Breaking Bad: Making Good

The call goes straight through to answer phone.

‘I need a new dust filter for my Hoover MaxExtract PressurePro Model 60. Can you help me with that?’ He hangs up the pay phone forcefully. The good thing about payphones is that they are robust. They can take some aggression. Something the man wasn’t short of.

He waits. He doesn’t have to wait long. The phone rings. A voice on the other end states a time and a place. Not that he needs to be told the place. It’s the same place as last time.

And that’s it. Simple as that. At least, it would be as simple as that – if he had the money. Dust filters for Hoover MaxExtract PressurePro Model 60s don’t come cheap. Especially euphemistic ones. In fact, those euphemistic dust filters are pretty darn expensive. And all he has is the shirt on his back. That’s a euphemism too, but only just. He has the shirt on his back plus enough other clothes to keep him descent. And an old car that’s almost out of gas. But nothing else. But no money. Not even a wallet. He had to beg a passer-by for the quarter he used to make the call. Not that that was difficult, given the state of him – particularly the scars down the right hand side of his face. He managed to pull off menacing without even trying to.

He gets in the car parked up beside him and turns the ignition key to the first click. The gas light comes on – a penetrating orange glow. He slams the wheel in frustration. He has thirty miles to where he needs to be and an hour to get there. He considers his options. He could try to make it, but if he stops short in the middle of nowhere he’ll have to hitch the rest of the way – or run. Even in his fuzzy state of mind, that doesn’t seem like a sound plan.

He glances at the driver-side mirror and sees a kid walking down the sidewalk toward the car – hoodie over his head, skateboard under his arm. The man gets out of the car.

‘Hey,’ he says to the kid with an upward nod of the head. ‘Can you drive?’

The kid looks at him suspiciously. Then nods in return.

‘Want a car?’ the man adds.

The kid flashes a look of confusion. ‘Huh? You crazy?’

‘No, no, straight up,’ the man insists.

Two other kids approach from over the road and stand by him. One of them was taller. Almost as tall as the man. ‘What’s up?’ the big kid says.

‘This guy wants to give us his car,’ the first kid replies.

The man speaks hastily. ‘Look, I need to be somewhere real important, but I got no money for gas. Give me a few bucks to put in the car, drive with me to the place and the car’s yours. Swear. No messing.’

The three kids look at each other. One of them shakes his head. ‘Dunno, sounds fucked up to me, man. How do we know this guy ain’t gonna whack us or summit?’

‘No, no. I’m not going to whack anyone. I don’t have no weapon, see.’ He holds his arms out. ‘C’mon, I just need to be someplace real bad.’ He pauses. The car is his only bargaining chip. They have to take it else he’s finished. Then he realizes he has one other thing on his side. Age. He looks the first kid in the eye.

‘Hey, I’ll buy you some beer,’ he offers. ‘As much as you’ve got cash for.’

The boys look at each other again. Eventually they come to an unspoken conclusion and start pooling cash out of their pockets. They have almost forty bucks between them.

The man nods toward the car. ‘Get in,’ he says. ‘Two of you will have to ride in the back. Keep your head down.’ The car was a pickup with only two seats up front. ‘Seriously, no messing. Don’t want no cops pulling us over. Got it?’