Stranger in Paradise

39.

They were sitting on a bench by the marina five blocks from Horn Street, looking at the boats, sharing a can of Pepsi and a joint.

“You know how to get to Florida?” Esteban said.

“Florida?” Amber said.

“I’m supposed to take you to Florida,” Esteban said. “And I don’t know where it is.”

“What do you mean?” Amber said.

“Your old man’s giving me ten thousand dollars to bring you down.”

“I don’t want to go to Florida.”

“It’s ten thousand dollars, baby,” Esteban said.

“You gonna sell me to my father?” she said.

“No, no. I just bring you down, turn you over, he gives me the ten grand. I wait around a couple days. You run away and we come back up here. How long’s it take to get to Florida?”

“I won’t go,” she said.

“Yeah, baby, you will,” Esteban said. “Up front beside me, or in the trunk, either way you gonna go. Ten thousand dollars’s a lot of money.”

She looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she began to cry.

“Hey,” Esteban said. “Hey, hey. This is for us, baby. You spend a couple fucking days with the old man, and we’re outta there with the money.”

Amber stood and ran. Esteban went after her, out along Marshport Way along the water. A hundred yards up from the marina was a red light. A half-painted, half-primed pickup truck that might once have been blue was stopped at the light. The back was full of loose copper pipe. Amber reached it as the light turned green and as the car started to move Amber stepped up onto the running board and hooked her arm through the window.

A big guy in a black tank top and a do-rag sat in the passenger seat. He had a thick gold chain around his neck.

“What the fuck are you doing,” he said.

“Somebody’s after me,” she said. “Keep going.”

The driver was a wiry kid with longish blond hair, tattoos on both forearms, and the scruffy beginnings of a beard.

“Keep going, hell,” he said. “Whyn’t we stop and clean his clock?”

“No, please, keep going,” Amber said.

The driver looked in the rearview mirror.

“Hell,” he said. “He’s given up anyway. Lemme stop and you can get in.”

She rode in the front seat between them, still crying.

“What’s going on?” the big guy asked.

“I can’t tell you,” Amber said.

The big guy shrugged.

“Where you want to go?” the big guy said. “Want us to take you to the cops?”

“No,” she said. “I…I want to go to Paradise.”

“You want to take her to Paradise?” the big guy said to the driver.

“Sure,” the driver said. “Better than running copper pipe all day.”