Tempted by Trouble

Table of Contents

 

 

Resurrecting Midnight
(Gideon series)
Dying for Revenge
(Gideon series)
Pleasure
Waking with Enemies
(Gideon series)
Sleeping with Strangers
(Gideon series)
Chasing Destiny
Genevieve
Drive Me Crazy
Naughty or Nice
The Other Woman
Thieves’ Paradise
Between Lovers
Liar’s Game
Cheaters
Milk in My Coffee
Friends and Lovers
Sister, Sister

 

 

 

Storm
(six-issue miniseries, Marvel Entertainment)

DUTTON
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First printing, August 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Eric Jerome Dickey

All rights reserved

 

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-44246-3

 

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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Dmytryk Knight

Eddie Coyle had parked
on the right shoulder of I-94 and left the engine running and the heater on low. It was below freezing in the Motor City. My seat warmer was on low, but the heat became too much and I turned it off.

Eddie Coyle said, “Back in ’97 there was the Loomis Fargo Bank robbery.”

His words pulled me out of my trance. His voice was powerful.

I asked, “Where was that?”

“Charlotte, North Carolina. They withdrew over seventeen million dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Seventeen million.”

“Where are they now?”

“Jail.”

I removed my black fedora, then reached inside my suit coat and pulled out my pocket watch, checked my time against the time on the dash.

He said, “Two minutes. That’s how long it took Dillinger to rob a bank. When you’re on the job, keep that number in mind. Two minutes. I’ll cover the rest with you next week.”

“Violence and injury occur in less than three percent of bank robberies.”

“You did some research.”

“Less than one percent involve murder, kidnapping, or hostages.”

“I never did the research. The only numbers that matter to me are on the front of money.”

“Well, I like to know my odds. They don’t look good, but they’re better than the odds in the unemployment line. I’m starting to feel I have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting a job.”

Sheltered from the inclement weather, I was sitting at the cross-roads with the devil.

Sometimes the only choices a man has left are bad ones.

Eddie Coyle asked, “How long have you been out of work?”

“Over two years.”

“You speak a handful of languages.”

“I do.”

“Your wife said that you used to be an executive.”

“I was. For a while, I was.”

“And can’t find a decent job.”

“Welcome to America. The long line on the left is the line for the disenfranchised.”

“A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”

“Add that to the long list of lies.”

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

“I know.”

“It goes against the grain of the American dream. Doesn’t make sense to me.”

“I worked on the line too. I was blue-collar too. Yep, I was laid off, lost my white-collar job, took a drastic pay cut, and ended up on the line for nine years. Seven years white-collar, seven blue-collar. I was willing to work wherever I could work, despite my education.”

“Not many executives are willing to take a blue-collar job when things get rough.”

“Not many.”

He looked at his watch and I thought about my own future, a future as dark as the night.

I pulled down the visor, flipped open the vanity mirror, and when it illuminated I stared at my image. My father’s image. My face was Henrick’s face. The face of a real man, a face not made for billboards and magazines. I used his pocket watch, a timepiece that had been his father’s timepiece, a pocket watch that had kept time for decades.

But the world had changed since Henrick walked on top of this littered soil, and not for the better. No one would say it was the best of times. It was bad for Wall Street, the housing industry, and law enforcement, and a travesty for the car industry. I didn’t see another way out.

As the SUV hummed, I asked Eddie Coyle, “What’s the cargo you have in the back?”

“I told you already.”

“What are we waiting on?”

“Godot.”

The man who had appropriated the name Eddie Coyle was in the driver’s seat, both literally and metaphorically. Ice spotted the sides of the roads and icicles hung from barren trees for as far as the headlights from passing cars would allow me to see; the same symbols of a harsh winter hung from interstate signs. Detroit was in a deep freeze. The chill that had crippled the Midwest and parts of the North sat on us as we waited on the right shoulder of I-94, the engine running and the lights off. It was twelve thirty in the morning. Five minutes later another Cadillac Escalade pulled up behind us.

I kept my voice smooth, masked my nervousness, and asked, “Are you expecting company?”

“My brother.”

“So you didn’t come from Rome by yourself.”

“I haven’t been alone all evening.”

“You said you worked with two other guys, Rick and Sammy.”

“From time to time.”

“Which one is your brother?”

“Neither. My brother is Bishop. We call him Bishop.”

“What’s he doing back there?”

“He’s going to be our lookout.”

“You and your brother could’ve done this alone.”

“If you want to make it to the next level, you’ll do this, not him. He’s already in.”

When there was a break in traffic, we stepped out into the cold and moved to the back. Eddie Coyle popped open the rear of the luxury SUV. The interior light revealed a man stuffed inside industrial carpet. He had been rolled up like a cigarette. He wore wingtip shoes that were similar to mine. The man had been a professional. As we grabbed the dead body and unloaded it from the back of the SUV, one of Detroit’s landmarks, the giant Uniroyal tire, towered on the opposite side of I-94. A freezing drizzle tapped against my fedora like an erratic heartbeat, that same freezing water adding weight to my long wool overcoat. The ground crunched underneath my Johnston & Murphy shoes as I held on to the feet of the dead man. My breath fogged in front of my face and my lungs contracted with each frigid breath. We were about forty yards into the brush and debris when we heard a boom, then in the distance the sky lit up. It was a new year and fireworks brightened the suburbs. For three seconds, if anyone on I-94 had looked into the wooded area that served as a barrier between the interstate and a strip mall, they would have seen two men wearing suits carrying six feet of carpet off into the nether regions. The carpet moved like a giant caterpillar battling to become a monstrous butterfly. The man in the carpet kicked, his right shoe slipping off his foot. Startled, I jumped and caught my breath. I didn’t yell, but inside my head my voice screamed, and I abandoned my end of the rug.