One Rule - No Rules

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "Maybe, but that's not how it is here."

  "He who lives by the sword, etcetera," said Louis. "That's pretty much how I feel."

  "I'm more: He who dies by the sword is fucking dead."

  "Ha. So, what – you're ready to launch Waco 2 here?"

  "No. I'm not going to get into a standoff. My strategy is to have the ability to escape in a worst-case scenario. The weapons and overall construction of this place are designed to make that happen."

  "Really? How do you escape?"

  "I'll show you one way."

  She grabbed a u-shaped steel handle from under the gun stand and headed toward the targets at the end of the firing range. Louis followed with reluctant footsteps. She inserted spring-loaded bolts on the ends of the handle into two holes camouflaged with brick-colored powder, and tugged open a small door.

  Stooping at her side, Louis saw a metal chute with what resembled a wide skateboard positioned by the entrance.

  "This chute leads to a locked steel shed in a patch of woods just over one hundred yards from here," she said.

  "You'd roll your way to freedom."

  "That's the idea."

  "You do realize this is completely insane, don't you?"

  "You have something against skateboards?"

  He snorted out a laugh.

  "It's only insane if it doesn't work," she said. "Do surviving and staying out of jail seem like the goals of a madwoman?"

  Louis shook his head. "It's just putting yourself in that position in the first place. Someone as smart and dedicated as you are could've made a fortune doing lots of things. Why this?"

  Thalma stood up. Louis backed up a couple of paces when she turned to face him.

  "I've thought about that," she said. "Our society requires you either to bow down to authority or to become an authority. I guess that I didn't like the other choices, so I chose a third option: become an authority over my own life."

  Louis stroked his beard, his frown somewhere between a vague understanding and puzzlement.

  "You know," he said after several moments, "that almost makes sense. I think I've felt something like that myself. In school, I had to do stuff I really didn't want to do. That's how it seemed out of school, too. You got to play by the rules, or they kick your ass."

  "I only have one rule," said Thalma. "There are no rules."

  "Ha. That's kind of a contradiction, isn't it?"

  "You know what they say about contradictions and little minds?"

  Louis shook his head.

  "You want to go for a little ride?" Thalma nodded to the skateboard.

  "By myself? We can't both fit on that thing."

  "I think we can. I'll lie down on it, and you lie down on me."

  "For real?"

  "If you're going to be here with me, I want to make sure it can work with two people."

  She ducked into the chute and stretched out on her stomach on the wheeled board. Louis hesitated. Lying on top of Thalma wasn't the worst thing he could imagine by any means, but he couldn't escape the feeling of being dragged into something he really didn't want to be dragged into. The story of my life, he thought, and scrambled in on top of her.

  "You can help push with your hands, if you want," she said. "Just try not to interfere with me."

  They both pushed and pulled awkwardly on the slick steel surface, but had no trouble getting the board moving. Must be some primo grade bearings in those wheels, Louis thought, trying to distract himself from the feel of her body beneath him. They were about the same height of 5'11", so they fit well – almost like interlocking Legos, he thought. He knew she was muscular, but he had no clue until now just how hard and dense her body was. It was like lying on a slab of steel covered by a thin rubbery cushion. Talk about buns of steel. He smiled.

  Soon they were scuttling along like a two-backed turtle at what Louis estimated to be the speed of a fast walk. Faint overhead lights flicked on as they rolled.

  "Are you okay?" he asked. "Am I crushing you?"

  "No," said Thalma. "I hardly know you're there."

  Louis frowned. He knew he only weighed one-fifty, give or take a few pounds, but still, he felt almost insulted. A girl ought to feel a little crushed under his manly weight, he thought.

  "I don't like big, heavy guys," she said, as if reading his mind. "You have a nice, slim body."

  "You think I have a nice body?"

  She turned her head, looking up at him with one eye, smiling. "Yes, I do."

  "Thanks." He cleared his throat. "I think you have a good body, too. Nice and, uh, firm."

