The Amateurs

by Marcus Sakey

  But to actively sell her out? Not just to promise the money in trade for his own life—not theirs, his—but then to tell them about the scissors she’d palmed? He’d killed her. And for what? He couldn’t possibly believe this guy would let them live.

  “Let’s go,” the man said. Ian stood and limped slowly toward the hallway, not looking at her. Coward. He started toward the kitchen, where an hour ago the three of them had planned to try to redeem their failures.

  “Sister, you follow right behind him.”

  Grimacing, she did as she was told. What was the point of this, anyway? Ian had promised all that was left of the money, more than two hundred thousand dollars. Which was impossible, because they had split—

  Wait.

  She looked up, clues snapping together with an almost audible click. At that same moment, she saw Ian stagger, fall against the wall with a hollow sound. For a moment he hung there, then he collapsed, hit the floor hard, not putting his hands out to catch himself. His limbs shook and twitched, arms and legs beating a pattern on the hardwood floor. He looked like he was having some sort of a fit, like demons had taken control of his body.

  “What is this happy horseshit,” the man said. “Get up.”

  For a bare half second, as Ian flopped to his back, his eyes opened and locked on hers, and in that moment, she knew what he was doing.

  “Get the fuck up.” The gun swiveling.

  “I think he’s having a seizure,” she said.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Let him choke,” she said.

  “You’re all heart.” The man hesitated, then took a wary step forward. “Hey.” He nudged at Ian with his shoe. “Hey.”

  The second time his foot touched Ian, the trader grabbed it with both hands, tucked it against his chest, and rolled. Caught off guard, the man’s knee buckled, and he came down hard onto Ian, who gasped at the weight. There was an explosion, loud and brilliant in the dim light of the hall, and drywall dust rained from a hole punched in her ceiling.

  The guy may have been taken off guard, but he reacted quickly, spinning his other knee onto solid ground and then bringing the pistol down. Ian saw it, grabbed for the gun with both hands. The man lashed out with a fast jab that cracked Ian’s jaw. On his back on the ground, her friend looked like a child, thin and waxy-skinned and bleeding from his mouth. No chance he could win.

  Not alone, anyway.

  She was starting forward when Ian rolled his head sideways and stared at her. The look couldn’t have lasted more than a fraction of a breath, but it burned into her retinas. He saw her step forward and gave a tiny shake of his head. His eyes were locked on hers. Pleading with her.

  His words on the couch came back to her, the ones she’d wondered about.

  If you know you’re only going to play once, or if there’s something truly important at stake, something larger. Then you betray. You make sure you get out.

  The emphasis on “you.” He had known what he was going to do then. He’d been telling her.

  And he’d been telling her that he had already made a choice. That he had weighed the factors and decided what was truly important. He wasn’t trying to win. He was trying to keep them from losing entirely. It wasn’t chivalry or some misguided attempt to protect her. He had simply treated it like a game. He had set the cost of his life against the pay-off of her getting to the police and decided that it was a good move.

  She stared at him. Thought about running to his aid, trying her kickboxing moves. An amateur against a professional; cardio classes against a lethal, armed criminal. As she watched, Ian took a vicious punch that snapped his face sideways, breaking their stare—and freeing the killer’s gun hand.

  And she realized what would happen if she tried and failed.

  Last game. If it’s the last game, and the stakes are high enough, there is only one thing to do.

  Jenn turned and sprinted for the door.

  ALEX LOOKED OVER MITCH’S SHOULDER, to where Victor held the cell phone, a smug expression on his face. Even from there, he could make out the picture. Jenn and Ian. Victor had them.

  They had failed. Completely. He’d even failed to protect Cassie. It wasn’t that he believed that the gas would actually be used on her. He wasn’t stupid, could run the odds. But Victor had as good as said it would end up used on someone like her. Some innocent child who chose the wrong day to go to the mall. Someone else’s daughter.

  “One more time, Mitch.” Victor’s voice was cold, but Alex could hear the anger beneath it. “Pick up the bag. Put the bottles in it. Now.”

