PART SEVEN
(Published in 1999)
Being a thinker, I jog across the parking lot and down to the street corner just in time to catch the Stolten sisters hot-footing it toward the taxi stand. By the time Roy catches up, all sweaty and excited, his bag is safely in my hands and the girls are safely rolling away in the Yellow Cab. They were more than happy to give me the bag when I told them that Roy had a gun. I figure it was the best way to deal with a potentially dangerous and otherwise unwisely encountered situation. I mean, Roy’s jaw muscles were working like locusts in a wheat field and his eyes glowing like the high beams on a semi at four in the morning. Discretion was the better part of valor here; you know what I’m saying?
Roy eyes me suspiciously as if to say: who the fuck do you think you are, then he grabs the bag and shrugs. He shakes his head and laughs softly. “All right, you win,” he says. “We’ll go get a car now, Mr. Ex-con.” I guess I owe you, now, huh? Anyway, that’s what you think, eh?” He smiles some more, eyes bleeding red. Then he goes into some kind of weird Indian dance routine, I think just for my benefit. After he finishes that, he sings: “Okay Joe, we gotta go, me oh my-o,” rattling it off with a hip–hop beat.
I just suck up some air and hold it in, praying for good fortune. Anything is better than waiting, I guess. I’m getting eaten up, by this waiting. I just have to get to the Moser’s.
We are heading somewhere on main street, Tower Avenue. My guy is walking fast, leaning forward, his arms swinging back and forth against the sides of his red-and-black checkerboard lumberjack coat.
“What the hell, Roy,” I say. What fucking hole in the world are you taking me to now?”
“We’re going to Roy’s own, personal used car lot. It’s right down the block. Just you wait and see.”
We cross the railroad tracks and come to this huge, gray warehouse. Looks like it used to be one of those discount retail outlets that sprung up all over the place back in the seventies. Now it houses two bars—Starland and The Classic. A parking lot almost a block long and a half a block wide runs along the south side. The lot is full of cars, some of them way back in the dark where the pavement turns to gravel.
Roy sure knows what he’s doing, I’m thinking. Except we don’t stop at the dark parking lot, we keep on walking.
Here we go again….
(To be continued)
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