"Yeah," Billy said, "same. Guess I don't change too much."
"And that is why your credit rating is so good and your score is so high. What exactly were you looking for?" Ray asked him.
"Well I'm looking for something four wheel drive. That's why I looked at the blazer. I'm going to do some traveling. I'm going all the way out to California to look at property," Billy lied. "Maybe I'll be spending a little time on the desert too while I'm there."
"Have you thought GMC Suburban? It's a bigger vehicle, but so much nicer. Let me show you one. I ordered it special: Captains chairs, dual AC, then the guy couldn't make the loan happen. This truck is nice, Ben, very nice," Ray said.
Ray sold him on the GMC. He also lined him up with a local agent who took cash and wrote an insurance policy for the truck. The loan was approved with no problem. Billy had been prepared to put several thousand dollars down, but Ray had told him with all the incentives and rebates he wouldn't have to put any of his own money down at all.
Two hours after he had pulled onto the lot he drove the suburban off the lot, licensed, insured and with a full tank of gas. They unloaded the commander; locked it up and left it sitting in the mall parking lot, the keys resting on the top of the roof like the owner had forgotten them.
April took over the driving, enjoying the way the big suburban felt on the highway.
Rochester New York
Jimmy West
"Yeah?" Jimmy said. He held the cell phone to his ear, the other hand on the steering wheel.
Tommy," Tommy Murphy said in his ear. "I got a little tip. A guy I know down in Florida gets a call from a small time drug dealer up in Watertown. Wants to know if he can handle a large amount of coke and heroin that is about to be southbound. Says to my friend, he can make it come right to him. My friend says he's a little overextended right now. He doesn't want to spook the guy, you see? Hangs up, calls me. What I want for you to do is go back there and talk to the other guy... Richard Dean... Rich to his friends... He thinks he's something too. Even has a couple bodyguards," Tommy laughed.
Jimmy joined him. "On my way. And Neo's place is taken care of. I had to clean up a little mess across the street. Couldn't be avoided," Jimmy said. “Got hot just as I was leaving, but I left nothing.”
"I appreciate that, Jimmy," Tommy said. He gave Jimmy the address for Richard Dean. "You're on your way?" he asked.
"I'm on my way," Jimmy said and clicked off.
He had just taken care of the stuff from Neo's house: He pointed the car back toward route three and Watertown, set the cruise control and settled back into the seat.
Watertown New York
Sammy and Don
"If we were in a bigger city we wouldn't have to wait for so much," Don said.
Sammy nodded.
The tall brunette walked back from the front dispatch office and looked at Don. "April Evans?" she asked.
"Yeah?" he said.
"She bought a car in Rochester yesterday. It's on the DMV Computer. Must have just got in before the close of business yesterday," she told him. "Late model Jeep Commander," she said. She read off the license number as she handed the printout to Don.
"Jenny?" Don asked. "How fast can you get this out?" he looked at her.
"I'm off in ten minutes." She sighed... "Okay... About twenty minutes. I'll do it before I go," she smiled. "You owe me, Donnie, right?" she teased. She swung her hips and walked back out of the room.
"Lucky bastard," Sammy said.
Don laughed. "Hey, things are looking up. You call Rochester city, I'll call the sheriff's department. Maybe someone spotted it."
They both picked up phones and went to work.
Watertown New York
Saturday Night
Jimmy West
Jimmy had parked his car two blocks away and walked. He hadn't liked it, but he had, had no choice. He had now been watching the place for over an hour. Two bodyguards, girlfriend: An anorexic crack head with silicone implants. Two kids from another woman, not his ex-wife. A couple of phone calls had supplied him with names and everything else he had needed to know.
He had watched the girlfriend come and go, same with the two kids. The bodyguards, big, beefy dumb looking bastards, passing by the hallway windows that lead from the garage as they let people in and out. There had been five or six small drug deals, or what he assumed were drug deals: The car pulled into the drive, the garage door rose of its own accord; the car drove in and the door came down. A few moments later out came the car again: The body guards moved back through the hallway. Currently the girlfriend and the kids were in the house.
The garage seemed to be the preferred entrance into the house. He had seen no one use the actual front door of the place. This guy had to be the dumbest bastard he'd ever seen. Everything right there to make him talk.
He'd seen two big pickups so far too. People that worked for Richard Dean. They had driven straight into the garage too, just a faster in and out, like the stuff was right there waiting for them. He had moved over to the door and waited in the shrubbery. Hidden in the expensive looking hedges. Another dumb move on this bozos part, or his security: You never planted shrubbery that close to the house or doorway. Somebody had fucked up, but it would work out well for him.
He didn't wait long: The next car came, the door went up and Jimmy rolled under the door as it was on its way back down, ending up right behind the new Camaro rag top that had pulled in. A long legged black girl got out of the car and started up the steps that lead into the house. Jimmy took a couple of fast strides and ended up beside her.
"Sorry, honey," he said as he shot her in the back of the head with the silenced 9 mm. He caught her and eased her to the floor. "Better for you," he told her. "Believe me, much better." He took three deep breaths and then tested the doorknob... Unlocked. He paused, flexed his legs, and then burst through the door.
