Guns

Six

She was cutting his hair.

He was sitting on a chair they had pulled in from the kitchen, and a dishtowel was draped over his shoulders while Jeanine worked on him. He was facing the open doorway. The trickle of blood had stopped. He could hear the ticking of the clock, he still did not know where the clock was. His hair kept falling onto the rug as she snipped away with the scissors. They had not bothered to put newspapers on the floor around the chair; they were going to leave the apartment soon and nothing could be any messier than the corpse they were leaving in the kitchen.

As she cut Colley’s hair, she rambled on about what it was like growing up the daughter of a career soldier. They had showered together fifteen minutes earlier, and now he sat in the chair wearing Jocko’s robe, the sleeves rolled up to accommodate the length of his arms, and she stood behind him wearing a blue smock. Listening to her, hearing the gentle reminiscent tone of her voice over the clicking of the scissors, seeing the steadiness of her hands, you would never guess she had killed a man less than an hour ago.

“I was born in what was supposed to be the worst year of the Depression. Fact is, my father joined the Army because of the Depression, figured he’d get himself three squares a day. Did I tell you how old I am?”

“Fourty-four, you said.”

“Right.” She grinned suddenly. “How does it feel, being involved with an older woman?”

“It feels good,” he said. He was lying. He was afraid of her. He was afraid of the pointed scissors in her hand. He was remembering the way she had butchered Jocko in the kitchen.

“I was still a kid while the Depression was on,” she said. “It wouldn’t have meant anything to me, anyway. We always had plenty to eat, the Army took good care of us. My father was a quartermaster. This was before World War II. We went all over the country, he kept getting transferred from post to post. Wherever there’s an Army post, I’ve lived in the nearest town to it. Fort Benning, Georgia? I lived in Columbus when I was three years old. Fort Dix? I lived in Trenton. Fort Huachuca, I—”

“Fort what?” Colley said.

“Huachuca. That’s in Arizona, outside of Tucson. I’ve been to every Army post there ever was, some of them don’t even exist any more. When the war broke out, World War II, we were living in Louisiana, town named Leesville, have you ever been there?”

“No,” Colley said.

“Fort Polk is down there,” Jeanine said. “My father got shipped overseas in 1942. Instead of staying in Leesville, which is not exactly the biggest city in the world, my mother and I moved to New Orleans for a while, and then down to Florida — Fort Myers. That’s not an Army post, that’s just the name of the town. Fort Myers. That was in 1943, I was eleven years old. I grew up in Fort Myers. I love it down there. Do you know Sanibel Island?”

“No,” Colley said. “I’ve never been down South.”

The scissors stopped just beside his right ear. The silence was complete except for the ticking of the clock. He almost caught his breath. He turned to look up into her face. There was a distant look on it, she was remembering something private and cherished. She sighed then, and without saying another word about Sanibel Island, began cutting his hair again.

“My father got killed in 1944,” she said. “During the Italian campaign. July. We got the telegram near the end of the month. He was killed in Sicily. I was twelve years old at the time. I cried for weeks, I couldn’t seem to stop crying. I still miss him. I loved him a lot.” She sighed again and fell silent. The scissors clicked into the clockwork stillness. Locks of his hair kept falling to the floor.

He had thought maybe they should bleach it, but Jeanine had said she’d never seen a homemade job that looked professional. When she was fifteen or sixteen she’d tried to touch up her own hair, make it look a little blonder and shinier than it naturally was, and all it did was come out cheap and brassy. And she was blond to begin with, don’t forget. Colley had brown hair, and a dark brown at that. For his hair, they’d have to use twenty-volume peroxide and either a powder or a liquid bleach and proteinators, and they’d have had to bleach out the roots first, and then the ends — the whole job would have taken hours and would have come out looking shitty besides; anybody taking even a quick look at him would realize in a minute he’d bleached his hair because he was trying to change his appearance.

A crew cut, on the other hand, really did change a man’s appearance, and looked natural besides. Your average person wouldn’t know you’d cut your hair only this morning, he’d think you’d worn it that way forever. Cutting your hair short or shaving off your mustache didn’t work with friends or relatives, they’d take one look at you and say, “Hi there, Joe, I see you cut your hair short and shaved off your mustache.” But with people who were working from a photograph of you, just a simple crew cut would be enough to throw them off the track.

“Come look in the mirror,” she said.

