by Jeff Johnson
I searched Riley’s body and found his phone, pocketed it. Then I turned to the projection screen and my heart went to ash. There was Hank, tied up and unconscious, the Dear John letter taped to his head. Riley had been following me again. The movie stopped and the room went black as Delia pulled the tape. I spun and looked, but she hadn’t seen it because she’d been fixated on the controls. She shone the light from her phone over the projector and then the light came back on. The screen was empty.
“Ambulance is on the way,” she said quietly. “Officer down, multiple shots fired.”
I grabbed her hand and we ran for it.
Delia’s car was parked three blocks down with a view of the Prius. We got in and she started the engine. The sirens were already coming in. Lots of them. I lit a cigarette and puffed. I was covered in blood and it wouldn’t light all the way. She watched, her white face spattered with red on one side, her eyes wide.
“I’ll call Gomez and have him meet us,” I said. “We have to go underground now until, until, I dunno.”
“Darby.” Delia blinked. “Darby. I’m pregnant.”
It was still raining at sunrise.
Gomez, Flaco, Chase, Santos, and Santiago stood in a loose circle around us. We were in the parking lot behind the old Tastee Freez on Powell. It had closed two years ago, and whatever kind of authentic bagel shop or artisan cheese joint was going in to replace it was behind schedule. Gomez handed me the keys to the little white minivan.
“Not much,” he apologized. “But it will get you there.”
“It isn’t raining in Ruidoso,” Flaco added. The old man looked older than ever, a scarecrow. He smiled, and even his gold teeth had lost their shine. He took his wallet out and opened it, took out all the bills. “Here. Gas money. Fifty-two bucks.”
“You guys don’t have to do this,” I said as I took it. Beside me, Delia nodded.
“There’s an APB out on us,” she said. “This makes you accessories.”
“We’re all accessories to all kinds of shit already,” Chase said. He gave her a hug and turned to me. “I got the shop for as long as it takes, homie.” He passed me a fold of bills. “Almost two hundred there. All I had on me when the call came in. I’ll find a way to get more to you. There’s always a way.”
We didn’t have any bags. Delia was wearing a change of clothes Santos had brought for her, the trashy duds of his latest new girlfriend, still asleep at his apartment. She would wake to find that her clothes had been stolen in the night, so another easy relationship ending easily for him. Santos was fine with it. I was wearing Chase’s yellow tracksuit. Our bloody clothes from the night had already been reduced to ashes.
“I’ll see you there in three days,” Santos said. “You got enough money to make it?”
“Almost three hundred dollars.” I nodded toward the van. “It only goes sixty, so maybe three tanks to get us there. Who has my cats?”
“I’m taking them,” Santiago said. “Your house is surrounded by police cars, Delia’s too. But I think I can get the cats once they’re taken to animal rescue.” The big man took his wallet out and gave me two hundred. “You got an even five bills now. Maybe stop and get some jeans and a T-shirt. I’ll give young Santos here as much as I can before he heads out. Won’t be much, I’m afraid. We all have to stay below the radar for a while.”
“Any word on Pressman?” Delia asked. Her face was scrubbed clean. In the rainy morning light, she looked like a porcelain doll before it got to the face paint part of the assembly line.
“Still in critical condition,” Santiago reported. “He’s in a coma. He makes it through surgery, it’s gonna be a long haul.”
If Pressman made it, we had a chance. If he didn’t, Delia and I were gone for good. I took a deep breath. All of them looked sad, even Chase. I didn’t know he could make his face do it. Delia put her arm through mine.
“I’m cold,” she said.
I shook hands with them, one by one, except for Santiago, who gave me a huge hug before he hugged Delia. While the Mexican Conan whispered to her, Santos and I conferred.
“You sure about this detour?” Santos seemed skeptical.
“Yeah, man. Gotta be done. Don’t forget the note. And don’t let her see you.”
Santos was taking a different route to Ruidoso, New Mexico, than we were. He was going to meet relatives he had never met before, a distant branch of the Familia who worked in immigration. But before he went, he had to drive to the Oregon coast, to a lonely hotel, to deliver flowers to the door of the only room with someone in it. The note read “Sorry.” Meeting Suzanne at the airport was out, but there was a chance that she’d go there looking for me. If she got it, it would be the last in a long string of notes I’d sent. A single word. It was all I could think of.
“Okay then.” Santos clapped me on the shoulder. “Okay.”
Delia got in the passenger side and I closed the door for her. I walked around and got in, started the engine, and without any final nods or tearful expressions, we left. Traffic was mercifully light, and we hit I-5 south without a hitch. Neither of us said anything when we passed the sign that told us we were leaving the City of Portland. To the south, the forest and condo theme gave way to farming and industry, so the view opened wide. Delia turned on the radio and flipped through the stations, then eventually turned it off.
“You sent a letter to Suzanne?”
“Kinda,” I replied. “I was supposed to meet her at the airport in about an hour. We were going to this hotel on the coast. That’s where I sent Santos.”
