Slices

by Michael Montoure

  His eyes kept flickering over to the bare mirror. He kept his rabbit’s foot hanging from the rear-view mirror in a car, always, even when people gave him shit about it, and he always insisted that he wasn’t superstitious, or anything, it was just his thing, you know? His shtick.

  But now he’d left it behind, forgotten it in his hurry to get rid of the last car. There was nothing on this mirror at all, and that unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. As if his luck would run out now. When in fact, it had plainly run out hours ago.

  “It’s not like we never killed anybody before.”

  Shut up, Craig, Gary didn’t say.

  A flash of red. His eyes dropped to the dashboard for a moment. Might have been the oil light. Or service engine soon.

  He glanced back at the road — nothing ahead but a straight empty black ribbon of highway — and then he stared at the dashboard again, like he was trying to read his future in the dials and gauges. No more lights, not at the moment. Answer unclear, ask again later, he thought.

  “What’s the matter?” Craig asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay, but — is that the engine?”

  “What?”

  “Listen.”

  This time, Gary heard it. Heard it for real.

  “I don’t think it’s the engine,” he said. “Sounds like it’s coming from the back.”

  “Something loose back there? You think?”

  “I guess.”

  “We’ll have to steal a better car next time, huh?” He giggled, and it was a sound like something had come loose inside him. “Better car next time.”

  “Sure, Craig. We will.”

  Car falling apart, Craig coming to the end of his goddamn rope, man lying dead in a ditch miles back and miles to go before they slept. And no damn rabbit’s foot in the car.

  Day couldn’t get much worse.

  They hadn’t slept at all, night before. Calling around trying to call in any favors they could and coming up empty.

  Seemed like fun at first. Their boss, Mr. Calhoun, he was a good guy. He never treated them like they were just drivers, just couriers. He let them hang out with him and his friends, drink some beers, shoot the shit. Regular guy.

  So Gary and Craig were in over their heads before they knew it. Hanging out with big time boys from out of town, drinking and bragging and placing bets.

  Gary thought this one was a sure thing, an absolutely sure thing. When he found out that Mr. Hiroshi, the boss’ guest from out of town, had a big bet on Johnny Grant, the boxer, he’d just laughed.

  This was Johnny’s big comeback match, but he’d had it. He was way past it, and everyone knew it. Everyone, that is, except Mr. Hiroshi.

  Unsmiling, he’d made a bet with Gary. A big bet. He’d talked Craig into going in on it with him. At those long odds, they thought it was stupid not to take the bet.

  Johnny won. Craig screamed and railed that it was fixed, that the other guy went down, but it didn’t matter.

  Here they were, three days, two convenience store robberies and one liquor store robbery later, on the road to Vegas with every single dollar they’d been able to lay hands on. Mr. Hiroshi had flown home, and Mr. Calhoun hadn’t said they had to get the money to him in person, but he had strongly suggested it, which was almost the same thing. He’d strongly suggested it would be a lot safer, in fact.

  That was then, this is now:

  Gary often forgot that there was anything to the world but coastlines and cities. He spent all his days sheltered in the shadows of skyscrapers, in wet, lush, green, rational places, like Vancouver or Seattle.

  This was high desert. Nothing recognizable. Rolling scrubland and sickly, pale green things that might have been trees, their bodies and branches snaking out in senseless looping waves.

  The only sign of habitation, besides the road, was the tumbledown wood-and-barbed-wire fence stretching out to either side, punctuated every mile or so by incomprehensible red-and-white plastic markers. Now and then he’d see some kind of building off in the distance, some barn or something like one, that someone had lashed together long ago and let the sun and wind beat down, and Gary would think, Jesus, someone tried to make it out here, someone tried to make something that would last, and he didn’t know whether to be impressed or just shake his head.

  “It’s getting worse,” Craig said, and for a moment Gary thought he meant the landscape.

  Then he asked, “What is?”

