Shoot the Moon (4 page)

It’s cool inside, and almost empty. He orders two seven-ingredient burritos, no sour cream, and a large Coke.

“Here?” the girl asks him.

“Huh?”

“Here, or to go?”

“Oh. To go.”

He drives back to the motel, one hand on the steering wheel, the other steadying the Coke container.

It’s five-thirty by the time he carries his purchases into his room and sets them down. He locates the remote control for the TV, turns it on, and sits against the headboard of the bed, eating one of the burritos and sipping his Coke as he flicks back and forth between the news and an all country-and-western MTV-type channel.

He enjoys the burritos, is pleased with himself that he remembered to order them without sour cream, which he dislikes. The Coke is a bit watery from the melted ice, but otherwise not bad.

He tries to imagine the person for whom the drugs in the spare tire were intended, and how upset he must have been when he discovered that the car he was supposed to have been given had already been rented to somebody else. Then he remembers that he’s given the name of this motel as his local address. For all he knows, the guy may by now have the information and be heading this way. He takes a tiny measure of comfort in knowing that what the guy wants is the car - or, more precisely, what’s inside the spare tire - and not Goodman himself. Nonetheless, he gets up and checks to make sure his door is locked. And to be extra safe, he puts the security chain on. It’s one of those lightweight brass ones, attached to the wooden molding with a couple of half-inch screws. They go for about $2.98.

The Weather Channel doesn’t seem to want to tell him tomorrow’s forecast. He’s learned that, in southern Florida, that’s a sure sign it’s going to rain. It seems the chamber of commerce forbids anyone from giving out weather reports that don’t call for clear skies and temperatures in the low eighties. He flicks back to the MTV channel, but some cowboy is singing about his faithful Cadillac. He turns the set off.

He dials his mother-in-law’s number again. His daughter answers in a small voice.

“Hello, angel. It’s Daddy.”

“Hi, Daddy.”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Grandma said you had a headache.”

“A little one.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Fine. The doctor said Larus can come with me when I go to have pictures made of my head.”

“That’s good, angel.” Larus is Kelly’s stuffed animal, her security blanket. It’s almost as big as she is, a sort of a cross between a teddy bear and an elephant. No one can remember where it came from or what it’s really supposed to be.

“Daddy, when are you coming home?”

“Soon, angel, soon.”

“Grandma doesn’t know any good stories.”

“As soon as I get back, I promise I’ll tell you a real good story.”

“A long one?” she asks.

“A long one,” he agrees.

“With
chapters?”

“With chapters.”

“All right.”

“Well, you feel better,” he tells her. “And remember Daddy loves you.”

“I love you, too, Daddy.”

“Let me talk to Grandma, okay?”

“Okay.”

After a few seconds, he hears his mother-in-law’s voice. “Did you call the insurance company?” she asks him.

“There
is
no insurance,” he tells her again. “Do I have to call a lawyer?”

He ignores that. “What do they think this could be?” he asks her. “The kid’s only six years old.”

“Six-year-olds can’t get sick?”

“Take her for the tests,” Goodman says. “I’ll find the money.”

“You
better
find the money.”

He understands it’s important for her to get the last word in. “Goodbye,” he says.

“Goodbye.”

“You got anythin’ else?” Robbie asks Russell.

“No, man, thas it.”

They had both nodded off, sitting in their corner of the rooftop overlooking 145th Street. Russell awoke first; it took Robbie another twenty minutes. Now, with nothing to keep them there, they stand up, stretch, and head for the stairs. At street level, Russell turns one way, Robbie the other.

“Later, man,” Robbie says.

“Later.”

As he heads back home, Russell reaches into his pocket and closes his fist around the second yellow cap, the one he’s held back from Robbie. The one to get him through the afternoon.

Goodman decides to let the matter of the spare tire take care of itself. He figures he’ll just leave the car right where it is tonight, parked just outside his room. Whoever’s looking for it will show up sometime during the night. Either they’ll break into the trunk and grab the spare or they’ll simply steal the whole car. In the morning, Goodman will find out which it was, then notify Avis one way or the other. Then, if they’ll let him use his Visa card again, he’ll rent another car and hit the road for New York. End of problem.

