The Dope Thief Page 9

  She spoke quietly, with no force in her voice. It was tougher to take than if she had been screaming. “The first time you got locked up, who was there for you?”

  “You.”

  “Me. And the second time, when you went to Lima, and the time after that when you went to the penitentiary. I never asked nothing from you and I never will. Not for myself.”

  Ray took a long pull on the beer and then played with the label, peeling a corner up and plastering it back down. The dog sighed under the table. Ray put his hand over his face, talked through his splayed fingers. “You know, for a long time I just figured he killed her, my mother. One day she was gone, and he said she ran off, but I just figured he got so juiced and crazy he split her skull and dumped her in a ditch. Then that postcard came, and at least I knew she was alive somewhere.”

  “He loved your mother, and he loved you. He still does.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. But what the fuck good did it ever do any of us? Even you?”

  “It’s not about what people do for you or to you. This is what I think: You just never give up. That’s what family means. He’s your family and I’m your family, and you’re ours. And that’s that.” Theresa went to the cabinet and got out a glass. She took the bottle from Ray and poured the beer into it. “I’m not stupid, Ray. You got a duffel bag full of money and no job. You and that dopehead Manny are stealing or dealing drugs or something’”

  “Ma’”

  She held up a hand. “Don’t even start.” She sat across from him at the table and picked up her lighter. “Just grit your teeth and give it up.”

  Ray blew out a long breath and held his hands against his temples. It was like every cell of his brain was firing at once. Too many wants and fears were crowding each other in his head, and he couldn’t sort them out or figure which were the important ones. He couldn’t pick anything new up without dropping something. He felt like he had run a hundred miles in the last few days and he hadn’t gotten anywhere, had no idea what direction to move. He had the feeling again that he wanted to cry but that if he did he would lose control of himself completely. His eyes burned.

  “Okay, I’ll make you a deal.” He combed his fingers through his mustache and made calculations in his head. “I’ll finance the great escape if you go down the shore for a few days, on me.” Her eyes narrowed, and she chewed her lip thoughtfully. He held up his hands. “Don’t blow a head pipe trying to figure my angle. Just do what I say and we all get what we want. Though from what Bart said when I seen him inside, I don’t know that he wants what you want here.”

  “Okay, okay, but I got calls in to the lawyer and the DOC. I’m at the shore they won’t be able to get me.”

  Ray opened the plastic bag and pulled out a throwaway cell phone. He grabbed a pair of scissors off the counter and cut the package open. He booted up the phone and waited for a signal, pulling a pen and a pad of Post- its from a caddy near the wall phone. “I got you covered.” He watched the readout and scribbled down some numbers, then handed her the phone and the Post- it. “For the next few days this is your phone number. Call everybody back and give them this number. Keep it with you all the time, and I’ll check in with you every day or so. After you talk to the lawyer and whoever, pack a bag and I’ll take you down to the limo.”

  “You’re in some kind of trouble, Raymond. Don’t think after all these years I can’t read you like a comic book, you little pissant.”

  He dialed his own cell phone number, and the phone in his pocket buzzed. “Nah, I’m trying to stay out of trouble, and I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, too. So do what I say for once in your life. I’m taking you out of here in half an hour. So do what you have to do.”

  “I’m an old lady, Raymond, it takes me a while to’”

  He held up his hands. “Ma. Don’t talk, pack.”

  “What about Shermie?”

  Christ, the fucking dog. “I’ll get him to that kennel up on County Line.”

  While Theresa got her things together and kept a running com plaint going about being rushed out of her own goddamn house, Ray went back into his bedroom and pulled the duffel out from un der the bed. He had to assume at some point they’d be here, and he didn’t want to leave anything for them to find. The bag was heavy, so he hefted it in two hands and lugged it out to the Toyota and set it on the open hatchback. He took out money in short stacks and put two in his pockets, handed two to Manny, and held two aside for Theresa. Down the street, two kids crept around their yard with water pistols, angling for position from behind bushes and skinny trees and then popping out to squirt each other, shrieking. He went back into his room and stood on the bed, pushing aside a ceiling tile and bringing down a tape- wrapped square of bills and throwing it on the bed and then reaching up for a short- barreled police- issue shotgun and a box of shells. He wrapped the money and the gun in his bedspread and carried it to the car.

