“I got the stopwatch on you, Benito. Tell me when you’re ready to start.”
“Shit,” he said. “And I thought you and me were close. I thought we were friends.”
“We are, partner. And this is what friends do. They respect each other’s privacy. Get it?”
Benito clamped his mouth and stared straight ahead at the ramp up to 95.
Ten minutes and they’d be there. Ten minutes for Stan to decide if he wanted to start his life over or continue being the gutless loser he’d spent the last twenty-nine years turning into.
SIX
Mrs. Scarlett Rogers, the tour guide for Sunny Pines Assisted Living Facility, was a fifty-year-old woman with a swirl of bright orange hair and a smile that was so rigid, it had to be the result of multiple failed plastic surgeries. Gritting her teeth, the woman looked like someone who’d just stepped off the ledge of a twenty-story building and was still trying to keep her composure. Lawton was crooning to himself while Scarlett Rogers described the excellent amenities package at Sunny Pines. A gym, a sauna, five coed hot tubs, a walking course on their two-acre lawn.
“I want to see these hot tubs,” Alexandra said. She had no idea why she said it. As far as she knew, her father had never climbed into a hot tub in his life, and had expressed no interest in doing so. But she didn’t like this woman, didn’t like the place, and it was the meanest thing she could think of saying.
The woman turned her inflexible smile on Alex, lifted an eyebrow, and scrutinized her for a moment, as if Alexandra might be concealing a miniature video camera. One of those sneaky reporters the TV stations were always sending around.
“Certainly,” Mrs. Rogers said. “This way, please.”
She led them down the freshly waxed linoleum hallway, past a large recreation room with pool and Ping-Pong tables. Alex noticed the net was down on the Ping-Pong table, no paddles or balls in sight. The corridor was lined with women in housecoats and smocks. They sat on benches or in wheelchairs and several of the women were speaking, but there didn’t seem to be any actual conversations going on. An elderly black man was slumped over in his wheelchair near the door at the end of the hall where Mrs. Rogers halted.
She motioned at a heavy gray door.
“The tubs are inside there. I would show them to you, but they might be in use, and we certainly don’t want to disturb anyone.”
Before the woman could protest, Alexandra pushed the door ajar and peeked inside. There were four large plastic whirlpools arranged in the middle of the room. All were empty. The gray wall-to-wall carpet was soggy and reeked of mildew and chlorine. Except for the tubs, the room was bare.
“This place sucks,” her father said. “Like a waiting room at the morgue.”
“We have a very well-trained staff,” Mrs. Rogers said, shutting the door firmly. “Four full-time RNs and eight state-certified orderlies.”
“You’re not thinking of locking me up in this hellhole, are you?”
“We’re just investigating, Dad. That’s all we’re doing.”
“We have a registered dietician on staff. Our meals are nutritious and low-fat and we offer salt-free and vegetarian specialties.”
“Am I here because I shot that gun?”
“Dad, please.”
“Send me to Raiford,” Lawton said. “Christ, lock me up with the child molesters and rapists. Anyplace but here.”
Alexandra took the brochure Mrs. Rogers offered and led her father back out into the afternoon heat.
“Whew,” he said as she held open the door to the Camry. “What the hell did those people do to deserve getting locked up in that god-awful place?”
“They got old,” Alex said.
“Then I’m staying eighteen years old from here on out. Eighteen’s fine.”
Alexandra made it back to South Miami by four, just ahead of the rush-hour onslaught. She parked on the street out front and sat there for a moment staring down the row of identical neat white houses, all with two bedrooms and one bath. “Starter houses,” they were called these days. The sterile architecture of the early fifties, when those houses served as winter retreats, little more than oversized motel rooms for the yearly crop of snowbirds. Now the neighborhood was a ghetto for university students and widows and newlyweds. No children, only a few pets. Lots of turnover. In the nine years they’d lived on Silver Palm Avenue, seven different families had occupied the house to their east. Nine years married and she and Stan were still starting out. Still exactly where they’d been.
“You forget something?” her dad said.
“I was just thinking.”
