Run For the Money (11 page)

He turned down the stereo. Not much worse in this world than shitty rap. Maybe The Doors and their fucking organ solos and no bass player. Who the fuck did they think they were?

A voice surprised Slick from the back seat. “What are you willing to die for motherfucker?”

The cold metal of a .45 pressed into his neck from behind. Slick eased up on the throttle, slowed down all his movements. “Drop the gun on the seat.” He did as he was told.

For the second time, someone got the drop on Slick. He stifled a hot rush of rage and did his best to remain calm. “I just need a ride, man. Doesn’t have to be this car. You let me out right here and we’re all good.”

“Bullshit. I know they sent you. Rudy thinks he can take me out that easy? Fuck him, man. And fuck you too, ugly motherfucker.”

Slick wondered why he didn’t smell the sweat before. It was nervous sweat, not exercise sweat. Big difference. Animal instinct could tell between the two.

“I don’t know any Rudy, man. I’m just looking for a ride and this car was the first one I saw.”

“Yeah, right. And I’m the Easter Bunny. Turn left on Hayes. Rudy wants to see me so bad, let’s go see him.”

“I’m telling you, man, I don’t know any Rudy.”

“Shut the fuck up and drive like I tell you. You want a ride? We’re goin’ for a ride.”

Slick exhaled, keeping his calm. Not much he could do from the front seat with a gun in his ear. He checked the mirror. Another kid, not more than twenty. Latino. Scared as hell, but covering it with a layer of tough guy swagger learned second hand by guys who learned it from
Scarface
.

“So what do I say to this Rudy when we get there? He’s never seen me before in his life.”

“You tell him El Cid is here to see him, to call him out. He wants to fuck with me so bad he can fuck me himself, not send out some walking Halloween mask to do his dirty work.”

“So I guess we’re going to see Rudy.”

Slick turned the wheel as instructed and thought about karma.

His only time in the joint, six months on an armed robbery, his cellmate went on and on about karma and Buddha and all kinds of bullshit. Slick let him talk. Better than getting his asshole violated. Jimmy wanted to talk Eastern religion, let him. But please keep your dick in your pants.

Somehow bad people attracted bad people. That’s karma, is what Jimmy would say. Go to bad places and bad things will happen to you, but a parking lot at ten in the morning isn’t usually what you’d consider unsafe. The liquor store adds a certain element to it but still, it’s not a dark alley at midnight.

So who does Slick attract? Other criminals.

“Hey, yo turn that music back up.”

Slick obeyed. He wasn’t sure how long this would delay him from his quest to recover his money. Money first, then Emma. That was for sure. With this little detour the money couldn’t wait any longer.

But then Emma . . . he really wanted to see her. This kind of shit was exactly why he wanted to take her away, start over on a foundation of $642,000. There had to be sleepy towns, beaches, places where there were no Rudys. No Slicks. He’d go back to using Eddie. Maybe get some of that plastic surgery.

Emma deserved it. Get the money, get Emma, get out. That was the plan. Only the matter of extricating himself from this little disagreement first.

“So, Cid, what’s your beef with Rudy?”

“Like you don’t fuckin’ know.”

“I really don’t.”

“It takes a dummy to play dumb.”

“Were you trying to get out of town?”

“Man, shut up and drive.”

“A guy hiding out in the back of a car, buddy driving him someplace safe, stopping off for a bottle. One for the road. No shame in running. It’s the smart play most times.”

Silence from the back seat. Slick felt like a cab driver making small talk with a client who doesn’t want to talk. “What if I told you I had a lot of money stashed and I could front you some cash to get out of here?”

“Look fool, you really think I’m that stupid? How much is Rudy paying you? It ain’t enough to get me to run chicken.”

“How’s forty-thousand?”

“Now I know you’re full of shit.”

“Suit yourself. You seem pretty scared though. Doesn’t seem like driving up to Rudy’s front door is the best solution here. For either of us. Better for us both to get out of town.”

El Cid sat up close to Slick’s seat back again, pushing the gun into his neck. He was going to have a bruise. “I ain’t scared. I wasn’t running. My cousin Marcos was scared. He was trying to get me to leave. You know what, Holmes. I’m glad you kicked him out. Now I can go show Rudy I’m not no pussy.”

“Glad I could help.”

The sky outside threatened rain again. Traffic rolled by with no idea what was going on inside the gaudy custom car with the hip hop soundtrack.