  She smiled again, and turned back to her work. In about a minute they reached a dead end. A small florescent light flickered on, revealing metal rungs ascending a narrow chute up to a small latched panel. As Louis crawled off her, Thalma sprang up and unlatched the panel, throwing it open. Lights filled the space above her.

  Louis labored up the rungs after her. A final rung, and he shoved himself up into a dimly lit shed. A sleek-looking motorcycle stood in its center, poised to go. An assault rifle – he guessed an M16 – and a big pistol hung on one wall. Again with the guns, he thought, scowling to himself.

  "Ever been on a motorcycle?" she asked.

  "Yeah, a couple of times. Nothing quite as fancy as this, though."

  She drew back two deadbolts and shoved the shed door open. Louis blinked in the daylight, which seemed impossibly bright after the underground tour. Thalma unhooked two helmets from the wall, and hopped on the bike. She patted the seat behind her.

  "That's one of those really fast bikes, isn't it?" Unease resonated in his voice.

  "Not that fast. There are plenty that go faster than 190 these days."

  "Oh, only 190. In that case, no problem."

  She smiled at him. "I'll go easy, I promise."

  Louis straddled the seat behind her, holding his breath as she started the motor. She strapped on her helmet, and waited for him to do the same.

  Oh God. Louis gripped the seat strap – then clutched Thalma's waist – as they launched through the door onto a tree-lined path with a stomach-churning burst of acceleration. In a flash the forest was past, and they were flying down a dirt road – some sparrows swerving away from their heads at the last instant. The relentless acceleration continued, until the cornfields on either side of them resembled a blurry modernistic painting to Louis's fiercely squinting eyes. A wave of nausea rose in him. He decided in that moment he would never ride on a motorcycle again as long as he lived.

  Then Thalma gently braked as they turned onto a driveway and rolled up to a green utility building – its bay door rising as Thalma touched a button on the keychain dangling from the bike's ignition. They cruised in alongside a FedEx van, and the bay door lowered shut behind them.

  Louis stumbled off the bike. He doubted the trip had taken more than two minutes, but it had felt like a lifetime.

  "Jesus," he said. "You call that going easy?"

  "Sorry." She smiled at him on her way to the van. "When I'm on that thing I find it hard to resist."

  Louis smoothed back his golden brown hair and drew in a steadying breath. "So what is this place anyway?"

  "One of my halfway houses to freedom."

  She raised the FedEx truck's rear door. He joined her in staring at the scattered stack of packages.

  "Did you steal a Fedex truck?" he asked.

  "No. And those are dummy packages. In case I get pulled over – all the props are in place. I also have a wig and sunglasses and a new driver's license and passport in front."

  Louis could only shake his head in wonder as she moved past him to climb into the cab, emerging in seconds as a blond with aviation sunglasses.

  "What do you think?" She arched her hips and fingered her sunglasses.

  "I think I need to slap myself and wake the fuck up."

  "I'm that gorgeous as a blond?"

  Louis gave her a lame smile. Thalma slipped off her wig and glasses and returned them to the glove com
partment. She locked the truck.

  "I know this must be a shock," she said, facing Louis. "I would never have believed I'd be doing this, either, if you'd talked to me ten years ago."

  "Yeah," Louis murmured. "I'm sort of on overload here."

  Thalma leaned against the van, her arms folded. "You can walk away, Louis."

  "Can I?"

  "Yes. Just keep your word about me, and everything's fine."

  "I keep thinking. It's like one of those movies, you know, where's this psycho bi –" He cut himself off. "Crazy lady who seems cool, but she likes violent shit too much, and she keeps looking for excuses to kill someone, you know?"

  "I've watched that same movie. I admit I like playing with guns and building my private fortress – playing this whole business game - but the truth is I always look for excuses not to hurt people. Maybe I'm not entertaining enough to be in a movie, because I'm not a psycho bitch, as you were about to say."

  Louis's smile was unconvinced. "You say you'd let me go, but what if I let something, you know, slip to someone? Would you show up someday and put a bullet in my head?"

