Tempted by Trouble (33 page)

My fedora caught as much snow as my wool overcoat.

Ten minutes later I was easing out of the empty community, moving across narrow streets that led across the railroad tracks. From there I rejoined the rest of the world. I turned left and drove down Highway 11, back toward Six Flags over Jesus. Snow continued to fall from gray skies, skies that were getting darker as the day ended. My headlights were on and my windshield wipers worked overtime.

Behind me, from the area that I had just left, there was a mighty explosion that sent shockwaves through Trussville. It felt like an earthquake. A short but powerful earthquake.

As flames reached up and licked dark skies, I took I-65 and headed north.

After I passed through Nashville, I threw my smoking gun away.

After the start of a new year, it was another brisk day in the Motor City. I loosened my scarf and took my gloves off, then adjusted my fedora and looked around. The day wasn’t as beautiful as it would become in the springtime, not as favorable as it would be after the bitter winter had gone away. A gray blanket covered the sky. The temperature was above freezing and that was enough to allow ice and snow to melt before winter’s frigid breath hit the city again. It was months before the heat of another horrid summer would arrive, weeks before hawthorns would start flowering and roses would bloom, but to me the day was beautiful. Maybe because there wasn’t anything better than springtime in Detroit and my heart looked forward to a new season.

Detroit.

Most people didn’t know that
Detroit
was a French word that was actually pronounced
day-twah.
The city of my birth was founded by a Frenchman whose last name was Cadillac.

I thought about that history as I sat on the grass at Evergreen Cemetery. My parents’ tombstones were in front of me, grave markers that stood side by side, as they had in life. Today I cleaned their gravesites and put fresh flowers on each marker. Then I sat there for a while, silent, not hearing any noise that came from Woodward Avenue and the surrounding community.

It was just me and my parents. My mother sat to my left and my father to my right.

The wind soughed and a chill raked across my wool coat as we talked about nothing in particular. After about thirty minutes, I told Henrick and Zibba what I had wanted to say all along. The words didn’t come easily, but the truth rarely did.

I said, “I might have to leave Detroit. It was a different place when you were here. People here are praying to deaf ears. I think some of that culture of corruption got into Cora. It got into me too. If a job comes through in another state, I’ll have to leave. There aren’t any jobs in Michigan anymore, and Detroit’s become the redheaded stepchild of the U.S. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out. Nobody loves you when you’re broke. It’s all about prosperity. All about money. The places we used to go on weekends are gone. They’re ghost towns and they want to bulldoze other neighborhoods. It’s pretty grim. It’s like New Orleans up here. Anyway, the house is on the market, but I won’t leave without saying good-bye. I’d never leave without saying good-bye. And I’ll come back to visit you.”

I paused.

I said, “I did some things. Some really bad things. I know you taught me better. Dad, I can see you frowning, but I’ll make you smile again. Same for you, Mom. I lost my way for a while. But I’m back now. Mom, Dad, I just need to ask both of you to forgive me.”

Not long after I stopped rambling, I took out my pocket watch and saw the time.

I kissed both tombstones and then I left. First I rode past the town home I used to own on the nicer side of town. From there I left the suburbs and drove aimlessly, past Wayne State University, the public library, Cadillac Place, St. Joseph Catholic Church, the luxury property on the riverfront and the Ren Center, the DPM roaring over my head as I stared across the Detroit River at Windsor, Canada. I cruised down Baylis Street, then drove down Normandy Street. This kingdom remained lined with trees, with homes for sale, and with enough foreclosures to remind us of the reality of the country. But everyone was still there. They were strong people. They were good people.

I parked my Wildcat underneath a tree that was in front of my home, turned the engine off, and sat inside my car for about fifteen minutes. The windows were down and it was a beautiful day. I sat there staring at the FOR SALE sign out front, sat there until I started to feel the evening chill.

