were that bad. “I’ll probably fuck that up too,” Kevin said, but more softly, and Mitch thought the outburst really was over. Thank god the old guy wasn’t home.
“We’re not gonna fuck it up, man. We’re gonna do it right.”
Kevin stared into the grass of the old man’s yard for a moment, then looked up, suddenly cheerful. Suddenly enough for Mitch to be a little alarmed. The switch in emotion was almost psychotic.
“OK,” Kevin said, brimming with energy. “Let’s do it.”
“You wanna have a look at the Impala?” Mitch asked cautiously.
“Yeah,” said Kevin, his eyes now insanely bright. “Let’s have a look at the Impala.”
“You OK, man?” asked Doug, who had just finished burying the dog by the garage. He tamped down the last piece of earth and put the shovel back against the woodpile.
“I’m great!” said Kevin, with an enthusiasm that made Doug and Mitch glance at each other. Mitch shrugged. They opened the hood and looked at the Impala’s engine, which was in surprisingly good condition.
There was the sound of footsteps behind them and Mitch was startled to see an old man dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt standing there.
“Hey,” Mitch said, trying to hide his surprise. “I didn’t see you there. Where did you come from?”
The old man appeared annoyed. “Came out the back door. To see what all the commotion was. You fellas wanna buy this thing? It’s three hundred dollars.”
“I’m Rick,” said Mitch, extending his hand. The old man grabbed it and then let go. This grumpy old bastard was barely looking at them, so the subterfuge was, hopefully, unnecessary.
“You wanna buy this thing? It’s three hundred dollars.”
“Does it run?” asked Kevin.
“Yeah it runs. It runs OK. What do you want, a goddamned new Cadillac? It’s three hundred dollars, for chrissake. Get it outta here.”
You had to love grumpy people, Mitch thought, because they didn’t ask questions. Foul, grumpy people were the opposite of nosy neighbors. If only there were more of them.
Doug pulled three hundreds out of his pocket and gave them to the man.
“You a dealer?” he asked Doug as he was counting the bills.
“Nah, man. I just have long hair. It doesn’t mean anything.”
The old man looked at him, confused.
“I think he means a car dealer, dude,” Mitch said. Doug burst out laughing, which only irritated the old man more.
“Get this damned thing outta here, and you go too.” He began to walk back into the house. “Making all that commotion. Disgraceful. Goddamned disgraceful.”
Well sonofabitch, Mitch thought, watching the old man climb the steps back into his house. That was easy. They had a getaway car.
THE GETAWAY CAR, it turned out, had a top speed of about fifteen miles an hour and labored mightily up even the slightest grades. As the Wilton area was nothing but steep grades, it became apparent to them that the getaway car wouldn’t get them away from very much until it had a tune-up or, at the very least, some new sparkplugs.
“I can do that,” Doug said. “But for a tune-up I’ll need to buy a timing light. That’s going to cost, like, two hundred dollars.”
“Dude, this time next week we’ll have hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“I’m just saying, man. When we count out the money, I want to get repaid for all this.”
“OK, fine,” snapped Kevin, whose glum mood returned after they left the old man’s yard. “We’ll have a million fucking dollars to split, but we’ll pay you an extra thirty-five fucking cents or whatever you want.”
“Chill out, man,” said Mitch, hoping this wasn’t going to degenerate into a full-blown fight, leaving the goal of the whole partnership, the robbery, forgotten. He had decided he was the leader here, based on the fact that he didn’t have dead dogs stuffed in his car, like Kevin, and he wasn’t prone to flights of fancy, like Doug. “Let’s all relax,” he said, trying to sound soothing.
“Dude, fuck you,” said Kevin. “We’ve got dogs to walk.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel of Linda’s Toyota, indicating a desire to go.
Doug hadn’t responded, which was in keeping with his recent respect for everything Kevin said, as if he owed the guy something. Mitch thought maybe he was overdoing the leadership thing. Maybe nobody was really ready to accept him as the leader yet. So instead of trying to mediate, he suggested they all go inside and smoke a bowl. Doug accepted the offer.
