The Double Cross

by Michael P. King

  “Paul? That’s just not possible.”

  Sam knelt in front of Cicilie and put his hand on her shoulder. “Unfortunately, it is possible. That’s the world we live in. I’m sorry. It would be better if you waited in the car.”

  “No, I can’t believe it.”

  “You’re a quality person, Cicilie. You want to see the best in people. I hope I’m wrong. When I saw how happy you were, I really hoped. But I had Marty run a background check on this guy. He’s not a good person.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “I promised Dan that I would protect you no matter what. And that’s what I’m going to do. Please go out to the car.”

  “No.”

  “Sam,” Paul said, “This is crazy. If you think I had something to do with the robbery, turn me over to the police.”

  “They wouldn’t arrest you. There’s no evidence.”

  One of the hired guns said, “Empty your pockets.”

  “No,” Paul said.

  “You want to get smacked around before we start? Empty your pockets.”

  Paul emptied his pockets onto the table: wallet, car keys, and a pocketknife. The hired guns pushed him down onto a folding chair and tied his arms and legs to the chair with plastic ties. Then they tipped the chair back onto the floor. The nearest man looked up at Sam. He nodded. The other man wrung out a hand towel in the sink and picked up a five-gallon jug of water from the counter.

  Cicilie’s face was white. Her hands trembled. “These guys don’t work for us.”

  “No,” Sam said. “I hired them special.”

  “So you were expecting you would need them even before my house was robbed.”

  “Like I said, the background check looked pretty grim. But I wasn’t going to do anything if there was any chance I was wrong.”

  Paul looked from the man kneeling beside him to the man standing with the water. “Hey, guys, don’t you have some questions?”

  “We’re just going to get your attention first,” the kneeling man said.

  The man with the jug tossed the damp towel to the kneeling man, who stretched the towel over Paul’s face. The man with the jug poured the water out onto the towel. Paul kicked and struggled. The chair banged against the floor. When the kneeling man removed the towel, Paul choked, gasped, and spat up water.

  “Do we need to go again?”

  Paul was red-faced. He shook his head. “No. I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you anything.”

  “Stop it,” Cicilie yelled. “Stop it. This is insane.”

  “Shush,” Sam said. “I know this is hard. If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize. I’ll make it right. Maybe he’s just a gigolo. Maybe he’s got nothing to do with the robbery. I’ll write him a check. Pay his medical bills. But I’m going to know the truth before he leaves here.”

  “You just can’t believe he really loves me.”

  “I wish it was so. I really do. I just don’t believe in this much coincidence.” He looked down at Paul. “I’ve got all night. I’m going to know the truth. Are you working with the robbers?”

  Paul looked from Sam to the hired guns kneeling over him, and then to Cicilie. There was no point in lying. Their relationship was over. “Yes.”

  Cicilie began to sob. “I don’t believe it. He’d say anything to make you stop.”

  “We weren’t going to hurt her,” Paul said. “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. That’s why I was with her—to make sure she was safe.”

  “Somehow, your words don’t mean much now,” Sam said. He turned to Cicilie. “I should take you home. You’re the victim here. No one needs to know about this guy. It will just raise a lot of embarrassing questions.”

  She looked at Paul. “Oh, my God. How could you—I let you—” She started sobbing again.

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  Sam turned to the hired guns. “Find out what you can.” He helped Cicilie to her feet. “Let’s go.”

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “You can’t kill him.”

  “He’s just going to go off and do the same thing again.”

  “I don’t care. Promise me.”

  Sam nodded. “I promise.” He turned to the hired guns. “You heard her.”

  “You’re the boss,” the closest man said.

  Sam led Cicilie out of the trailer. Paul watched her leave. No witnesses now. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “Where are your partners?”

  “I was supposed to catch up with them in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “They put an ad in the paper. That way if I get caught, I can’t give them up, and if they get caught, they can’t give me up.”

  “That story is too complicated.”

  The man on his right stood up and kicked him in the head; then the one on his left kicked him in the side. They took turns kicking him, yelling for him to tell the truth and kicking him, but he stuck to his story until he lost consciousness. When he woke up, he was lying in the bed of a pickup truck in the dark. The sky was full of stars, and the night was quiet except for the crickets. The men lowered the tailgate, dragged him out of the bed of the truck, and pitched him into a ditch. He rolled into the weeds. One of them said, “Stay away from Mrs. Chandler.”

  The hired guns drove away. Paul lay there a few minutes. He hurt all over. He wasn’t sure if he could stand, but he didn’t want to be there if they changed their minds and came back. Which way was back to town? The way those guys had gone? He crawled up the bank. Off in the distance, across a soybean field, he saw headlights. Another road. He pulled himself to his feet. He was bent over, his hands on his knees. He thought he was a pretty good liar. Had those guys believed him? He felt so sorry for Cicilie. She couldn’t possibly understand that he actually had cared for her. That’s the only way he could really sell it. He had to care and not care, both at the same time—the caring on the outside and the not caring on the inside. He started across the soybean field, limping and holding his ribs.

