Gone ’Til November (8 page)

“Stripes,” she said, walking around the table to the other side. The rim was marked with ancient cigarette burns. Elwood sipped beer, watched her. She picked her shot, leaned, eyed the setup, pointed the stick at a side pocket. She hit the nine off the eleven, watched it drop.

“Glad we’re not betting on this,” he said.

She missed her next shot, watched the twelve carom harmlessly off the rail.

Elwood put his cigarette down, blew smoke through his nose, hefted his stick, and circled the table. Sara looked back into the bar. Lee-Anne had her left arm linked in Billy’s right, had pulled him close. He was listening to her, nodding. He looked over his shoulder at Sara. She met his eyes for a moment, looked away.

Elwood sank his shot, took another, missed. She looked back at the table and for a moment couldn’t remember if she had stripes or solids. Elwood was watching her.

She eyed a combination on the eleven, shot and missed.

“You’re distracted,” he said.

She chalked up. “I guess.”

He walked around the table, looking for his shot.

“Our friend’s out a lot these days,” he said. “He should be keeping a lower profile.”

He sank the five ball.

“Is that what you’re doing here?” she said. “Keeping an eye on him?”

He stretched out for a shot, looked up at her, then back at the table, hammered the three ball into a corner pocket. “Maybe somebody needs to,” he said.

She sipped Guinness, looked out to the bar. Billy and Lee-Anne were standing, ready to leave, arms still entwined.

Elwood missed his next shot. Sara looked away from them, back at the table.

“Your shot,” he said.

She put the Guinness down, shot for the eleven again, missed. She heard the front door open and close.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw you miss two shots in a row,” he said.

“Can’t seem to concentrate.”

“No wonder on that.” He bent, missed an easy shot on the four.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“You know what I mean.”

He shrugged, got his beer.

She looked at him, then down at the table. She chalked up, leaned for the shot, used the ten ball to put the eleven in the side pocket. The cue ball came to rest midtable, gave her an easy setup with the fifteen in the far corner. She sank it hard, watched the cue roll back into position for another shot at the ten.

“That’s more like it,” he said.

She sank the ten, ran the table. The eight ball lingered near a corner pocket. She pointed the stick at the pocket, and he nodded. She chalked, bent, put it in.

“Like I said, glad we weren’t betting.”

“Good game, Sam.”

“Go again?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve got to be getting home.”

She put the cue back on the rack. The pint of Guinness was still half full, but she was done with it. She carried it back to the bar to save Althea a trip, went out the front door. It
shut behind her, muffling the music. She got her keys out, headed for the Blazer.

Billy’s truck was still there. Light wash from a pole fell at an angle across the windshield. She could see him in the driver’s seat, alone, head back, eyes closed, as if he were sleeping.

As she walked by, he opened his eyes, saw her. He said something she couldn’t hear, and then Lee-Anne raised her head up from under the dash, looked out at her.

Sara felt the warmth rush to her face. Lee-Anne met her eyes, smiled. She pushed her braids away, turned and spoke to Billy, then powered her window down. Billy sat there, frozen, blinking.

Sara couldn’t move. Lee-Anne looked out at her.

“You want to come over here and watch?” she said. “See how it’s done?”

Sara turned away, walked to the Blazer, her face burning. Behind her, Lee-Anne laughed. Sara got behind the wheel, turned the key, ground the starter, had to switch the ignition off, try it again.

Lee-Anne looked back at her, then dipped her head again, disappeared from sight. Sara heard a low moan from the truck, one she knew well.

She backed out, turned the wheel, pulled fast out of the lot. She was a mile down the road before she realized she was speeding. She willed herself to slow down, her face still flush and hot. It was the tears that surprised her.

When the knock came at the door, Morgan got the Beretta from the nightstand, looked through the peephole. C-Love and Mikey were outside.

“Come on, man,” C-Love said. “It’s freezing out here.”

Morgan undid the lock and night latch, opened the door, the Beretta at his side. As they came in, he looked past them into the parking lot. The Suburban was parked in the shadows near a Dumpster.

“The twins out there?” he said. He shut the door, locked it.

“Yeah, why you ask?” C-Love said. He was carrying a black plastic grocery bag. Mikey walked around the room, poked the bathroom door open.

