The Double Cross

by Michael P. King

  “If they’re in the game, maybe we’ll be able to scoop them up as well.”

  “Always the optimist.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Roy and Carol followed Pooch as he left the Elm Street house in his red Ford pickup truck. He parked in the metered parking on Twelfth Street near a corner convenience store. They circled around to find a spot behind him. When they were parked, they saw him come out of the corner store with a six-pack of beer. They sat there for over an hour before a tall black man who wore his hair in cornrows stopped at a silver Taurus, opened the trunk, took out a black book bag, and then got in the driver’s seat and drove away. Pooch followed him, and they followed Pooch.

  The Taurus drove into a blighted neighborhood and pulled to a stop in front of a boarded-up building. A black kid, maybe fourteen, wearing basketball clothes, came out of a doorway, got in the car for a minute, and got out carrying a paper sack. The Taurus made two more stops in rundown neighborhoods and then drove out to the eastern suburbs. It pulled to the curb half a block from a high school. A green Lexus pulled up. A white high school kid wearing expensive casual clothes jumped out, jogged over to the Taurus, slid in without shutting the door, and jogged back to the Lexus with a bulge under his shirt. Then the Taurus drove back into town and found a parking spot on Twelfth Street, one block north of the corner store.

  “Uh-oh,” Roy said. “Look at the gray work van.”

  Carol looked up the block on the other side of the street. “Is that a camera?”

  “Taking pictures of the Taurus. Must be the cops.”

  Pooch slowed down in front of them and made a U-turn in the intersection. “Jesus,” Roy said. He held up his hand to block his face, and Carol ducked down in her seat. Pooch drove right by them.

  “Do you think he saw us?” she asked.

  They drove past the work van. Roy took a left at the corner. “Don’t know. Right now I’m more worried about the cops. We’ve seen them, so we’ve got to assume they’ve seen us.”

  He took the next right. “Keep a look-out for anyone following us.”

  She turned in the seat.

  He took another left into a residential neighborhood, sped up to the next stop sign, took a right, and circled the block.

  “There’s no one behind us,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. The cops are set up on that Taurus. They might also be on the Sycamore car or the Jackson Street house. Worst-case scenario, they’ve taken our pictures three times already.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Change cars and move.”

  They drove down to Orion Avenue where a number of car dealerships were located and pulled into Dollar Bill’s Used Cars. After an hour of haggling, they left in a white Ford Bronco with rusted fenders. They drove through a Taco Grande for some late lunch on their way back to the motel, where they cleared out their room, wiped it down, and left.

  “Can we go to a better motel this time?” Carol asked.

  “I don’t think there are any worse,” Roy said.

  They got on the beltway and got off at another interchange where billboards advertised motels. “How about the Econo Inn?” Roy asked.

  “Why that one?”

  “Straight shot onto the freeway.”

  They got a room on the first floor on the side closest to the parking lot exit. The room was bright, the bedspreads were clean, and the bathroom fixtures were reasonably new. Carol left her suitcase on the floor by the door. “So we’re still trying to rip off your old partners.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about the cops?”

  “Carol, we don’t want the cops taking our pictures, but we’re just spectators here. All we’re doing is driving around town. We aren’t breaking any laws. If my old partners rob that drug crew and escape with the cash, we rip them off. If their plan goes wrong, and they get killed or arrested, we stay out of the way. There’s no downside for us.”

  “Then why did we change motels?”

  “Because, if my old partners rob the drug crew, and it gets messy, we don’t want the cops dragging us in for questioning right when we need to be chasing the money.”

  * * *

  “Hey, guys.” Pooch sat down on the sofa in the living room of the Elm Street house. A game show was on the TV. Jacob was sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner, and Stevie was coming back from the kitchen with a can of beer in his hand.

  “Where you been?” Jacob asked.

  “Did you guys see any cops today?”

  “Not me,” Jacob said.

  “Cops were set up on Twelfth Street watching the Taurus. I think I got away without being seen.”

  “You think?”

  “Definitely wasn’t followed. I’ve been circling around for a couple of hours. And I saw Paul. He was in a light blue Caddie with this little girl I fucked last week.”

  “Which explains how he got here.” Jacob drummed his fingers on his thigh. “He must have been following you.”

  “I didn’t tell the girl anything.”

  “We should have shot him,” Stevie said.

  “The kid’s luckier than Jesus. Cicilie Chandler’s friends should have killed him,” Jacob said.

  “So what now?” Pooch asked.

  “We’ve got to figure out if the cops are watching the Jackson Street house. We don’t want to be seen until it’s too late.”

  “What about Paul?” Stevie asked.

  “He doesn’t want to get in the middle of this. That’s not his style. He was following Pooch, so he’s probably hoping to rip us off, which means we’ve got nothing to worry about until we have the money. Then if he shows up, we kill him.”

