Tempted by Trouble (20 page)

A few seconds later, at another bus stop I passed a man who looked like Sammy.

Again, when I looked in my rearview mirror, that man was gone too.

I swallowed and felt the lightness in my head and inside my body.

Something told me that I was already dead, that I had died back in Los Angeles. But the pain I felt in my heart told me that I was still alive.

 

 

 

 

When I landed in
East Point, my first impression was that I had driven back in time and landed in Mayberry. It was a nice area with a high concentration of banks. I counted at least six banks within two blocks. Across the street from Thumbs Up, what used to be a nice-size church had been turned into a Bank of America. Banks had been planted in every direction I looked. It was a forest of federally insured financial institutions. But a police precinct sat in the heart of all that old Southern money. Response time to a robbery in this area had to be under a minute.

I hoped this wasn’t what Eddie Coyle had in mind. It would be L.A. all over again.

Thumbs Up was inside a refurbished building on White Way, had a brick façade and an open dining room. Waiters and waitresses were rushing back and forth. The sleet wasn’t coming down in East Point at the moment, but it was cold enough for me to have flashbacks of walking along the Detroit River. I shook those memories away, tried to make them vanish the way a child erased drawings from an Etch A Sketch. The establishment wasn’t overflowing, but they had plenty of business; more than enough people were coming and going to make the owner proud.

I hadn’t eaten a decent meal since Los Angeles. The food smelled so good my stomach started doing cartwheels. I had to get away from the aroma before I lost my mind and ran inside and started grabbing food from plates, so I swallowed my hunger pains and walked that strip impatiently waiting on Eddie Coyle, strolled down to the MARTA station that was at the corner, walked around the block, everybody I passed saying good morning like I was their first cousin. It looked like this was another area clustered with banks. A Bank of America sat across the street from the diner and at least two more were a thirty-second job from that one. I saw police driving like wasps circling a nest, kept my eyes away from the cops, and pretended I was just another local checking out the mom-and-pop businesses that populated East Point, Georgia.

My cellular vibrated. It was Eddie Coyle. He was five minutes away.

I adjusted my fedora, rubbed my hands, and hurried my anger and anxiety back toward the diner.

The gun was inside my pocket, the .22 that Jackie had given me in Fort Worth.

Christmas music and cheerful employees in Santa Claus hats aggravated me with kindness as I waited inside Thumbs Up. Nausea rose inside of me and I went to the bathroom and locked the door, stood with my head over the toilet, but nothing happened. I coughed, dry heaved, and spat. Then I washed my hands and splashed warm water on my rugged face before I went back and waited off to the side, found room on a bench. From there I stared out at the streets with fear, anger, and impatience. I didn’t see them pull up, but I saw them coming from the parking lot across the street.

They must’ve arrived in East Point while I was in the bathroom battling queasiness. I was feeling miserable but Cora was smiling and laughing. She was wearing a goddamn black fedora. That was insult to injury. She was wearing a fedora, glowing and skipping ice puddles in the bitter cold. Her hair hung from her hat, hair that was the color of honey. She had colored her hair. She was smoking a cigarette. So was Eddie Coyle. I knew that he only smoked Marlboro Blacks. I’d made her stop smoking a year before we married.

Eddie Coyle tossed his smoke, then my wife took a long pull and tossed hers, her final exhalation sending a stream of cancer from her beautiful lips. Fumes rose around her head and face like she was a starlet in a movie from the 1940s. I wiped my face and did my best to look my best, not wanting either of them to see me looking as angry or as battered as I was feeling. Head to toe I felt like crap, but I fought the exhaustion.

Then I blinked a hundred times, swallowed, tried to remove the bitterness from my palate.

Cora looked like she had put on close to thirty pounds and none of it was muscle. Despite that added softness, she fit in with the women in the area and still managed to look like she had stepped off the cover of a magazine that featured stories penned by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, maybe a pulp story about a mysterious, buxom woman who carried a gun, a woman who had sex for fun and shot people for the same reason. My elusive wife had gray wool pants that stopped around the middle of her calves. Toreador pants. She also had on a dark turtleneck, black boots that looked like they cost as much as a fur coat from Windsor.

