by Avery Stites
He shook his head. “Of course not, Donnie. Don’t play mind games.”
“And you never thought about your daughter, either.”
“Is that a question?” he asked.
“No.” I could feel pressure in my temples. “You took all this money and left town without giving Kate or Marie any of it. Why would you steal a million dollars and not share it with your daughter? She wouldn’t have needed to know where it came from.”
“They’d have known it wasn’t legit,” he said, shrugging. The attitude of defiance was cracking.
“So? You could have given them some of it, and told them you won it gambling, and they would never have been the wiser,” I said. “But that’s not what the reason is, really. You just didn’t want to share it with them.”
He looked up at me, his face a mask.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“Everything happened to me. I got tired of being everyone’s bitch.”
I thought about the guys from his crew that he and Oscar had killed, so brutally. “How could you murder your whole crew so horrifically?” I asked. “And what about the club manager? Why kill him if there was no cash?” I tried to picture it. “Was it you, or Oscar?”
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” he said. “Oscar did the cutting, I did the planning. Club manager was necessary to sell the story.”
I shook my head. “You are a real piece of shit,” I said.
Right then, Gerald lunged for the gun on the table. I fired a silenced bullet from the SIG Sauer into his hand quickly, destroying his thumb. He screamed loudly and fell back into the chair gripping his hand, his eyes wild.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. “You keep screaming, the next one goes in your brain.” I walked over, picked up the gun and sat in on the dresser behind me.
“Where’s the money?” I asked.
“I-in the closet, in the b-bag.” He nodded. “Take it, and j-just go,” he stammered.
“I will, eventually.” Danielle stepped out of the bathroom, and looked around, her eyes growing large. Seeing the scene before her was dampening the effect of the drugs she was on.
“Don’t scream,” I said.
“I won’t.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve seen things like this before.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I pulled out five hundred dollars from my pocket, and gave them to her. She looked at the money as if it weren’t real. “That’s for doing as I asked.” She didn’t say anything.
“How much do you get to do this?” I asked her.
“Not much.” She ran her hand through her dark hair. “The one you killed, he took most of it.”
“Do you have family?” I asked.
“I don’t need saving,” she said. “I’ve been on my own for a while.”
I pulled out another five hundred dollars from my pocket. “Here’s five hundred more to not remember my face.”
She took the money. “Okay.” She walked over to a chair near the door, sat down and put on some high heels. It was because of men like my brother that her innocence was destroyed, I thought. I hated him more in this moment than before.
“Danielle, go ahead and leave. Say nothing to anyone about any of this.”
She got up and walked out the door without looking back, closing it softly behind her. I turned back to look at Gerald; he had pushed a shirt into the wound where his thumb had been. The color in his face had drained. He looked at me, a mild look of fear crossing his features, but only for a second. I walked over to the window, peered through the blinds and watched Danielle walk away. The people at the pool were still having fun, oblivious to what was happening in this apartment. No one else watched from any other vantage. When I felt confident we were in the clear, I spoke.
“Here’s what you are going to do. You are going to pull it together and call your daughter at home, and tell her you have to go away for a really long time, but that you love her very much, and you are giving her uncle Donnie a surprise to bring back for her.” I motioned at a cordless phone that rested on top of a lampstand nearby. “Pick it up and call her.”
“No, I can’t,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Yes, you can, and you will. Say what I told you to. Be a man; be her father, for once.”
***
Gerald called his daughter, and told her he had to leave for a very long time, and wasn’t sure when he was coming back. He told her he had a nice surprise for her that he was sending back with her uncle Donnie, and that he loved her very much, more than anything in the whole wide world. She told him she loved him very much, too, and that she would miss him a whole lot while he was gone. I could hear her little voice through the receiver, and watched as his face broke into guilt and grief, and the tears fell free. He pulled the phone away as it happened, pulled it together, and then told his daughter goodbye.
For the last time.
When he hung up the phone, he asked, “Why are you doing this to me?”
I felt no sympathy for him; I only felt for his daughter. “I made you do that so she wouldn’t know what kind of shitty father she had, who would abandon her for a pile of blood money.”
He had no response to that. He hung his head.
I pulled the .20 caliber handgun from my waistband and wiped it clean using a nearby tee-shirt. As I had gloves on, there were no prints. I removed the magazine, checked the chamber, and then walked over to my brother.
“Grip the gun,” I said.
“Ah, man.” His eyes read pure defeat.
“Do it.”
He stuck his hand out and gripped the weapon, his index finger on the trigger. Once I was confident about the prints, I took the weapon from his grip and sat it on the coffee table.
He looked at me, the anger blazing from his eyes. “Now what?”
“Now,” I said, “we take a ride.”
Chapter Thirteen
I retrieved the money from the closet, which was mostly still there by a quick visual appraisal, and then we left Gerald’s apartment. I walked him slowly out the front door of his apartment, the SIG Sauer tucked tightly against his back, down the stairs with the bag to the Tahoe. It was the same as it always had looked, minus the Tennessee tags.