  Mitch. His friend, his doppelganger, the flip side of his coin. His partner in defeat. Alex could see in his eyes that the man was beaten. Mitch, who always had a plan. Beaten. Slowly, like his body was a wooden puppet under someone else’s control, his friend bent down to retrieve the black duffel bag from the floor.

  Alex looked over at Johnny Love. His former boss’s hair was slicked back, but a clump had come loose and stood at odd attention. His smile was as slippery and self-satisfied as a television commercial lawyer’s. “I told you, kid. You don’t fuck with me.”

  Mitch reached a shaking hand forward. Picked up one of the bottles. Slid it into the bag.

  It was happening. It was really happening.

  They were going to let these two assholes walk out with chemical weapons. They were going to put them in the bag politely, hand it over, and wait for Johnny to shoot them.

  Or, maybe worse, wait for him not to. For him to walk away, and let them wonder when they would hear about sarin gas in a high school.

  No.

  Maybe they would be safe if they did nothing. But they would never be OK. They had to fight. Maybe it would cost them everything. Their lives. But it would be a cause worth dying for.

  Mitch put the second bottle in the bag.

  Alex gently slid one foot to the floor, shifted his weight, counting on Victor and Johnny to be watching Mitch.

  If only they had a weapon. He remembered throwing the guns in the river, the heft of each and the plunk as they splashed into dark water. He would have given his arm to have one of them now. For a weapon of any sort: a knife, the baseball bat Jenn kept under her bed. A weapon, one little weapon. That was the only thing that was holding them back, keeping the odds from being even. A weapon—

  Mitch put the third bottle into the bag.

  Holy shit.

  Alex would have laughed if it wouldn’t have slowed him down. Instead he slid off the stool, turned to grab it by the back, spun hard, and hurled the thing at Johnny.

  It was a clumsy throw, awkward and overfast, and Johnny sidestepped easily, raising the pistol. But dodging had distracted him, and Alex put everything into a lunge, his shoulder down, feet scrabbling on the tile floor, the clean and perfect rush of motion, his insides piano-wire taut. He was going to tear Johnny apart, rip the smarmy fucker into pieces with his bare hands. Payback for a thousand minor indignities and one unforgivable sin. For Cassie.

  The pistol in Johnny’s hand spat flame twice.

  There was a sticky feeling like a thin finger poking through his belly, like a yellowed nail scraping through his intestines, and where it touched was agony beyond fire, and his feet were still moving, his momentum carrying him forward as he realized that he had been shot, that Johnny had hit him at least once, maybe twice, and that the gun was steadying again, centering on him, and everything disappeared but the gap, the horrifying gap between him and Johnny, six feet, five, the man so close he could almost see the pores on his nose—

  Another explosion.

  Alex staggered, his feet starting to tangle. His belly burned and his fingers were numb and his shoulder felt weak and he realized he had his tongue stuck between his lips and was biting it, and then he reached Johnny, the fat fuck’s face gone shiny. The pain was unreal, whirling and sharp, a spinning saw blade in his chest, ripping and tearing, and it took all his strength to lift his arms and clamp them on Johnny’s shoulders, th
en slide them around his back, to squeeze the man to him like they were dancing, Johnny’s aftershave sharp and chemical, mingling with the boxing-glove stench of his own sweat and a coppery smell from his chest, Johnny pinned with the gun between them, and then there was another explosion, this one muffled, and Alex felt part of his chest rip out his back and fly free and wet, and knew he was going to die.

  It was OK. It was for Cassie.

  He just had to do one thing first. One more thing.

  He had to trust Mitch.

  IAN SAW THE FIST COMING, couldn’t do anything about it, tried to close his mouth but only managed to get his tongue caught between his teeth as the blow hit. His head yanked sideways, white and black bursting. His fingers started to slip, and he made himself hold on, hold on, and he prayed that Jenn understood.

  And then he heard the sound of the front door opening and knew that he had won.

  “Fuck!” The man rose fast as a snake. With the last of his strength, Ian grabbed his calf. The man spun back, wound up, and unleashed a vicious kick. The foot exploded into his ribs with a crunching sound, and Ian’s grip broke. He flopped back on the floor, strength gone. His eyes were closed, but he heard the man stand up, his fast footfalls down the hall. But he had bought her something. Maybe enough.