Eddie Coyle knew I was watching.

He strutted next to Cora, hand in hand with her, like they were newlyweds the morning after. He had on dark jeans and boots, and an oversize American flag belt buckle held up his jeans. He had on an old sweatshirt that advertised for McCain and Palin, bold lettering underneath their grinning faces, THE MAVERICK AND THE MILF.
MILF
was twice the size of
maverick.
Eddie Coyle wore that outdated sexist misogynistic political advert in Obama country and walked like he was looking for a street fight. Knowing Eddie Coyle, he was looking for a brawl. Starting a fight was his cup of coffee.

Pain rose up inside me, the epicenter of that flaming ache trying to destroy that thing in my chest that was shaped like a fist wrapped in blood.

It had been 380 days since her legs moved away from each other on my behalf, 380 days since she moaned because of me, 380 sunrises and sunsets since she welcomed me into the warmth that lived between her thighs.

Customers had to pass through two glass doors to come inside Thumbs Up. The first glass door brought people out of the horrible weather and deposited them inside a vestibule just big enough for a newsstand that housed rags like
Creative Loafing, Sunday Paper,
and
Rolling Out.
That was where my wife was when she looked through the second glass door. She saw me and froze. She stared and blinked over and over like she was trying to wake from a nightmare, like she was trying to make a monster disappear. I raised my hand and waved just to let her know that it was me. For a moment she had a dolorous expression, as did I. Maybe she thought this meeting was coincidental, but in the next blink her eyes widened. She realized Eddie Coyle had brought me here intentionally. Her nostrils flared and happiness abandoned her face. My nostrils flared and my face became the snarl of a rabid dog.

Then her lips moved and she said a single word; its first letter was formed by her top teeth pressing firm against her bottom lip, the action necessary to create all words that started with the sixth letter of the alphabet. She wanted to turn around. But Eddie Coyle was behind her, and so were more people who were desperate to get out of the cold. My wife had to go forward. Once again her bottom lip and her top teeth became intimate, once again she tensed her face and uttered a word that started with the letter
F
and ended with the letter
K.
I nodded and whispered the same wonderful expletive, only with two words, one a personal pronoun, the last word the proper name for a female dog.

Her laughter had died. So had her smile. She adjusted her designer glasses, lowered her head.

My wife went the other direction, toward the bathrooms.

Eddie Coyle walked closer to me. The gun was inside my pocket, but the Mexican switchblade had been slipped up the sleeve of my coat. Bullets were reserved for Eddie Coyle, but not yet.

He said, “You’re looking pretty bad, Dmytryk. Like you’re in a hurt locker.”

“Nothing a Z-pack and a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”

I wanted to let the blade drop down and put that blade inside his heartless chest. In the background, police cars kept passing by to get to their precinct. One patrol car was across the street at the Bank of America. I wanted to hurt Eddie Coyle in a bad way and he knew it.

I said, “Based on Cora’s reaction, I take it she didn’t know I was in on this deal.”

“Not even a clue.”

“That’s not the way to do business, not even for a man like you.”

“She didn’t need to know who I was bringing in on this one. It’s better this way.”

“And you said Jackie Brown is the fourth person. What about your brother?”

“And Bishop is the fifth.” He nodded. “Sammy and Rick were in on this with me. It was supposed to be a five-man operation, but we’re down to three and there’s not enough time to recruit anyone else but you. I’ll need you to handle both stages of the getaway.”

“Five men? So, I have to handle two getaway cars and four are going in?”

“We’ll get to that part later.”

“Sammy knew you were with my wife?”

“Once again, as I said before, and this is the last time, I can’t attest to what any man or any woman knows, only myself.”

“You expect me to trust you?”

“Hit the front door if you feel like you can’t. I’m the one taking the big risk here. You might be wanted on a capital case and any association with you could be a big risk for me.”

“I guess I couldn’t trust you with my wife.”

