Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  Johnny guessed there were probably cops who put together the fact that the robberies were serial, but they must’ve dismissed it as a bunch of dumb hippies. Faces in the gang came and went. Lots of turnover. The only constants were Sam and Harmony. She drove for him, wouldn’t carry a gun. Sam carried a gun but never used it, and he liked to wear Looney Tunes masks for the jobs. In a time when beret-clad black men were pointing out that slavery wasn’t over, and a radical faction from Puerto Rico was explosively demanding independence, and upper-class white kids were detonating houses in Greenwich Village, a guy doing stickups disguised as Bugs Bunny didn’t really rate.

  It was six years before California got hot for Sam, and it happened because he discovered two things: cocaine and banks, in that order.

  They were utter failures at bank robberies. They’d go in with guns waving, then guns blazing. Inevitably a silent alarm got tripped. It was upsetting for Sam. He was a people person, but coke short-circuited him. It took his flexible temperament, his ability to adapt, and converted it to pure volatility. Back then, Sam did coke all day.

  Johnny shuddered. “He’s mostly pills now. He knows more about pills than I know about cars, and that’s a lot. He taught me the basics—what’s an up and what’s a down, what you can mix and what you can’t.”

  The gang did fourteen banks over four months and raked in $8,000 total. Sam killed three tellers and wounded five more. His trigger finger got jumpy on the powder, plus he didn’t like taking lip. Tellers had a way of giving him lip even when their lips were pressed tight together.

  Now the FBI got interested. It was 1983. Radical politics were tired, and greed was getting good, but only if you worked on Wall Street and wore a suit to the office. The seventies were over, and the sixties were very, very over, and somebody was going to teach these kids a lesson. The Cain Gang hopped in a van and headed east.

  “They did more little stuff on the way, but by the time they got to Jersey, they were broke. Sam decided their next score should be big.” Johnny and I were scooping our emptied snack containers into a trash bag. I felt stuffed, sated, and wide-awake. “He started casing, but banks had cameras now, security guards. Then one morning, Sam’s getting coffee, and across the street at this mall, an armored truck pulls up to do a money pickup. Just two guards, and the back of the truck chock-full of cash. Sam thought it’d be easy. I see why—he drew me a friggin’ map, took me through the plan. It looked good. Sam made it sound damn good.”

  Johnny’s face lit up. He began unpacking our garbage, building a kind of diorama.

  “Here’s their car.” Easy Cheese.

  “Here’s the mall.” Ritz crackers, Triscuits, Chips Ahoy.

  “Armored truck.” Ben & Jerry’s container.

  Johnny steered the Easy Cheese to the Triscuits and parked. Ben and Jerry arrived not long after, stopping parallel to the curb. Johnny dented in the empty pint of ice cream—it took a lot of bullets—and he pushed the Cheese car, fast, toward a gridlock of single-serve trail mix and fruit-snack packets.

  “They didn’t think of the traffic,” he said. “They forgot there’d be other cars. Sam figured three o’clock on a Tuesday, everybody’s at work. But he didn’t count on—”

  “School,” I said. “Kids were getting out of school.”

  “Here’s the elementary, and here’s the junior high.” Johnny put a granola bar box and a drained Hawaiian Punch jug behind the mall. “Cops and state troopers were there in ten minutes. The gang got half a mile, to the bypass. Two troopers and three bystanders killed. They were a hundred feet across the New York State line, which is why he went to Sing Sing. Which is why I wound up meeting him.”

  Johnny wrinkled his nose at the mess and started junking it again. “Your mom must’ve noticed the schools when they were planning the whole thing. Sam thinks she had kids on the brain just then, since she was pregnant with you.” He froze, holding the juice jug. “Sorry, I skipped ahead.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’m not used to— My brain doesn’t really work like that anymore. A, B, C, one, two, three.”

  “You’re doing great.” I kissed him. “Where’d you skip ahead from?”

  His sudden joy made the state sound sacred. “California,” he said.

