Run For the Money (12 page)

Looking after Delmer was a full time job. Lunkhead kid had been a thorn in her side since he was born. The ten years since Mr. Boone passed had been harder than she ever imagined. More than once she thought about a nice beach some place, away from the house and the girls coming and going at all hours, away from Delmer and his proclivities. Sell the house, pack a bag and take off to points unknown. Let the rest sort itself out.

But she stayed, lines on her face deepening despite her skin pulling taught from the stress. Only sixty-three and she looked eighty. When she heard her own voice she couldn’t believe it. Like the Wicked Witch of the West possessed her soul.

She’d given up. Even meeting a man couldn’t help her now, unless he was one of the Dr. Kevorkian suicide doctors. Sylvia Boone was settled into her role as the old crone who frightened children on Halloween. She hated it, but it was her life.

She took a sip of her coffee, black and bitter as she was, and unfolded the paper. Damn thing cost an arm and a leg to get delivered every day. All the girls, her boarders, would tell her about the virtues of online news. It was free, the pictures were in color. Had to have a computer for that shit, though. Who needs it?

She knew the face. Who doesn’t remember a face like that? He came around to see the basement girl, Emma. Sylvia always figured he had something on her. Some kind of blackmail that kept her around a Neanderthal like that. With that girl, it could be anything. She was trouble and Mrs. Boone knew it. Even before Delmer started showing an interest.

Staying on top of his latest crush was harder than teaching a puppy not to pee on the rug. You can smack them with a magazine a million times, but if they get it in their head they want to piss on the carpet, they’re damn well going to do it.

Delmer was like owning a puppy who never grew up. If she came home to find him humping the arm of the couch she wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

He creeped all the girls out, Sylvia knew it. He didn’t. He didn’t see what other people were thinking. It wasn’t part of his wiring. The fact that he grew bigger than a brick shithouse didn’t help the creep factor. And the fact he never left the house made it seem even stranger. He lurked. Even sitting at the breakfast table, he lurked. Couldn’t help it. His dad had been a lurker.

But Emma, all short skirts and alcohol breath and staying out until three a.m., she was like candy to Delmer. Sylvia thought about kicking her out over the two years she’d been in the basement unit, but without a good reason she could take Sylvia to court and cause a big mess. And, “My son the half-wit wants to fuck her all the time,” isn’t a legally binding cause for eviction. So let the kid jerk off and think of her
. If it’s not Emma it’ll be the next girl who moves in
.

But now that face was in the paper. Slick Eddie it said. Robbed a bank then broke out of the van taking him to prison. They found the bodies of two armed guards but not Slick’s body or his partner, Bo. She didn’t recognize his picture. Cute kid, long hair like a hippie. Those were the days. She sighed and remembered a sweet trip to San Francisco in ’67 where she met Mr. Boone. That led to a long courtship that took them from the forests outside of Portland, Oregon to an ashram in Santa Fe to living out of a VW wagon on the beach in Santa Cruz.

Then came the marriage which led to a job which led to a house which led to Delmer. Along the way the exterior took on the look of respectability, but Sylvia never stopped dropping LSD, growing her own pot and sampling whatever new pill Mr. Boone brought home from the pharmacy, a job he trained for expressly for the access to prescription narcotics, which probably led directly to Delmer. When it was obvious the boy wasn’t right Sylvia tried to recount what she had taken during her pregnancy and was horrified by what she could remember and downright scared by what she couldn’t.

The face brought her back to the present. The girl was trouble and she hung out with troublemakers. She had proof now. Grounds to evict her.

She slurped on her coffee sludge and thought to herself, “I’ll get you my pretty . . .”

Emma closed the suitcase, thinking about a nice beach some place, away from this town and the scummy guys and sleazy cops ready to fuck you and then fuck you over, away from Delmer and his creepy looks. Leave the apartment, pack a bag and take off to points unknown. Let the rest sort itself out.

Christ, she didn’t want to end up like Mrs. Boone. That woman was wrecked from a hard life. An easy life was one cardboard box full of cash away. All she needed to do was to shake MacKaye for a few hours to get it.

The guy had to sleep sometime or report back in to the office. There had to be bigger cases than staking out her place twenty-four hours a day.

