“About two hours ago.”
Dennis said, “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.”
Dennis turned to Wyatt. “Were you there? Did you see anything?” he asked.
“I saw the aftermath.”
“The woman was shot,” Moira continued, unable to contain herself. “A sixty-six-year-old woman. Shot in her own house by robbers.”
“Did the police catch them?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
“Did they get a description?”
“Two black men. Gang members, according to the man.”
“Who knows nothing at all about gangs,” Wyatt said dismissively. “They don’t know what they saw, there weren’t any lights on.”
“They were young and black,” Moira insisted. “The Spragues were sure of that.”
Cissy turned to Moira. “How badly was the woman shot?”
“She got hit in her side. She should be all right.”
“Thank God for that.” The women nodded in supportive female agreement.
“She should have had her own gun,” Rod declared.
“She did,” Wyatt told him.
“She should have used it, then,” Rod said. “That’s why you have a gun.”
“Well, since they took it away from her,” Wyatt answered with anger, “she wasn’t able to. They were pros and she wasn’t, so the inevitable happened.”
“You don’t have to be a professional to shoot someone in your own home. You’re crazy if you don’t,” Rod said.
Wyatt was taken aback. “Do you have a gun?” he asked, surprised. “A pistol?”
“Two. Mine and hers.” He looked at Cissy.
“You have to be able to defend yourself,” Cissy said unapologetically.
Wyatt looked at them. “I wouldn’t think of you two as having guns around the house. Doesn’t the idea of an accident scare you?”
“The alternative scares me more,” Cissy answered.
From across the table: “I’ve had a gun for five years,” Marybeth threw in.
“Five years?” Wyatt was incredulous.
“And a concealed permit for three,” she added. As he looked at her in disbelief: “I’m alone on the street at night, after a dinner meeting or whatever, I have to have protection, Wyatt.” She turned to Moira. “You’ve never felt you had to be armed? At least in your house?”
“I thought about it tonight,” Moira added, looking at Wyatt.
He shook his head forcefully. “We are not having guns in our house. That’s how people get killed. Especially with kids around.”
“Well, to each his own,” Cissy said. “I can see your point—it took me a long time to get okay with the idea, and I still don’t like it, but I want to feel secure.” She turned to Moira. “I take lessons at the range once a month. You could come with me next week if you want to.”
Moira looked at her husband—she knew how strongly he felt about this subject. Then she turned to Cissy. “Maybe I will,” she said. “Call me when you’re going.”
MARVIN STOOD ACROSS THE street, in shadow. Looking into the front window, he could see the owner posted stoically behind the counter, making change for the lone customer. An old white lady, even from this distance Marvin could see how her veins were broken in her face, especially her nose, and on her legs, her old legs were black and blue from bad circulation.
The old lady left the store, holding the plastic bag pressed up tight against her bony, sagging chest, scurrying along the sidewalk, head down for fear of looking somebody in the eye. He knew that feeling, how if you felt bad about yourself you thought people could see it in your eyes, so you didn’t let them look. You looked away, you didn’t ever let them look you right in the eye.
He glanced up and down the block. No one was coming. One last look, to make certain. Then he was out of the shadows and walking across the street.
The store was a little gold mine, but not because of the eighteen-hour days the owner put in behind the counter, occasionally assisted by his wife, who would come down from their apartment on the floor above. This store was a numbers drop run by the main Thai gang, one of the biggest and toughest gangs in the city, as big as any of the black or Latino gangs. Marvin had seen the action with his own eyes. All day long, around the clock practically, Asians of all nationalities came in with little slips of paper and handed their selections and dollar bills—or fives or tens or twenties—across the counter to the owner, who would write their code numbers and amounts in a little black ledger he kept under the register. The money wouldn’t go into the register—the Korean stashed it in a canvas bank bag that he kept locked up in a cabinet. Housewives, businessmen, kids, even cops—he’d seen two beat cops, white dudes, slip the owner some bills after taking a couple of sodas and a package of beef jerky, which Marvin knew they didn’t pay for (compliments of the house, so the cops would leave the owner alone). Of course, the Thai gang was paying the police off, that was a given, but at a higher level, lieutenants and captains.
Mondays and Fridays were the payoff days. The numbers would come out, a combination in the newspaper, and if you had the right three numbers, you were rich. Problem was, the odds were thousands to one.
His own mother played. A dollar a week, the same three numbers for years. She’d never hit, not once, and she never would. Fifty-two dollars a year down the toilet—by the time she was dead she’d have lost hundreds to it, thousands.
It was a racket, like everything else. But it meant that the people who were running them, the big-timers and the local store-owner drop shops, like this Korean, were sitting on a mountain of cash money most of the time, because the pickups were twice a week. Five thousand dollars, at least, sitting in the cabinet right behind the owner’s back. Every Sunday and Thursday night.
Tonight was Thursday.
For months Marvin had been thinking about doing this store. It would be so easy, as close to a sure thing as he would ever come across. The money was right there, just sitting in that cabinet. And the owner couldn’t go to the cops because the money was illegal and the police were on the take.
