The Upper Hand

by Johnny Shaw

  “No, sir. I am positive that we haven’t. I would have remembered.”

  Brother Floom turned to McCormick. “Hire them. Didn’t like the last band. Phonies. A bunch of sissies. These kids got brass. And a Mexican. They’re hard workers.”

  “But, Tobin,” McCormick said, “I don’t think—”

  But Brother Floom was already walking back down the aisle, saying to himself, “Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo.” He turned to the 300 that walked alongside him. “It’s fun to say.”

  Axel and Virginia walked out of the church. Virginia shook her head and laughed. “I don’t know where you found them, but that was worth it just to see Thrace’s head explode. Almost makes me want to sit through the sermon tonight and watch the train wreck.”

  “The band was caught off guard,” Axel said. “They were nervous after a long drive.”

  “Does it really matter?” Virginia asked. “This tour is a circus. Might as well fill the clown car up to capacity.”

  “Are you okay?” Axel put a soft hand on her arm. “Is there something going on?”

  “If I had my way—which I obviously don’t—this tour would be over right now.”

  “It seems like it’s going well. Bringing the Lord to so many people. The crowds have been great.”

  “And generous. Which is all Thrace cares about. I’m tired of my father getting dragged from city to city. I thought I could take care of him if I came along, but I can’t.”

  “Is he sick or something?”

  “Or something,” Virginia said.

  “It’ll work out,” Axel said. “Things work out.”

  “Naive but sweet,” Virginia said. “I’m glad you had your parking-lot vision and ended up here. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

  “Anytime.”

  “I still think you’re crazy.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “No,” Virginia said. “I mean seriously insane. You had a vision. Sorry. You’re being nice, and I’m insulting you.”

  “It’s okay. If you need to talk more, we can meet for dinner. We don’t hit the road until morning.”

  “It’ll be late. The Waffle House might be our only option.”

  “Ain’t nothing better than late-night hash browns.”

  “I’m at that hotel a block away. Come to room 207 around ten. We’ll figure something out.” Virginia gave him a kiss on the cheek and walked away.

  Axel put a hand to his face and watched her until she turned the corner around the church. For a moment, he had that first-date feeling. That butterfly nervousness that made his body tingle. Then he remembered she was his aunt. And the butterflies turned to maggots.

  “It’s not a date, stupid,” Axel said, making a mental note to find a good therapist when he got back to California.

  CHAPTER 25

  Let’s get crazy. We’re in Louisiana. I’m one espresso shy of robbing a liquor store just to get a rush. I’m bored and I’m in the South. The two of us need to put on some Daisy Dukes, hit the local watering hole, and see if we can stir up some trouble. Make some men fight over us.” Stephanie paced the hotel room, opening and closing a butterfly knife.

  “Where’d you get the knife?” Gretchen asked.

  “A kid was selling them out of his trunk. I bought one for you, too.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to get any more exciting.”

  “I know I’m complaining,” Stephanie said. “I understand the drudgery of crime better than most, but that was the most disappointing blackmail frame in the history of extortion. A slam dunk on a five-foot basket.”

  “I don’t want you to go back to SD, but you should consider it.”

  “Let me help,” Stephanie said. “Let me in on the frame. If you leave me here in the hotel room, anything can happen. Maybe I’ll head out to the crossroads and make a deal with the devil.”

  “It’s not my place to bring you in. I got partners.” Gretchen wanted to push the moment that Stephanie and Axel saw each other to somewhere between later and never.

  “I don’t want a piece of the action. I just want action. No cut. No share. Something to do. An assignment. I’m dangerous when I’m bored.”

  “I sympathize. I’m the exact same way, but no can do.” Gretchen went through the gear laid out on the bed and put it all into a duffel bag. Flashlight, binoculars, bottled water, dried fruit, beef jerky, cheese balls.

  “You’re obviously going to be gone awhile. You have snacks.” Stephanie picked up the big container of cheese balls. “You eat these? They’re gross, unnatural, and leave orange dust everywhere.”

