No More Birthdays (Carol Ann Baker Crime)

by Pelzer,Lissa

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It had vomit on it. It had…’ She didn’t want to say Moon Face’s vomit, didn’t want to even invoke her image around these two. ‘It had vomit on it and I threw it in the trash at the motel.’

  ‘Well, that was stupid. Because now you’re going to have to put it on yourself.’ He leaned back on the seat and spread his legs, started rubbing his finger on the crease of his chinos. ‘Oh Terence, oh Terence!’

  ‘Now, cut it out!’ Bobby shouted back. ‘Didn’t you ever learn how to speak to a lady?’

  ‘I did Mr. Bobby, so if you see one…’ He put his legs down. ‘But seriously, get on with it. That’s what you’ve got to do now. Time is ticking. There’s no room for speculation…just a bit of ‘ejaculation’, and give it a good rub to back it up with the physical.’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘We don’t want them thinking you’ve faked it for attention.’

  ‘Oh yeah and what if I get pregnant? What then for Terence McCoy.’

  ‘Girl, please! Terence got them cut twenty years ago. You think he’s that dumb? That’s just his jizz….’

  Lilly turned away. She wished he’d shut up for just one minute. She had to think. She wanted that money, but she couldn’t go in the police station to tell them about Moon Face or Terence. And why would the cops even care if she had sex with Terence McCoy or not? It was just Gary being a perverted creep, but she had to make like she was going along with it. Bobby was being quiet right now, but he wasn’t just the chauffeur here.

  ‘Okay fine!’ She reached inside her jeans pocket.

  She could do what he said and just walk in there and pretend she’d lost her phone or had her laptop stolen, then come back out. Gary and Bobby wouldn’t know.

  ‘What about the money?’ she said again.

  ‘Hello! Spot the whore in the car. You – will – get – money.’

  ‘When? How much?’ She saw Bobby. His eyes flickered to the rear view mirror.

  ‘Miss Lilly, you’ll get money. We’ll straighten it all out after you get out. We’ll drop you off and go out and park across the street. When you’re done, you just come on over and we’ll all get paid.’

  ‘I want the money first.’

  ‘I thought you said you had her trained,’ Gary said. ‘You said a lady would never ask for money.’

  ‘I’ve got it under control.’ Bobby’s hand came off the wheel and he ran through the stop sign without seeing it. ‘Now Lilly, you need to do what you’re told. I can’t help you if you don’t help me.’

  And they were out in the fields already. ‘Which police department are we going to anyways?’

  ‘Come on now…’ Gary said. ‘Pants down let’s see you rub that little slit….’

  She turned around, aimed her hand across his face as hard as she could, but he just grabbed her wrist and threw it back into the front seat.

  ‘Pull over Bobby,’ he said. ‘I need to teach this little girl a lesson.’

  And the anger boiled up in her so fast, she thought she might scream. She hated his face so much, his thick, waxed eyebrows and fat lips. She hated his nice clothes and expensive watch. She hated what he was and what he had always been. He was every, nasty high school boy, writing dirty things on your locker and telling stories behind your back.

  ‘Yeah. Pull over here Bobby,’ she said as they were passing a crossroads, the bank on one side leading up to an old baseball field with a fallen down net.

  He did a double take. Not sure who he would be obeying if he did.

  ‘We better pull over because I’m not going to the cops until I get paid.’

  Gary was laughing. ‘Hello? Two men – one girl? Bring it on. Bobby…’ He loosened the strap of his watch and pulled it off over his hand and stuck it in his pocket. ‘I’ll go first. This is how you’re going to get paid.’

  She pulled her purse onto her knee. ‘Pull over Bobby,’ she said again.

  ‘God damn it!’

  ‘Pull over!’ She reached inside and found what she was looking for. ‘Sorry Gary,’ she said pointing Cassandra’s little pug gun at him. ‘I don’t mean to be like this, but I’m not going anywhere and you’re not getting anything until I get the cash.’

  Gary’s hands went up and his mouth opened and the car skidded as it came to a stop in the dirt.

