By Anthony Lee Gregory
The train stations were completely desolate once most people had access to personal flight. It was the perfect place to meet.
Nicky leaned against a supporting column, using his leather jacket to shield the wind and his doubt. He was anxious. He couldn’t wait until Alexandra came for three reasons. He needed the work, he wanted to talk to her personally, and he was aching for a cigarette.
Her shoes clapped toward him as he looked down at a puddle of some unidentified liquid. The reflection crept into his view. She had the briefcase.
“Where have you been? The boss is in a hurry.”
“He’s never in a hurry.”
“Well this time he is. Let me see what you got.”
“You won’t be disappointed. It came straight from South Carolina.”
“There’s a lot of fakes out there who pass their stuff off saying that… are you sure?”
“Yeah. I know what I see and taste.”
Alexandra balanced her briefcase on the back of an old wooden bench and opened it. She withdrew a box wrapped in plastic. She opened the box carelessly, throwing plastic everywhere. Removing packages of chocolate and setting them on the bench, she proceeded to pull out a bag filled with cigarettes. She put the bag in her teeth then set down the briefcase and box on the bench. She took the bag in her left hand and pulled out two cigarettes with her right.
“Viola!” said Alexandra, as she simultaneously and playfully placed one cigarette in her mouth and one in Nicky’s. She lit the cigarettes with a lighter. “How do you like that?”
“It tastes good,” said Nicky while puffing, “I think it tastes good.”
And then Alexandra looked at Nicky, moved her eyes around inspecting the area immediately around him. Her face went through confusion, anger, understanding, then:
“Where’s Ben?” She hardly flinched as she said this.
“You didn’t get the memo?”
“What happened?”
“He got nabbed.”
Alexandra stood stationary, letting her precious smoke fade away into the passing seconds.
“Well,” she finally said, “where is he now?”
“In a portojail. There’s no use thinking about him any more.”
“I need to see him.”
“You can’t. You’ll be nabbed, too.
“You can’t stop me.”
“Oh no.” He seized her arm as she tried to leave. “I have to stop you, if you’re planning to go see him. You’ll endanger the Boss.”
The Boss never did get caught. He was beyond it. They had tried to catch him many times, and would continue long into the late 21st century. At this point, however, he was young and in his prime and simply impossible to catch. Nicky would eventually run into trouble, facing severe punishments, but not The Boss. It was during these years, after all, that Edward Langston would be at his most infamous. His cigarette ring would be prevalent from the 40s all the way until 2072, when modular communication finally made cigarette prohibition completely impossible. But by then, the vast black-market would be shared by many other smuggling tycoons. But in his hey day, Langston was unstoppable.
“That’s silly. I couldn’t possibly endanger him. He’s can take care of himself, and so can I.” Alexandra yanked away from Nicky and started off.
“This isn’t about Ben, is it?” shouted Nicky. Alexandra froze in her tracks, then turned around.
“What do you mean?”
“This is about me. You’re doing this to spite me.”
Alexandra stayed still, waiting for the earth to disappear and relieve her of answering the question. The earth was stubborn.
“I wasn’t aware you could feel spiteful anymore,” said Alexandra finally. “But the truth is, I am doing this for Ben.”
“Well then. That shows how much you really care about either of us.”
Alexandra walked off, much more slowly than the first time. She waited for Nicky to call out to her again. He didn’t.
Nicky stood looking at the puddle. He spit into it, not noticing any difference in the amount of fluid there. He wondered if spitting a thousand times would make the puddle any bigger.
“God damn it, Nicky!”
He turned and saw Alexandra standing there again. She looked like a ghost.
“Why didn’t you tell me before you felt that way?”
“I tried to, subtly. You missed it.”
“I missed it? Why couldn’t you make it clear? Things like that shouldn’t be a puzzle to figure out.”
“I wasn’t that subtle. I dropped lots of hints. But even if I yelled it at you from a megaphone, I mean, even if I drew it with smoke across the sky from an airplane–”
“You don’t think I would have gotten the hint?”
“I feel like I actually did that some times.”
“What?”
“Drew it with smoke. Across the sky. I feel like I actually did that some times. You know. You always wanted everyone to be so clear about it: I love you Alexandra, You’re beautiful and I need you. Well shit. I did say it. I said it a hundred times. But you were always busy being distracted just for the sake of it always being news to you. You wanted it fresh when you came back from your hiatus and decided to start paying attention to those around you. It wasn’t enough for me to scream into the wind, crying for you to turn and acknowledge me as a human being. You waited for my throat to become so sore that when you finally turned to face me, I couldn’t do it.
