The Smack Page 26

  “Check this out,” Tony said. He pointed to the gas icon on the dash, the one that looked like a pump. “See the arrow next to that? That’s what side you fill up on.”

  “No shit?” Diaz said.

  “No shit.”

  “I never noticed that before.”

  “I saw it on YouTube,” Tony said. “Now you’ll never be that fool pulling in and out at the gas station, trying to get it right.”

  When they got to Diaz’s dad’s house, the kid insisted on taking Diaz into the garage and showing him where the money had been hidden—on a shelf, behind some junk.

  “A good spot, right?” he said.

  Diaz was wondering who the fake cop had been who’d picked up the cash. It wasn’t Rowan, so how many other people were involved in the scam?

  “Is your dad home?” Tony said as they walked across the yard to the house.

  “He’s in Laughlin,” Diaz said. “He’s got a girlfriend there.”

  Tony kicked one of the newspapers lying on the porch. “My mom’s worried about him,” he said. “She thinks he drinks too much.”

  “He’s fine,” Diaz said. “He’s getting old, that’s all.”

  Tony had his duffel, and Diaz was carrying the bag containing the booze. Unlocking the front door took both hands, so he set the bag down. Tony rubbed the stump of his leg where it fit into the prosthesis.

  “That thing hurt?” Diaz asked him.

  “All the time,” Tony said.

  They stepped into the dining room, and Diaz turned on a light, a bare bulb on the ceiling.

  “Can you believe this?” Tony said, gesturing at the garbage piled everywhere. “I tripped out when I came to hide the money. Your mom used to vacuum every day. She’d make us take off our shoes before we came in.”

  “There’s cold beer in the fridge,” Diaz said. “Go get us a couple.”

  Tony looked for somewhere to put down his duffel, finally setting it on the back of the couch. He started for the kitchen but got distracted by an old computer on the dining-room table.

  “Hey,” he said. “This might actually be worth something. Dudes collect shit like this.” He moved on to a box of eight-track tapes, pulled one out and looked it over. “These, too,” he said. “Your old man’s gonna end up richer than both of us.”

  “Beer, beer, beer,” Diaz chanted, waving him on.

  Tony dropped the tape back into the box. When he reached the kitchen door, Diaz sprang across the dining room and shoved him the last few feet through it. The kid stumbled and almost fell.

  “What the fuck?” he said and squinted at something lying on the floor, struggled to make it out in the greasy darkness. It was a body. Diaz’s dad, facedown on the linoleum. Tony began to turn around, began to say something else, but Diaz had the .22 pointed at the back of his head. The first shot dropped him to his good knee, the second sprawled him on top of the corpse. Diaz was pretty certain he was dead but bent down and put one more round into him to make sure.

  27

  PETTY SLID THE BAG CONTAINING THE MONEY PULLED FROM THE lake into the locker with the other cash and paused for a second, just a second, to admire all of it, his big score. He then drove to the rental car office and turned in the Mazda. The risky business was completed, so he felt safe using his Benz again. The cabdriver who took him back to the motel had a thick Russian accent. He’d been in the United States for less than a year. Petty asked him how he liked it so far.

  “Work, sleep,” the driver said with a weary shrug. “Work, sleep.”

  Another epic sunset bloomed overhead, cold fire burning away the last of the chilly day. Tinafey scrambled off the bed when Petty came into the room and wrapped herself around him like he’d been gone for a month. He hugged her tightly and breathed in her scent: peach shampoo, coconut from the lotion she rubbed on herself after showering, and a hint of cannabis funk. The blend was still new to him, still turned him on.

  “Everything went okay?” she said.

  “Everything went fine,” he said.

  “You get away with it?”

  “I’m pretty sure I did.”

  “Thank God,” Tinafey said.

  She let Petty go and sat hard on the bed, put her face in her hands and breathed deeply. It took Petty a few seconds to figure out she was crying.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothin’,” she said. “It’s just my mind’s been racin’ for days.”

  Petty sat beside her. “It’s all over now,” he said. “You can relax.”

