by Glenn Gamble
“Who knew that drug dealers listen to news radio?”
“No, I heard it on my police scanner app,” the drug dealer said. “You’re the one who killed all them motherfuckers. How I know you ain’t gonna kill me?”
“Ain’t this a bitch?”
“So you gon’ up that count?”
“Yeah.”
Jessica ran toward the car like a world-class track athlete in high heels into Jim’s arms as they agreed on the pay. Before anyone could say anything, flames shot in the air as the smell of burned leather and interior carpet filled the air.
“Get the fuck in the car,” the dealer shouted. “Ay Jet, drive these motherfuckers to 115th & Kensington.”
The same man who confronted Jim became their driver. Jim handed the drug dealer ten $100 bills, opened the door for Jessica and followed her in.
“Nice doing business with you. If y’all ever back in this area, I got what cha need.”
The drug dealer initially wanted to have his men rough him up until Jim told him that he needed a ride. Upon seeing the burnt orange sedan that was described on the police scanner, he decided that it would be best to give Jim a pass. Besides, he shot four motherfuckers with ease—he had no desire to be the fifth person. He concluded that it would be best to get him out the neighborhood so that the block wouldn’t be swarming with police officers.
Jet drove south on Halsted Street, but noticed a traffic jam beginning at 87th Street.
“What the fuck is going on with this traffic and shit?”
“Jet, make a right on 87th and go west to the Miami Motel.”
“I thought chu wanted to go to 115th Street?”
“I did, but the state troopers probably have a roadblock set up on the highway.”
“Man, would y’all make up y’all fucking minds.”
What’s wrong with this bi-polar motherfucker? I just wanna reroute until I get a better plan in place.
“Jet, here’s a couple hundred more, I apologize.”
“Aw shit, that’s what I’m talkin’ bout—paper,” Jet shouted.
“First we gotta go to Citi Trends and get a change of clothes, and you gonna have to go in and get them for us. We’re gonna give you our sizes, so please don’t fuck this up.”
“Why I gotta go in?”
“So we can keep our asses out of jail. Do you wanna go to jail with us?”
“Hell naw.”
“Then do what I tell you to do. Fuck, I’m paying you, ain’t I?”
After Jet went clothes shopping, Jim and Jessica changed clothes in the car before arriving to the Miami Motel on 87th and Cicero Ave. Soon after they checked in, Jim dismantled the gun, went back outside, burned their clothes in a nearby alley, and found random locations to discard various pieces of the weapon.
Chapter 9
Frank’s daughter Frances gained enough strength to walk around in her fifth day at the hospital. He was relieved to see her feeling better physically—emotionally, would be another matter that would take a long time for her to overcome. The lead security guard at the hospital peered into her hospital room where Frank stayed by his daughter’s side each day. He made his rounds to check on Frank ever since the fight he had with Steve a few days prior. She told her father that she wanted to take a walk outside. Frances insisted that her father walk with her, not that he needed any encouragement. On the way to the lobby, Frank saw Steve checking himself out the hospital. He contemplated a confrontation with Steve, but the security guard gave Frank a look that made him change his mind.
“I’ma go take a hike, just me and my pumpkin,” Frank said.
“I won’t be too far.”
This motherfucker’s constantly busting my balls, and fucking Jim wants me to sit around and do nothing like a pigeon. He’d be okay if I could give him the ass-kicking that’s due to that toy cop.. Jim’s too timid for me sometimes.
Before they got on the elevator, Frank received a text message from Jim instructing him to drop off a utility payment that he was several months behind on at the 36th & Union address that the guard had given him—of course he didn’t tell Frank that it was for the security guard’s wife. He knew how much to give him based on the several months behind reference. Once he sent Jim a return text, the elevator opened. They got in, and the guard followed the two. Frances pressed the cafeteria button, and Frank gave the lead security guard a glance from the corner of his eyes. Their dislike for one another was mutual.
