The First Cut (7 page)

She hit the door of the diner and pushed through to the parking lot, running toward our teal Chevy at a dead sprint, oblivious to the puddles. “Hurry, Jack!” she yelled, knowing I’d be splashing along right behind her. She opened the door, threw the bag in the back and slid in the driver’s seat. I reached the car a second later and climbed into the passenger seat. She keyed the ignition, kicked it into reverse and skidded across the lot, the back tires throwing rocks and mud as the car sought traction. I turned and looked in the rearview mirror to see Randy, Mark and the other two men burst through the door of the diner and run across the lot.

“Wow! All right!” Trudy yelled, smacking the steering wheel and she maneuvered the car onto the frontage road. “Revenge is sweet!”

I finally remembered to fasten my seatbelt, which tipped Trudy to do the same, and then turned and pulled the bag out of the back seat. I sat it on my lap and zipped it open. I was surprised to find about 20 zip-lock bags full of powder, wholesale meth. Three years ago it would have been worth $20,000 or so; much more on the street. I had no idea what it would go for now.

“How much is there?” Trudy said, making no attempt to keep the excitement out of her voice. She steered the car up the entrance ramp and onto Interstate 80 westbound.

“Probably about 2 pounds, maybe less,” I said, shaking the bag to see what it contained. I wasn’t going to reach in for fear of leaving a fingerprint that would send me back to prison for 25 years.

“What do you mean? Two pounds of money? How much is that?”

“There is no money. Randy must have been buying instead of selling. He had the money, you grabbed the meth.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “So we have enough drugs in the car to get you put away --”

“Get
us
put away,” I corrected. “For a very long time.” We were both silent for several seconds.

“What did you think, that you could just grab Randy’s money to get back at him?” I said.

She looked over at me, her face a mix of fear and shame. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. It was perfect. The Mexicans would get the drugs and Randy would get nothing. Not like he could report it to the cops. The perfect crime and the perfect way to stick it to Randy. He owes us.”

I ran a hand through my hair and exhaled a breath I realized I had been holding for a while. I looked over at Trudy. Though she was small, she was a firecracker, someone you wouldn’t mess with twice. But now, she looked like a child behind the wheel, hunched over, her arms stiff as she clutched at it.

She seemed to snap out of a daze just then, sat up straight and looked in the rearview. “Jack, they’re behind me.” She said it with an odd calm.

“Which one?” I said, turning in my seat to look through the rear window to see first one car, then another emerge from the fog.

“Both of them, I think. What should we do? Why don’t we just throw the bag out? They’ll stop and get it and we just keep going, right?” Her voice rose in pitch with each word.

“That might slow them down, but not for long. One would stop and the other would keep after us to make sure we didn’t just throw out a bag stuffed with newspapers or something. Hell, they might not even see us do it in this fog.”

“So what are we going to do?” she said, her voice now shrill.

“Keep driving and just watch what you’re doing. They won’t do anything on a busy interstate, and we don’t need to get stopped by a trooper for speeding.”

She nodded. Her legs were shaking and she was gripping the wheel more tightly than before, her knuckles white.

“Steady, babe. We’re almost to Iowa City. Get off on Dubuque Street and head north away from town. Get us on our turf.”

Just then my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it. About 30 seconds later, it rang again.

“Get it!” Trudy said, sounding a little hysterical. “Maybe it’s someone who can help us!”

I pushed the button to connect and put the phone to my ear.

“Is this Jack?”

“Yeah, who is this?”

“It’s Randy. Glad you have the same cell number. What the hell was Trudy thinking?”

“She wanted to get back at you,” I said. “Dumb mistake. So how do we solve this?”

“Is that him?” Trudy said. “Tell him to back off!”

“Jack, this is a serious situation, OK? These are bad people, and they aren’t just going to let you walk away.”

“They’re bad people? What about you, Randy? You’re not exactly a Boy Scout here. I’m not sure who I should be more afraid of.”

“It’s them, Jack. No question.”

I hung up then, and threw the phone down by my feet.

“This is not good, hon,” I said. “We need to think of something.”

