“Here I am.” Her lipstick was a purplish shade of red that clung to her cigarette. “How about that whiskey you owe me?”
That was her standard. She would appear unannounced—sitting on a stoop or leaning against the hood of his car—and ask for something. The favors started small. Pick up a shipment at the docks in Seattle. Stash these duffel bags in your basement, she would say, and don’t even think about opening them. “I know I’m not a saint,” she said, “but I’m no devil either.” The drugs she sold—the pills called Skulls—they were 100 percent organic, non-addictive, A-grade happiness. Some blend of dopamine, adrenaline, and raw sugar, or so she claimed. “I’m not only helping myself, making some bank—I’m improving the lives of the miserable, bringing a little sunshine to a cloudy city.” The same applied to her Blood Bank. Not only did the transfusions benefit her—helping her outlive her expiration date by several decades—but she was paying people who needed cash for a renewable resource. “They sit down for a few minutes, and when they stand up, they’re fifty bucks richer and a pint lighter. I basically run a charity.”
There were questions he was afraid to ask her. About what had happened to him, and about what she was asking him to do, but he preferred this new role of his. Unthinking. Purely helpful. In his old life, he was supposed to have all the answers everyone sought. Now he didn’t have any. And he was happily vacant. It was easier not to think. It was easier to be a servant. Hand somebody a plate of hot food, offer up a fresh pair of socks, a fluffed pillow upon which to rest their head. Sarin was trouble—of this he was certain—but he owed her, and she wouldn’t let him forget it.
Then something happened. Sarin asked him to drive her to a meeting at a warehouse. “Don’t say anything, even if asked directly. Just stand behind me and look tough. Oh, and if the need should arise, don’t be afraid to use this.” She dropped a pistol in his lap, and he nearly drove off the road in surprise.
He said he wasn’t sure this was a good idea, and she said, “You don’t want to protect me? Don’t you think you owe me that much? I think you do. I know you do.”
“I’ve never held a gun in my life.”
“Thought you were from Texas?” she said. “There’s no safety, so all you have to do is pull the trigger. Easy.”
The warehouse was empty except for a folding table and two chairs. A small Asian man occupied one of them. He wore a black suit with a red tie. His hands were folded neatly on the table. To either side of him stood two men. Their jackets bulged suspiciously along the left sides. Beside them a hound panted. The floor was concrete and oil-stained. Pigeons cooed in the rafters, and shit and feathers and bits of nesting straw dirtied the floor. Rusted iron ribs held up the roof, and sunlight speckled in from the holes in the sheet metal, and shadows gathered thickly in the corners.
“We’re the good guys. Just remember that,” she whispered to Juniper as they crossed the twenty yards of floor to the table. Their footsteps filled the space with thudding echoes. The men were heavily tattooed. They all carried the same design on their skin—suction-cupped tentacles, curling from their shirtsleeves and collars and hairlines—which came into focus as Juniper drew near. He had shoved the pistol into his waistband beneath his fleece. The grip bit into his hip, but he resisted the urge to readjust it.
The man at the table did not stand but smiled and addressed Sarin. He spoke another language, one that Sarin shared, and when his eyes flitted to Juniper, it was clear he wanted an introduction but got none.
Sarin knocked a cigarette from a pack and sparked it with her Zippo. “Where’s Babs?”
Babs, Juniper would later learn, ran an underground club called The Oubliette. He also dealt and pimped on the side. Sarin controlled the east side of the river, and he controlled downtown. He was the one who arranged the sit-down.
At that moment there came the whirring of a tiny motor. Everyone turned toward the sound. Out of the shadows rolled a three-wheeled scooter with a grocery basket between the handlebars. Seated on it was a man—though his considerable size made his gender at first uncertain—wearing sunglasses and dangly earrings and gold chain necklaces and bangled bracelets and sparkling rings and a purple velour jumpsuit. His head was shaved, and the skin of it was as black and polished as obsidian. He was smiling but didn’t say anything until his scooter squeaked to a stop a few feet away.
“Welcome, everyone,” he said, his voice high and fragile. “I’m glad we could all come together for a friendly chat.” He lowered his sunglasses to eyeball Juniper. “And who, pray tell, is this big old piece of meat?”
Sarin said, “We look after each other.”
“Do you now?” Babs said, and then slid his sunglasses back into place. “I bet you do.”
“Can we get on with this?” Sarin said.
Babs asked her to please sit—“Stay awhile, girl”—and she did, and they all went back and forth, sometimes in English, sometimes in what Juniper guessed to be Japanese, their words growing more severe and sometimes punctuated by long, uncompromising silences. The word Yakuza came up more than once. It was a turf war—that became clear. These men wanted to expand their operation to the West Coast and wished to headquarter on the east side of Portland. At one point Juniper caught the hound studying him with its lip curled and a thick line of drool oozing from between its teeth. He quickly looked away. He didn’t know that they were sometimes called Grims or Barguests or Shucks. He didn’t know they were the companions of the dark, the guardians of the gates of hell. He only knew that the mere sight of them made him feel like he was swallowing a blade.
“Somebody’s got to give.” Babs’s bracelets clinked when he motioned from one side of the table to the other. “Either y’all offer more money or y’all negotiate more real estate, or our asses are going to be sitting here the next hundred years.”
Sarin ashed a cigarette. “Why should I give up anything? I was here first. Fuck that. Not for the price point they’re offering.”
The man in the suit said nothing in response to this, only smoothed his tie and crossed his arms.
Sarin tossed away her cigarette and stood and said, “Come on. We’re leaving.” With one hand she led Juniper by the elbow, and with the other she reached into his fleece and ripped out the pistol.
He didn’t realize the bullets were blasting from the muzzle until after the shots pounded his ears and the bodies of the men and the hound slumped to the floor.
Babs remained on his scooter, shaking his head. Gun smoke drifted in the air between them. He wiped away some blood that had splattered his hand. “Well, I guess you told them.”
Juniper didn’t realize he had been holding his breath. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said with a gasp, and Sarin said, “He’s got nothing to do with it.”