Tempted by Trouble (11 page)

“Sammy, Rick, and me were supposed to go alone. You weren’t invited.”

“I am now. So, if the job and the payout was a secret, I’m on the crew now.”

“Relax. It’s not that we were keeping the job a secret from you. It’s just that, well, sometimes it’s better to not speak about everything we do.”

“I think Rick was about to tell me. He said he’d wanted to talk to me about something. Maybe he was backing out, going home to his family, and plugging me in on the job.”

She nodded, then asked, “You said that you need four grand?”

“Why? You plan on robbing a few liquor stores tonight?”

“Can you relax for a moment? Loosen your collar and listen to what I’m about to offer.”

I nodded. The alcohol had her humming, bouncing her leg, and smiling to herself.

She said, “Maybe I could float you that baby bankroll until the next job is done.”

“You have access to that kind of money?”

“Say the word and I’ll make a call and make it happen. Provided you agree to the interest.”

There was always a catch. I took a breath and asked, “How much interest?”

“I usually take forty or fifty percent, but I can do thirty this one time.”

“You’re the bank.”

“Yeah. I’m the bank.”

“Thirty percent is outrageous. You’re another predatory lender.”

“Look, I have a kid and I’m trying to increase my funds tenfold so I can fix my situation. Every dime helps. This job has left me with nothing but a headache, heartache, and a bad taste in my mouth. So, I’ll go out on a limb with my money and take a chance and loan you part of my nest egg, but only if it is lucrative for me and my kid in the short run.”

“It’s been a long day. Both of us are on edge. Let me sleep on it.”

“No, I need to know now. You have five minutes. Then the bank is closed.”

She went to the kitchen and poured a little more vodka. This time she opened the refrigerator and found a carton of orange juice, used it to cut the liquor. She sipped, then said, “Five minutes are up. Do you want to borrow four thousand or not?”

“Don’t want to, but have to.” My voice was harsh and just above a whisper, yet it filled the room. “Lower the interest rate and
maybe
we can make a deal. You have a kid, but I have to take care of a few things too. We all have lives, Jackie. I empathize with your child-custody issues, but your problems are not the center of my universe.”

“Thirty percent. Take it or leave it. Tomorrow, if you ask, it will be back at my usual rates.”

“I wasn’t trying to offend you, just wanted you to know that I have my own issues as well.”

“Thirty percent. That’s all we have to talk about right now. Thirty percent.”

I accepted her predatory interest rate and asked her how soon she could get me the money.

“In a few. Let me wash down your insults and insensitivity and calm my nerves.”

I walked away from her and stood in the window, my arms folded.

She said, “Riddle me this, Batman.”

“What?”

“You wear a wedding ring, but there isn’t a wife around. No text messages, no sneaking off to call and check in. Sammy told me that you and the wife aren’t together, that she left while you were doing a job.”

I nodded and left it at that.

When my feet began to throb and the heaviness from life took hold of me, I sat down on the sofa and initiated the app that connected to the police monitors. I hoped Jackie would go into the bedroom, but she came over and sat down on the sofa. I struggled to get comfortable on one end and she relaxed on the far end, pulled her feet up under her body, took a very feminine position, and faced me. It was awkward being there with her. Over the last six months, it had always been four of us hiding out. And she had always ended up drinking and resting in Sammy’s lap after a job was done.

She finished her vodka, then poured another tall glass of the same and sat next to me. This time she positioned herself on the worn pillow next to mine. Her skirt rode high and she undid another button on her blouse. She sipped her drink and rested her left hand on my leg. When I looked in her light brown eyes, she didn’t move her hand away from my thigh. Her smile widened. She winked and rubbed my leg.

She asked, “When was the last time you were with a woman?”

“Let’s not go down that road, Jackie.”

“Maybe we could help each other out.”

I moved her hand away. “Let’s go get that four grand, Jackie.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I’m not Sammy.”

She gave me an unembarrassed smile. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“Then you’re going to make that call and we’re going to go get the four thousand.”

She took her cellular, staggered into the bedroom, and slammed the door.

