CHAPTER 1
TODAY
It’s been a long day in Los Angeles and in Malibu, California.
Dez is in a guest room of an ocean-side cottage, packing his duffel bag. His electric bass guitar already is stowed away in its nicked and smudged old guitar case, the oval fuzz of passport authority stickers evidence of his travels. Neither he nor the woman he can hear—out on her deck above the Pacific, on the phone, salvaging her multinational corporation—have said as much, but it’s likely time to call this affair quits. It’s been a good run. Dez will be sorry to say goodbye. He suspects she’ll be a little sorry as well, and he also suspects she’ll say it first.
His mobile vibrates. He checks. He smiles. He sits on the guest bed.
“Brat.”
“Old man.”
Dez grins. “Wotcher. In Portland, are ye?”
The young woman on the phone is a vocalist and a songwriter, barely more than a girl, barely a year out of her teens. She says, “…”
It’s not that she says anything. It’s that he can hear the catch in her voice when she tries to. He stops grinning. “What?”
“My sister’s in danger.”
He says, “Laleh. She’s a reporter, yeah?”
“Yeah. Dez, she’s in the hospital. She’s…”
Raziah Swann stops talking. Dez waits.
“Can you come? I don’t have any right to ask but—”
“Be there tomorrow.”
In the silence, he can almost discern the silhouette-sound of her crying. It’s more in the absence of noise, in the rustle of her clothes.
“Desmond Aloysius Limerick,” Raziah exhales his name, sniffs. “Goddamn, I think I love you.”
* * *
Dez says his goodbyes to Petra Alexandris, and they sleep together one last, satisfying time. He leaves her in the morning to tend to her stolen company.
He knows how to pack light. With the exception of the guitar case, everything else he owns fits in a military surplus duffel. His belongings include a number of items he cannot carry onto an airplane. Some he designed and built. Some are illegal in the United States. Two are knives, one with a set of lockpicks in the sheath. Dez has little interest in getting crosswise with its legal system. So for the flight to Portland, he checks everything except his tablet computer and a used paperback, the front cover missing, wrapped in a thick red rubber band. His wardrobe for the flight is what he’s worn every single day since arriving in the States: black jeans and a black T-shirt and boots. Dez has a fifty-inch chest and a thirty-two-inch waist and he has to buy the T-shirts online because no stores sell them in his size. He has twinkling blue eyes and a boyish smile, which he’s quick to deploy.
The tablet computer is unique, bespoke, and was of great importance in Dez’s old job.
The used paperback he’s already read, years ago, but for now he’s forgotten that and will only realize it right around the time his flight leaves the tarmac.
* * *
As he steps off the plane and activates his phone, Raziah’s image pops up, along with an address he has not seen before and a suggested route. She’s using Clockjack, an app that integrates all her technology and allows her to connect to anyone she wants with lightning speed. Clockjack is the app of choice for the twentysomething set and the techie set, and Dez doesn’t have it. It’s like TikTok; it’s one of those fads that make him feel old and out of touch.
He takes a Lyft to a small blush-pink condo building in a sector of Portland called Goose Hollow. The neighborhood looks like it grew up in the 1920s and decided to stay there. The topography is hilly and green, with views of downtown Portland peeking out at some intersections. The building is shaped like the letter C—two stories tall, with two units in the east wing facing the street lined with cherry trees, and two units in the west wing, and a tiny garden in between them, with more units behind the garden. The garden is simple and well kept, with a single tree, a stone bench, a little trapezoid of grass, and maybe five flowering plants.
Raziah Swann sits on a window seat behind the big bay window of the ground-floor unit to the east—she’s there when Dez waves and steps out of the Lyft; she isn’t by the time he grabs his bag and guitar case and crosses the street.
As he hits the sidewalk, Raziah is in the garden, heading his way. She’s not racing into his arms because Raziah is cool. Always cool. But she’s walking faster than usual, almost skipping, and shrugging her petite body into a cardigan about twelve sizes too big for her. Her Afro bobs contrapuntally with her stride, head down, hair partially masking her smile, and then she’s in Dez’s arms. Dez weighs two-sixty and Raziah weights about one-ten. She squeezes him tight.
He says, “Brat.”
She says, “Old man,” but doesn’t let go of him. “Hero-man.”
“Not that. Think ye owe me five quid.”
* * *
The condo belongs to the conductor of the Oregon Symphony who is on tour in Europe. She mentored Raziah when the girl had been a high school dropout; had been the first to realize she has a four-octave range and is a gifted lyricist. The conductor’s place is lovely and clean and well decorated. The artwork on the walls are originals, mostly charcoals and pencil sketches. Raziah wears cutoff denim shorts and a thin tank and Converse All Stars with no laces. The cardigan would fit an NBA power forward and hangs below her knees. Dez spots her acoustic guitar, and a cheap spiral-bound notebook and lots of pencils. She’s been writing music.
