Shaker

by Scott Frank

  Science watched as Alonzo Zarate finally left his apartment a few minutes after two p.m. and got into a yellow Mini Cooper. Science waited for him to drive off, then went around to the front of the building, a two-story four-plex, and climbed the outside stairs to Zarate’s unit on the second floor. There was a window beside the door and it took Science all of a minute to get it open and haul himself through it.

  The apartment was a dim affair with that single grimy window in the front room for light. The beige couch and the green bean bag chair looked like they had been there since the early eighties, the new fifty-inch Samsung flat screen leaning against the wall standing out like a sore thumb. No doubt, Science assumed, purchased with the green the man got off selling his eyewitness video to CNN.

  Science moved to the back bedroom and looked out the window at the alley below, every inch of it now crammed with flowers and balloons. Science pulled out his phone and took a few pictures. They had cleaned up the blood and the brain matter from the wall, but Science thought he could still see a dark stain there and took a few pics of that, too. Zarate, the lucky fucker, certainly had the choice view that night.

  Science wondered how long the man had been up here watching, and if he’d seen them playing Russian Roulette?

  That’s how it got started. All of them just sitting in the alley budding out, listening to music. They’d each brought a gun with them that night and were anxious to shoot something. They were thinking about turning out a party down the block—they’d gotten word there were enemy Mara Salvatruchas over there—when L, bent off his nut, emptied his gun, save one slug, and put it to his head.

  None of them thought he’d pull the trigger, so when he did, and they heard what would be the first click! of the night, they all went apeshit. Zarate might very well have heard them laughing as they couldn’t stop for about ten minutes.

  Shake was all like, “Righteous,” but Science knew that he as The Science Man had to do better than that. He held his hand out for the gun and said, “Give it up, Loc.”

  L passed the strap to him and Science put it to his head and without hesitating pulled the trigger.

  Another click.

  More laughter.

  Science said, “You’re up, dude,” and placed the gun in Shake’s hand.

  The fat kid tried to pass it back and said, “You’re all sprung. No fucking way.”

  “You ain’t punkin’ out, are you, faggot?”

  Shake said, “Fuck you, cuz. Two empties been tapped already.”

  “So spin it,” L said. “And maybe it lands on an empty and maybe it doesn’t. Or maybe it’s on one right now and you fuckin’ play yourself.”

  Shake stared at the gun, did whatever math would steel him up, and put the gun to his head, but then at the last second pointed it up at the sky and pulled the trigger.

  Zarate for sure heard that gunshot. It was loud in the alley, so close that Science’s ears were ringing. Shake stared at the smoking gun, doing a new kind of math now. Something had just passed through him. A new feeling. Science could see it. The boy would be wired for the rest of the night for sure.

  “Ain’t no thing.”

  They all turned and watched Truck come off the wall across the alley and take the gun from Shake. “You think you lucky, cuz?” He dumped the spent shell, picked up one of the bullets by L’s feet, and loaded it into the gun. Thought for a moment, then loaded another. And then another. He spun it and put the muzzle in his mouth and bit down. They all flinched when he pulled the trigger.

  Truck pulled the muzzle free and smiled. “Clickety click click.”

  He then pointed the gun upward and pulled the trigger twice, Science’s ears ringing out once more at the two loud shots that now smoked up the alley. No doubt Zarate heard that.

  Truck tossed the gun back to L, picked up his MAC 10 where he’d left it. They sat there in silence as Truck left the alley and disappeared into the dark to go take a piss or smoke or do whatever it was he did when he wandered off. Science traded looks with the other two, and they all once more burst out laughing. L turned up the music.

  “What’s going on here?”

  And there was the old guy, shifting from one foot to another in his little jogging outfit, huffing and puffing at the mouth of the alley, looking pissed off.

  “I heard a gunshot,” he said. “What are you boys getting up to?”

  They laughed at him, waved him on. Get the fuck outta here.

