Run For the Money (13 page)

“She doesn’t want to see anyone.”

“What are you on? Pills? Cocaine?”
I wish
, thought Bo. Maude squinted an eye at him as if she could divine what was running through his bloodstream.

“I’m clean now, Maude. Have been for two years.” He stood back trying not to impose. Such a sweet face. His blond hair and blue eyes gave him a young appearance. Maude could still see the little boy in him. Such a happy young man back before the troubled times.

She remembered the newspaper in her hand. She held it up in front of her like an exorcist wielding a cross.

“You’re supposed to be in prison!”

“Maude, is that you?” came another call from the closet. Maude perked up, followed the sound. Wanda rattled the doorknob on the tiny hall closet door. Maude looked at Bo with fear growing over her face.

Bo rolled his eyes, not wanting to do what he needed to.

Before he could react she swung out with the purse and hit him on the side of the head. Bo staggered and she hit him again. When she swung a third time he grabbed her wrist and twisted down. Her frail bones crunched under his grip. She dropped the purse and cried out like a wounded cat.

Bo let go. Maude reverted back to some decades-old self-defense instruction. She kicked at Bo’s crotch, kicked again, punched at him, kicked once more, each blow landing on his thighs, his stomach, his hips. He swatted them all away easily, but she kept coming like a stubborn bird banging against a window.

Bo was reluctant to touch her again, frustrated like a bouncer at a bar hoping the drunk guy would just go away so he didn’t have to get blood on his shoes.

Maude reached into her bag, pulled out a can of mace and sprayed.

Bo jerked out of the way but the spray spread out in a cloud. Instantly his eyes stung and his throat burned.

“God Dammit!” He wiped at his eyes futilely. Maude also felt the effects of the dissipated cloud of spray and she slapped hands over her eyes and cried like a woman at funeral.

“Come on, Maude!” Bo was angry now. It made the rest easier.

Bo stepped forward, grabbed her up in a bear hug and lifted her across the room. His feet crushed several butterscotch candies as he went. He set her down hard outside the closet door and pinched her arms to her side with his arm hooked around her. She struggled, but was weak. She tried to kick at his crotch again and he jerked his arm tighter, thought he felt ribs breaking. She cried out again, this time sounding like the same cat was stuck in a garbage disposal. The fight was all out of Maude. He loosened his grip as he fumbled through tear-streaked eyes for the door knob. He found it and unlocked the door.

Wanda stood tucked in between two winter coats, the look on her face was of someone emerged from a cave after years of isolation. Bo shoved Maude inside. There wasn’t enough room to fall down.

He slammed the door again, but it bounced back at him with another howl of pain like the cat was being strangled with piano wire. He looked down and saw Maude’s right foot sticking partly out of the closet, an odd angle to her orthopedic shoes. He kicked lightly at her foot, another yelp of pain, then slammed the door, locked it.

Bo walked back across the room, angry. The mace still hung in the air like a bad memory and he cursed again. The thought of his share of the money was slowly losing out to wanting to get a mellow high on. These racing thoughts put him right back to the days when he needed the speed to get healthy. The anger in his veins was too familiar and it made an ugly combo with being in this house where anger had practically been his roommate growing up. He should have had bunk beds. Fighting with his parents, cops bringing him home, hating himself for giving in to the want to smoke the pipe, snort the line.

Get the fuck out was priority number one.

Bo picked up Maude’s purse, dumped it out and found her keys. He snatched up a small fold of bills with a grocery list tucked into it. He read the first item – cat food – then crumpled and tossed it and turned for the front door. Cutting through the hot anger in his brain he could hear the kicking and banging on the door. He felt certain if they really put their minds to it they could get out. Either way when it was all over, when he had his share of the cash and was on his way out of town, he would call the police and send them over to the rescue. She was his Mother, after all.

Out front, Bo climbed behind the wheel of a green Dodge Dart. He almost didn’t fit without adjusting the seat back away from the wheel.

He’d only been to Emma’s twice, but felt fairly sure he could find it again.

––––––––

M
oneybags. Shit. She needed moneybags.

