“SHHH,” DECLAN ROONEY WHISPERED INTO Maya’s ear. They were crouching in the concrete drainage culvert just a few yards from the motel dumpster. His hand was still clamped over her mouth. She had her eyes tightly closed, but still kicked at his thighs and wriggled in his arms.
He duckwalked toward the end of the culvert, peeking out at the lot. He’d seen the two old ladies in damp, baggy bathing suits trot past, fanning out toward opposite ends of the bank of motel rooms, calling the kid’s name. It was full daylight now, and he had a decision to make.
Should he stay? Maybe trade the kid for access to the motel room where that fucker Chuck had stashed the loot from their joint enterprise? Even after four years, he knew the stuff was there: bags and bags of sterling silver, watches, gold and silver jewelry with their gemstones intact, all the valuables they’d bought off the hapless clucks who’d flocked to their motel room convinced they’d hit pay dirt.
Chuck had sworn it was still there. It had to be.
Fucking Chuck. Rooney should have known better. He and Tanya were doing fine on their own, a hit-and-run kind of operation where they’d rent a room in a Holiday Inn, buy some stuff, and then move on to the next town a couple days later. The money hadn’t been great, but it was okay. Then they’d met Chuck at the Indian gaming casino in Tampa.
An older guy. Tanya said he reminded her of her granddad. They’d had dinner and some drinks and some laughs. Good old Chuck was quite the storyteller. Probably that’s why he and Tanya hit it off so well. Next thing you know, Chuck invited them to stay at his girlfriend’s motel on the beach, over in St. Pete.
The beach. That was all Tanya had to hear. A couple days turned into a week, and before Rooney knew it, Chuck was a full partner. They ran ads on Craigslist and in the local shopper papers. Chuck put up flyers in nearby shopping centers, in laundromats and barbershops and nail salons, at the Moose Lodge and the senior center. Rooney had to hand it to him, the old bastard knew their demographic.
Sellers were banging down the door of their motel room, lining up like sheep ready to be fleeced. Things were going so well that a week turned into two weeks, and that, ultimately, was their downfall.
Rooney wanted to move on. The motel owner’s son was a cop, a fact Chuck conveniently forgot to mention. Cops gave Rooney the hives. But Tanya was sick and tired of the nomad life. Literally, she was sick. And tired. And Rooney was already remembering his old man’s advice: He travels fastest who travels alone.
That last night, he and Chuck decided to hit the greyhound track. Rooney had a hot streak running—every dog he bet on finished in the money. Tanya started calling around eight, but he finally just turned the phone off. They drove across the bridge to Tampa, hit the Seminole Indian casino, where their streak continued. Chuck knew of a strip club near MacDill, the air force base. They were on their way when Rooney glanced down at his phone and saw the text from Tanya that he’d missed hours earlier.
OMG WHERE ARE YOU? THE COPS ARE HERE.
He’d shown the message to Chuck. They drove back to the beach, cruised slowly past the Murmuring Surf, where the parking lot was full of police cruisers. On their second pass they spotted Tanya, being led into the parking lot in handcuffs, by a black female patrol officer.
“Keep driving,” Chuck advised.
“But the stuff—all the stuff we were going to take to the refinery. I’m not driving away from my money,” Rooney objected.
“Don’t worry. I hid it. The cops will never find it. As soon as things cool down, we’ll go back.”
Rooney had been deeply suspicious. “How are we gonna go back? Everybody there knows you. And me. They’ll call the cops the minute they see us.”
Chuck patted his pocket. “We’ll wait a couple days, go over there late at night. I’ve got the passkey. I tell you what. Let’s go back to the strip club. I know a couple dancers there. We’ll get a room, get laid, then tomorrow night, we’ll pick up the stuff, right where I hid it.” He grinned. “And then we’ll move on down the road. A two-way split. It’s not like you were planning on staying with Tanya—am I right, partner?”
“Hidden, where?” Rooney demanded, deliberately avoiding the question about Tanya. “I’m not fucking around here, Chuck. You try and cheat me, I promise it won’t end well for you.”
“Cheat you?” Chuck looked offended. “I would never.”
Rooney had started hatching his own plan while they were on the way to the strip club. He’d get Chuck drunk. It wouldn’t take long; the guy really couldn’t hold his booze. He’d wait until his “partner” passed out, grab the key, and leave him behind in a puddle of piss and regrets.
But he hadn’t counted on scoring coke from one of Chuck’s dancer friends. Hadn’t counted on Chuck getting in a fight with the club’s bouncer as they were leaving with the girls and pulling a knife. And he really hadn’t counted on watching his “partner” rolling away from the strip club that night in the back of a police cruiser—with the motel passkey securely in his pocket.
In the end, he’d done just what Chuck advised. He kept on driving.
The kid wriggled in Rooney’s arms. She was feisty, like her mother. He could feel her jaws working beneath his fingertips. “Shut up,” he whispered fiercely. She clamped down and bit his fingers, her sharp little baby teeth digging into his flesh.
He released his hold, only for a moment, but it was long enough. She was off, like a shot, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Stranger! Stranger! Mommy! Stranger!” She ran toward the end of the culvert, toward sunlight.
Rooney hesitated for an instant. Get the kid? Or cut his losses and get out now? He was thinking of all that money, all of it, locked up in that storage room. Fuck it. He’d come back. He was out of the culvert, heading toward his car, blinking in the sudden flood of sunlight.
A champagne-colored van with a handicap license plate was parked directly in back of Rooney’s car, blocking it in. The driver laid on the horn. Once, and then twice. The passenger-side door opened and a heavyset elderly woman wearing white surgical hose slowly climbed out. She slid the back door aside and retrieved an aluminum walker.
Rooney ran toward the woman, waving the Glock he’d taken from the efficiency. “Move the van!” he screamed. His ball cap fell off. His voice was hoarse. “Move this goddamn van, or I’ll fucking blow your head off.”
Trudi Maples turned at the sound of his voice. Her eyes narrowed as she instantly recognized the menacing blue-eyed man charging toward her. It was the man who’d cheated her, who’d bought her grandfather’s heirloom watch and cheated her out of thousands of dollars, money she’d planned to use for their fiftieth-anniversary trip. “You!”
He pointed the gun as he came closer. Trudi picked up the walker with both hands. She swung it at his head, sideways, as hard as she could, grunting with the exertion. She would never forget the look on Declan Rooney’s face; for months afterward, she would describe it in detail, to Merwin, and then her grandchildren and her bridge partners up home, anyone who would listen really.
It was a look of total astonishment, shock, turning to pain, as the aluminum walker slammed into the side of his face, the sound like the crack of a bat hitting a ripe cantaloupe, knocking him to the ground. He lay there, clutching his face, writhing in pain on the crushed-shell pavement. Blood bubbled from Rooney’s handsome, ruined mouth. She placed the pronged legs of the walker squarely over his body and leaned heavily upon it, effectively pinning the man to the ground.
Finally, Merwin put the van in park and made his way over to his wife. “Jesus, Trudi,” he said, staring down at the wounded stranger in horror. “What the hell have you done now?”