No one from around here knew him. This was an Asian neighborhood, not a black one. Where he lived was more than five miles away; another country. To these slant-eyed bastards he was one more dumb nigger, a race of people who all looked alike. He’d actually heard that once, this store owner talking to one of his customers, a Korean like himself. “They all look alike to me,” the owner had said. “And smell alike,” the customer had said back.
They had both laughed.
He’d been standing right next to them. But since he was black he was invisible.
The only reason he came on this street at all was because it was on his delivery route. Had been. He didn’t have that job anymore. He’d been fired three weeks ago. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t always get there on time, he had to take two buses to get to work, and the first bus was always running behind schedule, and then he’d miss the transfer to the second bus and that would make him late.
His boss had forearms on him like Popeye, that guy in the Saturday morning cartoons. A giant Lithuanian who stank from the garlicky herring he was always eating, he would put a fatherly arm around Marvin’s shoulders and tell him to catch an earlier bus, then he wouldn’t be late so much of the time. The boss’s breath would knock him over.
To be honest, his boss wasn’t so bad. Sometimes there would be an extra five- or ten-dollar bill in Marvin’s pay envelope. And he would joke with Marvin, asking about his girlfriends, telling him a big handsome kid like you must be beating the girls off with a stick.
Truth be told, girls did like him; he was big and good-looking, he knew that. Kind of like that Denzel Washington dude from the movies. But that didn’t mean jack shit, because what girls really liked was money—they wanted to be with a man who could buy them whatever shit they wanted. Being a delivery boy for minimum wage didn’t cut it.
On the other hand, there were older ladies o
n his delivery route who didn’t care how much money he made. Middle-aged horny white ladies. Fucking him in the middle of the day, like they’d never had it so good before. Which was probably the truth. Sometimes they’d give him money. Other times they wouldn’t, as if fucking a flabby middle-aged white lady was part of the job, as long as she was a customer of his boss.
He never said no to any of them, but there were times when he would leave their places and feel like a piece of meat. There were times when he felt like punching one of the bitches out, break half the bones in her goddamn face, teach her a lesson.
Stealing from his boss had been wrong, he knew that. He just couldn’t help it, skimming a little here and there from his delivery receipts. It wasn’t that much. Except that his boss caught him stealing, red-handed—he had called a longtime customer and had cursed the man out for not paying his bill in total, and the customer had cursed him back and sworn that he had, and so the boss had been forced to set a trap for Marvin, and Marvin had walked right into it, and the boss had made him empty his pockets right there on the spot. Marvin was big and strong but his boss had lifted him up clear off his feet like he was a ten-pound sack of potatoes and jammed his back up against the wall, practically breaking Marvin’s bones, he’d slammed him into the wall so hard.
“I treated you good, didn’t I, schvartzer?” the boss had yelled into his face, holding him up against the wall like a rag doll. “And this is how you repay me!”
He was fired on the spot. Not even bus fare home—he had to walk the whole seven miles.
His mother had gone through the roof. “After all what people have done for you!” she’d screamed. Screaming and crying at the same time. “You think I work my ass to the bone so you can pull that kind of shit? Mr. Livonius was good to you, he gave you a good job even though you ain’t got no high school diploma or nothin’, and this is how you repay him!”
“It wasn’t no big deal,” he had argued back, trying to blunt her rage. “He can afford it.”
“That’s not the point!” she’d raved. “You stole from the man. That makes you a thief. Ain’t no thief living under my roof, not one who ain’t got no job, you are eighteen years old now and you are on your own, Marvin. As of this very minute.”
She kicked him out, right out into the street. Hardly gave him time to pack a bag. “When you get yourself another job you can move back in. And not one minute before.”
He’d slept on the street that night. It was warm out, he was in shock from what his mother had done to him. She had always treated him like a little king, always coddled him.
That was three weeks ago. After that first night he slept with friends, a night here, a couple nights there.
He was about out of friends to spend the night with.
But in less than an hour he’d be checking into a nice hotel with clean sheets and hot water in the shower, scalding water, for as long as he wanted. And soft, fluffy towels. Then tomorrow, first thing, he’d buy some new clothes, quality merchandise. And after a short time, when he was set up in business, making it like Dexter, he’d come back and throw a bunch of money in his mother’s lap and watch her eyes get all wide. She would cry in his arms and forgive him. Then they would move out into a nice apartment in a decent neighborhood, where you aren’t so scared that you hit the floor every time there’s a sudden loud noise outside on the street.
He caressed the pistol through the material of his jacket. It felt alive, like a grenade ready to explode. A nice little piece, a .32 Berreta, small enough to handle easy but plenty big enough to blow somebody’s brains out, if it had to come to that. Not one of them crappy Saturday night specials that could as easily blow up in your hand as in some chump’s face. This was the real article—his buddy Raymond, a professional thief, had scored it during a burglary in the north side of town, took it out of some rich woman’s nightstand.
You had to have a burglar’s guts to walk into someone’s house, right into their bedroom where they were sleeping. Marvin didn’t feature that kind of dumb bravado. You don’t put your life on the line so you can boast about being cool to the men in the ’hood.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take care of business. Like robbing this store.
