Asking For Trouble (7 page)

Would Kirsten have gone to these lengths for her if she were in Jude’s shoes, or would she have buried her sister and moved on? Kirsten had always been so forgiving. Somehow, Jude knew she would have moved on. She was just that kind of person. Jude fidgeted in her seat, suddenly unsure. Maybe moving on was the right thing to do. Sure it was unfair, but that was life. Injustice stalked the innocent every day, and that was never going to change. She grasped the key to start the ignition, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wasn’t ready to walk away or follow through. She’d stick it out just a little longer until she figured out what to do.

By the time day gave way to night, Jude had flip-flopped several times on her choice to kill Meadows. As she followed him from bar to bar, he’d do something to trigger her disgust or pity. When he hit the road at one in the morning to head home, Jude still didn’t know what she wanted to do.

Meadows turned onto Larkin from Market, taking a route past where Kirsten had died. Jude shivered when she reached the spot.

On Larkin, Meadows’s driving deteriorated. It hadn’t been good, but now the drunk couldn’t maintain a straight line to save his life. The Oldsmobile wandered into oncoming traffic and Meadows overcompensated. The Cutlass lurched hard right, riding over the sidewalk. The
car struck a newspaper box, ripping it from its anchors. Then Meadows proceeded to plow into anything and everything on the sidewalk, felling a tree and half a dozen parking meters. A fire hydrant ended the trail of destruction. By then, the Oldsmobile lacked the momentum to shear it off. Meadows stumbled from his vehicle, seemingly unhurt by the crash.

Jude witnessed the carnage with sickening awe. Her foot came off the gas and she pulled up behind the wreckage. Fabian had warned her not to engage Meadows unless she intended on going through with the kill. She slipped from the car without the weapon.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

As she approached, her feet clinked on spilled quarters and dimes from the parking meters. Meadows, too drunk or too dazed, didn’t answer. She asked him again. He turned to face her, almost lost his balance, and grabbed the Oldsmobile’s roof for support.

“I’m okay,” he slurred. “I think I got a blowout.”

“Yeah, it looked like it,” Jude replied, amazed at Meadows’s nerve. “Would you like me to call nine one one?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“A tow truck then?”

“No, I’ll take care of it in the morning.”

“I don’t think you can leave the car like this.”

Meadows cast a look over his busted Cutlass, bleeding radiator fluid and hissing steam. “I guess not.”

He extracted a McDonald’s napkin, scrawled something on it, and stuck it under the windshield wiper. “That should do it.”

“Can I give you a ride?”

Jude didn’t know why she offered him a ride. She guessed Fabian would not have approved, but screw him. She’d handle it her way.

Meadows smiled and accepted the offer. The stench of alcohol filled the car’s interior. It wasn’t just his breath. He was so drunk that alcohol mixed with his fetid body odor was leaking from his pores. Jude cracked a window.

“Where can I drop you?”

She set off in the direction of his address even before he told her.

“That was some blowout,” she remarked.

“It happens.”

“Yeah, must have been a hundred proof.”

Meadows breathed hard, sounding like a leaky steam line. “What are you saying?”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“What of it?”

Jude shrugged.

Without provocation, Meadows trotted out a drunk’s tale. He cataloged a series of personal calamities that had led to two broken marriages, a wrecked career, and his dependent relationship with the bottle. Jude felt a pang of sympathy, but it was fleeting. Meadows took no responsibility for his mistakes.

“You have no idea what it is to be me,” Meadows ranted. He stuck his face in hers. She gagged on his rancid breath. He’d failed to notice she’d doubled back. They were on Market again and approaching the spot where Kirsten had died. “If you knew I was drunk, why’d you give me a ride?”

To learn one thing
, she thought. “Where were you on October 27, 2006?”

“Christ, I don’t know.” Meadows took in his surroundings. “Hey, where are we?”

Jude pointed at the corner as the car slipped past. “That was where my sister was killed by a drunk driver. Was it you?”

“You’re crazy, do you know that?” Meadows tapped his temple. “You’re cracked in places.”

“Just answer the question.”

