Double Play

by Paul Hina

any less flirtatious for it. But once Crystal started whispering in Brett's ear, and they both started laughing, that's when things got crazy.

  "Remember, her job is to meander around the tables. She had seen everyone's cards at the table by then. So, this whispering business wouldn't have gone over easy at any card game. And, at any normal card game, guys would've let her know in a hurry that she couldn't do that, but Ramsey took it to another level. He stood up, overturned the table, walked over, pulled Crystal up off Brett's lap, and slapped her hard across the face. And by the time Brett stood up to challenge him, there were already two of Ramsey's guys, one on each of his arms, pulling him away from Ramsey."

  "What'd Ramsey do then?"

  "He threw us out."

  "And what'd Brett do?

  "There wasn't much to do. They weren't asking nicely. So, we left."

  "He wasn't upset?"

  "Brett? Sure he was, at first. But that kind of stuff seemed to rolled off Brett like water. As soon as we were on the road back home, Brett was laughing about it, poking fun at Ramsey."

  "He wasn't scared?"

  "If Brett ever got scared, I never saw it."

  "But he should've been."

  "Right, but, remember, we had never seen that side of Ramsey before. I mean, we saw Ramsey's crew bust up a couple deadbeats at the club now and again, but it wasn't anything you couldn't see at any bar on a bad night."

  "I was told that you and Brett had a falling out."

  "I guess you could say that."

  "About Crystal?"

  "I had warned him about her. I'd told him to stay away from her, but he wouldn't listen."

  "So, what happened?"

  "Nothing much. It wasn't much of a fight, really. Brett, like he did most things, just kind of laughed it off."

  "But you were mad?"

  "Sure I was."

  "Gene said you guys had a fight about a girl."

  "I can see how he would've gotten that idea. I was pretty mad at them for getting us thrown out. As it was, I already felt like I was on the hot seat with Ramsey, and Brett's money was the only thing keeping me in Ramsey's good graces. Now, with Brett and Emma having done what they did, my association with Brett had become a liability. And, after that night, I was afraid to go back."

  "So, that was the last time you guys went to Fremont before the accident."

  "It was the last time I went."

  "So, how soon before Ramsey came to see you?"

  "Ramsey never came to see me."

  "But someone did."

  "One of his guys came to visit me at the garage, asked me to take a walk. This was about a week or so after Ramsey's blow up," Kevin says. "The guy started telling me how fond Ramsey was of me, that he didn't want to hurt me, but that I owed him a lot of money and wasn't leaving him much choice.

  "And by the time we were at the end of the block, another tough—a giant guy—was waiting for us, leaning against a running car with the back door open. I don't mind telling you, I was pretty scared."

  "They offer you a deal?"

  "They asked me to come to Milpitas with them. They said that Brett had been picking Crystal up most nights and taking her to the club. Of course, I knew that Ramsey must have hated this. And they told me as much. They said that Ramsey had warned Crystal to stay away from Brett, but she wouldn't listen to him. This didn't surprise me. Crystal was easily as headstrong as Brett was."

  "If you do ever talk to the police about this, you might want to be careful about referring to Crystal in the past tense."

  Kevin tightens his jaw a bit and nods.

  "So, what'd they want you to do when you got to Milpitas?"

  "I was supposed to wait with them until Brett got there. Once Brett got out of his car to get Crystal from the house, they wanted me to go to his car and cut the brake lines. They said they just wanted to put a scare into them, let them know that Ramsey was to be taken seriously."

  "And you just went along with this?"

  "They weren't asking me what I wanted to do."

  "What were they offering you?"

  "My debts to Ramsey would be gone."

  "But they weren't forcing you to go."

  "Not at first, but when I said I wasn't comfortable doing anything to Brett, I took an elbow form the giant guy right in the jaw. And that was before I'd even gotten in the car, but, for the rest of the evening, the smaller guy in the passenger seat was constantly finding a way to show me his gun."

  "So, what happens once you get to Milpitas?"

  "Like I said, we waited," Kevin says. "We must've been waiting there for about three hours. And, let me tell you, it was a tense three hours. They didn't say much, and even though I tried to get as much information from them about what they were going to do after the brake line was cut, they weren't giving me a whole lot of feedback."

