Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) Page 18

  And then there was the Vietnam vet at the country club. We’d gone pill for pill, four colors and eight shapes, until he was slinking down the wall to the pro-shop. I had meant to drive him home but he’d wrapped his truck around a telephone pole before I knew he was gone.

  There was a near legendary misconception that I was tough when I was really just unaffected. For whatever reason, the receptors in my brain didn’t accept pharmaceuticals. While everyone else drooled into the furniture, I’d be straight up sober and most often annoyed to be denied such obvious pleasure. But now with my head against the arm of the couch, I was thinking this mental glitch was the only thing that was going to save me. I was convinced the men would strangle me.

  Twenty silent minutes in and I didn’t know if I was affecting drowsiness too soon. I wondered how long I should wait before feigning sleep.

  I listened to Ramiro in the kitchen cooking and heard Hector go up the stairs. Miguel was on the opposite couch, watching when I closed my eyes and said with detached calm, “It would be great if you didn’t kill me. I’d really appreciate it. But if you do, you have my address. Please let my mother know. They say the uncertainty is the worst part.”

  “Okay, turista.”

  That was not what I wanted to hear. I was hoping for strong denials and pleasant assurances, but I showed no distress, merely gave a faint smile like I had received them and played like I was slipping away.

  Shortly after, there was a knock at the door and a boisterous man entered. I didn’t stir but Miguel was off the couch and Hector was coming fast down the stairs. Everyone was greeting and laughing, and my heart was pounding, terrified this was the person who was going to dump my body in the jungle.

  But instead, Miguel and Hector left with him, and Ramiro came to eat on the opposite couch. I heard him flicking through the first pages of a book. He said, “Hi, Willow. How are you? Good, thanks. How are you?”

  Then, a few bites of food and the page turned.

  “Where do you live, Ms. Willow? In a house? With no door? How wonderful!”

  Once I figured out he had a phrasebook and was practicing English on me, I had to bite the inside of my cheeks not to smile. It became a struggle.

  “Would you like to go on a date with me? Would you like to have dinner with me? I know a good Chinese Italian restaurant. Waiter, waitress a table for two please. I have a reservation.”

  I had to groan and bury my face like a disturbed sleeper because my lips were curling against my will.

  He ate and flipped the pages.

  “I like you. Do you like me?” His voice lost the singsong tone to drop dramatically low, “Your eyes say yes.” Then back to the phrasebook, “We are having a good time. May I hold your hand? Would you mind if I kissed you?”

  He was quiet, seemed to be considering it, and I was wondering if I was about to be molested.

  “Guapa, I like you, but you a little loco, no?” He smacked his lips against the air and carried on. “Thank you. That was a very nice kiss.”

  Before he was done, we had taken a train trip, rented a hotel with a Jacuzzi, and gone shopping for baseball caps. He flipped through the pages to conclude, “Thank you, Willow, this has been fun. Can we do it again sometime? May I have your phone number?” Rising from the couch, he returned to his own voice to say, “No. Willow no give phone number,” then walked over to thump me on the head with the book. “Willow no give address,” thwacked again. “Willow no give nada,” double whack before he climbed the stairs.

  Foreign Roads

  With the amount of diazepam in me, I should have been content to lie back and let events unfold as they may, and my curiosity did for a moment consider it, but then a punch of panic reminded me that people far saner than I were murdered for less in more conspicuous locations.

  I was hyper alert for the sound of Ramiro, but the stucco house had concrete floors and they don’t creak like wood. He was up the stairs but I had no idea where. I was debating with myself if I should wait, perhaps to hear the sound of the shower or something to indicate he would be gone long enough for me to get to the door, and then enough time passed that I could have been gone. I shouldn’t have hesitated. The next instant I was off the couch, sweeping up my bag of books and heading for the exit. I stopped at the breakfast bar to search its random clutter for my return ticket. My hands were stiff and my brain was screaming, “Run,” but I was talking to myself, saying, “Calm, calm, you have handled worse,” ignoring the mental return demanding, “When? Tell me when?”

