Crow’s Row

  “They think that I’m hiding something … they don’t trust us … they put the guards on high alert … you’re right, the crop is bad … the Hawk guy is planning on giving you all the worst plants … oh and, why do they keep calling you crow?” I finished, out of breath.

  Cameron first looked at me with puzzlement, and then his face quickly turned to fury. He pushed me behind him so quickly, so fiercely that I almost fell to the floor. Hawk, who had come running in my direction, looked violent, his rage equal only to Cameron’s.

  “What game are you playing at? You brought the girl so that you could spy on us?” Hawk screamed. I had been tricked into thinking that they couldn’t overhear me. Hawk and the old man had now heard everything.

  Cameron shoved Hawk away and looked like he was ready to kill him. “Step away. Now.” His voice was sharp, leaving no doubt that he would kill if pushed to it.

  The old man stepped between the two boys and urged them to calm down. He then he turned to me with an excited smile.

  “I knew I recognized those green eyes,” he said in French. “You looked like you understood what we were saying, but I had to be sure. There aren’t many people in these parts who speak French. Your brother Billy was the only one I knew outside our tribe.”

  The old man started to move toward me, but Cameron barred him and looked at me—absolute confusion on his face.

  I translated in a hurry. “He knows I’m Bill’s sister.” That was the gist of it anyway.

  Cameron continued to stand his ground, glancing from me to the old man, trying to figure out what to do. In my mind, there were only two options: fight through an army of armed guards and try to escape without too many bullet wounds, or let the defenseless old man approach me. Deciding for both of us, I held Cameron’s gaze and tugged his arm down. He let me by with great reluctance. The old man gleefully looped his arm around my shoulders—Cameron flinched as he did so.

  “In Manuuk tribal legends, crows,” he explained in French as we moved ahead of Cameron and Hawk and continued to wind our way down the vented tunnel, “are said to be spirits of great powers that move between the worlds of the living and the dead. They are highly intelligent creatures. They learn and adapt quickly.”

  “Crows are also greedy and tricky,” bitterly added Hawk, in English for Cameron’s benefit—the effect was lost on Cameron, as this was the only portion of the conversation that he had understood.

  “Yes, crows are mischievous—they like to play tricks on us, but they are also extremely loyal to their kind. When a crow is struggling, it will seek out its kind to survive. They take care of each other like a family, blood ties or not. Your brother and this one,” he said pointing at an oblivious Cameron, “were a lot like the crows of my tribe’s legends when I first met them.”

  We arrived at another elevator, and the four of us squeezed in. Hawk pulled the elevator grid closed.

  “I’m Emily,” I blurted out. From the look on Cameron’s face as I said this, I thought he was going to jump out of his skin.

  “Your brother called you Emmy, yes?” the old man asked, his inquisitive eyes persistent.

  I figured that I wouldn’t be able to lie to him, so I chose not to. “When I was young.”

  “And you’re not young anymore,” he said. This was funny to him. “I’m Jerry, but call me Pops.”

  The elevator motor hummed. Pops still had his arm looped into mine. He patted my hand like he could feel my heart beating a mile a minute. His skin was cold and rubbery, and I could smell pipe tobacco off his clothes. I usually didn’t like to be touched by strange old men. But I decided that I liked him, even if he was a drug dealer … distributor.

  We stepped out of the elevator into a darkened grotto. The rock walls and ceiling were glistening with dripping water, and a stream gushed along one of the walls through gaping holes, from one side of the cave to the other. The room was barely lit by lanterns that were clumsily hung on the walls. I couldn’t see my feet in the darkness and had to rely on the old man to guide me to a small bench that was next to the gushing stream. We sat down, while Cameron and Hawk silently stood behind us. Men with guns against the walls completed the scene. We waited. For what, I didn’t know.

  “I was really sorry when I heard your brother passed on. He was a good kid. Much too young to die.” Pops was sincere.

  “Thank you,” I said in English.

