And then his own voice, a bellowing scream: I just wanted you to leave me the fuck alone. And then he came leaping out of the cab with the rifle held to his shoulder, firing and ejecting and firing again, each bright flash of light freezing Rick, halfway up the snowbank, and then at its lip, and then gone.
17
HE KNEW THAT IT WAS CLOSE TO EIGHT NOW BECAUSE HE had been listening, for what seemed like a long while, to the various good-byes and see-you-tomorrows of the salesmen as they exited the building, the sounds of motion — footsteps and voices — decreasing until what remained was his own breath and heart and what sounded like a single remaining figure whistling tunelessly, the sound of it fading into and out of range like a distant television station. He hoped to god it was the sales manager and that his long wait in the darkness was coming to a close, the whistling rising and falling and then rising again and finally passing just beyond the door and down the hall toward the exit. The water heater next to him rippled with flame again and the soft growl of its ignition nearly made him gasp with surprise. From the floor came its faint orange glow. Then a moment of silence followed by a muffled and rhythmic beeping, after which the strip of light that had been illuminating the base of the door for as long as he had been secreted in the supply closet blinked out all at once. There was a loud metal bang. The alarm’s beeping continued for a few more seconds before it fell silent. Then nothing.
The phone panel opposite him had been flickering incessantly with green and red dashes and in the long two hours he had been hidden in that tiny space he had tried to find patterns amidst those constellations, imagining it a map, a game, a drawing of some kind, but failing to discover any meaning in the random blinking of the lights. Now the dashes had fallen to a single green row gapped by occasional empty spaces. He stood staring at it, listening for any movement beyond the closed door. Then he breathed once, twice, and finally reached for the handle, finding it in the new darkness, and slowly, so slowly, opening the door.
The hallway in shadow. At its nether end, the tight corridor opened into the broad glass-fronted showroom, the windows there reflecting a faint glow from the streetlamps that lit the main lot with its rows of sparkling new cars. He stood in that profound silence, watching, through the glass, as a great jumbo jet descended across the floor-to-ceiling windows, its engine roar muffled to a distant whispered hush. He stood listening for any sound from within but the showroom was empty and silent.
He knew they were on schedule and that Rick would arrive soon. The two of them had parked down the street for three consecutive nights, timing the final employee, the sales manager, as he drove out of the parking lot near eight o’clock each night. On the first night, a police cruiser had passed them slowly, its driver looking at them with care as it slid by, so when seven thirty came the second night, they were parked a quarter mile down the street, watching the black-and-white as it drifted by in the distance. They waited until nine o’clock but did not see another police car and apart from the few employee vehicles leaving the dealership between seven thirty and eight they did not see another car at all. What they had learned was that the movements ran like clockwork: police cruiser at seven thirty, sales manager at eight, and nothing but a ghost town after.
On that final night he had tried to speak to Rick about what he had done and had failed to do, but the words had become entangled. Out before them through the windshield, oval pools of light marked the road along the fence. I just want a clean slate, he had said. That’s all.
And Rick had broken his silence then. There are no clean slates, he had said.
You know what I mean.
Man, Rick said, this thing we’re gonna do … do you even get how dicey this whole thing is?
Yeah, of course I do.
Do you?
Yeah, Nat said.
Rick was silent for a moment. Then he said, I’ve known you about as long as I’ve known anyone ever.
Me too.
Thing is, I don’t understand what’s been happening with you anymore. It’s like you’re, I don’t know, out of control or something.
Down the long length of the street, the police cruiser appeared, its taillights moving slowly away from them in the distance.
It’s like you’re not yourself anymore, Rick said. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s weird.
I’m still me, Nat said. He looked out the side window. An airplane, bright white and luminescent in the night sky, ascended off the runway. He could think of nothing more to say and so he said nothing. The sound of the airplane ran all through the car: a long hiss that seemed to grow louder and louder and louder and would not stop.
The sound of the descending plane was quieter through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the showroom floor but it felt much the same. He had been holding his breath and he exhaled now, long and hard, returning to the hallway and moving down its length to the alarmed exit door that opened outside. The panel there glowed faintly. Its screen read simply armed in blocky electronic letters. Next to that message was a green light. He knew that the alarm would be triggered when he pushed open the door, but whether that triggering would directly contact the police or would activate some blaring siren or would do something else entirely, he did not know. Rick would knock and he would push open the door and they would deal with whatever happened next.
Then Milt Wells’s office at last: a dark space cluttered with furniture and files and binders that burst into shadows in the blaze of the
flashlight. The safe in the corner looked more substantial than it had when he looked at it from across the desk: a thick, almost featureless black box perhaps two feet square and fronted by a silver dial and handle. At first he simply grasped that handle and pulled but the safe did not move and for a moment he wondered if it was somehow bolted through to the floor. The wall shelves had been built around it and he cleared one side of books and binders and then swung his foot up into the gap he had made and pressed it against the wall, levering out with his body, pushing with his foot as he pulled hard upon the handle, and this time the box slid out slowly across the carpet and into the room.
When he had pulled it as far as he could, he sat on the flat surface of the safe in the dark, panting, his arms tired from the effort of moving that thick box even a few feet, and then rose and entered the hall and stood near the back door, listening to the too-loud sound of his own breath and staring at the alarm’s glowing keypad with its single word of menace. He waited there until he could hear the sound of a car outside, the gears shifting, the sound growing louder and then the car’s engine sputtering to silence. The familiar squeak as the Datsun’s door opened and closed. He waited. And then came the knock, shave and a haircut, the sound so loud in the quiet of the dealership that it startled him even though he had been expecting it all night.
The alarm panel again. The glowing numbers. The green light. Armed.
Then he turned the handle and pushed open the door.
Rick stood there in the darkness, his father’s.38 revolver clutched in his hand, the Datsun just behind, its trunk already open. There was no sound, nothing to indicate they had tripped the alarm, but when he looked back to the panel the light had gone from green to red. A moment later the phone began to ring.
What the fuck? Rick said.
I don’t know.
Fuck, he said. Then he stepped over the threshold and Nat pulled the door closed behind him.
What took you so long?
That fucking El Camino, he hissed.
No way.
Yeah way.
I told you that guy’s been on me.