Time to venture out again, see if she could see her shadow.

She checked the clock: 10:30. Her eye was on a 4:30 flight to Miami. Should be plenty of time to make it. She could put the ticket on her card. Paying cash put you on some sort of watch list she didn’t want to be on. She planned to ditch all her cards and debt and name when she landed wherever she was going; Cayman Islands still held an appeal, but Emma never was one to stick with her first choice. Made eating out with her torture for Slick.

Whatever sun drenched isle she ended up on she could buy a new identity for cheap. At least they did it easy enough on TV.

Emma bolted the door behind her, stepped softly up the stairs from the basement, but it wasn’t Delmer who ambushed her this time, it was Mrs. Boone.

Every time the old woman drifted out of the shadows Emma expected a clap of lightning and thunder followed by a horse whinny like in
Young Frankenstein
. The woman could scare the skin off a snake.

“Emma!” Sylvia barked. “Going out again? You’ve been banging up and down these stairs all day.”

Emma wondered if the word banging was on purpose. She hadn’t exactly been quiet with MacKaye earlier. “Sorry Mrs. Boone. Just trying to get some stuff done. Y’know, errands and stuff.”

“Yes, well . . .” she looked disapproving but decided to get the paperwork together for a legal and proper eviction before breaking the news. Handing her the papers would be so much more satisfying. Hadn’t had a thrill between the thighs in over fifteen years so this was as close as she got. “How’s your boyfriend?” She couldn’t resist the dig.

“Gone. Won’t be back. How’s your husband?” Sylvia scrunched into that just-ate-a-lemon look. Emma grinned as she opened the glass door to the old Victorian. Damn shame, such a beautiful house. All the kids thought it was haunted. Emma couldn’t exactly disagree.

Out on the street she scanned the cars first. No police cruisers. Nothing out of the ordinary. No MacKaye. No SWAT team swooping in. A few nondescript cars, the sound of a vacuum running two doors down and a guy taking a leak against a tree across the street.

Hold the phone.

Emma ducked behind the boat parked next door, stealing MacKaye’s owning hiding place. The pisser wore a suit. A cheap one, but not one that meant he had to do his pissing outside. She watched him shake off and hustle back to a dark blue Ford four door. Alone it was nothing, but now with Mr. Pisser behind the wheel it may as well have had flashing lights and a siren. It was Cop with a capitol C and that rhymes with T and that stands for trouble.

Sure MacKaye had other duties but Emma realized someone would be watching her every move from now on until Slick showed up, if he was still alive and if he hadn’t gotten to the money already.

The thought of being watched gave Emma an idea.

She closed the glass door as quietly as she could, not wanting to alert Sylvia that she was back again. The old bitch had blood in her eye for Emma for a while now and tossing off cracks about her dead husband wasn’t the best way to get back in her good graces.

Emma walked past the stairs down to her apartment and continued through the hall back to Delmer’s room. She knocked quietly.

She heard him moving behind the door, his massive frame unable to be stealthy. She heard him above her while she slept. She heard him pacing the floor when she showered. She knew his movements well, like an anthropologist living in the jungle studying a rare beast, quite possibly the missing link.

The door opened. Delmer’s hair was wet, his expression somewhere between blank and dumb.

“Delmer, I need a favor.”

Emma stayed at the glass door watching. If he stuck to the plan, which she tried to keep as simple as possible, he should distract the cop so she could slip out and make it to the money.

Delmer was certainly someone you noticed and when he started talking it was immediately apparent he wasn’t right so the natural reactions kick in. “Where is your mom or dad?”, odd to say to a man over thirty but easier to understand than, “Where is your state-appointed social worker?”.

Emma crouched low as Delmer crossed the street headed for the right car. One small victory down. He approached the driver’s side and said something.

The door opened and the cop got out. Emma could tell by his body language he was speaking in a pacifying way you use when you talk to children. His hands were out in a calming, palms-down outreach.

Delmer’s back was still to Emma so the cop was facing the house. Even though he was blocked by Delmer’s girth Emma wasn’t one hundred percent sure she had a good enough window to make a break for it. “Just talk to him about something, Delmer,” She’d told him. She should have been more specific, given him talking points, maybe index cards like a talk show host. Who knew what junk he was spewing? Could have been talking about her for all she knew. All she needed was a half turn in either direction. A quick waltz to the left or right and she’d make her break.

