The Take (2 page)

“Hi,
Eddie,” she said, passing him his beer. “How you doing?” Her voice was just
right — feminine, but forceful. It hinted at her hard interior.

“Okay,
Felina. But I’ll be a little bit better once I get this brew in me.” His smile
hid his jangling nerves. Or so he thought.

His
mind wasn’t on the beer as he watched her slip onto the sofa next to Val. He
just couldn’t figure it out. Val wasn’t that great-looking. What was he doing
with a sizzler like Felina? Or any of the other women he had on the side. Eddie
had seen a few of them and they were all gorgeous. Maybe it was the beard, he
didn’t know. Nevertheless, he did know that whatever it was Val had, Eddie
wanted it.

Val
spoke. “So, how’s it been goin’, man?”

“Well,
not so good, actually. You know, I paid off the money I owed on the Series a
few weeks ago, but now I owe more … um … a lot more’n I can pay. I thought we
might, you know, go somewhere and talk about, um …”

“Talk
about knockin’ over Chico Salazar,” Val stated in a very matter-of-fact tone.
He took another long swig from his longneck.

Squirming
like a kid in a barber chair, Eddie shot a quick glance at Felina, then back to
Val. One of those whaddya-tryin’-to-do glances.

“Don’t
worry, buddy boy.” His voice was crisp and aggressive, matching his pushy
personality. It was covered with a raspy overlay, picked up after years of the
Swisher Sweets. “I got no secrets from Felina here.”

He put
his arm around her as an underline to that statement. She responded by
snuggling up to him. Turning to look her in the eye, he smiled and added
affectionately, “‘cause she’s my lady, aren’tcha, baby?” She purred in the
affirmative.

“Val’s
told me all about it, Eddie,” she added. “I think it’s a great idea. We can all
use the money.” She ran a hand under Val’s T-shirt, stroking his stomach. Eddie
felt the beginnings of arousal down below.

“We?
Wh-what’s —“ His uncertain eyes shifted to Val, then back to Felina.
Finally, they settled on Val.

“Ah, don’t
sweat it,” Val said. “We split fifty-fifty, just like I was tellin’ you that
night. I take care of Felina with my end. Plus, she won’t be there when the
deal goes down. She’s out of it.”

“I’ll
be right here at home, Eddie,” she said in her sweetest Tex-Mex lilt. “Val’s
got it all worked out. You can pay off your debts and I can quit my job at the
cleaners. Then me and Val can move into someplace nice.”

Eddie
continued fidgeting in the recliner. He took a hearty pull from his Pearl
longneck. It didn’t calm him down any.

“Look,
buddy boy,” said Val, letting go of Felina and turning to face him, “when I
brought this up to you a couple of weeks ago over at T&T’s Tavern, I wasn’t
just talking out of my ass. I meant it. We can do this.”

Val’s
face glowed with confidence, but none of it rubbed off. Eddie still wore the
jittery look of a man with a deuce in the hole.

He
remembered their little talk in the darkness of the tavern: a few beers, a
little moaning about their hard financial straits, and then in walked Chico
Salazar with a glittering blonde. Coming back to the old neighborhood to show
himself. Five hundred-dollar shirt, gold and platinum hanging all over him,
diamonds on the blonde, the Lamborghini parked out front in the red zone. It
was like somebody flipped on a bunch of
floodlights, illuminating all the forbidden corners of the dingy
joint.

“I don’t
know, Val. It’s — it’s too dangerous, man.” He set his beer on the floor
and got up out of the recliner to leave.

Val
reached for his arm and yanked him back down into sitting position.

“Eddie.
Eddie. I said we can do this.”

“We can’t
just rob the son of a bitch. I mean, he’s probably surrounded by torpedoes
twenty-four hours a day.”

“That
night in T&T’s, he was only surrounded by blonde pussy.” He let go of Eddie’s
arm.

“Yeah.
In a bar, sure. But he’s a drug dealer, man. When he’s holding serious money,
you can bet there’ll be major firepower all over the damn place.”

