Angels

by Denis Johnson

  The three brothers picked Dwight up at the corner of Broadway and Central at nine in the morning. He was standing in front of a fried chicken establishment holding a brown paper shopping sack filled with various items for disguise, his foot resting on an olive-drab duffel bag containing two revolvers, a German machine pistol, and a sawed-off twenty-gauge shotgun with a shortened stock. “Friends and neighbors,” Dwight said. Anything could go wrong now.

  The four-door mid-size Chrysler the men travelled in was not quite stolen. It had been marked for repossession by one of Dwight Snow’s rivals, and the Houstons had repossessed it first. Burris started to get out from behind the wheel, but Dwight stayed him with a hand. “Just let me have the keys. From this point forward, you don’t ever leave that driver’s seat till we’re through with this car.”

  “No keys,” Burris said. “We busted open the trunk and wired it shut.”

  “Good. No problem.” Dwight put the duffel bag into the trunk.

  He sat in the back seat next to Bill Houston and dealt out things from his shopping bag—a mustache for James, big round sunglasses for Bill, for Burris a ridiculous grey beard. “Nobody’s going to look too close at a person in a car,” Dwight explained to Burris, “so it doesn’t matter how phony you look. We just want facial camouflage all around. Flowers?”

  James, in the front seat, reached down by his feet and handed over a bouquet of wildflowers wrapped in green paper, a gift item sold on the street corners of the city by half-dressed young women. “Here, darling.”

  Dwight took the flowers and removed a few. “Hey, why don’t we put these in our buttonholes? A little class. Just for appearances’ sake.” His neat efficiency, as he gripped each flower by its stem between thumb and forefinger; as he looked into the face of each man, handing him a flower; as he moved his eyes in a continual round of the scene outside the vehicle—rear street, Mexican joint, intersection, Kentucky fried, street forward—was inspiring to the others. Bill Houston, sitting beside him, observing his partners, feeling the sun begin to warm the Chrysler’s interior, felt a narrowing and focusing of his own dry-mouthed fear.

  “Where we gonna stop and break out weapons?” James asked.

  “Wow. I have to pee. I have to piss so bad,” Burris said. Bill Houston didn’t like to hear the undercurrent of whining in his youngest brother’s tone of voice. It turned his stomach. It made him afraid.

  Dwight leaned forward and put a hand on Burris’s shoulder. “You are the weakest link in this operation. We’re taking you right up to your limit. But you’re with us because I am absolutely certain that you’ll smoothly and efficiently carry out everything required of you today. Understand?”

  “Sure,” Burris said.

  “You know your job. You stay parked out front as long as it takes. What if we never come out?”

  “I never move.”

  “A-plus. You never move. You stay there as long as it takes. You’re going to feel anxious, but you’re not going to move. If I thought you were the kind to break, somebody else would be driving this car. Now we’ll stop at a gas station and bring the guns up front, and you can piss. Head over to Seventh Street.”

  It was as if the hand on Burris’s shoulder communicated serenity. He relaxed.

  Under Dwight Snow’s direction he drove slowly over to Seventh Street and then north to a gas station of dubious quality, keeping his right hand at all times on the dashboard and its thumb on the buttons of the radio, pushing the buttons regularly to change the stations and cut off the DJ’s and get the talking out of his life.

  When Burris was finished in the bathroom he came back and rested against the car while Bill Houston went inside to empty his bladder. Bill Houston didn’t like the way Burris looked. Anything could go wrong now. He could step outside to find squad cars flanking the Chrysler, thanks to the merest bit of the vast unforeseen, the unconsiderable factors and the twists of dumb luck.

  In the hacked and vandalized service station restroom he stood before the commode with one hand on his hip, unzipping the fly of his pants—but when he saw the tiny specks of blood dotting the mirror’s glass above the sink, he lost any desire to relieve himself and his stomach turned hard as ice. He felt he was looking, now, at what hadn’t been foreseen.

  “What do you think you’re trying to do?” he said to Burris when he stepped outside. “You figure we’re just playing here? You think we’re going to get high and then go to the drive-in?”

