Tempted by Trouble (17 page)

Jackie watched me. “I’ve already seen it. I saw your body. Somebody beat you up real good.”

I nodded. “You undressed me and then we had sex.”

“Don’t joke with me. Not at a time like this.”

“Come get on the bed with me, Jackie. Maybe I can help calm you down.”

“You’re joking, right? Sammy died yesterday and you’re coming on to me?”

“I’m lightheaded and feeling good.”

“Don’t come on to me. Respect me.”

“Here’s your chance. I saw the way you looked at me when you were with Sammy.”

She walked away shaking her head.

I said, “I guess you’re sober.”

“Go to hell.”

“And I see you didn’t shoot the television.”

“Go straight to hell.”

My wallet, pocket watch, fedora, cuff links, change, and personal effects were on the dresser.

I said, “You went through my pants pockets.”

“I sure did. And I went through your car. You don’t have the money I loaned you.”

“I told you that.”

“You have bruises like you’ve been beaten in a hate crime. When did that happen?”

“No one asked you to undress me.”

“It had to happen between when we left the safe house and when I woke up in the car.”

“Shut your mouth for a while, Jackie.”

“You’re in bad shape, but we have to leave. You’ve been unconscious for over six hours.” She took a breath. “Get dressed. I can drive. We can make it as far as Fort Worth before we stop to rest. That’s another twelve hours from here. That’s as far as I’ll go. It’s time to get out of Arizona. But I’m going to catch a plane from Dallas to Atlanta. I’m not riding in an old car for two days. Not with you.”

“You’re suffering from a hangover.”

“Was. I’m fine now. And we need to leave this hotel and get out of Phoenix as soon as possible.”

Jackie dropped my wingtips at the side of the bed, then picked up my suit pants and threw them to me. After I pulled on my pants and shoes, she tossed me my white shirt. When I had pulled it on, she grabbed my coat and held it upside down. A bottle of pills fell out of the inside pocket. I wanted to stop her from picking up the pills, but I wasn’t in any shape to do much more than groan.

“Are you serious?” She read the label on the pills. “You were popping Vicodin and driving?”

“That’s not yours. Give me the medicine, Jackie.”

“You’re medicated? You’re driving and you’re high as a kite? That’s what has you dizzy. You could’ve friggin’ killed me, you moron. Vicodin is the devil’s medicine.”

“Just give me the damn bottle before I get up—”

“This isn’t your wife’s name. This is an L.A. prescription. With an L.A. address.”

“Hand it over, Jackie.”

“Abbey Rose? Who is Abbey Rose? What kind of last name is Brandstätter-Hess?”

I shook my head. “Nobody.”

“Were you in contact with someone in L.A.? Did you jeopardize the job in any way?”

“They were gunned down coming out of the damn bank, Jackie.”

“If I find out the Wells Fargo job was your fault, Dmytryk, I swear to God, I’ll come see you.”

I struggled to my feet and she threw the bottle and it hit me on my chin. It took me a moment but I bent over and picked up the bottle. Jackie went and stood in the window, arms folded, the stance of anger and irritation. She turned and headed for the door, grabbed her luggage, then looked back at me.

She said, “Your old car is leaving in fifteen minutes, whether you’re inside it or not. The rain is still coming down, but it’s going to get worse and there is going to be snow all across the South in the next few days, so we need to get to the other side of Dallas, at least to Fort Worth, before we’re trapped in ice. Fifteen minutes. Try me and see if I’m serious.”

“Jackie, I might owe you a lot of money, but be careful how you talk to me. Be careful.”

She snarled. “Fifteen minutes. Not one second longer.”

“If you drive off in my car, you better head to South America.”

“You should be dead, not Sammy.”

“Find a new song to sing because that one has gotten too much airplay.”

“Fort Worth is as far as I’ll go with you, you drugged-up, incompetent moron.”

“Well, if the courts have taken your kid, I’d guess they found you just as incompetent.”

She cursed me. I ignored her.

