Twisted: The Collected Stories Read online

You’d think they’d stake out convenience stores. But those’re a joke and with the closed-circuit TV you’re going to get your picture took, you just are. So nobody who knows the business, I mean really knows it, hits them. And banks, forget banks. Even ATMs. I mean, how much can you clear? Three, four hundred tops? And around here the “Fast Cash” button gives you twenty only. Which tells you something. So why even bother?

  No. We wanted cash and that meant a drugstore, even though they can be tricky. Ardmore Drugs. Which is a big store in a little town. Liggett Falls. Sixty miles from Albany and a hundred or so from where Toth and me lived, farther west into the mountains. Liggett Falls’s a poor place. You’d think it wouldn’t make sense to hit a store there. But that’s exactly why—because like everywhere else, people there need medicine and hair spray and makeup, only they don’t have credit cards. Except maybe a Sears or Penney’s. So they pay cash.

  “Oh, brother,” Toth whispered again. “Look.”

  And he made me even madder, him saying that. I wanted to shout look at what, you son of a bitch? But then I could see what he was talking about and I didn’t say anything. Up ahead. It was like just before dawn, light on the horizon. Only this was red and the light wasn’t steady. It was like it was pulsing and I knew that they’d got the roadblock up already. This was the only road to the interstate from Liggett Falls. So I should’ve guessed.

  “I got an idea,” Toth said. Which I didn’t want to hear but I also wasn’t going to go through another shootout. Surely not at a roadblock, where they was ready for us.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “There’s a town over there. See those lights? I know a road’ll take us there.”

  Toth’s a big guy and he looks calm. Only he isn’t really. He gets shook easy and he now kept turning around, skittish, looking in the backseat. I wanted to slap him and tell him to chill.

  “Where’s it?” I asked. “This town?”

  “About four, five miles. The turnoff, it ain’t marked. But I know it.”

  This was that lousy upstate area where everything’s green. But dirty green, you know. And all the buildings’re gray. These gross little shacks, pickups on blocks. Little towns without even a 7-Eleven. And full of hills they call mountains but aren’t.

  Toth cranked down the window and let this cold air in and looked up at the sky. “They can find us with those, you know, satellite things.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You know, they can see you from miles up. I saw it in a movie.”

  “You think the state cops do that? Are you nuts?”

  This guy, I don’t know why I work with him. And after what happened at the drugstore, I won’t again.

  He pointed out where to turn and I did. He said the town was at the base of the Lookout. Well, I remembered passing that on the way to Liggett Falls this afternoon. It was this huge rock a couple hundred feet high. Which if you looked at it right looked like a man’s head, like a profile, squinting. It’d been some kind of big deal to the Indians around here. Blah, blah, blah. He told me but I didn’t pay no attention. It was spooky, that weird face, and I looked once and kept on driving. I didn’t like it. I’m not really superstitious but sometimes I am.

  “Winchester,” he said now, meaning what the name of the town was. Five, six thousand people. We could find an empty house, stash the car in a garage and just wait out the search. Wait till tomorrow afternoon—Sunday—when all the weekenders were driving back to Boston and New York and we’d be lost in the crowd.

  I could see the Lookout up ahead, not really a shape, mostly this blackness where the stars weren’t. And then the guy on the floor in the back started to moan all of a sudden and just about give me a heart attack.

  “You. Shut up back there.” I slapped the seat and the guy in the back went quiet.

  What a night. . . .

  We’d got to the drugstore fifteen minutes before it closed. Like you ought to do. ’Cause mosta the customers’re gone and a lot’ve the clerks’ve left and people’re tired and when you push a Glock or Smitty into their faces they’ll do just about anything you ask.

  Except tonight.

  We had our masks down and walked in slow, Toth getting the manager out of his little office, a fat guy who started crying and that made me mad, a grown man doing that. Toth kept a gun on the customers and the clerks and I was telling the cashier, this kid, to open the tills and, Jesus, he had an attitude. Like he’d seen all of those Steven Segal movies or something. A little kiss on the cheek with the Smitty and he changed his mind and started moving. Cussing me out but he was moving. I was counting the bucks as we were going along from one till to the next and sure enough we were up to about three thousand when I heard this noise and turned around and, what it was, Toth was knocking over a rack of chips. I mean, Jesus. He’s getting Doritos!

