by Nick Petrie
Eli was third through the opening, broken glass crackling under his old sneakers, Anthony hard at his heels. Skinny had his gun pointed at a strong-looking light-skinned man behind the right-side displays, shouting, “Don’t move, don’t move, hands up.” In the rear left corner there was an opening to a back room. Eli figured there was somebody back there who’d already hit some alarm or called the cops. Who might come out with a gun.
But that was Coyo’s part, and Eli left him to it. Eli went directly to the display cases on the right, found the Rolex watches, and swung his hammer. The thick glass cracked and sagged. He noted eighty shining watches in the case. He swung again and the glass fell in with a thousand glittering musical notes. He moved to the next case and smashed that one, too.
Behind him, Anthony put his gun in his pocket, set the tool bag down, took out a white plastic bag from the Save-A-Lot and fumbled it open. He reached past the shattered glass and began to pull the watches from their snug little nests, dropping them in the bag.
Eli saw a flash of movement and turned to see white-suited Coyo stride through the gap in the display cases toward the back room. Eli looked over his shoulder and saw Skinny B with his gun still pointed at the strong-looking man but watching Anthony harvesting watches. The man wore a dark suit and tie, but his jacket was unbuttoned and his hands were easing down. His face looked more angry than scared.
Eli pointed his gun at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.
It was louder than he expected. He’d never fired a gun inside before. Skinny jumped and swore and turned back to the strong-looking guy, whose color had gone pale, his arms now completely vertical. Anthony didn’t even seem to have noticed, focused on his job.
Eli stepped toward the rear of the store, the long display case still between him and the light-brown woman with the pearls, straightened hair, and dark, frightened eyes. She was backed up hard against the wall. “Don’t worry,” he told her, gun in one hand and hammer in the other. “One more minute and we’re gone.”
She stared at the strong-looking man with an expression Eli couldn’t even begin to decode. So he swung the hammer down and broke open the display case. He needed more hands. He dropped the hammer to the floor, tucked the gun into his armpit, took a white plastic bag from his own pocket and plucked out the chunky diamond rings in their plush boxes two at a time, letting them fall into his sack. He glanced to the side and saw Anthony working the second case of watches. Eli had no idea how long they’d been in there, but it seemed too long already.
“Time to go,” he called out, even as his fingers kept picking velvet boxes from the small square shards of glass. “Time to go, time to go, time to go.”
“Six more,” Anthony said.
“We really leaving all the rest of this?” Skinny looked down into the unbroken display case between him and the young white guy. The signs on the wall behind said TAG HEUER, BREITLING, and DE BEERS.
Eli hadn’t even looked into the other cases. That wasn’t part of the plan. “Don’t get greedy, we’re all done here.” He cinched up his sack and took the gun from under his armpit. “Police on their way. Time to get gone.”
Then Coyo came out of the back room towing a heavyset white man in a gray suit by the knot of his swirly-looking tie. The barrel of Coyo’s cheap pistol was jammed into the soft pale flesh of the man’s neck. The white face was flushed and he held one crook-fingered hand out from his body like a bird with a broken wing.
“Man had a pistol under his coat,” said Coyo, calm in that sometimes way he had, like a firecracker fuse softly burning down toward something loud. “Tried to take it out and shoot me.”
“Let him go,” said Eli, grabbing at Coyo with his eyes. “Stick to the plan. No harm done. We got what we came for.” He turned and whacked Anthony on the shoulder to get him moving, then waved the taped-up revolver at Skinny who was still staring down at the case of watches before him. “Come on, all of you. We’re gone.” He backed toward the hole where the door used to be.
Coyo pulled the heavy white man close enough to kiss, grinding the rough gun barrel into the man’s neck. Blood began to seep through the pale, scraped skin.
Eli felt his feet get slow like he was wading through deep mud, afraid of what would happen next.
Coyo didn’t speak. Just stood there, his face up to the white man’s. Breathing.
