Lourdes stood there in the entry, same clothes as yesterday, unwashed hair. I’m a disaster, she thought, remembering the phrase from a movie she’d stayed up to watch a few nights back, the girls in bed so she couldn’t ask them what it meant. She glanced up to check how her script, such as she’d managed it, was playing, at the same time noticing the odd burned smell in the air. “I think I must leave it behind yesterday, when I come and clean. Maybe I look around, I no take time, I promise…”
The smell was smoke. Veronica said, “We had a teeny little accident at the stove this morning.” She was girlishly small and achingly thin, sunken eyes, an insomniac pallor, her head a frizzy eruption of sage-colored hair. The ghost of an angry girl, Lourdes thought, that is what she looks like, what she always looks like. “Samantha has some awful sort of flu, she can’t keep anything down. I was trying to scramble her some eggs.”
Lourdes detected a second smell, the familiar whiff of alcohol, Veronica’s breath, at the same time thinking: The girl is here, I need to tell them. She pointed toward the kitchen. “You need me help you clean?”
Veronica ignored the question, plucking idly at her frayed hair. She tried to chuckle but her voice caught. The self-pity in her eyes splintered. “Charlie’s going to kill me…”
What was she talking about? “Veronica-”
“Christ, he blames me for everything. What am I supposed to do? It was an accident. Okay? If you had any idea what a misery this is, how hard-”
“Veronica, I’m not understand-”
“And for what?” She waved listlessly then laughed so bitterly Lourdes shrank from the sound. “Go on, look around. I haven’t seen your stupid watch but maybe it’s here somewhere.”
Veronica turned toward the kitchen, staggering with her first step, recovering with the next. Then Lourdes’s cell phone rang. Waiting until Veronica was out of earshot, she flipped it open.
– What’s taking so long?
– The girl is here, not just the mother.
In the kitchen, Veronica kicked something metal-a pan, from the sound-across the linoleum floor.
– Where are they in the house?
– The girl is in her room, I think. I have not seen her yet. Veronica is in the kitchen.
– Find out where the girl is.
– The girl, she is sick.
– I understand that, but… What the hell…?
His voice rose sharply then fell away and she heard squealing tires-a car banged into the driveway, chattering brakes, a door slamming. Swallowing the knot in her throat, she drifted toward the picture window, peered past the curtains and saw the husband charging through the drizzle up the walk, hair and necktie flailing in the wind, his face flushed with rage.
Charlie’s going to kill me…
Into the phone, she said:-You see him, he is-
– Stick to your story. I’ll call you back.
The front door slammed open, the husband burst in, breathing through his mouth from the rushed climb up the drive, hair shaggy and damp, skin florid. Spotting Lourdes, he pulled up short. She still held her phone.
“What are you doing here?”
For the merest instant she considered confessing everything, the five vatos outside waiting to rob him, ready to kill him. But she could not trust him to understand. And her girls, what would happen?
“I think,” she announced, “I leave my watch here yesterday. I come back, look for it.”
He’d already abandoned his question, neck craning toward the stairs, the hallway. Veronica drifted out of the kitchen.
He said, “What the hell have you done?”
“I want you to listen,” she began.
“Sam said you damn near set the house on fire.”
“That’s a lie. I was trying to cook-”
“She told you she was sick, she puked up half of last week, she didn’t want-”
“I just thought-”
“She said you were drunk.”
The mask dissolved. She turned away. “I’m not listening to-”
The husband lurched forward, grabbed her arm. “Don’t you turn your back on me.”
Lourdes, suddenly light-headed, reached out for the nearest chair at the same moment her phone rang again-only then did she realize it was still in her hand-the sound startling her so badly she nearly dropped it.
– What’s happening?
– They’re having a fight.
– Can you open the door?
– I don’t… I…
– Nothing’s changed. Do as I told you. Just the way we discussed. It’s going to be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.
The phone went dead. In a daze she backed toward the door. She swallowed another clot of air then called out, or thought she called out, that she would come back some other time to look for her watch.
HAPPY FLIPPED HIS CELL PHONE CLOSED AND TURNED TO THE OTHERS.“Vamos, bravos.”