  “I’m going to be sitting in my car the whole time. I’ll orange the rental.”

  “What’s this? You got plants to water or something?”

  “That’s a urinal for ladies.”

  “For ladies?” Stephanie said. “Do you hold your pinky out when you pee in it? So what are we staking out?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Let’s not do the back-and-forth,” Stephanie said. “We both know that I’m going to wear you down.”

  Gretchen and Stephanie sat in the rental car in the Walgreens parking lot. The drugstore was open twenty-four hours, so the lights remained on in the lot, but Gretchen managed to find a dark corner with a good view of the church across the street. And most importantly the buses parked in the grass field that abutted the building.

  “Ripping off a church is some next-level thievery,” Stephanie said. “There’s already the whole ‘Thou shalt not steal’ thing hanging over every thief, but you’re really spitting in God’s eye and flipping him the bird when you steal directly from him. That’s one badass ‘Don’t tell me what to do’ if I ever saw one.”

  “We’re not stealing from God. God doesn’t use money. We’re stealing from an organization that bilks people out of their money. The preacher is a conman.”

  “A tree is wood. A pig is pork. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “We’re stealing stolen money.”

  Stephanie put a hand on Gretchen’s face and turned it toward her. “Maybe you are, maybe not, but you sure as shit don’t have to justify anything with me. You want to jack a church, you have my blessing. A kid has an ice cream cone that looks delicious, I don’t care if you snatch it from him. Other than killing, there ain’t no amount of bad that’s going to scare me. I understand bad. I understand you.” Stephanie gave her a soft kiss. “Now give me the rundown of the caper.”

  “Caper? Really?” Gretchen smiled. “All the money from tonight’s offering will be brought to that bus on the far right, the Money Bus. We know that. What we don’t know is if, when, and how often the pickups are for bank transfer. I got to watch that bus to figure out timing and method of transport.”

  “Simple enough. One last question,” Stephanie said, giving it a dramatic pause. “Is that beef jerky just for you, or are we doing sharesies?”

  Three hours later, Gretchen fought sleep by naming every kind of sandwich that she could without saying the same sandwich twice. Stephanie slept soundly in the passenger seat. About fifty sandwiches in, Gretchen slowed down.

  “Monte Cristo, Philly cheesesteak, French dip, banh mi, Cubano, torta, bocadillo, Italian beef, po’boy, croque monsieur, sloppy joe, choripán.”

  A tapping on the window snapped her out of her sandwich hypnosis. For a brief moment, she couldn’t figure out where she was.

  The tapping continued.

  Gretchen took a big breath and centered herself. Probably a security guard rousting them from the lot. Without bothering to wake Stephanie, she rolled down the window.

  Axel leaned in. “Had a chance to get away and figured I’d see how it’s going. You need anything?”

  Gretchen glanced quickly at Stephanie, who faced in the other direction. “Get out of here. We shouldn’t be seen together. I’m fine.”

  “Is there someone in the car with you?”

  “Nobody. Someone I met. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You brough
t a date to a stakeout,” Axel practically shouted, then dialed it back. “This isn’t a game, Gretch. You can’t—”

  At that moment, Stephanie woke up, turned on the overhead light, and faced the two of them. “What’s up?”

  Gretchen felt that thing that was depicted in movies by dollying and zooming at the same time. The person stayed in one place and the background went weird. That’s how she felt. It might not have been that long, but it felt like an hour to Gretchen. It was long enough for everyone to recognize everyone else.

  Axel vomited on the side of the car, communicating clearly to Gretchen that he was a little upset about Stephanie’s presence.

  “A little dramatic,” Gretchen said.

  “What in the hell is she doing here? I can’t even understand how she could be here. It doesn’t make sense. She should be somewhere that’s not here. Not in this car. Or the state of Louisiana. Did you tell her things? What does she know?”

  “Calm down,” Gretchen said. “Do you want me to answer any of those questions, or do you want to ask like a hundred more before I start answering?”

  “She—” Axel started to say.

