Run For the Money (5 page)

He slid into the shadows against a brick wall a few storefronts down from the motel and cracked the cylinder on the .38.

Empty.

A lesson in intimidation. Always be angrier, always be scarier, always act armed. Lessons he knew, but which are easily forgotten from the wrong end of a barrel.

He opened the cigar box. A hundred and thirteen dollars. He pocketed the gun and the cash and tossed the cigar box deeper into the shadows, then walked to the lobby of the motel.

The lights were blue fluorescent, like walking inside a bug zapper. A fish tank crusted with algae and no signs of ichthyological life hummed behind the counter. The night man was like they always are – greasy, overweight, bad skin. He looked up from a comic book with a flat 2-D drawing of a Japanese school girl on the cover, her panties prominently displayed.

“Help you?”

Slick shook off some of the rain water. “I need a room.”

“How long?”

“Until morning.”

“Forty.” The night man continued chewing on something Slick couldn’t determine.

Slick took out his wad of cab driver cash and counted out forty from the crazily folded bills. The night man slid down the counter on a rolling stool, exerting as little effort as possible. He reached under the counter and came out with a room key. He flopped a hand over the cash, he’d watched Slick count it out so he didn’t need to, and slid a few more feet down the counter to the cash register. The machine dinged with delight as it ate up another helping of green.

“You need a whore?” he asked as nonchalantly as he would ask if you needed extra towels.

“No.” Slick eyed him up and down. Night men at a cheap motel – some of the most connected guys in town. “You got a connection for bullets?”

The night man turned to Slick, looked at him for the first time. He took a long time to pour over the harsh elongated features, lingering a while on the scar hidden in the dense bush of his two-week beard. The wet-dog look surely wasn’t helping his appearance any.

“I know a guy. You need a gun?”

“Just bullets.”

“What caliber?”

“Thirty-eights.”

“Gimme an hour.”

“You know the room. Send him up.”

Slick snagged the key off the counter and walked out.

––––––––

B
o thought of bicycles with banana seats. That’s what he used to ride around these neighborhood streets. Not this particular one, but they’re all the same. Houses stood far enough apart if you wanted to ignore your neighbor you could. Fences did the rest of the work. Porch lamps and walkway lighting wasted energy long after everyone was in bed.

One a.m. but Bo didn’t know it, only that he was tired. What a day. An on-again off-again relationship with prison.

The rain sapped the little energy left in him. He scanned the yards for options. Off the street, around back was where he needed to be. He cut through back yards, dodging uncovered pools, plastic ride-on toys and avoiding any yard with a dog house. He was ten years old again taking a short cut back home.

The shed sat well away from the house down at the bottom of a short hill. It meant there would be flooding, but also no prying eyes would happen to look up and see him from the kitchen window in case anyone came down for a midnight snack.

Bo opened the sliding metal door and went inside.

The rain was amplified by the thin metal roof. The smell of cut grass and gasoline gave him flashbacks to Saturday morning chores. It was a large shed, big enough to park a riding mower, good for the acre-plus of the yard, two rakes, a tangled green hose, an unopened bag of potting soil, two boxes marked
Donate.

Leaning against the wall was the broken frame of a hammock and the canvas rolled along side. He unspooled the canvas sling and laid it out on the floor. He pulled the bag of topsoil over to use as a pillow.

The ground was a wet sponge. When his body weight hit the canvas it sank into the muck and soaked through the hammock. Bo stood. He climbed into the seat of the mower, folded his arms and shut his eyes. He slept well on planes the two times he flew so he figured he could make do with sitting up.

He’d been making do for four years. He slept on streets, in doorways, on couches of people he didn’t know. After he got kicked out of the house for smoking his crystal meth pipe (again) he lived anywhere and nowhere. After he quit meth it was even harder to find a place to stay. All his drug buddies stopped answering the door since they knew he wasn’t bearing gifts.

Bo wondered how bad it would have to get for him to go back home. Anyone who ever threw it all away knows damn well they did. It made returning to the home where everything had gone right that much harder. Like the scene of the crime in reverse. He didn’t want to feel what it was like to be back in those rooms knowing he didn’t belong.

Bo tried to listen to individual rain drops hitting the roof and being blown against the side, but the noise all ran together and, like rushing water, opened his memories.

