by Ben Sanders
She said, “Yeah, lot of people know somebody. They all tell me they managed okay with it, but you end up dead eventually.”
Stanton said, “Not my aunt—she got hit by a bus.” What the fuck? He could do better than that …
Lucy said, “Probably because she was towing an air tank, couldn’t move fast enough.”
He felt he had a duty to get the story right for this fake aunt, make it Stantonesque, worthy of Stanton honor. He said, “No, she was just standing there, not looking, and it clipped her as it went around a bend. Think she stayed conscious for a minute too, gave the driver a piece of her mind.” Yeah, she fucking would have, too—vintage Stanton.
He heard the squeak-bounce of the air-tank trolley coming down the stairs, and he leaned in the hallway, looking suave, waiting for her.
She said, “You been a dodgy lawyer your whole career, or is it just something that happens a little bit at a time?”
“Dodgy” grated, but then there she was smiling at him, making it a joke, a box of pills on her hip under one arm, the trolley tugged along by the other.
He said, “I’m not a lawyer, I’m a talent agent.”
That made her stop. “What, like they have in Hollywood?”
Stanton said, “Yeah, that’s how I got the idea. This producer flew me to Atlanta one time, wanting me to be like an expert consultant on this heist movie. And that was fine, put me up in a hotel, but I thought, you know, fuck being just the consultant, I want to be the guy who puts everything together—you know, finds the writer, finds the lead, pairs them up with a producer, helps pitch it to a studio.” He rubbed his thumb on his first finger. “Get some dollars in the frame.”
She liked this story—he could tell from her expression, kind of bemused, not saying anything.
Stanton said, “I stayed in L.A. awhile, but it didn’t quite work out.” He shrugged—c’est la vie, who gives a shit. “So I came up here, and now I do the same thing really, just for other kinds of work. You know: see the opportunity, find the right talent, put a team together, take my ten percent.”
He’d told the story enough times he could lay it out pretty smooth, make it sound like this was the way he’d wanted it all along. Problem was, no matter how well you spin it, there’s no fooling yourself, no changing the fact that this was plan B, and that he hadn’t had enough—what? Verve or panache probably, or enough pure Stanton to go legit, and make everything work.
Lucy was still watching him, wanting more backstory, but he didn’t know where to take it next. He could tell her about the cover bands he’d had in L.A.—Six Ton Stanton, Pure Stanton when he was solo, and then a stint with Full Metal Stanton. But nothing had worked out, and he didn’t want to imply that failure was a life theme. He turned away while he thought about where to steer things, and he found himself looking out at a man in a suit: the guy standing on the other side of the folding glass doors, wearing a hat and pointing a gun at him.
Bobby Deen
The guy was about sixty, and heading fast down the wrong side of the hill—round in the middle, and sort of twiggy in the limbs. Bobby said, “Open the door.”
The guy probably couldn’t hear through the glass, but how could he not get the picture? He spent a moment thinking about it, looking left and right, realizing distance and geometry weren’t in his favor, and then he came over and crouched to free the catch at the bottom of the frame.
The glass sections all concertinaed with a whisper on a metal track, and Bobby stepped in with Nina following. The guy hadn’t seemed too shocked at the sight of Bobby, but now with Nina, he lost some composure. He said, “Holy shit, what is this?”
Like a lone man with a gun was okay, but a lady packing heat was too much to reconcile. Bobby took a step left into the kitchen, keeping the pistol raised, and said, “We’re looking for Keller.”
The guy wasn’t sure how to play it, and then he said, “I don’t know any Kellers.”
Nina strolled past him, one hand on her hip and the other hanging at her side with the gun. She said, “I recognize your voice. We spoke on the phone. You’re Stanton.”
Stanton said, “Oh, yeah. And you’re the New York Post reporter.”
Nina was off behind the guy, not looking at him. Bobby watched her checking out the photographs on the wall, getting up close to study each in turn.
She tapped one with her fingernail, a hard click on the glass. “This is his place. He had a photo of the woman in his hotel room.”
