Chapter 19
Garret raised his voice a little, pressing home the point that he knew the law, how it worked. The way he saw it, the time they’d spent learning how to break into a BMW or Porsche or fucking Volvo didn’t have an awful lot to do with cracking an armoured car. It was too big a bite, too many things could go wrong. If they got caught they’d do a quarter century, no chance of parole. He didn’t ever want to be thirty years old, never mind blow out his candles in a fucking maximum security prison.
They were at Billy’s house, smoking dope and getting wasted, Billy working hard to sell Garret on what a great idea it was to risk a couple of counts of first degree murder for a sack of cash.
Garret kept pretending he wasn’t interested. In the joint, the cons would be all over them like flies on honey. Doing dirty things to them. So forget it, Billy. No way was he going to rob an armoured car.
Billy kept hammering away at him. Threatening him, making jokes. Trying everything he could think of to get a handle on Garret’s fear and put it to rest.
Over and over again, Garret kept saying no. Billy didn’t hear a word he said. He was like a hungry wasp at summer’s last picnic. Circling around Garret, buzzing him.
Finally, Billy said let’s at least go take a look, and Garret caved in.
They spent all that afternoon in the Safeway parking lot, staring at the liquor store and the people that went in and out. A fat old guy in a yellow raincoat stood by the door, endlessly playing the same three-chord tune on a battered guitar, hustling for nickels and dimes. After a while, just to pass the time, Garret started keeping track of the percentage of people who tossed money into the musician’s open guitar case, trying to work out how much the guy was making. Not a hell of a lot, but more than Garret and Billy. At ten to eleven a clerk locked the doors and a few minutes later the last customer was gone and shortly afterwards the lights went out.
Garret said, “We could bust ’em at closing time.”
Billy shook his head. “They got a safe. And you can bet your ass there’s a direct line to the cops. All we’d get is the money in the till.”
“Could be three, maybe four thousand dollars, Billy.”
“Big fuckin’ deal. Know what your problem is? You got no fuckin’ ambition. Three grand. Jesus, we might as well bust a gumball machine.”
Billy turned the ignition key. The Pinto’s engine caught and held. Billy had dropped a new set of plugs in the car and stolen a heavy-duty battery out of a brand-new Econoline parked in a lot on Kingsway. The Pinto looked like shit but it was a beater; he knew it wouldn’t let him down.
The next morning, they were back in the parking lot by ten, parked close enough to the liquor store to watch the manager fumble through his keys and unlock the door.
Billy had bought a couple of cheap sleeping bags at the Army & Navy down on Hastings, but the Pinto was cold as the inside of a meat locker, you could spit icicles. Garret stomped his feet on the rusty floorboards, trying to keep warm, wondering for maybe the millionth time if he was making a mistake. Could Billy keep his act together long enough for Garret to do his tough guy thing? He dragged the toe of his boot across the rubber mat. Lee’s wallet a little cancerous bump down there, nothing you’d notice unless you were looking for it. Well, the homicide cops would be looking soon enough, if things worked out the way he’d planned.
A bottle blonde in a white fur coat came out of the liquor store, pushing a shopping cart full of booze.
“Party time,” said Billy. “Bet she spent five hundred bucks and drinks it all herself.”
“Why don’t we rob her, go home and get drunk? Be a lot more fun than sitting here freezing our asses off.”
It was so cold inside the Pinto that whenever either of them said anything, little puffs of vapour shot out of their mouths. Garret hated every minute of it. By now they’d spent enough time in the car to develop certain routines; they took turns scraping frost off the inside of the windshield and, every hour or so, trotting across the packed ice and snow to the 7-Eleven for coffee.
Billy had made the first trip, on the flip of a coin. The clerk they’d robbed hadn’t been there. Probably he’d been fired.
Billy looked at his watch. It was twenty past six, and the light was starting to fail. The liquor store was open from ten in the morning to eleven at night. Almost five more hours to go. “Hungry?”
Garret ducked his head. “Yeah, a little.”
“Wanna make a run over to the 7-Eleven, get something to eat?”
