by Sweet, Dell
She laughed. "I'm not afraid of most of the things that scare other people until they are over. Then I get scared. Kind of reversed from what it should be, right?" she asked.
"Yeah," Billy agreed. "Like today. You were like... I don't know... Like some warrior woman. You just stood there and blew that guy away. He could have killed you, but you were like ice. I've never seen anything like that before except in movies."
"Yeah and then I was so scared I cried like a baby," April said. "Your turn.”
"Okay I've only been with girls, I mean like back in high school before you, and one of them was back in junior high. So she really doesn't count," Billy said.
"So really? I'm the only woman? The only one?" April said. "Did you compare?" she asked. She lifted her head up and smiled at him.
"Yeah. It was no comparison at all and I'm not just saying that. You do things to me just looking at me," Billy said. "Your turn."
"Okay I've only been with two people before you. And, you're much better. You took time with me, made me feel good," she said.
"People?" Billy asked.
"No fair, that's two questions... Okay... One guy... And one girl back in high school last year. The guy treated me so bad I kind of swore off guys for a while... I'm glad I changed my mind now," she said... "Your turn."
"I used to deal drugs. Small town... Four years ago. I started that because all my friends would hit me up for coke or pot and then didn't want to pay. They wanted to party for free... I went to jail, my uncle and my friends at the same time," Billy said.
"I forgot I promised we would smoke... Do you still want to?" April asked.
"No, I'm good... Go ahead if you want to...” He let the silence hang for a moment “Where are we going from here, April. I mean... I mean you and me, not physically where are we gonna go, but us as a... A couple, I guess..." Billy asked.
"I'm going wherever you go. I mean we're together now, right?" April asked.
"Yeah, I wanted to hear you say it though. I want the same thing, but how come I never met you in all this time?" he asked.
"Because all you do is work and watch TV. I used to walk down that road every night hoping you'd be sitting on your steps so I could say hello. I told you when all this happened I knew where you've lived and I was heading there. I don't mean before it all happened, but after it did. I was trying to get to your place so I'd be safe," April said.
"You trusted me like that with all the whackos in the world?" Billy asked.
"Hey there were guys shooting at each other. I'm pretty sure they saw me before I could get off the road and into the woods. They would have killed me for sure. You? You seemed like a nice guy even though I only saw you a few times. Yeah, I would trust you that much," she answered.
They fell silent for a few minutes.
"Are you sorry you did this," she asked. "I mean the whole thing... It's not even an entire day yet and look at where we are... We're pretty much on the run... Or we will be soon. Are you sorry? Do you wish we would have stayed in the trailer and just let it all go?"
"No," Billy said. "I'm not sorry. First, money aside, I wouldn't have met you. Second, how does someone like me...? Or you... How does someone like us get ahead otherwise? I can see me working my crappy job until I could afford to buy my own trailer... Maybe or maybe not: I was starting to care more about drinking than anything else. I can't be sorry. Everything has changed. It wouldn't have," Billy said.
"Yeah," April said. "If you hadn't been there I might have done it myself if I could've worked up the nerve. I... I had a plan... I did have a plan.” She shook he head as though to clear it. “What worries me is I might have been too afraid. Tonight I could be sitting alone like every other night, watching TV... I couldn't be alone for long in that trailer park though. Eventually I would've taken one of those guys as a boyfriend just to be safe. It's crazy there: Especially on the weekends. Tomorrow night there will be two disappointed guys. They come around every Saturday night... The trailers on either side of me. One has a sister that lives there; the other is just a guy he works with, but all they really come for is to talk to me. I pretty much have to stay inside, hiding, trying to stay away from them. So that's what I do, I stay inside. Lately they've been getting braver, coming over and knocking. Then last weekend they got into a fight over me. I don't even know them, either of them, and they're out there fighting over who gets to knock on the door. I can imagine what tomorrow will be like... I'm not sorry either. I'm not sorry at all. I'm glad I'm here and I'm glad I'm here with you," she said. “Another few months, maybe even less, and I would have said to hell with it, given in. In a few years I'd have a kid or two running around and that trailer park would be home, and he'd be gone.” She looked up at him and frowned. “It's how that life gets you if you're a woman on your own, Billy... You get scared...”