  The water bubbled. It was too dark, I couldn’t see, so I leaned in for a closer look. A big fish suddenly surfaced, and I screamed, almost falling over the bench. Cameron caught me before I busted my skull open on the rock floor. Everyone laughed, except me. Cameron chuckled, only a bit. The men quickly went to work as more fish broke the surface. Pops and I watched from the sidelines. One by one, the whale-sized fish were pulled from the water by the gunmen and gutted—guts in the form of plastic bags fell out.

  “Look real, don’t they?” Pops said proudly. I nodded, still in shock.

  “They’re just robots covered in latex,” he explained.

  “Where do they come from?”

  “From everywhere—boats, submarines, neighboring states, Canada. This batch came from a German boat two miles off the eastern coast.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that they’ll get seized?” Or fished?

  “Hasn’t happened yet.” He seemed amused by my questions. “They can’t be traced back to us anyway.”

  A string of curse words erupted between Hawk and Cameron. They had resumed their earlier argument over the market value of the merchandise. I had to plug my ears as echoed profanities bounced off the rock walls.

  “Are they always like this?” I asked loudly.

  “This is the most well-behaved I’ve ever seen them. By this point, I usually have to order them to put their guns away or get one of the guards to pull them apart,” he said. “Both as stubborn as mules.”

  Pops caught Cameron nervously glancing over at me for the hundredth time. I quickly distracted him.

  “What was my brother like?”

  From the smile on his face, he knew it was a diversion, but went along with it anyway. “Your brother was just a boy when I first met him,” he remembered. “One day he showed up unannounced and demanded to speak to me. The first thing he said to me: you need to change your alliances. I didn’t know what to make of this kid. He was either a fool or pretty brave for strolling in here like that. I decided to listen to him. Well-spoken kid. Made a good case. He convinced me. Been doing business with these crows since.”

  I inertly smiled at this memory of my brother. Apparently his charm had also worked on drug dealers, not just girls’ panties.

  Pops’s voice brought me back to reality. “This one, on the other hand,” he said nodding in Cameron’s direction, “was very young. Too young to be in this business. Your brother relied on him quite a bit. The boy’s smart, but I always thought it was more than a kid like that could handle.”

  Pops eyed me, like he was waiting for a sign that this part of his discourse had mattered to me. He didn’t need to wait long for me to falter. Cameron glanced to check on me again, and our eyes locked for a split second. I motionlessly signaled that I was okay. I was starting to recognize Cameron’s subtle changes in demeanor—and he was definitely angry with me. I would have to deal with this later. I had bigger fish to fry for now.

  It had pleased the old man to spy us silently communicating. “He’s a quiet young fellow. Impossible to read. He seems lost, as if he’s already in the spirit world. We don’t like to do business with crows who don’t have any roots in this world,” he qualified. “But he’s a good businessman and has always been fair to us. I’m glad to see that he’s human after all.” His smile was telling.

  I wasn’t threatened by Pops, but that didn’t mean I wanted to gossip with him about my relationship with Cameron—even if I had understood anything about our relationship.

  “What’s in those plastic bags?” I garishly blurted out again.

  Pops didn’t dr
aw back at my insolence. “What do you think is in them?” he asked with amusement. He hadn’t been fooled by my pretend ignorance.

  “Drugs?” I said, taking another glance at the plastic bags of multicolored pills and powders.

  He neither confirmed nor denied. “What do you think about that?”

  I’m fine with it, seemed like the appropriate response. The truth was that, as much as I loved Cameron, what he did for a living did bother me. It didn’t lessen my love for him in any way. I had been able to tuck this small disturbance in a locked compartment inside my head. But I found myself unable to lie to this complete stranger.

  “It just seems awful to think that these drugs might end up in the hands of kids,” I tried to put nicely.

  “I don’t sell to kids,” he quickly replied, his brow furrowing.

