Young Americans

by Josh Stallings

  Terry grabbed Jacob’s wrist, stopping his fall. “Dipshit. You die now, up here, it’s tragic or ironic, but not heroic.”

  “All places are alike, and every earth is fit for burial.”

  “You almost die just so you could lay some Marlowe on me?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Good freakin’ weed, brother man.”

  “You got to feed your brain.” Terry kept Jacob in hands’ reach as they continued their descent.

  • • •

  “Time to di di mau up North and start putting heads on pikes,” Valentina said, sitting at the breakfast table finishing a plate of Esther’s fine pancakes.

  “He’s got a hillbilly army up there,” Sam said. “And he owns the local law. We can’t go in blazing.”

  “No, you’re wrong on this.” Valentina didn’t notice Terry and Jacob come in the front door. “We roll in and light them up. Kill anything that moves, grab our cash and be gone.”

  Terry watched Valentina, shaken, unsure of whom she had become. A gorgeous woman with an angry soldier’s voice coming out of her.

  “That is not the way. Not our way. Your father never owned a gun,” Esther said.

  “Esther, I love you and all,” Valentina said, “but comes to this you ain’t got a vote.”

  “But I do,” Sam said, drawing patterns in the syrup on her plate with a fork. “Best case we don’t get killed, but we do go to jail for the rest of our lives. Massacres just don’t fly, even up North in Hicksville.”

  “OK, Sam, what’s your plan?” Valentina stared at Sam, waiting for an answer. None was coming. “You are always the glam-dam with the plan so toss it out there. We go all ninja? Black pajamas and throwing stars? What?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Well tick-motherfucking-tock, princess. Maurizio called huge and silent over there. Gave us a no-shit-they-will-start-dropping-bodies-in-the-bay deadline. He needs that cash in forty-eight hours.”

  “She’s right,” Jo Jo said from the living room, where he was watching Scooby-Doo. “Jimmy the Hat don’t get his cabbage Wednesday night, he’ll start stacking bodies up.”

  Turning to see Jo Jo, Valentina saw Jacob and Terry. Her voice softened, went up in pitch. “Terr-Terr, Jacob, you missed breakfast.”

  “We’re good,” Jacob said.

  “I know you’re good. Hell, you two are fine.”

  “The bread is north.” Jacob spoke to Valentina, keeping his back to his sister. “So while we figure out the play we should burn up miles.”

  “There you have it, even the brainiac agrees with me,” Sam said. “Eat up, me hearties, we sail north this afternoon.”

  “Why not now?” Jo Jo asked.

  “Because I said so, and I run this crew.” Sam shut the room down. Chaos came from no leadership. Sam hadn’t a clue in hell what they were going to do, not one idea how to pull it off. She only knew the next step and hoped like hell it would lead to the path that would take them out of this monumental jug fuck.

  Motioning with her head, Sam led Jacob out the back door, closing it so they couldn’t be overheard. She leaned against the chalky stucco wall and sparked a Marlboro.

  “What?” Jacob stood defiant in front of his big sister.

  “Want a butt?”

  “No.”

  “You still pissed at me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’m pissed at me. We survive this brutal road trip, I’ll buy you a case of Mickey’s and you can tell me all the ways I fucked your life.”

  “If hillbillies don’t kill us in the hills above Arcata. If the goombah squad doesn’t drop us off the Golden Gate on principal. If that psycho cop doesn’t nail us to the wall. If by some miracle of miracles we live through this suicide run, you want to do some ESTian primal scream kumbaya circle jerk about why I’m pissed?”

  “You’re angry, got it. You need to grow the fuck up. You need to at least pretend to respect me around the others.”

  “Aye aye, mon capitaine.” He gave her a snap salute. “The helm is yours.”

  “Cute. A crew needs to know who is in charge, or things go sideways fast.”

  “Sideways? Like the man said, I been down so long it looks like up to me.”

  “I didn’t ask you in on this.” Sam turned to him, locking her eyes on his for emphasis. “But in you are. So slam the brakes on the petulant teen boy bullshit. I need you one hundred percent in.”

