Hollow Man (12 page)

Tristan was as white as a sheet and almost hyperventilating. “Jesus. Fuck. Shit.”

“Calm down, old chap,” I said through gritted teeth. “They're the ones who are dead, not you.”

Otto looked back and forth between us, and I was pleased to see he'd put his gun away. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

“Long story,” I said. I looked back down the track, wondering if the guys grilling their dinner had heard. I expected to see them appear behind us with cell phones in hand, maybe even weapons, but either they were used to gun shots out here or the steaks and beer had obliterated their hearing. Whatever the reason, I was pleased to see a still-empty track behind us. I looked back at Otto and dosed up my voice with surprise. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“Working. Security.” He looked at the bodies. “This is fucking nuts. Are they both dead?” Otto had reverted to his sweating and terrified self. He started toward the security guard, reaching for his phone as he remembered his line. “I'll call it in.”

“No, you won't.”

“What do you mean?”

I gestured with my gun, not exactly pointing it at him but as if reminding him that I held it. “Put that away Otto.”

He lowered the phone and looked around as if he was missing something. He looked back at me. “What the fuck's going on?”

His eyes were pleading with me because the script had just changed, rewritten from a fun and lucrative little heist to a thriller that looked like it might end badly. Clearly, he didn't know how to adapt and was assuming that, as the director, I did.

“Here's what you do,” I told him. “You go back to the other side of the park. Do you have another gun?”

“Another gun?”

“Yes, Otto. Answer the question, do you have another gun?”

“In my car, yes.”

I walked toward him with my left hand out. “Then give me yours.”

He looked down at it as the wheels turned in his head. He realized that when the cops arrived, they might check to see if it'd been fired, and if so they'd take it and test it against the bullet from the guard's body. He handed it to me and looked around. “What's happening?”

“It's dark, no one saw you. Now go get your gun and finish your shift.”

“But why?”

“Just listen to me. Either we all get rich or we all go to jail.” I stepped closer, my voice a hiss of urgency and threat. “Otto, the situation's changed but the rules are the same. Remember who fired first.”

“Wait, but—”

“No, listen,” I snapped. I didn't want to perform for Tristan, so I kept it short. “You do as I say, and when you get off duty you come to my house and find yourself richer.”

Otto glanced at the bodies lying on the ground then back at me, and I knew what he was thinking. He'd not bargained for this, but it was too late to pull out. As a former cop, he knew that if people die during illegal activity, that's felony murder, capital murder. The needle.

I told him my address and made him repeat it three times. He turned and walked away, looking left and right, into the dark.

“Unbelievable,” I said, then turned to Tristan. “Let's get the fuck out of here.”

“You said no guns,” he said. “You said it, loud and clear, no fucking guns.”

“Yeah, well, they started it,” I said.

“And we fucking finished it, all right,” he said. “Now can we go?”

“In a moment, we need to do this right.”

“Do what?” Tristan's voice wobbled and I wondered whether I should slap him. “No, we have to go.”

“Give me the bolt cutters, we're not leaving without the money.” Tristan threw me a scared look but did as he was told, running to the car like someone was chasing him. He handed me the cutters.

“Please hurry,” he said.

“I will, but just in case, hold this.” I gave him my gun. He hesitated, so I wrapped his hand around it, making sure he had a good grip. “It's just in case. You won't need to use it. I'll be right back.”

I pulled surgical gloves on as I ran the twenty steps to the Transit van, looking around and still seeing no one. Gun shots out here wouldn't be all that unusual, but sooner or later someone would come to investigate, if only out of boredom and curiosity. I leaned inside the van and set the blades of the cutters against the padlock. It took less than a minute to bite through it, open up the cage in the back of the van, and pull the two bags out. They were heavier than I'd anticipated, but that meant they were full, a pretty powerful motivator to carry them. I put a bag on each shoulder and started back to the Honda. The most direct line brought me back to Silva's body and, as I stepped over his legs, one of the bags fell.

I froze as the duffel thumped onto his left leg, and instinctively I looked at his face for some reaction. He lay as still as before. I was in a hurry, I knew I was in a hurry, but I wanted to see him up close. I knelt and pretended to check the man's pulse, even though I knew there would be none. My gloved hand lingered on his throat, where the loose flesh was drawn downward by gravity. I closed my eyes and felt taut sinews under my fingertips, like thick guitar strings, and let my hand drift over the firmness of his windpipe, my fingers tracing its edges like they did the neck of my guitar.

“Dom, what are you doing?” Tristan was coming toward me. “He's dead. Give me one of those bags.”

I waved him away. “I got it. Just make sure no one's coming.” I grabbed the bag and hurried to the back of my Honda. As I dropped
them in the trunk, I saw the blood on my fingertips and couldn't resist the temptation. I unzipped one bag, just a little, and wiped the blood on a stack of dollar bills. I smiled to myself,
Tristan's share?
I heard him muttering, so I rezipped the bag and slammed the trunk shut. I snapped the gloves off, turned them inside out, and stuffed them into my trouser pocket.

“Let's go,” he said. “And thank God you're an ADA. If the cops pull us over, they'll let us go. You have your badge, right?”

He was remembering what I'd said earlier, which showed that his brain was back in gear. But I didn't agree, not anymore. I looked to my left, across thirty yards of rutted scrubland to the woods.

“I have a better idea,” I said. “And we need that camera.”

Tristan was already in the car, the door open and his hand still clutching my gun like it was a comfort to him. I took it with gentle fingertips, dropped it into my pocket, and moved to the trunk of the car. He leaned out and looked back at me. “No, dude, let's just go.”

