“Well, this isn’t too bad,” Naomi says upon entering their hotel room.
She lowers her in-laws’ hastily packed overnight bags to the carpeted floor.
“It’s the ugliest hotel room I’ve ever seen,” says Rosie Quinn.
Naomi nods in agreement, yet smiles anyway. “Beggars can’t be choosers, unfortunately.”
“So I’m a beggar now as well as a coward, is that it?” Craig Quinn asks.
“Who comes to a hotel like this?” says Rosie, her eyes glued to the maroon drapes dotted with white roses, blackened with smoke stains — the smell of cigarettes in the room is inescapable.
“Gambling addicts and adulterers, I imagine,” Naomi says as she unslings her own overnight bag. She checks inside the small chest of drawers beside the first of two double beds. The bed closer to the door is better, she thinks, so that Craig will have to cross in front of her if he tries to leave in the night.
“And pussies afraid of their own shadow,” Craig adds.
“Craig!”
“What? She can handle it. She’s a basketball player. What do you think they talk about in the WNBA?” He gives a lecherous wink to Naomi, which she ignores.
No matter the conditions, Naomi is simply relieved that they have a room; it seemed every hotel in the city was booked solid this past Saturday night. They were far too early for Sunday check-in, so against Craig’s wishes they paid for two nights in order to hide away sooner.
Rosie gasps from the bathroom door. “The bathroom is abysmal.”
“Look at my socks,” Craig says. He sits on the bed and shows Naomi his blackened white soles. “I’ve only walked across the room twice. This place is disgusting.”
“We might as well keep our shoes on, then,” Naomi says.
“I don’t know if I can stay here.” Rosie turns back into the bedroom. “Craig, take that cover off the bed. People have sex on those things and I heard these hotels only wash the sheets.”
Craig recoils, face twisting in revulsion, then he notices Naomi looking at him and pretends nonchalance, rolling his eyes at his wife’s anxieties. Naomi frowns.
“Really, Naomi, I can’t stay here,” Rosie says. “Can’t we find another hotel?”
“Yes you can. And no we can’t. You can stay here, Rosie. We all can. It’s going to be all right.” Naomi runs her hands through her hair, trying to remain composed. “Why don’t we eat something? I’ve brought lots of food. We can eat a little, watch some TV. Then when we’re a bit more relaxed, we can have a nap and catch up on some of the sleep we’ve lost.”
“I can’t sleep in the morning,” Craig grumbles.
Rosie’s eyes continue to inspect every inch of the room with dismay. “I don’t have much of an appetite.”
“I might be retired but I’m no slob.”
“I get it, Craig, you don’t want a nap,” Naomi says. “Why don’t we talk, then? Tell me some of your stories when you were on the job.”
“Keenan wants me to blab to you, huh? Subtle. I don’t know how anyone so obvious could’ve fooled you into marrying him. Or how he thought he could be a cop either.”
Staring at this grizzled, bitter, insecure man, Naomi experiences a deep sympathy for her husband, something she has not felt in a long time. “Why not just tell us what happened?” she asks, plainly.
“’Cause it’s none of your damn business, that’s why.”
“It is my business, Craig. It’s Keenan’s business too. And Tyron’s. We’re all affected by what happened to the Shaws. And quite clearly, it’s Antoine’s business as well. He was most definitely affected. He was my friend. Maybe if someone had shared the truth with us when we were kids, we could’ve helped him. We could’ve stopped him from becoming a —”
“Murderer,” Rosie says, still hovering near the bathroom door.
Naomi glumly looks from Rosie back to Craig. “It’s a day for the truth to come out. We all have to face it.”
Craig holds Naomi’s gaze and doesn’t flinch. “It’s none of your business.”
“Please, Craig,” Naomi says. “For me.”
A muscle twitches in his cheek, above the line of grey stubble. His Adam’s apple dips with a loud swallow and his eyes flick away indecisively. He opens his mouth to speak, and Naomi unconsciously leans forward in anticipation.
“What’s on TV?” he asks. He breaks eye contact, walks to the television, and picks up the remote. But as he flips channels there is a touch of redness to his cheeks, shame spreading beneath Naomi’s scrutiny.
Naomi leaves her parents-in-law to use her phone, but goes only so far as the balcony outside their room over the parking lot. She calls Keenan first and updates him on their whereabouts. He is following Fitz to the police station.
“He’s taking it seriously?” she asks.
“Very,” Keenan says. “He was the right person to ask for help.”
“Good. Keep me posted.”
A pause. “Whatever you want.”
“You get in touch with Tyron yet?”
“No. I can’t get a hold of him.”
“Maybe I’ll give him a try.”
“Sure. How are my folks handling it?”
