Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [45]
It occurred to me that these kids might have firearms tucked under their puffy down jackets. Crow didn’t look like much but he was fifty pounds of solid muscle and, the one time someone had tried to kick my ass at Laurel, Crow had jumped the guy and actually gone for his jugular. The moment I’d told Crow to stop, he’d stopped but he’d done damage. The guy had to go to the hospital to get stitches. After that, no one fucked with me.
Now, I figured if any of these kids made a wrong move, Crow would be on them.
“You know the address of Belmont Racetrack?” I asked the girl.
She squinted at me. “What?”
“The track, Belmont.”
She looked puzzled.
“You came all the way from Oklahomahhh just to go to Belmont?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Shiiit,” she whistled through her teeth.
“Kareem,” she said, turning to one of the boys, “where’s Belmont at?”
“Long Island,” the kid said.
“Where on Long Island, motherfucker?” the girl asked impatiently.
“Out at the end of Queens. You gotta take a train at Penn Station I think.”
“My man here ain’t on no train, he got himself a vehicle,” she spat. “Come over here, tell him how to get to Belmont.”
“I dunno how you get there by car, Denise.”
Denise was losing patience with her troops.
“Any of you motherfuckers know how to get to Belmont by car?” she said.
They all shrugged. One of them piped up saying he could ask his uncle. Denise pulled a cell phone from her pocket and handed it to the kid. The kid dialed. Pretty soon he was talking. Denise impatiently took the phone from him.
“I want you to tell my friend how to drive from Delancey Street to Belmont,” she said into the phone before handing it to me.
I put it to my ear and listened to another fast-talking voice telling me a lot of incomprehensible shit. I pretended I understood it all so that maybe Denise and her friends would leave me be.
I handed the phone back to her.
“You got it?” she asked.
I nodded.
“All right then. You have a nice day, mister. God bless.”
With that, she gestured at her crew and they all walked away.
By the end of that day, after getting lost a few dozen times, I finally made it to Belmont. The security people wouldn’t let me in the backstretch though and I was too tired to think fast. I parked the car in a little lot behind a beauty salon and hunkered down for another night in the vehicle. My body was sore from sleeping in the car but now I didn’t even care anymore. Darwin was in a stall somewhere on that vast backstretch and I would see him soon. I got in the backseat. Crow took the front.
I really needed to brush my teeth.
ATTILA JOHNSON
14.
In the Hole
When something bothers Ruby she sleeps. Which is what she’s doing now. It’s barely eight P.M., and no sooner did we check in to our hideout at this somewhat sinister motel than she released her cats from their carriers, unceremoniously peeled off all her clothes, got under the covers, and passed out.
For almost an hour now she’s been sleeping soundly between the cheap yellow sheets. And I’ve just been sitting at the edge of the bed, trying to read but staring into space. Maybe I’m thinking some things through. Maybe not. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what’s happening inside yourself.
Ruby’s big cat, Stinky, is lying right near my girl’s head, apparently unruffled by the new environment, but Lulu has been cowering under the bed since we first got here and I suddenly feel terrible about this. I get down on all fours and crawl under the bed, trying to coax the little cat out. Right at that moment, my phone vibrates in my pocket, startling me and causing me to bang my head on the bedsprings.
I curse, crawl back out from under the bed, and go into the bathroom, closing the door before looking at the phone. I don’t recognize the number but I sense that it’s Ava calling again. I put the phone back in my pocket and stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. The circles under my eyes are getting bigger and my crew cut is growing out, making me look like an exhausted rooster.
I come back out of the bathroom and find that Ruby has come