  “I’m right here,” Stephanie interrupted, “and not a fan of being spoken about in the third person. I have a few questions myself.”

  “That’s funny, because I’m not a fan of being conned into buying a piece-of-shit monstrosity of a house. Or of falling in love with someone that’s a lying-ass liar bitch liar.”

  “Let’s watch the language and the name-calling,” Gretchen said. “Steph, I meant to tell you.”

  “Are you kidding me right now?” Axel said. “I knew her first.”

  “Again,” Stephanie said, “with the ‘shes’ and the ‘hers.’ It’s annoying. Why don’t you climb in the back seat to avoid bringing more attention to us? The church is across the street. We can talk like grown-ups. Or, at least, two grown-ups and a child.”

  “Am I the child in that?” Axel said.

  “She’s right, Ax,” Gretchen said. “Get in the car. Let’s talk.”

  “What’s the point?” Axel said. “This is over. It’s all done. We’re compromised. There’s no way I’m going to trust her—sorry, third person. There’s no way I’m going to trust you, you awful liar bitch woman. This is done.”

  “That’s not your decision to make,” Gretchen said.

  Axel leaned back, looking at the side of the car. “You’re going to want to run the car through a car wash. I ate beet salad earlier. This is a white car. If you want to get your deposit back, that is.”

  “It’s under a false identity,” Gretchen said. “They’ll charge the fake card.”

  “I’d clean it anyway. It looks like someone got shot up against the door. You don’t want to get pulled over with a criminal in the car.” Axel walked away.

  Gretchen opened the door to get out. Stephanie held her arm, stopping her.

  “You talked to him, but we need to talk about this,” Stephanie said. “Why didn’t you tell me about Axel? Is he your boyfriend or something? Your husband?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Oh.” Stephanie let go of her arm. “That’s not really a big deal, then. I thought it was a love triangle scenario. A brother is fine.”

  “It’s not fine,” Gretchen said. “I brought the woman that he was in love with that ended up conning him to the heist that he planned.”

  “If he’s a pro, how could he take any of it personally?”

  “He’s semi-pro,” Gretchen said. “I got to go. I don’t want this thing to fall apart. Keys are in the ignition. Please don’t leave. I don’t want this to sit until we’re back in San Diego. I really don’t want you to go.”

  “Go talk to your brother,” Stephanie said. “I’ll do what I do. I don’t like being lied to.”

  Gretchen caught up to Axel just before he walked into the church. “Ax, we need to talk about this.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  Two people walked out of the church. The woman looked perplexed. “It’s not my fault. They said the Young Lions would be playing.”

  Axel pulled Gretchen around the corner of the church. “I will not go to jail or get ripped off again by the same woman. You brought the last person we can trust into something that we need absolute trust to pull off. Best case, she double-crosses us and gets the money. Worst case, she double-crosses us and we end up in prison. Both are not optimal.”

  “I get you being mad. You should be mad. It shouldn’t have happened with Stephanie, but it did.”

  “She’s running an angle on you, Gretch. That’s what she does. You don’t see it, but she is going to screw you.”

  “Already has.” Gretchen smiled.

  “You’re joking? You’re making jokes?”

  “You teed it up for me.”

  “You only think about yourself. I get it. I do that, too. We pretend like we’re a family, but we’re not. We’ve never been a real family. Even on this gig, we’re each doing our own thing separate from each other. When Dad died, it could have brought us together. We could have had each other’s backs. We didn’t. It was every man—and woman—for himself. That’s the way we roll.”

  “I’m not the one jumping ship right before we pull a job. I want to go through with this. We can do this.”

  “Not with her. Not with you.” Axel walked away.

  Gretchen watched him go into the church. When he opened the door, she thought she heard Kurt rapping about the movie Escape from New York, but it had to be her imagination.

  CHAPTER 26

  Kurt walked off the stage to the sound of polite clapping. The kind of pity claps that a six-year-old gets after thrashing “Chopsticks” at a piano recital. The sound a participation ribbon would make. Fewer than a dozen people walked out, which he took as a good sign. Rehearsal and preparation hadn’t improved his rapping skills. Nor his dance moves. His attempt to do the Worm made one parishioner think he was having a seizure.

