“This is bad,” Mauricio said. “I don’t want to get killed over this. It’s just money.”
“Yeah, but it’s a lot of money. And nobody’s going to get killed. I promise.”
“You’ve been making a lot of promises lately. I’m just saying.”
A pang of guilt stabbed through Ash. “Okay, fine. We’re bailing, all right? Is that what you want to hear?”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“Fine. Screw this whole deal. We’re out.”
Mauricio paused. “You’re serious?”
“Dead serious. How about we just walk away. Okay?”
“Really? Okay. Good.” Mauricio sighed, sounding relieved.
“So lie low for now. I don’t want Prez or anybody else messing with you. I’m on my way back.”
“Oh, wait, are you coming back on the highway?”
“Yeah. Why?” Up ahead, a sea of red tail lights glowed in the curtain of rain. He braked, feeling the old tires slip a bit on the wet pavement.
“It’s on the news,” Mauricio said. “There’s a rockslide. Whole highway is closed off.”
“What? Where?” But he already knew. He slowed the Galaxie to a stop behind the mass of traffic, his eyes searching through the pouring rain. Somewhere up ahead, he was sure, waited the green pickup and the gunmen. And there was nowhere he could go.
Chapter Eight
DMT
First thing that morning, before everything went haywire, Mauricio had driven Ash and Moolah to breakfast. The restaurant was a 24-hour diner well past its prime, if it had ever had a prime. The broken neon sign and painted-over graffiti told Mauricio everything he really wanted to know about the place.
“Can’t we just go to Village Inn or something?” Mauricio said, backing into a space on the outskirts of the lot, next to a black SUV with gold trim. In front of the restaurant, there was a rusted green pickup and a black Trans Am with gold pin striping that glittered in the morning sun.
“Good news is, you don’t have to eat here.” Ash placed a stained white paper bag on the dashboard.
“Where’d that come from?”
“While you were in the shower, I went to that frou-frou bakery across from the hotel and got you some breakfast. You’ll like it. It’s French.”
“You planned this?”
“I go out early and get you a brioche, and you’re complaining?” Ash got out of the car and let Moolah out beside him. “Look, I’ve got a meeting with that guy I told you about. Should take ten minutes, tops.”
“Wait. Stop. Meeting?”
“Yeah. As in, I meet this guy in a public place, tell him where to find this thing he’s been looking for, and he gives me a whole lot of cash.”
“And you were planning on telling me about this when, exactly?”
Ash looked wounded. “Aren’t you going to ask me how much we’re going to make on this deal?”
“No.”
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s the biggest score. Ever.” When Mauricio didn’t answer, Ash leaned on the open door and sighed. “Okay, look, I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Well, sure, this is better,” Mauricio said, letting the sarcasm drip. “I’m much calmer now.”
“Good.” Ash was either ignoring him or being incredibly dense. Maybe both. “Because you should be happy. In about ten minutes, I’m walking out that door with a cold million in cash.”
Mauricio waited for the punchline. It didn’t come.
“We’re going to be rich,” Ash explained, his whole body brimming with energy.
Mauricio raised one eyebrow. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Ash sighed. “Whatever. Look, see if you can sell this car, huh?”
“No. I like this car. This is my favorite.”
“Too many people have seen us in it.” Ash shut the door and headed toward the restaurant patio, Moolah trotting at his heels. “Be back in a minute. Rich.”
Mauricio leaned out the window. “Fine. But from now on, I pick what we drive.”
Ash waved without looking back. He opened the patio gate and disappeared around the corner of the restaurant.
Mauricio sat there and pulled out the soft brioche from the bag. He ate, trying not to enjoy its delicate custardy taste while he cursed Ash under his breath. When he was done, he dug through the junk on the back seat looking for something to write on. He found a yellow legal pad. With a fat marker, he wrote FOR SALE in giant letters.
“For real?” a scratchy tenor voice said through the open window, making him jump. “You sellin’ that thing?”
