“Fine.”
Ryan and I each counted in absolute silence. “You done?” I asked after my second count.
“Yeah, I counted three times.” Ryan said. “You?”
“Got the same both times.”
“So how many?” Reese asked. We told her.
“How much is it worth?” Ryan asked.
Reese typed, deleted, and typed again, shaking her head. With a low whistle, she leaned back. “Thirty-four million.”
*
“What else do we need?” The front hall of the twins’ place was piled with duffle bags of clothes, pillows, blankets, a small bag with Ryan’s handguns, grocery bags of junk food, and water. Off to the side there was a neat pyramid of gold bars.
It was scorching in the foyer. Actually, it was scorching everywhere. At two o’clock in the afternoon, the temperature outside was approaching its triple digit height. I wondered why the air-conditioner wasn’t on.
Reese ignored me. She ran her hands through her hair and pulled it up off her skin. Beads of sweat stood out on her neck.
“You look good, Reese.” She let go of her hair.
“Are you sure we need to take two cars?” Reese pretended not to hear my comment.
“I don’t think either car will hold that much weight.” I thought she went to Yale. Didn’t they teach common sense there? “We don’t want them riding suspiciously low.”
“I just think we should try it.”
“It won’t work,” I said. “Do you want your precious Mercedes scraping the pavement?”
“What about Ryan’s?”
“His is lifted.”
“Whatever.” She walked out and returned a couple minutes later with a bottle of cold water.
“Thanks for bringing one for me.” Sometimes I thought Reese just couldn’t hear me.
“We need to pick up your stuff. Ready to face your mother?” She knew I was putting off saying good-bye to my mom. At my grimace, Reese laughed. “You are such a mama’s boy.”
“So?” I sauntered closer and made a show of leaning down to look in her eyes. If she thought I wasn’t going to play up the whole being taller than her thing, she was crazy.
A delicate fist gripped my polo shirt and yanked me closer. “It’s kind of pathetic, you know?”
“And?” I could smell the sweet tang of her sweat. “You’re sexy when you’re all sweaty.”
“We need to talk.”
“About my mother?” I wasn’t pretending to be confused. It was all real. Maybe the heat was making me stupid.
“You know, we don’t have to bring you with us.” She wasn’t asking, just telling me. I nodded. “And you know we don’t have to give you a cut.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
Reese looked at me like I was an idiot. “We are.” That was a surprise. It was probably going to be out of Ryan’s half. “So if you want your cut, you play by our rules.” She pulled me even closer.
“What rules?”
“Stop hitting on me. Stop looking at me like I’m a piece of meat. Don’t act like you’re calling the shots because you’re not.”
I pretended to consider her rules. After a second, I brushed her hair away from her ear so I could lean close and whisper, “If I give up my cut, can I still hit on you?”
The grip on my shirt eased up and Reese snaked a hand behind my neck. Her cheek pressed against mine. “No,” she murmured. I was breathing hard, but I think she was too. With every breath, I could feel her tits brush against me.
I backed away like it was no big deal. “All right, buttercup, but it goes both ways.” Indolently, I tugged my sweat-dampened polo over my head to reveal an equally damp tank top.
“Believe me, it won’t be a struggle.”
It would for me. Not that I was going to tell her that.
Thankfully, Ryan walked in two minutes later. I didn’t think I could glare disdainfully much longer.
“Cell phones for everybody.” He tossed each of us a pre-paid cell phone.
“Gosh, we’re just like spies now,” Reese mocked Ryan.
“Why do you have to kill my buzz?” Ryan threw up his arms and turned away. “You ready to go to your parents’?” he tossed over his shoulder. We followed him out the door.
*
My parents and sister were all home when we got there. It was impossible to act normal. I didn’t want to leave my mommy and daddy. Okay, I was a child. Reese and Ryan waited downstairs while I ran up. Ryan explained that we’d decided to go on a road trip, but we’d be back soon. No, we didn’t know where we were going. Ryan was a way better liar than me.
