I get my head down down down. The whole world rattles and the walls feel like they’re coming apart. There’s nothing to breathe but dust. And nothing to do but stay here and breathe it until the seconds that become hours become seconds again, and things go quiet. Except for the sirens. The sirens and the new but old sound, the sound of whirling wings.
They’re out of time, Jinx says. He hasn’t moved. He’s still sitting there, still holding his pistol, still grinning that empty grin.
Help is on the way, he says.
Yeah, I tell him.
So we wait, he says. Wait long enough and let the police do their job.
No, I tell him. No way. That’s not CK’s style. They’re gonna come, and they’re gonna keep coming. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not gonna die in a church. Not today. So I don’t think we got a choice. We got to move.
Easier said than done, he says. He twists his right leg, shows me the wound. It’s a nasty one that says he’s not walking.
Hang on, I say to him. There’s an Uzi on the floor that one of the dead guys doesn’t need. Still cold. Hasn’t even been fired. I slap the butt of its magazine and hear the magazine catch lock. Pull back on the charging handle and push the selector forward to automatic. Get my head down, chin onto the floor. Crawl through the doorway to the sanctuary. Check overhead. No light switches, but farther along the wall there’s something better, the place where somebody’s idea of a fire code forced the parish to mount one of those generic EXIT signs. A silver cable snakes out of the sign and into a junction box, and that might work. I steady the Uzi, it’s not meant for marksmanship, and let go, subsonic hiccups sparking up that junction box, and there’s a scrunch of shattered metal and a flickerflash of light and then everything in the sanctuary goes dark.
I slither my way back and tell him: What do you think?
Hey, he says to me. Don’t know bout you, but I stopped thinkin round four this afternoon.
Yeah, I tell him. But what I’m thinking is we move.
I nod to the wound, the bad one, the one on his leg.
That’s got to hurt, I tell him.
Yeah, he says.
If we stay here much longer, we’re both dead.
Yeah, he says.
So, I tell him. I push my forearms into his armpits and get ready to lift. The way I see it, it doesn’t matter if I move you. Except it’s going to hurt even more.
Yeah, he says.
Okay. I tighten my hands into fists, bend my knees.
On three, I tell him. Okay? One, two—
That’s when I yank him up and Jinx doesn’t scream, doesn’t complain, doesn’t do a thing. He just leans into me and says:
What happened to three?
I swing his arm over my shoulders, take some weight on my back, and that’s what screams, pain doing a line dance across my left armpit, over my rib cage, down my spine. We’re side to side, like a cruel sack race, the three-legged man hobbling down the aisle for some healing. But we’re making time, out of that morgue and onto the altar, finally into the sacristy and through another door, and the door opens to a long hallway where the lights are still working. There are doors and more doors and a fire door at the far end, and I choose the second door on the left and we’re inside a small room.
I lean Jinx into the near wall and he does the rest, easing his way down to the floor. It’s this pillbox of an office. There’s a desk and a chair and a file cabinet and a crucifix on the wall and a picture of that dead pope, the pope before the last pope, that guy, and a little square window and maybe this is a priest’s office, and with that thought I stagger over to the desk and it’s locked but I kick the bottom drawer and it pops out a little, so I kick it again and drag the drawer open and inside there’s a pint of that holy water known as Dewar’s, and I say to Jinx, I say:
Hey.
He catches the bottle on the fly and looks at the label awhile before he unscrews the cap and takes a long hit. It gets him coughing, and a little scotch and a little blood leak from the corner of his mouth, but he’s about the happiest wounded guy I’ve ever seen. He screws the cap back and sends the bottle my way. I grab that thing and right about now I start to believe, really believe, that we’re alive.
The first taste of that scotch is like truth: It burns but it’s good. I let it linger on my tongue for a while, then I drink it down. But I’m not greedy. I toss the bottle back to Jinx and I settle back into the wall on my side of the room, slide my ass down, and take a load off. I tug at the magazine on the first of the Glocks; it’s latched.
More sirens.
I don’t fucking believe it, I tell him. Took them long enough but they’re here. Coming in like the U.S. Cavalry. Never thought I’d be happy to see the cops.