He pulled her closer: She lifted up and came up even with him and then smiled and bought her mouth down on his. Just that fast he was ready again. He kissed her back slowly, took his time, his hands traveling along her body. She dropped one hand and guided him into her without breaking the kiss. He brought his hands up and let them play across her breasts.
Watertown
Sammy and Don
"The kid's truck is not out back," Sammy said as he came back around the trailer. "Maybe he's at work."
"No, day off he was already drinking since last night, remember? The kid had nowhere to go," Don said. He stopped for a second. "What the hell is that noise?" he asked.
"Dogs: You can hear them out back. Sounds like a couple of dogs out in the woods fighting over something: Probably a dead woodchuck or something; dump's close by. I get that shit all the time at my house," Sammy said.
Don looked around, pulled a card from his pocket, wrote on the back of it and then stuck it in the door.
"Maybe the girl... Maybe he's down there... Somewhere… I think everybody on this road knows each other. The girl said she knew him. I should have asked how well," he said as they walked away.
They both got into the unmarked car. Don turned it around and headed back down the road to the trailer park.
New Paltz
Chang Wii's Restaurant
Tommy Murphy
"Mr. Murphy, excuse me sir. I told them you shouldn't be disturbed, but they insisted," the waiter told him. He passed him a phone on a tray with its cord coiled next to it. Murphy smiled at the others at the table. They all worked for him in one capacity or another. He picked up the phone.
He listened quietly. His face gave nothing at all away. "I see... I see," he said at last. "Yes... We'll take care of it." He smiled, closed the phone and handed it back to the waiter along with a fifty dollar bill. "Scott, thank you. The call was important," he said as he passed him the phone and the folded bill. The waiter thanked him and left. Murphy turned back to the table.
"Enjoy yourselves," he said. "Jimmy and I have some business to discuss, and after that I'll be back... Jimmy?" he asked the tall, older man on the other side of the table. They both got up and left the dining room; walking out onto the wide rear deck that faced the mountains. Here in the Catskills it was early fall, but it was cool, even cold this time of year. For that reason the deck was deserted: If it had not been he would have had it cleared before he came outside.
"The deal went bad,” Murphy told him. “Neo is dead. Jefferson's boys are dead too. And funny thing, the cops haven't put any drugs or large sums of money into evidence yet.”
Jimmy nodded and continued to listen. Murphy reached into his pocket and peeled off several hundred dollar bills.
"Travel money, Jimmy; I don't know if there's someone else involved or the cops got it. I want my money back. Jefferson will want his product back... You work for me, but this time you shall be working this for both of us. I don't want this deal between Jefferson and me to fall apart. Find the problem, fix it, bring this to that happy conclusion I need, Jimmy," he reached over and placed one hand on Jimmy's shoulder. He frowned, let the silence p
lay out and then spoke again. “There is something else... Let's call it an investment that came along with this deal. Neo knew, Jefferson knew, no one else. I'll need your discretion... Believe me when I say this, there are two large bags, packed with pot, stuffed with pot, above all else bring those bags to me. I must have those two bags unmolested: If you must leave everything else. If you must kill whomever to take them back, do it.” He thought for a second. “I can't make it clearer, Jimmy. It is paramount that those bags come back to us.”
"Got you," Jimmy said. He turned and took the stairs that lead from the deck down to the parking lot. Murphy watched him go and then stepped back into the restaurant.
Lott Road
April Evans Trailer
"Hey, somebody call the cops?" an old guy asked. He was sitting on the back bumper of a rusted Ford pickup drinking beer at the trailer next door to April Evans' place.