  I look away from the kid for just a second and what’s he do? He pitches this bottle. Only not at me. Out the window. Bang, it breaks. There’s no alarm I can hear but half of them are silent anyway and I’m really pissed. I could’ve killed him. Right there.

  Only I didn’t. Toth did.

  He shoots the kid, bang, bang . . . Shit. And everybody else is scattering and he turns around and shoots another one of the clerks and a customer, just blam, not thinking or nothing. Just for no reason. Hit this girl clerk in the leg but this guy, this customer, well, he was dead. You could see. And I’m going, “What’re you doing, what’re you doing?” And he’s going, “Shut up, shut up, shut up. . . .” And we’re like we’re swearing at each other when we figured out we hadta get outa there.

  So we left. Only what happens is, there’s a cop outside. That’s why the kid threw the bottle, to get his attention. And he’s outa his car. So we grab another customer, this guy by the door, and we use him like a shield and get outside. And there’s the cop, he’s holding his gun up, looking at the customer we’ve got, and the cop, he’s saying, It’s okay, it’s okay, just take it easy.

  And I couldn’t believe it, Toth shot him too. I don’t know whether he killed him but there was blood so he wasn’t wearing a vest, it didn’t look like, and I could’ve killed Toth there on the spot. Because why’d he do that? He didn’t have to.

  We threw the guy, the customer, into the backseat and tied him up with tape. I kicked out the taillights and burned rubber outa there. We made it out of Liggett Falls.

  That was all just a half hour ago but it seemed like weeks.

  And now we were driving down this highway through a million pine trees. Heading right for the Lookout.

  Winchester was dark.

  I don’t get why weekenders come to places like this. I mean, my old man took me hunting a long time ago. A couple times and I liked it. But coming to places like this just to look at leaves and buy furniture they call antiques but’s really just busted-up crap . . . I don’t know.

  We found a house a block off Main Street with a bunch of newspapers in front and I pulled into the drive and put the Buick behind the place just in time. Two state police cars went shooting by. They’d been behind us not more than a half mile, without the lightbars going. Only they hadn’t seen us ’causa the broke taillights and they went by in a flash and were gone, going to downtown.

  Toth got into the house and he wasn’t very clean about it, breaking a window in the back. It was a vacation place, pretty empty, and the refrigerator was shut off and the phone too, which was a good sign—there wasn’t anybody coming back soon. Also, it smelled pretty musty and had stacks of old books and magazines from the summer.

  We brought the guy inside and Toth started to take the hood off this guy’s head and I said, “What the hell’re you doing?”

  “He hasn’t said anything. Maybe he can’t breathe.”

  This was a man talking who’d just laid a cap on three people back there and he was worried about this guy breathing? Man. I just laughed. Disgusted laughing, I mean. “Like maybe we don’t want him to see us?” I said. “You think of th
at?” See, we weren’t wearing our ski masks anymore.

  It’s scary when you have to remind people of stuff like that. I was thinking Toth knew better. But you never know.

  I went to the window and saw another squad car go past. They were going slower now. They do that. After like the first shock, after the rush, they get smart and start cruising slow, really looking for what’s funny—what’s different, you know? That’s why I didn’t take the papers up from the front yard. Which would’ve been different than how the yard looked that morning. Cops really do that Colombo stuff. I could write a book about cops.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  It was the guy we took.

  “Why?” he whispered again.

  The customer. He had a low voice and it sounded pretty calm, I mean considering. I’ll tell you, the first time I was in a shootout I was totally freaked for a day afterwards. And I had a gun.