I tossed a bunch of clothes into a duffle bag. What did people bring when they ran away? I grabbed another bag and added a couple books, my laptop, my iPod. Toothbrush, that was important. Where was my passport? I definitely needed it for Mexico. And whatever the hell country Reese would pick after that. I found the file folder in my desk with my important documents and riffled through until I got to the passport. With everything packed, I grabbed my bags and headed out. I lingered on the stairs debating.
It wasn’t like I was moving out. I couldn’t go back to visit my parents. Not for a while at least. I could let Reese and Ryan go on their own. They would be fine. Except I couldn’t do that. The twins won over my parents. It still felt shitty though.
I told my parents I loved them. I might have hugged my mom longer than necessary, but so did Reese. After my parents’ house, Ryan drove to my bank.
“This shouldn’t take too long,” I said before getting out.
“We’ll be here,” Ryan said.
It was surprisingly easy to pull the majority of the cash in my account out. All I had to do was ask for it. Ten minutes later, I was climbing into the back of the SUV.
“How much was in there?” Ryan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and leaned back to look at me.
I tossed a bank envelope onto his lap. “Three thousand. It won’t get us far.”
“Far enough.” He handed the envelope back. “Until we can sell a bar at least.” He assumed we’d be able to sell them. If not, we were fucked. We didn’t know how to move gold bars. You didn’t just walk into your bank and ask to have your gold bar turned into cash. Or maybe you did. How the hell would I know?
“So I was thinking. If we want to cover our tracks we should get some fake IDs.”
“Totally,” Ryan said.
“God, you two are hopeless,” Reese said. “Too many movies.”
“Whatever. Ideas?” Ryan was practically vibrating at the mention of falsified documents. What a loser.
“Remember Paulie Montrose?” Paulie’d had a monopoly on fake IDs in El Dorado County until he moved away. The kid had some serious skill.
“Oh, yeah. He’s in San Francisco now, right?” Ryan asked.
“I seriously doubt Paulie is still making fake IDs,” Reese said.
“No, he totally is. And I heard he’s gotten better. I bet he’d hook us up,” I said.
“So we’ll detour to San Francisco before we leave?” Ryan asked.
“Can’t hurt. You can head straight down to Vegas,” I told Reese. “We’ll hit up Paulie.”
“What’s your name going to be?” Ryan wanted to know.
“Anything you want, babe.” All that earned me was a loud sigh from Reese and rolling eyes from Ryan.
*
“We didn’t buy cigarettes.” Ryan started whining after ten minutes on the freeway.
“You don’t smoke,” I reminded him.
“You wouldn’t let me bring any weed. I need something to smoke.”
“Too bad. We just started driving. You’ll just have to deal.” I leaned back in the seat and studied cars opposite us on the freeway. I wondered where all of them were going. Home, probably, to their normal lives with a failed marriage and two point five brats. How unappealing.
“I’ll probably get withdrawal or something. I could die.” Ryan was such a drama queen. That was probably wh
y Reese had been okay with driving alone. She didn’t want to deal with his shit.
“Fuckin’ come on, bro. We’re supposed to be under the radar now. We can’t just keep going into gas stations and liquor stores.”
“We aren’t that far from home. Who cares if we go into a gas station?” He was so annoying.
“Fine.” I said. “Pull off here. I’ll go in.”
“You rock.” Thanks, Ryan, I was aware of that.
Ryan pulled into a gas station. “Wait,” he said before I could get out. He climbed into the backseat. “Wear this.” A baseball cap was thrown over the seat. “You’ll be incognito.”
“Yes, I’m sure the hat will totally disguise my identity.” I pushed my hair back and put the hat on anyway. “Too bad it’s dark or I could wear sunglasses too.” A pair of aviators landed in my lap. I tossed them back. “What kind do you want?”
“Camel Wides.”
