Culprits

by Richard Brewer

  Nothing.

  He reached in and shook the guy’s shoulder, but instead of waking, the man slumped to the side. Larry could now see that the man’s shirt was blood stained.

  “Are you all right?”

  He opened the door and climbed in far enough so that he could check the man’s pulse, except there wasn’t any. More than that, though, the man’s skin was unnaturally cold.

  The guy was dead.

  As Larry started to retreat from the cab, his sweater caught on a piece of cardboard that had been propped on the steering wheel. He picked it up, thinking it was just a piece of trash, but checked both sides just to make sure first.

  Not trash. Not trash at all.

  Mr. and Mrs. Norris—

  Not sure you remember me. My name is Benny Parker. I served with your daughter, Eva.

  Larry did remember him. Benny had made a trip to Boston to bring them some things of Eva’s he’d had. It had been obvious to Larry that Benny was nearly as devastated as they were about their daughter’s death.

  He leaned back into the cab and took another look at the driver’s face. It looked like Benny, though older and pale.

  I don’t have a lot of time, so will keep this brief. I have something for you. I mean, for Eva’s daughter. Sorry, I can’t remember her name.

  It’s in the back of the truck. The three duffel bags. They’re hers.

  Larry read to the end, and then read it again. When he was through, he checked the back of the truck. Three duffels, just like the letter said.

  Using the rear bumper, he climbed inside and opened one of the bags. Stacks of cash. More than he’d ever seen in his life.

  I want you to know no one will ever come looking for the money. It’s all taken from people who didn’t deserve to have it, and often earned it by criminal means. You can, of course, turn it in. But I ask you to take some time and think about it first, and how it can give Megan—it’s Megan, right?—how it can give Megan a head start in life.

  Your choice is simply this, when you call the police, the bags can be in the truck or not.

  Sandra would have turned it over to the police right away, no matter how much it might help their granddaughter.

  Larry glanced in the direction of the house, and noted that the truck blocked any view from there of the nearby trees along the drive. He then zipped closed the bag he’d opened and grabbed its straps.

  . . . “How much is a life worth?”

  It was one of those questions. You know the kind. The would-you-rathers and the what-would-you-do-ifs meant to fill time. That’s the thing about war, there was always so much damn downtime between bits of action. The sitting, the waiting, the mindless tasks, the boring patrols where nothing happened. Day after day after day after day.

  “What kind of life are we talking about?” Southside asked. “I mean, you know, an old man’s? A baby’s? What?”

  “One of ours,” Stevens said. He was the one who asked the question, so he set the rules.

  “Hell, my life’s priceless.” T-Rod tapped his chest and then held his hands out wide to the side. “Ain’t enough cash in the world to buy this work of art.”

  “The Army already bought you,” Southside said.

  “Bullshit. The Army’s only renting. No one’s buying me.”

  “A million dollars.”

  Everyone turned and looked at Eva.

  She shrugged. “I say a million dollars.”

  “A million dollars?” Dolan said. “Man, that’s crazy. You can barely buy a decent house in San Diego for a million dollars.”

  “Then how much do you think?” Stevens asked him.

  “Gotta be at least five, right? Minimum.”

  Southside laughed. “You ain’t gonna make five mil in your entire life. No way you can be worth that much.”

  The conversation devolved from there into a scrum of numbers being tossed about and counter arguments being made. Benny, who was content to listen to the others chatter, thought Eva was a lot closer to right than Dolan. One point five million seemed fair to him. Enough money for those you left behind to get on their feet and maybe do something with their lives, but not so much that they would get lazy.

  As questions went, Stevens’ was an all-time great, keeping them occupied for a full three quarters of an hour. By the next day, though, when the wind kicked up, making the world crazy, the others had all forgotten about it.

  Everyone but Benny.

  Chapter 9 - Racklin

  by Gar Anthony Haywood

  “Dude, I’m late,” the guy in the backseat said, working his way up to a good tantrum. “The fuck.”

  Racklin didn’t feel like offering the little bitch any apologies, but he knew he owed him one. He pulled the Nissan over to the curb, perfectly parallel, and said, “I did what I could do. You saw the traffic.”