He turns the TV back on, hunts for a movie, and settles on a National Geographic special about a lone wolf migrating north, trying to find his way home. The wolf is hurt, and Goodman senses that it’s not going to make it, so eventually he flicks channels: He doesn’t want to see the wolf die.

He settles on a baseball game and watches for a full twenty minutes before realizing that it’s the World Series, the Yankees against the Atlanta Braves. He has no real interest in who wins or loses, and he knows almost none of the players’ names. But he somehow manages to get absorbed in the rhythm of the thing: three strikes per batter, three outs per side. It’s not like football or basketball or hockey, where everyone’s in a big rush against the clock. In baseball, you get your three strikes, you get your three outs, you get your nine innings; you can take as long as you need to do it.

After each half inning, there are commercials for cars and beer. Goodman particularly likes one that shows three frogs who learn to say “Budweiser.” He eats his second burrito; it’s cold, but he enjoys it anyway.

Sometime around ten, he falls asleep.

Raul Cuervas pushes his foot down harder on the gas pedal, watches the needle on the speedometer climb to eighty, eighty-three, eighty-five. He looks at the digital clock on the dashboard: 10:49. He knows the Avis counter at the airport shuts down at eleven. He knows he’s still fifteen miles away. He knows he’s not going to make it.

He knows he’s seriously fucked up.

He was supposed to pick up the car yesterday afternoon. But the night before, he’d gone drinking with Papo and Julio, matching shots of tequila at Fast Eddie’s. After half a dozen shots, Raul had been feeling no pain. There was this little
chiquita
kept looking his way, giving him the eye. Finally, he’d gone over to her. They’d talked a while, ended up at a room somewhere.

He swerves to avoid a slow-moving car, fishtails for a moment as he passes it, leaning on his horn. Fuckin’ old
maricóns,
he thinks, they oughta get ‘em all off the road, give ‘em a big mall to drive around in, like bumper cars.

He tries to remember fucking the
chiquita,
but he can’t. He can remember her tits, though. Stickin’ out real good, with these hard little nipples. . . .

He notices he’s having trouble keeping his speed up, with even more cars in his way as he gets closer to the airport. He’s doing no better than seventy-five, and it’s already 10:54.
Cocksucker!

He recalls waking up alone this afternoon in some strange motel room, his head throbbing, his wallet gone, not even knowing if he’d got laid or not. And the worst of it was that with his wallet gone, so was the license and credit card Mister Fuentes had given him to pick up the car with. Without which, he didn’t even know the fucking name of the guy he was supposed to be.

He comes up fast on a pickup truck with no taillights, seeing it at the last minute, swerving around it with his tires squealing. Another one for the fuckin’ mall. He’s down to sixty-five, sixty. Still five miles away, and already it’s 10:58.

It had taken him all evening to get ahold of Johnnie Delgado and get a duplicate license and credit card. Now he’s gonna get shut down at the counter and have to wait till tomorrow to pick up the car.
If
the car’s still there, that is. Mister Fuentes is gonna wanta fuckin’ tear Raul a new asshole when he hears about this. If he hasn’t heard already.

Goodman wakes at around eleven, sees the game is over, that it has been replaced by some postgame analysis show. They’re interviewing some player in his underwear.

He flicks the TV off, turns off the light, and rolls over. He’s amazed he was able to fall asleep, what with his back and the air conditioner being so loud. But within five minutes, he’s asleep again.

It’s five after eleven by the time Raul Cuervas pulls into the Fort Lauderdale Airport, almost quarter after by the time he enters the terminal and finds the Avis counter. It’s empty and dark. On the counter is a sign: CLOSED WILL REOPEN 7:00 A.M. WE TRY HARDER.

He’d like to take the sign and throw it through the fucking plate-glass window behind the counter, but he notices it’s chained to the counter. Figures somebody musta done that once already.

Raul’s afraid to go home. Johnnie Delgado or Mister Fuentes might be trying to reach him, and he doesn’t want to talk to them till he’s got the car. But there’s no fucking way he’s gonna sit in the fucking
airport
for eight hours. He decides to take a ride to Fast Eddie’s, see if he can’t find his little
chiquita,
break her fucking little neck for her.

