Run For the Money (15 page)

He got his shoulders through one at a time and pulled his torso into the cab, the small opening scraping skin on his sides. His hips hung up. He twisted left to right, his jeans caught and started to slip off. He could put those on again once he got inside so he kept working it back and forth like a virgin with no lube.

There was a banging on the truck body. Slick looked up, his feet still outside.

A man, early twenties, porn star mustache, sleeveless t-shirt and a baseball bat in hitting position like all he wanted to was for Slick to come down so he could give him a few pointers on his swing.

“Help you, son?”

Slick hung his head. The gun was still tucked in his belt, but that was on the other side of the window. Backing out was going to be harder than going in so Slick shoved forward once and flopped out onto the bench seat of the truck. Blood raised from scrapes on his hips.

Slick lifted his hands, undid the lock and crawled out the driver’s door.

“You know what?” Slick said. “You can help me. You can give me the keys to this here truck ‘cause I am shitty at hot wiring.”

“What?” The bat was cocked and loaded.

“I got a trade.” Slick pointed to the bike resting on the curb.

“The fuck you get off trying to steal my truck?”

“It’s been a real hard day I guess.” The porn star eyed Slick up and down not sure what to make of him. “You gonna call the cops?”

“Not sure.”

“Whatta you got in there?” Slick thumbed over at the house. “A few pot plants in the back yard? Unpaid parking tickets? You’re not gonna call.”

He choked up on the bat and dug in his heels. “I’ll fuck you up.”

Slick knew what he was dealing with. If things were going to go bad they would have by now. Slick decided he was running this conversation. He reached behind him and drew the gun. “No, I’ll fuck you up.”

The bat fell to the grass quietly. The porn star sputtered and thrust his hands up.

Slick felt a familiar surge of adrenalized satisfaction when he flipped into intimidation mode. He let a smile cross his lips. Behind those clouds was the sun. “Those keys I was asking about?”

Inside the house, Slick stood guard while the man handed over the keys. The furniture was all garage sale chic and carpet from the Reagan years, but the guy had a two-thousand-dollar flat screen TV on the wall. Priorities.

Slick found the phone and went to pull it from the wall but it wasn’t plugged in.

“Got a cell?” Porn star handed over the phone from his pocket. Slick set it down on the chipped and dirty coffee table and was ready to smash it using the other phone in a weird cannibalistic ritual, but he had a thought.

Slick flipped open the phone and called Emma. He could see it was getting harder for the porn star to hold his hands up and they were pale from the draining blood. The mustache glistened with sweat. If this were a porn movie he would be getting ready for the money shot.

No answer. Slick snapped it shut, dropped it to the table and smashed it with the land line. A leg snapped on the coffee table too and the whole thing tilted over, dropping an ashtray and a bowl barnacled with dried Cheerios.

“Do I need to tell you to stay here, don’t yell for help, any of that shit?”

Porn star shook his head.

“Okay. You’ll get your truck back, I swear. I only need it for a little while. Okay?”

“It needs gas.”

“What?”

“It needs gas.”

Slick narrowed his eyes at the man, unsure what to think. “Okay. I’ll take care of that.”

Slick motioned with the gun for porn star to sit down. Slick found the remote for the TV in the pile that slid off the coffee table and he powered on the black rectangle. Booming sound came out of surround sound speakers as a DVD menu recycled on infinite repeat.
The Bourne Identity.
At least the guy had good taste. Slick pressed play. “When it’s over, do whatever you want.”

Slick slammed the door behind him and drove away in his new truck.

It was less than ten minutes to MaxSecure. As he pulled into the lot, Slick took note of all the security cameras. Four he could count in the parking lot. The tapes wouldn’t get pulled unless there was a reason to, but Slick still valued his anonymity right then.

He drove around back, parked so the license plate was aiming directly at the camera by the back stairwell. There was a greasy baseball hat with a Red Sox logo on it. Slick pulled it low over his eyes and kept his head down as he walked under the camera.