  “But you can’t control what happens to … the product once it leaves here,” I said apologetically. “I mean, at some point, some street thug will try to push drugs on kids.”

  Pops crossed his arms over his belly and crossed one leg over the other. “Kids don’t decide to start taking drugs because of some pusher they don’t know on the street. They’re convinced through peer pressure, through family and friends. You know, children are more likely to start by looking through their parents’ medicine cabinet for drugs that won’t cost them anything.”

  It sounded a little rehearsed. I quickly realized that Pops was looking for a sparring partner on the topic. I didn’t know if I could deliver. I wished that I had paid better attention in my high school political-science class when the issue would have probably been debated.

  “Yes, but drugs lead to violence,” I argued.

  “Violence in the media has been the leading cause of violence. Illegal drugs might cause bad people to do bad things, but so do alcohol and licit drugs,” the old man argued back.

  “But drugs do increase crime.” I had no idea if they did, but it definitely sounded good.

  “Most of the drug crimes relate to the sale of drugs. If selling drugs wasn’t illegal, then you would free up the court system and jails.”

  Pops waited with delight for my next claim.

  I searched for something, anything. “Drugs are just really bad for you. People can die if they take drugs.”

  “People do all kinds of things that are bad for them, like eating fast food and smoking,” he said with satisfaction. “You know heart disease is the leading cause of death in America. More people die from fast food and cigarettes than they do from anything else.”

  Cameron and Hawk looked like they were about to come to fisticuffs. Whatever Cameron said had set Hawk on another vulgar dissertation, and both were angrily facing off. I looked at Pops for his intervention, but he just smiled at me.

  “My son has a hot temper,” he explained. “He doesn’t trust the crows. Though … I think his opinion may change about this one after today.” He winked at me and then he glanced back at the businessmen and got up. “I’m afraid there isn’t much that I will be able to do with the one they call Spider. There’s something false about that boy.”

  Pops made his way to the barking men and calmly put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Give him what he wants, Hawk,” he ordered in English.

  Hawk was incredulous. “What? Why would I do that?”

  “Because I said so,” Pops answered with authority.

  Cameron was just as surprised as his sparring partner, but took advantage.

  “And the plants?” he asked Pops, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

  “Only the best ones.”

  Cameron and Hawk stood there. I imagined that their jaws would be agape, if they had been like normal people. Everyone in the grotto had gone silent at this development. All I could hear was the swishing of the stream’s current.

  Pops broke the tension and turned to Cameron. “If there is nothing else, then I suggest you take this young girl home. I’m afraid I have taken enough of her time, and she will soon grow tired of me.”

  Arm in arm, Pops and I made our way back through the underground maze, with Cameron and Hawk now quietly, reflectively in tow. I could feel Cameron’s eyes hammering into me. We walked through the stinky greenhouse, and I permitted myself to make a casual comment.

  “Your electricity bills must be insane,” I said, surreptitiously eying the torrent of fluorescent sunlight substitutes.

  Pops caught my meaning. “Hidden solar panels on the surface,” he clarified with a warm grin.

  We left Hawk and Pops at the elevator doors, but not before Pops whispered in my ear, “I hope we will see you again, young Emily.”

  I didn’t look at Cameron’s face as we stood in the elevator. I already knew that I was in really big trouble. We headed back where we had come from and met Griff at the top of the barn stairs.

  “Have a good day, sir. And madam,” Griff added with emphasis, bowing with a grin on his face.

  Cameron walked at a quicker pace, his shoulders tense and erect. I figured that I couldn’t get in much more trouble than I already was. I genially grinned back at Griff before sprinting to meet up with Cameron at the motorcycle. He handed me my helmet without looking at me. I snuggled in behind him on the bike, but the trick didn’t work its magic this time. He remained on edge as we sped off in a cloud of dust.

  Chapter Twenty-Five:

  Broken

  We rode without a word, and I was conflicted: distressed that Cameron was angry with me; yet happy—even a little smug—that I had pulled off my first business meeting with distributors without getting us killed.

