Shakedown

Chapter Thirty-one

The Argentine terminal was perched on a tower high above, and dead smack in, the center of the rail yard, with an expansive view of the surrounding roads, highways, businesses, hills, and homes that spread out from the yard like rings on a tree. Trains crawled along the miles of tracks like robotic serpents, each taking its turn, adhering to a careful, plodding routine that delighted Latrell Kelly. He tracked the movement of each train in the records that came across his desk, filing the manifests, inspection reports, route changes, and anything else his boss, the terminal manager, told him to put away in its proper place. It was, for him, the perfect job-creating and keeping order.

Latrell had a small desk in one corner, the surface made smaller by the stacks of paper piled on it, each sheet waiting to be put in its designated folder. The monotony of the job was soothing. The precision with which he maintained the perpetual paper?ow comforted him.

Today Latrell’s work neither soothed nor comforted him. He was tired from being up late the night before after giving Marcellus’s dog to the FBI agent and he had been uneasy all day, fidgeting as if tiny, invisible insects were burrowing into his skin. The itching distracted him, making it difficult to concentrate. He was falling behind and the further behind he fell, the more he itched.

Then, after lunch, things got worse when everyone in the office gathered at the windows along the north wall. Curious, he joined them, watching as police cars and an ambulance, their emergency lights?ashing, converged at the storage sheds on the northern edge of the yard, their sirens drowned out by the trains’ ceaseless grinding and whistling.

The phone rang. A secretary answered, listened, and handed the phone to Latrell’s boss, who muttered “shit,” gave the phone back, and bolted for the stairs, bad knees and fifty extra pounds slowing him down.

Latrell pressed against the glass, wishing he had a better view. He saw the parade of cars stop in front of the storage sheds, saw people miniaturized by the distance pour out and disappear as they went around the sheds to the edge of the woods.

The entrance to the cave was a short distance from the storage sheds, an easy walk if you knew which trail to follow. The possibility that the cave was their destination in?amed the insects marching across his skin. Though he had camou?aged the entrance with a thick layer of deadfall, someone who knew what to look for might find it. Latrell didn’t realize that he was holding his breath until he felt a hand on his shoulder, the secretary asking him if he was okay. He nodded and returned to his desk, afraid of attracting more attention.

A while later, the manager returned with four others, two of whom he recognized as the FBI agents who had knocked on his door after he’d put things right with Marcellus. The other agent, the one who had come looking for Marcellus’s dog last night, wasn’t part of the group. Latrell kept his head down, stealing a glance at them. No one looked his way.

He should have relaxed when his boss didn’t summon him, saying that the agents wanted to ask him some questions, but he didn’t. Instead, the itching got worse until his skin felt electrified. Latrell was clinging to the edges of his world, gathering them tightly around him, but he was losing his grip. Things should have been better after he’d killed Marcellus and the others, but they weren’t.

Latrell ducked into the bathroom, closed the door to a stall, and sat, taking things apart, putting them back together in his mind, searching for what had gone wrong. Each time, he came back to the FBI agent, Jack Davis, he said his name was. Worried about Marcellus’s dog. Standing outside his house waiting to trick him with that bullshit story about losing his son.

Latrell pinched his eyes closed, picturing himself in the cave, hidden deep under the surface, touching the special things he kept there, and screaming until his throat was raw. The image put him at ease. Get through the day, he told himself. Then he’d go to the cave and sort things out. Figure out what he had to do and do it. Put things right again.

The heat in Latrell’s skin slowly cooled to a tingle, then faded. Settled, he returned to his desk, his face a placid mask. The FBI agents were huddled with his boss in the conference room, its interior glass wall giving him a clear view of what they were doing.

The secretary rapped lightly on the door, a bundle of rolled maps and enlarged aerial photographs under her arm. The manager let her in, directing her to spread the maps and photographs out on the table. The agents crowded around as she unrolled them, Latrell’s boss pointing and nodding in response to the agents’ questions. Twenty minutes later, they rolled up the maps and photographs. Each of the agents shook his boss’s hand and they left, taking the documents with them.

Later, Latrell asked his boss what was going on. Found a dead body in one of the Dumpsters back by the storage sheds, his boss told him. It’s a rail yard, not a goddamn cemetery, his boss added, annoyed at anything that kept him from making sure the trains ran on time. Latrell should have been relieved, but he wasn’t. He began to itch again.