“Myself, I’m always forgetting things. It’s what I do now. It’s my full-time employment. I wake up in the morning and I lie there and decide what I want to forget that day. I make a list and scratch things off one by one. Forget my thirty years on the police force. Forget my wife. Forget my teenage years. It’s my job now, and I’m getting pretty damn good at it, if I do say so myself.”
“Let’s go inside, Dad.”
“You going to stash me in that place, that nursing home?”
“No. You’re staying right here.”
“You’re going to lose your marriage, Alex. You heard your husband. He gave you a choice. It was him or me—the half-wit.”
“He didn’t mean it. Stan says things sometimes when he’s angry.”
“Oh, he meant it all right. I know that husband of yours. We’ve had ourselves some long talks lately while you were off at work. Heart-to-heart, belly-to-belly.”
“Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not stashing you anywhere.”
“I don’t want you to lose your marriage, Alexandra. It doesn’t make any difference to me. That nursing home place wasn’t so bad.”
“I’ve decided, Dad. Don’t argue with me. We’re sticking together.”
“Even if it means risking your marriage?”
She pulled the keys out of the ignition, took a swallow of air.
“Even if it does, yes.”
“Wow,” he said. “Guess it just goes to show that blood’s thicker than …” He turned his head and peered out his side window. With his fingertips, he rubbed several hard circles into his temples. “Blood’s thicker than …”
“Water,” Alex said. “Thicker than water.”
“No, that’s not it. It’s something else. Blood is thicker than … I know it. It’s there on the edge of my tongue. I’ve said it a hundred times. Come on, come on. Oh, oh. Yeah, okay, there it is. Blood’s thicker than water.”
He turned from the window, his smile full of crazy light.
“Blood’s thicker than water. See, Alex, I’m doing fine. Yeah, maybe I’ve got to work a little for it, but I get it eventually. Blood’s thicker than … thicker than …”
He shut his eyes hard, smoothed both hands across his graying hair, mouthing a word that simply wouldn’t come.
Stan Rafferty hadn’t factored in Benito. That was one problem. He hadn’t expected the little guy to play any role at all. Slam his head against the windshield, get knocked unconscious and stay that way until the paramedics came. That’s the picture Stan had in his mind, but because he was using chaos theory to guide his thinking, he really wasn’t trying for any particular outcome with Benito or any of the rest of it. X was as good as Y, and Z as good as either. The crazier the better.
But still it worried him, Benito studying him so carefully as he drove along I-95, about a mile to the Liberty City exit. Scrutinizing his driving. Stan glanced over at him and asked him what the hell he was staring at.
“I’m trying to figure you out, man. Trying to read what’s going on inside that thick head of yours.”
Stan was about a mile from the exit, the go/no-go spot, and now with this new development, he’d decided to pull the rip cord, bail, bail, bail. Benito paying way too much attention, the traffic not busy enough. Christ, imagine that. Running along I-95 at almost rush hour through downtown Miami, and the traffic was all of a sudden super-light, nobody dart
ing and cutting.
Just didn’t smell right. Not right at all. Bail, bail.
Then he heard his own voice inside his head calling himself a chickenshit. All these years, he’d been thinking about crime, fantasizing about pulling off something like this. Imagining it, getting all hot. Now he had it set up; he’d figured it out, how it would work. He had a theory to support the action. And God knows, he’d need the cash starting his new life with Jennifer. He’d gotten himself rolling, picked his time; then at the last possible second he’d turned chickenshit. Yellow-bellied wimp. But then Stan heard another voice in his head give the other version of things. How another day would be better, a day when Benito wasn’t watching him so carefully, when the traffic was heavy, like it usually was, unpredictable, crazy.
Less than thirty seconds from the exit, the voices doing battle inside his head, and Stan gripping the wheel, not sure what his hands were going to do. Looking at the wheel, his fingers getting pink from gripping so tightly.
And then he glanced into the big rearview mirror and there was a car, a red low-slung sports car, must’ve been doing nearly a hundred, some kid barreling down the middle lane, Stan in the far right.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus goddamn Christ.”
“What?”
Stan pointed at the rearview and Benito peered into his big side mirror, and the voice that had been calling him chickenshit got quiet.
“Don’t worry about it, man. He ain’t in your lane. Just be cool.”