“You’ve got to walk Duffy,” Kevin said. “I’ve got dogs to walk too.”
“We’ll just smoke a bowl, then I’ll walk Duffy.”
“You do what you want. I gotta go.” Kevin peeled off.
“I’m worried about him,” said Mitch.
Doug said nothing.
Inside, they went over all the necessary details as they packed the bowl. The car had to be kept in the grass lot behind their house, away from prying eyes, they agreed. All the work Doug did on it would have to be as secretive as possible, and in the event he wasn’t able to fix it, they agreed they couldn’t take it to a garage because a mechanic would remember the car. An old car like that was just too distinctive.
“I’m worried about Kevin,” Mitch said again, after he had smoked. Again Doug said nothing. Mitch was also worried about Doug for that matter. Whenever they smoked, they would trade a few bits of deep philosophy or random thoughts, and lately the thoughts Doug was having indicated an awareness of death, or at least change. In the old days, he would come up with such gems as, “Why do we only use the word
Doug took a deep, slow hit and leaned back on the couch. “Man,” he said. “If we get shot during the robbery, I hope the car doesn’t blow up and burn us beyond recognition and shit. I’d hate for someone to have to identify me by my dental records.”
“Not again,” said Mitch. He took a long hit himself and lay on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. “Man, the ceiling’s gray,” he said. “We gotta paint this place.”
“Not again,” said Doug.
They both chuckled. “We need a change,” Mitch said. There was silence and the comment hung heavy in the air because they both sensed that change was coming.
THE NEXT WEEK was a one of busy preparation. Doug used his free time to get the Impala running better, which required a fuel filter change and some new sparkplugs. He was going to give it a tune-up, but as they intended to drive it two miles and then push it into a ravine, he decided to save the money it would have cost to buy a timing light and instead invested it in a car stereo that he bought from a junkie who lived behind the Dumpster at the convenience store. Then, instead of getting the sparkplugs to fire in perfect order, he spent the day installing the stereo so they could listen to tunes while waiting for the armored car to show up.
Kevin and Mitch devoted time between dog walks to finding a ravine in a forest near the Westlake branch of the First Susquehanna Savings Bank. There was plenty of forest. There was even a great dirt road that led back into the forest not a mile from the bank, but the road was flat all the way back, no ravines on either side. There was a small drainage ditch at the very end of the road, but it would scarcely conceal the Impala and might well cause water drainage problems for the farmer who lived there, who would most likely be out to investigate after the first rainfall. So no good.
“What we need is a rock quarry we can push the car into,” Mitch told Kevin.
“Man, all the quarries are twenty miles over on the other side of town.”
“We can’t drive this thing twenty miles.”
“No way. Lucky if we can get five miles out of it at a reasonable speed.”
“Goddammit. Everywhere you look around here there’s a ravine. Then, when you actually need one-”
“How about burning it?”
“No way, dude. That’s all we need, a giant tower of smoke over Westlake. Then if…” Mitch was going to say “if we get caught” but searched for a different phrase, not out of any sense of superstition, but because successful people did not entertain ideas of failure. “If… if… We want to avoid the possibility of an arson charge. That’s serious shit.”
“I think all of it is pretty serious shit,” Kevin said.
It was, indeed, serious shit, but starting a forest fire after you robbed an armored car was the type of thing that could make news from here to Pittsburgh. “No fire. What else?”
Kevin nodded. “Drive it into a creek?”
“Nearest creek is six or seven miles away.”
They stood looking over the drainage ditch. Damn, it would be so perfect, if only it were a ravine.
“How about parking it back behind those trees over there?” Kevin said.
“Someone’ll find it. Hunters, kids, all kinds of people come back here.”
“How about burying it?”
“What, digging a hole big enough for that thing? Fuck that. We’d need a fucking backhoe to make a hole that size.”
They laughed.
“Shit,” Kevin said, lighting a joint and handing it to Mitch. ‘How about burning it?’
“Dude, we just talked about that.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Tell you what,” Mitch said after a moment. “We park it back behind the trees and leave it there. It might be a day or two until anyone finds it. Then they trace it
