18
EAST WAS AS GOOD AS WEST. It didn’t seem to much matter. Moving was the point, staying mobile. Driving minute after minute, mile after mile, with no goal but keeping away from everyone, from the whole world, while they figured out what to do. How to make this right.
The thought almost made Tom laugh. Make it right? What would that look like, Einstein?
He shook his head, filled with a terror and loneliness he’d never known. The world he used to believe in had imploded, and the new one was a horror show inhabited by monsters. Everything he loved was at stake. And there was no one they could trust. They were all alone.
Anna shivered in the passenger seat, arms clutching her chest, and Tom leaned forward to turn up the heat. He punched back and forth between AM 720 and 780. A commercial for volunteer teachers, an overdubbed voice saying that positive role models could dramatically lower drug usage amid blah blah blah.
Nothing so far. It wouldn’t be long now, though. It couldn’t be. Your average shooting didn’t make the news in a city like Chicago, but a firefight in a Lincoln Park mall would. How had things gone so wrong? He still couldn’t understand it, couldn’t wrap his head around what had happened.
An announcer came on and they both held their breath. Waited to hear their own names, that they were fugitives. Prayed that they might hear about a known criminal, Jack Witkowski, gunned down by police while fleeing the mall. Instead, the announcer started in on the economy, the expected fall in the real estate market. People had been talking about how Chicago was overbuilt for a year or two, and coupled with a shaky mortgage industry, it seemed a recipe for imminent disaster. Once, that had really worried them.
From up ahead, Tom heard sirens. His fingers tightened on the wheel. In a blur of red noise, an ambulance blew past.
“Do you think—”
“I don’t know.”
There was a gap, dead air, and then the anchor came back on, his voice different, harried. Tom leaned forward to turn up the volume.
“—early reports of a shoot-out in a Lincoln Park mall. According to our information, at approximately ten o’clock this morning, shots were reported at Century Mall. Witnesses say that perhaps as many as ten people were involved, with gunfire wounding several and possibly killing others, including, it is currently believed, at least one police officer. We, ahh . . .” He stalled, and Tom could picture the host trying frantically to read. “We understand that police have evacuated the mall and may be in a standoff with the shooters. The identities of the men involved are currently unknown, as is whether they have been captured. There are only preliminary details at this time, but we will obviously be keeping you posted as more information becomes available on this story. Again, this took place at the Century Mall, an upscale center in Lincoln Park, not an area known for . . .”
Tom turned the volume down.
“Do you think they know we were there?” Anna clicked her thumbnail against her teeth.
He blew a breath, shrugged. His cheek itched, and he went to scratch it with his left hand, caught himself, reached around awkwardly with his right. “If they do, they’ll be after us.”
“Along with Malachi, and Jack, and the cops that work for him.”
“Yeah.”
They rode in silence. Lightning blew the sky like a bulb. Eventually she said, “What are we going to do?”
A light turned red ahead of them. He braked. Sat with the rain bouncing off the roof, the radio announcer muffled in the background. After a moment, he turned sideways. “Baby,” he said, “I don’t have the first clue.”
HALDEN HAD BEEN turning down Tom and Anna’s street when the reports started coming over his radio. Like most detectives, he let the thing run when he was in the car, just kept the volume low and listened subconsciously. Chicago was a big city, with plenty of badness. You got used to the rhythm, the steady call and response of mayhem and tragedy.
This had sounded different. The calls were faster, the voices strained. He’d coasted to a stop outside the brick two-flat and turned up the volume.
“—10-1, all available units, shots fired at Century Mall . . .”
“—ambulance, we need another ambulance . . .”
“—Jesus, it’s a war zone . . .”
“—officer down, repeat, officer down . . .”
He didn’t understand the situation, but it was clear what he should do. The mall was in his area, which made it his problem. What he was supposed to do was hit flashers and haul ass.
Instead he parked and got out of the car. Climbed the steps to Tom and Anna’s. He rang the bell, leaning on it, holding it down. Banged on the door. Nothing.