Garret shrugged. The sleeping bag slipped off his shoulders. He pulled it back up.
“Warm in the store,” Billy reminded him.
“What about you, you hungry?”
“I wouldn’t mind a coffee, maybe a cheeseburger.”
“I couldn’t eat another one of those goddamn burgers if it was the last food on earth,” said Garret.
“Hit the Safeway, the deli counter. Get ’em to make you a ham and cheese, whatever you want.”
“Something hot.”
“Hotdog and a coffee,” suggested Billy, even though he knew damn well that Garret never drank anything but Coke. Except booze, of course, but there was no alcohol on board because Billy figured it was pretty goddamn important, considering they were getting ready to do some robbing and shooting, that they stay sober for a change, keep a clear head.
Garret shifted in his seat. “Got any money?”
“What happened to that ten I gave you?”
“Spent it.”
Billy dropped the Colt Python on the car seat and dug deep in his jeans, came up with a crumpled twenty. He tossed the bill on the dashboard. Garret scooped it up, yanked open his door. Billy grabbed his arm. “Better leave the piece here, Garret.”
“What? Oh, yeah, right.” Garret gave Billy a dopy grin and shoved the Remington pump to one side. Billy made sure the safety was on and covered the shotgun with a corner of his sleeping bag. Garret climbed out of the Pinto and slammed the door shut behind him. Hands stuffed in his pockets and shoulders hunched, he trudged through the snow and parked cars towards the Safeway.
Billy turned the key in the ignition. The Pinto’s engine caught, faltered, held steady. He brought the revs up and turned on the heater. A gust of lukewarm air swept across his knees. He lit a cigarette. The store’s automatic door flipped open and Garret shot through like he was a human pinball, swivelled to stare at a checkout girl and bounced off a metal revolving rack of paperback books. What a fuckin’ clown. Billy watched him stroll over to the magazine stand. Girls or hot cars, that was about all he was interested in. For Garret, heaven was a bikini flopped across the hood of a Corvette.
Billy cradled the Python on his lap. He ran his hand along the polished walnut stock of the shotgun.
He started thinking about Nancy Crown again. Watched wide-eyed as she reached up to loosen the clasp that held her hair in place, her breasts moving under her sweater, that long, glossy blonde hair shimmering as it tumbled across her naked shoulders, that pale skin.
She was beautiful, and the more he thought about her, the more beautiful she became.
He’d been to her house three times now, slipping like a thief through the darkness. Each time, he’d sniffed around the doors and windows and then stood by the pool, snow falling all around him, silence. At four o’clock on a cold winter’s morning there was no traffic and no birdsong. Only a gradually thickening silence.
The last time he’d visited her, he’d turned his back to the house to light a smoke, not wanting to risk the bright flare of the lighter. A shaft of moonlight had slipped through the clouds and he’d suddenly become aware of the ocean, the fact that it was right there, at the end of the yard, fifty feet below him. A faint rustling sound came from the beach, cold black water massaging the shore. He got his cigarette going and blew smoke at the moon. Flakes of snow drifted into the ocean and vanished.
Billy flicked cigarette ash to the dirty, crumbling floor of the Pinto. The heater was working better now
. He held his hands out to the flow of warm air.
There were always lights on in the house. Even when she went to bed, there were lights on. In the kitchen and living room, where he figured the downstairs bathroom was, the den. The whole main floor of the house was awash with light. Even upstairs, there were lights on in the hall and several of the rooms. As far as he could tell, only the bedroom was in darkness. Standing in the backyard, he couldn’t tell if she left the bedroom door open or not. But the door must be shut because after she turned the light out the room was in total darkness, he couldn’t see a goddamn thing.
That’s when his imagination went into overdrive, when he was blind. Noises. He heard noises. Faint at first, vague and indistinct. But familiar, and rapidly becoming louder. The soft rustle of sheets; the sound of her body moving in the bed and the shape of her body beneath silk. Her body rising and falling and turning and turning. He pictured her lying on her back and then rolling over on her side, the curve of hip as she moved to face him.
He heard the sound of her breathing. A soft moan of pain or tiny cry of pleasure. A long, drawn-out sigh.
