2
At Randy’s horrified expression, Jackson nodded. “Yeah, it’s terrifying. But after that, I get to spend the day with my fiancé, and I like him, so that’s a good thing. Now scoot!”
Randy turned and went up the stairs with enough alacrity to make him slip. He recovered with a hand on the stair in front of him, and Jackson saw one more thing that needed to be addressed.
“ And change your shoes! New drivers don’t get flip-flops !”
He shut the door and turned around with a breath, staring at Henry with a flat expression. “Somebody owes me for this,” he decided. “You, Ernie, Dex—hell, I’ll take it up with Jennifer if I have to, but somebody owes me.”
“Understood,” Henry said. “But first, go up and remind him to grab his driver’s permit, because I’d put down money he doesn’t have that either.”
EVENTUALLY THEY made it into Jennifer, and as Jackson piloted her down the mostly quiet streets of Sacramento and then Carmichael, he told Henry to be on the lookout for a Starbucks or Dutch Bros. or something, because Jackson had chosen doughnuts over coffee and now he needed coffee.
“You could have let me make you some!” Henry objected.
“Well, we need to get to Sunrise Mall early for what I have in mind,” Jackson told him.
“What’s at Sunrise Mall?” Randy asked.
“Nothing.” Twenty years ago, it had been an active little indoor shopping center, and while the place across from it, Birdcage Center, was now all refurbished and outdoor accessible and busy, the mall itself had not fared so well.
“Literally,” Henry said, frowning. “Absolutely nothing.”
In the fall, it had pop-up Halloween stores in one of the cavernous old department store shells, but now? Maybe half the venues were occupied, and attendance, even during holidays, was grim. Jackson had seen it on Sacramento’s Ten Most Haunted Places lists—many, many times.
“Yup,” Jackson said grimly. “Absolutely nothing.”
There was a moment of quiet, and then Henry said, “Oh. Oh . Nothing. I get it now.”
“Yup,” Jackson said, sighting a Dutch Bros. on Fair Oaks with relief. “Not a goddamned thing.”
The mall was all but deserted when they arrived, and Henry wanted to know where the employees were.
“On the back side, facing the roller rink—”
“Wait! Shut up !” Henry told him, enchanted. “A roller rink ? As in skating ?”
Jackson grunted. “Straight out of an eighties movie, yes. Skating. On four wheels. I think the popcorn oil is older than I am. But we’re not going there.” He guided Jennifer to the far corner, where Macy’s used to be, and threw it into Park near the curb, near Greenback Lane. “Okay, Randy, I’m leaving the keys in so she doesn’t stall. We’re going to get out and switch places. It’s fine.”
Once they were back in their seats, Jackson made Randy put his seat belt on and sighed.
“Okay, we’re in Park. The right pedal is the gas—that makes it go.”
“I’m not stupid, Jackson,” Randy grumbled.
“I’m not repeating this because you’re stupid,” Jackson told him patiently. “I’m repeating this because you’ve got acres of nerve endings between your head and your foot, and sometimes you need some reinforcement to make that happen without thought. So, left pedal stops, right pedal goes. Say it with me.”
Randy rolled his eyes. “Left pedal stops, right pedal goes,” he muttered, but his foot twitched as he said which pedal was which, and Jackson had some hope.
“That’s right. So you step on the brake and shift into Drive. Never shift into Drive unless your foot is on the brake. Repeat after me.”
“Never shift into Drive unless your foot is on the brake,” Randy said, and apparently it only took the repeat ritual once.
“So put your foot on the brake and shift into Drive.”
Jackson tried not to hold his breath, but Randy apparently did have a connector between his foot and his mouth—and it didn’t always work against him.
In this case he shifted the minivan into Drive and waited for further instructions.
“We’re going down this lane,” Jackson said. “There is absolutely nothing here, not lane lines, not obstacles. I will tell you if you stray out of the lane, and what you might hit if this wasn’t the ninth vacant circle of hell, but I will not get excited unless you stand on the gas, jump the curb, go over the sidewalk, take out the stoplight, and head directly into traffic. Anything short of that and there will be no yelling, do you understand?”
“Yessir,” Randy said, and his relief was palpable.
“So if I am raising my voice, that means simply that I don’t want to die and not specifically that I blame you for my imminent death. Are we clear?”
Randy laughed a little. “Yessir. I understand.”
“Good. Take your foot off the brake, and put it gently on the gas.”
The car jumped forward, but, hey, there was nothing in front of them but empty parking lot, made interesting only by faded parking lines and a few plastic bags being pushed around by the wind.
After the jump—and no yelling—Randy pulled his foot off the gas a little, and Jennifer meandered forward, like an old cow smelling flowers.
Right over the faded lane lines, and then back into what would be oncoming traffic if anybody was in that lane, and then into the lane lines again, and into imaginary traffic. After they wandered past the distant hull of the Macy’s building, Jackson started to offer mild commentary.
“Okay, so we’re taking out cars here. Yup. That was a car. And another car. And another car.”
“Oh shit !” Randy stomped on the brake, and they all were flung forward, hard enough to leave bruises. “Are you sure?”
Jackson grunted and remembered that promise not to yell. Poor Dex. He’d only wanted to avoid a manslaughter charge, that was all.
“They’re imaginary cars, Randy,” he said, his voice remarkably even. “Pretend they’re giant penis cars, like Trump trucks or something. Get it out of your system. You’re wandering into the oncoming lane—you got any grudges you want to take out? Who are we plowing over as we drive?”
“Jackson!” Randy protested, obviously distraught, “I don’t want to hurt anybody! That’s horrible !”
From the corner of his eye Jackson saw Henry put his hand on his heart, and he nodded. Too sweet for words. Too dumb to function. It was a lethal combination.