  “That banging.” There it was. “That’s worse. I think that’s — oh, fuck, I know what that is.”

  Gary didn’t say anything.

  Craig turned and stared. “There’s somebody back there.”

  Gary’s eyes widened. “In the trunk?”

  Craig nodded frantically.

  “Bullshit. You’re just — ”

  “No, no, listen. You weren’t there, right? Driving for Fat Larry, that one time, taking that dumb sonofabitch who talked to the press down to the waterfront. Larry had him taped up in the trunk and he thrashed around and kicked and that was me driving, I was there, and it sounded just like that, I swear to God.”

  Gary still didn’t say anything.

  Craig said, “That’s what he was trying to tell us. When he said not to take the car. That guy. The guy I — ”

  “The one you shot.”

  Craig turned back to face the road. “It’s not like — ”

  “We never killed anybody before,” Gary said quietly. “I know.”

  Four hours ago, they’d been in Gary’s own car, listening to the crackle and hum of the police band radio. They had already hit their convenience stores and their liquor store in record time and were already on the highway, getting the fuck out of Dodge. They’d been starting to think they were in the clear when they finally heard the dispatcher telling all officers to be on the lookout for a red Mazda, license plate BRS-307. Gary’s plate. Gary’s goddamn car.

  “Shit. Now what? Now what do we do?” Gary said, and he didn’t know why he said it. He had never asked Craig to make a decision, not once in his life.

  “We’ve gotta get rid of this car,” Craig said.

  “Shit,” Gary said again. “I loved this car. My mom gave me this fucking car.”

  Craig drummed his fingers on the dashboard. Then he pointed. “Rest stop up ahead. We can ditch this car, get another one.”

  Gary hesitated, not wanting to let Craig make the call, but his mind was blank. He didn’t have any better ideas. So he took the next exit, pulled into the rest stop.

  Something felt wrong there. The air was too still, the wind too quiet. Gary’s skin felt electric and too tight.

  Craig felt it, too, or he looked like he did. He started to get out and then hesitated, half-standing, and then stood the rest of the way up. A sudden burst of static flared from the cop radio and startled him, and he leaned back in and snapped it off.

  Gary grabbed the battered brown suitcase that held all the money they had in the world. Everything else he planned to come back for, but there was no way he was leaving this in the car.

  They walked, fake tight smiles on their faces, to the rest area’s one small building. Two restrooms with a walkway between, drinking fountains, vending machines, a state map with a red dot that said “You are here.” A rack of brochures for local tourist traps.

  The gun in the holster under Gary’s flannel shirt felt ridiculously heavy.

  “How do we do do this?” Craig asked.

  What, like I’ve done this before? Gary wanted to say. He looked around at people in their cars, families with kids and couples out walking their dogs, and he said, “We want one guy. By himself. We get him alone — in the bathroom, so no one sees it — get his keys.”

  “Sure. Sure,” Craig said. “Make him lie on the ground and count to fifty.” Like they’d been doing to clerks all morning.

  They waited, pretended to study the map. After a while, a man walked into the bathroom wearing a suit — not an expensive one, but s
till a suit — and carrying a briefcase.

  Gary did the math. The guy wasn’t on vacation, that’s for sure. Working man, no wife and kids with him — or, sure, he’d have left his briefcase in the car, if there was someone to watch it. Made sense.

  He looked over at Craig, nodded, and in they went.

  Gary stood by the door, in case someone came in. Craig looked under doors to find the one unoccupied stall.

  Then — Craig was good at this part, he liked this part — Craig kicked the door open, reached in and grabbed the poor sonofabitch by the shirtfront and hauled him out, threw him face-first against a sink. Not hard, not teeth-breaking hard, just enough to bloody his lip a little, let him know they weren’t fucking around. Bright-red bloodsmear on white porcelain, like a candy cane, and then the guy was on the floor, howling, making way too much noise.

