Internecine by David J. Schow Read Free Book Online Page A

really work is by getting impatient once people have fulfilled the uses I require of them. A shrink would call it cold, emotionally isolationist.
    But I couldn’t picture Dandine having Friday night two-for-one drinks with a gang of
his
“co-workers,” either. Maybe if I saw a gang of the type of pull sheets Dandine had referenced, I might know who to trust.
    He returned and dumped a plastic bag in the seat. “Come on.” He lifted the Halliburton out of the rear.
    “Where?”
    He pointed next door, across a parking lot. “Bus station.”
    “Why?”
    He looked me up and down and cracked another of his almost-grins. “Because they have a men’s room there, Conrad.”
    Checkmate,
I thought, feeling idiotic.
    “You’re asking yourself,
why is this guy letting me roll with him,
am I right?” said Dandine. “I need to talk to you. About politics. I don’t keep up with elections and candidates; it means almost nothing to me. Here.”
    He pressed some cash into my hand. “What’s this for?”
    “Go buy a one-way bus ticket to Denver.”
    “Am I riding the bus?”
    “No.”
    “Can I hit the restroom first?”
    “Make it fast.” He was already scoping out the losers hanging around the vending machines, and the transients and bummers-of-change in the parking lot. He obviously knew what he was looking for.
    “Go ahead,” he told me. “Meet me back here in five.”
    I’d never spent time in jail, but the bathroom I located stank the way I always imagined a cell would. Urine, diseased shit, Lysol, ammonia, mildew, and more candidates for Dandine’s review, though these were drugged out or unconscious. The sink mirrors were those metallicplates that are supposedly unbreakable. I saw sprawled feet in a locked coin stall, and heard snoring. There was water—well, moisture—all over the black-and-white tiled floor. Dried blood, or barbecue sauce, on one of the sinks.
    God, I just said
I’ve never spent time in jail.
Just wait—that part gets better in a bit.
    When I emerged, I queued up and bought a ticket. By then, Dandine had found what he was looking for—a man with that “help a homeless veteran” look. He was about fifty, sandy gray hair, with an occluded eye. Threadbare jeans, fatigue jacket, sneakers bound up with packing tape. He was holding the Halliburton.
    Dandine was loitering near the storage lockers, leafing through a copy of
USA Today.
“Now,” he said, “Go give that man your ticket and we’re outta here.”
    The man sized me up as I approached, maybe wondering if he should ask for a few loose bucks. But he took the ticket as though expecting it and muttered, “Semper Fi.”
    Dandine had already walked out of the terminal. I had to hustle to catch up to him. “What the hell?” I said. “That guy won’t even get on the bus—he’ll try to trade the ticket back for cash.”
    “Doesn’t matter,” said Dandine. “He gets on or he doesn’t—doesn’t matter. He rides to Denver or finds a hidey-hole and tries to jimmy the case—doesn’t matter. I basted the locks so he’ll find it a mite difficult without tools.”
    “ ‘Basted?’ ”
    “Yeah, you know.” He showed me one of those blister-cards that pack four tiny tubes of Super Glue. One was missing. “These are great. Pop the cap, one shot, throw away.”
    “Why?”
    “He’s a random factor. Control freaks hate random factors. If anyone is following the case, he’ll toss ’em a few curves. Can you imagine how comic it would be if a black SUV pulled up and a bunch of secret agents jumped out, yelling
drop that case
?”
    It was no longer our problem, but I did not feel
done
here, and Dandine smelled it.
    “If you’re waiting for a shoot-out or an elaborate strategy to outfoxthe people after the briefcase, forget it,” he said. “It rarely works that way in the real world.”
    The man probably wasn’t even a bona fide soldier, ex-or not. Nobody was who they appeared to be. He’d stand up to the best interrogation