He considered calling it off, but till when-tomorrow? Next week? Lourdes couldn’t handle it, they couldn’t handle her, she’d bolt, she’d crumble, she’d beg them nonstop, crazy, infuriating: Let me go… And her girls, they’d call the law, all that.
He met the others on the street. “Change in plans. This guy Chuck, he’s in the house, so is one of the kids. The girl. We gotta take them down all at once, not one at a time. It’s gonna be okay. Look, everybody but Godo, you go to the same positions we practiced. Efraim, you got the upstairs bedrooms, you take the girl, make sure she don’t call 911. Godo, you look for this Chuck guy, you handle him, right?” His words met stares, each one with its own distinctive fear or surprise or numb resolve. “Okay then. Be smart, stay sharp.”
As they reached the porch they pulled down their balaclavas, dragged the weapons out of the duffel bags, slammed the magazines home, flipped off the safeties. Happy gave the ready signal just as Lourdes opened the door and backed out, saying, “I call before I come back…”
FOR THE PAST HOUR, CROUCHED IN THE BACK OF THE TRUCK, GODO HAD tried to convince himself there was a right way to do this thing, reminding himself this wasn’t Joe Citizen they were taking down but filth, one of them, the arrogant sloppy goat fuckers who, almost singlehandedly, botched the war. Happy wanted no one dead. Fine, the way it ought to be. Don’t just avenge Gunny Benedict, make him proud-assert control, overwhelming force, stay alert, maintain discipline. He could trust Efraim, he wanted to trust Puchi, Chato was wack. Shoot him if need be, he told himself. Better him than the wife or the girl.
As the front door swung open, he rushed in at the lead, using the AK to track the space left to right, ground floor to the stair, feeling the eerie déjà vu he’d expected but luckily not haunted by it, the ghosts present but silent-Gunny Benedict, Salgado, Mobley, the Iraqi family in the Cressida-as though he were split in two, the old Godo, the guy standing here. Then he spotted him, the contractor, Chuck, frozen in place, halfway up the stairs, gripping his wife’s dress with one hand, the other clenched into a fist. He stood there fright-eyed, hunched over the woman, then survival kicked in, he dropped her like a bag of sand and charged up the stairs but Godo was already closing, adrenalin purging all weakness from his bum leg as he moved to contact, taking the steps two at a time, forging past the wife who covered her head and rolled out of his way to keep from being trampled.
The contractor reached the first doorway, the master bedroom, before Godo gun-butted him from behind, knocked him to his knees. He heard Efraim in the hall behind him, running to the other bedrooms to secure them, take care of the girl, while downstairs Happy hooked his arm around Lourdes’s throat, shouting, “Stay calm! Nobody gets hurt, you do as you’re told.”
Chuck the contractor scrambled to his knees, wobbly but clawing at his pant cuff. Godo moved in, planting his foot down hard on the man’s calf, feeling the ankle rig beneath his boot. “Leave it!” He prodded with the tip of the AK’s barrel, a poke in the small of the other man’s back, then reached down, felt for the holster, unhitched t
he strap, pulled the chrome-plated.25 free and shoved it into the pocket of his coveralls.
“Take us down to the safe, open it up.”
Chuck tried to drag his leg out from under Godo’s weight. “What are you talking about? There is no safe.”
Godo studied his face. It was him, he thought, the guy in the back, passenger side, the Blazer at the checkpoint. Him or someone just like him. Applying a little more pressure on the leg, he said, “Don’t be stupid.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I know who you are.”
Godo’s mouth went dry. Knows me how, People’s Fried Chicken or the checkpoint? Maybe it was the weapon, the AK, he’d sold it to Puchi after all. Lifting his boot, “Get up.”
“Or what, you’re going to kill me? Then what, genius?”
Godo made an instant read and figured two things: One, threatening the wife would go nowhere, the guy was thumping her when they busted in, he could care less. Christ, might even be grateful. Two, that left the girl or Thumper here himself and he wasn’t gonna be impressed with mere displays, it was gonna take pain, which meant a change in the ROE. Nobody Gets Hurt had to downgrade to Nobody Gets Hurt Too Bad.
He took out the.25 and fired into the man’s calf. The burned tang of cordite, a strangled scream, floret of blood on the trouser leg.
