Stuff to Die For (17 page)

W
E PULLED INTO GAS AND GROCERY, closed at this late hour. A musty pine scent hung in the air.

“Just because we see him here during the day doesn’t mean he—” Angel just kind of appeared, out of the dark, walking up to the truck and resting his elbows on the driver’s door with its open window.

“My friends.”

“Angel, I’ve got some good news.” James smiled.

“The man wasn’t killed.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because I shot him in the shoulder. I was fairly certain his friend would take care of him. I may have done some serious damage, but I never believed he was dead.”

James sputtered for a few seconds. “Well, then why did you let us believe that he was—”

“People will believe what they want to believe. I have strong feelings for people with belief. But the final proof is in the beholding.”

I leaned over. “Who’s quote is that?”

“Mine.”

“They tried to kill James and me tonight on the highway.”

He surveyed the truck in the dim light. “They don’t appear to have been successful.”

James stared mournfully at the truck. “We just wanted you to know.”

Angel nodded. “Leave the truck with me.”

“With you?” James stepped back.

“With me. If they come to your apartment and the truck is there, they know you’re home. They may try to finish the job. If it’s not there, they assume you’re somewhere else.”

I looked at James and he shrugged his shoulders. “Do you think they’ll come after us tonight?”

“I’d like to think they’re somewhere licking their wounds,” James said.

“But they may be looking for us.”

“True. What the hell.”

It made sense. At twelve thirty in the morning, it made sense. Angel drove us back to the apartment, past the rows of faded concrete block houses and sparse brown, postage stamp-sized lawns, and we tumbled into bed. I slept a dreamless sleep, but woke with a sense of dread.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I
SHOOK HIM HARD. Sometimes James could sleep the sleep of the dead and there were times that no alarm could raise his sorry ass.

“Yeah. I’m sick today, boss.” He rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head.

“Get up, James. It’s safer at work than it is here.”

“I don’t have to be at work for another”—he glanced at his alarm clock—“hour. For Christ’s sake I’ve got an hour.”

“Do you want to walk to work?”

“Walk?”

“Three miles?”

“I’ll take the, oh shit, we don’t have the truck, do we?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll walk. Now get the hell out of my room.”

I showered, shaved, and put on the cleanest dirty shirt I could find. The tie that had the fewest wrinkles was blue, and it only had the fewest wrinkles because I wore it less than the other three. I didn’t like it, but except for the lunch with Em, I didn’t care what I looked like. I was lucky to be functioning at all.

Sammy sat behind his computer, probably checking out a new porn site. He looked up and frowned when I walked in.

“Skipper. I got a call yesterday from an appointment you were supposed to call on.”

“Yeah, I missed one late yesterday.”

“You never called the lady, Skip.” That condescending tone of voice.

“I’ll get her today, Sammy.” What kind of a name was Sammy? What the hell, what kind of a name was Skip?

“Don’t bother. Marie called on her, and it looks like the lady is ready to buy. Call if you can’t make the appointment, Skip. If you want to keep this job, call your clients.” He dismissed me with a jerk of his head. The jerk focused attention back to the computer.

I called Em, just to make sure lunch was still on. “I’ll pick you up?”

“Call me closer to the time, Skip. Right now, I’m sicker than a dog.” She hung up and I closed the phone. I still harbor this fear that germs can float through phone lines. It’s stupid, I know, but sick people bother me.

I stopped by two appointments, and only one was home. The first call was on a newlywed couple who had lied about owning their home. They rented the little shack, and I couldn’t sell them a security system if they’d wanted it. They didn’t. They wanted the cheap hot tub.

The second home had a note taped to the door.
We are no longer interested in whatever it was that you are selling. Please don’t call again
.

No matter what the placement office at my alma matter had said, a business degree from Sam and Dave will not necessarily open doors for you.

I drove into a mall parking lot, with its pitted, potholed blacktop and dollar stores and a place called Cheap and Sweet. They aren’t stores you usually find in a mainstream mall. I roamed through one of the discount outlets just to kill some time and ended up buying a brown tie that looked better than the blue one. At eleven thirty I called Em and we decided to meet at Esther’s. Her dad’s construction offices were only a couple of miles away, so it worked for both of us.

I had baked meatloaf and mashed potatoes and Em ordered a cup of soup and salad. The lady in the booth behind us talked loudly with her friend, never slowing down for a minute.

“Oh, my first ex hit me. He did, girl. Mental, verbal, and then physical abuse, and when he grabbed my arm and almost twisted it out of its socket, I knew it was time to leave.”

Her friend mumbled some condolences but was drowned out.

“My second ex—you remember Richard? Well, that was even worse. I had to have dental work from that relationship and now he has the kids. They gave him custody. Can you believe what I’ve been through? The father of my children.”

We got up and moved farther to the back of the restaurant.

“So tell me what happened.”

When I finished telling her, she smiled. “You think this is funny?”

“My God, Skip. We’d better laugh, because if we start crying we may never stop. You have to admit, this is almost comical. We’re just young—almost kids. I mean, we’re not involved in any of this. We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You never read the Hardy Boys when you were a kid?”

She shook her head no.

“Well, if James could have backed up a truck with side mirrors—”

“Told you.” She smiled.

