She turned to Vince and started to move that way, drawn to him, but his arms were still outstretched, the barrel of the gun still positioned behind the other man’s ear.
“Oh God, Vince—I knew—I knew . . .” She began to weep. No, more than that. She began to convulse. Her shoulders hunched as she sobbed. “Oh God, oh my God . . .”
I could see in his eyes that he wanted to comfort her but right now couldn’t move. “You,” he said.
Still holding the Glock in my right hand, I tried to take her in my own arms, put my left hand on her back as she pressed her face to my chest.
“It’s okay,” I said soothingly. “It’s okay.”
“Logan,” Vince said to the one closest to him.
“Yeah.”
“Still want to keep your mother happy? Keep your shithead brother and yourself alive?”
“Sure.”
“Then this is what you’re going to do. My friend’s going to go down the stairs, and the two of you are going to go down after him.”
“Where are the others?” he asked.
“They’re fine. Let’s go.”
I went down the stairs quickly so I could turn around and train the gun on Logan and Joseph as they descended. I saw Jane throw her arms around Vince just before he came down the stairs. Heard them speak softly to each other, a couple of nods.
Vince said, “We’ll be out of here in a minute. Why don’t you wait up here.”
I didn’t take that as a good sign. That things Vince didn’t want her to see were about to happen.
Vince came down the stairs, entered the room where Wyatt and Reggie remained trussed up on the floor and where our new visitors were standing, looking very uncertain. There were still a few short lengths of rope scattered about.
“Terry, do Bandage Man.” Looking at Joseph.
I grabbed a length of rope, twirled my finger to get him to turn around. “Fuck you,” he said.
Vince’s arm went up.
Logan said to his brother, “Joseph, just do it. If they were going to kill us, they could have done it by now.” He looked hopefully at Vince. “Right?”
Vince smiled. “That’s right.”
“Wanna blow me?” Joseph asked. I wasn’t sure whether he was asking Vince or me. I had a feeling he wouldn’t take direction well, that if I tucked my gun into my belt, he’d whip around and try to grab it. So I handed the weapon to Vince. He stood there looking like Gary Cooper, two weapons drawn, as I pulled Joseph’s arms behind him and tied the rope around his wrists.
It wasn’t my area of expertise, but I did the best I could.
“Ankles, too,” Vince said.
By the time I was done, he was on the floor like Reggie and Wyatt. Then I took care of Logan.
“Vince?” Jane called down from the top of the stairs. “I wanna get out of here.”
“Almost ready,” he said, returning the Glock to me.
We were, as far as I could see, ready to go. We had Jane. The money was in the car. The kidnappers were immobilized.
But Vince stood over them, his shoes seemingly glued to the floor.
“Vince,” I said.
He didn’t look at me. Instead, his eyes were on the four of them, transfixed. The gun in his hand.
“Vince,” I said again. “You and I, we had a deal.”
Slowly, he looked at me. “They’ve got it coming. They don’t deserve mercy. They deserve some sweet justice.”
“Not your kind,” I said. “Shit, maybe they do deserve it. But I told you, I can’t be a part of something like this.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. His body wavered. His eyes reopened and he looked the same way he had when he’d collapsed in our house. He lowered the gun to his side, put out his left arm, looking for something to brace himself on. He found the back of the couch, supported himself against it.
“Don’t feel so good,” he said.
“We need to go. You okay getting up the stairs?”
He took his hand off the couch, testing to see whether he could stand. “I think so.” Vince lowered his head, addressed the congregation. “Smartest thing you could do is disappear. Later, I’m gonna be sorry I didn’t do something about you. I’ll come looking. I’m gonna make this right.”
“Come on,” I said.
“Old man doesn’t have the balls,” Joseph said.
“Jesus, shut up, you dumb asshole,” Reggie said.
I let Vince go up the stairs ahead of me. I was half expecting him to collapse on the way up and felt I needed to be there to catch him. Jane, like an angel at the entrance to the pearly gates, awaited him at the top of the stairs.
Once we were all in the kitchen, I wanted to get the hell out of there, but Vince and Jane were huddled in an embrace, whispering things to each other. I felt they needed a moment of privacy, so I walked into the living room, gazed through the sheers at the street.
After the better part of five minutes, and a lot of discussion between the two of them, Vince called out to me. “Terry, we’re off.” His voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it before.
We opened the door that led from the house to the garage. Vince was moving like a wounded soldier, his arm around Jane. She opened the back door on the driver’s side, helped him into the seat. He dropped into it like a sack of cement.
“He needs rest,” she said to me as I opened the driver’s door. “Has he told you?” Her eyes glistened.
“Told me what?”
“He’s sick.”
That was pretty obvious. “How sick?”
She took a breath. “Cancer. Pretty far along, he says.”
I nodded. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. I guess we should go.” She rested her hand on my arm. “Thanks, Teach.”
I smiled weakly. “Sure.”
