Rocks Beat Paper

by Mike Knowles

  I looked at Tony. “Let’s see your knife.”

  Tony smiled. “Sorry, Wilson. I don’t have one.”

  I put the shotgun on him. “Strip.”

  “You serious?”

  “Were you serious when you said you weren’t carrying a knife?”

  “You really think he’d be dumb enough to carry the same knife?” Diego #1 said.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “This is bullshit,” Johnny said. He pointed at Elliot with a finger that resembled a lead pipe. “This little shit. This rat —” The big man suddenly charged across the room and took hold of Elliot. Elliot was flirting with three bills, but that didn’t matter to Johnny; he manhandled the fat man’s bulk with ease. Johnny pivoted Elliot and drove him across the room. I barely had time to sidestep the charge; Miles managed to avoid the impending collision, but not because he was quick on his feet — it was because Johnny was quick on his. The second he was within arms’ reach of Miles and his gun, Johnny shoved Elliot aside and went after the pistol. Johnny put two hands on Miles’s wrist and used his substantial weight advantage to swing him around. The big man was smarter than anyone gave him credit for. He understood that the shotgun in my hands was anything but precise and that shooting at him would be the same thing as shooting at Miles. He was counting on my loyalty — I was considering it.

  Behind me, Tony was moving again. His hand had already snaked around his waist and was on its way back with a nasty-looking switchblade.

  “Round two, nig —” Tony got to the g at the same time Monica did. The only difference was Monica’s g was for gun.

  Monica had pulled a small revolver from her jacket pocket. The green army jacket could have concealed a couple of bigger guns, but she went for something low key. What wasn’t low key was the sound of the gun. Two bullets shoved Tony gracelessly back against the wall and sent the knife clattering to the floor. The gunshots made my ears ring and sent the Diegos diving for cover.

  Johnny ignored the shots and focused on pulling the gun from Miles’s hands. Miles was putting up a fight, but Johnny’s size allowed him to dominate the con man. He kneed the smaller man in the stomach and yanked the gun free only to find Monica’s revolver against his neck.

  “Say my name.”

  Johnny’s eyes wrenched to the side trying to see the gun and the woman holding it.

  “I want to hear you say it. Not girl, not bitch, not nigger. I want you to say my name.”

  Johnny swallowed and said, “Monica.”

  “Now say, please don’t shoot me.”

  Johnny struggled with the words while Miles struggled to get air into his lungs again. I kept the shotgun trained on Johnny. He had two hands in the air, but Miles’s gun was still in one of them. With all three guns occupied, no one was in a position to stop Elliot. He pushed himself off the wall, ran five steps, and threw himself through the window.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “What the fuck was that?” Miles said. He straightened and grunted in pain. “Did you see that? He dove out the goddamn window.”

  Miles went to the hole in the glass and looked down. “There’s a dumpster down there. Did anyone know there was a dumpster down there?”

  I did.

  “Do you see him?”

  Miles leaned out. “No. Wait, yeah. He’s crawling out.”

  Everyone, even Johnny, was engrossed in the play-by-play.

  “He’s limping and holding his arm, but he’s walking.”

  “We need to go,” I said. “Someone will have heard the shots.” I looked at the Diegos. “Your money is in the space in the floor. Inside the envelope is an address. Meet us there at four a.m. if you want back in.”

  Diego #1 went straight for the hole and pulled out a stack of envelopes secured with a rubber band. He slid two out and dropped the others back in the hole. “You serious?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought this was about revenge.”

  I shook my head. “It’s about the job. We have a way in, but we could never have made it work if there was someone out there waiting to double-cross us. We needed to clean house before we could move forward.”

  Diego #1 looked at Johnny. “That’s all this was? Cleaning house?”

  I looked at Tony’s dead body. “That’s all it was.”

  Diego #1 looked at Johnny and the gun against his neck. “Is the house clean yet? Can you move forward?”

