A World of Thieves

I stayed put and watched the approaching car. If it had done anything other than keep coming I would’ve hurried to inform Buck and Russell. But the car steadily advanced. When it closed to within a hundred yards, I pulled up my bandanna mask and hustled away to the clearing.

The moon was higher now but the derrick’s shadow still reached across the west side of the clearing and angled halfway up the slope. The Oldsmobile was parked in front of the derrick, one of the men slouching against a front fender, his hands in his pants pockets. I couldn’t see his face under his hatbrim but his head turned to follow me as I jogged across the clearing and over to a row of barrels in the derrick’s long shadow. It looked like everything was going according to plan—Buck and Russell had taken them by surprise and disarmed them, then put one guy in the Olds’ trunk and told the other to perch on that fender and keep his mouth shut. I couldn’t see them but I knew Buck was in the shadows of a clump of yuccas near the entrance to the clearing and Russell somewhere behind the low outcrop to my right.

I was surprised to feel my pulse thumping so hard in my throat, to find my mouth nearly spitless. We’ll play it any way we have to—that was Buck’s instruction. It seemed to be taking too long for the car to get here. I thought maybe it had turned back, maybe I’d been spotted as I made for the clearing and they had retreated in alarm.

And then there the car was, a shiny Plymouth coupe, rolling slowly into the clearing. I cocked the .44.

The Plymouth made a half-turn and stopped parallel to the Olds, next to the man on the fender. The passenger door opened and Lester Wills got out. We’d had a look at him earlier that evening at a speakeasy a block over from Mona’s place, and even in this light there was no mistaking the pompadour he took such pride in he would not cover it with a hat. The driver stayed put and kept the motor running.

“What the hell you doing?” Wills said to the man. “You suppose to be in the car.”

A detail we hadn’t known.

Now Wills was looking up at the derrick and saying, “Yo, Walsh! You see them? Walsh? Hey, what the hell…?”

The man on the fender said something too low for me to make out. Buck yelled, “Stand fast, mister!”—but Wills was already spinning around and diving back into the coupe, hollering, “Go!”

Buck’s pistol started popping and showing bright yellow muzzle flashes as the car’s back wheels ripped through the sand and the Plymouth slewed toward the barrels I was hunkered behind. I jumped aside as the car made a tight turn and the open passenger door hit some of the barrels and sent them clangoring end over end.

I scrambled to my feet and Russell cut loose with the shotgun and buckshot raked the Plymouth as it angled toward the clearing exit. I fired and fired and there were loud gunfire sparks from the car and from the yuccas where Buck was and bullets were thunking the car and whanging against oil drums and there was another orange boom from Russell’s shotgun and the car veered sharply and went bounding up the rocky incline for about a dozen yards with its klaxon blaring before the motor stalled. The car slid back down on the loose rock, its rear wheels locked, and jarred to a stop at the foot of the slope and the horn quit. Steam was hissing loudly from various holes in the radiator. I couldn’t see the men inside but could hear one of them moaning.

There was a slide of stones behind me and I turned in time to see the man who’d been on the fender go scurrying into the brush at the top of the rise. I started after him but Russell called, “Forget it. He can’t warn nobody from over there.”

Buck went up to the Plymouth in a crouch and warily raised his head at the driver’s window—and just did manage to fling himself aside as a gunshot lit up the interior and a bullet caromed off some part of the window frame.

Russell yelled, “Down!” and threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired and glass shattered and flew and he smoothly pumped and fired three more flaring loads of buckshot into the car before lowering the gun again.

The ensuing silence was enormous. Acrid gunsmoke rose off the clearing in a blue haze and slowly drifted over the rise.

Holding his .45 ready, Buck jerked open the coupe’s left door and the driver seemed to just drain out. I didn’t have to ask if he was dead. Buck picked up the man’s pistol. I wondered if one of my shots had hit him, had maybe been the fatal one—and then reminded myself how close he’d come to running over me with the car. My chest was so tight it was an effort to breathe. My hands felt charged with electricity. I was afraid Buck or Russell might see them trembling and think I was scared. The truth was, I’d never felt more alive.