“I have a whole new appreciation for you, let’s put it that way. They’re doing fine. I haven’t been able to get your dad to open up yet, but I think I’m getting to him.”
“You should’ve been the cop.”
“Keenan.”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
“I better go.”
“Okay. Talk soon.”
“Talk soon.”
She blurts out a sharp, urgent, “I love you,” but midway through it their connection ends.
Lowering her phone, she does not know why she did that. She hadn’t planned to. It saddens her that he didn’t hear her say it.
It’s a crazy day, she tells herself. Just get through it.
Next up: Tyron.
He is breathing heavily when he answers her call. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey. You okay?”
“No. What’s up?” There are plenty of voices in the background on his end.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t get into it now. What’s going on?”
“Keenan’s been trying to get a hold of you.”
“I know. You told him we kissed?”
“No.” Her brow furrows, realizing what Tyron must have thought. “No, of course not. Did you hear about Antoine?”
“The murders? Yeah. Insane.”
“Keenan was there. He worked security. He saw Antoine after he did it.”
A loud, muffled voice erupts in the background, followed by cheers. “Crazy,” Tyron says, speaking over the background noise. “I want to hear about it, but I got to go, Naomi.”
“Ty, hold on, this has something to do with you. Antoine said that your parents were assassinated by the guys he killed. He said that the same corrupt cops who killed his father killed your parents.”
“He said what?”
“That’s why Keenan’s been calling. He’s trying to find out the truth —”
“Naomi, I can’t deal with this right now. We’ll speak later.”
The line beeps off, and Naomi wonders what else has gone wrong.
There are gangs of gunmen everywhere. Firefights in the streets. They drop several of the enemy before the rest flee to entrenched positions. Miraculously, none of Tyron’s men are wounded. Instead they look stronger than ever, immersed in the fight now, coated in dust, dirt, and blood.
When they concentrate their fire on the first of the buildings, squad leaders are volunteering to go in and clear it out. This time Lieutenant Lake is the one to say he’ll lead them.
Tyron gives him a smile. “Aye aye, Lieutenant.”
One by one they clear the buildings. He orders 2nd Platoon outside the wire too. The night wears away. Three of his men are hit by bullets: non-lethal flesh wounds. Four are hit by roadside bombs: two dead and two critical. A blood orange ribbon appears on the horizon to the east. Tyron can’t even remember how the night started.
They curve around the combat outpost, to the buildings on its western flank, where fires have broken out everywhere and the remaining insurgents have dug in. On the rooftop of an abandoned low-rise, Tyron looks out at the colours of dawn. His night-vision goggles have been stowed, replaced by bullet-resistant glasses: he sees as clearly as you can in all this smoke and dust. And what he sees are the shades of damnation. If hell is real, he thinks, it must look like this. Sky and earth: red, yellow, black. A sliver of sun has risen over one horizon, while on the other the night isn’t giving up without a fight. Neither are the insurgents. Bombarded from two directions, they continue to fire back from windows and rooftops.
Tyron slaps at his face. Hard. To keep fatigue from setting in.
He is not the only one battling exhaustion. All his men, who have performed so admirably, so bravely, and with such poise, look at least as tired as he feels. One more breakthrough, he thinks. One more advance and we’ll bust this thing open.
He rises just above the low wall that encloses the roof, and quickly studies the lay of the battlefield. Crouches back down before a sniper can pick him off. Between his position and a darkened apartment tower, from which most of the enemy fire originates, is a market square strewn with garbage, shrapnel, bodies, and several burned-out vehicles. His men have blown open the entrance to the apartment building; they need only to cross the no man’s land to get inside the stronghold and take these fuckers out at close range.
But it would take an Olympian to make it across the square unscathed. Or maybe an almost Olympian. He smiles to himself. I thought my track days were over.
Lieutenant Lake, still by his side, tries to talk him out of it. “I got the best chance,” Tyron says, as cement chips rain down on them from errant enemy rounds. “And anyway, better me than one of my men.”
“No sir. Not better. We need you.”
“You got this, Lake. Just make sure I’m covered. And lay as much smoke as you can between me and them. If I make it, and start wreaking havoc, you send the boys in after me.”
Then he is on ground level, jettisoning anything he won’t need in the next ten minutes. His ruck. His food and water. Even a ceramic plate in the back of his body armour. Fortune favours the brave, motherfucker. His heart thumps in his chest.
His men fire smoke canisters across the square, adding to the obscurity of the battlefield, littered with flaming husks of metal that were once vehicles. There is a particular vehicle, a Humvee turned inferno, that lies roughly at the halfway point between his position and the enemy’s. That is where he will go: use the blaze for cover, then sprint the second leg. Already the twisted Humvee is lost from view with all the smoke, but the wind is not idle, and the cover won’t last long.