The ring on the elevator had broken their stare down. They arrived at the cafeteria. Frances grabbed Frank’s hand and urged him to come on. Even with all that she had been through just days ago, she was still a sweet 11-year-old, happy to be with her father.
“Dad, can I have a fudge sundae?”
“Sure sweetie, tell them to get one for me, too,” Frank said. “Make sure they put extra chocolate chips on mine.”
“Can I get chocolate chips, too?”
“Whatever you want, pumpkin.”
Frances walked toward the counter and placed the order for their sundaes. Moments later Bones walked in and found Frank at the table.
“Frankie, I need to talk to you.”
“Right now is a bad time. I’m with my daughter.”
“Frank, it’s real important.”
Now face to face, Frank remembered when Jim warned him about not trusting Bones. With his cell phone in his hand, Frank toggled out of the text messages section and decided to go to his voice recorder app and hit record. Bones neither noticed, nor had any suspicion of him being recorded.
“Hurry up, because I’m having ice cream with my daughter right now.”
“You know them shacks where Steve ran blackjack, dice, and poker games?”
“Yeah.”
“We need that action, just you and me.”
“What about Steve?”
“We can make Steve disappear. I don’t know why Jim didn’t off the douchebag.”
“Keep your fucking voice down,” Frank warned.
“So are you in?”
“What about Jim? Those are his actual houses. He’s got to have a piece of the action.”
“We ain’t gotta worry about Jim. I got something for his punk ass.”
“I’m not in, unless you cut Jim in.”
Bones started to reply until Frances approached the table and dropped the sundaes. The sound of two glasses crashing to the floor caught Frank’s attention. That’s when he saw the urine that had run down her leg which formed a puddle on the off-white tile floor.
“I see what you mean, we’ll talk later.”
Bones walked out of the cafeteria as soon as he could and the custodian called a nurse to clean the urine and accompany the girl upstairs. Frank grabbed his daughter and hugged her shaking body.
“..I got a bad vibe about Bones.” He remembered Jim saying.
Son of a bitch. Jim was right about Bones. I’m going to cut this motherfucker’s throat with my bare hands.
As Bones hurried out of the cafeteria, he bumped into Steve in the elevator.
“Steve…”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I got something to tell you,” Bones said. “You got a minute?”
In the meanwhile, Pete called Carla from the Orland Park location where Jim wanted to meet. Pete’s eyes swelled with tears as he spoke with Carla.
“What’s wrong, Uncle Pete?”
“Jim’s dead.”
“Oh my God,” Carla said. “How did he get killed?”
“I don’t know, but he was in a car chase with some gang members who mistaken him for Steve. He told me he was going to meet me an hour from when he called as soon as he found a way to shake those guys. Jim said that if he was not here in an hour it’s because he’s dead. It’s been three hours now.”
Carla contemplated for a moment and was sad until the breaking news report on CNN came on and reported the details of a deadly shootout on Interstate 94. S
he realized that there was a possibility that he was alive.
“Uncle Pete, turn on CNN! Is this the car chase you were talking about?”
“Yeah, he said that he was on I-94 when he called.”
“They’re saying that four armed men were gunned down by one man who fled the scene. Several innocent bystanders were wounded by bullets from an automatic weapon not used to kill the four men. They’re also saying that a woman was with him…Uncle Pete, he’s alive, but he’s in trouble. I need to find him, and I think I know where he’ll be.”
“Carla, that’s going to be too dangerous.”
“I don’t care. I can’t let anything happen to Jim. I gotta go.”
Jim and Jessica took the Greyhound bus back to Memphis, enduring a long bus ride in a cramped space with passengers who ate Harold’s Chicken and licked mild sauce off their fingertips and a handful of passengers who wore the latest fragrance of ass and musk. They replayed the events that happened the previous day in the back of their minds. The only thing they could focus on at this moment was survival.
“I should have killed both of you motherfuckers last year. I wouldn’t be in this shit had I done so.”
“You’re the one who skipped town on me,” Jessica said.
“And you’re the one that ran off with Steve to do you know what.”