I put the money in the back seat, put Gerald in the front seat, and drove around to the front of the apartments. It was mostly dark, so it was easy to unload the bag of money into the trunk of my rental car. I pulled the gas can and other supplies from the rear of the rental car and put them into the back of the Tahoe, except for the duct tape and nylon twine. I locked the rental car and got back into the SUV. Gerald sat in silence, his head against the passenger glass, holding pressure on his wounded hand.
“Stick out your hands,” I said. He did as I asked and I took a section of the twine and bound his wrists. “Sit still, and don’t say anything until I tell you to talk.” Gerald pushed back in his seat, his head against the window glass. I pulled the Tahoe out into traffic and we were on the road.
I took Interstate 405 south until it intersected with Interstate 5, down past San Diego to the Mexican border. The trip took just under two and a half hours, which seemed like an eternity in silence, but the silence was a necessity. When we were a few miles from the border, I pulled off a side street in San Ysidro, the last community in San Diego before crossing over into Tijuana. I drove down a number of different streets, winding west and south, until I came to an open field on the outskirts of a community park. It was just after midnight. I pulled into the park, drove back by the field and parked the Tahoe. I observed the surroundings for a few minutes, and after I was satisfied no one was around, I exited the Tahoe. I walked around to Gerald’s side, opened the door, and he stumbled out. I closed the passenger door and leaned him against the side of the vehicle.
He had lost a decent amount of blood from his hand, and his breathing was weaker. He was tired and in shock. I stepped back from him and looked at him for several moments. He said nothing, and after a
few seconds he let his head fall to his chest, his hands bound in front of him.
“Do it,” he said.
“You aren’t getting off that easy,” I said.
He looked up. “Why are you fucking with me? If you are going to kill me, just do it.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not how this works. You had your chance to finish our relationship as brothers, and you screwed it up. Now, it’s my turn.”
“So you want me to beg for my life?” he rasped. “Will that make you feel powerful?”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to give you the dignity of a choice, something you didn’t give me.”
His eyes narrowed. I pulled the hunting knife from my waistband. I tossed it on the ground in front of him. The field was illuminated by moonlight only; the sound of cars on the highway and the bustle of the border were audible through the trees. Gerald bent down and picked up the knife.
“You can cut your hands free with that.”
He grabbed the blade from the ground and used it to cut his hands free of the nylon binding. When he was done, he asked me what was going on.
“I’m giving you the following option: you can go through the trees, toward the border, and cross over into Mexico. I’ll even give you a thousand dollars in cash from the bag. Once you do, you can never, ever come back. But be forewarned: Tijuana is not the most gringo-friendly place, though. Especially with no I.D., and a wad of cash...oh, and when you are bleeding.”
“What?”
“You heard me clearly. I’m offering you the dignity of your own choice. You can’t go back, especially now with your fingerprints on the murder weapon in your apartment. And you are a felon? That’s it for you. But even if you wanted that choice, you won’t get it. I won’t let you get off of this field.”
“What about my daughter? She’ll grow up without a father.”
“That’s not a card for you to play. She already doesn’t have a father. At least, after the phone call, she’ll at least think you tried.” I thought of his daughter; she deserved better than she had received. “You don’t deserve to know this, but Kate and Marie will be receiving some of the money in that bag. That’s your surprise for her.”
He looked at me, bewildered. “You are going to give my daughter some of the money I stole from you?” He couldn’t believe it.
“Yes, I am.” I pulled the SIG Sauer from my waistband. “You know what else really bothers me? You haven’t asked one time what the surprise for her is since you made that call. That just reinforces my belief about what type of person you are.”
“And what kind of person is that?”
I considered my words. “The only reason you haven’t suffered more than you could comprehend is that you are my blood. But you aren’t my brother any longer. The fact that the choice I’ve given you is to completely disappearing into isolation and the unknown is a strong indicator of how much I don’t care for you any longer.” I motioned toward the border. “It’s time to get going.”
“And what if I don’t do it?” he asked.
“Then you will die on this field,” I said.
Gerald leaned back against the vehicle, fumbling with the knife. After a few moments, he stopped and looked toward the trees, lost in thought. The sounds of the border created a dull roar in the background, almost like an atmospheric swell. The moon painted us both a pale bluish white. His face changed; something inside him seemed to break.
“Donnie, you remember that time we rode our bikes out to the pond when we were little and went fishing? You said that day, when I was sad about dad that you would always take care of me.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You said you would watch out for me.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You said you would never hurt me.”
“You are right, I did.”
“Then why are you hurting me now?” he asked.
“I’m not hurting you, Bit. I’m helping you.”
He hung his head, nodded, and shuffled away from the car. Once his hands were free, he walked out a few yards toward the border and the stopped.
“You are forgetting the money I offered,” I said.