  Dwight was at that moment getting out of the car and going around to the trunk. “Problem, Bill?” He untied the wire, raised the trunk’s lid, and hoisted out the duffel bag full of firearms.

  “This son of a bitch went in there and shot his arm full of dope,” Bill Houston said. “There’s blood on the mirror in there.”

  “Blood on the mirror,” Dwight repeated.

  “I used to play cards with a couple dopers on the Reservation up by Tacoma,” Bill Houston told his brother. “They were always spraying shit on the wall like that when they were done shooting up. You think I don’t know what that blood is?” He appealed to Dwight: “Didn’t even try to hide it,” he said

  Burris shrugged, examining his boots and behaving as if there were something on one of his boots that needed to be scraped away.

  “I ought to jerk your fucking head off for you,” Bill Houston said. He was on the brink of tears.

  “We’ll discuss this in a minute. I’ve got to get these out of the public eye,” Dwight said, and moved to carry the duffel bag into the bathroom. “Bring the flowers,” he told James over his shoulder. “Burris, stay with the car.”

  When Bill and James had joined him inside, James holding the bouquet of flowers, Dwight said, “I think we should just proceed as planned.” He knelt on the floor and took the machine pistol from the duffel bag along with two boxes of rounds. “If he’s too high to function, we can improvise.”

  James had nothing to say. He looked deep into the mirror stained with grease and a string of minute bloody flecks; his expression, as he greeted his own face, like that of someone suddenly released.

  “Improvise?” Bill Houston said. “Jesus Christ, improvise?” He accepted the sawed-off shotgun from Dwight, and then a box of one dozen shells. He looked about them at the walls and floor of the obliterated john, but couldn’t find anything to point to that would explain why he felt it necessary to abort their plans. “Hey,” he said to James finally. “Unwrap them daisies, how about.” He broke open his weapon and began inserting shells. It was a pump-action Remington, and it made him feel happy in spite of himself.

  “You never can tell. He just might function with a little more finesse.” Dwight opened his garish tropical shirt and slipped the machine pistol into a holster rigged with a cowboy belt and black electrician’s tape that girded his chest, the pistol resting along his rib cage under his left arm. He helped Bill Houston unwrap and re-wrap the flowers, the sawed-off Remington now among them. James loaded both revolvers—a nine-millimeter Ruger of stainless steel and his own long-barrelled Colt—and replaced them in the duffel bag along with the boxes of ammunition.

  They all three stood up straight and looked at one another—Bill Houston clutching the lethal bouquet, James with the duffel bag, Dwight holding his arm close alongside like the victim of a stroke—with something akin to love, a kind of immense approval, because now they were in one another’s hands.

  “I’m getting excellent vibes here,” Dwight said. “Obviously no one wants to scrap this thing. Let’s just take it along the projected route. If Burris fucks up, we’ll shut down and do it all over again tomorrow.”

  Neither brother dissented. The time was now, it was obvious.

  Burris had another shrug for them when the three got into the car and nobody said anything except, “Drive on.” He knew they sensed his incompetence. “Where’s my piece?” he said.

  “In the bag here. You can keep my little monster when we go into it,” James told him. “I’m taking the Ruger.” As he sai
d these things he looked out of the window, and spoke casually.

  Burris followed Dwight’s orders carefully, turning west only when directed, north only when directed, taking it one block at a time. He wanted them to know that he was competent: that half a bag—not a lethal dose, by any means—was just about right here, focusing his attention and rounding off some of the corners. He was in a good place, and felt relief beyond the mere action of heroin: he’d taken a chance getting off like this, that went without saying. He could have taken too much, he understood that. But sometimes the proper induction of chemicals was a requirement. He was surprised when Dwight said, “Stop here.” They were in front of the Central Avenue First State Bank. “We’ve come to where the flavor is,” James said. He set the forty-four Colt on the seat between them, touching Burris’s thigh. “Street looks sunny and calm,” Bill Houston said, and Dwight said, “Remember: motor running at all times.”

