The Amateurs (15 page)

“I—oh God.” She stood over the man she had shot. Ian came up beside her, the three of them staring down.
Like kids on a play-ground
, Mitch thought,
only it’s not a twisted ankle or a skinned knee, and no one can yell time-out. This game keeps going, like it or not.

“What do we do?” Ian’s voice was thin.

“We have to take him to a hospital,” she said. “It’s just his shoulder. He’ll be OK. Right?”

So if this is a game, what are the rules?
Mitch stared, let his friends talk around him.
There has to be more than what you’re thinking
.
There has to be.

“And tell them what?”

“We don’t have to tell them anything. Just drop him outside.”

He barely heard the others.
Don’t lie to yourself. It’s too late to lie. Lies won’t save you.

“He’ll tell them about us.”

“He doesn’t know anything.”

Ian said, “He saw your face.”

“But so what? I’ve never been arrested—”

“It’s not just the cops.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know.” Ian’s voice hysterical. “Christ, I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you put your gun down?”

“This is
my
fault? I didn’t shoot him.”

“I had to!”

The man was staring at them, his pupils wide but alert. Staring at the two men in masks, and at the woman standing between. Staring like he was memorizing her face.

Or like he already had.

Mitch raised the revolver, looked down the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

A
SMALL SPACE, VIBRATING, BRIGHT. On his back. Sirens. Movement around him. Cool pressure on his eye. Words. “Male, approximately thirty, blunt trauma to the head and eye, probable concussion . . .”

“Am I . . . where?”

“You’re in an ambulance. Lay still.” The figure touching his cheek, his nose, sliding something into his nostrils. “What’s your name?”

“Alex.”

“Alex what?”

“Alex Kern.”

“Do you know what year it is, Alex?”

“Ummm.” For a moment he wasn’t sure. “2008?”

“Good. And who’s the president?”

“Fucking George Bush.”

The technician snorted. “I’m going to put an IV in. It may pinch for a second.” There was a brief sting in his right elbow.

“Am I—”

“You’re going to be all right. The blow tore your skin, but your eye looks OK.”

“What about—who got shot?”

“I don’t know about that. Lay still and try to be calm.”

Calm,
Alex thought.
Right. Calm.
He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slow, wondering what the fuck had happened.

 

 

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” Jenn sounded like she’d been awake for a week. Mitch didn’t answer. He just leaned back into her couch. His hand tingled, felt very . . . present. Like the kick of the gun had left an imprint.

“Mitch. Are you—”

“Yeah,” he said. He felt at once powerful and weak, strong and shaky. “Yeah.”

It was his first time in her apartment, and it looked different than he’d imagined. He’d pictured frilly things and too many pillows. Clay-colored walls. The standard midtwenties Pottery Barn space. Instead it was tastefully minimal, with less furniture than he had expected. The walls were painted airy colors, and the windows had soft, sheer curtains that flowed with the breeze.

The last half an hour had been the strangest of his life. Like a Lynch film, everything mixed up and weird. Panic and exaltation coiling through his belly. It had all happened so fast. One minute they were walking out of the restaurant, he and Ian, the job done and a new life about to begin. Cut to him standing over a man, Jenn’s pistol in his hand, only one option, one freaking option, and he’d stared at the guy, first at his eyes, then, when he knew he was going to actually do it, at his chest, staring till he was looking at a pattern instead of a person, and then he’d pulled the—

—to the sirens tearing the night, drawing closer. There had been a sense of causality, as if by twitching his finger he’d set the world in motion. Hundred-proof power. King of the world.

Not knowing what else to do, he’d rolled with it.

He’d ordered Ian into the rental, then he and Jenn had climbed into the drug dealer’s Eldorado. Originally he’d only planned to move it out of the way, but the sirens were closing in fast, and so he’d spun north, the engine old but still boasting Cadillac power, and he’d had the strongest urge to jam on the gas, open it up. It had taken an effort of will to drive at a steady five above.

Thoughts and images sliding across him like rain on a window:

The good firmness of the trigger.

Her voice asking, “Where are we going?”

An explosion of light and a sound that hurt. The deeper darkness of the shadows that fell after.

“Your place,” he’d answered. “It’s closest.”

Expecting her to argue, but she’d said nothing. The drive was blurry in his memory. The whole time he’d been steering, braking, stopping, he’d been conscious of two things—

—and Jenn beside him. He could smell her, not perfume, her, the gentle smell of sweat and hair, of girl. Once he’d caught her looking at him, but her eyes slid away before he could read them.

And now here they were, sitting in her tasteful apartment, waiting for the smoke to clear. Wondering if they’d like the view when it did. Mitch coughed, straightened on the couch. “Are you both OK?”

Ian and Jenn looked at each other, then at him.

“I mean, neither of you were hurt.”

“No.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“What about Alex?” Jenn was in the opposite chair, her knees three inches apart. He had an adolescent urge to look up her skirt.

“Of course he’s OK.” Ian was pacing. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

“You hit him pretty hard,” Mitch said.

“I didn’t mean to.” He paused, made a strangled laugh. “It was my first pistol whipping.”

“What?” Jenn straightened. “You hit him with the
gun
?”

“It was in my hand.”

“What about your other hand?”

“I—look, I just did what we talked about. Mitch was there. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was there.”

Another silence, then Jenn said, “What do we do?”

A fair question. He decided to think about it, and was surprised to realize that he could. That in fact, he felt sharp. “OK. Let’s go through this. That guy.” He had a flash of the man’s face, buried it. “He must have been the drug dealer Johnny was meeting with. Damn. I really figured we’d have time before he arrived. He must have known Johnny—what?” Realizing Jenn was staring at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to get my head around this.”

“Get your
head
around it? Get your head around
what
, that you, that we . . .”

