The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Stuart M. Kaminsky Sometimes Something Goes Wrong

From The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology

“You sure?”

Beemer looked at Pryor and said, “I’m sure. One year ago. This day. That jewelry store. It’s in my book.”

Pryor was short, thin, nervous. Dustin Hoffman on some kind of speed produced by his own body. His face was flat, scarred from too many losses in the ring for too many years. He was stupid. Born that way. Punches to the head hadn’t made his IQ rise. But Pryor did what he was told and Beemer liked telling Pryor what to do. Talking to Pryor was like thinking out loud.

“One year ago. In your book,” Pryor said, looking at the jewelry store through the car window.

“In my book,” Beemer said, patting the right pocket of his black zipper jacket.

“And this is...? I mean, where we are?”

“Northbrook. It’s a suburb of Chicago,” said Beemer patiently.

Pryor nodded as if he understood. He didn’t really, but if Beemer said so, it must be so. He looked at Beemer, who sat behind the wheel, his eyes fixed on the door of the jewelry store. Beemer was broad shouldered, well built from three years with the weights in Stateville and keeping it up when he was outside. He was nearing fifty, blue eyes, short, razor haircut, gray-black hair. He looked like a linebacker, a short linebacker. Beemer had never played football. He had robbed two Cincinnati Bengals once outside a bar, but that was the closest he got to the real thing. Didn’t watch sports on the tube. In prison he had read, wore glasses. Classics. For over a year. Dickens. Hemingway. Steinbeck. Shakespeare. Freud. Shaw, Irwin, and George Bernard. Then one year to the day he started, Beemer stopped reading. Beemer kept track of time.

Now, Beemer liked to keep moving. Buy clothes, eat well, stay in classy hotels when he could. Beemer was putting the cash away for the day he’d feel like retiring. He couldn’t imagine that day.

“Tell me again why we’re hitting it exactly a year after we hit it before,” Pryor said.

Beemer checked his watch. Dusk. Almost closing time. The couple who owned and ran the place were always the last ones in the mall besides the Chinese restaurant to close. On one side of the jewelry store, Gortman’s Jewelry and Fine Watches, was a storefront insurance office. State Earm. Frederick White the agent. He had locked up and gone home. On the other side, Himmell’s Gifts. Stuff that looked like it would break if you touched it in the window. Glassy-looking birds and horses. Glassy, not classy. Beemer liked touching real class, like really thin glass wineglasses. If he settled down, he’d buy a few, have a drink every night, run his finger around the rim and make that ringing sound. He didn’t know how to do that. He’d learn.

“What?”

“Why are we here again?” Pryor asked.

“Anniversary. Our first big score. Good luck. Maybe. It just feels right.”

“What did we get last time?”

The small strip mall was almost empty now. Maybe four cars if you didn’t count the eight parked all the way down at the end by the Chinese restaurant. Beemer could take or leave Chinese food, but he liked the buffet idea. Thai food. That was his choice. Tonight they’d have Thai. Tomorrow they’d take the watches, bracelets, rings to Walter on Polk Street. Walter would look everything over, make an offer. Beemer would take it. Thai food. That was the ticket.

“We got six thousand last time,” Beemer said. “Five minutes’ work. Six thousand dollars. More than a thousand a minute.”

“More than a thousand a minute,” Pryor echoed.

“Celebration,” said Beemer. “This is a celebration. Back where our good luck started.”

“Back light went out,” Pryor said, looking at the jewelry store.

“We’re moving,” Beemer answered, getting quickly out of the car.

They moved right toward the door. Beemer had a Glock. His treasure. Read about it in a spy story in a magazine. Had to have it. Pryor had a piece-of-crap street gun with tape on the handle. Revolver. Six or eight shots. Piece of crap, but a bullet from it would hurt going in and might never come out. People didn’t care. You put a gun in their face they didn’t care if it was precision or zip. They knew it could blow out their lights.

