The Take (4 page)

Felina
looked at Eddie, then back at Val. “All right, now do you want to tell me what
the hell happened?”

The air
conditioning had quit. Eddie could see sweat trickling down her throat,
disappearing beneath her halter-top. He fought the urge to lick it.

Val ran
it all down for her, downplaying the carnage. He concluded by standing the
suitcase upright on the floor.

“And
right in here’s what we came for. This’s the star of the show.” He messed with
it some more trying to open it, then said to Felina, “Get me a screwdriver.”

She
went to the kitchen and returned, long phillips head in hand. Val attempted to
pry the case open, but it wasn’t happening. He cursed the case.

Eddie
had a thought. “Hey, maybe the thing’s wired. You know, if you don’t know the
combination and you try to force it open, it blows up or something.”

Val
brushed that aside with a glare. “We got anything stronger around here?”

Before
Felina could answer, Eddie said, “We could try the tire iron in my trunk. It’s
got one end on it like a crowbar.” Val nodded and Eddie went out to his car.
Moments later, he was back with the tool.

Val
pushed the case against the wall for leverage and wedged the sharp end of the
tire iron into its opening crevice. After a couple of tries, it popped open.
There was no explosion.

But there
was money. And plenty of it.

A ton
of cash, all packeted in bank wrappers, filling the suitcase right to the brim.
The trio gasped all at once, as they sat down on the shag carpet in a
semicircle, then fell silent, while the loot
glittered before them, begging to be touched.

Felina
reached first, fingering one of the packets, flipping the cash, all hundreds.
It didn’t bite, so she pulled it out to hold it in both hands. Then she held it
up to her face, caressing her cheek with it, and started counting.

Only
one packet, and so many more stuffed inside!

Then
Eddie and Val gingerly reached out. They each touched a packet, hesitating at
first. Then Val buried both hands deep inside the case, pulling out dozens of
packets. He let them fall from his hands onto the floor, as he laughed out
loud.

“Holy
shit! Look. Will you look at what we got.” He threw the packets up in the air,
no longer afraid of them. “Look at this shit, will you?” He laughed and
laughed.

Eddie
had never seen so much money in his life. Not even anything close. And he was
used to seeing lots of cash. But this — shit, this was something else
altogether.

The
only thing he could think of at this moment was, This is more money than I’ve
ever seen, but it was just a routine twice-a-month delivery for Chico Salazar.
The thought that Salazar’s successor would be hauling another load like this
one down to the islands in just two weeks was overpowering.

He
reached into the case and pulled out some wrapped bills, banded wads of twenties,
fifties, and hundreds.

Jesus, I don’t believe this
.

Felina
lifted the case and overturned it, allowing the remaining money to tumble out,
while the three of them giggled. The giggles crescendoed to frenzied laughter
as they all rolled around on the green carpet, wallowing in the packets of the
green dough, tossing them into the air.

Felina
continued counting the hundreds in her packet. On completion, she announced: “Five
thousand. There’s five thousand bucks here in this one little packet.”

The two
men stopped what they were doing. Slowly, they turned and looked at her, then
at the packets of money strewn around on the carpet. They gazed at each other
in thick silence, all three of them holding their breaths, until Val finally
whispered, “Let’s count it.”

It took
over forty-five minutes. Although each packet contained fifty bills — some
twenties, some fifties, a few tens, but a lot of hundreds — each was
counted. When they finished adding everything up on Eddie’s calculator the
total came to one million, nine hundred seventy thousand dollars.

When he
announced this figure, no one moved a muscle. Their jaws went slack, as though
it were all a cruel joke and the slightest movement would make the money
vanish, shoving them back into the real world. Their wide eyes glazed over, and
Felina had a tear on her cheek.

After a
few seconds of this, she said in her lowest, throatiest voice, “This is almost
two million bucks.”

“Holy
shit!” Eddie exclaimed. “What’re we gonna do?”

Val
took charge. “We’re gonna split it up. Now.” He took the calculator and started
figuring.

“But I
mean, what’re we gonna do?” Eddie insisted. “We can’t just take all this to a
bank.”

Val
chuckled. “No shit, Sherlock. One thing’s for sure, though. The government won’t
be on our asses. They don’t even know about this dough. It ain’t like robbing a
bank where the bills are red-hot, with their numbers all recorded
and shit. This is drug money, buddy boy.
You know what that means? It means it doesn’t have to be fenced. You can take
one of these C-notes and go out right now and spend it, and nothing’s gonna
happen, you dig? Shit, man, you could even bring it to a bank and get change
for it.”

“Then
this money is worth …” Eddie began.

Val
stood up. “One hundred percent of its face value. Every penny of it.” He was
holding a packet in one hand, slapping it into the palm of his other.

Felina
put it a better way. “We’re millionaires.”

“Nine
hundred eighty-five thousand apiece,” Val announced. “Not bad for a night’s
work, eh?”

Eddie
was still near speechless. “We-we’ve …”

Val
leaned down low over Eddie’s shoulder. “We’ve hit the fucking jackpot, buddy
boy.” Eddie sat stunned while Val straightened up, adding, “But we’ve gotta be
careful not to go attracting a lot of attention. Y’understand, Eddie? No big
buys. No jewelry, no new Caddies, none o’ that shit. You can be sure that
Salazar’s goons’ll be lookin’ high and low for this bundle. I don’t have to
tell you what they’ll do to us if they find it.”

He sat
on the sofa, then crooked his finger at Felina. She moved over to him, curling
up under his outstretched arm, holding a packet of hundreds to her lovely
breast.