  * * *

  Jimmy Shane got out of his Chevy Blazer in a downtown parking ramp close by O’Brian’s Barbeque. He was a big man with a shaved head. He was wearing a blue suit with a white shirt and no tie, but he moved like a brawler looking for a fight. The sidewalks were busy with the after-work crowd leaving from happy hour or going to dinner. He glanced at his watch. He was late. His girlfriend, Ellie, would already be sitting at their table, tapping her foot and watching the door, but he needed to make a phone call before he got to the restaurant. He spotted a phone booth in front of a Gas and Go Convenience Mart and crossed the street. He dialed city detective Tom Smiley. “Hey, Smiley.”

  “Jimmy, what’s up?”

  “Somebody in a red Ford truck was tailing my delivery guy.”

  “Really? It isn’t one of us. You know where our guys are.”

  “You don’t have anything new going on?”

  “Nada. You know everything we know.”

  “I want you to look into this.”

  “No problem. Who was being followed?”

  “The Twelfth Street Taurus.”

  “I’ll get it sorted out.”

  “ASAP.”

  “Of course.”

  Jimmy hung up the phone. The money he paid Smiley was money well spent. The drug taskforce never collected enough evidence to do anything but arrest a few of his lowest level street dealers. And the cops were always good for squeezing the competition. O’Brian’s Barbeque was just up ahead. Jimmy grinned. He was looking forward to a big plate of ribs.

  * * *

  Later that evening, Smiley met Benson at the Jackson Street For Sale house. They stood in the dark in the living room by the kitchen chairs positioned near the windows and peeked through the curtains at the money collection house across the street. The lights were on in the downstairs, and a minivan was parked in the driveway. “It’s been quiet since seven o’clock,” Benson said.

  They walked back into the kitchen and turned on the lights. Photos and reports were stacked on the kitchen counter. “Anything new today?” Smiley asked.

  “The Twelfth Street surveillance team spotted two cars following Jimmy’s guy. Just like the mopes we saw yesterday on Jackson Street, only the guy in the first car was different. It looks more an
d more like somebody’s planning to rip off Jimmy.”

  “How much longer until we have enough evidence?”

  “We’re close. We just need video of Jimmy handling the money. We’ve got all the other pieces of the puzzle. But we can’t wait too long. If some idiots try to rob him, it’ll turn into a mess,” Benson said.

  “As long as it’s players killing players.”

  “It’s never players killing players. Jerkoffs never hit what they’re shooting at.”

  Smiley shrugged. “Did we track either of the cars?”

  “Kelly and Sue managed to follow one car to a motel. Man and a woman. Watched them check out, change cars, and move to another motel. It’s in the report. They must have spotted the van. The other car, we don’t know where it went.”

  “That’s a tough break. We need to get all these players under surveillance if we’re going to stay ahead of any trouble.”

  * * *

  Darius stood in the living room of his doublewide trailer with an unopened fifth of Jim Beam in his hand. His woman, Melody, was in the kitchen getting a glass out of the cabinets. She was a skinny little bleached blonde whose pregnant belly stuck straight out in front of her, straining the fabric of her untucked shirt. She brought him the glass. He hugged her and kissed her neck. Then he sat down on the sofa, opened the bottle, and poured while Melody got a Coke from the refrigerator.

  “How’s my little man?” he asked.

  She smiled. “He was kicking hard after lunch.”

  “You been getting everything ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But not working too hard?”

  “I’m taking it easy.” She sat down beside him and put her swollen feet up on the coffee table.

  “Nobody knows we’re leaving?”

  “I haven’t told anyone.”

  “Not even Katie?”

  “Especially not her.”

  “We’re set for Friday. Then we’re gone.”

  “You still think your sister will be glad to see us?”

  “When she sees we’re starting a family, that I’m looking for a job, that we’ve got money to tide us over, she’ll be fine.”

  “We could go to my mom’s.”

  “All your friends know where your mom lives. Jimmy would be on us in days.”

  “Are you really, really sure about this?”

  “I’m not getting busted again and going back to prison. I’ve got you and the little man to take care of. Besides, I’m setting up these jokers I’m working with to take the fall. Jimmy will blame them. Everything is going to be fine for us.”

  “I hope so.” She cuddled up against him.

  He put his arm around her. “Trust me, Mel. We’re going to make a fresh start.”

  * * *

  Late Wednesday morning, Roy and Carol were tailing Jacob, who was driving a white Nissan Sentra. He left the Elm Street house, stopped for gas at the People’s Mini-Mart, made a phone call from the pay phone, and then parked on the street with a view of the Jackson Street house. Over the course of the next four hours, three guys showed up to drop off book bags, no one staying in the house for longer than twenty minutes. Finally, just before five o’clock, the black man with the cornrows came out of the house with a large gym bag and got into the minivan. Jacob didn’t follow him. Instead, he drove into an older neighborhood of small Cape Cod houses just south of downtown and parked on the street next to a neighborhood park with monkey bars and teeter-totters and a No Dog Walking sign. Roy and Carol parked half a block back. Thirty minutes later, the minivan pulled into the driveway of a house across from the park. The black man got out with the gym bag, went inside for about fifteen minutes, came out without the bag, and drove away. Jacob left in the opposite direction. But Roy didn’t follow him; he just kept looking at the house.

  “What’s up?” Carol asked.