Eli was fully stuck now. Couldn’t run, couldn’t stop watching Coyo and the white man, waiting to see what his friend might do. How true those stories might be.
Then Coyo shoved the man hard and turned away. Eli’s flooding relief felt like a long cool drink on a hot day.
“See, we don’t want to hurt nobody,” Coyo said to the room at large. “We just want to get paid like everybody else.”
Then they were scrambling over the shattered remnants of the door and out into the open mall, and it was all Eli could do not to howl like a wolf seeing the moon for the first time. He looked left down the walkway, but the two gray-haired walkers had vanished. Coyo turned right toward the escalator, and Eli moved to catch up, Anthony close at his heels.
Behind him, Eli heard jangled chords of wrong notes. He looked over his shoulder and saw Skinny B down in the jewelry store’s doorway, sprawled on his hands and knees in the spreading rectangles of broken glass. “Wait up.” He was scrambling to recover his gun.
“Leave it,” Eli called. “Move your ass.” He slowed when he saw a figure appear in the doorway at Skinny’s back, hands together, arms extended and rising. The older woman in the pearls and straightened hair lifted a bright, shining pistol. Rings glittered on her fingers, her brown face rigid with fury.
Anthony pushed past as Eli stopped in his tracks, mouth open but empty of words. Skinny B found a place for his feet and pushed himself up, red spots showing through the pale latex gloves, but his hands were empty. He didn’t look behind him. He took a careful step, then another.
The older woman pulled the trigger three times, crack crack crack. Skinny’s white coveralls jumped from his chest, splotched red. He stood fixed in place without falling, a surprised look on his face.
The woman blinked. Now she looked surprised, too.
The strong-looking light-skinned man came up in a hurry, slipping sideways to the older woman in the space where the door used to be. He put one arm around her shoulders, his other hand pushing down on the gun.
“Mom,” he said. He looked back into the shattered store, where the heavyset white man stood with his hand to his mouth. “Dad.”
Skinny B pitched face-first into the broken glass.
This wasn’t part of the plan.
Eli turned and ran.
* * *
• • •
On the escalator, the mathematical part took the heavy-duty black trash bag from Eli’s coverall pocket and snapped it open. He set his white plastic Save-A-Lot sack inside, then held it out for Anthony, who looked stunned but dropped in his own sack of watches. The trash bag was heavy now, and none of it seemed to matter.
Eli looked back but saw nobody there. Coyo was ahead of them walking calmly down the escalator, gun in his hand, looking outward at the broad central hall with its bright skylights and leafy green plants and gleaming floor. A black woman with a double stroller looked over her shoulder as she scurried into a store and vanished. A young black man and a young white woman sat holding hands on a bench, frozen in place, eyes wide. “What the fuck you waiting for?” Coyo called to them. “Get outta here.”
They scrambled off the bench and ran away.
Eli gave Anthony a shove and they went down two steps at a time, the ground coming up fast. Coyo stood at the bottom looking the wrong way down the hall, some kind of commotion coming from down there. “Go on, now,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”
Eli turned the corner at speed and headed for the exit, feet flying, knowing he’d be far faster than thick
Anthony, even hauling the big trash bag full of stolen shit.
Behind him, he heard shouting. Then flat echoing cracks, like something breaking. He kept running.
The double doors grew bright with golden sunlight as he neared the end of the hall. He listened for Anthony’s footsteps slapping the floor behind him, but he didn’t hear them. He didn’t let himself slow enough to turn and look. He hit the doors at full speed.
In the space between the doors, Eli forced himself to slow. Fighting the need to sprint, he shouldered the trash bag like one of the bent old men collecting scrap metal, as if it held the weight of the world.
Stepping outside, he made his walk tired and plodding, but still a direct line down the sidewalk toward the access road and the parking lot and the janky old Buick with its windows down. Head down, he tugged the mask to his chin, thumbed the papery hat higher. He looked only ahead, not left, not right, while sirens rose up around him.
