Page 15 of Born Into Trouble (Occupy Yourself)
Three hours ago, he stood and watched her drive off, dust from the gravel swirling up in the van’s wake, grit hanging in the air for longer than he’d expected, the rasp of sand between his teeth nearly as annoying as the bite of his need. It had been too long, and he knew it. The thought of a drink or a fix or a snort or a joint filled his head to the point where hardly anything else penetrated.
He knew mentally he wasn’t in any place to negotiate, but this seemed a straightforward exchange.Here, I have money. Give me drugs. He snorted. Somehow he’d managed to convince Benita. He’d swayed her, and after she gave him her trust, the idea of seeing disappointment written on her face, again, firmed his resolve. Shoving down thoughts of clinking ice and sloshing brown bourbon, he tried to remember which parts of his plan seemed brilliant only minutes before she dropped him off.Stupid.
Waltzed in, loaded bag in hand, fully intending to handle the payoff, only to find no one home. No challenges and nobody to even ask him what he was doing. He remembered thinking,If their security is this lax, they deserve anything that happens. That became his justification, and for a time, he actually considered what he was doing would be a favor to them, pointing out the flaws in their setup. A security consultant.Yeah, right. A fully delusional one. Then there were noises, and shouts, and he ran while fear swallowed him whole, blanking out long moments of time.
Now he was trapped, deep inside the compound in a place where he had no excuse for being, bag of money abandoned in his panicked dash along the way. Voices accompanied the approaching footsteps, and he made out two voices, both speaking Spanish. No surprise there, being as this was a Mexican drug cartel’s facility.Shit.
“Nada. Mi esposa es estúpida.” Guttural laughter.Talking about his wife, a family guy, a good guy?
Closer and closer. Benny turned his head, pressing tightly to the wall, wishing he could disappear into it, to meld inside like a science project gone bad, radio waves loosening the hold atoms held on each other. “Ella quiere más bebés, pero he terminado con los niños.” Closer still, as tension built inside him.
Fuck this. I’m done with this, he thought, wanting to leap out, put an end to the waiting, knowing they were only steps away. At the same time his stomach clenched at the thought, and he was left wondering if he could really move into view and accept whatever consequences came his way.
A commotion at the end of the hallway nearly had him jumping out and into view, but he managed enough self-control to remain hidden. A distant shout, then another, and far away, he heard what distinctly sounded like the rattle of gunfire.Shit. Receding footsteps had him brave enough to peer around the locker in time to see two stocky men running away up the hallway, automatic weapons held in a ready position across their torsos. Benny stood, easing away from the wall for a moment, watching. Then he turned and bolted the other direction, away from the men, away from the gunfire…deeper into the compound.
Herded by frantic sounds of what had to be a shootout, he blindly ran through the maze of hallways. Left. Right. Right. Left. Right. The turns weren’t at standard intervals, and he couldn’t imagine the size of the rooms they indicated. Huge warehouses built into the side of a mountain; the entire facility was far larger than the outside indicated.
Every few seconds, gunfire would sound in the distance, as fear drove him ever onward.
Finally, a metal door barred his progress, and he halted, pressed against it, panting for breath. With sweat streaming off his body, he cautiously looked through the small glass window set high in the center of the surface and when he did, Benny froze in place. The next area was brightly lit and vast, with tables lined in row after row stretching off to the far wall. On nearly every table was a stack of tightly wrapped bundles.Jackpot.
Scanning left then right, he didn’t see a single person in that room.Unreal. For no one to be guarding so much smack was unbelievable, so he pinched himself, winced, and then checked again. Still no one. He was gathering his courage to open the door when movement caught his attention and he watched as an overhead door on the far wall rolled up, letting in light. Moving fast, a van backed into the building and a dark-haired woman swung down from the driver seat, ran to an empty table and picked up a clipboard. Flipping through several papers, she laid the clipboard back down and then, using a huge button on a device hanging from the ceiling, lowered the door before running out through a normal-sized door set in the wall next to the overhead.
Quiet. Empty. The bundles beckoned. Maybe abandoned. He heard no more gunfire.
He should have taken the money and run from the gang out of Mexico.So stupid. But he’d lost the bag, and now, if he didn’t get the product, he’d be well and truly fucked.Sideways. With a crowbar.
Wrapped packages, lined and stacked. A single brick would be worth enough to keep the band going for a month. This drug gang had all the money. They’d find the bag of money, and then surely they would count it, see it was an even trade. Which just left the biker gang to worry about. Unconsciously, Benny was jittering in place. His desire for the oblivion promised by the drugs laid out in front of him a living thing inside him. This would show them their security was lax.Look how far I made it inside. His thoughts splintered, but that wasn’t an excuse for what he was about to do.Band needs this.
Denial is more than just a river. That was Andy’s voice in his head, something he’d heard his brother say to their grandmother. While he'd been talking about their mother at the time, Benny knew the statement could easily be about him now. Not liking how those words made him feel, he ignored it, focusing only on Andy.