  “I guess I ain’t cut out for this shit.”

  “I’ll never put you through anything like it again.”

  “I mean it,” Tinafey said.

  Petty lifted his shirt to wipe the tears from her face. She slapped his hand away and used her own T-shirt.

  “I look a mess,” she said.

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “You look great.”

  “There you go, lyin’ again already.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Motherfuckin’ hustlers,” Tinafey said.

  While she was cleaning up in the bathroom, Petty called the hospital for an update on Sam. She’d been moved out of intensive care and was back in her room. Good news. Petty poured himself a Scotch.

  “Let’s go out tonight,” he said to Tinafey. “Celebrate.”

  Tinafey slinked out of the bathroom wearing only panties and a pushup bra. She paused, hands on cocked hips, so Petty could get a good look at her, then sashayed toward him with a naughty smile.

  “Celebrate?” she said. She grabbed his head and pulled it into her cleavage. “I’ll show you about celebratin’.”

  Petty was sitting on the bed. Tinafey pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him. With her hands on his shoulders, she ground her pelvis into his. His hard-on was trapped at a painful angle in his jeans.

  “I feel that,” she whispered in his ear.

  He reached down and undid his belt. Tinafey tugged at his zipper.

  “You want me to take these off you?” she said.

  “Yes, please,” Petty said.

  Working together, they got rid of the jeans and his shoes. Tinafey slipped off her panties and lay on top of him again. She reached down and grabbed his cock.

  “Can I ride this?” she said. “Can I buck on it awhile?”

  Petty nodded, and she guided him into her pussy.

  Full dark had settled by the time they collapsed, exhausted, onto the tangle of sheets. Their bodies cooled quickly, sweat chilling into icy webs on their backs and legs. Tinafey went from pushing Petty away, saying, “Leave me be; I’m burnin’ up,” to snuggling against him. He grabbed the blanket off the floor and spread it over the two of them. They lay there as long as they could, drowsing in a gentle eddy, until the cold forced them to get up and drove them to hot showers and warm clothes.

  Petty was shaving when Tinafey announced that she wanted to go bowling.

  “Bowling?” he said.

  “I’m real good,” Tinafey said.

  “You don’t want to go to a club? A movie?”

  “You scared of gettin’ whupped by a female?”

  “Don’t let your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash.”

  “Okay, now you done asked for it,” Tinafey said. “Get ready to lose some of them fat stacks you just hustled.”

  They stopped at the hospital first for a quick visit with Sam. She looked up from her chemistry book and smiled wanly when they walked into the room.

  “I can still read,” she said.

  “Were you worried about that?” Petty said.

  “I was worried about everything. Hi, Tinafey.”

  “Hey, girl,” Tinafey said. “You’re lookin’ good.”

  Sam touched the bandages wrapped around her head. “I look like Aladdin,” she said.

  She was pleasant but spacey, still a little out of it. Petty was just glad to see her awake again and talking.

  “Here’s something
else I can still do,” she said. She held up her hand and quickly touched each of her fingers to her thumb.

  “I ain’t even had surgery, and I still can’t do that,” Tinafey said.

  “How about this?” Sam said. “Pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time.”

  “Seriously, now,” Petty said. “Take it easy.”

  Sam made a face at him and proceeded to lightly tap her head while rubbing her stomach.

  “You’re gonna pop a stitch,” Petty said.

  “Come on, Tinafey,” Sam said.

  The two of them patted and rubbed and chanted in unison, “Here we go, here we go.” They started in on Petty, wanted him to try, too. He resisted briefly but then joined in, let them have their fun. They laughed so hard watching him try to keep up that an orderly gave them a dirty look around the door.

  The nearest bowling alley was in the complex of restaurants and bars next to Staples Center. It was a tourist trap with a kitschy space-age theme that charged seventy-five an hour for a lane and fifteen bucks for a Manhattan. A DJ played booming hip-hop, and the customers stacked two deep at the bar danced in place and mouthed the words to the songs.

