It was possible for a man to clean his body and not remove any filth from his soul.
I reached inside the bag and found a pair of black boxers, a white V-neck undershirt, and a fresh white shirt that had been starched—the way Henrick used to wear his shirts. I went back to the bathroom to dress and assess my reflection in the mirror. My face was Henrick’s face. And I’d always used the same brand of shaving cream. I used his watch, a timepiece that had been his father’s timepiece, a pocket watch that had kept time for decades.
I thought about my father. I thought about killing. I thought about Abbey Rose.
I whispered, “No witnesses.”
Once a man killed, he was never the same. One death changed a man’s world forever.
After I dressed, I went back into the front room. Jackie hadn’t come out of the bedroom yet. I stepped over the destruction and dropped my duffel bag near the front door, raised my antique watch and stood in the window, found enough light and checked the time. Twenty-five minutes had gone by. It was late by L.A. standards, a loud and traffic-filled city overpopulated with bad actors and deadly thugs. Last call was at one thirty and L.A shut down by two, but it was still early enough to handle a few things.
The bedroom door opened and I expected to see Jackie swaying in her skirt and high heels, expected to see her hair pulled back or done in some presentable way, but she was dressed in her panties and her bra. Her heels were off and she had on a pair of thick white socks. Sammy’s socks. She looked a mess. She stood in the door frame, struggling to balance herself and gripping what I assumed to be four thousand dollars inside her left hand. Looked like she had just robbed a liquor store. Something told me that she had gone through Sammy’s luggage, appropriated whatever cash had belonged to her dead lover like a vulture.
Whether she burglarized the living or raided a tomb of the dead, money was money. I accepted the loan and counted the wrinkled bills before shoving them inside my pocket.
She said, “Now you owe me five thousand two hundred.”
Her words slurred. She could barely stand. The vodka had finally taken control of her.
She said, “I’m going mad. My face is breaking out like I’m a teenager. Look at me.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I have to kidnap my own kid, get fake passports, take my kid to South America, and change our surnames. Sammy was going to help me work that out.”
“So I guess all bets are off on that one.”
“I can still make it happen. But I’d need enough money to last at least six years, maybe seven. I can build a house right outside of Tegucigalpa for fifty thousand. I’m talking about a mansion with six bedrooms. Sammy was going to leave his wife. He was going to leave everything behind and come with me. He was going to help me build that house and help me learn to speak Spanish and get my kid and me acclimated to Honduras. It was all mapped out. I had concocted the perfect plan. Now Sammy is dead.”
She collapsed on the sofa and cried again.
Her tears came on strong, like she was a baby. She cried until she was exhausted. I brought her tissues and she blew her nose over and over. I helped her back toward the bedroom. She’d become dead weight and I had to drag her. I dropped her on the bed and struggled to flip her over on her stomach. She asked me if I was about to sex her. I told her no.
She chuckled. “You’ve been wanting to get inside me since you first met me in Rome.”
“Turn over, Jackie.”
“Are you gay or something?”
“I’m married.”
“You’re married. That’s a joke if ever I heard one. You might be married, but she’s not. She left you, Dmytryk. Everybody knows she split. Sammy joked about it and so did Rick. They laughed it up, the way you keep looking for her online and going back to a crappy house in Detroit. Eddie Coyle and his brother laughed about it too, and they laughed harder than Rick and Sammy.”
“Stop it.”
“The nerve to insult me. Yeah, my kid is the center of my universe. Your pathetic problems are no concern of mine either, Mister High and Mighty. Sit back, ugly shoes, I have a few insults of my own.”
“I’m being a gentleman, and with you that is a challenge, so don’t push me, Jackie.”
“The best way to get over somebody is to get on top of somebody else.” She laughed. “And your wife is probably on top of somebody else every night. Don’t you feel like a fool right about now?”
“Shut up.”
“She’s naked and bouncing on top of somebody else and you’re still wearing a stupid wedding ring.” She kicked her heels and cackled harder. “Losers. That’s all we are. Pathetic losers, nothing more and nothing less. So, come on, since this day’s been so bad, let’s give each other some pity sex.”
