The clerk just glanced at the name and said nothing. Crow waited and finally it came clear to him. The clerk was waiting for more dough. Changing a name in the register cost.
Crow hauled another ten from his pocket and handed it over. "There. Think that’ll cover it?”
The clerk smiled revealing crooked bottom teeth and closed the registry. He did not ask for identification. This was Brownsville where illegals crossed over the river from Mexico in the dead of night to head for the interior of Texas. Whether the guest was Hispanic or white, there wasn’t any point in taking down Ids, most of which would have proven false if checked out. Management didn’t care about much but the nightly fees.
The clerk took the money from Crow for two connecting rooms before glancing at the door to see a man, two women, and a child enter the front door. “Your party?” He asked, amused. Crow wondered what he’d been expecting, a few grungy gangster types?
“Yeah, that’s them. You got the keys?”
The clerk handed over the keys and said, “You look familiar. Ever been on TV?”
Crow gave him a fishy eye. “How ‘bout I talk to you about that later?” It was a promise that given time and privacy, the clerk would get more than the twenty bucks. Only if he kept his mouth closed, of course.
Crow joined the others and led them to the elevator at the end of the lobby. He hoped Heddy wouldn’t notice the extra bulge in his bag. The only way she’d get hold of the money was to kill him first. And that prick, Jay, would certainly never get it.
He almost stopped in his tracks, so taken aback was he by the random thought. Was that what she was up to with Jay? Using Jay to dispose of him so they could share the stash? He hated thinking paranoid thoughts like that. Heddy was his partner. Without her he wouldn’t even be here. He wished he could trust her again, goddamn it, he wished things were clearer to him.
When Heddy asked him in the elevator what floor button to push, he snarled at her, “Two.”
“What’re you biting my head off for?”
She was tired from driving and in no mood for his antics, he knew that. He tried to smooth it over. “I need some sleep.”
“Well, you’re not the only one, stop being such a jerk.” She added, “You get two rooms?”
“Yeah. We’ll have some privacy for a goddamn change.”
The elevator door opened and Crow went out first to lead them to the room numbers. He kept the leather satchel in front of his body, out of their line of vision. Nobody was taking his money from him. Nogoddamnbody.
#
FRANK teamed up with the FBI’s ongoing investigation in St. Louis. It was discovered that on Prairie Avenue only days before there had been a report from neighbors of gun shots. When police checked it out, they naturally went to the known drug house they hadn’t yet been able to shut down. There, with a search warrant, they found blood on the floor of the living area; enough bloodstains to indicate a slaughter had taken place. But the house was empty, totally deserted now. The drug operation had moved on. And whatever bodies had lain in that blood had also been moved.
“Rory” was one Rory Rodriguez, minor drug felon, two-time loser. He had been found dead at a service station out of state. An employee at the station remembered a pearl white Riviera that left not long before the body was discovered.
They were headed south.
Frank, along with FBI agents in conference, tried to figure out the connection between Craig Walker, Rory Rodriguez, and the evidence of blood left in the drug house on Prairie Avenue. It didn’t take much to postulate there might have been robbery involved. They’d stolen money for their flight from the Mexican gangs.
And they were still headed south, considering where Rory had been found. But the route appeared to be a strange one, leading across the state of Missouri into Kansas and only then turning south.
The bodies of the Anderson family had not yet been found. Frank and the agents all believed now the family was still with Craig and the girlfriend. It was a cross-country push with three hostages in tow.
Frank had to give the FBI what he knew about Jay Anderson. They weren’t too impressed with Jay’s background and credentials. He was in therapy? He beat his wife? What a scum.
Frank didn’t tell them he feared Jay might crack and do anything. Even join in on the spree, a lawman gone bad to the bone. And if the young criminal couple had Jay helping them out, they might actually skip the country alive. It sure increased their chances.
#
CROW put us all in one bed together--Mama, Daddy, and me. Afterward I heard him and Heddy taking a shower in the other room, making lots of noise, and laughing. They were near to the border and escape. The thought must have made them happy.
I couldn’t move around much because my ankles were tied and I didn’t have much room between my parents to move around. After a little while I got so hot, I was sweating. I whispered, “Mama, could you move over a little bit? I’m hot.”
She didn’t say anything so I tapped her on the shoulder. She was turned on her side away from me. Daddy lay on his back, both his hands and feet tied and looped together down the front of him.
Mama still didn’t say anything or move over.
Daddy said, “She’s asleep, Em. She’s tired out.” He scooted over a little to give me more room.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Are you really going to Mexico tomorrow with Heddy?”
He was quiet for a little while. “How do you know about that?”
“I don’t see how you can do it.”
“Emily, I asked you how you knew about it.”
I squirmed, trying to find a cool spot on the sheets. “I heard you and Heddy talking.”
“You were in the van.”
“I still heard.”
“Does your mother know?”
“No, she didn’t hear.”
We were whispering, but Daddy raised his head off the pillow to see if Mama was awake and listening now. He dropped his head back down, sighing.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I wish I could explain it, but I don’t think I can.”
“I’ll never see you again if you go.”