Poised beside the open doorway, he thinks it is good to feel fear again. Fear like this. He could run a world record jacked up like this.
You better, a voice inside him says.
His men unleash a wave of covering fire, the starter’s pistol for him. He bolts, sprinting as low and as fast as he can. He can hardly see anything through the smoke, and his eyes are down to make sure he doesn’t trip on the uneven ground.
The gunshots are relentless, filling his ears from every direction like he has plunged into a barrel of exploding firecrackers. The bullets whizz by his face, blow a kiss as they hurtle by. He pumps with the M4 assault rifle in one hand like an oversized baton. His throat and lungs burn from smog and exertion. The scorched carcass of a van suddenly looms out of the coils of smoke, and he almost crashes into it.
Where is he? Where is the burning Humvee he had been aiming for?
There is such a cacophony, outside him, inside him, such burning stinking fumes in his nostrils and in his mouth, he cannot think. He sprints harder.
The smoke starts to clear. He is in an open stretch now.
The roasting Humvee is way out to his right and already behind him. He glances at it over his shoulder as he keeps on sprinting, while the apartment tower rises before him, AK-47 barrels poking out its windows like bristling thorns. Among all the windows, and the holes blasted through the walls, Tyron somehow spots one gunman, lining him up perfectly. He won’t miss. Tyron knows it as much as he has ever known anything. Time, already slowed to a fraction of its speed, seems to stop altogether, and all he can think in this frozen moment, his final moment, is simply, This was a stupid idea.
The gunman’s head jerks. He tilts forward, over the sill. The AK-47 falls from his grasp and drops slowly through the air. Every Marine is a rifleman, Tyron thinks, thanking God for his men’s accuracy.
Dirt sprays up around him with wayward bullets. He leaps into new plumes of smoke. Coughs violently but doesn’t break stride. Almost there, you fuck, let’s go. He bursts out of the smoke right at the smashed opening of the building. Crosses the threshold into a stairwell, and no finish line has ever given him such a sense of triumph.
Springing over the bottom broken steps, he charges up, thunking grenades with his M203 launcher attached to the underside of his M4. As explosions rock the inside of the building and his enemies scatter, he notices that he is bleeding in three places: the outside of his lower leg, just above his boot; his left shoulder, which he now realizes aches like a knife is stuck in it; and his right side, below his ribs, where the blood is slickest. Sweat streaks onto his lips and it tastes thick and coppery: he is bleeding from his face too. The wounds occupy his thoughts for half a second at most.
He advances down the hall, launching grenades and firing bullets, a wolf loose in the sheep yard.
“Ty! Ty! Wake up, you’re going to make us crash! Stop punching. What’s wrong with you?”
He is inside a vehicle. Not a Humvee, just some regular compact car. His arms are moving of their own accord; he pulls them into his body. Looks around. He is in the front passenger seat. Tara is driving. She keeps looking over at him like he’s a rabid dog.
“I dozed off,” he says.
“Dozed off? You call that a doze? You’re lucky we didn’t crash.”
“What happened?”
“You were rocking and swinging and shaking the whole damn car.”
“I’m sorry.”
She takes a deep breath. “It’s all right. You just scared me is all. No more naps in the car, okay?”
She winks and he feigns a smile, though inside he is thinking, What the fuck is wrong with me?
A few minutes later they arrive at the Las Vegas Convention Center Bronze parking lot, the meeting site for the rally. Tyron is surprised by the number of people already gathered, with more arriving every minute.
They find Auntie Trudy near the centre of activity, where the organizers are at work welcoming protesters, handing out signs, and giving instructions. Tyron notices that most of the people running the show are women. He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t expected white people to be there in solidarity either. When he hugs Auntie Trudy, the first thing she says to him is, “Have you seen Marlon?”
He is unsure how she means the question. Has he seen him today? Has he seen him here, right now? Is she worried that Tyron hasn’t spoken to Marlon yet or is she worried that Marlon isn’t here yet? But what is apparent is that she is definitely worried.
“I was at his house a couple hours ago,” Tyron says.
“When did you leave him?”
“You haven’t seen him since then?”
“No. Why?”
“He hasn’t shown up. And no one can get a hold of him.”
A chill seizes Tyron.
Tara runs through the usual questions: When was he supposed to be here? Have you tried his cell? Has anyone else heard from him? Did someone go by his house? Who was the last person to speak to him? The answer to Tara’s final question is Tyron. He was the last person to see or speak to Marlon.
Even hung over, the instincts Tyron developed overseas uncoil and worm through his body. It was gatherings like these — a large mass in an outdoor space — that always scared him over there. An obvious target, easily infiltrated. Looking out at so many people in one place he cannot help but feel that he is in another target primed to be hit.