It was hard to flip her over on the twin-size bed, but I managed. She put some arch in her back and pushed her backside up in the air. She dared me to mount her. In her eyes, if I entered her drunken body, then my worth as a man would be validated.
I needed Sammy’s mistress to pass out facedown. That way if she regurgitated, she wouldn’t drown in her vomit and end up dancing the salsa with Sammy as they waited on Rick to join them at the same cantina in West Hell. Then they could share a good laugh on my behalf.
She laughed a drunken, irritating hyena laugh, but the laughter became sorrow, both eyes rivers of never-ending tears. Her body quivered and her chest rose and fell as she struggled to breathe, her nose again stuffy as she panted, “Sammy left without saying good-bye. Just like your wife did.”
I didn’t say anything and hoped she would do the same. Everything felt eerie. I was standing in the bedroom where, hours ago, Jackie had made love with Sammy. His carry-on suitcase rested in a corner. It stood up like a well-traveled tombstone made by Samsonite. His belongings rested next to Rick’s suitcase. Another bag that the frightened part of me hoped would become a grave marker.
Jackie asked, “Do you think Sammy really loved me?”
“Rest, Jackie. Close your legs and eyes and try and get some rest.”
Jackie took a deep breath. “Losers. We’re two pathetic losers stranded on an island.”
A man like me could only take so much. I shifted and battled with a massive headache.
She said, “Any other man would take advantage of me right now. I’m sorry I said I wished you were dead. I don’t wish you were dead. I just wish Sammy wasn’t dead.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Oklahoma,” she whispered. “When I’m sober I think that I’m going to tell you about Oklahoma.”
“What happened in Oklahoma?”
She kicked her legs awhile, but that slowed down, then stopped, and she was gone. Her breathing was thick and choppy for a few minutes, but it smoothed out and she slept like a child.
I went to the dirty window, pulled the tattered curtains back, and looked outside at a filthy town that had endless traffic on the streets. As engines revved and horns blew and mixed in with Spanish music and American curses, neon signs flashed and assaulted me with primary colors, God’s angry eyes blinking at us over and over. Head lowered, I gazed at my wedding ring and remembered the last nights I’d spent with my wife. She had left like a thief in the night. She had fled like a coward.
If we’d had a kid, if she had stolen our kid the way Jackie wanted to abduct her kid, and then vanished, I would’ve gone insane. I couldn’t find it in my heart to respect her for the way she left.
For all I knew she was sitting on the white sands on the isle of Hispaniola watching the constellations. Or she could have been killed in an earthquake and buried in a mass grave.
Sirens continued to sound all over Koreatown. The smells, the sirens, the carpet, it all had become too much. An abrupt wave of fear rose up and did its best to strangle me out of this world.
Like Jackie had done, when images of Rick and Sammy surfaced, when seeing their belongings got to me, when I inhaled the scents they had left behind, when that danced with thoughts ab
out my wife, I lost it, felt the same heat and surges I had felt this morning, only I let them get the best of me. I grabbed whatever I could grab, turned over suitcases, pushed over the television Jackie had murdered, let out primal grunts, and released as much tension as I could. When I was done, sweat drained down my forehead. Jackie’s drunken words had pushed me over the edge.
I picked up the gun and went to her, stood over her with the gun pointed at her head.
For a long while I looked at Jackie. A woman who knowingly slept with a married man who was a thief of the worst kind. And I was no better than the company I’d been keeping. I’d become one of them.
It took minutes, but I calmed down, straightened my suit coat, and regained control of myself. I wiped the gun down, then put it on the dresser.
“See you in Georgia, Jackie. I’ll see you when we get to everybody’s savior.”
