Dub
Rather than waste gas driving aimlessly around town, Dub drove to a strip center and parked. He sat there for a few minutes, staring blindly at the window of the closed hair salon. He had no schedule. No plan. He’d love to see Jenna, but she was still grounded. The best they could do was send texts and pics to each other.
His ringtone sounded and he scrambled to find his phone among the bags in his car. “Hello?”
A male voice came over the line. “You the guy who does the hauling?”
“That’s me.”
“I got a broken refrigerator. Can you take care of that?”
“I’ll do it for thirty dollars.”
“I’ll give you fifteen.”
Dammit, didn’t this guy know Dub needed to eat? To wash his smelly clothes? “Twenty.”
“Fifteen.” The man didn’t wait to see if Dub would agree, he just went on to give an address.
Dub drove to the address the man had given him. Together, they loaded the fridge into the back of Dub’s van. The wide appliance barely fit, taking up the entire space. When it was loaded, the man gave him a ten, four singles, and a handful of change.
Dub returned to the driver’s seat, counted the change, and realized the man had shorted him a nickel. Ugh. He accessed the Internet on his phone to see where he could dispose of the refrigerator. Looked like he could dump the fridge for free at any of the three city sanitation stations. But he’d have to wait until tomorrow. None of the stations was open on Sunday.
After being stuck in the van all night and most of the morning, Dub wanted to stretch his legs, get a change of scenery. But without money to spend, his options were limited. He couldn’t hang at a restaurant or go to a movie. So he decided to do what teenagers all over America did when they were broke and bored. Hang at the mall.
He drove to the Shoppes at Chisholm Trail and parked his van outside Macy’s. He held the door open for a mother and daughter to go inside, then followed them into the store. Passing the clothes he couldn’t afford and the cosmetics he didn’t need, he headed out of Macy’s and down the mall walkway to the home theater store. Maybe they’d be playing a movie on one of the big screens.
He reached the store and, sure enough, one of Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne movies was playing on a fifty-five-inch ultra-HD unit. Score.
A man in khaki pants and an argyle sweater sat in an oversized chair in front of the screen. He looked like he’d just come from church. Dub took a seat on a recliner-rocker next to him.
The man glanced over at Dub. “Your wife off spending your hard-earned money, too?”
Dub forced a chuckle. “Yeah.”
The two watched the movie for several minutes. Although the salesmen seemed to have no problem with the man in the argyle sweater, Dub noticed that they all seemed to be eyeing him. He knew he looked bad. He’d slept in the sweats so they were wrinkled, and the beard probably made him look homeless—which he supposed he actually was at the moment. Still, what did they think he was going to do, tuck a big-screen television into his pocket and walk out with it?
A commercial came on, a confusing one for some type of feminine product. The man turned to Dub and struck up a conversation.
“You hear about that shooting? What a shame, eh?”
The radio in Dub’s van didn’t work, and he hadn’t seen a newspaper or watched TV in a couple of days now. “There was a shooting?”
“Yup. A couple came home to their house and caught a burglar red-handed inside. The robber shot the man in the chest and the woman in the back. They’re in the hospital. Last I heard they were both in critical condition.”
Dub’s stomach twisted. “Where did this happen?”
Dub knew that Andro stuck to the neighborhoods he was most familiar with to the south of I-30 and west of I-35. Mistletoe Heights. Fairmount. Ryan Place. Park Hill.
“It was over by Forest Park,” the man said. “In one of those nice older homes behind the zoo.”
Park Hill.
“Did they catch the guy?” Please say “yes.” Please say “yes!”
“No,” the man said. “He got away before the police could get there.”
The feminine hygiene commercial was over now, replaced by a Cialis commercial, something the man seemed more comfortable with. As he turned his attention back to the big-screen TV, Dub pulled out his phone and accessed the Internet, searching for information about the shooting. He found a short news report issued only three hours before. The information said the police initially responded to a report of gunshots in the area and had noticed a broken window on the side of the house. They found the man and woman inside on the floor. The woman had lost a lot of blood, but was conscious enough to give the police a description of the shooter.
A young man with light brown skin and curly dark hair, wearing a white hooded sweatshirt with a tornado depicted on the front.
Holy shit.
Andro had really gone and done it now.