Tempted by Trouble (9 page)

When she had thrown up as much as she could, she staggered out and sat on the sofa.

I stood in the doorway watching her, anger darkening my eyes.

My wife sat there, eyes red, moaning, kept rocking and grinding her teeth. That had been a new problem that she had developed. Grinding her teeth. Unemployment had created problems beyond the checking account. We couldn’t afford health problems, couldn’t afford to catch a cold, but health problems were coming at us. She’d gained at least fifteen pounds. The weight didn’t concern me as much as watching her pop Motrin like she was addicted to drugs. She complained about jaw pain, oversensitive teeth, facial pain, neck pain, and muscular pain.

“We’ve made too many bad decisions, Dmytryk. All the right decisions have been bad decisions.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our town house was worth three hundred twenty thousand when we refinanced it and two hundred thousand when it foreclosed. We’d lost over a hundred thousand and we were working and paying on a mortgage when we should’ve walked away.”

“I wasn’t okay with that. I pay my bills. That’s what a man does. A man pays his bills. I wasn’t okay with walking away. I’ve never walked away from
anything.
This was my parents’ house and I’m not okay with losing this home. No, we don’t have the best zip code anymore, and we don’t have a brand-new town house, but I’m doing my best to make sure we have food and a roof over our heads.”

“
Husband,
your parents are
dead
.
Your wife
is alive. You have to do right by
your wife.
”

“How about doing right by your goddamn husband? How does that sound? For better or for worse. Do those words sound familiar? We signed up for better or for worse. Not for better or for best.”

Disturbed and powerless, I sat down and broke the household rule. I turned the television on. I bit my lips and watched CNN. I wrung my hands and changed to the local news, searched for a way out.

The only thing that made me pause was a story about a brazen thief who dressed up as a Walmart supervisor, emptied a safe inside a Florida store, and walked out with more than two hundred thousand. Walmart’s nonunionized employees applauded the outlaw. They were being paid less than the national average while CEOs took home almost thirty million.

Cora said, “If we had that much money, we could fix all of our problems.”

That bandit had done what thousands of employees wished they had the guts to do.

Cora said, “The only way out is to make your own way out.”

Dangerous emotions steamed from my pores. That same harsh energy emanated from my wife. She said, “Marriage is about compromise.”

“Don’t you know I know that? I was in grad school and now I’m delivering pizzas to people I went to high school with. People who barely made it out of high school are giving me two-dollar tips. Then laughing. You know how humiliating that is? Yeah, I’m compromising my friggin’ dignity too. But I’m here. I haven’t left. I haven’t walked away from this hard life. I haven’t walked away from this marriage. I’m compromising my ass off.”

“Are you listening to me? We need action, not talk. Nobody cares about your degrees or how smart you are. Nobody cares but you. That paper does nothing. Are you listening to me?”

I lowered my head. There was an invisible fire in the room, stealing all the air.

She said, “It’s your turn. You need to man up and make sacrifices like I have.”

That barbed wire swiped at my ego and left an impenetrable silence between us.

I asked, “What have you done?”

“More than you.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask again. Please. Don’t ask again.”

My wife cried soft tears and told me that she had done all she could do for now. And there was only one thing left she could do to boost our pathetic income. My heart caught fire and my eyes watered.

She choked. “Men offer me
that
every time I go to work at that place. I was at the mall and a man who had been to the club recognized me. He came up to me, in the mall, and offered me money to go to a hotel with him. I smiled at him, but something inside me died. This is what I have become. Once you become . . . one of these women . . . once you do this . . . they never see you as anything but a whore.”

She told me about the dancers who left with men, some with women who looked like men; some serviced customers who paid for acts of sadomasochism that rivaled the most disgusting Siffredi film. She repeated her question, asked me if I wanted her to cross that line.

She sounded destroyed.

And she wanted me to feel her pain, wanted to destroy me with her words.