“All right.” I hopped out of the 4Runner and went into the gas station. “Can I get a pack of the Camel Wides?” I asked the kid behind the counter.
“Wides?” He stood on his tiptoes to pull the pack down. “Anything else?”
“Nope.”
I handed him some cash. When he gave me the change and handed the packs over a, “Thank you, sir. Have a good night,” accompanied it.
I debated correcting him, but I didn’t care. Even though it wasn’t a common occurrence, it still happened often enough. When I climbed back into the SUV, I tossed Ryan his Wides.
“Did anybody recognize you?” Ryan played it up as if that were even a possibility.
“Nope. The hat worked. Actually, he thought I was a guy.” He started laughing. “Oh my God. I got it.” I realized how to fly under the radar.
“Got what?” Ryan opened his pack and lit a cigarette.
“I know how to stay incognito.”
“Baseball hats?”
“Drag,” I answered.
Chapter Ten
Paulie’s loft in San Francisco was in the heart of what he called SoMa. We just called it South of Market, but Paulie liked to pretend he was in New York.
“Damn, Paulie, this place is amazing.” I hugged the guy I’d known since childhood and stared openmouthed around his apartment.
“I know, right?” He grinned. “Come on. I’ll show you around.” Showing around mostly entailed looking out from the balcony off the twenty-third floor. The sun was beginning to set and it glinted off the glass buildings surrounding us.
“I thought your mom cut you off.” Delicacy in speech wasn’t one of my attributes. It was better to just ask.
“Yeah. Fags don’t get college money.” Paulie managed to say it without crying. I would have cried.
“So how the fuck did you get this place?” Ryan prescribed to the same social functions I did.
“I upgraded.”
“In boyfriends?” I picked up a framed black-and-white photo from the counter. It was Paulie in his scruffy, muscled glory with a gorgeous model type who had softly curling hair. They had matching shirts on. I was going to puke from the domesticity of it.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Paulie took the photo and gazed lovingly at it. “He’s Canadian. And so fucking smart. I think I’ll have to marry him to keep him here.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Don’t worry; you guys will get to meet him. He should be home soon. Anyway.” He sighed and put the photo down. “I mean, I upgraded in illicit forms of identification.” What a geek. “You guys are going to die. You said on the phone you wanted licenses, which are no problem. We just need to take photos.” He waved a hand like it was nothing. “But wait until you see what I’ve been working on. It’s an art form. I swear, I wish I could put them in a gallery.”
“Paulie?” He looked up at Ryan. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Driver’s licenses, military IDs.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Those are easy. Birth certificates, passports, not so much.”
“Fuck, dude. You’re awesome,” I said.
“You guys want? I could cut you a deal.” He always was a salesman.
“Are they any good?” Ryan should have known better. Paulie wouldn’t sell them if they weren’t perfect.
“Good? Sweetie, no. Amazing, brilliant. Art, I’m telling you. I do the birth certificates and my wonderful, sexy Marc—he works at the embassy—he pushes the paperwork through for a passport. So it’s fucking real.”
“You really are brilliant.” I congratulated him with only a hint of surprise.
“I know.” He gloated. “I about had a heart attack when they announced that they were going to do biometric passports.” Ryan and I must have looked appropriately blank. “You know RFID?” Still nothing. “Electronic ones.” That we could understand. “But as long as we can fabricate the documentation, it’s no problem. That’s when I started doing the birth certificates.”
“We didn’t really follow that, but it sounds cool.” I figured we should give him some encouragement.
“How long does it take?” Why did Ryan have to kill the excitement?
“Depends on how much cash you have. I can get it done in two weeks, but normally it takes about a month.”
“How much?” Ryan asked.
“For the two weeks,” I added.
He named an amount. We didn’t argue. “I’ll include any manufactured documentation like the birth certificate. And that’s fucking cheap so don’t tell anyone.” As if we would know who to tell.
“Done.” Ryan didn’t even ask me. “We need one for Reese too.”