Bo found out his father died from an old girlfriend who was still using. Shelly made a habit of retreating home when things got too intense on the street. Her mom was there to take her in, her dad divorced and living with a picture-perfect family three states away. Each time her mom knew, just knew, her baby came home to stay. Each time Shelly hung around for a few days or a week, then stole something quietly and slipped out while her mom slept.

Bo saw her while making a delivery. Just because he stopped using didn’t mean he had to give up all his connections. Muling drugs was a way to make a few bucks. He was always surprised at his own self-restraint. A guy they called Two-Bit Reyes loaded him up with twenty or even fifty bags of rock and a list of drops. Bo never dipped in to the stash once.

Two-Bit respected that. He started pimping out Bo’s name as Mr. Reliable. When it came down that Slick was looking for a second man to go on a job, Bo’s name came up.

When Shelly saw him she started crying. She was past due for another high and Bo had a hell of a time calming her down before she told him what she heard from her last stay with her mom. His dad. Heart attack. Buried, but she didn’t know where.

Bo finished his deliveries and at his last stop, a drop to Extreme Mike, he bought back almost the whole delivery.

Bo went back to the room he rented in the back of a vacuum repair shop and smoked for five days, sleeping only seven hours total. Hasn’t touched it since. He’d be clutching an 18-month chip if he bought into that twelve step bullshit.

Sadness soaked him deeper than the rain.

A gunshot brought him out of his half-sleep. Maybe it was thunder. A short crack. The echo low to the ground. No, a shot for sure.

He jumped down from the mower, slid open the door a crack fully expecting to see the bloodhounds on his trail. Instead he saw a figure, middle aged man, standing in the open French doors on the back porch. He held a gun out ahead of him and scanned the tree line, not pausing long enough to focus on anything.

Bo retreated into the shadows, keeping the door slid open a crack. The man wasn’t seeing what he wanted to. He stepped out onto the porch, shirtsleeves getting wet, sock feet soaking through. He was a lousy hunter. His head swung wildly side to side. Can’t see shit if you don’t slow down to look. He called out, “Don’t come back!” to the darkness.

Bo felt confident it wasn’t him the man was after.

A shape moved out from under the porch. Bo sank to the back wall of the shed, slid the hammock over him to hide behind like a Japanese screen not quite covering his body.

The door slid open then quickly slid shut again. The figure was panting, wet. Bo’s eyes were well adjusted to the dark so he could see a young man, maybe seventeen, shirtless and holding his pants against his chest. The boy had a fear about him that only running from bullets can give you.

Bo was done with all these surprises. He wanted a quiet room and a bong. Or some pills; the reds he liked. Or OxyContin. Some fucking thing to calm his nerves. Staying medicated all the time made the straight times more pronounced.
High strung
, his mom used to say. He felt pretty goddamn high strung in the rotten grass and gasoline smelling shed.

Bo lifted a pair of hedge trimmers off the wall and opened them as he walked forward toward the kid. He spread them and pierced the wall of the shed with the blades, straddling the kid’s neck like a stripper’s legs when you pay her extra.

Bo spoke calmly but firm. “Don’t move.”

The kid’s eyes were wild with panic. “Who the fuck are you?” Outside of a bullet proof vest salesman, there was no right answer for the terrified kid.

“Just a guy looking to get out of the rain. Who are you?”

“Steven.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple scraping the blades of the trimmers so close to his skin.

“Okay Steve. Why is that guy shooting at you? And is he going to follow you in here? I’ve had enough guns pointed in my direction tonight.”

“It’s Mandy’s dad. Do—do I know you?” Steven seemed to be running the options of whether he’d rather be shot or beheaded, certain that one or the other was imminent.

“Nope. Like I said, just a dude. Why does Dad want to plug you?”

Steven had trouble understanding how anyone could be calm at a time like this. “Because of Mandy.” The fear was like truth serum coursing through his veins. “The guy’s a psycho.”

“I can see that. I take it you and Mandy were . . . in a relationship he didn’t approve of?”

“Are you a cop?”

“Why don’t you put on your pants, Steven.” Bo pulled the shears out of the wall, rattling the thin metal shell of the building. Steven offered no threat.