Both bodyguards were standing, arms folded, chatting with Richard Dean's teenage daughter he had spotted going into the house earlier. He shot both bodyguards before they could move, and then punched the girl hard, knocking her out. Richard Dean himself came running to see what the excitement was about.
He tried to play it tough.
"Do you know who I am?" Richard Dean asked.
"A fuckin' dead guy if you don't shut the fuck up," Jimmy said. He put the gun barrel to his head. "Pick up your daughter. Where is everyone else?”
"Elsie is in the shower... The shower... Ja... Jamie is upstairs in her rrr room," he managed at last.
“Pick her up now," Jimmy told him, motioning at the unconscious girl where she lay blocking the hallway. Richard bent down and picked up Denise and carried her into the living room. Twenty minutes later Jimmy had the three women in the exercise room, just off the living area, tied up. He was tying up Richard Dean.
Richard Dean had let him kill his girlfriend. He wouldn't say anything. And he waited until Jimmy had started in on his youngest daughter before he'd wanted to talk. Frantic beneath his gag, but he had pissed Jimmy off, so Jimmy had kept on a few minutes before he had stopped.
He had gotten it all: Cell number the kids would call back to, where they were heading. Who they would meet, and the rest that was planned. After he was done talking and it was time for Jimmy to turn him and his daughters loose as he had promised, Jimmy had broken the bad news to him by gagging him and finishing off his daughters in front of him. A bullet in the head for each of them. He saved Richard for last. “That's for making me wait," Jimmy told him as he slit his throat.
It had been impossible to stay out of the blood, so he helped himself to a shower and some of Richard Dean's clothes. Not exactly his style, but a good fit anyway. He went back out to the garage, and looked at the Camaro once again. Nice fuckin' car, he told himself. He turned, slipped out the side door of the garage, locking the handle set and then shutting the door. He walked calmly down the street.
When he got to the corner of the street where he had left his car, he sa
w a cop car sitting in the shadows halfway down the block: Waiting silently in the dark... Watching his car? Probably, he had told himself, but it made no difference if it was there for some totally unrelated problem. There was no way that Jimmy would be heading back to that car ever.
He had simply pretended that he was looking both ways for traffic and continued on, passing the street by. He walked up the street, circled back around the next block up and then made his way back to Richard Dean's house. He forced the side door that he had locked behind him and slipped back into the garage. He searched the dead girl and came up with a thick wad of cash and the keys to the Camaro.
Usually Jimmy never took anything with him, but he decided on the spur of the moment that the Camaro and the cash were his. He was sure that there was more inside: If he took his time he could probably come up with a lot more cash. He thought about it for a few seconds but not too long. It was free money after all. There was no sense in passing it up. In any case he had been forced to come back, or he would have left it. It was like fate or something, he told himself as he pulled the side door shut tighter to hide the damage. He headed back into the house.
He left an hour later with close to a quarter million dollars in cash in two small, black gym bags and two new prepaid cell phones. Richard Dean had, had dozens of them in a cupboard over the sink. His old one, another prepaid throwaway was in his car that he had had to leave. His second one, the one that held his contacts, the one that the people who knew him had the number for, was securely in his pocket.
He sent the door up on its track after covering the dead girl with an old piece of carpet, and then backed the Camaro out into the driveway. He ran back in: Shut the door down and then exited the side door. He closed the side door as well as he could and then walked back to the Camaro.
He called Tommy: He drove as he explained the situation, waited for Tommy to make the call.
"I could have someone there to do it. I know people, but I want you there, Jimmy. Get a flight out of Syracuse and fly down there: Rent a car, take care of things," Tommy told him.
"On my way," Jimmy told him. He rattled off the phone numbers for the new prepaid phones and then hung up. He drove the Camaro to route 81 and called the airport for reservations once he was on the way. He had three hours before he had to catch his flight. Time to drop the car at his place, a small farm in Central Square. That would give him time to shower and change clothes again, he could drive his SUV to the Airport and leave it in the long-term parking lot.
He turned on the radio, tuned it to a classical station and listened as he drove. Life was good, Jimmy decided. Life was very good.
Lagrange Kentucky
Billy Jingo
The rest of Ohio went quickly and they were cruising through Kentucky, the traffic light, talking to each other to keep themselves awake.
"We don't have to drive straight through," Billy said.
"I think I'd like to get some sleep then," April admitted.
She pulled off interstate 71 in Lagrange and they took a room for the night.
Once they got everything into the room it was after 9:00 PM according to April's watch. She stripped down and curled into Billy's side. She was asleep before Billy had even closed his eyes.
Watertown New York
Sammy and Don
"We got a warrant," Sammy said. He was standing outside the car talking to Don. He had left with another officer to get the warrant. He'd come back with a flat bed hauler. Don got out of the car, straightened his rumpled shirt and coat, lit a cigarette, and walked over to watch them load the car.
