The Take (11 page)

Felina
gestured with her head down the street. A group of happy drinkers were in the
next block, headed their way, singing their version of
When The Saints Go Marching In
.

“You
want them to find us here next to this stiff? Because if you do, Eddie’s gonna
join him before too long, take my word for it.”

Linda
snorted in disbelief.

”Tell
her, Eddie,” Felina said.
He half-nodded. “She’s right, sis.”

With
the righteous weight of truth finally in her pocket,
Felina growled, “Now get your goddamn
hands off me and let’s get the hell into your apartment. Now!”

Linda
glanced down the street. The carousers were moving slowly, but their drunken
path was taking them straight to the scene. Garner’s blood oozed from his body
into a widening puddle in the street.

“All
right, inside. The both of you.”

She
guided them into the building, through the silent courtyard behind. The
nineteenth century French fountain dominated its center, barely disturbed by
the bobbing of the blue water hyacinths in its dark pool. Surrounding the
courtyard, the three-story building showed only dark windows, with bushy ferns
hanging
in the galleries.
Grimly, the trio trudged up the stairs to her second floor apartment.

Once
they were all inside with the door shut, Linda grabbed Felina from behind, spun
her around, and flung her back against the wall. She held her there with a
forearm on her throat.

“Now,”
she hissed, “you little fucking taco queen, you’re gonna tell me just what kind
of shit you’ve got my brother into.” She flung Felina’s head back hard against
the wall without removing her forearm. “Tell me!”

As
Felina tried to speak, only short, hoarse grunts came out of her throat. Linda
leaned harder and her taut face reddened around a tightening jaw, fury pouring
from her eyes.

“Linda!
Linda,” shouted Eddie. “Let her go.”

He
reached around his sister from behind, pulling her off, and Felina slid down
the wall to the floor, sucking wind. He dropped down to her side, holding her
close, while she leaned her head into the sanctuary of his chest. “For
Chrissake,” he bleated. “You could’ve killed her.”

“Goddammit.
Lowell’s lying dead down there and she’s pulling some wallet switch. Now I
wanna know what the hell’s going on!”

Still
on the floor, Felina regained her breath in spurts. Finally, she managed to
say, “I changed the wallets to save your brother’s life.” Between coughs, she
added, “And maybe yours and mine, too.”

Eddie
added it up. He looked at Felina.

“So
then if they think that’s me down there, then they —”

“Then
Salazar and Val and everybody else might buy it.”

A few
seconds later she was breathing steadily. Then the
corners of her mouth turned downward in
sadness. Her eyes clouded over to match. She reached up, twining her arms
around his neck, pulling her soft cheek up next to his.

“Oh
Eddie, I just did it for you. For us. Please don’t be angry with me. I just don’t
want them to ever find us.”

“Shh,
it’s okay, baby.” He stroked her hair, her beautiful black hair.

“Don’t
want who to find you?” Linda bellowed, still steaming. “Saved your life? Eddie,
somebody better tell me something, and fast!”

Eddie
remained on the floor embracing Felina.

“Okay
Linda, okay,” he said. “There’s some people in Houston who’re after me, big
time. So, if the cops think that’s me laying dead down there in the street,
then maybe the word’ll get back to Houston, and they’ll call off their dogs. I’m
sorry about the thing with the wallets, but I see why Felina did it. It’s the
only chance I got.”

“Bullshit!”
cried Linda. “You show up here out of nowhere with this fucking wetback and a
nice guy from Brenham who’s face down in his own blood right now out in front
of my apartment. Then you tell me there’s people after you. Like that could’ve
been you down there. You better start filling in the blanks, Eddie, or I call
the cops.”

He
leapt to his feet. “No, Linda! No! You can’t. Listen, I don’t know what
happened down there, why Garner was killed. I swear to you I don’t know. But
you gotta believe me, there’s guys just like that after me. And if you call the
cops about Garner, then we’ll be involved in it. Felina and I won’t be able to
leave town. It’ll make the papers, and you might
just as well send out engraved goddam invitations to the guys who’re
after me.” His desperate eyes told it all.

“If
they come after Eddie and me,” said Felina as she struggled to her feet,
coughing, “they’ll find you, too.”

“Who’s
gonna find me?” She turned to Eddie, eyes like knives aimed at his face. “Gimme
the straight shit, Eddie. Right now.”

“Linda,”
he pleaded, “you just gotta trust me. I can’t—”

“Give
it to me!”

She
stood there, feet planted, hands on hips, looking like
she was ready to uncork a solid right to
his jaw if he didn’t spill. Once again, the familiar authority in his life had
taken hold, the source of everything. The power.

“We
gotta tell her,” he said to Felina.

Felina
inhaled audibly through clenched teeth. “No-o-o, Eddie. We can’t!”

“Yes we
can. We gotta. Baby, she’s in this now. It’s like you said … if they find us,
she goes down, too.”

“I’m
waiting,” said Linda.

As
wailing sirens outside the drawn drapes signaled the arrival of the cruisers,
Eddie crossed the room and opened the leather suitcase.

“I
swear to you,
Linda, that’s all of it. From A to Z.” Eddie wriggled on the rattan sofa.
Felina sat next to him knees up to her chest, head down, and stiff-lipped, with
her arms folded, riled that he’d spilled the whole story. Linda leaned forward
in the matching chair, her elbows on her knees.

“I-I
just don’t know how we got in so deep,” he said, “and now this thing with
Garner … I don’t know what to do!”

Linda’s
eyes left Eddie. They slid over to the stacks of money packets in the open
suitcase.

“You
say this Val guy, he knows about me?”

“Yeah,”
he replied. “Well, he knows I have a sister living in New Orleans, but the main
thing is, he don’t know we’re here. I never told him you play music. And he don’t
know you’re going by Lavelle. He’d probably assume your last name is still
Ryan.”