I looked down at my callused hand and then looked up at the wall and saw my framed degrees. My wife complained about her life, but this wasn’t the existence I’d mapped out for myself either. This life wasn’t even close to what I had mapped out. I thought I’d end up with a sorority girl, a decent woman with a Ph.D. I wanted children who were White House-bound. I wanted a house filled with lawyers and leaders. Everybody fantasized until reality came along and knocked us flat on our rear ends.

I should’ve abandoned Detroit and my wife and her brand-new fur coat, my mind double-daring me to leave at that moment, my heart telling me that neither Detroit nor my wife would miss me. There was only so far a man could get when cash was low and credit cards had been maxed out. Only so much gas a man in my economic position could afford to burn.

The only thing I knew with any certainty was that my love for Cora hadn’t changed.

In a hardened tone I said, “If your friend can use me, I’ll be his getaway man.”

She paused a long moment before she whispered, “I’ll call Eddie Coyle.”

Now Sammy was dead
and Rick might be speeding down that same road.

Numbness had covered Jackie and me. We’d kept moving from morning until evening. We’d passed our hideout several times but put off going inside. We wanted to be sure that it was safe. Los Angeles had the world’s largest population of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Filipinos, Koreans, Samoans, and Armenians outside their native countries, and I think that we had seen every one of them at least twice since the fiasco at Wells Fargo. The darkening of the day had helped to lessen my fears, but not enough for me to feel at ease. Jackie and I lurked in the shadows of the safe house in Koreatown. Over a thousand bars, karaoke spots, spas that offered happy endings, pool halls, and clubs were alive and it sounded like I could hear the overlapping din from each and every one of them. Jackie parked on the crowded streets and we monitored the area. The earphones were in place and my iPhone was running the app that kept me in touch with both LAPD and the sheriff’s department.

Jackie said, “You hear anything?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s safe.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Rick isn’t a snitch. He has kids and a wife he loves.”

“That’s enough to make a man snitch.”

“Not on this crew. Rick knows if he snitches, he’ll be buying coffins for his family.”

Jackie had changed clothes a few hours ago, back when we had dumped the van and traded it for the four-door Pontiac she’d rented from Hertz when she had arrived at LAX. She had lost the T-shirt and jeans, traded up and become a woman adorned in clothing by Givenchy, Calvin Klein, and Marc Jacobs.

Jackie went back inside the building first. The building that we were holed up inside was a dull edifice and all of its tenants were from south of the border. Thundering Spanish music shook the neighborhood as Jackie clicked the lights on and off three times. That meant everything was clear. She left the lights off after the signal was given.

Jackie clicked a small table light on when I entered the apartment. The place looked as tacky and unorganized as when we had left. I stepped inside the cold apartment and turned on the wall heater, then I hunted for something to rub on my face, anything to alleviate the swelling. Outside of deodorant and Band-Aids, there wasn’t anything. I rubbed the stubble on my chin and that ached. The apartment was dark, but the neon lights of Koreatown yielded just enough colorful brilliance for me to be able to maneuver without needing additional illumination.

Jackie was in the living room, her lips pursed as she shook her head. She was in a trance, staring down at the things Rick and Sammy had left behind.

She cleared the pain from her throat, took a breath, and said, “Eddie Coyle called.”

“When?”

“When I was coming up the stairs. I told him to call back in a few minutes.”

“He’s here in L.A.?”

“He’s out of the country. There is another job coming up. He needs a crew.”

“Now is not the time to think about another job.”

“Court fees have drained me. Attorney fees have drained me. Now Sammy’s dead.”

I took a breath. “I’m in dire straits too.”

“You have a house. You don’t have any kids. What could you possibly need, Dmytryk?”

“Right now I need about four thousand.”

“Well, I need ten times that, at least. I need at least ten times that to pull off what I’m trying to do, or I’ll never get my kid back. Never,” Jackie snapped. “I need to figure out a way to get some more damn money. Sammy and Rick were in on this next job and now—”

“Stay focused. You need to stay focused and I have to do the same.”

