“Now answer us, smartass. Who’re you?”
“I’m Jay Anderson and the woman and little girl in the back are my wife and child. These two took our car in Missouri and we’ve been with them ever since. Hostages.”
The driver looked at Bob. “Check in her purse first.”
With his free hand Bob rummaged in the bag and brought out a two-inch packet of bills. He held it up. “This ain’t much.”
“There’s more in Crow’s bag,” Jay said.
“I ought to...” Crow started to say, but the man standing over him slapped his face so hard his head swiveled on his neck.
“Okay, all right. Stop with this heavy goon shit.” Crow reached down and brought up his leather satchel to hand over.
The man named Bob rummaged in it and found two more packets of money held together with rubber bands. He shook his head. “It’s still not much.”
“We’re all getting out,” said the driver, opening his door. “Now!”
The driver circled the front of the van, waiting while Jay came from the front and Bob and the others stepped down from inside the back of the van. Once Crow, Heddy, and Carrie were out, and the two men waited for the little girl to appear, Jay suddenly took a step back so that he was just to the left and behind the driver. He grabbed him around the neck in a chokehold and threw him forward and down. Heddy dove for the floor of the van and her open purse there while Crow bumped into the other man, knocking him off balance. His gun went off, firing wide. Carrie pulled Emily with her to the ground, covering her head with her own body.
Heddy had her gun. She turned onto her back, brought it up and fired. The bullet caught Bob just above his ear. It exited the top of his head as a nugget of hot metal, taking with it skull, gristle, and brain that spewed into the sunny air around his head like a bloody halo that dispersed before the body hit the ground.
She then turned the gun on the driver and said to Jay, “Let him go.”
The driver stumbled, coughing and choking, holding his throat. He said huskily, “Well, fuck me.”
“That’s a good idea,” Heddy said. “Crow, get your weapon.”
Crow stepped over Bob and reached in for his bag. He found the .38 and joined Heddy. He looked down at Carrie and said, “You can get up now.”
Carrie stared at her husband with stunned eyes. “What have you done?” She asked.
Jay looked only mildly surprised at his own actions. He frowned, thinking, and then he smiled. “I think I just saved our lives.”
“They’ll keep coming after you,” the driver said to Heddy and Crow. “You don’t walk off with Esponza’s loot and think you’ll get away with it.”
“Esponza’s a fucking Spic shithead,” Crow said.
“He thinks the same of you, Walker.”
Heddy grimaced at the usage of Crow’s real name. “What’s this about six hundred grand?”
“It’s what you took. It’s what we had in the house, on the tables. If you don’t give it back...”
Heddy looked at Crow. Crow had taken the money from the tables while she had the men in the house lie down on the floor, hands taped and above their heads. She had been busy, much too busy to watch him round up the cash. Crow took the money, Crow knew about the money. What a lousy thing to do to her. What a really crummy lowlife kind of deal that was. Here they’d been on the road for days now since the heist and he hadn’t said a word to her.
Crow glanced over at her and said, “Don’t fucking look at me, I don’t have it.”
“We don’t have it,” she said, sounding righteous. “You can count what we got and then you go back and tell them. You tell them someone else took the rest, it wasn’t us.”
“They’re not going to believe that.”
“It was on the tables?”
“Yeah.”
“It was stacked up and rubber-banded and it was all right there in the open. On the tables? When we hit the house?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You’ve been misinformed. It’s a fucking lie,” Heddy said, her voice rising in anger.
The driver shook his head slowly. “I think your boyfriend’s holding out.”
Heddy looked at Crow again. “You holding out? Huh, Crow? Is he fucking lying or did you make off with more than I thought?”
“I told you, no! Shit, look in my bag. You saw what he pulled out. Where you think I hid it, up my goddamn ass?”
Heddy knew he was lying, she knew Crow, and he was fucking lying. The thought caught her way down in her gut and made it burn, like pouring rubbing alcohol over an open sore. Yet she said again to the driver, “Tell them we don’t have it, we didn’t take it. A hundred grand’s not gonna break nobody. Tell them to leave us the fuck alone or we’ll kill every fucking bonehead comes after us. You tell them that.”
Heddy waved Jay, Carrie, and the girl back into the van. Crow patted the driver down and found no weapon. “You stupid goon,” Crow said.
They left him standing next to the body of his dead partner as they drove away from the deserted fish camp.
Heddy was driving, as usual, with Jay in the seat next to her. “You saved our asses,” she said. “I’m not much for saying thanks, but that was really something.”
“Then you can do something for me.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
“Then let Carrie and Em go. I earned their freedom. Take me with you.”
Heddy glanced over her shoulder at Crow. He shook his head.
She said, “I can’t do that. Crow’s attached to them. You’ll have to talk to Crow.”
“Wait till we get to the border,” Crow said. “I’d feel better if we wait.”
Jay cleared his throat. “You sure Crow didn’t take the rest of that money?”
“I think you better butt out,” Crow said, danger creeping into his tone.
“If he did, I’ll find it,” Heddy said, not willing to talk about the betrayal with Jay. She could not deal with it right now. It made her stomach hurt. She grimaced as she clutched the wheel, driving as fast as she dared away from the fish camp. She turned onto a highway leading away from the town of Fredericksburg. She’d had quite enough of the place before she ever hit the city limits.
