Everybody Pays (5 page)

1

The battered bondo-gray Chevy Impala was parked at the bottom of a shallow valley formed by a gently curving street flowing between a pair of stubby hills. Luxurious houses sat well back from the curb, nestled on lush landscaped lawns. The Chevy was twenty hard years out of the showroom, sagging on its tired suspension as if depressed by its prospects. A faint plume of oily smoke burbled out of its exhaust, quickly lost in the low-lying smog from nearby LAX.

A sleek new Ford Crown Victoria sedan with Security Services discreetly lettered in gold along its black flanks sat in the Impala’s blind spot at the top of one of the hills, watching.

Behind the wheel of the prowl car, a narrow-faced man in his twenties peered intently through the windshield. “Can’t see a damn thing in there. You think it’s going down?” he asked, his voice throbbing with tension.

“Think
what’s
going down?” the older, heavyset man in the passenger seat responded. They were both dressed in dark-blue police-style uniforms, complete with Sam Browne belts and 9mm semi-automatic pistols holstered at their waists, but without badges or insignia except for brass nameplates on their breast pockets.

“I dunno. A B&E maybe. Even a kidnapping. You know what they said at HQ. We gotta be alert for—”

“Yeah, right,” the older man said, his voice tired. “Arab terrorists, too.”

“Look, Mack,” the younger man said, “I know I ain’t no retired police
sergeant
like you was, okay? But that Chevy ain’t from any of the houses in
this
community, and I say we—”

“And
I
say we watch and see, Horace, all right? Whoever they are, whatever they’re up to, we’ll see soon enough.”

A patch of moonlight puddled on the Chevy’s broad roof, its luminescence dulled by the faded paint. The window glass stayed blank. Another ten minutes slid past. Then a cigarette lighter flared inside.

“Damn! That was too quick. I couldn’t make out anything. You, Mack?”

“A woman. White woman.”

“What do you think she’s—?”

“Let’s go find out,” the heavyset man said.

2

The black sedan slipped smoothly from its mooring at the top of the hill and approached the Chevy from behind, running without lights.

“When we get around the next curve, hit the flasher,” the heavyset man instructed.

“That’ll maybe spook ’em,” the younger man protested. “And we got no backup. They could make a run for it.”

“We don’t get paid to do car chases, Horace. Don’t get paid to get shot at, either. We get paid to keep outsiders away from all these fine, expensive houses, understand? They see the lights and they want to cut and run, that’s okay—we’ve already done our job.”

“But . . .”

“Remember what
HQ
said,” the heavyset man sneered, sarcasm thick in his tired voice. “We don’t take risks. We don’t pull our guns. And we
don’t
get sued. Now, do what I tell you, okay?”

The narrow-faced man opened his mouth, then closed it silently. As he steered into the curve, he reached down and hit the switch: The red-and-white light bar on top of the cruiser came to life, bathing the Impala with its warning glow. As the cruiser came to a stop, the younger man trained the side-mounted spotlight on the Impala’s driver’s-side door and slowly climbed out, adjusting the bill of his cap and squaring his shoulders. His partner was out ahead of him, moving smoothly despite his bulk, circling toward the passenger side. Despite his own admonition, the older cop’s pistol was in his right hand, shielded by his hip, pointed at the ground.

The younger man stopped in his tracks as the Impala’s driver’s-side door opened with a protesting squeak. A spike-heeled boot hit the street in the bright spotlight, red leather with white snakeskin toes. Then a slim, blue-jeaned leg. Then the woman. Medium-height, slender with a tiny waist, thick long midnight hair curling out over the top of a white Western-cut shirt with rhinestones forming a V to the cleft between her breasts. She turned toward the narrow-faced man, shielding her eyes from the spotlight.

“What is this?” she asked, the Appalachian twang clear in her voice.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the narrow-faced man said.

“And why should I do
that
?” the woman challenged, taking a step closer to him.

“Because I—”

“It’s all right, Horace,” the heavyset man interrupted, coming up behind the woman from around the front of the Impala. “Car’s empty.”

The woman whirled to face him. Her face was heart-shaped, set in hard, lovely lines. If she was self-conscious about the dark mole just to the side of her wide, lipstick-slathered mouth, it didn’t show in her clear blue eyes. “You’re not cops,” she said suspiciously.

“Private security, ma’am,” the older man said. “We work for the local community. Saw you parked here. Thought you might be having some car trouble, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m not,” she said.

