by Claire Matturro
“Hey, Birdie, let’s go to Atlanta,” my cousin Rose said over lunch. “I need to run an errand.” She jumped up, yanked open her junk drawer, tugged out a Tupperware box, and dropped it on the table. Crisp green $100 bills spilled out.
“Are they real?” I asked.
“Of course they’re real. Earl’s not a counterfeiter.”
No, Rose’s husband Earl ran a used car lot which made it easy for him to transport illegal drugs from Miami. He has a long trailer so he can haul used cars he buys at auctions and nobody ever inspects the cars.
Thing about running drugs, though, is that Earl has to be careful about loose cash. I knew better than to ask, but I figured Rose had to drop off that money to their tax lawyer in Atlanta.
As I wasn’t fixing to do anything except cut the gas, I nodded yes. We weren’t but a few hours south of Atlanta, we could spend the night like before, drop off the money, shop a bit, and still get home in time for church on Sunday. Soon we lit out of town, her driving fit to kill in that Honda she’s about drove to death. Sixty on a curve don’t mean a thing to her. We got there in time to check into a good hotel and have a nice dinner.
Next morning, Rose whipped out this little pink suitcase I’d been thinking was her make-up kit. She put on some gloves and wiped down that suitcase fit to kill with a towel. Then she dropped the suitcase into a big Macy’s bag.
With her carrying that suitcase in the bag, we flagged a taxi, though I pointed out we had our own car. Rose just smiled, so I didn’t ask a blessed thing further.
I decided to wait in the coffee shop downstairs from her tax lawyer. Minutes later, I was sipping a latte when a black Chevy came hurdling up to the curb and men burst out, running toward the law office. With their short hair and gray suits, I knew them for state cops.
I raced out the door toward the lawyers’ building, where I ran up the stairs fast enough to about make me faint, not thinking for a minute those cops were chasing somebody other than Rose or her tax lawyer. As I huffed into the office, her lawyer pointed a gun to Rose’s neck. He clutched her pink suitcase in his other hand and shouted out he’d kill Rose if anybody so much as looked hard at him. Right then I saw I needed to do something to get Rose out of that mess.
As the lawyer dragged Rose toward the stairs, I ran up behind him and rammed him with all the strength I had, right smack in the center of the small of his back. Speed, surprise, and my own heft toppled him right over. Rose snatched herself free as he went tumbling.
Problem was the lawyer had been all that was stopping my momentum. When he went plunging down the stairs, I went hurling down the entire flight with him. That damn pink suitcase flew down with us and somehow clonked me hard on the head.
At the bottom, in the ruckus that naturally followed, the man grabbed the suitcase and took off running. By then there were sirens everywhere. I felt swimmy headed.
Rose ran toward me, her hair streaming out behind her. “Oh, Birdie, honey, are you all right?”
I guess I passed out because Rose faded away and I was on a grassy field with red flowers blooming. My old dead dog, Rufus, came running out of the high grass and danced around me. He licked my face and wagged his tail, and his bright eyes weren’t clouded with the cataracts anymore.
Uh-oh, I thought. I’m dead sure, and my dog has come to take me over to the other side.
My daddy and I had had quite the discussion about whether dogs get to go to heaven, and I figured this answered that, and I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Daddy. But then I thought: if I’m dead, I can’t tell my daddy nothing.
That thought about brought me to.
Rufus gave me one more sweet lick and faded back into that high green grass. I woke up with Rose wiping my face with a cold cloth.
I looked around and didn’t see that lawyer in sight. How he hit the bottom without getting hurt and was able to run off, beat the cake.
While Rose patted my hand, a detective asked us why we were there in the first place. Then another cop separated me from Rose. He asked me a bunch questions I didn’t know. I said I was just waiting in a coffee shop, got bored, and went up to see what was taking Rose so long. Other than that, I didn’t know nothing.
That detective left me and went over to Rose. She flipped her hair and smiled, looking as pretty as ever. Later when I asked her if she were in trouble, she said, “Why, no, why would I be in trouble? I just explained to those officers that I was seeing the lawyer about a complex tax problem because there aren’t any tax lawyers back home. After a while, we were all friends, they left me their cards, and said how sorry they were I got taken hostage and you got hurt.”
We were back at the hotel by noon, got in some shopping, and that night I had me a hot tub bath with those water jet things, after which Rose gave me one of her Xanax. My head was hardly sore at all and I went right off to sleep.
Next morning, we ate room service, then set off. On the way home, I asked, “Why’d that tax lawyer run like that?”
“Oh, Birdie, he had to. They had a warrant on him for money laundering and conspiracy to traffic in drugs. That’s what the cops said before you got there. He told me he was real sorry to have to use me for a hostage, but he couldn’t be going to jail. Don’t fret. You saved my life, and everybody will welcome you back as a hero.”
I smiled, happy with myself. I had saved Rose. That ought to be worth a party with home-made ice-cream.
“Maybe we ought to go to New Orleans next time,” Rose said. “I reckon Earl and me will be needing a new tax lawyer.”
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