Russell Bradford can’t sleep. He lies sweating on the sofa in the living room. The room itself is cold, but Russell knows his sweats have nothing to do with the weather. Russell is getting sick again, which means it’s time to go out once more.

Though it’s dark, Russell has no real idea what time it is. He guesses it’s around midnight, but it doesn’t really matter: Where he’s going, somebody’ll be working. It’s like that out there.

He pulls the same T-shirt back over his head, slips into the same pair of Nikes. Pulls on a hoodie and his denim jacket. Silently, he moves about the apartment until he finds what he’s looking for: his grandmother’s purse. She’s taken to hiding it on the top shelf of the closet by the front door. But Russell suspects she’s not really hiding it at all. Suspects she notices each time there’s money missing from it. Has even heard her arguing with his mother, saying she’d rather the boy take a few dollars from her than be out stealing. Russell is “the boy.”

From the light coming in the window, Russell can see Nana’s got three tens and some singles. He takes one of the tens, goes to replace the purse, thinks a minute. Takes another ten. Tiptoes out of the apartment, closing the door quietly behind him.

Goodman gradually becomes aware of daylight slanting through the slats of the Venetian blinds. His first thought is about his daughter, Kelly. He tells himself that her headaches may be nothing more than a child’s way of asking for attention following her mother’s death. It’s been awhile now, but he’s read somewhere that kids can have delayed reactions to these things. And because they find it hard to talk about their feelings, they start having nightmares, wetting the bed, developing stomach cramps and headaches. Makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. He’s pretty sure that’s all this is. He says a little prayer that he’s right.

He says little prayers like this from time to time, asking for things to happen or not happen, or giving thanks for things that have somehow managed to work out okay. He says them to nobody in particular. He hasn’t been inside a synagogue since he was married fifteen years ago, and doesn’t consider himself a religious man. But he continues to say his little prayers and thanksgivings anyway. And they seem to work for the most part, as long as he’s careful not to ask for too much, and remembers to give thanks when something works out.

His second waking thought is about the car. He can’t remember hearing any noises outside the door during the night. But that doesn’t mean much: He knows he was tired and that he probably slept pretty soundly. And with the air-conditioning running, he figures he could have missed a
plane
taking off from the parking lot, let alone a car.

His bet is that the car itself is gone. That certainly would be the easiest thing for the people to have done, to take the whole car, rather than to start messing around with breaking into the trunk and taking the chance of stealing the tire - something that would also be a lot harder to explain if they got caught at it.

He gets up slowly, testing his back. It’s sore, but not as bad as it was yesterday. The night’s sleep on the hard bed has done him some good. He walks to the window, separates two of the Venetian blind slats with his fingers, and looks out.

He sees the Camry, just as he left it.

As he showers, Goodman convinces himself that they must’ve stolen the tire out of the trunk after all. Figures whoever came looking for it must have come alone, and since the guy already had a car, he had no real choice - hard to drive two cars at once, after all. Goodman remembers years ago, trying to figure out just how you could manage to do that best - get two cars from point A to point B all by yourself. Would you drive one car a little ways, then walk back for the second one, pull it up to the first one? Maybe even leapfrog ahead a bit? Or were you better off driving the first car all the way to where you were heading, then walking back for the second one? He never could figure out which would work best.

He lathers his body for what he realizes is a very long time. Suppose, just suppose, the tire’s still in the trunk. What then?

He rinses the soap off his body. What then, he tells himself, is that he drives to police headquarters, lets his problem become their problem, No other choice, plain and simple.

He steps out of the shower, dries off, wraps a towel around his waist. He sits on the edge of the bed and dials the information operator. He succeeds in getting the nonemergency number for the Fort Lauderdale Municipal Police Department, and dials it.

“You have reached the main switchboard of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. Our telephone hours are 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. If your call is an emergency, dial nine-one-one.”

He looks at the clock: 6:51. More than two hours to kill. He shaves, taking as much time as he can. He dresses slowly, removing each tag and pulling each pin from his new JCPenney clothes. When he’s done, he stands in front of the mirror in stiffly creased dark blue jeans and a short-sleeved white dress shirt. He feels like a redneck.

