Shoot the Woman First (20 page)

“Kevin had a brother in L.A.,” Cordell said. “We were going to lay back there afterward, figure out what to do next.”

“What happened?”

“When Kevin got shot, that changed everything. He's the one had it all set up. I didn't even know the man.”

“You're lucky,” Burke said. “Lucky it was me found you first, and not Marquis or Damien. If they'd caught up with you, they'd have killed you and your girlfriend both, just on general principles. You smoke?”

Cordell looked at him. Burke took the Newports from his coat pocket.

“Sometimes,” Cordell said.

“How about now?”

Cordell nodded.

“Lean forward. To your right.” Steering one-handed, Burke slipped the jacket off Cordell's shoulders, then took the scarab cutter from his coat pocket, opened it. “A little more.” Cordell hunched, and Burke fit the blade on the flexcuffs, sliced through.

“Move those arms around,” Burke said. “Get the circulation back.” He closed the cutter, put it away

Cordell brought his arms around front, rolled his shoulders.

“Sorry I had to do that,” Burke said. “But I couldn't take the risk, you know? Bad-ass like you, who knows what could have happened.”

He tossed the pack of Newports on the dash. Cordell rubbed his wrists, took the pack, and shook one out. Burke gave him his lighter.

“Couple things you need to face, Cordell. This big adventure you had, it's over. You're still alive, and you got your baby mama, or whatever she is, back there. You came out ahead. But that money you took, you can't keep it. You need to accept that.”

Cordell got the cigarette lit, coughed. Burke took his lighter back, dropped it in a pocket.

“Your buddy Kevin told me you walked out of that house with nearly two hundred K.”

Cordell shook his head. “Wasn't that much. Those other two got most of it.”

“Which two?”

“Woman and the white man.”

Burke took the folded papers from his pocket, smoothed them on his thigh, held them out. “Look at that photo. That him?”

Cordell took the papers, nodded. “He and the woman got away.”

“He didn't get far. One of you tagged him good. They found his body around the corner. Tell me more about the woman.” Trying to keep the kid calm, talking.

“Charlie brought her in.”

“That your cousin? One that got burned up in the house?”

“Yeah. He'd worked with her before. The white man, too. He knew her from way back.”

“What's her name?”

“They called her Crissa. Never heard a last name.”

“Where's she from?”

“Don't know.”

“Hard to believe, a woman running with a crew of hard-core stickup boys like that. She and Black come out here together?”

“I think. Yeah.”

Partners, then, Burke thought.

“So you took what, three twenty-five K, something like that, out of that drop car, right? Split it in half?”

Cordell nodded, drew in smoke, coughed again.

“And this Crissa got away with one-eighty of that?”

“Their split.”

“And you stashed the rest? Kevin didn't get a piece?”

“Wasn't time. He didn't seem too bad at first, he was walking around okay. Looked like it went right through. I patched him up best I could, but he kept getting worse. Couldn't bring him to no hospital.”

“You leave him that black tar?”

“Yeah, went out and copped it. Least I could do.” He looked at Burke. “He dead?”

Burke nodded. Cordell looked away, blinked. His eyes were shiny.

“Man up, son,” Burke said. “You wanted to play with the big dogs. This is no time to start acting like a bitch. This where we turn off?” A sign ahead said
SOUTHFIELD FREEWAY.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me something else,” Burke said. “About this Crissa.”

“What?”

“When things started to jump off back at the house, everybody shooting, she get hit?”

“I don't think so. She moved too fast. Shoulda had her right there, but she went out the window. Kevin tried to get her, but he's the one got shot instead. Bitch was fierce.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“What you mean?”

“You ever hear what they tell commandos, the antiterrorist teams, Navy SEALs? Kind that go into a situation, rescue hostages, blow the bad guys' shit up?”

Cordell shook his head.

