Jackie sat down on the bed. I sat next to her with my back against the headboard.
She said, “Sammy told me he loved me. Right before the last job, he told me he loved me. He told me he would give me whatever I needed and wanted to stay with me and forget the world. This is getting to me. Before Sammy, I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a year.”
She touched her face.
She whispered, “Come to South America with me, Dmytryk. I promise I won’t be like this. I’ll be good to you. I’ll be better to you than Cora ever was. You, my kid, and me can be a family. And I can give you another kid. I can give you two if you like. You don’t have to love me, but you’re the kind of man I wish my evil husband had been, and I know that I can love you. Hell, I’ll even lose a couple of pounds if you want me to. I’ll forget about Sammy. It’ll be me and you and my kid. We can be a family.”
For a moment, I imagined me and Jackie and her kid living in South America. I imagined freedom and happiness. Then I heard Cora’s voice on the other side of that door.
Jackie said, “You’re not going to try and cross the finish line?”
Silence was my answer. My mind was on my past, the robbery, the car accident, perseverating those regrettable moments over and over.
I went back to Abbey Rose’s book, picked it up, and stared at her photo. Then I put the book down and looked at Jackie. She had turned over and was still bouncing her legs like she was a teenage girl. Everything about Jackie irritated me. But she was all I had.
Jackie asked, “Do you think Sammy really loved me?”
“Of course Sammy loved you. Just like my wife loved me.”
I stepped out of the bedroom and went back toward the kitchen. Eddie Coyle was sitting on the sofa and his brother was doing the same, the movie Reservoir Dogs on the DVD player. Cora was in the kitchen looking at the plans. She was tense. She had heard Jackie singing her hallelujahs. Jackie’s scent was on my flesh, the truth about our marriage was on my pants, and Cora inhaled and shuddered. I stood next to her, stood close to her, the same poses we’d had when we stood before a minister over six years ago.
In a bitter tone she said, “When this job is done, we should file papers for divorce.”
I wanted to scream and tell her that I had come from a family that had values. Where I came from, divorce was what Other People did. I now had to accept that I was one of the Other People.
I said, “As long as you pay for it. I’m not spending a dime to get rid of you, not legally.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you know my address. You know where to send the papers.”
I went to the sofa and sat down between Eddie Coyle and Bishop, sat back and watched bloodshed and violence and betrayal. When the movie ended, Bishop put on another DVD, Two Hands with Heath Ledger. Cora was sitting at the dining room table. Eddie Coyle picked up his worn bible called The Myth of Male Power and began rereading his favorite scriptures. Cora glanced my way, her gaze long and empty, but I’d known her for years, so I recognized that expression that for others would be unreadable. She felt betrayed. By Eddie Coyle. By Jackie. By me. I wanted to tell her welcome to the club. The club that was only loyal to money.
I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. On the way out I paused by Cora. When she looked up at me I said, “We get this done, we’ll never have to see each other again.”
She nodded.
I went back to the bedroom.
Jackie was waiting. She was standing next to the bed holding that novel.
She put it down when I entered the room.
I closed the door and opened my duffel bag. I took out a red necktie and two pairs of black socks. I pushed Jackie down on the bed and used my tie to cover her eyes. Then I used my socks to tie her wrists. I gagged her too. When I was done I told her to open her legs.
I was ready to cross the finish line.
19
From the safe house in Dallas, Georgia, to our next destination, we covered one hundred and thirty miles in less than two hours. Eddie Coyle and my soon-to-be ex-wife rode in a white Chevy Suburban with Bishop at the wheel. It was Bishop’s vehicle, what he drove when the weather was unfavorable for driving a Harley. Jackie Brown rode with me and we followed them up two-lane interstates that were decorated with snow and melting ice. Jackie was on her cellular phone for the first thirty minutes, her voice soft and motherly, lots of laughing as she had a long conversation with her kid. She was a different person when she talked to her kid. She was likable. She was wrong and hypocritical, but she was loyal. I wished that Cora had been that way with me, as I had been with her.