  ‘Put that thing away!’ Bobby growled with a shake audible in his voice. He must remember what he’d told her about pulling a gun on someone. You didn’t do it unless you intended to fire, but she didn’t look at him. Her focus was on Gary. His hands were up, but his eyes were narrowing.

  ‘Where did she get that?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Bobby said. ‘Lilly. Put it away.’

  ‘No, I mean. Where did you get that? Like Toys R Us? Is that thing real?’

  ‘It’s real. You better believe it’s real.’

  ‘Or what, you’ll squirt me with it?’

  She let out a sigh and lowered the gun, let her thumb find the notch and her finger the tiny trigger and a sound like a firecracker in a trash can went off in the car. Something wet hit her face and a moment later Gary screamed. He screamed louder than the gunshot. He screamed long and hard and Bobby recoiled from the noise just as much as she did. He took a break to take a breath and screamed again until he ran out of air and then started stretching, kicking and pounding the back of her seat making it jump and lurch. He wanted to scream again, like a child angry for attention, needing to make someone else’s life as miserable as his, but he was running out of juice.

  He gasped.

  He grunted.

  ‘You shot me in the Goddamn-foot!’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Sorry isn’t going to cut it, sister! You shot me in the foot.’

  ‘Quit hollering!’ Bobby shouted. ‘Just try to relax will you. Let me see that.’

  ‘You keep away from me, both of you! Keep the fuck back. Let me out of the car!’

  ‘Take it easy!’

  ‘Open the Goddamn-door!’

  Bobby pressed the lock and Gary fumbled with the latch. He fell out hitting the dusty ground and sat there on the floor, getting his chinos dirty, dust caking his shoe.

  ‘For the love of God!’ He was gripping his ankle, pressing on it like it might fall off.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘A twenty-two.’ She glanced back at Bobby with a smirk, but he didn’t reply. He wouldn’t look at her. He was just staring at the back of his hands. She didn’t expect that from him. She thought he’d be a bit cooler about it, after the stories they’d heard. But right now he looked like he had that night on Sea Island. He looked like an old man who’d had a nasty shock.

  With the door still open, Bobby slipped the car into drive, pulled up level and got out. He went around the back to go in the trunk. The thought struck her now, as to why their bags weren’t in the trunk, and if anything was in the trunk at all or if it was empty. He was in there a while so it couldn’t be empty, but when he came back around, all he had was a half-finished bottle of bourbon in his hand.

  ‘Take some of this. Try to relax.’ He handed the bottle down to Gary.

  ‘Are you crazy? I’ve been shot in the foot. Don’t you know alcohol is a blood thinner?’

  Bobby stayed there, the bottle held out and when Gary didn’t take it, he took a mouthful himself.

  Lilly waited. Maybe he’d calm down enough in a few minutes to think sensibly, but maybe he wouldn’t. Right now they were in the middle of nowhere, a green corn field and the beginnings of the next town up ahead, but a car could come down here at any minute. That wouldn’t be good. But she knew what she was doing or she thought she did. She got out the car.

  ‘Come on. Let’s get back to business.’

  Gary looked up at her, his mouth contorted downwards like the other mask on a flyer for a high school production. ‘You want to do thi
s now?’

  ‘If I get paid.’ She shrugged. ‘Your argument was valid…I’ve done worse for money.’

  Gary looked to Bobby, hissing and rocking to comfort himself. ‘This changes everything.’

  ‘Not that much…’ she said.

  Chapter 20

  Gary put his good foot on the ground and heaved himself up. He let them see him limp and kick up more dust as he got to the car, but he wasn’t screaming now. She saw how the soft suede of his shoe had pulled away, but the bullet hole wasn’t more than you’d make with a pencil in a Styrofoam coffee cup. There was probably a bit of his shoe shot through the wound, but it was the dirt and dust that made her wince. Didn’t he think about that? Didn’t he have any notion of taking care of himself?

  He looked up pitifully. ‘Bobby?’

  ‘What do you need his permission for?’ she asked. ‘Just give me the cash and we can go and do this.’

  ‘Miss Lilly, why don’t you give me the gun?’

  ‘Just give me the cash. Gary, look I’m sorry, but I had to make a point.’