  Monica lifted her shirt with her free hand; she kept her other hand still. “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

  The Diegos looked at Monica’s torso and the bag attached to her hip for a long time. Then, Diego #1 said, “We’ll see you at four.”

  Everyone watched the two men leave.

  Johnny called after them, but the Diegos didn’t look back. They had already seen enough.

  I took the gun from Johnny’s hand; he didn’t try to fight me. “How much of Elliot’s story was on the level?”

  Johnny lowered his arm and looked at his partner. “He was right about Tony, but the whole thing was Elliot’s idea. He came looking for us after the meeting. He said we could do the job ourselves and make a hell of a lot more money. We were following the jeweller and saw the n —” Johnny caught himself and glanced around the room at the guns pointed in his direction, “Monica tailing him. Elliot knew it had to be you two who were with her. He didn’t want to risk you making a move on the store before us, so he came to us with a way to make sure you were out of the picture.”

  “What was his plan for the robbery?”

  “He had a way around the alarms, but that all went to shit after you tried to knock over the jeweller. The Jew upped his security, and we had to call it off.”

  “So stabbing Monica was just the cost of doing business?” Miles said.

  On the wrong side of a room full of guns, Johnny had lost his fire. For the first time since I had met him, his voice was quiet and without a trace of bravado. “You were the ones who cut us out. It wasn’t personal.”

  Monica jammed the gun harder into Johnny’s neck. His fleshy throat enveloped most of the barrel. “I shit into a bag on my hip. Did you know that? And I’ll do that for the rest of my life.” She stepped back and lifted her shirt. “Look at it. Look! Look at it and tell me again how it wasn’t personal.”

  “It — It —”

  Monica stepped in close to Johnny again and pushed the gun against his head. “Can you smell it? This is the closest I’ve been to another man since they put it on. I live in fear of someone smelling it. All I can think about is their face. What is their face going to look like when they smell what’s inside of me? But I’m not scared of you smelling it. I want you to smell it. Do you know why?”

  Johnny didn’t say anything. His jaw clenched in an effort to hide what the film of tears on his eyes already gave away.

  Monica grabbed a fistful of Johnny’s hair and forced him to look her in the eyes. “It’s because I want you to die with the smell of shit in your nose.”

  Monica held his eyes for a long time; long enough for the smell to find its way into Johnny’s nostrils. The scent sent a tremor through the big man’s jaw. He broke into sobs and began to plead. Monica’s own jaw remained set while she listened to every word he said. She held his gaze until he ran out of words. Then she pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  I took Tony by the arm and painted a red streak across the floor with his body. His slim torso slipped inside the hole I had concealed with the cooler with little manipulation. His feet hit the subfloor, and I used the butt of the shotgun to shove the body to the side.

  With Tony out of the way, I walked over to the bigger body on the floor. I took a limp arm and began to slowly drag the corpse to its above-ground shallow grave. Miles moved to take the other arm, but Monica stopped him.

  “I want to do it.”


  Miles looked at the body; I could see him doing a mental calculation of the amount of weight she would have to pull. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  With another pair of hands helping, I was able to get Johnny’s body to the lip of the hole. I had pulled the floor up with the big ex-con in mind. Now, on the edge of the hole, I wasn’t sure I had pulled enough.

  I wasn’t the only one thinking the hole might be a problem. “We should try legs first,” Monica said.

  I nodded at Monica, and together we spun the body around. The legs fell in easily, but it became really clear really fast that Johnny’s midsection was going to be an issue.

  “Maybe if we angle him,” Monica said.

  I pulled hard on Johnny’s arm and tilted the body on a forty-five degree angle. We shoved the body forward and felt the momentum come to a halt when his gut plugged the space.

  “Looks like we’re going to need a bigger hole.”

  “Shut up, Miles,” I said.

  “You shut up. That was a dead-on Roy Scheider.”

  We both looked at him.