Val
pulled a pack of Sweets from his pocket. There were two left. He broke the pair
and lit one, then gazed off at the far wall, exhaling the smoke. He held the
wooden match, still burning.

“No
matter who you are,” he said slowly, through the smoke, “no matter how
well-protected you are, there’s always one point, one moment when you can be taken.
Generals, presidents, kings …
 
they
all know it and they all fear it.” He blew the match out, as he watched the
dark smoke sail outward.

“Val’s
right, Eddie,” Felina spoke up. “There’s someplace, sometime when he’s
vulnerable.” Her accent tripped her up on that last word. She went on, “That’s
your advantage. You plan it out for the time when he doesn’t expect it.”

Eddie
had a hard time keeping his eyes off her lovely legs and his mind on the matter
at hand.

He
said, “Well, it’s a cinch he’s
not
gonna go down without a fight. If he’s carrying sixty or seventy grand on him
like you were saying the other night, he’s not just gonna hand it over to us
because we ask him nice.”

Val
rose impatiently from the sofa. “God damn right! We’re gonna have to
take
it from him.” His agitation showed
in exaggerated hand gestures and a raised voice. “Look, buddy boy, I’m up
against it just like you. I got bills. I been borrowing money all over the East
End. My landlady’s all over my ass ‘cause I’m behind in the rent. I got Felina
here to take care of. Her job doesn’t pay shit.”

“Go
hustle up a game of pool like you always do,” Eddie said. “That’s how you’ve
gotten by ever since we was kids.”

“Yeah,
twenty, thirty bucks a game. I’m tired of that shit, man! Been doing it since I
was fifteen. It’s gettin’ harder and harder for me to find a game anywhere
around town anymore. I had to go all the way down to Galveston last week, where
they don’t know me too well, just to make a hundred bucks.”

Eddie
wasn’t much of a pool player, but he knew that was the chief occupational
hazard of the professional. You practice and practice, getting really good,
then eventually, everybody knows how good you are. Pretty soon, nobody wants to
play you, not even if you spot them five balls. Even in a city the size of
Houston, Val’s reputation preceded him. Very few were willing to throw their
money down for a crack at him. They might as well throw it out in the street.

Val
continued: “You scuffle around for the short money, that’s all you’re ever gonna
get. I’m ready to move up to the next floor.” He downed the rest of his beer.
It did him good,
and he sat
back down on the edge of the sofa, leaning close to Eddie. “And so’re you,
buddy boy. That’s why you’re here.”

“Hey, I
don’t know about any next floor shit. I just need a few grand to pay off
Cannetta and my players.”

Val
calmly gripped Eddie’s forearm again, holding it down on the arm of the
recliner.

“Eddie,
this’s our ticket out of this black fucking hole of Calcutta. If we play this
right, our problems are gonna go away.” His grip tightened for emphasis. “It’s
our only chance. Our only goddam chance.”

It was
his desperate look, as well as his fierce whisper, that unnerved Eddie even
more. And of course, Eddie knew that for people like him and Val, big chances
didn’t roll around on the wheel of fortune too often.

“But … I
don’t know, there’s just gotta be a better way.”

Val
released Eddie’s arm, sinking back into the sofa. He said, “Oh really? A better
way? Well, just what do you suggest? That we should trot on down to the bank
and ask for a loan? Maybe we should take out an insurance policy to cover our
losses. Maybe we should just jump off the fucking Exxon Building!”

“But I
don’t like the idea of robbing him for it. And if the shit really comes down,
we might have to …”

“Relax,
buddy boy. I want it to be clean all the way. The key is we take him by
surprise. Don’t give him a chance to react. If he doesn’t give us any shit,
fine. We grab the dough and run.”

“And
what if he does?”

“Does
what?”

“Give us
shit.”

Eddie
already knew the answer but wished
he didn’t.

Val
paused. His eyes narrowed a little and he said, “Then we do what we gotta do.”
Eddie started to protest, but Val cut him off, “Hey, maybe a rap on the head if
he struggles. But look, it’s not like we’re stealing from widows and orphans.
Man, the guy’s a drug dealer. He’s fucking scum.”

