Run For the Money (16 page)

Finally the driver slowed and she stepped into the stairwell.

From behind, “Hey, yo, lady!”

Shit, shit, shit. Here it comes. If I swing this case out again like with those two assholes it’s gonna rip wide open. Please open the fucking doors so I can run!

Emma turned. It was black hoodie. His face was out from under the hood. He was a young black man, just as she feared, and he was holding something in his hand, just as she feared. It was a child’s sock.

“You dropped this.”

She almost threw up. The air brakes hissed and the doors swung open with a squeal. “Keep it,” she said and took the steps two at a time.

Keep it? That’s the best you could do.

He didn’t want one purple sock, but she wanted even less to hang around for one more second on that bus. She cursed herself for proving she may actually be a little racist. A nice kid doing a good deed and she thought he was about to shoot her in cold blood. He’d probably help the old lady off the bus next on his way to volunteer at the soup kitchen.

When she hit the curb she kept on moving, hefting the pillowcase from beneath like carrying a leaky bucket to a fire. Behind her the bus rumbled on, the driver indifferent to all who passed through his doors who might mess with his schedule.

She was a good four miles from home. She knew the way, so that was good, but fuck – four miles with this load? And keeping it from spilling out on the sidewalk?

Fucking laundromat lady and her cheap-ass sheet set.

The street was busy. Cars, foot traffic, a fat lady on a power chair. Everyone rushing like ants before the return of the storm. Kept inside for hurricane watch, now they all rushed out from their hive once the rain cleared and only had an hour more to stock up on supplies before the rains fell again. Insects. Emma would be damn glad to be free of them. On an island in the sun the only insects are beautiful specimens fit for saving under glass.

Escape. Keep that in mind. This was all for escape, which started now. She knew before she began her freedom had to involve more than buying a plane ticket and reclining in first class. To break free from this prison, first you had to dig a tunnel and get your nails dirty.

Finally she wouldn’t have to think anymore about the person in this town who disgusted her more than anyone else. Herself.

Emma had potential. She had the breaks. Parents who loved her, teachers who wanted her to succeed. Money? Not so much, but enough to get by. After her sister died, that’s when the behavior started. All the focus shifted to Emma. Katie had been the smarter one, the more driven, the attention getter. Emma loved flying below the radar. But after the funeral there was only one report card to sign. Only one parent-teacher conference to attend. There were six more months paid lessons at the pool, but the star swimmer was gone. Emma took on the workload of two girls. She picked up Katie’s slack. Ever since her death, Katie was really letting things slide.

Yearbook staff? Emma took over. First freshman to do it. Brian Shea, Katie’s boyfriend – Emma blew him and not just once. Picking up the slack. Emma even walked in Katie’s place during graduation. An eerie ghost Katie collecting an honorary diploma that never should have been printed.

Emma rebelled. She blamed her dad’s enlistment in the reserves. He never got his college plan five-year stint in the Army out of his blood so he stayed an active reservist despite Mom’s protest. When he went out on his weekend warrior expeditions he would cammo up and lock and load before he left the house, not wait until he got there like most guys. Emma always thought it was really exciting. The guns, the bayonet, the weird bravado that only showed up on training weekends.

First guy Emma met with a gun, she fucked him while he wore his holster. She played out rape fantasies, handcuffs, went on ride-alongs while guys stole cars. Bad boys. ‘Fell in with a bad crowd’ was the official diagnosis, but she knew what it was. Pressure release. If she was spending so much time being Katie, she had to turn up the volume on Emma to break through the static.

Well, no more. As soon as she landed on Grand Cayman it was goodbye Emma, hello Sascha, mystery woman with zero past except what she made up on the spot. And white sands were only about a thousand – plus four – miles away.

She spotted a shopping cart sitting like a stray dog a long way from home. It stood, alone, next to the empty stalk where a pay phone used to reside along a low cinderblock wall with a dying hedge in front. In the cart was a single plastic bag with four empty soda cans.

Emma looked left then right and saw no one who could claim the cart as theirs. People passed by on their way to other places to meet other people. A slightly frantic looking woman holding a bag and sizing up the merits of a rusty shopping cart made Emma looks homeless and that meant she was ignored, great boobs or not.