  I was pretty certain it was the most terrified I had ever been. Expected disaster was so much worse than being in the center of it. The fear of being caught off the couch, walking around perfectly lucid, was near enough to ensure I would pass out if anyone saw me.

  “Mumble inanities and pretend you’re sleep-walking,” I told myself, just strolling around with a bag of books.

  From the spread of litter on the bar, I reclaimed Willow’s license, and while I was there, I plucked a set of car keys from a bowl of change, and then, fuck it, no reason not to sling the mesh bag with the monkey pot over my shoulder as well, because, why not? Running this close to the cliffs, the allure of throwing myself over was too strong to resist.

  I couldn’t find my return ticket, and my carry-on was upstairs. Neither mattered though. My wallet with credit cards was still in my shoulder bag and I had enough cash to see me clear of Mexico.

  By the front door, I slipped into my shoes and then went for the lock. The bolt turning on the door was silent, but the door opening seemed to suck sound through the house. I pulled it to the frame but left it unlatched. The keys in my hand were dirty and worn with a Volkswagen emblem, and the pergola across the street held Miguel’s Mercedes and a pale blue Carmen Ghia with an orange hood.

  Throwing the bag of books onto the VW’s floor and the baby into the passenger seat, I stepped one foot forward to the Mercedes, thinking I needed to sabotage it, but my mind was screaming, “There isn‘t time,” so stepped back; then spun forward and back a few more times until I was motion sick and about to hurl. Every sound in the street was Ramiro in pursuit and I didn’t want to be killed, but I also did not want to be chased in a Volkswagen by a Mercedes.

  “You are a goddamn professional,” I mentally slapped myself and went forward. It was too dark to see under the shelter so I brushed my fingers over the Mercedes’ body until I was at the rear fender. Kneeling at the tire, I searched for the screw cap and threw it aside to shove the engine key at the invisible pin, then went wide-eyed horrified at the sound. Air escaping from the valve filled the street and an American on an unlit boat at the dock was shouting, “Hey, what are you doing?”

  I called back from the pitch black, “It’s cool. We’re going off road and there’s too much pressure in the tires.” I stopped and ran my hand over the gravel at my feet, trying to make it sound like I was moving to another tire. “Thanks man, it’s great people are watching out.”

  “Is that your car?”

  Air was hissing loud into the night again, “Well hell, I hope so, or someone’s going to be pissed.”

  “That’s a lot of air you’re letting out.”

  “Four tires is a lot of air,” I explained. Running my hand over the gravel again, I waited a few seconds before depressing the pin again. “You should have seen us earlier tonight. We got drunk and over filled them to see if they would pop. Rental cars, man, no one’s kind to a rental.” Then it was flat, and I was hurrying for the Volkswagen asking, “Going to get ice for the cooler. You need anything?”

  “Uh, no … but thanks.”

  As if all of that was not enough to alert Ramiro, the turning of the Carmen Ghia’s engine was a stuttering trick of gas, clutch, and pleading sweet-talk. I drove down the street with my hands too tight on the steering wheel, aware the street was narrow enough to block me in if I crossed paths with Miguel and Hector.

  Turning onto the main tourist strip was just another worry. Boulevard Kukulkan is lo
ng. Incredibly long. Like thirty mind-rending, neverending miles long, and if you happen to turn the wrong way when you first enter, it’s even longer. I’d seen quite a few VW Beetles but not another Carmen Ghia, and I suspected Cancun only had one that was blue with a vivid off-color orange hood. I felt like I was making a touring spectacle of my escape.

  When I got myself oriented correctly, I was heading out of town, away from the tourist hotels, the bars, and the beach, following the occasional sign for the airport and the ruins in the jungle. There was a wide median with intermittent palm trees and foliage that separated the two lanes. It did nothing to hide the car but went a long way in obscuring both me and the occupants of the passing vehicles.

