Frank turned his attention from the one to the other. He was sweating. “Keep the rest,” he said. “You can do me back.”
Chewy looked at Frank as though trying to discern him across a distance. “Sure,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I remember,” Mooch murmured, scrunching his face, “the first time I met Shel. Up at the house. She’s got a killer smile. I mean, a nice smile.” He waved his hands, to dispel a confusion. “Kinda smile that makes you feel wanted. Wanted as in ‘liked,’ I mean. Not wanted as in ‘by the FBI.’ ” He squeezed his temples again, to unscramble his thought pattern, then sighed. “You got a first-rate old lady, Frank.”
Chewy elbowed his brother again and whispered, “Shut… up.”
Frank said, “Yeah. Almost perfect.”
“Perfect,” Mooch repeated. “Dead on.”
Chewy licked his lips and said for the third time, “We’ll probably want to buy some more of this.” It came out very loud.
Mooch stood up, wavering on his feet. “I gotta pee.”
He shuffled from the room like a ghost. It’s no longer in your hands, Frank thought, remembering his flash of insight at the marina. What happens, happens. Do it right. Frank turned to Chewy. Something must have shown in his eyes. As soon as Chewy looked up, he said, “Don’t be mad. Okay?”
“Who says I’m mad?”
Chewy chuckled miserably and gestured as though to say, Get real.
Frank nodded toward the stereo. “How about some tunes?”
“Don’t be mad.”
“Stop saying that.”
Frank got up and went to the cassette rack, checking for anything loud. Finding a tape by a group called Stick, he slipped it in and jacked the volume on a tune called “No Groovy.” A spoon in a water glass rattled clear across the room.
Chewy shouted, “Hey…”
Frank drew the Ruger from his waistband, bracing his right hand with his left. He shot three quick rounds. Chewy lunged back into the couch, legs twisting up. He got fish-mouthed, sucking for air. His chest convulsed. The gun turned warm in Frank’s hands, which were shaking. He expected more blood.
Mooch hit the doorway yelling, “What the…”
Frank pivoted, charging at him. The next four rounds in the clip caught the boy point-blank. Mooch spun back trying to grip the door frame, hit the wall, then slid down. Frank noticed there was more blood this time.
He turned down the stereo. The gun was hot, he set it on the floor to cool. Don’t be mad, he thought. I didn’t mean anything.
Chewy’s body stopped twitching. To force back his vomit, Frank held his breath, held it till his head ached. It’s not like I had a choice, he thought. Out of my hands.
The next thing he knew he lay curled in a ball on the living room floor. His skin was cold with sweat. How much time had passed? It was still dark outside. He looked up at the furniture with something like envy. It sat there in the room so peacefully.
A nameless pressure lifted him to his feet and guided him back upstairs where, in a state of abstracted terror, he looked at what he’d done. This is not the beach at Baja, he thought.
Move, a voice said. Finish it.
Inspired by an impulse he’d not foreseen, he dug a pair of socks out of a drawer and put one on each hand. He went around wiping everything, even the door downstairs, the banister, then went back to the bedroom and trashed it. Make it look like a burn, he told himself, an inner voice he barely recognized as his own. Do it right.
Look for money.
The twins weren’t all that clever. They kept their stash in a wad, stuffed inside a throw pillow. Thirteen hundred and change. Finish it. He went through the rest of the house, throwing down every picture, dumping out baskets, checking the flour tins, cereal boxes, the bread hamper. He was light-headed and crying. In a pickle jar he found another grand wrapped inside a condom. He broke the jar on the floor, pocketed the money and left the fridge door open. He found scattered bills in their wallets, a few more in a magazine, an envelope, a hatband. It has to be thorough, he realized, to be convincing. He found two quarter-gram bundles stashed in an empty cassette case; he dusted the bodies with the powder. Make it look like honest-to-God revenge, he thought.
Too much candy in the house.
He picked up the gun, put it away, and collected all seven spent shell casings, reaching far beneath the couch to claim the last. Chewy’s body lay there, face to the ceiling, one leg tucked under. Blood caked most of his T-shirt now, the sofa cushion had soaked up the rest. The dusting of cocaine resembled sugar. Frank pulled the socks off his hands and crossed the room, reaching out to touch Chewy’s eye with his fingertip.
He thought of a boy. Not a monster, a boy not yet three years old, a precious boy, murdered by a drug-crazed half-wit.
Frank withdrew his finger. He’d already been planning to cut the twins’ share down, whittle it to zip, and though he expected them to whine, he doubted they’d have made enough noise to squirrel the plan. He could have strung them along, told them another deal was on the way, bigger, fatter, they were his favorite boys. Then poof, gone, with Shel beside him, the twins wondering where their money went. It could’ve worked. There was no need to do this. But it just took on a life of its own, not some wild improvisation but more the work of some invisible hand: the gun in the trunk, the eight ball, the constant niggling horseshit about Shel.
I’m only human, he thought.
He wiped his face with his sleeve and turned away, thinking: Fitting and fair. Everything, absolutely everything, is fitting and fair. Even this.
He went out to the garage, got behind the wheel of the four-by-four then found himself unable to move. He had no idea what to do. The plan he’d devised, it didn’t include a pair of dead twins. Think, he told himself. Think.
As his terror mounted, it occurred to him that maybe he should just pretend that nothing had happened. Stick to the plan, a voice said. Instantly he felt better. That’s it, he thought, backing the truck out of the garage. When in doubt, stick to the plan.
He returned to Oakley, heading for a remote entrance to the Akers property, about a mile from the house. This entrance led to an abandoned tract of pasture, separated from the rest of the Akers property by a walnut grove and a series of low hills. No one ever came back here anymore, not since half the Akers herd died in the drought.
He pulled in beyond the gate then sat for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness so he could drive without headlights. Beyond the first hill, out of sight of the road, he parked the four-by-four near a deserted milking shed. He’d readied the place for use the previous week and checked on it every day since then, to be sure no one came nosing around. Outside the truck, he peered in every direction, through the walnut trees, across the hills. He cocked an ear, listening. Confident no one was coming, he went to the back of the truck, opened the tailgate and unloaded the money.
Inside the milking shed, he kicked aside the hay he’d spread across the floor as camouflage. Two days earlier, he’d torn a hole in the concrete floor with a pickax. He emptied the money into a Halburton case he’d stowed there, then buried it beneath a small sheet of plywood. Using equipment he’d lifted from a construction site in East Antioch, he mixed a fresh batch of Quickrete in a slurry boat. After wetting down the wood and the jagged edges of the hole, he worked in the Quickrete, sealing the plywood and smoothing the top with a planing trowel. He shoveled dirt across the entire floor, kicking it helter-skelter to suggest a natural state. He ripped more hay from a wormy bale still sitting in the corner from years ago and scattered it around. He tossed his tools and leftover materials out the door then locked it shut from inside.
From equipment he’d stashed the same night he’d dug the hole, he fashioned a trap from filament wire, a blasting cap and a jar of ether, triggering it to the door. If anybody thought to come out here, peer in the windows, he’d see nothing worth his trouble. If that didn’t satisfy him, if he got curious enough to barge on in, he’d get ripped to shreds or burn to death. Frank had seen Lyle rig a meth lab this way, when they had to leave it unattended for a few days. That’s the beauty of it, Frank thought. Booby trap’s got Lyle’s signature on it, not mine.