My head sank back onto the disheveled earth, and I thought again of trying to get up and resume my climb, to find out what was waiting for me at the top. But my body felt lifeless, and the chilled air was pressing me down against the rubble.
Stiff and still I lie now, waiting for that sound to surface again, holding my breath, hoping to hear it again. Nothing comes to my ears, but I watch a swath of mist descend, swirling against the black backdrop of the mountain, and after a time my wife appears in its midst — I’m sure it’s Hazel, drifting toward me through the silvery veil.
Game
by Twist Phelan
A novelist with two series in print, the Pinnacle Peak extreme-sports mysteries and the Finn Teller, corporate spy series, Twist Phelan is also an extraordinary short-story writer. Her last story for EQMM, 2013’s “Footprints in Water,” won three awards: the International Thriller Award, the Arthur Ellis, and the Colorado Authors’ League Award. We’re glad to have her back with a new Film Teller story.
On what passed for a clear morning in Los Angeles, Finn Teller veered off the sidewalk into an alley. The entrance to the coffee shop was unencouraging. Cracked asphalt led to a thick wooden door with a hand-painted sign over it that read CAFÉ. It wasn’t artistic lettering, like you saw on boutiques that spelled shop with an extra pe at the end. It was bad graffiti, a scrawl of red on a scrap of raw board.
Finn didn’t care. It was the only place within two blocks of the office serving strong coffee sans employees whose upbeat, tightly scripted manner stemmed from an awareness of cameras angled toward the service counter.
She pushed open the door. There were no windows, and several of the overhead fixtures were out, making the light dim and occasional. Patrons, all male, either leaned against the bar or hunched over one of the scarred wooden tables. Several glanced up, pausing in their conversations, to see what the world had brought in. Short, squat men with Hispanic features showing indifference, superiority, and — a few — hostility. The smell of grease and hair oil hung in the air.
Finn paused on the threshold. Today a familiar face was missing. The one that always looked up interested, making Finn feel welcome.
She approached the cashier behind the register at the end of the bar.
“¿Dónde está Eduardo?”
“Se ha ido.”
Finn was surprised. “¿Dónde?”
The cashier shrugged, but his eyes veered toward the rear of the café, where another wooden door, closed, was cut into the wall.
“Un café con leche, por favor,” Finn said. “To go.” She lowered her voice. “Seriously, where did he go?”
“Mexico,” the cashier said, the whir of the coffee grinder almost swallowing the word.
Finn frowned. “¿Por qué?”
She’d gotten to know Eduardo a bit during the three weeks she’d been on assignment in L.A. During her morning coffee run, the teenager entertained her with his cheery good humor. He’d shared his favorite spot for fish tacos and she’d become addicted to the grilled shrimp and chunky tomato-and-pepper salsa dolloped onto freshly patted tortillas. She liked his politeness to the mostly surly customers, and his interest in astronomy. She’d given him copies of Sagan’s Cosmos and Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. More than once she’d asked him about his plans after high school. He’d smiled and told her Café was the right spot for him. “No college for me,” he’d said.
The cashier loaded the ground coffee into the coffee maker. Thirty seconds later, a small amount of very strong espresso was dribbling into a large paper cup.
“He didn’t say anything to me about going to Mexico,” Finn said as the cashier topped the drink with a shot of hot, frothy milk. She never drank decaf. Why drink coffee if not for the caffeine? And decaf never tasted any good.
“La migra.” The cashier used silver tongs to pick up a churro — a stick of lightly fried dough dusted with sugar — from where it rested with others on a metal rack and dropped it into a paper sack.
Finn was stunned. “He got picked up by Immigration? Are you sure?”
The cashier gave a brief nod as he pushed the cup and sack toward her. “Three dollars twenty.”
Finn opened her wallet and took out five bills. She laid them beside her coffee. The cashier tried to pick up the money, but Finn kept it pinned to the bar with her fingertips. His eyes narrowed in annoyance, then widened when he saw the fifth bill beside the four singles was a fifty.
“Tell me what happened,” Finn said.
After another glance at the door at the rear of the café, the cashier said, “I take a break in five minutes. Behind the laundromat at the end of the block.”
Finn left the singles and palmed the fifty. “See you there.” She took her coffee, ignored the churro, and headed for the door.
The cashier leaned against the rear wall of the laundromat, smoking. Finn resisted the urge to bum a cigaret off him. Instead, she said, “Tell me what happened.”
“You got the fifty?”
Finn held up the bill. The cashier reached for it, but Finn pulled it away. “Not until you tell me why Eduardo was picked up.”
“He pissed off el jefe.” The boss.
“How?”
“He has to pay protection to Los Lobos.”
Finn recognized the name of one of L.A.’s oldest street gangs. One of its low-level members had given her good intel for a case she was working a few years back. In return, she’d helped the young man enlist in the U.S. Navy, rounding up letters of recommendation from teachers and a local cop — in addition to writing her own — to obtain a waiver for his arson conviction as a juvenile. Last she heard, Tito was stationed at the naval base in San Diego.
“I’m not following,” Finn said. “What does that have to do with calling Immigration?”
The cashier flicked his butt onto the concrete and stepped on it with a ragged Nike. “Sometimes el jefe comes up short on the payment. When that happens, he stiffs everyone to make up the difference.”
“But that’s illegal. You can file a wage claim.”
“Not if you’re a Dreamer.”
“Eduardo is undocumented?” Dreamers was the term coined for illegal immigrants who entered the United States before their sixteenth birthday. Laws that would pave the way for them to obtain conditional and ultimately permanent residency had been introduced but never passed. Now Finn understood why Eduardo said college wasn’t in the cards.
“We all are. That’s why el jefe hires mojados. He knows we won’t say nada to nobody when he shorts our pay. If somebody causes trouble, he calls la migra and they pick him up.”
Finn was outraged. And pissed. “That’s not right!”
The man sneered. “So? It’s legal.” He glanced at his phone. “I gotta get back.”
Finn took a business card from her pocket and handed it over with the fifty. “If you see or hear from Eduardo, would you tell him to call me?”