In A Cold Sweat

“I have to do this, baby,” I told Cassandra as we pulled up in front of our house. The television was on in the living room and I could see what looked like Bart's silhouette standing off in the corner. I got out of the car and came around to let her out.

“Why can’t you stay here with me? Why do you keep doing this, Michael? Why do you keep dragging us back here?”

I took my beautiful wife in my arms and kissed her; kissed her like it was the first time. “Can’t you see? I gotta keep goin’ in there until they’re all dead.”

I felt cold all over and I shook it off.

“Havin’ the dream again?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah,” I told him and ran my hands over my face. I looked over at Bobby, he was seated in his usual spot, in his recliner, in his basement. I had fallen asleep on the couch and was having the same dream I’ve been dreaming since Cassandra was murdered. I don’t have the dream as often as I used to, but every time I do it changes. But Cassandra was right; he always kills her. It doesn’t matter what I do, he always kills her.

This all began when I came back from Todos Santos, an island located near the Tropic of Cancer in the southern portion of the Baja Peninsula off the coast of Mexico. I had gone there to kill Diego Estabon. A year before that, Diego had been the mastermind behind the kidnapping of my wife, Cassandra.

For that he had to die.

But when I got home I found Cassandra dead. Brutally murdered and the cops arrested me for her murder. I remember seeing her lying there on the floor and immediately dropping to my knees.

Both of her eyes were blackened, nearly purple; there were blotches of blood on her cheek. Her face was swollen so much I could hardly believe I was looking at my wife. My beautiful baby.

I remember there was so much blood, and there were bullet wounds in her back. Why would somebody do that to her? Every time I have that fuckin’ dream I swear that I will find and kill everybody who I think was involved.

I really believe Kirk knows something. He’s a good cop, and if it weren’t for him, I’d probably still be in jail. Kirk may not know who hired the men who killed Cassandra, otherwise, they’d be in jail, but he knows something. I’ve tried talking to him about it; he said it was police business. Like I give fuck about what’s police business. Somebody knows who hired them, and I’ll find them, and I’ll kill them all. “How’d you know I was havin’ the dream?” I asked Bobby.

“You always wake up in a cold sweat,” Bobby replied. “Go ahead and say it.”

“Say what?”

“About how you’re gonna find the people responsible and kill them all.” Bobby said the words to me that I always say.

“You doubtin’ me?”

“No, I ain’t doubtin’ you.”

“Then what are you sayin’?”

“That you always say that; that’s all I’m sayin’. Shit! Why you gotta get all defensive and shit like a bitch?”

“So now I’m a bitch, huh?”

“You know what? Fuck you,” Bobby said and got up. “Fuck you and this self doubtin’ bullshit. You lettin’ that dream shit get to you.”

“How so?”

“Okay, you say in the dreams you don’t save Shy, never save her. As hard as you try, no matter what you do, Bart always kills Shy. Dream or not, what do you think all that ‘I can’t’ shit rollin’ around in your mind is doin’ to you?”

At first, I looked at Bobby like he was a fuckin’ fool. But then I thought about the dream I just had. You had a plan the last time and he still killed me. “In my dreams lately Cassandra’s starting to doubt me. Maybe she represented the part of my sub-conscience that is starting to doubt myself.” I looked at Bobby, he was looking at me like I was a fuckin’ fool. “Did that make any sense?”

“A little.”

“I could drive myself crazy tryin’ to figure that out. All I know is that I will find the mutha fucka behind it all, and I am gonna kill them.”

Chapter Five

It was past midnight when Jackie left Travis’s house. She got in her Porsche Cayman S and drove down Bronxwood Avenue on her way to meet Freeze. It had been almost a week since Travis announced that he was done.

“Damn,” was all Jackie could say every time she thought about it. How could he just up and quit like that? Quit on her?

Jackie wasn’t selfish. She understood that he had just gotten shot. “If the situation were different,” she said out loud as she drove. “I’d probably be talkin’ that same shit myself. But damn.”

Jackie had allowed herself to believe that once Travis started feeling better he would change his mind, or at the very least, agree to do one last big job. At least that way she would have a stake to go forward with. But that wasn’t the case. Travis was already up and around and had shown no signs of backing down.

At this point, Jackie knew that she was on her own and would have to come up with a plan if she was going to survive. She had briefly given some thought to trying to get a job as a chemist. After all, she had graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in chemistry and had worked for a few years at Frontier Pharmaceuticals before she was fired for insubordination after refusing to work on a project for Jake Rollins, her former boss on her own time. But that was years ago, before she became part robber, part gambler.

“Maybe I’ll put together my own robbin’ crew?”

That was definitely a possibility, but she didn’t have the planning skills that Travis had. She considered bringing somebody in to plan the job, but quickly abandoned that idea for one simple reason. “If they planned the job, what would they need me for?”

No, she would have to plan and control the job to run her own crew.

“If then else, Jackie. It’s just the logical progression of events,” Travis told her once when she asked how he came up with his plans. “If condition is true, the statements following are then executed. If condition is false, each else-if, if there are any, is evaluated in turn. When a true condition is found, the statements following the associated are then are executed. If none of the else-if statements are true, or there are no else-if clauses, the statements following else are executed. Put simply, if this happens, then do this, if that ain’t workin’, what else can you do?”

“It can’t be that simple,” Jackie had questioned.

“The key is to anticipate every possible condition and plan for it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes you can. I know you can. You play poker, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s different,” Jackie reasoned.

“It’s no different. When you’re playin’ poker or any card game for that matter; you gotta always keep the objective in mind, naturally.”

“Naturally?”

“You have to look at what you got to work with and anticipate based on that to determine what the other players have. That dictates how you're gonna bet or how you play your cards. Same shit I do when I’m plannin’ a job.”

“But when I’m playin’, I’m doin’ all that shit on the fly, in the moment.”

“Okay, it’s different, but it’s the same. You just have to have discipline,” Travis told her that day.

Jackie knew that was the one thing she had none of; no discipline what so ever. A loyal slave to her passions was what Jackie was. If she saw it and she wanted it, she had to have it. And that included men… and women. And the Porsche she was driving;