  His passenger yanked his door open, adorable canvas laptop bag in hand, and smirked. “Shit. My grandmother could have gotten me here faster.”

  And again, because he was right, Racklin just watched him climb out onto the sidewalk, slamming the car door behind him like a jilted lover, and storm off, into this Grand Avenue high rise where he’d be six minutes late for a meeting with, no doubt, some other twenty-something prick or set of pricks, both or all planning to make millions on the backs of people just like Racklin.

  Or, not quite like Howard Racklin, because how many fucking Uber drivers had a retirement fund fit for the COO of General Motors?

  Racklin didn’t need to do this Uber shit for the money, and he damn sure didn’t need to do it for love. He just needed the practice behind the wheel. Because it was this or nothing at all, the end of who and what he’d been all his adult life: a driver. A wheelman. The kind of professional you called when you needed vehicular transport between two points, on paved streets or dirt roads, at whatever speed was necessary to outrun all possible forms of pursuit. Racklin wasn’t the best, the best never lived as long as Racklin had, but he had always proven close enough, and after the Crystal Q job—botched up shit show that it turned out to be—wheel work had made him a very rich man.

  Pity it didn’t make him a smarter one, or one with a little more luck. If Charley had taught him anything—and his stepfather had taught him everything about the criminal profession he knew—it was to get out of a game while your pockets were full and there was still an open door through which to make a safe exit. That’s how Charley had done it. He’d lost Racklin’s mother in the process, and damn near gotten himself killed as well, but in the end he’d walked away—flown away, really, his skills as an old barnstorming pilot playing a key role in his escape—with a small fortune, one he was able to live on comfortably for the rest of his life.

  Racklin had been given that same chance and had blown it. The time to walk away from driving for good had been right after the Crystal Q heist, which he’d survived by a thread as thin as the hairs on a horsefly’s ass. But he hadn’t done it. He’d taken on one more job instead, not so much tempting the devil as spitting in his left eye and pissing in his right, and the cold sweat Racklin broke into today just trying to drive the speed limit in a goddamn Nissan Sentra was a direct result of that decision.

  He no longer dreamed about the accident, but for weeks afterward, it haunted his sleep like a ghoul holding a grudge.

  The Silverthorne Media heist should have been one of the easiest and sweetest he’d ever signed up for: a high tech software company out of the Silicon Valley, a week after its first public offering had made instant millionaires of its three college boy owners. Somebody got the bright idea to throw a big party at corporate headquarters in San Jose and share the wealth with the small staff, not by handing out iPods and gift certificates but by tossing cash and prizes around like fucking bridal bouquets. Cash, as in short stacks of C-notes, and prizes in the form of genuine Breitling watches, the kind authorized dealers insured to the tune of eight grand against theft.

  Thr
ee people were all the job required: the ex-classmate of one of the owners who’d gotten wind of the event; a gunman for muscle; and a driver. Racklin’s two partners crashed the party and hustled out with the high five-figure take like kids snatching snacks at the 7-Eleven, and Racklin did the rest. No blood, no drama, and no visible pursuit. All Racklin had to do was get them to the drop in one piece.

  But pursuit or no pursuit, Racklin never left a crime scene without haste. The more distance he could put between the crew and the mark before the first 911 call was made, the better he liked it. So from the jump, he had the Silverthorne getaway car, a late model Chevy Malibu with the three hundred horses of a Camaro SS’s V6 stuffed into its engine bay, tracing their escape route at an easy fifty, planning to throttle down only when instinct moved him to do so.

  Near crashes and pedestrian casualties were part of the job, of course, especially on urban runs like this one. Racklin had seen more than his share of both. But in twenty-seven years as a wheelman, he’d never had a crash bring him to a stop, nor hurt anybody on foot so bad the doctors in the ER couldn’t fix them.

  When the old guy in the walker stepped off the curb, he knew the odds had finally caught up with him.

