The Animals: A Novel (37 page)

On that final night he had tried to speak to Rick about what he had done and had failed to do, but the words had become entangled. Out before them through the windshield, oval pools of light marked the road along the fence. I
just want a clean slate, he had said. That’s all.

And Rick had broken his silence then. There are no clean slates, he had said.

You know what I mean.

Man, Rick said, this thing we’re gonna do … do you even get how dicey this whole thing is?

Yeah, of course I do.

Do you?

Yeah, Nat said.

Rick was silent for a moment. Then he said, I’ve known you about as long as I’ve known anyone ever.

Me too.

Thing is, I don’t understand what’s been happening with you anymore. It’s like you’re, I don’t know, out of control or something.

Down the long length of the street, the police cruiser appeared, its taillights moving slowly away from them in the distance.

It’s like you’re not yourself anymore, Rick said. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s weird.

I’m still me, Nat said. He looked out the side window. An airplane, bright white and luminescent in the night sky, ascended off the runway. He could think of nothing more to say and so he said nothing. The sound of the airplane ran all through the car: a long hiss that seemed to grow louder and louder and louder and would not stop.

The sound of the descending plane was quieter through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the showroom floor but it felt much the same. He had been holding his breath and he exhaled now, long and hard, returning to the hallway and moving down its length to the alarmed exit door that opened outside. The panel there glowed faintly. Its screen read simply
armed
in blocky electronic letters. Next to that message was a green light. He knew that the alarm would be triggered when he pushed open the door, but whether that triggering would directly contact the police or would activate some blaring siren or would do something else entirely, he did not know. Rick would knock and he would push open the door and they would deal with whatever happened next.

Then Milt Wells’s office at last: a dark space cluttered with furniture and files and binders that burst into shadows in the blaze of the
flashlight. The safe in the corner looked more substantial than it had when he looked at it from across the desk: a thick, almost featureless black box perhaps two feet square and fronted by a silver dial and handle. At first he simply grasped that handle and pulled but the safe did not move and for a moment he wondered if it was somehow bolted through to the floor. The wall shelves had been built around it and he cleared one side of books and binders and then swung his foot up into the gap he had made and pressed it against the wall, levering out with his body, pushing with his foot as he pulled hard upon the handle, and this time the box slid out slowly across the carpet and into the room.

When he had pulled it as far as he could, he sat on the flat surface of the safe in the dark, panting, his arms tired from the effort of moving that thick box even a few feet, and then rose and entered the hall and stood near the back door, listening to the too-loud sound of his own breath and staring at the alarm’s glowing keypad with its single word of menace. He waited there until he could hear the sound of a car outside, the gears shifting, the sound growing louder and then the car’s engine sputtering to silence. The familiar squeak as the Datsun’s door opened and closed. He waited. And then came the knock, shave and a haircut, the sound so loud in the quiet of the dealership that it startled him even though he had been expecting it all night.

The alarm panel again. The glowing numbers. The green light. A
rmed
.

Then he turned the handle and pushed open the door.

Rick stood there in the darkness, his father’s .38 revolver clutched in his hand, the Datsun just behind, its trunk already open. There was no sound, nothing to indicate they had tripped the alarm, but when he looked back to the panel the light had gone from green to red. A moment later the phone began to ring.

What the fuck? Rick said.

I don’t know.

Fuck, he said. Then he stepped over the threshold and Nat pulled the door closed behind him.

What took you so long?

That fucking El Camino, he hissed.

No way.

Yeah way.

I told you that guy’s been on me.

I had to drive all over town to get rid of him. Kind of freaked me out.

You lost him?

Yeah, totally. Where’s the safe?

Down here. What’s with the gun?

I don’t know, he said. I brought the rifle too. It’s in the car.

Dang, Rick.

Let’s just get this done and get the fuck out of here. I’m all spooked out now.

The phone had stopped ringing although it felt like some part of that bell-tone drifted in the black air all around them still.

