Cadillac Payback

by AJ Elmore

  Again words fail me. My tension slips. I try to hold onto the anger, but it's too late. I know he sees my bring-it-on glare crumble in confusion. The breeze shifts directions a little and picks up, blowing in from the river. It smells of ghosts and secret wars.

  “No,” I answer quietly, finally. “It's never mattered how we feel. You're right, now is not the time,” I continue, maybe to myself. The moving air kisses my searing skin, carrying away bits of my temper.

  We stare at each other for a long moment. At length, his mouth stretches to a thin, wry smile.

  “She's going to tenderize your heart with the heels of her shoes, rookie.” He takes the couple of steps toward me to make sure our eye contact is true, to make sure I know he doesn't fear me in the least, then adds, “If you can stand up after all that, then you can take up your beef with me. I'll be glad to wipe your ass all over the pavement.”

  He brushes past me, leaving my adrenaline precariously fluctuating in the fading threat, the likes of which I've never heard him make. I burn into the coming switch from night to morning. I think I hate him. He always makes me feel like a stupid kid.

  Chapter 10 Car Seat Confessional

  Isaiah

  When Maria told me to come with her, I caught the flare in Josh's eyes. It was the same anger from last night. Sure, she surprised me with her command, probably intentionally, but I covered it with a smirk, just to piss him off.

  She didn't speak until the Cadillac was cruising out of town at just under the speed limit, windows down to let as much air move around us as possible.

  She has taken the reins so easily, so comfortably. She has successfully banished her grief to the dark times, it seems, and she either cries about it alone or she's avoiding it.

  It's late afternoon, the culmination of the day, at least a sweltering hundred degrees. She's blasting the air conditioner despite the fact that the windows are down, fiddling with the radio. I know something is up because she never takes me on the deals she runs. That's Josh's job.

  I was Charlie's right hand. It was Josh or Freddy at Maria's back, by rank. Freddy has rank – two years longer under Charlie's lead – but he's not the type to negotiate. So, more often than not, it was Josh.

  “The funeral has been arranged.”

  The words are tense, like she forced them out. I shake a cigarette halfway out of the pack and lip it. I can already tell I'm going to need a focal point for my attention. Charlie never let her drive because he didn't like the avid honks and looks from male drivers. Her command of this vehicle is so distracting.

  I had expected that the funeral idea would fly when the words left Jack's mouth night last night. I knew she would go for the idea. From her point of view, it's brilliant, really. From where I'm standing, all I can see is Rome, falling to its own magnificence. I'm not sure if she wants a response, so I don't offer one.

  “The restaurant will be neutral ground,” she continues.

  I try to ignore my peripheral vision where the sun makes her skin glow, earthy and vital. I can see a few stray bits of hair tossing in the breeze from the window. How can I ignore the way she drives the car just like her brother did, with blatant control and natural grace, always anticipating how her ship will move? This boat would never sail so smoothly for me. Still, I am unsure what she wants from me, so I make a conscious refusal to take any bait as I light the smoke.

  “Most of the big leaguers in our network have agreed to attend. I'm hosting an open meeting afterward for those who want to talk business.”

  My heart aches at her words. It's all perfect, likely to work. I hate it. Surely she knew I would. That's why she trapped me in the car. I wonder if there is really business or did she just want to corner me against this red-hot hunk of metal?

  “I want you to be there.”

  Fuck. There it is, her emotional grenade. There is no escape for me this time.

  “I'm not a diplomat, I'm a distributer. I think you're confusing me for Josh,” I answer from a dry throat, retreating immediately to my nicotine addiction.

  She sighs, nailing me with a narrowed, brown suspicion that I wouldn't be able to see if my head were turned just a little more. I can all but read her thoughts. Why would I ever relinquish any task to Joshua, whom I might very well hate? I want to break the connection, but she looks back to the road first.

  “Josh worked with me on small shit. You worked with Charlie,” she answers.

