Cadillac Payback Read online

  Cadillac Payback

  AJ Elmore

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products.

  Copyright © 2015 AJ Elmore

  Cadillac Payback

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by AJ Elmore.

  Summary: When a rival drug ring kills Maria’s brother, she vows to exact revenge upon the enemy. With help from her brother’s crew, she seeks a blessing from her cartel connections, and begins a trail of vengeance through the streets of New Orleans.

  1. Crime 2. Revenge 3. Romance

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN-13: 9798656385084

  Edited by Eugenie Rayner, Magic Lamp Editing Services

  Cover design by The Illustrated Author

  Cover art copyright©: AJ Elmore

  This one is for my partner in crime, Nazarea, for refusing to give up on my work, and for giving me so much of her time and effort. Without her, this book would still be collecting meta-dust in the vault of my computer.

  

  Part One

  Chapter 1 Cadillac Payback

  Joshua

  Her brown eyes catch glints of light from the headlights of oncoming traffic. The irises glow like honey in sunlight, embers of a smoldering yet deadly fire. Her gaze is full of anger, hatred, so hard I barely recognize her. I can almost see the tracks her tears have traveled on her cheeks, but those tears are long gone, dried into cold rage. Dried along with the blood on her jeans and hands.

  We're barreling east at about ninety miles an hour. Her brother's .40 cal rests on the car seat, between her legs. Both hands grip the wheel of the ancient Cadillac. She doesn't speak. She only drives. If we get pulled over by a cop now, our lives would be over, but she doesn't seem to care about that. Then again, a significant part of our lives is already over.

  The silence is heavy as it presses against us and the car interior. We are headed, undoubtedly, into Mississippi. Reaper country, judging by the way she's driving. I believe she has set our course straight into the hub of the Reaps' territory, straight toward the heart of hell. I didn't ask her where she was going when I followed her into this cage on wheels, I just got in the car. I couldn't let her leave alone with nothing but car keys and a gun. We never go anywhere alone. She never told me to stay, or to get out.

  If I didn't know her better, I'd think she hasn't noticed me beside her, though we've been driving for . . . how long? Forever? She hasn't looked at me even once since she recklessly jerked the Caddy out of the driveway. She hasn't spoken since she left his lifeless shell on the floor, since she felt his blood on her hands.

  Yeah, if I didn't know her, but I do.

  I know she feels my eyes on her occasionally. She may not care that I haven't tried to stop her. I know she can't be stopped – it's not my place to try. At least I can provide some cover. There's a good chance we will both die tonight.

  It's well known in our network that the Reaps – our biggest rivals in marijuana distribution in all of Louisiana and Mississippi – have set up shop in Biloxi. There they can get their hands on the more underlying secrets of the Casino life, while keeping most of their other business in New Orleans. They've hated us since before I came around. They call us the Mexicans because our shit comes from across the border. We've always been their biggest competition in NOLA.

  They're scum, never afraid to pull some slick shit. That’s the only thing about them we can count on. Of course we hate them, too. They are behind every deal gone bad, ruining our trade by undercutting our price. Until now, our hate-hate existence has remained relatively non-violent. Apparently they've decided to make a brutal and major play against us, the reason for which I can't even speculate.

  They've started a war.

  The girl beside me is thin, hard, and quick with most weapons. She is the daughter of a Mexican father, legal, and a white mother, one of whom is dead and the other long gone from her life. She inherited most of her physical traits from the Hispanic blood, with dark hair, dark skin, and her honey eyes. She's twenty-three and a thousand years wiser than her age. She's generally peaceable, yet street-seasoned and gifted with a mind and upbringing for less legal, more profitable business ventures.

  Our people never really instigated contact with the Reaps, but today they killed her brother. They have awakened a rage in her. Now she wants blood in return, and she's bringing the battle they've begun to their doorstep.

  The southern air is unbearably thick outside the car. The smell of magnolia seeps inside. The humidity makes me feel like I'm packaged inside some unyielding, midnight-colored velvet. She hasn't moved to turn on the geriatric AC in the car, and neither do I. We sweat in the silence that threatens to crush the breath right out of my lungs.

  I listen to the thumping of the unmanaged highway and feel sweat slide down the small of my back. The polished leather seat is starting to get uncomfortable. Surely this surface has never itched so much against my skin, or made me feel like I was melting against its heat.

  There's no sense to be talked to this girl. I can offer no condolences when the event that brought us here is bleeding my insides, too. Her brother was my best friend, my mentor. There's only one thing I can think to say to her, only one truth I never have spoken.

  “Maria, I love you.”

  Her foot moves like light as she slams it onto the brake, throwing me against the giant dashboard before I can realize what she's doing. She whips the boat onto the side of the highway like she's driving a Roadster and skids it to a complete stop, sending dust flying and soliciting angry honks from trailing traffic. I have fleeting doubts that she even hears them.

  “You what?” she asks hoarsely.

  I take a deep breath and peel myself off the dash.

  “I love you,” I say again.