  “Shut up. Shut up,” Craig hissed. “Listen! Gimme your keys! Gimme your fucking keys!”

  “My — my keys?” The man on the floor was having trouble talking. “You can’t — ”

  Gary stepped further into the room, frustrated. “Come on. Just give us your keys and we won’t hurt you.”

  “I don’t — have them, they’re in the car — ”

  “Shit.” Craig pulled out his gun. “What car? What one is yours?”

  The guy just shook his head. “You don’t want my car.”

  Gary drew his gun, too, and pointed it at him.

  “No, you don’t understand, I’m serious — ”

  “Do we look like we’re not fucking serious?” Craig snarled. “Does this look like, what, playtime? Does this look like recess to you?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Where is your car?” Craig pressed the gun to his head.

  The man sagged. “I’ll show you,” he said.

  Craig glanced at Gary. Gary nodded reluctantly — this wasn’t the plan — and Craig let the man up.

  “Don’t try to run,” Gary said. “No sudden moves, no calling for help, or — ”

  “You’ll kill me?” There was a strange smile on the guy’s face when he said it. A sickly, sweaty smile, but a smile that was somehow weirdly calm all the same.

  “Right,” Craig said, missing it, and he hauled the man to his feet.

  Craig kept his gun at the man’s back. Gary stood at his side, concealing the gun, and looking almost casual, almost natural, the three of them walked out of the bathroom, staying far from the eyes of the playing children and watchful parents.

  Off in the distance, someone was playing Frisbee. Someone else was laughing. Gary thought the air seemed thick, like syrup. That they were moving in slow motion. He looked around at people in their motorhomes and RVs and thought about vacations he’d had as a kid and wondered how exactly he’d come to wander so far away from that life.

  The man’s car was white, non-descript. No bumper stickers or a cute license-plate frame.

  The keys were sticking out of the lock on the trunk. The keyfob was still swinging gently back and forth. Gary reached for the key as they approached, but the man darted forward at the last moment and pulled them out of the lock.

  Craig’s finger tightened on the trigger. But the man turned and dropped the keys in Gary’s hand.

  “We said not to try anything,” Gary said.

  “I’m not.”

  Gary stared past him. “What’s in the trunk?”

  “Nothing,” he said, way too quickly.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Craig took the keys and unlocked the car. Gary put the money inside.

  “Whatever’s in the trunk is not our goddamn problem,” Craig said.

  “That’s right. That’s right,” the man said.

  Craig stared at him for a moment. “What is your goddamn problem?”

  “No problem,” the man said. His face was a dead mask of clam. “This is just very important. All right? You can take the car, that’s fine. That’s no problem at all.” His voice was flat and soothing. “But you can’t open the trunk. All right? This is very important. When you’re done with the car, just walk away from it. Leave what’s in the trunk alone. Do you understand?”

  Craig was shaking. He couldn’t have said why. He also couldn’t explain later, no matter how many times Gary asked, why he did what he did next:

  He raised the gun to the man’s face. He had a moment to notice how dull and flat the man’s eyes looked (like nailheads, they looked just like nailheads), and then he pressed the gun between them and pulled the trigger, dropped the hammer.

  Whatever had gone wrong, however they’d lost control of the situation, Gary had missed all the warning signs.

  He wasn’t missing them now. The car was giving up on him and he knew it. The accelerator jerked and hesitated under his foot, the engine kept pausing, as if lost in thought. The service engine soon light came back on and stayed on, and the oil and battery lights soon joined them.

  “What’s wrong?” Craig said. “What’s wrong with the fucking car?” The silence from the engine had taken his mind off the noise from the trunk for a moment.

  “It’s dying,” Gary said.

  “That’s great. That really is. You know that? That’s fucking terrific. Now we need another goddamn car.”

  Minutes passed without words. Out of the half-light of the setting sun, the car’s headlights picked out a sign:

  Rest area, 3 miles. Next rest area, 48 miles.