“Sure you will! I’ll send for you to visit sometimes.” He hesitated. “I guess that’s not true. I won’t be able to do that. Not until you’re older, a lot older.
“Your mother was going to take you away from me anyway, Em. We were separating when we got back home. This is no different.”
If he thought this was the same thing I didn’t know what to think. “I’ll never see you again,” I repeated. I had to tell him the truth. “Why do you...like...her?” He knew I meant Heddy.
“It’s complicated. Maybe I don’t know exactly all the reasons why myself. She’s...she’s not like other women.”
“She’s not like Mama, that’s for sure. Daddy, she’s killed people. She should go to jail. If you’re with her, you’ll go to jail too.”
He was quiet again for a while. “If we’re caught, yeah, I guess I will.”
“And Crow doesn’t like you.”
“I don’t like him either.”
“He hid that money from Heddy.”
“I know he did. He’s a real jerk. A stupid punk kid.” Daddy lifted his head again to see if he could see past the door that connected the two rooms. Like me he could hear the two of them in the shower, playing around.
“What if Crow gets really mad about you and Heddy? When you get down to Mexico? What if he...?”
“Emily, you’re just going to have to stop worrying about me. I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself. And your mother will make sure to take good care of you. You’ll be better off without me around.”
He was right, Mama and I would both be better off, but he was still my father. I couldn’t believe what he was going to do. I had to try to stop him. “You’re a policeman, Daddy. You’re supposed to arrest people like them.”
“Sometimes, Em, people change.”
I didn’t know if he meant Crow and Heddy might change or that he had. I said, “Sheriff Eric won’t know what to think.”
Daddy let out a small grunt. “He’ll think he’ll have to hire a new recruit, that’s all. He never liked me all that much. He’s the one who sent me down to Charlotte to talk to...”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
It seemed I couldn’t find a way to persuade my father not to carry out his plan to leave the country. All I could think to say, at last, was, “She’s dangerous.”
“I know. Don’t worry. Try not to worry. I really do love you, Em. I always have. I can’t help how I am. Things haven’t been right for me and you mother for a long time.”
We both heard the door to the hall open and lifted our heads from the bed to see who had come in. We saw the hotel clerk cross our doorway, glance in, then turn for the bathroom where Crow and Heddy showered.
“What’s he want?” I asked Daddy.
“I don’t know, baby. But I think you ought to wake up your mother. Something’s going on.”
#
HEDDY wasn’t as tired as she had pretended. Once Crow had the family bound and in the bed in the other room, Heddy pounced on him as he undressed for the shower. She came from behind snaking one hand between his legs to cup his balls and one hand around the front of him, taking his penis into her hand.
“I’m horny as hell,” she whispered against his neck, then licked where her breath had laid down a track of moist heat.
“Let me get a shower. Join me?”
She let him go and began ripping off her clothes as if they were on fire.
“I thought you were tired.”
“Not when I walk in the bathroom and catch you naked, those tight little buns staring me down. God, I love your butt.”
“You kinky bitch. C’mere.” He drew her into his arms and ran his tongue around her lips then into her mouth.
They played like children in the shower, soaping one another down, playing slapstick games, slipping, sliding, colliding--and laughing all the while with uproarious squeals and squawks.
He tried to push inside her while she braced herself with her feet against the tub rim, back against the wall, but they both slipped, nearly ripping down the shower curtain. He gave it up as a bad job until Heddy went down on her knees and took him in her mouth. He wrapped his hands in the wet tangles of her hair and groaned in pleasure as the shower beat down on his shoulders. “Oh Heddy, oh baby...”
Neither of them heard the door to the room open and someone pad across the thin carpet to the partially open bathroom door. It wasn’t until the man there spoke that they halted their shenanigans, Heddy rising to her feet. Crow slipped aside the shower curtain.
“You can go down the hall to the fire exit, up the fire escape to the roof, cross over, and down the escape on the other side.”
It was the chocolate-dark Hispanic clerk who had signed them in. Crow gaped at him. “What the fuck you talking about, man? What the FUCK are you doing in here?”
“I sent two bad dudes on a wild goose. They’re right now knocking on the door of an empty room on the first floor looking for you. Me, I’m going down the service elevator and out the back before they come up here. I think you better move it. After you pay me first.”
Heddy ripped aside the curtain, standing boldly in her nakedness, water from the showerhead sluicing down her thin body. The clerk never blinked an eyelash. She said, “They asked for us?”
“They asked for a guy named Crow, but when they described him, I knew it was you.” He pointed at Crow, then smiled grimly. “They didn’t even bother to hide the guns they were carrying. They’re bad dudes. Real forward.”
Crow viciously turned the water faucet handles and stepped out. He was covered with goosebumps and not from the chill of the air. His penis had shriveled into near nonexistence, hiding on top of his tight balls like a sparrow ducking in a birdhouse from the onslaught of a hawk.
Wrapping a towel around his middle, he hurried into the bedroom and found a packet of the money for the clerk. “Here, take this.”
“Wow, all right, that’s cool, gracias.”
“End of hallway, fire exit, up the escape, down the other side of the building?” Crow asked.