“Thing is, in those terrorist groups, the women are the real hard cases. It's the same with gangbangers, right? You don't mess with the women.” He took the cigarettes from the dash, got one out, speared his lips, used his lighter. “So when they're training these counterterror teams, they tell them when they're going into a situation where there's multiple targets—men and women—you shoot the women first.”

“Why?”

He blew out smoke. “Because in a gang or a crew or whatever, a woman's got to be three times as tough, three times as committed, three times as hard-ass for the men to take her seriously. And a man'll naturally hesitate if he's pointing a gun at a woman. Long enough to get shot himself. That's why they tell them take out the women first, even the odds.”

“I never heard that.”

“It's true. That's what you should have done in that house. Would have saved you a lot of time and trouble. Look where you are now, because of her.”

“She fucked things up for sure.”

“No,
you
fucked things up. She was the professional, you two were the amateurs. This shit ain't a game. Not everyone's made for it.”

He followed Cordell's directions to where the freeway turned into Southfield Road. The storage facility was the only light on a dark block, a small city of low flat buildings. He slowed as they neared the entrance.

Cordell's cigarette was done. He powered down the passenger window, dropped the butt out.

“You know, I'm not like Marquis, or Damien,” Burke said. “I don't have anything against anybody. All I want is the jack.”

“Then what?”

“Then I'm going to haul ass out of this town. I've done some things you can't undo, you know? Time to start over somewhere. What you should be doing, too. How much you need?”

“What?”

“You've got to run. You understand that, right? You don't have a choice. If Damien catches up with you, he'll cut off those big balls of yours, feed them to you before he puts a bullet in your head. How much for you and Adrina, get out of Detroit, go somewhere he can't find you?”

Cordell looked at him, didn't answer.

“I've done some bad shit last couple days,” Burke said. “Things I'm not proud of. Don't want to do anymore if I can avoid it. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, a couple hours ago, all that money belonged to you. And now it doesn't. But you need to concentrate on tomorrow, not yesterday. Will twenty thousand do it?”

“You serious?”

“Why not? Twenty's better than nothing, right? Anyway, you earned it, all the shit you went through. And if there's as much as you say in there, there's plenty to go around.”

He pulled up to the gate, used the key card Cordell had given him. When the gate swung open, he drove through.

“Left here,” Cordell said. “It's down about halfway on the right.”

Burke drove slow, no other cars around. The units they were driving past now were all garage-size, the narrow streets brightly lit.

“That's it there,” Cordell said.

Burke pulled up, put his headlights on the orange metal door. It was padlocked to a small U-bolt in the concrete.

Burke switched off the headlights, killed the engine. He took the Browning from his coat pocket. “Any surprises in there and you'll go down first.”

“Won't be no surprises.”

“Good. Get your key.”

They got out of the car together. Cordell was moving slow. He undid the padlock, slipped it free of the bolt, pushed the door up on its rollers. Inside was a silver Lexus, parked nose first against the far wall.

“You first,” Burke said. He tossed his cigarette away.

Cordell went in, hit a wall switch. Fluorescent ceiling bulbs blinked on. Burke came in behind him, used his left hand to pull the door back down until it met the concrete lip of the entrance.

“It's in the trunk,” Cordell said.

Burke gestured with the Browning. “Open it.”

Cordell took out a key fob, pressed a button, and the trunk lid clicked, opened an inch. He raised it the rest of the way.

“Step back,” Burke said. “Go stand over there.”

He did as he was told. Burke looked in the trunk. Inside were two more black tac bags. He unzipped one, saw banded packs of cash jumbled together. In the second were handguns, extra magazines, and two Kevlar vests. He could see the parts of a disassembled AR-15.

“Start a war with this shit,” he said. “You people were prepared, give you that.” He put the Browning in his coat pocket, hauled out the bag with the money, propped it on the fender, tilted it to get a better look at the bills. “This the rest of it?”

“That's it.”

“No one else touched it?”

“No.”

“You didn't stash any someplace else, just in case?”