  But he wouldn’t leave. Instead he squinted at them and said, “I don’t recognize any of you. You don’t live in this neighborhood, do you?”

  Shake said, “Move the fuck on, Herb. This ain’t your shit.”

  Not about to be blown off by them or anyone, the old man didn’t move, so they just shrugged and ignored him. Played their music and hit the blunt. Laughing about Truck and the fuckin’ meat that boy had, put a gat in his mouth like that.

  “You know what your problem is?”

  They turned and fuck if that fucking Herb wasn’t still there. Only now he started walking at them, pointing a long finger like he was Uncle fucking Sam.

  “You have no incentive. You know what that is? Incentive? It means that you have no drive. You’re always looking for someone to put something in your hand.”

  What the fuck? None of them knew what to say to that. None of them even knew what he was talking about.

  A pumped-up Shake finally said, “I got something in my hand,” and held up his gun and pointed it at the man. “And it’s fuckin hot and hard and it’s gonna blow your fuckin’ head off.”

  And that was that.

  —

  Science spent the next hour rummaging around Zarate’s shitty little apartment, his efforts rewarded with a Raven MP .25 automatic in a drawer beside the bed, as well as a new hunting knife, still in the box it came in. He put them both in his pockets and sat down at Zarate’s laptop.

  The world’s most famous Witness of the Week had a file on his computer labeled “Scrap Book” that linked to all of his interviews both in print and on TV. There was a draft of a Wiki page that mentioned, among other things, Zarate’s associate’s degree in accounting from DeVry University and a blue belt in Tae Kwon Do. But Science was more interested in the dozen or so pictures of a girl who looked Filipino in her underwear posing all around the apartment.

  Science’s stomach started growling, so he went into the crappy little kitchen and ate a couple bowls of Golden Grahams and washed them down with a Mountain Dew. He then kicked back on what turned out to be the greasiest couch he’d ever sat on and turned on the new flat screen, passing the time watching a couple episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants and the last hour of The Wrestler before finally nodding off.

  He woke up sometime later to Alonzo Zarate kicking at his Timbos and screaming at him.

  “What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

  Science yawned and sat up. “It’s not a house, cuz. It’s an apartment.”

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  “Ain’t you gonna call the po-po first,” Science asked. “Tell ’em you got an intruder?”

  That stopped the dude.

  “What?”

  Science leaned back on the couch. “Go on, hit 911,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

  Zarate looked at him, cut a quick look at the bedroom, no doubt thinking about that jammy in the nightstand. So Science put his arm up on the back of the couch, opening his jacket so that Zarate could see the gun in his waist.

  “You little fucker—is that mine?”

  “Make the call, cuz.”

  Zarate looked at him and said, “You are so fucked,” and then took out his phone and dialed 911. Waiting for them to pick up, he asked, “Do you know who I am?”

  “No, but now that you mention it, I thought you looked kinda familiar? You famous?”

  Zarate shook his head and put the phone to his ear. “You are really fucked.” He stared at Science while he continued to wait for an operator to pick up. Elev
en, twelve fucking rings. It was maddening. Someone finally answered and Zarate said, “Some asshole’s in my apartment and he won’t leave.”

  Science said, “I’m famous, too,” and pulled the Raven out, waved it at Zarate. “Be sure and tell ’em I got a gun.”

  Zarate stared at him as he said to the operator, “I don’t know—he was here when I got here.”

  “Tell ’em.”

  Zarate said, “He’s got a gun,” and seemed to finally see Science for the first time, recognition freezing his face.

  “I know who you are—”

  Science shot him three quick times, the gun jerking in his hand, sending each shot higher than the one before, the last .25 caliber slug hitting Zarate in the left eye.

  If Science had missed the irony a few hours earlier when he had taken his own cell phone shots of the alley, he got it now when he stood up over the wheezing Zarate and said, “Witness that, mothafucka” and shot him in the other eye.

