Tempted by Trouble (5 page)

The freaking money had a dye pack. The pack had been activated by a perimeter alarm that caused it to explode seconds after the pack made it outside. That explosion stupefied Rick. He dropped the red-tinted greenbacks and stumbled. Over one hundred thousand dollars took to the air and scattered across the pavement. My cut of that treasure was going to reverse the curse and change the course my life had taken, get me out of this business. With each windswept bill went a piece of my heart, my future blowing away.

The guard had broken the bank’s rules, kept yelling and coming like it was his money being stolen. He fired again and the bullet hit Rick in the back. Rick’s eyes widened as his teeth clenched with the pain. Hot lead spiraled through his body and kept going until it struck the passenger window of our stolen getaway car. The window shattered, glass spraying everywhere, then the hot lead kept going and hit the driver’s-side window. By then it had lost its power. The lead hit the window and bounced away, fell into my lap. I looked down at the spent bullet. It was still hot and decorated with a dying man’s blood.

Rick collapsed, went down hard, and tumbled on the blacktop.

The car that had stopped between us accelerated and left the scene, the driver terrified.

A crowd of people dashed beyond the wounded guard and ran toward Rick. People bolted from cars, from trucks, from the ATM, all with their eyes wide, all with desperation.

The crowd clutched the fallen money, some trying to snatch cash that wasn’t stained and others who didn’t care. The young, the old, Caucasians, Latinos, African Americans, Africans, they all rushed, grabbed what they could grab, pushed each other out of the way, lips pulled back, growling with vengeance.

What I witnessed was like watching vultures pick at the carcass of what had been left behind. Everyone grabbed money like they were robbing the system that had stolen their dreams.

This madness was the common man’s corporate bonus.

Rick looked up at me, his face scratched and bloodied from his fall, his expression panicked and desperate, pleading for me to help him before the parade of sirens came. His hand reached for me the way the poor reached out for their savior. Blood pumped out of his wound as his eyes begged me to save him. I trembled, put my hand on the door’s handle, had to risk it all and get out and help him.

But I paused when I spotted at least three opportunists capturing the bloodshed with iPhones and BlackBerrys. Eyewitnesses would get descriptions wrong, as most did, but video cameras didn’t lie. This would be broadcast on television, would become breaking news in ten minutes, or on Twitter and Facebook within two. The Internet was a beast that John Dillinger never had to worry about.

I took a horrified breath, a breath that played out how this could end, for Rick and for me, both of us being caught right here in this parking lot. I played the unfavorable odds that were getting worse with every passing millisecond, and I frowned and shook my head. There was no way out for him. There was no way I could get to Rick and drag him inside this stolen car. And if I couldn’t stanch that wound, I’d end up covered in blood, fishtailing out of there, trying to escape the police with a dead man at my side.

Hard choices had to be made. My life had always been one hard choice after the other.

My foot punched the accelerator and I sped off, left Rick on the pavement, his image fading in my rearview mirror as Sammy’s spirit rose above me. I cut a hard left, took to Santa Rosalia, accelerated down the two-lane street that ran by Debbie Allen’s dance studio. Horns blew as I rocketed through the light at Marlton, battled potholes, and passed by more strip malls, most of the businesses abandoned.

I blew through stop signs and intersections, sped by a group of runners who jumped out of the way when they saw my uncompromising pace. The pack scattered and cursed me for ignoring California’s law that proclaimed pedestrians owned the right of way. Then, as I approached Hillcrest, a black SUV rolled through the red light without stopping, broke the law and did what they called a California roll, made a goddamn right turn less than ten yards in front of me, then galumphed well below the speed limit.

I was going too fast to slow down.

I hit a dip that snatched the car to the left. That cavernous hole grabbed the front tire and I lost control; I shifted and my foot pressed down on the accelerator.

My eyes widened while my hands gripped and battled with the steering wheel.

Sirens punctured the atmosphere as I slammed into the back of the slow-moving SUV.

Fiberglass met fiberglass as I crashed harder than Black Monday.