Don was good with numbers, names, he memorized them almost instantly. He had gotten a bad vibe about the guy at the Shop and Stock and that had caused him to look at his car. He had remembered three numbers. Other than that he hadn't even been able to remember the make and model. The kid manager had though. He had noticed it was a Buick Century. He had also noticed the bumper stickers as the guy had turned around and drove out of the parking lot. He had told him that one said, "My other car is a Cadillac," the other sticker was a parking permit for some garage. This car had matching bumper stickers. And the first three digits from the license plate number had matched the ones he had remembered.
Unfortunately the plates were registered to a silver Chevy Impala. Same year. The two cars probably looked a little alike, both GMC Products. When they ran the plates they were reported as stolen just a few nights ago in New Paltz, a little place up in the Catskills.
The VIN number came back as junked. They would probably come up with very little from the car. But if they did get something they would have the warrant to make it all legal.
The mechanic used a slim Jim to unlock the car and an electronic lock pick to turn the ignition and slip the car into neutral. A few minutes later he was winching the car up onto the flat bed hauler.
Sammy climbed back into the unmarked car with Don and they followed the truck back to the garage in silence. They were both down, both tired. It had been a long day. Sammy had predicted it might be a long day earlier that morning. It didn't make him happy that he had been right.
SIX
Sunday morning.
He held her and listened to her breath. He felt her soft breaths against his chest. Her skin against his skin. Her warmth.
Billy was worried. He was worried that somehow he would miss something: Even now he was trying to think around every angle and corner. He was afraid they would fail to see some little thing and it would be their undoing. It would most probably kill them. Literally.
He was mostly flying blind. Trusting to the same instinct that had kept him alive for all of his life: Steered him away from the bad guys; caused him to be somewhere else when the bad shit went down. Not every time, not for everything, but most of the time, for most things in his life.
He didn't know what to call it so he called it God. Or, he thought, he believed it was God: As close as he could come to understanding God anyway: If God was anything else he didn't know what that could be.
All he wanted was to get to Mexico with April. Find a place to live. The money was the only thing that could make that happen. It couldn't happen any other way: If it could happen some other way they could simply have walked away from the whole mess. Leave it for someone else. Make their way to Mexico like she wanted to and just stop.
Except, then what? Then what always came up. No money meant no land. No house. No way to live. No anything, so it came full circle. Right back to the money. No money was a bad idea. The exact opposite of what they wanted. So here they were dragging fourteen and a half million dollars across the country. And enough illegal drugs to put them both away for a hundred lifetimes if they got caught with them. The amounts just boggled his mind. He would start to think about it and get all tangled up in the numbers.
She moved against him, mumbled something low in her throat, and then quieted again as he stroked her hair with one hand. He pulled the blanket up further to keep her warm.
It was early. He had no way of knowing how early, but the traffic from the interstate sounded sporadic. Too early to get up. He held her and a few minutes later his eyes slipped closed and he drifted back off to sleep himself.
Watertown
Don and Jenny
Don batted at the alarm clock and its incessant low beeping, finally hitting the snooze button and silencing it for a few more minutes.
"You have to go right now?" Jennie asked in a sleepy voice from beside him.
"Soon, Jen, soon," Don said. He let one hand roam down her side, felt the swell of her hip, her breasts heavy against his side.
Her hand came across his belly and ran through the tangles of hair on his chest. His own hand slipped over her hip, and stroked the length of her upper thigh.
"Stay awhile, Donny... Just a little while?" she said. She raised up on one elbow and let her hand drift back down across his stomach.
He shifted his weight and pulled her over onto him, his mouth finding her breasts and
suckling at her nipples as she rested her thighs on his hips.
Richard Dean's House
Brian and Liv
Liv Spencer had never known Rich not to answer his door. She had called him twice and someone did pick up the phone, but had said nothing. She was worried, but more than that, she needed some heroin. She needed it. Rich always took care of her. Not only did she need his help, she had no idea where else to go for help like his... Caring like his.
She stood outside in the cold predawn rain for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. That had seemed like forever. Fifteen minutes was all the time in the world when you needed to fix. It was every clock, every watch in the world ticking away. Hell it was everything in the world. There was nothing else. Fifteen minutes and she finally started trying the doors. Front door, back door, locked. She hadn't really thought about the garage door, but finally she tried it. It was unlocked and it was also badly damaged at the lock set. That had made her stop.
The rain had stopped. She stood on the wet blacktop by the door thinking what she could say...
"The door was unlocked, Richie... I found the door unlocked, Rich... I just touched the handle and it turned, Rich... It was busted... It was already broken, Rich. I turned the handle and it just sort of fell open... It fell open, Rich. I needed you, Richie, the door was unlocked... I needed a fix, Richie, where the fuck were you?"
She practiced more excuses in her head, but finally it didn't matter that the door had been broken. She shut down the little alarm in her head that had begun to jabber about that. All that mattered was that the door was not locked and she needed to fix. She finished turning the knob and stepped into the garage.
The garage was lit, but only dimly. She made her way to the door that lead into the house, nearly tripping over a bunched up section of carpet someone had left laying by the door, and tried the door to the inside of the house. It wasn't even closed all the way and began to swing open as soon as she touched it.
"Rich?" she called. Her voice was a rusty croak. "Richie!" She stepped further into the shadowy kitchen.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 155