Halden walked around back, to a small yard with a picnic table and untended flower gardens. He looked up at the window, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled. “Tom! Anna! This is Detective Halden. I need to talk to you right now.”
Nothing.
He yelled louder for the benefit of the neighbors, hoping embarrassment might drive them out. “Mr. and Mrs. Reed, this is the police. Come out right now.”
Nothing.
Damn it. Where were they? The house had been a long shot, but worth a try. Had they spooked somehow? Could they have talked to another cop, found out that he hadn’t told the lieutenant after all? He chewed on his lip, fought the urge for a cigarette. Finally he turned and walked back to the car. Until they turned up, may as well do his job.
It took him ten minutes to get to the mall, and he barely recognized the place once he did. The front glass was broken out onto the concrete. An ambulance and at least a dozen squad cars blocked the street and sidewalks, light bars spinning blue. Sirens wailed from every point of the compass. As he watched, EMTs raced out with a gurney, a tech running alongside to keep pressure on a chest blooming red. Two hundred citizens clustered behind yellow tape, watching the show. A reporter screamed obscenities at a cop trying to hold her back.
Halden left his car on the sidewalk, badged the guys at the door. “Who’s the detective in charge?”
“Detective? You kidding?” The cop shook his head. “Half the brass is here. The security office.”
Inside, the mall had a surreal quality, chairs and benches overturned, glass broken from store windows, pop music playing over the sound system, but instead of shoppers, there were crime techs and tactical officers and photographers. Most of the action seemed to be concentrated a couple floors up, but Halden wanted to find out what had happened before looking at the scene itself.
The mall security office was small, a windowless room with a couple of grainy monitors and too many people huddled around them. He gave up hope of pushing inside when he saw how much his rank would bring down the average. Instead, he wandered until he saw a detective he recognized from a raid the year before, an Uptown meth house. “What’s the story?”
“Some sort of a meet gone wrong,” the man said. “A couple of bodies. Six or eight bad guys. They shot a cop on the way out.”
“He okay?”
The detective shook his head. “Took one to the head.”
Somebody was fucked, then. You didn’t shoot police in Chicago.Halden gestured to the security office. “What’s the big attraction?”
“They pulled a security feed from one of the stores.”
“Anything useful?”
“Yeah. One of them looks like Jack Witkowski.”
“The Shooting Star suspect?” Surprise came first. Then Halden felt his stomach tighten. Yesterday, Tom Reed had said the drug dealer had mentioned Witkowski. Then Reed had gone AWOL. When Halden had finally gotten hold of him, the guy had sounded scared. And behind his voice, there had been the random sounds of a public place, and a persistent beat, like music.
Maybe the same music that was playing over the speakers right now. Shit. Shit, shit, oh shit. The other detective started to walk away, but Halden grabbed his arm. “Wait. Did you see the tape?”
“Yeah.”
“Who else was there?”
“Nobody anybody recognized. The angle is lousy. They’re looking at cameras from other stores now.”
“Could you see anybody else?” He couldn’t keep the panic from his voice. “Anybody at all?”
The detective looked at him strangely. “Yeah. Witkowski, if it was him, he was talking to two people. A man and a woman, looked like taxpayers. Had a bag that they started to show just before everything went crazy. They ended up running.”
Halden let go of the guy’s shoulder. Forced a nod.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He turned away. The other detective stared for a moment, then shrugged and headed for the doors.
Tom and Anna Reed. It had to be. Which meant that since yesterday,he’d had information that might have prevented this from happening. In all the messages he’d left, he’d never said anything about the money because he hadn’t wanted to spook them into running. He’d pretended he was going to set up the drug dealer, when really he just wanted to lure Tom and Anna somewhere. Wanted to grab them himself and make the big arrest. Be a hero, get his name in the paper, jump clear of his lieutenant and the rest of the politicians.
Which made this his fault. At least partly. If he’d told the truth, things might have gone differently. A dead cop might still be alive.
He’d screwed up before, but never like this.
Halden took a deep breath and started toward the security office, trying to figure out how to share what he knew in a way that didn’t make him the scapegoat for the whole mess.