  "Bullets are messy. I'd probably just use my hands or poison."

  "I'm being serious."

  "So am I."

  Louis looked away from her measuring eyes and her hard smile, feeling as if he'd reached the gates of paradise only to face a pack of rabid Rottweilers. To step into Thalma's world would be stepping out of the known universe.

  "If they come after you, raid your place, whatever," said Louis, "you have another life – another identity - set up to run off to, right?"

  "Yes."

  "What about me – I mean, if I were your partner? Could I have those safeguards, too?"

  "That could be arranged. If that's what you want."

  Louis sighed. "If it came to that, I don't have much worth sticking around for, far as I can see. My folks won't speak with me. I got a few cousins and relatives, but we aren't close. My friends are mostly dope heads who couldn't give a flying fuck about the future."

  "Sounds like you could use a change," said Thalma. "So could I."

  "You have family, don't you?" For some reason, he found that hard to imagine.

  "I haven't spoken to my mom in a decade. She has no idea where I am now or what I'm doing. I have a few relatives, but they're living in California and Oregon."

  "Father?"

  "I've only seen my father once," she said. "When I was four."

  "He and your mom were divorced or...?"

  "They were never married. I've never seen them together. He just showed up at our house one day, when my mom was at work."

  "Your mom left you alone at home when you were four?"

  Thalma smiled thinly. "She wasn't worried about me."

  "So what happened with your dad?"

  "He tried to kill me."

  Louis straightened up, staring at her. Her voice and face were so matter-of-fact she might've said he took her to the zoo.

  "Fortunately, he didn't try very hard," she said.

  "Are you sure he tried to kill you?"

  "He placed his hands around my neck. He was either going to crush my throat or break my neck – I could see that in his eyes. So I bit his arm and squirmed free. I got my hands on a kitchen knife. He made a move to grab me, and I stabbed at him."

  "Jesus," Louis whispered.

  "He told me he'd be coming back. He told me I'd better learn to defend myself, because next time he would show no mercy."

  "Why the hell would he do that?"

  "I don't know."

  "What did he look like? Do you even know his name?"

  "He was tall, dark. I remember his eyes – dark green, cold and bright like a cat's." She shrugged. "My mom would only tell me that I was named after him."

  "A dude named 'Thalma'?" Louis's chuckle fell short at her expression. "Maybe he was like a Mafioso, and you were, you know, proof of an affair he wanted to eliminate...or something?"

  "Not a bad guess," she said, slight surprise in her eyes. "I actually asked my mom that exact question. She said he wasn't in the Mafia – that he was much more dangerous than that."

  "Maybe he was the hit man I thought you were?"

  "He's a killer," Thalma said in a quiet voice. "That much I'm sure of."

  "Then why didn't he kill you? No offense, but you were only four years old. A kitchen knife wouldn't stop him."

  "I know. I think he did mean to kill me, but when I fought back..." She frowned. "I passed a test. And when he comes back – if he comes back - I'll have to pass another."

  "From what I've seen, that shouldn't be a problem."

  "We'll see."

  A smile broke through her reflective frown. She reached up and brushed a bang from Louis's forehead. He blinked. Her warm hand launched tingles down the side of his face.

  "It just hit me," he said, taking a step back from her. "Maybe that's part of what this is about? You know, all the guns and escape routes and training your body as you obviously have?"

  "You're perceptive. More so than I expected."

  "I don't know about that, but I'm pretty good with basic logic." He smiled.

  "I grew up half-expecting him to show up at any moment," she said. "That's why I joined the Army, and then the women's Special Forces program, when I was eighteen. I wanted the combat training, and I wanted to escape my home."

  "I remember reading about that. WASP, was it? They shut it down, didn't they, after a few years?"

  "Yes."

  "Somehow I don't see you taking orders all that well."

  "Especially from people I don't respect."

  "That's when you started your career in drugs?"

  "Sort of. After I was discharged, I received a job offer from the father of one of the girls in the WASP program. A Brazilian who, I learned later, ran a major drug empire. Down there, I learned a lot about how to run such an operation, and about Brazilian martial arts as well."