  I looked him over. He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. But he wasn’t a local. I could tell because of the shoes. They were rich-boy shoes, the kind you see all the Yuppies wear. I couldn’t see his face because of the mask but I pretty much remembered it. He wasn’t young. Maybe in his forties. Kind of wrinkled skin. And he was skinny too. Skinnier’n me and I’m one of those people can eat what I want and I don’t get fat. I don’t know why. It just works that way.

  “Quiet,” I said. There was another car going by.

  He laughed. Soft. Like he was saying, What? You think they can hear me all the way outside?

  Kind of laughing at me, you know? I didn’t like that at all. And, sure, I guess you couldn’t hear anything out there but I didn’t like him giving me any crap so I said, “Just shut up. I don’t want to hear your voice.”

  He did for a minute and just sat back in the chair where Toth put him. But then he said again, “Why’d you shoot them? You didn’t have to.”

  “Quiet!”

  “Just tell me why.”

  I took out my knife and snapped that sucker open then threw it down so it stuck in a tabletop. Sort of a thunk sound. “You hear that? That was a eight-inch Buck knife. Carbon-tempered. With a locking blade. It’d cut clean through a metal bolt. So you be quiet. Or I’ll use it on you.”

  And he gave this laugh again. Maybe. Or it was just a snort of air. But I was thinking it was a laugh. I wanted to ask him what he meant by it but I didn’t.

  “You got any money on you?” Toth asked and pulled the wallet out of the guy’s back pocket. “Lookit.” He pulled out what must’ve been five or six hundred. Man.

  Another squad car went past, moving slow. It had a spotlight and the cop turned it on the driveway but he just kept going. I heard a siren across town. And another one too. It was a weird feeling, knowing those people were out there looking for us.

  I took the wallet from Toth and looked through it.

  Randall C. Weller, Jr. He lived in Connecticut. A weekender. Just like I thought. He had a bunch of business cards that said he was vice president of this big computer company. One that was in the news, trying to take over IBM or something. All of a sudden I had this thought. We could hold him for ransom. I mean, why not? Make a half million. Maybe more.

  “My wife and kids’ll be sick, worrying,” Weller said. It spooked me, hearing that. ’Cause there I was, looking right at a picture in his wallet. And what was it of? His wife and kids.

  “I ain’t letting you go. Now, just shut up. I may need you.”

  “Like a hostage, you mean? That’s only in the movies. They’ll shoot you when you walk out and they’ll shoot me too if they have to. That’s the way the cops do it in real life. Just give yourself up. At least you’ll save your life.”

  “Shut up!” I shouted.

  “Let me go and I’ll tell them you treated me fine. That the shooting was a mistake. It wasn’t your fault.”

  I leaned forward and pushed the knife against his throat, not the blade ’cause that’s real sharp but the blunt edge, and I told him to be quiet.

  Another car went past, no light this time but it was going slower, and all of a sudden I got to thinking what if they do a door-to-door search?

  “Why did he do it? Why’d he kill them?”

  And funny, the way he said he made me feel a little better ’cause it was like he didn’t blame me for it. I mean, it was Toth’s fault. Not mine.

  Weller kept going. “I don’t get it. That man by the counter? The tall one. He was just standing there. He didn’t do anything. He just shot him down.”

  But neither of us said nothing. Probably Toth, because he didn’t know why he’d shot them. And me, because I didn’t owe this guy any answers. I had him in my hand. Completely, and I had to let him know that. I didn’t have to talk to him.

  But the guy, Weller, he didn’t say anything else. And I got this weird feeling. Like this pressure building up. You know, because nobody was answering his damn, stupid question. I felt this urge to say something. Anything. And that was the last thing I wanted to do. So I said, “I’m gonna move the car into the garage.” And I went outside to do it.

  I looked around the garage to see if there was anything worth taking and there wasn’t except a Snapper lawn mower but how do you fence one of those? So I drove the Buick inside and closed the door. And went back into the house.

  And then I couldn’t believe what happened. I mean, Jesus. When I walked into the living room the first thing I heard was Toth saying, “No way, man. I’m not snitching on Jack Prescot.”

