“Hole in the World”
We hang a U-turn in the middle of the block then head back south for a few blocks and make a right. I figure he’s going to his dealer’s place when we turn into the alley behind a forties-era strip mall: three shingled, seen-better-days two-story buildings adjoining a brick drugstore on the corner.
Roy parks the ratty Continental in the alley and I sit watching while he gets out and grabs a greasy canvas bag from the trunk then proceeds to climb up the drugstore wall. The corners of the building are built with the bricks protruding about an inch and a half on every other row, and old Roy just scurries right up that convenient little ladder like a monkey to a banana stash. When he gets to the little flat area behind the second floor apartment, he disappears from my sight.
Now I’m freaking out. I should leave right away. It seems this guy is burglarizing the place while I sit waiting in the getaway car. Me with priors and almost a million bucks waiting for me up in God’s country. No way I should jeopardize that. I mean, I’m not running scared; I just have to get the hell out of this car. I go behind a dumpster where I can still see everything and take a piss. Roy doesn’t come out right away so I sit down at the base of an old oak tree and fire up a Kool. At least from here I can run if the cops come. The ground is wet but I plant my ass on one of the tree roots and stay dry. The ground has a pleasant musty smell until the wind swirls and I whiff the dumpster.
Must be a half an hour before that crazy fucking Indian comes sweating back down the bricks and hops into his car. I can see him inside there behind the wheel, bathed in blue light, his head jerking all around. I know he’s thinking, Where the fuck is that guy, asshole out dropping a dime on me?
I time it so just as he backs out into the alley, I grab the door handle and rip it open. Only trouble is Roy sees the door fly open and floors it and damn near jerks my arm out of the socket. A couple of yards down the alley he realizes it’s me and starts laughing his ass off. I run up and get in and he floors it again like a fucking idiot and we go swerving and tire spinning down the dusty trail. I’m sure by then that every house for a square block has dialed 911.
None too pleased, I say, “What the fuck were you doing back there, Roy, buddy? If it was anything illegal I suppose I should say what did we do back there, because as long as I’m in this car with you, I’m an accessory. And that means I get to know what the fuck it was you were doing.”
“Oh, nothing much, man. No sweat, not to worry,” Roy says. He’s barely under control, lips sticking to his teeth. “Just something I been thinking about for a long time.”
“Whose apartment was that you just illegally entered?”
“That was my girlfriend’s apartment.”
“What’s the matter, lose your keys or something?”
“Yeah, I did, a long time ago. I should’ve said my ex-girl friend. We just broke up. Just this minute. Only she doesn’t know it yet. I don’t think she’ll want me anymore now that I’ve ruined her kitchen floor.”
“Ah, man, what did you do, trash the place ’cause she’s balling someone else or some shit?” I’m imagining all sorts of weird shit he might have pulled.
“No, man. I wouldn’t trash a woman’s place. I mean—for screwing somebody else. Nah, not me, it wasn’t like that.”
“What the fuck did you do then? I think I have a right to know. And one thing you need to know is that I got priors. That’s what you need to know. And if I need to get out of this car to keep from getting popped, I expect you to tell me.”
“I’m sorry, man,” he says. His eyes are sparkling, burning in the dashboard light. “Back at Mama’s I was thinking you might have done some hard time. I don’t want to get your ass in a sling, man, so maybe you’re right. Maybe we should ditch this car. Take off the plates and—”
“It’s still got registration numbers.”
“Yes, it does. But I never changed the title. Bought it from a skin off the rez—up by Bemidji—and they’ll never find that fucker. They come looking; he’ll just disappear into the woods. Probably stole the thing anyway. The plates, though, are mine—off an old Pontiac I had.”
“You still haven’t told me what you did back there in that apartment, Roy. You’re a tricky one, aren’t you?”
“And you’re a persistent one, Mr. I-Got-Priors. I was going to tell you, man. But you need to know one thing: I was an MP in the service and I fucked up a lot of tough guys when I was in. Some of ’em thought they were real fuckin’ bad, too—before they decided to mess with me, that is. So don’t think you can horn in on my action, here. I—”
“Listen, Roy, goddamnit. You brought me along on this, man. And now you got me wrong. This ain’t no strong arm. I got plenty action of my own that I’d like to get to without having to spend time in some jerkwater jail, that’s all.”
“Okay, Donny boy, then take a look in that bag back there and see if there’s anything you recognize. Besides the burglar tools, I mean.”
“Ha, ha, very funny. You’re a funny guy, Roy. So come on, tell me, funny guy, what did you do back there in your girlfriend’s apartment?” I snatch the greasy bag from the back seat and it’s so heavy I wrench my back a little. When I look inside I have the answer to my question: I’m not sure how he did it, but the fifty or sixty bottles of colorful pills lying in the duffel tell me that the crazy sonofabitch hit the drugstore, hard.
“Jesus fuckin’ Jenny,” I say, “you got thousands of bucks worth of pills here. You got your Percocet, your Valium, your Dilaudid, Xanax… some generic morphine, five and fifteen milligram… looks like some Brown + Clears at the bottom here. Codeine… Percodan… Jesus Christ, man, I’d say you hit the mother lode.” I take a nice deep breath and let it out real slow. “So now that I’ve praised your work, can you let me get real far away from you?”
“Relax, relax, my man. There’s no problem here. We’ll be rid of this car and inside a bar in ten minutes, I promise you.”
(To be continued)
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