in kind of a hurry.’
He reached under the chair and brought up a large metal cashbox. He placed it on the table and opened it, revealing bundles of dirty notes. All of the money in New Richmond is dirty, figuratively at least. There can't be a dollar bill which hasn't been involved in something illegal somewhere down the line, hasn't been handed over in a suitcase at some stage in its life. Howie counted off eight hundred dollars in fifties and held it out to me between two fingers of one hand. ‘You want a loan on top?’
I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but no. Don't know when I'll be this way again. Maybe never.’
‘So pretend I'm your friend and call it a gift.’
I smiled and stood up, slipping the notes into my inside pocket. ‘You are and I'll be okay.’
Howie pursed his lips and looked up at me. ‘You know there's a whack out on you?’
I stared at him. ‘Already? What, an old one?’
Howie shook his head. ‘Don't know, but I think it's new. Heard twenty minutes ago.’
‘How much is it for?’
‘Five thou.’
‘That's insulting. Let me know if it goes above ten,’ I said. ‘Then I'll start seriously watching my back.’
At the door, Dath stepped to one side to let me out. I paused, and looked up at his face. Dath looks like your basic worst nightmare, except he wears expensive clothes and gets a nice close shave. There'd always been a rumour that before working for Howie he'd been a made guy in Miami: starting at the bottom, in the mail room, before deciding to specialize as a hitman. The word was he'd worked his way up the ladder in the old-fashioned way, beginning by being cutting to people: for a hundred dollars he'd march into someone's place, look them up and down and go ‘Yeah, great suit,’ in a really ironic way, and then leave. His speciality was the ‘overheard conversation’ hit. Wherever the target went – in a restaurant, in a bar, in the john – Dath would be somewhere just out of sight, talking loudly about postmodernism. It eventually drove them crazy.
He always denied it. I was never sure.
‘You heard about the contract on me?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘You a player?’
‘Nah,’ he said slowly. ‘Think I'll wait till it goes up to ten.’
Then he winked, and I smiled as I walked past him back out into the streets.
Goodbye to all that, I thought.
The guy behind the counter was looking at me strangely, but I went quickly about my business, walking the mart's dusty aisles and picking out what we needed. I got a couple packs of soya bars, powdered milk, cheap food in heataTins – and the biggest jar of Frapan pickles I could see. Every couple of minutes I glanced down the end and saw the guy was still looking at me. Not all the time, but enough. It was beginning to piss me off.
At the exit of the service shaft, I'd given the guys the 170 dollars I owed them. They were pleasantly surprised, said it had been a pleasure doing business with me, and gave me their card for future reference. The main man also said that Mr Amos had sent a message saying that I had a free pass in future. I told them I wouldn't be coming back.
‘Yeah, he said you'd say that,’ the man said.
Which left me with a little under 700 dollars, just about enough for a beaten-up truck and the gas to get us out of the state. After that, who knows what was going to happen? Certainly not me. I was in kind of a bad mood by then; wishing I'd had another drink with Howie, wishing I'd had several more, in fact, and just forgotten about the spares. I've never been good with responsibility. That much at least seemed not to have changed.
All I could sense for the future was the sound of road beneath tyres and the chill of winter evenings in places I didn't know. After so long away from New Richmond I could hardly believe this was it: a quick score, and then scurrying away back into the wilderness. The feeling got so strong that I actually stopped walking, turned and looked back up at the city. Other pedestrians had to pass either side of me, muttering and glaring, and what they saw was a man just standing, staring up at a building, probably with an expression somewhere between love and hate in his eyes.
Halfway back to Mal's I'd stopped at the Minimart, knowing there were things we needed. I expected a fast and joyless shopping experience. I didn't expect to be stared at. I knew my clothes looked ragged, and I've got a couple of scars on my face – but who hasn't, these days? This is a time for scars. It's a feature. The counter man didn't look especially charming himself. He had the slab knuckles of someone who'd grown up fighting, and the flat eyes of a man who could watch bad things and not feel too much about them. He was big in the shoulders but going to seed out front, and his face looked like someone had spent a happy afternoon flattening it out with a spade. The few other customers I'd seen were fumbling for the cheapest brands of alcohol and shambling up to the counter to pay with heaps of small change. Derelicts, in other words, in a store run by an ex-hood where the lino on the floor was yellowed and worn with age and curled up at every join to show the stained concrete underneath.
Maybe I looked too refined.
There was a convex plastic mirror hanging at the end of the aisle, bent in the middle from some past impact and so dirty as to be nearly opaque. It was there to stop people lifting stuff from the dead zone, but I doubt the proprietor could see much more in it than ghosts. As I walked slowly towards the cold goods I caught sight of my battered reflection. I guess I might have looked a little wired, and in certain lights my eyes can look a little weird. I have the Bright Eyes, for a start, though it generally requires a certain kind of slanting light to show, rather than the sickly haze which oozed out the Mart's tired strip lighting.
I knew he could still see me, even though he was wrapping up a bottle for some huge black guy down the end, so I got out my wallet and made a big thing about counting through my cash. ‘I've got money,’ was what I was saying. ‘Don't worry. You'll get paid.’ His big, impassive face showed no sign of having got my message. There was insufficient depth in his eyes to show if he was even looking, or just had his head pointed my way.
Maybe I was just being paranoid. I turned my attention to the stuff in the chest fridge instead.
‘I wouldn't if I were you,’ said a low voice. I didn't straighten, but just swivelled my eyes from side to side. I couldn't see anyone, and it didn't feel as if anyone was behind me. ‘Seriously, I can't advise it,’ the voice added, and I had my hand halfway in my jacket before I realized it was the fridge talking.
‘What?’ I said quietly.
‘Don't buy the cold goods.’
‘Why?’
‘They aren't cold. I've been broken for six months, and he won't get me fixed. Says it's cold enough outside.’
‘You don't agree.’
‘See that cream cheese? Been there a month. Another couple of days and it's going to explode. And he won't clear it up. That stain on the side there is from a yoghurt that went critical a month ago.’
I glanced round to see if the guy was looking, and saw that I was pretty well masked from him by the racks. I leaned on the front of the cooling unit and spoke quietly.
‘What can you tell me about him?’
‘He's a slob,’ the fridge said. ‘That's all she wrote.’
‘Anything else? Like what his problem is?’
‘Look, I'm just a fucking fridge. Don't buy the cold goods is all I'm saying.’
I reached in and grabbed a pot of soft cheese, and then turned away.
‘You'll regret it.’
‘Probably,’