He led Rick to the office and Nat closed the door behind them. Then the flashlight, everything bursting into shadows.

Christ, turn that off, Rick said.

Nat pointed to the safe. There it is, he said.

Yeah, I see it. Now turn the light off.

They both kneeled and then struggled to lift it, the two of them on either side, the box only two feet square but heavy, solid. The faint sense of something sliding within. Then it was up and in their grasp and they were moving through the door in tiny, mincing steps, Rick’s face there before him, as if they had embraced, or tried to, only to find this heavy iron cube between them, their expressions the same, as if each faced a mirror and the other had become his dark reflection.

Careful careful, Rick whispered.

They moved down the hall, the box heavy but manageable now that they were moving, and when they reached the exit door, Nat fumbled backward, catching the handle and opening it and then they were outside, the night cold and open and miraculous, and they laid the safe into the trunk, grunting and groaning and cursing, the little Datsun heaving down from its weight, and in the next moment the trunk was closed and they were both in the car.

Holy shit, Rick said. That was fucking intense.

We did it, Nat said. We fucking did it. He turned the key and the engine cranked and started and he levered the car into gear.

We sure as hell did, Rick said.

Nat was smiling. The sense of relief that flooded through him was like nothing he had ever experienced, a great slackening as if some overinflated tire had burst through its own sidewall, hot and stagnant air rushing out all at once, and all he could think was that he had done it and that he was free. He turned the wheel downhill toward the opening that led out onto the street.

And that was when he saw the El Camino.

Its low slanting shape slid out before them like a huge door rolling shut across their path, the Datsun’s headlights shining upon its front wheel, its long rust-colored side panel, and finally upon the tattooed man’s face in the driver’s-side window, a face that stared back at them without concern or expression.

No, Nat said. And then he said it again in a long frantic stream: No no no no. He did not stop the car, could not. Instead his foot came down hard on the gas, his hands pulling the wheel and the little Datsun’s engine flooding up in a quick hard hum and then leaping forward at a diagonal as if possessed of some new purpose or function, the gap between the front of the El Camino and the metal pole that marked the edge of their escape route closing even as they sped toward it. Rick was yelling next to him but he could not hear the words, only the weak roar of the tiny engine and then the crunch of metal as the Datsun struck the El Camino at the wheel well and both cars ground immediately to a stop.

What the fuck? Rick said, his voice high and loud and his hands scrabbling the floorboards for the .38.

We gotta get out of here.

I fucking know that.

But the tattooed man was already out of his car, Nat slamming into reverse but the front of the Datsun clinging to the El Camino, the little car’s tires squealing against the asphalt and then abruptly breaking free, that moment coming just as Rick’s door flew open and Rick himself was pulled outside, the man grabbing Rick’s jacket and the Datsun whipping him out of the car by the pure force of its sudden motion, Nat staring now at a scene unfolding in the diminishing distance below him, all of it caught flat and brutal and impossible in the yellow of his headlights: the tattooed man throwing Rick to the asphalt, the baseball bat coming down and coming down and coming down, Rick’s body seeming to collapse in on itself and his voice rising into that lit nightscape in a flurry of curses and screams.

He stopped the Datsun at the top of the driveway almost in the same location Rick had parked, the car’s single functioning headlight pointing down the long slope, a parking lot empty of cars, the whole of the night crushing down on him all at once. Then he reached into the backseat for the rifle before wrenching open the door and stepping outside.

Stop goddammit, he yelled. Stop stop! and when the man raised the bat again Nat pointed the rifle into the sky and pulled the trigger. The sound of it was bright and hot and the flash blinded him for a moment but the man had stopped now, looking up to where Nat stood, the rifle held in his grip.

Now you think you’re gonna shoot me? the man said.

Get away from him, Nat said.

Rick slid backward across the asphalt on his elbows, his feet kicking out for purchase.

I told you, you fucked with the wrong guy. A man repays his debts. And I sure the fuck owe you two sons of bitches.

