Magic Line (2 page)

Homer goosed Earl. ‘Yeah, Earl, you be lookin' p'lite while I shoot their fuckin' heads off, huh?' He had a weird laugh,
hyaw-hyaw-hyaw,
and one of his eyes wandered.

Zeb didn't know their last name. He'd asked Robin, ‘Where'd you find Darrell-and-Darrell?'

Robin just chuckled briefly, that dry little half laugh he'd developed lately, and said, ‘Don't worry about them, they'll be fine.'

Earl couldn't seem to say one whole sentence without obscenities but usually made a brutal kind of sense. Homer really did seem to be a few cards short of a deck. He was good with his weapons, Zeb would give him that. But it rubbed his nerves raw to share this cramped space with a guy who kept flipping a butterfly knife over and over, in and out of attack mode, catching the handle one-handed every time. Balisong, they called that weapon. Robin carried one too, sometimes, in a holder Velcroed to his leg. Not today, though – he was travelling light today. Stripped down for action, he told Zeb with a wink.

Finally Robin said, ‘Homer, you don't quit playing with that knife I'm going to stick it up your ass,' and Homer tucked it into an ankle holster. He showed Zeb another knife he kept in a zippered pocket on the leg of his cargo pants. Then he started moving his big handgun from place to place under his shirt, making a point of telling Zeb it was a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver. He watched Zeb's face when he said it, wanting to be sure Zeb understood what a kick-ass weapon that was. Zeb didn't know much about guns but he was trying to firm up his place on the team so he looked at it respectfully and said, ‘Hey, big time.'

Homer couldn't seem to decide between a shoulder holster and his belt. Then he tried out several cleaning buckets till he found one big enough to conceal the gun. He tied a couple of towels around the handle for cover so he could carry the gun inside the bucket, ready to fire. When he had it arranged to suit himself he poked Earl, chuckling, and said, ‘Looky here, what'cha think?'

‘Looks OK.' Earl had a pistol of some kind, under his shirt in a shoulder holster, that he seemed at ease with and never took out. As soon as he saw how much of his chest the clipboard would cover, he unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt. After that he sat still, looking fierce but relaxed, like a panther after lunch.

Zeb was nervous about his own weapon. Robin had given it to him last week, along with the shirt he was to wear on this job. That was a surprise too, a hiking shirt from Summit Hut with clever, hidden pockets fastened with Velcro. One of the pockets had another, zippered pocket inside. ‘You get to carry the money,' Robin said, with more winking; he was making an effort to keep Zeb on his team today. Zeb got a tremor in his chest, thinking about stuffing those pockets with money. How heavy would that shirt get? He could almost feel it on his shoulders – the pull of money.

Robin said the gun was a Lorcin semi-auto, whatever the hell that meant. It fit easily in his hand and was not complicated to fire. It seemed a little small for the task at hand which, he had almost admitted to himself, might include shooting somebody who was trying to shoot him first. He had practiced at a firing range with Robin beside him, talking him through it like a drill master.

‘Don't look at the gun, look at the target. Support it with both hands, so you hold it steady, see? Take a deep breath, let it out slowly . . . slow-leee . . . now squeeze. Good, you actually grazed the edge of the target that time. Can't you stop shaking?'

Later, in front of his sister's mirror while she was at work, he had watched himself pulling the handgun out of his belt and aiming. He told himself over and over,
Just pull it out, aim it and shoot
. He tried to stifle the voice in his head that kept saying,
Yeah,
but the mirror's not shooting back.

‘Heads up,' Robin said now. ‘Here they come.' Zeb felt hot blood rush into his head and neck; now felt way too soon. He could see two men in the front seat of the approaching Chevy Malibu, the bald one driving and the dark-haired one with the brush cut, in the passenger seat where he always sat, scanning the street with laser eyes. Zeb held his breath and craned forward, trying to see. Was there a third man in the back?

It was the question they'd never settled: were there two men in the house, or three? During two weeks of watching, they had only ever identified two men going in and out of the house. But whenever they watched the runs in the SUV, they thought they saw a third man sitting very straight in the middle of the back seat. Hard to be sure with those darkened windows, but it sure looked like there was a third guy in there again today.

