by Lee Baldwin
“Took you long enough,” she says by way of greeting.
I am well past being disturbed by anything Montana says. She is running down some weird track now. Me reacting to her bent vibe will be merely distracting.
“You check the layout?” I ask her.
“What is this, my job interview?” She sounds insulted but that’s OK, I want her unsettled. Even knowing that Wolfe will be monitoring things, I am scared out of my Sunday School wits to be around Montana in her current state.
She goes on, staring at the clock on her dash. “I know exactly how to get in there and where to stand. He gets home eleven-ish from the City Council meeting. Fairly dependable. We have thirty-five minutes.”
I know as much from talking to Wolfe. Except there are some details planned for this evening that Montana won’t guess. I just hope nobody gets hurt. I’m still thinking I should warn her, somehow.
She speaks again, all in charge. “Let me see the gun.”
“What gun? You said you would have a gun.” Complete bafflegab on my part.
“You loser,” Montana hisses through clenched teeth. “The piece Mick gave you.”
“You must be confused. That’s a parole violation, remember? You are my parole officer.”
I had no idea what Montana and Mick had talked about. Chances are it was in code, on the phone, so the possibility of misunderstanding was always present.
“Agent, not officer! Shit, I knew you would screw things up.”
“I can always come back next week.”
“What? No way, has to be done now.”
“Mick tell you what would happen if I don’t hit this guy?”
“Yah you are toast.”
I silently hand over copies of the three photos, Carruthers, Montana, and Tharcia.
She looks from one to the other. “What is this?”
“You should know, gangsta bitch. In case I didn’t feel like going through with it, Mick takes out you and your daughter.”
Montana laughs. “He would never touch us. You’re making it up.”
“Think about it. My probation is due to be over in a few months. You saw my file. I’ll be free. Mick is asking me to violate parole, commit a felony, for a few bucks. And here you are, my parole agent, ready to write me up.”
“Oh Stuka I would never.” She doesn’t sound convincing at all. She could have arrested me if I’d produced a firearm.
“And,” I go on, “just in case I’m not interested, he threatens me by hurting you guys. Which is really stupid considering what he already did to Tharcia.”
She seems to ignore that. “Well it’s a good thing I came along, you moron. If you need something done right...”
“You down with Tharcia getting hurt?”
“That’s not going to happen, schmuck boy. Mick won’t hurt his own daughter. You however are another story.”
“So I was right, Mick is Tharcia’s dad.”
“Play your cards right Stuka and things will go well for you. We want you in the network.”
Oh great news, now she’s making a deal with me. Rubbish. I know that Mick wants me wiped off the board because I threaten the appeal of his conviction. If Mick wants that, Montana wants it. She looks at her phone. “Time. We have to go. Follow me up there and park where I show you.”
I check my phone. It’s way too freaking early. “Not so fast, we’re not on a schedule are we?”
“I’ve got a gun you can use,” Montana is saying, looking around at the empty parking lot. “I’ll give it to you when we’re in position.”
I’m thinking that her actual plan looks more like this: She shoots me with her service pistol, takes the other gun and pops Carruthers, maybe she’ll miss but take a shot anyway to prove I’m evil, then press that gun into my cold dead fingers. I’m doubtful Tharcia will swallow such a story. Montana underestimates her daughter, as she does most everyone.
The parking lot is quiet. I know Wolfe is out there somewhere. Just to pass the time, I begin to nag her. “This takes me back to that time in high school. You loved me then.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Well I loved you. Idiot.”
“You’re joking.” Her tone is derisive but I know her inner narcissist wants to hear more.
“I did, Mon. But you were more interested in hanging with Mick.”
“That’s not true,” she says defensively. “He was always trying to help both of us. Just like right now. He respects you Clay. He was impressed with your getaway after the diamond thing. But it was a mistake for you to double cross him.”
Diamond thing? I never heard about any diamond thing. I try to sound nonchalant.
“Double cross him? Which getaway?”
“Mt. Baldy dummy, your fake car crash.”
