Mary hooked her thumbs on her hips and broke stride. Sofia spun to avoid a collision. The girl in the lead, Robin, flapped her arms like a goony bird to arrest her momentum. As the younger girls caught their breath and gathered together, resting on each other’s shoulders and backs, Mary stepped to the edge of the path, squinting across the ravine. The blob had stopped too. It wavered like a mirage. All at once, it disappeared.
Mary Bowen waited, chewing on her lower lip, her teeth worrying into a small tear in the fleshy center. “It’s nothing,” she finally said. “A local. There’s a lot of rednecks around here. The idiot just fell over. He’s drunk.” She looked at her stopwatch. “Now our time is ruined.”
Chapter Two
“How’s it look out there?” Billy called.
Sam, peering through the glass in the front door, grinned. “Not many cars left on the street. People are getting out of Dodge.”
Billy Lane couldn’t believe their luck. The diversions—especially the big one, the one they’d all laughed about—had worked better than they possibly could have imagined. And the earthquake—well, that was just pure serendipity. A nice little kick-start to the plan. He checked his watch: he’d cleaned out the vault in four minutes flat.
He tripped over the bank manager on the way out. The banker kept his hands on his head, his face pressed into the floor. Billy noticed that the man had balled up his necktie into a little pillow for his ear. He considered what to do with him. The man had seen his face. But after Billy shaved and cut his hair, would the old guy be able to recognize him, if it came to that? Would there be even a flicker?
The whole thing had gone so easy—too easy. The public panic had started before they even reached Second Avenue. When the first bomb went off, three blocks from the bank, people really got moving. Cars jerked away from the curb and screeched around corners. People ran. All headed out of the little downtown. Jackson had been able to park right in front of the bank; he wouldn’t have to circle the block. By the time Billy and Sam walked in, only the manager and one teller were still in the place. The guard had already run into the street. The teller smiled when they came in, which seemed odd. Sam, wearing his big fake nose and badger-hair mustache, walked right up to her and punched her in the face. She hit the floor as if she’d fallen from a plane, her nose lying across her cheek like roadkill. Sam hit her again with his rifle as she lay sprawled on the floor. She wasn’t going to remember the past month, let alone the man who’d decked her. Seeing this, the manager threw his hands in the air like a football referee. He opened up the cash drawers without complaint, whispering please please over and over as if wooing a lover. All Billy could think was: it wasn’t supposed to be this easy.
Billy hadn’t done a bank job since Seattle. Little T was, what, four years old? Five? Becky’s sister had driven in from Tucson to look after the kid for the week. Becks wouldn’t leave her with just anybody. They headed to LAX dressed for the Yukon. What did they know? They had lived in the Southwest their whole lives; they had no idea what to expect in Seattle. Billy could still picture Becks on the street outside the First National, wearing that white sweater that showed off her shape. She was the only diversion they’d needed. They would have gotten away free and clear if he’d offed the guard, but of course he hadn’t. He’d tied him up instead. The man had somehow pulled himself loose from the chair and stumbled outside right when Becky was running for the car. The guard plugged her with a single shot in the back. Pure luck. They had to leave her there, bleeding out in the street, screaming, the sound of sirens in the distance. When Wilson swung into a turn half a block away, Billy vomited all over himself.
All these years later, he still didn’t know how he managed to brazen it out when he showed up at the hospital later, how he convinced the cops that Becks had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, a tourist out looking for the Space Needle while her useless husband was taking a piss in the park. Maybe the coppers had bought the story because they wanted to believe they lived in a city that was a tourist destination. He went straight from the hospital to the airport, hopped the next flight back to LA. He never talked to Wilson again: Wilson, who had the old school chum working at the bank; Wilson, who assured them it would be a piece of cake.