  Half the lanes had been reserved for a Christmas party, and while Petty waited for the attendant to bring his and Tinafey’s shoes, he watched a guy dressed as Santa roll a strike. The crack and clatter of the pins made him flinch, and he felt a headache coming on.

  Tinafey, on the other hand, was enjoying herself immensely. She made a big production of choosing her ball, hefted three or four before settling on a bright orange one that blazed like a comet as it rolled down the blacklighted lane. She was as good as she had claimed to be. Her approach and delivery were smooth and graceful, arms and legs moving in perfect sync, and when she released the ball, her follow-through was perfect.

  Petty had never been any good at bowling, had never cared enough to get any good. His mom’s girlfriends bowled, slobs bowled, cops bowled. He rolled gutter ball after gutter ball, which delighted Tinafey.

  “You need them to put up the kiddie rails?” she said.

  He acted like he was interested when she gave him tips—kept his wrist straight as she instructed, took four steps to the foul line, aimed for the second arrow from the edge of the lane—but really he was counting the minutes until their time ran out. He threw one strike toward the end of their last game, sent the pins flying. Tinafey pointed at him with both index fingers, wiggled her butt, and sang along to the song blasting out of the speakers—“That’s the Way,” by KC and the Sunshine Band. Petty clasped his hands and shook them over his shoulders like an old-time boxer.

  “Sorry I wasn’t much of a challenge for you,” he said later, after they’d turned in their shoes and found an empty sofa in the bar.

  “Didn’t matter,” Tinafey said. “You wouldn’t put up any money anyway.”

  “I might have, but you blew it,” Petty said. “If you want to hustle someone, don’t show how good you are right off the bat. Lose a few games first.”

  “Shit, baby,” Tinafey said. “If I was lookin’ to hustle you, you’d have been hustled. Believe that.”

  A waitress came over, and they ordered wings and chili fries. Tinafey told Petty about how she got kicked off her high school bowling team for smoking weed.

  “And shopliftin’,” she said. “A pair of shoes I didn’t even need. And wouldn’t you know it? The team made the state championship that year. I coulda gone to Nashville, coulda stayed in a hotel, gotten a trophy. Instead I spent four weekends pickin’ up trash on the side of the highway.”

  “Fuck it,” Petty said. “I’ll buy you a trophy.”

  “Yeah?” Tinafey said. “And what else?”

  “Whatever you want. And we’re moving out of that shithole. They’ve got a Marriott right here. It’s close enough to the hospital.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then what what?”

  “What next?”

  “We wait and see what happens with Sam. We hope for good news.”

  “Ain’t gonna be nothin’ but good news from now on,” Tinafey said.

  “About time,” Petty said.

  “Good news, good luck, everything.”

  The DJ played the Jackson 5 version of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” Tinafey sang along for a while, then said, “I want a Christmas tree.”

  “Sure,” Petty said.

  “And I’m gonna get Sam one, too, a little one for her room.”

  The wings came, the fries, another round of drinks. Petty and Tinafey ate it all up. Petty began to worry about Sam again as they walked through the cavernous parking lot to the car, wondering what the doctors would find when they analyzed the tumor. He batted away the troubling thoughts, but they continued to buzz in the background during the drive back to the hotel.

  “What you thinkin’ about?” Tinafey said.

  “Nothing,” Petty said.

  “Nothin’,” Tinafey said, imitating him.

  “It’s been a long day,” Petty said. “I’m beat.”

  They pulled into the parking lot and lucked into a spot right under their room. Petty took Tinafey’s hand as they walked up the stairs. It was ice cold. He lifted it to his lips and blew warm breath on her fingers.

  Diaz had to piss, but now that the sun was up, he couldn’t duck behind the bus shelter to do it. There were people all over the street and cars everywhere, and the last thing he needed was to get popped for urinating in public. He reluctantly left the bench and hurried around the corner, where he found an alley, a narrow walkway between two tenements. He sidled into it and unbuttoned his jeans. Steam rose as he cut loose—the morning was that cold.