The black SUV parked next to him had its windows down. The door swung open and out climbed the biggest black guy Mauricio had ever seen. He was built like a water tower, huge on top with skinny legs. He wore a designer suit with the shirt collar spread. His voice went up another notch, into Mike Tyson range. “How much you want for it?”
Caught off guard with the thick marker still in his hand, Mauricio named the first number that popped into his head. “Five thousand. Cash.”
“Huh. It hot?” The guy narrowed his dark eyes. “Or you got the title?”
“Oh, sure, I have the title. It’s all legitimate. W-would you like to take a drive? I’m Mauricio, by the way.”
The guy drew in a long breath through his nose, puffing up even bigger. He let it out with a smile that showed the gap between his front teeth. “DMT.”
“Excuse me?”
“My name, dawg. DMT. Don’t forget it.” He took a couple of steps back, moving easily for a guy his size. He surveyed the car from nose to tail, nodding to himself like he was eyeing up a restaurant buffet. “My mama needs a car, nice one like this. Always wanted a leather interior. That real leather?”
“Oh, yes.” Turning in his seat, Mauricio petted the headrest. “Very nice.”
“That ain’t no Naugahyde or nothin’.”
“Definitely real leather.”
DMT folded one arm across his huge chest and covered his mouth with his other hand. He stood that way for a long moment.
Mauricio kept petting the headrest, not knowing what else to do. “It’s very nice. You want to have a seat?” Mauricio unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door.
DMT stopped him before he got out. “Naw, naw, it’s cool. Tell you what, you drive it to my mama’s house. So she can see it.”
Mauricio glanced over at the restaurant, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ash, but there was no way to see the patio from here. And the glare on the windows left the inside of the restaurant a mystery. “Where does she live?”
“A-town.” DMT saw his puzzled expression and explained. “Aurora. Up off a two-twenty-five.”
The freeway. I-225. “Oh. Sure.”
From nowhere, gospel music filled the air. DMT dug a giant hand in his pocket and pulled out a phone. “Yo, Prez.”
Prez. Couldn’t be the same Prez he knew. Could it?
DMT glanced at the restaurant. “Yeah, I’m here now. Nothin’ happenin’.”
“Prez?” Mauricio said out loud, catching DMT’s attention. “Like with the pool tables, Prez? I know him.”
DMT dropped the phone away from his mouth. “For real?” He picked up the phone again. “No, Boss, sorry. Jus’ a dawg name Mauricio say he know you.” A moment later, DMT handed over the phone. It was warm from his hand.
“Well, hey, Prez. How are you, man?”
“I am very fine, thank you,” Prez’s scratchy voice said. In the background noise from his speakerphone came the unmistakable crack of a pool cue hitting a ball, then a clatter of balls striking and sinking. “Thought you said you were never comin’ back to Denver.”
“I know. It’s nuts, right?” Mauricio felt a little giddy, talking to a familiar voice again, even if they’d only done the one Torino job together what, five years ago. “Small world. So DMT here, he’s thinking of buying my car. Now I know he’s a good guy, he works for you. I’m sure he’s got the money.”
“Mm-hmm.” Prez
sounded distracted. Another strike of the pool cue.
Mauricio realized he didn’t really have anything to say. “Hey, you still got that car we got for you? That Torino?”
Prez didn’t answer, which left him feeling a little empty, really. He spent so much time on the road, moving around with Ash, he never got to catch up with anyone. But he could feel the conversation wrapping up before it even got started.
“Well, anyway. Good to hear from you. Ash is in a meeting right now, but I’ll tell him you said hi.”
“He in a meeting right now?” Prez’s voice perked up. “Right there, at the restaurant?”
“Well, yeah. How did you—”
“Let me talk to my man.”
Mauricio wordlessly handed over the phone, feeling a little lost.
Meanwhile, DMT was trying to talk, but not getting a word in. “Yeah, Boss, I—” He frowned. “No, I . . . Yeah, I got you. A’ight.” He hung up and stared at the phone, puzzled. “Huh.”
Mauricio bit his lip. “What did he say?”
DMT’s face lit up. “He told me, buy the car. He gonna pay for it. I just got to hang out wit’ you awhile. That cool by you?”