“What are you looking for?” Morgan said.

“Nothing.”

“You bring what I asked?”

C-Love hefted the bag, dropped it on the bed.

“We need to talk about some shit,” Mikey said. There was a table and chair under the front window. He pulled the chair out, straddled it.

“That boy you murked in the alley,” he said. “That was Philly Joe from around the way.”

“So?” He set the Beretta on the nightstand.

“His people gonna be looking for you.”

Morgan went to the bed, opened the bag. Inside was a ziplock plastic bag filled with greenish-gold marijuana. C-Love stood near the door, watching him.

A plane came in low overhead. The lamp on the nightstand rattled.

“That’s good shit,” C-Love said. “Best hydro around right now.”

Underneath, two brown plastic prescription bottles without labels. He twisted the top off one, saw the Vicodin inside.

“What you need that shit for, dawg?” Mikey said. “You never told me.”

The tablets were five milligrams each. Morgan broke one in half, put it on his tongue. He dropped the other half back in the bottle, put the cap on. He went into the bathroom, palmed water, swallowed it.

“That shit will fuck you up,” Mikey said.

Morgan drank more water, came out of the bathroom.

“You scarfing down those pills so quick,” Mikey said, “you don’t even see what else is in the bag.”

Morgan looked. There was a black plastic bundle at the
bottom, ends taped shut with duct tape. He drew it out, knew what it was. “This for my trouble?”

“That’s an advance,” Mikey said. “I need you to take that little trip for me. Shit I told you about.”

“How much is in here?”

“Five Gs.”

“Not much.”

“For expenses, for now. Traveling money. Good timing, too, since Philly’s boys looking for you. There’s that thing with Rohan, too. Gonna be a while before all that shit quiets down.”

“You talk to them?”

“That Trey Dog crew? Can’t do that just now. They’re screaming for blood, and they know you with me. I can get messages back and forth, with an intermediary. But I gotta watch my back on this, too.”

Morgan sat on the edge of the bed. “Tell me about this trip.”

“Told you some of it. Pipeline’s been dry since the Colombians went down. Even if they beat the case, they ain’t gonna be up and running anytime soon, if ever. Now I got this RICO shit hanging over my head, and these lawyers, man, they keep wanting more.”

“Go on.”

“Word was some Haitians down in Florida had a good line on powder, shit coming in through the islands. They the new power down there now. Making mad money. We set up a meeting, place called Belle Glade. Curtis went down there.” He nodded at C-Love. “It looked good. They had their shit
together, steady source, but they don’t know me well enough to want to do business. And those voodoo motherfuckers don’t trust anyone didn’t grow up poor and barefoot like them.”

“So you sweetened the deal?” Morgan said.

“You know my cousin Leon? He in Rahway now, longtime, but he used to run those corners down near Baxter Terrace. His son Derek was wanting to get ahead, put some work in. Smart boy, too. Going to Rutgers, wanted to be a teacher or some shit. But he got a little one now, a baby mama, too. He needed cash, you know? He came to me, wanted me to help him out, bring him along a little. So I gave him a shot.”

“You sent him down there?”

“Set him up good. Route, expenses, every damn thing. He had a cash advance for the first shipment, prove we were serious.”

“How much money?”

Mikey twisted a thick gold ring on one finger. “A lot, man. More than I could afford.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred fifty K. I threw in some iron, too; as a gift. Island boys love their guns.”

“Why didn’t you send the twins?”

“With their jackets? Some cop pull them over, think he hit the lottery. Derek was clean. No sheet on him.”

“What happened?”

“Some shit I still ain’t figured out. He got pulled over in some cracker town down there. They say he drew on a deputy, but that’s bullshit. They capped his ass and took my money.”

“You know this?”

“Much as I need to. I ain’t known Derek to ever carry, but he might have been, I don’t know. Might have got nervous, cash in the car, dealing with some niggas he didn’t know. But shoot it out with a cop? Nah. He ain’t got the stones.”

“Maybe he got scared.”

“Maybe he did. Maybe it happened exactly like they said. But ain’t nobody said shit about the money yet. And it was in all the papers down there. They impounded the car, probably ripped the thing apart. If they found the money, some motherfucker took it.”

