Free The Front of the Freeway by Logan Noblin Page A

the far side of the room.
    “I quit my job,” I start, reaching for some common ground. Maybe he wants to see some order in my life, but right now I think we’re both pretty fed up with the career ladder, and I can see him at the bottom of it, staring up at the endless rungs, wondering if he ever should have grabbed one in the first place. He twists his heavy, greyed head enough to stare at my shoes and slowly sighs.
    “Well, if you hate it, Julian, maybe it’s for the best.”
    “I kind of got something else lined up, anyway. I think I’m going to end up happier.” I think. I still have to close this deal with Cesar, and I’m never sure what little insanity Tony’s going to pull me into next, but there’s something to be said about the uncertainty of it all, and the comfort of knowing I won’t find myself throwing empty bottles around my house over office politics. It’s like climbing out of a vice, pulling the locked metal teeth off of my ribs and breathing in for the first time. But my father’s caught too deep in the bear trap. There’s no climbing out for him, not right now. Nauseous from the flickering mechanical light, I push myself up and move to hit the light switch by the door.
    “They killed one of us yesterday.” The blood’s back in my father’s voice, but not the same color as before. My foot freezes on the linoleum and a cold chill runs down my neck, gripping my lungs, freezing my blood. “Eddy…you remember, soon-to-be Sergeant Eddy? They sent him after some kids coming out of a toy store or something, thought it would help give the promotion some credibility. They killed him, Julian. This fucked up, bureaucratic machine, it’s killing me, one day at a time, and now it killed him, too.” Eddy Miller. He had a name. He must have had a family and a father and a life, too. Murderer, killer, accomplice—some excruciating voice screams from the back of my conscious, clawing through every thought and feeling that threatens to forget. That machine didn’t kill him; Tony did, with a .38 caliber Glock in the front of an Oldsmobile they’re never going to find.
    “Who the fuck robs a baby store anyway?”
    “Someone really desperate, I guess.”
    “Yeah, I guess.” He wipes his nose and pushes himself to his feet, stumbling across a glass minefield of pointed shards towards his bedroom door. He used to walk on his toes, teaming with some hidden energy. Now the whiskey drags him around like a wet mop. He stops in the hallway and turns halfway to me, a somber, weathered face flickering in the dim light. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this, Son. I just need a win, you know?” Yeah, I know. And I want to scream, I think there’s a way out, Dad, and you can climb out from under all of this. But I can’t tell him all that, not yet. I need to my find my own way out first, and Cesar’s is the only name on my mind.
    “This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.”
    —Al Capone
    Tony gave me the keys to the Mercedes, which would have been a nice gesture if he hadn’t stolen the thing a week earlier. He swapped the SUV’s license plate with a Mercedes of Crenshaw plaque from the dealership and told me not to worry about it, but I’m still trying not to break my neck from checking over my shoulder for cops. But the beach is a long walk from downtown, and the buses don’t go to Malibu, not where I’m going. Besides, except for a few stray cars spotted along the beach highway, the traffic’s mostly clear, and there’s nothing more beautiful or rare in L.A. than an open road, so for now I take a deep breath of salted ocean air and lean on the gas.
    I can’t shake the feeling that I’m sitting in a rich man’s wallet, smooth black leather wrapped around everything, and a lot of backlit buttons on the glossy oak dashboard