“But he’ll
come after us if we don’t kill him.”

“Oh,
now you want to kill him? Make up your mind, man.”

“No,
no. I just want to — I mean — “ All this swirled around
Eddie way too fast. He was becoming
disoriented. Rubbing his hands together hard, he calmed himself, his eyes
darting from his fluttering hands to the label on his beer bottle, then back to
his hands. Despite all of the eye-darting, he really didn’t see anything.

He
said, “But he’d come after us for sure.”

“Damn
straight,” Val shot back. “He’ll be double pissed at first. He’ll want to tear
us apart. But how’s he gonna know who we are? He doesn’t know either one of us.
He’s from the neighborhood, sure, but he came up after we did. Anyway, that
kind of money’s no big deal to him. After a few weeks, he’ll cool down.”

“You’ll
be okay,” Felina said, “as long as you don’t show off a lot of money, and as
long as nobody finds out he was robbed.”

Eddie
frowned. “Nobody finds out?”

“It’s
the Latin macho thing,” she said. “If people found out about it — you
know, other Mexicans — then he’d have to find you, no matter what, no
matter how long it took. He’d have to make an example of you, because if it got
out that he could be taken, then everybody would try it.”

The
whole thing sounded like suicide. Eddie was about to count himself out, when
Val said, “I can find out when he’s gonna be holding the big money.”

“How?”
asked Eddie. “I mean, he’s not gonna advertise it in the paper.”

Val’s
voice evened off. “I been looking into it since that night in T&T’s. It so
happens I shoot a game every now and then with Tony Chávez, Chico’s driver.”

“I
think I remember him from around here in the East End,” Eddie said. “A few years
younger than Chico, isn’t he?”

Val
nodded. “Okay, so one night, a week or so ago, I get him into a ten-buck game
over a couple of beers, and I let him beat me two games in a row. So pretty
soon, he tells me he can’t give me a rematch the next night because it’s the
third Thursday of the month and he’s gonna be busy.”

“So?”
Eddie asked. He had one eye still on Felina, curled provocatively on the couch.

“So I
say, whaddya mean ‘busy’, and he says he can’t ever do anything the first and
third Thursday nights of any month on account of that’s when he takes Chico to
the airport. Sumbitch’s got his own private jet, can you believe that shit?” He
gestured toward the empty longneck at Eddie’s feet. “You ready for another one?”

Eddie
nodded and Val signaled Felina. She headed for the kitchen.

Val
went on. “So I call my sister’s husband. He works in security out at
Intercontinental Airport. Anyway, he calls one of his buddies in Flight Service
and finds out Chico’s filed a flight plan for the night in question, leaving at
nine-thirty for Grand Cayman.”

Felina
returned with the beers. Val took a big first swig.

After a
light burp, he continued. “Okay, so I go out to the airport that night and park
outside the general aviation terminal. I get there a little before nine and
wait around, and sure enough, about twenty after, who pulls up but Tony in a
white Rolls. He gets out and opens up the back door. Out steps the man himself,
Mister Chico Salazar. And he’s carrying a metal suitcase. He goes and gets
right on the plane. No waitin’ around.”

He
stopped, eyeing his last Swisher Sweet. Decisively, he pulled it out and lit
it, crumpling the empty pack.

He
dropped his voice to a lower key.
“So then, I follow Tony all the way back to Chico’s house, over off
Memorial. Instead of taking the freeway all the way back, he gets off at
Memorial Drive downtown. Then he goes through the park to get to back to
Chico’s. The damn park!”

He
exhaled with the effort of someone who had just finished off a major speech,
then leaned back as far as he could into the sofa cushions.

“The
park? So what?” Eddie said.

“Do I
have to draw you a fuckin’ map? If he takes that route coming back from the
airport, it’s safe to say it’s the same route he takes going out there. If he
goes through the park on his way to the airport, that’s where we nail him.”

“In
Memorial Park?” Eddie knew the two-mile stretch of divided road through the park.
It was a well-traveled four-lane artery, linking downtown to the elite Memorial
neighborhood on the park’s western fringe.