by Lou Berney
“Donald.”
“What?”
“Look at me. Why did they kill everyone but me?”
Finally Donald looked up. He wiped his nose with the cuff of his shirt. The cuff was already filthy. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You have to know.”
“I don’t, Heinz. I swear. They weren’t supposed to hurt anyone! Dale said that! He swore! Nobody gets hurt.”
He shook his head again. His big head, his skinny neck. Donald’s neck was so skinny that Wyatt thought he could grab it with one hand, he could squeeze slowly, he could squeeze until there was nothing there.
Wyatt scooted the chair another inch closer. “Think,” he said. “What did they say? Did one of them know me?”
“No. I don’t know. I know that Dale never went down to the theater. Before that night, I mean. He said . . . he said it was safer that way. He said he was being careful.”
Wyatt had been too young to pass for eighteen, so he’d never set foot in the bar upstairs. But had he crossed paths with Dale on the mall escalator? In the parking lot?
Had they exchanged a few words? What words?
“Did you hear them say anything, Donald?” Wyatt said. “Can you remember any detail? The smallest thing might matter. Why would they kill everyone but me?”
Donald wiped his nose again. He bit his bottom lip. His effort to remember seemed genuine.
Wyatt waited. Donald started crying again.
“I don’t know, Heinz,” he said. “I really don’t.”
Wyatt stood. He carried the metal folding chair back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Inside were a few cans of Coors Light and a half-empty package of cotto salami. He went back to the living room. Donald was watching him.
“Are you going to turn me in?” he said.
Wyatt couldn’t tell if he looked hopeful or hopeless.
“Shut up,” Wyatt said.
“I should have turned myself in. But I didn’t know— After the police killed Dale and his psycho friends, I didn’t think that—”
“Shut up.”
Wyatt knew he could turn Donald in, but what was the point? Every single day I wake up. Wyatt didn’t find it hard to believe Donald when he said how crappy his life had been for the past twenty-six years.
It was an odd sort of numbness that Wyatt felt. He still didn’t hate Donald. He didn’t pity him. He just felt a profound, empty indifference.
“I’m so sorry, Heinz,” Donald said. “I’m so sorry. I swear. After they drove off, Dale and his psycho friends, I tried to stop it. You remember! I tried to warn him.”
“I remember?” Wyatt said. He didn’t know what Donald was talking about. “I remember what?”
“You answered the phone when I called! I was calling to warn him! But I couldn’t do it. Dale said I was in the mix now, whether I liked it or not. One of Dale’s friends, the really psycho one, said I was a dead man if I said anything to anyone. They knew where I lived. When I bailed, when I was walking back to my car, I thought they were going to shoot me.”
Wyatt thought back. The night of the murders, the pay phone in the lobby rang just after the ten o’clock show started to roll. Wyatt had answered.
“Pheasant Twin,” he’d said.
“Who is this?”
Wyatt had recognized the voice. He’d wondered why Donald was calling Mr. Bingham in the lobby and not in the office like he usually did.
“Heinz speaking,” Wyatt had said, just before Mr. Bingham pounced and grabbed the receiver. Mr. Bingham was always trying to catch them in the act of using the lobby pay phone for personal calls, but tonight the tables were turned—the personal call was for him.
“It’s your friend,” Wyatt had told Mr. Bingham pointedly. “Pet Shop Boy.”
“I was going to warn him, but I couldn’t,” Donald said now. “I’m so sorry. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
Nobody was supposed to get hurt.
Wyatt tried to guess how many times over the years Donald had told himself that. Not enough times, apparently.
“Why didn’t you call the office phone?” Wyatt said.
Donald lifted his face out of his hands. Confused. “What?”
Wyatt didn’t really care why Donald had called the lobby pay phone instead of the office phone. But it was one answer at least that he knew Donald could give him.
“When you called Mr. Bingham to warn him. Why didn’t you call the office?”
Donald seemed even more confused now. “I wasn’t calling Tim,” he said. “I was calling O’Malley.”