  “How many ways do I have to say I’m in? J’en suis. Ich bin dabei. Jeg er med dig.”

  “Stop. I get it.”

  “No, I seriously doubt you do.” Jacob leaned against the wall, looking out into the puffy clouds drifting happily above them. How dare the clouds be happy? He spoke quietly, eyes remaining on the sky. “Growing up, when we were kids, I wanted to be you, wanted to fit in with our family. I remember lying in bed fantasizing that you were all Russian spies and I was the only true Stern.”

  “That’s one screwed up adoption fantasy.”

  “Remember asking me how I got good grades?”

  “Good? Freakishly stellar, create a new ceiling, blow-the-curve-for-the-rest-of-the-class grades.”

  “Right. And I said being smart was only part of it. Not the big part even. Other part, the key, is I listen to the teachers, figure out what thing they want me to do, then I do that thing. Whatever gene that you got that says fuck authority, I got one that says fit in and keep your head down.”

  “That’s not a gene, Jake. ‘Keep your head down’ is our family mantra.”

  “Point is, the point I’m trying to make, I don’t have any illusions about you. But that doesn’t mean I won’t follow you on a one-way flight to hell if that’s what is called for.”

  Sam looked at Jacob for a long moment. She wanted to say something profound or something that might win him back over to her side. Words evaded her, she was in free fall. No backup chute. Fuck it. It was one more thing she probably wouldn’t survive to have to deal with.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  “And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds . . .” —David Bowie

  They divided up into two cars, agreeing to meet at Callum’s apartment. He was long in the wind by now and no one would expect to find the crew there. Terry and Jo Jo rode in the Firebird with Sam.

  Jacob saw the way Valentina’s face fell when Terry asked to go with Sam, so he asked to ride with her in the Galaxie. As a bonus, he got to get away from Sam. His feelings were raw, near the surface. He was afraid of what he might say if he was stuck next to her for five and a half hours.

  Esther said she wanted to go with them, insisted on it. Sam sent her to the store for food and drinks for the road. As soon as Esther’s VW bug drove away, Sam loaded up and rolled out. “This mean no road snacks?” Jo Jo asked.

  Sam threw him a hard look.

  “I was just asking. I didn’t have lunch, was looking forward to some beef jerky and Fritos.”

  “You want a snack?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, I’m hungry.”

  “You, the guy who would have killed my brother if you got the word, are hungry?”

  “That was business. No choice, you know?”

  “No, I don’t. Shut the fuck up or I’ll feed you the barrel of my piece. Want a lead sandwich, asswipe?”

  Jo Jo sucked air through his teeth. He rested his hand on the pistol holstered under his arm, but said nothing.

  “How about you, Terry, you hungry, need to take a potty break, make a boom-boom?”

  “I’m solid, Sam.” Terry dreamily watched the glowing tendrils growing off his fingers.

  “How stoned are you?”

  “Pretty stoned,” he said in a bad Monty Python accent. “If truth needs be told, I’m mad as a stick but not sick as a parrot.”

  Sam banged her head twice on the steering wheel, then drove on in silence.

  • • •

  Valentina parked near the freeway entrance, giving Sam t
ime to get up the road. If one of them got busted or hit by Breeze’s boys, the other promised to finish the gig.

  “One way or another, this thing ends,” Sam said before they left.

  “One way or another,” Valentina echoed.

  “There’s a rumor going around I don’t care about anyone but myself,” Sam said.

  “Jacob?”

  “Kid hates me.”

  “No one likes seeing a hero fall off the pedestal. You’ll always be my Princess Samantha, if that helps.”

  “More than you could know.”

  Before pulling onto the freeway, Valentina had Jacob light her a Marlboro. She let the smoke dribble out over her full lips. “Tastes like shit.”

  “So you keep saying.” Jacob took a drag on his cigarette.

  “How is Terry holding up?” Valentina tried to sound casual.

  “Solid, just ask him.”

  “Does he talk about . . .”