“Yeah, and quick, very quick. They coming.” The clerk made no effort to say good-bye. He was there one moment and out the door, vanished, the next.
Heddy already had her clothes on. Crow was dressed and untying their hostages in the adjoining room. “Wake the hell up, get up, get your shoes on!”
Jay was wide awake, as if he had been listening the entire time. “More buddies from St. Louis?”
Crow ignored him while untying the girl. “Put your shoes on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
In less than two or three minutes Crow had everyone out the door, the leather satchel with the money in it hanging from his shoulder like dead weight. They moved down the dimly lighted hall to the red light signaling the fire exit. Carrie took that instant to go a little crazy. She started repeating, “Let us go, let us go, let us...”
Heddy whacked her so hard in the back of the head with a fist that Carrie was thrown off balance and had to catch herself on the wall. “You don’t move it, I’ll shoot your fucking heart out.”
Jay gave Heddy a hard look while he grabbed for his staggering wife and pushed her through the exit. They all stood on a dim landing, weak yellow light from a wire-caged bulb outlining stairs that went down, stairs that went up, and through the wall window, the fire escape.
“Raise that,” Heddy said to Jay.
Jay pulled up the window as instructed. The sound was loud in Crow’s ears.
“Now go out and climb to the top.”
Jay glanced quickly at Emily as if imparting strength to her before doing as he was told. Heddy made Carrie go out next, followed by the little girl. Crow brought up the rear as Heddy moved onto the metal fire escape landing and took the rungs upward. He said, “I hate heights.”
He didn’t think anyone heard him and was maybe kind of glad for that.
#
WE were in a pot of trouble that night, I told the therapist policeman as he lit another cigarette.
It was like all the other trouble rolled up into one huge cabbage head, boiling away in a big black pot, stinking like cabbage does.
The rungs were slippery with damp and there was fog crouching on top of the building like a very big, building-size gray cat. The fog scared me more than the thought of slipping off the fire escape. We couldn’t see what might be up there on the roof. I understood there were some men looking for Heddy and Crow, and I knew they must be from the drug lab, not the police, from the way I’d heard the clerk talking about them. My main worry was--what if they were waiting for us to get up there?
I felt my legs shaking as I climbed. I kept catching little looks up at the bank of fog hovering like something alive over the edge of the hotel building. In front of me was Mama, still muttering about how they needed to let us go, just let us go, please Jesus.
Above her was Daddy and I saw when he disappeared over the edge, swallowed into the swirl of thick fog. I paused, holding my breath, and from below me Heddy tapped at the back of one of my legs. “Get fucking moving!” She said. That scared me more than any old fog so I scrambled up another few steps until I caught up with Mama.
I didn’t want Heddy mad at me, not now, not on the slippery steps.
An arm came down out of the fog, taking hold of Mama’s arm, lifting her up until she too disappeared. I was about to cry. I didn’t want to do that--cry--. I hadn’t done that hardly at all during the days we were with Heddy and Crow. I didn’t cry even when I couldn’t stop thinking about the young man who died in our motel room or the policeman Heddy shot, or the man down by the fishing camp, or those people in the convenience store. I thought I might never cry anymore and that meant I was grown, but now I could feel myself puddling up with tears half blinding me. That’s when Daddy’s
strong arm reached down again and caught me, bringing me up and up onto the roof’s edge and pulling me over it into the soup.
That’s what it was like. Thick and wet, lukewarm soup. I could see vague outlines of Mama and Daddy, then Crow and Heddy as they piled onto the rooftop. When anyone moved, the fog parted and then swept back again, folding around him. I licked my lips and tasted salt. My tears, I guess, because I’d cried. I didn’t think fog had salt in it.
Suddenly that made me mad enough I stopped crying. If anyone could have seen me clear, he’d have seen I was up on my feet standing, my hands on my hips, mad and madder yet that we had been done this way. I was angry we were still being pushed around like we were little ragdolls you put in chairs at a table for a tea party. I was no doll. I was tired of all this pushing and shoving.
“Everyone hold hands. We’ve got to get across this bastard to the other fire escape.”
That was Crow. I almost didn’t mind him, didn’t do what he said, but Daddy had my hand and I couldn’t pull away or I knew I’d be lost in the fog and might fall right off the edge.
It seemed forever crossing the roof, running into stacks and vents that stuck up from the floor and tripped us before we could see them. Heddy cursed beneath her breath saying things worse than she’d ever said before. Both of them cussed all the time, but this night Heddy came up with stuff that scorched my ears.
I was about to cry again until I let the mad come back. I wouldn’t cry because of her, or of being in this awful damp fog, or of having to climb down fire escapes to keep two men from finding us. I wouldn’t cry if they beat me, that’s what I thought. Kid or not, I didn’t have to act like one and nothing we were going through was going to make me.
One by one we found the handrails on the fire escape on the opposite side of the building and one by one we carefully got ourselves onto it and down. Once out of the fog and back at street level where I could see again, I didn’t think I’d cry or, want to cry, again.
BAD TRIP SOUTH Page 16