though. I’ve seen him put people in the hospital for that.”
Eric reached into Ray’s jacket and pulled out a small bag of H. One of the girls, the youngest one with alabaster skin and a blond wig, grabbed his leg and scurried next to him. She placed her mouth over his pants and bit down gently, tugging slightly to arouse him. He pushed her away softly and went into the bathroom.
There was no syringe so he snorted the H. His nose tingled and bled a little, but he felt fine.
CHAPTER
23
The room was a disaster when Eric woke up; bottles all over the floor and the only table cluttered with plates that had crusted food caked to them. His head throbbed and his nose was itchy and dry. The room smelled like vomit and sex. It sickened him as he rose and looked for Ray’s jacket.
Ray was passed out in the bedroom. Eric found his jacket next to the dresser and searched it but didn’t find anything but half a vile of coke. He walked out onto the balcony, the air hot from the noonday sun, and snorted it there as he watched the glistening waters of the river below. It made a whooshing sound, like ocean waves softly breaking on a beach. He heard someone stumble and looked back to see Ray walk out and sit on a balcony chair next to him.
Ray lit a cigarette and put his feet up on the metal railing of the balcony. A breeze was blowing and the salty air felt cool against his skin. “So where you from?” “Miami,” Eric said, finishing a line and handing the remaining coke back to Ray. “I’m from LA.” He snorted a small mound of coke from the back of his hand. “You like Miami?” “It’s all right.” “Why’d you leave?” “Trouble.”
Ray nodded, flicking ashes onto the bare stone of the balcony. “Me too. I was in college; I was gonna be a business major like my dad.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah. I only went a couple semesters though. Moved out here instead of finishing.” Eric leaned back in his chair and put his feet up as well, the railing warm against his soles. “I fucking hate it here.” “It’s not so bad. I been to worse places.” “Like where?”
“I stayed in Mexico for a couple months. Over here, the criminals are the criminals, you know? We’re the fucking criminals and the cops are the cops. In Mexico, the fucking government’s the criminals. They’ll fuck you up for nothin’. There was this ditch by this guy’s house I was stayin’ at. This rotten smell always came from it, like burning garbage or some shit. I went and looked at it one day and it was a bunch of dead bodies. Kids, women… the guy I was stayin’ with told me that’s where the cops dump bodies of people. Some of ‘em are hits, but some of ‘em are just for fun. Like girls they rape and kill, shit like that. Crazy shit.” “Jesus,” Eric said, itching at his arms. “Yeah.” They stayed silent and then Eric said, “So what now?”
“You mean the money? I say we take half of it and buy the biggest baddest guns we can and some fuckin’ ski masks and go out again. I mean, that was the easiest fuckin’ money I ever made.”
“You’ve never done that before?”
“No. I mean, I robbed people and shit, but never a bank. Dak just knew a girl that worked there and she told him when they was gonna start closin’ up and what day they make their deposits.” He put his cigarette out on the chair. “You in?”
Eric watched the sunlight reflect off the water below, fragments of white light on a moving current. “Yeah.”
The next bank was going to be in what looked like a strip mall, five or six other stores sharing the same building. It only had two tellers and a few desks for managers and staff. There was one security guard that watched the whole strip mall as far as they could tell and he just wandered around, seemingly not paying attention to anything.
They slept most of the day and waited for nightfall, Ray providing a mountain of coke for them before they went out. Dak showed up in another car, a gray Honda, with three shotguns and ski masks in the backseat. They drove in silence, smoking and drinking beer out of a large bottle.
Eric was starting to get itchy and restless; he hadn’t shot up all day. The coke helped but it didn’t take away his craving. He felt it deep in his gut, like a hunger that he couldn’t fill not matter how much he ate.
They pulled into the strip mall and stopped the car in front of the bank, leaving it running. This time, there was no rush or panic; they casually stepped out of the car, put on their ski masks, and walked into the bank as if they owned it. One petite teller in a white blouse was counting money and she looked up, her expression frozen in confusion before she screamed. The other tellers stopped what they were doing and looked over to see Dak and Ray running over and yelling at them, shotguns pointed from their shoulders. Eric stayed by the door and kept a watch for the security guard patrolling the area.
Dak grabbed one of the girls and slammed her against the counter. He started yelling louder and the tellers started crying. Eric saw that there was some sort of problem, the teller shaking her head and Dak yelling at her. “What the fuck’s going on?” Eric yelled. “Bitch might’ve pushed the alarm,” Ray said. “Fuck, let’s get outta here.” “Fuck that.” Ray pointed the gun at the teller’s head and said something in Thai, and then pulled the trigger.
The shot was like a falling shelf hitting a bare floor, deep and resonating off the walls. Eric lost his breath when he saw the black blood cover the other tellers and the walls behind them. They stopped screaming. Their eyes went wide as they were sprayed with sticky droplets and went into shock.
Eric didn’t even notice the gun drop out of his hands. Even Dak stared at Ray as if he were from another planet. Ray motioned for him to get the money and they shoved what they could in plastic bags. Eric stood still and watched them. It felt like he couldn’t move, like every muscle had frozen with the girl’s death. She was young and pretty. She wasn’t a criminal; she hadn’t done anything to them. She was just young and pretty.
Dak and Ray ran out of the bank but Eric still couldn’t move. The other tellers were crying and watching him with primitive eyes, their minds not regarding him with the normal recognition of another human being. He realized he was not a human being; he was pure horror to them. A monster from the darkest corners of their minds. To them, he was what his stepfather had been to him.
Ray called out Eric’s name, but he still couldn’t move. All he could do was stand; his mind blank. He didn’t hear the sirens pull up and into the strip mall. He didn’t hear the officer’s shouts and the eventual gunfire; the deep bass of shotgun blasts mingled with the higher sounding pistols. All he saw was the look on the teller’s faces, as if they were magnified and in slow motion.
By the time his senses returned to him and he realized where he was and what he was doing, the gunfight had ended and Dak and Ray had been cornered behind their car. The teller had pressed the silent alarm right when they had entered the building and a patrol car was only one and half blocks away, another one four blocks away. They delayed the men long enough for an army of officers to get there, swarming over the parking lot as they opened fire without demanding surrender once they saw the sleek shotguns in the men’s hands.
Eric watched outside. Ray and Dak were ducking next to the car; easily a dozen officers beginning to position themselves in the parking lot. Eric looked again at the body of the young girl. He picked up the shotgun and stepped outside.
“Hey Ray!”
Ray turned around just as the shotgun blast tore through his stomach. He slammed against the car, his weapon flying out of his hands, and then collapsed on the warm concrete.
Eric threw his weapon down and ran back inside.
He sprinted in the direction of the tellers, their screams growing frantic and tapering off as he ran past them. There was a short hallway with doors on either side. He opened one; just an office. Another one was a storage area. Another was safety deposit boxes and a safe. At the back of the building was a bathroom and next to that an emergency exit. He slammed through the door, an alarm ringing in his ears as he found himself in the back of the building next to a dumpster and a stack of empty cardboard boxes.
Eric ran from the building and hopped a chain-link fence that led onto a barren dirt field. There was drilling equipment and a few tractors left on the field, a small trailer with a giant lock on the door. He ran on the dirt until
