Free Money Men by Gerald Petievich Page A

them."
    "What's your name?"
    "I don't want to get involved," she whispered.
    Shaking his head, Carr walked to the front door of the house and knocked.
    A tiny peephole was opened by a young woman. "Pleach isn't here," she said.
    Carr held up his badge. "Open the door, Vikki."
    The face disappeared from the peephole. Carr stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. There was the sound of running, the back door opening, a struggle.
    "Let me go!" Vikki screamed. "You're breaking my arm! You pig! Put me down!"
    The screaming came toward the front door. The door was unlocked. Kelley opened the door, carrying the struggling Vikki under one arm like a calf. His other hand held a black plastic garbage bag with something in it. He handed Carr the plastic bag. It was closed with a piece of string. "She tossed this in the yard. I grabbed her before she went back in."
    Carr pulled off the string and opened the bag. The money was in rubber-banded stacks. He guessed the counterfeit twenties at forty to fifty thousand worth.
    Kelly sat the pale Vikki down in a bean-bag chair and began looking around the house. She was in a housecoat. Her shroud of thick dishwater hair was near waist length and caused her facial features to appear tiny. She had bony hands.
    Carr sat on the couch facing a wall papered with a blown-up photo of Leach and Vikki standing in front of a Cadillac in silly poses. There was a stereo system on shelves and on another wall. The room had the scent of marijuana and dirty clothes.
    Carr rested the plastic bag on his lap and read the "Warning of Rights" card out loud.
    Vikki stared at the floor,
    "Do you understand your rights?" he asked, putting the card back in his coat pocket.
    "I've been arrested twelve times. What do you think?"
    "Are you willing to answer a few questions for me, Vikki?"
    She wrapped hair around a finger, pulled, and let it pop back. She looked at her lap. "I guess."
    Carr patted the plastic bag. "Who has Pleach been peddling this to?"
    "I don't know what's in the bag."
    "Then why did you throw it out the back door?"
    "I don't know why. I just got scared."
    "Pleach is in jail," Carr said.
    "For what?" She looked up.
    "For delivering some of the twenties out of this bag. He was setting up a buy."
    Vikki sat up straight and folded her arms across her chest. "Pleach is my old man. I ain't going to say anything to hurt him. He's been good to me."
    Carr sat for a while checking the serial numbers on the counterfeit money.
    A tear rolled down Vikki's cheek.
    "How old are you, Vikki?" Carr asked.
    "Twenty-two." Her voice cracked.
    "Any children?"
    Vikki turned toward him and finger-rolled some hair. "A three-year-old boy. He's with my mother because he's hyperactive. My mom didn't like my ex-old man, so she keeps him. He's really wild. It's my first husband's fault."
    "What was your first husband like?"
    "He used to go berserk," she said.
    "How do you mean?"
    "Like one time when I was out with the girls and when I came home he jumped up and threw a fishbowl at me, and it broke and all the fish were jumping around on the floor and he was grabbing my hair and hitting my head on the sink. He was bad news. He cut his hand on the fishbowl and started wiping the blood on the walls and everything."
    "What happened then?"
    Vikki wiped her nose with her thumb and index finger.
    "I called the cops. They came and arrested him, and to get back at me he told them there was grass in the cupboard and the cops arrested me, too. I tried to make a phone call to my mom, and the cop grabbed the phone out of my hand and handcuffed my hands behind me, and I was in my housecoat and it was open in front. It was really bad news. It was really gross." She released a finger roll of hair. It sprung back to her head like a rubber band.
    "When did you meet Pleach?"
    "About six months ago. He was a friend of my ex-old man. The second one."
    "Does Pleach score for you?"
    Vikki extended her track-marked right arm. She rubbed one of the scabs