  There was no place to put the Malibu where it wouldn’t up the kill rate or wrap itself around a utility pole; Racklin just ran right through the poor bastard, the two guys in the backseat screaming like bitches as the Chevy launched the old man into space. All witnesses saw after that was a blur of green, Racklin standing on the car’s gas as if to pierce the sound barrier. They made it to the secluded drop site in record time, too fast for the cops to locate and give chase, but no one in the car felt like celebrating. They divvied up the take and broke off, Racklin left to trust that his accomplices would keep their mouths shut because their armed robbery had just turned into a murder rap and, like Racklin himself, they’d want to pretend it never happened as soon as their consciences would allow.

  He made his way toward Los Angeles in his own ride, prepared for a long stint in hiding, and sensed almost immediately that something was badly amiss. Miles before the grapevine on Interstate 5, his hands on the steering wheel began to shake like a spooked ratter's tail and the road wouldn’t stay focused in front of him. He had to pull over twice, to vomit and let his nerves wind down, just to keep himself from plowing into the center divider or another car. Racklin kept seeing the old man climb up the windshield and across the Malibu’s roof, making a racket, his aluminum walker vanishing beneath the car’s front wheels like so much grass before a lawnmower. Why the fuck had the dumb shit stepped off that curb? Why hadn’t somebody stopped him?

  Racklin made it to L.A., but he was damn near crawling when he arrived. And every time since then when he’d slip behind the wheel of a car, it was the same: the shakes, blurred vision, nausea. If he hadn’t been ready for at least semi-retirement before, he sure as hell had to start considering it now, because fate didn’t seem to have any other future in mind for him.

  Still, he was a wheelman, and he wasn’t going to let go of driving without a fight. So, he traded in his Charger SRT for a new Nissan Sentra four-door, a rolling box painted hospital white with all the horsepower of a goddamned motorized wheelchair, and gave himself a reason to get in it every day and turn the key in the ignition: Uber. Running strangers from one end of Los Angeles to another, listening to their inane stories and whiny complaints, never letting the Sentra’s speedometer climb above sixty-five, no matter how much they offered to tip or swore was on the line if they failed to arrive at Point B on time.

  In the beginning, he could only take short runs, nothing that would require him to use the freeways. And even then, he’d sometimes have to pull over in a rush to puke at the curb, making some excuse having to do with a rough night out or a change in his meds.

  By now, however, he’d worked his way to the point where the cold sweats didn’t come until the Sentra was doing the posted limit on the 405, or some impatient jackass in the back was goading him into running yellows on the street. The streets were still the worst, because that was where he had killed a man guilty of no greater offense than being old and slow and careless, and every intersection seemed to hold the promise of a similar disaster. On the street, Racklin’s eyes darted from side to side, up to one mirror and over to the next, like a cop on patrol, and he tapped his brakes at any sudden move a pedestrian might make. He felt like a fool.

  But it was either this or quit, and he wasn’t going to quit. He couldn’t. The need for speed was in his blood, and he was going to feel the rush of it again, without his knees buckling and his stomach collapsing into a knot, or die trying. Because Charley had instilled that in him too: persistence. Work with what you’ve got and turn it to your advantage, no matter how long it takes. Charley had made his own fortune converting what should have been a fatal stroke of bad luck into a million-dollar windfall, so he wasn’t just talking out of his ass.

  Racklin was an Uber driver, and he was going to go on being an Uber driver until he finally got his chops back and could call himself a wheelman again.

  . . .

  “Hey,” the little blonde in the tight yellow skirt said, “you remember me?”

  Racklin thought he did, sort of, but he couldn’t place her.

  “Not really. Help me out.”

  “You drove me to my mother’s place last week. You’re an Uber driver, right?”

  She snuck a peek at the sticker in the Sentra’s rear window. Racklin had been pumping gas near his apartment in Echo Park when the girl walked up, he didn’t see from where.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Your mother’s?”

  “In South Pas. You picked me up around six thirty at work in Glendale. You really don’t remember?”

  Racklin really didn’t. “Sorry. Maybe it was an off night for me.” He figured her to be somewhere in her early twenties; too old to be jailbait and too young to be a good time entirely devoid of guilt.

  “Sure. Are you busy?”