The airbag exploded and
the impact catapulted me back in time, hurled me into the dark skies and frigid air of the Midwest, back into the land of Butch Jones, Maserati Rick, and the Chambers Brothers. The explosion of lights inside my head faded like stars at sunrise. I battled to regain focus. My face was numb and my nose felt like a middleweight boxer had hit it with a knockout punch.

Stunned, I fought with the deployed airbag, struggled to get oriented and shove it out of my way. Horns blared. People yelled. Each noise echoed a thousand times. In front of me, over the front end that had folded like tinfoil, beyond the hissing steam from the fluids, was the SUV I had rear-ended.

It took most of my strength to shove the door open. It took just as much energy to pull myself out of the wreckage. Eyes peered into the rearview mirror of the SUV I had hit. It looked like the driver was a woman. I broke free of my pain and hurried to her window. She was shaken, her eyes wide open. She was shocked, but there was anger too. She had been thrown forward as her neck snapped backward, and her seat belt had locked and held her captive. It was still clamped across her sternum. A powerful violence had attacked her world without a sliver of warning.

I had taken the fedora with me when I limped away from my car. The brim was tilted down. I’d become Humphrey Bogart, disheveled and wounded, in a dark city trying to hide his injured face.

I asked, “Are you okay?”

“I . . . I think so. My . . . oh my God . . . my cappuccino . . . my seats . . . my clothes . . .”

A venti-size Starbucks cup had ended up on the passenger seat; most of the contents were on the leather seats and across her pin-striped suit. She grimaced like the cappuccino had burned like acid. She reached for her seat belt, tugged it over and over and was unable to get it to unlock, that simple movement making her cringe with pain. She moved in slow motion, as if her life were underwater.

Horns screamed in a dozen octaves and the
kindhearted
yelled for us to move the SUV.

Her BMW X5 was damaged, the bumper knocked askew, but the damage wasn’t enough to debilitate her vehicle. Mine was dead. Steam rose from the front end of an American-made car that was mangled. Every exit we had planned had been by car, not by foot. Everything was upside-down and I’d fallen into a worst-case scenario. Eddie Coyle had said that there was always a way out. People were on the sidewalk, but not many. A pregnant teenage girl was pushing a baby carriage. She kept going. A few old people did the same.

Police were all over town and that wrecked vehicle would be on the most-wanted list in a matter of seconds. I needed that car moved and I couldn’t do it myself. I limped toward a handful of Latinos, speaking in Spanish. I told them I’d pay them to push the car. They were all day laborers, more than likely heading to the nearest Home Depot so they could hustle for work. For five dollars each, one climbed inside and guided the car while two more shoved the scrap metal to the side, pushed it off the streets and into a parking space.

Now each man was five dollars richer and their fingerprints were all over the car.

Again I looked around. Sweat streamed down my face. I was less than a minute away from Wells Fargo. I hurried back toward the wrecked SUV and limped up to the driver’s window again. I needed to pull her out and commandeer her SUV, needed to throw her onto the asphalt and speed away before it was too late. Sweat ran down from underneath my fedora, trickled across my forehead to the stubble on my face. I held the iPhone in my aching hand, the earphones dangling to the filthy ground, the echo from the police scanner rising up from the headphones and being swallowed by a multitude of noises. Her eyes focused on my face and followed the trail of sweat to my lips.

She said, “Your bottom lip is busted. Your nose is bleeding too.”

I didn’t care about the blood that was staining my white shirt. I needed to rip her out of the SUV now, but when I reached for the door handle, I grimaced with the pain. The airbag had exploded and hurt my arms. She’d been rear-ended, assaulted from the rear, so her airbag didn’t deploy. She was shaken up, but she wasn’t wounded, at least not on the outside.

She panted, every motion frantic as she dragged both hands through her mountain of hair and said, “I need your insurance information.”

“Did you call the police?”

“I was sending a text to . . . someone . . . and . . . and I’m . . . I’m about to call the police.”

“You don’t need to.” I put an earphone inside my left ear. “I’m calling now.”

