The message ended, leaving me with the continuous rumble of the freeway. I looked at the bundle of fifties in my hand and the audio file on my phone, and wondered what was happening.
Was this for real?
Was it a joke?
Or worse, entrapment?
Someone had fronted ten grand for my bail and another grand in cash and offered me another hundred to kill a stranger. A drug dealer. Maybe a murderer. You ever have one of those fork-in-the-road days? A moment you replay when you wish you could go back and pick a different path? There, right there in that dirty, messy living room, in that raggedy house in the shadow of the freeway, seriously considering an invitation to murder, that was one of those moments for me. I should have deleted my search history, pocketed the cash, and waited to see how the mechanical voice came to extract my supposed debt.
Instead, I found myself seriously considering the offer.
I was desperate. A shadow of the man I’d once been. Old me would have refused the offer.
I couldn’t.
Had I been roped in to settle an organized crime beef? Had this guy, Walter Glaze, rankled the wrong person? But why hire me? Gangsters would have their own people. Sure, I had military experience, but I’d been an army engineer, not some James Reece, Jack Reacher medaled super soldier. I couldn’t believe any villain would have singled me out because of my service record. I was solid. Above-average shooter, decent engineer, careful, methodical, but never going to win any combat medals.
Whoever my wannabe patron was, they were smart. I’d read stories of people hiring assassins through Facebook or supposedly super-secure message boards only to get busted by the FBI or ratted out by would-be killers who choked at the last minute. Maybe it was just random chance that had brought us together? A connection that couldn’t be traced by any conventional detective. That would be very clever.
And keeping me in the dark meant if I didn’t do it, the client could move on to another candidate without fear of exposure.
Listen to me talking about clients and killers like some body-bag-filling assassin. At that point I was green and bewildered. It might have been a prank, and there I was taking it seriously. I mean, a total stranger offering me a hundred grand to kill a man. Me? A deadbeat?
What would you have done?
Would you do it?
Would you kill someone who deserved to die?
That’s what kept running through my mind. If the offer was genuine, and this Walter Glaze guy was a villain, could I do it? Did he deserve to die? And if he did, why shouldn’t something good come of his death?
The bounty on his head was a future for me and my kid.
That’s what desperation does to a person. It gets you testing the limits of what you’re prepared to do, because life isn’t about living anymore. It’s about survival.
I was startled by a knock at the door.
“Peyton?”
It was Toni, my ex-wife.
“Peyton, are you in there?”
“Yeah. Just a minute.” I shoved the bundle of fifties behind a couch cushion and went to the door.
“Where were you?” Toni asked before I’d had a chance to take in her sour expression.
I’d let Toni down. Like boiled candy with a sour center, all the sweetness of our life together had been sucked away to leave only the mouth-puckering kernel. I remembered how happy and carefree she’d been as a teen, her hair so long it used to blow around her face in the Chicago winds. Now it was cropped short, giving her a severe appearance that was at odds with the carefree girl I’d known. Resentment shone from her eyes and worry lines marked her face. She’d never lost the figure that had initially attracted me to her and wore tiny shorts that looked as though they’d been sprayed on and a T-shirt that was tied above her belly.
“You were supposed to see Skye this afternoon,” she went on.
Skye was right there beside her mother, watching me with the pitying look a farmer might give a least-prized hog about to be taken for slaughter. She had her mother’s eyes, hair, mouth, and physique. Heck, she was Toni’s mini-me twin, and looking at her always made me remember the lost days of youth when the future had been unwritten and the blank pages full of nothing but promise. Before she’d lost me to prison, she used to be so alive she sparkled with the excitement of each new day. When I was sentenced, part of my little girl died.
I didn’t resent their combined judgment. With the repossession and the arrest, I’d forgotten this afternoon was one of my allotted times with Skye.
“I’m sorry—” I tried, but Toni cut me off.
“Skye, honey, can you wait in the car?”
Our daughter glanced at me, and I nodded. “Your mother and I need to talk. I’ll see you in a couple of days, kiddo.”
“Tomorrow, Dad,” Skye corrected with a sense of weary sadness that almost crushed me.
Toni gave an emphatic eye roll and slow shake of her head.
I sighed. I couldn’t do anything right.
“Tomorrow. That’s right. Sorry, kiddo.”
Skye withdrew to Toni’s ancient, rusty gray Honda Civic, which was parked in front of my house.
“What happened? Where the fuck is your car?” Toni asked, her anger bubbling over now that our daughter was out of earshot.
“It’s a long story,” I replied. “Something came up.”
“Something booze? Or something lazy?” Toni asked.
Her questions stung just enough to remind me of the man I used to be.