  Her suspicion turns to the road, so I face her. There's no stopping it. My body declines my command to play it cool and divert attention out the window. She forces me to halt my emotional retreat. Without the momentum, I may never again be able to get away.

  I've never asked for authority, never sought glory. All I've ever wanted was to figure out life for myself, to take care of me and make my own space. Slinging dope came naturally. I had a huge network of acquaintances and good time buddies, tons of connections that eventually drew together into the road I chose to take. I've never wanted to fuck anybody over, I just want to get mine.

  I had just walked away from everything in my life with nothing more than my life when that fateful road brought me this damn Cadillac and two kindred spirits. They were criminals by law, but they were more than petty street-level thugs, they were people who took care of the people who took care of them. They were family. And they had some impressive connections. It was too big to resist, being part of that crew.

  At length, she says, “You've got more experience.”

  These are such carefully chosen words on her part, and I can tell she has thought about them very hard before letting them loose. This is when she's at her most dangerous, when she's quietly planning. That's when I know she means it.

  I watch the damp air scatter ash across the dashboard.

  “You worked with my brother, you're the veteran,” she says, brow furrowing.

  Every time she makes this face, I feel the need to cede to her anything she wants if she'll just smile. She seems so perturbed, like she can't figure out the right words to use. Never mind the feeling of being punched in the gut by her reminder.

  She says, “You always know what people are thinking.”

  I'm floored. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't make a scene, who doesn't yell or scream to get noticed. I don't strut. I don't fight. I'd rather walk away from conflict than fuck with it. I observe others, figure out how to deal with them in the least resistant way. For her to lay me open like that nearly makes me drop my burning cigarette into my lap.

  My defense is a natural reaction by now. Maria has always looked at me with eyes belying her age. I have seen there a curiosity with me, some heavy fascination. Before Josh, before Frederick, I was there carefully avoiding friendship with her. Still, she would come to me sometimes to talk.

  “Besides, I can be diplomatic. Stop acting like I'm still a kid,” she says, the corner of her mouth hooking slightly upward in a lopsided, wolfish grin that finally drives my gaze away from her. Her point is perfectly true and part of what bothers me about the current transition in our lives.

  Whatever strategy she has planned, she had me when she got me in this car. For a long moment, I feel like I've been punched in the throat. I can't speak, can hardly breathe. I watch road signs pass by without ever seeing what they say. I have to treat her like a little girl because she's much too dangerous as a woman.

  “You already know I'll go,” I say, as much of an admittance of myself as of her.

  She takes a turn toward a less populated avenue that pits my body over into hers. Now I know she's just driving. I scramble away and jerk the seatbelt around me.

  She just stares into a blazing sunset that turns the whole interior of the car to a brilliant, deep orange. She must be divine. Her skin burns with the succulence of the dark afternoon spectrum, makes my insides ache to the point of making me sick. My hands twitch to touch her. She can't know how cruel she has been by pinning me here, because she can't understand the reasons
why I run away.

  Again my desire is so thick it's nauseating. Who am I kidding? She's damn well a woman, and now that Charlie's gone, I'm terrified of what she's going to do. How can she not know that she can drag us each through the mud and we would still stand for her?

  She throws a sharp glance my way that anchors me to the seat by my heart strings and says, “I want Josh to be there, too.”

  Fucking Josh, like powdered glass under my fingernails, like youth wasted. I think of the day he arrived on the scene, under Charlie's wing, carelessly flashing his cocky, lazy smile around. Something about his sharp eyes and calculating manner pissed me off even then. He saw the disdain in my eyes that first night as he drank liquor with the family. Somehow he knew. He never said it, but he always savored her attention.

  I can't look at her. I stare out the window. Sure, it stings to share the floor with that jerk. But if I wedge Josh into this mess between me and Maria, maybe I can shield myself and begin to cut the strings she so easily controls. What do I care if he falls under the bus?