“But I still did it. Why? Because I felt for you that way. Everyone knew it. The boss knew it. Ben knew it. You sure as hell should have known it. And I knew it. I still know it now–”
“Nicky!” interrupted Alexandra, “I had no idea it was like that.”
“Of course you didn’t. You were too busy with Ben.”
“Oh my God. Ben. He’s still locked up. I need to go see him!”
“You can’t.”
She pondered the truth of this. “Why not? Why must smuggling be like this?”
“It’s not smuggling. I’m not asking you as a smuggler. I’m just asking. Don’t, Alexandra. Please don’t.”
“Why do you have to make this so hard?”
It won’t help him at all. It definitely won’t help me. Why do it? Why go?”
“I need to. Before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” asked Nicky through his hoarse voice, “what will it be too late for that it’s not already too late for?”
“It’s too late for you and me. It’s not too late for me and Ben.”
That was the last thing Nicky ever heard her say.
The nearest prison visitor’s center was close to closing that night. Alexandra walked in just in time, as the civil attendant was about to duck out ten minutes early for supper.
“I’ve come about a recent prisoner.”
“Name?” asked the attendant, quite irascible about having to stay her whole shift that night.
“Mine, or his?”
“Yours.”
“Alexandra Grody.”
The computer communicated to the attendant.
“It says here we have a couple warrants for your arrest, for cigarette smuggling. That’s a very serious crime. Do you wish to address this now?”
“No. I’ll come in another time.”
“Okay. Who are you here to visit?”
“Ben Van Carp.”
The computer communicated again.
“Sorry. We don’t have him in any of our PortaPrison. Are you sure he’s with us?”
“That’s what I hear.”
A series of loud, striking boops came from the computer.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Grody. But we have to arrest you now.”
“Okay.”
Ivan Fields sat drinking at Terry’s bar on University Avenue, holding his beer and telling the story he always told about the crazy bathroom with the crazy-glued toilet seat. He reflected on the many years he had told that story in that bar, going all the way back to when he was only 18 years old and drank there telling that story. It was illegal to sell alcohol to 18 year olds in California back then, but the people at Terry’s never carded.
Nowadays, Terry’s was carding because they were being very careful about legal matters. They were already suspected for involvement in the Milpitas Cigarette Ring, and didn’t want to attract any attention.
At the time, the management at Terry’s did now know it, but that tavern was indeed the center of the Ring. And no one, either at Terry’s or among the authorities, suspected Edward Langston as pulling the whole thing together.
The police had no reason to suspect Terry’s, except that they had been into organized crime for over 100 years, back since when they were a speak-easy.
Edward sat at his table, waiting for Nicky to arrive. He suspected the possibility that Nicky might not, based on an early conversation when Nicky zapped him earlier on the CommuniBox that day:
“How crucial is it that we come in today?”
“It’s a matter of life and death.”
He didn’t mean that he would kill Nicky or anything like that over some money and some cigarettes. He meant that the longer people were out in the open with large quantities of either, the more danger they were in. But he began to think that he was ambiguous when talking earlier that day, and considered that Edward may have been on the run over a misunderstanding.
When the waitress came around, Edward ordered some Jack Daniels and a side of heroin. He decided he wasn’t hungry, but wanted something to pass the time. He decided to take a pharmanap. He ordered some sleep inducer, and went to sleep for about fifteen minutes when Nicky finally came through the door and woke him up.
“Sorry, Did I wake you?”
“No, no. Don’t worry about that. You got everything?”
“Yes.”
“Great. I want to get moving tomorrow, I’m thinking of bringing–” he immediately truncated his sentence and his thought when he noticed simultaneously the hopeless expression on Nicky’s face and the strange matter best embodied in the question: “where’s Alexandra?”
“She went off to see Ben.”
“Stupid strumpet.”
“She totally fucked us!”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll be fine. I took care of everything. It’s just that she gave herself up so needlessly.”
The two looked at each other with new and old understanding. Edward pretended not to hide anything in his eyes. Nicky didn’t hide anything in his eyes, though he tried to.
“She must love Ben,” said Edward.
“Yep. I think there’s more, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I think she went to him to hurt me.”
“That’s so egocentric.”
“I’m serious. I think she left me for him because of she thinks I left her for you in a way. I think my devotion to the business has made her jealous. I think she only began courting Ben after you took all my time from her.”
“Was that before or after I had her?”
Nicky did not know that Edward had had her.
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