Tempted by Trouble (28 page)

 

 

 

 

Abbey Rose watched us.
Jackie was on the bed, her rear in the air, having a spastic orgasm. I gave her resentment; I gave it to her like I wanted to destroy everyone. Her hands pulled the covers from the mattress, just like she had done with Sammy, then she tugged the sheets as she broke down and moaned Sammy’s name. I didn’t know if she thought Sammy was inside, if she saw him in this room, or if she was begging for Sammy to save her. I opened my eyes, looked across the room at the picture of Abbey Rose, saw her judging me. Jackie caught her breath and told me not to stop being rough with her. But I stopped and rolled away from her. This wasn’t the kind of intimacy I wanted. But she wanted something from me.

Not long after, she collapsed on the bed, sweat draining down her neck.

I rolled away from her, listened to the voices on the other side of the door.

She kicked her legs and whispered, “Did you make it to the finish line?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“I needed you to.”

“But you and Sammy did.”

“I said his name, huh?”

I thought she would apologize, but she didn’t. She chuckled and I rolled to the side and stood up. My suit pants were bunched around my shoes. I pulled them up, my pocket watch adding weight to my right pocket while my loose change jingled inside my left. I’d taken my shirt off, but I hadn’t removed my white T-shirt. Jackie’s blouse was opened and wrinkled, and her bra had been loosened but not removed. Her dress was pulled up to her waist.

I stared down at Abbey Rose’s face. Jackie rolled over and rested on her stomach and kicked her feet over and over, just like she had done in L.A. I’d done to her what I felt like the world was doing to me. But I didn’t own the sensation of victory.

She grinned and asked, “Want to try again?”

“Not right now.”

“If it feels better, we could do it without a condom. You could give it to me that way.”

I smiled at Jackie.

She tugged her skirt down in a way that said the candy store was closed and the owner was taking a break. Jackie went into the bathroom and closed the door. A minute later she returned.

Jackie sat down on the bed. I sat next to her with my back against the headboard.

She said, “Sammy told me he loved me. Right before the last job, he told me he loved me. He told me he would give me whatever I needed and wanted to stay with me and forget the world. This is getting to me. Before Sammy, I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a year.”

She touched her face.

She whispered, “Come to South America with me, Dmytryk. I promise I won’t be like this. I’ll be good to you. I’ll be better to you than Cora ever was. You, my kid, and me can be a family. And I can give you another kid. I can give you two if you like. You don’t have to love me, but you’re the kind of man I wish my evil husband had been, and I know that I can love you. Hell, I’ll even lose a couple of pounds if you want me to. I’ll forget about Sammy. It’ll be me and you and my kid. We can be a family.”

For a moment, I imagined me and Jackie and her kid living in South America. I imagined freedom and happiness. Then I heard Cora’s voice on the other side of that door.

Jackie said, “You’re not going to try and cross the finish line?”

Silence was my answer. My mind was on my past, the robbery, the car accident, perseverating those regrettable moments over and over.

I went back to Abbey Rose’s book, picked it up, and stared at her photo. Then I put the book down and looked at Jackie. She had turned over and was still bouncing her legs like she was a teenage girl. Everything about Jackie irritated me. But she was all I had.

Jackie asked, “Do you think Sammy really loved me?”

“Of course Sammy loved you. Just like my wife loved me.”

 

 

 

 

I stepped out of
the bedroom and went back toward the kitchen. Eddie Coyle was sitting on the sofa and his brother was doing the same, the movie
Reservoir Dogs
on the DVD player. Cora was in the kitchen looking at the plans. She was tense. She had heard Jackie singing her hallelujahs. Jackie’s scent was on my flesh, the truth about our marriage was on my pants, and Cora inhaled and shuddered. I stood next to her, stood close to her, the same poses we’d had when we stood before a minister over six years ago.

In a bitter tone she said, “When this job is done, we should file papers for divorce.”

I wanted to scream and tell her that I had come from a family that had values. Where I came from, divorce was what Other People did. I now had to accept that I was one of the Other People.

