“Carlo who says thank you,” he replied.
“That a last name?” I asked.
“It is for men who don’t need any trouble,” he said.
Spade rolled his neck. “He’s getting some anyway.”
8-Ball tossed the key to Spade who placed it in his pocket like it was a coin. He smiled then turned back to Salvatore the way diplomats smile at border guards. “We’ll be ghosts.”
“Be on time. The weather can be quick to change.” Salvatore replied.
“Storm coming,” I said.
He didn’t blink.
We fired the bikes up again. The choir came back to life. The pier jumped. Night opened its mouth to us as we pulled out in two lines, cages ahead, chrome behind, a little city on wheels.
One line would go with the cage carrying the bike to the drop off site. The rest would go with the other cages to the pier.
I took my slot and felt the road climb into my bones. Snake Eyes drifted to the rear like smoke. Spade’s engine thumped like a heart with anger issues. Miami fell in next to me, face lit by the dash glow, eyes hot and hungry. He kept glancing at the bed of the cage like a lover checking on a door he forgot to lock.
“You really think it’s humming?” I asked.
“Not think,” he said. “I know.”
“Maybe that’s your skull.”
“I got music in there,” he said. “You got bats.”
“Bats don’t hum.”
“These ones do,” he said.
I laughed. The city rolled at us in bands of neon and bad decisions. We came off the dock road and onto blacktop slick from the last rain. A quarter mile ahead a cruiser sat in the median with its lights off. Snake Eyes called it in calm as a man ordering coffee. We knifed past at exactly the speed limit for twenty long seconds, then the world opened again.
We hit Baltic and the night tensed. You can feel it when a place holds its breath. Windows went by oneby one like eyes deciding to close. A kid out way too late for his own good on a bicycle froze mid-pedal and then ghosted into an alley. Somewhere behind the drumbeat of our pipes I heard the cough of a motorcycle that wasn’t ours and that didn’t belong.
“Eyes up,” I said. “We got company.”
Spade’s chuckle hit the comm like gravel. “Good.”
“Hold formation,” I said. “We’re not bleeding on their schedule.”
“Who says we’re going to bleed?” he asked.
The storage units sat in a low rectangle like a row of teeth. One streetlight was blown. One was flickering. Another was as steady as a heartbeat. The gate stood waiting, lock clean, no rub marks on the chain. Someone cared. Someone wanted the world to think nobody else did.
We swung in and killed our engines. The universe shrank to the ping of cooling heads and the tin twitch of the ocean wind. The cage eased to a stop. Turnpike peeled off to the corners. Snake Eyes rolled past and parked cross-wise, in the parking lot, thinking about exits and making calculations nobody else could see.
8-Ball stepped out and held the key up to the flickering light like he could see the future in its shine. “Make it quick,” he said.
“Make it clean,” Blackjack said over the radio from the pier, voice tinny and iron at once.
Miami hopped onto the bed. He wanted to be the first to touch that black thing again. Spade climbed up beside him, impatient. I took the door on 317 andlistened. No breath behind it. No scrape. No prayer.
8-Ball slid the key in and opened the unit. It smelled like concrete, dust, and a brand new lie. It was empty. A rectangle of darkness. Enough room for a secret to grow legs.
“That Carlo better be real,” Spade said.
