The Weight (37 page)

She shifted a little, like a fighter taking a real hard shot but refusing to go down.

“When Albie set that trap, he couldn’t know who would go first,
him or Solly. But he knew, if Solly told you about the desk, you’d have a chance to get in the wind before he could send someone.”

“To kill me,” she said. Like she was tired of living anyway.

“Unless you gave it up, yeah. Probably even then, from the way Albie’s message sounded.”

“Solly sent you.”

“To talk to this Jessop.”

“And get Albie’s book.”

“Yeah. He was always a step ahead, Solly. He knew you’d get me to … Wait! Wait a minute. No, he couldn’t know that. It’s just like I said. Solly didn’t know you; what he knew was
me
. Sure. When I called and asked him to prove you had this ‘will’ of Albie’s, Solly, he was
expecting
that.”

“So how come you didn’t kill me, then?”

“I wouldn’t ever have done that. Solly, he knows that, too. Listen, Lynda. Solly, he’s every kind of tricky you ever heard of, and plenty that you haven’t. And I’m not trying to get you to change your mind about him, but he
never
told me to do anything to you. That’s why I was kicking myself, looking for the room where the partners desk was. I was afraid you’d think I was hunting you.”

“I thought you might be, Sugar. I didn’t want to, but I was … taught better, you know?”

“Yeah. And you were taught right, too.”

“So this whole Jessop thing, that was just—what?—a convenient excuse?”

“I don’t know. I for damn sure don’t know. But now there’s no choice.”

“That’s why you asked me about getting him to Tampa?”

“Yeah,” I said, glad she couldn’t see my face when I said that.

I kept waiting for her to say something. I felt her body get softer and softer, her breathing change. She was asleep.

I guess I must have gone out, too. I heard her say, “Oh, Sugar!”

“Huh?”

“I dropped off, like a baby taking a nap. And you couldn’t even move for … jeez, almost four hours! I even got your shirt wet.”

She looked embarrassed when she said that last part, so I made like I didn’t hear it.

“We just needed to rest,” I said.

She jumped off my lap and started doing stretches on the carpet. I took off my shirt and worked the kinks out of my neck. I was finished way before she was. But when she got done, she jumped up and ran out of the room.

Before I could even think about why she did that, she was back.

“This is Albie’s phone,” she said, handing a cell to me. “It’s got a 305 area code. That’s Dade County. Miami.

“Every town in the part of Florida where Jessop’s supposed to be living, that would be an 863 area code.”

“Would he recognize your—?”

“Not mine. Albie’s.”

“What good does that—?”

“Wait,” she said, “see this?” Holding up a little metal case. “Watch.”

She hit some button. The case she was holding said, “New work. Same place. Tomorrow night at eleven. Leave message, in or out?”

The voice sounded like it was in the room. Thin and strong at the same time, like piano wire.

“That’s Albie,” she said. “I’ve got a couple of dozen different messages from him on this.”

The next afternoon, we kept arguing all the way back.

“If he recognizes you—”

“He won’t see me, Sugar. Just you.”

“Yeah? And how are we going to get that Lincoln out of the garage?”

“Just drive in and take it. What’s the big deal? We’re not doing anything illegal.”

“Albie told you to get out of that house and never come back.”

“I
won’t
ever come back.”

“What if they’re waiting?”

“They wouldn’t do that. They only come after dark, and they never stay long. To them, it’ll look as if I already disappeared.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t know them. They’re … machines, not people. And I know things have been going wrong the past couple of years. Things they planned, I mean. Not crime stuff, like Albie did with those others. But … something. Something bad. I don’t know why anyone would want Albie’s blue book, but that note—
that
says Solly’s a traitor, straight out. I’m sure, if I showed them that, they’d know who’d been talking to the wrong people.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“We already agreed to do it, Sugar.”

“Me,
I
agreed to do it. I didn’t agree to do anything with you.”

“Would you
listen
for just a second? If Jessop doesn’t see that Lincoln, he’s going to spook.”

“I know.”

