The Last Time I Met Clara

Barney kicked the back of my leg and I dropped hard on my knees to the floor.

"Hang on a second," he said. He left the bathroom. Fred took his place, standing behind me.

"What the fuck is that?" he said, a few seconds later, "A machete?"

I turned my head to look. Barney was, indeed, holding a machete. It looked about three feet long.

"Yeah, it's a machete. I put it in the bag earlier, in case I got a chance to use it."

"Where the fuck did you get it?"

"The Amazon."

"The jungle?"

"No, the website."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Chop the fuckin' bitch's head off."

I felt like my body was floating in space as I listened to their conversation. Like this was happening to someone else, and I was just observing.

"Dude, for chrissake, I'll just put a slug in her brain and we can get out of here. I haven't had anything to eat since lunch time."

"There's still a couple Pop-Tarts."

"I want real food."

"It's three in the morning."

"We can get pancakes at Denny's."

"Okay, but I just got this and I want to try it out."

He tapped the flat of the blade on the top of my head.

"I always wondered what it would be like to chop off somebody's head, especially a mouthy cunt like this one. You notice she ain't got shit to say now."

I wanted to say something, but what? I was determined not to beg these creeps for mercy. I knew it was pointless.

"Okay," Fred said, "but it's going to make a huge mess. You think you can do it with one stroke?"

"Probably not. I been watching some videos from that Mexican cartel. El Zappo or whatever the fuck it's called. They do it all the time. It usually takes them about four or five whacks."

"Well, watch where you swing that fuckin' thing. I don't want to lose a hand."

"I'll say one thing for this bitch," Barney said, "Usually by now they start offering to suck your cock if you won't kill them."

Fred guffawed. "LIke I can't kill a bitch because she's got my spunk on her face."

Barney put one foot in the tub. He grabbed my hair, pulling my head forward and stretching my neck.

"Man, if you are swinging one handed, it's going to take more than four or five whacks," Fred told him.

I closed my eyes tight and waited to feel the blade. But what I felt was something hot spattering the left side of my face.

I opened my eyes and looked up. My ears were ringing loudly.

Barney was leaning on the wall, staring at me with one of his blank eyes. The front of his shirt was shredded and dripping with blood. The machete clattered against the enamel tub. I watched him slowly slide to a squatting position.

My ears were clearing and I could faintly hear voices. I turned and saw Clara standing in the doorway. She had a shotgun jammed against the back of Fred's neck.

I stared at her for a moment, then looked at Fred. He was shaking his head. Tears were streaming down his face.

I could see Clara speaking to me and jerking her head to the side. I shook my head and my ears cleared.

She was saying, "Get out of the way, Jan."

I struggled to my feet and squeezed past Fred.

"You should go in the other room," Clara said.

"No. I want to see this."

She shrugged. "Okay."

She kicked Fred in the back of the thigh.

He fell to his knees, just like I had.

"You fuckers killed Eric," she said. "Say bye bye."

He babbled something unintelligible.

"Say it, asshole."

He sniffled loudly, then blurted, "Bye-"

I put my hands over my ears.

When the shotgun went off, I winced and shut my eyes.

I opened them to see a spray of bright red blood across the bathroom wall. There was a head in the bathtub, but it wasn't mine.

"You okay?" Clara asked.

"No, but I'm fucking alive."

"Sometimes that's good enough."

She left the bathroom. I stepped over Fred's legs to the sink.

There was blood on my shirt and the side of my face. If Barney had not pulled my hair out of the way, it would have been soaked with it.

I washed my face and hands. Fred's gun was on the floor, between the sink and the toilet. I picked it up.

I walked into the kitchen. Clara was standing by the table, relaoding her shotgun.

I pointed the gun at her. "Put it down on the table, Clara," I said.

She looked up. Her eyes widened when she saw the gun.

"You set me up."

"Jan, honey, what are you talking about?"

"Put the fucking gun down."

She laid the shotgun on the table.

"You put my pictures on Eric's phone and left it at the robbery. You left his jacket here. You wanted them to think I was you. They'd kill me, then you wouldn't have to worry about them looking for you any more."

"I came here and saved your life. Put the gun down, Jan. You ain't going to shoot me."

"You came here because you were following them to get your hands on the money. Don't be too sure I won't shoot you."

She wasn't sure. I could see that in her eyes.

"You know what really made me realize it though? The GPS. Who the fuck favorites their girlfriend's house? Guys don't forget where they get pussy."

Her face dropped. "How did you know about the GPS?"

I jerked my thumb toward the bathroom. "Barney told me."

"Who the fuck is Barney?"

"The short one."

"Nah, their names are Vinnie and Gene. I don't know which one is which."

"What about Eric? Did you set him up, too?"

She shook her head. "No, he just got stupid and went to get some shit at his place and they were watching it."