  It was unnerving. I felt certain I would encounter Miguel and Hector, either in a car beside me or passing back to the coast and the stucco house. I wanted fully out of Cancun. My plan was to drive to the next largest city and arrange a flight home from there, but where that city was, I had no idea. The road signs were inexplicable. I knew about the Mayan ruin, Chichen Itza, so at first I was following those signs, but they seemed to wrap back into Cancun. I thought I was driving in circles so I started following the signs to Merida. The route led straight through the city until the median grew thin and the street lights few.

  I had finally convinced myself I was safe, thinking I had traveled far enough away from the city hub, and deep enough into the undeveloped outskirts, that the chances of passing the rich Mexicans were low. I was out in scrub brush and squat cement buildings that looked like workshops and garages, but it was there, right on the edge of town that a passing car slammed on the breaks and swung around to follow.

  ~~~~~~

  It had happened too fast for me to recognize what type of car had turned to pursue, and in the rearview mirror it was nothing but alternating high and low headlights. I couldn’t imagine why they bothered. It wasn’t like I was going to pull over.

  I had the speedometer needle buried past 140, but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere near a hundred and already the car wasn’t steady.

  I reminded myself, “I love to be chased. I absolutely love to be chased.”

  This wasn’t my first car chase. I’d had another a couple months before, though at markedly lower speeds. Absurd really for how harrowing it was when we never reached 40.

  It was on the night of the ice storm and I’d just cleared out the company safe. For a decade, you could mention it to anyone in Tennessee as the Ice Storm and everyone would remember the night with awe. It started out weird because it was February and an approaching storm had pushed the temperature close to seventy, but as the clouds neared, the mercury started to drop and it kept falling through the day. The sky was dark purple and gothic before evening, and the temperature kept plummeting, turning the clouds wild, threatening tornadoes, and soon the thermometers read freezing but it was still getting colder. Then it was dark and the rains started. By 7:00 p.m. it was splashing across the pavement as frozen slush, covering everything in rippling cables of ice. It was stunning but extremely dangerous.

  No one should have been out in it, but I was a couple of hours from home in Columbia, trying to break into a floor safe. The idea came from a book I’d read a decade before, and while I couldn’t remember the title, I never forgot the plot. The woman in it crossed the country accepting jobs as a secretary strictly to empty the vault. The book made it sound positively thrilling and left me wondering why more people didn’t do it.

  While I was experimenting with every other conceivable crime of identity, I figured I might as well test out that one as well. But I knew most firms didn’t keep tens of thousands in the safe for secretaries to steal. I knew who did though: fast food. TCBY had taught me that. It was nowhere near as glamorous as the book, but I took a job at the Columbia Subway for three days. I had accepted the job on Tuesday and was taking advantage of the storm on Saturday.

  At twenty-three, I was the oldest of four in the store and ordered everyone home for their own safety. I was demanding they leave, insisting I was fine, assuring I’d be right behind them. Then once alone, I fussed with the safe while the phone rang and rang. I knew it was the owner. I was moving fast to get the money and wipe away any traces of my fingerprints, and then the phone stopped ringing. The owner was coming. I knew he was because no one had answered the phone and official closing was still hours away.

  The freezing rains had been coming down for close to an hour and it wasn’t letting up. I left the front door unlocked to enter the storm.

  It was brutal. Ice was cutting into my eyes, stinging the skin on my face and collecting in my hair. I’d parked two storefronts away in the Kroger parking lot and skated to my car. Slamming against the trunk, I was slipping to the door when the Subway owner skidded his truck to an uncertain stop before the store. I was trying to force my key into the frozen lock but my car was a block of ice, the doors frozen shut, the windscreen thick and opaque.

  Freaking out, I slid into the grocery store to ask for help, certain the owner had seen me and would be out any second to confront me for the empty safe.

  Two Kroger employees came out with a can of deicer and a scraper to hack their way into my car. As soon as the door was free, I turned the engine over and they worked on the windshield. But behind us, the owner was holding open Subway’s door, looking at us, calling, then trying to race forward but sliding, falling, and crawling on his knees. I told the guys, “Enough, enough, that’s great,” but they had only managed to scrap a four-inch swatch in the windshield.