  “You're the boss,” I say finally to the passing street. It's a dodge, one aimed to rile her temper.

  I can tell it works by her heavy pause. She's doing some fast street-style calculation, weighing her moves at lightning speed. This has been her style since I met her. She won't let me take this so easily. No, she seems hell bent on making it hurt the most it possibly can before the ship goes down. And of course I'll take it, but I'll lessen the blow as best I can. That's what I'm good at.

  “So what is it that's bothering you about this, Iz?” she asks.

  Now she wants to know, now that she's won. I'm not good to her if I lie.

  “Are you sure you want to set up down here? Are you sure we can handle the increase in weight?”

  These are two of a million questions that beg for answers. Like is she sure she can supply an increase in weight?

  She smiles into the sunset and says, “Our workload won't increase. That's the beauty of it. The restaurant will handle most of the traffic. We have willing partners, it makes the most sense to set up here.”

  Her limbs have relaxed now that she has my honesty. She rests her left arm on the door, fingers tapping to the beat of the road. She knows her simple reasoning will not be enough to quell my disquiet, but she must make it to me anyway, just so I know where she stands. She can't pretend I don't know the whole story like she does with Josh, but she has been known to avoid my radar.

  “Besides,” she adds, “it'll be fun to live here again. I miss this place.”

  Fun is not the word I tag to my memories of this city. Long nights, hazy, rough: any of those would do, but fun? Fun was afternoon cookouts in the backyard at the house along some southern country road. It was the never-ending battle against kudzu and mosquitos, the stars changing above us, shooting beer cans, not people.

  “It's dangerous,” I mutter.

  We both know what I'm not saying, why Charlie kept us out of the city. We're at a disadvantage. She glances at me, brown and sexy, and she must know that she has me at her whim by the desire I can't hide as quickly as I'd like.

  “So am I,” she says. “It's unavoidable.”

  Suddenly, I understand much more than I'd like. Her vengeance may also earn her grace in the eyes of our debt. Clever. Ballsy.

  She rolls to an impossibly slow stop at a light, tucking some hair behind her ear as she checks her mirrors. Her left knee is bouncing next to the clutch. Her breaths come long and forced. Is she trying to provoke me?

  A city cop car pulls up on her left, brakes squealing as the thing stops. The pig's windows are up, but I can see him turn to inspect the scene. Who could resist? His appreciation is apparent despite his big black shades, and I want to get out of the car and smash his windshield into his lap. I suddenly understand, more than ever, how Charlie must have felt when she maneuvered him into the passenger seat.

  Then she smiles at him, not the sexually smoldering curves she sent my way, yet not quite an innocent grin either. My heart skips several beats. I try to play calm, but she already had me so worked up that surely I look like a breakdown. He never even notices me, the swine, as he laughs and lowers his shades for a better look. Red turns to green and he nods at her, drives away. If I could catch him, I'd break his face.

  She turns up her stereo, the most modern piece of equipment in this boat. The CD player is a twist that she had insisted on. Bose speakers bang out a lilting acoustic guitar and driving drums.

  My cigarette has burned away. The filter is about to start smoking. I flick the remnant of my addiction out my window. Now she won't look at me. Marilyn Manson's gritty voice rubs my sense for the dramatic like sandpaper as I watch her drive, silently begging for mercy. I'm about to break, to tear across this seat and kiss her like she's never known, or to make her pull over and let me out. I don't care how far it is, I'll walk home.

  It's the spontaneous moments like this that remind me that I can't compare them, she is so different from her brother. He hated Manson. And she's right. She is dangerous.

  She says, “I'm going to make a place for us here, and we won't have to be afraid.”

  How can I say that you should always be afraid in this gig? If you're not, that means you're sloppy. She knows that. Maybe this is her bravado. I have this feeling that I'll get to find out.