Buck and I went around to the other side of the car and pointed our pistols at the door and Buck nodded to let Russell know we were set and Russell pulled open the door. Wills was slumped on the seat. Russell poked him twice with the shotgun muzzle and then yanked on him by the coat collar and Wills tumbled from the car. We stood over him and tugged down our bandannas. His breathing was ragged and wet and his eyes were closed. He was shivering like he was cold. His shirtfront and one coatsleeve and the right side of his face were dark with blood, his pompadour was skewed. Buck knelt beside him and went through his pockets. I retrieved his gun from the car floor—a .380 automatic—and stuck it in my waistband. The money was in an envelope in his pants pocket. Buck chuckled and stood up and put the envelope in his coat.

Wills suddenly arched up like he’d been stabbed in the spine, his eyes wide. His mouth moved as if he were trying to say something, but if he was he never got it out. He fell slack and gave a rasping sigh. And even in the moonlight you could tell that his open eyes weren’t seeing a damn thing anymore.

“Dumb bastard,” Buck said. “If he’d done like I told him he could’ve got drunk tonight, he could’ve got laid. He could’ve been around tomorrow to complain about being robbed.”

“He called the play, all right,” Russell said. “But I have to say, we’ve done smoother jobs.”

“Yeah well,” Buck said. “We got the money, ain’t we?” He checked his watch. “Let’s get set for Scroggins. He’ll be looking for the lights in about twenty minutes. Get the car, Sonny.”

I got in the Olds and cranked it up and started to bring it around to the mouth of the clearing. As Wills had done, Scroggins would wait somewhere down on the trail until he got an all-clear headlight signal before coming the rest of the way.

Buck and Russell were already at the clearing entrance and scanning the moonlit country to the south. Then Buck grabbed Russell’s arm and pointed. He whirled around and beckoned me wildly, yelling, “Come on!”

I goosed the Olds up to them and Russell yanked the door open and jumped in beside me and Buck hopped up on the running board and hollered, “Go! Go!”

I hit the gas and the tires spun on the loose trailrock and found purchase and the Olds leapt forward.

“They’re wise to us!” Russell yelled. “Kick this thing, kid!” And now I saw the cloud of dust far down the trail. And the truck that was making it. Heading away from us and back toward the junction road.

As we closed on the spot where we’d hidden the Ford, Buck hollered through the window, “Keep after him, I’m right behind you!” He jumped off and went rolling into the brush.

I stomped on the accelerator and the Olds bounced and yawed along the snaking trail, flinging up stones and raising dust, leaning one way and then the other.

“Bastards must’ve got here early,” Russell said. “Must’ve heard the shooting, that damn klaxon, something, everything. Shit!”

The truck was more than half a mile ahead of us and moving in and out of sight as it went over and around rises and outcrops. In the rearview mirror the lights of the Model A showed far behind us.

“Which way will he go when he hits the junction road?” I said.

“Not to Blackpatch,” Russell said. “Too small. Only one way in and out. He’ll head for the highway.”

“Then to Rankin?”

“Yeah. Mix in with all them other trucks. Lots of roads out of town. It’s what I’d do. He beats us there, we’ll lose him sure.”

I didn’t intend to let that happen. With my foot to the floor we went over a rise at a speed that took all four wheels off the ground. The Olds lit hard and bounced on its springs and went slewing off the trail in an explosion of dust and brush and rocks hammering the floorboards. I thought I heard a scream behind me. I kept the pedal to the floor and managed to wrench the car back onto the trail, wrestling with the wheel as we swerved all over the place, and then we were straightened out and barreling on.

“Helllllp! Christ Jeeesus! Let me out! Let me ouuuuuuut!”