And Marlon. He wouldn’t miss this. Tyron is certain of that. What if the man wasn’t being paranoid? What if people actually were following him? What if his absence now isn’t a coincidence?
“I’m going to look around for him,” Tyron says in a plain voice, masking his concern.
“Let us know if you find him,” says Tara, who doesn’t seem too worried.
Tyron weaves through the crowd, scanning faces. So many. Such a target and Marlon absent: Tyron can’t quiet his racing mind. He moves faster through the crowd. The faces are unknown to him, a stranger in his hometown. And then he sees a familiar face, and is comforted a little.
“My man!” Ricky says, slapping his hand and embracing him. “What a night. What a night.”
“Rick, Marlon’s missing. No one can reach him.”
Tyron tells Ricky the full story. Ricky’s expression empathizes but doesn’t agree. “Ty, there could be a million reasons why Marlon isn’t here and isn’t answering his phone.”
“Or answering the door at his house.”
“Or answering the door at his house,” Ricky says. “He’s out, he’s not answering his phone, he’s not here yet. It’s too soon to panic.”
“I got a bad feeling, Rick. It’s been building since yesterday, and I can’t shake it now. By my last tour, if I got this feeling, I was always right. I knew. And the stronger the feeling, the closer it was to something going down. To people getting killed.”
Ricky puts his hand on Tyron’s shoulder and shakes him lightly. “You’re home, Ty. You’re not over there anymore.”
Tyron shakes his head, frustrated. “This isn’t PTSD or some shit you’ve seen on the news. I know something’s wrong. And I’m powerless. I’m powerless to stop it. I’ve got no men. No guns. No intel, no rank, no contacts. No understanding of anything. No fucking nothing, man. I’m no one back here. I know something is wrong and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.”
“Hey hey,” Ricky says. “You’re cool, dude. You’re cool. We’ll find Marlon. And you ain’t no one out here. You the last thing from that. I never met anyone as loved as you. I’d hate you with jealousy if I didn’t love you so damn much myself.”
Tyron laughs, just once, in spite of himself.
“And I know it’s not a company of Marines, but you got me, brother,” Ricky says.
“Yeah, I got you, Rick. God’s looking out for me.”
“Well, you don’t got to be sarcastic about it.”
“I wasn’t.”
Tyron embraces the smaller man, and the anxiety that was cresting inside him recedes. “I’m still right about Marlon, though. He’s in trouble.”
“Okay, so what do you want to do? I’ll leave with you if you want to go look for him. But I don’t know where to begin. And he might show up here anyway.”
Tyron thinks it over. “Let’s keep looking here for now. You’re right, he might show up.”
Together they scour the vast parking lot and the many people in it, while continuing to call and text Marlon’s cell phone. When they come across someone they know, they ask if the person has seen or spoken to Marlon. No one has. At the edge of the parking lot, Tyron looks across a narrow road at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department station. It was there that Antoine was caught breaking in all those years ago, when he was still new to the Shaws.
On Tyron and Ricky’s return to Tara and Auntie Trudy, Tyron’s phone rings and his heart skips a few beats. But his hope is for naught. Had Naomi called an hour earlier he would’ve been thrilled to hear from her; now he is disappointed and frustrated that she is not Marlon.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey. You okay?” she asks.
“No. What’s up?”
While Naomi starts talking about Keenan and Antoine and the murders last night, he and Ricky move through the crowd to the front. A few women in their twenties and thirties with loudspeakers are indicating to those around them that they’re about to get things under way. Naomi is still talking.
One of the women welcomes everyone, thanks them for coming, then asks if they’re ready to fight injustice. The answer is unanimous.
Tyron is not sure he heard Naomi right in all the cheering, but he thinks . . . he thinks she just said his parents were assassinated. By the same guys that Antoine killed last night.
The woman on the loudspeaker shouts chants and questions and the crowd repeats the chants and answers the questions, all in one booming voice. He presses his ear harder against the phone but cannot hear what Naomi is saying, except that it has something to do with Keenan.
“Naomi, I can’t deal with this now. We’ll speak later.”
He ends the call and shoves the phone in his pocket. His parents were assassinated by the guys Antoine killed, what the fuck? Who knows what is truth, what is disinformation, and what is misinterpretation. I got to get out of the desert, he thinks. I’ll go north. Far north, where it’s wet and cold and green, and where there’s only one person I have to worry about.
He looks over at Ricky and Tara and Auntie Trudy, pumping their fists and shouting their support. Tara catches his glance and smiles at him.
I’m here, he thinks. For today at least, I’m here.
He listens to the leaders of the protest and tries to forget everything else. Everything other than that Black lives matter.