Run For the Money (14 page)

She grabbed one ear, remembering the day her instructor told the class that all it took was thirty-three pounds of pressure to detach an ear from a human head. The broken nose had felt good under her hand and she entertained the thought of finding out what pulling a guy’s ear off felt like, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be holding a severed ear so she twisted and pulled but didn’t jerk upward. Cue Ball obeyed.

His body dropped on Eight and they both splayed out across the boxes and piles of paper. Emma thought about trying to find some method of tying them up, but decided escape was the higher priority. She swung up with the pillow case and smashed the spiral lightbulb sending a snow shower of fragments to the floor then she slammed the door which plunged them into darkness and she spun the tumblers on the combination. Locked in. Waiting for the night patrol to hear them.

Emma lifted her pillowcase of money and went out to catch the bus back home, laughing to herself about what would happen if she held out a stack of ten grand and asked the driver if he had change.

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B
o slapped the steering wheel over and over like he was swatting at a stubborn mosquito who refused to die.

Outside the car, the quiet calm of the intersection was broken by the muted profanities slipping past the rolled up windows. The 1970 Dart was 100% original which would have been worth something on a Camaro or GTO or Barracuda or other cars of a similar vintage, but a Dodge Dart is a Dodge Dart, original avocado paint or not. He was driving a Grandma car and Maude didn’t even have kids.

A headache grew behind his eyes, a bullet lodged there by dark thoughts. The only time he wished for a twelve step mantra or a sponsor to call were moments like these when the needle on his will power dipped to E. The headache would go away instantly if he got his lips around a warm glass pipe or a rolled up dollar bill went up his nose.

Not today
, he kept repeating to himself.

He tried to push the thoughts out of his head but when he did the image behind it was of his mother and her friend locked in a closet fighting for space with his old ski boots. He could hear his mother’s voice calling out for her husband, the man Bo drove to an early death.

He’d given passing thought to settling the score for his dad’s death, but never seriously. Bo was a pacifist at heart. Only reason he took the job with Slick was that he promised no guns. That and the money. Half of the take. $321,000. That would surely buy a locksmith to get Mom out and unlock the door to a new life.

Run far enough away and the bad thoughts can’t catch you. But now he was in the middle of his past like a quicksand all around him. Seeing the places he grew up, the places he was happy before it all went to shit. Meeting people who knew his dad and watching their eyes change as they recognized him and the scarlet letter he wore on his chest.

He’d been trying to get away for a long time, but with that money he could really get away.

Away from places like the one the Dart rolled past. Linda Vista park. A square of green, picnic area, playground, and all the meth, pot, heroin and coke you could ever want in a tiny burg like this.

His old stomping ground.

Bo wasn’t sure if it was on his way to Emma’s or if his subconscious steered the car by ESP. He hadn’t been back since he got clean. Parents still sent their kids to play there. Cops were mostly clueless about what went on. The way things move in the dope world it may have been old news, like hair metal or pagers – here one day, gone the next. Dopers were a fickle lot. Especially when one of the top dogs like Crankhead Bob got killed.

The park sat empty except for a boy no more than fourteen doing tricks on his BMX bike off the lip of the non-working fountain, a small pool of rainwater collected in the basin. Bo was part of the reason that fountain had been drained. After the tenth time he dumped detergent in it to watch the foam build up to blizzard proportions, the city shut it off and it stayed off for years. One bad apple ruining it for everyone else.

Downed branches littered the grass and the kid’s bike tires left deep ruts when he ran over the still soggy greenery.

Bo parked. He sat behind the wheel. He thought about his options. He thought about how good a little meth would feel.

Chances were good Slick went after the money as soon as he left Bo for dead in the rain. Chances were good Slick would go for Emma too. Chances were equally good Bo was too late and his three hundred grand was gone. With that much money Slick could get lost for a lifetime. Bo had no chance.

Chances were slim Slick, being a wanted man and all, took off to get hid and said screw the money. Since Bo hadn’t been arrested yet, then chances were slim Slick had already been apprehended by the police. Chances were slim Slick would be anywhere the money was not.

Whitman and Theresa, Dad used to say. Slim and Nun.