  ‘Lilly.’ Bobby was holding his hand out towards her. ‘Darling… There is no cash. Give me the gun.’

  He was bluffing.

  ‘Oh come on.’

  ‘Honestly Darling, no one here’s got any money.’

  ‘But you said…’

  ‘I know what I said, but darling, I had to.’

  ‘But he’s going to pay you! Why the hell would you do this if you weren’t getting paid either? This is all lies. You’re lying to me right now. When do you guys stop?’

  ‘There’s no cash!’ Gary called out from the backseat. ‘There’s no cash! There’s no cash! There’s no cash! Get over it.’

  Bobby looked at the bottle of bourbon, but thought better of it and screwed the top back on. ‘Gary is giving me another shot… he said. ‘That’s the deal.’

  ‘Another shot at what?’

  ‘At Terence McCoy… And his redhead.’

  ‘Cassandra. She has a name.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way. That was the arrangement. If you go and do this for Gary, he’ll arrange the date with Terence, a few days from now. That’s how I get paid.’

  She should have known. ‘So there’s no money?’

  ‘Well done, Einstein!’

  ‘And there never was?’ She felt her hand twitching, the blood coursing up her arms and making her shoulders tense. So now what? She had shot a guy in the foot and still didn’t have the cash to start over, and he would tell. He wasn’t the type to go to the hospital and call it an accident. And he was smirking at her. He knew she’d worked it out. If he told and she got on that bus to Atlanta now, they’d pull it over before they got out of Southern Ohio.

  ‘So, Plan B,’ she said. ‘You need to get the cash, get the ten thousand Bobby owes me.’

  Gary was in disbelief. ‘Ten thousand?’

  In the distance, a car was coming. Gary turned. He saw it too. It could be the police, coming after someone in the house beyond the corn heard the gun and the shouting, but she doubted it. Gary got a wild look in his eye and she pointed the pug at him. ‘Stay there.’

  If it was police, on their way to a kids’ birthday party or wherever, they’d probably still pull over, just to have a look and see why three people with out of state plates were parked up in the middle of nowhere. They’d act like they were checking they hadn’t broken down.

  ‘Get in the car…’

  Gary writhed, getting excited now, thinking she had a reason to be nervous.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ she said and Bobby took a step away from the car. ‘Bobby, get in the car!’

  But he didn’t. He just stood there, looking sad, looking like a pathetic old man who’d lost his glasses.

  The car came closer, came into focus. Lilly lowered the gun and waited. It was just a gray saloon. She saw Gary’s face drop, saw the man driving peering at them. She gave him a smile and he looked away, put his foot down and carried on. And Gary, just sat there like he’d forgotten he needed to do something to make the guy stop.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Lilly watched the car disappear and turned back. He might have missed that chance, but he wouldn’t miss the next. ‘We’ll go to a bank,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to two. I’m sure you have two different credit cards at least.’

  ‘I have plenty of cards, but how much cash do you think they let you take out…on a Sunday?’

  Bobby came into the car looking for his cigarettes and Lilly took them out the middle holder and tossed them over to him.

  ‘You don’t have an expenses account?’ she asked. ‘Yesterday you were playing it like you were a pretty big deal.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘You think I’m authorized to take out ten thousand just like that? And even if we found a place open today around here, how am I going to go in a bank like this?’ He held his hands out around his foot. ‘You need to take me to the hospital.’

  ‘I’ll take you to the hospital,’ Bobby said. ‘Don’t panic. Lilly Darling, come on. Enough is enough.’

  ‘This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to call your office, you’re going to get authorization and we’re going to go past a drive-thru ATM. How about that?’

  ‘Forgive me, honey, if I’m a few steps away from trusting you right now.’

  Lilly smiled. ‘You looked in a mirror lately – Honey?’

  ‘And what about this?’ He hitched his leg up by the knee. ‘What do you think I’m going to do about this?

  She beckoned Bobby to throw her a cigarette and he did.

