As an Ambassador for the Top Sam, Keys worked alone. There were often long stretches of time when the only words she spoke were to order food or to dispense orders and, quite frequently, threats. It was a solitary, isolated life that few could embrace. Keys not only embraced it, but she aggressively courted, proposed to, and married it. Her passionate devotion to her chosen career could be held up to young couples as a template to model new marriages after, so long as they left out the parts around body counts.
Her work often led her to some, we’ll say “sketchy”, characters over the years. The typical interaction between a Black Sams ambassador and a Sketchy Character usually followed a simple formula: contact, exchange of something valuable from the ambassador for something valuable from the Sketchy Character, then breaking contact. Occasionally more was broken than contact, however, if said Sketchy Character asked too many questions or decided the agreed upon something of value wasn’t valuable enough and they would like more value.
Ambassador Keys normally lived for those moments when the formula broke down. When the Sketchy Character thought he/she/they were in a position to negotiate with the Sams, Keys made sure they learned their lesson pronto. Or more accurately, their next of kin learned it. Nobody double crosses the Black Sams, and the last person one should even hint to crossing the organization was an ambassador.
Keys was feeling something she hadn’t felt since her first days after joining the motorcycle gang faction of the Sams years ago, long before her promotion into the upper echelons of gangster enforcement. As she walked toward a side door of a solitary warehouse located on the southern periphery of Pueblo, Colorado, Keys felt a shiver of fear. She glanced around. There were no vehicles in the parking lot, aside from her black Lexus SUV and the 18-foot moving truck (with the crate holding the weird table) that followed her over the past three days from Virginia. The drivers were low-level functionaries, only aware they were working for someone involved in possibly illegal activities but clueless as to who it was they were ultimately employed by. Keys left them with the truck as she made contact, since the less they knew, the less likely she’d have to consider them loose ends in need of taking care of once the mission was over.
Her contact was supposed to meet at the warehouse now. There was no allowance for “running late” with this kind of business transaction. Being the cautious professional, she arrived at the location about an hour prior to give time to case the area and evaluate potential threats. In that time, no vehicles had come or gone. That absence of activity and the empty parking lot bothered Keys. The town of Pueblo was very small, and the area surrounding the warehouse was open, desert-like terrain bounded to the west by the Rocky Mountains. There didn’t seem to be anywhere an ambush could be set, except for inside the building itself. If the Sketchy Character she was supposed to deliver the crate hadn’t arrived, then she had to be ready for complications.
The warehouse had three entrances. The main front door had a security pad, which Keys knew the code to open, and a side door which required a key, a copy of which was in her hand. The only other way in was through the loading docks in the back, which could only be opened from the inside, so she ruled them out for her immediate use. She didn’t like the idea of entering either of the doors, however, because if there were multiple Sketchy Characters, they’d certainly be watching for her at both points. But of the two, the side door was the best option, since there were no cameras and if someone was waiting, they wouldn’t know she was there until she opened it. But she’d have to move fast. She pulled her Glock out of its holster, and thought through the best way to…
The door opened. How exactly it did this was unclear, since there wasn’t anyone in the doorway.
Keys lowered her weapon and peered into the shadowy innards of the warehouse. From her vantage point, all she could make out were some empty pallets and trash. The only obvious illumination was coming from the narrow windows along the top of the warehouse walls.
Was this an invitation? If so, it was pretty creepy. She felt that shiver again, and she hated it.
It was quiet, too, with only the rustling of dormant weeds in a light winter breeze making any sound. The door didn’t even make any noise when it opened, and it was a heavy, rusted beast.
The door suddenly slammed shut, and Keys dropped to the ground, weapon again ready for action. Almost as soon as it had thundered closed, it swung open again. Keys frowned. She had the sense the warehouse was…annoyed. She stood, assumed a Weaver stance, and then slowly walked toward the open portal. She made it only a few steps before she noticed a light beginning to fill the building.