Jinx looks a long time at that bottle. Then:
Bout time we called it a day, he says, and he wants to laugh a little but he can’t. He takes a quick pull of the scotch and now it’s my turn again. To take a drink and to talk.
Yeah, I tell him. It’s about time. But not yet.
The bottle comes to me. I take my drink, and the scotch is almost gone, so I save a little bit, for me or for him. It all depends. I wait for my stomach to warm and then I tell him:
I got to ask you something.
Yeah? he says.
Yeah, I tell him. See, something’s been bothering me for a while now, but I wanted to wait for the right time or maybe the right place. Or until I figured it out for myself. But that didn’t happen. So now, before little boy blue gets here, maybe you can help me out.
I hold that bottle of what’s left of the scotch out at arm’s length and I watch the glass bend the fluorescent light, make it blur and bloom, and I guess it’s time to say it, so I say it to Jinx, I say:
I want to know why you shot me. In the garage. In New York. Why you shot me in the back.
But that’s wrong. I know why he shot me, and I know why he shot me with a small-caliber pistol, and why he shot me only once and in just the right place, below the shoulder, above the kidney, away from the spine: To put me down but not out. So I try to say it again. I say:
What I want to know is what you were doing there. In the garage. And what you’re doing here. Now. Why you came back.
There’s a burst of gunfire, something automatic, and it’s answered by pistols and more pistols. Voices yelling. Voices in command. The cops are here, and they’re closing things down.
Jinx isn’t looking at me. His head rests back against the wall and it’s like he’s calm, suddenly calm. He’s staring at the ceiling, or something past the ceiling, the sky, the stars, a dream, I don’t know. But he’s somewhere else for a moment and then he’s back. That’s when he says:
We were following you.
Something about his voice, it’s wrong. It’s different. Changed somehow.
That can’t be right, though, because—
There’s another exchange of gunfire. Closer. In the distance, above us, chopping wind, the sound of helicopters. Incoming. It’s almost over.
You could of followed me to the hotel, I tell him. But then I realize what he said, what I missed: We?
It doesn’t take long. I hear a shot or two from the direction of the chapel, and then the sound of boots, and then the voices:
Clear. Clear. Clear.
The sound of a door being kicked in.
Go!
Boots on linoleum.
Clear!
Coming down the hallway.
Go!
Door to door.
Clear!
Until they’re right outside the office and I know they’ve got fingers on the triggers and they’re going to shoot first, probably shoot second and third, and then, maybe somewhere around fourth or fifth, they might think about asking questions. So it’s got to be smooth. Perfect.
Officer? I work for the right tone. Loud but not too loud. No threat. Compliant. I keep my Glock up, watching the shadow, the helmeted shadow, watching it thicken outside the door, and then t
he second shadow, hovering over and merging into the other one, and I say:
Here. In here. We’re friendlies. Let me say that again: We’re friendlies. And we’re surrendering. We have weapons but we’re giving them up, okay? So go slow. No más, okay? We give.
The first policeman swings in at a low crouch, service pistol out, very steady. Blue helmet, blue uniform, one of the District of Columbia’s finest.
Drop your weapons, Helmet tells us. Then:
Now.
I look at Jinx.
No problem, he says. He takes the Ruger from his lap and palms it onto the linoleum, pushes it toward the cop. Then he goes into the moose: Hands over his head, right hand clutching his left wrist. He’s wincing. It has to hurt. He’s trying to say something.
I bring my hands out wide to each side. But I don’t let go of the Glock.
Drop the weapon, Helmet says to me. And raise your hands. He flattens his foot on top of Jinx’s pistol. Then he says:
Clear.
The second cop slinkies into the room, pistol pointed at the floor, and he’s popped out of the cookie cutter, same chiseled cowboy face, same blue-on-blue. He settles in behind Helmet and I’m showing him my hands, nice and wide, but Helmet isn’t happy that I’m holding on to the Glock and he starts to follow the nose of his pistol my way and that’s when Jinx says to the cops, he says:
Eighty f.
