Dirty Money Read online

  The silence continued as I started the car, drove to the bungalow, and followed her inside. She went to the kitchen and got out bread and peanut butter. After assembling a messy sandwich, she grabbed a bottled water and set both in front of Ryan.

  “Ryan,” she said. He continued to sleep. “Ryan,” she screamed, all patience gone. “Get up.”

  “Huh?” He opened one eye. “What, Reese? Why’re you yellin’?”

  “Eat the sandwich. Drink the water.” She handed him two pills. “Take the pills.”

  “What’s got your panties in a twist?”

  “Yeah, buttercup.” I finally moved from the door, ready for action. “What’s got your panties in a twist?”

  “Shut the fuck up.” She pointed at me as she said it. I guess that meant she meant business.

  “Seriously, what right do you have to be so pissed?”

  “Umm, guys,” Ryan interrupted, his mouth full of peanut butter. “What’s going on?”

  “Cooper has decided it’s okay to push me around.” Reese caught his eye so he would get it.

  “Dude.” He turned to look at me, confusion clouding his face. “You hit my sister?”

  “No.” I wasn’t going to play her bullshit games. “That’s probably normal in your family though, right? I mean in the mafia it’s okay to hit women.” I shrugged.

  “What?” Ryan managed to swallow.

  “Well, I just found out that the DiGiovannis are the biggest fucking crime family east of the Mississippi,” I shouted.

  “If you really want to know,” Reese shouted back. “They’re not the biggest. There are at least three others just as big.”

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” She glared in response. “Your mother was, and I quote, a mafia princess. What does that make you? Are you guys mafia royalty too?”

  “Oh, fuck,” Ryan murmured.

  “And Cooper decided to scream all of this at me on a street corner. A street corner, Ryan. When I wouldn’t scream back, she tried to throw me in the car,” Reese said.

  “Shut the fuck up. Don’t try to make me the bad guy,” I tossed back at her.

  “Okay.” Ryan stood, swayed, and caught himself on the back of the couch. “I am not going to mediate your relationship. I don’t know what happened.” We both opened our mouths to tell him, but he continued, “And I don’t want to know. Cooper, if you hurt my sister, I’ll kill you.”

  “All right,” I conceded.

  “Reese, don’t twist shit around to make it sound different than it was.” He pointed at her.

  “Fine.” She scowled.

  “When you’re done shouting at each other, I guess we’ll need to talk.” Ryan turned back to me. “I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.” With that, he picked up his sandwich and water and went into his room.

  Reese and I watched to see who would make the first move. It was her this time.

  “Never, ever, pull a stunt like that again.”

  “A stunt like what?”

  “Grabbing me and pushing me around. I’m not a child and I don’t enjoy that kind of abuse.”

  She was right. I shouldn’t have touched her.

  “Neither do I,” I shot back.

  “When did I abuse you?”

  “Mafia,” I spat the word, letting it explain me.

  “You knew,” Reese insisted.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  This conversation was going so well. “I figured out they were organized crime. I had no idea they were so big. Your family is legit, buttercup.”

  “Actually, they’re not,” she said. I think she was trying to be funny.

  “I’m not in the mood to fuck around.”

  “Okay, you want to be serious? Yes, our mother”―she really emphasized mother―“was very involved with the family business. If things had turned out differently, she would be running it right now.”

  “You say that like it’s normal,” I said incredulously.

  “For them it is.” Reese let that hang for a few moments. “You think I like that I’m a DiGiovanni? That my family runs guns and drugs and girls and sells them like…like I don’t know.” The careful mask began to fall so her mouth trembled and her eyes looked like wet shale. “They sell guns and drugs to children and then they sell children like guns and drugs.”

  “Eloquent.” Right then, I didn’t give a shit what they did to make them bad guys, I just cared about how hard they were going to come after me.

  “You asshole,” she screamed. I half expected her to stomp her foot. “I don’t have to tell you this, you know?”

