Bad Karma

By Todd Cabrera

Tim is hired to be the getaway driver to transport an escaped convict from San Francisco to Mexico. His trip is marred, however, by a lovesick female prison guard who aided in the escape. On the run from the authorities, the threesome encounter unforeseen obstacles that prevent a clean break in this noir thriller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pettway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386503316

Book preview

Chapter 1

Wake up Tim, you’re as home as you’ll ever be.

Tim Morro blinked cautiously out of a sweaty stupor from his side of the cab of a working man’s pickup that smelled of farm and oil and Tim's own farts. The brakes complained and the wheels turned against the cracking curb of an unfinished suburb of another, only slightly less desperate suburb of Modesto County, California, fully 50 miles from where Tim had just passed an unproductive night, earning nothing but a heat rash and another in a long list of life’s lessons.

And now it was morning, the kind of blurry, sunny, summer California morning that always made Tim wish he was a bat.

That your dump, isn’t it? The truck belonged to Tito, probably, the Mexican hustler who occasionally found work for Tim as one of many day-laborers who composed Tito’s visionary enterprise of making money off the backs of others.

Tim sat fully up and confirmed that this was, indeed, his dump.

You got anything for me, Tito?

Tito shook his head, his eyes shut in studious mourning. Afraid not, amigo.You don’t do the job, you don’t get the money.

I did the job. I watched the store all night.

You watch the wrong store, Tim. Insurance company don’t pay if the cheaters get away cause you watch the wrong store.

I got the license plate.

Okay. You got the license plate. But the insurance company already knows who they are. License plate don’t prove they got twenty thousand dollars of fire damaged computers. Just proves they got a license plate. I do got something for you though. Tito took a small stack of curled envelopes from the door pocket. More mail come for you at the office. When you going to get an address people can know about Tim?

When you get me some work that pays?

Yeah, you know, that’s going to be a problem. Insurance guys say I don’t use you no more. Not after tonight.

When did they tell you that, Tito, we’ve been together since you picked me up. 

Well, I’m pretty sure they going to tell me I don’t use you no more. 

Oh. It’s like that.

You should at least get a better place, Tim. Tito took in the neighborhood, all small, detached houses looking very much like Tim’s dump — unfinished. Most had garbage bags for windows and dirt lawns and either plastic siding or, at the point on the street when the banks gave up on the little Hispanic community, tar paper. What you pay for that place, anyway?

Twenty-five a week. It’s shelter.

For a whole house you pay a hundred bucks a month? So that’s why you live out here.

Not the house. I live on the veranda, there. Tim pointed out an enclosed patio, partially clad with found materials from particle board to plastic sheets. The rest of the house belongs to a fat Mexican couple and their five fat kids. I can’t use the bathroom after eleven.

Tito looked at Tim. Okay, Tim, serious, you need to go back to driving.

I would Tito, I’d love to. God knows it’s the only thing I was ever good at.

So...

Well, there’s gas, insurance, the three strikes law. I’m better off staying clean.

Yeah, you really livin’ it up Tim. Maybe you should sell the car then, if you not gonna drive no more.

Tim’s almost new, low-profile, gray Malibu shone on the crumbling driveway, looking like a modern installation piece indicting the inequalities inherent in a capitalist society.

It’s all I’ve got. Anyway it’s not mine to sell, really, not until I pay it off. Tim stepped onto the road. Bye Tito. Thanks for the lift, at least.

Maybe your luck gonna get better, Tim.

You know Tito, I’d be happy to just negotiate a truce.

Tim gave his Malibu an apologetic tap on the fender as he passed and stepped into his enclosed veranda, looking forward to a morning nap and being out of the sun and little else. But he wasn’t going to have even that much.

Mike? Tim’s fat landlord, Miguel, was sitting on the couch/bed/only piece of furniture that wasn’t a bar fridge, looking at Tim like he expected to be stabbed. Only slightly more strangely, Miguel also appeared at the interior door.

That no Mike, Tim. That my little brother, Carlito. Carlito, this is Tim. Carlito smiled at Tim the way people who don’t have guns smile at people who have guns.

Okay. Hi Carlito. Mike, why is Carlito on my bed?

Oh, Carlito come to stay a while. Carlito, Carlito’s wife. Their kids.

I see. Going to be a little crowded here, isn’t it Mike?

Little crowded. Yeah. Going to be a little crowded here. Mike took a serious interest in everything in the room but Tim.

I’ll just get my things, shall I?

You take your time, Tim. You take all day, if you want.

Tim was born in San Francisco and he spent his life and did his time there. So that’s where he went now, to North Beach, specifically, with a vague plan to just be nearer the action, and hope that something turned up that didn’t involve selling his car or stealing another one. He called his friends, and told them his tale and his situation and none of them were any help. He knew they wouldn’t be. Some of them were real friends, but useless, and others were like Tito, and more useless, but they all had this in common — they were all bad for Tim and Tim’s future and all