Crossing the roadway he heard the roar of an engine. Tires squealed and crunched on the road at his back. Flashing red and blue lights reflected off the car windows ahead of him. He kept walking. He thought he heard somebody bang through the double doors. Anthony, he thought, and Coyo. Coyo had told them to run.
He made it to the car and heard shouting while he stuffed the trash bag through the open back window. He heard the too-familiar flat cracking sounds behind him, again and again. They seemed to go on forever.
He opened the door and saw the wires hanging down from the steering column and realized he didn’t know how to start the car.
He didn’t even know how to drive.
He got himself behind the wheel and leaned over to peer at the wires. The mathematical part of him took over completely. It examined the thin strands, the colored plastic insulation stripped away, the bare stranded copper crimped and bent. Saw how they might have fit together before. Took the two wires and touched the exposed ends together and felt the engine shudder for a second. He twisted the wires fully together so they’d stay, then pressed the gas pedal the way he’d seen Coyo do.
The engine churned until it was running smooth while Eli’s foot learned the feel of the gas. He stripped off the white hat and mask, shouldered out of the paper-plastic suit. The breeze through the open windows began to cool his sweat-soaked skin. He finally allowed himself to look toward the double doors, but the big police trucks blocked his view, lights flashing. No actual police in sight.
He put his foot on the brake the way he’d seen Coyo do, then pulled the lever down until the little line hit the D, like Coyo had done. He put both hands on the wheel, looked both ways, then moved his foot off the brake to let the old car ease out of the parking space and wander down the aisle toward the exit, touching the gas with a feather foot, learning to steer as he went.
He watched the mirrors more than he watched the way ahead. His heart pounded so loud he was sure the police would hear it and come make him stop.
But nobody took notice of the neglected old car, the skinny black boy driving.
It had not been a good plan, he thought.
Not if he was the only one left alive.
He would not allow himself to cry.
PART 2
FIVE DAYS EARLIER
5
You’re getting restless,” June Cassidy said.
She sat with Peter Ash in low backpacking chairs, half-hidden in the high meadow grass that was just coming back from the long mountain winter.
Behind them stood windblown pines and tall tilted rocks fallen long ago from the granite peak to the west. Ahead of them was the waterfall that fell a thousand feet to the teardrop-shaped pocket valley where June had grown up. Beyond that was pure blue sky and the rest of the Cascade range, then the open rolling country of eastern Washington.
“I’m not restless.” Peter Ash held her slim, strong hand in his wide, knuckly grip. His dark hair was long and shaggy, like a wolf’s winter coat, hiding the slightly pointed tips of his ears. “There’s plenty for me to do here.”
She waved her hand at the valley below, with its fields and orchards and clusters of buildings. “You’ve been through every fucking structure on the property,” she said. “It only took you three weeks to build the new sleeping porch. Then you upgraded the kitchens in all the cottages, did a gut remodel on half the bathrooms, replaced every piece of rotten trim and cracked siding, and put a new roof on the equipment shed. What the hell is left to do?”
“Rust never sleeps,” he said. “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”
With her free hand, she gave him the finger. She wore her red hair in a short pixie cut, bringing out the freckles on her cheeks. She had freckles other places, too.
“June, this little valley has fourteen buildings, some of them more than a hundred years old. I haven’t even scratched the surface. If I play my cards right, I could have a job for life.”
“But you’re restless,” she said. “Or worse. Bored.”
He smiled, squeezed her hand gently, and looked out at the wide blue sky above the mountains. He knew she wouldn’t give up until she got an answer. It was one of his favorite things about her, that relentlessness. It made her a very good investigative reporter.
“The pay isn’t much,” he said. “But the benefits are spectacular.”
* * *
• • •
For most of October, November, and part of December, Peter’s leg had been healing after a run-in with a particularly unpleasant asshole.