“Oh, okay. This happened so fast. You hit me from behind really hard.”

She wanted to see the damage, but I shook my head, stopped her from getting out.

I said, “It’s not safe to get out right here. You should pull over so traffic can get by. Let me get my insurance card and I’ll come back and we can exchange information.”

She regarded me with apprehensive eyes. Maybe it was the way I had instructed the immigrants to push my car off the street or the way I had handed them money that had made her fears rise. Or it could’ve been the panicked way I had kept my fedora tilted downward as I limped to her SUV. My gut told me that she should have known then. She should’ve locked her doors and sped away sounding her horn.

But she didn’t.

She had been rear-ended by a man wearing a classic suit and wingtip shoes.

I opened the passenger door and saw that she had her red insurance card gripped inside her trembling fingers. She raised her head from sending someone a text message, her lips tight with hostility. Her frown deepened when she didn’t see any insurance card in my hand.

She shook her head and groaned. “Please, tell me that you have insurance.”

I knocked fallen books to the side, threw her Starbucks cup out of the door, then climbed in and sat on the wet leather seat. I slammed the door, removed my fedora, let it fall and land at my feet. I reached inside my suit pocket and pulled out the Mexican switchblade. It wasn’t open, but she knew what I was holding. Urgency was engraved in my face and my gentlemanly smile was gone. Her fear came alive. Instant fear. I pushed a button and the six-inch blade popped out like death.

Her lips parted and said one word: “No.”

Her cellular was inside her right hand. The panic in her eyes told me that she was about to dial 911. It pained me, but I reached over and gripped the cellular, snatched the phone out of her hand. She yelled and reached for her door handle. The door opened, and she had time to get away, but she couldn’t leave. Her seat belt was still on. Again, she reached to try to undo the buckle, but I intercepted her hand, then I grabbed her body and pulled her back. Terror gripped me and my heartbeat accelerated. She opened her mouth to scream, but I jerked her hard, forced her to look at me. I shook my head in a way that told her there would be no screaming.

She was a small woman, manageable even with my injuries. I gripped her and made her sit still. I held the blade in my hand, held it like I was Jack the Ripper. More police cars and emergency vehicles zoomed by us in a blur. Her eyes went to the police cars, then gradually came back to the switchblade, her horrified expression telling me that she was adding things up, and the pandemonium revealed I had concerns more monumental than a totaled car and a ticket for tailgating. My desperation danced with her fear, and our lips trembled. A man wearing a Don Draper suit had become the bogeyman in her world. Face bruised, nose bloodied, distressed, I clenched my teeth and grimaced. She still had her insurance card clenched inside her other hand. I took that from her too.

I read her name. “Abbey Rose Brandstätter-Hess.”

She regarded the six-inch blade, shivered, and whispered, “Please . . . don’t kill me.”

A fear worse than death trembled in her voice.

My face burned. My hands throbbed. I swallowed pain and told the woman to be still.

I said, “Close your eyes.”

My hostage closed her
eyes with fear and defiance, more of the former than the latter.

She was tense, body tight, waiting to feel the Mexican switchblade dig into her body.

I held my inner panic at bay and evaluated the situation. She had keen features and a head of thick hair colored springtime blond and auburn. She wore a business suit. And for a moment I thought she might have been an undercover cop, but a cop never would have allowed things to get this far.

Her SUV was filled with dozens of books. One of the books was turned over on its face and I saw a picture on the back. It was a picture of the terrified woman, only she was dressed in faded jeans and a white blouse, her face in makeup, and her smile was wide and joyous. In the photo she was sitting on a yacht, clear blue waters and an island behind her, smiling like she owned the world.

I kicked the book out of the way, then I looked at her. She wasn’t breathing. She had frozen, hadn’t moved or inhaled since I told her to be still.

I said, “Take a deep breath.”

She did.

I did the same as blood dripped down to my shirt.

I said, “Now take another one.”

She did.

“Now I want you to open your eyes and drive.”

She hesitated, then her eyes eased open.