Fate in black book

“Wake up numbnuts, you’re running on fumes” Steve yells at himself as he dives across the freeway. Did someone mention fate? Fate is an interesting creature. A person can spend years of his life developing values, setting priorities, working towards a goal, but fate, call it coincidence if you like, can trash your plans in less than a minute. Just ask Steve.

“There has to be one around her somewhere,” he mumbles. After a couple of blocks with no luck, Steve turns right. A couple more blocks, no gas station. “Where do people around here get gas?” Steve shouts and turns left.

“Oh my-lanta, where the heck am I?” Steve begins to finally really notice his surroundings and the amount of graffiti that is part of them. “Nude girls here; Bad Boyz waz here; Duck and cover punk; 911s a joke”. But he barely has time to get nervous, when the familiar red and green, Stop ‘N’ Go sign pops out from behind a fence.

“I’m saved”

Steve pumps eight dollars worth into his car. Just enough to be sure and get home and to work in the morning. Steve starts the car and, like he doubted it, he sighs in relief at the rumbling engine. “Here we go.” Steve eases the car back on the road, heading for the freeway. Crouched forward, both hand white-knuckled on the steering wheel, eyes darting left, right, forward. After a couple of blocks, he begins to sweat but doesn’t seem to notice. He makes his right turn and continues his death drip on the wheel. He makes it to his left turn and from there he can see I-45 on-ramp about four blocks ahead. Again, he sighs some relief as he makes the turn. About the time he has completed the left turn, he hears a gunshot and leaves his body, temporarily. Well, he thought it was a gunshot. It was, in fact, something else, maybe something worse. A blowout.

“No, that is not a flat. I do not have a flat. Crap, crap, crap, crap AAAAAGH!!” Steve pulls the car over, pounding the steering wheel with his fists. His right front tire is history. “Great…..great….great. Alright, let’s think. No other choice but to change the tire. Review the steps. Make this as quick as possible. You got this. OK” Steve handles a crisis by thinking out loud. “Jack and spare are underneath the trunk, in the well….He goes on until...Throw the lug wrench and jack in the trunk. Fine. Great. No problem. Keep keys in pocket. Open the trunk with the latch in the car. OK. Are we ready? Let’s do this fast, pit crew style. Here we go.”

The trunk pops open when Steve pulls the latch. He jumps out and begins his routine.

“Loosen the lug nuts on the tire….Done. Get the spare out and put beside the bad tire…Done. Jack up the car….rest...Done. Take the lug nuts off...Done.” Steve performs his tasks very professional-like, methodical and coordinated. He handles situations and tasks by dissecting them into little actions and following through step-by-step. Same routine every morning, no change, always the same. Each little action done with concentration and dependent on the preceding action.

So, he is changing his tire in good Indy-pit crew fashion, making good time. Somewhere between putting the bad tire in the trunk, Fate comes running around the corner. Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly fate, but it was definitely something that was going to change Steve’s life.

The dark-skinned man is holding a sports bag in one hand and, quite unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, a gun in his other. Probably a .45. His running was a hobbly kind of running as he comes down the street towards Steve. Steve, meanwhile, has completely frozen beside the passenger-side door with the lug wrench and jack in hand. You can almost see the smoke coming out of his ears as his brain deals with the situation. Lower the car. Fully tighten the lug nuts. Put the bad tire in the trunk. Throw the lug wrench and jack in the trunk. Nowhere did it mention dealing with a running, limping drug dealer with a gun.

Put the bad tire in the trunk. Duck the flying bullets. Throw the lug wrench and jack in the trunk. Punch the criminal, take his gun. Close the trunk, leave. Nothing like that existed in his plan.

In the meantime, the man stops by Steve’s car and leans against it. For about half a second, before collapsing by the car. Steve finally reacts to the developments by dropping the log wrench and jack and squatting to aid the man. The man is now lying by the car with his feet resting against the rear tire and his head just short of the front tire.

“Sir, are you ok?” Good question. Steve exhibits his calm, cool and collected self.

The man groans as he rolls over to face Steve.”

“Oh, man, you’re bleeding!” Steve now notices two wounds, probably gunshot wounds. One about three inches above the man’s navel and the other in the middle of his left thigh. “Oh, stink, I got to get you to a hospital”

“Aaagh, better hurry..They’re behind me...Fast”

“Stay on the ground. I’m going to open the door. It should go right over you.”

Steve opens the passenger side door from the front, pulling the door towards him. He begins to push the man out from under the door so he can lift him in the car. Just as he is going to stand up and go around to the inside of the door, a car comes flying around the same cornet the man came from and slams on its brakes. The car screeches to a stop a foot short of Steve’s bumper. The passenger side door opens and a man begins to step out. Steve works the gun out of the near-dead man’s hand and ducks behind the door.