Wyatt didn’t understand. “O’Malley? Why were you calling O’Malley?”
“To warn him! To tell him it was getting out of hand! I’d told him that before, a couple of times, but he always said don’t worry, he had it under control. He said we could trust Dale. But he didn’t know about Dale’s psycho friends! Don’t you see? O’Malley only knew Dale. He didn’t know that Dale’s friends were going to show up until that night.”
Wyatt felt his brain suddenly cut out—the machinery seized up, all the spinning flywheels and humming belts froze in place. For a second, Wyatt was just gliding, silently coasting off the edge of a cliff into the bright blue nothing.
“You’re saying— What the fuck are you saying?” Wyatt said.
“O’Malley wanted there to be two robbers, me and Dale,” Donald said. “With the rubber masks? He said if it was just me, just one person, it wouldn’t be badass enough.”
Wyatt remembered what Donald had said earlier: We were just going to scare Tim and make some serious money. Wyatt had assumed that “We” meant Donald and Dale Earl Barrett.
Wyatt was still gliding, soaring—nothing above or below him.
“You’re telling me O’Malley was part of it?” he said. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not! I swear! It was O’Malley’s idea.”
Donald shrank back. Wyatt realized he was standing over him, fists clenched so tightly they throbbed.
“You’re lying,” he said. “That’s ridiculous. Why would O’Malley do something like that?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. All he ever said to me— He said it would be a hoot. He said we’d scare Tim and make some money.”
“No. O’Malley wouldn’t do something like that.”
“I know he was in kind of a bad mood that summer. The end of that summer.”
“What?” Now Wyatt knew for sure that Donald was lying. O’Malley was never in a bad mood. “Why was he in a bad mood?”
Donald shrugged. “He didn’t talk to me about things like that. I just know he said we’d scare Tim and make some serious money.”
“No. There’s no way O’Malley would ever— They murdered him. They put a gun to his head and blew his brains out. If he was part of it, then why—”
“I don’t know. Nobody was supposed to—”
Wyatt grabbed the collar of Donald’s dress shirt and heaved him to his feet. Donald weighed nothing. When Wyatt shoved him against the wall, though, the wall shook, the foam-core Midas sign flopped to the carpet.
“Okay, listen to me,” Wyatt said. “I know you’re lying, Donald. You’re trying to make yourself feel better about what happened. You trying to save whatever fraction of your sorry soul is still left. I understand that, but if you don’t stop lying, right now—”
“Okay!” Donald said. “I am. I’m sorry. I am lying. It was me. It was my idea all along.”
His eyes were wide, searching Wyatt’s face. He tried to smile.
Wyatt held his collar tight. The fabric cut into Donald’s neck, lifting his chin high.
“It was all you, wasn’t it? Not O’Malley.”
“No. I mean yes.”
Wyatt knew O’Malley. He knew him like a brother. Ther
e was no possible way O’Malley could have conceived a plan so crazy, so reckless, so dangerous.
But Donald, Wyatt realized, could not have conceived it either. Idiot Pet Shop Boy? No. The mastermind behind the robbery had to be Dale Earl Barrett. It was his plan, and he’d recruited Donald to help him carry it out.
Why, though, would he do that? Dale Earl Barrett was a hardened ex-con. Why would he recruit someone like Donald to help him rob the movie theater? Donald was the last person on earth he’d recruit.
Did Dale Earl Barrett know that Donald was friends with Mr. Bingham? Did he know that Donald had easy access to Mr. Bingham’s keys? Did he know that that Donald was not too bright and easily manipulated, always trying to raise capital for his next big loony, can’t-miss venture?
O’Malley knew all that.
“I can’t breathe very well,” Donald said.
Wyatt released his collar. Donald sank back to the sofa.
We were just going to scare Tim and make some serious money.
Donald had no reason to scare his only friend in the world. It was O’Malley who thought Mr. Bingham was a pompous prick, who was always looking for ways to— How did O’Malley put it? Dupe and bamboozle the Little Cheese.
