Vanilla Ride (23 page)

Leonard wheeled us away from the lake, and Tonto, who was driving in front of us, pulled the van to the side of the road and parked. We pulled up beside him, real close, lowered the window on the girl’s side. Tonto lowered his window, said, “Now what?”

“I think we ought to think this over before we do anything,” Leonard said.

“What’s that mean?” Tonto asked.

Leonard looked back at me. I leaned forward in the seat and spoke loud enough for them to hear. “I’m with Leonard. I think now we’ve done the deed, we should regroup a little. Gonna hand these kids off, I want to make sure I’m not dropping them in the lion’s den. We maybe hole them up somewhere, then me and Leonard see how the lay of the land is, figure what to do next.”

“I’m just along for the ride,” Tonto said.

“Me too,” Jim Bob said.

“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s drive over to Shreveport, put the kids in a hotel, and we stay there with them. Maybe we’ll take a day or two and consider what we ought to do next.”

Leonard turned, looked at Tim in the backseat, then at Katie. “You’re not going to give us shit, are you?”

“I just want to go home,” she said. She turned and looked at Tim. “I just want to go home, baby.”

Tim reached over the seat and patted her shoulder. “I know. It was a dumb idea. I don’t know why I had to take the money. That was stupid.”

“Thing is,” Leonard said, “we want to make sure it’s okay you two go home, that you’re safe. So we’ll do it the way we’re talkin’ about, and we’ll use some of the money you stole to pay for it. We’ll tell the feds we had to use some to get the bulk of it back. Expenses. I think they’ll go for that.”

“Got a feeling,” I said, “Dixie Mafia might hold a grudge, we spend their money.”

“Not like we’re giving it back to them,” Leonard said. “Once we give it to the feds, we’re out of this deal and the organization is still out the money.”

“I don’t think we’ll be out of hot water that easy,” I said.

“Me neither,” Jim Bob said from across the way. “It’s not just about the money with these guys. For them, they get it back or they don’t, they aren’t going to like us much either way. Especially you guys. They know who you two are. Me and Tonto, maybe we can just go home, put our feet up.”

“But you won’t,” Leonard said.

“Of course not,” Jim Bob said. “Well, speaking for me, anyway.”

“My favor isn’t done till the job is done,” Tonto said. “And it’s not like I got kids waiting at the house. So count me in too.”

The Louisiana border wasn’t far, and neither was Shreveport, so that’s the way we went after we found a quiet place to switch license plates on the Escalade and the van again, doing it out in the rain.

I thought about what would happen if we were pulled over and for some reason a cop wanted to take a look and found the stuff under the flooring; the van was packed with enough weapons and license plates that the four of us could go up for about three thousand years wearing thumbscrews and without possibility of parole.

We drove into Louisiana, and not much longer after that, made Shreveport. Stopping at a filling station we got some gas, then we went to a nice hotel and spent some of the Dixie Mafia’s money to put us in a connecting room with the kids, and to put Jim Bob and Tonto in a room together.

We had our clothes in overnight bags that we had left in the van, and we carried those into the elevator, and the kids carried their two
suitcases, one of which, the girl’s, was on rollers. Leonard carried the heavy duffel bag of money over his shoulder. When we got to the room, which was on a high floor in the hotel, Leonard and I pulled off our slickers, and then the four of us took turns taking showers in the two bathrooms and dressing in clean clothes. The way the suite was set up, there was a bedroom on either end with a bathroom in it, and in the middle was a big room with a couch and television set and chairs, and there was a kitchenette. Through sliding doors was a covered deck surrounded by Plexiglas. It gave us a good view of the city and the casinos and hotels.

After looking at a menu, we ordered up some bowls of chili and a pot of coffee, which seemed like a pretty damn good idea after the cold and the rain, and we went out on the protected deck to sit at the table there while we waited. A short time later, a waiter arrived pushing a wheeled table and we had him take it out on the deck, where the four of us sat and ate and drank our coffee with very little to say.

The day was dark and the lights turning on inside and outside the hotels and casinos on the strip made everything look surreal and strange through the rain. As we sat and ate, and gathered our thoughts, and let the food seep into us and renew us, night dropped down over the city and the multicolored lights appeared brighter than before and almost Christmas-like through the deluge.

I guess we sat there for nearly a half hour before I felt like I was actually going to live. Still, my back hurt where I had been slammed into the wall, and my head hurt where the shelf had cracked me, and when I had taken a shower and looked in the mirror, I was no longer surprised at the way people had looked at me in the lobby, the way the little guy behind the hotel desk had stared at me. I thought it was the old rain slicker that smelled like fish, and that most certainly was part of it, but my face looked like it had been through a buzz saw. Leonard, being darker of skin, didn’t look so wounded if you didn’t look right at him, but by the time we finished our meal one of his eyes had swollen near shut, and he was starting to look like an ebony Cabbage Patch doll with an attitude. I had found some aspirin in my shaving kit and took four of them, shaved while I was in there, and it was a tender job. When I looked at my hand, I noticed it was trembling slightly. I managed to cut myself only a little, brushed my teeth and went out and got a look at everyone else.

