Lola on Fire

by Rio Youers

  Brody closed his eyes. It felt like he was sliding down a steep embankment, grabbing at roots and rocks that appeared solid, only to have them come away in his hands.

  “My bases are covered,” Blair said. “But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Listen a sec.”

  “I don’t want to listen to you.”

  “I’ve got some good news, some bad news, and some real bad news.”

  Brody wanted to cut the call, but two of those words—“good” and “news”—sank their shiny hooks into him, dragged him along.

  “The good news,” Blair revealed, “is that the police are not looking for you. Well, not you specifically. My dad didn’t submit the surveillance footage as evidence. He removed the tape before the police arrived.”

  “Why?” Brody asked. This didn’t sound at all believable, but he stiffened attentively, like a starving fox that has caught the scent of food.

  “That leads me to the bad news,” Blair said, and sighed. “My dad has never been a huge admirer of our nation’s judicial system. I mean, sure, you can get the death penalty in South Carolina for murder, and our lawyers would push for that to happen. But you could live a long time before they stuck that needle into your arm. Shit, my dad would probably die before you, and what kind of justice is that?”

  Brody gritted his teeth. He knew where this was going.

  “He’s coming for you himself, Brody.” Her voice conveyed an uncharacteristic gravitas, as if she’d gone from strewing flowers to pounding nails. “He wants to take matters into his own very capable hands.”

  “Capable,” Brody repeated. Not really a word, more a vague grunt.

  “And so we come to the real bad news.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Brody said. “Your old man is a former Navy SEAL badass. He cracked skulls in the Middle East—put the bullet in Bin Laden.”

  “Hmm, he’s a badass, but he’s no hero.” A pause. Brody imagined her somewhere quiet, out of the way, while police and forensic units worked inside her house, snapping photographs, dusting for prints. “You never asked what my surname was—and to be fair, I’d have lied if you had. But I can tell you now: it’s Latzo. My father is Jimmy Latzo. Have you heard of him?”

  “No.” Brody pressed a hand to his forehead. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not exactly thinking straight right now.”

  “He’s . . . a man of influence.”

  “A mobster, you mean.”

  “He doesn’t like that word.” Blair made a tut-tut sound, as if Brody were four instead of twenty-four. “Google him. There’s a whole bunch of stuff online. Not all of it is true, of course. That whole thing about him tying some guy to the back of his Cadillac and driving him through town—heck, I don’t believe that.”

  “Jesus,” Brody said. His vision tripled again. He cranked the window and took a chestful of night air.

  “Feel kind of sick, huh?”

  “Oh Christ. What have you done to me?”

  “Aw, come on. I never asked you to rob that convenience store. You brought at least some of this on yourself.” She tutted again. “Bad Brody.”

  “You’re evil,” he whispered. “You’re the devil.”

  “I have my moments,” she said. “But anyhoo, back to the matter at hand: Believe all of what you read about my father, or none of it. I don’t care. But take it from someone who shares a house with him . . . he is one mean son of a buck. And he’s looking for you.”

  Brody’s vision had cleared, but it dipped and swayed. He tried to focus on a single point: the black and yellow Waffle House sign on Carnation Boulevard. It bent like a tree in a storm, leaving pretty streaks against the sky.

  Blair continued, “He knows what you look like, but he doesn’t know who you are—”

  “Yet.”

  “Right. But he’s already got people working on it. His top guys. It’ll likely take them a couple of days to track you down. No longer than a week. You should use this time to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not the devil you think I am.”

  He blinked hard. The Waffle House sign bent the other way.

  “Or maybe,” she said, “some part of me really did want to paint the town red with you. Either way, consider this a courtesy call. I don’t know, Bro, it kinda feels like the least I can do.”

  “You’re going to hell,” he said, and cracked a mad smile.

  “And talking of courtesies . . . this may seem trivial now, but I took the liberty of destroying your wallet. Soaked it in gasoline and set that sucker on fire. No chance it can be used as evidence, so you don’t have to worry about that little convenience store thing anymore.”