Eight men were crammed inside the tiny room, talking in low voices. Among them the deputy chief of D’s, his boss’s boss. Halden had caught his eye, started to gesture him over, when a thought hit.
Maybe there was still a way to save this. To come out on top, a hero.
Being a detective was about asking the right question. Right now he was focusing on his own mistake. But that wasn’t what Tom and Anna would be thinking about. Their plan had just backfired horribly. So the real question was, what would they do now?
With the question reframed that way, the answer was obvious. After they knew they were safe, they’d remember that they weren’t criminals. Not in the real meaning of the word. So they’d call the police. And not just any cop—they’d call one who knew them, who would understand their circumstances.
They would call him.
Halden spun on his heel, went back down the corridor. It was a dangerous game, sure. But he could pull it off. Go to the bosses not with hat in hand, but with two people from the incident, a bag full of money, and a complete explanation for what had happened and why. Lemonade from lemons. Instead of being a scapegoat, get a promotion and a pay bump and a hell of a lot closer to that cabin up west of Minocqua. And all he had to do was wait. And pray.
“WELL, that didn’t go quite how you planned.” Marshall sounded like he might have been trying for a joke, but didn’t quite hit it, his voice tight and shoulders tense.
Jack said, “We got out, didn’t we?” The handles of the duffel bag were heavy against his palms, the bulk bumping his knee as they walked through the rain. The heft of the thing felt good, right. He’d worked hard for it. He knew it wouldn’t bring Bobby back—he wasn’t a fucking idiot—but it was something.
Sirens screamed toward them, but Jack held himself steady. The car blew past in a spray of water and flashing light, heading east toward the mall three blocks away. After he’d killed the cop, they’d hit the apartments across the parking lot. A simple matter of jimmying a window lock and they were off the street. Marshall had snagged a black tee from the owner’s dresser and balled the shirt of the fake uniform deep in the kitchen trash. Then they strolled out the front door and down the steps like they owned the place, right past a prowler car coming up to blockade the back of the mall.
“We did get out,” Marshall said. “And we do have the money. But I just feel like there was something that didn’t go quite right. What was it?” He paused theatrically, then put a finger up in a eureka gesture. “Oh yeah—you shot a cop.”
“What did you want me to do? Ask nice if he’d let us walk?” The bag was getting heavy, but his other arm throbbed from the reopened cut. The bandage on his left arm was staining a slow scarlet. “Cop’s just a guy in a funny hat.”
“Chicago PD, man, they’re brutal when one of theirs goes down. They’ll never stop looking for us.”
“They’d never have stopped anyway. Besides, it’s done.”
They turned into the drugstore parking lot. The truck was a beater, an old Ford F150 they’d bought off a Western Avenue lot for a grand in cash. They’d left the stolen Honda parked on a pleasant neighborhood street, where it would likely sit for months before anybody noticed it. No sense pulling off a deal and then getting nabbed if the highway patrol happened to punch their plates. He swung the door open with a creak, tossed the money behind the driver’s seat, then leaned over to unlock Marshall’s side. Fired the engine, turning the heat on full blast to battle the chill from his wet clothes. “Just one more thing to do.”
“What’s that?”
“See to my favorite couple.” They’d been a pain in the ass, almost gotten him killed twice. And while he recognized that it didn’t make strict logical sense, some part of him held them responsible for Bobby’s death. It had something to do with Will Tuttle being dead, because the guy he’d looked forward to getting revenge on had shuffled off swift and sweet instead of slow and painful. There was a word for the thing he was doing, something he’d seen on daytime TV, one of those psychology words. Projection? Transference? Whatever. Since he couldn’t get Will, he wanted Tom and Anna.
“Huh?” Marshall looked over sharply. “The cops’ll have them.”
“Maybe.” Last he’d seen, they’d been running down a back stairwell. “Maybe they walked out the same door we did.”
“Even if that’s true, we have the money. We don’t need them.”
“They saw us. They can ID us.”