The call ended and Jackie fell silent, looked incurably sad and heartbroken, then closed her eyes and went to the land of Nod. Maybe she was thinking about her kid and all of her problems, or maybe the vodka and staying up all night were finally catching up with her. We all had a past. We all had a present. We all wanted a better future.
Country music played on the radio and I fell into a lull and let my mind drift. My mind was on the job, but my mind was on Cora too; I thought about who we were eight years ago.
The way Cora and I met was simple. It wasn’t forced. It just was a man meeting a woman. I’d seen her working the line. We’d passed each other dozens of times, but we’d never shared a word. She was the woman that most of the men had wanted to become biblical with, but she never dated any of the men she worked with at the plant.
Then on a freezing, gray winter day in Detroit, a day that was too much like today, she had run through the blizzard and caught up with me as I made it to my car, her breath fogging from her face as she looked me up and down and she said, “Your name is Dmytryk, right?”
I cringed with the cold and said, “Yeah. I’m Dmytryk. What’s the problem?”
“Saw your name written down. Wasn’t sure how to pronounce it.”
I nodded. “You have an accent. You’re from the East Coast.”
“Born in Brooklyn.” She shifted from foot to foot. “Been in Detroit most of my life.”
We stood in the winter’s chill and she shook my gloved hand. When she let go, she had left a small piece of paper resting in my palm. A slip of paper that had ten digits scribbled in red ink. It was the number to her cellular.
She said, “Up to you. Call or not.”
I read the name that had been written over the phone number. “You’re Cora Mature.”
“I’m Cora Mature.”
We stood in the cold, the kind of coldness a man or a woman became accustomed to when they lived in the Midwest. We didn’t say a word as the snow fell like angels throwing feathers. Cora was beautiful. She had looked so young, innocent, and trustworthy. In that moment she had reminded me of my mother.
I said, “We could meet for drinks after shift on Friday.”
“I get my hair done Friday evenings. Saturday is better.”
“Saturday is fine. We can go to Grosse Pointe and stop by Dirty Dog for jazz.”
“Lunch would be better.”
“We can do lunch. We can go over to Windsor. How does sushi at Oishii sound?”
She smiled. “Call and ask me out on a date. Make it official.”
“Nos hablamos y nos vemos este sábado.”
“You speak Spanish?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “¿Cuál es su apellido?”
“My surname is Knight. It’s spelled with a K. Dmytryk Knight.”
“What nationality are you?”
“I was born in this city and on this soil and that makes me American.”
“Well, I’m from Brooklyn and I’m part Dominican. That makes me Domini-merican.”
“I know.” I laughed. “Everyone knows. You used to be in the military.”
“You know that much about me?”
“Men talk about pretty women, and you are a pretty woman.”
“What did the men say about this pretty woman?”
“You’re hardworking and serious an
d it’s hard to get you to say hello.”
“What else do they say?”
“I can’t say. I’m a gentleman.”
She smiled. “Good answer.”
“It’s an honest answer.”
She held on to her smile awhile, then she said, “Another question?”
“Sure.”
“¿Tienes novia?”
“No, I don’t have a girlfriend. Soy soltero.”
“You’re sure that you’re single?”
“I’m sure. ¿Y tú? ¿Tienes algún novio o esposo?”
“No. No boyfriend or husband. Soy soltera.”
“Good to hear.”
She jogged away, winter coat over blue Dickies jeans and black steel-toes. She wrapped her red scarf around her neck and adjusted her hat before she looked back, waved, and smiled again. That smile was the beginning of my end.
I had taken my cell phone out and dialed her number before she made it to her car.
I said, “Hello, this is Dmytryk. May I speak with Cora?”
“This is Cora.”
“I hope this is a good time to call. I would like to ask you out on a date.”
“For which day?”
“Saturday evening.”
“Let me check my schedule to see if I’m free.”
