“You said there was two of them.”
“The other installer was black. Young and strong, like his partner. Tall. That’s all I can remember about him. I’m sorry-”
“That’ll be fine. Write down Chris Carpet’s phone number on the back of the bill for me, will you?”
Mindy found a pen in her purse and did as she was told. Cotter took the bill of sale, folded it, and slipped it into the pocket of his windbreaker. Then he stepped forward and pressed himself against her. His cock grew hard. Because of his height and her lack of it, he pushed it against her belly. She turned her head to the side. A tear sprung loose from one eye and rolled down her cheek. He felt her body shiver against his.
“Don’t cry, honey,” said Cotter.
“I can’t… help it.”
“You wanna know what I had in that hole?”
“No.”
“I had money.”
“No…”
“How about our real names? Wanna know what they are? Bet you’re curious.”
A string of mucus dropped from Mindy’s nose and came to rest on her lip. “I’m not.”
“Course you’re not. You think if I tell you my name I’m gonna go ahead and kill you. Ain’t that right?”
Mindy’s tears flowed freely and she closed her eyes and shook her head. Cotter stepped back. A triangle of urine had darkened the crotch of her dress.
“Look at that,” said Harbin. “She tinkled.”
“I’m not gonna kill you, Mindy,” said Cotter. “Not you. I don’t need to.” Cotter put his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled free a cell phone. He flipped it open and punched buttons clumsily with his thick thumb. “I got a phone, too. Not as fancy as yours, but hey. Here we go.”
Cotter handed her the phone. She looked at the screen and made a small choking sound from deep in her throat.
“You recognize those little girls, right? Kinda hard to see ’em, I know, ’cause I was far away. But that’s them. That would be your granddaughters, right?”
Mindy did not answer.
“Say it’s them,” said Harbin.
“It’s my granddaughters,” said Mindy Kramer.
“Okay,” said Cotter. He pointed to the ink on the crook of his hand. “Now, do you know what this is?”
“A clover?”
“It’s a shamrock, honey. Means I’m part of something, kind of like a club. We got members in prisons all across the country. We run the prisons, matter of fact. Got a lotta members who are out and in the world now, too. All of us, in this club, forever. When you ride with the rock, you’re protected. And if anything bad does happen to you, you’re avenged. Families, children… we’ll kill ’em all and not even think on it twice. It’s part of the blood oath we take to get in. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“I hope you do. You know what we were doing this morning? We were parked outside your office, watching you bring in your granddaughters, watching you bring them back out. After, we followed you to where you dropped them off, at that rec center outside the elementary school. What was that, Thirty-third Street? Yeah, that’s where it was. Where I snapped these pictures from my phone.”
Cotter reached out and took his cell from Mindy Kramer’s hand.
“You never met us today,” said Cotter.
Mindy Kramer nodded.
“You ain’t gonna talk about this to your priest or rabbi, or your shrink, or nobody else. You’re not gonna warn Chris Carpet that we’re looking to speak to him, either.”
“I won’t.”
“Because if you do, my little friend here will visit your granddaughters.”
“Please, don’t-”
“He’ll cut their heads off and skull-fuck ’em both, Mindy. Do you get it?”
Mindy Kramer nodded.
“Say you do,” said Harbin.
“I get it,” said Mindy.
“I think she does,” said Cotter. “C’mon.”
Harbin sheathed his knife. He and Cotter walked down the hall, straight out of the house, closing the door behind them and taking the steps to the sidewalk, not caring if they were seen.
When Mindy Kramer heard the shut of the door, she dropped to the kitchen floor and sat with her back to the cabinets, weeping, her head between her knees, chest heaving, mascara running down her face. She made no move to phone the police or anyone else. She sat there and waited for the fear to leave her. She sat there for a long while. What they had taken from her would not come back soon. Maybe it would never come back at all.
The men walked to their car, a 1988 Mercury Marquis they had picked up from a cancer-ridden old man in West Virginia. From the long-term lot at Dulles Airport they had switched out plates, and the car now bore D.C. tags. The sedan was boxy and black, with a landau roof and red velour interior, a fake-fur-covered steering wheel, and a V-8 under the hood.
Ralph Cotter and Nat Harbin were not their names. The big man with the walrus mustache was Sonny Wade. He had chosen the fake names from two of the many novels he had read while incarcerated at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. In those books, Cotter had been a stone killer and Harbin had been a career burglar. It was at Lewisburg that Sonny Wade had met the little man, Wayne Minors, who had been his cell mate. Wayne did not read books.
Sonny got himself positioned in the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. Wayne looked tiny beside him, as if he were Sonny’s child, if Sonny could have had a son his own age. Wayne’s features were compressed toward the middle of his face, folding into one another, so he looked like a piece of fruit that had begun to rot. Wayne drank and used speed, but his longtime cigarette smoking had done the bulk of the damage to his looks.
Wayne lit a Marlboro off a butane flame as Sonny pulled out of the spot on S Street. They were headed toward New York Avenue, where they had a room in a flophouse motel populated by unwitting tourists, assorted losers, prostitutes, alcoholics, drug addicts, and people on the government tit.
“She wasn’t so full of herself when we got finished with her,” said Wayne.
“She won’t speak on this to anyone,” said Sonny.
“She pissed her panties.”
“That she did.”
“Kramer’s a Jewish name.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You hear what she said about us being together? And askin, do we like to cook?” Wayne’s eyes crossed slightly as he considered this. “It was like she thought we was faggots.”
“She thought you was,” said Sonny.
“Your daddy was,” said Wayne.
They were silent as Sonny wheeled the radio dial, trying to find something he liked, settling on a station playing a Rascal Flatts song. Wayne smoked and studied the city as they passed through it, looking at the whites and the blacks together in these neighborhoods, wondering how a father could let his daughter live among these low coloreds in a shithole such as this.
“Those installers took my money,” said Sonny after a while. “Had to be them.”
“We’ll get it back.” Wayne pitched his cigarette out the open window. “Sonny?”
“Huh.”
“Why’d you tell that woman I’d fuck those little girls and cut their heads off? You know I wouldn’t do no such thing. I wouldn’t kill a kid. I’m a gentleman. I ain’t like that.”
“And I’m no AB. I was just puttin the fear into her, is all.”
“I’d kill a nigger,” offered Wayne.