“We have to get another car,” she said.
“I was afraid of that.” Crow found the bag of goodies from the convenience store pushed under the seat and brought out an Almond Joy bar. He handed it to Carrie and smiled at her.
The little girl looked at him as if he had snakes crawling on his head. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you something,” he said, but he didn’t think that was the problem. He didn’t think that was what was in her thoughts at all.
#
THE minute I knew Crow had double-crossed Heddy, I wondered how long it would be before she killed him.
The men after us wanted back six hundred thousand dollars. I tried to think how much that is, but I couldn’t do it. I’ve never had more than a ten-dollar allowance to spend by myself. I tried to imagine thousands of ten-dollar bills piled up and I just couldn’t work it out in my head how many piles it would take, how many tens would have to be in each pile. Mama always told me I needed to study harder in math.
When Heddy asked Crow about the money, he made a joke of it and said where would he have it hidden anyway?
Then I saw behind his eyes and inside his head and I knew where he had it hidden. I knew everything. It was like seeing a movie at fast speed, or fast-forwarding a VCR tape. I wasn’t in the van anymore. My own thoughts were replaced. I went spinning into the memories that Crow had opened up with what had just happened to us and how he was being accused and had to save his face.
It was not like I was me anymore. I was at a door to a house, a back door, the day was cloudy and there had just been rain. I could smell the grass, crushed down by their feet as they padded across it to the gray cinder path leading up to the door. I was seeing all this as if through Crow’s eyes.
Heddy knocked and called out,
telling them she was there to see her friend, Rory. “Hey, Rory,” she yelled and knocked some more.
“He’s not here, go away,” someone called through the door.
Heddy grinned her crooked half grin at Crow hiding beside the steps, gun drawn, and banged on the door again, not to be denied. “He said I could wait for him here. Hey, man, how about if I pick up some rocks while I’m here anyway, ‘kay?”
Sounds of bolts being thrown and chains coming unchained rattled through the quiet morning. The door opened and a Mexican man who could have stood to lose some weight around his middle hovered there frowning at her. He said, “Who the fuck are you, man?”
Crow came from his crouch beside the steps, out of sight, and moved up the steps where Heddy had stepped aside. “No, the question is, man, who the fuck are you?”
He pushed the guy back and moved into what used to be a big open kitchen. It was still a kitchen, but on the counters there were lab supplies, beakers, tubes, vials. And something cooking, dripping from a rubber tube into a huge glass jar. There were trays of junk, trays of rock, a whole arsenal of pharmaceutical shock-joy-toys.
Two guys sat at a huge plank table made with wide smooth planks laid across sawhorses. They were counting money, putting rubber bands on it, stacking it to the side. Now they stopped, hands frozen in place. Another man came from the front of the house and stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. He said, “Whoa...” He was so big, he filled the doorway, but the blood drained from his face instantly when he saw it was a heist.
“Everyone get up slow-like and move out,” Crow said, twitching the gun at the seated men at the money table.
They rose and, with the man who had opened the door, joined the fourth man in the doorway. They all trooped into the next room that had once been a family living room. Now there was just a broken spring sofa, torn and leaking gray cotton, sitting beneath a window where the blinds were shut. Gloom camped in the corners of the room and dust motes danced lazily through the spear of sunshine leaking through the small square window in the front door. Empty pizza boxes and Chinese take-out cartons, overflowing ashtrays and empty beer cans littered the floor.
On the sofa sat two guys playing poker on the sofa cushion between them. They looked up, startled, and dropped their cards. Some of them fluttered to the floor.
“Get them down,” Crow said to Heddy.
She brought out her own gun she’d bought off Bandy and told them to get on the floor on their bellies. “Don’t fucking stand there, do it! I look like Mary Poppins to you?”
Crow backed into the kitchen, his gaze shifting from man to man as they obeyed Heddy. He took a black Hefty leaf bag from his pocket. He flapped it open and began pushing the money packets into it. He could feel his heart stampeding like a herd of buffalo and his mouth went bone dry. He swallowed hard, but he couldn’t stop grinning, thinking how much money this was, how fucking much money he had his hands on.
When it was all inside, he tied the top and dropped it to the floor for pick up on their way out. He moved into the living room again. He saw Heddy had done a fine job, a really highly excellent round up. The six men were all on the floor, lined up like bodies in a morgue, hands above their heads. She’d taped their wrists with gray duct tape.
Crow didn’t hesitate, didn’t have time. Someone else might come in any minute or some drug-crazed fiend might knock at the door, wanting to buy some shit.
Stepping to the first man in the line, Crow leaned down and put a bullet into his skull. Moving fast, not thinking, going blank as a slate chalkboard, he did the same to the next and the next. The fourth man had rolled over by then and put up his hands in some kind of plea. Crow plugged him in the forehead and heard the eerie shattering laughter coming from Heddy that did a tornado spin up the column of his spine. He shivered and moved on.