  “You? Does he like you? Maybe we should find a buttercup or make one of those paper thingamajigs with the numbers. A cootie catcher? You put them on your fingers and count off, find out if he loves you. Or a Magic 8 Ball?”

  “You have one?” Valentina smiled. “I know I’m ridiculous. Maybe this is what an estrogen overdose looks like. He makes me crazy.”

  “Truth?”

  “Please, Jacob.”

  “Terry is down the rabbit hole and stumbling in a land not of his making. Two weeks ago, he and I were hanging in the parking lot at Truman with the other smokers, arguing over whether Bowie or Rundgren would stand the test of time, trying to decide if we should go to trig or to Foothill Park and get stoned.” Jacob lit a fresh cigarette off the ember of his current butt. “Terry’s life is strange because he’s my friend, and being near our family makes shit weird. But it is the fucking Brady Bunch compared to where we are now. Is he freaked out? Yes. By you?” He mimed shaking a Magic 8 Ball and reading it. “Reply hazy, try again.”

  Valentina relaxed, breathing slowly in and out. “I read this book, Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Valentina said. “It was about how it is only when you stop and look back that the road makes any sense.”

  “Yeah, but ‘we can’t stop here this is bat country.’” Jacob quoted Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

  “You’re an odd lad, Jacob. But I do love you.”

  As the Galaxie crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and the Emerald City receded in the rearview mirror, Valentina wondered if she would ever see the sparkling womb that gave her life again.

  • • •

  It was just after six when the Firebird hit Arcata. The sun was down, streetlights haloed in a fine layer of fog. It wasn’t thick yet, but it was getting there. Parking in the alley behind Callum’s apartment building, Sam told Terry and Jo Jo to wait in the car while she checked it out. Moving up the exterior stairs she walked with a confident stride—she belonged there, no question. Through the blinds she could see that Callum left in such a hurry he didn’t even turn the lights off. Slipping a diamond-shaped pick into the lock she moved the pin. With a second skinny tool about the size and shape of an icepick, she rotated the tumbler. The deadbolt was a Schlage; a good enough lock, but for Sam it was too easy to be an enjoyable distraction.

  Entering the apartment, she relocked the door behind her. No need to be surprised by an unwanted guest. On the coffee table sat an open beer with a small pool of condensation leaving a ring in the wood. She moved to the bedroom.

  A man stepped out from behind the door and dropped an arm over Sam’s neck. She struggled but he was stronger than her and had her in a headlock.

  Instinctively she brought the heel of her Red Wing down on his arch.

  He howled and released her.

  Sam spun, saw her attacker.

  Callum.

  She swung a fist, but he blocked it and grabbed her wrist, pulling her in too close to strike again. “Stop,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Funny, I want to hurt the hell out you, you duplicitous bastard.”

  He hugged her against his chest, lifting her off the floor. “Sam, listen, it’s not what you think.”

  “Let me go, douchebag.”

  “No, listen. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “No shit, really?”

  “I’m a cop.”

  This information winded her. She stopped struggling.

  He released her, setting her down. “I work for the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Wait here.” He moved to the closet and dug into a messy suitcase and slid open a hidden compartment. Returning, he handed her his Federal ID and badge.

  “At least your name is Callum, you lying pig.”

  “I know it doesn’t do any good, but I hated doing it.”

  “Means zero. You going to arrest me for the heist?” Sam was fighting to sound like she didn’t care one way or the other.

  “One, I work for the DEA—drugs are my only purview. Two, I set you up to pull the heist—that’s called entrapment. You would skate.”

  “Then why, dickweed, did you sell me down the river?”

  “I did it to get close to Breeze. He’s my target.”

  “Now that makes me feel so much better. You fucked me to get to him.”

  “Not exactly. I fucked you because you drive me crazy. I set you up to get next to him.”

  “Now I should what?” Sam flipped her hands in the air in exasperation. “Trust you? Forgive you? What? Come on handsome, you tell me.”

  “Let’s start with calling a truce and see where that leads.” He stuck out his hand.

  Sam looked down at the hand. “We’re not there yet.”