  Roy rubbed his chin. “How do they know where these houses and parked cars are located? Stevie and Pooch got here when we did, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Maybe Jacob has been here a couple of months, figuring it all out. Hunt and peck. Or maybe they have a partner feeding them inside information. That’s the most likely.”

  “How does that affect us?”

  “Someone else to look out for—someone we don’t know.”

  “So they’re going to rob this house?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think they’re going to try to pull the money from the cars or ambush the delivery guy before he gets here. That’s why they’ve been checking up on the cars and houses and following those guys around town. If they were going to rob the house, why would they risk being noticed?”

  “But what about the cops?” she asked.

  “We know they’re set up on the Twelfth Street car. We know about the Jackson Street house, so I bet they do, too. Hell, they may know about all the drops, cars, and houses. But that doesn’t matter to us. We’re not robbing the drug crew or interfering with the cops. That’s the beauty of our plan. No dealer and no cops. And if there’s an inside man, our plan makes even better sense. We just need to make sure we’re tailing Jacob and the guys when they pull the job, so that we’ll be able to rip them off when they drop their guard.”

  * * *

  That evening, Jacob, Stevie, and Pooch were sitting in the living room of the Elm Street rental, eating delivery pizza from the box and drinking beer. Baseball was playing on the TV. Jacob muted the sound. “So now we’ve seen it all—the stash cars, the three guys who do the pick-ups and drop-offs, the collection house, and the girlfriend’s house where the money ends up. Looks like Darius is playing it straight with us.”

  Pooch reached for another piece of pizza. “We gonna keep his cut?”

  “We could, but that’s just extra aggravation. Right now everything is safe and easy. On Friday Darius comes out of the Jackson Street house with the gym bag, and we make it look like it’s a straight-up robbery.”

  “Boom,” Stevie said.

  “Exactly,” Jacob said, “No muss, no fuss. The Charger is the fastest, so we move the Sentra and the truck ahead of time, and use the Charger for the getaway car. We’re already packed, we get the money, and we leave town like a bat out of hell.”

  “That’s two more days,” Pooch said.

  “Two days to find out where Paul is staying and put a first strike on him.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Stevie said.

  “Thought we were going to let him come to us,” Pooch said.

  “We’ve got the time. Might as well use it. How was that girl he’s got with him? Is she worth a try?”

  * * *

  Roy woke with a start. Carol with yelling incoherently and thrashing about beside him. He turned on his bedside lamp. “Carol.” He shook her shoulder. “Carol.”

  She sprang up, looking around the room, her T-shirt hanging from her thin frame.

  “You were dreaming. Hollering.”

  She put her hand on her chest. “That was crazy.”

  “You need a drink of water?” He got up, filled a plastic cup from the bathroom sink, and brought it to her.

  She took the cup from him. “That was the weirdest, realest dream I ever had.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was in some kind of time loop. It was me and Terry. We were doing our thing, but every time something went wrong—I got raped or stabbed or Terry got shot or arrested—and then it all started over again. Nothing I could do could make things turn out right.” She gulped the water.

  He took the empty cup from her. “He’ll be out in a few months.”

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right? You were working his game—stealing cars, rolling drunks. It’s only a matter of time before it all goes wrong. The odds were against you.”

  “I know that now.”

  “He made his choice. He should have known the risks. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but you’re not going to end up in a trap like that w
ith me. We’re going to steal from people who won’t go to the police. And if you don’t like my plan, if I won’t listen to your suggestions, you can walk away. No hard feelings. By the time we’re done dealing with my old partners, you’ll have learned everything you need to know to make your own way.”

  She slid back down in the bed. “Why are you so good to me?”

  “Carol, in this life you have to have some rules you live by. We’re partners. It’s us against the world. You need a drink of that whiskey you’ve got hidden around here?”

  “No, I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”

  He turned off the light. She snuggled up against him. Everything was going according to plan. He’d won her trust, even if she still felt loyal to Terry. He was the one on the scene, the one she was lying next to, the one she was looking to for comfort. Soon she would be his woman, and she’d choose him over Terry. Soon it would be time to tell her the truth about how Terry ended up in jail.

  * * *

  The next afternoon, they were following the black man with the cornrows as he drove around town making deliveries. They knew his route so they kept well back. When he reached the Jackson Street house, they parked at the far corner just in case there was police surveillance they didn’t know about. When the minivan pulled out, they followed. The minivan drove a circuitous route, doubling back on itself twice, but it eventually ended up at the Cape Cod. No ambush. No carjacking.

  They drove over to the Elm Street house. The truck and the Sentra were parked in the driveway. “I guess nothing’s happening today,” Roy said.

  “Maybe they’re going to rob the Cape Cod.”

  “The minivan is the easy score.”

  They were driving back to their motel, cutting through a residential neighborhood, when an unmarked police car, an Impala, turned on its lights and siren. They pulled over in front of a duplex. A fat man with a gray mustache, wearing a blazer and slacks, a pistol holstered on his hip, got out of the Impala. Roy lowered his window. The fat man showed him a city detective’s badge.