Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Laurence Gough

  The infrareds shone down on her, bathing her in a warm red glow.

  Nancy took another towel from the rack and patted herself dry, went back into the bedroom.

  Tyler had rolled over on his back. He’d never been what you might call handsome; it was his intensity she’d first been attracted to. As he lay there, sleeping, his eyes shut and his face slack, she couldn’t find a lot in him that was admirable.

  Nancy went back over to the window, looked down. He was there and then he wasn’t there — and never had been. A winter mirage.

  She slipped back into the bed. The electric blanket had kept the sheets warm for her. She stared at the bright red numerals of the alarm clock. When the minute changed, she closed her eyes and counted slowly to sixty, then opened her eyes and watched it change again. Once again, she remembered the way he had leaned towards her in the car, the smell of his body.

  Her fear, excitement. Finally acknowledging it, she admitted to herself that she had wanted him just as badly then as she wanted him now.

  Chapter 22

  At eight o’clock in the morning the cheap plastic alarm clock Billy had shoplifted from London Drugs made a horrible metallic gargling sound, like a wind-up Jiminy Cricket being squeezed to death. Billy snatched at the Python, sat bolt upright with his eyes wide open. He stared at the shrieking clock for a moment, then brought the heavy barrel of the revolver down hard, putting the cricket out of its misery.

  The time was now 8:01 and for that particular clock, time had stopped forever.

  Easy enough to steal a new one.

  The house was silent. It was so cold he could see his breath. He eased out of bed, dressed in a pair of jeans and sweatshirt, pulled on his cowboy boots and black leather jacket.

  The thermostat was turned down to sixty. His goddamn mother, always looking to save a dime. He cranked it up to eighty. In the basement, the furnace clicked on. He went into the kitchen and filled the kettle and put it on the stove, rinsed out a cup. His mother had forgotten to buy coffee. Shit. Angrily, he stomped into the bathroom, urinated and then stood in front of the mirror, examining himself. His hair was a mess. He combed it carefully, getting it just right. There was a dark stubble on his chin. He decided against shaving. Two or three days’ growth made him look older, tougher. He brushed his teeth, smiled, and then let the smile fade and his green eyes get cold and distant. The killer look he’d been practising.

  The living room was a shambles, the air heavy with stale cigarette smoke. He dug out the telephone and dialled Garret’s number.

  Garret answered on the first ring, his voice thick with sleep.

  Billy said, “You get the wheels?”

  “No problem.”

  “Something with a heater, I hope.”

  “Caddy,” said Garret. “Figured if I was going to steal a car, it might as well be something with a little class.” Garret had taken a midnight ride out to the airport, prowled the long-term lot and found the Caddy, black with a sunroof, tinted windows. He’d hot-wired the car, paid twenty-two bucks in parking fees to a sleepy attendant, driven into town and parked a block from his house.

  “A Cadillac,” said Billy, the words laced with envy. “No shit.”

  Garret smiled into the receiver. It was the kind of cowboy thing Billy liked to do; steal a luxury automobile and cruise around town, put himself at risk just for the hell of it. But Garret had told him no, he was going to choose the wheels, and that was that. Billy gave him one of his ice-cube looks, but let it go. Just as well. Now that they were getting down to it, Garret was running on a short fuse. That time Billy had peppered his face with the Colt, he was ready to kill him just for the pleasure of watching him die.

  And the feeling hadn’t entirely gone away.

  “Nine thirty,” said Billy. “Be there, understand.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Garret, and hung up.

  At twenty past nine Billy parked his Pinto on Tenth Avenue, two blocks from the liquor store. Garret pulled in behind him five minutes later. At nine thirty sharp, they drove the Caddy into the Safeway lot. Garret parked in a slot facing the liquor store. The sky was clear and the sun was up. Everything was dripping, the world was turning to slush. Meltdown. They were about fifty feet from the liquor store’s glass doors, close enough to see what was going on inside. Not much. The clerks getting ready for the first rush of boozers.

