Things got quiet. Turret sat back down, letting us chew on everything he’d said. On TV the riot continued unabated. We watched an armored vehicle clip a protester, who, luckily, was able to get up and limp away. The newscaster said the school had made an announcement barring all future protests or campaign speeches on campus, and that all classes through the end of the semester had been canceled, as a girl on-screen was beaten bloody by a cop. The baton didn’t stop even after she fell to the ground.
“Looks like Kent State all over again,” Ellen said, shaking her head, then turned to Turret. “I’m in,” she promised, and the admiration in her eyes when she looked at him nearly broke my heart.
“Dude,” Rory said, addressing Greg. “We talk the talk, we should walk the walk.” Then, to Turret: “Count me in.”
Greg shook his head slowly, trying to convince himself.
“We get a free pass here in college,” Ellen said to him. “You feel good about that?”
Tense silence, before Greg stood up. “I can’t do it, guys. Not this way.” He started for the door.
“Hey Greg,” Turret said sternly. “You wouldn’t sell out your friends, would you?”
“They know I wouldn’t do that,” Greg replied, making clear where Turret stood with him. He left without looking back, closed the door quietly.
Turret wasn’t happy. “Can we trust him?” Frustration wrinkled his forehead.
“Of course,” Ellen answered. “Greg’s stand-up.”
“He still live in the same place?” Turret asked.
“I’ll talk to him, Glenn. Don’t worry,” Ellen said.
Turret held her gaze without blinking, went over and looked out the window. Then he turned to me and spoke, hands on his hips, voice tight. “That leaves you.”
I wanted to get up and follow Greg out the door. I wished I had his courage. Ellen regarded me with a doubtful expression, like she expected me to disappoint her. The fact that she wasn’t trying to convince me said a lot.
“When do we do it?” I asked, and Ellen’s warm smile almost erased the doubts in my mind.
Turret came over to shake my hand. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said. Then he sat down next to Rory and laid out the plan.
We’d do it on Friday. The bank would have lots of cash on hand for payroll checks. Three of us would go into the bank armed, the other would wait in the car with the motor running. Pretty standard, it seemed. Except we couldn’t decide who got to stay outside. We finally settled on passing a joint around and the one who killed it would do the driving.
It went around twice and got back to me. The joint was hot and short in my fingers, the smoke sweet and dense in my mouth before filling up my lungs.
Then the final burning ember fell onto my shirtfront and winked out.
“Hope you can drive fast,” Turret told me with a grin.
* * *
Friday, early afternoon in downtown San Francisco. Fog just starting to lift from the city, white clouds lit by the hazy sun drifting lazily up above. The air was cool and moist, though I was sweating behind the wheel of the car, watching the entrance of the bank across the street in my rearview mirror. I looked at my watch: only a few minutes had gone by but I was starting to get nervous.
Suddenly, the pedestrians on the sidewalk in front of the bank froze, jerking their heads toward the entrance. Then they scattered in all directions, hunched over in fear, and I wasn’t sure if I’d heard the muffled report of gunfire.
Moments later Turret burst through the front doors brandishing his weapon. He dashed across the street toward me, eyes blazing with adrenaline, and that’s when I knew everything had gone wrong.
That morning we’d gathered once again at Ellen’s place to prepare for the robbery. Everyone had a gun except me, deadly-looking automatics that Turret had acquired a little too easily from an unknown source. His ready access to them made me wonder about the type of people he was associated with. We’d never learned much about Turret’s background; he’d suddenly just appeared in our lives, confident he could convince us to take such an enormous risk for a cause he professed to be loyal to. Now, far too late to say anything about it, I got a funny feeling about him.
As he went over the final details, I glanced at Ellen. Grim-faced and serious, giving Turret her full attention. Rory looked more bleary-eyed than usual, constantly rubbing his forehead and lifting his hands to his temples as if he were in pain.
Turret noticed it too and interrupted himself. “What’s the matter, Rory? You didn’t smoke too much last night did you? I told you we had to be on for this today. Focused. No drugs.” He didn’t seem happy.
Rory defended himself. “Nah man, just a little headache. I’ll be fine.”
“What happened?” I asked, trying to lighten the moment with levity I didn’t feel. “You get smacked in the head with your board or something?”
Nobody laughed. To my surprise Rory confirmed it, shaking his head at the memory. “Wiped out pretty good this morning. But that wave was worth it. You shoulda seen it.”
“You went surfing?” Turret asked, miffed. “This morning?”
Rory nodded. “Crack of dawn. Same as every morning. Something wrong with that?”
Turret opened his mouth, seemed to change his mind and closed it. Then started over. “Take a fucking aspirin or something. We gotta concentrate on this.”
Ellen raised an eyebrow at Turret’s sudden attitude. Rory got up without a word, went into the bathroom and came back with a bottle of aspirin. Popped two of them dry and sat back down.
Turret finished up a few minutes later, tried to be reassuring. “I got it timed out perfect, everybody. Do your jobs right and everything will be fine.”
Now he was rushing toward the car alone, finger still on the trigger. He clambered in and tossed the gun in the back, kept the large canvas bag in his lap.