The longer they drove, the residential streets showed a direct correlation to the level of poverty in relation to the amount of junk in the front yard.

A car with a tarp over it and unmowed grass creeping up around the tires: going through some hard time. A washing machine on the side of the house and a plastic kid’s playhouse with two walls collapsed and the bright red plastic gone pink in the sun: minimum wage, good likelihood of the night shift in that house. Car on blocks, two jet-skis with cracked hulls, grass hadn’t been mown in a year now hiding the lawn mower rusting by the front door, propane tanks used for target practice: unemployed, welfare cheats, spend more on drugs in a year than food.

This was exactly the kind of fate Slick was trying to avoid with his bank job. He wanted to marry Emma. And not to propose with a promise but with a ring. An honest-to-goodness diamond ring. Bring on the biggest, brightest blood diamond your slave labor can dig out of the ground. Then he didn’t want to take her home to a trailer park. His car would never be left to rust out, promising, “Next year, next year we’ll be on our feet again.” His kid wasn’t going to grow up on one meal a day.

He still had a chance. He wouldn’t give up as easy as El Cid’s cousin either. Someone was going to have to run him right the fuck over to get him out of the way of his dream.

He sure as hell hoped whoever Rudy was that he wasn’t that guy.

“Pull up here, yo.”

Slick parked the car in front of a patch of brown grass. El Cid rolled down his window. “Turn that shit up.” Slick turned the knob on the stereo. Thick bass, hand claps, rhythmic lyrics and a sample of an Indian sounding drum boomed across the lawn of a one story ranch house with faded blue paint. Two BMX bikes leaned on a chain link fence that ran across the front yard. There were bars on the windows, a security camera at the door, flood lights on poles that could have lit a soccer pitch at night. No shadows was the idea. No place to hide. May as well have a flashing neon sign that read: drug dealer. Slick had no idea what the beef was between Rudy and El Cid, but these sorts of confrontations never went well.

“Yo, Rudy! I got your boy here! Come on out and say what you got to say to my face!”

Strong words called out from the back seat of a Honda with peeling tinted windows. Slick could see in the rearview El Cid ducking down, trying to stay out of sight and away from the window. Act as tough as you want but if you’re scared, you’re scared and the whole world will know it. It’s animal. It’s in us to recognize.

The house stayed quiet.

“Yo, Rudy! Get the fuck out here!”

It was like the house and El Cid were in a staring contest. The music was hurting Slick’s ears.

The front door opened. A man stepped out holding a sawed off shotgun down around his waist. He was shirtless with tattoos across his chest, words mostly, in five-inch-tall gothic script. IN IT FOR LIFE ran across his ballooning belly, under his navel. NEVER DIE under his neck.

“Rudy, I presume?” asked Slick.

El Cid didn’t answer. Might not have heard him. Slick saw curtains move in the house, wondered how many guns were pointed at them.

“Turn that shit down! People got motherfucking jobs around here, man!” Rudy spoke in a booming Mexican accent. The swagger of Ricardo Montalban and the grammar of Tupac Shakur.

Slick turned down the volume on the second rate rap. Silence was always better than two-bit MCs. The pitch of El Cid’s voice rose. “Turn it back up, yo!”

“He said turn it down. His gun is bigger.”

“That you Cid?” said Rudy.

“Yo, Rudy, man, why you tryin’ to take me out?”

“Why do you think, bro?”

Cid’s silence meant he knew the answer. He stayed hunkered down in the back seat.

“I got your boy!”

“What boy?”

“This one. Ugly one.”

Slick waved from the front seat, both hands visible all the time. “I told him I didn’t know you. I got no dog in this fight.”

Rudy scrunched up his face at Slick. “I don’t know this fool. And you best believe any motherfucker I send after you ain’t gonna let you get the drop on him.”

Slick wanted to protest, but it was fair. If he’d been on a paying job to take the kid out, however, the job would have been done. This was an apples and oranges situation. Not the right time to explain that to Rudy.

“Yeah, well,” said El Cid, “you don’t leave me be and I’ll kill him.”

“Go ahead. I don’t give a fuck.” Rudy chuckled, looked over his shoulder to the house. Undoubtedly the men inside were laughing too.

Inside the car, Cid shifted in the back seat. “Get out.” Slick knew the gun was aimed at him again.

“You sure?”