Jessica remained quiet for the remainder of the bus ride.
Steve remembered that Jim hit him in the head before he was unconscious. Jim and Jessica were in the car, and now no one could find either Jessica or his car. He was furious at having let Jim get away, but he was even more furious with the fact that he didn’t have a clue as to who broke in to his card games and stole the shipment of weapons that would enable him to pay back a debt owed to Don Carson. Poetic justice considering that he hijacked those weapons from the Cobras motorcycle gang. Now that Bones talked to him, Steve knew what to do. He borrowed Bones’s car and decided to stop at his house to pick up some clothes until he noticed some unfamiliar cars sitting out front. He drove past and decided that it would be best to drive elsewhere.
Jim and Jessica arrived in Memphis after an uncomfortable nine-hour bus ride. They took a cab back to Jim’s house and en route to their destination Frank called.
“You were right about that son of a bitch.”
“Who?”
“Bones, I know for a fact that he raped my little girl.”
“What you want me to do?”
“Keep your phone close, I’m going to board a nonstop flight to Memphis in a few minutes.”
Just as Jim concluded his phone call with Frank, he and Jessica arrived at their destination. Jim paid the cab driver, but noticed a car with Mississippi tags. Not unusual considering that Memphis was on the border of Mississippi. He dismissed it, walked to the front door, and opened it to let himself in.
“Don’t fucking move,” a voice said.
Jim felt a gun to his temple and a jolt of electricity in his ribs.
###
Bon Appétit
Escape
On the Run
James
Author Afterword
On the Run was a struggle for me to write. Correction, this book was really fucking hard to write. This bookwas such a struggle because I strayed so far from my original outline that I printed it out and wiped my ass with it. Apparently my original outline wasn’t as good as I thought it was because when I started writing the story I found myself going in another direction after I introduced Bones as a new character. Bones was originally a runner for Jim and Frank, but when I started writing the setup of Steve’s gambling spots; it seemed natural to give him a more important role in the story. Then shit rolled uphill from there.
Once Bones was given a bigger role, I realized that I had to make him more of a wild card in the story. I hadn’t given any thought to writing in the bit referencing Frank’s daughter in the original outline. When I wrote the dialogue between Carla and Jim I realized that Jim needed a better reason to return to Chicago than “checking on his games back home,” especially when he’s acquired a more peaceful lifestyle right outside of Memphis. That’s when it occurred to me to introduce an event that compelled Mr. Money to come back home which took me further away from my outline.
Then of course Ted and his wife accounted for the gap between his departure from Memphis to his arrival in Chicago. We’ve all encountered annoying travelers when either riding the bus, train, or airplane to our destination. Given the uncertainty of his friend’s situation back home, their presence made things more stressful for Jim during those moments. His reaction was wrong and he only made it halfway right when Ted came into the picture.
The security guard at the hospital, the cougar nurse Tracey, and the situation at the hospital weren’t conceived until I steered further away from my outline by adding these variables to the story. They made the scene at the hospital complete. Somehow I thought it made sense to incorporate Jessica into the story and the change made more sense than my original storyline. Because of her actions in this story, the events in Bon Appetit and Escape were poetic justice for Jim. Now he can see her for who she really is and not her outer appearance, which sparked his original infatuation for her.
Even the shootout wasn’t originally written into the story. Because of how the plot developed, I had to eliminate half of my original outline and incorporate the shootout and the new ending. I had one hell of a hard time writing this story, but I’m very proud of the outcome. Now I have to face the challenge of writing a better follow-up to this story in James. So far, all of the novellas in the Jim Money series have been better than the previous one, and I hope to continue the trend with James.
-Glenn Gamble
July 2011
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank my mom for being my mom. I’d also like to thank my high school English teachers Mr. Beatty (Luther South), Ms. Neill (Lindblom Tech), and Mr. Majeski (Lindblom Tech) for being crazy enough to assign me to write speeches, journals, and short stories, and for being even crazier for allowing me to read them.
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