“Fucking go!” he yelled frantically as he slammed the door.
“What about the others?”
“They’re not coming. Now step on it!”
I peeled out on the slick pavement, screeching around the corner toward a parking garage a few miles away, where we’d stashed my car—Turret had wanted to ditch the getaway car, a junker with stolen plates, as soon as possible.
“What the hell happened?” I yelled, seized with panic.
“Not right now,” Turret barked, looking behind us. “And slow down for Chrissake. We’re in the clear.”
I eased up on the gas and glanced at Turret, feeling sick. He was still breathing hard, flush with excitement, and didn’t seem too broken up that my friends weren’t with us.
“What the fuck happened back there, goddamnit!” I persisted.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes, evading the question. “It doesn’t matter now. Just drive.”
I did as I was told. A few minutes later we pulled into the parking garage, a five-story structure that Turret had picked out carefully. The entrances were served by automatic ticket machines with an all-day flat rate, and the exits were unmanned, perfect for our purposes. It never filled up, according to Turret, and the top two floors were invariably empty. As a precaution, my car was on the fifth floor, away from the elevator to avoid company when we returned.
“Fuck!” Turret said under his breath when we reached level five, and I wouldn’t know how lucky I’d gotten until later.
There was one other car in addition to mine up here, a VW bug parked a few spaces down with a man and woman inside. They were making out. They’d obviously wanted some privacy and watched with annoyance as we approached.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Act normal. Gimme your keys and drop me off at your car. I’ll meet you right below.”
I looked at him dumbly, scared out of my mind, and he explained impatiently, “It’ll look weird if we both get out and switch cars. Just do it!”
I stopped behind my car and handed him the keys. I could feel the two lovers watching us, waiting for us to leave. Turret g
ot out nonchalantly, duffel bag in hand, and leaned back in after closing the door. “Better make it the third floor. I don’t want these idiots noticing this one parked all by itself on their way down. Got it?”
“Yeah.” I crept away unhurriedly, drove down two floors, and parked in a crowd of other vehicles. Turret pulled up behind me moments later. I got out and dashed to my car, making the mistake then that saved my life.
“Come on, come on!” Turret urged impatiently, as I climbed in beside him and slammed the door. It echoed loudly in the enclosed garage, along with the screech of rubber on concrete as we sped off.
When we reached the street, Turret shook his head and muttered, “That stupid ass Rory, man.”
“What? What the hell happened? Are my friends dead?”
“Maybe. They both went down. That’s all I know.”
“Shit! How? What went wrong?”
“Fucking Rory. He lost it, man!”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It was going beautifully. We had everybody on the floor except the vault manager, and she was handing over the cash like her life depended on it. I mean, it was perfect! No one got hysterical, none of those guards tried to be a hero, and I’m watching all that bread going into the bag with one eye and my watch with the other. Next thing I know, Rory’s lettin’ loose with the bullets, man! All hell broke loose after that. I don’t know how I made it out of there alive. But thanks to Rory, that bag is only halfway full.”
Two of my friends were probably dead and he was worried about the money. I looked at him with new fear, suddenly wanting to get far away from him.
“When he started shooting, the guards pulled their own weapons. Ellen was, like, frozen. The rent-a-cops might’ve gotten her, I’m not sure. Rory was already on the floor.”
“And you just left them there?” I asked hysterically. “How could you?”
“You weren’t there, man. It was like a war zone,” he said, getting on the highway toward Santa Cruz. “If I’d stopped to help them none of us would have made it. Including you.” He looked at me, frowned. “And it didn’t take much coaxing to get you to step on the gas back there.”
He was right about that, and I felt like a coward and a traitor for leaving my friends behind. Please God, I thought, let them be alive.
Alone with those dark thoughts, sick with worry and regret, I didn’t notice that Turret had pulled off the freeway into a deserted rest area. When he stopped in front of the restrooms I came back to myself.
“What the hell are we doing?” I asked, confused.
Turret didn’t respond. Just leaned over the seat and reached for something in back, pushing the bag of money aside impatiently. He stopped suddenly in surprise and our eyes met, and that’s when I realized that he’d been going for the gun. The gun that we’d left in the other car in all the confusion.
I was a split second faster than he was and turned to throw open the door, getting one foot on the pavement before he grabbed me and tried to wrestle me back into the car. Cramped by the steering wheel in front of him, he couldn’t get a grip on me with both hands. I used my leverage against the doorjamb and the edge of the seat to tear myself away, scraping one side against the open door before landing on the other shoulder on the ground outside. I got up and took off the way we’d come, toward the highway to flag someone down. I looked back. Turret had started around the back of the car, then stopped and pounded his fist angrily on the trunk before scrambling back behind the wheel and screeching away in the opposite direction. When I reached the freeway he was already gone, blending in with the traffic down the road.
I sprinted back to the restroom for the pay phone, frantically searching my pockets for change. Then I realized I didn’t need it for an emergency call and hit “0.”
My breath was loud in the earpiece before the connection went through. A disinterested voice said, “Operator,” and a few seconds later I was talking to the police. I gave them a description of Turret and the car, as well as my own location and a rundown of the crime.