I packed my duffel bag, took everything I had brought with me on this unprofitable trip, and left the unkempt hideout as fast as I could. I used my remote and started my car before I left the building. The remote upgrade had been added last year. When I made it to my Buick Wildcat, it was warmed up and ready to leave. My wife and I had owned two brand-new vehicles three years back. She had driven a Cadillac and I’d had an Expedition. Now both were gone. All we had was a car my old man had left behind, a 1969 Buick Wildcat, a four-door hardtop that was green inside and out. My wife called the car old. I chose to call it classic. My Buick was forty-three hundred pounds of U.S. history that had a cracked dashboard and crank windows to go with its three-hundred-sixty-horsepower engine and twenty-five-gallon tank. I loaded my Wildcat and took to the road, mixed in with hundreds of new cars built in other countries.
I took to the dangerous streets of L.A. with between five and six thousand dollars smoldering inside my suit pocket. I had a little money of my own. Soon that would be gone.
Out of habit, I checked the time on my pocket watch, then I reached to adjust my fedora, but it wasn’t on my head. My father’s prized fedora was no longer in my possession. It felt as if my brain swelled, doubled in size, and pressed against my skull.
After I had driven about seven miles, I was back in the area where things had gone wrong. The Crenshaw strip, Baldwin Hills, everything I had witnessed that morning owned a new face. I drove through the Wells Fargo parking lot, a parking lot that now felt haunted, maybe some sort of Valhalla for Sammy, and I parked where I had parked that morning. I took the same spot, as if I were trying to do the day over again. I sat there in the dark, sirens humming in the distance, an occasional car pulling up and the driver or passenger running to withdraw money from the ATM. I tortured myself, let this morning’s tragedy replay in my mind a dozen times. Rick felt betrayed, that last look in his eye. I had failed him.
I clenched my jaw, wiped away a few burning tears, and left the same abrupt way I had done this morning, sped down Santa Rosalia until I made it to where I’d had the accident. The wrecked Chevy was gone. That made my heart accelerate. It was just a matter of time.
We could only be betrayed by the people we trusted.
Instead of taking the freeway east, I turned around and went back to the safe house.
I hustled back upstairs and grabbed everything that had belonged to Rick and Sammy and carried it to my Buick. One by one, I dragged their Samsonite tombstones to the car and tossed them inside the trunk with my traveling bags. Then I did the same with Jackie’s carry-on luggage. I shook Jackie awake, then dragged her to the bathroom and threw cold water on her face until she was able to open her eyes. After that I waited for her to empty her bladder before I did my best to help her get dressed. I dragged her drunken frame down a set of concrete stairs and loaded her dead weight in the backseat of my car. When I opened the door, the side of her head banged the metal door frame as she fell back across the backseat. I had to go to the other side of the car and grab her arms in order to drag her body inside. After that effort, I grabbed some covers I had in the trunk, blankets I carried in case my car broke down in the cold, then propped her up in the corner behind me and covered her up the best I could.
She was a dead man’s mistress. She wasn’t my friend. She was the type of person I had no love for, but I couldn’t abandon her the way my wife had abandoned me.
She was part of the team.
As I took to the streets, I wondered if I could’ve saved Rick. I wondered if I could’ve made it to him and pulled him inside the car. That action would’ve changed everything that had happened after.
Maybe I had been the weak link. Maybe I had been incompetent. If I had moved the car closer to the door about one minute and thirty seconds into the job, then, regardless of the fact that Sammy was wounded, they could’ve made it to the car and fallen into the backseat before the guard had staggered out the door. But then the money bag would’ve exploded inside the car and left that red dye all over the inside of the windows. It would’ve blinded us all and whoever didn’t die would’ve been shackled within five minutes. I searched for another way I could’ve saved the men who had called me their brother. Tears fell and my hands trembled. I had been traumatized. Seeing Sammy’s head blown open was like a bad dream that I couldn’t shake. I despised this world and every living being on this planet. Behind my eyelids, I saw the opportunistic people jumping over Sammy and Rick, no regard for the dead or the dying, chasing dye-stained money as it flew away like confetti. Beneath smog-covered skies that were devoid of any real humidity, I had watched the world lose its humanity.
9
Last December.
