I had to drive all over town to get rid of him. Kind of freaked me out.
You lost him?
Yeah, totally. Where’s the safe?
Down here. What’s with the gun?
I don’t know, he said. I brought the rifle too. It’s in the car.
Dang, Rick.
Let’s just get this done and get the fuck out of here. I’m all spooked out now.
The phone had stopped ringing although it felt like some part of that bell-tone drifted in the black air all around them still.
He led Rick to the office and Nat closed the door behind them. Then the flashlight, everything bursting into shadows.
Christ, turn that off, Rick said.
Nat pointed to the safe. There it is, he said.
Yeah, I see it. Now turn the light off.
They both kneeled and then struggled to lift it, the two of them on either side, the box only two feet square but heavy, solid. The faint sense of something sliding within. Then it was up and in their grasp and they were moving through the door in tiny, mincing steps, Rick’s face there before him, as if they had embraced, or tried to, only to find this heavy iron cube between them, their expressions the same, as if each faced a mirror and the other had become his dark reflection.
Careful careful, Rick whispered.
They moved down the hall, the box heavy but manageable now that they were moving, and when they reached the exit door, Nat fumbled backward, catching the handle and opening it and then they were outside, the night cold and open and miraculous, and they laid the safe into the trunk, grunting and groaning and cursing, the little Datsun heaving down from its weight, and in the next moment the trunk was closed and they were both in the car.
Holy shit, Rick said. That was fucking intense.
We did it, Nat said. We fucking did it. He turned the key and the engine cranked and started and he levered the car into gear.
We sure as hell did, Rick said.
Nat was smiling. The sense of relief that flooded through him was like nothing he had ever experienced, a great slackening as if some overinflated tire had burst through its own sidewall, hot and stagnant air rushing out all at once, and all he could think was that he had done it and that he was free. He turned the wheel downhill toward the opening that led out onto the street.
And that was when he saw the El Camino.
Its low slanting shape slid out before them like a huge door rolling shut across their path, the Datsun’s headlights shining upon its front wheel, its long rust-colored side panel, and finally upon the tattooed man’s face in the driver’s-side window, a face that stared back at them without concern or expression.
No, Nat said. And then he said it again in a long frantic stream: No no no no. He did not stop the car, could not. Instead his foot came down hard on the gas, his hands pulling the wheel and the little Datsun’s engine flooding up in a quick hard hum and then leaping forward at a diagonal as if possessed of some new purpose or function, the gap between the front of the El Camino and the metal pole that marked the edge of their escape route closing even as they sped toward it. Rick was yelling next to him but he could not hear the words, only the weak roar of the tiny engine and then the crunch of metal as the Datsun struck the El Camino at the wheel well and both cars ground immediately to a stop.
What the fuck? Rick said, his voice high and loud and his hands scrabbling the floorboards for the.38.
We gotta get out of here.
I fucking know that.
But the tattooed man was already out of his car, Nat slamming into reverse but the front of the Datsun clinging to the El Camino, the little car’s tires squealing against the asphalt and then abruptly breaking free, that moment coming just as Rick’s door flew open and Rick himself was pulled outside, the man grabbing Rick’s jacket and the Datsun whipping him out of the car by the pure force of its sudden motion, Nat staring now at a scene unfolding in the diminishing distance below him, all of it caught flat and brutal and impossible in the yellow of his headlights: the tattooed man throwing Rick to the asphalt, the baseball bat coming down and coming down and coming down, Rick’s body seeming to collapse in on itself and his voice rising into that lit nightscape in a flurry of curses and screams.
He stopped the Datsun at the top of the driveway almost in the same location Rick had parked, the car’s single functioning headlight pointing down the long slope, a parking lot empty of cars, the whole of the night crushing down on him all at once. Then he reached into the backseat for the rifle before wrenching open the door and stepping outside.
Stop goddammit, he yelled. Stop stop! and when the man raised the bat again Nat pointed the rifle into the sky and pulled the trigger. The sound of it was bright and hot and the flash blinded him for a moment but the man had stopped now, looking up to where Nat stood, the rifle held in his grip.
Now you think you’re gonna shoot me? the man said.
Get away from him, Nat said.
Rick slid backward across the asphalt on his elbows, his feet kicking out for purchase.
I told you, you fucked with the wrong guy. A man repays his debts. And I sure the fuck owe you two sons of bitches.
I said get away from him, Nat said again.
The man laughed then, the black smears of his tattoos snaking up and down his arms, his teeth shining in a wide grin. Let’s have a look at what you got in your trunk, dipshits, the man said. Maybe we can make a deal.
We triggered the alarm, Rick said from the ground. The cops are already on their way.
Then I guess we don’t got much time, the man said. Despite the cold, he wore an unbuttoned collared shirt with the sleeves torn off, and he pulled the shirt out of the way to reveal the grip of a pistol extending from the front of his pants. You think you can shoot me before I draw? he said.
Shoot him, Rick said from the ground.
The man laughed again. He’s not a killer, the man said, and neither are you, Mr. Medium Security. He smiled. Then he said, But I am.
And that was when Rick came at him, his body nearly parallel to the earth as he dove, crashing into the man sideways and both of them coming down. Nat could not see anything in the headlight glow, there were only bodies, hands on the bat, a kind of furious dissolve of flesh as if they had become one man with four arms and four legs, one man gone wild, striking at himself, predator and prey all at once.
He thought he could hear distant sirens now and he called his friend’s name again and again, the rifle still held in his hands, the car behind him, his own shadow cast as a long straight arrow pointing down to that crazed and multiarmed figure. And when the shot rang out he jolted backward, staring for a quick moment at the rifle before realizing that he had not accidentally pulled the trigger on his own, that the shot had come from below.
Ah shit, the tattooed man said, smiling gleefully. Look what I did. He moved the pistol from one hand to the other and then looked up at Nat and turned toward him, the weapon pointed uphill now but not firing. Instead, the man simply advanced, walking quickly and with purpose up the slope, his shadow weaving out behind him to where Rick lay sprawled on the asphalt beside the El Camino, his shinbone bent at an impossible angle and a bright red mushroom of flesh bulging up through a rent in his jeans from where he had been shot, this shadow strung out behind him in the glow of the dealership lights like the shadow of some huge desert tarantula. You fucking shot me, Rick said, his voice a howl of impotent and impossible rage.
Nat stepped backward toward the Datsun’s open door and as he did so, perhaps in direct response to the sound of the gunshot, a siren chirped twice, not so very far away, and then came blazing into full volume. Nat felt his heart clutch in his throat and all he could think, the only word that would come to him, was no no no.