“Let’s see some ID,” the younger man said, moving close behind her.

“See some what?” she said over her shoulder, eyes still on the older cop. “I don’t have to show you nothing. I was just . . .”

“Just
what
?” the younger man demanded. “You don’t live here. You can’t just—”

“Easy, ma’am,” the older man said gently. “You know what it’s like, doing a job, right?”

“Right . . .” the woman said. Slowly, as though she was acknowledging a difficult truth.

“Well, we’re kinda under the gun here,” the older man said, holstering his weapon for emphasis. “We got bosses, we got orders. . . .”

“Oh, all right,” the woman said. “My purse’s on the front seat.”

Before either cop could say anything, she bent at the waist and leaned through the driver’s-side window, holding the pose while the younger man visibly relaxed and grinned appreciatively. And the older man’s hand crept back toward his holstered pistol.

The woman’s upper body emerged from inside the car, a thick pink vinyl wallet in her hand. “Step to the side, would you?” she said to the younger man. “Let me have some of that light.”

In a minute, she extracted a driver’s license, held it out to him.

“LaVonda Greene, that’s you?”

“It is,” she said, a proud ring to her voice. “My name, my momma’s before me.”

“You hillbillies got names just like niggers, huh?” The younger man smirked.

“Ask
your
momma,” the woman shot back.

The older cop laughed.

The younger one glared.

“You all done playing with me? Okay if I go now?” the woman asked the older cop.

“Yes, ma’am. Sure thing. I wonder, though, if you wouldn’t mind . . . ?”

“What?”

“Well, ma’am, you got to admit, it’s a bit . . . unusual to see someone just parked out here, doing nothing. I mean, if someone was parked in front of
your
house, you’d be happy if an old fool like me rolled by to check it out, wouldn’t you?”

“You ain’t
that
old. And you damn sure ain’t no fool.” The woman smiled. “Why you want to play me like I’m one?”

The older cop grinned self-consciously. “You got me, ma’am. Sure enough. But you see how it is, don’t you? We need to know what you’re doing here. Just for the report, okay? I mean, your name doesn’t have to come into it or anything. But if you’d just . . .”

The woman took a step closer to the older man. “I’ll tell
you
,” she said, a thin vein of honey in her steel-guitar voice. “Not him.”

“Well, that’s fair enough.”

“Can we sit in my car?”

“Uh, how about if we sit in mine, ma’am? I got some hot coffee in there.”

The woman held his eyes for a long moment. Nodded.

“Horace, you just give us a couple of minutes, all right?”

“I’ll check the grounds,” the younger man said, walking off to save face.

3

“It’s my husband,” the woman finally said.

“Your husband?”

“He’s been tomcatting around. I just know he is. But I didn’t know where. And then my girlfriend Mary Beth, she heard he was . . . involved with this married lady.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mary Beth, I just told you.”

“No, the woman your husband’s supposed to be—”

“Oh. I don’t know her name. But I know where she lives. Right there,” the woman said, pointing at the house across from where her car was parked. “Eleven Morningstar Place. I figured I’d just sit here and watch. See for myself. It could be just gossip, I know that. But I had to see for myself. And if I see his car coming . . .”

The older cop’s laugh was a dry thing in the darkness of the prowl car.

“What’s so damn funny?” the woman asked in a hurt voice.

“Ma’am, I hate to tell you . . . but even if your husband was getting it on with some other woman—and I have to say, from the looks of you, he’d be blind
and
stupid if he was—you’re not going to catch him here.”

“And why not?”

“This isn’t Morningstar, ma’am. It’s Morning
side
. You’re on the wrong side of town.”

“Damn!” the woman said softly. “I can’t do nothing right. I . . .” She started to cry then.

4

An hour later, the ancient Impala nosed its way through a junkyard until it stopped between a pair of abandoned wrecks waiting for the chop shop’s day shift to complete their demise. The woman got out, snapping a lighted cigarette into the darkness. From her purse, she took a small ratchet wrench and went to work on the Impala’s license plates. She put the plates into a blue gym bag. Then she pulled the black wig off her head and shook out her shoulder-length chestnut-brown hair. She pulled a pre-moistened towelette from her purse and scrubbed her face hard. The mole came off with the heavy makeup. Next she unbuttoned the Western shirt and stood stork-legged in a white bra as she pulled off the boots one by one. As soon as she slipped on a pair of scuffed white sneakers, she was five inches shorter. From her purse she took a small compact, popped it open, and surveyed her face. Deft movements with her fingers removed the blue contact lenses, revealing lustrous brown eyes. Finally, she pulled an oversized white sweatshirt over her head, pulled it down until it covered her hips. Then she started to walk through the junkyard.