  “Oh,” Brody said. Should he be grateful for this? Maybe, but it felt a little like Blair had handed him a Kleenex to wipe his boogery nose, moments before blowing his brains out with a shotgun.

  “Run,” she said now, the pounding-nails tone back in her voice. “I’m serious, Brody, if my dad finds you, he’s going to hurt you in a hundred different ways. And then he’ll hurt you again.”

  “My sister,” Brody said weakly. More tears crept from his eyes.

  “If you’re lucky, he’ll kill you first.”

  “I hate you.”

  Silence between them. Ten seconds. No longer. The Waffle House sign bent all the way to the Waffle House parking lot, then snapped back, straight as a flagpole. The flash it left behind was breathtaking.

  “Beat feet, Bro. Out of town. Out of state.” Her voice was still remarkably controlled. “Nowhere is too far.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have to go. The police need to question me.”

  “Yeah,” he said again, but she’d already gone. He lowered the phone, looked at the screen. Call duration: 6:46. His eyes flicked to the cracked, faded dashboard and the cassette/CD player and the fat odometer, and he wondered how far this old shitbox could take him.

  * * *

  Molly tried to hold on but he broke away from her, not wanting to—needing to. He dropped to one knee, grabbed an old gym bag from beneath the bed, and placed it in Molly’s arms.

  “Pack anything you absolutely can’t do without,” he said. His voice was a little firmer now. “Leave the rest.”

  “Brody, what—”

  “We have to go. Tonight.”

  She stared at him. Her mouth formed a trembling, downturned line that had very little to do with her palsy. “What are we running from?”

  Not what—who. He had Googled “Jimmy Latzo” shortly after his call with Blair, when a fraction of his mind had returned and his hands had stopped shaking enough for him to punch the letters into his phone. He didn’t go deep, though. He couldn’t. Partly because time wasn’t on his side. Mostly because the first thing he read put him off digging any deeper.

  Blair had told him that not everything he read would be true, but the source—The Mighty Penn Online—appeared credible. There was a photo of Latzo, circa 2010. He was dressed like Gotti, had the same pompadour hairstyle, but terrible facial scarring. They looked like burn scars, Brody thought. The accompanying article reported that Latzo was being questioned by authorities in connection with the brutal murder of Art Binkle, a music industry executive from New York City. Binkle’s label, Purple Mule Records, had allegedly declined to sign Latzo’s nephew (not named), despite a generous monetary “contribution” from Uncle Jimmy. Soon thereafter, Binkle wrote an email to his close friends and business partners, saying that he feared for his life. He was found decapitated in his studio a week later, his severed head mounted on a turntable and spinning at 45 rpm.

  “I’ll tell you everything soon. I promise.” Brody kissed Molly on the cheek. “Please, sis. Pack as quickly as you can. We need to get out of here.”

  “Are we coming back?”

  “No.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “But . . .” Tears shone in her eyes. “I have work tomorrow.”

/>   “Not anymore.”

  He left her standing with the gym bag in her arms, and walked through to the living room. The football game was on commercial break. Tyrese was using that time to rifle through the bones in his bucket, looking for any pieces of deep-fried bird he might have missed. He didn’t know he had company until Brody said:

  “We’re out of here.”

  “Whu?” He had a bone in his mouth, too.

  “It’s what you wanted, right?” Brody’s hands were still shaking. He rammed them into his back pockets. “Well, you got it. We’re taillights.”

  Tyrese spat the bone from his mouth. “When?” He licked his lips and his fingers.

  “Tonight.”

  “Whoa, damn. Really?”

  “Really. We’re just throwing some shit together, then we’re out of your hair for good.”

  Tyrese considered this, then shrugged and shook his bucket. Bones rattled. He dug a greasy hand in and came up with half a thigh. “Where you going?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Shit, man. Just asking.”

  Brody took his hands from his pockets, folded his arms, shuffled his feet. “Sorry, T, it’s just . . .” He lowered his gaze. “We’re going to Maine. I have an aunt there who—”

  “You told me you don’t have no family.”