“Or they’re holding it and not telling anybody. Waiting to see who comes looking for it.”

Mikey shook his head. “There ain’t no DEA, no FBI involved in this. If there was, I’d have heard. This is a bunch of redneck Confederate-flag-flying small-town motherfuckers. Whether it was one motherfucker or two, or the whole goddamn town, fact remains. Somebody stole my money.”

“Hard to believe you sent that boy down there on his own like that.”

“Best way to do it. Down there, two niggas in a car get pulled over for sure. Cash was in a panel under the trunk. All he had to do was leave the car where we told him, then rent another, drive back. Didn’t have to deal with them any more than that.”

“So it went bad. Nothing you can do about it. Walk away.”

“Can’t take that kind of loss. Not now. Too much shit going on. I need that money or I need that powder so I can sell it and make that money back. Now I ain’t getting any product out of those Haitians, because that money never got to them,
and they not gonna believe me when I tell them what happened. Or care, even if they did. So I need that money.”

Morgan got up. The Vicodin was kicking in, easing the tension in his stomach, taking the edge off the pain. He went to the window, bent the blinds, looked out. It was raining lightly, the parking lot shiny with it. The Suburban hadn’t moved.

“If the cops do have that money,” he said, “they’re using it to build a case. No way you’re going to get it back. And if someone stole it, they stole it. Either way, it’s gone.”

“If some nigga broke into my house and stole three hundred fifty K of my money, you think I’d let it go? Say, ‘what the fuck, it’s gone, forget about it’? Just because that shit happened in Florida doesn’t mean it’s any less fucked up. If I start letting people steal from me, I might as well pack this shit up right now. Or let some motherfucker put a bullet in my head, get it over with.”

“I still say walk away.”

“I can’t, dawg. I need that money. I need you to go get it for me.”

Morgan looked at him, then at C-Love.

“This shit can’t stand,” Mikey said. “I need that money. That’s
my
money and I’m going to get it back, whatever I need to do. I don’t have no choice.”

“I do,” Morgan said.

“You do. But you ain’t even asked me the terms yet.”

“Terms?”

“Three hundred and fifty K,” Mikey said. “No way whoever took it could have spent it yet. All the shit in the news
down there, they’d be laying low. So somebody dug a hole and buried it till things calm down. You find it, keep a third. You find the whole three fifty, you keep an even hundred twenty. That fair?”

A hundred and twenty thousand
, Morgan thought. Combined with what was in the safe deposit, it might be enough for the treatment, maybe enough to get him started in another town. More money than he’d ever had at one time before. Might ever have again.

“Well?” Mikey said.

“I don’t know anything about the South. D.C.’s the farthest I’ve ever been.”

“You don’t need to know shit about the South. Like I said, that’s a backwater cracker town, man. They still burning crosses and fucking their sisters. I’ve already got someone looking into things down there.”

“Who?”

“Derek’s shorty. She went down there to bring the body back. She ain’t too happy with the way things played out, but there it is. He took the chances. She don’t want shit to do with me, but she’s looking into things, seeing who’s who, what they say happened, all that shit. Maybe she gets us some names, too.”

“And then?”

“You go down there, straighten that shit out, get my money, and bring it back here. Take your cut. Then we clear.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“It ain’t nothing you haven’t seen before, dealt with. It’s the same thieving bullshit, man. That’s all it is.”

Morgan scratched his elbow, looked at C-Love.

“You’re the only one I can trust with this,” Mikey said. “If you get down there and it don’t work out, then it don’t work out. I’ll pay you for your time.”

“How much?”

“Twenty K.”

“I’ll need to think on this.”

“All right. But one other thing. If you do find the motherfucker that got my money?”

“Yeah?”

“You need to put him in the ground. Cop, sheriff, judge, mayor, whatever. I don’t give a fuck. Put him in the ground.”

The machinery clicked, hummed, and Morgan slid into darkness. The plastic table was cold through the thin hospital gown. Wraparound safety glasses blocked his view, but he could sense the walls of the tunnel closing in around him. A steady hum grew louder, then faded. The table buzzed, slid him farther into the tunnel, stopped. Then the hum again, rising and falling like something in a science fiction movie.