“Women and money are two different things. A man can’t keep either for long. And while he has either one, he best enjoy it, has to use them for what they’re worth, because when it’s gone, it’s gone.”

I should’ve shot him right then. I should’ve shot him and left him bleeding on the floor of the café, the way Michigan has been bleeding people for the last five years. He evaluated me and nodded.

The waitress came and led us to the booths on the left side of the U-shaped eatery. We sat down in a booth about midway. I took the side facing the streets, the man’s side of the table.

Cora returned; her hands were deep inside her pockets and her steps were slow and cautious. She was shaking her head. She stopped at the edge of the booth and frowned at me, then used her middle finger to push her glasses up on her face before she slid inside the booth next to Eddie Coyle. A thousand wasps stung my heart when she took her seat. Eddie Coyle asked her to let him out and she did, then he motioned for her to sit on the inside. Now she was unable to leave the table or run away without climbing over the top like an animal trying to escape this zoo. She moved to the wall and wouldn’t relinquish any more eye contact, no matter how hard I stared at her.

My hand was inside my coat by then, my finger on the trigger.

But when I saw her, when I smelled her, my finger slipped away from the trigger.

I swallowed, cleared my throat, and said, “Cora.”

She nodded. “Dmytryk.”

I said, “
¿Cómo amaneciste?
”

“
Bien
.”

Eddie Coyle said, “No Mexican talk. This is north of the border so both of you speak American.”

I said, “Go to hell.”

Cora said, “You’re looking bad, Dmytryk. You’re looking bruised and pale.”

“Thanks for your concern, Cora, but I’ll survive.”

She softened her voice. “Who beat you up like that?”

“Life.”

Cora picked up a menu. Without reservation, I stared at my wife.

I said, “About six months ago, I went to Texas, came home, and you were gone. I thought that maybe you had Alzheimer’s and wandered away from home. And now Eddie Coyle has found you and he’s sending you home to me, untouched. Is that what has happened?”

Stress lines grew in her face, a face that wore perfect makeup, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She looked like a child who was doing her best to wish me away.

I put on a smile. “Where is your wedding ring?”

“Pawned it in Guthrie, Oklahoma.”

“Pawning a ring doesn’t pawn a marriage.”

Eddie Coyle said, “Look, you haven’t heard from her in half a year. The marriage between you and Cora is done. She said it was over long before we met. She just didn’t have the guts to tell you.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“You understand what’s going on here, right, Dmytryk? If there are any hard feelings, put them all on the table so we can have the waitress come along and throw them away with the other trash.”

Still I received nothing from Cora. Her leg was bouncing and vibrating the booth. Underneath the table, my gun was aimed at her pretty stomach. I’d make her look at me. I’d make her feel my pain.

I said, “I was with you for six years, and at this moment, no matter how much I respected you, all I can think is that a slut is just a slut, no matter if she wears a wedding ring or not.”

Cora growled. “You’re a nasty, pathetic, vulgar jerk, you know that?”

“And you’re sloppy seconds.”

Eddie Coyle said, “Okay, Dmytryk, that’s enough of that. This is where I draw the line.”

I gritted my teeth and pointed in his face. “
Stay out of this, Eddie Coyle.
”

My wife leaned forward like she wanted to stab me with her fork.

Eddie Coyle smiled like he wanted her to, but he patted her hand like she was a trained animal. She took a sharp breath and sat back. It was invisible, but her leash was there, dangling from her neck.

I said, “So, wife, you were unhappy with me.”

She softened her voice and said, “You knew I wasn’t happy.”

“I knew you weren’t happy with our situation. I wasn’t happy with our situation. Only a fool would be happy. I’m asking if you were unhappy with me.”

“What’s the difference? You were my situation, Dmytryk.”

I softened my tone in response. “You were unhappy with me.”

“Yes. And when you went to sleep, I used to sit in the bathroom and cry half the night.”

“And you’re happy now.”

She sat back and looked like she aged fifty years. I pulled my lips in, the aches inside my body pulling at me as I turned and faced Eddie Coyle. He was a spectator at a circus and he would jump up and applaud if the lioness devoured the ringmaster.