It wasn’t until much later the following day, after I’d been arrested, that I found out exactly what had happened. By that time, the robbery was all over the news and a tape from the bank’s security cameras had been released. It showed a grainy, black and white view of the lobby and teller counter, but the carnage it depicted was all too clear. Everybody was on the floor. Rory was near the entrance guarding the door. Ellen stood in the opposite corner. Their guns covered the room. A second angle from a different camera showed Turret near the vault urging the attendant to fill the bag quickly. He brandished his weapon threateningly. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Rory toppled to the floor. His gun went off, spraying the ceiling with automatic weapon-fire, the rounds bursting from the barrel in white flashes before he hit the floor. The guards came up firing, pointing toward Ellen, who seemed to be in shock. Somehow, they both missed her. Turret came rushing forward, gun blazing. One of the guards dove behind a desk and the other one got hit and folded to the floor, blood staining his shirtfront. On his way out Turret leveled his weapon at Ellen and blew her over the desk she’d been standing in front of.
A few seconds later Turret disappeared out the front door. Rory tried to stand, shaking his head dazedly. The guard that dove for cover shot him twice in the chest. Rory didn’t move after that.
I told the police that Rory had probably fainted as a result of his surfing mishap earlier that morning.
DESERT
CHAPTER ONE
“Hope you can drive fast.”
The dream always ended with those words, reaching through the years in that half-state between sleeping and waking, when my defenses were down. I was used to it, though; had been for quite some time. It brought guilt and an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, but that Sunday morning, it became more than just a reminder of the mistake I’d made in my youth.
I woke up early, six sharp as usual. No alarm clock from years of regimented wakeup calls. Deirdre had been tossing and turning the last few nights, so I let her sleep. In the kitchen I made some coffee, the special blend I saved for weekends, and while it was brewing, wiped down the counter and rinsed out the mug that I kept on the hook next to the microwave. After checking on Deirdre—still knocked out—I put on some pants and a shirt, then went to get my coffee. I took it out to the front porch, but my first sip stalled halfway to my lips when I realized what I was seeing. Flies don’t circle like that around anything that’s alive.
My coffee cup dropped from my hand and shattered on the concrete. I stepped over it onto the lawn. Dry grass crackled under my feet, the sound of the insects, like high-tension wires, getting louder as I approached. I stopped. Squatted tentatively. Reached out my hand. But I knew it was no use and pulled it back. Then Deirdre was there kneeling beside me, nightgown fluttering in the hot morning breeze, cinnamon hair kissing her soft, bare shoulders.
“He looks like you,” she said quietly.
My neighbor’s timed sprinklers suddenly switched on. The spray misted in the morning sunlight. Rainbows danced like shimmering ghosts.
“Call the cops,” I said, standing. Deirdre backed away slowly, hand over her mouth. A wet sob hiccupped out before she turned around and hurried inside. I felt dizzy for a second, and had to steady myself. The sprinklers were a soft counterpoint to the hammering in my ears. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, which felt cold and clammy despite the temperature, like the TB patients that used to come out here to die. At funerals, I never wanted to view the body, laid out and posed in a casket, with too much makeup on. At least the eyes were always closed.
He was lying face up near the edge of the grass, gazing into the clear blue sky. He’d been shot in the side of the head near the temple, a small hole that was slightly elongated, like the bullet entered from an angle. Early twenties or so, wearing a concert T-shirt and faded jeans. Arms in the grass at his sides. Spent dandelions poked from between his fingers.
Deirdre didn’t say
much when she came back out. “They’re coming. They said not to touch anything.” She wiped a tear from her cheek roughly, another one replaced it.
“How long?”
A resigned shrug. “Few minutes.”
I nodded, looking up and down the street. Still early, nobody around yet. Sirens wavered in the distance, getting closer. Deirdre grabbed my hand and squeezed. She was shivering in the sweltering heat. The flies were buzzing angrily, darting in and out over the body. One of them crawled back and forth over an eyeball. He’s really dead, I thought, as the sirens reached a fever pitch. Then two patrol cars rounded the corner, shot up the block and made a hard stop behind my car.
Moments later we were in the house with two of the officers.
“You made the call?” Things were moving fast now.
“Yeah. My wife did, actually.” The living room seemed small and unbearably hot. They both wore the black, short-sleeved uniforms of the Palm Springs PD, their black leather gunbelts shiny and dangerous. The officer who’d addressed me had his notebook and pen out while the other one was moving slowly about the room, looking around. The bookcase with its collection of counseling and psychology texts stopped him before he moved on. Deirdre watched him, her hands shaking; she could have been one of her strung-out clients.
“Are you okay?” the cop with the notebook, whose nameplate said Tyler, asked her.
Deirdre gave him a look: there’s a dead body on my front lawn, but didn’t voice anything.
“Why don’t we sit down,” he suggested.
Deirdre took a seat on the couch, switched on the table lamp next to the old photograph of her sister. I sat next to her on the edge of the cushions, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. I rubbed my hands together nervously.
Tyler didn’t move. “Mind if my partner looks around?”
“Looks around? Why? We’re the ones that called it in,” I pointed out.
A Stranger Lies There Page 2