Godo shouted down to Happy, “It’s okay. It’s me.” Then, turning back, a soft voice: “Infield hit, Chuckles. Man on base.”
Face white with pain, that sour breath, the guy hissed, “You’re dead, I fucking swear.”
Godo fired a second round, the right bicep this time. Another gargled scream. More blood, not too much. “Sacrifice bunt, perfect execution, third-base line. Runner on first advances. We have a man in scoring position.” His face beneath the balaclava itched, damp with sweat. Somebody on the stair struggled with the wife, the screech of duct tape. “The safe downstairs, shit dick, or the girl’s next.”
“I told you-”
Greedy selfish motherfucker, Godo thought. “Bring me the girl!”
“You punk fuck.”
“The girl! Now!”
Godo felt good, in the hunt, balls in a swing, spine like a sparkler. It was Fourth of July. Proof through the night. He was alive. Then he remembered: He knows me. Which tracks back to Puchi, to Chato, to Vasco. Estamos chingados. We’re fucked.
Efraim dragged the girl into the doorway, flannel PJs, blue socks, her hands bound behind her back with the thick silver tape, another strip spooled around her head, pinning her hair against her head, gagging her. It made her eyes pop. She was waifish like the mother and crying.
Godo grabbed her arm, jerked her close, staring down at her father. “Daddy wants you to know, whatever’s down there in that safe of his? It’s, like, way more important than you.” Chuck tried to wet his lips, tongue clicking. “Sammi?”
“You, he don’t give a shit about. He’s handed you up to me.” Godo pushed her down so she couldn’t avoid her old man’s blood, then thumbed back the hammer on the.25. “Man on second, Pops, nobody out. Fly ball, deep center, throw to the plate.” He pressed the barrel to the sobbing girl’s head. “You make the call.”
EFRAIM REMAINED UPSTAIRS WITH THE WOMEN, LOURDES AND THE wife, with Chato on the back door, Puchi the front. Couldn’t leave Chato alone with two bound and gagged women, no matter how homely they were, not without a tacit green light to use his dick for a DNA dispenser. Happy and Godo dragged Chuck downstairs, a couple makeshift bandages for his wounds, and they brought the daughter with them, eyes puffy and red, face slick with tears and gouts of snot.
The cellar room conjured bunker, not sanctuary, low-end paneling with a fake pine veneer, an oval braided rug, an office-salvage desk. Nice array of guns, though, the ones racked on the walls all legal, shotguns mostly, a civilian-issue AR-15, a Korean War vintage M1, a Winchester.30-30 deer rifle with a 3-9 scope. The pistols were displayed in a locked glass case.
Wishing he could draw Happy aside, Godo wanted to tell him that Thumper here, Mr. Chuckles, he may have recognized his voice. The original plan had called for Happy to talk, maybe Efraim, no one else, precisely because the guy could make everybody else. That’s what happens, Godo thought, when things get rocked on the fly. The endgame blurs, you miss the most goddamn obvious things. Then again there was the weapon, he may have figured it out from that alone, though one AK looked pretty much like the next. He’s not going to the law, he reminded himself. Too much to lose, too much he’d have to lie about. Which meant if this thing went south, it wouldn’t be later, it wouldn’t be cops, it would be right here, in this room.
He didn’t see a safe. The paneling had no obvious defects to suggest a false wall, the gun cabinet hid nothing. That left the rug. With Happy training the Glock on the girl, Chuck slumped in the desk chair looking on, Godo shouldered the desk aside, lifted the rug, found the cutout square in the concrete, a notch for a hand grip, the wavy outline of the newer cement like a water stain. Figuring the thing was booby-trapped, he dragged Chuckles from his swivel chair, dropped him near the hidey-hole and cocked the.25.
“Open the safe but don’t reach inside. You do, I blow the back of your head open. And my buddy here does your girl.”
His right arm weakened, the bandage seeping blood, Chuck struggled with his left to lift the heavy concrete panel-one try, two, barely budging it upward. Godo leaned down, flipped the back of Chuck’s ear with the pistol’s snub barrel, then pressed it to the hollow at the back of his skull. “You’re not fooling anybody.”