Beemer glanced at Pryor, keeping pace at his side. Pryor had dressed up for the job. He had gone through his bag at the motel, asked Beemer what he should wear. Always asked Beemer. Asked him if he should brush his teeth. Well, maybe not quite, but asked him almost everything. The distance to the moon. Could eating Equal really give you cancer. Beemer always had an answer. Quick, ready. Right or wrong. He had an answer.

Pryor was wearing blue slacks and a Tommy Hilfiger blue pullover short-sleeved shirt. He had brushed his hair, polished his shoes. He was ready. Ugly and ready.

Just as the couple inside turned off their light Beemer opened the door and pulled out his gun. Pryor did the same. They didn’t wear masks. Artist’s sketches were for shit. Ski masks itched. Sometimes Beemer wore dark glasses. That’s if they were working the day. Sometimes he had a Band-Aid on his cheek. Let them remember that or the fake mole he got from Gibson’s Magic Shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina. That was a bad hit. No more magic shops. He had scooped up a shopping bag of tricks and practical jokes. Fake dog shit. Fake snot you could hang from your nose. He threw it all away. Kept the mole though. Didn’t have it on now.

“Don’t move,” he said.

The couple didn’t move. The man was younger than Beemer by a decade. Average height. He had grown a beard in the last year. Looked older. Wearing a zipper jacket. Blue. Beemer’s was black. Beemer’s favorite colors were black and white. That was the way he liked things. The woman was blond, somewhere in her thirties, sort of pretty, too thin for Beemer’s tastes. Pryor remembered the women. He never touched them, but he remembered and talked about them at night in the hotels or motels. Stealing from good-looking women was a high for Pryor. That and good kosher hot dogs. Chicago was always good for hot dogs if you knew where to go. Beemer knew. On the way back, they’d stop at a place he knew on Dempster. Make Pryor happy. Sit and eat a big kosher or two, lots of fries, ketchup, onions, hot peppers. Let Pryor talk about the woman.

She looked different. She was wearing a green dress. She was pregnant. That was it.

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” said Beemer. “You know what to do. Stand quiet. No alarms. No crying. Nothing stupid. Boy or a girl?”

Pryor was behind the glass counters, opening them quickly, shoveling, clinking, into the Barnes & Noble bag he had taken from his back pocket. There was a picture of Sigmund Freud on the bag. Sigmund Freud was watching Beemer. Beemer wondered what Freud was thinking.

“Boy or girl?” Beemer repeated. “You know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl?”

“Girl,” said the man.

“You got a name picked out?”

“Melissa,” said the woman.

Beemer shook his head and said, “Too... I don’t know... too what everybody else is doing. Something simple. Joan. Molly. Agnes. The simple is different. Hurry it up,” he called to Pryor.

“Hurry it up, right,” Pryor answered, moving faster, the B&N bag bulging, Freud looking a little plump and not so serious now.

“We’ll think about it,” the man said.

Beemer didn’t think so.

“Why us?” the woman said. Anger. Tears were coming. “Why do you keep coming back to us?”

“Only the second time,” said Beemer. “Anniversary. One year ago today. Did you forget?”

“I remembered,” said the man, moving to his wife and putting his arm around her.

“We won’t be back,” Beemer said as Pryor moved across the carpeting to the second showcase.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the man. “After this we won’t be able to get insurance.”

“Sorry,” said Beemer. “How’s business been?”

“Slow,” said the man with a shrug. The pregnant woman’s eyes were closed.

Pryor scooped.

“You make any of this stuff?” Beemer asked, looking around. “Last time there were some gold things, little animals, shapes, birds, fish, bears. Little.”

“I made those,” the man said.

“See any little animals, gold?” Beemer called to Pryor.

“Don’t know,” said Pryor. “Just scooping. Wait. Yeah, I see some.”

Beemer looked at his watch. He remembered where he got it. Right here. One year ago. He held up the watch to show the man and woman.

“Recognize it?” he said.

The man nodded.

“Keeps great time,” said Beemer. “Class.”

“You have good taste,” the man said.

“Thanks,” said Beemer, ignoring the sarcasm. The man had a right. He was being robbed. He was going out of business. This was a going-out-of-business nonsale. The man wasn’t old. He could start again, work for someone else. He made nice little gold animals. He was going to be a father. The watch told Beemer that they had been here four minutes.

