opened the door. Right next to it on the wall was the panel of buttons you punched as soon as you entered, to turn off the silent alarm system. Shit. So he got in his dad's car and drove back to Robin's:
Buzzed her apartment and got no answer. Buzzed the manager. . . .
From 9:30 till 3:00 A.M. Chris sat in the car parked across the street from 515 Canfield, in the dark. He pictured Robin and Skip in a bar, two ex-cons talking past their shoulders, scheming, grinning at each other as they had fun getting smashed. Seeing them in a bar because he would love a drink. Go somewhere to have a few and get something to eat. He hadn't had anything since breakfast. A box of popcorn in the show. He should've called Greta. He caught a glimpse of Phyllis, the cotton between her toes. . . .
Then saw Greta in her T-shirt now, bending over the stove.
Saw her sitting at the desk in the squad room. Saw her walking, her thighs moving in the skirt. Saw her in his dad's car, in profile.
And saw Mel Gibson playing the burnout and saw Juicy in the Cadillac, the Glock going off, Jesus, and saw Juicy's gray tongue in the pink interrogation room.
Greta was alone in that empty house, the phone and message recorder on the bare floor. He should've called.
He wasn't different.
He saw Donnell in the library, that dismal room, it seemed dusty, a gray area of figurine lamps and leather chairs, Donnell getting the checkbook out of the desk, holding it close to him.
Greta, he liked her name. He liked her red hair against the pillow, her mouth. . . .
He saw Donnell and Skip and Robin standing slack, not moving a muscle. They better not. He was covering them with the Glock auto. But where would it happen?
Donnell kept waiting for the man to fall asleep so he could go downstairs a while, have some time to himself. The house would be quiet and Donnell in his room listening would think, Finally. Then would hear the man's voice from down the hall.
'Donnell?'
And he'd move through the dark to the master bedroom, light showing inside. Three times now, walk out of the room dim, the night light on in the bathroom, come back to it lit up.
'I'm right here, Mr. Woody.'
'I can't sleep.'
'You keep turning the light on, how can you?'
'But I can't see.'
'That's the idea. You close your eyes and you have sweet dreams. Think of like you lying in a hammock and this lovely woman, has a flower in her black hair, is holding a banana rum daiquiri, big, big one, kind you love, and you sipping it through a straw.' Give the man some kind of shit his wet mind would recognize and accept. Patient with the man, kindly, that new page for the will downstairs in the desk drawer.
'Put the light on in the bathroom.'
'The night light's on in there. You see it?'
'I want the light on.'
'You got it.'
Donnell stepped over to the bathroom. As he came back the man, the mound under the covers, big curly head against the pillow, said, 'I thought I heard you go out.'
'Ain't I right here?'
'You went out last night. I woke up, I didn't know where you were.'
What the man meant, he didn't know where he was.
'I told you I had to go out, Mr. Woody. My mother had a dream I died and I had to show her I was fine. Then I had to look in the Dream Book for her, see what number it meant to play.'
That quieted the man. Either give him some shit his mind would accept or, the other way, confuse him, shut him up. 'You be fine now,' Donnell said and reached down to touch the man's toes under the covers, about to tell him good night. What he said to him instead was, 'Mr. Woody, you forget to take your shoes off, didn't you?'
Picking the knots out of the man's shoelaces woke him up some more. One thirty in the morning he believed maybe a drink would help him go to sleep. Donnell said, 'Yeah, that's what you need'--on top the fifth or more of scotch, the fifth of gin, the half dozen cans of beer the man'd had today--'a nightcap. Why don't I bring it to your bed?'
And if that didn't do it, hit him over the head with something.
Donnell went downstairs wishing he had a baby bottle. Fill it with booze and let the man fall asleep sucking on it. There was scotch at the bar in the library, but no ice left from the man's evening entertainment; the refilled trays in the fridge underneath the bar weren't half frozen. He'd have to get a couple of cubes from the kitchen. Always something, catering to or picking up after. He turned off the light in the library, walked through the front hall to the dining room turning lights on, pushed through the swing door to the butler's pantry and was in darkness again edging into the kitchen, running his hand along the wall. There it was. Donnell flicked the light on, turned and said, 'Jesus!' loud, feeling his insides jump.
A man and a woman were sitting at the kitchen table.
He said, 'Jesus Christ Almighty,' sounding out of breath.
They were grinning at him now.
'How'd you get in here?'
Robin said, 'It wasn't hard,' and looked at Skip. 'Was it?'
Skip let Robin handle it. When Donnell wanted to know what they thought they were doing, Robin told him they were here because he'd fucked up. Donnell said, 'Wait now, I have to hear this.' But first had to run upstairs, get the man settled with his nightcap. He left and Robin said to Skip, 'Bring our stuff in.'
'All of it?'
She said, 'We're going to use it, aren't we?'
Skip went out through a back hall where there were two doors: one that went into the garage and the one he'd jimmied open with a screwdriver, nothing to it. (Coming in, Robin said, 'No alarm system?' He told her maybe Donnell was afraid a burglar alarm might catch one of his buddies. Skip bet, though, the ex-Panther had a gun in the house.) He went out through the busted door to the VW parked in the drive by the garage. First he brought their bags in. Robin, still alone in the kitchen, was looking in the refrigerator.
When he came in the next time, lugging the wooden case of Austin Powder, Used in 1833 and Ever Since, Donnell was at the kitchen table talking to Robin.
He looked up, appeared to become rigid, and said, 'You ain't bringing that in here.'
In this moment Skip decided he wasn't going to have any trouble with Donnell. If the man was ever an ass- kicking Black Panther he must've forgotten what it was like. Skip put the case on the end of the table away from them and Donnell stood right up. Look at that. Made him nervous. Skip could tell Robin saw it, too.
She said to Donnell, 'It won't hurt you,' with a tone meant to soothe him. 'All we want to do is stash it someplace. By Monday morning I promise it'll be gone.'
Skip liked that. It would be gone, all right, along with whoever was standing nearby. He wanted to wink at her, but she wasn't through with Donnell yet, saying to him now, 'You must have a gun in the house.'
Skip could tell Donnell didn't want to say.
'I believe there might be one.'
'I'd find it if I were you,' Robin said. 'You know why?' Talking down to him, making the guy ask, No, why?
Skip didn't care for her tone now, going from soothing to bored and superior. Or the way she said, ' 'Cause your buddy the cop's going to come looking for you. The kids you sent to do a job on him blew it.'
That wasn't right. She wasn't there, she didn't know what she was talking about. It seemed to antagonize the man, from his expression, more than it scared him.
Skip stepped in and said to the ex-Panther man to man, leaving the snotty woman out of it, 'Actually it wasn't they blew it so much as they misread him, thought it was gonna be easy and it wasn't. What she's trying to say, Donnell, we don't want to make the same mistake.'
Donnell said, 'Mankowski is coming here?'
Skip said, 'I 'magine he will. See, but I'm the one set him up with the brothers. He comes here with a wild