“Do the math, damn it! Two cars, we need two drivers.”

“You got stubborn confused with smart, Lynda.”

“I don’t have
anything
confused.”

“Yeah, you do. Starting with me.”

She sulked all the way. But when I told her she had to park the Caddy in the airport lot, way in the back, and lie down in the back seat with the windows up and the doors locked, she turned into a fucking volcano.

“If I don’t fry to death, I’ll run out of oxygen.”

“You’ll be uncomfortable, that’s all. This thing’s not airtight. You can even crack the far-side window a little bit, if you want. But once you get down, and I throw these jackets and stuff over you, you have to
stay
like that, understand?”

“You think, just because it’s dark, I can’t bake to death? It must be over a hundred, even now.”

“Stop all the damn drama, Lynda. You’ve got a water bottle, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“What if—?”

“I don’t know what this Jessop’s going to be driving. But if he doesn’t see Albie’s Lincoln, he’s going to turn around and make tracks, right?”

“Yes,” she snapped at me.

“So, if that happens, you just climb into the front seat and go back to Tampa.”

“Sugar—”

“Zip it. I’ve got the key to the Lincoln and the button for the garage. That’s all I need, except for one thing.”

That one thing was the address of a little mall not so far from where the house was. The cab driver didn’t even try and make conversation. He was an older black guy, and I guess he figured it wasn’t worth working a guy who looked like me for a tip.

I went into the mall with my carry-on bag in one hand and walked through until I found the last exit.

The bar was a couple of blocks away. I went in. And, like Lynda said, it was full of just what I told her I needed. Albie probably had the whole town mapped for people like them.

I sat down at the bar, ordered a beer. It was loud: some kind of crash-pound-boom noise from the jukebox, people trying to shout over it.

All the punk with “88” tattooed on the back of his shaved head knew was that I was there to do a job on some kikes who were contributing
way
too much money to the wrong people. He was down with the cause. RAHOWA all the way, bro. But he still snatched the C-note I offered him for a ride on the back of his cycle.

When we got close enough, I slapped him twice on his right shoulder. He pulled over and rolled the cycle into a thick clump of bushes, just like I had told him in front.

I also told him that a car was coming for me in half an hour,
after I got finished doing whatever I was going to be doing with whatever I had in the carry-on.

He gave me the White Power fist, saying goodbye. By then, I already had my left forearm around his neck, so I said goodbye, too.

I left him there. I wasn’t worried about prints, not with the leather gloves I’d been wearing.

If there’s one thing I know, one thing I’ve studied all my life, it’s how to be a thief.

And that’s me. Maybe, at first, I only got in on jobs because I was good muscle, and I’d stand up if the wheels came off. It was Ken who told me, and I never forgot: “This life of ours, where you stand isn’t about how much weight you can lift, kid. It’s how much weight you can take.”

That’s all I ever wanted to be: a man like Ken. Maybe “all” isn’t the right way to say it. Ken was a legend. A legend with witnesses.

I was getting there, I hoped. I was still a young guy, but I’d proved in by doing everybody’s time on that first robbery, so I could hang out in this bar where Ken did business. In fact, I was sitting right next to him when it happened:

This guy, Eugene, he was good-sized, and he was supposed to be a shooter, too. Reliable, people said about him. Never turned. But he’d never been Inside, either, so I always wondered about that.

Plus, he was twisted in his head. Always bringing his girlfriend in with him right after he finished working her over. Most guys, I think, if their woman had a big black eye and a split lip, they wouldn’t want her to be showing her face. But Eugene, he
liked
that.

This girl, she was kind of good-looking, but you could see she was … dull, or something. Ken and I were at the bar. Eugene, he drags the girl in by the back of her hair, throws her across from him, and sits down in a booth.

We could see the whole thing in the mirror. The girl was trying to hide her face with her hands. Eugene must have told her to get
him a drink, ’cause she got up and walked over to where we were. Her blouse was ripped; you could see her bra. And her bruises. She was trying hard not to cry, like she was afraid to.