  We pulled into a small parking lot where a stationed school bus had been converted into a fast-food stand. It was mid-afternoon. I was starving. The smell of greasy fries was the best thing I had ever smelled by that point. Cameron barely looked at me while we waited in line. The extent of our conversation was limited to “What do you want to eat” and “Veggie burger with extra fries.” Cameron asked for mayo for my fries. I didn’t need to say anything.

  I followed him around the back of the converted bus through a band of trees. I could hear crashing water as we neared the end of the trail. Fifty feet above ground, a waterfall plunged in an almost perfect line down the face of the rock and into a gurgling bath of water. People, sporadically spread about the trees and grass, picnicked and took in the breathtaking scene. Cameron dug a blanket out of the backpack and spread it on a tiny patch of grass as if he had been there before. We were mostly hidden in the brush.

  While he ate and brooded, I threw my helmet-hair back into its cozy ponytail. This caused Cameron to smile, which he tried to hide from me. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I had done to make him angry. There was no doubt in my mind that nothing about the meeting had gone according to his plans, and that I didn’t do anything that I was supposed to do—like stay quiet.

  With a bit of food in my belly and Cameron’s mood seemingly bettered, I figured I would get it over with, whatever was bugging him.

  “You’re angry with me.” I was really good at stating the obvious.

  “Uh-huh.” Cameron was lying on his back with his legs crossed one over the other.

  Apparently I was supposed to guess what I had done wrong—which I wanted to do as much as a serial killer wished to confess every crime he had ever committed to the rookie cop who had just stopped him because of a broken taillight.

  “Can you tell me why?” I asked.

  “Things could have gone really wrong in there.”

  “But they didn’t,” I replied.

  “They could have,” he reiterated, with emphasis. “I had no idea what was going on.”

  “Welcome to my world,” I mumbled, spearing my straw though the plastic lid of my cup.

  Cameron half-smiled. “Emmy, when I don’t know what’s going on and can’t understand what you’re saying, I can’t react.”

  “You don’t have any faith in me.”

  “It has nothing to do with my faith in you and everything to do with
my mistrust of them. These people aren’t angels. This isn’t a game. As far as I knew, the old man was threatening to put a knife at your throat as soon as I wasn’t looking.”

  “He never threatened me.”

  “I had no way of knowing that,” he griped.

  “Considering the circumstances, I think I made the right decision.” I was convinced of this.

  Cameron exaggeratingly rolled his eyes at my cockiness. “I should have known that you’d be able to charm yourself out of trouble. Must be in your genes.”

  I wasn’t sure if he’d meant that I had charmed myself out of trouble with the distributors or with him. It didn’t matter in the end. I had taken his change in demeanor as a signal that I was on my way to being forgiven. I decided to swoop in for the kill and snuggled up against him. He didn’t recoil.

  “I got you everything you wanted, didn’t I?” I said with a sigh.

  “Yes, Emmy,” he conceded, also with a sigh. “You made me a lot of money today. But it’s just money. I would have preferred it much more if you would have stayed out of their grasp.”

  Something moved within the trees. Cameron abruptly pushed me off and sprang up. An old lady strolled by, shakily leaning on her cane. She was about ninety years old and maybe eighty pounds soaking wet.

  “Sorry,” Cameron said awkwardly to me. He laid back down on the blanket. If I hadn’t been aware of his paranoia, I would have been insulted by his fear of being seen in public with me.

  I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at Cameron.

  “What’s going to happen when things settle down?” I wondered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happens to me when the danger is gone?”

  “You go home,” he said instinctively. He hadn’t changed his mind, after everything.

  I tried to keep it cool. “And then what?”

  “And then nothing. You go back and live happily ever after,” he said, refusing to look at me.

  “What about us?” My voice was shaking.

  Cameron was silent.

  “I could just stay with you,” I offered.