  It was dark when Science came out of the apartment, but he still didn’t run so as not to get anybody looking his way. He found Zarate’s Mini Cooper parked around the corner and was unlocking the door when fuck it if he didn’t see Mr. Freeze standing across the street.

  Science didn’t move. He was pretty sure that the man hadn’t seen him, because he didn’t move either. He was just standing there, still as an oak, staring at the alley. After about ten minutes of this, he finally turned and started walking away from Science up the street.

  Science worried that the way things were going, if he didn’t do something about it right now, he would continue to bump into this dude every day for the rest of his life.

  He watched Mr. Freeze get into a car and pull out. Science jumped into Zarate’s Mini and, after a minute of figuring out how to start it, took off after him. Science wasn’t much of a driver to begin with, and the Mini had a manual transmission, so it took some doing to keep up with the other car. Science’s older brother Guy had given him a lesson one afternoon in his Nissan, but that was a while ago and Science was rusty. The little Mini stalled out every time they reached a red light. Science was sure the drivers honking their horns behind him would get him made, but Mr. Freeze kept right on going.

  It wasn’t much easier when they got on the 101 and headed east toward downtown. Twice Science stalled when the traffic stopped, but soon he got the hang of it and discovered that if he just kept the car in second gear the whole way, he’d be fine.

  Zarate had the radio tuned to some talk radio station and Science was about to change it when the topic of Frank Peres’s murder came up. There was a lot of speculation as to what happened that night. Even more about the deviants who shot him and just what they were up to that night. There was mention of some shit that had happened in New York’s Central Park a million years ago and another caller brought up a similar incident in Long Beach. The consensus was that these uneducated little thugs in North Hollywood had no idea that they were beating and then murdering the next mayor of L.A. That maybe Kelly Maguire had been crude and insensitive, but she wasn’t wrong.

  Oddly enough, Science wasn’t upset. He felt that same sense of certainty he had the other night. This was just like the rest of it. Where he was, in this car, right now. It was fate.

  A few cars ahead, Mr. Freeze suddenly got off onto the 110 toward Pasadena and Dodger Stadium. Science veered into the exit lane after him and dug into his pocket for his phone.

  Roy spent a couple of nights in a couple of different shitty motels in North Hollywood and Reseda before stealing a white Honda Civic from the car wash on Cahuenga Boulevard and driving from there to Martin Shine’s apartment. He would keep the car for an hour and then steal another off the street near Shine’s place. But when Roy pulled up to the boatlike building and saw the yellow tape crisscrossing Shine’s front door, he knew it didn’t matter whether he got picked up in this car or another one just like it.

  For all of his experience and caution the past twenty years, he had made a careless mistake and would now almost certainly go down for it.

  He had hoped to come pick up the body and dump it somewhere on the way out of the city, but clearly that option was no longer available. The only reason he’d left Shine there to begin with was because there was no DNA, no witness, and, therefore, no way to connect Roy Cooper to Martin Shine in any way.

  But by now Kelly Maguire would surely have figured out that the bullets in Martin Shine and Frank Peres came from the same gun, the bodies falling a mere two blocks away from each other. And while Roy had that gun once more in his possession, he knew that it didn’t matter. Science or, more likely, one of the other little gangsters would certainly get picked up and eventually talk about where it had come from.

  For the first time, Roy, the invisible man, had been made.

  He drove around the corner and found the alley without any trouble. How had he gotten so lost that night? Even in the dark, it made no sense. He parked in the same spot he had left his rental car and got out. He looked at all of the flowers and balloons that had been left in the alley across the street.

  Where would he go? Where could he go? He could hide, he knew how to hide. But when he thought about it, it was probably too late for that as well. He couldn’t leave just yet anyway. The only thing he really cared about was the game at Dodger Stadium later that night. Once he saw The Kid break the record, and Roy knew that he would, he didn’t much care what happened after that. Bust him, kill him—it was all the same to Roy.