Then Delmer hit him. The cop was in mid-sentence and Delmer reared back a right and plowed it into the cop’s jaw. The cop went down like a sack of dirty laundry.

Emma gasped. She obviously hadn’t been specific enough when she told him to “distract” the man in the car. Great. So Delmer would get arrested, he’d tell about their conversation – he had no capacity to lie – Emma would be brought in. Great.

4:30 and Miami was starting to look very far away.

Emma didn’t bother to close the door behind her when she ran.

––––––––

B
o quit high school a little less than three months before graduation. His chance of actually getting his degree on time was what his dad used to call, “Whitman and Theresa. Y’know? Slim and Nun.” That was the first time his dad hid his drugs.

Bo tore the house up then, too. A few times after that as well. Looking for his stash, for things to sell, cash laying around. Never for car keys. As he dug through another drawer of junk in the kitchen – expired coupons, dead batteries, used-up chapsticks – he thought what a golden opportunity he missed. If he’d sold a car in high school for dope money he’d have been in the shit.

He also knew he’d have been dead. He knew it. A part of him missed getting high on crystal every damn day, but a growing part of him was glad he’d left that world behind and was quite proud of himself that he’d done it without any programs, no come-to-Jesus moments, no steps. He wasn’t proud it had taken his father’s death to spur him on.

It was hard to feel proud of tearing apart your senile mother’s kitchen looking to steal her car, but this situation called for a modification of what he considered justified.

The banging had stopped. Wanda may have passed out or gotten tired. From what Bo saw already she may have forgotten where the hell she was.

“Mom, you tell me where the keys are and I’ll let you out of there.”

“I’m just so disappointed in you, Bo.”

That was nothing new.

He overturned a crystal bowl filled with hard candy. No keys but several of those butterscotch candies he liked as a kid. He unwrapped one and popped it in his mouth. Made him want a nice, calming Percocet. Almost immediately he spit it back out. Christ, he used to like those things? He calculated the very good chance they were from the same bag of candy Mom put out twenty years ago.

Someone at the door knocked out the first part of
Shave and A Haircut
. Bo inched backwards, hoping his mom hadn’t heard. Three steps back and he kicked the side table spilling the crystal bowl, the hard candy, her vampire novel and the lamp in a heap on the wood floor. It sounded like a piano falling down a flight of stairs.

“Wanda? You alright?” It was a woman’s voice. Concerned. The kind who would call an ambulance if she didn’t answer. All those damn “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” ads have created a generation of paranoid old biddies.

Bo opened the door. Wanda’s oldest friend, Maude, stood there holding a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies and a black purse with a newspaper sticking out of it. She knew Bo immediately. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting. It’s Maude, right?”

“Right. Where’s Wanda?” She pushed past him through the door. Bo spied her car at the curb.

“She stepped out. I was actually thinking of going to look for her. Have you noticed she’s not all there these days?”

“Yes, I have. That’s why I check on her every day.” She eyed him up and down like he hadn’t merely stepped in dog shit, but had dropped and rolled around in it. “No one else seems willing to.”

“Y’know, can I borrow your car to go check on her? I’m really getting worried.”

She recoiled as if he’d asked to feel her titties. “No, you may not.” She looked down at the wreckage of the side table. “Where is she really?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m worried.”

“Maude?” Wanda’s voice was far away. Maude turned her head to the upstairs.

“What have you done with her?”

Bo put out his hands to pacify the old lady. “She’s having one of her episodes. I don’t think she should see anyone right now.”

“Oh what the hell do you know, you goddamn drug addict. I was a nurse for thirty-five years. I think I can handle her. Is she upstairs?”

Bo stepped in front of her to block. “I really think this is a family matter.”

“If I see any family around here I’ll let you know.” She dropped a shoulder and faked left, went right like a running back. Bo got caught up on the fallen side table and she was gone, her cookie bag rattling in her hand and making crumbs. He dodged the obstacle and cut her off at the foot of the stairs.