I said get away from him, Nat said again.

The man laughed then, the black smears of his tattoos snaking up and down his arms, his teeth shining in a wide grin. Let’s have a look at what you got in your trunk, dipshits, the man said. Maybe we can make a deal.

We triggered the alarm, Rick said from the ground. The cops are already on their way.

Then I guess we don’t got much time, the man said. Despite the cold, he wore an unbuttoned collared shirt with the sleeves torn off, and he pulled the shirt out of the way to reveal the grip of a pistol extending from the front of his pants. You think you can shoot me before I draw? he said.

Shoot him, Rick said from the ground.

The man laughed again. He’s not a killer, the man said, and neither are you, Mr. Medium Security. He smiled. Then he said, But I am.

And that was when Rick came at him, his body nearly parallel to the earth as he dove, crashing into the man sideways and both of them coming down. Nat could not see anything in the headlight glow, there were only bodies, hands on the bat, a kind of furious dissolve of flesh as if they had become one man with four arms and four legs, one man gone wild, striking at himself, predator and prey all at once.

He thought he could hear distant sirens now and he called his friend’s name again and again, the rifle still held in his hands, the car behind him, his own shadow cast as a long straight arrow pointing down to that crazed and multiarmed figure. And when the shot rang out he jolted backward, staring for a quick moment at the rifle before realizing that he had not accidentally pulled the trigger on his own, that the shot had come from below.

Ah shit, the tattooed man said, smiling gleefully. Look what I did. He moved the pistol from one hand to the other and then looked up at Nat and turned toward him, the weapon pointed uphill now but not firing. Instead, the man simply advanced, walking quickly and with purpose up the slope, his shadow weaving out behind him to where Rick lay sprawled on the asphalt beside the El Camino, his shinbone bent at an impossible angle and a bright red mushroom of flesh bulging up through a rent in his jeans from where he had been shot, this shadow strung out behind him in the glow of the dealership lights like the shadow of some huge desert tarantula. You fucking shot me, Rick said, his voice a howl of impotent and impossible rage.

Nat stepped backward toward the Datsun’s open door and as he did so, perhaps in direct response to the sound of the gunshot, a siren chirped twice, not so very far away, and then came blazing into full volume. Nat felt his heart clutch in his throat and all he could think, the only word that would come to him, was no no no.

Ah shit, the man said. You fucking dipshits. He looked up at Nat, then at the Datsun, perhaps thinking in that moment that it might be easier to take Nat’s tiny car, but instead he simply said, Next time you won’t be so lucky, and turned and ran back down the slope, past Rick and into the driver’s seat of the El Camino, Rick’s voice calling up at Nat all the while: Help me. Jesus fucking Christ. He shot me. I’m fucking shot.

The lights were coming along the street now, blue and red and illuminating everything, and Nat could not tell if there was one car or a hundred. The sirens loud and screaming. The tattooed man sat behind the wheel of the El Camino and its engine was roaring and roaring but the car did not move and Nat could see that its wheel well was crushed into the front tire from where the Datsun had hit it.

Jesus Christ, Rick called out to him. What are you doing? Come on!

The lights and the sirens. The tattooed man leaping out of the El Camino now, the pistol in his hand, running out beyond the lights, out into the darkness of the town and the desert that held it, the first of the police cars passing the stranded El Camino, sirens blazing, lights flashing everywhere.

Nat had backed to the door and slid now behind the wheel. I’m sorry, he said, his voice quiet, calm, and when he pulled forward it was not into that blaze of rotating police lights but instead to the right, the Datsun following the long stretch of the building toward the far exit, Rick’s voice following him as he drove: What are you doing? Don’t leave me! Don’t fucking leave me here. But he was already out amidst the rows of new cars glistening under the white glow of a quarter moon. He could hear Rick’s voice calling to him long after he was on the road, long after the casinos disappeared in the mirrors and the desert blew out all around him, empty and endless and as black as an ocean, a voice that called and called and called his name and would not stop.