Free The Divide by Robert Charles Wilson Page A

the bill to his hip pocket. “So what is it you want?”
    “Amphetamines,” the Chess Player said, and Tony was briefly amused at how dainty he made it sound: am
phet
amines.
    “How many?”
    “How many have you got?”
    Tony did a little mental calculation. He began to feel better. “Come with me,” he said.
    Down the block to the Corvette. Checking the guy out sideways as they walked. Tony kept most of his stock in the back of the “Vette. He had been ripped off twice; and while that was something you expected—he was not a volume dealer and he could eat the occasional losses—it was also something you didn’t want to set yourself up for. But Tony was fairly smart about people (his Cree instinct, he told himself), and he didn’t believe the Chess Player was a thief. Something else. Something strange, maybe something a little bit dangerous. But not a thief.
    Tony opened the car door and rooted out a Ziploc bag of prescription pharmaceuticals from the space under the driver’s seat. He held the bag low inside the angle of the door, displaying it to the buyer but not to the public. “Some of these suit your fancy?”
    “All of them.”
    “That would be—you’d be talking some serious money there.”
    He named a price and the Chess Player peeled off the bills. Large money amounts and no haggling. It was like a dream. Tony stuffed the cash into his rear pocket, a tight little bulge. He could go home. He could have a drink. He was prepared to celebrate.
    But the Chess Player leaned in toward him and said, very quietly and calmly, “I want the car, too.”
    Tony was too startled to react at once. The Corvette! It was his only real possession. He had bought it from a retired dentist in Mississauga for a fraction of what it was worth. Put some money into it. The fiberglass body had been through some serious damage, but that was purely cosmetic. Under the hood, it was mainly original numbers. “Fuck, man, you can’t have my car—that’s my car.”
    But it came out like a whine, a token protest, and Tony realized with a deep sense of shock that he
was
afraid of this man; it was just that he could not say exactly why.
    Big, almost luminous eyes peering into his. Christ, Tony thought, he can see right through me!
    Without blinking, the Chess Player pulled out his roll of bills again.
    Tony stared at the cash as it came off the roll. It was like a machine at work. Crisp new money. He counted up to $5000; then—without thinking—he said, “Hey, look, I paid less than that for it… it needs bodywork, you know?”
    The Chess Player put the money in Tony’s vest pocket. The touch of his fingers there was weirdly disturbing. “Buy a new car,” the Chess Player said. “Give me the keys.”
    Be damned if Tony didn’t do just that. Handed them over without a word. Mysterious.
    He would spend a lot of long nights wondering about it.
    The Chess Player was about to climb in and drive away when Tony shook his head—it was like waking up from a bad dream into a hangover—and said, “Hey! My
property!”
    “Take what you want,” the Chess Player said.
    Panicking, Tony retrieved ten ounces of seeded brown marijuana and a milk carton of Valium and stuffed them hastily into a brown paper A&P bag.
    The door slammed closed as the Corvette pulled away.
    He watched as the automobile faded into the night traffic, southbound on Church, all the while thinking to himself: What was that? Jesus Christ almighty!—what
was
that?
     
     
    John Shaw stopped off at the apartment to pack a change of clothes and leave a note.
    Within ten minutes he had folded every useful item into two denim shoulderbags, including the bulk of the money he had withdrawn from his private accounts. The note to Amelie was more difficult.
    He hesitated over pen and paper, thinking about the man who had sold him the Corvette.
    He wasn’t proud of what he’d done. It was a skill he had mastered a long time ago, a finely honed vocabulary of body and voice.