  For a moment, he just breathed, every inhale agony. Then he heard steady footsteps. He opened his eyes, saw the man standing above him, shaking his head, a smile on his lips. “That was your big escape plan?”

  Ian tried to speak, coughed, blood and bile mingling in his mouth. He turned sideways and spit it on the floor. Looked back. “Yep.”

  “The money isn’t here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I give you credit for heart, brother. But you really are a fuck-up, you know that?”

  Ian coughed again. Stared at the barrel of the gun. “Yeah.” He smiled through broken lips. “But I’m working on it.”

  A finger moved on the trigger. There was a loud sound.

  And then there was nothing.

  MITCH’S HANDS WERE SWEATY on the plastic. His brain felt like a prisoner, walled away and forgotten as it screamed and threw itself against the bars of its cage. Every breath felt stolen.

  He put the third bottle in the bag, aware of every sensation, the way the zipper grated against his wrist, the cool of the plastic leaving his hand, the pressure of the edge of the bar against his stomach. Victor was smiling, a wolfish, ugly grin. The look of a man winking at you as he fucked your girlfriend.

  Then there was a squeak and a scrambling beside him, and his head whipped around to see Alex in motion, a bar stool hanging in the air like it was on wires, the big man surging forward at Johnny and his big chrome pistol. It lasted forever. The chair didn’t fly, it drifted, no kin to gravity, turning slowly, a play of light gleaming off the polished wood back. Alex was a freight train in slow motion, power and energy moving through jelly, shoulder down. The gun drifting lazily as Johnny took a step sideways to avoid the stool.

  The sound was incredibly loud and terribly familiar. It jolted him, shook that secret center of him that was all he really was. The part that wore the rest of him like clothing.

  A gunshot, just like the one he had heard in the alley, when he sighted down the barrel at the man on the ground and pulled the trigger.

  A second blast followed, and a third. They sounded crass, unnecessary. Alex took the shots like a charging boxer tagged by jabs, slowed but not stopped, his body rippling where he was hit. And then he was on Johnny, had the man pinned in a bear hug, and Mitch wanted to howl, to scream his friend’s name.

  The fourth shot was muffled, and a piece of Alex’s body blew out the back of him to spatter on the bar.

  The moment broke like a mirror.

  Mitch had the last bottle, felt the heft of it, light for so much death, but heavy enough in his hand. He turned to Victor, saw his mask crumbling. The man stood directly opposite him, a dark shape against the rows of glowing bottles, whiskey and tequila and vodka and gin standing side by side like soldiers. He thought about jumping the bar but saw Victor’s hands moving, realized he must be going for a gun. Thought of dropping to the floor, into the safety of a child hiding beneath a bed. Thought about rushing to help Alex, and turned to do it, only to see a twisting mass of bodies, Alex and Johnny, spinning and sliding and falling. Tumbling toward him. Somehow Alex, shot more than once, had kept hold of Johnny and yanked him toward the bar, the two of them embracing like lovers.

  They slammed into the bar beside him, still scrabbling, Johnny red-faced and furious, spit flying from his lips as he yelled, a grunt of effort and pain, struggling to get his arms free. A moan wrenched from Alex at the impact. His skin skim milk. Mitch couldn’t believe the man was still standing, that his reserves of strength and fury and shock had given him the power to hold on, to drag Johnny here. Some part of him wondered why, what the point of the gesture was, whether it was a plan or just a reaction.

  Victor’s hand behind his back.

  Alex slumped, Johnny starting to push away from him. His friend’s head lolled, eyes wild. Staring. Staring at Mitch, and then lower. His lips moved, nothing coming out at first. Then a sound. A plea. The words more gasped than spoken.

  “Do it.”

  His eyes staring at Mitch but not. The will draining from his friend’s body like oil from a punctured drum. Johnny started to push himself free.

  Do what?

  He looked where Alex was staring. To the bottle in his hand.

  Words in his mind.