“Let’s go,” he called to Pryor.

“One more minute. Two more. Should I look in the back?”

Beemer hesitated.

“Anything back there?” Beemer asked the man.

The man didn’t answer.

“Forget it,” he called to Pryor. “We’ve got enough.”

Pryor came out from behind the case. B&N bag bulging. More than they got the last time. Then Pryor tripped. It happens. Pryor tripped. The bag fell on the floor. Gold and time went flying, a snow or rain of gold and silver, platinum and rings. And Pryor’s gun went off as he fell.

The bullet hit the man in the back. The woman screamed. The man went to his knees. His teeth were clenched. Nice white teeth. Beemer wondered if such nice white teeth could be real. The woman went down with the man, trying to hold him up.

Pryor looked at them, looked at Beemer, and started to throw things back in the bag. Wait. That wasn’t Freud. Beemer tried to remember who it was. Not Freud. George Bernard Shaw. It was George Bernard Shaw with wrinkled brow who looked up at Beemer, displeased.

“An accident,” Beemer told the woman, who was holding her husband, who now bit his lower lip hard. Blood from the bite. Beemer didn’t want to know what the man’s back looked like or where the bullet had traveled inside his body. “Call an ambulance, Nine one one. We never shot anybody before. An accident.”

It was more than five minutes now. Pryor was breathing hard trying to get everything. On his knees, scampering like a crazy dog.

“Put the gun away,” Beemer said. “Use both hands. Hurry up. These people need a doctor.”

Pryor nodded, put the gun in his pocket, and gathered glittering crops. The man had fallen, collapsed on his back. The woman looked up at Beemer, crying. Beemer didn’t want her to lose her baby.

“He have insurance?” he asked.

She looked at him, bewildered.

“Life insurance?” Beemer explained.

“Done,” said Pryor with a smile. His teeth were small, yellow.

The woman didn’t answer the question. Pryor ran to the door. He didn’t look back at what he had done.

“Nine one one,” Beemer said, backing out of the store.

Pryor looked both ways and headed for the car. Beemer was a foot out the door. He turned and went back in.

“Sorry,” he said. “It was an accident.”

“Get out,” the woman screamed. “Go away. Go away. Go away.”

She started to get up. Maybe she was crazy enough to attack him. Maybe Beemer would have to shoot her. He didn’t think he could shoot a pregnant woman.

“Joan,” he said, stepping outside again. “Joan’s a good name. Think about it. Consider it.”

“Get out,” the woman screamed.

Beemer got out. Pryor was already in the car. Beemer ran. Some people were coming out of the Chinese restaurant. Two guys in baseball hats. From this distance, about forty yards, they looked like truckers. There weren’t any trucks in the lot. They were looking right at Beemer. Beemer realized he was holding his gun. Beemer could hear the woman screaming. The truckers could probably hear her too. He ran to the car, got behind the wheel. Pryor couldn’t drive, never learned, never tried.

Beemer shot out of the parking lot. They’d need another car. Not a problem. Night. Good neighborhood. In and gone in something not too new. Dump it. No prints. Later buy a five-year-old Geo, Honda, something like that. Legal. In Beemer’s name.

“We got a lot,” Pryor said happily.

“You shot that guy,” Beemer said, staying inside the speed limit, heading for the expressway. “He might die.”

“What?” asked Pryor.

“You shot that man,” Beemer repeated, passing a guy in a blue BMW. The guy was smoking a cigarette. Beemer didn’t smoke. He made Pryor stop when they’d gotten together. Inside. In Stateville, he was in a cell with two guys who smoked. Smell had been everywhere. On Beemer’s clothes. On the pages of his books.

People killed themselves. Alcohol, drugs, smoking, eating crap that told the blood going to their heart that this was their territory now and there was no way they were getting by without surgery.

“People sunk,” said Beemer.

Pryor was poking through the bag. He nodded in agreement. He was smiling.

“What if he dies?” Beemer said.

“Who?”

“The guy you shot,” said Beemer. “Shot full of holes by someone she knows.”

