The Movie Makers

by Gary Phillips

  She turned her head and saw a maroon station wagon barreling toward her.

  Her confused brain burned two precious seconds wondering if the car was an illusion (the “drug talking,” as the characters in novels always put it) and she was “tripping out” or whatever. Her hammering heart said no, she was a real person on a real road with a real mom-mobile about to squish her flat.

  She thrashed, and her body flopped across the yellow line as the honking station wagon screeched to a stop three feet away. The driver’s door opened, and a middle-aged lady with a pinched face burst out. Through the windshield Fiona saw a young kid staring at her slack-jawed, shocked. You and me both, she wanted to tell him. You and me both.

  When she got back, she planned on murdering August in as painful a way as possible. Dunking him in a piranha tank seemed like just the thing. Or skewering him with a red-hot poker.

  The lady yelled: “Are you okay?”

  Fiona opened her mouth to speak and emitted only the softest of gurgles.

  “Oh my God,” the lady continued. “Are you on drugs?”

  Fiona grunted like a bullfrog. Her legs and arms refused to peel from the pavement, no matter how hard she tensed her muscles. The lady hovered over her, and Fiona’s roving eyes settled on something that sent a shivery bolt of fear through her gut: the station wagon’s license plate.

  It read: Delaware.

  And Fiona had popped that pill in the great state of New Jersey.

  Fear dumped enough adrenaline into her bloodstream to reactivate her knees. She stood on quaking legs, brushing away the lady’s hand. Another car hummed to a stop behind the station wagon. Fiona could see something bulky on its roof, like a ski rack.

  No, those were bubble lights, because it was a friggin’ police car.

  Well, today was going nowhere but up.

  “This girl’s on drugs,” the lady yelled at the bored cop with a porn-star moustache who climbed out of the cruiser, his hand on his service pistol. As he hip-strutted toward them, Fiona pictured her parents’ faces hard with disappointment, the school principal wagging a finger in her face, her science-club friends whispering behind her back. No top school would accept a girl with an arrest record. And getting a good job? Forget about it.

  August had set her whole life on fire.

  “What’s your name, girl?” the cop asked, halting five feet away.

  Keep up the zombie act, Fiona told herself. Make them think you’re not a threat. Letting her chin droop to her collar, she shuffled a few steps to the left, trying to clear a little space between her and the adults.

  “Kids these days,” the lady continued. “I mean, it’s not like we didn’t have controlled substances in our day, officer, but from what I hear they’re getting into now…”

  The cop swiveled toward Mom of the Year, to better absorb her nuanced assessment of the nation’s drug problem, and Fiona saw her chance. She sprinted for the cruiser, the cop shouting at her to stop, reaching for her—too late. She slammed the door and locked it before he could grab the handle. The keys were in the ignition, thank God.

  As the cop pulled his baton from his belt, readying to smash the window, Fiona keyed the engine to life and pushed the column-shift and hit the gas, barreling down the road in reverse. The cop’s baton smacked the hood as she passed. She giggled. It was like something out of a movie.

  Now to deal with the problem at hand: escaping. She was tall for her age and had no problem seeing through the windshield. Her lifetime experience behind the wheel amounted to driving a pickup on the backroads of her cousin’s farm, but she had watched enough action movies over the years to absorb how stuntmen executed a turnaround at speed, and it seemed simple enough. A hundred yards down the road, she stood on the brakes and spun the wheel, the view out the windows blurring, the cruiser tilting hard as it skidded onto the shoulder. Her heart froze. You’ve lost it, you idiot. You’re going to crash.

  But the cruiser bounced back to pavement, facing in the right direction. In the rearview mirror, the shrinking cop yelled into the radio on his shoulder, no doubt calling backup. Beside him, Mother of the Year clutched her jaw, swaying from foot to foot.

  At least he didn’t shoot at me, Fiona thought. The only thing worse than getting kicked out of school for drugs is a bullet to the head.

