“Did you get the ski masks?” Kevin asked Doug as he climbed into the pickup. Doug wordlessly pulled from his pocket a handful of old, worn green wool caps, into which he had painstakingly cut eye holes. Kevin stared at them.
“Dude, are you fucking kidding me? Why didn’t you just buy new ski masks?”
“What’s wrong with using these? You can use them as ski masks.”
“Was it because you were worried we weren’t going to pay you back? For ten dollars’ worth of ski masks?”
“Dude, those’re fine,” said Mitch, who was concerned that one of the others might try to pick a fight intentionally so that the whole plan would disintegrate. Now was not the time to bicker, couldn’t they see that? But Kevin, who’d apparently had his heart set on black ski masks, wouldn’t let it go.
“Would it have been so hard to go to the mall and buy a nice set of black ski masks?”
“I don’t have a car anymore,” said Doug. “So yes, it would. And at the end of the day, do you think we’re all going to be sitting around going, ‘Ya know, man, everything would have gone so much better if only our ski masks had been a different color.’”
“I’ll drive the Impala out there,” said Mitch, ignoring both of them. He was gripped by a fear that everything was going to fall apart, which made him talk fast and loud to drown them out. “I’ll follow you,” he said to Kevin, making firm eye contact to draw him away from the ski mask conversation.
“I’ll ride with you,” said Doug, getting out of the pickup. It might be better that way, Mitch thought, because it would put an end to the childishness. Kevin nodded, and Doug slammed the door shut.
“What’s his problem?” Doug asked as they got into the Impala. “Excuse me, but I thought this was a robbery not a fashion show.”
“No big deal, man. He just got hung up on details.”
“But what the-”
“It’ll be fine,” said Mitch, cutting him off. “Put your gloves back on.”
Doug had been idly pulling one of his gloves off, apparently forgetting that the night before they had spent an hour wiping down every part of the car that might contain a fingerprint-underneath the dash, the radio, the fuel filter, the wing nut that fastened the air filter to the engine, everything. All they needed now was to absentmindedly touch something and have to do it all over again.
“Dude, this car drives like shit,” said Mitch, who was having trouble getting it up to fifteen miles an hour as Kevin sped off in front of them. “I thought you fixed it.”
“The engine works fine,” said Doug. “It’s getting gas. You gotta let it warm up a little more.”
Mitch floored the accelerator and the Impala bucked and chugged then shot ahead, banging Mitch’s head against the headrest. Then the car began to buck and chug again, nearly smashing Mitch’s head into the steering wheel.
“I put new gas in it, high octane,” said Doug. “I figure it had been sitting for a long time, so the shitty firing was because there was water in the gas.”
“How much gas did you put in? The needle’s almost on empty.”
“Two gallons,” said Doug.
“Two gallons? Why didn’t you fill the tank?”
“That high-octane stuff is expensive. Why throw money away? We’re only going to drive it a few miles.”
“This is our fucking getaway car? Jesus,” Mitch snorted. He pulled over and called Kevin on his cell. “Dude, we gotta stop for gas.”
“Didn’t dipshit put any gas in the tank?” Mitch was holding the phone close to his ear just in case Kevin said something like that. The last thing he wanted right now, when it seemed like things were actually going to happen pretty much as planned, was confrontation.
“OK,” said Mitch, as if Kevin had said something agreeable. He hung up and they pulled into the first gas station, the one where the Mexican girl worked. It occurred to Mitch that Doug hadn’t mentioned her in a while.
“You want to pay for it?” Mitch asked, thinking that giving Doug a chance to talk to the Mexican girl was doing him a favor, then realizing too late that he was basically accusing Doug of being cheap. Doug got out silently and went into the store. Mitch watched through the window as he paid the girl without talking to her, for the three hundredth time. Perhaps when you were on your way to commit a felony wasn’t the best time to put your moves on a girl.
“Ten bucks,” said Doug as he got back in the car. “That’s all I got.”
Mitch nodded and filled the tank with high octane. Funny, he thought, that Doug hadn’t mentioned the Mexican girl in a while. He used to talk about her all the time, planning what he thought were clever ways to engage her in conversation. Something had been going on with him, something he hadn’t been talking about. While pumping the gas, Mitch recalled other ways Doug had been acting weird-his nervousness around Kevin, his cryptic phone conversations. Then his mind switched to the conversation he had had with Kevin the day before. Linda knew about the Ferrari.