Andy was in Fort Wayne, Indiana. A high-ranking person in his own biker gang. Organized crime. That was what the papers called what they did. He’d read all about Andy’s gang. Suspicious deaths, racketeering, pimps and whores, gun runners, drug dealers, it read like a laundry list of what not to do. But they did it. All the time. So, this would be normal for them. Same shit, different day. Drugs were normal in a gang.
With the money, he could pay the bikers back. He could pay GeeMa back. Hell, he could even pay Andy back. For years and years, his brother had been pulling Benny’s fat out of the fire. Years and years of Benny being the burden. All his life. Born to it. The words teased at his mind, and his eyes slipped closed as he chased the possibility of lyrics into the dark.
Born to be his trouble. Always my brother’s burden. Making his life a waste.
Sounds coming from a distant hallway to his right jerked him back to alertness, unaware of how much time had passed while he stood there staring at the darkness behind his eyelids, playing with words. Looking into the room to find it was still empty, abandoned, the van remained standing in front of the now-closed doorway.I can do this. Andy could use the smack for his friends. Sell some of it for himself. Pay Juan back. GeeMa. Everyone makes a tidy sum. It would make up for so much. He could sell the rest for me. I’d even give him a cut.These were the arguments he had made to Benita. Sounding reasonable enough to believe, she had stopped trying to talk him out of the idea.
We can get booked into his bar. Show up. He’ll be thrilled. I’ll ease into it with him, feel him out. See what we can organize. Not something to bring up on the phone as he’s in a gang. Their phones are probably tapped. Benny’s hands rested on the crash bar that would open the door and almost without conscious intent, he pushed, and the door clicked open. He froze, the door a half-inch away from the frame, held in place.He has to hate me, that hate growing every year. Lodged in place like a chicken bone choking the life out of a careless diner.
Andy had been gone for years. All the times Benny needed him the most, his brother had been thousands of miles away, nothing but a voice on a phone.Gone before I knew him.Leaving made Andy’s life easier, even if Benny learned from Harddrive that it hadn’t been an easy decision.Shit, I haven’t thought about that old man in years. Wonder how he’s doing?
Distant sound from the right broke into his thoughts, and he pushed the door wide enough to slip through. The room was cold. Chilled in a way the hallways weren’t, and there was a positive airflow that propelled wind out through the doorway until it settled back into place. Drifting towards the van, he trailed his fingertips across stacks of bundles on each table, counting as he went. One hundred on this table, one-twenty on that one, only eighty-five here.So much money. In his mind, the bundles were no longer drugs, but blocks of greenbacks.Benjamins.
Opening the back doors of the van, he was surprised to find it vacant, the entire cargo area spotless and…empty. Glancing at the tables behind him, he remembered how the woman went for the clipboard and walked over. The top paper held the schematics of a van, showing what looked like voids in the walls. Back to the van, he started feeling around, finding panels held in place with strong magnets. They might be voids some of the time, but right now, they were filled with white bricks, tightly wrapped in paper then plastic, sealed with a hand-written sticker. Everything he needed, right there in front of him, already packaged for travel. A new van. A new start.A new life.
He allowed himself one small armload of bricks from a nearby table.Don’t get greedy. With a grin, he threw the clipboard into the van and closed the doors.
His movements were frantic, and he jittered through the next few seconds, feeling paranoid someone could walk in at any moment, taking all this from him. His drugs, they were an instant way out of the painful evolution of no money for touring, no money for studio, no money for gear. Laid out before him was a way to cut that sequence off, change their luck.I might have been born into trouble, but I’m gonna crawl out of that cesspit with one short drive. Finger on the button to raise the door, he paused, thinking.She opened the door from outside; there’s probably a remote in the van. He knew it was unreasonable, but he couldn’t ditch the thought it would be quieter to use the remote.Quiet is better.
Crawling into the driver seat, he found a device clipped to the visor. Glancing down, he spotted the keys still in the ignition.Bingo. The door clicked into place behind him. Hands to the wheel, he wrung it a couple of times, feeling like his heart was about to burst from his chest. Hand to the keys, a familiar vibration came to life under his ass as the engine turned over. With a finger to the button on the remote, he held his breath and pressed.
Sound and lights assailed him, sirens wailed all around, the volume vibrating the seat under him more than the engine.Shit. Loud and piercing, the oougah of the alarm jangled up and down his spine. The door slid up as the bright, rotating lights illuminated the panels. There was a hissing sound and he looked into the outside mirror, seeing a thick mist beginning to gather in the room behind him.Shit. Gearshift jammed down, he stomped on the accelerator and rocketed forward, the top of the van scraping against the overhead as he went, the door not having reached enough height to allow escape.
Outside, the gate he had avoided on his way in was right there. The length of a football field in front of the van, standing wide open, the road only feet beyond that. There was a rattle from the van’s side door, and he looked in the mirror to see a man with an automatic gun running alongside, hand grasping at the handle. In the distance, more men were flooding towards the warehouse, and Benny saw smoke pouring out through the doorway he’d left open behind him.
Foot to the floor, Benny bounced in the seat as the van rocked through a series of potholes, each jarring jerk conspiring to keep the man’s hand off the handle.Ping. Something like a stone bounced off the top of the van, but he knew intuitively it wasn’t a rock.Shit.