  She accelerated to ninety, trying to put as much distance as possible between her and…what? They would scramble a fleet of cop cars to hunt her down, from all directions. Helicopters overhead, armed with snipers and spotlights, as the radio waves crackled with her name and description. So long as she stayed in this vehicle, nowhere was safe. You need a big parking lot. Like a mall or something. Dump the vehicle, call your father, and hide. At least you feel fine. Imagine if that pill had messed up your ability to walk.

  Even as her brain puzzled over logistics, she found herself laughing uncontrollably. This was fun.

  Three miles later, the road widened into four lanes, and the forest on either side of the road gave way to endless concrete: a sea of parking lots around the glittering island of a mega-mall. Some Dark God was protecting her. She steered the cruiser into the first open space she saw, locked it, and ran toward the mall, avoiding the front doors in favor of the loading docks in the rear.

  Her joy at finding an ancient payphone on the mall’s third floor curdled when she tapped her hip and realized, for the first time since waking up on the road, that her cute Paul Frank monkey wallet was missing. Had that little shit August taken it?

  Across from the payphone was an Irish pub, packed with hungry shoppers. Through the windows, she saw a family stand to leave, the father dropping a few bills and quarters in tip money on the table. Guilt squeezed her throat as she entered the pub and scooped up the change, ducking out the door before a waiter noticed. How long until the cops swept through the mall, on the hunt for a teenage carjacker?

  “Get in the ladies’ room,” her father told her over the phone, once she explained everything that had happened. “In a stall. Wait. Don’t leave for anybody or anything. I’ll get there in exactly three hours from this moment, after it’s dark. What’s the back of the mall like?”

  She wiped a tear from her cheek. “Like you’d expect. There’s like the place where trucks come in, some dumpsters, stuff like that.”

  “I’ll be by the dumpsters. You know the car.”

  “Okay, Daddy. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just get through it.”

  Her father was waiting where he promised. He still had his work beard, which made him look a bit like a young Fidel Castro. I guess it helps him blend in, Fiona thought. Wherever he’s been going lately, it gives him a serious suntan. His sleeves had slid away from his wrists, revealing small cuts and a few nasty bruises.

  When she slid into the front seat, he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. She opened the rear door, and he said: “No. The trunk.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “I’m sorry about what happened, but that’s a pretty messed-up punishment.”

  “How else am I getting you past any cops?” he said.

  But there were no checkpoints. Cocooned in the warm darkness of the trunk, Fiona contemplated her wild day. Sure, it was a rush to score a hundred-ten on a test (she always went for the extra credit) or show off her math skills in front of the class, but that was nothing compared to the high-octane thrill of ripping off a police cruiser and taking it on a high-speed chase. The fear just added to the excitement. For the first time in her life, She wondered: who am I really?

  Once they crossed into New Jersey, her father pulled the car onto the side of the road and let her out so she could ride in front. They sat in silence for the next fifty miles, Fiona chewing her nails and doing her best not stare at her father too closely.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he asked: “So what happened?”

  “A boy at school gave me a pill. I’m sorry I took it. I was stupid.”

  “You
were curious.” He smiled. “It’s one of the best things about you. But you can’t take a teenage boy at his word.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I’m sure you’ll never do it again. Did the cops identify you?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t tell them my name. Didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Good. And I bet they’ll want to cover all this up. It doesn’t reflect well on a department when a kid steals an officer’s car. I’ll make some calls, see if anyone’s making an issue of it. If they are, well, someone down the line probably owes me a favor.”

  “Thank you.” Relief swept through her like a warm wave. She added the mileage from the highway signs and figured her body had traveled some hundred-fifty miles south while her mind orbited Mars. At least she had done it (somehow) in a single afternoon; she could plead illness at school tomorrow. Her mother, working yet another epic shift at the hospital, would have no idea what happened, provided her father kept his mouth shut.

  Fiona suspected he would. Her father never liked starting drama, and things had been powder-keg tense for a long time between her parents.