Whatever the fuck it means, that’s what he says, and he says it again and Helmet seems frozen in place, the second cop turning in slow motion, and Jinx comes out of the moose and he reaches toward his right ankle and I can’t believe he’s trying to pull something, go for a piece, what the fuck is he doing?
Eighty f, he’s saying to Helmet.
That’s when Helmet turns and starts emptying his pistol into him.
That’s when the second cop spins toward me and fires, but his first shot kicks wide and he doesn’t get a second shot because I blast back, two shots into his groin that fold him over and put him down. Helmet’s still shooting Jinx when I blow off Helmet’s left shoulder then spray his fucking brains across the far side of the room and I shoot him as I stand and I’m still shooting him when my pistol clicks dry about three feet from his corpse.
I bend over Jinx. I can’t tell how many times he’s been shot, but it’s bad, it’s real bad. Jinx looks at me, and if there are words to describe what happens to his face, I don’t have them. It’s the face of cruel knowledge. The face of death.
He speaks blood.
His mouth opens, his lips move, but it’s blood that comes out. Blood, and at last: Aw, fuck.
Then:
Metro Police, he says.
Yeah, I tell him.
D.C. Police, he says.
Yeah, I tell him. But not anymore.
And he says: No, man. No no no. Not ever. Not here.
What?
D.C. Police, he says again. Aw, fuck. Don’t you see, man? They may be D.C. Police. But this is Virginia.
Oh, shit, I tell him and myself, and I slap another magazine into the Glock, the Teflon-coated KTWs and I head for the door and I’m right on time. Two more of them are shuttling down the hall. The same blue helmets, the same blue uniforms, the same white faces.
Maybe they’re D.C. cops. Maybe not. But even real D.C. cops can’t do shit in Virginia.
The first one doesn’t have a rat’s chance, doesn’t even see me until I snap the Glock up and rack the slide, doesn’t even get to react as I blow his chest out his back. The shots cut through him and then past him, twisting his partner into the wall, his head and helmet fractured into a messy stain. What’s left of them flops onto the floor.
Then: Nobody.
I duck back into the priest’s office and I look at Jinx and the guy’s convulsing. He’s spitting the blood off his lips but he’s talking, he’s still talking.
Eighty f, he’s saying, and he’s pulling at his ankle again, but there’s no throwdown gun, there’s nothing at all, and he’s tearing past his pants leg, he’s pulling off his boot, the man’s delirious, he’s pulling off his boot and finally he gets the boot into his hands and he drives the boot into the floor once, twice, like a hammer, again and again, and his fingers, curled with pain and slick with blood, so much blood, peel the broken heel away from the sole and a shiny rectangle, a piece of plastic, falls from the gap onto the floor.
He drops the broken boot and fades back into the wall.
I put my hand into the tarry black of his blood. I pick up the plastic card that was hidden in his boot. I wipe it off. I try to read.
Who are you? I say to him.
Some kind of laugh rattles and slurps up out of his lungs. Blood bubbles on his lips. He coughs, shooting phlegm and more blood from his nose. Forget what they tell you in the books, what they show you on the TV, in the movies. Dying is never a pretty thing.
I say it to him again: Who the fuck are you?
Eighty f, he says, and his hand reaches to touch the rectangle of plastic. His fingers trace through the blood and now I see his picture, there on the plastic, and at last I hear what he’s saying:
ATF, he’s saying. ATF.
He presses the plastic into my hand and I see the emblem. I see the shield. I see the words that read Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. I see the words that read Special Agent. I see the name but I don’t read the name, I don’t want to know the name, I don’t want to know what’s behind the name, the wife and the kid, the mother and the father and the sister and the brother, I don’t want to know these things, not now, not ever.
We had a man inside …
You fuck, I tell him.
No, he says to me.
No, he says. You fuck. Then:
Don’t you understand? he says. Haven’t you figured it out yet? Nobody’s what they seem. Not me. Not your girl. Not your crew. Not your boss. Not those fucking cops. Nobody.