Trudy, her face now ghostly white, pulled the car onto the exit at Dubuque Street, blew the stop sign at the top of the rise and headed north away from town. As we followed the road down toward the Iowa River and then back up and past it, I got an idea.

“Remember that Frisbee golf course out at Sugarbottom that Randy and I used to play?”

She nodded.

“Head out there. I think I know what we need to do.”

Truth told, Randy and I didn’t see each other much outside our apartment. He was a perpetually undeclared major who didn’t make it to class very often, and I was a pre-engineering major always loaded up with homework. He had answered an ad I posted in the student union looking for a roommate after Tony, a friend from my hometown, had dropped out and moved back home after a bad case of mono.

The one thing that Randy and I both took to was Frisbee golf. There were a few courses around, but the one at the Sugarbottom camping area near the Coralville reservoir, a state park surrounding a man-made lake north of town, was the best. For a few short weeks our junior year, we played so often that we got to know every twist and turn, every dip and rise. We’d wander around, talking about sports, girls and music, me trying to discuss the latest from the Strokes or the White Stripes and Randy digging down into hippie rock arcana in the hope of convincing me I was missing out. There were some tricky holes, the wire basket that we aimed for completely out of sight around a copse of trees or over a scrub-covered hill of limestone. Those obstacles, and my familiarity with them, was the edge I sought to get us out of this.

The phone rang again, but I ignored it. I wanted to think that Randy was on our side, but I wasn’t willing to put my faith in someone tweaked to the gills that was probably armed. Trudy  steered the car onto Mehaffey Bridge Road, careful as it snaked through wooded areas and over the water, then turned onto Sugarbottom Road as it swung out wide to the south around the lake. She turned into the camping area, slowing a bit as the road turned from cement to blacktop.

Randy and the other guys were still behind us, staying tight but not so close that someone would get suspicious. The phone rang again. Trudy glared at me, so I swiped it off the floor and pushed the button.

“What?”

“Jack, now isn’t the time for games,” Randy said. “What are you doing?”

“What, you don’t want to toss a few for old time’s sake?” I said. “You’re not willing to help me recapture the innocence of my pre-incarceration days?”

“Jack, you don’t know what you’re in the middle of here, OK? Why don’t you toss the bag and then circle around the campground and get out of here.”

“Sure, and leave you to scoop up the drugs and your buddies back there to tail us and take care of business while you conveniently split again? Don’t think so.”

I hung up the phone and jammed it in my pocket. Trudy had reached the parking area for the course. I pointed her to a back section that was reached by passing through a narrow drive between some trees and told her to park at the far end of the lot, then be ready to run. Randy had expected us to park in the front lot, so the move bought us a couple of seconds. That was enough for her to slam the car into park and for both of us to leap from the car, leaving the doors open, to sprint through the light fog across the adjacent field and toward a hilly stand of trees.

“Stay low and follow me,” I said over my shoulder, clutching the bag to my chest as I ran. I hit the trees first, Trudy a couple of seconds later. Squinting through the fog, I could see that Randy was out now, running across the field, Mark close behind. The two other guys were out of their cars, each with a handgun at the ready, looking around as if scouting for cops.

“Listen,” I said, pulling Trudy close. “You remember hole 6, the one with the rickety bridge over the gully?” She nodded. “Run straight for that and hide under that bridge. Pull some branches up alongside yourself if you can. Just stay out of sight until I come for you. OK?”

“What are you going to do?” she said, her voice breaking.

“Get us out of this.” I took a couple of steps in the opposite direction, then turned to see if she would go. She looked across the field, saw Randy coming, then turned and ran. My direction was uphill, toward the course’s back holes that sprouted like overgrown metallic mushrooms in small clearings among the trees. I didn’t really have a plan, hoping that I could somehow lure Randy in and knock him out with a rock or tree branch, and perhaps lose the Mexicans in the process. It was a dumb plan, I realized. They weren’t just going to go away, and after following our car for 15 minutes, they’d have people watching for us all up and down the interstate, meaning we’d have to ditch the only thing of value we owned.