  I'm staring at the bugs crowding in on the headlights, like I would if I were studying the mysterious screen of a confessional. I don't want to see her face if her eyes are still glazed over like glass. The silence again blossoms, then spreads between us. The noise of the road seems suddenly distant.

  Moments pass. They feel like years. Only sudden, tiny sniffing sounds can pull my eyes toward her, the only sound that can unfailingly break my resolve. She's sitting very still with her hands abandoned on the wheel, hands that are capable, yet useless now. She's still staring forward, her eyes wide and momentarily empty. The glass has shattered. Tears have returned to her perfect cheeks. I am so useless in this situation that it hurts deep in my gut.

  “No. Joshua. You don't,” she says to me. Her voice is low, wavering. Her arms might be shaking a little, but the steering wheel holds her steady.

  I've never seen her this distraught. I sit back against the sticky car seat and look toward the green at the edge of the headlights' reach, as if the night's obscurity can save me. I belatedly pull on my seatbelt and I tell her, “I do. I just wanted you to know. In case we die.”

  She punches the gas as fast as she cut it off moments ago. I feel my muscles spread a little over the seat's surface. My brain experiences the back of my skull. My stomach lurches as she swings the Caddy onto the blacktop, flinging roadside pebbles like water. We are long gone before the dust can settle.

  She says nothing el
se.

  An eternity later, we roll into Biloxi in a dead heat. Maria trails the car ahead of us, breezing across the city limit at a pace that would be leisurely in any other situation. I pop the magazine out of my Glock for the fourth time. It's still loaded. Its weight is at least a comfort. Even the metal is warm to touch in this cursed summer air, and the world feels like it will never again be cool.

  She drives along the beach like my grandmother used to drive after church, so slow and steady that I think my blood may be standing still in my veins. I roll down my window just to let some of my tension escape. The breeze isn't cool, but it's better than the old stale smoke smell and silence that cling to the Caddy's interior.

  I can barely hear the Gulf that moves beyond the streetlights, and some slow blues drifting from the Hard Rock as we pass it. The coastal air catches her long hair, which sticks to her smoldering skin. If she feels it, she ignores it. Nothing can distract her at this point.

  She turns inland and slows the car even more. My suspicions are proving to be all too true. We are going to hell and, before long, even at our dawdling pace, she guides the Caddy down their street.

  I'm overwhelmed by the purple, syrupy smell of an overzealous lilac bush. The car moves toward the Reaps' largest trap house like sap leaks over tree bark. I can barely stand the waiting. For a mad moment, I consider bailing from the car and running until my heart explodes. My arms feel like I've bench pressed the Caddy. The uncertainty is just as heavy.

  The house of the wicked inches by on my right. Things seem quiet. The shades are drawn. Light leaks out along the bottom of the windows, betraying the life inside. There are no guards to be seen.

  She finally turns her face toward me, but for the first time – maybe ever – I'm glad her eyes aren't searching for me. She glares toward the house, assessing the situation. I've seen the same shrewd expression on her during deals and poker games. That look could melt a polar ice cap.

  I know that some of the most dangerous people we've ever encountered are sitting right inside. There are guns and drugs and money. She knows, too, but I can also tell that danger makes no difference to her.

  Yeah. Our world is about to shake.

  But then the moment is over. The house passes as slowly as it crept into my perception. Maria sits back against her seat and drives. I can't help the breath that escapes me, as if the past couple of hours were conveniently just a particularly awful nightmare. As if my partner in crime isn't dead, and I didn't admit to the only one left who matters that I love his sister.

  Maria coaxes the yacht into the gravel at the side of the street beneath a huge magnolia tree, its big, waxy leaves sheltering us from the eyes of the neighborhood. She pops the trunk, swings open her heavy door, and steps out of the car. She leaves the door open, the engine purring.

  Her movements are so deliberate that I feel lost, as if I should also have some determined objective. She's terrifying in the accuracy of her actions, how she wastes nothing, not even a breath. Why won't she just speak? I don't know what she's planning now, and I can't even pretend like I have a clue. I do know she didn't take the time for personal vendettas, so she must want to kill them all. I know that sometimes she is just like her big brother.

  I tuck my gun in my waistband as I follow her to the mafia-sized trunk. In a fluid blur, she's sliding away a metal case that I recognize as a gun carriage, and she's opening a black one that is unfamiliar to me.

  “Stay in the car,” she says softly, her tone solid and measured.

  She opens the case with the precision and surety of an assassin. Inside, nestled between some egg crate foam, is a fifth of Southern Comfort. The liquid inside is the right color, but it moves like mostly melted butter.

  I'm too stunned to respond properly. Stay in the car? Not likely. She can't expect that of me. I watch her retrieve another bottle lid that has a big, white tampon hanging through it by the string. It is severely out of place, that tampon. Almost comical.

  She replaces the bottle's lid with the tampon-laden one, leaving the cotton to dangle inside. I watch with morbid fascination as the liquid bleeds into the misemployed feminine product. Events are beginning to reshape in my mind's eye, as the thing in her hand begins to make more sense in my frayed thought process. This is no bottle of summer evening rowdiness, this is one mean little Molotov cocktail. Frederick's work, no doubt.