That was strange. Only the three of them knew about the Ferrari, and he knew neither he nor Kevin had told Linda. That left only one of them.
Holy shit. Doug must have told Linda.
He stopped pumping and stared into space for a few seconds while he tried to get his mind around why, exactly, Doug would have told Linda about the Ferrari. What could possibly have motivated him to do that? Why had he been hanging out with Linda at all, for that matter? Did the Doug-Linda connection have something to do with Doug not mentioning the Mexican girl? Fuck it, they were on their way to rob an armored car. Was it really the right time to start worrying about this?
When he got back into the car, he looked at Doug for a few seconds and Doug looked back.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Mitch kept staring at Doug.
“Dude, you’re freaking me out. What?”
“Nothing.” He started the car. “Come on, let’s go get this done.”
CHAPTER 12
THE SNOW WAS beautiful. Not beautiful in the sense of aesthetically appealing, because Mitch hated snow. It was beautiful in the sense of making it difficult for police officers to chase and apprehend you. It was starting to stick too, which was even more beautiful. The only way this could not go perfectly now was if the bank closed early or the armored car never showed up.
Kevin parked the pickup on the dirt road by the drainage ditch they had been staring into just the day before, facing toward the road for a quicker exit. Mitch exited the driver’s seat of the Impala and turned it over to Kevin, who got in wordlessly. Mitch liked the fact that no one was talking, as if they were commandos who had mastered their responsibilities so completely that words weren’t necessary.
As Kevin pulled out of the dirt road, he asked, “You guys gonna talk with British accents?”
The British-accent thing had seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but Mitch didn’t really think that dialogue was going to play much of a part in the day’s events. Besides, the mood that had spawned the British-accent idea, one of pot and partying, was absent in the car, where stress and fear and concentration had taken over.
“Nah,” said Mitch. After that, no one spoke.
Kevin pulled onto Westlake Avenue and they passed the bank. He drove about a hundred yards down the street and then turned around. The street was deserted except for them, every parking space along the curb empty.
“Shit,” Mitch said. “I hope the bank doesn’t close.”
“It’s still open right now,” Kevin said, “and if it’s open, they’re going to need a cash delivery.”
Kevin looked at his watch. “Ten minutes, if they’re on time. You guys want to wait across the street?”
“It’s freezing,” said Mitch. “I think we’ll just stay in the car for a few more minutes.”
“I need to stretch my legs,” said Doug. He got out, slammed the heavy door of the Impala, and walked across the street without another word.
Kevin looked at Mitch. “Is he all right?”
“Is he ever?”
They watched Doug take up a position across the street, shivering in the little alcove by the antique store.
“Go tell him to at least pull his hood up,” Kevin said. “He doesn’t have to pull his ski mask down yet, but it’s probably best not to walk around bareheaded.”
“Shit, there’s no one around,” said Mitch. “It don’t matter.”
Kevin was bumping his knee repeatedly into the steering wheel, so Mitch said, “Are you getting jumpy?”
“No,” said Kevin, sounding more intense than Mitch had been expecting. “I just think you should go talk to Doug. There’s something wrong with him. He’s not talking and he’s fucking standing in the street bareheaded when we all agreed to wear ski masks. The guy’s been on the verge of fucking this up since day one, you know? First of all, he doesn’t even do the one fucking thing he was given to do, which was buy ski masks, and now we gotta wear these fucking things.” His eyes blazing with rage, Kevin held up the old wool cap with the eye holes cut out, his fingers sticking through the holes derisively.
“All right,” said Mitch. “I’ll go talk to him.” He got out of the car and was aware of his feet crunching in the snow as he crossed the silent street. He wondered if instead of helping, the snow would serve as a hindrance, as it was recording his footprints for the investigators. He made an effort to grind his feet into the slush to make the footprints less distinct.
Mitch went and stood in the little alcove, shivering next to Doug. “You all right, dude?”
“I’m fine.” Doug lit a cigarette and watched as an enormous SUV turned the corner and stopped right in front of them, blocking their view of absolutely everything. There were now two cars on the street, the Impala and the SUV, which was black and had tinted windows and was idling right in front of their little alcove.
“What the fuck is this guy doing?” Mitch asked.