She gently set down the pillowcase inside and left the bag of cans on the curb by the hedge. As she started to push she realized why someone abandoned the cart. It dragged one bum wheel and the three working wheels squeaked like a nest full of hungry baby birds.

The sound roused her. From out of nowhere came a woman with mad professor hair, wrinkled skin which could have been tan or could have been dirty, and clothes held together by nothing more than stink. She was tying off a rope belt around her waist. Her crotch was a dark stain of fabric.

“Hey! That’s mine!” The homeless woman’s broken radio voice made people turn, but no one stopped. Emma halted the cart.

“It was empty.”

“It’s mine.” She came closer, a wild look in her eye. Emma shrank.

“I need it. I left your cans.”

The homeless woman grabbed the push bar and yanked. She was stronger than Emma expected and the cart was pulled from her hands.

“Hey!”

“Mine!” The woman knew the trick to getting the broken wheels to move efficiently and she motored off in the opposite direction. Emma followed.

“At least let me get my stuff.”

“Mine!”

Emma knew it was going to be like arguing with a two-year-old. She caught up to the woman and grabbed back the push bar. The woman turned to Emma and spat in her face.

Emma let go and stepped back, mouth agape at the shock of it. The woman leaned forward and spat again, directly into Emma’s open mouth.

“You had it comin’!” she shouted and kept walking away with the cart and the money.

Emma leaned over and spit into the hedge over and over. She nearly gagged. By the time she looked up, the cart was almost to the corner. In a nearby doorway, two dishwashers from a Chinese restaurant laughed at her.

Emma ran. She caught the homeless woman around the corner and put a hand on her shoulder. The woman spun, bearing a row of blackened teeth. Emma held on despite her disgust.

“Mine!” the woman yelled.

Emma slapped her across the face. Hard, like a woman in Victorian times with a case of hysteria. The homeless woman stopped. She looked almost normal for a moment. Emma had a flash thought wondering if she had snapped the woman out of a decades-old amnesia that landed her on the street in the first place. But the woman continued to stare blankly.

Emma reached in and lifted the pillowcase from the bottom and wrapped the loose fabric from the top underneath to add support to the tear. She clutched the bundle in both arms and turned back toward home.

Her back and arms ached as she turned the last corner. The scary old house she lived in never looked better. As she approached the house she felt pinpricks of paranoia creep over her flesh. Behind every tree was a robber in a mask and striped shirt waiting to leap out. The pillowcase suddenly had giant dollar signs on it advertising the booty inside.

The blue unmarked cop car was still there. Emma needed to take precautions. She slipped in between her house and the neighbors and moved her back against the boat permanently docked in the driveway. She scanned one last look around and then slipped the pillowcase up under the dirty tarp and heard the sack thump onto the deck of the powerboat.

Satisfied that no one would look there for a hundred years, Emma went to her front door.

Mrs. Boone was there lurking like a Haunted House spook. Emma jumped.

“I’ve been thinking, Emma,” she started, a satisfied look on her face. “Maybe you should start looking for another place.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was just thinking.”

“Were you now?”

“Yes. I think it’s best you move on.”

“Mrs. Boone, nothing would please me more.” Mrs. Boone was caught off guard.

“Really?”

“Yes. I’ll be out tomorrow. You’ll never see me again.”

Stupid bitch girl was taking all the fun out of it. “Yes, well, I think it’s for the best.”

“I agree.” Emma marched down the steps to her apartment.

––––––––

A
s soon as Bo saw Emma round the corner, right on cue, a bird shit on the window of the Dodge. Not any bird, a goddamn condor or something else with a severe intestinal issue. It dropped a load of runny white liquid obliterating his view of Emma and whatever it was she was carrying. The ancient wipers on the Dart only made it worse, smearing it around rendering the entire surface opaque; a shit screen to conceal anything happening outside up to and including landing a 747 on the street in front of him.

“God dammit,” Bo said to himself as he prayed for rain. She was alone, that much he could make out. No Slick. No Slick meant no money. Yet. He could wait it out a little longer. Maybe go scout it again in a bit if Slick doesn’t show. If he does . . . well, he’d deal with that when it happened.