“Not without the camera. The cops might find it, and if they do, we're well and truly fucked. And the woods are perfect for stashing the money for a day or so.” Before he could argue, I popped the trunk and put a flashlight in my back pocket. I heaved a duffel bag back onto each shoulder. “Wait here.”

I trotted away from the car, looking back over my shoulder but still seeing no one. I was starting to think that the kinds of people who lived in the tornado magnets out there had learned to steer clear of trouble, not poke their noses into it. Gun shots might mean cops, and cops were never a good thing for people who lived in their cash society on the edge of the grid.

I hit the woods and stopped, working the flashlight into my right hand and flicking it about until I saw the first of the white strips on the trees ahead of me. I started forward as fast as I dared, my eyes darting between the narrow path at my feet and the strips of white tape that guided me out of view and to the camera. A rustle ahead of me stopped me in my tracks. I knew it wasn't a person—it was too low
and gentle to be human—but for me, the alternative was little better. Maybe it was the comparison to sociopaths and psychopaths in books and movies, but I'd come to loathe snakes. Cold-blooded, dead-eyed, calculating, and ruthless, hiding in plain sight. Yeah, an easy comparison to make: me, snake in a suit. Maybe that's why I didn't like them, and as I stood on that earthen path I realized that snakes and I had gained another thing in common—we both killed to survive.

All around me, crickets and cicadas shredded the peace and quiet of the woods, upping my adrenaline as I scanned the brush around my feet for slithery movement. I saw nothing, heard nothing more, and kept going. In less than a minute, the tree loomed familiar, it's gaping
U
shape a welcome sight. I looked around before dropping the bags behind it, kicking them into a narrow ditch that might once have been a stream. There were enough leaves to cover both bags, and I threw a few sticks on top and tried to make it look as natural as possible. But I didn't have much time.

I hauled myself into the bend in the tree and leaned over to get the camera but froze as a dark silhouette moved between the trees no more than fifteen yards away. The figure stopped, but I couldn't tell if he was facing me or the other way. My hand moved slowly toward my trouser pocket. Another movement, and a second figure, a little shorter, joined the first and their heads came together for a moment. I stayed where I was, hardly daring to breathe, not wanting to kill anyone else. After a few seconds, the silhouettes separated just a little and moved away from me, deeper into the woods.

Young love
, I thought.
All three of us getting lucky.

Once I'd pulled the camera down, I went back to the bags and put it inside, then re-covered them a little more carefully. I almost sprinted back to the car and about fell into the driver's seat.

“Jesus, Dom, let's go.” Tristan was sweating and, quite literally, sat perched on the edge of the passenger seat. “I don't understand why that was even necessary.”

“Look, what I said to you before, about the cops letting me go
if they stop me? That's out the window now. That shit works if I'm speeding, and maybe the cop'll give me a ride home if I'm driving drunk. If I know him. But if they've got reports of two people shot and a description of this car leaving the scene, my badge means something very different to a cop who pulls us over.”

“Like what?”

“Like he'll be extra careful about how he does his job. We match any kind of description, we'll be out and in handcuffs while they search this car. Thanks to me, they won't find a damn thing.”

I fired the engine and spun the wheels in the dust, bouncing from the dirt track of the mobile-home park onto the main road. Once on pavement I slowed, driving carefully all the way home, sticking to the speed limit and signaling each turn and lane change.

Like every good criminal should.

As soon as we were safely away, Tristan turned to me. “What the fuck was the deal with Otto?”

“Meaning?”

“Did you know he was going to be there?”

“Working there? Hell no.”

“He wasn't part of your little plan all along?”

“No. Of course not. Why would I hide that from you?” I glanced at him, trying to look outraged. “And why are you so pissed anyway? We should be glad he showed up; that dude saved our bacon.”

“Maybe.” Tristan looked at me a while longer, and I knew he wasn't sure whether to believe me. Eventually he turned and stared out of the window. We didn't talk the rest of way home, although every now and again he muttered
You said no guns, no guns
. But he didn't seem to want an argument, so I kept quiet except to tell him to keep an eye out for cops. He seemed happy for the distraction, and I used the quiet to put myself in his shoes, and Otto's, to think
about how they might feel. It was hard, because I knew they were terrified of being caught, but they'd also feel something about the two dead men. That, of course, was the part I had trouble with. The fact that both had weapons and would have merrily used them on us was all the justification I needed, and I didn't need much. They'd escalated the situation, turned a simple theft into a double homicide. I hoped my chums would appreciate, in the midst of feeling sorry for themselves, who was left lying in the dust.

Otto's car was already parked outside our apartment building, and he was pacing the hallway inside, his head down, muttering. When he heard us, he looked up, and his face looked like it had melted, a sweaty mix of wide eyes and slack jaw, relief and terror.

“Gentlemen,” I said quietly, “I believe you know each other.”

“Yeah,” said Otto, “and we're a little past polite introductions.”

I unlocked the door to the apartment, and they both rushed in, like the answers to all our problems were laid out on the coffee table. Tristan collapsed on the couch, and Otto went into the kitchen, where he opened and closed cabinet doors for no obvious reason.

“Need something?” I asked.

“A drink. Fuck, you don't drink, do you?”

“No, but Tristan does. Try the cabinet over the microwave. Brandy, I think.”

He poured himself a tumbler, more than I wanted to see him drink, but I didn't say anything.

“So what the fuck is going on?” Otto demanded. He looked directly at me and gave a minuscule nod that said, “I'm back to the script.”