Troy on Troy - Epitaph, a Novel

Troy on Troy - Epitaph, a Novel
Epitaph

Chapter 1

Fighting off fear was easy compared to the intense desire to shut his eyes. He tried telling himself, "just for a few seconds." Thump, thump, thump, thump, the yellow lane dividers jolted him back awake but his eye lids were so very heavy. The road is black but the night is darker. "Aren't the stars supposed to get brighter the farther you get from the lights of the city?" He talks to himself to try and fight off the sleep but he knows that it’s pointless. That last sleep came 40 hours ago.

He can't afford to get a motel room, not because of the money; there’s a briefcase full of it in the trunk. It's the people after him. Surely that's how they would catch him. “It's the slip ups that get people killed,” he knew this from the books he read. He loves a good mystery. Finally giving in to his body, he pulls over to the side of the road where there is an underpass. The I15 has a lot of these between LA and Las Vegas. He thinks they’re for floods or something but it has to be safe in September. It hasn't rained in this area in months. The underpass provides shelter from the people after him.

His mind races from image to image as the sleep is coming but he can't calm his mind. He cracks his window and pulls another water from his cooler. He would rather have a beer but he has to keep his head as sharp as possible. There are so many things that need to happen if he is going to be able to try and keep both the money and his life. Three point five million dollars. That thought brings the first smile to his face in days. "If you’re going to run, make it worth your while," he again says aloud as if speaking verses thinking makes everything better. He looks in the rear view mirror to check for damage, just a small cut on the cheek below his right eye. But he can feel the dried blood on his neck and back. It has long since dried and has turned hard and itches. That would be bad enough, but it's worse, it's not his blood.

His last thought of the day before crashing into sleep lulls him back to when his world was normal. That world is gone forever and he knows it. A foggy black and white haze like that of a silent movie flickers thru his half awake mind and he is suddenly back in his bed. His dog and “waitress of the day” lay all clumped together under a quilt picked out by his daughter. He misses his dog.

He never dreams when he sleeps but now, the complete exhaustion opens like flood gates and he is back at the beginning, at least to the beginning of this part; the bad part.

“Fuck you, get out of the car.” He is the man with the knife and he is the one pulling at the door handle and screaming at the random woman in the car. She freezes from the terror of what is happening. Bad timing, being at the wrong place, etc. We have all heard it before but this time it couldn’t be truer. She just stares back up at him like the insane maniac he has become. It isn't his fault as this is survival but in reality, it’s all his fault. His decisions and actions have caused this very moment. “I’m not going to hurt you, I just need the car, get the fuck out!”

The window shatters but not from his fists or the butt of the butcher knife in his hand from the restaurant but from the bastard shooting at him. She’s dead. Just like that, her life is over. The driver of the car was dead from the first shot. If she would have just given him the car she could have gone on with her day, he really just wanted the car; needed the car.

The shot sounded far off but even he could tell from the way the glass exploded that his hunter was closer than he wanted.

He reached in from the now empty window and hit the electronic switch, he pulls at the handle and opens the car door and yanks the dead woman from the car. She is heavier than she looks and her body is limp. “I’m sorry but fuck, why didn’t you get out of the car?” he mumbles to himself. He tosses her to the pavement, jumps in the car and hits the accelerator. Shots ring out after him as he flees, so he drives hunched over just to be safe like he has seen "them" do in the movies.

There is blood everywhere but he’s not hit. He does a quick check by running his hands all over his body and nothing, the blood is hers.

How did they know he was there? Nobody knew except for Sadie, his three year old Australian Shepard. Only she knew that he was coming in on Sunday when they were closed. It was the first time that he had actually ever stepped foot inside in the damn place on a Sunday since they had bought it. Sadie was the only living thing he had told about finding the briefcase and the letter. If those sons-of-bitches knew it was him that had the case then surely they knew where he lived.

He decides to do a drive by so he won’t look suspicious. He pulls into the track of homes where he lives, makes the turn on his street and remembers he’s covered in blood in a car with a shot out window, “freaking brilliant… idiot “ He has always been his own toughest critic.