“Wasn't time.”

“So there should be about a hundred and fifty thousand in here, that what you're telling me?”

“'Bout that.” He was rubbing his wrists again.

“Pretty big score for a guy your age. And hell, you almost got away with it.” He dropped the bag on the floor. “Count that shit for me.”

Cordell pushed his glasses up on his nose, knelt, and opened the bag wider. He began to take out bound packs, set them on the concrete floor. Burke leaned back against the Lexus's fender, crossed his arms.

“Rough count's good enough,” he said. “Doesn't have to be to the dollar.”

Cordell nodded, counting out packs, lips moving silently.

“When you're done, don't forget to take out your twenty,” Burke said. “That's twenty. Not thirty, not forty. I'm watching you.”

Cordell moved stacks to one side, took more from the bag.

“Count it twice,” Burke said, “just to be sure,” then took the slapjack from his coat pocket, raised it high, and laid it across the back of Cordell's head. He grunted, fell forward across the money, and Burke leaned over, hit him again, then a third time.

He rolled him off the money, grabbed his belt, dragged him clear, turned him faceup. He was still breathing. Burke used the slapjack on him four more times. When he was done, there was blood on the leather. He wiped it on Cordell's T-shirt, then put the slapjack away.

The money went back into the tac bag. He zipped it up, then checked the rest of the car. There was blood on the passenger seat. That would be Ferron's. No other cash.

He went back to Cordell, wrestled him closer to the car, then gripped his belt, lifted. He got his head and shoulders inside the trunk, then raised his legs, tumbled him inside atop the other bag. His glasses were on the floor a few feet away. Burke threw them in after him, shut the lid.

Out of breath, he opened the gate, looked out on the street. Still empty. He stowed the tac bag in the Impala's trunk beside the other one, then switched off the lights inside the unit, rolled the door shut, and padlocked it again.

He used the key card at the gate, headed back toward the freeway. He lit another cigarette, threw the padlock key out the window. A mile later, he tossed the key card.

Time for a road trip, he thought. If it worked out, he'd come back here, get the rest of his money from the bank and what he'd hidden in the house. Then head out, someplace far away, worry about Marquis later. Or maybe pay a quick visit to Terry Street first, take out Marquis and his brother both, never have to worry about either of them again.

Time to finish this shit up, he thought, find the woman, find the money.

Just you and me now, honey, he thought. Let's see what you got.

 

NINETEEN

They'd been on the road more than an hour, Claudette in the backseat, Haley sleeping in her lap. Crissa looked at them in the rearview, said, “Are you awake?” They were on Interstate 95 now, heading north.

Claudette raised her head, blinked. She'd been drifting in and out of sleep the last twenty miles. “Yes.”

“How do you feel about what happened back there?”

“What do you mean?”

“We need to talk some things out, and we need to be on the same page with it.”

Haley shifted in her sleep.

“How much does he know about your sister?” Crissa said.

“Not much. Her name. Town she lives in. That's about it.”

“We need a plan, in case he comes looking for you.”

“He won't.”

“He might. So you have to plan as if he will. But you know what the biggest danger is?” She caught Claudette's eyes in the mirror.

“What?”

“You decide you miss him, try to go back.”

Claudette looked out the window. “I don't think I could do that. Not now. Not after today.”

“Good.”

“I feel bad for him, though.”

“Don't.”

“Sometimes you see things, know things,” Claudette said. “But you ignore them, hope they'll go away on their own, that things'll get better.”

“Sometimes they do. Mostly they don't.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, if Roy's smart, he's on his way to Alaska right now.”

“He can be,” Claudette said. “Sometimes.”

“What?”

“Smart.”

“Let's hope,” Crissa said.

*   *   *

It was just before 2:00
A.M.
when she steered the rental into the gravel driveway. It was lined with live oaks on one side. Spanish moss hung from the branches, gray and ghostly in the headlights.