Swag (8 page)

“Do it!” the Armenian said in his high voice.

“Two.”

“Kill me! You take my money, kill me!”

“Three.”

Frank clicked the hammer back with his thumb. The Armenian's shoulders hunched rigid and held like that. Stick waited, feeling his own tension.

After a moment Frank said, “Shit.”

There was no point in wasting any more time. They could tear the place apart and not find anything.

Frank said to the Armenian, “You're lucky, you know that? You're dumb fucking lucky, that's all.”

After they left and were driving away, Stick said, “Shit, we forgot the thirty-eight bucks.”

There weren't any textbooks on armed robbery. The only way to learn was through experience.

They found out gas stations weren't as good as they looked. Hand the kid a twenty and watch him go over to the manager or owner who'd take a wad out of his pocket and peel off change. But it didn't amount to that much: a bunch of singles and fives. There were too many people using credit cards now. Also, the high-volume service stations, where the money would be, always had five or six guys working there, using wrenches and tire irons, some hard-looking guys, maybe not too bright, who might see the gun pointing at them and decide to take a swing anyway. In their three gas station hits they went in and got out fast, the best take seven-eighty, which they figured was about as good as you could do.

They crossed off gas stations and altered a couple of their ten rules for success and happiness, finding it was all right to be polite, but you still had to scare the guy enough so he'd know better than to try and be a hero. It was all right, too, to dress well, look presentable. But they realized they'd better not become typecast or pretty soon the police would be writing a book on the two dudes who always wore business suits and said please and thank you. So they wore jackets sometimes, and raincoats. Stick had a pair of coveralls he liked he'd bought at J. C. Penney. They were comfortable and no one seemed to bother looking at him. Frank liked his pale-tan safari jacket with the epaulets. Very sharp, big in California. He liked the way the Python rested in the deep side pocket and didn't show. Usually, after a job, they kept the guns locked in the glove compartment of the T-bird. Stick thought they should put them away somewhere, hidden. But Frank said it was better to have them handy; they saw a place they liked, they were ready. Keep them in the apartment, some inquisitive broad could be snooping around and find them. Ho
ho
, what're these two business types doing with loaded firearms? Stick wasn't convinced, but he couldn't think of a better place to keep them.

Speaking of rules, Stick said maybe there was one more they should add. Number Eleven. Never try and hold up an Armenian.

They had taken in, so far, close to twenty-five thousand, spent a lot, but still had ninety-six hundred in a safe-deposit box at the Troy branch of Detroit Bank & Trust and about fifteen hundred or so spending money in the Oxydol box under the sink. They didn't divide the money. Except for major purchases—like the car and an eight-hundred-dollar hi-fi setup Frank picked out for them—the money went from the bank safe deposit to the Oxydol box, usually a thousand at a time, where it was available to both of them for pocket money and personal expenditures. There was no rule as to how much you could take; it was whatever you needed.

Two months ago, when they'd moved in, Stick had questioned the arrangement. He'd see Frank dipping in every day or so for fifty, a hundred, sometimes as much as two hundred. Finally he'd said, “Don't you think it'd be better, after a job, we divvied it up?”

Frank said, “I thought we were partners.”

“Equal partners,” Stick said. “We divvy it up, then we know it's equal.”

“Wait just a minute now. You saying I'm cheating you?”

“I'm saying it might be better to split it each time, that's all. Then we know where we stand, individually.”

“You know where the dough is,” Frank said, “right? Under the sink, that's where we keep it. And you know you can go in there and take as much as you need, right? So how am I cheating you?”

“I understand the arrangement,” Stick said. “I'm only asking, you think it would be better if we each took care of our own dough?”

“What're you, insecure? You want to hide it?”

“If half the dough's mine, why can't I do anything I want with it?”

“Jesus,” Frank said, “you sound like a little kid. Nya nya nya, I got my money hidden and I'm not gonna tell you where it is. What is this shit? We partners or not?”

Stick let it drop.

From then on, he took two hundred dollars a week out of the Oxydol box, over and above what he needed, and put it away in his suitcase.

7

STICK WAS ON THE BALCONY,
looking down at the empty patio. It was quiet, the pool area in shadows. He turned when he heard Frank come out of his bedroom and watched him walk over to the bar in one of his new suits and finish a drink he'd made and forgotten about.

“You taking the car?”

“No,” Frank said, “we're going to walk. Broads love to get taken out to dinner and have to walk. You going out?”

“How?”

“What do you mean, how? You going out?”

“I mean
how.
What am I supposed to do, hitchhike?”

Frank took his time. He said, “It seems to me I remember I said maybe we better get two cars. You said, Two cars? Christ, what do we need with two cars? You remember that?”

“How come you figure it's yours?” Stick said. “Take it anytime you want.”

“Jesus Christ,” Frank said, “I don't believe it. You want a car, steal one. You want it bad enough,
buy
one, for Christ sake. Take it out of the bank thing.”

“Have a nice time,” Stick said.

Frank was shaking his head, a little sadly, patiently. “Sometimes, you know what? You sound like a broad. A wife. Poor fucking martyr's got to sit home while the guy's out having a good time.”

“I'll wait up for you,” Stick said. “Case you come in, you fall and hit your head on the toilet when you're throwing up.”

“How long you been saving that?”

“It just came to me, you throw up a lot.”

“You're quite a conversationalist,” Frank said. “I'd like to stay and chat, but I'm running a little late.” He went out.

There was a junior executive group at the Villa, a few guys with friends who were always coming over. Sometimes in the evening, after they'd changed from their business outfits to Levi's and Adidas, they'd sit on the patio and drink beer. If Stick was out on the balcony he'd listen to them, see if he could learn anything.