Don looked at him. Not old; just hard faced from all the drinking. His eyes slid to the trailer. The lights were off.
"Seen April around tonight?" Don asked.
"Maybe," the guy answered. He took a pull of his beer and smiled.
"Well, if you maybe saw her, would you maybe know where she is?" Don asked.
"Maybe," the guy agreed. He lit a cigarette, blew out the smoke and then laughed at his own private joke.
"Uh huh," Don said. "Let's see some ID. I'm thinking drunk and disorderly, Sammy. Did you hear him just call me a cocksucker? That hurt my feelings." He looked back down at the guy who hadn't moved.
"Yeah, I heard him. I couldn't believe it myself, but the guy called you a cocksucker all right. He must not know you too well," Sammy said. He looked down where the man sat. “Don doesn't suck cock. I have never seen him suck a cock. He's not a cocksucker. You must have him confused with your father or something.”
"Fuck, I didn't say no such thing at all," the guy said now, sitting up straight. "You fuckers lie so bad." He glared at one then the other, but his eyes held panic.
"ID, sir," Don said stepping closer now. "Or I'll help you to get it."
The guy shut up and dug out his wallet. He seemed nervous.
“Anything you want to say before I run this ID?" Don asked.
"Why you fuckin' with me?" he asked.
"Because I asked you a question and you decided to fuck with me." He looked at the ID and then slipped it into his pocket. "You see how that works? … Of course we could start over again," he offered.
"Yeah, I'm not a bad guy: Let's start over again. The thing is I can't help you with April. She ain't home. I wish she was. I've been here half the day and she ain't been around. That's all I know."
Don reached into his pocket and flipped the guy's driver's license back to him.
"She works on Friday nights?" Don asked.
"Not usually... She's around nights. Works days down to the Stop in Stock... Store at the end of the road... Comes home real early mornings... Like sun coming up early... Cashier... Good girl," he said.
"She got a boyfriend?" Don asked. "Specifically, you know this young guy down at the end of the road, Billy?" Don asked. “Billy Jingo?”
"Ain't never seen her with a boyfriend... I know Billy, a little anyhow... At least I use too... He used to do a little dealing, if you know what I mean. Went to jail... He ain't done shit since then... And I never have seen him around here. I don't think she'd be his type," the man said.
"What do you mean not his type?" Don asked.
"She don't date... He was always hanging around with the guys, following the partying. She don't party either," the man said.
"Make you sad?" Don asked with a smile.
"Of course... She's pretty... Needs a man," the man said.
Don took another of his cards, wrote "Call me" on the back and walked over to the trailer door, and pushed it into the gap. He handed another card to the guy when he came back. "John, you call me when she gets home. I don't care how late it is, okay?" Don said.
The man took the card. "How do you know my name?" he asked.
"The license," Don told him. "I'm good like that. It comes with the job."
"I'll call," John said.
"You do that," Don said as he walked back to the car with Sammy.
John watched them as they drove away and then went back to smoking and drinking. Wondering to himself where April had gotten to.
Billy Jingo's Place
"Hey! Hey! You dogs get away from there!" Don yelled.
He was tempted to shoot his gun into the ground to scare them, but the department frowned on discharging firearms without good reason. You had to fill out paperwork, which was exactly why he usually carried a few extra rounds with him. Only today he was out. He took the gun out anyway: If one of them charged him he could shoot it. There were three of them, a big Rottweiler, a mangy looking yellow shepherd mix, and some sort of chow mix: The chow worried him most.
"Shoot that goddamned Chow," Don started to say, when beside him, Sammy raised his pistol and shot the chow.
"Jesus," Don said. "You shot the fuckin' Chow."
"You said to," Sammy said.
"I wasn't done speaking. I was going to say, shoot that goddamned Chow if it charges us," Don said.
"Huh," Sammy said. "Guess it charged us."
The other two dogs had taken off, well, like a shot, Don thought and chuckled.