Mauricio shrugged. “Sure. That’s cool.”
“A’ight, move over.”
Mauricio made his clumsy way over to the passenger side, while DMT squeezed himself in behind the wheel and shut the door. He let his arm hang out the window.
Mauricio drummed his fingers on his knees, uncomfortable. Wondering if he’d actually just sold his car.
Just then, Ash came around the corner of the restaurant and let himself out through the patio gate, with Moolah at his heels. Right behind him came three tattooed Latino guys.
At the end came a dark-haired man in a black suit and mirrored sunglasses, carrying a briefcase. The sunglasses turned to stare across the parking lot at Mauricio, as if drawn there by some unseen force. The hair prickled on the back of Mauricio’s neck.
Ash didn’t look his way. He opened the door of the extended-cab pickup and let Moolah jump in, then climbed in after him. The tattooed guys crowded into the front of the truck.
“What the hell is he doing?” Mauricio whispered to himself. “Is he leaving?”
“Which one’s yours?” DMT nodded at the group of them.
“The white guy. He’s my brother.”
He gave Mauricio a look. “Thought you was Mexican or somethin’.”
“He’s my half-brother. My mother was from Colombia.”
“Huh. That’s my briefcase.” DMT nodded at the guy in sunglasses, who got into the black Trans Am alone.
Mauricio’s phone rang. He answered. “Where the hell are you going?”
Ash said, “I told him where it is. But he wants me to take him there and actually hand it to him before he gives me the money.”
“So you’re just going to go with him?” Mauricio said. “That really sound like a good idea? You don’t even know this guy!”
“Relax. We’re just heading up into the mountains. Simple, easy. I’ll be back this afternoon with the money.”
“And then you’ll tell me what this is all about?”
“Once we’re on the road,” Ash said, “we’re gone. See if you can get rid of the car.”
“You better know what you’re doing.” Mauricio hung up. He watched the pickup drive off, the black car following.
“Well, that’s it.” DMT shifted in the seat, breathing loudly through his nose as he moved. Finally, he got comfortable and grinned at Mauricio. “My mama’s gonna love this car.”
*
Mauricio yawned. It was stretching into the evening, and now it looked like Ash wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Cleo had told him on the phone that they’d stay overnight at her mom’s house and wait until the highway opened again. While he was stuck here, hanging around DMT’s apartment for the duration. Lovely.
The sounds and smells of the shadowed brick apartment building grated on him. He leaned over the chipped handrail and peered straight down three stories to the dark lot below, where his car sat parked.
Something had gone wrong up in the mountains; that was obvious. Ash was acting irrational, even worse than usual. At least Cleo was there with him, as bizarre as that was. He couldn’t wait to see her again, when they got to town. Catch up on life since the old days.
If Ash stuck around that long. Big if. Mauricio glanced at his watch. He’d have to pick up a different car and be ready to go by morning. There was probably a used car lot still open where he could find something cheap. But it just wouldn’t be as nice as this one. He gave the car a long last look.
DMT came outside through the apartment door, looking troubled. “Let me have your phone, dawg.” When Mauricio held it out, DMT took it and tucked it in his pocket.
“You need to make a call or something? Because I’ve got to take off, get some dinner,” Mauricio said. “You tell Prez I’ll call him later, get the money for the car.”
DMT folded his big arms. “Boss jus’ called. Says I ain’t suppose to let you out my sight.”
Mauricio tried to laugh it off, then realized he wasn’t kidding. Suddenly, the chipped handrail felt like prison bars in his hands. The low-rent apartment building around him transformed from kitschy to gulag.
“Hey, come on,” Mauricio said, his voice less than steady. “That supposed to be some kind of threat or something?”
“Pssh, I hope not.” DMT shook his big head. “I like you, man.”
Chapter Nine
Storm
Night fell while they waited in traffic, and the storm dumped rain, but there was no sign of the green pickup. Ash inched the Galaxie to the next exit off the highway. As they splashed along night-blackened roads, he kept a watchful eye ahead for flooding. The wipers slammed back and forth across the windshield, pushing around an endless stream of water.
