I called up Danielle and got her mother, the mega-nurse. Binnie is very cheerful on the phone, the way people are when they talk to five hundred voices a day. She said could she take a message, and, no, Danielle hadn’t mentioned me. Binnie wished me a good day even though it was night.
Raymond had told Chad, point-blank, that nobody would get hurt, and Chad had put his hands up in easy surrender.
He said it was the last thing he wanted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I still had a couple of hours before I was supposed to meet Chad and Raymond, and I looked out at the hills going Easter pink with sunset, the sun out of sight on the other side of the building.
I wondered what I was supposed to wear on a night like this. Chad had said “something dark,” but I wondered: Sweatpants? Jeans? I had trouble picking out a shirt, too, every color too bright.
I could hear my father out in the living room, demonstrating to Ms. Shore how even a tax strategist can learn the triplets in “Moonlight Sonata.”
The clock was not moving.
I called my grandparents and the phone rang and rang. My grandparents were the first people in North America, probably, to have an answering machine, decades ago, so I wondered what the problem was. Or maybe they were out under the desert twilight, drinking iced tea and letting the barbecue coals get that nice, even char.
A male voice answered on about the eleventh ring, my grandfather.
“Girlie and Gram are off looking at the yucca trees,” he said.
That’s what he calls my mom, Girlie. There had been a son, my uncle, who died of meningitis before his first birthday. My grandfather likes to sneak up and grab you from behind and then laugh. He really used to scare me when I was little.
I wanted to ask if the yucca trees had been doing something unusual, vanishing only to reappear in strange places. I offered some general remark, about how stunning the landscape was. “But hot,” I added, feeling ridiculous, making the most vapid small talk in history.
“She’s doing just great,” said my grandfather, meaning: Mom looks fine without your dad in her life. “But we’re all set to see you,” he added.
Maybe I had hidden a hope from myself—that I might blurt out that I needed money, that I would love to come down and drive a rusted-out pickup truck up and down the desert acres.
A part of me would have loved double-pumping the clutch on an old Dodge four-wheel drive, but at the same time I heard the challenge in my grandfather’s voice, the macho drill bit as he went on to say he’d let off both barrels of his twelve gauge right at a coyote the week before, and blew a hole this big.
“How big?” I asked, playing along the way my dad does, sounding boyishly amazed but actually waiting for the conversation to be over.
“About as big as a grapefruit,” he said. And then I sensed the age in him, the uncertainty, questioning himself. “Or maybe a little smaller, about like an orange. I don’t know. I missed with the other barrel,” he said, his voice trailing off.
I said that I didn’t realize you could hunt coyotes, chiding myself silently for challenging him even in this oblique way.
“Oh, hell, Steve,” he chuckled. “The fence was what I blew out. I missed the coyote by about a half a mile.”
He laughed and laughed, enjoying my confusion, or maybe amused at his own failed bravado, blasting a gap in some old redwood planks.
My mom sounded years younger. “Oh, it’s so wonderful to drink water right out of a well,” she said.
Then, “When are you coming down?”
In old-time boxing matches, if you got cut or woozy the referee didn’t stop the fight like they do now. The boxers fought on, ribbons of black streaming down their faces in the old silver-and-gray films, the fighters not seeming to mind, like they were already legends, or ghosts.
I stalled as long as I could with my videos.
At last it was time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Blockbuster Video parking lot was cold.
Chad was walking in a loop, like a pitcher circling the mound. Raymond stayed within himself, hands in the pockets of his dark pants, his long shirtsleeves fluttering in the wind. I was wearing forest green pants, with a loose-fitting, long-sleeved sweatshirt against the chill.
Dad had finally finished showing off his piano fingers, giving the Bechstein a workout. He had knocked on the bedroom door, his signature tip-tap, to announce that he and Ms. Shore were heading over to the city to hear an old mentor of Dad’s, a jazz pianist. “I’ll be back by midnight,” he said. I told him I had a late shift at the cafeteria, and would be back by two.
“You hungry?” I asked Raymond.
I was stalling, not wanting to begin just yet.
“Not really,” Raymond responded, keeping his body at an angle to the wind. Then he added, “Chad heard from his sister-in-law today.”
I began to ask right away—what happened? But then I sensed bad news and I didn’t want to hear another word.
Raymond rubbed his hands together, keeping them warm, and popped them back into his pockets. “She filed her divorce papers this week,” he said.
I was almost relieved that the news wasn’t something worse.
Chad opened the front passenger door and got in, one hand slapping the dash, looking back at us, a show of impatience.
“Plus, his brother got hurt today,” said Raymond in a low voice.
Chad put a head out of the car, gesturing, Do I have to wait all night?
“In the prison yard,” Raymond continued softly. “A shiv in the back. He’ll be okay, but Chad’s—” I could sense Raymond trying to select the right words. “He’s not in a very good mood.”
We got into the car. Raymond started the engine, and glanced back at me.
I offered a reassuring smile. Maybe he could see it.
“I might be able to eat a pizza slice,” Raymond offered.