  ‘I’ve not changed the deal,’ she said. ‘I’m not trying to con you. You get me the money you guys told me was on the table and I’ll go to the police with your Terence McCoy story… Then you go to the hospital and tell them you had an accident. Get it? If you change your story, well then I’m sure as hell going to change mine.’

  She smiled. She wasn’t worried about him changing his story. She’d be out of the car and in another long before Bobby dropped him off at a hospital.

  Gary blinked as the thought process traveled slowly through his head, summing up the pros and cons. Maybe he was thinking of the story he’d be able to tell Terence McCoy later, how good it would make him out to be, willing to take a bullet to the foot just to save his good name. Maybe he was thinking about how ten thousand dollars was nothing really, not to him. Lilly knew it was nothing to him. But it didn’t make it any less valuable to her.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Ten thousand dollars. It might take a minute.’

  ‘That’s fine. We’ve got plenty of time.’

  Gary cranked up his shoulder to get in his chino pocket, got his phone out and scrolled through the contacts. He selected one and put the phone to his ear, all the while hardly taking his eyes off her.

  ‘Hello, Charlene… It’s Gary.’ He pressed his lips together. ‘Yeah. I’m fine. Well, not that fine.’

  Lilly raised the gun and Gary waved it away.

  ‘Just a moment.’ He pressed his hand over the phone. ‘Chill out, will you? Don’t you think it would be a little crazy telling her I was fine and then showing up with this!’

  Lilly nodded, lowered the gun and let him get back on the phone.

  ‘Oh, no. I had a little accident. I’m going to need to stay in this backwater a little longer. Hopefully not permanently, if you get my drift.’

  ‘Miss Lilly…’ Bobby turned in his seat.

  Lilly twisted around. ‘Why are you still calling me that?

  ‘What, you want me to call you Carol Ann?’ Bobby cringed. ‘But it’s so…unattractive. You should stick to Lilly. Lilly is such a nice name.’

  ‘Bobby. I mean, don’t call me ‘Miss’ all the time. And anyway, I think I’m done, with being attractive and nice.’

  He was nodding slowly. ‘One thing’s for sure, this business here. This isn’t attractive…’

  ‘And what we were doing was?’


  ‘Done the right way… Darling, what’s wrong with it when it’s done the right way?’

  ‘Bobby.’ She shook her head. Now was not the time to try and illuminate his thinking.

  He was confused, his brows coming down, his eyes searching her face. ‘I don’t get you, darling. I just don’t. You got so broken. When did that happen?’

  She held the pug up again and pushed it against his shoulder like a finger. He didn’t flinch. He just closed his eyes. ‘You happened Bobby. You broke me!’

  ‘I didn’t break you. You were no virgin. You said you wanted to…’

  And Gary said, ‘Okay, that’s good. How long? Sure…Oh, I’ll live, just a flesh wound, just a little butter-fingers!… We’ll find it from here… I mean, I will. I’ll wait for you to call back before I head into town.’ He hung up the phone, looked kind of pleased with himself and gave them one nod. ‘All taken care of.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Charlene…that’s the girl on the client desk… She’s getting Finance to call around, said they’d find a specific bank open today that’ll take the transfer, wrap it up and have it waiting. Then she’ll call back and let us know where to go. If that’s okay with you.

  ‘Fine,’ Lilly said and lowered the gun onto her lap.

  ‘So, can we all just chill out for ten minutes. Is that possible?’

  The windows were down, but no one was smoking. A sticky Midwest wind wafted through the car carrying grit and seeds with it. Lilly turned to Bobby and he looked away. Maybe he had something to think about.

  She had something to think about too. They were sitting here, her and Bobby still acting like all this was her fault. He owed her compensation for everything that had happened and she was in her right to try and get it. She tried to think back to that night, as much as she could without remembering the details, putting the glasses and ashtray on the trolley outside the door - the heart-attack-code, knocking on Bobby’s door and him coming out and coming back and then. She had done everything right except swing the first time. She came to the room, she waited there. Did she go again? Blood was everywhere. She knew it was, it had to be. She didn’t see it with her own eyes. She didn’t want to see it.

  Bobby said, ‘We should drive into town and get some sodas. There’s no reason us all sitting out here, drying ourselves out.’