  “Yeah, it’s just my life.” I shrugged at how insignificant that was becoming. The color started to drain from her face. “You’re right. I probably don’t need to know that the guys chasing me are hardcore mobsters. Sure, I just fucking killed two of them, but that’s no big.” She looked like she might heave. “They probably won’t retaliate. Isn’t that right?”

  I never really got her opinion on that though. Right when I thought her face couldn’t get any more pale, her dark eyes couldn’t pop out any more, the muscles in that lovely jaw couldn’t get any tighter, she turned and marched away.

  *

  For me, emotion came in waves. The emotion dictated the wave. So fear was short-lived, maybe two minutes. Then it would go. Two minutes later, it would be back with a vengeance, like I suddenly remembered there was reason to fear. Anger lasted longer, twenty or thirty minutes. It made days when I was angry very annoying. Just when I’d calm down enough so I didn’t want to hit things until they broke into a thousand tiny fragments, something else would remind me, oh yeah, I’m fuckin’ mad.

  Reese was different. She could hold a grudge for days, months, years. I was still getting grief for taking all her Barbies’ heads off. That was when we were eight. The worst part was the stupid dolls’ heads went back on, but no, Reese didn’t remember that.

  So there we were, two days later and not a word. Ryan knew something was wrong, but the silence scared him enough not to ask. I didn’t even care anymore. I’d gone from the pure rage of how could she not tell me, to the submission of maybe she was right, to the desperation of I’ll cut my own heart out if that will make her speak to me again, and back to rage, until I was exhausted. I couldn’t even bother to be mad at her original offense anymore. Now I was just mad that she wasn’t speaking to me.

  And I was eyeing the knives in the kitchen. Maybe my heart would make her speak.

  That night the dream began. It started simple. Blood, just blood, fucking everywhere. Staining, permeating, becoming everything until it took shape. Her shape. A short skirt pulled too high. The flash of silver and then he filled my view, cutting out my heart. Moving over her like he owned her, and right then, he did.

  In the dream, I lifted the gun the way I had in that stretch of nowhere. My aim was shit though. The bullet ripped from the barrel flying wide and coming to rest above her heart. As Reese’s dying form twitched in front of me, I couldn’t decide who was worse.

  Me or Tommy.

  When I woke, an aborted scream tearing from my lips, tears streaming down my cheeks, I felt her in the dark. She was awake. There was a moment of indecision where she began to reach for me. To shelter me from whatever demon was tearing into my soul. Instead of touching me though, she turned away and hugged her pillow to hide her face from the darkness. Quietly, separately, in that double bed, we cried ourselves to sleep.

  *

  Stubborn wasn’t getting me anywhere. I needed to apologize. So did Reese. Neither of us was showing signs of breaking, so I went for inane.

  “You want some coffee?” My voice was quieter than I’d wanted it to be. I wasn’t even sure if she’d heard. I waited, wondering if I should repeat my question.

  “Yeah.” She was quiet too, like our voices hadn’t been used in years. Except it had only been days. “Thanks.”

  Reese looked all sexy, the kind of sexy she only looked in the morni
ng. Hair kind of crazy and messy, eyes the color of espresso heavy with sleep. This morning, the puffiness from crying half the night made them even more bruised than usual. Gorgeous. I just wanted to kiss those sad, angry eyes until she begged me to touch her, begged me to hold her.

  “I’m going to make toast.” Her voice sounded stronger now. “You want?”

  “Sure.” Fuck yeah, I wanted her to make me toast. Hell, she could do anything she wanted because she had said a whole nine words to me. Nine. I could save the world with nine words.

  Reese set a plate of toast on the table. Damn, it was even buttered.

  “Thanks.” I reached for a piece.

  “We should call the airport today.” Reese took a piece of toast too. “See if we can set up a plane to carry our cargo.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. We should have done it two days before. It was harder to coordinate though when two out of the three of us weren’t talking and the third was afraid to break the silence.