“Something work,” I said, and I moved away from the door to the couch, where I peeled four notes off the deck of fifties.
I sensed Toni craning round the doorway to see what I was doing, but I was shielding my stash with my back. I replaced the rest of the money behind the cushion and turned to see her face puckering further as she surveyed the disgusting condition of my home.
“Clean this place, Peyton. Skye isn’t coming here until you pick up. You probably got rats and racoons living in this dump.”
“I will,” I assured her. “Meantime, here’s a couple of hundred.”
I handed her the cash, and she frowned. I think she’d given up hope.
“You still owe me thirteen grand alimony,” she said sharply.
“I know. I’ll get it to you. I promise.”
I’d spoken empty words before, but this time I might have a way to fulfill them if I was prepared to end a life. It was a slim hope, but it was better than none.
She eyed me suspiciously. “What kind of work you doing?”
“Just helping a guy out with a problem.”
“Criminal problem?” Toni’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s good, paying work,” I said.
We eyed each other for a moment.
“Is it dirty?” Toni asked, brandishing the money I’d given her. “Because I need to know if you’re giving me dirty money.”
“No,” I replied truthfully. I hadn’t done anything yet. “But let’s say it was. Hypothetically. Let’s say there was a way to make a lot of money that strayed across the line.”
“What line? Sex? Violence? Drugs?”
I didn’t answer.
“Are you fucking kidding me? After what you’ve put us through? What you do is your business, but don’t you be giving me any money that comes from across any lines.” She gave me a fierce look. “Your kid needs better than she’s got, and I’m working every hour I can just to stay above water.”
She hesitated.
“And the pool might be about to get deeper.”
I knew her well enough to sense the bad news just over the horizon.
“Skye’s been losing weight. Fatigued. Funny moods. Irritable. Not sleeping right.” Tears came to her eyes but didn’t fall. “Always thirsty. The doc is testing for diabetes.”
“Oh shit,” I said, shaking my head, my heart sinking down low, lower than it had ever been. My kid. You can take pain for yourself, but the suffering of a child hurts in a whole different place. I knew Skye had lost weight, that was kind of hard to miss, and she’d been kind of lackluster, but I thought that was teen growing. I didn’t know about the other stuff. I was familiar with only type one because I was at college with a guy who’d been diagnosed as a teen, but what I knew wasn’t good.
“Don’t go doing anything stupid. And don’t say nothing neither. It might be an infection or something, and I don’t want you scaring her. But you need to know, because if it is, we’re gonna need money, Peyton. We’re gonna need a lot of money. Insulin is free, but if she develops complications, it’s going to cost a lot of money to keep her safe. We need to come through. For her. For our daughter.”
I nodded gravely. This was as real as life gets. My baby. My poor baby girl.
“So, I’m going to ask you again, and I want to know the truth; is this dirty money?”
“No,” I replied. “It’s clean.”
She gave me a skeptical look.
“It’s clean,” I assured her.
“Then if there’s more of this to be had, don’t you go crossing any lines. Get earning honest dollars and provide for your daughter, Peyton. Make sure she’s okay, whatever happens. It’s Saturday tomorrow and you’ve got Skye until after lunch, so don’t be late.”
She turned and marched to her car. Skye looked at me sadly from the passenger seat. There are few things less satisfying in life than getting a full-blown blast of pity from a kid, particularly your own, but that’s where I was in life. If not at rock bottom, then clinging onto the step just above it.
I’m not going to be a stereotypical ex-husband and portray my ex-wife as a bitter serpent who made every living moment hell. She is a wonderful woman—that’s right, Toni, if you’re reading this, I still think you’re the best. When we were together, she was sweet and kind, beautiful and sexy, smart and tenacious, everything I could ever have hoped for. We’d been sweethearts at Mather High School in Skokie, Illinois, where we spent scorching summers on the beaches of Lake Michigan and frozen winters tracing patterns in the condensation on the windows of Cindy’s café as we sat drinking our hot chocolates, watching the world go by.
We’d married shortly after graduation, and she’d come with me to LA when I studied mechanical engineering at Cal State. After growing up with the full force of four seasons, we both fell in love with the predictable sunshine of Los Angeles, and agreed that wherever my deployments took me, we’d always aim to end up back in the City of Angels. I had no idea we’d succeed, but as individuals living separate lives.
Toni had reserves of strength I could only dream of. But this wasn’t about me. It was about Skye, and I couldn’t bring myself to picture her coping with the diagnosis if things fell that way. I couldn’t imagine how any of us would cope. We weren’t coping as it was. Toni didn’t even look back as she walked away. She got into the car, fired up the rattling engine, and drove west.