  I just stood there. And you should’ve seen the look on his face. He knew he’d blown it big.

  Now this Weller guy knew my name.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. Toth started talking real fast and nervous. “He said he’d pay me some big bucks to let him go.” Trying to turn it around, make it Weller’s fault. “I mean I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t even thinking ’bout it, man. I told him forget it.”

  “But what’s with tellin’ him my name?”

  “I don’t know, man. He confused me. I wasn’t thinking.”

  I’ll say he wasn’t. He hadn’t been thinking all night.

  I sighed to let him know I wasn’t happy but I just clapped him on the shoulder. “Okay,” I said. “S’been a long night. These things happen.”

  “I’m sorry, man. Really.”

  “Yeah. Maybe you better go spend the night in the garage or something. Or upstairs. I don’t want to see you around for a while.”

  “Sure.”

  And the funny thing was, just then, Weller gave this little snicker or something. Like he knew what was coming. How’d he know that? I wondered.

  Toth went to pick up a couple magazines and the knapsack with his gun in it and extra rounds.

  Normally, killing somebody with a knife is a hard thing to do. I say normally even though I’ve only done it one other time. But I remember it and it was messy and hard work. But tonight, I don’t know, I was all filled up with this . . . feeling from the drugstore. Mad. I mean, really. Crazy too a little. And as soon as Toth turned his back I got him around the neck and went to work and it wasn’t three minutes later it was over. I drug his body behind the couch and then—why not—pulled Weller’s hood off. He already knew my name. He might as well see my face.

  He was a dead man. We both knew it.

  “You were thinking of holding me for ransom, right?”

  I stood at the window and looked out. Another cop car went past and there were more flashing lights bouncing off the low clouds and off the face of the Lookout, right over our heads.

  Weller had a thin face and short hair, cut real neat. He looked like every ass-kissing businessman I ever met. His eyes were dark and calm like his voice and it made me even madder he wasn’t shook up looking at that big bloodstain on the rug and floor.

  “No,” I told him.

  He looked at the pile of all the stuff I’d taken from his wallet and kept going like I hadn’t said anything. “It won’t work. A kidnapping. I don’t have a lot of money
and if you saw my business card and’re thinking I’m an executive at the company, they have about five hundred vice presidents. They won’t pay diddly for me. And you see those kids in the picture? It was taken twelve years ago. They’re both in college now. I’m paying major tuition.”

  “Where,” I asked, sneering. “Harvard?”

  “One’s at Harvard,” he said, like he was snapping at me. “And one’s at Northwestern. So the house’s mortgaged to the hilt. Besides, kidnapping somebody by yourself? No, you couldn’t bring that off.”

  He saw the way I looked at him and he said, “I don’t mean you personally, Jack. I mean somebody by himself. You’d need partners.”

  And I figured he was right.

  That silence again. Nobody saying nothing and it was like the room was filling up with cold water. I walked to the window and the floors creaked under my feet and that only made things worse. I remember one time my dad said that a house had a voice of its own and some houses were laughing houses and some were forlorn. Well, this was a forlorn house. Yeah, it was modern and clean and the National Geographics were all in order but it was still forlorn.

  Just when I felt like shouting because of the tension Weller said, “I don’t want you to kill me.”

  “Who said I was going to kill you?”

  He gave me his funny little smile. “I’ve been a salesman for twenty-five years. I’ve sold pets and Cadillacs and typesetters and lately I’ve been selling mainframe computers. I know when I’m being handed a line. You’re going to kill me. It was the first thing you thought of when you heard him”—nodding toward Toth—“say your name.”

  I just laughed at him. “Well, that’s a damn handy thing to be, sorta a walking lie detector,” I said and I was being sarcastic.

  But he just said, “Damn handy,” like he was agreeing with me.

  “I don’t want to kill you.”

  “Oh, I know you don’t want to. You didn’t want your friend to kill anybody back there at the drugstore either. I could see that. But people got killed and that ups the stakes. Right?”

  And those eyes of his, they just dug into me and I couldn’t say anything.