Stanton said, “Also he’s got some pictures of himself, which is a real good clue.”
Bobby saw Nina holding back a smile. She turned to the Stanton guy and said, “You tell us where he is, we can be out of your hair. He’s wanted for robbery-homicide, or so I understand. Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy you want to associate with.”
Stanton didn’t answer.
Nina got right up close to him—close enough the guy could have gone for her gun if he was quick enough. But she had a strong don’t-fuck-with-me vibe, and it kept the man in his place. She said, “You seen any bags of money lying around?”
Stanton did a good act of thinking hard. He said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Who were you talking to just now?”
“No one. Myself.”
Nina’s eyebrows went up, indulging his bullshit. Stanton kept at it, held eye contact and deadpanned her: “Sometimes when I’m alone, I just say my name over and over, like: Wynn Stanton, yeah, Wynn fucking Stanton, he’s the man. Then I come in a bit higher, like: Wynn, Wynn, Wynn, he’s the fucking Stanton. Sorta barbershop, I guess.”
He turned, still holding it together well, not a glimmer of a smile, and said to Bobby, “Imagine that’s what you heard.”
Nina seemed to find the guy quite entertaining. She looked at him a long moment, smiling faintly, the hand with the gun doing an idle pendulum so the frame slapped against her thigh. She said, “I’ll go and get the girl, you stay here with Ricky Gervais.”
Lucy Gates
She recognized the woman’s voice from the hotel earlier—they’d been stepping out into the hallway as she went into Miles’s room. She figured they must have guns, or Stanton wouldn’t be so helpful.
So much for the air tank helping quality of life: she couldn’t hide with it, and if she put it down, it’d be clear she was nearby.
The bedroom doors were all open. She went into the guest room she’d been using and stood the tank in the corner, left the box of pills on the floor beside it, out of view from the door. Then she slipped along the upstairs hallway to Miles’s room.
She lay down on the floor on the far side of the bed and crawled in under the frame, chin on the carpet and watching for feet in the doorway. She heard the woman on the stairs, a steady rhythm, no different from her pace downstairs.
Lucy held her breath, and everything seemed to stop with it:
Silence in the house. No footsteps. She waited until the breath burned and then let it out her nose, terrified she’d cough.
The woman said, “Let’s just take the comedian. He’ll be better entertainment, anyway.” Her feet going down the stairs, and then her voice again, quieter, saying, “She’s probably hiding up there with a gun. I don’t want to stick my head above the landing and end up wearing a bullet.”
Quiet for a while, and Lucy strained to hear. She elbow-crawled forward and stuck her head out from under the mattress.
She heard the woman say, “This will all be easy. You just sit in the car, and we’ll go for a drive, and you’ll be on your best behavior. You can keep telling jokes—that’s fine—but you can imagine what’ll happen if you try and make a scene.”
Something she didn’t catch, and then the woman said, “Okay, great. After you. Just a nice, steady walk, no bullshit.”
She heard the folding door close with a slam, and then the house was silent. She listened for footsteps or a car door, but the blood in her head was pounding too hard. She commando-crawled out from beneath the bed, pushed hersel
f up onto all fours and then fully upright, dizzy with stress, her pulse slamming madly.
She ran to the stairs and started down them at a trot, out of breath already, only a few minutes off the tank.
The woman was standing at the bottom by the front door, a pistol in one hand at her side, and the shock of seeing her stopped Lucy with a jolt, like she’d been pulled up by a leash.
The woman shook her head and said, “What an amateur.”
Bobby Deen
Man, he hadn’t even seen Nina raise her gun yet. The woman he’d seen in the hotel—the lady with the gas mask, but with no gas mask this time—came along the hallway with Nina following, the pistol still hanging at her side.
Nina said, “We could keep them here and wait for Keller to show up.”
Stanton said, “He isn’t showing up. He’s a fucking fugitive.”
Nina said, “Yeah, we noticed. Nice picture of him on the news.”
