The Pickup

Nadia took the job because rent was due and the app said it paid four hundred dollars for one delivery. That should have been the warning. Four hundred dollars is not a delivery fee, it is a bribe, and she knew that, and she clicked accept anyway because the landlord had stopped being polite. The pickup was a dry cleaner on Voss Street. The man behind the counter did not look like he worked there. He handed her a padded envelope the size of a paperback, surprisingly heavy, taped shut along every edge. "Pier nine," he said. "You have forty minutes from now. Not forty-five. Not fifty. If you're late, leave it in a trash can and walk away and forget my face." Then he looked at the clock on the wall, and so did she, and the second hand was already moving.