Uncertainty about the third man was the reason, Robin said, why he'd added Earl and Homer.

‘You think we need more firepower, huh?' Zeb said, after he met them.

‘Well, yes,' Robin said. ‘I probably wouldn't be counting on them for more brainpower, hmm?' Zeb snickered, Robin winked and chuckled, and for a few seconds they were buddies like old times. But then Zeb went ahead and asked what was their split going to be? Because he had already put in two weeks on this job with no cash flow, and now these two mean, pushy thugs were acting like they owned the thing.

‘No split. Three hundred apiece for an hour's work, that's all they get.'

‘Oh. Well, then. OK.'

‘Of course OK. I know how to set up jobs, Zebby. So why don't you just chill and let me handle things?' Which Zeb did, of course, because without Robin there was no job. But something about the way these crazy, dangerous brothers cleared out space for themselves made Zeb suspect they'd been in on the deal from the beginning.

Robin didn't put the van in gear until the Malibu was in the driveway, the garage door beginning to rise. Watching that door go up, Robin had said, the stash house guys would be thinking about getting inside and wouldn't even notice the utility van rolling toward them in the street. A cargo van with a sign on the side that said ‘Bestway Carpet Cleaning' was as good as invisible.

The Bestway van was still two doors away when the garage door began to roll back down. It was closed by the time Robin pulled up at the foot of the driveway and parked. Earl hit the switch on the big vacuum and they swung the rear doors open so the sound of air roaring through the hose filled the street. They got out, Earl with his clipboard up in front of his chest and Homer with the towels hiding the revolver in the bucket, and walked sedately up the driveway.

Robin and Zeb had already trotted up the driveway and along the side of the house to the backyard. That was the plan, for the two of them to get around in the back while the men inside were still in the garage. Zeb carried the glass cutter in his fist, so it didn't show. Robin had the suction cup under his big shirt, on a cord around his neck.

‘That lady on the corner's coming outside,' Zeb said.

‘She's just getting the mail,' Robin said. ‘She'll go right back in to the babies, forget about her.'

Earl and Homer were almost at the front door. Earl had his pens on a pocket protector, his brutal face screwed into a weird little smile above the clipboard. The heavy-duty metal door, double locked, the only really secure door on this working-class street of cheap, ageing bungalows, had pulled Robin to this stash house like a magnet.

Back of the house, on the cement slab that passed for a patio, they saw the blinds were closed like always inside the sliding glass door. That's what Robin liked so much about this job: the way the men running this stash house kept everything in the back closed up tight. The door and the double window overlooking the yard were always shut and locked, blinds down, drapes closed.

For two weeks Zeb had biked and driven around this house and hidden in the empty house with the ‘For Sale' sign three doors away. He had never seen anyone look out the back window or walk out the sliding door and sit on the cement by the dying cactus.

‘Dumb shits think it keeps them safe to keep the blinds closed,' Robin had said, grinning at the weed-choked backyard the last time they watched it. ‘Just makes our job easier.'

Watching the window now, smiling the odd, humorless smile Zeb had noticed on him lately, Robin pulled on surgical gloves.
Why don't I have some of those?
Zeb wanted to ask but didn't dare start an argument now.

Robin pulled the suction cup out from under his shirt – the roomy blue denim shirt that he had bought in a thrift shop just for this job. Gathered below a broad yoke, it looked old-fashioned like the Dutch Boy on paint cans, but had a modern left sleeve with a zippered small iPod pocket where Robin kept his radio. ‘Radio's better than an iPod,' he said. ‘I can get anything I want on it and nobody can trace it.' Not being traceable, Zeb noticed, had become very important to Robin.

He set the suction cup in place on the window, six inches from the latch. It was actually called a dent puller, but glass installers used them, too. He'd ordered it from Amazon – $2.39 plus shipping, he'd told Zeb, chuckling, and there wouldn't be a local record of the purchase. Robin thought of everything these days; there was a new little line between his eyebrows and when he wasn't smiling that too-wide smile under the bright eyes, one side of his mouth had begun to turn down in something like a snarl.