His breath is wet. His eyes wince shut. Pain nearly takes him into the dark. But the guy’s a fighter. He may be down but he’s not out, not yet, and soon enough he’s back and he says:
So?
He holds me with those eyes, those dying eyes.
I tell him: So?
So who are you? he says. Who the fuck are you?
For about the only time in my life, I don’t have an answer. Not one that works. I can only tell him what I know, which is nothing:
I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.
His eyes go shut and I think it’s over. I think he’s going to find sleep and never wake up. I wipe the blood from his ID and I slip it into his shirt pocket. I take his hand in mine and I wait. Time doesn’t mean much, it could be seconds, minutes, it’s a lost gap until he opens his eyes and he says to me, he says:
I do.
Yeah, I tell him, and I don’t know why, but I want him to see me smile. So I smile, what I’ve got left of one, and I tell him: Yeah. I bet you do.
He blinks his eyes and he coughs more blood and he says to me: I do. So listen to me, Burdon Lane. Just this one time. Listen, okay? See, they say the Lord works in mysterious ways—
Oh, yeah, I tell him, and I want to shut up but I can’t. I tell him:
And you know something? Out of all the things they say, that’s the one I can believe in. Because they’re right. The Lord does work in mysterious ways. All the fucking time. He kills your mother with cancer. Gives three-year-old kids leukemia. Takes down airliners. Aims drunk drivers right smack into school buses. Sets retirement homes on fire for Christmas. Thinks up things like AIDS. Gives people different color skins—
Yeah, Jinx says. That’s right. God does that. All the time. Those are His ways. Mysterious ways, terrible ways. Evil ways. But they’re His ways. And you know what, Burdon Lane?
His hand tightens on mine, and he says:
Somewhere in those mysterious ways, I do think there’s room for you.
He says that word again:
You.
I want to laugh now but I can’t laugh. I can’t do
anything but look into his face. Because I know this face. It’s my mother’s face. At the end.
I can’t leave him this way. I can’t let him die this way. I need to say something, do something, but there’s nothing left to do. Then I remember what I did for Renny Two Hand when I found him at the bottom of that ravine. I can give him that.
I let go of Jinx’s hand, and I reach across the corpses of the cops who aren’t cops, or they’re the wrong cops, I don’t know and I don’t care, and I find what I need: Jinx’s pistol, the Ruger, there on the floor. I wipe blood from its grip and I show it to him, show him that pistol, then press the grip into his hand. It’s so wet, his hand, the gun, my hand, there’s blood everywhere, so much blood, I can’t wipe it all away. At first his fingers can’t hold the weight of the pistol, but I curl his knuckles tight around the grip until he has it. He has it.
He looks at that pistol and he looks at me. He raises the pistol between us. His hand shivers with its unbearable weight.
His face goes calm, resolute, and he says:
I don’t need this anymore.
With whatever strength he’s got left in his body, he throws the pistol aside.
His empty hand reaches for mine, takes it, holds it, squeezes it. After a while his eyes drift closed.
I sit waiting. Trying not to let go. Until he’s dead.
no exit
So this is the end: The big silence. The yawn that’s the payoff for a lot of years pretending I had a life. Making my money and biding my time, waiting for something to show me that there was a point to making the money, biding the time, waiting and wishing and wanting and running and running but never getting anywhere but here, where there’s nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch.
No, make that less than nothing: It’s a hole that sucks everything left of life into that blank space called death.
I’m thinking about a run. A run that was nothing special, the same old same old: Guns for money, money for guns. A run from Dirty City to Manhattan and back, count the dollars, drink myself to sleep, and wake up bleary and weary on another Monday morning. Business as usual.
But it was the last run. The run that would close down UniArms and all the spiderwebs in its attic. The run that Fiona and Jinx and the rest of the cops and the Federal agents worked so long and so hard to set up, to get inside of, so deep inside that they would own it, make it happen, watch its every move to the moment when the badges and the handcuffs would start to shine. The run that would end with arrests and convictions and maximum jail terms, that would take out the gunrunners and the gangbangers in one package wrapped so tightly and brightly that it just might look like Christmas.
Run Page 24