  Chapter 11 Jazz Funeral

  Joshua

  The din of voices in this twenty-five table restaurant roars through me. They complement the group of pierced, tattooed musicians in the corner playing a ska-infused version of “Hotel California.” Smoke forms a blanket, hanging just beneath the ceiling and glowing with the bar's electric blue lighting. The house lights are down as low as they will go, dimming the grief, luring out the good memories of everyone's favorite drug dealer, the best friend I've ever had.

  The shades are all drawn. I'm sitting at the bar, leaning back against it, elbows propped on its edge. I'm pressed in the midst of a crowd that goes well beyond the regulations of a fire hazard, not that the guys ever have held legality in much regard. For the moment, I believe that if I don't move, no one will notice me. I'm certain I can smell hints of our product wafting from the bathroom area. Maybe I should join the more private party? I really thought I was ready for this, but it's getting a little stormy.

  The girl beside me is laughing and crying at the same time, as she tells a story about our boy to the group that stands around us in a wobbly semi-circle. One time, Charlie got her and her friend wasted on expensive tequila and even more expensive cocaine, then took them on a high ride through some back-ass swamp road. They woke up two days later in the same king-sized bed in a hotel room in Mississippi.

  “It was the scariest fucking experience of my life,” she says. “But I'd do it again in a heartbeat.”

  She's not talking to me, but I can't help the forlorn smile her words coax from me. I know the story's true because I was there. He bought the coke from her. The hotel had been in a casino, and the casino had been in Biloxi. Tastefully, she has left me out of her narrative, but the images of bouncing headlights cutting through crushing vegetation flash through my mind's eye.

  I can almost feel the bugs biting my sweaty skin as she and I fucked with reckless abandon against a moss-covered tree trunk. I hear phantom moans as Charlie fucked her friend in the back seat of the Caddy. Then she falls to tears.

  My smile drops and the memories fade.

  I'm forced back to the present. Watching the scenes play in this room is like bearing witness to some underground alliance coming to fruition. I see customers old and new, friends, suppliers of every sort of vice. It's startling, actually, the array of villains we've managed to attract. I see notorious faces that have previously turned away our better offers, based on some crude sense of loyalty and already-formed business arrangements. It seems some ethics are being redefined.

  When Noah said they could double the weight of their distribution, I couldn't
grasp the larger picture that he saw. I'm starting to understand as the night wears on that they mean to take the city absolutely. I had no idea how many enemies the Reapers actually have. Everything is about to get bigger. And I know now what Jack meant. I'm the small fry, the inexperienced one.

  The danger level is escalating as each player sizes up opportunity, as they assess the potential in working together under a new flag. This is the part of the night when everyone pays their respects. They make their rounds and they are civil, even if their thoughts are all business. There will be a point, soon I'd imagine, when the mourners will dwindle, and those who remain will be those who have decided it wise to hear what Maria has to say.

  The ceiling fans are really just taunting me at this point. I see them spinning, but the air in here is not moving. The restaurant is a mass of sweat, alcohol, and pheromones. I can't escape the memories that return to the surface, so I try to let them run together until they are unrecognizable. I feel like I've been forced off the plank into a deadly undercurrent. It's either swim or get dragged down to a beautiful and tragic end.

  I'm gasping for my last breath just as salvation arrives. Maria. Her presence soothes my suffocation. I attempt a stony facade, try to confront her as impersonally as she has done with me since that night. I try, but I know all she can see is me drowning.

  She hands me what must be at least a double shot of brown liquid with a little lime wedge hooked onto the side of it. I can smell the liquor like a post-traumatic stress trigger. It's tequila, old stuff by the looks of it. The good stuff. This is our ritual, how fitting that we should perform it now.

  I know she can see the fear in my eyes, because she smirks. She's already a little drunk, I can tell. With false valor, I take the shot from her and we cock our limes. Slowly, cruelly, she licks the back of her hand, holding my eyes the whole time. I follow, a slave to her command, just as she knew I would be. The salt on my skin is enough. Then we slam the shots.