Zeb cut a big circle around the suction cup with the glass cutter. One little squeak was all the noise it made. He could hear people moving around inside, and some quiet talk he couldn't understand. A drawer opened somewhere near the window. Some rustling, then the drawer slid closed and the drawer-pull clicked against the plate. Zeb felt as if his ears were growing.

Robin pulled on the suction cup. Nothing moved. He turned his bright eyes on Zeb and mouthed,
Tap it
. Zeb laid three fingers of his left hand on the glass, tapped them once lightly with the handle of the cutter, and felt the glass move. Robin pulled out the circle, set it quietly on the cement, and replaced the suction cup very carefully in the center of the circle on the inside pane. Zeb began cutting around the cup, close this time, working carefully so he didn't cut himself on the outer glass.

The doorbell rang: chimes, a little tune.

A voice inside, quite near, said something like ‘Who the fuck's that?' softly, like he was deciding whether to answer it or not.

Footsteps – two sets or three? Zeb couldn't decide. He finished the second cut and Robin hit the puller gently with the heel of his hand. When the glass gave he pulled the circle out, set it down, stuck his hand inside and slowly, gritting his teeth in concentration while he listened, raised the latch. It rolled up without a sound. Zeb, who hadn't known he was holding his breath, exhaled.

A different voice, from further forward in the house said, ‘Carpet cleaners. Must have the wrong house.'

The first voice, moving away, said, ‘Or maybe not. Wait'll I get the—' Zeb couldn't understand the next word. Slowly, ready to stop if he made a noise, Robin slid the window sideways. Dusty venetian blinds hung just to the waist-high sill. Robin moved one slat aside an inch and they saw a stained cotton lining inside a flowered drape. Robin nodded, looking pleased, and turned his back to the opening. He set both hands behind him on the sill, hoisted his butt onto it, mouthed,
Let's go
, turned sideways and swung one leg over.

Inside there was some quiet scurrying, a hinge squealed on what sounded like a cupboard, and the doorbell rang again. There was a whoosh of air as the front door opened and the blind and drape bellied out the open window. Robin was briefly wrapped inside plastic slats and the clinging drape. He pushed it all away and swung his other leg inside. Homer's big gun roared at the front door; Earl's barked right behind it. Another gun answered from inside and then a chattering weapon cut loose and drowned out everything else. Somebody screamed in the front yard. Robin dropped inside, ducked under the blind and disappeared.

Zeb turned his back to the window sill, ready to push himself up and follow Robin into the house. But then there was another great burst of gunfire, and a bullet blew through the left side of the back window, close to the jamb, carrying fragments of flowered drape and plastic blind along with many shards of glass. He felt the wind as it passed his head, and a sliver of glass lodged in his cheek.

The screaming out front stopped abruptly. There was one more shot inside the house, then silence. And then Zeb heard, from somewhere amazingly close and coming on fast, a siren. It felt like a knife slicing into his brain – the cops were already here!

He ran like a rabbit. Dropping his glass-cutting tool on the cement, he abandoned Robin, great deeds and easy money – the money he had imagined so clearly, he would have sworn he could feel it weighing down his special pockets.

There was a break in the wooden fence, down by the corner post. Not large, but he sucked up his gut, held his breath and slithered into the neighbor's yard. He ducked under sheets on a clothes line, climbed through a wire fence into another yard that was open to the street. Running east on Chardonnay Drive he reached Oak Tree Drive and ran south along it, his tattoos and body piercings flashing in the late-afternoon sun.

A second patrol car turned into the street, siren screaming. Zeb saw him slow at the sight of a running man, muttered, ‘Oh, shit,' and began looking for a yard to duck into. But the car's radio clattered with urgent orders, ‘ten-ninety-nine, see the officer at . . .' and the address on Spring Brook Drive. Zeb saw a flash, marveled that a patrolman would shoot through his own windshield, then realized he had not been shot and a second later knew he'd just been photographed. No sweat, he thought, a blurry photo of a running man, so what? What mattered was the black-and-white drove on.

The scare did him a favor actually, made him realize running was conspicuous. As soon as he slowed to a walk he remembered the Lorcin was still in the waistband of his pants. He stuck it in his pocket and walked briskly into the parking lot of the Walmart Store, doing his best to look unarmed and harmless. Inside the sliding front doors of the store he stood still, feeling his sweat cool.