My meeting was on the seventy-second floor at Coach Insignia, a bar that had a panoramic view of Detroit, the Detroit River, and Canada. That was where the man called Eddie Coyle was waiting. I found him seated at the swank bar, his eyes moving from the television to the well-dressed women as they exited the elevator and sashayed into the dimly lit area. Some wore open-toed high heels and short dresses. Those women were with men who wore Rolexes as symbols of success. The wives of executives wore the same brand of watch to symbolize they had latched onto the paychecks of wealthy men. I took a breath and reassured my battered ego that one day my wife and I would belong to that club, the one for people who had access to wealth and were given all the love that money could buy, people who had Panglossian temperaments and lived inside a gold-lined bubble where all was the best in this best of all possible worlds.
I took off my wool coat, then removed my fedora. Eddie Coyle had on a dark suit and tie. He was clean shaven and looked like he was trying to pass himself off as a businessman, but he had the face of a laborer. In a room filled with gastronomes with deep pockets, he was eating pretzels, drinking a glass of red wine, and reading a book. He looked up from his book, saw me watching him, evaluating him, and put the wine down as I snaked through the crowd. The bar was stocked with over eight hundred wines, but after we shook hands I ordered a Hennessy and Coke. Eddie Coyle ordered another glass of wine. On this floor and the one below everyone was beatific and dressed in expensive clothing, mostly tuxedos and gowns. On the seventy-second floor of the Ren Center the world wasn’t in turmoil. People ate exquisite meals and drank the best wines like they were Roman gods.
My wife had told me that the man was from Rome, so I greeted him in Italian, said good evening, and then apologized for keeping him waiting. It had been a long time since I’d had a conversation in Italian, and part of me looked forward to that aspect of the evening. I asked him if he’d been waiting long. He looked confused and had no idea what I had said.
He moved his book to the side and said, “In English. This is America, so, if you don’t mind, please speak in English.”
“My wife said that you’re from Rome.”
He laughed. “I’m from the Rome in Georgia, not the one in Italy.”
I asked, “What’s the book you’re reading?”
He slid it toward me. It was a nonfiction number titled The Myth of Male Power.
I said, “I’ve never heard of that bo
ok.”
“This is my bible.”
I nodded. “You’re from the other Rome. I’ve never heard of Rome, Georgia.”
“It’s near Atlanta. Ever been there? To Atlanta?”
“Outside of a layover at Hartsfield, never been. How is that city?”
“Atlanta is nice, used to be nicer twenty years ago, but now it’s on the verge of becoming another Paris. The people in France said that Paris was the city of love, but you should see their ghettos. I was there for a month. I wasn’t impressed. Their ghettos are worse than the ones over here. Worse than the ones here in Detroit, if you ask me. And now, since Katrina washed its lovely canaille and destitute and drug dealers into Atlanta, it’s become the same with Atlanta. I’ll never live in the city. I own property there, but I’ll never live in Fulton County. I’m stuck renting my properties to fags, jigs, and wetbacks.”
“Before you go any farther, being the type of man I am, a man who says what is on his mind, I have to tell you that I protest the use of racial slurs and I’m not a fan of the disease known as bigotry.”
“Common language in parts of the South.”
“Understood. But despite the commonality of your colorful language, this isn’t the South. And the way I see it, minus the revisionist history, if you’re neither indigenous Mexican nor Native American, regardless of how you ended up in the country, voluntarily or otherwise, you’re the ancestor of an immigrant.”
“And as you will see, if you come on board, most of my associates are minorities. Whether they came here through Ellis Island or arrived on slave ships, that don’t matter to me. So if you’re implying that I’m racist, you’re wrong. And the colorful language my associates use is twice as creative as mine. This isn’t corporate America. Where you’re going has nothing to do with white collars. We don’t have to be politically correct. We’re not forced to lie. We speak our minds and let the chips fall where they may.”
“I wanted you to know where I stood.” I said, “So, you’re not keen on the populace in the city of Atlanta.”
Tempted by Trouble Page 9