  "I figured you'd be into martial arts." Louis's half-smile faltered. "So this drug lord just let you leave?"

  "I earned my way out." Thalma climbed back on her bike, her dark expression closing the subject. "You ready?"

  "I think I'll walk, if that's okay." He offered her a shaky smile. "I could use some time to think."

  "Okay. I could have some dinner waiting. How do you feel about steak?"

  "That would be great. Thanks."

  Thalma watched Louis in her rearview mirrors as she rolled away, wondering if she'd dropped too much information on him too fast. It had been so long since she'd opened up to anyone. It was like opening a dam. Once the words started flowing, it was hard to stem the flow.

  She redlined through the first three gears, and hit the center of the hard-packed dirt road at nearly 140. The police SUV on the transecting road to her right flashed by in a blur. She was a half-mile past the intersection before the SUV rounded into view in her rearview mirrors, sirens and lights blazing. Damn. She usually reduced her speed to near-legal on the paved roads, but today she'd allowed herself to be distracted.

  She started to let up on the throttle, but the police SUV was now little more than a blinking blip in a fast-retreating cloud of dust. The motorcycle was legal, but not registered in her name – not part of her official identity. The main reason she wore a helmet was to disguise herself while riding.

  Screw it. She twisted the throttle. In seconds she was beyond the view of the pursuing police car and racing through her path into her woods – the path entrance a barely visible opening in the brush – skidding to a stop before the storage shed. She punched out the combination, and then was inside - the sirens whining in the distance.

  Five minutes later, Thalma was out on the back porch igniting the gas grill when the familiar white SUV rolled into the driveway and up to her end of the house. Sheriff Martson stepped out, looking seriously pissed as he strode across the grass toward her. Socrates, who had been not so subtly eyeing the steaks on the plate by the grill, lumbered down
the steps and moved to intercept him.

  "Control your dog," the sheriff growled, one hand on his gun.

  "Soc," Thalma hissed, and the big Rottweiler dropped down on his haunches. "What's up, Sheriff. Did you decide to arrest me?"

  "Do you own a motorcycle, Miss Engstrom?"

  "Nope."

  "Did you happen to hear one racing by your property a few moments ago?"

  "Yeah, I did. It was raising a lot of dust. Must've been moving pretty fast."

  "You could say that."

  Sheriff Martson stood with his hands on his tool belt, studying her.

  "Was there something else?" she asked. "I'm making dinner."

  "I was just thinking. Things – illegal things – seem to keep happening around you lately."

  "The thing I notice happening lately is that you keep showing up to harass me."

  "Is that really the attitude you want to take, Miss Engstrom? In my experience, people who take that attitude have something to hide."

  "I'm not all that interested in your psychological theories, Sheriff Martson. You're on private property. Unless you have some legal issue with me, I'm going to ask you to leave."

  "This isn't your property. You're a tenant here, right?"

  "So I guess that means I have no rights?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "As I said, I'm making dinner." She started for the back door.

  "You know, you're not in the clear, young lady. The kid you rescued on the road is going to be tried, and I can personally guarantee your name is going to come up when that happens."

  "I hope you say good things about me."

  Thalma moved inside, making herself shut the door gently. In the kitchen, she dropped a pair of artichokes into a pot of water on the stove, and turned on the gas. She slipped two potatoes into the countertop electric stove, watching Sheriff Martson through the small window above the stove as he retreated, scowling, to his car.

  Thalma was scowling herself. This small-time sheriff was getting on her nerves more than the violent and deadly criminals she'd dealt with on an almost daily basis in and around São Paulo. With them you knew where you stood. If someone pushed you around, you were free to push back. Police there were hesitant to get into a shoving match with suspected or known criminals, because that was a fast track to death. Cops preferred to be paid off and work out safe and profitable relationships with their brothers and sisters in crime. Most of the cops she'd known of were as corrupt and evil as the crime lords and enforcers they did business with.