The man went back to his task, redoubled his effort or pretended to, hefting the concrete slab out of its form-fit hole, pushing it aside with a wincing grunt. The safe lay below, bearing a nameplate: Churchill. It had taken some real work, Godo thought, cutting through the old floor, digging a hole deep enough, planting the safe, squaring it plumb in the hole, reworking the cement. He wondered if Chuck had done it all himself. He seemed the type, industrious, thorough, paranoid.
“Open it up now.”
Reaching down, Chuck leaned to the side a little for the sake of the light, making sure he could see the numbers on the dial as he worked the tumblers, clumsy again, left-handed. His daughter, in Happy’s grip, shuddered and blinked, watching closely like everyone else. Three alternating spins, a pull of the lever, he drew back the door. Figuring there was a gun inside for just this sort of situation, Godo pressed the.25 to the man’s head. “Back on out, sit down.”
The man crabbed his way to the swivel chair and dropped into it, his breathing shallow and rough, the bloodstains on his sleeve and pant leg larger now. Godo gestured for Happy to bring the daughter over, sit her on her father’s lap, and as she got dragged from one spot to the other he noticed, for the first time, the Rorschach of dampness in the crotch of her pajamas. He felt a sudden meek sympathy. He remembered blowing ballast his first time in combat, Al Gharraf, his MOPP suit drenched with piss. Some guys in his unit crapped themselves. The indignities of war. Of warriors.
He lifted the barrel of the.25 until it was level with the bridge of the contractor’s nose. “You got that safe rigged-there a trip wire, a flash-bang, anything else in that hole-you better tell me now.”
Dry-mouthed still, Chuck worked his tongue around, trying to talk. His girl sat perched on his knee, gazing at the floor. Ashamed. Don’t be, Godo wanted to tell her. He traded glances with Happy, stepping back and letting the.25 drop as his cousin lifted the Glock in its place, pressed it to the contractor’s head and spoke for the first time Godo could remember since the start of the robbery.
“Anything goes off,” he said, “you die. And I promise, the girl gets it too, the wife, cleaning lady, everybody. You got one way out. Take it.”
The girl started crying again, breathy tears, eyes shut tight, like she was trying to catch herself, hold back. Godo flashed on a house raid in Fallujah, the unit acting on a tip about a weapons cache, finding only a Shia woman with facial tattoos, a line of big colored dots along her chin and eyebrows,
standing in the kitchen with her simpleton daughter who wore a shabby white linen dress and bit her arm to stifle her sobs, trying to be brave as the marines tore her home apart. Something about this girl here, Sammi her dad called her, she was the portal. Then became now, the claustrophobic shadows and the adrenalin fever and the smell of lentils and goat fat and mint, all of it, flooding his senses. Don’t do this, he thought, trying to shake it off, but it was already too late. The misgiving and dread lingered. They belonged.
“There’s a sensor,” Chuck said finally. The anger remained but it swam around in his eyes untethered. “Sets off a frag grenade inside the hole. Hit the switch just inside and on the top, push it back. That clears it.”
Godo studied him a second, looking for deceit, then lifted the Kalashnikov’s strap from around his neck, set the rifle on the floor, went to the hole, knelt down, peered inside. “I don’t see a switch.”
“It’s tucked inside the door. On top like I said. Have to feel for it.”
Godo checked that Happy had his gun up, hammer back. Godo reached down, put his hand inside the safe, curled his hand up and around, felt for the toggle. Just as a sixth sense told him no, back out, the flash went off, blinding him. The explosion came next, that fraction of a second that saved him, otherwise the hand would be no hand. Still, he felt the scorching wave rip through the glove and his skin caught fire or seemed to, the strange gum-stretch of time with its impersonal calm even as he knew he was yowling with pain, the gravity of shock and a muddy ring in his head, the after-blast, through which he could hear a fleshy drumming tock, the rotors of the little bird chopper overhead and he braced for the storm of dust, until he understood the sound was just blood, pulsing in his ears. He feared he might weep. He could make out scuffling, the Glock’s fierce crack, once, twice, and he snapped back through the funnel of time to now, then glass shattering, the gun cabinet, the barklike grunts of hand-to-hand, Happy and Chuck going at it, the thud of flesh against something hard, the side of a skull maybe, a throaty cry of pain and then the Glock again, three times now.
Do They Know I'm Running Page 28