  Garret fished a pair of black knitted ski masks out of an Eatons bag. One mask had red trim around the eye and mouth holes. The trim on the other mask was blue. Billy went for the red but Garret snatched it away. He tossed the blue-trimmed mask to Billy. The price tag was still attached. Eleven dollars and ninety-five cents.

  Garret said, “You can pay for yours out of your end. And the taxi ride I had to take out to the airport, the twenty-five bucks I paid in parking fees. Call it sixty, altogether.”

  “Got to spend money to steal money,” said Billy, grinning.

  Garret checked the load in the Remington pump. The shotgun held two shells in the magazine, another in the chamber. He had twelve more rounds, six in each of his jacket pockets.

  Billy eased back the Python’s hammer and spun the cylinder. He’d practised dry-firing at home, sighted in on Arsenio Hall or whoever’s head happened to fill the television screen, squeezed the trigger and shot them between the eyes. But this was a whole different thing altogether. Loaded, the gun was much heavier. He’d played with it as if it was a toy, but it didn’t feel like a toy now. All the fun had gone out of it. Loaded, the Python was a deadly weapon.

  He wondered what it was going to be like, dropping the hammer on a man, instead of the brighter-than-life electronic image of a talk-show host.

  His hands were damp with sweat. He wiped them on the coarse material of the ski mask.

  Garret said, “Nervous?”

  “No way.” Billy pointed. “Where’d you get the watch?”

  “That ain’t a watch, it’s a fuckin’ chronometer.” Garret fondly tapped the crystal of his new toy; a black plastic digital Casio with bright green and yellow and red plastic buttons sticking out of it.

  “Don’t wanna be late for dinner, that it?”

  “It’s a sports model. For joggers. When we get out of the car, I push the red button.”

  “Right,” said Billy. “Good idea. Then what, we run like hell?”

  “The red button’s the stopwatch function. What we’re gonna do is the same as robbing a bank, Billy. Except we don’t go inside. I figure we got three minutes max. A hundred eighty seconds.”

  “Then what?”

  “The cops are rolling and we’re outta here. We’re history.”

  Billy lit a cigarette, rolled down the window a crack and tossed the smoking match on to the asphalt. “Tickety tickety tick! Shoot the guards! Grab the cash! Tickety tickety tick! Split second precision. I like it. Real fuckin’ professional.”

  Garret studied his new watch. 9:49:07. Eight, nine, ten… He pushed open his door.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “For coffee.”

  “Two creams, hold the sugar,” said Billy. “Everybody tells me I’m sweet enough as it is.”

  Garret slammed shut the door.

  The parking lot was starting to fill up. It was astounding, the number of people who decided to buy their groceries at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Why choose that particular time? Probably because there was nothing to watch on television. A gold-coloured Volvo station wagon pulled in parallel to him, three slots away. The cheap model, a 240 DL. A woman got out of the car. She was in her early twenties, wearing black cords and a hip-length red leather jacket with hugely padded shoulders, dopey black rubber boots with red soles. Her hair was short and brown. She opened the back door of the car and hauled out a baby in a pink snow suit. Her eyes caught Billy’s. He smiled at her and waved at the kid. She turned her back on him. Carrying the baby in her arms, she walked stiffly through the slush towards the Safeway.

  Billy went over it in his
mind. The armoured car pulled up. It stopped in front of the liquor store. The driver took a quick look around. Something he’d done a thousand times before. Routine. The rear door swung open and the two armed guards jumped out. They went into the liquor store and stayed inside anywhere from three to five minutes. When they came out, it was the second guy who had the money. The first guy led the way towards the armoured car, his hand resting on the butt of his gun. They’d wait until he reached out to open the door for his buddy, and then Billy would be on top of him. The Python coming out from under his jacket.

  The way they’d planned it, Billy was supposed to shoot first. Instead of killing the guard, he’d pop him in the back of the leg, through the kneecap. Disable the sucker, instead of blowing him away.

  A split second later, Garret was going to do the same thing to the guy with the money. Shotgun him in the leg.

  Then the easy part. Billy’s job was to grab the canvas bags full of cash while Garret used the Remington for crowd control.