“What the heck is this diamond thing?”
Now she laughs at me. “Oh, you were so stupid. Completely in the dark. Mick planned that robbery in infinite detail. Except you were supposed to show up in a car to take your package. Not on a bicycle. You didn’t tell Mick where you put your stash. That’s why he fingered you and made it look like a drug deal. He fooled the cops on that too.”
My mind is racing, trying to integrate diamonds with my money run after Mick’s drug deal. This is scary now, her being careless with such secrets. Why? Because the way she sees it, 20 minutes from now I won’t be telling anyone anything.
Montana’s still talking. “It was only good luck that you got away. You weren’t supposed to. You startled the guys at the drop. They handed you the wrong package.”
Wrong package? So what was in the package I took? It means someone else took a handoff, someone I didn’t know about. There could have been a mix-up.
“Nah, it was cash. That’s how Mick set it up.” I try to keep my voice even.
“You moron. Mick knows where you put them, we don’t need you anymore.”
She’s talking nonsense. I told no one. No one could find where I hid it. Them? And it isn’t what I’ve always thought. “Why didn’t Mick just ask me?”
“By then he had been arrested.”
“I mean when we were at the restaurant.”
“Because you didn’t show up.”
Oh crap. Mick has been feeding her the feces on what happened that day. She’s an important part of his network? No way. Time to change direction. “You’re a player in Mick’s organization? Hah. Mick is only interested in your fat ass.”
“My ass is not fat!”
“Only language he understands is spoken by your butt.”
She glares at me, teeth gritted around her next words. “Mick wasn’t interested in you. It was me all along. Mick loves me. He’s stoked at how powerful I have become. He played you until he had me. You were so lame. Then all he wanted was to get rid of you. You had no skills, it was hard to fit you in. He only wanted me. You won’t believe the plans we have, when he gets out. It’s only you and that fucking Wolfe made me move ahead faster.”
I’m incredulous. How many women have said that about jailbirds? Rescue chicks with low self-esteem, thinking they can save the dangerous bad boy. And how many other women is Mick conning right now? It gets lonely in there. I know it does. Guys make plans with women they have never met.
“Well I hope I’m around the day you discover you’re just another pelt on his trap line.”
“You numbnut. You can’t imagine the power I have in his organization.”
“Oh I’m sure. You send him homemade porn to keep him warm at night?”
The way her face hardens says I’m not that far off.
“I wonder how much he makes selling those,” I say sarcastically. “You’re probably the poster pussy in half the cells at Lancaster. Parole Agent Porn Queen.”
“He needs me and he loves Tharcia. He loves his little girl.”
“Then why didn’t you two stay together?”
“Complications,” she spits at me.
“Complications?”
“None of your bus
iness, bozo.”
“Let me try my luck. Let’s say the complication is Mick. Abusing your nine-year-old daughter under your own roof?”
“What! You are out of your mind!” She says the words, but there’s no conviction in her voice.
“So Montana, then why did you two split up? More precisely, why did you move out of his house to a motel, then to a nice house in San Jose? A house you couldn’t possibly afford?”
“It wasn’t like that at all.”
“Fuck you, mother of the year. I can give you the name of your daughter’s shrink.”
And now I see Montana do something I have never seen her do before, not even as a girl. Hands to her face, she begins to sob, heaving gasps of air pulled from a lifetime of self-loathing and inner rage.
I don’t care how she feels. I am beyond furious. “Tharcia came to you afraid and in pain. What did you do? Told her to shut up. You got in Mick’s face, but you didn’t really separate. Ten years later you’re still hooked into him, still sucking off his power. And you deprived your own daughter of help she needed by telling her not to talk about it. Mick had to keep you and Tharcia quiet. Child abusers are the bottom-slime in prison. If that got out, his network would cave in and grease the guy. That’s why you are valuable to him. Your silence keeps him operating.”
“Please Clay just shut up shut up shut up.”