5

A red Camaro IROC was parked a couple of blocks away. The woman unlocked it, climbed inside, and took off with a chirp from the rear tires.

Fifteen minutes later, she pulled to the curb next to a Goodwill bin. Stepped out and tossed the boots inside.

A Dumpster a few blocks down got the Western shirt. And a sewer got the wig.

As she drove away, she shredded the LaVonda Greene driver’s license in her long-nailed hands, allowing the wind to scatter the pieces out the window.

6

“You’re a genius, Vangie,” the man said. “A pure genius, I swear it.” He was tall and whip-thin, long black hair combed straight back in waves from a high forehead. His green eyes dominated a handsome face—prominent cheekbones, a slightly hawkish nose, cleft chin. The man was wearing a black silk shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, sitting at a pink Formica-topped kitchen table. Before him sat six short stacks of gold coins. They looked like a millionaire’s poker chips.

“Nobody saw you?” the woman asked.

“Not a soul, honey. It was just like you said. I swear, I don’t know where you find stuff out.”

“People talk in beauty parlors,” the woman said. “They just talk and talk. They never expect the poor girl with her hands in their ratty hair is actually listening.”

“But keeping those rent-a-cops with you so they couldn’t patrol . . . I mean, that was . . .”

“All right, Chandler. Spare me the Vaseline. How much we got there?”

“Got one hundred and four of these things, baby. What they worth, anyway?”

“Those are one-ounce Canadian Maple Leafs. Two sixty to two eighty each, depending on the market. But we want to dump them all off at once, we’re looking at maybe two hundred each.”

“So that’s . . . ?”

“About twenty thousand.”

“All right!”

“Of which you owe the lawyer five, and two to the bondsman. And we owe Pablo for the car.”

“Yeah, honey. But still—”

“But still
nothing
,” the woman said. “I’m done with this. I told you—this is the last time. And I got to be at work in a couple of hours.”

The woman got to her feet. She was wearing a man’s flannel shirt and nothing else. She lit a cigarette, walked barefoot over to the kitchen window, and sat down, watching the sun struggle to come up.

7

“You don’t know nothing about dope,” the woman said to the man at her kitchen table the next evening.

“Pablo said—”

“Pablo’s good with cars, baby. But just ’cause he’s a Mexican don’t make him no expert on marijuana.”

“Vangie, there’s nothing to it. Pablo knows a guy, he can bring it in. Ten grand will get us
fifty
on the street in no time. Then we can get—”

“All you’re gonna get is your fool self killed, dealing with those people. I am thirty-three years old, Chandler Torrance. I been waiting a long time, living like this. I want to go home. I want to go back where it’s green. I want to have girlfriends like I used to. I want to see my momma face-to-face, not over the damn phone.”

“I know, Vangie. Me, too, I swear. But if we just had us some real cash, we could go back in style. Buy us some ground, and . . .”

“And what, sugar? You gonna
work
that ground? Or get a job, maybe?”

“It’s not my fault,” the man said sullenly. “You try and get a job when you’re an ex-con. . . .”

“Chandler, I’ve had my brand on you since I’ve been fifteen years old. I waited for you when you went to the County Farm because
you
couldn’t wait to buy a car to drive one. And when you decided you were gonna stick up a liquor store instead of working in one, I waited for you when you went to the penitentiary too. When that was over, I came out here with you, like you wanted. So you could start over. But you never did.”

“Honey . . .”

“There’s never been another person had his hands on me in my life, Chandler. Can you say that?”

“Well, I’m a man, honey. You can’t expect—”

“You’re not a man, Chandler. You’re a little boy. My little boy. My pretty little boy. And I’ve been taking care of you, all these years, waiting on you to be what you always was in my eyes. But I don’t believe it’s ever gonna happen now. And I’m going home.”

“Evangeline . . .”

“I mean it, darling. I know I said it before. But I mean it this time. Look in my eyes. You know I don’t lie. Not to you. Look close, Chandler. I am going home.”