“Yes,” he said.

“Can we look on the bright side?” Ian’s eyebrows high. “The cash?”

Funny. Mitch had forgotten about the money. He straightened, pulled the bag to his lap. Opened the zipper. What he saw inside, less real than raising the gun and pulling the—
stop, bury it—
was bundles. He reached in, took out a handful, packs of hundreds and twenties.

“Wow.” Ian sounded reverent. “How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m saying, count, man.”

“No.”

“OK, let me.”

“No.” He stuffed the money back in the bag. “We’re not talking about the money now. We have to think first.”

“About what?”

He looked up, met Ian’s gaze, held it. “About how to get away with this.”

“Get away with it?” Jenn made a squeaky sort of sound. “How?”

“One step at a time.” Mitch’s thoughts came clear and clean and logical. Like a machine, a big industrial machine that stamped out part after perfect part. “First. In the restaurant. We were wearing masks and gloves. Ian, you didn’t take your gloves off, did you? Get sweaty, wipe your hands?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.”

“I might have touched something,” Jenn said quietly.

“Touched what?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“In the alley?”

She nodded.

“That’s OK. It’s an alley. Hundreds of people go through it.” His body felt like it was getting low-grade electrical shocks. He stood, cracked his knuckles. Pulled the pistol from his waistband and dropped it on the table. It hit loud and heavy. “This was the only gun we fired, right? So that’s lucky.”

“Why?”

“It’s a revolver. Revolvers don’t leave casings.” He saw Jenn’s expression, said, “The part that comes off a bullet.” He took two steps forward, spun, took two back, feeling muscles in his legs. Stopped, looked at Ian. “What were you
thinking
, man? Pulling out your gun like some freaking gangster?”

“I was—”

“You didn’t even have the safety off.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the one who shot him.”

“No. You’re just the one who left us no choice.” He glared at his friend, feeling the anger run through him, remembering the guy doing coke in the goddamn car. Ian tried to meet his gaze, then looked away, at the window, his feet. Shuffled them. Looked up again, something in his eyes.

Something like fear.

Strange. Mitch couldn’t remember anyone being scared of him before. “OK. That doesn’t matter now. These guns, the guy you got them from, who was it?”

“Just a guy I know. He runs a private casino. Some other stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“I don’t really know. Prostitutes, I think.”

“Can the guns be traced to him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because he would have worried about us getting caught. He’d have given me ones that couldn’t be traced.”

“OK,” Mitch said again. It felt good to say, to mark off little increments of thought, like ticking off items on a list. “You’re right. And we didn’t leave any fingerprints, and the bullets can’t tie to us. So, then.”

Jenn stared at him. Hanging, he realized, on his next words.

“So then we’re OK.”

“OK? You killed—”

“We. We killed.” He closed his eyes, rubbed at them with his forefinger and thumb. “But he was a bad guy, a drug dealer. And he saw you.” He moved to her, dropped to a squat beside the chair, took her hands in his, not thinking about any of it, just doing. “Jenn, he saw your face.”

She said nothing. Something was happening behind her eyes, though he couldn’t have said what. He kept speaking, talking fast, wanting to make everything better. “But now we’re safe. Things didn’t go exactly how we planned, but we got the money and got out, and didn’t leave anything that would lead to us.”

“But we—”

“Yes,” he cut her off, his patience snapping. “Yeah, we did. Which is just one of the reasons I didn’t want to do this in the first place, remember? You wanted your big adventure? Well, now you’ve got it.”

“That’s not fair.”

“What’s fair got to do with it? It happened, damn it. Do you get me? It happened. It’s real. Do you understand?”

Jenn’s eyes were wide. She nodded yes in a way that meant no.

He sighed, squeezed her hands. “Look, it’s nobody’s fault. But what matters is that there is nothing to point to us. Nothing at all.”

“Sure there is,” Ian said. “The money. The cars. The guns.”

It was a fair point, and it froze him cold. Ian was right. He’d been so focused on thinking about what had already happened that he hadn’t put any thought into what happened next. Still, he was the one holding it together, while the two of them seemed about to come apart, Jenn retreating into herself, Ian’s swaggering a thin veneer over panic. If someone had to be strong, to make the hard decisions, it looked like it was going to be him.

He was surprised at how good that idea felt.

“You’re right. We’ll need to take care of all of that. But first things first. We need to talk to Alex, see what happened on his end. With the shooting, the police will be involved. We hadn’t counted on that. We need to know what they think.”

“I’ll call him,” Jenn said, rising.

“Wait. He’s probably on the way to the hospital.”

“The
hospital
? How hard did you hit him?” She glared at Ian, who sighed and dropped onto the couch.

“Harder than I should have, OK? I was nervous.”

She shook her head. Straightened her back and ran her hands through her hair. “Which hospital would they take him to?”

Mitch realized she was asking him, him directly. “I don’t know,” he said. “And we can’t start calling around, or dial his cell phone a hundred times. We can’t do anything that would raise suspicion.” His mind still churning steady and strong, focusing on the task at hand.
Maybe if you do that hard enough, you won’t have to remember what you—stop
.

He took a deep breath. “The idea from the beginning was that there was no reason why anyone would look at us. Far as we know, that hasn’t changed. We need to talk to Alex and find out what happened on his end. He won’t be in the hospital long. Overnight, probably.”

“So what do we do?”

“Leave one message on his cell, something perfectly normal. Tell him that we’re getting together tomorrow morning. Here.”

“And until then?”

“Wait.”

T
HE CT SCAN hadn’t been a lot of fun. It wasn’t claustrophobia so much as the noise—loud, rhythmic clunking and banging while his head throbbed like an apocalyptic hangover. But worse was just lying there, not knowing what had happened.