Outside, he looks around before opening the trunk of the Camry, but there’s no one in sight. He unlocks the trunk, lifts the lid over the spare, finds it still nestled in its well. Closes it up.

He decides to leave the car there while he takes a walk to find some breakfast. He wonders if he’s giving them one last chance to come and make off with the car. No, he decides: It’s just a nice time of day to be out, before the sun heats things up too much.

Raul Cuervas is back at the Avis counter in the airport by 6:30. His skin is a bit paler than usual, his hair a bit more mussed. His mustache even seems to droop a little more. Raul has had less than two hours’ sleep during the night.

From the Avis counter, he’d gone back to Fast Eddie’s, but he hadn’t found the
chiquita
who’d ripped him off the night before. Instead, he’d spent three hours drinking Cuervo Gold and making frequent trips to the men’s room. Not to relieve himself, but to snort the better part of a gram of cocaine to stay awake.

From Fast Eddie’s, he’d gone to the Miramar Lounge, where he’d hung out to closing time. And from there to Rico’s, an after-hours spot in Miami. There, they’d let him lie down for a couple of hours in one of the upstairs rooms that on busy nights are reserved for the
putas
and their johns, $20 for thirty minutes, or until you come, whichever happens first. By 5:45, he was back on the road, determined to be the first customer on line at the Avis counter.

The rental agents show up around a quarter to seven, but they spend the next ten minutes setting things up and giggling like schoolchildren. It’s five of seven when he finally gets one of them to talk to him.

“My name is Velez,” he says, “Antonio Velez.” To prove his point, he displays the driver’s license Johnnie Delgado has supplied him with, the second one. “I was supposed to pick up a car the day before yesterday. I got delayed.”

“Let me see,” the woman says. She has reddish hair and big tits. She takes the license, reads from it as she punches his name into her computer.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Velez,” she says after a minute. “We had to cancel your reservation. You were more than twelve hours late.”

“
I
had a problem,” he explains.

“You should have phoned our 800 number,” she says. “Would you like me to see if we can find you another car?”

“Yes. No, I mean. I want the same car.”

“No problem. I can give you the same car. A Toyota Camry, right?”

“It’s gotta be
ezzackly
the same,” he says. “It’s gotta be the pink one.”

“Excuse me?”

“The car,” he says. “I need a pink one. I promised my little girl we’d rent a pink car.” He’s pleased with himself for his quick thinking. “See, it’s her birthday,” he adds.

The redhead plays with her computer some more. “I’ve got a pink Lincoln Town Car,” she says.

“Gotta be a pink Toyota Camry,” he says.

More playing with the computer. “I only show one of those,” she says. “And it’s already rented.”

Cuervas feels a knot in his stomach. “Who’d you rent it to?” he asks. “That was supposed to be
my
car.”

“I’m sorry,” she smiles. “We’re not allowed to give out that information.”

“When’s it due back?” he asks.

She smiles again.

“C’mon,” he pleads. “It’s my little girl’s
birthday.
I
promised.”

She punches some more keys on the computer, then looks around to make sure nobody’s listening. Like this is top-secret information, national security stuff.

“Noon.”

“Noon today?”

She nods.

“I gotta have it,” he says, feeling the knot in his stomach loosen up a bit.

“I can reserve it,” she says. “I’ll need a major credit card.”

He’s already handing her the card Johnnie Delgado gave him.

“Lissen,” he says while she punches numbers. “I’m gonna wait for it, okay? Case the guy brings it back early. You don’t see me, you page me, okay?” He extends his hand over the counter, showing just the corner of a $50 bill. She sees it, looks around again. Then she covers his hand with some papers while she takes the fifty from him.

“Don’t give my car away again,” he tells her.

“Don’t worry,” she says with a smile.

As soon as he gets his license and credit card back, Cuervas walks away from the counter. Too dangerous to wait there, he knows.

He steps outside and wanders around for a while until he finds the sign he’s looking for: AVIS RETURN RENTAL CARS HERE.

Goodman dawdles over breakfast at an imitation Dunkin’ Donuts place called The Duke of Donuts. Several times he looks at his watch, imagining that even as he’s eating his pancakes, thieves are breaking into the Camry back at the motel. It’s 7:50 by the time he finishes his second cup of coffee and pays his check - $6.50, with the tip.