The expressway was straight ahead. Beemer could see the stoplight, the big green sign.

“I don’t know her,” Pryor said. “Never saw her before.”

“One year ago,” Beemer said.

“So? We don’t go back. The guy dies. Everybody dies. You said so,” Pryor said, feeling proud of himself, holding G. B. Shaw to his bosom. “We stopping for hot dogs? That place you said? Kosher. Juicy.”

“I don’t feel like hot dogs,” said Beemer.

He turned onto the expressway, headed south toward Chicago. Jammed. Rush hour. Line from here to forever. Moving maybe five, ten miles an hour. Beemer turned on the radio and looked in the rearview mirror. Cars were lined up behind him. A long showroom of whatever you might want. Lights on, creeping, crawling. Should have stayed off the expressway. Too late now. Listen to the news, music, voices that made sense besides his own. An insulting talk show host would be fine.

“More than we got last time,” Pryor said happily.

“Yeah,” said Beemer.

“A couple of hot dogs would be good,” said Pryor. “Celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“Anniversary. We’ve got a present.”

Pryor held up the bag. It looked heavy. Beemer grunted. What the hell. They had to eat.

“Hot dogs,” Beemer said.

“Yup,” said Pryor.

Traffic crawled. The car in front of Beemer had a bumper sticker: DON’T BLAME ME. I VOTED LIBERTARIAN.

What the hell was that? Libertarian. Beemer willed the cars to move. He couldn’t do magic. A voice on the radio said something about Syria. Syria didn’t exist for Beemer. Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Bosnia. You name it. It didn’t really exist. Nothing existed. No place existed until it was right there to be touched, looked at, held up with a Glock in your hand.

Gluck, gluck, gluck, gluck, gluck.

Beemer heard it over the sound of running engines and a horn here and there from someone in a hurry to get somewhere in a hurry. He looked up. Helicopter. Traffic watch from a radio or television station? No. It was low. Cops. The truckers from the Chinese restaurant? Still digesting their fried wonton when they went to their radios or a pay phone or a cell phone or pulled out a rocket.

Cops were looking for a certain car. Must be hundreds, thousands out here. Find Waldo, only harder. Beemer looked in his rearview mirror. No flashing lights. He looked up the embankment to his right. Access drive. The tops of cars. No lights flashing. No uniforms dashing. No dogs barking. Just gluck, gluck, gluck. Then a light. Pure white circle down on the cars in front. Sweeping right to left, left to right. Pryor had no clue. He was lost in Rolexes and dreams of french fries.

Did the light linger on them? Imagination? Maybe. Description from the hot-and-sour-soup-belching truckers? Description from the lady with the baby she was going to name Melissa when Joan would have been better? Joan had been Beemer’s mother’s name. He hadn’t suggested it lightly.

So they had his description. Stocky guy with short gray hair, about fifty, wearing a black zipper jacket. Skinny guy carrying a canvas bag filled with goodies. A jackpot piñata, a heist from St. Nick.

Traffic moved, not wisely or well, but it moved, inched. Music of another time. Tony Bennett? No, hell no. Johnny Mathis singing “Chances Are.” Should have been Tommy Edwards.

“Let’s go. Let’s go,” Beemer whispered to the car ahead.

“Huh?” asked Pryor.

“There’s a cop in a helicopter up there,” Beemer said, moving forward as if he were on the roller coaster ride creeping toward the top, where they would plunge straight down into despair and black air. “I think he’s looking for us.”

Pryor looked at him and then rolled down his window to stick his head out before Beemer could stop him.

“Stop that shit,” Beemer shouted, pulling the skinny dryness inside.

“I saw it,” said Pryor.

“Did he see you?”

“No one waved or nothing,” said Pryor. “There he goes.”

The helicopter roared forward low, ahead of them. Should he take the next exit? Stay in the crowd? And then the traffic started to move a little faster. Not fast, mind you, but it was moving now. Maybe twenty miles an hour. Actually nineteen, but close enough. Beemer decided to grit it out. He turned off the radio.