  “So inviting you to bed would be an overreach?”

  “Massive.” Sam couldn’t help a small smile from escaping.

  “OK, we’ve established you didn’t come here looking for a tumble, so why are you here? You taking Breeze down?”

  “No. You first. Why haven’t you busted the son of a bitch yet?”

  “He promised a pile of dope to help set you up, only he never said exactly that. He spoke around it. Cautious and wily. He used an intermediary to deliver my stash. I don’t have a solid link to him.”

  “Why not plant the weed on him?”

  “Like you tried on me?”

  “Found that?”

  “Some Highway Patrol officer did. Nice trick.” He winked. “My boss in D.C. had to chill them.”

  “So, why not set him up? I know you’re not a Boy Scout.”

  “When I take him down, I want to make sure he stays down. And I was a Boy Scout, but that was a long time ago. Your turn. You here to take him down?”

  Sam took a long breath. She looked in Callum’s blue eyes, then looked away before her hormones did the talking. “I need your word you won’t come after my crew.”

  “Then don’t tell me about anything outside of the disco robbery. Keep to that and you’re covered. You decide to kill anyone, like say, Breeze, I can’t know about it.”

  “It may come to that.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell you about it.”

  “Good. Be better you didn’t do it in the first place.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  A knock took Callum to the door. Through the peephole he saw a muscular young man. His eye makeup and sparkling Velvet Underground shirt gave him away as one of Sam’s glitter crew, so he opened up.

  Jo Jo stepped in front of Terry, pointing his Smith & Wesson .357 magnum at Callum’s face.

  “Jo Jo, this is Callum.” Sam stepped between them. “He’s a cop. Callum, this is Jo Jo. He’s a . . . what are you, Jo Jo?”

  “A handyman. A mechanic. A soldier. You choose,” Jo Jo said.

  “I think I’ll go with enforcer,” Sam said. “Put the piece away. We won’t be shooting any cops quite yet.”

  “You say so.” Jo Jo slid the revolver back into his shoulder holst
er. Finding the TV, he turned it on and settled into a beanbag chair. Welcome Back, Kotter was midway through. Horshack mugged for the camera. Vinnie Barbarino said “Up your nose with a rubber hose.” The audience cracked up.

  Terry sat cross-legged on the shag carpet next to Jo Jo. He smiled at the innocence of the show and lit a joint. “Billy Holiday always knew when she was strung out because she could stand to watch TV. Clean she couldn’t take it,” Terry said.

  “Yeah,” Jo Jo said, his eyes not leaving the screen.

  “It’s a fact, I think.”

  “Hmmm?”

  At the kitchen table Sam and Callum drank a couple of cold Heinekens. “I got no reason in the world to trust you,” Sam said.

  “What you don’t have is a choice. Trust me or not, I may be your only ally in the straight world. This goes wrong, you will need a friend.”

  “Goes wrong? Man, that was three stations ago.” After threatening to scalp him if he screwed her, Sam told Callum about the robbery and exactly whose money he had turned over to Breeze.

  “You stole Jimmy the Hat Binasco’s cash from Maurizio Binasco? Breeze knows whose cash it was?”

  “Had to. You were backup. He sent Sardine and Cracker to take us off the board. He was looking to remove any link between him and the robbery.”

  “Balls. Cast iron balls on that guy. What’s your plan to get to him?”

  Sam struggled to come up with an answer, finally settling on a shrug.

  CHAPTER 29

  * * *

  “A bit of the old ultra-violence.” —A Clockwork Orange

  When the first gun went off it brought on a volley that sounded across the hills like thunder. Twelve hours earlier, Jacob swore his plan would be free of gunplay.

  • • •

  “Getting the cash is step one, and relatively easy,” Jacob said, “compared to getting free of Humboldt alive.” The crew was sitting around Callum’s apartment. The coffee table was littered with pizza boxes, three large ‘kitchen sinks’ from Johnny’s. Callum provided Heinekens all around. Jacob had been in favor of shooting Callum, cop or no. Sam took him outside.