He walks back slowly, pretending to enjoy the sights, hoping that by the time he gets to the motel, the car - and his problem - will be gone.

Finds it parked, exactly as before.

Inside his room, he packs his few new possessions into the two JCPenney duffel bags. His plan is to get to police headquarters as soon as they open up, tell them his story, let them take the spare tire and give him a receipt for it, drive to the airport to drop off the car, and rent another one if he can, one-way to New York.

He checks the rate schedule posted on the inside of the motel door, notes that checkout time is 11:00 a.m. Decides to hang on to the room key for a while, just in case he needs to stop back in the room later, like maybe to use the bathroom. He doesn’t mind using a public restroom for urinating, but when it comes to sitting down, he likes his privacy. And he figures even if he doesn’t come back, he can always drop the key in any mailbox, just like the writing on the green plastic tag tells him.

Even though he’s unsure of the way and drives extra slowly, Goodman arrives at police headquarters a full twenty-five minutes before nine. Finds a parking lot, but it’s reserved for municipal vehicles. A block and a half away, there’s another one, for visitors. He guesses he qualifies as a visitor. Pulls in at the sign marked entrance, finds a spot, shuts off the motor, and waits.

At the airport, Raul Cuervas waits, too. He’s positioned himself right outside the Avis drop-off area. He wants to be there when the clown who took his pink Toyota Camry brings it back. He wants to see the car at the earliest possible opportunity, make sure there’s nothing wrong with it. Maybe follow it through the drop-off process, slip a coupla bucks to the guy’s supposed to check it out, see that he’s good and quick about it.

He also wants to get a look at the driver. Just in case it turns out there’s a problem.

As he begins his wait, he lights a cigarette. He’ll go through a pack and a half before the morning’s over.

In his South Bronx apartment, Russell Bradford finally falls asleep. He’s been out most of the night, copping and smoking, copping and sniffing, hanging out on corners, on rooftops, in alleyways. It was already getting light when he sneaked back into the apartment. He thought he heard somebody saying something in one of the bedrooms. Probably his grandmother, Nana. She never seems to sleep. But she didn’t come out to the living room.

Spaced-out from the dope but still jumpy from the crack, Russell had lain on the couch for what seemed like a couple of hours. Then, just as he began to hear people waking up and moving about, he finally crashed. . . .

In the days that follow, Michael Goodman will try to reconstruct just what it was that went through his mind as he sat behind the wheel of the pink Camry in the visitors’ parking lot, waiting for the beginning of normal business hours to begin at the Fort Lauderdale Police Department headquarters. He will remember thinking about how hopelessly in debt he was, and how little money he had to his name. He will remember worrying about his daughter, shuddering to think what headaches could mean in a six-year-old, not daring to imagine how expensive the tests would be and how he would possibly figure out a way to pay for them.

He will recall that there had been no one thing in particular that he could put his finger on. It had just seemed at the time, as he had added things up, that everything seemed to be in the debit column and nothing in the asset column, with no prospects anywhere on the horizon. And he had suddenly felt terribly tired; and the old, seductive fantasy of falling asleep and never waking up again had entered his thoughts as he sat there. And the only thing that had finally brought him out of that was the realization that while that might be fine for
him,
it wasn’t going to do much for Kelly.

And he will remember that it was somewhere right about then that it had come to him: that he
did
have an asset after all; that there was indeed a prospect on the horizon. Not floating vaguely way out there somewhere, but sitting right under him, not five feet behind his butt!

He will recall looking at the clock on the dashboard, seeing that it was still ten minutes before nine, becoming acutely aware of the annoyance he felt at having had to call the police repeatedly, listen to their stupid recordings, drive to
them
(when by rights they should have dropped everything and come rushing over to
him),
and then wait on their bankers’ hours. He will remember sitting there behind the wheel of the Camry, feeling his annoyance begin to steam and simmer, until it reached the full boil of anger. Anger at the mechanical voices of the operators he’d had to listen to. Anger at the bureaucracy that forced him to respond to its stupid rules and adjust to its rigid schedule. Anger at the officials he’d be sure to encounter as soon as he walked inside and tried to explain his discovery of the contents of the spare tire.