  “Do you want to call from town?” Reese was studying her coffee. I wished she would study me.

  “Sure. There’s a pay phone by that cantina we went to the first night.” It was the only place I’d noticed one in town. Not that I’d seen much of the town.

  “That works.”

  “What works?” Ryan emerged from his room all smiles. I was willing to bet he’d been listening the whole time.

  “We’re going to call the airport about getting out of here.” Reese made eye contact with him. The lucky bastard. “We’re going to call from a pay phone in town.”

  “The one by the cantina,” I said.

  “Awesome. They make these margaritas in glasses the size of my head.” Wasn’t that kind of a girly drink? “I didn’t get one before ’cause I was feeling too shitty.”

  “It’s not even ten yet.” Reese used her angry tone.

  “But we’re in Mexico,” Ryan said. “That’s like being on vacation. You can drink in the morning on vacation.”

  I refrained from pointing out that we seemed to be on a permanent vacation.

  “You have issues.” Reese glared at him.

  Ryan tilted his head to the side in contemplation then said, “Yeah, I’m cool with that.” He snagged a piece of toast and started to walk away. “I’m taking a shower.”

  “I’m after him,” Reese announced as she stood.

  I wanted to ask if I could join her. The look in those suddenly gunmetal eyes made me reconsider.

  *

  Reese was once again elected to do the honors of making arrangements due to her proficiency in Spanish. Ryan went into the cantina to order a drink the size of his head. I was stuck leaning against the 4Runner listening to Reese’s conversation that I didn’t understand. Seriously, what had been so important at fifteen that made me blow off Spanish classes?

  Ryan joined me soon after with the fabled drink. He leaned against the car holding his cup with two hands and drinking carelessly. Soon he had a margarita mustache edged with salt like some toddler stealing sips from his dad’s drink.

  “You look like an idiot,” I told him.

  “Want some?” Ryan tilted the cup in my direction.

  “Sure. Why not?” Reese was already mad at me. Might as well add drinking before noon to the list of reasons why. I tuned back in to Reese’s conversation while we waited. I couldn’t really understand more than the numbers she was saying like the weight of our cargo, the number of passengers. Weird. It sounded like she told them there were two passengers with the cargo. Even weirder, it sounded like she wanted two planes going to different locations. That wasn’t right.

  It hit me when I heard the word Sacramento. We were supposed to go to Europe. Reese was sending me elsewhere. Far away from them. What the fuck?

  I pushed off the car and started toward her. Reese angled her body away from me and curled protectively around the phone.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered angrily.

  Reese leaned her shoulder against the pay phone with her back to me.

  “Reese. What the fuck?” Still no response.

  I was reaching over her to hang up the phone when a car pulled up behind us. A police car. Two guys in uniform got out and approached Ryan. Shit. Fuck. This was so not good.

  “Reese. We got company.” I didn’t whisper this time.

  Reese turned to look, said something else I didn’t understand, then hung up the phone. We had started to walk toward Ryan and his new friends when they started to cuff him, the margarita forgotten on the sidewalk.

  Reese greeted the officers in Spanish and it sounded like she asked if there was a problem.

  “They’re arresting me for drunk driving,” Ryan told us. He looked panicked.

  “But you weren’t driving.” I couldn’t help but point it out.

  The guy cuffing Ryan slammed him onto the hood of the police car way harder than necessary. His face twisted in pain as his left arm was pulled back. I took a step forward. I was going to drop that dude like a bad habit. Reese grabbed my arm to stop me.

  “Police brutality,” Ryan gasped, his tone slightly joking. That boy could make light of anything.

  “Guys, stop talking,” Reese said. She went back to speaking Spanish. Ryan looked like he was following a bit more than I was. Damn, I wished I’d paid more attention in high school.

  The officers apologized to Reese and the one tossing Ryan around leered at her. That made me really want to knock him out. But I didn’t. They started dragging Ryan to the police car. Ryan struggled, trying to twist away.

