The White Van

by Patrick Hoffman

  “Emily,” said Nichols, “we’re going to walk in right past those cops. Okay? If you make a move, if you say anything, I won’t kill you, it’s not like that now.” He shook his head like someone uninterested in buying shoes from a homeless man. “I’ll just calmly walk up and tell them that you’re the woman who robbed the bank. And this is the point that will really piss them off: I’ll tell them that you’re the reason their little buddy got killed. I wasn’t even here,” he said, looking back at her in the mirror. “I’ll get a reward.”

  Emily sat with her head down.

  “Now are you ready to fix it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You gave a statement at the station,” Nichols said. “Tell me the name of the detectives you talked to.”

  Emily pulled out a business card from her pocket and gave it to him. He read it and put it in his breast pocket.

  “Let’s go,” said Nichols.

  They walked down Minna alley. At the police tape, a walrus-looking cop was staring like he was ready to arrest them. Nichols, composed and authoritative, explained that Emily was a witness to the shooting, and that Inspector Cooley had asked them to take her home. He pointed toward the Auburn, which was between them and the actual crime scene. The cop called over a younger cop and asked him to walk the three of them to the door of the hotel. “Don’t linger,” said the walrus cop.

  The young cop walked in front. He seemed bored. Emily wondered what would happen if she ran. Nothing good. There weren’t that many cops out anymore. There was a man snapping pictures of something on the ground, and just past him a man took measurements. The other cops just stood at different spots, or walked from here to there.

  The young cop held his hand to the front door of the Auburn like a waiter seating them at a table. Emily, with Nichols and Sophia following right behind, walked up the stairs to the door, realized she didn’t have her keys, and was buzzed in.

  The manager looked happy to see her. “Where you been?” he asked. His eyes went from Emily to the other two and back again. “Everyone’s been looking for you.”

  “Tell them I’m gone,” she said. She signed her two guests in and got a key for her room from the manager. The whole process seemed absurd. Sophia had become shy. Nichols was clenched.

  They walked up to the third floor. Emily’s heart was beating so hard it seemed to interfere with her breathing. She had to pull herself along on the rails to keep going. I will stop doing bad things. I will clean up.

  The air smelled stale. Emily had a rising hatred for this place, for her life, for everybody and everything. Nobody else was in the hallway. The place seemed unusually quiet. She realized she had spent her entire life being told what to do.

  At her door, Emily put the key into the lock and felt it slide into place. She looked back at Sophia and Nichols. They looked pathetic, scared themselves. Emily decided right then that they weren’t monsters. They could be ripped off just like anyone else.

  She breathed deep and opened the door and flicked the light switch and the room lit up. Pierre’s neat little room. She could smell him in there and she realized she didn’t like the smell. It had never been her home.

  She stepped in and the other two crowded in behind her and closed the door. Emily’s mouth was dry. She could see the red and blue light from the police cars out her window. Water ran through the pipes over her head. She pointed toward the bed.

  “I checked there,” said Nichols.

  “Check again.”

  He moved to the bed and pulled the mattress off the bed frame. The black bag from Walgreens sat there like a prize.

  Nichols exhaled. He looked at Emily, smiled, stepped toward the bag, and pulled it up off the ground. He felt the weight in his hand and then he walked to the desk and set it down. “Watch her,” he said to Sophia.

  He unzipped it and looked. The bills, stacked and green, were a beautiful sight. He reached his hand in and pushed the money around. Emily, knowing that his examination of the bag had to be stopped, took a step toward him. The balance of the room shifted. Nichols turned toward her.

  “Give me it,” said Sophia. She had the gun out again. She looked unhinged.

  “We’ll split it,” said Emily, purposefully hitting a higher note to signify desperation. She finally felt natural. She could see where she wanted things to go, and she knew exactly how to get them there. She needed just one more chance.

  Nichols zipped the bag closed and turned toward the door.

  Sophia raised the gun up and said, “No, no, no, give it to me.”

  Nichols didn’t do anything. He stood there and waited. Sophia pulled the trigger and the hammer clicked down, but nothing happened. She pulled it again and again and the thing kept clicking.

  “You fucking cunt, you think I’d give you a loaded gun?” said Nichols.

  He walked toward the door. Sophia sprung on him and started scratching at his face. She was making a high-pitched, animal noise. They thrashed toward the wall. Nichols managed to get a hold of her hair, and forced her head down to the ground and held it against the floor. He was telling her to shut up. He put his weight on her head until she stopped fighting and then he got up and looked around wildly like he’d realized Emily might jump on him. He grabbed the black bag and stepped out of the room, closing the door shut as he went.

  Emily looked at Sophia. She had pushed herself up to a seated position. Her glasses were off, her hair was crazy, blood was smeared around her nose and mouth. She was breathing heavy, her back against the wall, and Emily felt a wave of compassion. It wasn’t Sophia’s fault; it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Things sometimes just got out of control.