  Around ’82, when their exploits started showing up in the Crime section of the LA Times, Harmony decided she wanted out. Easier decided than done: Sam ran a tight ship, with the girls especially. But Harmony had been married to him for two years, and with him for seven, and she knew his blind spots. He developed tunnel vision when preparing for a theft. The bigger the prospective take, the truer this was. After they got to Jersey and Sam saw so much money under so little guard, he became possessed, ignored her completely. She was even able to get to a doctor after a week of nonstop vomiting to find out her uterus had a tenant.

  A week later, Sam assembled everybody to outline the plan. He also assigned each member their roles: Harmony would drive, as always; he and five others would subdue the guards; and the gang’s most athletic member—a girl who was a nationally ranked sprinter before she met Sam and dropped out of college—was given a vital task: raiding the truck and running with the money bag.

  Harmony saw her chance. Soon after the plans were laid, she went to the money runner and told her a top secret new plan. Something Sam didn’t want the others to know about.

  After a couple of weeks’ practice, it was time. They drove to the mall and arrived at five minutes to three, Harmony behind the wheel of their van. She kissed Sam good luck. He got out with the gang behind him, all armed. The runner followed, ready with a duffel bag.

  “Now, here’s the awesome part.”

  Harmony had parked by a corner of the mall. She claimed, to Sam, that it would afford them more choices for a getaway route. Once her best friends and the father of her unborn child were thoroughly engaged with the armored truck, she got out and walked a few blocks. To where she’d parked another vehicle. It must have been a real chore to acquire that car without Sam knowing, but Harmony had done it—and it was a car that no one would ever APB.

  “The guards in that truck put up a good fight. They died, but they took three of the gang with them. Sam was the only one who didn’t at least get wounded. Then he—”

  Johnny set a fist on his lips. His laughter got out anyway. “He turns around, and there’s the girl, right? With the money bag? She’s running right past their van. Sam thinks of chasing her, but this is why he picked her, ’cause she’s so fast. Even carrying four million cash, she’s just gone. He gets in the van, and he sees your mom’s not there. Sam says he knew right away what Harmony was doing. A couple of his guys aren’t dead, they get in after him, and Sam guns it for where the money went. Except there’s the school traffic. A couple hundred cars, easy, and he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He takes the turnpike; he doesn’t have a choice. The cops catch up, and”—Johnny cleared his throat, shook his head—“the shoot-out on the highway isn’t funny. I mean, none of it’s funny. But it is, sort of. Your mom had serious balls.”

  Sam never implicated Harmony. His codefendants rolled on him like cheap sleeping bags in exchange for reduced sentences. During the appeals process, Sam made friends with his lawyer and persuaded him to research abandoned vehicles with Jersey plates recovered nationwide in the weeks after his capture. There was a black ’73 Datsun catalogued in San Luis Obispo with a passenger seat soaked so maroon it looked like the factory had fucked up and put red interior in that one spot. Next, his lawyer looked into bodies. The girl was found on a Pennsylvania roadside two days after the robbery. Her autopsy revealed that her femoral artery had been nicked. Most likely it happened while she was running from the armored truck, toward my mother, with the cash.

  “So your mom rode west with four million bucks while Sam got life.”

  Johnny scooped up the garbage and cinched the trash-bag ties with finality. Outside, dark was going gray with presunrise. I recalled agreeing to some dawn s
ex. He tossed the bag on the floor, looked at the window, and stopped talking. It had to be the least aggressive seduction move ever made.

  That suited me; I could pretend not to notice. I was occupied trying to square my housedress-and-heels mother with an outlaw getaway driver. Her rules about shoes on the carpet, her repeated felonies.

  How often she checked behind her while walking down the street. Moving a slat of the blinds so she could see out. I’d always assumed she was scared of imaginary monsters. But five years on the run, a little LSD, a lot of marijuana, ripping off your husband for several million—he’s in the clink and you know he’s a chatty guy. What do you do? You put on a costume. You play the part. If the authorities show up at your door, you say Sam’s mistaken. They’ll leave long enough for you to grab the essentials, throw your daughter in the passenger seat, and tell her this is not a drill.

  It was wonderful, in a way, to have Harmony make some sense. It was atrocious, too.

  “I don’t know how much cash can be left,” I said. “She never had a job, and her wardrobe was pretty considerable.”