Spruced up, Tim was a pretty good-looking kid, and Katie was the sort of girl that if she told you she was a model for a clean-cut catalog like JCPenney’s, you’d believe her. Even with her hair cut close like that, she was a knockout. Coltish in white shorts, with long legs and that long neck and a way of moving that made you wish you were young and single and cool and had a pocketful of money. Maybe enough to steal money and a car from your dad.

Out on the deck, I sat down and said, “We can tie you two up, or you can act like you got some sense and get a good night’s sleep. Thing is, you’ll be better off with us than out there on your own.”

“We’ll do what you say,” Katie said, and looked at Tim. He nodded.

“It’s for your own good,” I said. “We don’t want anything to happen to you. You’re kind of our calling card for better treatment concerning a problem we have. You and the money. Just listen to us and do what we say, and everything will be all right.”

“You won’t let anything happen to us?” Katie asked.

“No, we won’t.”

“You promise?” she said.

“Yep,” I said. “I promise.”

She looked at Leonard. He smiled. “When he promises, or I promise, baby girl, we’re promising together.”

The kids got one bedroom, and Leonard won the other due to a coin toss. I got the couch. It was a good way to make sure the kids didn’t get a wild hair up their asses and want to sneak out in the middle of the night. I doubted that would be the case, but insurance seemed like a good idea.

Leonard helped me move the couch close to the front door, which was the only way out of the room, and then I picked up the phone and called over to Jim Bob and Tonto’s room to see how they were doing. Jim Bob was watching TV and he said Tonto had gone over to one of the casinos.

We bantered a little, but neither of us was really up for it. After I hung up the phone, Leonard and I took some time to clean and oil the guns we had with a little kit I carried in my overnight bag.

After that, Leonard went to bed and I got a pillow and blanket and turned out the lights and lay on the couch and went to sleep immediately. It was a deep sleep, but there were bad things down there in the deep with me, and so I came awake about three a.m. I lay there for a while, then finally sat up, and saw that Tim was out on the deck, sitting at the table looking at all the lights, which were clearer now, because the rain had stopped at last.

Pulling on my pants, not bothering to turn on the light, I went out there barefoot, and when I pulled the sliding door back, he turned in a kind of panic.

“It’s me,” I said.

“I don’t know who I was expecting.”

“Probably the guy you saw killed today. I keep thinking he’s going to come back from the dead.”

“Tough guy like you thinks that, I don’t feel so bad.”

“Don’t fool yourself, kid. I’m not that tough.”

“You look tough.”

“I look tired, that’s what I look.”

I sat down at the table, and Tim said, “I couldn’t sleep. Katie, she can sleep anytime. No matter what’s happened, she can sleep. I wonder why that is?”

“I’m like you,” I said. “Brett, my girlfriend, she’s like Katie. We can have an argument, or something can go wrong that will stress me out and I won’t be able to sleep, but she can lay down and hibernate like a bear.”

Tim nodded. He said, “I really didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“You know what your father does for a living.”

“You know I do. For some time now.”

“You know he has people to answer to.”

“Sure. I just didn’t think it would amount to this. I thought they’d be mad and he’d be mad at me, and what I did was a kind of vengeance.”

“For the work he does?”

“It’s not work. It’s drugs and whores.”

“I agree with you. It’s not work and it’s not good. You should have just run off with the girl. That said, my bet is her parents are worried sick about her.”

“I’m sure they got the cops out after her,” he said.

“The cops, the FBI, and us.”

“What happens to the money?”

“The FBI gets it.”

“And what do they do with it?”

“Good question. Three hundred thousand dollars is lot to do with.”

“Three hundred thousand?” Tim said. “It’s more than that.”

I went into the living room with Tim trailing along behind me. I got the duffel bag with the money out of the closet and dragged it out and
opened it up and poured the money on the floor. It was a mixture of hundred-dollar bills and twenties, some tens and fives.

I said, “Get down on the floor there with me, and let’s count it.”

We did that, and when we had it counted and in stacks, I said, “Just short of five hundred thousand dollars. That the way you had it figured?”

“Sure. I’ve counted it a few times. It was five hundred thousand when we started. We been living on some of it.”

“But your dad is saying three hundred thousand is missing.”

Tim shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know either, but I tell you what. Let’s put it back in the bag and put it away and go to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll see if something comes to us.”

Lying on the couch I thought about the money, and I thought about what we had been asked to do, and I thought about Hirem. Something was niggling at the back of my mind, but I wasn’t able to grasp what it was. I’d feel as if I almost had hold of it, and then it would move away from my grasp. I fell asleep dreaming of Big Guy coming out of the water with most of his head missing, climbing into the boat and onto the platform and chasing Leonard and me along the lake shore, and when I’d look back at him, he’d be wearing that minnow bucket over his head.