  He kept hearing a voice in his head telling him to leave it all, the money and the guns and the whole thing, and just get in the car and drive away. Was it Marletta’s voice? Maybe it was, trying to propel him away from the terrible things he had done and the terrible things he might do now. Was he really trying to get to some kind of safety or just so far down this road he couldn’t see any other place to go? He had been thinking so much he’d like to talk to her again, to ask what he should do. To explain he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, not really. He’d just fucked up so many times that every move seemed wrong, every way he could go seemed to lead down into a hole.

  Manny was dialing the cell again, and he snapped his fingers to get Ray’s attention. Ray looked up, and Manny mouthed Danny and handed the phone to Ray.

  “Hello?” The voice sounded whiny, young. Something else, agitated.

  “Danny?”

  “Who is this?” Fear. That was the something else he heard. There was a tremor in Danny’s voice, and Ray heard him breathing hard.

  “Danny, it’s Ray. Manny and Ray.”

  “You fucking guys, what did you do?”

  “We did what you told us to do, Danny.”

  “No, no way. I never told you to kill nobody. You fucking guys.” Whining, like a kid, Ray thought. Jesus, and this junkie dipshit knew who they were.

  “Danny, don’t be an idiot. We’re on a cell phone.”

  “You think that fucking matters now? You fucking guys, honest to Christ.”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on? They know me, that’s what’s going on. You got to get me money and I mean right fucking now today, got me?”

  “Danny, what did you get us into?”

  “What did I get you into? Are you high? Manny never told me nothing about killing nobody.”

  “What do you mean, they know you?”

  “These guys from New Hampshire. They stayed at my fucking house, they know where I live.”

  “Jesus Christ, Danny, why would you put us on to something that could get back to you?”

  “I need money. I got bills and shit. I got a dependency problem and I owe people and I had no idea you two fuckups would get somebody killed.”

  “Danny, they don’t care about that, which you should please stop saying on the fucking phone. They want their money back.”

  “I need my money. You come here and gimme my money so I can get gone.”

  “Why did they for Christ’s sake stay at your house?”

  “My cousin, Ronnie, he knows these guys from being inside up there.”

  “Jesus, Danny.”

  “And they gave me money and I got dependency problems. I seen they were trying to get established down here. And I thought you guys weren’t going to fuck this up so bad. Ronnie called me.”

  “Danny.”

  “You better fucking hurry up. Those fuckers come back I am giving you two assholes up, you hear me?” There was a click and the line went dead. Ray tried calling back, kept hitting the send button, but Danny never picked up again.

&nbs
p; Manny raised his eyebrows at him, and Ray shook his head. He couldn’t believe he had given his life to a junkie for safekeeping.

  THEY WENT TO Theresa’s bank, and Ray gave her money to pay lawyers and what ever expenses she thought might come up, then dropped her at a hotel in Willow Grove where she could meet a limo to take her to Atlantic City.

  He went into the lobby and got a ticket for the limo and a schedule while Manny took her little paisley suitcase out and extended the handle. When Ray handed her the tickets she held him close and kissed his cheek.

  “I know you’re pissed. I know it. But I did the same for you and I have to do this for him.”

  He held up his hands in surrender and shook his head, smiling, and backed up toward the car. Out of her kitchen she looked tiny, frail, but her chin was up and her eyes bright.

  She said, “Family’s got to come for you when no one else will.”

  He took out his cell phone and waved it at her to remind her to keep it near her and on, and Manny put the Toyota in gear and they drove up to the Wal- Mart at Jacksonville Road. Manny pulled the Toyota up to the door when Ray came out, and he piled the things he had bought in the back. Manny drove up to a U-Store- It around the corner. They rented a narrow, cinder-block storage unit for a couple of months and paid a hundred and eighty bucks.