Jane took her hand off my arm and started to walk around the front of the car, which took her to within half a dozen feet of the door into the house.
It burst open.
I should have taken a knot-tying course when I was a Boy Scout.
It was Joseph. He came flying out the door, a knife in his right hand. The one, I presumed, that I had left sitting out on the kitchen counter after freeing Jane’s wrists.
His eyes, wide and crazy, were fixed on her. She screamed when she saw him and raised her arms defensively. But they weren’t going to do much to save her against an enraged man who was larger and stronger than she was.
He had the knife raised high, clutching it in his fist the way you’d hold an ice pick.
His teeth were bared like an animal’s.
The Glock, as it turned out, was loaded.
I didn’t think about any of it. My arm went up. It would be an overstatement to say I aimed. I just pointed and then I squeezed the trigger.
No safety.
The shot echoed inside the garage. A red blossom appeared on the side of Joseph’s neck, knocking him off course and away from Jane. He dropped to the concrete, vanishing beyond the front of the Beemer.
“No,” I said.
The garage was suddenly very still. Jane had backed up a few steps, pressed herself up against the fender of the SUV, both hands over her mouth.
I heard something behind me, whirled around.
Vince had gotten out of the car. He shuffled past me, knelt down by the car’s front bumper, his head just above the hood.
He turned and looked at me. “Good shot,” he said.
I had to ask. “Is he dead?”
“That’s what ‘good shot’ means.”
Slowly, using his hand on the hood to help him, he got back up on his feet. He stepped toward me and put out his hand. “Give it to me.”
“What?”
“The gun.”
Dazed, maybe even in shock, I handed it to him.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
Vince was quiet a moment, then reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “I tried to play it your way,” he said, “but you’ve cha
nged the game.”
SEVENTY
TERRY
TRYING to recall what happened over the next few minutes is, even now, not unlike trying to remember a dream. I try to see it clearly, but it’s like viewing an image through wax paper. Everything is slightly out of focus, softened, fogged. I can’t say I was clinically in a state of shock, but at the very least I was stunned. I could not believe what had just transpired.
I could not believe I’d killed a man.
It did not seem real.
Yet, at some intellectual level, I knew this was happening, that it was real. But I still felt disconnected from the events. I seemed able to listen and observe, but unable to act. I was paralyzed.
I remember Vince talking to me.
“You saved Jane’s life. That’s what you just did. You saved her. You did the right thing.”
“I have to call the police,” I whispered.
“No, you don’t have to do that. You know why? Because as far as they’re going to be concerned, you didn’t do that. You see who’s holding the gun now? That’s me. It’s going to be my fingerprints on this gun. Not yours.”
“My fault,” I said. “Didn’t tie him up good. The knife—”
“Don’t worry about any of that shit,” Vince said. He still had his hand on my shoulder. “You really are my number two. You came through.”
Someone else was touching me. Jane. She had a hand on my arm. “Yeah, Teach. He’d have killed me. He’d have done it.”
“So . . . it was justifiable,” I said. “So if I tell the police—”
“Thing is, pal,” Vince said, “we’re not quite done yet.”
He said to Jane, “The two of you go. Now.”
“No,” Jane said. “Come with us.”
“I don’t want you here,” he said. “I want you to get away as fast as you can. It’ll be okay. I’ll see you soon.”
Vince moved his hand from my shoulder to hers. They stood inches apart. Jane was crying.
“No, you won’t,” she said. “I can tell.”
“Don’t worry. And you’re going to be just fine. Do what I tell you.”
She fell against him and he wrapped his free arm around her. “I love you,” she said. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“Shh,” Vince said. “You get Terry out of here. Right away. There’s still the other car here. I can get the keys off Logan. I’ll be okay.”
I wanted to wake up. Please let me wake up.
“I think you better drive,” he told Jane. “Terry’s kind of out of it.”
“Why?” I asked Vince.
“Huh?”
“Why do you have to do it?”
He smiled sadly. “It has to end here. If I leave with you and Jane right now, it’s not over. It’s gonna spin out of control in a hundred directions.” He paused. “Trust me.”
Jane was tugging on my arm. “Come on. We have to go.”
I got into the Beemer on the passenger side.
Maybe, once I got home, I could still call the police. Confess my crime. They’d understand, wouldn’t they? That I had to do it? To save Jane’s life? But what would the cops think—what would a jury think—when they considered everything that had come before? Vince and I effectively kidnapping Wyatt and Reggie ourselves? Making them bring us back to this house? Tying them up?
That wouldn’t play well.
Jane got in the driver’s seat next to me, then looked at Vince. “Keys?”
Vince said, “Terry?”
I glanced over. “What?”
“The keys?”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You’ve got them. In your pocket,” he said.
I reached down into my pants pocket, found the set I had taken from Reggie when we’d arrived. Jane took them from me and started the car.
Vince extended a hand to a button mounted on the wall. “I’ve got the door,” he said.
