Kwik Krimes (14 page)

“Apple or blueberry?”

“One of each. Mikey don’t like blueberry.”

“How many times I gotta tell ya? No names.”

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“Want fries with that?” Vito asked.

“For both of ’em, yeah.”

“One box apiece?”

“Way more’n we need.”

“See me out back in five.”

Bobo spent five minutes watching the rain dent the puddles in the parking lot. Then he trudged out the diner’s front door and circled around back.

Vito stood between an overflowing Dumpster and his Mercury Grand Marquis, a model he favored because of the oversize trunk. When he spotted Bobo, he popped the trunk and rummaged through the boxes stacked inside. He chose two and handed them to Bobo.

“Apple for you, blueberry for your bud. Seven fifty, total. I’m throwin’ in the fries for free. Don’t open the boxes, asshole. Somebody might see.”

“I need to know what I’m buyin’, Vito.”

“Taurus .38 Special for you. Cylinder holds five rounds. Ruger semiauto for your pal. Magazine holds ten .22 longs.”

“Better iron than we need. Only using ’em once.”

“It’s what I got, Bobo. Take it or leave it.”

“Serial numbers filed off?”

“Fuck, no. These babies are brand new. Went missing from a gun shop in Worcester last month. Get caught with ’em, just say you bought ’em off some guy at a gun show. Ain’t nobody can prove different.”

“Gotcha,” Bobo said. He peeled the seven fifty from a roll of damp bills.

Mikey was watching bondage porn on his laptop when Bobo shouldered through the door to their Federal Hill flat.

“Get the pieces?”

“What the fuck you think I’m carryin’ here?”

“We still a go for tomorrow?”

“Lemme check with Sheila while I take a shit.” He slid the phone from his pants pocket, unbuckled his belt, and hustled to the bathroom.

“Jesus! Shut the fuckin’ door and open the window, will ya, Bobo?”

Ten minutes later, Bobo exited the bathroom, slumped beside Mikey on the fake-leather sofa, and saw that his roommate had put the video on pause.

“We still good?” Mikey asked.

“Still good.”

“Tell me again how it’s gonna go down.”

“At two thirty p.m., we hotwire two SUVs at Union Station, drive to Honey Dew Donuts on Allens Avenue, and watch for a
lime-green Isuzu box truck with Finnerty Shipping on the door panels.”

“Why would he use Allens Avenue?”

“Sheila says the driver don’t like the downtown Providence exit. Too much traffic. He always gets off on Thurbers and takes Allens going north.”

“Okay.”

“Soon as we see it, we pull outta the lot, box it in, jump out, and order the driver to get outta the truck.”

“And if he don’t?”

“He will when I shove my piece in his face.”

“You sure he’s gonna be alone?”

“Sheila says yeah.”

“And then?”

“We leave the SUVs in the street, jump in the truck, and drive to Grasso’s warehouse. His boys open the door for us, and we pull right in. Grasso hands us the cash, and we’re gone. Whole thing shouldn’t take more’n ten minutes.”

“And he’s paying us how much?”

“Twenty cents on the dollar. A hundred HP Pavilion laptops, seven hundred ninety-nine dollars retail, makes our cut just under sixteen grand.”

“Sounds foolproof,” Mikey said.

Just after three p.m., the partners slipped on ski masks, gunned it out of the Honey Dew lot, and forced the box truck to a halt. Bobo rapped his revolver on driver’s side window, ordered him out, and slipped behind the wheel. Mikey confiscated the driver’s cell phone, stomped on it, and climbed into the passenger seat.

Bobo cranked the ignition, bulldozed Mikey’s SUV out of the way, and roared down the street. Five minutes later, they pulled
into Grasso’s warehouse, the overhead door creaking shut behind them.

Bobo and Mikey jumped down from the truck and slapped high fives with two of Grasso’s boys. Grasso stepped out of his office and strolled over.

“Any trouble?” he asked.

“Smooth as a teenage pussy,” Bobo said. “Give us our cut and we’ll be on our way.”

“First show me what I’m buying.”

Bobo reached into the truck and slid the key from the ignition. He unlocked the rear door and rolled it up.

“Aw, shit!” he said.

“What?” Mikey said. He peered into the back and saw nothing but a load of folding metal chairs.

Grasso’s boys drew semiautos from their waistbands. Bobo’s piece of apple pie was stuck in his pocket. Mikey had left his slice of blueberry in the truck.

“Boss?” one of Grasso’s boys said.

The boss rubbed his chin, thinking it over.

“Load their bodies in the back and dump the rig in the parking lot at Green Airport.”

Bruce DeSilva is the author of the hard-boiled Mulligan crime novels. The first,
Rogue Island,
won the Edgar Allan Poe and Macavity Awards. The second,
Cliff Walk,
was recently published to rave reviews, including starred reviews in
Publishers Weekly
and
Booklist.
Previously he worked as a senior editor at the Associated Press.

Jo Dereske

For Archie

H
e woke up under a tree in Texas.

A palm tree, actually, outside a baby-blue building, which, from James’s position, appeared to be a cruise ship on stilts. It had a curved prow and porthole windows and balconies like those underwater images of the
Titanic
. A group of gray-haired people lined the railing, pointing at him.

He gave a halfhearted wave—au revoir—hoping for something better next time he opened his eyes. His head pulsed; his stomach roiled.

James struggled to remember. Music festival, that’s right. Austin. Reams of people. Too much to drink, no shit. But then what?

“Jimmy?” The voice sounded familiar.

“Grandma?” he asked, opening his eyes as he recalled his grandmother was dead.

“No, honey. It’s me, Lily.”