My duffel bag rested at the end of the sofa. I grabbed my toiletries and hurried inside the bathroom. I threw a ragged towel down in the tub and stood on top of that while I showered, then I wrapped a towel I had brought with me around my body. I borrowed a lime-green plastic bowl from the kitchen, one of the few things that hadn’t been destroyed during Jackie’s rage, then filled it with hot water and added shaving powder, stirred it until I had made a decent amount of foamy shaving cream. I always shaved after a job. Always showered and shaved. It was my ritual. I didn’t need to break that now. While the lather was hot I used my shaving brush and swirled the wet tips of the brush, used the same motions my father had taught me, then I painted my face, again emulating the strokes he had used. I used a straightedge razor and shaved the way men had shaved for hundreds of years. I’d used Noxzema Lather Shave Cream, and this was a powdered version of the same, had the same scents, a mixture of coconut, eucalyptus, clove, and peppermint oils. When I was done I rinsed my face, inspected my injuries, packed up my shaving tools, and went back into the living room.

It was possible for a man to clean his body and not remove any filth from his soul.

I reached inside the bag and found a pair of black boxers, a white V-neck undershirt, and a fresh white shirt that had been starched—the way Henrick used to wear his shirts. I went back to the bathroom to dress and assess my reflection in the mirror. My face was Henrick’s face. And I’d always used the same brand of shaving cream. I used his watch, a timepiece that had been his father’s timepiece, a pocket watch that had kept time for decades.

I thought about my father. I thought about killing. I thought about Abbey Rose.

I whispered, “No witnesses.”

Once a man killed, he was never the same. One death changed a man’s world forever.

After I dressed, I went back into the front room. Jackie hadn’t come out of the bedroom yet. I stepped over the destruction and dropped my duffel bag near the front door, raised my antique watch and stood in the window, found enough light and checked the time. Twenty-five minutes had gone by. It was late by L.A. standards, a loud and traffic-filled city overpopulated with bad actors and deadly thugs. Last call was at one thirty and L.A shut down by two, but it was still early enough to handle a few things.

The bedroom door opened and I expected to see Jackie swaying in her skirt and high heels, expected to see her hair pulled back or done in some presentable way, but she was dressed in her panties and her bra. Her heels were off and she had on a pair of thick white socks. Sammy’s socks. She looked a mess. She stood in the door frame, struggling to balance herself and gripping what I assumed to be four thousand dollars inside her left hand. Looked like she had just robbed a liquor store. Something told me that she had gone through Sammy’s luggage, appropriated whatever cash had belonged to her dead lover like a vulture.

Whether she burglarized the living or raided a tomb of the dead, money was money. I accepted the loan and counted the wrinkled bills before shoving them inside my pocket.

She said, “Now you owe me five thousand two hundred.”

Her words slurred. She could barely stand. The vodka had finally taken control of her.

She said, “I’m going mad. My face is breaking out like I’m a teenager. Look at me.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“I have to kidnap my own kid, get fake passports, take my kid to South America, and change our surnames. Sammy was going to help me work that out.”

“So I guess all bets are off on that one.”

“I can still make it happen. But I’d need enough money to last at least six years, maybe seven. I can build a house right outside of Tegucigalpa for fifty thousand. I’m talking about a mansion with six bedrooms. Sammy was going to leave his wife. He was going to leave everything behind and come with me. He was going to help me build that house and help me learn to speak Spanish and get my kid and me acclimated to Honduras. It was all mapped out. I had concocted the perfect plan. Now Sammy is dead.”

She collapsed on the sofa and cried again.

Her tears came on strong, like she was a baby. She cried until she was exhausted. I brought her tissues and she blew her nose over and over. I helped her back toward the bedroom. She’d become dead weight and I had to drag her. I dropped her on the bed and struggled to flip her over on her stomach. She asked me if I was about to sex her. I told her no.

She chuckled. “You’ve been wanting to get inside me since you first met me in Rome.”

“Turn over, Jackie.”

“Are you gay or something?”

“I’m married.”

“You’re married. That’s a joke if ever I heard one. You might be married, but she’s not. She left you, Dmytryk. Everybody knows she split. Sammy joked about it and so did Rick. They laughed it up, the way you keep looking for her online and going back to a crappy house in Detroit. Eddie Coyle and his brother laughed about it too, and they laughed harder than Rick and Sammy.”