“Get out, but stand close to the car where I can see you.”

“Where you can shoot me in the back you mean.”

El Cid had no answer.

“Okay.” Slick moved his hands slowly to the door, called out to Rudy. “He’s telling me to get out. I’m unarmed. Just following orders.”

Slick moved deliberately like he had a cobra in his lap. No sudden moves.

The tilt of Rudy’s sawed off raised a bit. Curtains rustled in the house. Slick could feel gunsights staring at him, like the kids in high school. You know damn well when you’re being stared at by a hundred kids at once. You know damn well what they’re whispering. Frankenstein. Lugosi. Freak show.

Slick’s scar pulsed. He could feel his cheek heating up like a hot wire pressing down. The street was silent except for dry grass crunching under his feet.

“Hey, I don’t
know
this fool,” said Rudy.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” said Slick.

“I’ll shoot him where he stands!”

Persistent little fucker
, thought Slick.
Dumb as shit, but committed. Letting me out of the car was about the stupidest thing he could have done. Where’s his leverage now? If he shoots me they’ll blast him to shit. These fucking kids. They think they can be a big tough gangster because some kid from the suburbs raps about it and makes it sound cool. You need half a fucking brain in your head. Otherwise you fuck up like this. Or Bo. Fuck! That little shit. I wish to hell I’d watched him die so I could replay that movie in my head forever
.

The scared little turtle in the back of the tricked-out Honda was another Bo trying to come in and fuck this up for Slick. Someone else to keep him from his money, his girl. Slick wanted to grab that sawed off from Rudy’s hands and use it himself on this little weasel.

“You gonna use that thing or are we gonna stand here all day waiting for a sign from Jesus?” Slick said to Rudy.

Rudy looked at Slick, to the shotgun, back to Slick.

“Who the fuck
are
you, man?”

“Just a guy lookin’ for a ride.”

“Yo, Rudy!” came a call from inside the house.

Rudy kept his eyes on Slick, ignoring the car. “What?”

“I know that dude. He’s on the news. Busted out of prison.”

“You sure it’s him?”

“Yeah, man. Look at his face. You don’t forget a face like that, man.”

Even when Slick pulled off an impressive job like $642,000 still all he was known for was his face. He felt like John Wilkes Booth whose Hamlet was supposedly sublime, but all anyone ever mentions is the whole shooting Lincoln thing.

“That true, man?” asked Rudy.

“You really should be worried about the gun that’s pointed at you from the back seat of that car,” said Slick.

“What’s your stake in this?”

“I don’t have one! This jack off car jacked me. I’m not supposed to be here.”

The shotgun came up, twin barrels looking like the snorting nose of a bull. Slick put his arms up. “I want to know,” said Rudy, “what the fuck is going on here.”

“I wish I knew, man. I wish I knew.” A bird landed on the fence between them, looked left, looked right, decided it was a bad place to perch and took off. Slick wanted to ride that bird on out of there. That bird made him think. Every second he wasn’t in a cell up at Wharton was a second of freedom he wasn’t supposed to have. Better live it up. It’s all borrowed time. Fuck it, if neither one of these fools has fired yet, they aren’t going to. “You know what? I got places to be.”

Slick turned and walked back toward the car.

“The fuck you going?” shouted Rudy, sawed off ready to jump out of his hands.

“This ain’t my fight. I don’t belong here.” He opened the door, calling their bluffs. El Cid in the back seat pointed the gun at him. Slick ignored it, grabbed his own gun off the passenger seat and opened the passenger door, slid out the other side of the Honda.

No one fired.

Tucking the gun into his belt in the small of his back, Slick walked to the two bikes slanted on the fence. He grabbed the handle bars of the black bike in front, chrome fixtures and rail grinder studs jutting from the tires, climbed on and rode.

Leaving the dumbfounded crew he saw a car coming fast down the street. A red Miata angling toward Rudy’s place. An angry young man behind the wheel, tears in his eyes. Cousin Marco, screaming revenge.

Slick pumped the pedals while behind him the tires of the Miata ground two black scars into the pavement.

The gunfire started, sounding to Slick like fireworks fading into the distance.

––––––––

M
rs. Boone finally sat down with her newspaper. Renting out rooms to college girls was no way to spend a retirement or a widowhood. Damn kids asking for every little thing done for them.
Surprised they can wipe their own asses sometimes
.