It was them, the gray-haired people from the railing. Five, no, six of them, standing in a circle gazing down at him, all wearing lime-green T-shirts that read,
CROQUET AT LA MIRAGE—IT
’
S REAL!

“Lily?” Who was Lily?

She blinked big eyes behind glasses, looking worried, like
somebody’s
grandmother, which was probably why James complained like a child, “My head hurts.”

“Of course it does, dear,” she soothed, “after all that liquor. We were worried about you.”

The others, three women, two men, gravely nodded.

“Where am I?” James sat up, wincing.

“Just you sit quiet for a minute,” the woman named Lily said. “Georgia, where’s that coffee?”

A thick mug was pushed at James, and he gingerly drank the black brew while the women clucked and a man with a walker intoned, “Good for what ails you.”

James absorbed his surroundings. More palm trees, a second baby-blue building behind the first. “How’d I get here?”

“This is La Mirage, and you asked for a ride,” Lily told him. “To see the Gulf.”

“My wallet…”

Glances were exchanged. Murmuring. Lily’s face pinked. She appeared embarrassed. “Did you leave it in Dolly’s condo?”

“Who’s Dolly?”

More glances. Meaningful. Then, as if a group decision had been reached, “C’mon. We’ll show you.”

They led him to an outside elevator. “Dolly’s on third,” Lily explained, and all seven of them piled into the elevator, jostling like tourists on an excursion.

“We met last night?” he asked, still fuzzed. “All of us?”

“Mm-hmm,” Georgia confirmed. “At the Palomino Bistro.”

James had been high when he’d entered the Palomino. A vague image of old people yucking it up in the corner, louder than anybody.

On the third floor, a passing elderly man shook his head. “The Croquet Club rides again, I see.”

Georgia giggled, “High-ho, Silver. Away!”

Everybody was old. “Is this a retirement home?” James asked.

“A
community
,” Lily amended primly.

Nobody answered Dolly’s door. “She doesn’t lock,” Lily said. “Go on in and find your wallet.”

“Check the bedroom,” one of the men advised, and the women tittered.

James hesitated, but they shoved him inside and crowded the open doorway, watching.

It was a studio, and he spotted a lime-green T-shirt draped across a chair, gray hair, then her bare leg sticking unnaturally from beneath a flowered coverlet. “Holy shit.”

They pressed inside, slamming the door. James heard their stage-whisper voices.

“Is she?”

“She is.”

“Poor Dolly.”

“Is that a bruise on her neck? Better call the cops.”

And lastly, “Oh, Jimmy, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” he squeaked in panic. “I don’t even know who she is.”

“You knew Dolly last night, for sure,” Walker-Man said sternly.

“You’re joking. Not me. She’s old.”

Tut-tutting from the women.

“I mean, too old for
me
,” James tried to amend. Too late.

“Did you hurt Dolly?” Georgia asked.

“Call the cops,” Walker-Man repeated.

“No. Listen,” James tried. “It wasn’t me. I swear to God.” Sweat slid down his pits. “I didn’t do anything to her.”

“You got reasons to be scared of the cops, young man?”

“No.” But he’d paused, and they tensed. “Just a few outstanding tickets, that’s all.”

James couldn’t look at the body. He hadn’t seen Dolly’s face, but he knew he hadn’t…he
couldn’t
have. A few drugs, a little light-fingeredness, maybe, but not…
this
.

The stares and silence continued too long. His heart ratcheted. If he could just make it out the door…

“Jimmy, honey,” Lily finally said. “I believe you.” The others grumbled and shifted.

“Dolly was a wild one.” Lily shook her head. “And old people die. But you understand we have to call the police, don’t you?”

He nodded.

She sighed. “I think I should take you to the bus station.”

“Now?” he croaked, hopeful.

James sat on the floor of Lily’s van, watching the fronded tops of palm trees. She hummed from the driver’s seat and, when she stopped, warned him, “Stay down. I’ll buy your ticket.”

“My wallet—” he began.

“Got it right here,” she sang out, and the door slammed.

Lily waved from the ramp as his bus pulled away. The driver suddenly braked, and James froze, expecting the cops, but only a flustered older woman scurried aboard.

“Thanks,” she told the bus driver and dropped into the seat beside James. “Almost didn’t make it.”

James nodded, waving one last time to Lily, flooded with gratitude. She
did
look grandmotherly.

“You know Lily?” the woman asked, gazing past him.

“Not really.”

“What’s that club up to this time?”

“The Croquet Club? I don’t play.”

She snorted. “Neither do they. They wear those T-shirts—it means they’re on an escapade.” She shook her head. “Old fools
acting like the meanest kids you hated in school. The things I’ve seen them do. Ugly, just ugly bad tricks.”

“Like what?”

“You don’t want to know.” She shrugged and cozied into her seat. “Shame on me, gossiping. Dolly’s one of them, but if she hadn’t given me a ride, I’d have missed this bus for sure.”

Jo Dereske is the author of eighteen published novels, including the Miss Zukas mystery series, and the Ruby Crane mysteries. She divides her time between Sumas, Washington, and the Bulkley River Valley in northern British Columbia.

Tyler Dilts

A
fter the flash of terror, after the dull steel head of the hammer strikes again and again, there is darkness.

And there is cold.

And there is emptiness.

Then you, squatting, looking down at the pool of blood on the floor, the tiny islands of bone and brain.

Outside an old woman cries on the porch. You talk to her, say soft things, comforting things.

There are people on the lawn. Inside the yellow line, they have uniforms; outside of it, they don’t. The woman sees someone in the crowd, on the other side, a young man in a hat. She starts to raise her arm to point, but you stop her, gently push it back. You call a uniform over, whisper something in her ear, and then she says something into a radio.