"What's so funny?" Sammy said.
"The other two dogs took off like a shot," Don said and smiled.
"Well, yeah. They were probably scared," Sammy said.
“Gonna cost you some paper work though,” Don said.
“Uh uh, got extras,” Sammy told him.
“Well fuck,” Don said and stopped. “I was out or I would have shot that fucker myself.”
Sammy laughed. “Well he's shot.”
Don shook his head and then started into the clearing to see what about that duffel bag had them so agitated. He walked around the side and saw that they had gnawed a hole into the side of the bag.
The two of them almost had not come back. They had been nearly to the end of the road when Sammy had said, "What if it's not a woodchuck?"
Don had turned around and headed back down to the trailer without another word.
He squatted now and looked at the side of the bag and what was outside the bag too. He leaned forward and used his pen to push aside leaves and blades of grass to see the bones and scattered pieces without disturbing anything. He rose back to his feet.
This was no woodchuck. Sammy had been right. Something raw and red showed inside the bag. Outside the bag was a scattering of small bones and something meaty that wasn't really recognizable until you really looked at it, let your mind put it together, and realized it was part of a human hand: The palm part to be specific; and those little bones were finger bones, all except that one piece right up against the bag. That was a finger with a manicured fingernail still on it. He looked at his pen, debated and then slipped a plastic bag from his pocket, dropped the pen inside and sealed the bag.
"Better go call for the crime scene guys," Don told Sammy. Sammy nodded and took off back through the woods with their only flashlight. There was a moon and that helped, but he didn't feel particularly good knowing those other two dogs were around somewhere.
He reached into his pocket, fished out his pack of cigarettes: Sammy was gonna pitch a fit: He didn't smoke: Didn't like the smell of it, but right now Don needed one and something was rustling in the underbrush close by. No telling what it was, but smoke, cigarette smoke, would keep most of the wildlife away. They hated it even more than Sammy did.
He lit the cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. It immediately calmed him. He shifted gears in his head and began to wonder about the duffel bag and what was in it. No way could it hold a whole body. It was a small bag. The girl was small, but not that small. It may have nothing to do with the two of them, but he doubted it. It was too much coincidence. It was either parts of one of them... Or... He just didn't know.
He smoked and waited for Sammy to return, occasionally rustling the tree limbs and scrub brush around him to let any animals near know that he was there.
Rochester
Billy Jingo
It was even later. Once again April was curled into him with her head resting on his shoulder, but this time they were both back from another shower and under the covers.
"You think we'll be okay?" April asked.
"Yeah... I think we have to move on. We might have to get another vehicle after today...... Besides, we need one that's not in our names," Billy added.
"What about that Neo guy... You look a little like him, if you get it right they would never guess it wasn't you. I mean make yourself up to look like him, you see?" April asked.
Billy nodded. "It could work, but we should wait until we're out of this state. Just in case. That way no one can remember seeing us... Where do you want to go?" he asked.
"Mexico... There are so many nice places down there. You can live like a queen on almost nothing too. We got to get rid of the pot and the heavy stuff too before we go down there," April said. “They are not kidding if you get caught with that kind of shit over there... Prison there is not like here... You better have family or someone to pay money to feed you or you'll die... Bad.”
Billy looked at her and she met his eyes with her own.
“T.V. show... Saw it on a T.V. show a few years ago: A girl with her boyfriend. She didn't even know he had the stuff... He got out of it and she was stuck for it. It was bad...” Her eyes went away and her hand came up and rubbed across his belly.
"We'd have better luck selling it down south anyway, before we cross. We just got to look for the right guy. I could call my friend tomorrow, ask him if he knows anyone down there that would buy a lot," Billy said.
"Should we chance it?" April asked.
"It'll be okay. I'll call from a prepaid phone. He won't know where I am. He's a big deal, he don't mess with the cops. No one will know." Billy said.
"Okay," April said. "Then we go to Mexico?"