“That dumb fuck,” Stan yelled, and swung the armored truck hard to the right, aiming for the downtown exit, cutting off a yellow Chevette over there.
The little car honked and Stan oversteered right, then oversteered left, the big truck doing fifty-five down the exit ramp, careening. A car screeched and there was honking behind them and Benito crying out something in Spanish while Stan made a move with his legs like he was trying to downshift, brake, feet missing the pedals, the truck swerving back and forth, big red stop sign coming up fast, letters obscured with graffiti, heavy concrete beams on either side of the ramp, one sitting off-kilter, as it had been for weeks, its sharp edge hooking out toward the street.
“Jesus, stop this fucking thing!”
Stan guided the truck toward the left side of the off-ramp, toward that sharply angled cement beam. He cut over the shoulder, jounced against the cement, sparks showering from the hard brush, glanced out the rearview, to see cash and coins flying in their wake, and then they were in the cross street, hauling ass through a blank spot in the traffic, Stan hitting the brakes and cursing, wrestling the big wheel as the truck sailed across the avenue, doing an acting job for Benito’s benefit. The truck cut across both lanes and jolted over a small sidewalk where the drunks hung out, the homeless, the addicts hunkered in doorways, the muggers scanning the sidewalk, all the poor sad fucks of Liberty City drifting here and there. Stan was counting on them being around, being ready for his arrival as the truck humped over the curb, thirty-five miles an hour, bounced hard, and slammed head-on into the bright yellow fire hydrant.
Money was in the air. Coins tumbling inside a roaring geyser. A great column of water erupting through the floor between their seats and churning against the roof. And bills, a flood of green, swirling with the silver, bubbling out the broken windshield, across the hood, and out the windows into the street. Bright copper and silver, the water, the air, the money, a tumbling whirlwind of cash and water, as if Stan were caught deep inside the tumult of a tidal wave, a thirty-footer curling over him, locking him in its powerful embrace, the white foam, the dazzling silver, bills and coins.
He’d wanted chaos, and Christ, he had it now.
The truck was straddling the broken hydrant. From what he could see, he’d gouged a wide seam down the driver’s side of the van and another gash along the driveshaft from the front fire wall to the vault door. Water continued to blast at the ceiling, a torrent all around them. Half-conscious, Benito wriggled inside his safety harness.
Out the windshield, a deranged carnival was under way. A few dozen people out there on the sidewalk and in the muddy vacant lot, downstream of the flow of money. Heavy women, skinny men, children, gang-bangers with their ankle-length shorts, old ladies in quilted robes, everyone scrambling for the bills that were pouring out of the truck, pooling up, eddying near the roots of the trees. Yelps of excitement, a little shoving, a scuffle or two. More people coming out of the nearby apartment buildings.
Stan searched the crowd but didn’t see the one he was looking for. He twisted in his seat, freed himself of the seat belt, tried to move his legs, and that’s when the streak of lightning blasted through his skull. He slammed his head against the headrest and air whistled between his teeth. Behind a thick cloud, the sun dimmed and he felt himself sinking into the cold dusk it left behind.
But he fought it. Blinking, he gritted his teeth against a howl growing in his throat. He clenched the wheel, took several quick breaths, and looked over at Benito again. The little man was waking from his bad dream, the water blasting between them.
This was all Alex’s fault. Bitch goddess ice queen. The stench of corpses on her breath. Her and her job. Her and her brainless old man. Without Alex goading him into it, the whole thing would’ve just stayed in Stan’s head, a festering fantasy. No girlfriend on the side, no criminal enterprise. Alex had made him do it. Her and her Bloody Rapist. She’d left him no choice. And now look at the shitstorm he was in, a fucking tornado of tens and fives and twenties.
Stan squinted through the dazzle of pain, ground his teeth, and reached down to explore his legs. Cautiously, he probed his left leg, the damp fabric of his trousers, fingers easing below the knee. He felt faint, a gray swoon. His fingertips touching his left shin, the loose pouch of broken china. Jesus, he’d be in traction for a year. Walk with a limp, if at all.