  They drove down the long, empty rows of doors and found the unit they had rented, number 181. They angled the car in and got out, and Manny mouthed the number to himself. Ray laughed, and Manny said, “What?”

  “You’re going to play that number?”

  Manny said fuck you and laughed and hauled the door open and went inside. Ray took some flashlights and batteries out of a plastic bag. They closed the door and turned on the flashlights and sat on the cement floor with the bags, the guns, and the money. Ray sorted out his cash from the money he’d been holding for Manny and the money they owed Danny, splitting everything between two imitation leather suitcases with the tags from the Wal-Mart still on them. Manny loaded and checked their guns and put them into the olive duffel. Ray had bought them some bottles of water, a couple of T-shirts, and candy bars, and Manny put them into a new knapsack.

  When they were done they shared a bottle of water, their faces lined with sweat. Manny opened the door a crack to let some air in.

  Ray put one of the flashlights up against his chin and made a moaning noise like a ghost in an old radio program. “It is later than you think.”

  Manny made a face. “What’s that?”

  “Something my old man used to do.”

  “Christ, what, to help you sleep?”

  Ray turned the light on the floor. “Yeah, he was a charmer. It was something from an old TV show. Used to scare the shit out of me.”

  Manny lit a cigarette, waved the match out.

  Ray said, “Guess we can’t stay here forever.”

  “Nah. It’s too fucking hot, for one thing.”

  “We had it sewed for a while there, huh? Set ’em up and knock ’em down. How did things get so fucked up?”

  Manny flexed his skinny biceps, his tattoos sliding and puckering on his arms. “Things are what they are. The thing I don’t get is why you think they should be any different.”

  “We had it under control before. If it wasn’t for that fucking Rick, or that moron Danny . . .”

  “Oh, will you please? If it wasn’t those two it would have been one of the tweakers. Somebody was going to go for a gun eventually. Somebody was going to dime us to the cops or just come to our houses in the middle of the night.” He stabbed the air with his cigarette. “You think, what? Shit can’t go wrong cause you’re smarter than they are? Cause you got a plan?”

  “I used to think that. I used to be one smart motherfucker.” He watched a bee hover in the light from under the door, jinking back and forth, looking for an angle on something it wanted. “Now I don’t know shit.” He took the keys to the padlock out of his pocket and gave one to Manny.

  “Listen, I got to say this out loud. You think there’s any point in giving the money back?”

  “Only if you want to be standing still when they kill you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You heard that fucking guy’s voice. What do you think he’s going to do? Say thanks and no hard feelings?”

  Ray shook his head. He couldn’t say he saw it any different. He shifted on the cement. “If anything happens, we . . . split up or you don’t know what happened to me, just leave my bag here for a month and then come back and give the rest to Theresa.”

  “You don’t have to say it.”

  “I know. See, I’m making the possibility that you could lose track of me but I could still be alive. Just by saying it out loud.”

  “You think that’s how it works?” Manny smiled and shook his head. “So, we go into this fucking hornet’s nest and I don’t come out. And if I don’t come back and get my hundred and fifty thousand dollars, it’s not because someone stuck a gun in my mouth and punched my ticket.”

  “No, not necessarily. You could’ve just gotten real busy doing

  something else and the money just slipped your mind.”

  “I think you slipped your mind. Look, Ray, we’re just a couple of lowlifes. Guys like us, we make our run and we go out. We get locked up, we get killed.” Kilt, the way Manny said it. “We knew it going in.”

  “Did we? I don’t remember going in, is the thing. It was like I was born in.”

  “Yeah, well, I never got what you were doing anyway.” Manny scratched his neck. “I mean, you were smart enough not to get caught up in this shit.”

  “I was? Why didn’t someone tell me before?”