“Come on, man, they’re doing that right now. You really want to be in town once our faces start flashing on TV?” He shook his head. “You shot a cop. Chicago just got way too small for us.”
“But—”
“You do this, you’re on your own.”
The line fell heavy. Jack looked sideways at his partner. Saw the stare, the sincerity. Not like Marshall to back away from a fight. It made Jack pause.
Truth was, the guy had a point. They had the money, and their freedom, and there really wasn’t anything they could do about what Tom and Anna knew, not now. It irked, the idea those two yahoos might walk away unscathed, might not have to pay for stealing from him, for trying to game him. But he’d learn to live with it. Jack sighed. “All right. Forget it,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Marshall blew a breath. “Amen.”
Jack put the clutch to the floor and forced the stick into reverse. The truck coughed and shook, but moved. Marshall pulled the pistol from his holster and popped the clip. “You recognize that black dude?” He squinted, counting rounds. “He was with the drug dealer. The night we took down the Star.”
“No shit?”
“I’m pretty sure. Didn’t recognize the other two, though.”
“What the hell were they doing there?”
“Dunno. One more reason to get clear.”
Jack nodded. He hated leaving all this shit undone, all these loose ends, too many of them personal. But they’d won. That would have to be enough.
“Now,” Marshall said, slamming home the clip and holstering the pistol, “let’s see how we did, eh?” He fumbled behind the seat, dragged the duffel bag up to his lap. Jack turned the truck south. They could take Halsted down, pick up the freeway at Lake. Be in Saint Louis by afternoon. From there they could flip for the truck, split the take, shake hands, and part ways. Marshall wanted to go south, to Florida, but Miami was no kind of place for a middle-aged Polack. No, forget Miami, forget Chicago. Forget Tom and Anna Reed, forget the Star and the police and the drug dealer. The time had come to head west and hang up his spurs.
Then he heard a sound from Marshall, a kind of choking inhale. “Jack?” He had the bag in his lap, the top held wide, money bunched up in his fists, hundred-dollar bills green and crumpled, and beneath that, revealed now, the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, and the edge of one beneath that, and beneath that. For a second, Jack just stared, trying to understand what he was seeing, how his money had turned into newsprint.
Then he jammed the gas and spun the wheel, tires squealing, engine roaring up to the red as he popped a U, missing an oncoming car only because the other driver jerked onto the sidewalk. He held his right foot down and worked the clutch to jump from second to fourth.
Motherfucker. Tom and Anna Reed. They wanted to play? Fine. Time to play rough.
“MAYBE WE SHOULD RUN,” Tom said, watching the rain arc off the tires of the cab in front of them.
“Where?
“Anywhere. Get out of town. Now that Jack has killed a cop, the police are going to go crazy finding him. We could just get out of the way, come back once they have.”
“What if they don’t?”
He shrugged, didn’t know what to say.
“Tom?” Her voice husky.
“What is it, baby?”
“I was wrong.”
“When?”
“Before. I said we could still win.” She was drenched and solemn, hair flattened to her cheeks. She shook her head. “But it’s like a fairy tale.”
“Huh?” He looked over, wondered if she was starting to lose it.
“An old one, I mean. Brothers Grimm, that kind of thing.” She rubbed her eyes. “The violent ones, before they were Disney-fied. Rub the lamp, you get three wishes, but none of them go the way you planned. Like, you wish for riches, and your father dies. So you’ve inherited his fortune but lost your dad.”
“The Twilight Zone.”
She nodded. “I remember, when we found the money, thinking it was like a magic lamp. It was going to turn everything around for us, dig us out of the hole we were in, the stupid concerns of our old life. And it was going to give us the thing we most wanted.”
Tom sighed slowly. The world felt heavy, something that could bear down, crush you slow and complete. “Well, I’m definitely not worried about the devaluation of Chicago real estate anymore.” He didn’t know if he was making a joke or not. Didn’t know what he was saying. His head hurt, and his fingers throbbed in his lap.
