“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.”