The fifth man was on his knees, trying to crawl backward like a crawfish, but Crow stopped him easy. The last man made it to the door before Crow dropped him with two shots to the back. Heddy went to him and shot him again, in the head.
It was all over in minutes, less than ten minutes and they were rich, so filthy stinking fucking almighty rich they’d never work again, never lift a finger to earn their bread. It was so exhilarating that Crow wanted to climb the walls, eat glass, and fuck horses.
That night he and Heddy stayed at a dump with torn linoleum floors and a bed that sagged in the center. They were on the edge of St. Louis, somewhere where white people wouldn’t even drive at night, much less take a room.
She wanted to see the money, sort it, count it, but he told her the truth. He had to get balled or he was going to blow a nut. They screwed their brains out and fell asleep a little after midnight.
The next morning, Crow woke at six a.m. It was prison life made him crack open his eyes and look around suspiciously. Prison made him get his ass moving not long after dawn and he hadn’t shaken the habit yet. His body clock was still striking morning wake-up call no matter how late he’d been up the night before.
Heddy had drunk about a quart of Mr. Jim and she was out, cold as a tombstone. Crow knew she would be, counted on it. He quietly rose from bed, dressed, and stuffed the majority of the money from the heavy Hefty bag into his leather satchel. Then he let himself out the motel door while Heddy snored in a blubbery drunken sleep that left spit bubbles forming between her open lips.
He drove to an office supply store and bought a large manila mailer full of bubble plastic. In the car again he took the money from his satchel and got most of it into the mailer. He sealed the envelope and addressed it to himself at:
CRAIG WALKER
DUPRAVADO HOTEL
BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS
Heddy didn’t know he’d already made reservations for them and that he’d told the manager he would be expecting a package they could hold for him until he got there.
Heddy would never know about the money.
It’s not that he didn’t love Heddy, hell, he loved her enough--or he thought he did and wasn’t that the same thing? Squirreling away the money was just what you did when you had made a promise to yourself that you’d never again in this lifetime spend years behind bars in a goddamn maximum security prison. It’s just what you did when all your life the people you trusted fucked you over. You didn’t look out for Number One, no one did, even Heddy could understand that.
No matter how long Heddy was his old lady, there was no way in hell she’d ever know he had the haul stashed away for when they might need it.
He bought a book of stamps at a convenience store, stamped the package and dropped it in a blue mailbox on the street before picking up coffee and Egg MacMuffins to take back to Heddy.
Then Mama shook me and she was calling my name, repeating it. “Emily. Emily! What’s wrong? Emily!”
When I blinked, the van was back and I was back. I didn’t want to look at Crow because if I looked at him, he’d know I knew, he’d understand some way that I knew where the money was and how he’d cheated and lied to Heddy.
“Mama? I’m okay. I’m okay.”
“She have a seizure or what? What the hell’s wrong with her? I never seen a kid act like that.” Crow sounded wound tight.
Heddy said from the driver’s seat, “If she throws up, I’ll dump her out on the road.”
Mama hugged me close to her bosom and I wanted to cry, but that would just make things worse.
“What happened to you?” She asked.
Daddy was concerned too. He was twisted around in the seat, looking worried.
“I don’t know, Mama, I...”
“You wouldn’t speak to me. You just sat there with your head all loose and rolling around, but your eyes were open. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“See what you’re doing to my family?” Daddy asked. “She probably needs a doctor. You’re scaring her to death.”
“I’m...I’m all right. I’m really all right.”
She’s probably hysterical because her father betrayed us, Ma
ma thought.
I didn’t want to hear anyone’s thoughts anymore. I pulled away from my mother and sat up straight. I breathed real deep and then held my breath for a couple of seconds. I thought about school and doing my lessons. I thought about history and the Battle of Shiloh, something we had been studying at the end of the school year. I thought about computers and wondered if I’d ever get one like some of the kids in my class had in their rooms at home. I thought about the blanket I had when I was little, how soft and yellow it was, covered all over with little white ducks, how I hugged it against me in bed at night and felt safe and warm.
For the next hour all I thought about was me and stuff about my life and memories of my past. That squeezed out Crow and Mama so that I wasn’t a tuning fork picking up their stray thoughts.
But I couldn’t help wondering if we’d be with Crow and Heddy when they got to Brownsville. If they ever got to Brownsville so they could cross over to Matamoras. And what would happen when Heddy found out a big thick manila package packed with money was waiting there at the check-in for her boyfriend.
#
THAT night everyone was subdued and silent, even Crow, who didn’t touch his bag to hunt down a high. Heddy watched him tie the family and pull the covers over them as if tucking in his own children.
When Crow was in the shower, Heddy sat down on the bed next to Jay and said quietly, “You really did save us back at that fish camp. If it hadn’t been for you I don’t think we would have walked away alive.”
Jay turned on his side toward her and away from his wife, who lay on her side facing the other direction, smiled a little.
Heddy let her hand rest on his shoulder. She dragged it down his arm, squeezed his elbow, and then slid her hand down over his chest. She felt his intake of breath and how he stiffened.
“I think I really do like you,” she said.
Carrie began to turn onto her back. “You stay where you are. I’m not talking to you.” Carrie halted and she too got stiff.
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