“You’re lying, Donald,” Wyatt said.
“Yes. I swear.”
Wyatt thought about that night at the pool, a couple of weeks before the murders, when Theresa did a handstand underwater and O’Malley suggested they reverse the peephole in Mr. Bingham’s office door.
When a man in a mask knocked on the office door the night of the murders, Mr. Bingham had not been able to see out. He would have assumed that the knocker was Grubb or Melody or Karlene. He would have unbolted the office door and opened it.
“I wish they’d killed me,” Donald said. “I wish they’d shot me in the back when I bailed. I’m so sorry.”
Wyatt didn’t answer. He picked up the Midas sign and propped it back against the wall.
“Later, Donald,” he said, and headed to the door.
WYATT HAD THE cabdriver drive west on Memorial Road until the city fell away behind them. Then back east, past Frontier City amusement park. From there southwest to the First Christian Church on the edge of Crown Heights, a giant white spaceship egg that had been built in the 1950s and known at one time as the “Church of Tomorrow.”
The cabdriver didn’t complain. The meter ran. He was making a killing.
Just a few blocks from the Church of Tomorrow, on Western, was Fairlawn Cemetery. Wyatt found a groundskeeper with a long beard the color of old charcoal. Denim overalls, a stoop, a squint.
“How do,” the groundskeeper said.
“I’m looking for the man who killed the man who killed Jesse James,” Wyatt said.
The groundskeeper used the handle of his rake to point Wyatt in the general direction. After ten minutes of searching, Wyatt located the simple stone that marked the grave. Sure enough:
EDWARD O’KELLEY
1858–1904
THE MAN WHO KILLED
THE MAN WHO KILLED JESSIE JAMES
Wyatt looked up. Yes, he was pretty sure of it. They had played midnight Frisbee right around here.
O’Malley’s grave was on the other side of the cemetery. Wyatt walked halfway over and then decided that was far enough. He found himself out of breath, light-headed. He sat on a bench beneath a redbud tree and swallowed another pair of painkillers.
He tried to imagine how it might have happened. O’Malley going upstairs to barter movie passes for booze, striking up a conversation with the guy at the end of the bar. O’Malley wouldn’t have been intimidated by someone like Dale Earl Barrett. O’Malley was never intimidated. He would have been intrigued.
O’Malley already had the idea for the robbery. But he was unsatisfied. A single robber, Pet Shop Boy, wasn’t badass enough, wasn’t dramatic enough, wasn’t loud enough. When O’Malley met Dale Earl Barrett, he’d spotted an opportunity to crank up the volume.
That was O’Malley for you. That was why everyone loved him. He always cranked up the volume.
The cemetery groundskeeper moseyed past.
“Find it?” he said.
“Yes.”
The groundskeeper nodded and moseyed on.
Wyatt took off his suit jacket. The sun felt good. The sun and the painkillers.
He thought he understood why O’Malley had not played the role of the second robber himself. Because, of course, he was too smart for that. O’Malley, who’d figured out countless ways to pilfer concession-stand candy and movie passes without getting caught. Who’d devised an elaborate scheme to palm tickets and hand back previously torn stubs, so he could resell the intact tickets and pocket the cash.
If anything went wrong during the robbery, O’Malley would have a bulletproof alibi. Donald would take the fall and O’Malley would deny everything.
Wyatt thought about the day they’d all gone skiing on Lake Dirtybird, O’Malley gunning the boat so close to the shoreline that Wyatt could feel the scrape beneath the hull, could see the horizon line start to tilt.
Afterward no one could figure out how to get the trailer hitch locked again, so they drove all the way back from Norman with the coupler resting precariously on the ball. That worked fine on the highway, but once they hit surface streets, every big bump or pothole would bounce the trailer. The boat would veer off onto the shoulder, a few times barely missing an oncoming car. O’Malley, laughing, started to steer toward the bumps and potholes.