There was a cell phone on the counter in the kitchen. Bobby picked it up and brought it back over to the little gathering, ready for the requisite call for help. Ideally they’d get the girl a bit teary and desperate, have her phone up Keller and give him the hard news. Then Bobby could just wait for him to arrive. Sit down with Keller in the living room and run through why things were playing out as they were. Grant him some decorum. Nina would approve. Then just shoot the guy in the head, walk out of there with a bag of cash and a level score.
Stanton said, “I’m glad we’re hanging around here, though. Like, when someone’s a fugitive, the cops never actually go and check out the guy’s house, do they?”
Nina said, “Must be safe enough, otherwise why are you hanging out here?”
Stanton said, “I’m not a fugitive. Neither’s she.”
“You must have heard of aiding and abetting though?”
Stanton turned his bottom lip out. “Nah, haven’t heard of that.”
The backlight on the phone timed out, and the numbers went dark. Bobby hit the power button and lit the screen up again. He saw Stanton watching him, and he wondered what they’d been doing in the house.
The guy wasn’t thick, and somehow he guessed the thought. He smiled and said, “What on earth were we up to? Were we calling someone? Were we waiting for someone to show up?” He looked around with mock interest and said, “Is this the kind of house where you can shoot someone, and nobody hears? So many goddamned unknowns, right?”
Nina wasn’t enjoying the show so much anymore. She didn’t have her gun up yet, but Bobby thought she’d have an answer, something to kill the guy’s hot air.
Bobby looked at the phone, the buttons lit up in orange. He pressed redial, and a phone number appeared on the little screen.
He put the phone to his ear.
It rang and rang, but he hung on, keeping eye contact with Stanton, trying to read his play—trying to see if he had something going, or if it was all just bravado.
The ringing ended.
Bobby waited, and then a woman’s voice said, “Miles, you’ve got to stop calling me.”
The line went dead in his ear.
He looked at Nina and saw her already watching him, a click as something went between them, a synapse flash, shared futures aligning, pulling them on the same perfect curve.
Bobby said, “I’ve got an idea.”
THIRTY-THREE
NEW YORK, NY
Bobby Deen
Sitting in the back of the car with a captive girl beside him, he felt as if things were coming full circle. It was like the Nina rescue all over again, except this time Nina was up front, in the driver’s seat, running that phone number through Google.
She said, “It must be the ex-wife. He’s obviously got a thing for her, still.” She looked up from her cell phone and found the girl in the mirror. “So don’t get your hopes up—he’s got his mind on other matters.”
The woman—Lucy, her name was—didn’t answer, probably trying to conserve energy now she’d lost the air tank.
Nina said, “Kings Point exchange.” She looked at Bobby in the mirror. “Where have I heard Kings Point?”
It caught the girl’s attention, too—Bobby saw her chin come up a touch. He said, “It was on that news bulletin. His murder-robbery was up there.”
Nina said, “Yeah, that’s it.” She had her head down, typing something. “Bear with me, I’m Googling.”
Bobby let her Google.
Eventually she said, “Kings Point. Okay. I think I’m sufficiently intrigued.”
She tapped her phone screen to dial, and a ringing tone played at high volume through the speaker. She looked at the girl again and said, “This is a test of your good behavior. If you can sit quietly, you’ll be fine.”
The ringing quit.
A woman answered—the same voice Bobby had heard a moment ago: “Caitlyn speaking.”
Nina said, “Good afternoon, ma’am. It’s Maddie Rogan from the Kings Point Police Department. How are you?”
“Oh, fine, yeah—are you calling about my ex-husband?”
Nina said, “Have you been in contact with a complaint, ma’am?”
“Well, no, I haven’t. I mean—I just got a call a few minutes ago, so I assumed that’s what this is about. My husband laid a complaint previously about Miles—”
“Of course, ma’am. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m checking up on. Your phone provider has a flag for incoming traffic off Mr. Keller’s number, so we received an alert.”
“Right, sure. He didn’t say anything, he just hung up.”
Nina said, “Has this been a common occurrence, ma’am?”