Meadows wrinkled his face in confusion but saw the benefit of answering. “I don’t know what I was doing that night. All I know is that I didn’t run someone down that night, that corner, ever. Okay?”

Jude believed him. To live his life, she guessed he had to lie most days, but she knew somehow he wasn’t lying now.

“Okay. I’m sorry. You were drunk and it just brought something out in me. I’ll take you home now.”

“That’s okay. I understand,” he said in a fatherly tone. “The bad things stick and don’t wash off.”

He was right. The bad things did stick. Kirsten’s death had left a stain that couldn’t be removed. Jude eyed Meadows with something bordering on respect. She was wrong to blame him for Kirsten.

They drove the rest of the journey in silence, except for the occasional sliver of small talk. The trip came to a swift conclusion and she pulled up in front of his building.

“Thanks,” he said, sounding sober, and opened his door.

Jude wondered if she’d scared him straight tonight. It was a nice dream.

He went to leave but stopped. “You got a little squirrelly on me.” He laughed nervously. “Scared me, if I’m being honest.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Everyone needs to go off the rails now and again. It teaches you what’s important.”

Jude nodded. She understood all too well.

“If you want to come up for something before you go, that’s fine. I think I’ve got coffee somewhere. Not my poison, if you know what I mean.”

They laughed.

“No, I’m good. But thanks.”

“Okay.” He patted the dashboard. “Thanks, and you have a good night.”

Jude watched Meadows amble across the road. His advice had put a different spin on what she was trying to achieve. He’d made her understand. She knew how to move on, how to live her life without Kirsten.

Fabian offered closure, a chance to slip a noose around a surrogate’s neck, but it couldn’t be done.

“We provide closure in cases where there can be no closure,” Jude said to herself, quoting Fabian’s literature.

It had taken her until tonight to truly understand the meaning of that phrase. She would never have closure when it came to Kirsten. Offing Meadows wouldn’t bring her closure, but it was a start toward justice. Meadows hadn’t done anything to her, but he would to someone else. The laws of probability dictated it. One day, Meadows would kill someone else’s sister, or wife or daughter, and inflict the kind of misery she’d endured these past four years on someone else’s
family. She couldn’t let that happen. If she let Meadows carry on and he took a life, her guilt would know no end.

Jude called out to Meadows to wait up, that she’d take that coffee after all. She pocketed the gun and followed him up the stairs.

R
acing back to his car, Todd cursed the ATM. Why was there always a line when he was in a hurry? He didn’t love his job packing boxes, but he didn’t want to lose it by being late again. He hopped back into his car and crunched it into reverse. The Honda Accord was way overdue for an overhaul, although even that wouldn’t do much for its ancient transmission. It was toast. Half the time, he didn’t know what gear he was selecting. The Accord stuttered in the parking stall.

“Get in there, damn it.”

Gears snarled as Todd struggled to find first. He jumped off the clutch, and the car leaped backward, slamming into a Porsche Boxster’s headlight.

“Shit!” he muttered.

His antics had drawn quite a crowd, and they’d all witnessed his screwup.
Nowhere to run
, he thought. He found first gear without effort this time and eased the Accord forward to assess the extent of the damage.

Everyone had an opinion and no one had a problem telling him where he’d gone wrong and how much it was going to cost him. He crouched in front of the Porsche and picked at the broken headlight and buckled bumper. There was a couple hundred dollars of damage to the average car, but on the German exotic, he was looking at thousands. His car, the piece of shit that it was, didn’t exhibit any signs of damage—just like Todd, who didn’t exhibit any signs of insurance.

“Does anyone know who the owner is?” Todd asked.

No one did.

“You’ll have to wait,” someone suggested.

“I can’t. I’m late for work.”

“I don’t think you have much choice,” someone else said.

“I can’t. I’ve been late twice this week already.” Todd delved inside his car for a scrap of paper and a pen. “I’ll leave a note.”

He wrote:
People think I’m leaving you my contact and insurance details. I’m not. Sorry.

Todd folded up his note, wrote “sorry” on the outside, and stuck it under the windshield wiper. He shrugged, hopped inside the Accord, and raced off.