Steven blinked twice, rain dripping off his hair down into his eyes. His night had gone from dangerous to absurd.

Bo spoke calmly to try to pass on some calm to Steven and to keep his own racing thoughts in check. He kept the hedge trimmers hanging by his side in case he needed a quick defense. Violence wasn’t his thing, but he wasn’t incapable.

The high shrill of a teenage girl’s voice cut through the rain and the cheap walls of the shed. Steven perked up like a dog to a whistle. A Father-Daughter fight. One of the more dangerous things in nature.

“Shit,” said Steven.

“Sounds like she’s getting
your
lecture.”

“Seriously man, he’s nuts. He’ll kill her.”

“Spoken like a teenager. That guy’s not out to kill anyone. You included. A few shots high over your head is to scare you off so you don’t come back sniffing around his little girl. Unless he’s mister McGoo he would have gotten you already if he wanted to.”

“What the fuck do you know?”

“If you didn’t have time to pull on your pants on your way out, I’d say he was close enough to breathe on you and so, close enough to shoot your ass if he wanted to.”

A piercing scream. Short, like the gunshots.

“Fuck. He’s hitting her.”

“What?”

“Again.”

Bo stepped next to Steven. He slid the door open a crack but couldn’t see any movement in the house.

“He’s hitting the girl?”

“Yeah. It’s what he always does, man. Mandy thinks he killed her mom, but she can’t prove it.”

There was movement behind the French doors, but Bo wasn’t sure what he saw. He thought he heard a, “No.” in a girl’s voice.

“I gotta go back in.” Steven’s legs didn’t seem to agree with his mouth. He only shifted on his toes like he was debating whether to steal second.

“You did see he had a gun, right?”

“I told her . . . I told her if he ever beat her up again I’d . . .”

Whatever it takes to get inside those panties, thought Bo. He looked at Steven. This kid couldn’t exactly swoop in and rescue the damsel. If Bo planned to get any sleep tonight, he’d have to do it himself. Beat hiding out listening to a girl scream and besides, beating on a woman, as The Dude says, “This aggression will not stand, man.”

Bo slid the shed door open with a bang. Steven froze in the sudden light from the back porch, looking like a curtain had raised and he found himself standing on stage in front of a sold out house in his underpants.

“After you,” said Bo. Steven scrambled to put on his jeans again and Bo followed him to the house, hedge trimmers in hand.

The back door was open, the floor wet from Dad’s socks. Steven nearly lost his balance. Bo scanned the well-appointed home. Dry. Warm. Smelled like pipe smoke and lasagna.

Something heavy hit the ground in a room below them.

“The rec room.” Steven turned to Bo. “That’s where we were.” The welcome addition of a strong arm into the situation made Steven brave, though he did stay a few paces behind Bo.

In a finished basement with tan carpet and wood-paneled walls, Mandy, seventeen and generically attractive, slumped on a worn couch as her Father loomed over her. He turned his head, a look of anger on his face Bo hadn’t seen outside a black and white horror film – a Wolf-man face with his lower jaw jutted out, spit frothing at the corners, brow folded over on itself, making his thick eyebrows stick straight out.

Bo checked the man’s hands, but did not see the gun.

“What the fuck is this now?” Dad said.

Bo sniffed, shook some water from his hair. “This here is Steven, who you know. I’m just a guy looking to get dry and who hates to see women get beat on.”

“Get out of my Goddamn house. And you—” he thrust a finger out toward Steven who flinched at it.

Bo lifted the shears and snapped them shut in the air between them. Mandy’s dad tucked his finger back into his fist, went quiet. “I think you should stop now while you’re behind because it’s been a hell of a day for me and I don’t have time for this kind of bullshit.”

Mandy slid off the couch and ran to Steven’s arms. He wrapped her up and she sobbed into his shoulder.

“You get out of my house right now or I’ll call the cops,” said Mandy’s dad.

“I don’t think you will. Beating up on your own child, a girl no less. Cops tend to frown on that. I’m kind of an expert on this shit. Not my own dad. But I’ve seen enough to know. I tell you one thing, you keep it up and this little girl of yours is gonna be down on Whitman street sucking on a crack pipe and a whole lot else if you know what I mean. Every addict I know in the world who’s a girl had a dad that beat her up. Every one.”