But he couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t try to stop the flow of events, redirect things. He had only one thing to do, one small act amid the agony and upheaval. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t squirm anywhere. His legs were pinned beneath the steering wheel, jangling with pain while a sleepy stupor rose in his head, his mind going gray and mushy.
But this was no time for whining. The window of opportunity was closing; the smallest moment lay before him. Only one choice. As woozy and nauseated as he was, Stan managed to reach over and shake Benito’s shoulder. The small man opened his eyes, looked out at the throng of people rushing after all that cash. He swung around to Stan, wiped his mouth, and a snarl twisted his lips.
“You goddamn idiot, what the hell you doing, man! You almost killed our asses.”
“It was an accident.”
“No fucking way, man. That was no accident. You did that. That was on purpose.”
Stan groaned and took a whistling breath. Got the words out in short bursts.
“My leg. I can’t move. You gotta unlock the door, reach in there, get those big sacks.”
“What?”
“The big sacks. Save from the looters.”
Stan motioned at the windshield and Benito looked out at the crowd that had grown to over a hundred now, spilling around them, some of them peering into the rear vault, which had been gashed open by the cement beam. There were sirens in the distance and the water continued to spew through the floor, pummel the ceiling—a fire hose at close range, thousands of pounds of pressure.
“Come on, come on. Get the sacks, Benito. Do your job.”
“That’s not procedure.”
“There’s a procedure for this? Get the fucking sacks, Benito. Do it. We got to protect the money.”
The man shook his head, wriggled out of his shoulder harness, and took another look out at the people swarming into the muddy lot, on their knees, scrabbling for the cash.
“Hurry up, Benny. Hurry the hell up.”
The shadow was coming back again. Something big and dark and cold eclipsing the sun, the mother of all mother ships. Stan held on against the vertigo, w
atched Benito unlock the door to the rear; then, when it didn’t move, Benito put his shoulder against it and heaved it open. Sunlight pouring in back there. A minute later, he was hauling one sack out, then another.
“That’s all?”
Benito stood in the doorway, looking back at the vault, the glare of daylight.
“Fucking truck’s torn wide open, man. Somebody’s already got the rest of it. Or else it’s blown away.”
There was a knock on Stan’s window. Three hard, two soft. Then three hard again.
“Give ’em to me, Benito. The sacks.”
“Give you the sacks?”
“That’s right. Hand them to me.”
Grimacing at another spike of pain, Stan took the bags from Benito and stuffed them through his broken window. A white hand grabbed the first one, then the second.
“Hey!” Benito said. “Who the hell is that?”
Benito sat down on his collapsed air bag and peered around the geyser.
Stan brought his voice down to a gassy whisper.
“It’s okay, Benny. Tranquilo. What we need to do, we need to talk. I have to tell you something before I pass out.”
“You don’t have to tell me nothing, man. I already know what the hell you did. You robbed the company. You almost killed the both of us.”
Stan motioned for him to come closer. Benito stiffened, drew back.
“That’s not how it is, Benny. You got it wrong. Lean over here; my voice is going. I’m passing out. My fucking legs. You need to know what’s going on, man, before I faint.”
Benny sighed and shook his head in disgust, then bent forward. Stan grabbed Benito’s long black hair, levered himself up in his seat, and dragged Benito’s head into the jet of water and held it there, face-down. Benny struggled, but even in Stan’s weakened condition, even on the edge of unconsciousness, he was too strong for the little guy.
He heard the sirens on the next block, the sound piercing his flesh, packing his blood vessels, sirens in the veins, screaming blood. Holding Benito’s face into the powerful spray, arm muscles straining, but doing the job, from all those years of resistance training in high school—“isometrics,” they’d called it back then. Football team sitting around the weight room straining against bars that wouldn’t move, then back to lifting weights so they could tear more muscle fibers, because that’s what it took to make them rebuild larger. Scar tissue. Stan was just one big bundle of scar tissue. All those hours getting his body hard and strong and big so he could go out on a hot Florida night and smash some kid across from him and make the crowd scream. All those hours of grinding pain, torture, and sweat so his sister, Margie, would see him from the stands, be proud of her big brother, proud of him. He still got goose chills remembering it.
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