I said, “As long as you pay for it. I’m not spending a dime to get rid of you, not legally.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you know my address. You know where to send the papers.”

I went to the sofa and sat down between Eddie Coyle and Bishop, sat back and watched bloodshed and violence and betrayal. When the movie ended, Bishop put on another DVD,
Two Hands
with Heath Ledger. Cora was sitting at the dining room table. Eddie Coyle picked up his worn bible called
The Myth of Male Power
and began rereading his favorite scriptures. Cora glanced my way, her gaze long and empty, but I’d known her for years, so I recognized that expression that for others would be unreadable. She felt betrayed. By Eddie Coyle. By Jackie. By me. I wanted to tell her welcome to the club. The club that was only loyal to money.

I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. On the way out I paused by Cora. When she looked up at me I said, “We get this done, we’ll never have to see each other again.”

She nodded.

I went back to the bedroom.

Jackie was waiting. She was standing next to the bed holding that novel.

She put it down when I entered the room.

I closed the door and opened my duffel bag. I took out a red necktie and two pairs of black socks. I pushed Jackie down on the bed and used my tie to cover her eyes. Then I used my socks to tie her wrists. I gagged her too. When I was done I told her to open her legs.

I was ready to cross the finish line.

From the safe house
in Dallas, Georgia, to our next destination, we covered one hundred and thirty miles in less than two hours. Eddie Coyle and my soon-to-be ex-wife rode in a white Chevy Suburban with Bishop at the wheel. It was Bishop’s vehicle, what he drove when the weather was unfavorable for driving a Harley. Jackie Brown rode with me and we followed them up two-lane interstates that were decorated with snow and melting ice. Jackie was on her cellular phone for the first thirty minutes, her voice soft and motherly, lots of laughing as she had a long conversation with her kid. She was a different person when she talked to her kid. She was likable. She was wrong and hypocritical, but she was loyal. I wished that Cora had been that way with me, as I had been with her.

The call ended and Jackie fell silent, looked incurably sad and heartbroken, then closed her eyes and went to the land of Nod. Maybe she was thinking about her kid and all of her problems, or maybe the vodka and staying up all night were finally catching up with her. We all had a past. We all had a present. We all wanted a better future.

Country music played on the radio and I fell into a lull and let my mind drift. My mind was on the job, but my mind was on Cora too; I thought about who we were eight years ago.

The way Cora and I met was simple. It wasn’t forced. It just was a man meeting a woman. I’d seen her working the line. We’d passed each other dozens of times, but we’d never shared a word. She was the woman that most of the men had wanted to become biblical with, but she never dated any of the men she worked with at the plant.

Then on a freezing, gray winter day in Detroit, a day that was too much like today, she had run through the blizzard and caught up with me as I made it to my car, her breath fogging from her face as she looked me up and down and she said, “Your name is Dmytryk, right?”

I cringed with the cold and said, “Yeah. I’m Dmytryk. What’s the problem?”

“Saw your name written down. Wasn’t sure how to pronounce it.”

I nodded. “You have an accent. You’re from the East Coast.”

“Born in Brooklyn.” She shifted from foot to foot. “Been in Detroit most of my life.”

We stood in the winter’s chill and she shook my gloved hand. When she let go, she had left a small piece of paper resting in my palm. A slip of paper that had ten digits scribbled in red ink. It was the number to her cellular.

She said, “Up to you. Call or not.”

I read the name that had been written over the phone number. “You’re Cora Mature.”

“I’m Cora Mature.”

We stood in the cold, the kind of coldness a man or a woman became accustomed to when they lived in the Midwest. We didn’t say a word as the snow fell like angels throwing feathers. Cora was beautiful. She had looked so young, innocent, and trustworthy. In that moment she had reminded me of my mother.

I said, “We could meet for drinks after shift on Friday.”

“I get my hair done Friday evenings. Saturday is better.”

“Saturday is fine. We can go to Grosse Pointe and stop by Dirty Dog for jazz.”

“Lunch would be better.”