She says, “I want to take you to my sister.”
Dez says, “I want to pee like a racehorse, then meet your sister.”
They agree to this modified strategy.
After, Dez catches the girl looking at him as she sometimes does, head canted forward, that mass of hair obscuring her vivid mahogany eyes. Her father was Black and her mother was Iranian, and her skin is a tone that Dez can’t quite describe and had never seen before. She smiles.
“What?”
“I called. You came.”
“How it normally works, yeah? Not psychic.”
She snugs her fingers in the back pockets of her little shorts, elbows pointing straight back from her narrow frame. “That’s not how it normally works. Not in my experience.”
“Where’s your sister?”
“Good Sam. It’s a hospital.”
“You said she’s in danger. Not was in danger.”
“Her apartment was ransacked. The next day she was mugged by a man who almost killed her, except some witnesses happened by and called the police. Laleh went to the cops, told them everything. She’s got a concussion. And I think she’s still in trouble.”
“Then let’s go an’ meet her.”
Raziah grabs a floppy rattan bag worn cross-shoulder, and they call another Lyft.
Good Samaritan Hospital is in the northwest sector of the city, called the Alphabet District. The neighborhood is an untidy hodgepodge of tiny cottages and huge Victorians, boutique shops and four-star restaurants, all sitting cheek by jowl, bisected by mathematically straight, ninety-degree intersections. The land in this neighborhood is as flat as a phonograph.
Outside the hospital, Dez makes an excuse about needing to tie his boots, and he takes a knee as Raziah races into the hospital on coltish legs. He’s spotted a man loitering outside the hospital. The man is clocking Raziah as she races into the lobby. Now, could be he’s watching her because she’s twenty and graceful and lovely, but Dez doesn’t think so. While fiddling with his bootlaces, he spots the second watcher, half a block away.
The two men nod to each other.
They’re not watching Raziah; they’re watching for Raziah.
One guy’s Black. The other’s Latino. Both wear jeans and windbreakers of gray or black; nothing flashy. Both look tough enough and experienced enough to handle themselves. They begin to move toward the lobby door, but both quickly stop and look away when Raziah pops out like a jack-in-the-box and bellows at Dez.
“Get your ass in gear, England!”
Dez stands and crosses the street to her, side-eyeing the men but subtly. “Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER 2
When Raziah was here the day before, her sister had been in the Emergency Department, where she’d been diagnosed with a concussion. She’s since been moved. Raziah has jotted a room number across her palm with a Sharpie.
Before she can dash away, Dez draws her to a bank of vending machines and goes through the charade of hunting for coins. “Your instincts weren’t wrong, love. Two fellas outside were waiting for you.”
“No fucking way!”
“Language.” He studies the array of candy behind the glass. He’s already clocked the room number scrawled across her hand. “Go see your sister. I’ll tag along behind, keep an eye on our feckin’ playmates.”
Raziah could have been expected to look frightened but the emotion that flashes across her light brown, gold-flecked eyes is scalding anger. With her mop of lightning-bolt hair, she can bow her head and hide it. “If they—”
“Well, that’s why I’m here, innit. Scoot. There’s a good girl.”
Raziah heads down the corridor. Dez doesn’t really want any candy, and he’s a cheapskate, so he changes tactic, drags out his bulky mobile phone, and pretends to read a text. His phone is larger than average, as is his tablet computer. Both have been ruggedized. Both have needed to be.
The Latin guy starts down the hall in Raziah’s wake. He’s got his hands stuffed in his pockets, and he whistles. Aren’t I the most innocent thing ever? It’s the single crappiest bit of playacting Dez has ever seen.
The other fella, the Black guy, stays well back, keeping an eye on Dez.
Dez pretends to send a text, then heads down another corridor, perpendicular to the one Raziah took. He doesn’t look about to see if he’s being followed. Dez takes a left and a left and then quickly leans his shoulder blades against a wall, arms like oak trunks crossed over his barrel chest.
The Black guy comes around the corner and bumps into Dez’s elbow.
His emotions march naked across his face: Shit, who is this/Shit, this is the guy I’m following/Shit, he made me/Shit, be cool.
“’Scuse me,” he rumbles.
“Dez,” Dez says.
“What?”
“Dez. I’m Dez. Friends call me tha’. Laleh, you know. Raziah’s the sister. You’re a thug. Think we’re caught up.”
The Black guy steps back and, doing so, Dez catches the outline of a pistol in a holster clipped to his belt. This isn’t a surveillance gig. It’s a snatch job. Or worse.
Dez unfolds his arms and steps away from the wall.
Copyright © 2023 by James Byrne