  “Sam’s lawyer checked into that. She skimmed a quarter mil, but that’s all. She did something with ladders or CDs or—bonds, I guess? I don’t know. Sam said she was smart with it. Only nice thing I ever heard him say about her.” Johnny scooted closer. His voice dropped low. “Sam said some really, really mean stuff about her. Stuff he’d do if he got a hold of her. I can’t repeat it. Or, y’know, I won’t.”

  I touched his arm, grateful.

  “Sam thinks she kept the rest of the money hidden as a bargaining chip. So he couldn’t kill her if he got out. He knew she was getting weird, but he didn’t think she’d—” Johnny took my hand and held it in both of his. “I’m sorry your mom killed herself. I am.”

  “I wasn’t surprised,” I said, observing his thumb rolling over my knuckles. “But I was. It was strange. It’s still strange.”

  “The bad stuff is like that. The horrible stuff. It’s all strange. Sometimes I think it’s because horrible stuff’s not supposed to happen. It doesn’t fit. Things are supposed to be good.” He grinned, sheepish. “It’s nice to think that, even if it’s not true.”

  I crawled onto him. He hugged me shamelessly. Light was seeping into a dark corner behind the bed, where a mousetrap was set with a plastic wedge of cheese.

  “This can’t be all we get,” I said.

  “It’s not that bad. It’s better than a cot.”

  “I meant tonight. We can’t just get tonight.”

  “I’m gonna draw a shape on your back. Try and guess what it is.”

  I laughed, kissed him neck to nose to chin, and at his lips, I married the moment to uncountable others, the many others we’d had and would get.

  “Are you listening now?” I said.

  “Mmm.”

  “Come with me. Run with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then meet me after. When it’s all over.”

  “Don’t cry.”

  “Say we’ll meet after, and I’ll stop.”

  He lay sideways, bringing me with him. A crumple under my head turned out to be our two remaining condoms. I unwrapped one.

  Johnny stole them, flung them aside.

  “You’ll come find me,” I babbled, resisting his efforts to hold me, calm me down. I didn’t want to be calm. “After it’s all over, you’ll come find me and we’ll go get an apartment. I’ll wait tables. Mechanics can work off the grid. You’ll get home, and I’ll be there on the fire escape, with my guitar, and you can come sit with me, and we’ll decide if we want to cook dinner or go out. Or see a movie, or take a walk. We’ll get a dog, so we’ll have to walk him.”

  I left off there for Johnny to contribute. He had sex hair, lovingly disarrayed. I touched it as a dopey smile spread over him. “Home,” he said.

  Pop! Pop pop! From upstairs, the kitchen.

  No, outside.

  I puckered to form the word “what,” but Johnny was off the bed. He bolted up the stairs, out the door.

  I went after him. Blaine’s coat. I thought of going back but didn’t. We’d handle this, we’d go back, Johnny and I would make sweet daybreak whoopee, and I’d get Blaine’s coat and return it the next time I saw him; it’s interesting—part of me really did believe all that. I was running through the woods, getting nipped by branches and needles. Curly and Legs: I’d forgotten they existed. Ahead, I heard a giggle, followed by a shush, same as in the rest stop bathroom. I cleared the trees. There were the girls, pushing the station wagon toward the road. The gravel made a sound like popcorn under the tires. They had it in neutral, were each at a door, straining, ass muscles rounding. Johnny was lying in the dirt, holding his crotch. I got to him as the van arrived at the turn.

  “Stop them,” he said.

  Curly saw me and shouted, “Now!” Legs stepped into the passenger side, holding the window frame. She pulled; the door clicked. Curly hopped in the driver’s seat. She yanked the door, but my shoulder was there just in time. The armrest conked off my hip, and the door wagged open again. I got a foot inside. Curly’s fist smashed my left tit, and I shouted an incoherent cry of offense. I started slapping at her, a totally inept fighting technique, but she was about as much a pugilist as I was. We threw open palms, doing no damage. Legs reached for the ignition. I reached, too, and Curly tried to scratch at my hands. She missed, because I wasn’t going for the ignition.

  I pulled back and up, bouncing off the door as the transmission jammed into park. The car rattled to a stop; I crashed to the ground.

  “Hurry up! Hurry up!” Curly yelled, catching her door and slamming it shut. Something fell out of her pocket. “Come the fuck on!” she was saying, but I was looking at the ground.