“Stop it.”

“The nerve to insult me. Yeah, my kid is the center of my universe. Your pathetic problems are no concern of mine either, Mister High and Mighty. Sit back, ugly shoes, I have a few insults of my own.”

“I’m being a gentleman, and with you that is a challenge, so don’t push me, Jackie.”

“The best way to get over somebody is to get on top of somebody else.” She laughed. “And your wife is probably on top of somebody else every night. Don’t you feel like a fool right about now?”

“Shut up.”

“She’s naked and bouncing on top of somebody else and you’re still wearing a stupid wedding ring.” She kicked her heels and cackled harder. “Losers. That’s all we are. Pathetic losers, nothing more and nothing less. So, come on, since this day’s been so bad, let’s give each other some pity sex.”

It was hard to flip her over on the twin-size bed, but I managed. She put some arch in her back and pushed her backside up in the air. She dared me to mount her. In her eyes, if I entered her drunken body, then my worth as a man would be validated.

I needed Sammy’s mistress to pass out facedown. That way if she regurgitated, she wouldn’t drown in her vomit and end up dancing the salsa with Sammy as they waited on Rick to join them at the same cantina in West Hell. Then they could share a good laugh on my behalf.

She laughed a drunken, irritating hyena laugh, but the laughter became sorrow, both eyes rivers of never-ending tears. Her body quivered and her chest rose and fell as she struggled to breathe, her nose again stuffy as she panted, “Sammy left without saying good-bye. Just like your wife did.”

I didn’t say anything and hoped she would do the same. Everything felt eerie. I was standing in the bedroom where, hours ago, Jackie had made love with Sammy. His carry-on suitcase rested in a corner. It stood up like a well-traveled tombstone made by Samsonite. His belongings rested next to Rick’s suitcase. Another bag that the frightened part of me hoped would become a grave marker.

Jackie asked, “Do you think Sammy really loved me?”

“Rest, Jackie. Close your legs and eyes and try and get some rest.”

Jackie took a deep breath. “Losers. We’re two pathetic losers stranded on an island.”

A man like me could only take so much. I shifted and battled with a massive headache.

She said, “Any other man would take advantage of me right now. I’m sorry I said I wished you were dead. I don’t wish you were dead. I just wish Sammy wasn’t dead.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Oklahoma,” she whispered. “When I’m sober I think that I’m going to tell you about Oklahoma.”

“What happened in Oklahoma?”

She kicked her legs awhile, but that slowed down, then stopped, and she was gone. Her breathing was thick and choppy for a few minutes, but it smoothed out and she slept like a child.

I went to the dirty window, pulled the tattered curtains back, and looked outside at a filthy town that had endless traffic on the streets. As engines revved and horns blew and mixed in with Spanish music and American curses, neon signs flashed and assaulted me with primary colors, God’s angry eyes blinking at us over and over. Head lowered, I gazed at my wedding ring and remembered the last nights I’d spent with my wife. She had left like a thief in the night. She had fled like a coward.

If we’d had a kid, if she had stolen our kid the way Jackie wanted to abduct her kid, and then vanished, I would’ve gone insane. I couldn’t find it in my heart to respect her for the way she left.

For all I knew she was sitting on the white sands on the isle of Hispaniola watching the constellations. Or she could have been killed in an earthquake and buried in a mass grave.

Sirens continued to sound all over Koreatown. The smells, the sirens, the carpet, it all had become too much. An abrupt wave of fear rose up and did its best to strangle me out of this world.

Like Jackie had done, when images of Rick and Sammy surfaced, when seeing their belongings got to me, when I inhaled the scents they had left behind, when that danced with thoughts about my wife, I lost it, felt the same heat and surges I had felt this morning, only I let them get the best of me. I grabbed whatever I could grab, turned over suitcases, pushed over the television Jackie had murdered, let out primal grunts, and released as much tension as I could. When I was done, sweat drained down my forehead. Jackie’s drunken words had pushed me over the edge.