LUST & MONEY

Chapter 6: Dirty Work

Steve Baker was at home when the call came through. It buzzed against his leg, but he looked out the window to check on Sharon before taking his phone from his pocket. She was still in the back yard hanging out laundry. He had maybe thirty seconds.

"Yes?"

The crackle of a line connecting via satellite delayed the answer and Steve looked out the window again before moving towards the stairs at the other end of the house.

"The marina. Fifteen minutes," said a Latino who didn't wait before ending the call from the other side.

Shit!

That phone call meant something serious just happened. He was going to have to get creative with Sharon. She already had suspicions, he knew that. He could see it in her eyes and read it from her silences. They knew how to read each other like a book. Only Steve was a mystery book with a twist that kept Sharon turning the pages in hope, and more than a little faith.

"I gotta go, hun," he called through the screen door. He kept himself indoors, a psychological barrier to keep distance between them. He in one world, her in one where he didn't belong.

"It's work."

Sharon paused, a bed sheet draped across the line held in one hand, a peg in the other. Her shoulders were stooped and her mouth set. She looked at Steve, and nodded wordlessly. Steve couldn't see clearly from where he stood, but he was sure she was crying. He hesitated for just the briefest of moments then turned away to leave.

The drive to the marina was short, yet tense. Time stretched out around him in that way it always did when he tried to figure out a way to make Sharon a part of his life, yet shield her from its ugliness and brutality.

Only two cars stood outside the motel. One of those would belong to the man he had come to meet. He adjusted his sunglasses and stood slowly from his own car, taking in as many details of the scene as he could. There was danger in carelessness.

The Latino man inside the building, dressed in dirty jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, was pacing up and down the foyer, clearly troubled. Steve would have recognized the man and his clothing style even from a distance.

"Hey, Mateo. How bad?" said Steve.

"They got you up here now?" asked Mateo, squinting into Steve's face before he remembered the sunglasses on his head and slid them back into place. "This is some fucked up shit, my man. This is 'Hiroshima' bad. The goods are gone. Someone's gonna be ordering Cristal tonight, and we'll be paying for it. You know what I mean?"

Steve always knew what Mateo meant. He never was one for subtlety.

"So was this random?" said Steve.

"Hard to tell, but we got eyes on someone making moves with our stuff. We may need to break out the big guns. The higher ups aren't happy, you know? They don't like this shit in the news, you know?"

Steve fell silent and walked around the motel, appraising the situation. "So the body's gone, the kid still owes, and we got to find the necklace before the trail goes cold. Why do I feel like I'm not gonna be getting any sleep for the foreseeable future?"

"You always liked the bad news first, my friend." Mateo smirked, clearly pleased with himself.

"I asked some questions in the neighborhood. Benefits of this badge, you know?" He pulled aside the Hawaiian shirt to reveal a county police badge clipped over the waist of his jeans.

"I gotta get me one of those some day," joked Steve. "Okay, spill."

"It just so happens that there's a guy I know who—"

"Is this gonna be another Santiago story?" said Steve.

Mateo said nothing more for a moment but shrugged his shoulders and brushed down his shirt, pretending to take offence.

"Do you want the news or not?"

"I do," said Steve, laughing. "I really do."

"Okay, since you have the patience of a woman, I'll give you the short story version. The people making the moves with our stuff? They have the necklace. And they're on a boat about two knots south, near the reef. I suggest you prepare for a late night, my friend. We have work to do."