THE ICE WAS MELTING in Paula’s drink.
Violet and Peggy came off the dance floor. They’d been dancing steadily without taking a break, one fast song after another, and hadn’t been paying attention to whether Paula was sitting at the table or not. The floor was crowded with bodies, everybody pressed up against each other, and the lights were dim, to promote that down-and-dirty sexy feeling, and everyone, with or without a partner of the opposite sex, was in their own space, their own thoughts.
Peggy dropped into her chair. “I’d say I was sweating like a pig, but I wouldn’t want to offend anyone you know.” She waved her hand to get the waitress’s attention. “I’ve got to get some fluids into my body pronto or I am going to pass out from dehydration, and passing out in a bar of this caliber would be too mortifying for words.” She looked around. “Where’s Paula?”
Paula’s drink hadn’t been touched. The ice had melted; the slice of lime was floating on the top of the glass like a dead goldfish.
“I haven’t seen her,” Violet said. How long had it been since Paula had gone outside? She had lost track of the time.
“She hasn’t come back inside?”
Violet shrugged. “I don’t know if she’s come back or not. I haven’t seen her, that’s all I know.”
“Maybe she came back in and went out again. It really is hot as blazes in here tonight.”
Violet pointed to the limp drink. “I don’t think so.”
Peggy nodded in agreement. “She wouldn’t let a drink go flat. Not our Paula. Not when it’s on her tab.”
Violet pushed herself to her feet. “I’m going to go out and look for her. Maybe she got sick. She had at least three vodka tonics by my count, and I don’t think she’d had anything to eat before we came.”
“Leave it to that girl. Nothing in moderation, that’s her motto.” Peggy stood also. “I’ll come with you.” She shook her head, half in exasperation, half with envy. “You don’t think …”
“She found someone? She’s impulsive, but she isn’t dumb.”
Grabbing their purses, they pushed their way through the crowd, which was pressing in on all sides, from the edges of the dance floor to the long bars against the walls, and went out the same door Paula had earlier used. After the heat and body humidity inside, the relative coolness of the nighttime breeze momentarily took their breath away.
Peggy sucked in a lungful of moist air. “What a relief.”
“Do you see her?” Violet asked, craning her neck to try to peer over the roofs of the parked cars.
“No, not yet.”
Violet looked around. Here and there she could see couples making out in the shadows. None of the women was Paula, she could tell that from a glance. “She wouldn’t have left without telling us,” she ventured.
“No, of course not.”
They both laughed: nervous relief.
“The hell she wouldn’t. You or me, but not Paula.”
Violet thought about it. “You know, she was casing the place out the whole time we were inside. If she’d seen someone that attracted her, even a little bit, she would have broadcast the news.”
“This is true.” Peggy hesitated. “Unless there was somebody out here she hadn’t seen, and she got carried away in the moment.”
Violet frowned. “She’s done it before.”
“And been sorry the next morning. She carries protection, doesn’t she?”
“That woman carries protection when she’s taking out the garbage.”
They had been wandering through the lot as they talked, looking up and down and around the spaces between the cars. They reached the area where Paula had earlier seen the man in the shadows smoking his cigarette.
Paula was nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t
feel like hanging around out here,” Violet said, turning away as she caught a glimpse of yet another man and woman making out like bandits in the backseat of a nearby parked car.
“Me, neither.”
They started walking back across the lot, toward the bar.
“She’d better be inside,” Violet stated, feeling more anger than she realized she had.
“Hey, you’re not her mother. Lighten up.”
“I’m talking about courtesy, not responsibility.”
“I hear you there.”
Paula’s chair was empty.
“Well,” Violet said, “I guess she got lucky after all.”
“Let’s hope that’s what she got,” Peggy replied. “Or she is going to be pissed at herself in the morning. Royally.”
“No more than I’m pissed at her right now. You don’t walk out on your friends without at least saying good-bye.”
“Maybe things happened too fast, and she didn’t have the time.”
MARVIN STOOD OUTSIDE THE entrance to the store, angled away from the door so the owner couldn’t see him if he happened to look that way. His fingers were all tingling, like how it is when your legs go to sleep and then you stand up suddenly. And he had major cotton-mouth, dry as a bone, he should’ve had something to drink, get the bad taste out.
He had the jitters, but that was to be expected. Earlier, when he’d gone away from the store, killing time while waiting for any last-minute shoppers to clear out, he’d opened the pack of cigarettes he’d bought earlier and lit one up to have something to do with his hands, which had developed a life of their own. One inhale and he almost coughed his lungs out, so he’d just stood there where he’d wound up, a couple of blocks away, the cigarette burning down in his fingers. Made his hands and breath smell bad.
He wished he had something to drink. Something sweet, like a Pepsi.
In a little while he’d have so much money on him he could buy a case of Pepsis. A pallet-load, if that’s what he felt like.
His fingers curled around the butt of the gun in his pocket. Now was the time. He took one last, deep breath.
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