  Her father’s next question snapped her back to reality: “What was the boy’s name?”

  “August.”

  “What are you going to do to August?”

  She lashed out a foot. “Hit him in the balls.”

  Her father shook his head. “No, sweetie, that’s not good enough. You need to punch him in the face, not just once but repeatedly. You need to break his nose. Understand?”

  “I don’t want to hurt him for life. Or disfigure him.”

  “You’re such a kind soul, hon.” He squeezed her shoulder. “But if you break his nose, you’re doing him a favor. For the rest of his life, every time he looks in the mirror, he’ll remember what happened. The consequences of doing bad. So maybe the next time he wants to push drugs on someone, he’ll think better of it.”

  It made sense. August might have killed her with that pill. If he did the same thing to someone else, and they died, how could she live with herself?

  “In fact, when we get home, I have a gift for you.” Her father smiled. “Something that might help you out with your friend.”

  The gift was a pair of brass knuckles. Her father taught her how to hit with the added weight on her hand, using one of his worn-out punching bags in the garage. He demonstrated proper technique with his own steel knuckle-dusters, which had a little spike on the pinkie edge (“It’s for opening beer bottles,” he joked). They had a weekend of real father-daughter bonding before he had to leave again.

  The next time August saw her behind the shed, between fourth period and lunch, his eyes sparkled with relief. “Thank God,” he cried, arms spreading wide for the hug. “I don’t know why the hell you wandered off like that…”

  She hit him hard in the face, twisting her hips like her father taught her. The brass knuckles crunched the delicate bones around his nose, and blood flew. She let him fall to his knees without punching him again; her father might have advocated crippling someone who crossed you, but Fiona figured she would show August a little mercy. After all, he had given her the most exciting afternoon of her teenage life.

  “Why did you do that?” August blubbered through his bloody hands. “You’re nice.”

  “You have no idea who I am,” Fiona said, wiping the brass knuckles on her jeans. She didn’t know who she was, either; not really. But she intended to find out.

  This Past Monday

  1.

  They were halfway to the airport when the big black car tried to kill them.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Fiona saw it swerving across three lanes of highway, its fender aimed at their cab’s rear panel. Classic pursuit intervention technique, beloved by cops the world over. No time to scream. She had her seatbelt buckled, as she always did in cars. She grabbed Bill by the shoulder, pulling him toward her, her arms cradling his neck and head.

  Their cabbie never saw it coming. He was too busy talking about making a fortune in real estate, through some scheme involving credit cards and home equity loans. Fiona loved how everyone in New York had a hustle. The cabbie’s last words (“I’m paying the mortgage, double-time, okay?”) were interrupted by the mighty crunch of steel on steel, and his head smacked the scratched plastic partition between the front and back seats, painting it red, as the cab flipped onto its side.

  Bill’s heavy body crashed into Fiona, blasting the air out her lungs. Her face pressed against the cracked window, gravel on the other side—they had stopped on the shoulder. She smelled gas and scorched rubber, felt a slick warmth on her back. She was cut, but how bad?

  “Haven’t we suffered enough?” Bill braced his feet against the partition, levering his body away from her.

  Wincing at the ache in her ribs, Fiona unbuckled her seatbelt and twisted around until her legs were under her, feet flat on the window. She stood, pressed tight against Bill, their heads a few inches below the door that had become their ceiling. She reached behind her back and felt the source of the blood trickling into her waistband: a clean laceration to the right of her spine, long but not deep. Her shirt would staunch the bleeding until she could slap a bandage on it. Hopefully.

  Stuffing a hand through the broken cash hole in the partition, Bill stabbed two fingers into the driver’s bloody neck. “I think this dude died, dear.”

  “Losing half your skull tends to do that.” Fiona drew her pistol and checked that the safety was on. “Cover your eyes.”