“I am focused. I need to get my kid and get to South America, just like we had planned.”

“Sure you want to do that? That might draw a lot of attention.”

“Sammy told me I could get away with it, and I trusted Sammy with my life. He said that if a man kidnaps his child, it’s news. But if a woman takes the child she bore, you’ll never hear about it. My ex has used the system to his favor, and I’ll take advantage of the rest. It won’t even create a ripple in the news.”

Jackie blinked and cleared her throat. She broke away from her trance and hurried across the worn shag carpet into the kitchen, then raided the cabinets and found some vodka.

Drink in hand, Jackie came into the living room and snapped again, “Everything has gone bad.”

“Turn the television on so we can see if there’s any word on Rick’s condition.”

She didn’t respond. I found the remote and turned the television to the local news. They were in the middle of a story about a viral video of an old white man beating a young black man on a bus.

Jackie was dazed, eyes wandering around the room, shifting in and out of focus, moving from wall to wall like she was confused.

A cellular started ringing again. The same Spanish song that had played before. When the call ended unanswered, as if on cue, the second cellular started singing the Dean Martin ringtone.

Jackie caught her breath. “Their wives are not going to stop calling.”

“They don’t know.”

Jackie took a deep breath and shook her head. “Sammy would want his wife to know.”

The cellular phones started ringing again, first the Mexican song, then the number by Dean Martin. It made me wonder if Rick and Sammy were dead and calling us from the other side.

Jackie went into the bedroom and came back with the phones of our fallen comrades. After she stared at it with watery eyes, she handed Sammy’s phone to me. She took Rick’s phone. I answered Sammy’s phone with reluctance, while Jackie answered Rick’s phone in the same manner.

In a nervous tone Sammy’s wife asked, “Is he there?”

“No.” I paused and searched for words. “And he won’t be coming back here.”

“Not tonight?”

“Not ever.”

“Oh, God.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. My condolences to you and your family.”

Grief filled her voice. I heard Sammy’s kids laughing and playing in the background. The news of a bank robbery gone south wouldn’t reach their local news. She’d had no idea that she was a widow.

Nothing else to say, I hung up Sammy’s phone.

Jackie finished talking to Rick’s wife about the same time.

I asked, “Rick’s wife knows?”

She ran her fingers through her hair and whispered, “She knows something is wrong. Rick was supposed to call her ten hours ago. He’s never late. I told her to not make any dinner plans because it might be twenty years before she talks to him again.”

“Does your blood always run cold or do you keep it on ice?”

She broke Rick’s phone in half. I did the same with Sammy’s cellular.

She went to the kitchen and poured another glass of vodka.

Then the early-morning bank robbery at Wells Fargo hit the news. It was a thirty-second report. The security guard was former military. They showed his grieving wife and let her talk about how her husband had served in Afghanistan and left there after three tours of duty only to return home and struggle to find a job, and end up gunned down his first week working at the bank in Baldwin Hills. Half the cash had made it out of the parking lot in the hands and pockets of the opportunistic. The anchor said one of the robbers was on life support.

Jackie stared at the driver’s license photo of Sammy Luis Sanchez that was being broadcast on KTLA. It was a chilling confirmation of Sammy’s horrible death.

I’d fallen into a trance watching the report. Rick hadn’t been identified. They had no idea who the second man was.

Then I heard something that I never expected to hear. Laughter. There was a soft chortle. It sounded distant, but it was inside this room. I looked at Jackie and her right palm was over her mouth, muffling what sounded like misplaced amusement. What I saw disturbed me because I’d seen that wide-eyed look on the face of many people who’d lost their jobs. Her eyes were wide open. She was shaking her head and she wasn’t blinking. That laughter wasn’t the kind of hilarity that came at the end of a joke, but the kind of laughter that came at inappropriate moments, the laughter of pain and disbelief, the frightening kind that ballooned and turned hysterical and sounded like the opening bell to the release of the madness within. All day she had held everything in. Now, while we were in this space and away from the rest of the world, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.