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “When I was a kid, I had this illustrated book of myths. I read them over and over. There was one with this dog, not cute, sort of menacing, with a bird he’s caught in his mouth. And he’s taking it home to eat. But before he gets there, he crosses a river and sees a dog with a bird in his mouth. And he wants that bird too, so he opens his mouth to attack the other dog. Only it was his reflection, of course, and he ends up with nothing. I always felt sorry for him, even though he was kind of a stupid dog.” She shook her head. “Or that Greek one, the kid with the wings that melted?”
“Icarus.”
“Right, Icarus. He and his dad were locked up somewhere, and his dad made the wings with wax and feathers. He told Icarus not to fly too high. But first chance the kid gets . . .” She whistled through her teeth, skimmed a hand upward. “The illustration was all orange and red and yellow, and just a silhouette shooting upwards, feathers falling away. I always wanted to warn him. But of course you turn the page, and . . .” She sighed, rubbed her face.
Tom said nothing, just nodded, waited.
“Back at the hotel, I was talking about how fate was funny, how everything came down to a cup of instant coffee. Like the fire in our kitchen was what started everything. But that’s bullshit, isn’t it? You can’t blame life on a cup of coffee.” She shook her head. “Everything I needed to know was in those books. But I kept going. I just . . . kept going.”
“You weren’t alone.”
“I pushed you, though,” she said, her voice small. “I wanted it more. I always wanted it more. I know you’d love to have a child. But I was the one who pushed. After we tried the shots, the hormones, you were ready to adopt. But I wanted to have one of my own. So I kept pushing, and we got deeper into debt, and you and I, we lost track of each other.”
“Stop,” he said. “None of that matters now.”
She looked over at him, held the gaze for a long time. Finally she said, “You would have been a great father.”
Something in him broke, some tenuous, fragile connection deep in his chest, it just gave. He felt a rush of emotions, too many and mixed to name. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He knew what she was saying. What it cost her, cost them both.
“It’s time, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s time.” He flipped on the turn signal, pulled into the lot of a Jewel, and parked.
“The police are going to be tough on us.” She wiped her hands on her pants. “We don’t have much of a story to tell, not with a cop dead.”
“I know,” he said. “But every time we try to get out of this, we only make it worse.”
“Should we tell them about the deal we made with Malachi?”
“We should tell them everything. Every detail.”
“We’ll go to jail.”
“Probably,” he said.
She nodded. Reached over and put a hand on his thigh. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said, and for the first time since this whole thing started, since the moment, Christ, it seemed like years ago, when they’d looked at each other across the pile of money and each realized the other wanted to take it, for the first time since then he felt right. No more running. No more playing angles or choosing convenient truths. No more pretending to be criminals. He leaned across the parking brake, and she met him halfway, the kiss passionate, her hand snaking around his neck to pull him close. The rain pattered on the roof, less urgently than before, and it seemed safe somehow, a childhood sound, a rainy day home from school.
When they finally broke, he stayed near, their eyes inches apart and staring. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “Me too.” Then he took his phone from his pocket and dialed.
“THIS IS STUPID, MAN.” His partner rubbed his chin, the stubble grating. “The cops could be here any minute.”
“Why? If Tom and Anna are talking to them, why would they send someone to the house?” Jack sniffed hard, popped his knuckles. “No one’s coming.”
“Even if you’re right, you don’t really think the money is here, do you?” Marshall stood in front of the door. “They probably turned it in already. And if they’re running, it’s going with them.”
“Only one way to be sure.”
“Look—”
“Move.” Jack stared hard. With a sigh, Marshall stepped aside.
He didn’t bother with picks this time. Just wound up and booted the door at the handle. The wood cracked and snapped. A second kick, and the thing flew open, the lock mounting tearing out of the frame, splinters flying. He was through before the door banged against the opposite wall.
Beep.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Marshall said. “The alarm.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. He stepped over to the control box and punched a six-digit string. The beeping died.
“How—”
“I watched Anna.”
“You said she hit the panic code.”
“Panic code is one digit higher than the regular code. Alarm companies do it so people remember when they’ve got a gun pointed at their head.” He made a slow turn, surveying the space. “All right. Tear this place apart.”