  “Oh no. No. Not another rest area. Not after the last one.”

  “We don’t have any choice,” Gary said, and he could tell Craig wanted to argue, but there was nothing he could say.

  The engine hesitated as they pulled into the exit, and then twice more as they pulled into the parking lot. As they passed the No Overnight Stays sign, the engine gave up completely. They coasted, then stopped, and with a wordless glance at each other, Craig and Gary got out of the car, used the open doors to push it into a parking space.

  They looked around. One thing was obvious. One of them had to say it.

  “There’s nobody here,” Craig said.

  Gary shrugged. There wasn’t. Theirs was the only car.

  “We wait,” Gary said. “Someone will come.”

  “Sure,” Craig said. “I mean, it’s not like this is the middle of nowhere, right?” he said, even though it was. “Somebody has to come.”

  There was a sudden sound from the back, a crash, desperately loud without the noise of the engine.

  “There is someone back there,” Craig said. He said it very quietly.

  Gary nodded, no longer able to pretend that there wasn’t. “Not our problem,” Gary said. “You said it yourself.”

  “Yeah.”

  More noise. A shuffling, a shifting of balance.

  “Can I turn on the radio?” Craig asked suddenly.

  Gary snapped the key into position. “Knock yourself out.”

  Craig turned the radio on, turned the dial from one end to the other and got nothing but static. Once, he found something that may have been the crackling ranting of some distant preacher, but that faded, too.

  “Not like we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Gary said.

  “Shut up,” Craig said, and Gary let him say it. Gary turned the power back off, and the sound of static died.

  There was another crash. Two more. That, Gary thought, is the sound of someone with both feet tight together, trying to kick their way out.

  Craig laughed, eyes sideways at Gary, then stopped.

  A new sound came from the back, and this time Gary couldn’t identify it:

  A low rumble, like a growl, or like the pulse and thrum of some kind of machinery.

  “What the fuck is that?” Craig said. “Some kind of animal, or — ?”

  Gary shook his head. He didn’t look at Craig — his eyes were firmly fixed on the entrance waiting for some car, any car, to pull in.

  Three more kicks. Weaker, this time, like protests.

  Craig opened his door and got out. Gary nearly aske
d, where are you going? — but decided it didn’t matter. He dropped the keys in his pocket and followed.

  They ended up at the Coke machine, staring at it behind the metal bars that kept it safe from vandals.

  “You don’t have any change, do you? Or any ones?” Craig asked.

  Gary shook his head.

  “Man, I could really use a Coke.” Craig laid his head and hands against the bars for a second. He laughed. “We’ve got all this money with us, and I can’t buy a Coke. That’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  Craig walked over to the drinking fountain, and found that it didn’t work. He smacked it with the flat of his hand, then backed up and kicked it.

  “Cut it out,” Gary snapped. The sound reminded him too much of the car.

  “Gary,” Craig said. “I just — what are we gonna do, Gary? Just sit here and wait?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Not really.”

  Gary moved to where he could see the entrance better, and Craig followed him.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” Craig asked.

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “I thought I’d start.”

  Gary had to laugh at that. He took out his pack of cigarettes — he had three left, and he’d been saving them for later, but — but there isn’t going to be a later, is there?

  He handed over the cigarettes and lighter and shoved that thought back down wherever it had come from.

  He watched Craig fumble with his first cigarette and then he turned his eyes back to the dark and empty road. He wanted to make some joke about waiting for Godot, but couldn’t think of anything funny to say, and besides, he didn’t really think Craig would get it.

  “We’re going to take the first car that comes along, right?” Craig asked.

  “First one that comes,” Gary agreed.

  The banging started up again. They could hear it from here. It didn’t sound like it was going to stop.

  They looked at each other. Gary thought about all they’d left behind when they’d abandoned his vehicle and said, “I think we should get the money out of the car.”