“I turned my phone off yesterday,” she said. “Someone kept calling and calling, had to be Hank. Different number, but no one else calls every two minutes. But I was trailing Dessel”—her voice caught—“and Pressman. Then I was hiding in that warehouse. Now my phone is in a trashcan. I never even got to say goodbye.”
Delia started crying then, at first the kind of sobs that happen when you’re trying to hold it in, then the kind that came when you stop trying and let it out. I waited through it until she was done. Then we were both quiet. About forty minutes later I saw a Starbucks sign, so we went through the drive-through. Delia got a decaf soy latte. I got two triple espressos and a chocolate chip cookie. Then we went to the edge of a parking lot and got out so I could smoke. No one was around for as far as I could see in any direction. The wind picked up. Once I’d fired up my smoke, I took a single puff and shot it off into the tall grass. Then we hugged each other.
“We’re gonna be okay, little woman,” I said. It came out confident, and I realized I believed it. Delia pulled back a little and looked up into my eyes.
“I wonder what kind of mother I’m gonna be,” she said. “Hiding out in a trailer in New Mexico.”
I kissed her on the forehead.
“A fuckin’ good one.”
She squeezed me. “You dumbass.”
I squeezed back.
“I guess Riley got his wish,” she murmured into my chest, “even if he didn’t get to see the final director’s cut.” She leaned back and searched my face. We’d thrown the tape in the river without watching the rest. The gun Delia shot Riley with was registered to her. She was wanted for a murder she actually committed. I smiled and brushed the tip of Delia’s nose with the tip of my index finger.
“He most certainly did not,” I said easily. “I get to be a daddy.”
Delia gave me a long look then. I didn’t flinch.
“We better get going,” she said finally, still staring into my eyes.
“I guess we better.”
As soon as were back on the freeway, she turned a little in her seat and regarded me.
“I always wanted to go on one of your road trips,” she said. “See the world through your Dollar Store sunglasses. Eat different tacos at new holes in the wall.”
“Dreams come real every day, baby. We cross the state line, well. I have a vision. Ross Dress for Less. Commando raid. I’ve been practicing. We go in, get new duds, pay,
and leave in less than four minutes. You up for it, pregnant lady?”
“Try me.” It came out fierce.
“Fuckin’ good. I don’t know how Santos charmed the dress off a bank teller, but that outfit of yours is—”
“Whatever, MC Hammer.”
“We have to get into character,” I continued. “Weirdos running from the law in other people’s clothes is too obvious. Tell you what. I’m going to be Dan Smathers. Hear me out! Smathers is a janitor, digs model airplane glue. Fly fishing. Big fan of Lonesome Dove, secretly enjoys watching Friends. Going to Vegas to, to, to—”
“To drop off his step sister Fanny Jean Olson. Fanny is going to a three-day seminar on dental hygienics. Smathers wants to play the nickel slots.”
“And?”
“Fanny dreams of becoming a baker. She’s especially into cake decoration. At night, she likes to lie on her kitchen table and use a squirt frosting thing to—”
“Fanny. Back to earth.”
“Fanny likes dogs, but she’d rather have a pony.”
“What’s she wear? What’s she charging into Ross to get?”
Delia considered.
“No-nonsense tight-in-the-butt blue jeans. Underwear, because I’m not wearing any, cowgirl boots if they’re less than thirty bucks, and a frumpy plaid shirt she can untuck and tie above the midriff for Karaoke Night down at the truck stop. Smathers?”
“Jeans. Long-sleeve phony Ross Polo shirt. Sandals. I already thought it out.”
“Sandals! No one’ll ever find us.”
We were both quiet again after that, lost in our dreams of tomorrow. I’d never been to Ruidoso. Neither had Delia. Flaco and Gomez said it was in the mountains, and they both went on and on about a Hungarian restaurant they liked. The trailer that waited for us was an Airstream, used from time to time to shelter small illegal migrant worker families shuttling up to the Willamette Valley for fruit-picking season. It had some land. It had a woodstove. Eventually, Delia cleared her throat and looked up from her still flat stomach.
“Darby, tell me a story. Tell me the story of the day you got to Portland. Broke and starving and running from the animals. Tell me what you did.”
She wanted to hear the story so she would have some idea what would happen when we got to Ruidoso. I flashed her a smile and hit the cruise control, settled back.
“That’s a good story, baby.” I searched for the feel behind the words and it came instantly. “I’d lost it all. The future was totally uncertain. I’d tried to find a life of some kind, but it was all fire and ashes and the law and a pack of monsters were right behind me.” I smiled at the open road. “But I was free, Delia. There was nothing weighing me down but the sky itself. And it was a good feeling. Clean and clear. I could breathe, and every drop of water was sweet as sugar.” I looked over at her. “You ready for the rest?”
“I already know how it goes. But tell me again anyway.”
Jeff Johnson is a writer, filmmaker, and tattoo artist living in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of a memoir, Tattoo Machine, and the novels Everything Under the Moon, Knottspeed, the Deadbomb Bingo Ray Books, the Darby Holland Crime Novel series, and numerous optioned screenplays.