Emma stepped off the bus in front of a mini mall anchored by a laundromat. A Chinese food joint, a wig store, one vacant storefront and a dentist filled out the ugly, low stain on the landscape. Emma wondered how bad your teeth would have to be before you went to a strip mall dentist. A sign in the window advertised Extractions $99. With a rusty set of pliers, no doubt. As long as the nitrous was good.

MaxSecure storage waited across the street, but if she went in empty-handed she might draw attention on the bus back home with $642,000 in cash cradled in her arms like a baby.

Emma stepped into the Wash n‘ Go laundry. A Hispanic woman looked up from her magazine for a moment. She sat in front of a washer gyrating gently in the spin cycle. The whole place was a wash of white noise from the machines and smelled like being in a fifty-year-old’s panties on date night, all fake flower scent and slightly damp. The Hispanic woman went back to her gossip. Three dryers spun against the back wall with one twenty-something rocking a baby stroller back and forth. The moist heat and constant hum of the dryers had put the baby to sleep.

Emma thought for a second, pausing at the door, then stepped back to the wall of dryers.

“Is that your car out there?” she asked the young mother.

“Where?”

“Out in the lot. Some guy clipped it with his pickup. I think he’s driving away.”

“Are you serious?” She was standing, craning her neck over the washers to see out into the cramped concrete lot. “Shit.”

She pushed the stroller quickly and the sudden movement jolted the baby awake. He was not happy about it. The cries faded as she raced for the door and Emma scanned the three windows into the dryers. At the third she found what she needed. She pulled the door and the tumble began to slow. She reached in and grabbed for a pillowcase. She got a nursing bra first, let it go, and grabbed again. She landed on what she wanted and quickly stuffed it up under her sweatshirt, the slightly damp cotton sticking to her belly. She shut the dryer door and the machine picked up speed again.

Emma headed for the door. As she ducked out she could see the mother doing laps around her beat up Chevy looking for damage. How she could tell a new ding from what was already there Emma wasn’t sure, but the search was enough to allow Emma to escape.

She bypassed the lobby entrance of MaxSecure and went around to the three-story building in back. The one housing the garage-sized storage sheds, the ones where all the dead bodies could be found or at least the urban myth of them.

She found it hard to move with the pillowcase sucking on to her front like a tumor, so she took it out and held it; a kid on Halloween about to get one hell of a treat.

She climbed the stairs to the third floor and found the locker number she knew by heart. She entered the combination and opened the door. A pile of lose encyclopedia pages avalanched out onto her feet.

Emma’s heart sank.
He’s been here. It’s gone
.

Part of her was sad about the money, but another part was sad because Slick had come for the money and not her.

When the door opened it automatically triggered the compact florescent bulb and she watched the corkscrew warm up and fill the tiny locker with a bile-colored light. She stepped in, feet slipping on pages Cod - Denmark, and pulled the door closed behind her, sweeping stray pages inside with her. Her stomach heaved as if she were at a crime scene and her feet were sliding on guts. The money, her plans – gone. Fuck that MacKaye and his prying eyes. If she’d gotten here last night when she wanted to . . .

A box with a lid on it. Two. Maybe. Just maybe.

Emma lifted a lid, her movements amplified in the tiny tin room. A neat row of leather bound spines. N - Z. Another box. A - M. Two rows of spines still intact. Maybe.

Emma lifted at the corner of volume G. The two-inch wide spine tilted up and came out easily. Light. The pages inside having been severed, now laying strewn across the locker floor taking her footprints.

Between the wine-colored hard-bound spine – the money.

Emma had to catch her breath. She’d seen it before and felt the thrill, the night Slick came home from the bank, but this was like finding a buried treasure. Before she could think about it she let out a howl of joy. Staring down at the neat rows of money was even better than looking down at MacKaye’s tight abs working as he banged into her.

The order of it all was impressive. Tight stacks held together by crisp bands with numbers on them. Numbers with lots of zeros. Row after row tucked inside the hollowed out encyclopedias. She pulled out A through F and ran her fingers along the patient rows of money, taking a last admiring look at them before transferring them to the stolen pillowcase.

