“When I was working the line and making money hand over fist, my education wasn’t a problem.”
She went to the wall and looked at my degree.
“Maybe it’s you, Dmytryk.” She shook her head and frowned. “Maybe you’ve been my bad luck.”
“I guess you’ve been thinking that for a while.”
“My life was fine before you came into my world. I was doing just fine.”
“You haven’t exactly been a pot of gold underneath a rainbow. If you were as ambitious about things legal as you are about things illegal, my luck would be better too. Yeah, if you see robbing banks as a good thing, then I guess I’m as rich as you are smart, so I guess we’re a match made in heaven.”
She pulled my framed diplomas off the wall and threw them across the room. She faced me and waited for an equal and opposite reaction. When there was none, she folded her arms, went inside the bedroom, and slammed the door. I walked out of the house before another argument erupted. I walked down Baylis Street. I walked down Normandy Street.
Shaking my head, I looked around. There weren’t any penthouses or mansions. This was the zip code of the workingman, the steel-toed workingman who labored hard to send his kids to college. The workingman who worked long hours so the next generation would have a better chance. This was where I was born, had been the zip of my parents for four decades. Again I examined my callused hands, an oxymoron with the degree I had on the wall. There was nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all. I’d been part of the backbone of society. Without the workingman, there would be no castles, and there would be no kings.
I went back inside my house and stood in the bedroom door.
My wife was lying across the bed, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
We had become prisoners trapped inside a shrinking jail and willing to do anything to get free.
I said, “One bank. That’s our compromise. One bank.”
She sat up and gave me a nervous-yet-excited half smile. “When can we do it?”
“We’ll have to find a bank that’s at least one state and ten to twelve hours from here. We can drive that long without having to stop for anything but gas. We can’t chance walking in and seeing someone we went to high school with working as a security guard or as a teller. We’ll have to pay cash for everything along the way. And if the weather’s bad, we’ll have to sleep in the car. That’s how it goes. It’s not pretty and it’s not first-class. Don’t forget what happens if it goes wrong, Cora.”
“How much do you think we can get?”
“We won’t know until we have it.”
“When can we leave?”
I took a deep breath. “After we have a plan. We’ll need a stolen car on the other end.”
“Outside of a wig and a note, how much of a plan do you need to rob a bank?”
“This isn’t a game. You need an exit strategy.”
“If you can do it, how hard can it be?”
Once again, she challenged me, put a sharp blade inside my ego and turned it slowly. My hands opened and closed. I smiled an angry smile and let that insult go by unanswered. It had gotten to the point that whenever I asked a question, or whenever she yielded an answer, all words seemed like an attack. Six years after I had taken my vows, I realized the type of woman I loved and had married.
She said, “When we leave, let’s just keep going and never come back.”
“I can’t do that. We can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“We live here.”
She fell quiet for a while. “Let’s go in the kitchen and talk about finding a bank.”
Weeks later, Eddie Coyle called again. There was another job. I wanted to pass on it, but I was already in too deep. I had become a team player, habit from working in corporate America, habit from working in the union, habit from playing sports. Eddie Coyle didn’t have to hold that gun over my head or remind me of that night we’d stood on the side of I-94 with the Uniroyal tire at our backs. I needed what he offered because the money was running low and my marriage was once again coming apart at the vows. Trips to Vancouver and Nashville and staying at the Townsend and paying bills and stress shopping had been like a quick trip around the Monopoly board, but there was only one way to collect another bonus for passing Go.
Eddie Coyle.
It felt as if the world had nailed me to a financial cross and he had become my savior.
Every time I left Detroit, every time I walked through the door, it felt like it might be the last time I saw the Motor City. Or Cora. That was why I kissed my wife the way I did, with a combination of love and fear. I knew right from wrong. But I had become swept up in the current and quick profits that came from wrongdoing. Part of me lived on the high, and another part of me reminded me of the inevitable. I’d told Cora that if I was caught, she was to disavow any knowledge and not say anything that would cause her to be incarcerated as well. The same if I was killed along the way.
In my mind I was being a man, protecting the kingdom and the queen, while the queen risked nothing in return.
At times I felt like a king was nothing more than a slave with benefits.
Responsibility was only a euphemism for the burdens of man.
Then there was the job in Pasadena, Texas, the job that changed everything. I packed my duffel bag and kissed my wife good-bye, hugged her and looked in her eyes and told her everything would be okay, then left and came back two weeks later with another fifteen thousand.
When I returned from Pasadena, when I entered my house carrying roses and chocolates, I walked inside a home that reeked of cruelty. It felt as if I had been robbed, but at first glance I couldn’t tell what had been stolen. The television was there and the furniture remained, but I rushed from room to room calling out for my wife, terrified that someone had broken in and attacked her, afraid I’d find her body beaten, bloodied, violated, and without life, until the truth grabbed me and shook me. I opened her closets and saw they were all barren. Cora had packed everything she owned and left. I stood in front of an empty closet like a mourner standing in front of a casket. Fear changed to panic and I searched our bedroom, took my dread from room to room, saw all of her belongings had been removed from the home. The carpet had been vacuumed and the bed left made. The house was so clean it looked like a model home. Everything I owned was in its place, as if she had never lived there.