He felt guilty for shafting the Porsche driver, but at the same time, he was buzzing with the thrill of his lawlessness, and his speedometer showed it. He was accelerating past forty-five on Telegraph Avenue. He took a deep breath and eased off on the gas.

In the scheme of things, what he’d done wasn’t so bad. It was an accident, after all, and it was more likely the Porsche driver’s insurance company could afford the repairs than he could.
Anyway, with a car like that
, he thought,
you’re asking for trouble
. Todd pulled into his employer’s parking lot safe in the knowledge that the matter was over.

***

Todd liked to take Sunday mornings easy. He lounged in bed until ten, then took a walk to the newsstand to pick up the Sunday paper. He wandered back through the apartment complex, pulling out the color supplement and flicking through the magazine, ignoring the front-page splash about some big drug bust. He took a different route back to his apartment and strolled by his assigned parking space. He slowed as he approached his car. At first, he thought his windows had steamed up overnight, but the weather had been too warm for that. As he got close, he realized he’d been way off. Every one of the Accord’s windows had been smashed in. All four tires had been slashed. He ran a hand over the scarred paintwork. A crowbar was buried up to its hilt in the front windshield, and a note was sticking out from under a wiper. He pulled it out and read it.
Guess who?
it said.

Todd didn’t need to guess. He knew who had done the damage. It was the Porsche owner. Todd hadn’t forgotten about the fender bender, but it had been days since it had happened, and he’d thought it was over, a stunt that would dissolve in his memory over time.

He’d screwed it up this time. Someone must have taken down his license plate before he’d driven away. He was going to pay big for this one. He tugged out the crowbar and tossed it on the backseat through a glassless window.

Returning to his apartment, a thought dogged him. Someone may have taken down his license plate and reported him to the police or the Porsche owner, but how did the Porsche owner know where he lived? He opened the door to his apartment.

“Mr. Todd Collins, I presume,” the small man said, getting up from Todd’s couch.

Two linebacker types, one black, the other Hispanic, flanked the small man. The small man seemed genial, but the linebackers looked ready to tear Todd’s head off. He could have bolted,
but judging by the bulges under the three men’s jackets, he didn’t expect to get far. He guessed he’d just met the owner of the Porsche.

“I’m Todd Collins.” Todd stepped inside the apartment and closed the door.

“Do you know who I am?” the small man asked.

Todd just shook his head, finding that his vocal chords had failed him.

“Good. That makes things simpler. It’s probably not a good idea that you do. It’s only important that I know who you are. Understand?”

Todd nodded.

“I bet you’re wishing you’d left your insurance details now, aren’t you?” the small man said.

“I can make up for it. I can pay.”

The small man held up a hand and shook his head. “It’s far too late for that.” He looked Todd up and down. “Besides, I doubt you could afford to pay. The damage is incidental. However, the consequences of your misdemeanor have been severe. Put the newspaper down.”

Todd, confused at first, hesitated before doing as instructed. He placed the Sunday newspaper on the chipped coffee table. The small man separated the newspaper from the supplements and opened it out. He tapped the front page with the back of his hand.

“See what you’ve done.”

Todd glanced at the headline. D
RUG
D
EALER
B
USTED DURING
R
OUTINE
T
RAFFIC
S
TOP
, it read.

“The car you hit belongs to an employee of mine. Driving home the other night, he was pulled over for a busted headlight. The cops discovered two kilos of coke in his possession. He’s in a lot of trouble, and I’m minus an employee. Do you see now? Do you see what you’ve done and why it has led us to your door?”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s immaterial.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to know. But I’ve lost a valuable employee who had a job to do. Now he can’t do it. Which is where you come in.” The small man stabbed a finger in Todd’s direction.

Todd’s stomach twitched. He didn’t like what was coming. Points on his license and a fine he could accept. But the small man’s kind of retribution filled Todd with dread. He wasn’t a criminal.

“Me?” Todd stammered.

“Yes. You’ll have to fill in.”

The linebackers wrinkled their noses. They knew Todd wasn’t the right man for the job and he agreed with them.

“What do you want me to do?”