  Louder high-fived him as he walked past. “INRI rocked the house.”

  “That was a disaster.”

  “That was Andy Kaufman–Brother Theodore level brilliance,” Louder said.

  “They didn’t throw a single thing,” Pepe said. “They could’ve. They had Bibles and crosses and other stuff. But they didn’t.”

  “My body is adrenaliney,” Kurt said. “Skin quivery.”

  “That’s the biggest crowd we’ve played for,” Louder said.

  “Maybe I should do some beatbox next time,” Pepe said, demonstrating his beatbox skills, which sounded like explosion noises a child made.

  Kurt’s voice dropped down to a whisper. “Are you high?”

  Pepe winked. “High like a fox.”

  “We had an hour-long conversation, because you kept forgetting. No smoking pot. We have to be extra chaste.”

  “Nobody’s chasing me,” Pepe said. “I didn’t smoke any pot. I said I wouldn’t, and I didn’t.”

  “Your eyes are redder than a blushing communist cutting onions.”

  “Edibles, compadre,” Pepe said, pulling a Ziploc bag halfway out of his pocket. Gummies shaped like cannabis leaves filled the bag.

  “Give me that,” Kurt said, grabbing the bag from Pepe and putting it in his pocket. “No more pot.”

  Pepe pouted but nodded.

  “Can we get back to celebrating?” Louder said. “We didn’t suck too bad.”

  The three of them chanted “We didn’t suck too bad. We didn’t suck too bad. We didn’t suck too bad” until Kurt spotted Thrace McCormick out of the corner of his eye. He shushed them.

  When McCormick got close, the three of them pretended to pray. Kurt hoped he would go away, but he could feel the man standing next to him.

  “Amen,” Kurt said. “Oh, hello, Mr. McCormick.”

  “Abhorrent,” McCormick said. “A travesty. Nothing resembling music just happened.”

  “The audience seemed to enjoy it,” Kurt said.

  “Quality is not determi
ned by popularity,” McCormick said. “Something is either good, or it isn’t. You isn’t.”

  Kurt hated that he agreed with his simplistic explanation of popularity versus quality. That was going to bug him for a while. It was like Hitler explaining how great Raiders of the Lost Ark was. It would force you to agree with Hitler.

  McCormick shook his head and started to walk away, then turned. “Am I mistaken, or did you play the same song twice?”

  Kurt thought they had gotten away with that. Their set list was limited, so they played the first song again at the end. “That’s our theme. We open and close with it.”

  “Don’t do that. It makes it seem like you only know four songs.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kurt said. “Got it.”

  “And is there any way to reduce the sweating? Three people asked me if it was raining outside.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  McCormick caught sight of something behind Kurt. With his long arm, he pushed Kurt and Louder against the wall. “Make way.”

  Four of the 300 marched forward, clearing a path. Kurt, Louder, and Pepe remained glued to the wall to avoid getting steamrolled. Once there was a clear path, Brother Tobin Floom in his pristine white suit with gold accessories walked toward the stage.

  When he reached Kurt, he stopped and turned to him. “What are you doing here?”

  McCormick put a hand on his shoulder and guided Floom away from Kurt. Brother Floom looked back, confused. The crowd’s cheer snapped him out of it. His eyes brightened. He clicked into performance mode.

  Brother Floom opened his arms to the applauding congregation. A few people whooped and hollered, which kind of hurt Kurt’s feelings. They had it in them but chose not to give INRI any of that enthusiasm. Brother Floom stalked the stage a few times and then jumped into his sermon. “What a glorious night for fellowship. Praise Jesus. Thank you for inviting me to your wonderful house of worship.”

  “Mom would have loved this,” Kurt said, leaning down to Louder. “At least, I think she would have. I don’t even know what she saw when she saw him. A preacher or her father-in-law. A holy man or a thief.”