He got up. His hair was all over the floor. He rubbed his hand across the top of his head and felt the bristles, and then he followed her down the hall to the bedroom. Jocko’s blood was still on the sheets, Jocko’s blood was all over this fuckin apartment, the sooner they got out, the better. There was a mirror over the dresser. He looked into the mirror. He was wearing Jocko’s robe, which was too big for him, the sleeves rolled up, the shoulders far too wide. He would have looked scrawny in the robe even with a full head of hair, but with the crew cut he looked emaciated.

“It’s awful,” he said.

“I think it looks good,” Jeanine said.

“It’s terrible,” he said, turning his head to the side to see what he looked like in profile. “Jesus, it’s really awful.”

“You want to look beautiful, or you want to get where we’re going?”

“I don’t even know where we’re going,” he said.

“We’re going to Fort Myers,” she told him.

It was still dark, he was beginning to think it would stay dark forever; they had done some bad things tonight, and the sun would never come up again, the sun would stay hidden in shame for the things they had done. Killing the cop — but that was self-defense really, the cop had a gun in his hand, he was yelling “Police officer”; you don’t announce yourself as a cop unless you mean business, unless you intend to use the gun. He wondered again if somebody had snitched to the cops about the job. He did not know why it was so important that he know whether the cop had been tipped or not. If he could only call the police department and ask them whether the stakeout had been for just anybody, or did the cops know he and Jocko were going to hit the place. He really wanted to know. Because if they’d been waiting there for just anybody, why then, it made the killing of the cop seem, well, senseless. Because that meant the cop would have come running out of the back room yelling at whoever walked in there with a gun. That meant the cop was yelling not at Colley but at the gun in Colley’s hand.

He wished he could call the police department and find out. Maybe he’d ask Jeanine to call for him. Just to see if the stakeout was planned for him and Jocko. Because if it was planned for them, if the cops were specifically waiting for them, then killing the cop was very definitely self-defense, the way Jeanine killing Jocko in the kitchen had been self-defense. The way, when you came to think of it — though he wouldn’t mention this to Jeanine — the way the German or the Italian who had killed her father in Sicily was also acting in self-defense and trying to save his own skin. The way Colley’d been trying to save his skin in the liquor store. Dumb fuckin cop had nothing to lose, Colley had fifteen years staring him in the face. Police officer, my ass, Colley thought. If my own brother tried to send me back to Sing Sing with that fuckin Kruger grabbing my ass, I’d put a bullet in his head, too, brother or not. Fuck him.

He needed a gun.

She’d cut off all his hair like Samson and Delilah, he’d seen that picture on television with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr, she’d robbed him of his fuckin strength. He needed a gun now. He’d come to this apartment to get a gun, and he wasn’t going to leave here without one.

“Where’s the gun he had on the job?” he asked her. “Did he have it when we carried him in here tonight?”

“I don’t think so,” Jeanine said.

“You think he dropped it in the store?” Colley said. “That’s bad if he did. Cause his prints’ll be on it. Do they have this address for him?”

“I don’t know,” Jeanine said. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

There was an edge to her voice, but she was packing unhurriedly, folding slips and panties and sweaters and putting them neatly into her suitcase. He thought of what had happened just a little while ago, Jocko caught in the threshing machine that had been Jeanine wielding a bread knife. Why hadn’t she fallen apart immediately afterwards? Why were they still in this apartment, for Christ’s sake, Jeanine moving to the dresser now to take out a stack of blouses, placing them squarely on the slips she had just folded and put into the suitcase. The clock ticking. When he found that clock, he would step on it, he would crush it beneath the heel of his foot.

“Maybe they don’t have this address,” he said. “Jocko moved around a lot, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said. She was at the closet now, stooping to pick up several pairs of shoes from the floor.

“Also, his parole was from Texas, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, yes.”

“So the cops here wouldn’t have a sheet on him, except maybe he’s wanted for extradition. What I’m saying is, even if they did get some good prints from the gun, they could only get a make from the F.B.I. files, and even then it wouldn’t give them this address. So we got time.”

“Okay,” she said. “Fine.”

“I know he had some spare guns, he told me he had some spares. A Walther, I think, was one of them. Do you know where he kept them.”

“No, I don’t,” Jeanine said.

“You been here since April, and you don’t know where he kept his guns?”

“Why don’t you go ask him,” Jeanine said.

“You must have seen him take out the gun he used tonight, didn’t you? Where’d he take it from?”

“I don’t know,” Jeanine said.

“Well, I ain’t leaving this apartment without a gun in my belt.”