  They said, “No, wait, you can’t drive like this,” but I had gently put the car in drive and was closing the door, saying, “No, really, thanks, it’s great, really good,” sliding forward as they skated back and then careened for the parking lot exit.

  The owner was one of those good ol’ boys that went out on nights like this to pull people out of ditches. His truck was normally capable but this night was extreme. More extreme than anyone could remember and he wasn’t having too easy of a time even getting into his ride.

  At 5 mph, I made my blind escape. There wasn’t much to see through the small opening and the sleet was covering it back up. On the road, I cut my lights and tried to turn right onto a side street but the tires started sliding. I was forced to turn the wheel to recover and coasted forward, past the escape and then noticed my encrusted back window was illuminated by headlights in the distance.

  To the left were businesses but no streets that led away, and the lights from behind were getting brighter. I didn’t want to trap myself but I could barely see and the next street turning right was far ahead while to the left was a gravel drive leading behind a brick building. There was nothing to do but follow it and hide.

  Heater on max, I waited until defrost cleared my windshield, aware the owner’s truck was making repeated passes, scouting the street, trying to find me. He had seen me turn but he didn’t know exactly where.

  And I was afraid to stay, certain he’d eventually become more committed and start exploring. Once he saw my exhaust, I’d be done. I waited until his lights swept by again and then crept onto the street, driving 10 mph but slipping every few seconds, unable to secure traction. The streets were empty, the town dead. Ice had encased absolutely everything. I was gliding through a residential area watching limbs from overhead trees fall through the power lines and shatter against the street. It was too treacherous to swerve so I was driving over them.

  It had taken ages, but I was two blocks away with a branch sticking out of my grill. I thought I had lost the Subway owner, but then, sliding through a four-way intersection, no way to stop, I looked left into his face for slow motion recognition.

  Now he was behind me. I pushed it to 20 but he was gaining. Sleet and slush and rain were coming down together and he was driving too fast for the conditions. He started spinning out, headlights whipping right and then left across my mirrors.

  He slid off the road into a ditch and I was glad to be escaping. But he had four-wheel driv
e and was quickly out of the gutter and back on the road. He was more cautious but he was still coming. Through the city we sped at school zone speeds, first one then the other swerving wildly across the road, sliding wide on the turns, me fleeing, him pursuing.

  On the highway, I thought I was being suicidal going 30 but I needed distance between us, and he must have thought he could hang back and catch me when I inevitably ditched.

  For an hour we sped recklessly through the storm, dropping to 10, racing to 35, but never higher, my headlights off, his on high, both of us losing control when we tried to go faster. I had put a fair space between us when he suddenly started gaining, and then abruptly and finally his lights arced sideways and he was gone from my rearview mirror.

  It had been an absurd low-speed chase.

  Now in Mexico, I was going 140 kilometers per hour, no idea what it meant in miles except the needle could no longer register an increase in speed. The car was shaking and the tires were light on the road, and that was never good.

  I had once been told, “Everybody thinks they’re a good driver.”

  Well, I had no such illusions. I was a shockingly bad driver. I was pretty certain I held a gold standard of incompetence that no one would dispute.

  But I excelled at wrecking. I was a freaking genius when it came to crashing a car.

  By the time I took possession of the Carmen Ghia, I had unintentionally totaled a dozen cars and mangled a few more. I was an appalling driver that no one dared ride with twice, but in those wild, screaming we’re-all-going-to-die moments of an accident, when it was all throwing down and turning over, I was a Zen master. I’d had so many wrecks, I could see clearly where a crash was going and would often avoid the worst of it by accelerating. I thought I held a PhD in Unexpected Automobile Demolition.

  As such, I could just sit in a car and know exactly how it would fair in a collision. And I did not want to drive the Carmen Ghia into anything stronger than a scrub brush. At whatever unknown speeds we were reaching, if the Volkswagen collided with something, it would crumple and I’d be wrapped up in it.