  "And they just assumed you'd know how to cut a brake line?"

  "I don't know. I mean, they knew I was a mechanic. I know my way around a car. They didn't seem to question it. They just gave me a hacksaw and told me to cut the line. I told them that I didn't want to hurt Brett. Not only was he my friend, but he was with my sister. But the guy in the passenger seat, the one with the gun, just kept saying that they were just going to scare them a bit, shake them up."

  "So, Brett gets there…"

  "Yeah, I guess it must've been about ten o'clock by then. I don't really remember the time, but that's the usual time we would roll through Milpitas on our way to Fremont.

  "But he got out of the car, and went around the side of the house toward the back. Then the guy in the passenger seat got out, opened the door, and told me to get out and to hurry."

  "He still have a gun?"

  "Oh yeah, only now it was pointed directly at me."

  "Did he have you at gunpoint the whole time?'

  "He did."

  "So you cut the brake line?"

  "Yeah, I took the saw to it."

  "Then what?"

  "We ran back to the car and waited. After a couple minutes, Crystal and Brett came back around the house from the backyard."

  "Why the backyard?"

  "Beats me. Ramsey's guys knew exactly what was going to happen, though. My guess is they had been staking the place out for awhile. But they knew he going to the back of the house. I'm not sure why. Maybe she was sneaking out or something. She was a young girl after all. I think she'd just finished high school. I doubt her parents would've approved of her leaving at that time of night.

  "Anyway, they got in his car and took off down the road.

  "And I thought that was it. I thought we were done. I expected Ramsey's boys to turn the car around, and to take me back to San Jose. But we followed them instead.

  "At first, we kept a pretty good distance from Brett's car, but once we were well clear of Milpitas, and the road got more curvy and uncertain, they jumped on his tail, forcing him to really speed up. And it was a particularly dark night too. I could barely see what was happening outside the shine of the headlamps. That's when it dawned on me that they were planning more than just a scare. I yelled for them to slow down, but they ignored me. And, honestly, at this point, we were going so fast, I was scared as much for my own life as I was for Brett's.

  "Then it happened. Brett lost control of the car, skidded into a turn, and his Bel Air started to fishtail. Then they flew over the hill.

  "It was terrible. Once they disappeared down the hill, you could just hear the car flipping. At this point, I couldn't see what was happening. Besides, everything happened so fast. I just remember how quiet everything suddenly got. Brett's car had stopped flipping, and Ramsey's guys had stopped in the middle of the road. I remember just sitting in the back seat, looking out the car window, and watching the smoke and dirt rise up from the hill in our headlamps."

  "Did the fire start right away?"

  "That's the thing. I didn't see any light at all, only the light from our headlights. But the guy in the passenger seat, the one with the gu
n, got out and walked to the edge of the road. He had a bottle in his hand. It looked like a bottle of booze, and there was something tucked in the lip of the bottle, a rag or something. He lit the rag and sidearmed it down the hill. That's when I first saw the light of a fire, and it didn't take long before it was really raging."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "It was pretty dark outside, but he was clear as day to me. He was standing right in the headlamps when he threw the bottle."

  "Then what happened?"

  "He got back in the car and we took off."

  "Where?"

  "To Fremont."

  "To the club?"

  "Yep."

  "To do what?"

  "I don't know. I didn't ask."

  "They didn't say anything to you after the accident."

  "Not a word," Kevin says. "But once we got to Fremont, they took me to an office behind the bar. I'd never even noticed it before. It might've been Ramsey's office, but I don't know. I just sat down on the couch in the office, and wondered what they were going to do to me."

  "What'd you think they were going to do?"

  "I was too stunned to think clearly about it."

  "So, they just left you there, in the office?"

  "They gave me a couple hundred dollars in chips and told me I could go play the tables if I wanted, or I could get some rest. They said I was going to be there for the rest of the night either way.

  "I tried to sleep, but it wasn't happening. I couldn't get the whole scene out of my head. I couldn't shake the moment when the car went off the road. I must have imagined it a thousand times that night—the sound of the car rolling down the hill. It was terrible. I couldn't shake it.

  "I knew they were dead. I knew that if I hadn't cut the line they might've survived. I could've just lightly run the saw over the metal