He went to the dresser and opened the top drawer, and began rummaging through Jocko’s underwear and socks and handkerchiefs. In the back of the drawer he found a box of 9mm Parabellum cartridges, which told him his memory had been right about the Walther. He also found a box of .38 Specials, which were the cartridges that fit the Colt Cobra that Jocko had used on the job tonight. And there was a third box of .32 Long cartridges. He was lifting the lid on this box to see how many cartridges were in it when the telephone rang, startling him. The box tilted in his hand, spilling cartridges onto the dresser top. The telephone shrilled into the apartment. Cartridges rolled off the dresser top and onto the floor. He saw his own startled image in the mirror and did not recognize himself for an instant, and again the phone rang. He looked swiftly at his watch. It was four-thirty in the morning, and the phone was ringing, ringing...

“Get it,” he said.

“Suppose it’s the police?”

“It won’t be the police, they don’t have an address...”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Answer the fuckin thing!”

Jeanine picked up the receiver on the bedside table. “Hello?” she said. She listened. “Hello, Teddy,” she said.

Colley let out his breath.

“Yes, Teddy,” she said. “When was that? Um-huh. Um-huh. Um-huh. Well, he’s here, do you want to tell him yourself?” She handed the phone to Colley, and then walked over to the closet.

“Hello,” Colley said into the phone.

“Hey, how you doin?” Teddy said.

“Not so hot,” Colley said.

“They got a positive on you, huh?”

“How’d you know that?”

“I heard your name on the radio. I couldn’t sleep, I got up and went to make myself a sandwich. I turned on the radio low while I was eating, I didn’t want to wake the wife. The announcer gave your name, said the police were conducting a citywide search for you.”

“Yeah,” Colley said.

“How’d they get on to you?” Teddy asked.

“Son of a bitch recognized me.”

“Who do you mean?”

“The other cop in the store. From when I got busted four years ago.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I was.”

“Boy,” Teddy said.

Both men were silent.

“How’s Jocko doing?” Teddy asked.

For a moment Colley did not know what to answer.

“Colley?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought we were cut off.”

“No, no, I’m here.”

“How’s Jocko doing?”

“He’s dead,” Colley said. Jeanine was taking a skirt from the closet; she turned to him sharply and looked directly into his face. Colley nodded assurance. “Jeanine couldn’t stop the blood,” he said into the phone. “I called here to see how everything was, she told me to get over here in a hurry.”

“Boy,” Teddy said.

“Teddy, I’m going to make a run for it.”

“Colley, am I in this yet?” Teddy asked.

“I don’t see how.”

“I keep trying to remember if Jocko had his gun with him when he came out of that store. Because if he didn’t, then maybe they’ll get prints from it and find out who he is and start asking around. There’s lots of people in this city seen me and Jocko together.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Colley said.

“He had the gun then, huh? When he came out of the store?”

“No, Teddy.”

“He left it in there?”

“I think so.”

“Well,” Teddy said, “that don’t sound too good. Guy who took a couple of falls already, they’ll have a sheet on him in the F.B.I. files, next thing you know they’ll be knocking on my door.”

“How you figure that, Teddy?”

“Because when they ask around, they’ll find out him and Teddy Stein were pals, so next thing you know Good morning, Mr. Stein, we’d like a few words with you if you’ve got a minute.”

“No, I don’t think—”

“And also, Colley, what were them cops doing inside there? Were they waiting for us to show? Did somebody snitch that we were going to hit that store?”

“I don’t know about that. I been wondering that myself.”

“Cause if that’s the case, they know the whole fuckin gang, never mind just you.”

“What do you mean?”

“If somebody set us up, then he must’ve also told the cops who we were, don’t you think?”

“Maybe not. Look, Teddy, I’m in a hurry. Jocko’s dead in the fuckin kitchen, and the cops know—”

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where’d you say Jocko was?”

Colley did not immediately answer. Teddy was wondering how a man who was supposed to have bled to death had managed to do it in the kitchen. He knew the layout of the apartment, and he was wondering. The clock was ticking. The clock was a constant unseen reminder of itself, like Death.

“In the kitchen,” Colley said at last. “He’s in the kitchen.”

“How’d he get in the kitchen? You just told me—”

“Jeanine was in the kitchen. He yelled for her, and she didn’t hear him, so he went out after her.”

That was the truth. He had told Teddy the absolute truth. Now it was time to start lying.

“And that’s where he died, huh?” Teddy said.

“Yes,” Colley answered. It was still the truth. No need to lie, after all.

