The Big Exit

by David Carnoy

  Carlyle cuts through the lot, makes a hard left into the lane that runs just adjacent to the mall, the back of the truck fishtailing to a stop. He jolts the car into park, leaving the engine running. “Time to get some exercise,” he says, and dashes off.

  Madden jumps out and sees Consuelo pull up behind him a few seconds later.

  “Secure the vehicle,” Madden shouts, coming around the Yukon to get into the driver’s seat. He points at the Flex. “The Ford SUV right there. Don’t touch anything. Just make sure no one goes near it.” Then he gets in the car and drives off.

  As he reaches the front of the mall on the El Camino side he hears sirens coming up the El Camino from the south. Two squad cars in the distance. Palo Alto PD. Not theirs. He looks to his right toward the mall but doesn’t see either of the Tongans or Carlyle, so he circles the mall until he’s on the opposite side from where he left Carlyle.

  “I’m on the other side by the Gap,” he tells Carlyle over the radio. “You see them?”

  “They split up,” Carlyle says, breathing hard. “I went after the bigger one. More my speed.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Right in the middle. Just went by Gymboree.”

  Madden stops the Yukon in front of Häagen-Dazs and gets out. It’s hard to tell exactly where he is in relation to Carlyle, but he decides to head right and then cut left into the mall just before Bloomingdale’s, breaking into a brisk walk that makes him more aware of his limp. He turns to make his way to the center of the mall and suddenly hears a woman’s scream. Then a man yells, “Hey, watch out.” Then it’s Carlyle shouting at everybody to get out of the way and a moment later the quarry appears, wide and wild-eyed, charging toward Madden.

  The guy’s a fucking bull, but instead of reaching for his gun, Madden freezes, startled that he’s coming directly at him. His first thought is How do I stop this guy? and then he thinks, He doesn’t know I’m a cop, he expects me to get out of the way.

  So he doesn’t. In a moment of inspired stupidity, he does what any punter with limited tackling skills would do when faced with a speedy return man streaking through a hole into the open field: he decides to go low.

  He dives in front of the guy, aiming for his ankles, and feels a sharp pain as the beast clips his right shoulder and is sent tumbling to the ground, landing hard on his side. Stunned, he looks back at Madden, who’s also laid out on his side, grimacing in pain. The guy gets up and just as he does, Carlyle comes flying in, doing his best imitation of a blindside cornerback blitz, hitting the guy full force with his shoulder and wrapping his arms around him at the same time.

  The blow knocks him back to the ground, but it doesn’t have quite the incapacitating effect that Carlyle had hoped for. He tries to keep him pinned, but the guy’s got a good eighty pounds on him. He manages to shed Carlyle, then literally lifts him up and chucks him toward the Bloomingdale’s entrance. Madden, who’s watched too many professional wrestling matches with his son, thinks the guy’s next move will be a pile driver, but he’s not that crazy. Instead, he scrambles to his feet and turns to resume his run only to find himself staring at the barrel of Madden’s Glock.

  “Freeze, asshole, or I’ll blow your fucking brains into Bloomingdale’s.”

  The guy looks him in the eyes, gauging his sincerity. Madden adjusts the grip on his gun, adding his left hand to show he’s not fucking around. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a woman cowering behind a cement garbage can.

  “Hands behind your head and on your knees.”

  The guy complies—halfway anyway. He does a modified lunge and drops down on one knee. “I didn’t do anything,” he says, clasping his hands behind his head.

  Madden notes that his English is perfect. No trace of an accent. He’s a kid really. Probably twenty, twenty-one, Madden thinks.

  “Then why are you running?”

  “There’s a big sale today,” he says. “Just trying to get my Christmas shopping done early.”

  “A goddamn comedian, eh?” Madden says to Carlyle, who’s back on his feet, cuffs out. “We’ve got Sinatra, now Don Rickles. Who’s next?”

  “Why don’t you tell us the one about the guy who got caught driving around in a dead man’s car?” Carlyle says, binding his wrists behind him with a plastic cable, a wrist tie. “We’ll see how that goes over.”

  Just then two Palo Alto cops appear from the same direction Madden came from. One has his gun out, the other a Taser. Out of the corner of his eye, Madden can’t really tell exactly who they’ve got their weapons pointed at, but everybody seems to know who everybody is, which is what he’s mainly concerned about. Both officers are fairly young, in their early thirties. Madden has met them before but he doesn’t remember their names.

  He lowers his weapon, waving them on. “Keep going,” he says. “There’s one more. On foot. Also APA but smaller and has a prominent soul patch below his lower lip. Don’t know if he’s armed but he’s probably as stupid as this idiot.”

  “I’m not stupid,” their captive protests.

  “Just wait,” Madden says. “It’ll sink in soon enough.”

  20/ FORBIDDEN FRUIT

  “FORMAN, YOU GOT COMPANY.”

  One look at Madden’s wry smile and something tells him that this may not be such a welcome visitor. At first he thinks it’s someone from the DA’s office, but then he looks past Madden and sees the cop from last night, Carlyle, escorting a familiar character, the Oddjob look-alike, which makes his eyes light up.