My feet slipped as I scampered up a muddy path carved into the side of the hill over the years by hundreds of skater sneakers and crashed through some bushes in an attempt to make my route less obvious. As I climbed, I rose out of the fog. Thorns clawed at my coat and face, raising long welts that seeped beads of blood along my cheeks. I reached the 12th hole, the most secluded on the course, in a small clearing surrounded by rocks and trees, and hid behind a large boulder marked by the scrawled wisdom, names and epithets of dozens of players.

I peeked around the side of the rock and saw Randy through the haze about fifty yards away, his hand above his eyes to cut the glare of the sun as it broke through the haze. He unzipped his coat and moved his hand to the butt of a gun in a holster on his belt. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature slid up my spine.

“Jack, this is it,” he yelled. “Pretty smart to hide someplace you know like the back of your hand. Or it would be if I didn’t know it just as well.”

He kept walking, growing nearer with every step. Mark came into view, his head and then the rest of his body seeming to lift out of the fog a moment later. “I’m guessing you’re behind that boulder on 12. Pretty decent spot. But again, you don’t really have a way out, do you?”

I realized he was right. This was the back of the course, and unless I was willing to trek through thicker brush and trees, making a tremendous amount of noise in the process, I’d need to go back past them to get away.

“Look, let’s sort this out before my friends show up,” Randy said. “I have something to tell -- ”

Just then we heard something else crash through the brush, then a cry. It was Trudy.

“We have the girl,” I heard. “If we are able to leave with the drugs and the money, she doesn’t need to die.”

Randy started to scan the surrounding brush, and then his gaze locked on a spot about twenty yards away. He hadn’t stopped walking, and was now in front of the rock. “Jack, get out here. We need to end this.”

I took a step from behind the rock, the bag still clutched tightly to my chest. The Mexicans emerged from the trees then, one with a tight grip on Trudy, the other with a gun pointed in our direction.

“You get one chance,” said the one with the gun. “Throw the bag over here. Then you,” he said, pointing at Randy, “you toss your guns and your keys. You don’t follow us and we’ll let you live.”

“But what about my money?” Randy said. “I had nothing to do with this!”

“We heard everything. We know you are friends. I’m not sure how you planned to rip us off, and I don’t care.”

Trudy struggled against the grip of the other Mexican. “Don’t do it, Jack!” she yelled. “They’re punks. They’re not going to kill anyone!”

The Mexican with the gun turned and fired, hitting Trudy in the shoulder, the bullet driving her head back and sending her and the other man still holding on to her reeling. She screamed, and blood began to spread across her shirt as she fell. The man holding her scrambled out from under her.

“You son of a bitch!” I yelled, stepping fully around the rock. The Mexican turned and aimed. As he pulled the trigger, Randy leaped in front of me. I felt the force of the bullet as it slammed into his back, pushing both of us to the ground.

Mark, who had been standing a few feet away, unholstered his gun and in one motion shot the Mexican gunman in the chest, then ran, the gun held in two outstretched arms the entire time, across the clearing toward the other one and Trudy, sprawled on the ground.

“Police! Get away from her now!” he shouted, keeping the gun trained on the Mexican’s head. The Mexican rolled away from Trudy. When he was on his stomach, Mark stepped forward and put a boot in his back. “Hands behind your head.” He pulled a zip tie from his pocket and secured the man’s hands, then went over to check on Trudy. She was holding her shoulder with her good arm, moaning softly, rolling back and forth on the ground.

I pushed Randy off of me and rolled him onto his back. His eyes were slits, his face a chalky white. I ran to Trudy's side and put my hand on her burning forehead.

"You gonna be OK?" I said.

"Maybe."

I rose and shoved Mark hard.

“You guys are cops?” I yelled. “Since when?”

“The whole time,” he said. “College was our cover."

I walked over to Randy, still flat on his back.

“Then why did you let me take the fall? One word from you and I wouldn’t have gone to prison.”

He swallowed, then grimaced in pain. “It was that packet in your pocket. I vouched for you, but when they found that, all bets were off. They said you weren’t worth blowing my cover over.”

As I sat next to him, shivering from the cold setting in as the sun began to go down, I felt something wet seep under my hand. I looked down to see rivulets of blood leak out from under Randy’s back.