When breakfast was done, the trio bought burner cell phones at a nearby shop and took a taxi three hours south to Portsmouth. The homes there were cared for — houses painted and grass cut — and the people seemed like every day Americans, their clothes were clean, and guys wore their pants up around their waist instead of down around their ass cracks. But small groups of young men hung out around town when they should be in school or at work. Chris didn’t have to know that Portsmouth had one of the highest crime rates in Virginia to know that something was wrong — he could feel it.
The taxi pulled into a motel parking lot. Hannah paid the driver, opened the door, and stepped out. “Here we are.”
Chris and Sonny followed her across the parking lot. She glanced down at the monitor on her cell phone then up at the room numbers on the doors. Finally, she stopped in front of a room situated as far from the motel’s front office as possible. Hannah knocked, and someone looked at them through the peephole.
“Hi, Walter,” Hannah said. “I’m Hannah. We spoke on the phone earlier.”
The door opened a crack with the security pin still latched. “You didn’t say anything about those other two on the phone,” a raspy voice said. The smell of tobacco seeped from his mouth.
“All three of us need IDs,” Hannah whispered.
“You look like cops.”
Hannah was patient with him. “Nothing I can do about how we look.”
“I don’t need more trouble with the law,” Walter said.
“If I kick down this door, will that convince you that we’re not cops?” Sonny asked.
Walter hesitated. “Okay, but just one of you in here at a time.” He unlocked and opened the door.
“One at a time, my ass,” Sonny said, pushing open the door. Hannah and Chris followed him into the room.
“Hey!” Walter shouted.
Chris locked the door behind them.
On a table were stacks of blank cards, opaque polycarbonate strips, an embosser, laptop, laser printer, magstripe skimmer, and some already-completed fake IDs. In one corner was a suitcase and a duffel bag. In another corner, Walter had his portable photo studio set up.
Hannah looked at Walter impatiently. “Well?”
“How do we know this guy can even make a Virginia driver’s license?” Sonny asked.
“He can,” Hannah replied.
Walter nervously motioned for her to sit down in front of the camera to take her picture. His anxiety infected Chris, who looked out through the peephole. “Two black males and a Caucasian in their twenties lingering outside our door. Friends of yours?”
Walter clicked the camera. When he pulled his fingers away, his hand was shaking. “No. You’re next.”
Chris took a seat for his photo, and Sonny walked over to the window, parted the curtain slightly, and peered outside. “Three against three doesn’t hardly seem fair,” Sonny said.
After Walter snapped Chris’s picture, he took Sonny’s photo. He kept his sour face and refused to smile. Then Walter picked up his cell phone.
“Don’t!” Chris ordered. “Don’t touch that phone!”
Walter reluctantly put the phone down and went to work on his PC.
“You got a gun in here?” Sonny asked Walter.
The man’s hands trembled so much that his fingers jiggled the keys on the keyboard.
Sonny searched the nightstand drawer.
“Please, don’t,” Walter said.
Next, Sonny checked under the pillow. He pulled out a Glock 19 pistol. “You might appreciate this.” He handed it to Chris.
It was the original factory model. There was no round in the chamber, and it didn’t look like it’d been fired at all. “That’ll work,” Chris said. It was worth around five hundred dollars new, but he dropped six hundred on the bed.
“That’s generous,” Sonny said.
Hannah put a hand on her hip. “Can you guys let Walter do his job so we can get out of here?”
Chris stuck the pistol in his waistband. “No problem.”
Soon Walter handed over the licenses. They looked them over: good. Hannah paid Walter, who seemed happy to receive his money but not totally soothed. She called a taxi.
Chris, Hannah, and Sonny stepped out of the room and put on sunglasses. The three loiterers seemed surprised — maybe they were expecting to jump Hannah alone. “Hey, buddy, how’s it going, man?” the guy wearing a polo shirt asked, moving closer to Chris.
“I ain’t your buddy, so back off,” Chris said firmly.
Polo and his two buddies moved in closer with Cheshire grins on their faces. The man in front of Hannah was particularly full of smiles.
Chris scanned the line of motel rooms and the parking lot for any onlookers. He didn’t want to risk causing a scene, and he knew Hannah and Sonny felt the same, but they didn’t want to have their asses handed to them, either. Reading the confidence in the three thugs’ body language and their forward movement, they’d already decided to make a scene. The best way to win a fight was surprise, speed, and violence of action.
Sonny grabbed Mr. Smiles by the crotch and lifted him off his feet.
“Heeee!” the man wheezed.
Hannah kicked Cornrows in the solar plexus, knocking him out of his left shoe and catapulting him into the parking lot where he landed flat on his back. His left shoe lay in the parking lot like that of a lost child.
Chris pulled out his new Glock and pistol-whipped Polo. He toppled to the asphalt.
Sonny lowered Mr. Smiles to the ground. As he hunched over, Sonny pulled Mr. Smile’s head down and smashed his knee into his face. He collapsed.
“This place is happening,” Sonny said. “We’ll have to hang out here more often.”
Again, Chris scanned the hotel rooms and parking lot for any onlookers. “If someone calls the cops, we may spend more time here than you’d like.”
“That taxi driver sure is taking his time,” Sonny said, checking his watch.
Hannah looked anxious, too. “He should be here any minute.”
Not a minute later, a taxi came to a stop in the parking lot, and the driver stared oddly at the three men lying on the ground as if they’d fallen from the sky.
Chris hopped inside the car and offered an explanation: “Crack heads.”
Hannah and Sonny joined him inside and closed the doors. While Hannah gave the driver directions, Chris and Sonny used their cell phones to scour the Internet for pistols, rifles, and ammo. The driver dropped them off at a car rental place, and the three rented a grey SUV.
That evening, they returned to Young’s house with IDs, an SUV, weapons, and ammo. “We’ll have to zero our weapons tomorrow,” Chris said. The others agreed.
“Anything new?” Hannah asked Young.
“Victor’s phone keeps ringing,” he said, “and I got word that Jim Bob’s condition improved enough so that he was flown back here to Virginia Hospital Center.”
Sonny looked from Hannah to Chris, and that wicked smile returned to his face. “I guess it’s time we paid the patient a little visit.”
28
The next day, they zeroed their weapons and planned their visit to Jim Bob and how they’d clear their names. In the evening, disguised as doctors, Chris and his teammates slipped into Jim Bob’s suite at Virginia Hospital Center. The three stood over his bed observing his bandaged face. He was hooked up to a monitor that displayed blood pressure, pulse rate, oxygen, respiration, and heart rhythm. A calm wave rolled across the monitor showing his vitals. As if he sensed the trio’s presence, he opened his drowsy eyes.
Chris and the others were still wearing surgical masks and hats to blend in and conceal their identities, but Chris didn’t bother to disguise his voice. “Remember me?”