“We’ll eat after,” said Chad, his voice hard and quiet. He reached under the seat and brought out a bottle of Bacardi rum, three-quarters full. He screwed off the top and drank. The liquor sloshed in the bottle and gave off a sweet-sick smell.
Raymond drove carefully. I sat in the back, watching the slow lights and traffic, all of it too quiet, car doors slamming, people talking, without a sound.
The liquor store on the corner of Washington and San Pablo sells lottery tickets and sparkling water, canned veggies and fingernail clippers. Bottled liquor gleams on the shelves behind the cash register. The place was a box of white light, fluorescent glow in every corner, SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED in red letters.
The sign in the front window said MONEY ORDERS, which Chad said meant they have bundles of twenties and fifties sitting in a box somewhere. I had borrowed a little cash from Raymond, so I could make a purchase like a customer.
The white Firebird was across the street, lights off, although you could see vague shapes in the darkened interior. My own reflection stared back at me from the glass.
Magazines showed off female body parts over on one corner, by a stack of horse-racing tabloids. You could buy Pres-To-Logs, cat food, marmalade. A woman paying for a pack of Marlboro Lights spoke with the man behind the counter, laughing.
Raymond had flashed me a don’t-leave-me glance as I left the car. A fish-eye mirror high up in one corner showed a weird, wide-angled view of shelves of jug wine and California champagne. A video camera with a tiny red eye peered down from above a display of lemon-flavor Calistoga water.
The proprietor was starting to watch me, smiling with his customer, but craning his neck as I searched up one aisle of bottled wine and down another. If he had a weapon it was behind the counter, not up on the wall like a trophy shotgun or a hunting rifle, deterrence for all to see.
The owner was watching me now with his full attention.
What struck me just then was that it could be done. Not now, not this way, but if all you wanted was to knock out one cash-fat till, grab the currency, and run, it wouldn’
t be that difficult.
This insight made me feel all the more innocent. I could do harm, and yet I wouldn’t. I was like a boxer in a position to hit a defenseless opponent, holding back.
It would work, if you did it right.
It would be easy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I put on an act, relieved to find what I was looking for, digging my hand into my front pocket.
I paid for a can of salted peanuts, counting out my change, really more than I wanted to spend, and dodged traffic across the street.
“Only if we wore masks,” I said, slamming the car door.
“Masks,” said Chad. He screwed the cap back onto the liquor bottle.
“We could put them over our heads,” I said.
If robbery was going to work you’d need two men, I reasoned, not three, or best of all, just one man with a weapon that he could brandish. Freeze the counterman, paralyze the customers with shock, crack the till, grab the money, and show what weeks of running every morning can do for the legs.
It was almost a good plan. I had that feeling you get when you let your fists drop and dare an opponent to hit you. You feel untouchable, and there is nothing he can do.
Chad put a forefinger to one eyebrow, scratching his face, his posture communicating disapproval. “You saw the video camera?” I could smell the booze on his breath, and I wondered how stupid rum makes people.
“One. But the guy behind the counter could see you sitting out here.”
“So we’ll go get us some bags,” said Chad. “Brown paper ones, not plastic, three nice bags.”
Chad turned his head to see in my direction in the backseat, but looking beyond me, too, at the street. Raymond was too preoccupied with inner thoughts to do more than key the ignition, start the engine, the Firebird idling a little rough.
“We can each buy something,” Chad was saying, “at Safeway up the street, ask for paper not plastic, and poke eyeholes out with our fingers.”
“This liquor store owner,” I said, “is going to let three guys walk in off the street with brown paper bags over their heads?”
I let the question hang there, no further comment necessary.
“What’s he going to do, Steven?” Chad said. Stee-ven like he was mocking it in some way.
He’ll call 911, I was about to respond, but then I figured I had made my point. “The plan is okay,” I said, careful not to offend, “but we can tweak it a little. We need a better store. And leave Raymond in the car.”
Chad examined my purchase, shaking the can of salted nuts, prying off the lids, one plastic, one metal with a pull ring, and the car filled with the fragrance of roasted nuts.
We ate mixed nuts for a while, the three of us chewing. Then Chad put the blue plastic lid over the can, carefully, and placed the can beneath his seat. He wiped his hands on his shirt front, then leaned over and hit the glove box.
He rustled among papers in the dark interior. He pulled out a handgun.
He examined the automatic, holding it in the flat of one hand, continuing to wipe his other hand on his pant leg.
Raymond shrank over against the driver-side door, putting his hand on the parking brake, releasing it very slowly. I didn’t move, sitting there without making a sound. In the store across the street the owner was a silhouette, torso and head.
Raymond looked back, the way the drivers do in the training videos, making sure there was no oncoming traffic.
We drifted out onto San Pablo Avenue, passed an auto body shop, a Beverages and More outlet, and then Chad said, “Make a left at the light, go around the block. Sit up behind the wheel, Raymond, or I’ll have Steven drive.”