“Lowell’s
death has nothing to do with all this?” Her eyes were still glued to the cash.

“Nothing.
I got no idea at all why he went down. Shit, I’m just as shocked as you are.
Although he did seem like he was in a hurry to get to New Orleans.”

“He
did?”

“Yeah.
On the way over here, he was talking about how somebody screwed him out of his
business, his nightclubs. Maybe it had something to do with that, I don’t know.”

“He never
mentioned that name? What was it —Kilgore?”

Eddie
shook his head.

“This
drug dealer — Salazar — does he know you? Ever seen you before?”

“No.
But me and Val knew who he was. He grew up in the East End, just like us.”

“How
about Chiquita Banana here?” She gestured toward Felina. “Does he know her?”

“Hey,
fuck you!” Felina lifted her head up from between her knees. “No, he doesn’t
know me. And I don’t know him.”

“Knock
it off,” said Eddie. “We’re all in the same boat here. We can’t be at each
other’s throats all the time. We gotta figure out what we’re gonna do.”

Linda
clasped her hands, making a steeple with her index fingers. She touched the
steeple to her lips, her mind in fourth gear. Finally, she got up and closed
the suitcase.

“The
first thing is to put this away.” She went to the kitchen, returning with a
large black trash bag. Without saying a word, she began transferring the money
into it.

“Hey!
What’re you doing?” Eddie was uneasy at this casual handling of his worldly
estate.

“Keep
your shirt on.” Linda shoveled the last of the dough into the trash bag. “This’ll
be the last place anybody’s gonna look for something valuable. And that
includes any of your everyday garden-variety burglars that might just pop in
while we’re gone.” She applied a twist-tie to the bag, then lugged it into the
kitchen, where she plopped it on the floor next to her tall swing-top trashcan.

Eddie
had to laugh. There it sat. The score of a lifetime, big-league drug swag. Men
in Houston were strapping on
shoulder
holsters and getting in cars right now because of this. They were ready to
dedicate years of their lives to searching for it. And there it was, lying on
the kitchen floor looking like last week’s garbage. Linda should’ve thrown in a
few rotten eggs for the authentic touch.

Back in
the living room, she said, “Next thing, Eddie, if you’re gonna take Lowell’s
identity, you’re gonna need a mustache like his.”

“Well,
sure, I can grow one. It probably wouldn’t take —”

“No,”
said Linda. “No time. There’s a shop here in the Quarter that sells theatrical
stuff — makeup, costumes, and whatnot. We’ll go there tomorrow and get
you a fake mustache. A thick one, just like his.”

“What
about the money?” Felina asked.

Linda
caught just a little snottiness creeping into her voice. “What’s the matter,
sweetheart? Don’t trust me, hmm?”

Felina
was about to backsass her when Eddie said, “What she means, Linda, is what’re
we gonna do with it. I mean, we just gonna leave it there on the floor in the
kitchen?”

“For
now.” She got up and went to the window. Peeking through a crack in the drape
at the activity down on the street, she saw the ambulance, the flashing cop
cars, the gathering crowd, the yellow tape — all the usual crime scene
stuff. She turned back toward the living room.

“It’ll
probably take a few days for this thing with Lowell to cool down. The cops won’t
find anything and pretty soon they’ll write it off as another street crime.”
She returned to the chair. After shifting around in it a little, she said, “Meanwhile,
you take the money
and your
honey and get the hell out of Dodge. As far away as possible. Y’understand?”

Eddie
nodded. “But what about the money? I mean, we can’t just put it in a bank. What
can we do with it?”

“Hey,
that’s your problem, little brother.
I
didn’t pop that Mess’can,
I
didn’t
steal my best friend’s girl, it wasn’t
me
that screwed over some loan shark.”

She saw
the old hangdog expression sliding down Eddie’s face. She knew he was at sea
without a sail, with violent storms moving in fast. Slipping onto the sofa, she
took his hand.

“Listen,
Eddie, I didn’t mean it like that. We’ll figure out something, but we got to
cover all the angles. You’re in deep shit here. Now, by making it look like you’re
the one down there in the street, you’ve built a good scam, a good cover for
yourself. For now. But the longer you’re here, the bigger the chance of it
falling apart. Think about it. You can’t be hanging around the very block where
you were supposed to be killed. There’s no telling who all’s gonna be nosing
around here and for how long.”

Her
voice slipped way, way down as she turned his head so his eyes connected with
hers. She said, “I don’t want anything to happen to my little baby brother.
Ever.”

He
almost broke a smile. It was all right now. The churning waves inside him were
dying down. Linda had spoken, issuing her ruling on this whole situation.

Instinctively,
he started to put his head on her shoulder, then retreated. But she pulled his
head down anyway, so the unwinding was complete. He was finally at rest on her
familiar bosom, with her arm
securely
around him. From his other side, Felina reached for him. She held him tight
around his waist, then she laid her head on his rib cage, as he slid his arm
around her.

≈≈≈

Soon, he was sound asleep right there on the couch. The women eased up
from him.

“The
guest bedroom’s in there,” Linda whispered to Felina, clicking off the light,
pointing over her shoulder, as she walked into her own room.

Stepping
softly, Felina crossed into the guest room, where she quickly fell asleep
herself. As she drifted off, she shook loose the events of this horrid day, and
soon she was dancing in peaceful, vivid dreams of
México lindo
.

M
orning broke
over Houston,
the harsh rays of dawn attacking the
waiting room of Ben Taub Hospital. The young doctor emerged from the intensive
care unit, his haggard face telling the story. He had endured a particularly
demanding graveyard shift. His muscles ached, especially the ones between his shoulder
blades just below the back of his neck. They were always the first to go.