“So I get it now. It was a diamond theft. Mick thought he’d get me arrested, or killed. Expected I’d be shot dead by the cops up Mt. Baldy. But when he figured out I’d hidden diamonds, Mick brought the heat on me so I’d be inside, where snitches die. Inside, where I couldn’t make a deal for the hiding place. Of course he didn’t want me on the outside screwing you. But he doesn’t care who bangs you, really.” That’s when I get it... I’m alive purely because no one knows of my hiding place. And after all those years in prison, I finally know what’s really hidden there.
“Shut the fuck up Cicero.” Now that were on a safe topic she sounds more normal, if you can call it that.
But as wacked out as she is, I still feel the need to warn her. “Okay, I admit it. I stashed the diamonds somewhere else.”
Her eyes are on me all intent. “Where?”
“Split this scene and meet with Wolfe tonight and I’ll tell you. Whatever happens, those diamonds will be in your future.” I am totally faking. With all the lying and mix-ups, I can’t be completely certain what I shot up that tree on Mt. Baldy four years ago. It’s an educated guess.
“You are demented,” Montana says. “Mick retrieved them. I already have a share.”
“A few maybe. You know what a liar Mick is. He got me busted because he doesn’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“I talked to him the other day, remember? He doesn’t know where they are.”
I can see it’s not working and Montana is getting restless. My first big clue comes when she pulls out a dark pistol, twists a long silencer to the end of the barrel. She slaps a clip into the grip and sights over her steering wheel.
“So why did you shoot Roswell?” I ask her. “Think it was me?”
The question catches her off guard. “I never do my own work,” she tosses off, intent on the pistol. She realizes what she’d just let slip, but she doesn’t care anymore. She’s been lying for so many years, she’s relieved to have this pretense gone. In the dimness her face changes, as though she’d grown a pair of pointy horns, a smile loaded with sharpened teeth.
“It was supposed to be you, schmuck-boy.” Her voice is defiant and relieved at the same time. It’s out. Something she’s wanted to say to me for years: I want to kill you. Once more I give thanks to the gnarly traffic on Highway 17. And to Drake. For being a greedy double-dealing son of a bitch, he took a bullet meant for me. You’re welcome, dude.
I press the attack. “So you threatened Yamamoto so you could take over my case. Is he the only guy you blackmailed? Wolfe thinks not.”
“You’re talking to Wolfe?” She sounds hurt, betrayed. Really ironic coming from a major traitor.
“Oh, Wolfe and I are best buds,” I remark confidently. She’s holding the gun directly on me now, no further pretense. It’s all Mick, pulling her strings. I have one consolation. At least before I die I know exactly how it was our last year in school.
She was all about him, totally a bad-boy’s girl. Eight years older, he completely outclassed me. Montana went right over to him from the day the three of us met, hungry for his power. I was only her training wheels. And I realize why she wanted to be the shooter that time so long ago. Showing Mick she could play by his rules for the power he could give her.
“Get out of the car,” she says with ice. “Walk around slow.”
I get out, holding my hands in view. This has veered off Wolfe’s instructions, I was not to get in her car. But we hadn’t discussed this gunpoint thing. She opens her door and stands, tracking me over the Jeep’s roof with the pistol. Her face is serene now, prettiest I’ve ever seen it. Angelic. She looks happy. She’s saving her relationship.
“I could kill you simply because you stole from me,” she says out of nowhere.
“Huh?” I reply eloquently. “Stole what? I’ve never taken anything from you.”
“My jewelry. From my bedroom. You were there alone when I went to work. Who did you sell it to?”
She is raving. But now I know why it’s so important to her. Her diamonds are real. Pink diamonds?
“So Mick didn’t know anything about Roswell,” I say, dragging my feet to kill a little time.
“Nobody in our chain knows who he was. He just wandered up your porch while my guy waited for you.”
“You’re such a fool. Could’ve been my UPS driver. You’re so incompetent Montana. Is that thing even loaded?”
“It’s loaded. As you’ll find out the hard way when we get up there.”