  “Busy?” Racklin hung the gas nozzle on the pump, screwed the Sentra’s filler cap back on.

  “I could use another ride. I was just about to call for one when I saw you here. If you’re not on, it’s no problem. I just thought…”

  “Sure, sure,” Racklin said, opening the passenger side door for her. “You can make the call on the way.”

  She wasn’t going to South Pasadena today, just a strip mall in Hollywood. Or so she said. When Racklin pulled the Nissan into the cramped little lot and a guy jumped in the backseat with the lady the minute she unlocked the door for him, Racklin figured she had another destination altogether in mind.

  “Yo, Rack ’Em Up, how you doin’?”

  It was Danny Eaves, the hired muscle from the Silverthorne job. Danny was a pink-nosed, sliver-thin Army vet with dishonorable discharge papers somewhere in a drawer, and he shared his general disposition with a dim-witted hornet trapped in a jar. He was also, Racklin thought, a premonition realized; a loose end that should have been tied up back in San Jose with two bullets behind the ear.

  Eaves cheerfully gave the blonde a wet kiss. “Thanks, baby.”

  “You lunkhead. What the hell are you doing here?” Racklin asked, spinning around in his seat. But, of course, he already had a good idea.

  “I need a ride, what else? And I didn’t think you’d come if I asked for one, so I had Kelly here ask for me. Worked like a charm.”

  Kelly smiled like she’d just won a gold star. No wonder Racklin hadn’t remembered taking the blonde to her mother’s in fucking South Pas last week.

  “How did you find me?” Racklin asked.

  “Find you? Shit, man, you found me! I came down here for a little R and R, hit the beach and babes for a weekend, and who do I see last Saturday, dropping some old gal off in Venice in this shitbox little Toyota? Ol’ Rack ’Em Up himself, baddest wheelman in the business!”

  “It’s a Nissan,” Kelly said.

  “What?�
��

  “This is a Nissan, not a Toyota, D.”

  “Whatever.” Eaves looked back at Racklin. “Anyway, I’ve been followin’ you around, off and on, ever since. And I gotta hand it to you, Rack, man. An Uber driver. Gotta be the last thing anybody’d expect a man like you to be doin’ with himself.”

  “Get out, Danny,” Racklin said.

  “What?”

  “I said get the fuck out of my car, asshole. I’m not going anywhere with you today.”

  “No? You didn’t see this piece in my hand when I got in? You don’t think I’ll use it?”

  Racklin had seen it: a blue metal 40-caliber, bound up tight in the wiry man’s right fist. Racklin’s own gun was in the pocket of the driver side door panel, where he’d have to leave it until Eaves dropped his guard or the forty, one or the other.

  “Get this motherfucker started and move. Don’t matter which direction, just move.”

  Racklin did as he was told.

  Eaves sat back in his seat and spread his legs, enjoying the ride. “Rack, this is my friend, Kelly. Kelly, say hello to my old partner, Rack ’Em Up.”

  “Hi,” Kelly said.

  “Fuck you.”

  Eaves laughed, tickled as usual by anything that made Racklin see red.

  “What do you want, Danny? Spell it out.” Racklin had the Sentra up to thirty-five, a crawl he was certain Eaves would take notice of any second now.

  “You ever hear the expression, ‘some things you can’t unsee,’ Rack? Well…” He grinned and shook his head. “That’s my sitch: I can’t unsee you, hidin’ out here in Los Angeles. I know you’re here. So if somebody were to ask me where you’re at…” He let it go at that.

  “Somebody like who?”

  “I’m not talkin’ about the cops. And I don’t know their names. I’ve just heard that some powerful people are lookin’ for you. And that they’d pay good money to find you. Real good money.”

  More loose ends, Racklin thought. This time from the Crystal Q heist, no doubt. O’Conner? Estevez? Or the man Racklin had brought into the job who double-crossed them all, Will Ellison? His bet was O’Conner. O’Conner had shaved Racklin’s take from the Crystal Q job by fifty grand as payback for Ellison’s act of betrayal, and he might have decided that amount wasn’t payback enough.