“Mm,” Teddy said.

There was another silence.

“Colley?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“When you split, is Jeanine going with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Where you going?”

“We thought Canada,” he said immediately and intuitively. Teddy was worried and Teddy was suspicious, and he did not want Teddy to know they were headed in the opposite direction, toward Florida. Teddy might dope it out for himself, but Colley wasn’t going to help him. He suddenly did not trust Teddy at all.

“So far, I’m the only one the cops ain’t on to,” Teddy said. “You they already made, and Jocko they’ll make from whatever shit he left on the Cobra. Me, there’s a chance they’ll ask around and people will say ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, the Jew with the glasses, yeah a good friend of Jocko’s, I seen them around a lot together.’ Or maybe the guy who set us up...”

“We don’t know for sure we were set up.”

“Well, if we were, okay? Before now he didn’t tell the cops who was going to do the job, he only told them it was coming off. But now a cop’s been killed, so he suddenly gets religion. He knows by now they already made you, so he figures he’ll score a couple of points with the law. Bango, he nails Jocko and me in the same breath. I’m saying maybe, Colley.”

“I follow you,” Colley said. “But I don’t think we were set up. I ain’t sure, but if that was the case...”

“I’m only saying maybe. On the other hand, let’s say it was a complete and total coincidence, okay? The bulls were in there waiting for anybody to hit, and we walked in out of the blue. Which means I’m clean. They know you, and they’re gonna know Jocko very soon, but they don’t know me, Colley.”

“That’s right.”

“So, Colley, do I have to worry?”

“About what?”

“About somebody dragging me in this thing where so far I’m clean?”

“Who’s gonna do that, Teddy?”

“You tell me.”

“Why would I drag you in it?”

“Make things easier for yourself,” Teddy said. “They pick you up, you might want to cop a plea.”

“You’re giving me ideas,” Colley said, and tried a laugh. Teddy did not laugh with him.

“Colley, I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

“Colley, I never done time in my life, and I don’t want to have to start worrying about it now. I got a wife and two kids, I don’t want to get fucked up this late in my life.”

“What do you want from me, Teddy?”

“I want your word, Colley. That if they pick you up, you don’t know who was driving the car, you never saw the driver in your life.”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Colley said.

“You promise?”

“I promise, yeah. Relax, willya?”

“Because, Colley... I find out you snitched on me, I’ll make sure you don’t ever snitch on anybody else ever again. They send you to jail, Colley, they send me to jail, we could be in different jails a thousand miles apart, you’ll still be sorry you snitched. I got friends in every fuckin jail in this country, they’ll kill a man for a package of Bull Durham. I mean it, Colley.”

“That’s a good way to keep my friendship,” Colley said. “Threaten me, that’s a very good way.”

“It ain’t my fault this went wrong,” Teddy said. “I wasn’t in the store. It was you guys who fucked up. I coulda drove off, remember, but I came back to help you.”

“Thanks,” Colley said.

“Just remember,” Teddy said.

“The Three Musketeers,” Colley said.

“Yeah, bullshit,” Teddy said, and hung up.

Colley slammed down the receiver. From across the room, Jeanine was watching him.

“He’s worried, huh?” she said.

“Yeah. Fuck him,” Colley said, and went back to the dresser and began looking through the drawers again.

In the bottom drawer he found two guns: a Smith & Wesson .32 and a Walther P-38. He loved that German gun. He’d loved it even when he was seven or eight years old, and his mother took him to the movies with her and he saw pictures about World War II, with all those Nazis carrying this very sleek and deadly handgun. He knew the gun as a Luger in those days. He used to do a German imitation, hold his right hand out with the index finger extended, “You zee vot I am holdink here in mein handt? Dot’s a Luger, mein Herr, und I know how to use it.”

Stamped onto the metal just below the breech of the gun were the words Carl Walther Waffenfabrik Ulm/Do. He didn’t know what Waffenfabrik meant but he loved the look of the word, those fuckin Germans had style. Under that was stamped P-38 Cal. 9mm. The official name of the gun was the Walther P-38 Automatic, and the caliber was 9mm Luger, which is why there was a box of 9mm cartridges in the top drawer of the dresser. He hefted the gun in his hand, smiling. It was a beautiful piece, and Jocko had kept it in fine condition. Colley slipped the magazine out of the butt and loaded it with eight cartridges he took from the box in the drawer. He put another cartridge into the breechblock, and then tucked the gun into the left-hand side of his belt.