A yellow Post-it was left on the side of the bed, placed on the pillow where she used to sleep. I already knew that it wasn’t a billetdoux. The days of Cora writing me love letters had come and gone.
The note told me not to look for her. She wanted her freedom. She wanted a new life.
She’d had enough of being married.
I’d never tell anyone she left a note. She was gone. That was all anyone needed to know.
I’d lost my parents. I had been shoved out of my white-collar career and I had been severed from my blue-collar job. Now I had lost my wife. I wondered how many times a man could die in one lifetime.
I was okay. For a few moments I was okay. For a few moments I felt as if a burden had been lifted. For a few moments I felt free. I went to the bathroom and emptied my bladder, then as I walked back into the living room, I saw what she had left behind. Our wedding photo stared at me from the wall. I pulled it from the wall and sent it flying across the room, wanted it to break into a thousand lies. The fifteen thousand dollars I had brought home, I pulled it from my pockets, threw it all at an unseen foe.
Moments later, I sat at the kitchen table and laughed until I came unglued. I laughed until my laughter changed to screams and howls of frustration. When madness had abated, I cleaned up my home, the home that my parents had lived in and loved in for decades, picked up the glass and put the picture from our wedding back on the mantel above the fireplace, and for the first time in six years, I took out pots and pans and cooked dinner for one.
10
Death. Lies. Debt. Deception.
Those demons da
nced inside my mind as pain enveloped me.
I coughed, tasted blood, then coughed for a few more moments.
“You’re in pain? Good, so now you know how I feel on the inside.”
The windshield wipers on my Wildcat worked overtime as I struggled to flee east on I-10. The wipers battled to throw water from the glass the same way I fought to throw memories from the surface of my mind. Another sharp pain hit and for a moment it was hard to keep my car between the white lines. Global warming had sent snow to most of the fifty states, as well as dumped an inch of rain on the frigid desert, and with the drop in temperature there was enough chill for me to continue running the heater on low. Joshua Tree National Park and Eagle Mountain were north, but El Centro and Calexico were south, maybe an hour away. Part of me wanted to drive in that direction, run from my problems before they caught up with me, cross into Mexicali, and find a hideout in Xochimilco or Lázaro Cárdenas.
“All I wanted to do was kill you.”
“I saved your life.” I coughed again. “I saved your damn life.”
Eighteen-wheelers passed me and threw gallons of water across my windshield. When visibility was better, I looked up and expected to see helicopters circling in the dismal sky. Expected to see a cavalry of cars following me like in the final moments of the movie Thelma and Louise. They weren’t there. Nothing was up there but rain clouds hovering and spitting rain down on my paranoia.
Jackie moved around in the backseat, shifted and moaned.
The pain remained and outside of making me feel loopy, the Vicodin wasn’t helping much.
A car passed by and I swear I saw Sammy riding in the backseat. The car changed lanes and exited the freeway, and Sammy looked back at me.
I rubbed my eyes. I’d seen Sammy twice in the last three hours.
Jackie moaned again just as I cruised into downtown Phoenix. Bank headquarters, law firms, and government buildings greeted me as I moved through five lanes of morning traffic, cars filled with men and women chasing a dream that only a few would ever catch. First I heard Jackie’s breathing change from smooth to heavy, then I heard her moving around in the backseat. She was waking up. She coughed. Then her hand reached up and she grabbed the back of the passenger seat. She struggled to find her center of gravity and sit upright. What I saw rising in my rearview mirror was like something from a Japanese horror film.
I adjusted my fedora and hoped Jackie couldn’t get a good look at my bruised face.
“I don’t care about your father’s fedora.”
I whispered, “I do. You might not care, but I do.”
Jackie asked, “Who are you talking to?”
I said, “Go back to sleep.”
She sat back and licked around inside her mouth. Static took over the airwaves and I changed the radio and stopped at a religious station. I wasn’t listening, just hoped that Jackie would think I was in tune with the preacher and not talk for the next sixteen hundred miles.
I liked her better when she slept.
She shook her head. “Change the station. I hate waking up to the voice of idiots.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Change the station.”
She cringed, then sat back and looked out the window, watched the world go by at sixty miles per hour. She was hungover. It looked like she was reading the interstate signs, trying to figure out where we were. I changed the station on the radio, landed on a conservative talk show, and let it play.
Jackie cleared her throat. “I’m thirsty and I have to use the bathroom, but not in that order.”
“Once we clear Phoenix, I’ll find a gas station.”
“At a hotel. Not a 7-Eleven and not a truck stop. Those bathrooms are disgusting.”
“You’ll have to go inside the hotel and rent the room.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “I guess I should be embarrassed.”
“How much do you remember?”
She whispered, “Sammy is dead.”
I let a moment pass. “What do you remember about last night?”
She paused. “I loaned you most of my money.”
“You loaned me some money, yeah.”
“I was drunk and loaned you four thousand dollars.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I need that money back and I want it back right now.”
“Sorry, Jackie. I don’t have the money, not anymore.”