The door slammed behind her. Before she could walk away her cellular rang again. Jackie stopped where she was, right on the other side of the door, and answered. I thought it was Eddie Coyle calling her again, but her voice changed, switched from an unyielding tone that was both harsh and distended with anger and became the soft and tender tone of a mother who desperately missed her child.

We had that pain in common. She missed her child the way I missed my wife.

I looked across the room and focused on my fedora.

Jackie drove fourteen hours
and didn’t slow down until she made it to Fort Worth. By then it was three in the morning, and Dallas was less than an hour away, but she was exhausted. We saw a row of hotels from the interstate and Jackie exited and took to the edges of the city nicknamed both Cowtown and Where the West Begins. Driving a car that didn’t have cruise control took a lot more energy than people realized, but Jackie had pressed on through the darkness while I had done my best to sleep and stay comfortable in the backseat.

Fort Worth was quiet. Being on Vicodin made the world seem like heaven.

While I stood in the arctic wind and grabbed our luggage, she checked into a room at the Hyatt Place at Cityview, a well-lit area off I-20 that was filed with restaurants, hotels, and at least a hundred places to go shopping. The roads were clear at that time of the morning, but the temperature was right at twenty degrees and the wind made it feel like it was below zero, so the city was frozen.

The nerdy man working the front desk told us that a heavy snow-storm was scheduled to hit the Dallas/Fort Worth area in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The windows in all of the cars in the parking lot were frosted. Ice was forming on most of the bumpers. As soon as we walked inside the room, I found the thermostat and turned the heat up while Jackie turned the television on just in time to catch a recap of the local news. Her timing was either bad or it was perfect. The news reported that bank robberies were on the rise. There were a lot of John Dillingers, but the money they stole would never match the fortunes stolen by Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford, or Hopkins. The news held our attention when they reported the FBI had arrested a bank robber. She was a local mother of five kids who had robbed at least four banks while wielding a gun and wearing a hoodie.

I said, “The financial crisis pushed somebody’s mother over the edge.”

“And I’m right behind her.”

The next story was about a cross-dressing bank robber in Jennings, Missouri.

Jackie headed for the shower, shaking her head. “What is the world coming to?”

“Lots of competition out there. Lots of competition.”

“Kill that noise before I get my gun.”

I turned the television off and collapsed across the bed.

A lot of people had been pushed over the edge. Less than a month ago I’d gone to the funeral of Anthony Baldacci, a man I’d worked with when I was living in a white-collar world. He’d been out of work longer than he could bear. He’d tossed a rope over a beam in his basement, made a noose that fitted his neck, and stepped up on a wooden chair. People said that he had killed himself out of selfishness, but I know what it’s like to wake up every day to diminishing options, and I understood why he had made that terrible choice. He had lost his job and he had lost his self-worth. He killed himself because of his inability to regain his crown as the financial leader of his family. He’d lost his job and lost his place in the world and put a rope around his neck, kicked away a chair, danced his last dance, and went to meet Jesus.

I’d thought about doing that more than once.

But I’d like to think that I was stronger than my pain.

That’s what I thought about as Jackie showered.

I was glad that Cora and I didn’t have any kids.

Our obligations would have had a different weight if we had.

Knowing my wife loved me had kept me sane.

Still, I’d walked out of that funeral home sad, angry, and afraid.

We lived in tough times.

Those were the thoughts I had as I closed my eyes and drifted toward a thin, restless sleep. I was in too much pain and too anxious to fall into a deep slumber.

I woke up when Jackie crawled in the bed. I set free a grunt of pain, put my feet on the floor, then I staggered a foot or two before I headed for the sofa in the front part of the suite. Another grunt of pain came from me as I sat down and touched parts of my swollen face.

Jackie asked, “Are you okay?”

“Not really. My face. It’s still burning a little.”

“Burning?”

“From the car accident. The air bag.”

“I guess we’re both having skin issues.”

“I guess so.”

“What did you put on the burn?”

“Nothing yet. We’ve had bigger problems than burns on my face.”