  “From Jaws.” His eyes widened and his jaw went slack as he mimicked the old cop seeing the great white for the first time. “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

  We both said, “Shut up, Miles.”

  He didn’t. “Maybe we should stand on him.”

  Monica ran a hand through her hair. “Stand? No, not stand.” She lifted a foot and brought it down hard on the body. The next stomp had more force behind it. I stepped back. Miles and I watched silently as Johnny was forced inch by inch into the hole. With each kick, Monica lost a bit more of her composure. She began to cry, and then yell. Her screams became a roar as the body disappeared.

  I went to the window and felt the cold air on my face. There weren’t any sirens. I had picked the right place and time to deal with the people who had tried to deal with us. The location and date were all by design and it had almost been enough. Elliot had been smarter and more cunning than I had given him credit for. The crowded first meeting had given him camouflage. The other big personalities drew attention their way, leaving the true danger the fat computer whiz posed unnoticed.

  I used the toe of my boot to kick the unopened beer bottles into the hole. I went to the next room and came back with a piece of plywood and a rug. I covered the hole with the board and rolled the rug out to hide the quick repair. I stepped back and evaluated my work. The carpet was big enough to cover the hole and bloodstains and shabby enough to blend in with the shitty room.

  “Thank you,” Monica said. She nodded her head towards the carpet and what was barely hiding underneath. “For that. I’ve been bad since it happened. Real bad. This was something I had to — something I needed to do.” She took a deep breath in and slowly let it out through her nose. “I had to do this.”

  Miles reached out and gently put a hand on her shoulder. Monica pulled away before Miles could finish asking, “You okay?”

  She nodded. “I’m better than I was this morning, but that other one is still out there. I need to find him.”

  I checked my watch. “That’ll have to wait. We’re on a timetable and we need to move.”

  Monica looked me in the eye. “Fine.”

  On the stairs, Miles asked, “Do you think they’ll show?”

  “Would you?” Monica asked.

  He didn’t even think about it. “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  Miles looked at me. “Why? Because we killed two members of the original crew. One right in front of them. Do you think they could ever trust us? If I were in their shoes, I’d take the five and walk.”

  “If we were going to kill the Diegos, if that was our plan, when would have been the smart time to do it?”

  “Upstairs,” Monica said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “They’re smart enough to know that. They’re also smart enough to know that Johnny and Tony had it coming. They’ll show.”

  “Care to put money on it?” Miles asked.

  I opened the stairwell door and checked the street. I motioned for Miles and Monica to follow me outside.

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” I said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  It took an hour to get to the truck stop and back. The snow had been falling steady for hours, and the storm of the century, the fifteenth this century, had finished warming up. The news had been speculating about the severity of the storm for days. By the day of the storm, the massive accumulations were such a foregone conclusion that the evening news gave the weatherman a break from his spot in front of the green screen in favour of an on-location report. The network set up the meteorologist in a hardware store so he could divulge weather gossip while talking to customers hurriedly buying the last of the shovels. The salt, sand, and plow trucks were out in full force, but they were all playing catch-up with the heavy snowfall.

  Monica drove the plow across the highway without showing any signs that the roads were anything less than perfect. She passed cars moving at barely a crawl while avoiding the aftermath of car wrecks caused by drivers who were unprepared for the weather.

  In the heavy stolen plow, the return trip to the city took half the time of the initial run to the truck stop.

  “We’re early,” Miles said.

  I nodded. “Ten minutes.”

  “You’re welcome,” Monica said.

  Miles smiled and turned his head so that he could speak into Monica’s ear. She shifted in her seat and put a few more inches between them.

  I spoke before the con man. “Timing is everything on something like this. Ten minutes could end up being ten years.”

  Miles pulled away from the driver’s ear and Monica eased off the gas and away from the door. “I checked the maps. I know a detour that should add a few minutes.”