Driving by, the house looks normal, shutters closed, door is closed, nothing seemed out of place. He turns the dead woman’s car around and parks across the street facing the wrong way. He hid a key for his daughter on the side of the house in case he was away when she wanted to come home on the weekends from college. It’s under a pot, not very creative. It’s actually very safe because if Sadie didn’t know you, all hell would break out as soon as you rattled the gate. Sadie started in but once she saw it was him, the tail started wagging, the key was his for the taking.

Once inside the house, he moved fast. He went upstairs and grabbed the case; it was right where he had left it. “Think, think, think, c’mon jackass think!” He grabbed an ice chest and threw in some beer, water and apples. He got his phone charger and a few pictures. He needed the pictures because he knew live or die, he was never coming back.

He threw everything in the car and started to get in and then stopped. His every movement just stopped. “Sadie.” She had followed him everywhere in the house and he didn’t realize he had been talking to her the whole time. He always talked to her so this wasn’t unusual. He went back inside and she was sitting just on the other side of the door looking at him… she knew something was wrong from the way he was acting and the smell of the blood he was covered in. He knew he couldn’t take her with him. This was their last time together; their goodbye had to happen quickly. He had already spent too much time there. He opened the garage door and called for her. She came instantly as always and he led her to the next door neighbor’s house. Without saying a word, he opened their side gate and told her to go in. Again, no hesitation. He shut the gate and she was gone.

Sadness overwhelmed him. Sadie was his only friend since his wife Ginger had died. If Ginger had been alive, she would have made him turn the briefcase into the police when he found it at their restaurant. None of this would be happening. He didn’t have time for a change of heart, not now…he was in too deep.

He started the car and backed out. It was his wife’s MG and he hadn’t driven it since she passed. He left it right where she had parked it. Like most of her belongings, he left as much as he could in exactly the same places where she had put them as if she wasn’t gone, he just couldn’t say goodbye. But that was all over now, he was driving in her car, away from her things and his dog and the house and “What the hell was I thinking?”

As soon as he had taken the briefcase from under the table in the corner where Marco and his “associates” sat every Tuesday night, he knew his life would never be the same. Every Tuesday they would come and have the veal picatta which everyone thought was the best they ever had. They weren’t subtle about who they were or what they did for work. He and his wife had owned Lucci’s, an Italian restaurant, for six years and he had personally been their server of choice for most of that time. They had always tipped way too much; he figured that was to buy his silence from the conversations he had overheard. And he had heard some big stories. Drugs, murders, you name it, they had claimed it. Part of him believed them but part of him thought that they were just big talkers.

The last Tuesday night they were there, last night, they had been drinking heavily celebrating something big. They threw hundreds at him like they were nickels and had him keep the place open much later than normal so they could keep partying. They just left it there under the table, a briefcase full of cash, what was he supposed to do? Almost like it was a test of some kind. He failed miserably.

He drove south from Seattle in her car because he was afraid to use a credit card for a rental. They had to be smart enough to check for those kinds of things. When he got to LA, he changed his mind, “screw Mexico, cash is King in Vegas,” so east on the I15 it was. He could disappear into the crowds for awhile and then take his pick of his next destination. A tropical beach, swaying palm trees; maybe even Europe. He and his wife had always talked of seeing the statues and fountains throughout Europe but it was just talk. They both new they could never afford a trip like that, but with the booty he had in the trunk, that was no longer an issue.

Forty hours later he was sleeping under a bridge with 3.5 million dollars of a drug dealer’s cash in a briefcase in his dead wife’s trunk.

He woke up hot, thirsty and disoriented. His back was killing him and the heat, "Oh my God the heat." It was 11:00 am and already the temperature was well over 100 degrees. He did the math and realized he had been out for about five hours but he was alive. He had survived the first 48 hours of a nightmare that had left at least 1 person dead.

He reached over to his cooler and pulled out the last bottle of water and an apple. What he wanted was the beer, but there would be plenty of time for that if he just didn’t panic. He craved a shower; he had to get the blood off somehow and soon. He couldn’t get a room or a meal looking like a survivor of a train wreck. Time to move.


End, chapter 1