He took the steps two at a time on his way to locker #323. He felt a little like he did the day he and Bo stood in the bank vault and first saw the piles of money before them. A pure, breathless feeling like savoring the first gaze at a woman’s naked body in bed. Back then the feeling hadn’t lasted. While Bo packed the two duffle bags with cash, Slick had to shut up a teller who wouldn’t stop screaming. He told her three times if everyone cooperated no one would get hurt. He told her and told her but she wouldn’t shut up.

So he shot her. Just in the leg, no big deal. That made it worse for a minute. So he shot her again, in the other leg. That one at least made her pass out and go mercifully silent.

Of course that’s when big ol’ Mr. Manager has to get brave, only after someone’s been shot twice.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted like a disapproving parent. He took three lumbering steps toward Slick before he caught a bullet in the knee. He went down face first onto the marble floor and belly flopped like a fat kid in the pool at summer camp. Then he pissed himself like the same kid in the top bunk.

This time Slick was going to savor the moment of seeing his money again. Reunited, two old friends. He got to skip the twenty-five years in prison and get right to the tearful reunion.

He spun the combination and opened the door.

Cue Ball came first, then Eight, both squinting at the light after being locked in the darkness. Slick backed up, frightened as a kid on Halloween, fumbling for the gun in the small of his back.

He hit the wall of corrugated metal behind him, the Red Sox hat falling off his head. Cue Ball and Eight landed on top of him but didn’t wrap him up. They both fell to the floor, confused and disoriented. Slick drew the gun, but didn’t fire. Gunshots echoing in this metal amplifier would draw the alarm and cops would descend faster than flies on a corpse.

“What the fuck?” he asked to anyone who could answer. Cue Ball looked up and saw the gun, but not the girl he expected. Eight, sprawled slightly under Cue Ball, saw it too.

“What’s going on?” demanded Slick.

“Fuck, you tell me, man.” Cue was out of breath and savoring the deep sucks of fresh air. Eight puffed like he’d reached the finish line of a marathon.

“What are you doing in my locker?”

“She put us there, man.”

Slick was trying to see inside but it was dark and all he could make out was a mess of encyclopedia pages and fallen boxes. Not a good sign.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. Some girl.”

“Emma?”

“I didn’t get her name. She was too busy kicking me in the balls.”

“She’s crazy, man,” added Eight.

Slick pivoted toward the locker door, keeping aim at the two punks on the floor. He kicked at some of the pages spilling out again. He could see the empty spines of volumes A-M strewn about with no signs of the money.

“What about the money?”

“Is that what it was? She took it,” said Cue Ball.

Eight kept up his color commentary. “Not before she beat our ass with it.”

“She took it?”

“She took something and she was aiming to keep it.”

Slick spun the options in his mind. Emma had the money. Was it to wait for him to come get her? Was it to make a run for it?

If anyone one in the world had the cash, Slick felt glad it was her. At least there was a chance.

“Get inside.”

Cue Ball and Eight protested. Slick had sympathy, he hadn’t wanted to go to Wharton either, but fates intervened. Luck of the draw.

“In, boys.” He let the gun say please.

Slumping and grumbling like teenagers headed for detention, they went. The two squeezed back inside the tiny closet, taking up the same positions they had been in. Slick reached down into a box and took out the T volume of the encyclopedias.

He teepeed the book over the gun, four hundred pages on either side of the barrel, and fired. The sound was loud, but too loud. No louder than when the two punks came tumbling out all over Slick like vomit out of a sorority girl.

He only shot twice, no more than he needed and both bodies were still moving as he shut them inside again. He hoped they wouldn’t be for long.

Slick came through the door back into the parking lot and was met with a strong gust of wind and a wet smell in the air. More rain any minute. He kept his back to the security camera. If it could get a shot of him it would see his scar swelling red with hot blood. Slick pulled down on the Red Sox hat and made for the truck. Time to find out if Emma was on his side or not.

––––––––

D
o public buses come straight from the factory smelling like piss or does it take time?

Emma cradled the pillowcase of money like a newborn as she tried to keep her eyes down and inconspicuous, but failed. She examined every passenger for body language, clues as to their true intentions. The black guy in the down vest looked sneaky, but then so did the grandma in the cardigan with the bag of knitting. It was getting so there wasn’t a damn person in the world anymore who was trustworthy. Christ, Emma’d been fucked then fucked over by a cop.

