. You bring home the stuff you sell?”

“Not exactly. It’s a good IPA, though.”

“At least it’s strong for a beer, right?”

 

 

Deria looked at Vern, still in his jacket but obviously muscular, broad-shouldered. She remembered how he looked shirtless and knew better than to say anything about liking things strong.

Deria didn’t want Vern back in her life. She liked him as a story to tell, her flirtation with danger. She didn’t want a life with it. That’s what she wanted away from, men like Vern and her bosses at the bar and what they might want from her. That’s why she’d planned to get away. It didn’t look like her getaway would be as soon as she’d hoped. It looked like she was back to settling for less.

He got up from the couch, stood over her.

She looked up as though trapped beneath him, wished he’d step away. He didn’t, just grinned down at her. She saw his teeth like a shark’s and took a drink from her beer, kept her eyes away. She drank awhile, looked up slowly.

“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “You’re not a problem.”

“Someone is,” she said. “What happens tomorrow?”

“I become a problem. For the guy who tried to rip me off.”

She took a long drink, then another and her bottle was empty. She stood, nearly brushed against Vern. She stepped around him, went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “You ready for another?”

He nodded, chugged the rest of his bottle. “You said the danger wasn’t the only thing.”

She opened both bottles, handed one to him. “I said what?”

He sat on the couch, set his empty bottle on the table, held the fresh one close. “Danger’s not the only reason. Me not needing you’s another.”

“There’s lots of reasons, Vern. Reasons we don’t work.”

He looked at his bottle, looked up at her, patted the arm of the couch. “So you could get past the danger.”

She didn’t sit down, took a step back. “I didn’t say that.”

“If the danger was everything,” he said, “there wouldn’t be room for other things.”

“All you seem to need are animal things.”

Vern stood. He shook his head, beer bottle in one hand. He took a step toward Deria.

She took another step back. It was a small apartment, but she could have taken a bigger step than that.

“I feel what I feel,” he said. “I need to feel more.”

“You want to feel more,” she said. “It’s not the same thing.”

He stepped directly in front of her, took her shoulders in his hands.

Deria tightened, stepped back. Vern let go. He stepped toward her again, kept his arms at his sides this time. Deria stepped forward.

 

 

They lay in bed, awake. Vern’s pistol was on the table beside him, the envelope of money inside his pillowcase. “When I leave,” Vern said, “you can’t let anyone know I was here. This night never happened.”

Deria sat up. “After you finish this, you coming back?”

“Yeah,” Vern said. “I think I will.”

She got out of bed. “I’m getting some water. You want anything?”

“I’ll take a beer if you got one left.”

He’d barely sat up and she was handing him a bottle in the dark. She settled in under the blankets, tall glass of water with a straw on the table beside her.

She ran a finger along the scar that ran the length of Vern’s broad chest. “You gonna tell me how you got this?”

“Nah,” Vern said. One hand stroked her blonde hair. “All my wives told me not to bring my work home.”

“All?” Deria said. She’d known about one. “How many were there?”

“They also told me not to talk about my ex-wives.”

She laughed and dropped her hand under the blanket.

“Wait,” he said. “You hear somethin’?”

“It’s probably your million exes coming to get you.”

“Sh,” Vern said, index finger in front of his lips. There was someone in the hall. Vern rolled out of bed, landed softly, naked, and picked up his pistol. He waved his free hand at Deria. She got up quietly and dressed. She was on the side of the bed closest to the front door. Vern stepped beside her.

The front door was the only way in. There was a bedroom window, but it was small—nothing outside it except a straight drop. “Behind the bed,” he whispered. “Get down.”

She walked around the bed and crouched to the floor as he crossed the room and pressed his back and ass against the wall next to the door.

Vern wondered how they knew he was here. They must have followed him, which meant there’d been more of them near the pizzeria. They’d had plenty of opportunities to kill him and take the money. There must have been too many witnesses until now. He waited, gun in hand, for the door to open. Their voices had lowered as he got closer to the door. Now they’d faded to silence. Vern reached over, unlatched the bolt, unlocked the door and pulled it back.

No one there. The killers had been quiet for the best possible reason: they weren’t here. Vern shut the door, locked and bolted it again. “False alarm,” he said.

Deria stayed crouched.

“You can get back into bed,” he said.

She stood. “I don’t think I can.”

“They don’t know about you,” he said. “Or this place.”

“You acted like they did.”

“I have to act that way. Someone wants to kill me.”

She walked toward him. “Can we get more to drink?”

“Like at a store?”

“We can’t get it here.”

“So long as it’s close,” Vern said, shaking his head.

 

 

Deria lay awake, Vern asleep beside her. They’d bought beer and bourbon and brought it back to the apartment, drank and made love again. Not so great this time, but necessary. Vern snored. Deria smiled. She’d never liked that snore. She got up, poured herself a glass of bourbon. She sat up in bed with it and sipped.

She didn’t know much about Vern, except he was probably a sociopath and she liked him. A thing she’d been telling herself wasn’t true. Maybe she knew too much already. It wasn’t like he’d open up about his life. He didn’t need an accessory after the fact, and she didn’t want to be one.