  And Burris’s Adam’s apple filled with wet cement and his eyes clouded with burning teardrops. “We’re going to be seven minutes maximum,” he heard Dwight’s voice telling him. “But suppose we’re in there for seven hours?”

  “Nothing,” Burris said. “I stay here,” he said. Although he knew they all knew he wasn’t competent.

  They went into it slowly, testing each inch of space.

  As they went into it James felt his nostrils dilate painfully, and jism dripped from his penis and stained his underwear. The stainless steel barrel of the revolver touched his thigh like a loving finger, and he said to it in his mind, You’re everything to me. For the next seven minutes you are my wife, my lawyer, and my money.

  Shallow breath now, he told himself, and drew oxygen slowly. The odor of wildflowers, as beside him his brother shifted his bouquet from one hand to the other, was overpowering. The bank opened away from his face like a tremendous bell to be kept absolutely silent. Every surface was capable of ringing.

  James had walked past these windows many times in recent weeks, on the other side of the glass, and had thought himself familiarized. But he hadn’t been prepared, somehow, for the largeness of it all, for the insignificance of the people surrounding them, as if this great chamber with its oversized plants and tall, thin fountain of water had been constructed for a race of monsters. He wanted to detain his partners, invite them to get a sense of the place. But it was too late. It was already in progress. Bill Houston went past the high semicircular security desk, the elderly guard elevated by some means—perhaps on a platform-without looking at the man. James was happy with the calm manner in which his brother laid out his flowers on one of the check-writing counters and folded his hands over the package, staring forward at the row of tellers’ windows. Dwight moved to the officers’ area in the rear and, his back to the several desks where a few men and women pored over figures or chatted with customers seeking favors, he put his left hand to the buttons of his Hawaiian print shirt.

  James went deliberately to the guard’s C-shaped desk and leaned against it, putting his right: hand at belt-level beneath the hem of his shirt, fingers brushing the Ruger’s grip. The guard, immaculate, silver-haired, and gentlemanly, looked down at James through pale grey eyes, and it seemed to James that they looked straight into each other’s minds, that both of them understood completely the requirements and parameters of this situation. He’d been about to speak inconsequentially—this the bank that gives toasters? don’t I know you from Thursday bowling?—and chat till the signal came down. But now he saw the understanding in this person’s eyes and froze completely: he knows. He knows; he’s going to draw out on me; goddamn it, Dwight, let me see the nod or I’ll start this thing myself—

  Dwight nodded once. The weapons came out.

  Dwight called out clearly, “Ladies and gentlemen: your money is my money.”

  James put the Ruger up against the guard’s nose Bill Houston raised the shotgun high to advertise his power and cried, “We want everything completely quiet!”—although no one had said a word or made a noise of any kind. The single audible sound was the action of water on water as the oblivious fountain ceaselessly fell into its pool—a sound all mixed up with the crashing of blood in James’s arteries, his pulse so urgent he could feel it in the palm of his hand where he gripped the revolver. Most of those present—there were no more than a dozen customers this morning, some in the tellers’ line, a couple at the counters, two or three at the desks with the bank’s officers-—found some reason to look away, not yet understanding that they represented hazard to these bandits and would be required to move. One man went on writing in his checkbook next to the torn green wrappings of the bouquet, a multi-hued assortment of wildflowers scattered at his feet, his head lowered—ignoring the armed man who stood with feet braced apart not two yards from his elbow—refusing any connection with this mysterious and violent event.

  They were in it.

  In the rear, Dwight was briefly manhandling the chiefest officer available, speaking too softly for James to hear. Bill Houston covered the tellers and intervening customers. James pressed the Ruger into the guard’s face, making him smell the stainless steel: as soon as the money came out he would have to come around and disarm the man, and then take tellers one and two. Between James and Bill were customers who could not be said to be thoroughly neutralized. They were thin—they had known they’d be thin—but it meant as much as ten thousand dollars each to take the bank without a fourth gun.