“Oh my, What the hell have I fallen into. I’m a dead man. Maybe that target practice will come in handy after all, Dad.” Steve’s dad was a hunter/gun enthusiast that forced Steve to participate in the hobby as well. More on this later.

“Trying to hide in that car, Phillips? Didn’t you think we’d look in there” Steve hears the footsteps of the man as he approaches.

“Listen, Jake...I wasn’t...I didn’t...Oh, shit, Jake don’t kill me.” The bleeding man pleads for his life, which may not last much longer anyway.

“Phillips, no can do.” At this, Steve hears a gunshot and the lying man flinches. Another gunshot and Steve is able to see the hole in the man’s forehead. The sight of the blood and the dead man’s eyes snaps Steve. He nearly cries but fights it off. But he’s too far gone. He hears the man picking up the sports bag the ex-limping, ex-running, ex-breathing man was carrying. That’s when Steve goes into cruise control, running on adrenaline and defensive instinct.

Steve pops up, sights the man and fires. Two shots, both hit squarely in the man’s face and he falls. Steve looks toward the care and another man is standing half in, half out of the driver’s door, looking quite stunned. Steve fires two more shots, both of which reach their target. Face shots. Steve always liked hitting the paper targets in the face. The driver falls in a heap of lifeless flesh. Steve crouches and waits for a response from the car....

Nothing…

He walks around to the driver side of his car and walks along this car toward the fallen driver. Still nothing from inside the car. He reaches the driver and quickly searches the body. A wallet, a gun, car keys and some change. Steve pockets them all. He leans into the car, gun in front, ready for an adversary in the car. But no one is in the car. He gets in the car on his knees and searches the backseat. Only thing in the backseat is a briefcase, he opens it.

“Hokey smokes,” Steve utters as he opens the briefcase to reveal three bags of white powder and a layer of money. Moving quickly, Steve uses the gun to flick the drugs out of the case and closes it. Just as he is getting out of the car he thinks to open the glove box. This is another heavy dose of fate that continues the radically change Steve’s life. Using his shirt to keep from leaving fingerprints, he opens the glove box. Inside he finds a little black book. Take the briefcase and the black book with him, he runs to the passenger side of his car. He throws the briefcase and black book in the car and searches the two dead men there. A wallet, some change and some keys in the running man’s pocket; a wallet and some change, along with his gun from the other man are thrown in the car. Steve opens the sports bag and finds more white powder. He dumps them out and leaves the huge stacks of money in it. Zips it up and throws it in the car. Slams the door and runs around to his car’s driver side, closing the trunk on the way and jumping in. Starts the car back up and pulls away from the scene. Not fast enough to spin out but definitely with a purpose. Steve gets to the freeway, turns right onto the entrance ramp and guns the car to 65. He enters the freeway and looks back in his rearview mirror. He sees the flashing red and blue lights about a half mile behind him.

“No, no, no, no”

But the police car exits and heads toward the scene. Steve eases the car up to 75 and begins to clean house. He reaches over and unzips the sports bag. He puts all the wallets and guns in the bag. He zips it up and puts it in the back on the floor. He reaches down and picks up the briefcase off the passenger side floor and puts it neatly in the seat. He surveys his hands, arms and body searching for blood stains. None, good. He, then, seems to relax. This is shortly followed by a long and vicious, war-cry type yell that Erik the Viking would have been quite proud of.

When Steve arrives home, he quickly gets everything into his apartment. He leaves a voicemail at work calling off sick for the day. He grabs the little black book and starts going through it. Names, numbers, names, and numbers. Lots of them. A drug dealer with a ledger. What is up with that. He reads the entire thing, well, most of it because at some point he nods off.

By the time he awakes, fate has done its adjustment. He is a new man. “Well, always wanted to do some good” Not that being a drug vigilante is necessarily “good”.

The first couple of names were easy to track down. These were the small time guys. Didn’t know what was coming as Steve didn’t really look all that menacing. Steve thought it might be harder to actually kill someone, but at this point, he was no longer himself. Justice was being served.

It didn’t take long for word to get out. For the news to get around. Steve had to try and keep his regular life going so his productivity in the administering of executions was suffering. However, a dozen dead drug dealers has a way of making the news. It was weird for Steve to see himself, well, his handy work on TV. But, he couldn’t help watch as many news reports as possible.

He decided it was time to go big. So, he started planning how he was going to bring down the biggest name in the book…

Sorry but that story will have to wait for another day.