Blacktop Wasteland(20)

“Alright then. Let me know if you have any problems with the Mustang,” he said.

Ariel shook her head. “See ya,” she said. He watched as she walked up to the counter, paid for her drink and her gas and strolled out of the store. As she stepped across the parking lot it was like he was watching a time-lapse movie in reverse. She was sixteen, then twelve, then five. By the time she got to the car, he could see her in his arms just after she had been born. Her little fists had been balled up like she was ready for a fight. A fight she was destined to lose because the game was rigged, and the points didn’t matter.

Through the big picture window he saw her get in the Mustang and tear out of the parking lot spinning tires. Like grandfather, like father, like daughter.

He would tell himself later that he had slept on it. That he had mulled over the pros and cons and finally decided the benefits outweighed the risks. All that was true. However, in his heart he knew that when Ariel told him about skipping college, that was the moment he decided to take the job with Ronnie Sessions and hit the jewelry store.





FIVE



Ronnie rolled over on his back and stared up at the ceiling. The AC in the window of Reggie’s trailer was as weak as a chicken. It pushed the heat around but didn’t actually condition the air. A trickle of sweat was working its way down his forehead. He hadn’t slept at all. He and Reggie had left Beauregard’s and went over to Wonderland to score some Percs.

Reggie had $100 left from his disability check. Ronnie had nothing left from the $2,000 he had gotten for running some stolen eels up to Philly for Chuly Pettigrew. Eels were a delicacy in fancy restaurants all over New York and Chicago. Chuly’s men had stolen a batch of eels from a fisherman in South Carolina who was now sleeping with the fishes. They weren’t worth much in South Carolina, about $70 a pound. But take them up to Philly or New York and some pretentious celebrity chef would cream his linen pants for eel sushi. The guy in Philly had paid $1,000 per pound. There had been 125 pounds of eels in the trunk of the car he and Skunk Mitchell had driven to Philly.

That was $125,500 for some slimy sea worms. Skunk was one of Chuly’s main men. Ronnie had done some of his time with one of Chuly’s other main guys, Winston Chambers. He’d recommended Ronnie as a good ol’ boy who could handle a gun and keep his mouth shut. Everything had gone smooth and less than a week after leaving prison Ronnie had a pocketful of money. Which he promptly blew up like the World Trade Center. That wasn’t that surprising or that big of a deal. How he had blown it, however, was quite concerning. Ronnie swung his feet around and moved into a sitting position. He grabbed his T-shirt from the back of the couch he had crashed on and pulled it over his head. Reggie was in his room with a girl they had taken home from Wonderland. She was a big girl, but Ronnie didn’t mind. She tried hard to please both of them, but Reggie couldn’t get it up and Ronnie was quick on the draw. She didn’t seem to mind that and curled up with Reggie after Ronnie had rolled off her.

Ronnie got up and went into the kitchenette and grabbed a beer from the fridge. When he had gotten back from Philly, he had gone down to North Carolina and celebrated a job well done at a strip club Chuly owned just outside of Fayetteville. A strip club that had poker games and craps in the back. Long story short, he had drunk away two hundred dollars, made it rain with a hundred dollars’ worth of ones and gambled away the rest. Then he had done something so monumentally stupid he figured he should be the one getting a disability check. He had gotten a marker from Chuly’s guy at the club. They let him play and play until Skunk had the guy cut him off. By that time, he was fifteen thousand dollars in the hole.

Skunk had called Chuly, and Chuly had said he had thirty days to get it to them.

“He gave you thirty days cuz he likes you,” Skunk had said in that gravelly voice that made his skin crawl. He sounded like he gargled with battery acid.

“What happens if I don’t have it in thirty days? You gonna kill me?” Ronnie had asked as they walked him out of the strip club.

Skunk had pushed him into the passenger seat of Reggie’s car and closed the door.

“Nah, not at first. First, I’ll come get you and take you out to the farm. Cut off a couple of your toes. Let you watch me feed them to the pigs,” he said. He tapped the roof of the car and motioned for Reggie to leave.

“Jesus, Ronnie, what you gonna do? He was talking about cutting off your damn toes. I think that fucker would do it too. He got crazy eyes,” Reggie said as they barreled out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

“Shut up, Reggie,” Ronnie had said. His head had begun to spin and not from the all the alcohol he had drunk.

Ronnie took a sip from his beer. The sun was shining through the small window over the sink. The rays of light found every crack and crusty crevice in the trailer and highlighted them. Ronnie pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He turned on the stove and lit his smoke from the blue flame of the front burner. He had gone to Wonderland last night to find another driver. He had fucked things up with Beauregard. That much was obvious. He might as well as gone to a chicken coop to count hen’s teeth. There wasn’t one decent driver among all the pill-popping, moonshine-swilling meth head patrons of Wonderland. At least not one he trusted with his life. And none of them had one ounce of the skill Beauregard had. Ronnie heard some noise from Reggie’s room. Maybe they could do it without Beauregard. Him, Reggie and Quan. He pushed that thought away. He loved his brother but what little in the way of brains the good Lord had given him was being eaten away by pills and on occasion Mr. Brownstone. Technically Reggie could operate a motor vehicle. He just couldn’t drive.