  “At least stay here,” she says, unexpectedly nailing me with dead seriousness.

  I can barely see the brown of her irises in the moonlight. Summer bugs buzz in my head. My stomach invades my lower intestines at the sight of the deadly intent on her face. She's sidelining me, putting me on the bench until her business here is done.

  She steals away. Her feet barely make any sound in the gravel. Her hips sway slightly, sending upon me a wave of slow motion sensory cues that always seem to happen before something significant comes. My consciousness breathes in. I close the trunk as gently as I can manage and wait.

  She sidles up to the house, a stalking predator in the shadows. A siren erupts somewhere several blocks away. The noise makes my heart stutter, nearly fail, but Maria is steady, unaffected. She doesn't give a shit about authorities in the still night air.

  I keep waiting for gunfire, or a signal of danger from a hidden lookout, for some indication that they have been waiting for us all this time. Perhaps they really have underestimated the magnitude of their actions and the force they have angered. These fuckers are crazy if they believe they won't be hearing from us tonight, even crazier if they thought they could scare Charlie's little sister into inaction. Such is the smug self-confidence of their ringleader.

  I watch her silhouette slip a lighter from her pants pocket. Its flame illuminates her face for just a moment and the tampon's fuse is lit. She waits long enough to make sure the flame will hold, then unceremoniously chucks the bottle toward the house, a baby sis with something to prove.

  All I can think is that if he could see her now, he would be proud.

  The bottle of spirits smashes through a large, picture window, raining viscous death into the enemy's front room. Muffled expletives can barely be heard as she heads back to the car. As I throw myself into the huge car seat, the worst kind of explosion rocks the hell house, and with it the entire neighborhood and my sanity.

  My girl is back at the wheel like liquid grace running over steel nerves, and she's rolling the Caddy back onto the street once more, at a speed that my dear grandmother would use to get away from the devil himself.

  We're blocks away before the confusion of the Reaps' neighbors can even settle. I doubt she cares if someone did see her getaway. She has made her play, upped the ante.

  I watch, through the rear view, the orange blaze grow exponentially. Anyone caught inside is toast. Anyone in the area has a good chance of a contact buzz as who knows how many different drugs are incinerated. I hope, vaguely, that the fire doesn't spread to neighboring houses. Then I remember that sort of compassion has no place in this world, that this attitude is why the guys call me green.

  Maria is dialing her cell phone as she drives. She feels far away across the front seat that was made in a time when front seats fit three adults. Everything seems a little askew to me, life on tilt. I'm only slightly surprised at her method of going off the deep end. I've always known that she and her brother were volatile and dangerous. I feel unpleasantly high.

  “Start packing,” she says into her Samsung, calling me back from my trauma. The voice on the other end doesn't say much. Who would argue with her right now? No one who knows her. No one from our camp.

  I can hear the muffled reply to her directive. She answers before the voice is finished.

  “There's no time for that now. Get Frederick on a connection with a morgue. You start packing, we won't have long.”

  She hangs up the phone and abandons it on the seat between us with a toss. I don't want to lose her to silence again, but I don't know what to say. Miles away
, our home is in disarray. Charlie has grown cold, no doubt, his life drained out onto the kitchen floor.

  I search her face for any sign of emotion. She shows none. She's being strong, impossibly stoic. She has officially taken the reins of the family business. She has inherited a great responsibility.

  “Where will we go?” I wonder, not really counting on an answer. But I can't take the void anymore.

  “New Orleans.”

  I might have guessed. It makes sense. That's where the majority of our business lies, even if we don't currently live there. And it will be infinitely harder for the Reaps to retaliate in NOLA.

  “Then what?” I stab. Maybe the answers will continue.

  “Then I rally the troops.”

  “We,” I correct her.

  “We,” she says in a bitter-edged tone, “destroy Gram and every last fucking rat who works for him.”

  Chapter 2 Morning Wreckage

  Joshua

  Early morning is waning. The city is quietest right before the dawn, even this close to dreaded Bourbon, as if the whole place can feel the weight of our arrival. Soon the sun will rise.

  We haven't slept. Freddy and Isaiah are on Magazine Street, waiting in an apartment above a restaurant. Maria and I are on St. Ann's at our friends' hotel. Even in the hushed darkness the humidity clings to everything. Fog from the river rolls over uneven streets, the Quarter's ghost, voodoo secrets stealing soundlessly by to bewitch all the souls it touches, so that they may never truly leave.

  In this tiny hotel, they only had one room open with one bed, but I couldn't bring myself to leave her. Reality and trauma have started to run together, to blur my waking hours. I'll sleep on the floor.

  The girls are very welcoming and protective, even though housing us could be dangerous. They insist on feeding us from their continental breakfast stash: apples, bananas, muffins, whatever they can convince us to swallow. They valiantly attempt to fill us beyond our emotional capacity to handle eating. Then they steep some hot chai while they get the essential information, mostly from me because Maria has gradually slipped back into silence since we arrived.