The soundtrack to her dreams.
And then there would be a gust of wind and rattle of branches or maybe a car would shoot by, and he couldn’t be sure what he’d heard, if he’d actually heard anything at all.
More silence, the weight of it pressing down on him as he leaned into the night.
Heavy black cloud drifting across the blank white face of the moon.
Darkness.
Billy turned his back and hunched his shoulders to light another cigarette, cupped his hands around the flame.
And then he heard the voice of her husband, distant, muttered words he couldn’t quite catch. Soft whispers. Entreaties, demands. Would she do this and would she do that. More rustling of sheets.
Billy paced the length of the pool, prowling and sneering. He spat in the steaming water, kicked a deck chair into the deep end. The crisp and brittle snow crunched beneath his heels. What was real and what was not? He had no idea, no way of knowing. In his rage and impotence he wanted to smash the whole goddamn world, kick it to pieces. His ears burned.
Would she do this, would she do that?
A bitter wind snapped at him. A storm of snow filled the car. Garret slammed the door shut. The plastic bag he was carrying leaked good smells.
Billy cleared his throat. An after-image of Nancy Crown lying naked on a bed flickered in his brain. He said, “Where the fuck you been, all this time?”
“They were real busy, you shoulda seen the line-up.” Garret briskly rubbed his hands together, blew on them. “Nobody eats at home anymore. Or if they do, it’s takeout.”
Billy rooted through the food. He popped open a foam container, peeked inside.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Potato salad.”
“Potato salad?”
“It’s good. The girl at the counter, she let me have a taste.”
“She did, huh?” Billy tossed the container back in the bag, tried another. Some kind of meat that looked like little runty sausages, in a thick brown sauce that was steaming hot. He grabbed one between his finger and thumb. Hot. He stuck it in his mouth, chewed.
“What else you got?”
“Buffalo wings.”
Billy gave Garret his dead-fish look.
“Chicken,” explained Garret. “Spicy, you’ll like ’em.”
Billy ate another sausage.
Garret had a plastic fork. He filled his mouth with potato salad.
Billy said, “You’re a weird guy, Garret. It’s five below zero, we’re in the middle of a fuckin’ snowstorm, and you got a fever for potato salad. What is it, your brain froze solid?”
“Potato salad and sausages.”
“You can’t have any fuckin’ sausages. I’m gonna eat ’em all.”
“That ain’t fair!”
Billy gave Garret a look of sheer disbelief. He ate another sausage, glanced up and saw the big, silvery-gray bulk of the Loomis armoured car parked in front of the liquor store.
“Jesus Christ!”
“What?” mumbled Garret, a big goop of potato salad falling out of his mouth.
Billy spilled hot brown sauce all over his sleeping bag. He stuck the half-empty container on the dashboard, and reached for the shotgun.
Garret stared at him, bug-eyed with fear. Had Billy somehow peered inside his brain, found out what he was planning?
Billy’s legs were all tangled up in the sleeping bag. He kicked free. The shotgun was across his lap, pointing at Garret’s belly. He worked the pump. Garret snatched up the Python. He thumbed back the hammer and pointed the revolver at Billy’s face, the barrel so close to his nose Billy could smell the gun oil.
“Garret, fuck off!”
Garret held the gun steady, in both hands. His arms were bent at the elbow. He squinted down the barrel, one eye squeezed tight. “Drop it!” he yelled in a tone of voice Billy had never heard before.
It seeped into Billy’s mind at last what Garret had said to him, what he must have been thinking when Billy grabbed the pump. He took his hand off the Remington and rubbed the windshield clean, pointed.
Garret saw the armoured car. He saw the liquor store door open wide and the guy standing out there in the cold playing numb-finger guitar step back. Saw the two Loomis guys in their gray uniforms, one of them pushing a dolly loaded down with canvas sacks, the other staying a few steps behind him, his hand on the butt of his holstered weapon.
The guy with the gun unlocked the back door of the armoured car. The second guard began to throw bags of money into the car.
“Shit,” said Billy.
Garret carefully lowered the Python’s hammer.