Billy put his Browning Hi-Power to the manager’s head. His hand shook as if it were taking control of its own destiny. The bank manager, recognizing what was happening, also came to life. He choked on a sob, twisted his head to look at Billy and plead his case. “No, please,” he tried to say, but he swallowed the words. Snot fell out of the man’s nose. Billy closed his eyes, put his left hand on top of the right one, and pulled the trigger. The report threw the gun toward the ceiling, wrenching Billy’s shoulder. Brain matter sprayed across the floor. Billy refused to look. He stood and turned away before opening his eyes. First time for everything, he thought. Better safe than sorry. He’d learned that the hard way.
Sam sauntered to the stolen Buick Skyhawk and ducked into the backseat. Hefting the money-stuffed plastic bag over his shoulder, Billy kneeled at the bank’s front door and locked it. He jammed the keys through a storm drain, tossed the bag in the trunk of the car, and climbed in the front passenger seat. A fire was raging in a dumpster down the street, the last of their diversions. Billy thought he could hear a fire truck’s siren, far away, as Jackson eased the car from the curb. There were a few people on the street, but they weren’t looking at the bank or the Buick. One old man wearing suspenders was crouched in an alley, covering his head. A middle-aged woman and a teen boy were running for a side street, away from the fire.
This, right here, this scene: it made Billy smile. The thrills in his line of work were few, if he was honest, but they were real. And however few they were, the assembly line would have offered far fewer. His father—Big Bill—had built bombers during the war, and he’d kept doing so after the war. Billy could have done the same; his father could have punched his ticket with the union, no problem. But Billy had other ideas. He was sure he could be the next Elvis. He was in the mailroom at RCA, his second year there, when he met Becky. She worked as a secretary at a flooring company—laminates and whatnot—while trying to be an actress. They immediately bonded over their frustration at being unknown. Billy’s voice was true and clear, after all. Becky could bring forth tears on command. And they were beautiful. He was tall and long, with a gorgeous sweep of dark hair. A young Robert Wagner, Becky called him. She was blue-eyed, apple-cheeked, and lithe. She could be the next Eva Marie Saint, she said. So why hadn’t they been discovered? They did their first job together—hitting a clothing store—after seeing Ocean’s Eleven, for the excitement of it, and they ended up finding their true calling. By the time they had relocated to low-profile Bakersfield, they were full-time burglars, though Becky still did community theater to feed her soul.
In the years since her death, Billy had convinced himself that the Seattle bank guard’s lucky shot had been an assassination—just one more in the series: President Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Fred Hampton, Sal Mineo, and Christa Helm. He knew Becky could have made it in Hollywood if she had really wanted to. If she had played the game like Tate and Helm. Hollywood was as corrupt as Washington, D.C.—that was what you had to remember. Joe Kennedy had run whores for RKO before the war. That was no secret. Becks received offers after she did that lingerie ad for Macy’s but she’d refused them. Maybe before she met Billy, she would have taken those offers, gone down the rabbit hole. But after Billy, and then the baby, she didn’t want it, not like that. She was better off in Bakersfield; she was happy. Billy was sure of it. Her performances at the playhouse had a purity they never could have had in Lotusland. Her portrayal of Alison in Look Back in Anger was unbelievable. As for himself, Billy had given up singing without any trouble at all. He enjoyed belting out a song, absolutely, but he’d always felt it wasn’t really all that masculine. That was his father talking, but that didn’t mean it was wrong. Big Bill understood wh
at man’s work was. And Billy never had any doubts about the decision. A man needed a real profession. Besides, Elvis had gone out of fashion by then, and Billy had no intention of being the next Bob Dylan. Money doesn’t talk, it swears, Dylan sang. Which just proved the guy was an asshole. Money was the only thing a man could count on. Money made the world go ’round. Who wrote that?
The Buick jolted to a stop. The access road to Highway 395 was backed up—backed way up. All along the road and down the highway as far as they could see: nothing moved. Some people had climbed out of their cars and were talking to other motorists. Billy glanced in the rear-view mirror, saw vehicles piling up behind him. Sam had turned around in the back seat, keeping an eye out for the fuzz. The hunting rifle, tucked under a blanket, sat lightly in his arms.
