With a mother hooked on drugs and no father at home, Cody Gaines was forced into the duties of a man too soon in life. He worked from the seat of his bicycle at the tender age of eight, selling nickel-and-dime sacks of weed on the street corners of his hood to help provide for his two younger sisters at home. Being much smaller than most kids who worked out in the streets, he fought. Struggling to keep his earnings, becoming toughened up like old boot leather, over time he found it easier to survive, and as he grew, his thirst for money consumed him. Smarter than most kids, too, he began using his size to his advantage, fitting into places where others couldn’t go. At 16 years of age, he was arrested for business burglary, becoming another number in Nashville’s statistics of criminal, addictive thinkers roaming inside its city limits. After serving some time in a juvenile detention center, and having kept a closed mouth, allowing his accomplices to escape arrest, he was invited to join one of the city’s most notorious street gangs, the Oh-Nos, who were known for their aggressive behavior. Always one to embrace conflict, he soon rose to the gang’s ranks. Eventually, he surfaced on the FBI’s radar, his photo top and center of the organization’s totem pole posted in the city’s crime lab downtown.
Now, sitting in his office at an old abandoned building, Cody thought. He struggled with his inner demons telling him to reach for the pistol hidden only inches from his fingertips under the desk. It wasn’t every day that he stared into the wrong end of the gun held by some guy wearing a mask made out of a too-tight pair of pantyhose, whose legs dangled down both sides of his face like rabbit ears.
Blowing cigar smoke through a smile, Cody looked into the barrel of the .44 magnum pistol pointed at him. A large safe stood open full of cash and drugs, and Cody considered his options. He could tell the guy was jacked up on something and was nervous as hell, so he decided to let the guy have his way. Hell, he wouldn’t make it out of the building, Cody thought.
“I said put the money in the bags. Now, and I don’t mean to-fucking-morrow.” Slapping the desk with his free hand, the robber caused the hogleg pistol in his other hand to discharge, sending Cody’s body backwards, his head sprayed on the wall and safe behind him.
Pumped up on meth and barely able to see through the nylon material, Oddie stood, looking on in horror. He’d shot Cody Gaines! Voices outside the room put him into action, moving around the desk and stuffing two sacks full of cash and drugs. Thinking fast, he ran to a window, dropping the sacks and then himself in a large dumpster two floors below.
Barely making it into the can, he scrambled to get out from the bags of garbage and discarded food. Shots rained down around him from above as he ran to the awaiting truck. He tossed the keys to Candi, who started the truck, slapping Rod into action. His hands were glued to the wheel, bringing him back into the situation at hand. The truck jumped out from the alley into traffic nearly hitting several vehicles. Oddie watched the traffic behind them, making sure no one had followed in their escape. Turning around in his seat, he directed Rod through the twist and turns, ordering him to park at the rear of a large hotel.
“Dammit Bill, you try to freeze up on me again boy or pull any funny shit Ima spread your yeller ass all over the place.”
Cocking the gun, he stuck it to the side of Rod’s face, reaching around Candi. “You’s part of the family now, boy!”
Smiling, Candi looked over at Rod. “That’s right, cowboy!”
Turning back at Oddie, she pulled a pickle from his shirt. “You have another one in your hair, hon.”
After a few moments of scoping the parking lot for a vehicle, Oddie saw a woman walking to her car. He noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding band. Bingo! Running up from behind her as she was opening the door of the car, Oddie struck her, knocking her unconscious.
Rod, seeing Oddie attack the innocent lady, began to exit the truck but was stopped by the sound of the hammer being cocked and the pistol jammed into his side.
“Don’t even think it. You just had to get into the back of the truck. Coulda kept on pedalin your little bicycle down the side of the interstate, but noooo. No, you had to climb your good smellin’ ass in and now you’s in fur good! Done gone and messed up all my plans, my dreams of Nashville shattered. Now you gonna help me git rid of that dum sumbitch right there.” Candi pointed the pistol in Oddie’s direction.
Looking back and forth from the pistol to Oddie, Rod realized that this woman was switching personalities faster than he could keep up with.
She raised the pistol, speaking to it as if it were alive in her hand.
“Granmama tole me bout you. She read the cards and said you’s was comin one day.” Candi stopped speaking, looking Rod in his eyes. Rod was lost.
“Cards?”
“Damned tarot cards, dummy. She said a man would come sent by God himself, touched by angels with a gift.”
With talk of angels, Rod was transfixed, forgetting about everything transporting around him.
“So what she say then,” he asked quietly.
“Nutin, dummy. Come on.” Candi pointed at the two tote sacks stuffed with money and drugs. “Grab them bags, hon, we gotta cut-a-shuck.” She shoved Rod out of the truck with the gun. Oddie pulled up next to the truck in a dark gray sedan with tinted glass.
“Okay, Billy boy, this is your cue. One funny move and you’ll be alligator shit pretty soon.” Oddie held up a driver’s license with Jill’s photo and information on it. “We goin to Lousianer!”
Starting up the sedan, defeated by fate once again, Rod said a silent prayer.
