how this works, do you? You’re not in charge. I am.”
Silence.
“This is the beginning of your end, Driver. I’m not even warmed up yet. Would be a damn shame if every time you pulled out on the streets one of my friends from LAPD found a reason to give you a ticket. Lose your license and I can have Wolf fire your ass with cause and you’d lose your chance at getting a job anywhere a bus doesn’t roll. Maybe they could find a ton of drugs in your apartment. Or hidden in your car. With your record—how many more years do you think you’d lose? You’re forty. Let’s see, that would be your second strike, so, let me think, you’d be at least sixty when you got out. You better stock up on Viagra while you can, Playa.”
I swallowed my rage.
I whispered, “Don’t fuck with me like that.”
“A real man always pays his debts and keeps his word. You’ve done neither.”
My teeth gritted.
I snapped, “Don’t believe you did a B&E and destroyed my apartment ... and my suits ...”
“Consider that penalties and interest.”
More silence while I beat her ass over and over in my mind, my teeth gritting.
“Driver, only two ways out of this.”
“I’m listening.”
“Get my money.”
“Option number two?”
“Do what I paid you to do.”
Silence.
“Bet you’re wishing you had returned my calls. I begged your ass to call and talk to me. How many times did you ignore me? Bet you’re wishing you did now, huh? Can’t believe you had the nerve to get a job, to come to my business and work damn near every day. To stand in my face, torture me with your presence. You know how that makes me feel?”
“Lisa—”
“Instead of being an Uncle Tom and drinking beer with my husband, yeah, bet you wished you hadn’t ignored me, rejected me like that. Or talked to me like I was somebody and not just some bitch off the street. When you first started seeing me nothing was a problem.”
I held the phone away from my right ear. She bounced back and forth from being business to emotional, didn’t give me room to squeeze in a gnat-sized word, so I let her rant until the batteries ran down. Wait for the Energizer Bunny to lose energy, that was all I could do.
“Told you, I haven’t fucked with you yet. You have no idea. I’ve been nice. That punk move you pulled, whatever you said to my husband at work, that changes things. That punk move should cost at least a one-day penalty. But I’m a woman of my word. Unlike you I do what I promise. To tell the truth, as mad as I am, I’m debating if I should activate an acceleration clause, have that balloon payment due by this time tomorrow.”
In my mind, again, I felt her kicking, struggling to break free, heard her neck breaking.
I counted to five, had to do that so I didn’t say the wrong thing. “Look, you know I can’t pull down fifteen large just like that, but what if I could hustle you some good faith money?”
Seconds went by like hours. She responded, “Hustle up half and we can talk.”
I’d stomped out to La Cienega, wanted to get into the light, never knew who was still lurking in the darkness, was in front of my building, hand in backpack, head throbbing again.
I heard Wolf’s voice in the background. He was coming up the stairs to his wife.
I couldn’t hear what Wolf asked, but she went into June Cleaver mode, sweet as sugar, and replied, “Not sure who the Lakers are playing tonight, sweetie. You want to eat at Staples Center instead of dinner at Windows? Fine if you do. Just let me know how I should dress.”
He said something else.
She laughed like a schoolgirl. “If I wore nothing, we’d never make it out the house.”
She hung up.
The same vision played over and over in my mind, my own TNT movie. Saw Lisa, my big hands around her little neck, her feet inches off the floor, kicking, watching life seep from her breath by breath, her refusing to die, me refusing let her live another day, hour, second.
Didn’t trust her. I turned right, hurried my car down the alleyway and stopped in the McDonald’s lot on La Tijera, parked in the back, away from all the families in search of Happy Meals. I searched my ride top to bottom, checking to see if her bullyboys had left a package