She couldn’t believe a tiny pile of bills, wrapped in a belt marked $10,000 could actually be so much money. She regretted having to undo that belt and spend it. But then again, Emma smiled, a belt is best when it’s come undone and let loose the package inside.

She quickly moved the H through M side of the box into the cream-colored pillowcase and took several loose pages to make a cover over the cash should anyone look inside.

She could barely lift the sack, but flung it over her shoulder like a badly cast Santa Claus. When it slumped over her shoulder the cluster of cash stacks punched into her kidney and she nearly lost her balance. She bent over and took a moment to recover. If she got into trouble on the bus the sack would make a good weapon.

Emma exited the locker backwards, the sack leading the way, looking more like the Grinch after he’d stolen all the Whos’ toys. She kicked with her feet trying to keep the sliding hill of paper from spilling out into the hall, as noticeable as a blood stain.

When she turned two faces were smiling at her.

Cue Ball and Eight stood with arms crossed, blocking her way to the stairs.

“I thought I heard a mouse rustling up in here,” said Eight.

“Yeah, making an awful racket,” said Cue Ball.

Emma cursed her excitement that overpowered her need to keep quiet inside the reverberant metal room.

“Girl, we already been and gone from that one. Ain’t shit in there.”

“Looks like she found something,” Cue pointed at the bag.

“It’s my locker,” said Emma, unmoving.

“You must really like to read then.”

Emma nodded. Moments like this were when she wanted Slick by her side, but also when she was grateful for the six months of Krav Maga she took two years ago. She’d put back all the weight she’d lost, but those crazy Israelis sure did know how to fight.

“What’s in the bag, girl?” asked Eight.

“Some paper.” Green. Rectangular. Pictures of the founding Fathers.

“Mind if we have a look?” Cue Ball grinned.

“It’s my paper.”

“Well, now how do we know that? Does it have your name on it?”

“I’m gonna call security.”

Cue Ball and Eight laughed. “Security?” bellowed Eight to prove his point that no one could hear them. “This isn’t Fort Knox, girl. This here is just a bunch of old shit people can’t even be bothered to keep at their house. Some of it is worth something, most of it is worth nothing, but it’s all shit people don’t care too much about. So when I see you hanging on to that bag like it’s gonna keep you alive if the Titanic goes down, that makes me wonder.”

“I told you, just paper.”

Cue stepped forward. “Then you don’t mind if we take it with us. We might need to start a fire later on.”

Two against one, girl against guys, no one could hear them. Hardly seemed fair.

Emma swung out with the pillowcase. It barely made the turn in the narrow hallway, but caught Cue Ball as he stepped into it. Sixty-four little bricks of cash cracked into the side of his face. Emma used good softball form and followed through with her swing which pushed Cue’s head along with the bag. Both stopped dead against the wall of the hallway. The building rattled, corrugated walls shaking under the wrecking ball collision.

Cue Ball’s knees buckled and he fell, disoriented, to the floor. Eight accelerated across the six-foot divide between them and Emma knew she couldn’t raise the sack again to swing. She opened her hands and felt the slight nausea come back briefly when she let go of the cash.

She dropped into a defensive stance as Eight came at her throat. Her muscle memory booted up classroom mode and she did a perfect deflection into a crotch kick which landed square on the mark. Eight doubled over which pushed his face forward at her like a battering ram. She used the heel of her hand to crack across the bridge of his nose and for the first time after so many classes spent simulating the action on each other and a rubber dummy, she finally felt the sensation of breaking someone’s nose.

Eight stood up straight and grabbed at his face, the blood coming quickly. Emma reached out and took his right wrist, twisted his hand back over itself and pushed down.  He was like a marionette under her control.

With an echoing cry of pain he turned where she wanted and let himself be guided into locker #323. Eight had a fleeting thought of Cue Ball’s birthday. Things pop into your mind at the damnedest times.

Emma pulled down hard on the wrist and felt something give way. It wasn’t bone, but she felt sure she’d ripped some tendons or something. Some kind of sports injury without the sport.

She quickly turned to Cue Ball who was coming around from his blow to the head. She stomped down on his crotch like crushing a cockroach in the bathroom. His face reddened and he cupped his balls.