They made it to Dempster in thirty-five minutes and headed east, toward Lake Michigan. No helicopter. It was still early. Too early for an easy car swap, but it couldn’t be helped. Helicopters. He searched this way and that, let his instincts take over at a street across from a park. Three-story apartment buildings. Lots of traffic. He drove in a block. Cars on both sides, some facing the wrong way.

“What are we doing?” asked Pryor.

“We are doing nothing,” Beemer said. “I am looking for a car. I steal cars. I rob stores. I don’t shoot people. I show my gun. They show respect. You show that piece of shit in your pocket, trip over thin air, and shoot a guy in the back.”

“Accident,” said Pryor.

“My ass,” said Beemer. And then, “That one.”

He was looking at a gray Nissan a couple of years old parked under a big tree with branches sticking out over the street. No traffic. Dead-end street.

“Wipe it down,” Beemer ordered, parking the car and getting out.

Pryor started wiping the car for prints. First inside. Then outside. By the time he was done, Beemer had the Nissan humming. Pryor got in the passenger seat, his bag on his lap, going on a vacation. All he needed was a beach and a towel.

They hit the hot dog place fifteen minutes later. They followed the smell and went in. There was a line. Soft poppyseed buns. Kosher dogs. Big slices of new pickle. Salty brown fries. They were in line. Two women in front of them were talking. A mother and daughter. Both wearing shorts and showing stomach. Pryor looked back at the door. He could see the Nissan. The bag was in the trunk with George Bernard Shaw standing guard.

The woman and the girl were talking about Paris. Plaster of? Texas? Europe? Somebody they knew? Nice voices. Beemer tried to remember when he had last been with a woman. Not that long ago. Two months? Amarillo? Las Vegas? Moline, Illinois?

It was their turn. The kid in the white apron behind the counter wiped his hands and said, “What can I do for you?”

You can bring back the dead, thought Beemer. You can make us invisible. You can teleport us to my aunt Elaine’s in Corpus Christi.

“You can give us each a hot dog with the works,” Beemer said.

“Two for me,” said Pryor. “And fries.”

“Two for both of us. Lots of mustard. Grilled onions. Tomatoes. Cokes. Diet for me. Regular for him.”

The mother and daughter were sitting on stools still talking about Paris and eating.

“You got a phone?” Beemer asked, paying for their order.

“Back there,” said the kid, taking the money.

“I’m going back there to call Walter. Find us a seat where we can watch the car.”

Pryor nodded and moved to the pickup line. Beemer went back there to make the call. The phone was next to the toilet. He used the toilet first and looked at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look good. Decidedly.

He filled the sink with water, cold water, and plunged his face in. Maybe the sink was dirty? Least of his worries. He pulled his head out and looked at himself. Dripping-wet reflection. The world hadn’t changed. He dried his face and hands and went to the phone. He had a calling card, AT&T. He called Walter. The conversation went like this.

“Walter? I’ve got goods.”

“Jewelry store?”

“It matter?”

“Matters. Cops moved fast. Man’s in the hospital maybe dying. Church deacon or something. A saint. All over television with descriptions of two dummies I thought I might recognize.”

“Goods are goods,” said Beemer.

“These goods could make a man an accessory maybe to murder. Keep your goods. Take them who knows where. Get out of town before it’s too late, my dear. You know what I’m saying?”

“Walter, be reasonable.”

“My middle name is ‘reasonable.’ It should be ‘careful’ but it’s ‘reasonable.’ I’m hanging up. I don’t know who you are. I think you got the wrong number.”

He hung up. Beemer looked at the phone and thought. St. Louis. There was a guy, Tanner, in St. Louis. No, East St. Louis. A black guy who’d treat them fair for their goods. They’d check out of the motel and head for St. Louis. Not enough money, without selling the goods or going to the bank, to get a new car. They’d have to drive the Nissan, slow and easy. All night. Get to Tanner first thing in the morning when the sun was coming up through the Arch.