O’Malley.
Wyatt had survived a knife to the chest. He’d survived a mass murder. He didn’t know if he’d be able to survive this. He didn’t know if he wanted to.
O’Malley had been surprised when the storeroom door banged open, when the killers herded them all upstairs to the projection booth. None of that was part of the plan. Wyatt realized that O’Malley had started the new tradition, gathering in the storeroom to toast the end of a shift, so he and the rest of the crew would be out of the way when the robbers robbed Bingham.
O’Malley must have wondered why there were three robbers, not two, and why one of them was not tall, skinny Pet Shop Boy. But O’Malley played along anyway. He didn’t understand what was about to happen until it was too late, everyone lined up on the floor of the booth, their hands tied behind their backs. That’s when he’d tried to turn over and sit up.
“Wait a second,” he’d said. O’Malley had great faith in his ability to talk his way out of anything. It had never let him down. “Just listen.”
Earlier that night O’Malley had been standing next to Wyatt when Donald called the lobby pay phone.
What if Mr. Bingham hadn’t snatched the phone away? What if Wyatt had handed the phone to O’Malley and Donald had been able to warn him about Dale’s psycho friends? Would the night have ended differently?
Wyatt doubted it. If he knew O’Malley—and who knew O’Malley like Wyatt did?—O’Malley would have told Donald to chill out, everything would be cool. Never fear! Because weren’t three robbers even better than two? O’Malley could just imagine the look on Mr. Bingham’s face.
Who knew O’Malley like Wyatt did? Wyatt supposed he didn’t know him at all.
The cemetery groundskeeper moseyed past again.
“All right?” he said.
“Just fine, thanks.”
Was that why Wyatt was still alive? Did the killers confuse Wyatt with O’Malley? Was it O’Malley who was supposed to survive, and not Wyatt?
That couldn’t be right, though. Dale Earl Barrett knew O’Malley well. They’d planned the robbery together. In the projection booth, Dale Earl Barrett was the one who told O’Malley to shut up. He was the one who brought the shotgun down on O’Malley’s head.
The sun and the gin and the painkillers—Wyatt felt weightless, transparent. The next time t
he groundskeeper moseyed past, maybe he’d notice an odd shadow on the cemetery bench, nothing more.
There was no answer, Wyatt realized. There were answers, but no good ones. And there never would be. He could choose to accept that or not.
“Why me?” he’d asked Theresa that day they sat on the hood of her old yellow Skylark watching the sun set, watching the colors eddy and roll among the clouds.
Because why.
Julianna
CHAPTER 29
The sun was out, a beautiful November afternoon. But chillier than it looked, especially when you weren’t moving, when you stood still on a low rise with only a few trees to block the wind. Julianna had left her leather jacket at home. She regretted it.
Ariel hadn’t worn a jacket either, or even a sweater. She was in a shimmering red top with a keyhole back. She looked like she’d just stopped by Forever 21 before a night out in Vegas.
“I don’t know where the giraffes are,” Ariel said. “Fickle fuckers. Cross my heart, sometimes they really do come right up to the fence, close enough that you can smell their breath. It’s so sweet.”
“Aren’t you freezing?” Julianna asked.
“You’re standing in the shade. You picked like the one tree for miles around to stand under.”
Julianna realized it was true. She stepped into the sunshine.
“Come on,” Ariel said. “I know where we can go.”
She led Julianna down the hill, across the tracks for the kiddie train. They turned onto a wide walkway that curved past the rhino paddock.
Julianna hadn’t been to the Oklahoma City Zoo since she was a child, a school trip. She was old enough to remember the concrete pit that used to be just past the main entrance. Inside the pit was a replica of a sunken pirate ship, teeming with small monkeys. The monkeys climbed the mast and swung from the rigging. They took public poops that made the kids laugh.
“Here,” Ariel said. “We can get warm in here.”
They entered a building that was humid and pungent. On the other side of floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas windows, a gorilla family loafed outside in the sunshine.