  Manny tipped a bottle of water over his hair and shook his head like a dog coming in out of the rain. “I don’t know. I figure it’s some kind of fuck- you to your old man. Something like that.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Anyway, you were always good company, and who wants to do this shit alone?”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  AN HOUR AND a half later they were coming off of 202 in Malvern. The sky was full of clouds, white and dark blue moving across the sun. Things could go either way, more rain or more sun. There was a breeze, but it was just hot air moving. Ray kept trying Danny’s cell phone number but got nothing. It didn’t mean much. Danny used, and he could’ve lost the phone or had his service turned off or just been bingeing on dope and ignoring the ring. They turned onto a narrow country lane, and Ray began looking at the numbers on mailboxes. Finally they turned into a driveway that wasn’t much more than a trail into the woods.

  The house where Danny lived with his mother was speckled with green’some kind of mold or fungus that made it seem as if the house were being reclaimed by the forest. There was a washing machine rusting in the yard and cracked and rotted asbestos tiles on the walls. A pickup truck sat in the carport with blue plastic covering a missing passenger side window. Manny turned off the engine, and they sat for a minute, watching the house. Somewhere far away a dog barked and birds moved in the trees. Ray began to open the door, and Manny put a hand on his arm and reached into the backseat for the vests. They struggled into them, sweat pouring down their backs, and then stretched and shrugged, trying to get used to the bulk. Manny lifted a hip and awkwardly dug a one-hitter out of his jeans, and they both did jolts of brown meth. Ray smacked his forehead while the dope burned in his sinuses like he’d fired a flare gun into his head.

  They both got out and left the doors of the 4Runner open. Ray held up his hand for Manny to stay at the car. He nodded to Ray and pulled his shotgun from under the seat and stood with the open door between him and the house. Ray reached over the seat and got his Colt semiauto and worked the slide, putting a round in the chamber. Maybe it was all for nothing, maybe Danny was okay and they could give him some money and send him packing, but the house sat there closed and quiet in the woods, and Manny and Ray looked at each other, feeling wrong.

  Manny wiped sweat from his f
ace with the heel of his hand. He flexed his shoulders and whispered, “Christ, I can barely move in this thing. I feel like a fucking astronaut.”

  Ray held the Colt behind his leg and walked to the front door. He looked back at Manny and then knocked on the door with his fist. “Danny!”

  They stood for a minute. Ray blotted at the sweat at his temple with the back of his free hand. He knocked again, this time banging the butt of the pistol against the door. After a minute he tried the door and found it unlocked. He looked back at Manny, who put the shotgun sight on the door. Ray stood clear and pushed the door open, flattening himself against the outside wall. There was no sound except the door creaking as it opened. Manny shook his head.

  Ray moved inside, pointing the gun into the hallway ahead of him. He called Danny’s name again and waited. After a minute with no sound but the birds in the trees and the faraway dog, he moved down the hallway into the kitchen. He circled through the first floor, checking the empty rooms. The place was a mess, and there was a stink of unemptied garbage and mildew. In the living room there was a big new flat- screen TV standing next to the box it came in. This was Danny spending his end of the score he had put Manny and Ray onto before he even got his hands on it. In the living room a few steps from the front door, a suitcase was open on the floor. Clothes were pulled out and heaped on the dirty carpet.

  He went to the front door and shrugged at Manny, who came out from behind the car door and moved around the back of the house. Ray went up the stairs, and the garbage smell got stronger. All the doors were open except one, and Ray moved to it and stood in front of it for a moment, adjusting the pistol in his sweaty hand. Finally he pushed the door open and looked for a minute before stepping away and breathing through his mouth, gasping and spitting to keep from throwing up.

  He forced himself to look again. An old woman was in the tub. There was blood and vomit on her chin and down the front of her robe. One eye stared, a milky blue. There was a hole in her chest and her throat was open. There were flies walking in the blood on her mouth and a terrible buzzing noise that filled the small room. Ray used the sleeve of his coat to grab the door handle and pulled it closed, wiping it again after it was shut. He didn’t want to see what might be in the other rooms and ran down the stairs and out the front door. He heard Manny calling his name as he wiped the doorknob and pulled the door shut.