“Great. You still want IDs?”
“Yep,” I said.
“So three Canadian passports and three California driver’s licenses? Or you want Canadian licenses too?”
Ryan and I looked at each other. He raised an eyebrow.
“You want the British Columbia license,” Paulie said. “The holograms are beautiful.”
“Paulie, are you as good as you say you are?” He always was a cocky bastard. I just wanted to make sure.
He just laughed. “Come on. We need to take pictures. Do you have the pictures of Reese?”
“Right here.” I gave him a flash drive with the pictures we took before leaving.
“Did you use a plain background?”
“We did everything you said on the phone.”
“Perfect.” Paulie ran a finger down Ryan’s chest. “Just like you.” He turned away smiling. “Follow me, boys and girls.”
*
Five hours later, Ryan woke me up. It was just past midnight. The pillow I had propped against the window fell between the seat and the door.
“You want me to take over?” I asked all groggy.
“Yeah, I’m dead tired.”
We switched and Ryan was out in five minutes. We were somewhere on I-5 between San Francisco and LA. The sporadic headlights on the other side of the freeway lulled me into a half awake, half asleep state. Periodically, I sipped from the Mountain Dew I’d pulled from the cooler to keep myself alert.
When you’ve got a shitload of gold bars in the backseat, it tends to slow you down so we were barely at the speed limit. I wondered how long it took Reese to drive. We knew she was already there because she’d called to tell us she checked into a hotel, but it was going to be hours before we arrived.
After I’d been on Highway 15 for a while, Ryan’s GPS said we were about an hour outside the city. I pulled onto the shoulder.
“Ryan.” I shook him. “Hey, it’s time.”
“Shit.” He rubbed his face and shook his head. “All right. Let’s do it.”
I took the 4Runner off the asphalt and drove straight out into the desert for about ten minutes. Periodically, Ryan would consult the GPS and tell me to go a little to the right or the left.
“How’s this?” I put on the emergency brake.
“Works for me.” Ryan hopped out and opened the back. I chugged the rest of my Mountain Dew and joined him. Both shovels wer
e already on the ground. Ryan was strapping on his shoulder holster.
“What are you doing?”
He opened the side compartment and pulled out his Glock 21.
“Seventeen million,” he said as if that answered my question.
“You can’t dig a hole when you’re strapped.”
“Watch me.” He grinned his pretty boy grin and grabbed a shovel.
*
My arms were going to fall off. Followed by my shoulders and legs and neck, and then I was just going to die.
“I can’t dig anymore.” Both holes were about three feet deep and four wide. They were separated by about six feet. “It’s three a.m. Why is it so hot?”
Ryan tossed his shovel to the ground and sat with his feet in the second hole. “It’s too hot to think.”
“Too hot to breathe.” I sat next to him
“To move.”
I dragged myself back to the 4Runner and pulled out two bottles of water. “We haven’t been digging that long.”
“Thanks.” Ryan caught the bottle I tossed to him. “It’s the heat, I’m telling you.” Or the fact that neither of us had slept more than a couple hours since before the party.
“Should we get this shit over with?”
Feebly, Ryan stood and joined me. He found a bandana in his duffle bag and tied it around his forehead to keep his hair back.
“Come on, gorgeous. Give me a hand.” I palmed a bar and handed it to him.
“You’re brutal.”
“I want a shower and some sleep and a drink.” Dreams of cool water and soft sheets were already filling my head. A naked girl would complete the picture, but I didn’t want to get carried away. “I can’t have those things until we finish.”
“Bro.” That meant he agreed.
We began the laborious process of stacking the gold in one of the holes. Each bar was wrapped in a piece of cloth, duct taped shut, and numbered. Ryan crouched by the hole and I carefully lobbed the bars into the dirt next to him. I tried really hard not to hit him.
“Shit, Cooper.” He jumped out of the way for the third time. “I swear if you hit me I’ll kill you.”
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