Blacktop Wasteland(48)

“I just got a lot going on right now. I’ll talk to you later.”

“If I was you, I’d keep an eye on them. You don’t need to let your new friend know you holding something magically delicious.”

She shut the door and locked it.

“Ain’t that bout a bitch,” he said under his breath. He whistled a low short tune and headed back to his car. Maybe the time to upgrade was now. Jenny was beginning to look rode hard and hung up wet anyway.

Jenny opened the boxes. They were both stuffed to the gills with cash. She sat them on the couch and went to the bedroom. She grabbed a few shirts and pants and threw them in an overnight bag. She went back into the kitchen and took her sugar bowl out of the cabinet. She’d hidden twenty or so Percocets in the bowl. A gift from Ronnie. She shook all the Percs into her hand and put them in a pocket on the side of the overnight bag. A wet lock of hair fell into her face, but she didn’t bother moving it. The wail of an electric guitar made her jump like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. She looked down at the kitchen floor.

The man had finally stopped bleeding. The handle of an eight-inch butcher knife stuck out of his neck like the crank on a jack in the box. The guitar sound was accompanied by a low vibration coming from the pocket of his jeans. That was the tenth or fifteenth time his phone had gone off since 3:00. Jenny stepped over him, careful to avoid the puddle of blood that was surrounding his body, and opened her freezer. She pulled out the ice tray and placed three cubes of ice in a small freezer bag. The ice felt good against her right eye.

Her daddy had been a mean son of a bitch but the one good thing he had done was teach her how to fight. That bastard never pulled any punches with his mouth or his fists. Those hard lessons had proved lucky for her but bad news for the guy lying on the floor. She stepped over him again and went back to the living room. It took some elbow grease, but she got both boxes in the overnight bag.

Jenny went to the window and peeped through the drapes. She didn’t see Ronnie anywhere. She grabbed her keys from the hook by the door. She went back to the window. Her apartment complex was laid out like a motel. A series of units with one big front window and a front door that faced the parking lot. She only saw one strange car and that was parked right next to hers. The car looked empty. Still, she decided to wait a few more minutes. She didn’t want to pass Ronnie on the road. He’d follow her and pretend he didn’t care if she had a guy at her place, then he’d try sweet-talking her. She couldn’t have that. She might just tell him everything. No, she had to run. Running might make her look guilty to the cops but staying would get her killed. She’d seen the news. Lou Ellen was lying. Whoever owned the shop didn’t want the police in their business. They were sending guys like the dead guy on the floor of her apartment with a mouthful of rotten teeth to handle it for them. Once she got down south, she’d call Ronnie and warn him. She did owe him that.

Jenny checked her phone. The guy had knocked on her door around noon. He’d punched her in the face at 12:15. He was dead by 12:30. It was now nearly 7:00. Six hours of sitting with his rapidly cooling corpse waiting to see who would show up first. Ronnie or Yuckmouth’s buddies.

Almost as if on cue, his phone rang again.

“Fuck this,” she said. She grabbed her overnight bag and left the apartment. She hopped in her car and started the engine.

“Breathe. Just breathe and drive. That’s all you gotta do,” she said out loud to herself. She tossed the bag in the passenger seat.

Checked the rearview mirror. Nothing. As she backed out of her parking spot the fuel light started to blink. That was fine. She had more than enough gas money. She’d stop somewhere in North Carolina and score some Adderall or something. Drive all night to Florida. Getting to the Bahamas shouldn’t be hard after that. Money talks and everything else walks. She pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto Bethel Road. A fine mist of rain began to fall. Jenny thought that was symbolic. It was like the rain was baptizing her. She’d come out of this a new creature. She didn’t have any AC in the car, so she was going to leave the window down until it started raining harder.

A black Cadillac Seville passed her on the two-lane highway as she headed for the nearest gas station. It was the only car on the road. No cops. No gangsters with butter yellow teeth. No Ronnie. Just the old Jenny on her way to a new life.

She was almost to the interstate when she noticed the Cadillac had turned around and was following her.





EIGHTEEN



“Wake up, sleepy head,” Kia said. Beauregard opened his eyes. “Can you pick Darren and Javon up this evening? I’m gonna pick up another office job tonight.”

“Yeah. Where does that Cook boy live?”

“On Falmouth Road.”

Beauregard sat up in the bed.

“Falmouth?”

“Yeah. They in that subdivision,” Kia said. She clipped on some earrings and closed her Rottweiler-shaped jewelry box. Beauregard thought that box was one of the ugliest things in existence. You had to lift the head to open it at the throat. You basically had to decapitate it every time you wanted an adornment.

“Okay,” he said.

“We gonna be alright, ain’t we?” she asked.

Beauregard spun until he felt his feet hit the floor. He grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips. He gave it a brief peck. “Yeah.”