  A few hours later, he came to an intersection at the edge of town. On one corner was a Phillips gas station. Across the road a flashing sign said “Mickey’s Rodeo.” The gas station parking lot was empty; the honky-tonk’s parking lot was full. The gas station bathroom was on the side of the building. The light was bright, the floor was more or less clean, and the mirror over the sink wasn’t broken. Paul looked at himself. There was a big bruise at his hairline and blood under his nose. He washed his face, combed his fingers through his hair, and wiped off his clothes with a damp paper towel. He looked like he’d been sleeping on a bench, but it would have to do.

  He walked across the road to Mickey’s Rodeo. The bouncer, a pumped-up guy with a look in his eye like he’d just been released from prison, gave him a hard glare but didn’t stop him from entering. The place was crowded, and the lights were dim. Top-forty country music blasted from the jukebox. He needed to call Pooch to come get him, but his cash and wallet were back at that trailer or in one of those assholes’ pockets. At the end of the bar, three couples stood together, trying to signal the bartender. He changed his gait to appear drunk, stumbled into one of the men, and lifted the wallet from the handbag of the woman next to him. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, “my mistake.”

  He staggered to the pay phone and used the change from the woman’s wallet. “Pooch, glad I caught you. You guys tripped the alarm. Cicilie’s partner set some guys on me. They dumped me out north of town. Come and get me.”

  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Supposed to be?”

  “You don’t get it, kid. Jacob dimed you out.”

  “Why? Why would he do that?”

  “You don’t know anything, do you?”

  “I want my share from the job.”

  “Look, I like you, kid, but if you come around here, you’re going to get shot. You shouldn’t have been mouthing off to
Jacob, giving him a headache. Take it as a lesson and move on.” He hung up.

  Paul turned from the phone. His mouth tasted like ashes. He never should have trusted those guys. He was always the outsider with them. Now they’d double-crossed him, and there was nothing he could do about it. At least for now. He shifted his weight. Pain shot down his leg from his lower back. He needed to lie down before he fell down. He started out of the bar. At the door he turned to the bouncer. “Hey, buddy, I found this wallet on the floor back by the restrooms.” He handed the bouncer the woman’s wallet. Out in the parking lot, he walked around to the side of the building where he couldn’t be seen, found an unlocked car, and hotwired it.

  He left the car on the street one block over from his rent-by-the-week motel room. The parking lot was full. He scanned the cars. There was no one watching the room. How to get in? No deadbolt, just the cheapest lockset that could be bought in bulk. He glanced around on the sidewalk for a thin piece of metal or a stiff piece of plastic. No such luck. He didn’t want to go down to the office and wake up the manager. Screw it. He gave the door the best kick he had. It swung open. There was no one sitting on the bed with a gun in hand. He looked back at the doorframe. The latch plate and a few inches of wood were pushed out of the frame. He closed the door. He looked under the mattress. His hammerless Smith & Wesson .38 snub-nose and an envelope containing $200 were still there. He put the pistol in his front pants pocket and the envelope in his back pocket. His head was swimming. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to drive here. He shuffled two steps and fell on the bed.

  * * *

  Early morning, Jacob, Stevie, and Pooch were at a Best Western motel at a freeway interchange outside Emmett City. They’d rented two rooms with a pass-through door. Three prostitutes posed on the beds in their underwear with drinks in their hands while Stevie used a razor blade to lay out lines of cocaine on the glass-topped table. He snorted a line, and then held up the straw. Pooch went next. Then he handed the straw to Jacob. “That’s some good shit.”

  “I told you that guy wasn’t an asshole,” Stevie said.

  “Well, you said you knew a guy who knew a guy, which didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence,” Jacob said.

  Pooch wiped at his nose. “The kid reached out to me.”

  “And you said?”

  “He better not show.”

  Stevie looked up from laying out some more lines. “Think he’s going to make trouble?”

  “The kid?” Jacob said. “No way in hell. Without us, he’s nothing.”

  “Well,” Pooch said, “he was the only one of us who could sweet-talk those old gals.”

  “He was getting too uppity.”

  “I’m not arguing. Just saying. When are we getting rid of that stuff, anyway?”

  “Tomorrow. Meeting a guy in town.”

  “Hey, girls,” Stevie said. “Come on over here and get some of this.”

  2

  Traveling Money

  When Paul woke, it was 2:00 p.m. He was so stiff he had to roll off the bed to get to his feet. He undressed, leaving his dirty clothes on the floor, went into the bathroom, and looked in the mirror. The bruise at his hairline looked a little better. There were two heel-shaped bruises on his ribs, and a number of small bruises scattered across his stomach. He couldn’t lift his right arm over his head. He took a shower, first hot, then cold, staying in as long as he could stand it. Then he put on clean clothes.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the phone as if he expected it to tell him what to do. Finally, he looked in the phone book for the number of Speedy Joe’s Subs and More, ordered a twelve-inch Italian sub and a large Coke delivered, and lay down. There was a knock on the door. He paid the delivery girl, sat back down on the bed, ate the sub, drank the Coke, and went back to sleep. When he woke up, it was two hours later. Now was the time to get out of town.