  “Ryan, stop. Just go with it.” Reese didn’t look happy.

  “Can’t we just bribe them or something?” I whispered in Reese’s ear.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered back. She raised her voice again and said something else in Spanish. It sounded like she was offering to pay his ticket.

  One of them, the one who was leering, named a price. A thousand bucks. American. Steep, but worth it in my opinion. I started to reach for my wallet. I had at least three hundred. Maybe the others could make up the difference.

  Reese stopped me, very subtly. I think she asked where the station was. What the fuck? Why didn’t we just pay?

  “Do you have the keys?” she asked me.

  “Yeah.” I decided questioning her wouldn’t go over very well.

  “Let’s go.”

  The last thing I saw as we pulled away was Ryan being stuffed into the backseat of the police car. Fucking bullshit.

  *

  After going to the station, we found that paying the so-called fine to get Ryan out was going to be fifteen hundred bucks. I didn’t understand much of what was said, but Reese had warned me to keep my mouth shut and stop reaching for my wallet. So I did.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked the second we were back in the car.

  “I’m guessing he paid for that margarita with a large bill, probably a hundred.” Reese’s jaw was clenched and it looked like she might hit something. Or someone. I edged away.

  “So what?”

  “So he flashed a large amount of cash in a fucking bar. The bartender called the cops, the cops arrested Ryan to get money.”

  “What the fuck? They can’t do that.” Seriously, I knew Mexico was corrupt, but this was insane. He wasn’t even drunk.

  “I know, but that’s just the way it is sometimes.” Reese shrugged. “Ryan should have known better anyway. But he acted dumb, so now we’re out two grand. If we’re lucky, that will get him out.”

  “Two grand? I thought it was fifteen hundred.”

  Reese started shaking her head like I was unbelievably naive. Maybe I was.

  “I’m guessing he had at least five hundred in his pocket and I guarantee they already took his cash. We’re lucky we all got rid of our plastic.”

  “Why? And if they’re already getting two grand why wouldn’t that get him out?” I was only freaking out a little. Really.

  “Because, Cooper. They can take our money and hold him
until they’ve got everything. At least everything they know we have. If he had a debit card or a credit card, they would use it until it was dry and then release him.” Reese was talking real fast like I should have known this shit. Why the fuck would I know how to bribe the police in Mexico? “That’s why we’re going to make a big show of scraping together the money, like it’s everything we’ve got, and then we’re getting the fuck out of here. We’ll have to fly out of a different airport too or they might stop us before we can leave the country.” All of this was delivered like complete common sense instead of the bullshit that it was.

  “Douche bags,” was all I had to say.

  We pulled up outside our little house and my stomach just dropped. Reese looked at me with her mouth hanging open, eyes bugged out.

  The door was open.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Should we go in?” she asked, her hand already reaching for the glove compartment.

  “We don’t really have a choice.” I leaned over to open the dash before she could. My hand closed around the handgun and I pulled it out of her reach.

  “Give it to me,” she said. It was the only gun in the car.

  “No.” I tucked it into my waistband and pulled my shirt down. “Stay here.”

  “No.” Reese tried to grab for me, but I was already getting out.

  “If I don’t come out in two minutes then go. I’m fucking serious.” I tossed her my wallet. “You’ll have enough to get to an airport and fly somewhere else.”

  “Not happening.” The wallet remained untouched on the driver’s seat.

  “Why? You were perfectly happy to ship me off to parts unknown. Do yourself a favor. Get the fuck out of here.” With that, I closed the door.

  Once I was close enough, I could see that someone had jimmied the door open. As quietly as possible, I pushed it open far enough to slip quietly inside. It didn’t really matter. If anyone was here they already knew we had pulled up. It became clear rather quickly that I was alone. There wasn’t much to check. One closet, the shower, under two beds. Only one door, and none of the windows opened.