  Bill did as he was told. Gritting her teeth, Fiona reversed the pistol in her grip and smashed it against the window one, two, three times until it shattered into a gummy mess, each blow sending fresh pain down her arm. Using the pistol-barrel as a rake, she swept the broken glass from the window-frame, then poked her head into the open air. Nobody took a shot at her. Traffic along the highway had already slowed, dozens of faces gawping at her through windshields.

  The black car was nowhere in sight.

  That was weird. What kind of professional didn’t confirm the kill?

  “Get the bag,” she said, pushing through the window. Her every joint and tendon begged for mercy: too many weeks on the road, too many fights, too many tumbles and punches and falls. The cab rocked under her weight, threatening to tip over. She stood, arms out, surfing it as she sought a good place to jump.

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Bill shouted, and their bag sailed out the window. Because it was filled with lumps of gold, it flew only a few feet before thudding onto the white strip that separated the shoulder from the roadway. Fiona leapt after it, ears pricked for sirens.

  It took Bill a little more effort to squeeze free of the cab. He jumped and stumbled hard, hands flailing for balance. Fiona already had the bag looped over her shoulder, its strap biting into her bruised flesh. She needed to call their contact at the airport, the man who would have changed their gold into cash for a hefty premium. Plans had changed. The new plan was hiding out and staying alive.

  Dragging Bill upright, she led him toward the small thicket of elms beyond the shoulder. Her body felt like a crumpled soda can, everything bent and broken, her pulse too loud in her ears. How much longer could they go before she collapsed?

  “I’m done with this shit,” she told Bill as they ran. “We need out of this life.”

  2.

  The Dean was pissed.

  Or pissing, if you wanted to get technical about it.

  “You might think this is barbaric,” he said, unzipping his fly. “But trust me, the desecration is appropriate to the situation.”

  Having justified his actions to God and man, the Dean unleashed a spray on the thick Persian rug, swirling his hips as if trying to scrawl his signature in urine. He whistled a song through clenched teeth, tuneless and off-key. His dark-suited men, lining the walls on either side of him, struggled heroically not to laugh.

  At the enormous desk behind the Dean, Simon also foug
ht to keep his expression neutral. His round sunglasses helped, but it was hard to keep his lips from peeling into a snarl. He busied himself with lighting a cigarette, telling himself: best to let this pizdá get it out of his system. I can always have a rug cleaned, and a war is something I don’t need right now.

  The Dean shook out his last drops, zipped up his fly, and swiveled on his heel. His eyes blazed with fury. From the jacket of his herringbone suit he drew a thin cigar, bit the tip, and spat a wet nub of tobacco at the silver bowl on a nearby table. “Now,” he said, patting his pockets for a lighter or matches. “Where was I?”

  “You were blaming me for Fiona and Bill,” Simon said.

  “Yes, and you didn’t seem to be empathizing properly, so I made an example of your rug.” The Dean, finding no fire for his cigar, snapped his fingers for Simon’s gold lighter on the desk. “Fiona comes to the city, asks for your help, and you not only give it to her, but you neglect to tell me?”

  “I don’t work for you.” Simon blew a smoke ring, making no move to hand over the lighter. “You and I are business partners, out of convenience. And your conflicts are not mine.”

  “That’s what you think.” The Dean took the seat across from Simon. “Speaking honestly, when Bill first stole that money from me, and Fiona joined him, I pictured it as a small issue. Just send men with guns.”

  “A straightforward solution. How many has she killed?” Simon asked.

  “Enough to give me heartburn.” The Dean began to reach for Simon’s lighter, and stopped. It was clear from his expression that he wanted Simon to hand it over, to complete this little power game. When Simon crossed his arms and leaned back, smoke trickling from the corner of his mouth, the Dean’s cheeks reddened.

  “It’s not easy replacing men with guns,” the Dean continued, adjusting his collar. “Not like you can go online and just order more, two-day shipping, satisfaction guaranteed. And now Fiona and Bill are back in the city, merrily wrecking things left and right, which just draws attention to us. You included.”