“No, not really. I mean, every couple of months maybe. It’s not threatening, but it’s just, you know…”
“Yes, I understand. Ma’am, we’re making a real effort toward domestic safety, and if you’ve got some time available this evening it would be great for me to just drop in for a moment—”
“Oh, it’s okay, I don’t want to trouble you on a weekend.”
Nina said, “No, ma’am, not at all. In fact under our faces-to-names department policy, I do need to drop by at some stage. Especially with our VIP residents, we want to make sure you know we’re here all day, every day.”
The VIP mention did it. The lady said, “Well, sure, great. Yeah, my husband’s overseas with work at the moment, so it’s nice having that comfort of security.”
“Of course. That’s exactly what we’re here for. What does your husband do?”
“Oh, he’s in corporate banking.”
Banking: that chimed with something. He remembered from that afternoon, Nina telling him her Keller connection—how she’d robbed that banker at a dinner party, and Keller checked her out. So maybe that’s why the cop had let her go: his wife had ditched him for a banker prick, and Nina’s theft felt like payback, somehow. Her victim as a proxy for the wife’s new man. Train-wrecked logic, but love did funny things. Bobby guessed he knew that better than most people.
He listened to Nina tell the lady to keep the phone off the hook once they hung up, send a strong message to Mr. Keller if he tried to call again.
“Sure, okay. It’s not that it’s threatening, it’s just … You know. He can’t really move on, I guess.”
They small-talked for a minute longer, and then the woman told Nina her address, and Nina said she’d be dropping by in an hour or so.
She ended the call and turned the key, looked at Bobby in the mirror as she said, “Everything just got so much clearer.”
THIRTY-FOUR
NEW YORK, NY
Miles Keller
The subway felt dangerous. His carriage was ultrabright and near-empty. It felt like an exhibit on wheels. He stayed on his feet so he could turn his back to the platforms. He could see people reflected in the windows—just a glimpse of them as the train flashed by—and they were all staring in at him.
But he made it out of the station at Sheepshead Bay, and no one stopped him. No one pointed, or had a second look. He walked
south into quiet residential streets, and his heart stopped slamming.
Stanton’s car was at the curb across the road. Miles went in the front gate and saw the cat coming out to meet him, bright-eyed and alert and moving in a dainty trot, collar bell tingling.
“You’re always pleased to see me, aren’t you?”
He picked it up under one arm and felt it purr. The front door was locked, so he knocked and called, “Luce, it’s me.”
No answer, but he heard a dull, rhythmic knocking, like a phone book being picked up and dropped, over and over. He put a hand under his shirt and felt the stolen Colt, checking the draw, and walked around the side of the house to the kitchen.
The folding glass door was unlocked. He stepped in and pulled it closed behind him. One of the chairs from the kitchen table was missing.
He took the Colt out of his belt and said, “Luce?”
More thumping, and he could hear humming as well. He walked down the corridor with the cat in one hand and the gun in the other and found Stanton in the living room, duct-taped to a chair. There was tape across his mouth too, and his eyes were bulging as he rocked from side to side in an effort to create noise.
“This wasn’t the plan, Wynn.”
Miles ripped the tape off his mouth. Stanton sucked air. His whole head was scarlet, and it fell forward and hit his chest.
“What happened?”
Stanton’s shoulders were heaving. He wiped his mouth on his shoulder. “A dude in a hat, and a fucking New York Post journalist.”
Nina.
Miles put the gun in his belt and sat down in an armchair. The cat poured out of his grip and slipped away. “What happened?”
“Can you untie me? I really need to drop a stack.”
Miles didn’t answer.
Stanton said, “Come on, I’ve been here an hour. I really need a shit.”
Miles fetched a knife from the kitchen and cut him free.
“Oh, man. Finally. Thank you.”
He was unbuckling his belt as he headed down the hallway. Miles stayed in the living room, and Stanton called, “Lucy was getting her stuff together, I look out the window, there’s a guy standing there aiming a fucking Sig at my face. I let them in—he’s got the lady there with him, whatshername, Nina—and then they take off with Lucy.”