We laughed. I remembered that first laugh like it was yesterday.
We had cut from I-20 to I-459 North and invaded an area where the population was almost one hundred percent white and the median family income was close to seventy thousand a year. That information had been in the notes that Eddie Coyle shared at the safe house in Dallas. Trussville rubbed elbows with Gardendale, Fultondale, Tarrant, Moody, Irondale, Pinson.
Many of the passengers in cars and trucks were in yuletide spirits; some wore Santa Claus hats.
The area was filled with businesses and churches, but the megachurch stood out on Highway 11. Jackie told me that it was ten times the size of the First Baptist that was two miles away. First Baptist was brick. The main building at Six Flags over Jesus was glass and marble, as ostentatious and magnificent as the Crystal Cathedral, a Hollywood church that had been built in Garden Grove, California. Everything in Trussville had been dwarfed by the elongated shadows thrown over the land by the edifice Eddie Coyle had called Six Flags over Jesus.
As we passed by, I stared in amazement.
We went to the safe house that was right off Main Street. It was a two-level, redbrick town home tucked inside Trussville Springs at Riverwalk Hamlet, a subdivision that had one two-lane entry. The only way in or out was across railroad tracks. Eddie Coyle took us to Cahaba Bend and Spring Street, where four town homes stood adjacent. All were unoccupied. It was a new community and not many of the houses and town homes had been completed. And it didn’t look like any of the ones on this short block had been sold. I looked around. It was secluded and big enough for two hundred residences, but I doubt if two dozen were finished. It looked like the work had stopped when the river of money stopped flowing and the economy came to a halt. I’d seen half-built and abandoned communities like this all over the country. Everywhere we had gone to rob a bank it was the same story. It reminded me of the ghost towns back home.
We picked up a copy of The North/East News that had been left at the back door, then went inside and dumped our bags at the base of the stairs. The unit Eddie Coyle had managed to appropriate for a day was the model home, so it was furnished top to bottom. Everything evoked a memory and this property reminded me of the one we had lost back in the suburbs of Detroit. Cora stepped in and looked around, then sighed and looked vulnerable. I was sure it reminded Cora of the same life, of those four years when things had been good.
As soon as the door closed we convened in the kitchen and went over the plans and diagrams again. Just like we had done in Dallas, we put the maps and schematics on the tables and walls. It looked like it was less than a minute’s drive from the main church to the annex with the vault. Outside of the members of the treasury, three people worked the transfer, and one of them was the inside man, so there would be only two armed men to deal with.
Eddie Coyle said, “Two to put down and one to leave injured.”
Cora nodded. “That’s the plan.”
We talked through the entire scenario, but I focused on my part of the crime. I was going to enter the property off Highway 11, blend in with any traffic going into the church, then drive the team to the back side of the megachurch, move the team to the area that had several annexes. When they were done, I was going be ready for them to load up and not be seen as we exited. I would get us to the stage-two vehicle, get us loaded, and bring us back here.
I asked, “You’re sure the money will be there?”
Cora nodded and took over, made an impatient face, and explained that in the big churches there were treasury teams. She had learned that going to our church. This mission had been in motion long enough for her to know that the target church always collected the money inside the church, then the treasury team always left the main building and counted the money inside the annex.
I asked, “Always?”
Eddie Coyle said, “That’s what the inside man says.”
Cora took a deep breath and added that the treasury team counted the tax-free monies two, maybe three more times before putting it inside the vault. No one else would be inside the building but the treasury team and their security. That gave us a large window of time. But the inside man was making it possible to get the money before it ever made it inside the vault.
Eddie Coyle said, “I can’t wait to look at that money.”
Jackie smiled. “I want to see what a half million looks like.”
Cora swallowed her excitement. “This will pay off. This is six months of my life.”
Bishop rubbed his palms and grinned. “I bet that money will be stacked up on a table like in the opening of that movie Across 110th Street. A mountain of money will be on the table and the electronic counters will be there spitting that money out like they’re in a bank.”