She regretted getting on the bus. Should’ve taken a taxi, but pulling cab fare out of a pillowcase full of cash was a little different than breaking out the ol’ handbag and hunting for a twenty among the loose tissues and empty gum wrappers. Cab drivers don’t forget either. Like friggin’ elephants. A cop’s best friend. Like a dog. And they usually smelled like a sick gorilla.
Cab drivers are animals
was Emma’s basic assessment.

She pulled the pillowcase closer, hugging the lumpy, uncomfortable heap like only a mother could. For the first time she noticed a child’s sock static-clung to the outside of the case. She knocked it off onto the seat next to her like it was a spider crawling up her leg.

A young guy, early 20s probably, a few seats down on her same side started singing. It was a song she didn’t know and he didn’t know much of it either except for the chorus which he belted it out for all to hear. Everyone avoided eye contact with him. No one told him to shut up. Bus riding etiquette. Never tell anyone to shut up, you might get shot. Don’t even underestimate Granny there. Could be a .38 under all that yarn. It’s happened before.

Emma ran her tongue along the jagged points of her lower teeth, something she’d done absently since she was a girl. Beat biting her nails.

Emma was still five stops away from home and from there it was a six block walk. Outside the wind picked up to nearly Esmeralda levels again. The sky had gone steel with clouds that hung heavy and moved slow.

Next stop. Doors open. Wind gusts in, brings a lost section of newspaper with it. Coupons. They wrap around the pole right inside the door and stick. The guy with the vest tightens it and turns up his collar. A man gets on. Young. Black hoodie. Moving fast, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He passes right by the bus driver without paying. The driver starts up and drives on. Hell if he’s going to get shot or beaten over a buck twenty-five.

Grandma sets down her kitting bag on the empty seat beside her, needles up. A Latino man in the back crosses his legs so his cowboy boots make a gate blocking the seats next to him.

The black hoodie sits two seats down from Emma. She tests the limits of her peripheral vision and tries to size him up. Hood up, head down. Trying not to be noticed. She thinks he’s black but can’t tell from how deeply he’s in the hood. Either way, time to move.

Emma had never seen herself as racist. Always cautious and aware of the statistics. Better safe than sorry, her mom used to say. Everyone’s mom used to say. It was worth risking looking like a scared white woman rather than having the money stolen.

Emma stood to move down the aisle, closer to the driver, to the exit. She lifted up on the pillowcase and it hung like a pendulum in her hand. She was sure it didn’t look like laundry and when she let out an involuntary grunt at the heft of it, it sure didn’t seem like a sack full of panties and t-shirts. Her eyes darted. She pretended to check the street signs, looking for her stop.

She could feel eyes on her. God damn her fabulous breasts. Like an eyeball magnet all her life, even when she didn’t want to be noticed.

Emma heard a sound. It made her flinch and her first thought was of the new guy in the hoodie. It had to be the sound of a gun being drawn. The metal on fabric rub of a .45 sliding out from a waistband.

But it wasn’t. It was a tear. A seam ripping. A pillowcase coming apart.

Blood flushed Emma’s face. She reached a hand under the case to support it from below. The bundles of money, like water, all kept heading for lower ground. The corners of the pillowcase spilled over her hand and drooped two sagging weights like tits on an old burlesque dancer.

Another tear. She spun her head. Only Granny was looking at her. Emma shot her back a look that said,
try it lady. I’ll pluck those needles from your bag and have them in your eye sockets so fast you won’t have time to whip out pictures of your Grandkids for me to see
.

Emma felt around the bottom of the bag trying to find the source of the ripping sound. She ran a finger over an inch-long hole along the bottom seam right at the corner. Her finger felt through and touched ten grand in cash. She kept the hole plugged.

There was an empty seat, but she didn’t sit. She had to get off that bus. She eyeballed the pull cord to tell the driver “Ding! Me next” but reaching it would require taking her hand away from the rip she was currently performing triage on. Unplug her finger from the dyke and she’d have a flood of green down the aisle of the bus. A flow that would be sopped up quickly by everyone riding the local. Untrustworthy bastards. She stood near the door and cursed them like Scrooge.
All they want is my money. Well, they’ll never get it
!