  He opened his suitcase onto the bed and checked it. It was already packed to go. He needed to start working smarter, and he needed better partners. If Jacob, Stevie, and Pooch hadn’t been involved, he could have lived off Cicilie for six months, filled his pockets, and she wouldn’t have cared. Hell, she would have begged him to stay. But even that was too much risk. Her friends cared about her too much. And an innocent person—a person with nothing to hide—could always go to the police. No, the ideal mark was one who wouldn’t call the police—who didn’t want anyone to know what had happened because they were guilty of something. Those were the kind of marks he needed to find. But what to do now? Two hundred dollars wasn’t going to carry him far enough to get something else started. How much counterfeit could he get for that? Two thousand? Jacob’s counterfeiter was in Pikesville. He’d have to drive all day, but it would be worth it. It was as good a place to start as any.

  He dug down in his suitcase to find his ring of shanked car keys. They’d proven to be a good investment. They would open and start most cars, which meant he could drive a stolen car without attracting suspicion. Out in the parking lot, an old Honda Civic was parked away from the building. He found the Civic key on the ring, slid it in the door lock, and jiggled it as he turned it. The door lock popped. He put his suitcase in the back seat. The Civic started on the first turn of the key. It was full of gas. Maybe his luck was changing.

  The following afternoon, Paul arrived in Pikesville. He left the Honda in the downtown bus station parking lot, rented a locker for his suitcase, and took a cab to the High Five Tavern. A group of retired men sat at one of the Formica-topped tables, playing cards and nursing beers. The bartender, a black man with a short Afro and a toothpick hanging from his lips, turned from the TV behind the long walnut bar. “What can I get you?”

  “I’m looking for Stella.”

  The bartender stepped out from behind the bar and cracked open a door at the back marked Private. “Someone to see you,” he said.

  Stella came into the barroom. She was a handsome, dark-haired woman wearing tight jeans, high-heeled boots, and a sleeveless top. “You’re one of Jacob’s guys.”

  “Not any more.”

  “Good for you. Come on into the back.”

  All three of them went into the back room. Boxes of liquor and cases of beer were stacked up against the back wall. A gray, government-surplus desk sat to one side. The back door had an iron bar padlocked across it. “Check him over, Gary.”

  The bartender patted Paul down, took his .38, and handed it to Stella. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I need to buy some paper.”

  “How much?”

  “How much can I get for one hundred sixty dollars?”

  “I usually don’t deal in petty cash.”

  “I understand. I’m just trying to get to a place where I can get on my feet.”

  “You’re pretty banged up. Jacob push you out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For cause?”

  “Difference of opinion.”

  “Tell you what; are you in a hurry?”

  He shrugged.

  “You do me a favor, and I’ll take care of you.”

  He looked her up and down appraisingly. “What kind of favor?”

  She laughed. “You’re pretty enough, but it’s not that kind of favor.”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve killing.”

  “You won’t kill anyone?”

  “Not if I don’t have to.”

  “There’s a guy I want you to follow. He knows my guys. I want to know everywhere he goes and everyone he sees.”

  “How long?”

  “Three days should do it.”

  “I don’t have a car or any ID.”

  “You are one lost puppy, aren’t you? Gary will hook you up and give you all the details.” She handed back his gun.

  * * *

  Three days later, Paul returned to the back room of the High Five Tavern.

  “What have you got for me?” Stella asked.

  “Everything you asked.” He set a camera and manila envelope do
wn on the government surplus desk.

  “Twenty-four seven?”

  “Absolutely. I slept in the car.”

  “Go over it.”

  He pulled a stack of photos out of the envelope. The top photo showed a small, white, clapboard house with a porch swing. A dark-haired man in a blue suit was standing on the porch. The next photo showed the man and a black woman in a bathrobe. “That’s your guy. He was there all three days at different times of the day. Sometimes he was carrying a bag, sometimes he wasn’t.”

  The third photo showed a bar. “He also went here every day at five.”

  “Curley’s?” Stella asked.

  “Yeah. There’s a card game in the back. Couldn’t get a picture there.”

  The fourth photo showed a two-story brick house in an upscale neighborhood. The fifth picture showed two blond children, a boy and a girl, playing in the yard. The sixth picture showed a good-looking blonde woman in yoga clothes getting out of a blue minivan. “This is where he spent all three nights. Otherwise, he was just running errands, eating in restaurants—normal stuff. Except when he was here, of course. I took a bunch of other pictures just in case. They’re all in the envelope.”

  Stella pushed the photos into a pile. A tear started down her cheek. “You haven’t asked me what this is all about.”

  “That’s because it’s none of my business.”

  “The driver’s license and Social Security card we gave you are top quality. They should more than pay for the job.”

  “They aren’t in my name.”

  “You don’t like being Roy Stevens? You need to stop using your birth name. Someday it might be valuable to you.”

  “You said you’d take care of me.”

  “I remember.” She reached into the top drawer of the desk. “Here’s five thousand counterfeit. I’m going to mark you down for five hundred.”

  “I really appreciate it. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just a traveling man, huh? Well, don’t be a stranger. I may have another job for you sometime.”