Beemer went down the narrow corridor. Cardboard boxes made it narrower. When he got to the counter, the mother and daughter were still eating and talking and drinking. Lots of people were. Standing at the counters or sitting on high stools with red seats that swirled. Smelled fantastic. Things would be all right. Pryor had a place by the window where he could watch the car. He had finished one hot dog and was working on another. Beemer inched in next to him.

“We’re going to St. Louis,” he said behind a wall of other conversations.

“Okay,” said Pryor, mustard on his nose. No questions. Just “Okay.”

Then it happened. It always happens. Shit always happens. A cop car, black and white, pulled into the lot outside the hot dog place. It was a narrow lot. The cops were moving slowly. Were they looking for a space and a quick burger or hot dog? Were they looking for a stolen Nissan?

The cops stopped next to the Nissan.

“No,” moaned Pryor.

Beemer grabbed the little guy’s arm. The cops turned toward the hot dog shop window. Beemer looked at the wall, ate his dog, and ate slowly, his heart going mad. Maybe he’d die now of a heart attack. Why not? His father had died on a Washington, D.C., subway just like that.

Pryor was openly watching the cops move toward them.

“Don’t look at them,” Beemer whispered. “Look at me. Talk. Say something. Smile. I’ll nod. Say anything.”

“Are they coming for us?” asked Pryor, working on his second dog.

“You’ve got mustard on your nose. You want to go down with mustard on your nose? You want to be a joke on the ten o’clock news?”

Beemer took a napkin arid wiped Pryor’s nose as the cops came in the door and looked around.

“Reach in your pocket,” said Beemer. “Take out your gun. I’m going to do the same. Aim it at the cops. Don’t shoot. Don’t speak. If they pull out their guns, just drop yours. It’ll be over and we can go pray that the guy you shot doesn’t die.”

“I don’t pray,” said Pryor as the cops, both young and in uniform, moved through the line of customers down the middle of the shop, hands on holstered guns.

Beemer turned and so did Pryor. Guns out, aimed. Butch and Sundance. A John Woo movie.

“Hold it,” shouted Beemer.

Oh God, I pissed in my pants. Half an hour to the motel. Maybe twenty years to life to the motel.

The cops stopped, hands still on their holsters. The place went dead. Someone screamed. The mother or the daughter, who had stopped talking about Paris.

“Let’s go,” said Beemer.

Pryor reached back for the last half of his hot dog and his little greasy bag of fries.

“Is that a Glock?” asked the kid behind the counter.

“It’s a Glock,” said Beemer.

“Cool gun,” said the kid.

The cops didn’t speak. Beemer didn’t say anything more. He and Pryor made it to the door, backed away across the parking lot, watching the cops watching them. The cops wouldn’t shoot. Too many people.

“Get in,” Beemer said.

Pryor got in the car. Beemer reached back to open the driver-side door. Hard to keep his gun level and open the door. He did it, got in, started the car, and looked in the rearview. The cops were coming out, guns drawn. There was a barrier in front of him, low, a couple of inches, painted red. Beemer gunned forward over the barrier. Hell, it wasn’t his car. He thought there was just enough room to get between a white minivan and an old convertible who-knows-what.

The cops were saying something. Beemer wasn’t listening. He had pissed in his pants and he expected to die of a heart attack. He listened for some telltale sign. The underbody of the Nissan caught the red barrier, scraped, and roared over. Beemer glanced toward Pryor, who had the window open and was leaning out, his piece-of-crap gun in his hand. Pryor fired as Beemer made it between minivan and convertible, taking some paint off both sides of the Nissan in the process.

Pryor fired as Beemer hit the street. Beemer heard the hot dog shop’s window shatter. They wouldn’t be welcome here in the near future. Then came another shot as Beemer turned right. This one went through Pryor’s face. He was dead, hanging out the window. Beemer floored the Nissan. He could hear Pryor’s head bouncing on the door.

The cops were going for their car, making calls, and Pryor’s head was bouncing like something out of the jungle on the door. Beemer made a hard right down a semidark street. He pulled to the curb, reached past Pryor, and opened the door. It swung open, Pryor draped over it. Beemer grabbed the dead man’s shirt, pulled him back through the window, and pushed the body out the door. Then he reached over to close the door. Pryor was looking up at him with three eyes, one of them brand new.