  As Billy wheeled the Caddy out of the parking lot and into the home stretch, Garret would take a few shots at the armoured car. The driver was protected by about an inch of bulletproof glass; the idea wasn’t to waste him, just encourage him to keep his head down.

  They’d lose the Caddy on Tenth Avenue, switch to the cold car, the Pinto. Time the cops figured it out, they’d be long gone.

  Nothing to it, Billy kept telling himself.

  The Caddy’s door swung open. Garret climbed inside, shut the door, handed Billy a styrofoam coffee cup and a bag of nachos. It was seven minutes past ten.

  At quarter to eleven, the woman with the baby pushed a rusty shopping cart up to the gold Volvo, unloaded the pink snow suit and a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of food. Billy tried to catch her eye, but she was having none of it. He wondered what the red leather jacket had cost. She got into the car and slowly drove away.

  At one thirty, Garret risked another quick trip to the 7-Eleven for more coffee and a couple of hamburgers.

  At a few minutes past three, Billy trotted over to the convenience store to use the bathroom.

  By four o’clock, it was starting to get dark.

  At ten minutes past four, a man in jeans and a ski jacket set up shop by the liquor store doors and began to play a trombone. Billy listened for a moment and then turned up the volume on the Caddy’s radio.

  At twenty-three minutes to five, a patrol car cruised slowly into the parking lot and stopped in front of the trombone player. The two cops in the car got out. The musician didn’t miss a note.

  Billy slouched a little lower in the seat. Garret studied the rear-view mirror. They waited.

  The cops stood with their hands on their hips. The trombone said something and then slapped his forehead and bent to grab his hatful of change. A clerk watching from inside the liquor store clapped his hands. The trombone jay-walked across Maple Street and the cops climbed back in the squad car and drove away.

  Garret turned the radio down.

  Billy had to go to the bathroom again. Garret gave him a look, but didn’t say anything.

  By ten thirty, they had been sitting in the Caddy almost thirteen hours, and they were stiff and tired and hungry, ready to call it a night and go home.

  At ten thirty-seven, the Loomis armoured car eased into the parking lot, its silver-painted body gleaming under the sodium-vapour lights.

  Garret said, “You awake, Billy?”

  Billy nodded. His throat was dry.

  The rear door swung open. The two Loomis guys jumped out. It was their last shift ever, but they didn’t know it, not yet. One of them had a small metal dolly. His partner shut the armoured car’s thick metal door. Billy rolled down his window. The dolly had rubber wheels, but he could still hear the sound of it rolling across the shiny wet asphalt.

  The two men entered the liquor store. Billy lost them, but he knew where they were going. To the left, towards the glassed-in manager’s office, the safe.

  Garret was studying his watch.

  10:39:17

  Billy lit a cigarette. His hands were steady. He held the burning match out in front of him, so Garret could see how strong he was.

  Garret kept staring at his watch.

  In the armoured car, the driver saw the small bright flame appear behind the Caddy’s windshield. The flame held steady for five, maybe ten seconds. He spoke into the microphone pinned to his uniform collar.

  “Fourteen Alpha.”

  The answer came immediately. “Fourteen Alpha clear.”

  The flame had disappeared. It was probably nothing, the driver thought, but at least he’d look alert, they’d know he was doing his job. He cleared his throat. “I got an eighty-eight Cadillac, black, tag number Andrew Niner Bike three zero four.”

  “Check.”

  In the Caddy, Billy turned his cold green eyes on Garret. “Don’t fuck this up.”

  Garret thought about it for a couple of seconds and then decided, what the hell, why not tell him. No harm in it now, nothing Billy could do. He said, “Listen up, Billy. There’s something you should know about me.”

  Billy’s head came around. Garret had never talked to him like that before, each word hard as a brick, slamming down on him.

  Garret said, “Remember that guy they found in the Chinese gardens? On the pond, frozen solid? We saw it on the late night news?”

  “Yeah, sure. What about it?”

  “That was me did him.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Five grand up front. His kid paid me. Met him at work, waxed his BMW for him. We got to talking and one thing led to another.”

  Well, that wasn’t exactly how it had gone down. But Billy was paying attention for once, so Garret kept up the monologue.