  She’d dropped her phone. I checked on Johnny. He was cradling his groin, trying to stand. No sign of Sam, and Curly was cranking at the transmission lever, while Legs was yelling at her to hurry, hurry, hurry. A red wash of sunrise hit the treetops.

  I snatched the cell, flipped it open, and dialed, doddering around the wagon to get a plate number. Blaine answered before it rang once. “Rainy?”

  “Brown Subaru Outback with wood trim. Don’t know what year.” Gravel ate my knees. “Hang on. I’m almost to the front.”

  “Are you hurt?” Blaine’s voice was like a balm. “Are you—”

  Out of nowhere, my wrist bent wrong. I screamed, looked up. Curly was shutting the phone, putting it in her back pocket. “Fix this,” she said, kicking the fender. “Right now.”

  She stood over me, trying for scary, but it didn’t work.

  “Where’s my dad?” I said.

  Curly smirked. “He’s a little tied up.”

  “Ellie, it’s fine,” Legs squeaked from the car. “We can walk.”

  “Shut up! Kat here broke it. She’ll fix it.”

  I got to my feet a little unsteadily. I wasn’t 100 percent sure where I was going, but I wanted to get there, so when Curly got in my way: “Move.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, cricking her neck upward, trying to compensate for the eight inches I had on her. “You owe me a car.”

  “How about you suck my dick?”

  “No, thanks.” She patted her belly. “Ellie’s all full.”

  I went around her. She came with me. “Fucking move,” I said.

  She reached behind her back. I should have been afraid, but I was too angry. I did what she’d just done to me—grabbed her arm, tweaked hard. The gun fell from her hand. I jumped, thinking it might go off. Curly took the opportunity to wind up and throw a haymaker. I flinched, and her fist connected with the top of my shoulder. Heat came up my neck, to my hot head. I threw my weight at her, and we rolled against the hood. She got a knot of my hair and pulled. I dug my nails in her arms and drew blood.

  For my first fight, I thought I was doing fairly well, until pain seared into my right eye. It didn’t come from Curly, but from a pebble that got kicked up as Legs sprinted past us.
We both watched, unmoving, as one of those fleeing knees blew out in a cherry spray. I saw the impact before I heard the shot rend the dawn, a big-throated boom!

  Legs had made it almost fifty yards. She folded to the road and rolled to face us, fumbling for her knee. She found it. She attempted, for a futile few moments, to gather it together before she realized how many chips of bone there were in the hole, and how many there were in the road. Comprehension pried her mouth open, and she screamed, “Help me! Somebody help me!”

  “Get off of her,” Sam said.

  I thought he meant me, that he was ordering me to get off of someone, maybe Legs. Maybe I was making her scream like that. Over and over and over and over, the “me” getting longer and louder. “Help maaaay! Help maaaay!”

  Curly kept pushing me back down. “Sam, hey. We were just messing around. We wanted to go grab doughnuts for everybody. We didn’t want to wake Kat, so we were being quiet.”

  Sam smiled; he didn’t look mad. If anything, he looked sleepy. A friendly bear coming out of his cave after hibernation. A couple hundred pounds of affability, a hug waiting to happen: that’s the story his smile told.

  But it’s still ringing through the valley, astoundingly loud: “Help maaaay! Somebody please help maaaay!”

  And the gun hung at the end of his hand. And his wrists were cuffed in rashy red. “Smart of you,” he said. “Wear­ing me out first.” His brow knit at me. “Are you all right, honey?”

  “Dad,” I said. Legs was on her back now, screaming at the sky. “She needs help.”

  “The two of you need to get out of the road.” Sam grabbed Curly by the front of her shirt. She was off the ground, kicking, her feet hitting mine in short, desperate timpani taps. Sam held the gun a few inches from her nose. “This is not what I do,” he said.

  Her face disappeared in a blob of jelly. Sam threw her. She bounced off the car door and crumpled. The tire obscured her. A dark-red pool poured outward, around the tire, dyeing the dull rocks. I was scuttling away, so it wouldn’t dye me. I made to grab the grille, climb the car, but I didn’t want to touch it, because she was touching it.