“Oh,
baby,” she cried. “Now we can get out of here. Maybe go to Mexico, just like
you said we could.” She just couldn’t lose that beautiful smile that covered
her face.

“Sure,
honey, sure,” he replied, his mind elsewhere.

Eddie
moved numbly into the recliner. The money stayed on the floor next to the empty
suitcase, still commanding lots of attention.

“What
can we do with all this? Like you said, we can’t spend it. We can’t put it in
the bank, we can’t do shit. We can only …”

“Hold
on to it,” said Val, turning up the intensity in his eyes. “And make sure it’s
… safe.”

A
subtle chill touched the back of Eddie’s neck, like little cold needles.
Suppressing a shiver, he suddenly wanted to get out of there. “Let’s divide it
now.”

The
split didn’t take nearly as long as the initial count. Eddie scooped his share up
from the filthy shag carpet.

“I’ll
take the suitcase,” he said.

Val
nodded, as Eddie sealed it shut with a few strips of duct tape. Then he was
gone.

The
ride home took forever, or so it seemed. Salazar’s men would surely be aware of
things by now, meaning the hunt would be on.

What if
he and Val had slipped up? What if they’d left something behind that could ID
them? What if there were witnesses? He didn’t remember any, but what if there
were?

His
insides tightened as he drove down McCarty. The dark fear of his future
squeezed his stomach, hard. Knots began to form all through his insides.
Struggling to catch a breath, he opened his driver’s side window to the Houston
humidity, as he took stock of his situation.

Knocking
over a Mexican for thirty or forty thousand apiece sounded easy, like it could
be pulled off if you planned it right.

But two
million bucks? That moved everything into the big league. A league where
violent men routinely kill each
other
in large numbers, and often for a lot less. A complex league of money
launderers and fat cat bankers and Lamborghinis and life above the law.

Eddie
Ryan had never seen himself in that world, but there he was. Right down in the
god damn middle of it. Wanted, not only by the law, but by the most ruthless
cowboys this side of Colombia.

He
looked at the silver suitcase on the dirty passenger seat next to him. What
will they do to get it? He already knew the answer to that one.

What
can he do to protect it? He had no idea.

He
almost wished it only contained the thirty large they were originally after.
But there it was, bigger than shit, sitting there with nearly a million dollars
in it.

He
laughed out loud, a sardonic one-note laugh.

Me! With a million bucks.

Everything
would be different from here on out because of this … this stroke of good luck,
well, wouldn’t it? He’d waited for this luck his whole life, hadn’t he? Wasn’t
this his one big break? I mean, it was good luck, wasn’t it? This kind of money
doesn’t just fall into a guy’s lap every day, does it?

Whatever,
he was in it right now up to his nostrils, with no looking back. No looking
back.

Hmph, that’s a good one. I’ll be looking
over my shoulder for the rest of my life, starting now.

He
glanced at the rear view mirror.

He felt
like his guts were in a vise, as though some powerful unseen hand was turning
the grip tighter, squeezing, squeezing …

I
t had stopped
raining. As he turned the corner onto the busy street where he lived, Eddie
scanned the landscape, looking for anything out of the ordinary for this time
of night. Anyone sitting in a parked car? Anyone loitering out front? Any
well-dressed Latinos around?

He
turned onto a side street to see if anyone was following him. His eyes
narrowed, shifting back and forth from the rear view mirror to the parked cars
on the wet street in front of him. After a nervous lap around the block, he
emerged on the corner, carefully eyeing the people hanging around. Finally, he
was satisfied. He was home free, at least for tonight.

The
spot in front of the greasy spoon underneath his room was illegal, ticket
territory for certain, but he damn sure wasn’t about to carry that suitcase any
distance. The duct tape barely held it together. He felt it could pop open on
him any second.

He
rushed inside with it, up the narrow staircase, bumping it a couple of times on
his way. Sticky sweat gathered under his arms as he imagined the horror of the
cash spilling out onto the stairway.

After
fumbling with his key, he made it into his room with everything intact.
Shutting the door, then bolting it behind him, he exhaled loudly, and fell onto
the bed in the corner. The only light in the heavily shadowed room came from
the flashing beanery sign just below his window.
As always, the thick aroma of something deep-frying drifted in from
downstairs.

Something
pinched his side. He groped the .38 still in his waistband, then removed it,
placing it under his pillow. The suitcase lay on the floor by the bed, still
taped. He shoved it under the bed, deciding he’d worry about it tomorrow,
because by then he’d be long gone, with this dump far behind him.

What a
night. He realized how drained he felt; then sleep called and off he went.

≈≈≈

The morning sky over Houston turned bright blue, as an early sun
flooded Eddie’s room. He stirred awake soon after dawn, still dressed.

The
events of the night before flew back into his memory and he jerked himself
upright. Looking around the bed, he saw the suitcase peeking out from
underneath, right where he left it. He ran a hand across his unshaven face and
through his disheveled hair, then got up.

Walking
slowly along the wall, he carefully approached the window for a peek outside.
Again, nothing unusual. He really didn’t know what to look for, but from where
he stood, everything appeared normal for a Friday morning.

Friday
morning! He had a date with Raymond Cannetta at noon. A fast shot of anxiety
stabbed at him, but then — hey, wait a minute — his debts were no
longer a problem. He would pay off Cannetta in full, then take care of his
bettors as well. At last, he’d be square with the world. Everything was going
to be all right.

He
leaned over the sink. As he threw water on his face, he started to organize his
thoughts.

He’d
have to leave right away. The money? Well, there was no way he was leaving it
in that taped-up case. He’d transfer it over to his own
suitcase. A different car, too. He couldn’t
keep that old Toyota much longer.