When I went inside the house, every room smelled of lavender and every nook and cranny was clean. The house was always clean. Cora was inside the kitchen, dressed in a blue dress and high heels. She was cooking dinner. She’d just started. The dress looked good on her; I told her that. She smiled a nervous smile. The extra weight was gone from her frame. Her hair had been cut short, restyled into a pixie cut. It was trendy, but it didn’t look good on her. Still I smiled.

She asked me, “How far would you go for the person you loved?”

“What do you mean?”

“Would you lose yourself to keep the person you loved?”

“You know my answer. Would you?”

“For you I would.”

After I removed my coat and fedora, we shared a lingering stare, one that spoke of her undying love for me. I went to the garage and pulled out the rake and I started raking up the fallen leaves, leaves that had been there for weeks, one of my many neglected chores in this home of divided labor.

Adam had eaten an apple. Samson had lost his hair. A man being a fool was nothing new.

Back in Trussville, Cora had run from me in fear, and in the end I had lowered the gun and walked away.

A while later, I’d gone inside a bathroom and washed as much blood off my hands as I could. Then I tended to my wounds, wrapped my shoulder and my left arm. Racked with pain, I had shaven, and when I was done I took out a fresh white shirt and a different suit. While Eddie Coyle lay dead on the dining room floor, while Bishop and Jackie began rotting in a stolen van hidden inside the garage, I put on a change of clothing and collected my things. When I was done, I walked back to the garage and sat inside my Buick. The pain I felt in my shoulder and left leg at that moment was overwhelming. I started my engine and prepared to leave. I was going to leave Cora. I was leaving the money behind. I wasn’t taking a dollar. But Cora had run out to the car and climbed inside. She had left the money behind too. She begged me to take her back.

She said, “You’re right, Dmytryk. Baby, you’re right.”

Her presence had startled me.

She said, “We’re supposed to fight together. We’re supposed to starve together. And in the end we are going to come out the winners. That’s what a marriage is about. Anybody can be married when things are easy. Anybody can be married when there’s plenty of money. Get me away from here. Get me away, baby. I’d live underneath a bridge with you if I had to. I just want to be your wife again.”

I’d stared at Cora’s face. She was crying. She was afraid. She needed me.

Weighed down with pain and guilt, it took me a moment to accept her back into my world.

I nodded.

I said, “Let me fix this.”

“You know how?”

“Stay here.”

I’d gone back inside the town home and walked past the scent of new deaths. I closed all of the windows and turned all the gas burners on the stove on high, let that rotting sulfur smell begin to fill the town home. Candles were all over the model home. I lit two tall ones and left one in the living room and the other in the dining room. Then I picked up the bag of money and stepped over the dead bodies and limped out the back door. I dropped the bag of stolen money fifty yards away from the town homes, far enough for the currency to not be damaged. That was what I had hoped. The money wasn’t federally insured. If it was destroyed, the government wouldn’t replenish the well.

The newspapers said that the town home exploded with a blast so vicious it totaled the three connecting units and sent debris over fifty yards, across the railroad tracks and out onto Highway 11. The buildings were demolished, but the money was recovered, for the most part, unscathed.

From Birmingham toward Nashville, from Louisville to Dayton, then back into Detroit, that journey was seven hundred and forty miles. I told Cora that she had eleven hours to give me a reason not to leave her on the side of the road, seven hundred and forty miles to change from being a woman named Trouble back into the woman I had married.

She whispered, “Trouble is gone, Dmytryk. It’s just me.”

“Cora.”

“It’s Cora. It’s the woman you married.”

Right before Nashville I asked Cora if she had any money. She had close to eight thousand dollars. She told me that it was money from the other bank jobs. I told her to take three hundred out. She did. Then I told her to throw the rest out of the window. She did. We had enough money to eat at McDonald’s and get us back home.

That was all we needed.

Cora sat next to me the entire ride back. She came home with me to Detroit.

But still. The guilt.

My left arm was sore, but I was able to move it without too much pain.

And the pain in my left leg had subsided and I could walk without limping.