I guess the customer is here after all. Keys holstered her gun. It wasn’t professional to make contact with a customer with weapons drawn, no matter how sketchy. After one more quick glance around the outside, she stepped in. She nearly swore.
The truck was inside, the back open. She looked left and right, then up into the cab. The two drivers were there, but looked to be sound asleep.
How the HELL did this truck get in here? She stepped to her right, fighting the urge to pull out her Glock once more. She walked to the loading docks. There were four of them, and they were all closed. But it didn’t matter. The docks were not big enough to allow anything larger than maybe a pickup truck through. Even then, she knew there wasn’t a ramp or a lift of any sort outside. Trucks backed up to the docks, opened their doors, dropped off their deliveries or picked up outgoing shipments, and then they left.
So again, she thought: How the HELL did the truck get in here? Especially since she had just left it not five minutes ago, and there wasn’t the hint of a sound of the truck’s engine starting.
“Hey! You two bozos. Wake up!” She approached the cab.
“They are unable to hear you, Ambassador,” said a voice from a corner of the warehouse.
Keys turned and looked. Nothing was there but a stack of old wooden pallets, a bucket, and some lumber stacked vertically against the wall. Now she was getting mad. She cleared her throat.
“Mr. Mann?” she asked.
“Count Mann,” said the voice.
Keys’ skin crawled as shadows around the stacked pallets seemed to coalesce into a man.
That was crazy, of course, he was always there, but somehow she had looked right past him. If he wanted to, she realized, he could have killed her.
“I’m sorry, Count. But I’m a little freaked out. How did you get my truck in here?”
Count Mann glided by her, and she instinctively stepped back. His weird skin was unnerving. He looked so frail and poorly assembled, she wondered if she punched him whether his head would burst.
“Your payment is next to the loading dock,” he answered. “You may leave.”
A number of kinetic methods of responding to this creep bubbled up as Keys took in a quiet breath. As a professional working for one of the most powerful gangsters in the world, there were few things that triggered her. Being ignored was one of them. And it had been a long time since any “business associate” of the Sams thought it a reasonable thing to be so dismissive of one of the Ambassadors.
“I’d like to take a look at the payment first, Count Dracula,” she replied. Whatever annoyance she may have felt at her slip in professionalism was eclipsed by her irritation from Mann’s disinterest that she was in the warehouse with him at all.
She walked over to a large, half-filled burlap sack set down beside the garage door. It was heavy. She looked in. There was gold. Diamonds. Rubies. Some kind of silver bottle which shimmered red and green when the light struck it. It was breathtaking.
“Oh, Ambassador,” said Mann, snapping Keys’ attention away from the treasure. She turned and looked at him. He was standing before the open back of the truck. It was empty. How had he unloaded it by himself? And where was the table? He had had only minutes where he could have removed the massively heavy crate. “ Please deliver a message to Top Sam Hector Marshall. It is of the utmost importance.”
She had questions, but Keys knew she wouldn’t get any answers. She simply nodded.
“Speak to him the following: our original bargain is now complete. We are satisfied. Please now acquire the clock of which we spoke. This must be done quickly, as there are now other parties likely to seek it. As promised, the reward will be great. It has been refreshing to find like-minded business associates in this part of the galaxy. Visionary beings such as yourself will thrive in the world to come.”
That last part didn’t sound good. It sounded ominous. But she’d heard worse from other gangsters. At least this message didn’t mention anything about killing anyone.
“Oh,” said Mann, “and please also tell Top Sam Hector Marshall that as a token of our friendship, we will help kill the pest David Razorback Mitchell.”
Ah, she thought. There it is.
She exited out the front door. It was just as the lock clicked into place she realized the delivery truck was parked close to but not quite where she had left it just before entering the warehouse. The two drivers suddenly stirred. They looked comically stunned for a few moments, then started chatting quietly. Keys hefted the sack with the treasure over her shoulder and headed for her SUV. She needed to call the Top Sam and…
Wait. Did Mann say, “this part of the galaxy?”