  He checked on the Mercedes when he returned to the bus stop, peered over the wall into the motel’s parking lot. Still there. And no activity in the vicinity of room 23. It was a couple minutes after eight. He’d been at the stop since one, came right back after taking care of Tony. After twenty-four hours without sleep, his eyeballs felt like they’d been rolled in sand. He wished he had a can of Red Bull or a few go pills to get his heart pumping.

  He sat on the bench and stared down at his shoes. He put his hand in his pocket and, for the hundredth time, hefted the .22. An old man and an old woman dressed for church sat next to him. The woman asked him in Spanish if this was the bus to Compton. Diaz said he didn’t know and pointed out a map posted on the wall of the shelter.

  The man walked to the map and squinted up at it. He traced the bus’s route with a finger and called to his wife, “This is it.”

  The woman was peeling an orange, dropping the peels to the ground. “Take this,” she said to the man and made him come over and get a piece of the fruit.

  By the time the bus arrived, ten people were waiting for it. Diaz moved away from the crowd in order to maintain a clear view of the motel. He stood against the parking-lot wall until the bus departed, then sat on the bench again.

  A pigeon swooped down on the orange peels. Diaz lifted his foot to scare it off but ended up letting it be so he had something to watch besides traffic. The bird had only one eye and couldn’t decide whether to keep it on Diaz or the peels. It was a nervous wreck, swiveling its head back and forth between them.

  The sound of a door opening turned Diaz around. His hand went to his gun when he saw Rowan. Easy, he said to himself. Easy. He adjusted his stance so that he wasn’t facing the motel, pretended to be looking in another direction. Rowan left room 23 and headed for the stairs. The dude was alone, meaning his girl was still inside. He jogged down the steps like a man in a hurry.

  Diaz’s plan had been to wait for Rowan to come outside and confront him in the parking lot, stick the gun in his ear and ask where the money was. He started toward him but then stopped, reconsidering. Say the dude had his own gun. Tony hadn’t mentioned one, but that didn’t mean anything. Or say he didn’t have a gun but fought back anyway. Every crackhead holed up in the motel would be watching, and one of them was bound to call 911.
<
br />   A better idea came to Diaz. He walked past the driveway and continued a short distance down the block, stopping in the shadow of a telephone pole. The Mercedes pulled out of the lot and turned right onto 7th. Diaz waited until the car was out of sight and returned to the motel.

  He prepared himself as he climbed the stairs, turned his blood into kerosene, his muscles into barbed wire. He knocked hard on the door to room 23, making it sound urgent, but the girl still took her time before calling out, “What do you want?”

  She had her eye to the peephole, Diaz knew. He imagined he could feel her heart pounding through the door.

  “You know a guy named Rowan?” he said. “Drives a silver Mercedes?”

  “Why?” the girl said.

  “Someone ran a light and T-boned his car,” Diaz said. “He’s hurt bad and asked me to come get you.”

  “Just now?” the girl said.

  “Barely a minute ago,” Diaz said. “It doesn’t look good.”

  He heard the girl scrabbling at the dead bolt, heard it pop, and waited, tensed, for the door to open. When it did, he slammed his shoulder into it, forcing his way into the room. The girl, startled, backpedaled until she tripped and fell onto the bed. Diaz kicked the door shut and held the gun high so the girl could see it.

  “Stay down,” he said.

  The girl was sitting on the edge of the mattress, feet on the floor, leaning back on her elbows. She had short hair and big tits and wore a Hard Rock Hollywood T-shirt and nothing else.

  “Don’t shoot me,” she said. “I’m not gonna do nothin’.” She sounded scared but nowhere near panicking.

  “Where’s my money?” Diaz said.

  “Your what?” the girl said.

  Diaz stepped to her and put the muzzle of the gun between her eyes. “We’re not gonna fuck around like that,” he said.

  The girl pointed with her chin at a small safe on the top shelf of the closet. “In there,” she said.

  “Open it,” Diaz said.

  The girl was going to say she didn’t know the combination, but after peering again down the barrel of the .22, she got up, walked over, and punched some numbers into the keypad. The safe blinked and beeped, and she opened the door and stepped aside.