Cora said, “More money will be inside the vault. Enough to make this a big score.”
Everyone gave high fives in anticipation of success.
I said, “So after the treasury team exits the church, we’re going to meet them inside the annex. This annex, the one on the back side of the property, away from the streets and all eyes.”
Cora snapped, “Is this vague, Dmytryk? It’s just like robbing a bank. And there is no ‘we’ going inside. No ‘we’ that you are a part of. You stay in the van. We will go in when they are the most vulnerable. And you sit and wait. When they think they’re safe and are in the middle of their routine, the part of the team that you’re not on will take care of what needs to be taken care of. Get it? That make sense? Nothing bad has ever happened here, and they’re not expecting us.”
I took a calming breath and shook off her rage. “While I wait in the van, you and the crew are going to storm inside to make the withdrawal. There is a long hallway. There are stairs. You’re going inside an area you’ve never seen before. I’m worried about the timing.”
Cora snapped, “He’s on the friggin’ treasury team. That’s covered.”
Eddie Coyle said, “Relax. Cora’s friend will tell us the exact moment. It will all go down behind closed doors. We’ll walk in wearing ski masks and they’ll know we mean business.”
“Masks and guns. That’s not your usual MO.”
Bishop said, “You rob a bank, the Feds look for you.”
Eddie Coyle added, “You rob a church and the world will hunt you down.”
I took a breath. “Sounds like the prelude to another North Hollywood shootout.”
Cora shook her head. “But it won’t be North Hollywood. This is not a bank.”
Eddie Coyle said, “If Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Matasareanu had done what we’re doing they would’ve both been rich and walking on top of the ground.”
I said, “Just to be sure, since you’ve been hol
ding out on information, you’re not going to storm inside the sanctuary like it’s a bank holdup in a bad movie, are you?”
Eddie Coyle laughed. “They won’t even know we’re there. The annex will only have a few people. We’re not going to rush inside the main church and have ten thousand witnesses.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled, my insides tightening up.
Eddie Coyle said, “That makes you feel better, I take it.”
“Would it matter?”
Minutes later, Bishop left with Cora. They loaded up inside a ten-year-old van that Eddie Coyle and Cora had waiting for us inside the detached garage. They were back within twenty minutes. Bishop carried in a large box. Inside that box were a dozen pairs of plastic ties that would be used as handcuffs and black bags that were thick and the size of a human head. There were more than was needed. There were a dozen balaclavas and five Ruger P94s. They had nine-millimeter guns, weapons that held fifteen bullets in total, ready to be used on this job. Eddie Coyle had secured the same tools that had been used to pull off the biggest bank job in Britain. Eddie Coyle handed everyone a gun, including me. It was light, but as heavy as death. Cora held a gun in her hand. She looked excited. Anxious. Everything but afraid.
Eddie Coyle came to me. “Jackie said you did good with the gun you had back in L.A.”
“I did what I had to do.”
“You finally had to put one down.”
“Like I said, I did what I had to do.”
“Well, here’s an upgrade. I’ll cover the basics, but if it hits the fan just point and shoot.”
“No problem.”
There wasn’t any food in the town home and everyone was hungry. We ended up near I-59 at a Cracker Barrel, an agrestic Southern eatery that had wooden rocking chairs and checkerboards set up out front. There were deer heads and rifles and plastic fish and cast-iron skillets and fishing rods and washboards on the walls.
Eddie Coyle sat across from me. Jackie sat next to me, and Cora sat next to Eddie Coyle. Jackie and Cora were seated across from each other, face-to-face. Bishop sat at the head of the table. Eddie Coyle was the leader and we were the disciples. That was the way it felt. Knowing what we were about to do had put my mind in a different mood. Robbing a bank hadn’t bothered me, not like this. It was wrong, I was aware, hypocritical at times, and I made no excuses, but robbing the government was justified. They had stolen from us directly.
Tempted by Trouble Page 22