He was going to have to consider working with Sam again, Billy thought. He had been pleasantly surprised at how calm the little guy had been throughout the operation. Robberies were the lowest-margin part of Billy’s business—because he was careful, steering clear of potential big scores, the ones that drew heat. He didn’t do heists in Bakersfield, either. They had to be at least fifty miles from home. He really looked for excuses not to do them at all. So much could go wrong. He had nodded all the way through the opening scene of All the President’s Men, his armpits prickling. He had warned Sam about what this job would be like, what he would feel as it was happening, but the guy wanted to do it. “Hell, if a spoiled rich bitch can pull off a bank job, anyone can,” Sam said. Patty Hearst had made everyone see the possibilities of the criminal life.
Billy sat back, a hot fear boring into his stomach. He had to think of the bank manager as an object, not a person. If you have to turn a screw, you turn a screw. The screw exists for your benefit. It doesn’t have a family; it doesn’t have any other purpose but to fit perfectly against your screwdriver. The car inched forward, jolted to a stop again. They had to get out of town, before the cops found the mess in the bank and the lockdown began. The highway should have been wide open at this time of day; there should have been no traffic at all. They hadn’t counted on this level of mass panic. Billy closed his eyes, counted: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.
On their second or third job, back in the winter of ’61, he’d been forced to smack a store clerk when the man wouldn’t do as instructed. Becky had been shocked. She made him go to Mass with her the next Sunday. “Do you have any faith at all?” she’d asked as she watched him chewing gum and zoning out on the bench next to her. She was kneeling in the pew, her shoulders rolled forward like a beggar. “I have faith in us,” he responded. The remark had pleased him as he said it, but her expression made him change his mind. He shook himself. He didn’t know why he was remembering that now.
He reached into his pocket, mindlessly massaged the Browning as if it were a rabbit’s foot. He had to get rid of the thing. He began to rethink making Sam a partner. There was the lost assault rifle, for one thing. No matter that Sam bought it under a false name. Losing track of it showed a dangerous carelessness. And as cool as Sam might be under pressure, it could never be the same as with Becky. He and Becks had done it for love, to be together on their own terms. Why was he pulling a bank heist now, after all these years? The money? That’s what he told himself, but he knew that by the time you factored in prep costs and laundering the cash and splitting it up four ways, you had to go back to work. No, he did it for sentiment, which was never a good reason. You couldn’t rely on your judgment when you were doing something to bring back what might have been. If a crook doesn’t have sound judgment, what does he have? That was why, until this job, he’d worked alone for the past dozen years. Bookmaking. Low-risk residential break-ins. Pushing a little coke. A living. But now it was time to ratchet up his earning. Inflation was eating away at every dollar, even if he didn’t declare most of it. There was another reason as well, one he didn’t let himself consciously think about. Billy had to figure out a way to send Tori to college. She was starting to look so much like her mother. He wanted her out of the house.
Billy opened his eyes. “Turn around,” he said.
“What?”
“Come on, do it.”
“We can’t get around this,” Jackson said. “There must be an accident up there.”
“I know. We’re not going to get around it. We’re going to go back.”
Sam wheeled around in his seat, interested. He peered into the front of the car.
“I’m not turning myself in,” Jackson said. “I’ve already done five years in the can.”
“I haven’t done any time in the can, and I’m not going to start now,” Billy said. “Now let’s go. We have to get through downtown again while there’s still time.”
“What are you talking about? Where are we going?”
“We’re going up the mountain. There’s a camp up there for girls. Good place to hide out for a few days.”
Sam barked out a laugh. “Yeah! Girls! Let’s do it.”
Billy cut him with a look. “They’re teenagers, goddamn it!”
“Teenage girls,” Jackson said, angling the car into the median and turning it around. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Chapter Three
“You feel that trembler this morning?”