He didn’t know about her either. She didn’t know if he ever would. She’d like to give him time, let him know he wasn’t the only criminal in the bed. Of course, she was getting out of that life. She wasn’t in deep, but it was too deep for her.

She looked at him. The way he left out certain details, she was certain he’d killed a man. She knew he liked the excitement of his work, worried that maybe he liked to kill. She worried that she thought that and still liked him.

She took a long drink, then another, emptied the glass. She lay down, turned on her side, and put an arm around Vern’s strong belly.

 

 

Seven in the morning, Vern took a cup of coffee to the table in front of the couch and opened Deria’s laptop. He’d slept five hours, he was fine. He removed the money from the envelope: five rubber-banded stacks of hundred dollar bills, ten thousand dollars per stack. Vern slid off one of the rubber bands, peeled off ten of the bills and put them in his wallet. He had some small bills in there already; he’d try not to use the large ones. He replaced the rubber band, listened in case Deria had gotten up, and pushed the stacks deep into the couch. He folded the empty envelope, stuck it in an inside coat pocket, and sat on the couch. On forty-nine thousand dollars. He looked at maps, checked bus lines, finished his coffee and walked out the door, his pistol holstered behind him.

He walked to the nearest bus stop, caught the line going past his own decent Berkeley neighborhood. He got off the bus farther north, stopped to buy a disposable phone then walked. To Keene’s neighborhood: nice houses, but not showy. Keene lived below his means, kept his obvious security people inside. Vern rang the bell.

It was seven forty-five, earlier than Keene’s days usually started. But Keene had money go away without product coming back. Keene might have slept, but someone was up all night.

A guttural voice came through the door. “Who is it?”

“Tell Keene it’s Vern.”

Vern waited, but only a few seconds. The door opened a crack. “You enter slow,” said the voice, “then lean against the wall and I frisk you.”

“Not fucking likely.” Vern flung a wadded up napkin through the gap in the doorway. “That’s my number. Tell him to call me.” He walked rapidly away from the house, head turned and pistol drawn. No one followed. Not yet. He reached the sidewalk and ran, turned the first corner and walked. Cars were on the street but the sidewalks were empty. He needed to join a crowd soon.

 

 

Vern walked fast, his pistol holstered. He had to get past these houses, reach a café. Preferably one with a rear exit. Right now, Keene’s people could find him, but they wouldn’t kill him. He’d shown himself, but he had fifty large of their money and he hadn’t shown that. He wouldn’t be ignored.

Vern slowed down. No reason to wear himself out. Someone could see him as long as he was on the sidewalk; he’d move fast when he got off it.

His phone buzzed. He picked it up, kept walking. “Yeah.”

“You got it?” Keene asked in his usual high voice.

“I got what I went with. You’ll get it back, but first tell me who I’m after.”

“I heard about it,” Keene said. “Someone else is already on the job.”

“Maybe, but those guys are after me. Tell me who they are. And if I do the job, I should get paid.”

Keene said, “Joey Lee,” and Vern knew he was smiling. Keene had a vicious smile where his lips barely parted. “You still want the job?”

Vern stood still on the sidewalk, pictured that smile. Fuck. Joey Lee was way too big for him to deal with. “The job has me,” he said. “All you know is Joey Lee?”

“That’s who the deal was with,” Keene said. “It’s his people.”

“I got your number now,” Vern said, and resumed walking. “I’ll call you back.”

Vern ended the call. Joey Lee moved half the smack in Oakland, way too much to cross Keene for fifty large. One of his thugs though, trying to impress…

 

 

Vern looked at the phone until he’d memorized Keene’s number. He kept the phone in his hand until he saw a sewer grate, then he threw it in so hard he hoped he killed a family of rats.

Ten o’clock. Vern was a half-dozen blocks from where Carelli could usually be found this time of day. He walked fast. Carelli’s morning office was an outdoor table at a Starbucks. Vern slowed down when he got on the same block. Moving fast at Carelli was not a good idea. Vern approached the man’s table at a steady pace.

Carelli’s eyes behind his glasses focused on Vern as he drew near. One small hand gestured Vern forward. Carelli was short and thin, his hair the same. On his table was a newspaper open to the crossword puzzle. Unlike all the younger people at these tables, the fifty year old Carelli did not have a laptop or a phone in front of him, not even a pencil. He did the fucking crossword in his head. The man kept track of a lot of things, and all that information was in his head, where it couldn’t be shared accidentally. “Don’t sit down,” Carelli said.

Vern stopped at Carelli’s table. “I need to find a guy.”

“A guy who works for Joey Lee,” Carelli said. “Word is you killed his partner for their product but they shot back and you ran.”

Vern clenched his right fist. “That ain’t what happened.”

“That’s from Joey’s people.” Carelli tapped two fingers on the handle of his coffee cup, kept his eyes on Vern.

“The guy I want,” Vern said. “Where is he?”

Carelli tapped the cup again. “I’ll give you his name but you got to leave. You can’t stay at my table.”

Vern looked in Carelli’s eyes. Cold, same as always. “I can’t stay anywhere,” Vern said. “Who is he? Where?”

“His name’s Chen. He likes to work alone. When he’s not working, he shoots pool at Possum’s.”

Vern stared at Carelli.

“That all?” Carelli said.

Vern walked away fast.