Delmer knocked on his mom’s door. She answered it angrily, a finger holding her place in a book she’d read a dozen times before.

Her son, her idiot son, stood before her in a button down shirt with his one and only tie hanging flaccid around his neck.

“Mom, could you help?”

Sylvia stared at the loose ends of the green and white striped tie, a relic of Delmer’s dad’s, and thought how easy it would be to tie a slip knot and choke her son to death with it. Be done with all his bullshit. Then he gave her the eyes.

Every time she felt overwhelmed by her giant man-child and all the attention he required he gave her a look that was still pure five-year-old innocence. The dried prune in her chest where a heart should have been beat a few weak throbs, as close to human as Sylvia got these days. His condition wasn’t his fault. She knew it. Those eyes reminded her.

She closed the book, losing her place and not caring. “C’mere you.” She tied his tie for him explaining the step-by-step of a Windsor knot as she went, surely for what had to be the hundredth time. “You got a hot date or something?” she kidded.

“Uh-huh. With Emma.”

She stopped tying. “What?”

“Emma likes me.”

“She told you that?”

“Sort of.”

Sylvia let the worn silk slip through her fingers and aimed a pointer at him, balling up a fist with her left hand and putting it on her hip.

“Now you listen to me, Delmer. That girl is no good. You hear me? She’s a no good tramp.”

“She likes me.”

“She don’t like anyone or anything except for money.”

Delmer tilted his chin down and tried to complete the last flip under and pull down of the knot on his own. Sylvia lowered her pointing finger with a sigh. “Delmer, you don’t need anyone else but me, okay?”

“Okay, Mom.”

“And you’re
not
going anywhere with that girl, right?”

“Right, Mom.”

“Okay then. Why don’t you watch one of your movies? Maybe I’ll make up a batch of popcorn.”

“Okay, Mom.” He turned and walked back to his room keeping his head down and focused on the tie conundrum.

Sylvia watched him go and shook her head.
Ought to throw that whore out on her ass right here and now. Tonight.
But, no, it was too much damn effort. She didn’t even have to make popcorn.
He’ll have forgotten about it by the time he gets down the hall.

Delmer shut the door to his room and forgot about the tie which hung, half-tied, around his neck. He went to a shelf in the corner of his room, the room of a teenager, and ran a finger down a row of DVDs. Westerns, talking dog movies, box sets of 80s TV shows. Delmer’s taste ran to the eclectic. Anything to make him laugh, which was pretty much anything at all. That allowed Sylvia to shop out of the dollar bin and get whatever low rent straight-to-video crap out there. He picked out a movie numbered part three in a franchise no one could remember the first two movies from. Sort of a mishmash of plot ideas stolen from much better movies from
E.T.
to
Back To The Future
. The cast had a suspiciously Canadian accent.

He put it in the player and turned on his TV. Delmer lifted the tie off his neck, keeping the half-knot tied. He turned to his closet, opened the door and said, “You’ll like this one.”

The cop he cold-cocked sat strapped to a chair, eyes wide with fear and spit pooling at the sweat sock stuffed in his mouth. Officer Coleman, as it turned out from his badge which now sat in Delmer’s top drawer. Delmer took the tie and slipped it over the cop’s head dropping it down over his eyes, blinding him. He turned and shut the door again. Guess officer Coleman would miss the show.

––––––––

T
he thick clouds threatened, but refused to throw the first punch, like a guy in a bar fight filled with liquid courage and tough talk but no real desire to lose a tooth.

Bo rolled down his window and craned his neck out to get a better look at Emma’s front door. Nothing changed since she went in almost an hour ago. Time to do a little recon.

As his hand hit the door handle a car came around the corner moving fast. Bo stayed put.

The car, a navy blue Ford, pulled up next to its twin, the empty car that looked too much like a cop car not to be one. Bo watched with curiosity.

The new car parked and a man got out. He was either a cop or a catalog model. Handsome and square jawed and moving with athletic grace as he quickly crossed to the old Victorian. Bo found a spot at the very bottom of his windshield that wasn’t smeared with bird shit. The man went inside with purpose. Bo got out to play peeping Tom.