“Okay, then, so just Trump trucks? We’ll pretend they’re empty.”
“Heh heh heh, yes ,” Randy said. “You tell me when I’m taking them out.”
“Sure,” Jackson said, and then, “Take your foot off the brake and put it gently on the gas.”
“Oh!” Randy remembered he’d been stepping on the brake, let it go, and this time their acceleration was a little smoother.
“Good,” Jackson said, his voice still soothing. “And that’s a Trump truck, and there’s another, and there’s another.”
“Shit,” Randy said, overcorrecting.
“And there’s one in front of us, ’cause it’s an oncoming lane,” Jackson reminded him.
“Shit!” This time the overcorrection was a little less dire.
“And that’s a car, and that’s a car, and hey,” Jackson said, as he neared a stop sign, “that’s a whole family, Randy, because that was an intersection.”
“ Shit !”
And they started again. By the time an hour had passed, they’d made four tortuously slow loops around the mall, and while Randy wasn’t ready for the road yet, they hadn’t gone over any curbs, and he’d stopped taking out imaginary families at vacant intersections, so that was something.
After their third trip around, as they passed the back of JCPenney again, Henry spoke up from the back.
“Jackson,” he said slowly, “remember that case we’re working on?”
“Shoplifting?” Jackson asked. “Randy, that was an entire fleet of trucks. I know you can drive on the right side of the road.”
“Sorry, Jackson,” Randy said, then thrust his tongue out between his lips and resumed driving.
“Yup. Remember our client’s defense?”
“That two women dressed like Jersey Shore rejects walked out with—oh holy fuck,” Jackson muttered. “Randy, stop. Henry’s got to jump out of the minivan and take some pictures.”
“Yahtzee!” Henry muttered. “I didn’t even know the mall was open!”
“The parking lot here has been filling up,” Jackson admitted, checking out the two women with big sprayed hair, tight T-shirts in the cold gray day, and sparkly sunglass frames. “It’s getting to be time to go back. Go flirt with those two dumb broads and get some shots of what’s in their bags. We’ll be around in time to get you as you run away.”
“Oh my God!” Henry cackled. “This is amazing!” He paused. “Do you think you’ll be back before they get me?”
“Yeah, run through the mall and come out on the first entrance on the Sunrise side. I swear we’ll be there.”
“Sweet!”
And then Henry flung the door open and trotted out. They were far enough away that the objects of his camera phone hadn’t spotted him yet, and Jackson said, “Put the car into Park, Randy—be sure to step on the b―”
“Step on the brake,” Randy muttered, suiting actions to words. “Put the car into Park. Get out of the seat, jump in the back.”
“That’s my boy.”
While Randy was jumping in the back, Jackson crawled over the console.
“Seat belt on,” Jackson muttered.
“Go!” Randy shouted.
As if on cue, Henry ran up to the women and knocked the giant Macy’s bags out of their hands—yes, the same Macy’s that had gone out of business—and whirled around, taking pictures of clothes that had all the tags and none of the receipts.
And Jackson stepped on the gas and roared down the street that passed behind the mall and then around to the front.
He got there just in time for Henry—covered in red underwear and a stunning blue formal, all of it draped from his head and shoulders and floating behind him like a banner of shame—to launch himself from the double doors.
Jackson screeched to a halt long enough for Henry to jump in, and they peeled away and off toward the Greenback entrance before the women even got a look at the crap-brown minivan serving as his getaway vehicle.
Jackson cut corners, jumped curbs, and cut off several pissed-off motorists merging onto Greenback and roaring toward Fair Oaks, their empty Dutch Bros. cups rattling in the holders while Henry freed himself from tacky lingerie and finally got his seat belt on.
It took them three miles to stop laughing, and another mile for Henry to start texting the pictures to Ellery so he could use them to bargain for their client’s freedom.
“Well,” Henry breathed when they finally all calmed down, “put another one in the ‘Listen to Ernie’ column.”
“Who’s Ernie?” Randy asked from the back seat, and Jackson had to keep himself from startling, because he and Henry had been in their work mode and had almost forgotten he was there.
“A friend,” Jackson told him. “He told me Henry should come along for the ride.”
“I wonder what he meant by getting bent out of shape if I didn’t?” Henry asked, and Jackson shook his head.
But he was thinking about his desperate peel out around the mall and how several vehicles had been entering a once-vacant side road as Jackson had ripped down the drive.
Several Trump Trucks, on parade.
There was no guarantee Randy would have gunned the engine and gone for it if he’d seen them—after all the “That’s a car” exercise had been purely hypothetical.
But no guarantee he wouldn’t have, either.
“I got nothing,” he lied smoothly, and Henry gave him a look that said they’d talk later.
“That was awesome,” Randy said, sounding content. “Can we come here next week and do that? You’re both so relaxed. I think I might learn how to drive after all!”
Jackson let out a breath and silently consigned a couple months of Sundays to this enterprise, and next to him, he could hear Henry do the same.
“It’s fine,” Jackson said. “I really can’t stand Meet the Press .”
“Thanks, guys,” Randy said, his gratitude literally on his sleeve. “With you guys, I feel safe as a kitten.”
Henry snorted next to him, and before Jackson could send him a “Hush!” look, his seat belt unhooked out of nowhere and smacked his fingers as it got sucked back up into the release mechanism.
“See?” Jackson muttered.
“Yeah, I know,” Henry muttered back. “Sorry, Jennifer—didn’t mean to tempt fate.”
“What’s that?” Randy asked.
“Nothing, kid,” Jackson told him. He and Henry both shook their heads in silent prayer. “Not a damned thing.”