He pressed the button and behind us the garage door noisily rose. Jane looked down between the seats, got the automatic shift into reverse, then twisted around so she could see out the back window to back the car out of the garage and down the driveway.
I kept eyes forward.
Vince watched us for five seconds, then hit the button to send the garage door back down. Just before it closed, I saw Vince go through the door that took him back into the house.
SEVENTY-ONE
TERRY
“WHERE are we going?” I asked Jane.
“To the cemetery,” she said. “Vince said that’s where his truck is.”
Of course. That made sense. I wasn’t thinking clearly yet. I needed to try to focus, to bring myself out of the fog.
“Trouble is,” she said, “I have no idea where we are. They brought me here with a bag over my head.”
Even I had to think for a moment. “Okay, um, up here, turn by that bench. Once we get out of this neighborhood, you’ll probably get your bearings.”
After a couple of more turns, Jane knew where she was. “Okay, we’re good now.”
“Vince give you the keys to his truck?”
She nodded. “Don’t let me forget to transfer over all the stuff in the trunk.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like Vince won’t have to worry when his depositors come back to make withdrawals.” I glanced over. “Do you even know about that? This thing Vince had going on for a while?”
“I heard them talking,” Jane said. “The ones who grabbed me. Vince had all kinds of money hidden in people’s houses.”
“Yeah. Last night, when Grace and Stuart got into that house, they ran into someone who was ripping Vince off. Someone who found out money was hidden there. I’m thinking now it might have been your kidnappers. They figured out one house where the money was hidden, but it was too much to figure out all the locations, so they grabbed you. Told Vince to clear everything out or they’d—you know.”
“Kill me.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they nearly did,” she said. “Vince told me, fast, about what was going on. He says we have to get a whole bunch of guns out of your house?”
Jesus. I’d forgotten.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
“You know what he’s doing, don’t you?” she asked.
“I don’t want to think about that.”
“He’s protecting us. Both of us.”
“I could see him doing that for you,” I said. “Not so much for me.”
Jane glanced over. “He respects you.”
“What?”
“He does. He thinks you’re a good man. He always has. He’s just not that good at showing it.”
I wondered why I should care. Vince Fleming was a thug. A killer. Did I need the respect of a man like that? And yet, knowing this, I felt something that was hard to explain. Some small measure of pride.
Was it because I was a killer now, too? No, that was a totally different thing. What I did had nothing to do with the kinds of things Vince was capable of.
“Pull over,” I said suddenly.
Jane looked over. “What is it?”
“Pull over!”
She whipped the car to the side of the road and I threw open the door. I stumbled out, doubled over, and was sick. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten anything, but whatever it was, it was gone now.
I rested there a moment, hands on my knees, while the Beemer idled. I stood, took a couple of deep breaths, and got back into the car.
Jane continued on.
At the cemetery, we took everything from the trunk and put it behind the seats in Vince’s Ram pickup.
“We have to wipe it down,” Jane said to me.
I wasn’t sure at first what she was talking about. She’d grabbed two rags from the truck and handed me one. “The Beemer. Vince said to wipe it down. Fingerprints.”
She had the door open and was going over the steering wheel, gearshift, dashboard—just about everything—with the cloth. I did the passenger sid
e of the front, then the backseat. Jane did the trunk lid and the door handles.
“The hood,” I said. “By the front. Vince put his hand on it to get back up.”
When he was looking at the man I shot.
“Vince wasn’t so worried about his own prints,” Jane said. “Just us. But I’ll do it anyway.”
The last thing she did was wipe down the key fob itself, which she tossed into the car through an open window.
Then we were off in the truck, Jane behind the wheel again. “Let’s clear your place out,” she said.
I told her how to get there, and ten minutes later I was in the attic, lowering the box of Glocks and Wyatt’s gun through the hole to her as she stood on the ladder. I tamped the insulation back down, crawled back down through the hole, and slid the cover back into place.
I put the box behind the pickup’s seats with the other bags of loot.
“Tell me you’re not going to drive around with all that.”
“Not for long,” Jane said.
She stood solemnly before me, smiled weakly, and gave me a hug. She whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” I said.
“That you and Grace—that you all got dragged into this. I’m sorry about that, but grateful, too. For helping Vince. For saving me. You know, those kinds of things.”
She squeezed.
“And for always believing in me, Teach,” Jane said, putting her lips to my cheek and giving me a light kiss.
I hugged her back.
“Are you going to be able to do this?” she asked.
“I’m gonna give it my best shot.”
“All you have to do is play dumb.”
I almost smiled. “I should be able to do that.”
“It’ll blow over. It will.”
“Tell Vince I’ll try,” I said.
She gave me a pitying smile. “You don’t get it. We’re never going to see him again.”
I watched her get into the pickup, back out of the drive, and head up the street. When she’d turned the corner, I went back into the house, through the hall, and into the kitchen.