“Nah,” Hicks said. “Slept right through it.”
Lloyd drove with purpose, guiding the Bronco along the dirt road that led into the hills above Meridian Fields. Mammoth Mountain shimmered in the distance to the north. Now that they were higher up, Hicks fiddled with the police radio, with no luck. It had been popping in and out for weeks. The push-to-talk button kept sticking, allowing only transmission, usually on some unknown channel. Lloyd should have gotten the thing fixed while Hicks was laid up, but he didn’t think he had the authority to approve the expenditure. Which was true enough. The chief sat back, frustrated.
“Temblor,” he said.
“What?”
“Temblor’s the word. Not trembler.”
“Temblor?” said Lloyd, trying the word like an exotic new dish. “I don’t think so.”
Hicks didn’t want to argue about it. Lloyd was the one with the associate’s degree.
They’d rushed Jamison to the clinic—“Not life threatening,” the admitting nurse had assured them—but they couldn’t reach Jimmy’s wife on the phone and the chief quickly decided they couldn’t wait. Hicks’s stomach hurt thinking about it. Sure, this thing on the radio, whatever it was, could be a real clusterfuck, and, yes, Marco would track her down after he had a cup of coffee and got dressed. None of which changed the fact that the real reason he and Lloyd didn’t go find Pamela Jamison themselves was that Hicks felt responsible. He didn’t know what to say to her. Jimmy could get pretty mean when he was drinking. He knocked Pamela out cold once, which was why they picked him up whenever he went on a tear. But Pamela was devoted to him. Hicks could understand that. He liked the guy, too. Probably the smartest man in Mammoth View. Jimmy was always interesting to talk to. He’d been all over the world. He knew about things like ocean currents and astronomy. He’d talk to you for hours, drunk or sober, about black holes, the Big Dipper, Ursa Minor.
Hicks wondered what Ursa Andress was doing these days. He let himself picture the actress, the smoky hair in her face, the severe look in her eyes that foretold emotional and probably physical domination of the next man she met. She had to be about forty by now. He couldn’t imagine that. Was she still making movies? Ursula—that was it. Not Ursa. She was a Swedish girl, not a Martian. Watching her walk out of the ocean in that Bond flick, that was the first time Hicks ever realized he was capable of cheating on Sarah. His wife was sitting right there beside him in the theater, but he’d wanted to climb up on that screen, throw Andress down in the surf and do a From Here to Eternity on her. He’d had to go get a bucket of popcorn to settle himself down.
“Come on,” he said to Llo
yd. “Step on it, will you? You drive like my mother.”
Lloyd stepped on it. Behind them, Lake Crowley made its appearance again, jerking into the rearview mirror as if being moved by a crank. So far they hadn’t seen anything. The sawmill property was empty, like always. The surrounding woods were empty. There was nobody at the lake. Nobody at the campsite. Hicks had searched the landscape with binoculars until he began to question his own perception, until nature began to seem unnatural. The tall grass looked mechanical, the hills like movie sets.
“Why do you think Tom Singer will know something?” Lloyd asked.
“Tom’s place has a panoramic view of the lake and the old sawmill,” Hicks said. “The whole valley, almost. If something happened out here, he would have seen it.”
“If he was standing at the window.”
“Yeah.”
The bland, brown grassland gave way to woods as they climbed. The road here was barely large enough for the Bronco, but there was no way to accidentally drive off the side. Trees, one after the other, pressed right up against the road. On and on the trees went, seemingly into infinity. They had the windows down on both doors, and the cool air swept through and around them.
“You know, the sun causes earthquakes,” Lloyd said.
“How’s that now?”
“It pulls Earth toward it. Makes the tectonic plates shift.”
Hicks considered trying the radio again. Static could be very soothing. “Mmm,” he said.
“There’s this push-pull thing going on between the sun and Earth. If Earth wasn’t moving, it would fall into the sun. Ever think about that?”
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