At the red light Raymond looked back at me, a nice tight little smile, both wondering and a little scared. Because with Raymond you always sensed an undercurrent. He didn’t care, and he cared a lot. I tried to send him a mental message, that it would be all right.
He made just the tiniest little shake of his head, his eyes on mine.
I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, not sure how strongly the liquor was working on Chad. I was also not used to being in a car with a handgun.
“What kind of gun is that?” I asked, like it was easy, controlling the unsteadiness in my voice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“This is a Browning Hi-Power nine millimeter,” Chad said, matter-of-fact. He put it up over his headrest, like I might not believe him, holding it where any passing car could see.
The gun had a very subtle odor, all the way in the backseat. Oil and metal, mixing with the smell of the rum.
I had to keep myself from shivering.
“It’s been chopped down,” he continued, studying the weapon, “the rear sight taken off and the grip shortened. I keep a round chambered.”
His description of the Browning was delivered in a tone new to me. Chad was either quoting his older brother, someone with full command of language and mechanics, or else the act of holding a gun gave him new authority.
The street was under repair, Solano Avenue a battlefield of piled-up dirt, the pavement uneven. Raymond made a turn, and we drove by sleepy houses.
“So we’re going to walk into this liquor store with this big greasy pistol and our heads in bags.” I couldn’t keep my voice from trembling, trying to be sarcastic, but surprised at how I really felt.
The gun made it even easier, if I was crazy enough to go ahead with this.
Chad cocked his head. “It’s not greasy,” he said quietly, no-nonsense, the way Coach Loquesto could sound when he felt like it.
I was about to say that this kind of store owner always has a shotgun under the counter. At the same time I realized that we were very close.
We were very close to doing it.
“What’s that funny noise?” demanded Raymond.
“Steven clearing his throat,” said Chad.
Raymond said, “No, there’s a rattling under the hood.”
We all made a show of listening, eyes gazing at some point in the distance, the way people do when a sound steals their attention.
“The engine’s acting up,” Raymond said. He pulled over to the curb.
An ATM across the street was bright in the streetlight, a metal front with a black computer screen and a metal slot for twenty-dollar bills.
Chad had one hand out to the dash, looking back to me for an explanation.
“Fuel pump,” I suggested.
Raymond shook his head, then lifted a hand off the wheel: Maybe.
Chad put his hand on the steering wheel, sensing the car’s vibration.
A man with a small, square dog shuffled from a car with its headlights on, a woman at the steering wheel. He had trouble walking, each step hesitant, reaching for the wallet at his hip. As he glanced across the street in our direction, he took a long moment, memorizing the make and license number of the Pontiac.
“Cautious man,” said Chad. “Wrapping his leash up tight, protecting his dog from getting stolen.”
The man drew his dark, jumpy little dog in close, hunching protectively before the ATM machine, and Chad chewed a fingernail, laughing without sound. “Look, the dog is cold,” he said as the mutt nosed the air in our direction.
“Those small dogs are always like that,” said Raymond, as though relieved to find a neutral subject for conversation.
“Always afraid of being killed,” said Chad.
“We can’t go back to the liquor store,” I said. “That owner could paint our portraits. What we need to do is find another store that, sells money orders, a new place, wear bags, and make sure the guy behind the counter sees the gun.”
The car was idling fast.
“He has to see the gun,” I said. “Just set eyes on it. That’s all.” Meaning: No harm to anyone.
Chad licked his upper lip slowly, someone doing calculations in his head.
Right then I realized what Raymond was doing, subtly stepping on the clutch, tickling the accelerator, giving it t
oo much gas, trying to make the car sound bad.
Chad put his hand on Raymond’s shoulder with artful gentleness.
“Drive right,” Chad said.
In daylight, going into Safeway for groceries is a routine but pleasant experience, selecting a cart, pushing it along through the aisles. You can start with fruits and veggies, sniffing the cantaloupes, or you can head right over to the other end of the market, to the red meat.
At night it doesn’t feel right, all those shiny labels. The three of us looked shadowy and sleepless, although Chad held up best under the bluish glare of the lights, sauntering along like a man with a memorized grocery list, picking out a box of raisins.
“We’ll all go shopping together,” Chad had said, sticking the automatic under his shirt, and now I had the feeling he was going to do it right here.
Here at the express checkout.
I tried to flash him a mental message: No.
I caught Chad’s eyes and he gave me a reassuring uplift of one corner of his mouth. He shook his head, filled with a secret amusement, as though picturing cash all over this tiled floor, security guards running from all directions. He let his gaze wander absentmindedly over the display of Snickers and Mars bars near the checkout, looking like a man just off work starving for raisins and peanut butter, the purchase he was about to make.
Raymond stood like a person demonstrating bad posture, hunched over in another line, holding a box of powdered milk and a jar of French’s mustard. Raymond counted money out of his wallet. I was the only one who had chosen a living object, a very large Crenshaw melon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Raymond drove along San Pablo Avenue, past the Albany Police Department and Church’s Fried Chicken, proceeding with exacting care.
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