  “Right. And we don’t. She was a friend of my dad’s. A close friend. We just called her aunt, you know? Aunt . . .” His mind blanked. A name. A female name. Any female name. “. . . Cherry. Aunt Cherry.”

  “Cherry, huh?”

  “Cheryl, actually.” Brody wiped his eyes. They were still damp. “Anyway, she said we can crash with her for a while, and she knows a guy who can set me up with work. Basement conversions, I think.”

  Tyrese nodded, sucking meat through his teeth, wiping his fingers down the front of his sweatshirt. “Right on.”

  “So, yeah . . . our bus leaves at midnight.”

  “You ain’t driving?”

  “Shit, my car wouldn’t make it to Rock Hill, let alone Maine.” Brody pushed out a laugh. His chest hurt. “I sold the car. Got two hundred bucks for it. The buyer’s picking it up outside Rebel Point Central.”

  The commercial break ended. Joe Buck’s voice welcomed viewers back to the game. Tyrese turned up the volume. “Okay, brother. Sure.” He flapped a hand in Brody’s direction. “Take her easy, man.”

  Fuck you, Brody thought. He returned to the bedroom. Molly packed silently and wouldn’t look at him. He dragged a second gym bag from beneath his own bed and started throwing stuff in. Underwear, a pair of jeans, a few tees and sweatshirts. His dad’s leather jacket wouldn’t fit in the bag, but he refused to leave it behind and so put it on. It was too large for him; his dad had been bigger, even as a younger man.

  Brody pulled the curtain for privacy, lifted the loose floorboard at the back of his closet. The last things he packed were the replica handgun and the fat bag of cash that had gotten him into this mess.

  “You ready, Moll?”

  “Nearly,” she said coldly.

  They were on the road fifteen minutes later.

  * * *

  They drove southwest, away from Blair and her mobster daddy (and in the opposite direction from Maine and their fictitious Aunt Cherry). Molly didn’t ask any questions, and for that Brody was grateful. She took her medication and eventually drifted off to sleep. By midnight they had passed over the Tugaloo River into Georgia, the first of many state lines Brody hoped to cross within the next few days.

  He fueled up west of Gainesville, wondering wryly which would last longer, the car or the tank of gas. They rumbled through the suburbs of Atlanta an hour or so later. The engine groaned and clattered but the car kept running. Brody angled the rearview so he didn’t have to look at the shocked, unhappy man staring back at him. He focused on the road ahead, locked to the speed limit. He wanted to make the Alabama state line before stopping for the night.

  Molly slept, occasionally half waking to stretch and knead the stiffness out of her legs.

  * * *

  Stardust Motel. Mallory, Alabama. Sixty rooms off a litter-strewn parking lot, this populated by aging pickup trucks and cars with expired inspection stickers. The rooms were off-white boxes with insincere splashes of color: fire-orange blankets on the beds; a russet carpet; paintings of birds. It was no different from the Motel 15 chain dotted across South Carolina, or the thousands of other motels across the Lower 48. The disadvantages with places like this—quite aside from the lack of comfort—were the vomit and/or piss in the stairwells, the junkies that oftentimes loitered in their doorways, the stained towels and sheets. The (only) advantages were the price and the fact that all they required was cash up front. No ID. No credit card.

  “What are we doing here, Brody?”

  “I messed up, sis.” Brody ran his thumb over a cigarette burn on the nightstand. “I don’t know if there’s a way out of this, but if there is, I’ll find it.”

  Brody’s phone had switched over to central time. Two-ten a.m. They ate corned beef subs and Twinkies that Brody had bought at the gas station. He slept afterward, but woke early from a shocking nightmare. No chance of getting back to sleep, so he showered, then sat at the window and watched daylight spill across the parking lot and Interstate 20 beyond.

  They were 220 miles from Rebel Point but he didn’t feel safe.