Aside from the punctured muscle, his thigh bone had broken badly. To repair it, the orthopedic surgeon had driven a titanium rod down the interior length of the femur, from the hip to the knee, then screwed it into place and stapled him up. The screws were temporary, removed with the staples after two weeks, but the rod was permanent.
He’d set off a metal detector for the rest of his life.
The damaged tissue and bone needed another ten weeks to be fully mended, but once the temporary hardware was out, the leg would carry his weight again. The surgeon told Peter not to just park himself in front of the television. Physical activity would help the healing process, limit scar tissue, and improve range of motion.
That wasn’t a problem for Peter.
It wasn’t in his nature to stop moving.
The day after the screws and staples came out, he found a windfallen limb from one of the big maples that grew behind the black barns. He trimmed it into a good walking stick, and found that he could stump his way around the perimeter of the half-wild little pocket valley, if he took it slow and was careful with the bandages.
It wasn’t easy. Slow wasn’t in Peter’s nature, either.
There was no path to speak of, not at first. It became a path as he walked it, every day, rain or shine. Roughly a seven-mile loop, it was flat and easy at the north edge of the fields, rough and rocky and steep above the orchards to the south.
At first, the walk took him the better part of the day. He had to stop and rest. He packed a lunch.
When he finally made it back to June’s little farmhouse, he’d allow himself a pain pill and take a scalding-hot shower, soap sluicing over puckers of scar tissue from Iraq and Afghanistan. He’d walk to the kitchen, open a beer, and stand steaming in his boxers while he prepped ingredients for supper. His tall, lean body resembled storm-torn branches made into a hard, rough frame. It could carry a heavier load than anyone would think possible.
While he worked, June would come up behind him and wrap her arms around the warm flat planes of his chest and belly, press her cheek against the long muscles of his back.
Sometimes she said, “Guess what I learned this afternoon?” Sometimes she said, “I’m getting closer to those dirty bastards.” Sometimes she didn’t say anything, just held him tight, and he’d know she’d been digging into a particularly ugly corner of the world. Then he’d turn and she’d grab the waistba
nd of his boxers and tow his battered body to the bedroom.
Together, they made the world go away for a while.
Later, he’d finish supper. Marinated steak tacos, or chicken in mole sauce, or black bean and sweet potato enchiladas. Cinnamon ice cream. June said he must have eaten a Mexican cookbook as a child. He told her his grandmother had grown up in Oaxaca, and his favorite dishes were the ones he’d learned to cook by watching her. His abuelita had never used a recipe in her life.
While the weather was still mild, he formed and poured the foundation for the sleeping porch, then laid down sill plates and floor joists. The roof was mostly skylights. The walls were sliding windows that stretched from the tongue-and-groove floor to the pine-paneled ceiling. When everything was open to the wind, it was almost like being outside.
Almost.
His leg had lost strength from the muscle damage, but he hiked the perimeter path faster every week. He was in good shape when he got hurt, so recovery was quicker than it might have been. By the time the snow fell, he was running the path every day. When the snow got deeper, he went out in snowshoes. By May, he ran the seven miles with a forty-pound ruck and a four-foot section of salvaged iron plumbing pipe in his hands. The weight of the pipe was comforting, only slightly heavier than his old M4 carbine. Almost like the old days.
It was easier to sleep inside if he was tired.
Although June didn’t always let him sleep much.
June had a lot of energy herself.
* * *
• • •
Now, in the high meadow, she said, “I know you miss it. Being a dharma bum, out on the road.”
“I miss some things,” he said. “The scenery changes, for one thing. New people. Plus all those lonely farmgirls, looking for a roll in the hay.”
She pivoted in her chair and punched him in the arm. It was a good hit, even from a seated position. She’d really put her shoulder into it. He’d been ready—hell, he’d been asking for it—and still she rocked him sideways in the little backpacking chair. June had gotten stronger over the winter, too.