“Oh you have a schedule? And by the way, is that the same pistol that killed Roswell? Wolfe already has you as a Roswell suspect. He’ll connect the dots, you’ll be in the shitter.”
She laughs. “You don’t know the half of it,” she spits back. “Mick will take care of me.”
“Oh I’m sure Mick will get you adjoining cells with a shared bath. And what does Tharcia get? A mom she can see on visiting days? Pat downs on Christmas and Easter?”
“Mick helped me a lot. Helped us a lot. It’s how I got through school with a kid. You idiot.”
I’m at the passenger door now. “It’s locked,” I tell her with a crooked grin. I’m nervous, fingers trembling, but I manage to crack, “You’re so smooth.”
She reaches for the lock button, not taking her eyes, or the gun, off my face. Door clicks and I climb in slow. The pistol, in her left hand, is still on me. A lunge for the weapon is out of the question.
“Mick is wrong about Tharcia by the way.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s not his daughter.”
“She is. I am sure of it. A woman knows.”
“Tharcia knows who her real dad is now. And so do you. You’re just stringing Mick along on that one.”
Montana mutters something unintelligible. Her phone ping-pings. She pulls it out and glances at it. “That idiot is so getting on my nerves!”
I can guess who it is. “Wolfe wants to stop you from doing anything dumb. He might be out there right now, waiting. Guns on you.” Hint hint. Come on Montana, connect.
Her pistol wavers slightly. She drops the phone into her purse. She’d like to finish me now but her plan needs my bleeding corpse at Carruthers’ house. She’s thinking she can wave all this away by appearing to save the Councilman’s life.
Suddenly from out in the night, a bullhorn crackles. “Agent Harrison, lower your weapon.”
Montana jumps at the sound of Wolfe’s amplified voice. Her face is a hunted mask. She curses, looking around the parking lot. There’s nothing to see. Her phone pings again but she ignores it.
“It’s over Montana,” I
tell her quietly. “Put it down now. Think of your daughter. For once. The diamonds I’m holding can be yours!”
Her eyes turn into slits. “You fucking traitor. I regret I ever knew you.” I can see in her face that the least she can do for Mick right now is be sure I am dead.
“Agent Harrison,” the bullhorn blares. “Lower your weapon or we will fire.”
Montana hesitates a split second. She screams out, “Mick!”
She floors it. The Jeep takes off across the deserted parking lot. She’s concerned with aiming for the distant exit, not so intent on me. Waving randomly in my direction, the gun is almost within reach. I tense up to lunge at her, anything to get that murderous barrel off me!
Sirens and squealing tires, five police cars charge into the parking lot from behind the darkened stadium, sweep toward us fast in a comet of flashing lights. The cars fan out in a line, all we can see are blinding headlights and sparkling blue and red.
With a curse, Montana brakes and swerves hard left. I select that moment to pop my door and roll off the seat, hoping I don’t get mashed by a pursuing car. An evil pffffft slices air as I exit the Jeep. A slug hits the asphalt behind me and whines angrily into the night. I hit the hard pavement rolling and the chase moves away, the wailing cars converge on her Jeep. About a hundred yards off they get her hemmed in. There’s a crash. I hear Wolfe on the bullhorn, voice commanding.
I am kneeling on the asphalt willing her to stop, give it up, think of Tharcia. But incredibly, she is out of the car wielding the pistol, silhouetted in headlights. Her arms jerk upward and she’s falling to one side before the shots reach my ears. She hits the ground limp as a sack. The arm with the pistol flops out awkwardly. Montana what were you thinking?
Then she doesn’t move at all.
I’m on the ground, staring across the parking lot in empty disbelief. One of the cars rushes toward me. Two hooded men jump out, all in black with assault rifles. They draw down on me and loudly do their get on the ground thing. I stay down, looking across the littered surface to where Montana lies, a shapeless lump surrounded by milling cops. One has a foot on her wrist, the hand that holds the gun. I know that hand will never move again. This hooded cop is searching me, cuffing me. I’m led roughly to the cruiser.