“Shit,” said Billy again.
The guard picked up the dolly and pushed it inside the car. He climbed in and then the guy with the gun took one last quick look around and went in after him. The door swung shut and the truck pulled smoothly away from the liquor store.
The guy with the guitar went back to playing.
Billy worked the Remington’s slide, ejected the shell from the breech. Brass, plastic. A half-ounce of powder and a couple ounces of double-ought lead. A load that would blow a hole the size of a baseball right through a man, chop him down, kill him so goddamn fast. The shell hit the door panel with a dull thud. Billy picked it up off the floor and stuck it in his jacket pocket.
“I thought you were gonna shoot me,” said Garret.
Billy said, “Well, you got it all wrong. We’re gonna shoot them, remember?”
A guy in a black trench coat came out of the liquor store. The guitar player broke off his tune to hold the door open. The guy in the trench coat didn’t even look at him, just walked right by. Billy couldn’t blame him; the musician couldn’t even hit a clean chord. The guitar was mainly for show, a prop. All the guy was, really, was a doorman. The trench coat hurried through the snow to a cream Mercedes.
“Bet he’s got a Blaupunkt,” said Garret. “Thousand dollar stereo system in that car.”
“And we’d get fifty bucks for it,” said Billy.
The trench coat got into his eighty-thousand-dollar car. He hadn’t even bothered to lock it. The Merc’s headlights flared, cutting twin paths of sparkling light through the falling snow.
Nancy would know people like that, rich people who drove expensive cars and had doors opened for them all the time and didn’t even notice. Billy glanced at his watch. Five minutes to eleven. He wondered what she was doing. Saturday night, she wouldn’t be in bed, not yet. Watching television, maybe. Or out somewhere, at an art gallery opening, a play. All Billy had to go on was movies he’d seen. He’d never been to a play, inside an art gallery, attended a symphony.
He rolled down his window, flicked his cigarette into the cold night air, rolled the window back up and lit a fresh cigarette.
“Now what?” said Garret.
Billy checked the gas gauge. He still had a quarter tank.
He could drive down to Nancy’s; her house was only a few miles away, a ten-minute drive. Make Garret wait in the Pinto while he checked out the house. But he’d have to park a block or so away, or Garret would find out where she lived, and he didn’t want that. Also, Garret would start asking questions. Watching TV, you got up to take a piss, Garret had to know where you were going and when you’d be back. Billy didn’t want any questions because, more and more often lately, he’d found himself wanting to talk about her. Tell somebody about the way she held herself, the smooth, gliding way she walked, how nicely she dressed, the big, brightly-lit house she lived in. And he wanted to tell somebody about the warmth and exquisite loneliness he felt as he stood by the steaming pool, darkness all around him, silence.
He said, “You ever been in love, Garret?”
Garret laughed. “Sure, hundreds of times. And I said so, too. Hey, baby, I think I’m in love…”
“No,” said Billy. “I mean… the real thing. Where you really love someone and want to do something for her. Even if she doesn’t love you.”
Garret lifted his nose and sniffed the air. “Got a leaky exhaust? Your brain full of carbon monoxide, is that your problem?”
“Forget it.”
Garret made a grab for the foam carton full of little sausages. Billy didn’t try to stop him. Garret chewed and swallowed. “No, I never been in love. Except I love my mom, if that’s what you mean.”
Billy said, “I always figured there was something between the two of you.”
“Fuck off.” Garret licked thick brown sauce from his fingers, went after another sausage. He said, “Slippery little bastards, aren’t they?”
Billy said, “I mean, you’re both ugly as a shoe box full of shit, so I guess it figures.”
“Fuck right off,” said Garret. He popped a sausage in his mouth and dug energetically around in the sauce. “How many sausages you eat?”
Billy shrugged. “Five, maybe six.”
“I only had three.”
“Want me to stick my finger down my throat, see what I can come up with?” A clerk unlocked the door of the liquor store to let the last of the customers out. There were still a dozen or more cars in the parking lot — the Safeway was open until midnight. Billy leaned forward to release the emergency brake.
Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) Page 17