He turned around and looked at me. “I can’t go to Mexico. And I’m not going to let you do it.” Then Gerald took the knife turned it toward himself and plunged it into his chest. His eyes fluttered; his steps staggered, and he dropped to his knees. He swayed back and forth for a few seconds, and then fell backward onto his back, his knees in the air. I walked over to him and kneeled down, looking at his face. His normally tanned face had lost color, and dark blood bubbled from his lips. He looked in my eyes, his breathing labored and slowing down. For the smallest of moments, I felt a sharp pang of heartbreak, and then it was gone. He took a few ragged, slow breaths.
“Goodbye, Gerald,” I said, putting my hand to the side of his face.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “Forgive...me…”
And then he exhaled his last breath.
Chapter Fourteen
I made the return drive back to Los Angeles in just over two hours. My brother’s body was in the rear of the vehicle. Once in Los Angeles, I drove to an abandoned seafood warehouse district in Santa Monica. It was nearly four a.m., and I didn’t have much time before the sun came up in order to finish the task.
I pulled up in between a row of large loading docks. I put on my second set of latex gloves, and spent the next hour removing all the VIN number emblems from the Tahoe, as well as any paperwork or information that it had ever been my vehicle. I emptied all the supplies out onto the ground next to the vehicle, as well as the money. I picked Gerald’s lifeless body up out of the back; he was starting to stiffen, so I moved quickly to get him into the driver’s seat. I pushed the seat all the way back and wedged him in. I grabbed the can of gasoline, poured it all over him, the interior and exterior of the vehicle. I dipped a piece of nylon twine in the remaining gasoline, lit it, tossed into the vehicle, and closed the door. For a few moments, I watched my brother’s body and the vehicle burn, my mind flashing back to my mom telling me about how our father had been found in a burned vehicle in Nebraska. Like father, like son, I thought. Someday, it would be my turn to go. But right now was not it.
I picked up the bag of cash and walked back toward the road. I hailed the first cab I saw, and shortly before the sun rose, I grabbed my rental car and headed to get breakfast. After that, I had one more errand to run before catching my flight home.
***
I got home from the airport around midnight. I took a shower, and collapsed into my bed. As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep at all.
The following afternoon, a Saturday, the box arrived in the mail, next day air from UPS. My last stop in Los Angeles had been at a UPS store. I had to ship the cash and the gun home for obvious reasons. I opened the box, pulled out the bag of money, and counted it correctly. There was nine-hundred and eighty thousand dollars left. I separated it into even piles, then put half back in the bag, and drove it out to Kate and Marie’s home.
***
Gerald’s ex-wife Kate met me at the door. She smiled, hugged me around the neck and the looked at the bag, concern on her face. “It’s okay,” I said.
She invited me in, and poured me a cup of coffee. She sat down with me at their kitchen table, and sipped from her own cup. “What’s in the bag?” she asked.
I lifted the bag onto the table and unzipped it, the top opening wide as the sides sagged to expose the large amount of stacked and banded bills. Kate’s eyes widened, and she nearly dropped her coffee cup.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Kate, I understand this is a shock, but Bit wanted you to have this money,” I said. “There is four-hundred and ninety thousand dollars in here, just for you two.”
“I can’t take that money,” she said. “It’s dirty.”
“No, it’s not. He earned this money, and didn’t do anything bad to get it.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, lying. “He only said it was fair and square.”
She looked at me closely. “Where is he?”
I offered her the most compassionate look I could. “He’s not coming back.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” I said, “he isn’t coming back. Ever.”
She put her head in her hands, and started crying softly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He wanted to take care of you guys the only way in which he could, which was this money. Be careful with it, and don’t put it in the bank except for small amounts over the long haul. I can help you with that if you need. Pay for everything with cash or money orders, and when it’s time for Marie’s college, we’ll work that out.”
She looked up, and out the window. She wiped her eyes, her makeup smearing slightly. “Okay...okay.”
“Good,” I said, unsure of what else I could say.
“I’m sure Marie would like to see you,” she said.
I walked down the hallway to her bedroom. I knocked on the door, and I heard her tiny voice from behind it. “Yes?”
“Hey Marie, its uncle Donnie,” I said.
“Uncle Donnie!” she yelped, and I heard the patter of her feet coming across the floor of her room to her door. She opened it, and I knelt down and gave her just as big of a hug as I received.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m happy to see you!”
Her smile was infectious; I couldn’t help but smile back. “I’m happy to see you too, dear.”
Her expression changed to one of concern. “Mommy told me you were hurt...are you better now?”
I smiled at her. “I am, dear. I’m healing up well. Thank you for asking.”
We went over and sat down on the edge of her bed. Her room was like many eight year old girls across the country: bright colors-pinks and purples throughout the room, an ornately carved metal bed, painted white, and posters of pop music boy bands were all over the walls. I looked around, and then looked at her. She was watching me.