  But then he thought about the last call he had with Rita and Harvey two days earlier. He was sound asleep in a place called the Star Light Inn in Reseda when his phone rang.

  “Good-bye, son.”

  “Harvey?”

  “Rita and me are going away.”

  “When?”

  “Right now. Today. But I wanted you to know that you’re on your own. Don’t come back here.”

  Roy could hear Rita in the background telling Harvey to hang the fuck up, they gotta go.

  “You’ll be fine, Roy. You always have been.”

  And then Rita’s voice, He’s not gonna be fucking fine. Quit telling him that. Gimme the fucking phone. And then she was on.

  “Albert’s coming.”

  Roy took that in.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you.”

  “He just called here,” she said. “He knows you’re still breathing and he’s coming for you. And then, of course, he’ll come for us.”

  Roy said, “I didn’t know that he was alive.”

  “Sure, you did. A part of you had to.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “What would have been the point?”

  “I can think of a few.”

  “You fucked us, Roy, like I always knew you would.”

  “Good-bye, Rita.”

  “Good-bye to you, too. I hope that psychotic French cunt finds you and turns you the fuck off forever.”

  “Albert’s Canadian.”

  “Fuck you, Roy.”

  And she was gone.

  As if the ground in L.A. hadn’t been shaking enough, now Albert had to show up. Roy knew that no one who had come into contact with Roy would be safe now. That’s how Albert worked. It was, after all, what Albert had taught him: When in doubt, kill everybody.

  Roy got back in the car, took out his phone, and Googled Dodger Stadium. It took him a few minutes, but he managed to start the active map and pulled out, ignoring Science in the yellow Mini Cooper behind him. Science was no longer his problem. If Albert knew that Roy was alive and well, his first move would surely be to wipe out everything Roy cared about, regardless of who else might get blown away in the process. It was the “who else” Roy worried about most. And for that reason alone, he had to get to Dodger Stadium before Albert did.

  For nearly twelve years, Roy, Albert, and Bob Spetting lived on Harvey Cooper’s farm in Higginsville several miles north of Slaughterhouse Bend, not far from where the Armour plant
had been. The three of them would often drive to nearby Concordia or Sedalia to get drunk, or, less often, head east to Kansas City for a job.

  When Roy first met Harvey, his wife, Rita, had just begun a four-year sentence for embezzlement at the Kansas Prison for Women in Topeka. Harvey was lonely and depressed and, for a few years at least, glad to have them all there. But twelve years later he was ready to chase them all out at gunpoint. And if “the Danny Leone thing” hadn’t gone down the way it had in Waterloo, he probably would have.

  Harvey Cooper was an old-school B&E man who at sixty-two had gotten into guns as a way to fill the time between jobs. He customized weapons for an assortment of “made assholes” in Kansas City and Chicago, specializing in everything from shotguns to World War II–era German Lugers. At some point, he started making his own ammo that, along with his carefully reconditioned firearms, made him a favorite at gun shows throughout the Midwest.

  But Harvey’s first love was stealing shit. And soon he and the boys were making a good deal of money breaking into jewelry stores, pawnshops, and other establishments that kept a lot of cash overnight.

  Harvey, not Albert, was the leader of the Hole in the Wall Gang as they started calling themselves. So named not for Butch Cassidy, whom Albert and Bob had never heard of, but for Harvey’s penchant for finding the blind spots in alarm systems, blowing or cutting a hole in the wall, and simply walking right on through. Harvey’s particular stylistic hallmark also prompted his underworld handle, “Harvey Wallbanger.”

  Albert, of course, wanted to do more than rob pawnshops. As far back as Boonville, Albert had talked about getting into business with the mob in Kansas City. He had always felt that the real money was working for those guys, not for themselves. Harvey was reluctant. Right now they were in control of their own destiny. But that would go away the minute they became part of some “family.” He argued that no mobster would ever really trust them. They couldn’t get made. They would never see a fair share of anything.