  JULES GUNN’S EPILOGUE

  Emily called me that night, told me to pack my bags and pick her up, we going on a trip, she said. She said, Jules, pick me up right now, come to the Kingsley Hotel, right near the Auburn, right on Howard Street, pick me up. Her voice was hella crazy and I knew even before she told me that this was gonna be about some real money shit. She said, pick me up right now. And I did.

  I jumped in the Escalade and within a half hour I had her in the car and we were on the Bay Bridge and she was already telling me how she had robbed that bank. She told me the whole damn thing before we were even an hour outside of the city. Told me all about the Russians and how they were drugging her and how they made her do it. Told me how she told those Russian motherfuckers, hell no. Told me she took the money for her damn self. She said, hell no, I’m a grimy bitch, and you don’t push a grimy bitch. She told me about Pierre. She told me about the Russian lady. She told me about the bald white dude in the car. She told me about the cops, and how one of them got killed right in front of her and how she had to tell the other one what to do. Told me a Russian boy got shot, too. Told me about the showdown in the room. Told me she got them with the old switcheroo. Told me she left that Russian lady in the room, went to her neighbor’s, grabbed her money bag from his ceiling, went up on the roof, and crossed over to the other hotel and called me. She talked hella fast. She told me it all.

  I asked her why she didn’t tell me any of it when she had me bring out the dollar bills to the hotel; I told her we could have left right then. All she could say was to shake her head and say she didn’t know, said she still wasn’t right in her head.

  We drove straight to Las Vegas. I took us to the Hard Rock. Checked in at a nice hotel. Had a room with a view. I wasn’t tripping on it though, but she was. She was nervous as hell. We got drunk down at the bar and ended up sleeping in the same bed. Best friends, or not, she knew it was on. She knew what she was doing. I always knew she wanted it.

  We stayed in Las Vegas for three nights. Went to the Bellagio, ate all-you-could-eat crab legs. We had money, too. We went shopping. Took my ass to the Marni store. She was spending hella money on me. Bought me dresses. But she didn’t want none of that. She just wanted some jeans, some Nikes, and some clean white T-shirts. It always makes me laugh how a girl could go dyke and decid
e she was on some man clothes shit straight out the gate.

  We bought me makeup. Got me a bag at the Marc Jacobs store. Got the whip detailed. Put in a new stereo, put in some new speakers. We ate all the good food. Didn’t even barely gamble; just played the slots a little. Emily was walking around holding my hand acting like she had always been gay. She was on some Sinatra shit, too, talking about, It had to be you.

  After that we headed for Miami. Drove all the way to Dallas in one day. We’d stop at the rest stops and smoke cigarettes ’cause I try not to smoke in the Escalade. We stayed downtown at another hotel, ate the food, looked in at some shops.

  From Dallas we drove to New Orleans. Emily had never even left California before, so she was really tripping off New Orleans. I showed her it. I know it. I been there. We stayed there for another three days. I know a girl named Lady that dances at Big Daddy’s and she took us all over the town. We were drunk the whole time. We’d get so drunk that we’d end up fighting, but by the morning we’d forget what we’d been fighting about in the first place.

  We got tattoos, too. The shop had a poster of Russian prison tattoos; Emily saw it and lit up. She picked out a tom cat with a top hat, a bow tie, paws and claws, and underneath the words, Help Your Self; it was supposed to mean she was a thief. She got it on her left forearm. She seemed real proud of that one. I got an old-looking kind of sailing ship, a vessel, it was supposed to mean escape. It was Russian, too, but I always liked ships, so I didn’t care.

  Emily liked New Orleans; said she was tempted to have us stay there. She liked all the food and the people, the partying, the music, all of it. But I convinced her to keep on coming to Miami, see my family, see where I came from.

  We drove straight from New Orleans all the way to Miami. Emily was hungover and acting grumpy, but I could tell she was tripping off the clouds and the warm air. We’d listen to music, roll the windows down, play us some Sade, hold hands, we were acting hella stupid.

  We got to Miami, got to Liberty City, that’s where I’m from, got our welcoming party from my mom and all of them. Liberty City’s a rough-ass place, though. Emily said it looked like a tropical Sunnydale. All the people thought she was Chinese. Emily was the only nonblack person in the city. She got drunk at the party and tried to show them she could rap, talking about:

  I’m a boss bitch. I’m a bad bitch. I took money from a bank then I switch shit. I’m a rich bitch, with a bad bitch. I got Jules on my wrist ’cause I took shit. I talk shit. I bought shit. I’m ’bout shit, ’cause I’m a boss bitch.

  She made my little nieces and nephews laugh too hard at that one. She was making everyone laugh. The warm weather was turning her into a regular Katt Williams.

  We rented a little apartment over near Legion Park. My uncle knew someone who knew someone and we paid cash for a fully furnished one-bedroom. Emily said it was the biggest place she had ever lived. She would strut around the living room nodding her head. The streets were green and quiet. We’d walk around, drink gin, smoke cigarettes, try to be healthy.