Usually it was about how stoned one of them got the night before. Or the best source of grass in Ann Arbor. Or why this one guy had switched from a Wilson Jack Kramer to a Bancroft Competition. Or how a friend of one of them had brought back eight cases of Coors from Vail. Then he wouldn't hear anything for a minute or so—one of them talking low—then loud laughter. The laughter would get louder as they went through the six-packs, and the junior executives would say
shit
a lot more. That was about all Stick learned.

This evening he didn't learn anything. They had two beers and decided to go to the show. Stick wondered what Mona was doing. Frank was gone. It'd be a good time if he was going to do it. He liked her looks and could picture her clearly in his mind, but he couldn't see her making all those sounds.

He wondered how much she charged.

He went out past the Formica table at the end of the living room to the kitchen and got a can of Busch Bavarian, came back in, sat down on one of the canvas chairs, and stared at an orange-and-yellow shape on the wall, a mess of colors, like somebody had spilled a dozen eggs and framed them.

He put the beer on the glass coffee table, went over and got Donna Fargo going on the hi-fi. He listened to her tell how she was the luckiest girl in the U.S.A., how she would wake up and say, “Mornin' Lord, howdy sun,” and studied himself in the polished aluminum mirror on the wall. He looked dark and gaunt, a little mean-looking with his serious expression. Howdy there. I'm your next-door neighbor. I was wondering—

Going out the door and along the second-floor walk, he was still wondering.

I was wondering, if you weren't busy—

I was wondering, if you were free—had some free time, I mean.

He said to himself, Shit, let her do it. She knows what you want.

He knocked on her door and waited and knocked a couple more times. Still nothing, not a sound from inside the apartment. Stick went back to his own place, picked up the can of Busch, and walked out on the balcony. It was still quiet, with a dull evening sky clouding over. A lifeless expanse of sky, boring.

But there was somebody down there now. In the swimming pool. A girl doing a sidestroke, trying to keep her head up and barely moving. She was actually in the water, and Stick couldn't recall any of the career ladies ever actually swimming before. He thought she had on a reddish bathing cap, then realized it was her hair—the redheaded one with the frizzy hair the guy in the silver Mark IV came to visit a couple of times a week. That one.

Arlene saw him standing there with her purple beach towel as she came out of the pool in her lavender bikini, her beads, and her seven rings. She said, “Hi,” and laughed.

Stick handed her the towel, asked her how she was doing, and learned, Just fine.

He said, “Your friend coming over tonight?”

“He's tied up,” Arlene said. “Had to go to Lansing.” She began drying her wiry hair, rubbing it hard, and Stick couldn't see her face for a while. He watched her little boobs jiggling up and down. They were small but well shaped, perky. She had freckles on her chest. Stick figured she was a redhead all the way.

“What're you supposed to do when he doesn't show,” Stick said, “sit around, be a good little girl?”

She answered him, but he couldn't hear what she said under the heavy towel.

“Do what?”

She peeked out at him through the purple folds. “I said he never told me I had to sit and twiddle my thumbs.”

Stick gave her a little grin. “Don't you like to twiddle?”

Arlene grinned back and giggled. “I don't know as I ever have, tell you the truth. Is it fun?”

“You're from somewhere, aren't you?” Stick said. “Let me guess. Not Louisville. No, little more this way. Columbus, Ohio.”

“Uh-unh, Indianapolis,” Arlene said.

“Close,” Stick said. “You take Interstate 70 right on over to Indianapolis from Columbus. Used to be old U.S. 40.” He wasn't going to let go of Columbus that easy.

“I was Miss NHRA Nationals last year,” Arlene said. “You know, the drag races? I was going to go out to California—a friend of mine lives in Bakersfield—but I was asked to come here instead, to do special promotions for Hi-Performance Products Incorporated. You know them?”

“I think I've heard the name.”

“They make Hi-Speed Cams. That's their main thing. Also Hi-Performance Shifters. Pretty soon they're going into mag wheels and headers.”

“It must be interesting work,” Stick said.

“You'd think so. But what it is,” Arlene said, “it's a pain in the ass. Those drag strips are so dirty. I mean the dust and grease and all. The noise, God. The first thing I do I get back to the motel is dive in the pool. I love to swim.”

“I noticed, I was out on the balcony there,” Stick said, glancing up at the apartment. “You're like a fish in the water.”

“I love it, the feeling, like I don't even have a body.”

“I guarantee you got a body,” Stick said.

Arlene laughed, raised closed eyes to the dull sky, and shook her wiry hair. It barely moved.

Stick was looking at her mouth, slightly open, her slender little nose and the trace of something greenish on her eyelids.

“I was thinking,” he said, “after all that swimming how'd you like a nice cool drink now to wet your insides?”

Arlene loved the apartment. She said it was cool, it looked like it would be in California. Stick thought Arlene looked pretty cool, too, on the bamboo barstool in her little swimming suit, bare feet hooked on the rung and her legs sloping apart. He fixed her Salty Dogs, once she told him how, kept the vodka bottle handy, and sipped a bourbon over ice while she told him what it was like to put on a little metallic silver outfit with white boots and pose for camshaft promotion shots, with the hot lights and all. She said it wasn't any picnic and Stick said he bet it wasn't. He watched her rubbing her eyes and blinking, but didn't say anything about it until she'd put away three Salty Dogs and was working on number four.

He said, “It's that chlorine in the pool. What you ought to do is go in and take a shower.”