A knock on the window. Bo jumped, snapped free from his haze, the pinpoint headache rushing back into place to bore deeper into his skull with a tiny hot-tipped drill.

It was the BMX kid. Bo rolled down the window with the hand crank, the sweet smell of decaying leaves floating in on the cool moist air.

“Yo, you looking to buy?”

Bo blinked at the kid. Up close he was more like twelve or thirteen. Black hoodie, worn jeans, Vans on his feet, chomping on gum. Could be any BMX rider for the last twenty-five years. Some things never change.

“Buy what?” said Bo

The kid pulled an ‘are you crazy?’ face. He spoke like a bad actor in an after school special of what a drug dealer was supposed to talk like. A hint of a Mexican/Cuban drug cartel accent sneaking in for “authenticity.” “The fuck you think, man? I got smoke, I got powder.”

The kid looked around for cops, but it came off more like looking for his dad before he snuck into the cookie jar.

“You got crank?”

“What’d I just say, fool? How much you need?”

Bo pictured the kid at his dinner table, speaking like a Mouseketeer, all please and thank you and let me help with the dishes, Mom. He tried to see himself, before, but this kid was different. Too young. The kid was still cultivating his first crop of pimples and from the looks of it he had a lot of years of squeezing and shyness ahead of him. That young he probably had a bad news brother who got him selling. Or maybe a shitty home life, Dad beating on him, Mom who didn’t care. Not like Bo, an only son to devoted parents whom he shit all over because he was too scared to do anything else.

He made his choices and he made them bad. He sat in the stolen car thinking how easy it would be to hand over Maude’s cat food money and make another bad decision. Like spitting in the ocean.

He realized what he hadn’t those years ago when he was busy fucking up his parents’ life alongside his own – his bad decisions contributed to other people’s bad decisions. If he bought from this kid he was choosing bad times two and those days were over. The money made it so. The money he had to try for, even if he wound up empty handed.

“Who are you selling for?”

“What? Fuck you.”

“Who are you selling for?”

“You don’t want to buy then fuck off in your grandma’s car and leave me alone.”

The kid spit on the windshield. The gob of saliva had a pink tint to it from the gum he chewed. Bo watched it slide down the glass, heard the kid laugh.

Bo opened the door. It caught the kid broadside in the leg, which was up high on a pedal ready to take off, and knocked him off balance. Bo was out and standing over him before he could get untangled from the bike. Bo reached down and grabbed the hoodie, pulled the strings tight and hauled the kid’s face up so he hung by only the hood, his legs still on the ground, head hanging back like he was trying to see his own spine.

Bo bent down and stayed quiet but intense, the searing poker behind his eyes pushing his words out hot and sharp. “Stop it. Fucking cut it out, kid. You’ll die. You hear me? You’ll die if you keep it up.”

“Jesus, fuck, don’t kill me, man.” His voice was back to pure suburban white kid.

“It won’t be me. I’m not your friend. It’ll be someone who says they are. Someone who says they’ll be there for you. Someone who says this is only temporary. Someone who says you can get out when you want to.” The kid squeezed his eyes shut, but tears leaked out and ran down his temples like his spit down the windshield. “So fucking cut it out.”

Bo dropped him. Gave a glance around to make sure no one saw. The park and streets around them were deserted. The kid started choking. He coughed and hacked until the wad of gum came shooting out and flew down next to the tire of the Dart. Then the kid scrambled and kicked like a victim in a zombie movie, clawing to his feet and dragging his bike with him a few feet before hopping on and pedaling away.

Bo looked to the ground where the kid had been. Two baggies sat in his place, tied tight with rubber bands. Each held a dozen other tiny bags inside, one with rocks and one with powder. Bo stared, the headache anvil-heavy behind his eyes.

He reached down, picked them up, walked to a trash can and dumped them in. He got into the Dart and drove away, running the wipers as he went.

Bo reached Emma’s and wasn’t sure exactly how. Between second guessing every street name along the way to the daydreaming about what he would do if he could actually get his money, he could barely make a left turn. But like a bomb-sniffing dog his heightened senses drew him to the right location.