  I was teaching Emily yoga. I learned it in prison—we had a girl named Lisa in Chowchilla, that volunteered and came and taught the inmates. I’d tell Emily: You got seventy-two thousand rivers of energy running through your body. Seventy-two thousand tunnels of light. Breathe in and breathe out. Leave all of your worries out the door. Breathe in and breathe out. You are in the place you need to be. You are where you need to be. Everything comes and everything goes. Let the light run through you. Don’t think too much, just be in your body. Let yourself be here in this body, in this place, right now. Freedom. Freedom. I’d show her the downward dog, show her corpse pose, all of it. She liked it. She’d do it in the living room wearing sweat shorts and a wifebeater.

  I got us healthy, too. I told her no more pills. No more coke. We’d be off an ecstasy on a special occasion like my cousin’s birthday party, but that was it. No more pain pills. We’d smoke weed and drink, but no more pills like that. I’d make her drink juice with ginger in it; she’d act like she didn’t like it, but I knew she did. She was looking good, too; we both were. Sunshine will do that to you.

  We followed what was going on back in San Francisco, too. It looked like all hell broke loose after we left. Turned into a national news story. They had them up on CNN talking about a Russian crime war. First, there was the ugly Russian boy that got shot by the cop in front of Emily. Then that same day they found the lady bank manager dead in the park. Emily said she could barely even remember meeting that one. After that the bodies really started piling up. The news said an old man by the name of Yakov Radionovich got killed in broad daylight outside a Russian teahouse in the Richmond. They shot the man in his head and then cut off his hand with an ax. They were on some real revenge-type shit out there. Three, four more Russians got killed that week. Buildings in the Richmond got burnt down. Emily said she knew it was the lady Sophia doing it. I had my own sources who were telling me that a Russian lady did in fact take over. They didn’t have no details, but the streets whisper and they were whispering loud about a Russian lady.

  Don’t scorn a bitch, said Emily, shaking her head like she knew all kinds of things. Don’t scorn a bitch.

  We watched that cop, too. He was all in the news himself. They kept writing stories about him, calling him hero cop and all that. The paper would say: Leo Elias, hero cop, loses house to foreclosure. Then the next article was saying: Police union comes together to save hero cop’s house. They showed pictures of him, too. My mom’s mom was Haitian and she taught me how to read people’s face, and that man’s face did not look happy, saved house, or not; his face looked fake as a motherfucker. Looked like he didn’t want to be at any of the celebrations they were throwing him. I showed the pictures to Emily, and she’d say, Well, even if the man did pinch my stomach and talk hella shit, he didn’t tell on me, so we cool.

  A few months of hanging out, doing our thing and both of us started to get a little antsy. Problem is, the both of us are born hustlers. All we ever did was try to hustle to survive, hustle to get drugs, hustle to find a place to stay; as soon as we had all that taken care of we were left with a void in our lives. All the yoga, sun, and juice in the world can’t fill that void.

  Soon, we were making all kinds of plans. Emily said she’d take all the money she had and flip it for some drugs. Said she’d give all $800,000 to the person who could give us thirty pounds of that pure Israeli ecstasy. Nobody could say no to a deal like that—we were offering twice the going rate. We could turn the thirty pounds into about 150,000 pills. Shit, we’d turn that to a million-and-two—go back and repeat. Get our foot in the door. My cousin knew a dude in South Beach named Semion Rosenstein that could procure that much. My cousin told us the dude is Russian, which Emily obviously didn’t like, but we figured the world’s a big place, and they got Russians up in every corner of it.

  The thing is, if you got money and a supply, you could get rich in Miami. We wouldn’t even have to step out on the streets and sell it. I had all kinds of people ready to do that. I know strippers in Miami. I know hustlers in Miami. We figured once we wait for a minute, give it a year or two, we could move our operation back to San Francisco. Go west. Spread our wings and fly. This shit ain’t a movie. We ain’t about retiring on a beach. Everybody needs to work. Everybody gotta stay busy.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my agent and friend, Charlotte Sheedy, my editor, Morgan Entrekin, Patsy Wagner, and all the wonderful people at Grove Atlantic.

  Ed Loftus gave me a speech that got me going. Andrew Koltuniak inspired me with his stories. Greg Jowdy helped me finish. Basho Mosko, Dante Ortiz, and Nathan Burazer talked with me every weekend. I want to thank the whole Korngold/Beinfield family, but especially Bear, Shem, and Murray, who read the manuscript and supported me with their friendship. Michelle Quint, Avi Lessing, Eric Rosenblum, David Hoffman, Brigid Hoffman, and Kent Lam also read and provided valuable feedback.

  Jordan Bass, in an a
ct of kindness I will never forget, edited an early version. Sarah Lannan, Simon Evans, Billy McEwan, Brendan Morse, E.G., Ali Nelson, Becca Nelson, Jane Rogers, and Kent Simpson always encouraged me.

  I want to thank both sides of my family, but in particular, my mother, Kathy Coyne.

  And, finally, I could have never written this book without the help, inspiration, and love of Reyhan Harmanci.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  The White Van

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART I

  1

  2

  3

  PART II

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Back Cover