“Listen to me, this is a waste of time—”
“Would you just fucking do it?” Jack grabbed the back of a knockoff Eames chair and yanked the thing over. It flipped and slammed loud. His head hurt, and inside his chest he could feel something crackling like a downed power wire.
His partner stared. For a moment, Jack wondered if he was going to make a play. But Marshall shook his head, turned, and went down the hall to the kitchen, started looking through cabinets.
Good enough. Jack turned back to the room. There was a lock-back knife sitting on the coffee table. He opened it, saw that the blade was crusted with dried blood. Jack smiled, then dug the point into a sofa cushion and yanked, feeling the tearing shiver up his arm, the rich physical pleasure of it. He yanked out a handful of foam, then tossed the cushion and eviscerated the next. Slashed at the back, then reached for the bottom and flipped the sofa up on its ass.
He went to the bookcase and began shoving novels to the ground by the armload. Opened the cabinets below and scattered DVDs and board games. Went to the entertainment center, took hold of the TV, a big Zenith, forty inches easy, and yanked it forward. The thing hung for a moment on edge, wavering like a beast on the lip of a cliff, and then it plummeted. The picture tube exploded with a high-pitched pop, and glass crunched against the hardwood. He could feel his heart starting to go, his breath coming a little faster. It felt good.
In the bedroom he slashed the mattress in a dozen places, tore the pillows to clouds of wobbling feathers. Yanked the drawers from the dresser and upended them, then tossed them on the mauled bed, leaving the dresser to gape. He tore clothes from the rack in the closet, striped yuppie shirts and fancy sweaters. Ripped down a shoe rack, a dozen varieties of what looked like the same black heel clattering. Jerked the medicine cabinet off the bathroom wall. Ripped down the shower curtain. Used the lid of the toilet to shatter the tank, porcelain ringing loud, water pouring out to drench his pant legs, drown his shoes. A migraine had been formingbehind his eyes, but the destruction seemed to keep it at a distance.
The spare room was stacked with banker boxes, no furniture, like they’d had other plans for the room that never came together. One by one Jack tossed the lids and shook the contents out, bills and letters and tax returns flipping and fluttering like crazed birds. Yanked a bookcase off the wall. Found a box of photos and upended them, a dozen years of weddings and Christmases and quiet Sunday mornings spilling across the ruin of the den. He unzipped his pants and pissed all over them. Fuck Anna and Tom Reed. Fuck them eternal.
From the doorway he heard Marshall speak. “Unless that thing in your hand is a magic wand, I don’t think it’s going to help us.”
Jack shook himself dry, zipped up. His breath coming hard, steady and strong, even as his head throbbed. He wanted to spit in the eye of God. “Nothing in the kitchen?”
“There’s nothing anywhere, man. The money’s not here.” Marshall paused. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Jack didn’t answer. He stepped into the hallway, looked around. The floors of every room were covered with broken glass and piled fabric, spills of paper and upended furniture.
“Let’s go.” Marshall spoke calm, steady.
“One more thing,” Jack said.
The pillar candle in the bedroom would do. He walked back to the kitchen, where pans and broken dishes lay strewn among multigrain waffles and Tupperware and butcher packages of steak. Every kitchen in America had a junk drawer. He found where Marshall had dumped it, rubber bands and batteries and take-outmenus, and kicked through to find a pack of matches. Lit the candle and set it on the kitchen table.
“What are you doing?”
It made sense. For the Reeds, this was the way the whole thing had started. There was a nice sense of circularity. Jack gripped the edges of the big Viking range and yanked. The base squealed against the tiles, and a metal flex-hose stretched out to the wall. He hoisted himself up onto the counter, maneuvered a foot around, then stomped the point where the hose met the stove. Again and again, the coupling bending, then, one more good hit, snapping free, the sweet fart stink of gas rising fast.
“Jack—”
“Let’s go,” he said.
Marshall looked at him, then at the stove. He shook his head and started down the hall. Jack followed, closing the front door behind him. They walked down the stairs, stepped out onto the porch. Jack felt better than he had in days. Destruction had, at least temporarily, transmuted the anger and frustration and grief into an almost sexual tingle. They started down the block.