“We can do lunch. We can go over to Windsor. How does sushi at Oishii sound?”

She smiled. “Call and ask me out on a date. Make it official.”

“
Nos hablamos y nos vemos este sábado
.”

“You speak Spanish?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled. “
¿Cuál es su apellido?
”

“My surname is Knight. It’s spelled with a K. Dmytryk Knight.”

“What nationality are you?”

“I was born in this city and on this soil and that makes me American.”

“Well, I’m from Brooklyn and I’m part Dominican. That makes me Domini-merican.”

“I know.” I laughed. “Everyone knows. You used to be in the military.”

“You know that much about me?”

“Men talk about pretty women, and you are a pretty woman.”

“What did the men say about this pretty woman?”

“You’re hardworking and serious and it’s hard to get you to say hello.”

“What else do they say?”

“I can’t say. I’m a gentleman.”

She smiled. “Good answer.”

“It’s an honest answer.”

She held on to her smile awhile, then she said, “Another question?”

“Sure.”

“
¿Tienes novia
?”

“No, I don’t have a girlfriend.
Soy soltero
.”

“You’re sure that you’re single?”

“I’m sure.
¿Y tú? ¿Tienes algún novio o esposo?
”

“No. No boyfriend or husband.
Soy soltera
.”

“Good to hear.”

She jogged away, winter coat over blue Dickies jeans and black steel-toes. She wrapped her red scarf around her neck and adjusted her hat before she looked back, waved, and smiled again. That smile was the beginning of my end.

I had taken my cell phone out and dialed her number before she made it to her car.

I said, “Hello, this is Dmytryk. May I speak with Cora?”

“This is Cora.”

“I hope this is a good time to call. I would like to ask you out on a date.”

“For which day?”

“Saturday evening.”

“Let me check my schedule to see if I’m free.”

We laughed. I remembered that first laugh like it was yesterday.

 

 

 

 

We had cut from
I-20 to I-459 North and invaded an area where the population was almost one hundred percent white and the median family income was close to seventy thousand a year. That information had been in the notes that Eddie Coyle shared at the safe house in Dallas. Trussville rubbed elbows with Gardendale, Fultondale, Tarrant, Moody, Irondale, Pinson.

Many of the passengers in cars and trucks were in yuletide spirits; some wore Santa Claus hats.

The area was filled with businesses and churches, but the megachurch stood out on Highway 11. Jackie told me that it was ten times the size of the First Baptist that was two miles away. First Baptist was brick. The main building at Six Flags over Jesus was glass and marble, as ostentatious and magnificent as the Crystal Cathedral, a Hollywood church that had been built in Garden Grove, California. Everything in Trussville had been dwarfed by the elongated shadows thrown over the land by the edifice Eddie Coyle had called Six Flags over Jesus.

As we passed by, I stared in amazement.

We went to the safe house that was right off Main Street. It was a two-level, redbrick town home tucked inside Trussville Springs at Riverwalk Hamlet, a subdivision that had one two-lane entry. The only way in or out was across railroad tracks. Eddie Coyle took us to Cahaba Bend and Spring Street, where four town homes stood adjacent. All were unoccupied. It was a new community and not many of the houses and town homes had been completed. And it didn’t look like any of the ones on this short block had been sold. I looked around. It was secluded and big enough for two hundred residences, but I doubt if two dozen were finished. It looked like the work had stopped when the river of money stopped flowing and the economy came to a halt. I’d seen half-built and abandoned communities like this all over the country. Everywhere we had gone to rob a bank it was the same story. It reminded me of the ghost towns back home.

We picked up a copy of
The North/East News
that had been left at the back door, then went inside and dumped our bags at the base of the stairs. The unit Eddie Coyle had managed to appropriate for a day was the model home, so it was furnished top to bottom. Everything evoked a memory and this property reminded me of the one we had lost back in the suburbs of Detroit. Cora stepped in and looked around, then sighed and looked vulnerable. I was sure it reminded Cora of the same life, of those four years when things had been good.