“What do you mean you don’t have my money?”
“It’s gone. The money is gone.”
“How can it be gone? I just loaned it to you. You have to have it.”
“As we agreed, I’ll pay you when we finish with Eddie Coyle.”
“That money is for my kid, Dmytryk. I’ll kill you if you screw me over.”
“Well, Jackie, you’ve already tried to screw me and kill me, but not in that order.”
“I’m serious. Make your jokes at my expense, but I’m serious.”
“I know you will, Jackie. I know you’ll go shopping for old carpet and a new gun.”
“Eddie Coyle has used a lot of carpet and I’m not afraid to do the same.”
When I crossed into the Phoenix/Chandler area, hotels were lined up on the right side and I exited I-10. Jackie wanted to rent a room at the Holiday Inn Express. I parked out front and stood off to the side while Jackie rented a room. She had straightened herself up the best she could, but she still looked like a shapely hooker who had a very bad evening and worse skin. It hurt me to stand up straight, so I guessed that I looked like an ailing businessman who was the next customer on her sexual merry-go-round. It was early morning in Arizona and a dozen families were down for the free high-cholesterol buffet the hotel offered. Most of the faces were Native Americans. Peaceful families and their children. By the time Jackie had the card-key to her room, I had pulled a self-serve cart up and fought my pain and loaded her bag. I was in too much agony to carry the bag more than ten feet. Driving wasn’t a problem, not as long as I was sitting in one position and going in a straight line and not changing lanes too often. That was constant pain that I could handle. Jackie led the way and we checked into a second-floor room that had yellow walls, abstract art, and a Philips Magnavox television.
Jackie said, “I got drunk and passed out and slept in my makeup.”
The agony came in waves. I took a step and stumbled.
Jackie came closer and looked me up and down. “What happened to you?”
My body betrayed me and revealed that I was in pain, severe pain, but I tried to not let the extent of my misery show, not to Jackie. She would kill me and dump me on the side of the road if she knew.
She said, “Did you get into a fight?”
I took my fedora off and tossed it on the bed. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Did you get robbed?”
“I don’t have your money, so you can stop asking about it, okay?”
“Somebody took the money I loaned you?”
“Go get cleaned up. You smell. Get cleaned up and get some rest.”
She took her carry-on and rushed inside the bathroom. The weather report was on. It was minus 3 degrees in Memphis, minus 33 in Bismarck, and minus 1 in Atlanta with a hundred accidents. Detroit’s temperature was at 12 degrees. That was twenty degrees below freezing. No one was at my home. It had been left on its own. Abandoned. I hoped the pipes at the house hadn’t frozen or burst. But a burning in my gut and another shot of pain told me that busted pipes in an old house were the least of my worries. I tossed my keys on the desk, then went to the window and grimaced out at rain and 38-degree weather. There was a row of eighteen-wheelers underneath my window. A La Quinta hotel was next door, beyond the parking lot and the sparkling waters in the swimming pool. Mountains were in the distance, beautiful mountains that outlined the edges of the Sonoran Desert, nature as beautiful as the line of palm trees.
I grabbed my fedora and picked up the keys to the Buick again. My pain-filled strides took me through the lobby, past a line
of Native Americans, and out into the brisk air that helped cool the sweat on my skin. I went to the Buick, started it up, and drove around to the back of the hotel. I crawled out and opened the trunk, then stood there for a few moments, looking at traffic passing by on I-10, looking at people leaving the hotel and loading up their family vans and trucks. It felt as if I were underwater. When the parking lot was clear, I summoned my strength and tugged out Sammy’s and Rick’s bags. It took all of my power, but I growled and pushed them inside a green Dumpster. Rick’s bag busted open and a thick green Bible tumbled out. I tried to adjust it, but I made it worse and other things, maps and papers, fell out. The maps were of the streets in some part of Alabama. There were schematics for two, maybe three buildings as well. One large building and several small ones. The other papers were programs. A Bible and church programs. I guess I didn’t know Rick. Maybe that was what he was going to tell me. He’d turned religious and wanted out before it was too late. Without looking the programs over, I collected everything and threw it all into the Dumpster. It had been too much. I was not in any condition to labor and my mind wasn’t in gear, so I was unable to process the maps I had disposed of. I moved at a pace a baby’s crawl could beat. Again I coughed and tasted blood in my saliva. I stood still until I could handle the pain.
At the mouth of the entrance of the hotel, my world began to spin like a top. Still I pressed on. I needed to get back to the room and fall across the bed.
I staggered into the lobby and stood surrounded by convivial brown-skinned Native Americans. A wave of agony battered me, its tide as high as a tsunami, and I fought a battle I couldn’t win. My world went dark and I collapsed on the floor as a beautiful woman screamed.
Wrapped in darkness, I was plummeting from the seventy-second floor of the Ren Center, but I was close to consciousness, trapped with my bloodshot eyes halfway open, neither here nor there. Both worlds were out of focus. Jackie’s voice surrounded me, her rapid words strong yet inaudible.
The Ren Center and the Detroit River and Windsor faded away and the descent ended.
Tempted by Trouble Page 12