airhorn at them, but the noise quickly fell away, and Kolaski half-turned again to say, ‘That was a little quicker than in the practice.’
Mackey said, ‘I didn’t have that semi there in the practice.’
Angioni said, ‘Ed, no stunts on the dirt road, okay? Dust, remember? You can see it rise up in the air, miles away.’
‘No dust,’ Mackey promised, and tapped the brake a few times, slowing them before they made a gentle right turn on to rutted one-lane dirt.
They moved more slowly now, but the jouncing was worse. They did half a mile like that, surrounded by slender-trunked trees, and then on their left was a body of water instead, gleaming in late-afternoon sun, a few feet below the road. Williams looked past Mackey and out the windshield and saw it was a good-size lake, with some sort of structure far ahead, where the shore curved.
Parker said, ‘What is this?’
‘Swimming up there in the summer,’ Angioni told him. ‘Nothing, this time of year.’
Mackey braked to a stop. ‘Right here,’ he said.
They all climbed out of the van, stretching, everybody stiff. Williams saw that the road, which had been ten feet or so from the lake before this, had now curved closer, so the water was just there, below the side of the road.
Mackey and Kolaski peeled off their hats and jackets, tossing them through open windows into the van. Then Mackey said, ‘Drop it any time. We’ll be back.’ And he and Kolaski walked away down the dirt road toward the swimming place.
Angioni had also stripped off his hat and jacket. ‘The water’s deep here,’ he said. ‘A lot better than trying to clean this thing.’
Williams and Marcantoni stripped off the upper parts of the uniforms, while Parker did the same with the lawyer’s jacket and tie and shirt, all the clothing tossed into the van. Then Angioni backed the van in a half-circle, drove it forward to the lakeside edge of the road, put it in Neutral, and climbed down.
The four of them got behind the van and pushed, and lazily it rolled off the road, its rear end abruptly jumping upward, then sliding at an angle down and away. The van went into the water deliberately, almost reluctantly, air bubbling up from the open windows; then all at once it dropped below the level they could see, and there was only the water, still and black. Not even bubbles any more.
Williams stepped back, behind the others watching the van sink, wondering if he was supposed to be next now. But they turned without menace, Parker looking away in the direction the other two had gone, while Marcantoni grinned and made a remark into the air about the parking of the van. So maybe it was going to be all right.
Brandon Williams had grown used to this level of tension, never knowing exactly how to react to the people around him, who and what to watch for, where it was safe to put a foot. Part of it was skin color, but the rest was the life he’d lived, usually on the bent. He’d had square jobs, but they’d never lasted. He’d always known the jobs were beneath him, that he was the smartest man on the job site or the factory floor, but that it didn’t matter how smart he was, or how much he knew, or the different things he’d read. The knowledge would make him arrogant and angry, and sooner or later there’d be a fight, or he’d be fired.
The people he mostly got along with were, like him, on the wrong side of the law. It wasn’t that they were smart, most of them, but that they kept to themselves. He got along with people who kept to themselves; that way, he could keep to himself, too.
And to his own kind. The jobs he pulled, suburban banks, places like that, didn’t need a big gang; two or three men, usually. There’d been times when one of the crew was white, but not often.
Twice in his life he’d taken falls, but both were minor, and he’d wound up spending a total of fifty-seven months inside. But this time was different.
He’d known he was making a mistake when he’d agreed to team up with Eldon. The more you stayed away from junkies, the better off you’d be. But Maryenne had pleaded, had sworn Eldon was better now, just needed the kind of self-confidence he’d get if Williams agreed to work with him, and Williams had never been able to refuse his youngest sister, so when he went into that bank, Eldon was next to him. The third man, Haye, was in the car outside.
Maryenne herself wasn’t a junkie, at least Williams hoped she wasn’t, but she sure hung out with the wrong people, and Eldon was still one of them. The kind of self-confidence he brought into the bank was not the kind he’d get from working with Williams but the kind he’d get from the stuff in his veins. There was no reason to start shooting, and just bad luck the off-duty cop was in there looking for a car loan.
The result was, a guard and Eldon both dead and Williams and Haye both facing murder one. Escape was the only Plan B, and this guy Parker the only one in Stoneveldt with the determination and the friends on the outside to make it happen.
Williams had been happy to stick with Parker in Stoneveldt, though he would have been more comfortable if his partner had been of color. But nobody of color in that place looked to be making a key to get out of there, and Parker did. So when Parker asked him to come along, he rode with the idea, though at first with every caution. Does this guy really want a partner, or does he want somebody to throw off the sled when the chase starts?
Throughout their time together inside, Williams had watched the man he’d known then as Kasper, waiting for him to give himself away, and it never happened. It looked as though Parker was just a guy determined to get out of that place, who’d known he couldn’t do it on his own but needed a couple more guys in it with him, and who’d decided Williams should be part of the crew. No more, no less.
Well, that was then, this was now. They were out, though still not many miles from Stoneveldt. But guards and gates and prison walls didn’t hold them apart any more. Williams watched Parker, thinking, I done my part, I been straight with you. I know you got me out of there, but I got you out of there, too, so what does that mean? Is this crew still together?
He was dependent on Parker, whichever way he went. It wasn’t possible to ask anything, so all he could do was stand there and watch and wait, and know that, sooner or later, they would both be going to ground, but in very different places.
While they all stood there, looking at the water where the van had been, nobody with anything else to say right now, here came two cars, both anonymous, a green Ford Taurus and a black Honda Accord. Mackey was first, at