  * * *

  The TV was small, Clinton-era, bolted to the wall. Brody flicked through the news channels, but there was no mention of Jimmy Latzo’s murdered wife. The stations were out of Alabama and Georgia, though. Perhaps they weren’t interested in out-of-state news. Or perhaps—and Brody prayed this was the case—Latzo’s infamy wasn’t as far-reaching as Blair had led him to believe.

  He checked South Carolina’s WIS and Live 5 websites on his phone, scrolled through several pages, but found nothing. Now Brody wondered if Latzo had used his influence to keep his wife’s murder out of the press—at least until the guilty party had been tracked down. Bad for business, maybe.

  Molly woke up at 7:37 with a numbness in her left hip and her leg shrieking in pain. Brody gave her two Motrin and helped her with some basic range-of-motion exercises. She swore at Brody throughout—told him she couldn’t do this, she was going home.

  “We don’t have a home,” Brody said.

  Once the pain had faded and most of the feeling had returned, Brody helped Molly into the shower. He held one hand behind the curtain while she washed herself with the other. After she’d toweled off, Brody gestured at her cell phone, placed on the nightstand between the two beds.

  “You can’t tell your friends,” he said, “where we are, or where we’ve been. No texts. No photographs. Okay?”

  Molly nodded.

  “If they ask—if anybody asks—tell them you’ve gone to live with your Aunt Cherry in Maine. Your brother got a job opportunity. Too good to pass up.”

  Tears filled her eyes. She dropped onto the bed and wept silently. Brody gave her a minute. When he tried to hug her, she pushed him away.

  “I don’t understand,” she said irritably, “why we can’t go to the police. They can help us. Protect us.”

  “Not an option.”

  “Why? Is that who you’re running from?”

  “No. Not exactly.” Bitterness swished through his stomach, as brown as the nicotine stains on the ceiling. “I’m going to tell you everything, Moll. But first we need distance, then I have to figure out what we’re up against.”

  She gave him a look, as if the room she had in her heart for him were diminishing. “I miss Dad.” She wiped her eyes on the bedsheet. “He’d know what to do.”

  Yeah, good old Dad. But let’s not forget that he started this shitball rolling when he killed himself. Brody pushed his hands through his hair, clenched them behind his head.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to be at least two states west of here before the sun goes down.”

  * * *

  They we
re midway across Mississippi when Jimmy’s men caught up to them.

  Chapter Six

  The car gave up on the outskirts of Bayonet. It spluttered and lurched, gradually losing speed, until it surrendered with a disagreeable cough on the shoulder of Route 82.

  “What now?” Molly asked.

  Brody struck the wheel. His only plan had been to put at least a thousand miles between them and Jimmy Latzo. He’d been considering Oklahoma. A small town in the Panhandle, perhaps, where they could catch their breaths and contemplate their next move. Maybe they’d assume aliases and stay awhile. Brody could find work under the table—hang at the corner of a Home Depot until some contractor picked him up for eight bucks an hour.

  But could they do that here, in Bayonet? the shining light of mississippi, according to the sign at the edge of town, but also famous for the Byrnes Theater Massacre. It seemed an ominous place to hang their hats. Moreover, they were only five hundred miles from Rebel Point.

  Not far enough.

  “Talk to me, Brody.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  Two choices: ride the Greyhound, or repair the car. The former was appealing; they could sit back, talk things through, maybe sleep awhile. Brody was reluctant to give up the car, though. It was chewed by rust and breathing its last, but they might have to live in it, at some point.

  He flipped a coin in his mind. It came down tails.

  “Brody?”

  “We get a tow to the nearest garage.” He fished his phone from the console in the dash. “See how much it’ll cost to get this shitbox back on the road.”

  * * *

  The tow set him back $110—a sixty-dollar hookup fee, then another fifty bucks to pull his car three miles to Kane Bros. Auto. Brody was certain he’d been stiffed, but the tow-truck driver had an air of misery about him, so he elected not to contest.

  The brothers Kane weren’t much cheerier. Silas and Mort, whippet-thin twins with black greasy hands extending from the sleeves of their coveralls, their Adam’s apples as stark as elbows.