Jackie eased back out of the bed and came over to me. She clicked on the lamp at the end of the sofa and sat next to me. She had on panties and a bra, nothing else.

“Why are you being nice to me?”

“I am concerned about something, Dmytryk.”

“It’s just me and you. You don’t have to keep saying my name.”

She said, “Abbey Rose Brandstätter-Hess.”

“So what?”

“Who is she? I want to know who she is.”

“Let it go, Jackie.”

“Maybe I’ll ask Bishop to find out.”

“Ask and you’ll lose the money I owe you. That will cost you every dime.”

Jackie smiled. “So, I’m sitting on top of a nerve.”

I returned the same falseness.

“You’re looking bad, Dmytryk.”

“Just when I thought I looked like a movie star.”

“With that busted nose, split lip, and chafed skin, you look like the bad guy in a horror film.” Jackie paused a moment. “You did pretty good with the gun. Nerves of steel.”

She was measuring me. She was trying to put two and two together.

I paused. “That was my first time being in that situation.”

“I thought everybody from Detroit had killed at least one person.”

“Not everyone. Just the politicians.”

“First kill and you didn’t throw up. Most people freak out or throw up after their first kill. But I almost forgot. You were with Eddie Coyle when he killed Joe.”

“Joe?”

“Joe Holden. The other wheelman. Guy from Nome, Alaska.”

“I didn’t get an introduction.”

“And Rebecca. That was Joe’s wife.”

“Bishop shot the woman. I never saw her face. But Bishop shot the woman.”

“You did good in L.A.”

“L.A. is behind us now.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“It’s done. So it’s behind us.”

“You shot that woman in the black BMW. You pulled the trigger, killed her as she sat in her SUV, and kept it moving. What was her name? Any idea?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t ask her name?”

“It wasn’t the time to sit down and sip tea and make small talk.” I took a breath and maintained eye contact with Jackie. “Everything went wrong back there. Now we’re back on track. I don’t look forward to having to do anything like that again.”

“Gunning somebody down is fun.”

“Not for me.”

She chuckled. “The man with big balls has no balls.”

“I have balls.”

“I bet you do. I bet you have real big balls.”

“Jackie.”

“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate. I’m . . . was used to joking like that with Sammy.”

“Understood.”

“So, the woman in the black BMW—”

“I killed the woman back in L.A. I killed her and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jackie backed down.

“Your face got it real bad.” She smiled a little. “Hold on for a second.”

She swayed across the room and reached inside her oversize purse, pulled something out, then sashayed back with a small tube of some sort of clear gel.

I asked, “What’s that?”

She sat next to me before she opened the container and put two fingers in, then Jackie rubbed her fingers across my cheeks.

She said, “Aloe vera. Should help with the burns.”

“Thanks.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

When she was finished, she went back to her side of the room and eased back in the bed.

I reclined on the sofa.

“Dmytryk.”

“Yeah.”

“The bed is big enough for both of us.”

“You sure?”

“Just stay on your side.” She moved to the far left side. “You’re in enough pain.”

I eased off the sofa and went to the right side of the bed. I took off my suit pants and shirt, felt my wounds, and wondered how much Jackie knew. I wondered if she was asking me about being an assassin because she knew what I had done. I pulled off my socks and slid underneath the covers.

Jackie was already in a deep sleep.

Not long after, I went to sleep too.

It had been six months since I was in the same bed with a woman.

My side of the bed was on the right. I moved close to the edge and went to sleep craving my wife. But when I woke up I was in the center of the bed, the way I had grown used to sleeping on my bed at home after Cora had left. I had cuddled next to Jackie, her warm body up against mine. My fingers traced her skin, then she captured my hand. I thought she was about to move my hand away, but she brought my hand up to her breast. I rubbed her nipples and squeezed her breast, then adjusted, found myself wanting to kiss her neck, her shoulders, and I did, I kissed her until she turned and kissed me back. She kissed me like I was her husband and I closed my eyes and kissed her like she was my wife. I rubbed her and kissed her and felt her and she kissed me and rubbed me and felt me.