The Front of the Freeway by Logan Noblin

cocking it will.
    Whir. Click.
    The clerk squeaks, and, with a mechanical cough, the register yields, sticking out a wide metal tongue lush with green paper bills. I lunge across the counter and plunge my free hand into the paper pond, tearing bill after bill from their tin coffins. I clear the drawer and take a look at my clenched green fist—a knot of ones and fives. What is this, thirteen dollars?
    And then, somewhere in the distance, the penetrating whine of a blue and red police siren penetrates the store.
    “What the fuck is this?” Now I’m shaking a wad of stripper bills in Amber’s face, and a hot sweat is breaking down my neck. The car seat must have cost a hundred, at least.
    “That’s all there is… I’m sorry. That’s everything. Please, just take it!” I rocket my open hand back onto the metal tongue but it only knocks against the empty tin trey. Suddenly, Tony’s gun is flush against Amber’s temple, and I’m no longer in control.
    “Don’t fuck with me, Amber! Where’s the rest of it?” The dams in Amber’s eyes burst, and tears pour down her cheeks. She’s sorry, she doesn’t know, oh God, oh God, oh God. My ears jump at a panicked roar from the parking lot, and Tony’s waving me in, engine humming.
    Amber’s useless now. Whimpering and shaking, her eyes follow her tears down to the register.
    Anxiously, subtly—to the register.
    I throw my hand at the machine one more time, this time tearing up at the rigged tray itself, and to the relief of my knotted stomach, the trey gives. I fling the tin table aside and grope at another green pond; twenty, fifty, and hundred dollar bills all jump into my pocket. I’m shaking as much as Amber now as the banshee sirens choke the air, a swarm of howling bees crying louder and louder around my head.
    Pockets jammed, eyes stung with sweat, I bolt for the car. I tear through the thin glass door, across pavement, and into Tony’s growling taxi, giving myself to the lurching weight of the car as it jolts desperately from the lot. My head flies back onto the headrest, and I shut my eyes tight against the piercing, hunting siren, panting hard while Tony yanks the car around the corner.
    And then in the mirror two colored lights swirl from a flashing, orca striped LAPD rounding the corner behind us.
    “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.”
    —Frederick Douglass
    Tony’s not pulling over. A single, whining cop car is stalking us up King, and Tony’s cruising at about 25. You think he’d turn the radio down.
    “Tony, what the hell are we doing?”
    “We’re driving, man, just relax. Breathe a little.” Breathe a little? We’re about to finish this ride in the back of a squad car and he wants me to breath? I rip off my seat belt…no, that’s not right, I shove it back in the buckle and wipe my palms on the seat. Are there drugs in the car? With the wave of his hand, Tony brushes the turn signal and brings the car’s ticking heartbeat to life. Jake follows the leader around the corner and into a dusty, stucco district. “You ever draw out of the lines when you were a kid, JT?” I just blink. We’re looking at five to ten, and he’s talking about coloring books.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Come on, JT, did you ever connect the dots how you wanted? Ever fuck up the numbers and just paint?”
    “Where are we, Tony?” Tony breaks a smile, and after a week I’ve known him long enough to worry.
    “See? Now that’s what I’m talking about—always got to know ‘Tony, where are we ?’ and ‘Tony, what’re we doing ?’”
    This can’t be good.
    “Well, I’ll tell you what we’re doing, boss. We’re coloring just a little bit outside the lines.” Tony stretches across my lap with a long right arm, and guiding the wheel with a blind left hand, grabs the pistol from the passenger floor. He rests the gun under his left leg and eases the car to