  “Kid’s gonna inherit the family business. The five’s only a down payment, but he don’t know it yet. Soon as he gets his hands on the money I’m gonna start squeezin’. Blackmail, you ever heard of it?”

  Billy said, “What’d you do with the money?”

  “Spent it on the Mustang. Leather seats, rolled and tufted. Ten coats candy-apple red lacquer. Car’s gonna be ready in a couple more weeks.”

  “Bullshit,” said Billy again, but there was a look in his eyes that Garret had never seen before. Respect, tinged with fear. He was staring at a brand-new Garret; his buddy the hard-nosed killer. Garret stared back at him, watched the wheels slowly turning. He’d told Billy about the murder to keep him in line. In a few more minutes it wouldn’t matter anyway. Because no matter how much money they came away with, it was only going to be about half of what Garret needed.

  The homicide cops, investigating Billy’s death, would find Kenny Lee’s wallet under the rubber floor mat of the Pinto, Lee’s ring and gold Lorus watch hidden in the trunk. It’d give the cops everything they needed to wrap the case. And even if they did come after him, he had a bulletproof alibi. A guy he knew, dude who boosted whole cars, and not just the radios, but had a clean sheet, no record, was going to cover him for a piece of the action.

  As for Billy, well… The kid was only seventeen, but this was it. He wasn’t going to get any older.

  Garret stepped out of the car, the shotgun held tight against his leg. He said, “Let’s do it, kid.”

  Billy found himself hurrying across the parking lot, trying to catch up. He saw the liquor store door swing open. A short, fat man carrying a case of beer in both hands walked directly towards him. The man gave Garret an odd look, stopped dead in his tracks.

  The liquor store door swung open again. Billy looked at Garret and saw that he was wearing his black ski mask under his cowboy hat. Billy’s mask was on the front seat of the Caddy. And Garret had murdered the Chinese guy and never said a word. How about that. Suddenly Billy felt like that poor dope on the Letterman show, the one without the remote control transmitter, the dummy.

  Too late for that, too.

  Garret brought the shotgun up. Billy unzipped his jacket.

  The fat man
yelled something.

  Billy drew his Python and fired from the hip, hitting the man in the chest and knocking him down.

  Inside the armoured car, the radio crackled briefly. “Fourteen Alpha, that car’s hot.”

  “Shots fired!” yelled the driver. “We got a robbery in progress! It’s goin’ down right this fuckin’ minute! Shots fired! Shots fired!”

  The shotgun exploded. Garret worked the slide. The spent shell bounced off Billy’s left arm. The fat man was on his knees and he was still yelling, his chest a mass of blood. Billy thought, it ain't over until you stop singing, and shot at him again, and missed by twenty feet. The Remington exploded a second and then a third time. Both guards were down. It was amazing, how fast it had all happened. Black liquid flowed across the slushy asphalt.

  The wail of a siren filled the air. Billy glanced wildly around. The sound was coming from the armoured car. A rotating red light on top of the cab threw a fine spray of blood into the air. Billy could see a profile of the driver, his face up against the glass. He started towards the money, hesitated.

  Garret hit him in the small of the back with the flat of his hand.

  “C’mon, hurry up! What the fuck are you waiting for! Grab the fucking cash!”

  Billy staggered forward. He pointed his gun at the fallen guards, and then saw that Garret’s marksmanship, if he’d aimed at their legs, hadn’t been all that good. Both men had been shot in the head.

  Billy fell to his knees and threw up. The shotgun went off again. The red emergency light shattered but the siren kept screaming and the fat man wouldn’t stop yelling.

  Billy wiped his mouth. Garret was standing over him, shoving double-ought loads into the Remington. He grabbed a handful of Billy’s jacket and hauled him to his feet.

  Billy grabbed a canvas bag. Too heavy. Coins. He dropped the bag and grabbed another one and then another one. He switched both bags to his left hand and started running towards the car. Garret fired another round and Billy heard the load of buckshot slam into the metal flank of the armoured car.

  Garret yanked open the Caddy’s door. He threw the shotgun in the backseat, climbed in, slammed the door, flicked on the car’s brights.