He parked the Dart at the end of the block and got out. No police cruisers with flashing lights. No yellow crime scene tape. None of Slick’s calling cards. For the first time, Bo had a moment to stop and think about the betrayal. He’d been so consumed with guilt for his own easy sellout of Slick to the cops he hadn’t seen Slick’s return of the favor as anything other than a justified comeuppance. But now, with the smell of the money in his nostrils, the ruthless cold in Slick’s face as he plunged that van down the ravine started to boil Bo’s blood.

Much of his anger came from the fact Bo couldn’t imagine himself finding the money. All he saw was Slick and Emma on a beach somewhere enjoying his $321,000. Even before the money, Slick’s fright-mask face pressing into Emma and breathing hard in her ear gave Bo a sour stomach. Now to think of him humping her on a pile of Bo’s hard-earned cash was nauseating.

Emma seemed like such a nice girl. She certainly looked Bo up and down the few times they’d met. A girl happy with her man doesn’t do that. It was like she was measuring him for a condom and which side of the bed he liked. Maybe deciding if he was worth riding bareback.

Bo knew the type, though. Bad boys did it for all kinds of girls. At least she wasn’t stripping. Those extra pounds and maybe the chin moles kept her off the pole, but she took out her daddy issues in the men she liked to fuck. It sure wasn’t love.

Bo waited behind a tree and scouted the street for five minutes. Nothing. The blue Crown Victoria screamed cop, but no one was on duty. Bo walked casually past the car then around to the street side. Drops of what looked like blood stained the pavement by the door. Not enough to be deadly, maybe old enough to be something else. A neighborhood kid with a skinned knee, perhaps. A game of catch that ended in a bloody nose. Didn’t have to be sinister.

Bo continued on to the mean looking Victorian. It was the kind of house you wouldn’t be surprised had a mass grave in the back yard. Or at least bats in the attic.

He ducked down the driveway in between a boat on a trailer and the Victorian. He crouched low by the thin windows into the basement apartment. All was quiet, the lights off.

Gone forever or just getting supplies for a trip out of town? He’d have to wait to find out.

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S
lick took back all the times he called Lance Armstrong a pussy; bike riding was hard.

He was on his way to the money. The money won out over Emma by sheer proximity. No way he was riding any further on this damn bike than he had to.

His legs had that heat-from-the-inside feeling of his muscles releasing chemicals he couldn’t name. At least there was a cool breeze even if that meant hurricane Esmeralda’s ugly cousin was on the horizon, late to the party. The clouds overhead were gathering again in grey sheets and the air was damp.

A police cruiser rolled by in the street next to Slick. He tucked his head into his chest and kept pedaling.
Don’t let ‘em see your face or you’re fucked.

Keep moving forward was his mantra. When the van crashed and gave him a new lease on life it was easy to get caught up in the little moments and lose sight of the bigger picture. Get the money, get Emma, get out of town. If only getting there didn’t feel so much like walking through fucking quicksand.

The cop car slowed. Slick turned off onto a side street, front tire wobbling as he cornered. One block off the main drag and he was in among rundown houses and the sound of barking dogs. He threw a look over his shoulder to make sure the cop didn’t follow, but never stopped pedaling.

He was clear.

Cars in the driveways made him salivate. He was a cartoon wolf imagining the sheep as a rack of lamb in mint sauce. He was a starving man on a lifeboat seeing his friends as cuts of meat sizzling in butter. This bike riding stuff was for assholes and little kids. Time to ditch.

A pickup caught his eye: white, a little older, off road tires. She was the woman in the bar who doesn’t look good until last call. He slid to a stop and hopped off the bike, the gun wobbling in his belt.

Slick scanned the street. The chorus of dogs kept up but none were living at this address so he crept forward. Car theft had never been his thing, but now he was attempting his third in under twenty-four hours. Time to add GTA under special skills on his resumé.

The back window fit the bill. The owner had a two panel sliding window put in. Cheap one too with Plexi panels instead of glass. Perfect. Slick climbed into the bed of the truck and wedged the panels open with barely a push. The opening was small, but Slick was determined.