The .32 was not one of his favorites. The Model 30 was a six-shooter that came with either a two-, three- or four-inch barrel. This particular gun had a two-inch barrel, and Colley was grateful for that because it made it small enough to carry in the right-hand pocket of his pants. He had pulled his sports shirt out of his pants to cover the Walther, unbuttoning the two shirt buttons just above his belt so he could reach inside for a quick cross-draw. But the .32, even with the two-inch barrel, was a tough gun to carry tucked in your pants; you really needed a holster for it. There was no question of the sight snagging on anything in his pocket; it tapered back smoothly from the open end of the gun to a point midway between the muzzle and the cylinder. He rolled out the cylinder now, took six cartridges from the box in the drawer, loaded the gun, and then put it in his pants pocket.

He felt good again.

“Look,” Jeanine said, and turned toward the window. “The sun’s coming up.”

Jeanine was wearing a pleated white skirt and a lime-colored blouse that picked up the color of her eyes. A white scarf was wrapped low on her forehead, blond hair falling loose on either side of her face. She wore no stockings, and she drove the small red car with her handbag on the seat beside her, white leather to match her sandals. Her right hand rested on the handbag, just over the clasp. There was forty-seven dollars in that bag; Colley had watched her count it out earlier, when they were taking stock. The car was Jocko’s, a 1971 Pinto with New York plates. It had been parked in the lot behind the building, in the space allotted to apartment 5G. Jeanine was driving because Colley was a convicted felon on parole and the state wouldn’t grant him a license. Jeanine’s own license had been issued to her in Dallas, and was valid through September of that year.

Into a small valise Jeanine had brought up from Dallas, Colley had packed some of Jocko’s sweaters and shirts, a dozen handkerchiefs and six pairs of socks. Aside from the clothes he had on his back, that was it. In the right-hand side pocket of his trousers, he was carrying the Smith & Wesson. In the waistband of his trousers, on the left-hand side, he was carrying the Walther. The boxes of cartridges for both pistols were in the glove compartment, together with the registration for the car. Colley’s wallet was in his left-hand side pocket — the hip pocket was the sucker pocket, easily slashed with a razor blade; the best place to carry your stash was close to your balls, where you could feel anybody trying to lift it. Inside that wallet, there was sixteen dollars in cash — a ten, a five and a single. Together with what Jeanine had in the handbag, that gave them a total of sixty-three dollars. From the minute they counted up the cash this morning, Colley knew he would have to do another robbery. The only question was how soon. He thought about this all the way crosstown, and he thought about it on the way over the bridge into New Jersey. He did not want to do the robbery too early in the morning cause there’d be nothing in the till. But he wanted to do it while they were still in Jersey; he had relatives in Jersey, he’d been to Jersey before, it felt familiar to him. He was afraid of what lay beyond. He had studied the Mobil Guide map only briefly when they climbed into the car, and the names of those Southern states made him nervous.

You got those fuckin redneck cops down there, they beat the shit out of you in their crummy local jails and then sent you to work on the road gang forever. Forget about appeals, forget about paroles, you worked paving roads or cutting down forests all day long in the blazing sun and then you went back to the stockade where you ate chitlins and hog shit and got buggered by a big black nigger. That was what Colley thought the South was like. Southern cops and Southern jails, anyway. He’d had no real experience with either, but that was what he imagined it would mean, getting busted down there. So he wanted to do the robbery while they were still in Jersey, and before they crossed over into any of the Southern states. On the road map, it looked as if they had to cross into Pennsylvania before heading South, and he supposed Pennsylvania was okay, though he preferred Jersey. One thing for sure, Virginia sounded Southern as hell, and he didn’t want no redneck Virginia sheriff shooting him in the leg with a Magnum. So it would have to be either Jersey or Pennsylvania, and of the two he preferred Jersey.

What he decided to hold up was a diner. This was Sunday, and there wasn’t much choice. Unless you wanted to go in a church someplace and steal either from the poor box or the basket while it was being passed, why then, you were limited to either a place serving food or else a gas station. The gas stations nowadays, they had these safes stuck in concrete and the attendant stashed the money down inside them except for chicken feed he needed to make change, and a big sign said ATTENDANT DOES NOT KNOW COMBINATION TO SAFE, so that let out a gas station. It had to be an eating place of some kind, and Colley figured if he found himself an all-night diner, then the receipts from Saturday night might still be in the register, and maybe he could get himself a pretty good score instead of like, say, he hit a restaurant that had just opened for lunch, there’d be nothing in there but checks that had got paid at lunchtime. Anyway, it was still too early for lunch, and they’d probably be out of Jersey before lunchtime, so he kept his eye open for a diner that had a sign out front saying it was open all day and all night. He was in no hurry, long as they found one before they got out of Jersey. Never mind Pennsylvania, he had definitely decided now that it would be Jersey.