  “We found one of your Tongan friends,” Madden says.

  “Bravo, Detective. I didn’t think you had it in you. Where’s his buddy?”

  “Still looking for him.”

  “You holding anybody else?”

  “No.”

  “Wouldn’t he be more comfortable in his own cage?”

  “Sure.”

  Madden opens the door and steps out of the way, leaving Richie face to face with his old acquaintance, Oddjob, who doesn’t seem terribly happy to see him again. The guy gives him a hard stare, followed by an almost comical guttural noise, a cross between a growl and grunt.

  “Marty’s not going to be pleased about this,” Richie says.

  “Probably not,” Madden says. “But I’ll let him know this is how we roll here in Mayberry.”

  Smiling at the comment, Carlyle removes the Tongan’s wrist restraint, then gives him a nice nudge into the room and shuts the door.

  Richie braces for confrontation but once inside the guy just brushes past him and sits down on the bench, rubbing his wrists. He decides to give him space—the little he can give. He takes the few steps to the other side of the small room and leans his back into the wall and looks up at the ceiling, searching one more time for the microphone or camera that Lowenstein had suspected was there. He’d promised to keep his trap shut, but he’s curious as hell to know why they arrested the guy.

  “What’d they get you for?”

  He waits for a response but none comes. So he rephrases:

  “What’d they charge you with? They told you what they charged you with, didn’t they?”

  His new roommate turns his head a little to the right—away from him—and mumbles something out of the side of his mouth that he can’t decipher.

  “What, bro?”

  “I ain’t your bro.”

  “Fair enough. But what’d they charge you with?”

  “Failure to stop and assaulting an officer.”

  Richie lets out a low whistle. “Assault, huh? A cop? That could get you some jail time. You got a record?”

  He shakes his head. The guy still refuses to look at him when he speaks. Dressed respectably enough in gray cargo pants and a black collared untucked short-sleeve shirt, he seems like a relatively normal kid. He’s just big, with a wide, round face, a buzz cut, and dark, dull eyes. Shark’s eyes. A little puffy. Tears? Maybe. Despite the earlier growl, Richie detects a touch of fear.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.


  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You seems to know who I am, so it only seems fair I should know who you is. Unless you prefer I make up a name. I’ll try to keep your weight out of it but I can’t promise anything.”

  “Tevita,” he says quietly after a moment. “But people call me T-Truck.”

  “As in tow truck?”

  “No. As in I will run your shit over, bro.”

  “Charming. You Tongan?”

  “Why you talking like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “With that accent?”

  “I didn’t know I had an accent.”

  “Well, you do.”

  Silence.

  Richie: “So how’d you get wrapped up in this little mess?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “I know how you feel. But how’d you end up working for Mark McGregor?”

  “Who said I worked for Mark McGregor?”

  “Oh no? Who then?”

  “His wife.”

  Richie pushes himself forward off the wall. “His wife?”

  “Yeah. Ms. Hill.”

  “Why were you working for her?”

  “She offered us double what her husband was paying us.”

  “Really? And did you keep collecting from McGregor?”

  He smiles. “Yeah.”

  “Sounds like a pretty awesome arrangement. So he’s paying you to follow her around and she’s paying you to do what exactly?”

  “She had us working on a couple projects.”

  “Like what?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, we were supposed to hang out in front of your building, keep tabs on you for a couple of days.”

  Richie takes a step closer.

  “Why?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “To get your attention. Reverse psychology, bro.” He taps his temple a few times, a smile breaking across his face. He seems rather pleased with himself. “You tell someone to stay away and they can’t.”

  “The old forbidden fruit trick.”

  “Yeah. Forbidden fruit.”

  Regrettably, he’s right. After the run-in with the Togans, he’d only been able to hold out for a day before the urge to contact Beth had grown too powerful. He hadn’t called her from his cell. Instead, as a precaution, he’d called her from a public phone, which hadn’t been easy to find; he had to go to the Caltrain station, a ten-minute walk from his apartment. She’d answered on his third try, her voice tentative. As soon as she figured out who was calling she got nervous. “I can’t talk,” she said. “Just wait. I gotta go.” And then she was gone.

  He did wait. About a minute later the pay phone rang. He thought it was Beth calling back so he picked up. But he got a man’s voice.

  “Who’s this?” the caller asked.

  Richie’s first reaction was to hang up, but then he reconsidered.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Who this?”

  “Ms. Hill’s assistant.” The accent was English, poorly done. “Are you trying to reach her?”

  “I think you have the wrong number.”

  “You called, bro.”

  “No, you called,” he said, and hung up.

  His heart was pounding. What the hell? Was that who he thought it was? And his heart was still pounding a minute later when the phone rang a second time. Let it go, he thought. But then he heard his father again telling him to go to trouble. And he thought, Fuck it, and picked up. This time he didn’t say anything.

  “Richie? Richie, are you there?”

  It was Beth’s voice.