After a moment, Marshall said, “It’s easier running together.”
Jack nodded.
“Somebody to watch your back, no worries about the other guy having been caught, making a deal. I’d rather we stuck together. But you need to understand something.” Marshall’s voice formal, like he was picking his words carefully. “I’m sorry about Bobby, but you need to let it go.”
“He wasn’t your brother.”
“That’s right. He wasn’t my brother.”
“You have a point?”
“Yeah.” Marshall stopped, and Jack turned to face him. “I’m done. I’m not disrespecting you or Bobby. But I’m done here.”
“We can’t run without the money.”
“Bullshit.” Marshall shook his head. “If we knew where it was, nothing would stop me getting it. You know that. But we don’t. So I’m going. You want to come, great. If not, you’re on your own.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. He and Marshall had known each other a long time, done a lot of work together. But in the end, everybody stood alone. “Might be that’s best.”
They stared for a long moment. Then Marshall shook his head, started walking again. Jack followed.
There was a bright orange ticket under the windshield wiper of the Ford. Parking without a neighborhood sticker. This town. Everybody playing an angle, even the government. Especially them. Jack dropped the ticket on the street, then pulled himself into the cab. Marshall got in the other side.
They could run without the money. But the thought of Tom and Anna winning? He’d rather pull out what was left of his hair than let that happen.
Yeah? Rather spend the rest of your life in a SuperMax? Twenty-three hours a day in solitary?
The thought came from a quieter part of him, and came cold. It chilled the destruction high right out of him. Had he climbed so far into his own head? He’d shot a cop earlier this morning. If he got caught, that was that. Everything else they’d done, he might have gotten away with for lack of evidence and witnesses. With a good lawyer, call it ten, out in four. But nobody walked after murdering a cop.
If only he knew where Tom and Anna were, knew whether they’d given up the money. Somewhere in this city, the two of them sat safe. He punched the steering wheel, hitting it hard. An image of Bobby popped into his head, ten years old and beaming as he rode wobbling down an alley on the bike Jack had stolen for him.
“How much was in the bag?”
Marshall looked up, his gaze quick. “Maybe ten grand.”
Ten grand. Plus they had the briefcase of drugs. They’d have to unload that wholesale. Call it another ten, twenty in all. Not something to retire on. Not money that would let him buy into a bar in Arizona. Not money that was worth his brother’s life.
But it was enough to get them the hell out of here, and to lie low for a while. Plan the next move. Get back to work. He sighed, said, “Count it, would you?”
“Sure. Sure thing.” Marshall’s voice sounding relieved. He reached behind the seat, pulled the bag into his lap. Jack sat and watched. Every time Marshall dipped into the black duffel bag, he came out with a handful of hundred-dollar bills. But soon the handfuls dwindled to pairs, and finally to single bills. Finally he zipped the bag and hoisted it by the handles, turning to put it away. The image reminded Jack of something. Something he’d seen recently. What was it?
It hit. “Wait.”
“What?”
He felt a smile beginning somewhere deep. Could it be? “The bag.”
“What about it?”
“It look familiar to you?” The smile pushed upward, bubbling from inside of him, and as it did, from behind came a sudden roar and the sound of a dozen windows shattering at once. They both turned to look as flame punched out the glass in a shimmering arc, the wash of heat physical even at this distance. Photographs and loose paper rolled in front of the blast of fire, twisting and looping like they were surfing the inferno. Even as the explosion faded and reversed, sucking air back in, yellow-orange tongues began to lick up the curtains. Jack could imagine the cashmere sweaters and Egyptian-cotton towels and high-thread-count sheets smoldering and twisting. Trickles of gray began to ooze out the broken windows, darkening with every moment as the house caught. A smoke alarm shrieked senselessly.
And as he watched Tom and Anna Reed’s pretty little world begin to burn, the smile broke free and bloomed on Jack’s lips, and he leaned forward to start the truck.