“So tell me about the señora,” Cleo said. The dashboard lights hinted at the soft curves of her face, but Ash couldn’t read her expression.
“Well. Mauricio wants to just settle down, right? Have a ‘normal’ job, whatever that means. He’s got this crazy idea about the two of us buying this old hotel in Arizona.”
“You’re right,” she deadpanned. “Hotel management usually appeals to the insane.”
“Whatever. This cleaning lady who works there, her husband and son were in trouble. She hired a coyote to smuggle them into the States. But the coyote decides to double his money and hold them for ransom. If she doesn’t pay, she’ll never see them again.” A lump rose in Ash’s throat.
Cleo nodded, watching him.
“It was just wrong.” He cleared his throat. “So Mauricio and me, we decided to take on the coyote.”
“You couldn’t just call the police?”
He gave her a sour look. “Please.”
She held up her hands in surrender.
“So anyway, the setup goes like this: Mauricio goes into the bar dressed up like a migrant worker. He sits next to the coyote and starts crying into his beer. I mean, just absolutely sobbing.”
“Mauricio?” A half-smile crept across her face. “Our Mauricio?”
“Well, he’s half Colombian. He can pass for a Mexican.”
“I guess, but what, he’s an actor now?”
“Hey, film school paid off. Anyway, he gets out this lottery ticket. Powerball. Sixty-seven million dollars.”
“A real lottery ticket?”
Ash held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor. A real, honest-to-God Powerball ticket, printed with the winning numbers. And Mauricio’s bawling up a storm, saying he’s an illegal, so he can’t cash it.” He gave Cleo a sly look. “It’s Arizona, you know. And he’s crying about how cruel life is, he gets this winning ticket and he can’t cash it.”
She stared at him. “So it’s not a winning ticket.”
“That’s where I come in. I go up to the bar, overhearing this, and tell him he’s a liar, no way is that ticket a winner. I make a big scene, get out my ph
one, threaten to call the lottery. The phone number’s printed right on the ticket. So guess what the coyote does?”
“He calls the number,” Cleo said.
“Everybody in the bar calls the number. And I’m watching the coyote’s eyes, under the brim of his hat, as he hears the recording read off the winning numbers, the ones right there on Mauricio’s ticket. Sixty-seven million dollars. His eyes light up, and at that exact moment, I pull out my wallet, slam down a thousand in cash on the bar. ‘I’ll buy that ticket,’ I tell him.”
Cleo nodded thoughtfully. “So the coyote isn’t going to let you buy that ticket.”
“Exactly. He says he’ll give Mauricio two grand. I say four. He says ten. We go back and forth, this guy’s yelling at Mauricio in Spanish, ‘Don’t sell it to the gringo.’ People start getting hostile—it’s going to get ugly. Mauricio flips open a lighter, says he’s going to burn the ticket before he gets killed in this bar. He wants to see his wife and kids again. Whole place goes dead silent.”
She leaned forward in her seat, listening. The wipers slapped out a rhythm on the windshield. “And?”
“And Mauricio sells the ticket to the coyote for twenty grand in cash.” Ash couldn’t keep the grin off of his face. “Seriously, I expected maybe five, ten at the most. Guy had a duffel bag with twenty gees.”
She blinked. “You could’ve been killed.”
“Well, maybe if we stuck around. Mauricio drops a couple hundred on the bar, buys a round for the house, and we take off. Give the señora ten grand to ransom her family back, a couple more to move them out of town, and we kept the rest. Went to Vegas.”
“What about the ticket?” Cleo said.
“It’s for the next week’s drawing.” Ash tried to hide his pride, but failed. “I figured out, when you buy a ticket, you can pick any numbers you want. So I bought a new ticket with the current jackpot numbers. Unless you pay close attention to the date, you don’t notice it.”
She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, my God. That is so illegal.”
“Nope. It’s actually a perfectly legal ticket. Just worthless, is all. And what tickles me is that the señora paid off the coyote with his own money.”
The Spider Thief Page 5