  Monica had driven up to Buffalo a week ago and stolen the snowplow. She drove it to an abandoned barn I had found way outside the city. The barn had been our operations base for three weeks. I had come back to the city with a plan, but the plan came with a large shopping list. Monica had been instrumental in acquiring many of the items we needed; for her, the job was about more than money. The jewellery store job had cost her a piece of herself. She now carried a bag on her hip and dry swallowed pills all day long. She wouldn’t say it, but I knew why she signed on with us again. She needed it to mean something. The price she had paid couldn’t have been for nothing. More than that, Monica needed to know that the job hadn’t been the end of her.

  At three in the morning, the street was quiet. The snowplow idled in the street, drawing attention to itself with its out-of-shape engine. Luckily, there was no one around to hear the noise coming from under the hood. The heat was turned all the way to the right, and the uncomfortably hot air coming through the vents stunk heavily of the exhaust drifting around the truck.

  I shut off the heat when the stench and the temperature started to make me feel nauseous. No one complained.

  “He’s late,” Miles said.

  “The snow is slowing him down,” I said.

  Monica checked up and down the street. “Should we go look for him?”

  “No,” I said. “He’ll be here soon.”

  “The streets are pretty terrible. Maybe he took the night off.”

  “Look at the road,” I said. “Someone has been driving laps in the same tracks. This time of night, in this weather — it’s our guy.”

  Five minutes later, a car with the word Citurity painted across the doors turned off of Ninth Avenue and began a slow crawl down West 47th. Monica didn’t wait for me to signal her. She pulled down her ski mask, dropped the blade, and put the plow in gear. There was a metallic scrape as the truck was forced into gear, and then the blade began to grind against the pavement as the plow picked up speed. The security car was driving in its tracks a
t a slow crawl. The company must have been expensive because they sprung for a current model Nissan and heavy-duty snow tires. The driver knew better than to rush in the bad weather, and the good tires ensured that the car didn’t slide. All of that changed when Monica turned the wheel and hooked the plow into the side of the much smaller car. Monica had used the road to her advantage; she turned the plow at just the right time to capitalize on the skid she slid into. The plow slid a tight forty-five degree turn, and then the spinning wheels found the pavement and jolted the plow forward in its new direction. The blade connected with the side of the Nissan and drove it into the curb. The second the snowplow connected, I pulled down my own mask and opened the door. I held on to the side of the seat and waited for the impact that signalled the Nissan had been pushed as far as it could go. On the street, I circled around the back of the plow and walked straight towards the Nissan with a hammer in my hand. Monica caught sight of me in her mirrors and backed up a few feet when I was out from behind the truck. The car had been lifted onto the plow blade and only the far wheels were touching the pavement. I didn’t wait for the car to get all the way to the ground before I swung the hammer into the driver’s side window.

  The sound of the breaking glass was overshadowed by the noise of the plow backing up. The security guard was going for his radio but my finger found the trigger first. The stun gun sent two tendrils through the hole in the window and into the chest and neck of the man behind the wheel. The guard went rigid as the electrical current overrode the commands of his brain. The stun gun crackled while I used my free hand to open the door. I eased up on the trigger and waited to see if it had been enough. The guard flopped forward and bounced off the steering wheel — it had been enough. I opened the door and secured the keys before dragging the guard out. I bound the guard’s wrists and feet with zip ties that I got at the same tiny hardware store where I’d bought the hammer. The guard was still dazed when I dragged him to the rear of the car and forced him up and into the trunk. I wrapped my hand around the head of the hammer and used my loaded fist to put the driver all the way out. I closed the trunk lid and crossed the street to the idling plow. Monica was already at the rear of the big truck; I caught up with her just in time to see the tailgate fall. The sound of the metal hitting the pavement was offensively loud in the quiet stillness of the snowy morning, but it was a fitting opening for the cacophony created by the ramp that was dragged out and fitted into place. Monica had been working on the plow for a while to get it ready for what we needed it to do.