Beemer drove. There were lights behind him now, a block back. Sirens. He turned left, wove around. No idea where he was. No one to talk to. Just me and my radio.

Who knows how many minutes later he came to a street called Oakton and headed east, for Sheridan Road, Lake Shore Drive, Lake Michigan.

People passed in cars. He passed people walking. People looked at him. The bloody door. That was it. Pryor had marked him. No time to stop and clean it up. Not on the street. He hit Sheridan Road and looked for a place to turn, found it. Little dead end. Black on white sign: NO SWIMMING. A park.

He pulled in between a couple of cars he didn’t look at, popped the trunk lock, and got out. There was nothing in the trunk but the bag of jewelry. He dumped it all into the trunk, picked up the empty canvas bag, closed the trunk, and went looking for water.

Families were having late picnics. Couples were walking. Beemer found a fountain. He soaked George Bernard Shaw and brought him dripping back to the Nissan, where he worked on the bloody car door. It streaked. He worked, turned the canvas bag. Scrubbed. He went back for more water, wrung the bloody water from the bag. Worked again. Gunga Din. Fetch water. Clean up. Three trips and it was done.

George Bernard Shaw was angry. His face was red under the parking lot lights.

Beemer opened the trunk and threw the bag in. When he turned, he saw the cop car coming down the street. Only one way in the lot. Only one way out. The same way. He grabbed six or seven watches and some little golden animals and shoved them in his pockets quickly. Then he moved into the park, off the path, toward the rocks. Last stand? Glock on the rocks? Couldn’t be. It couldn’t end like this. He was caught between a cop and a hard place. Funny. Couldn’t laugh though. He hurried on, looking back to see the cop car enter the little lot.

Beemer found the rocks. Kids were crawling over them. Big rocks. Beyond them the night and the lake like an ocean of darkness, end of the world. Nothingness. He climbed out and down.

Three teenagers or college kids, male, watched him make his way down toward the water.

Stop looking at me, he willed. Go back to playing with yourselves, telling lies, and being stupid. Just don’t look at me. Beemer crouched down behind a rock, the water touching his shoes.

He had no plan. Water and rocks. Pockets full of not much. Crawl along the rocks. Get out. Find a car. Drive to the motel. Get to St. Louis. Tanner might give him a few hundred, maybe more, for what he had. Start again, find a new Pryor to replace the prior Pryor, a Pryor without a gun. Beemer knew he couldn’t be alone.

“You see a man out here?” He heard a voice through the sound of the waves.

“Down there,” came a slightly younger voice.

Beemer couldn’t swim. Give up or keep going. He kept going. A flashlight beam from above now. Another from the direction he had come.

“Stop right there. Turn around and come back the way you came,” said a voice.

“He’s armed,” said another voice.

“Take out your gun and hold it by the barrel. Now.”

Beemer considered. He took out the Glock. Great gun. Took it out slowly, looked up, and decided it was all a what-the-hell life anyway. He grabbed the gun by the handle, holding on to the rock with one hand. He aimed toward the flashlight above him.

Before he could fire he heard a shot, felt the pain, fell backward. His head hit a jutting rock. The rock hurt more than the bullet that tore at his stomach. But the water, the cold water, was worst of all.

“Can you get to him, Dave?” someone called.

“I’m trying.”

Beemer was floating on his back, bobbing in the black waves. I can float, he thought, looking at the flashlight. Float out to some little sailboat, climb on, get away.

He bobbed further away. Pain gone cold.

“Can’t reach him.”

“Shit. He’s floating out. Call it in.”

Footsteps. Beemer looked up. Beyond the light aimed at his eyes, he could see people in a line looking down at him as he floated farther and farther from the shore into the blackness. He considered waving to them. He looked for the moon and stars. They weren’t there.

Maybe the anniversary hit hadn’t been such a good idea.

He closed his eyes and thought that he had never fired his Glock, never fired any gun. That would be a regret if they didn’t save him. That would be a regret if they did. It was a damned good gun.

Beemer fell asleep. Either that or he died.