The day was bright and clear and cool after last night’s rain. Great day for a robbery, you came out running, there was no danger of the car skidding off a wet pavement onto the sidewalk or into a lamppost; your driver hit the gas pedal and off you went. Jeanine was a good driver, he was grateful for that. Before he got busted and sent to Sing Sing that time, he had once used a girl driver on a job. She was a girl he was shacking up with, she seemed like a pretty level-headed broad and the times he’d been with her in a car she seemed to handle the wheel pretty good. Day of the job it was like a Keystone Kops comedy; this wasn’t the job he finally got busted on, but it was a miracle it didn’t turn out to be the biggest bust in the history of New York State. He had to smile, thinking of it now, though it certainly wasn’t funny at the time.

He was working alone at the time; he had always worked alone before he threw in with Jocko. When he first started he even used to do his own driving, but then later he began cutting a man in for ten percent and that way had a car waiting at the curb for him. He had lost a very good driver just four weeks before he’d started shacking up with this girl; guy moved to California. The girl’s name was Carter, that was her first name. She was a Wasp from New Canaan, Connecticut, she’d gone to prep school and college; she was looking for thrills, Colley guessed. Carter Hewlitt. She told Colley she’d been named after a mystery writer, Carter Dickson. She said her mother was a big mystery buff and loved reading Carter Dickson. She asked Colley if he’d ever heard of a mystery writer named Carter Dickson. Colley told her he didn’t read mysteries and they got into a big argument about it. That was the night he told her he was an armed robber and that he was involved in real-life crime and didn’t have time for reading any bullshit mysteries. She said, “These happen to be very good mysteries. These are locked-room mysteries.”

He didn’t know what a locked-room mystery was, and he didn’t bother asking her. They started talking about going in places with a gun then, and she didn’t seem shocked at all by what he did for a living, and she didn’t seem scared either that maybe he’d pull a gun on her, blow her New Canaan brains out now that she knew he was a thief. In fact, she seemed very excited by all of it. He had the feeling she couldn’t wait to go home and tell her mother all about the dashing crook she’d met. Be even better than Carter Dickson. Anyway, two weeks later she drove for him on this job. Everything inside the place went like clockwork. This was a place sold office supplies, copying machines, typewriters, expensive items like that. Colley figured there’d be at least a couple of grand in the register, and whereas it turned out there was only six fifty, that wasn’t bad either for an hour’s work, counting commuting time. It was the commuting time that nearly blew the job.

He came running out of the store with the money in a dispatch case, and he could see Carter sitting at the wheel of the rented car, her head craned over her shoulder, blond hair cut short, blue eyes alert. He heard the car starting. Great, she was on her toes, it was going like clockwork. He threw open the curbside door and climbed in, and grinned, and Carter grinned back and tossed her short blond hair and rammed the car into gear and instead of going forward, where there was a clear space, backed up into a laundry truck instead. Bam, they hit the truck, it had one of those very high bumpers, it smashed in the trunk of the car. Carter mumbled “Shit!” under her breath in a very refined New Canaan Wasp way, and then fiddled with the stick, and threw it out of reverse and into neutral and then into gear again, and looking straight ahead of her through the windshield, let out the clutch and stepped on the gas and the car backed up into the laundry truck again, right into the high bumper again.

By this time people were beginning to gather on the sidewalk to watch this cute button of a girl trying to park the car — they thought she was trying to park the fuckin thing instead of drive it away from a holdup! Colley had his gun in his hand below the window on his side, he was just waiting for the owner of the store to come out and start yelling cop. He had just beat the guy for more than six hundred bucks, the guy was either on the phone yelling cop or else he’d come out on the sidewalk and start yelling it in person to whoever’d listen. Carter tried again. She said to the gear shift, “Come on, motherfucker,” in not such refined New Canaan Wasp tones, and then rammed the stick into what she hoped was first, and let out the clutch and stepped on the gas, and lo and behold, they were off and running at last.

“What’s so funny?”

“Huh?”

“There’s a smile on your face,” Jeanine said.

“I was thinking of something happened a long time ago,” he said.