  Ian: Apparently, if you’re the kind of evil fuck who makes chemical weapons, you make them in two parts.

  Alex: No wonder you freaked when you saw me drinking.

  Jenn: Guess the Thursday Night Club isn’t done yet.

  Victor’s hand swinging around, a blur of something black in his grip.

  And for a moment, it all made sense. Every step of the confused dance that had brought them here. Every wrong move. A pattern that he had never suspected, like something had been conducting them toward this moment, playing each of them like an instrument, point and counterpoint, building to this crescendo.

  Mitch turned at the waist, the bottle in his hand held parallel to the bar. His mind split, part of it cool and focused, the rest of the world gone away, nothing but this motion. The other part screening moments from his life. His father teaching him to ride a bike down leaf-shaded streets. Sunlight and Jimi Hendrix and the spray of water as he leaned back in a friend’s speedboat smashing the waves of Lake Michigan. The first snow of a forgotten winter, walking past the bookshop on Broadway as soft faint white fell around him. The cello curve of Jenn’s sleeping body in the moonlight.

  He spun and hurled the bottle at the bar back with everything he had. It wasn’t just his arm that threw. It was his whole life. Everything he was, everything he had ever hoped to be, put into one perfect motion.

  It could have flown a mile. Could have sailed into the limitless night and blown by the moon.

  Until it hit the wall of shimmering bottles above Victor’s head and exploded, plastic and glass cracking and shattering, the force of the motion driving everything against the mirrored wall an inch back and then rebounding, the geometric precision of liquid spattering in perfect globes, a slow-motion film of a bottle hit by a bullet, the invisible immutable rules of the world taking over, a shower of spray rebounding, an arc like a dying sprinkler.

  And through it all, his mind still showing the things that had made up his life. His mother fussing over his prom tuxedo. His ’86 LeBaron with the crooked-smile bumper. The kick of the pistol in his hand and the primal joy he had been afraid to acknowledge.

  The night the four of them met.

  Right here, at this same spot in this same bar. The recognition each had felt in the other, that strange glow of assumed camaraderie that came from nothing but some inner certainty that here were friends, that whatever was to come, however they might fail one another, they shared this sense of ne
wfound completion, of being made whole.

  Mitch was laughing as the liquid rained down on them all.

  CHAPTER 34

  LATER, Jenn Lacie would spend a lot of time trying to pinpoint the exact moment.

  There was a time before, she was sure of that. When she was free and young and, on a good day, maybe even breezy. Looking back was like looking at the cover of a travel brochure for a tropical getaway, some island destination featuring a smiling girl in a sundress and a straw hat, standing calf-deep in azure water. The kind of place she used to peddle but had never been.

  And of course, there was the time after. And all the days yet to come.

  There was never just one picture, one clear moment. Everything came in juttering fits and starts, all of it snarled, one circumstance leading into another. Untangling it would be no simple feat. But it seemed important to try. That was her work now. Her tribute.

  Tonight, though, the moment she kept coming back to was the flash of a second when Ian was on the ground and their eyes met. When she had realized what he was doing. When they committed to the right thing, even if it was hard. Yanking open her front door, sprinting down the steps, abandoning him there, that had been hard.

  There had been crazy adrenaline, an energy unlike anything she had ever known. She had run with everything in her. She’d wanted to look back but hadn’t dared, just leaned into it, legs flying long and free as she sprinted toward Clark. There would be people on the street, and cars. Even if the man followed her, she knew she could make it.

  It was when she heard the muffled crack from behind her that she almost screwed up. She’d known what it was. What it meant. Ian had gone all-in.

  The feeling that climbed from her belly to her lungs to her mouth was raw and horrible, a recognition that life had stakes, consequences, and that they were playing for them. And with it, a furious anger at the forces that had come into her life, into her house, that had killed her friend. The rage made her fingers tremble, and for a moment, she wanted more than anything to stop. To hide behind a parked car and wait for the man to chase her. To turn from prey to predator, snapping a hard kick into his belly that dropped him to the ground. Then kick him again and again and again, kick until her toes were broken and there was nothing left to kill.