There were tears in her eyes. "I didn't want him to get killed. He treated me good. I liked him."

"But you were going to take the money and disappear on him."

"I didn't like him one and a quarter million dollars worth."

She hesitated, then added, "I mean, I was going to leave him some."

The first time we met she was going to prison for assaulting a woman who fucked her ex. It wasn't hard to believe she'd want to kill the people who murdered her man, even if she was about to stab him in the back.

"So why didn't you let them kill me before you shot them?"

She fidgeted, but didn't speak.

"Fucking answer me!"

She mumbled, but I made out what she said. "They had weapons. You didn't."

"I've got one now."

She started to cry. I wasn't buying it.

"Okay," I told her, "Empty your pockets."

When she didn't obey, I stepped forward. She pulled a flip phone and a set of car keys from her pocket and dropped them on the table.

"Burner phone?" I asked. She nodded.

She was standing in front of the broom closet.

"You see that door behind you? Open it."

She glanced over her shoulder, then half turned and opened the closet.

"Get in," I told her, gesturing with the gun.

"There ain't room."

"Pull out the vaccuum cleaner."

"Jan, come on, you and me can have a good time..."

"I'm sure you told Eric that, too. Get the fuck in there."

She rolled the vaccuum cleaner out of the closet and stepped inside.

I kicked the door shut and jammed the back of a kitchen chair under the knob. I could hear her muffled voice, pleading for me to let her out.

There was a small tool box under the sink.There was a hammer in it and a box of nails I used to hang pictures.

She pounded and scratched the door while I nailed it to the frame.

Once I was sure she couldn't get out, I tossed my bloody shirt in the bedroom hamper and put on a clean one.

I got my suitcase from the bedroom closet and tossed a couple of changes of clothes and my jewelry box into it.

Clara had gotten quiet. I threw my purse over my shoulder and grabbed the phone and keys from the table.

I picked up the canvas bag. It was heavier than I thought it would be.

The neighborhood was quiet. I stood in the doorway for a few minutes to be sure. If anyone had heard the shotgun blasts, they weren't checking out the noise. I trudged down the stairs with the bag and my suitcase.

Clara's truck was in the parking lot. There was also a black Ford Expedition. Somebody was going to get a good deal on that at the impound auction.

I dumped the bags in the passenger seat of the truck and got in. I drove downtown and parked in a supermarket lot about five blocks from the bus station.

It was almost four o'clock. I figured even the muggers had called it a night. I toted the money bag and suitcase to the station.

Other than a lone clerk at the ticket window watching a movie on his phone, the only people there were a homeless man sleeping on a bench, and an elderly couple sitting along one wall, sipping coffee from paper cups.

I looked up at the departures board. The morning's first bus was leaving at six o'clock. Buffalo-Cleveland-Toledo-Chicago.

Chicago seemed as good a place as any to get lost. At least for a while. With more than a million dollars, you have a lot of options.

I bought a one way ticket and got a luke warm Pepsi from the vending machine.

I sat down and propped my feet on my suitcase. It was hard not to doze, but the thought of the money under my seat kept me awake.

When they called for boarding the Chicago bus, I took Clara's flip phone out of my pocket. I dialed 911.

I told the operator that I was walking my dog by Fernando's Barbershop on DeWitt Street and thought I heard gun shots and a woman screaming. When she started asking questions I snapped the phone shut and tossed it in the nearest trash can.

Ten minutes later, I was on the bus. An older lady sat down across the aisle from me. We chatted and she told me she was changing busses in Buffalo. She was headed to some town in Pennsylvania to stay with her sister. When she dozed off, I got up to use the bathroom. On the way back, I dropped my phone into her purse, just in case the cops tried tracking it. They could start their search in Podunk PA.

It turns out, they never really looked for me. Just another ex-con sex worker gone missing. Why should they care?

They found the two dead bikers in my bathroom, and Clara in the closet, pissed off but unharmed.

I followed the news reports on the case pretty closely. She claimed innocence, telling them that the bikers, whose real names were Vincent Lutz and Eugene Hutchins, had barricaded her in the closet. She heard the gunshots but had no idea who shot them, or what happened to me.

There were only two problems with her story. The tiny spots of blood on her face and the gunpowder residue on her hands.

But she knew the skinny on the Horsemen's drug dealing that she learned from Eric when they planned the heist. She gave the DA enough info to take down most of the gang, and got two concurrent life sentences, instead of one needle in her arm.

She did me one solid. She told them that Eric hid the money, and she didn't know where.

After Clara went up, I started using my real name again. I liked Chicago and decided to stay. A few months later I met Amy and we've been together ever since. She works in a bookstore. She keeps me on the straight and narrow.

Maybe some day, when she is very old, they will let Clara go. Maybe she will try to find me. Find the money.

I don't give it much thought. But every once in a while, on a stormy night, I will listen to the thunder and remember the last time I met Clara.