As I raked up a few leaves and picked up dead branches that had fallen from trees, I heard the neighbor’s kids playing in the yard next door. The temperature began to drop at sunset. I paused and wondered what would have happened if Cora had exited the annex first, if she had come running to me smiling, needing me the way I had needed her, holding a half million dollars, telling me she had done it all for me, yelling that every wrong she had done had been for us. She would’ve jumped inside the van and Eddie Coyle, Jackie, and Bishop would’ve raced out behind her, chasing the money with a fury I’d never seen before. Maybe I would’ve realized that we could leave Jackie, Bishop, and Eddie Coyle behind. It would have been a split-second decision. As Eddie Coyle, Bishop, and Jackie reached the van, as their nine-millimeters rang out in chorus, I would’ve peeled away, cut through falling snow, and left them stranded in front of the annex. I’d regretted leaving Rick behind, even though he was mortally wounded. But Eddie Coyle, his brother, and Jackie would have deserved their fate.

Other times I wondered what it would have been like to leave Cora, Eddie Coyle, and Bishop in the bottom of that annex and flee with Jackie. I wondered what it would have been like to be with her and her kid, living the high life in South America as a family. We could’ve built that dream house right outside of Tegucigalpa for fifty thousand and had over four hundred thousand to spare. I could’ve been living inside a glorious mansion. I could’ve been her Sammy and she could’ve been my Cora. I could’ve been teaching Spanish to her and her kid and getting acclimated to living in Honduras. We could’ve been making love every night.

Jackie’s voice came to me. “
I’ll never leave you, Dmytryk.
”

I looked around the yard and expected to see Jackie. When she wasn’t there I looked for Rick and Sammy. I looked for Eddie Coyle and I looked for Bishop. No one was there.

When I was done bagging all the leaves and branches, I dragged the bags out front before I went to the garage and pulled out a ladder. Christmas lighting decorated the front of the house. I removed the lighting, put it inside a plastic container, carried that container to the garage, then went inside and showered. I put on cologne, dark suit pants, and a blue shirt. By then Cora had finished dinner. She had cooked venison tenderloin, pan seared and served with creamy mascarpone polenta and a blueberry thyme port wine reduction. It had been paired with a pinot noir. She had come home from one of her part-time jobs, showered, put on a nice dress, and cooked my favorite meal.

She was doing her best to fix what had been broken. I was doing my best to meet her halfway.

She asked, “Is this okay?”

“It’s fantastic.”

“I can’t cook as well as you cook.”

“You’re a great cook, Cora. How’s work going?”

“Same old. How is work going for you?”

“I picked up two more students. One for Italian and one for French.”

“That’s great. Autoworkers?”

“Two former executives.” I nodded. “Hopefully they will pay on time.”

She hesitated, then looked around the room before she looked at me. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s move forward. The past is the past is the past.”

“I love you, Dmytryk.”

I nodded and whispered, “You’re in my blood.”

She whispered, “You’re my blood. Dmytryk, you’re my blood.”

“I know.”

“Those things that I said—all of those horrible things that I said that morning in East Point . . .”

“Let’s eat, Cora. Let’s eat this beautiful dinner you made.”

Tears fell from her eyes as she ate. My eyes watered as I did the same. I reached across the table with my right hand, palm turned upward. Cora reached across the table and put her hand inside mine.

My name is Dmytryk Knight. My wife’s name is Cora Knight. Right or wrong, she’s my wife.

She said, “Jackie.”

“What about her?”

Her hand went up to the healed scar on her forehead. “What she did in Trussville. When she went crazy. When she took her gun and shot me. When she tried to steal all of the money.”

“It was wrong.”

“But I was thinking the same thing. When I was with Jackie and Bishop and Eddie Coyle, I was thinking the same thing. It was so much money. I’d never had anything growing up. I thought of all the things that I didn’t have and all of the things that I could’ve bought. I thought about us, Dmytryk. I thought about us. We’d had it so hard for so long. I wanted to take it all from them. You’ve always loved me. Eddie Coyle had betrayed me to get the money. Jackie had betrayed my friendship and my trust, then she tried to kill me. Everyone I had trusted for six months betrayed me.”