“We never would have had the accident, we never would have found the finger, and—”

She folded her hands and was quiet.

“What?”

“Vic. I just keep thinking about this poor guy, kidnapped, his finger being cut off, and his father not having any idea where he is.”

“That’s the last part of the story, Em. His father warned us to back off. After he begged us to keep looking. He says that if we stay involved, they may kill Vic.”

“And there’s a good chance Vic is already dead.” She buried her head in her hands.

“Yeah. However, I think we should keep looking.”

“What?” She pulled her head out of the palms of her hands and gave me a big-eyed stare. “You think what?”

I couldn’t tell her. It was just not the right time. I believed there was never going to be the right time. “I just feel I need to do this.”

“Give me a break. You guys almost got killed last night. You can’t keep getting in deeper.”

“Listen, these guys have got it in their heads that we know something. We can’t convince them we don’t. For some reason they either want to scare us or kill us and we can’t just sit around and wait for it to happen. If we can find Vic Maitlin, then Rick Fuentes has his kid back, and he can go to the cops and tell them everything.”

She had tears in the corners of her eyes. Once again with the tears.

“It’s going to be all right. Really.”

She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I’m pregnant.”

I forgot to breathe. For what seemed like an eternity she looked at me, waiting for my reaction.

Once again she said, “I’m pregnant.”

Finally I managed to stammer out a response. “Who’s the father?”

She slowly stood up and headed toward the door.

“Em, wait.”

She kept walking.

I caught up with her and put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. Or maybe I’m not. Do you want—” I didn’t know what I was saying.

She spun around and gave me a fiery look that even her tears couldn’t put out. “You’re the father, you ass. Don’t you get it? You. Who else did you think it might be?” She turned and walked out the door and I just stood there. I watched her drive away, and I couldn’t take one more step to stop her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I
DID THE MATH YEARS AGO and figured out that my mother was pregnant for three months before she married my father. Maybe that was in his mind when he left home. Maybe he’d been pressured into marriage because of me and never got over that.

I could marry Em. I could do a lot worse, but I still feel that I’ve got a lot of growing up to do.

I couldn’t get a grip on this father thing, and I certainly wasn’t going to be able to just accept it in the first minute I found out. I called her cell, but she didn’t answer. An hour later I called her at work, but she wasn’t in. I called her home, but the machine picked up. I drove to Biscayne Bay, but she wasn’t there.

I drove aimlessly, passing the entrance to the causeway where a black guy sat up on a mound of earth, watching the cars go by, his laundry hung out to dry over a guardrail. I ended up a couple of blocks farther at Bayside, a sprawling, colorful outdoor shopping and restaurant community on the bay, with a Hard Rock Café, Hooters, and all the other chain attractions you’d expect. It was almost like a carnival. I had a seven-dollar beer at an outdoor bar and watched a lady with a parrot on her shoulder hustle a mother and her little girl for a ten-dollar picture with the blue and red bird on the girl’s shoulder.

I’d blown off two afternoon appointments and figured I may have to find another job. Construction was probably out of the picture. Right now, Em’s father might not be in the best frame of mind to hire an unskilled carpenter.

When I pulled into the apartment, the truck was sitting in the lot. Buick-blue streaks and raw-rubbed metal graced the driver’s side of our moneymaker. It might take just about all the money we’d made to fix it. Right next to it was a rusted-out Ranchero, one of those old Fords with the front of a car and the back of a pick up. I’d seen it parked there before. It’s a junk heap that barely runs and the magnetic sign on the side says
Refinance—let us make your dreams a reality
. As if.

The TV was blaring and James was sprawled on the couch, drinking one of my beers, a box of Cheese Nips sitting on the floor.

“Oh, you’ve got dinner waiting?”

He grunted.

“Did you get to work this morning?”

“Yeah. There’s some cold crab in the fridge. Help yourself.”

I’d gotten to hate it almost as much as he did, but when money was tight his perks came in handy.

“The truck?”

“Angel brought it back this morning. He said something a little weird.”

“That would be so unlike him.”

James smiled. “No, this creeped me out. He said the guys in the Buick never showed up.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. I took it to mean that he was watching our place to see if they did.”

“Our own guardian angel.”

James looked up at me. “Honest to Christ, I never thought of that. He really was like an angel.”

“Yeah, well you didn’t do too bad last night in that role. Thanks for putting the truck on the line.”

He grunted again.

“James.”

“Dude?”

He could tell it was something important. It’s hard to explain that kind of a relationship to someone. I suppose an old married couple could have that relationship, although most of the old married people I know don’t really care for each other that much. But James and I understand each other. Most of the time.

“I’ve spent the last hour thinking about this.”

James punched the remote and the television went black.

“Tell me.”

I hesitated. I still wasn’t sure this was something he should know. But I’d come to the realization that he probably
was
the first person who needed to know. Eventually I wanted to go to my dictionary and look up the word
conflicted
. I felt certain that was an appropriate word for the way I felt about the entire situation. If I’d been high on some hallucinogen I couldn’t have been more confused.

“I’ve got a serious problem.”

“Something new going down?”

“No. Nothing to do with what’s been happening. This has to do with Em.”

James studied me for a moment. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head.