  Dwight was speaking now: “All right, we’re in Phase Two, control and movement.” To the tellers: “I want no alarms.” To the officers: “I want no alarms.” To the tellers: “I want drawers open. I want money stacked. I want no alarms.” Pointing to the vault behind the officers, he said, “You see that vault there? I want that vault cleaned of cash in three minutes. You, and you, will clean that vault of cash in three minutes. Begin now. All others in this area: on your hands and knees, crawl immediately to the tellers’ area over here to my right. Move now. Hands and knees.” As tellers, officers and customers began doing as they’d been told, he chanted at five-second intervals: “I want no alarms, I want no marked bills. I want no alarms, I want no marked bills.”

  The money was coming out. James wanted to check the clock above the tellers’ area, but knew better. He watched the guard’s face as he moved slowly around the desk to accomplish the man’s disarming. And the face was scary. It was smooth and framed with silver hair and absolutely crimson. The grey, nearly white eyes were sightless—he was having some kind of fit, perhaps.

  Burris felt his was the hardest job—to watch helplessly from the car.

  For the first moments after James had drawn out on the guard, only James and Bill Junior were visible to Burris. And then Dwight came up from the rear of the establishment, herding together some people and putting them down onto the floor, holding aloft the German machine pistol like something he wanted to keep above a rising flood.

  The scene appeared to Burris as a moving diagram flattened out against the window, a vision revealing the weak spots in their plan. It was a big bank. As Dwight moved forward, Bill Houston was left to secure nearly half its area by himself. James’s firepower was nullified; he was useless until the guard could be disarmed. In the recesses of the place, where Burris’s vision couldn’t penetrate, men were cleaning the vault virtually without supervision. Burris had been prepared to endure unexpected calamity—a cop might arrive to cash his paycheck, a self-armed citizen might open fire in defense of his savings—but to witness how tenuous was their command of the bank and its customers, to know that almost any degree of resistance would be uncontainable, would ruin everything, would plunge them into chaos—it made him want to run inside and start shooting people. It was fake! This was bunko! They were bluffing here, they intended to create an impression of strength and get away with money by intimidation. We’re not going to make it, he thought. We can’t handle the least go-wrong. Save myself, save myself. This is crazy!

  And now their operation did in fact appear
to be going crazy. He heard popping noises from inside the bank and saw James, coming around behind the guard’s desk to take his gun, abruptly moving backwards, as if jerked by the belt. The guard was standing up now, and because of the elevation of his desk—designed to give him a sweeping view of the bank, to make him the most powerful figure in it—he seemed taller than a natural man. In his hand he held a black revolver, and the expression on his face was definite and clear to Burris as he fired again, wounding James somewhere in his abdomen. His face was tight and pale, almost the color of his silver hair. James fell backward, and Burris could no longer find his brother in the view.

  And then the guard seemed not to know what came next. He only stood there. Dwight was looking over his own right shoulder, in an attempt to keep secure the area behind the tellers’ windows. And Burris could feel them hitting the buttons in there, could feel the silent hammering tremor of alarms moving under the world and up his legs.

  The guard posed in his bewilderment like wax.

  Burris was out of his seat and unaware of it, standing next to the car’s open door, an unarmed bandit wearing a false beard on the sidewalk before a bank. “Somebody kill that motherfucker,” he screamed.

  “Kill that son of a bitch,” Burris screamed.

  His brother was down. He cried from the pit of righteousness, “Kill that man!”

  And Bill Houston did.

  Now that the shooting was started, Bill Houston wanted it to go on forever. Holding his gun out toward the guard and firing was something like spraying paint—trying to get every spot covered. He wanted to make sure that no life was showing through. He didn’t want the guard to have any life left with which he might rise up and kill Bill Houston in return. When the guard was still, lying there at the open mouth of his C-shaped desk with his jaw hanging off to one side and the blood running down his neck and also back into his hair and his ear, Bill shot him twice more in his chest, and would have emptied the shotgun into the guard but caught himself up short, feeling he didn’t want to spend his shells, because shells were more precious than all the money that surrounded them now. The smoke of gunfire lay in sheets along the air around his head, where light played off the fountain’s pond and gave it brilliance. In the center of his heart, the tension of a lifetime dissolved into honey. He heard nothing above the ringing in his ears.