  She’d called him back from a friend’s phone. She said Mark had installed some sort of spyware on her phone. He could hear who she was talking to, see who she was texting and emailing. She’d heard a weird echo and had taken her phone into the Verizon store. A repair guy there told her she had spyware on her phone and that there was no way to get rid of it. He told her to trash the phone but she hadn’t because then Mark would know she’d replaced it.

  “It’s bad, Richie,” she said.

  He thought of mentioning the call he’d just received from her fake assistant, but she already sounded stressed enough. “How so?” he asked.

  “Mark’s gotten really weird. He’s paranoid. He thinks I’m having an affair. He thinks people want to kill him.”

  “Maybe he’s right.”

  “He started a new company.”

  “I heard. Riding high. The next big thing.”

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “There’s a lot of anxiety. He had to go back to investors. I don’t know how much longer I can live like this.”

  “Did you come to my apartment building, Beth?”

  Silence.

  “The other day, you were there, Beth, weren’t you?”

  If she denied it, he was ready to say he’d seen the photo, but he didn’t have to.

  “I was up in the city. I stopped there. I rang your buzzer, but you weren’t in. Then someone let me into the building. I waited a bit, then left.”

  “How do you know where I live?”

  “Mark knows. He told me at some point. A few months ago he said you were living in the same building that Christopher Markus used to live in years ago. Bayside Village.”

  “Why’d you come, Beth?”

  A moment of hesitation, then a soft voice. He could barely make out what she was saying. She was going to give him something. He thought he heard her say “rug.” But that didn’t make any sense.

  “My what?” he asked, and just as he did, he realized what she’d really said.

  “Your ring.”

  She enunciated the word this time, said it very clearly, and it hit him harder than he expected. Maybe it was how she said it. The way it came out made it sound as if it had never belonged to her. She was harboring stolen goods. Or rather, she’d borrowed it and now really wanted to return it. She didn’t want it on her conscience anymore.

  How he got all that from two short words she’d uttered he wasn’t sure, but he suddenly felt sick.

  “I thought, you know, you should have it back,” she said. “That you might be able to get good money for it. I know what it’s worth.”

  So did he. He’d bought it for $24,000. He’d gotten a deal on it through his father’s friend in New York. A real rock.

  “I told you I didn’t want it back,” he said.

  “I know. But I thought your sentiments might have changed.”

  “I gave it to you, so it’s yours. It always will be.”

  “It’s a beautiful ring, Richie. You should have it.”

  The whole thing was killing him. The goddamn ring not only reminded him of sweeter times, but of his father, who’d helped pick it out and had died while he was in prison. A wave of anger swept over him and he released it in a way he was all too familiar with toward the end of their relationship. He let her have it.

  “So let me get this straight, you’ve got a paranoid husband who put spyware on your phone and you’re coming to my place? Did it occur to you that someone might be following you? If he’s got shit on your phone, he’s also probably got something on your car.”

  “I made sure no one was following. I was careful.”

  Not careful enough, he thought.

  “Did Mark say anything about me demanding money from him? Did he say I was trying to blackmail him? Anything about notes or calls or emails or anything like that?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think someone may be trying to get money out of him using me as leverage.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Just stay away, Beth. And tell that psycho husband of yours to stay away. I don’t need this shit. I’m doing okay here.”

  “Richie?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Go to the police, Beth. Go right now, do you understand? File a report.”

&nbs
p; “What am I going to report?”

  He heard an echo of himself in that response.

  “Show them your phone,” he said. “Show them the spyware.”

  “And what?”

  “And I don’t know. It’s not my problem.”

  “I don’t want the ring, Richie.”

  “I don’t want it either. So we’re even.”

  “You think about it.”

  “I don’t want to think about it.”

  “You will,” she said. “I know you will. You’re stubborn but you’re also practical. I know you’ve changed, but some things never change.”

  No, they don’t, he now thinks. You knew, didn’t you? You knew saying that would remind me of that stupid song. You knew exactly what you were doing, didn’t you?

  “The bitch done you good, bro.”

  Richie looks over and realizes T-Truck’s been talking but he hasn’t been listening. For a moment, he’d forgotten he was there.

  “That your buddy who was monitoring her calls?” he asks him. “Mr. Soul Patch? It sounded like him.”

  T-Truck looks at him quizzically. “What are you talking about?”

  “She had spyware on her phone. You guys were monitoring her calls.”

  That gets a chuckle.

  “That what she told you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He laughs again. “She played you good, bro. Spyware. That’s a good one. I certainly hope you aren’t—”

  He coughs in the middle of the sentence, garbling the end of it.

  “What?” Richie asks.

  T-Truck takes a moment to clear his throat. “I said I certainly I hope you aren’t protecting her. ’Cause she set you up, bro. Just like she set us up.”

  “How’d she set you up?”

  “She gave the cops a picture of us. Made it seem like we got something to do with this. We’re all over the fucking Internet. That’s why the cops was after us.”

  “What do you mean? I told the cops about you stupid fucks. I was the one who—”