The Best American Mystery Stories 2002
- Автор: Грейди Джеймс, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2002
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-12494-7
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2002». Краткое содержание книги:
In the motel room they had rented, about a mile from O’Hare Airport, Alan showered and dressed in the new clothes they had bought for him while Lewis and the others opened the four stolen suitcases, dumped all the money on one of the beds, and set about counting it.
“Throw all the ones on the other bed,” Lewis said. “I’ll start putting them in hundred-dollar bunches with rubber bands. You guys sort the bigger bills.”
“That ain’t gonna be hard,” Potts cracked.
While they were counting, Alan finished getting ready and came into the room. He looked distressed. “I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t let you guys go on with this plan. It’s not fair. I’m going to get away and you guys are going to get caught and go to prison. Then in three months or so, I’m going to be dead and they’re going to be bringing you guys in from Joliet for radiation treatments — and you’re going to die in prison.” He shook his head determinedly. “It’s all wrong. Look, if I give myself up, maybe they’ll go easy on you. Maybe you’ll just get probation.”
The three men who had freed him exchanged glances, each in his own way moved by Alan’s concern.
“Look, Alan,” said Lewis, “it’s nice of you to feel that way about us, but the fact is, it ain’t only you and us and the cops that are involved in this thing. See all this money here? We stole it from Cicero Charley Waxman, a mobster — and Cicero Charley don’t grant probation. If he catches up with us, we’re dead — and he’ll catch up with us just as easy inside prison as out.”
“Maybe easier,” Hoxie amended.
Potts went over and draped an arm around Alan’s shoulders. “What he’s saying, old buddy, is that we’re up to our necks in this thing. Ain’t no way out for us now. We got to play it right to the end. It just might turn out that the only thing we get out of this is knowing we helped you get away. You take that away from us an’ it could turn out that we done it all for nothing. You don’t want to do that to us, do you?”
“No,” Alan shook his head, “I don’t.”
“You best get on up to that little badger ranch then,” Hoxie told him quietly. “That way we get something out of it.”
“All right,” Alan said, lowering his eyes. He looked like he might cry.
Lewis guided Alan over to one of the open suitcases, which was now neatly packed with bundles of currency. “There’s three thousand dollars in one-dollar bills, another fifteen hundred in fives and tens, and here” — he handed Alan a separate bundle — “is another five hundred in mixed bills to put in your pocket. Potts is going to drive you over to the Greyhound terminal near the airport. He’ll go in and buy you a ticket on the first bus leaving; it’s safer for him to do it, ’cause there won’t be no pictures of us out yet. Then you take the ticket and get on the bus. Wherever it takes you, you can start out from there for Canada. Eight to five you’ll make it.”
Alan shook hands with Lewis and Hoxie, and left with Potts.
Lewis and Hoxie went back to counting dollar bills.
When Potts returned, Lewis and Hoxie were watching television.
“We made the evening news,” Lewis told him.
“Made it bigtime,” Hoxie added. “Lead story.”
“They got a picture of the kid on there, but none of us yet. We got the city cops, state police, and FBI after us. They got the feds in on it ’cause they say we’re prob’ly gonna leave the state and that’s something called ‘Interstate Flight.’ How’d the kid do?”
“Good,” said Potts. “Got him on a bus to Omaha, Nebraska. He said he can make Montana easy from there, then just walk into Canada through the woods.” Potts looked at one of the beds, which was piled with bundles of money. “All counted, huh?”
“All counted,” Lewis confirmed. “My friend Ralph estimated it pretty close. Total take was twenty-three thousand six hundred and twelve dollars. Minus the five grand we gave the kid, leaves us with eighteen thousand six hundred twelve. That comes to sixty-two hundred and four bucks apiece.”
“Damn poor wages,” Hoxie muttered, “considering we got all that law plus Cicero Charley after us.”
“Yeah, sixty-two hunnerd ain’t gonna get us far,” said Potts.
“We could still make Buenos Aires,” Lewis pointed out. “At least we’d be out of the country, and each have five grand to last us down there.”
“Count me out,” Potts said. “I got my wife and three kids to think about. Only reason I went in on this was I figured to have enough money to send for them, so’s they could be with me when I die. Since that ain’t worked out, I’ll prob’ly just send my share of the dough to them and go on the bum around the city here until I get picked up.”
“Hell, you can send them my puny little share, too,” said Hoxie. “I’ll go on the bum with you. Anything to get out of my daughter’s basement.”
“There is one other thing we could do,” Lewis said quietly. He was sitting with his eyebrow’s knitted together in a frown, looking like a cross between James Cagney and an owl. “I don’t know if you guys would go for it or not.”
“Well, let’s hear it. I mean, we ain’t never let you down yet, have we?” Potts said drily.
“Yeah, tell us all about it,” Hoxie declared. “Hell, we wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for you, my man.”
“I thought of something while we was counting all them dollar bills,” Lewis explained. “It was something my friend Ralph said to me one Thursday morning when he let me into the parlor early to lay my bets. He said I was lucky he was letting me in at all — especially on Thursday. Because Thursdays and Fridays was count days. Thursdays and Fridays. If the chump change from parlay cards comes in on Thursdays, the serious money from track and sports betting must come in on Fridays. I picked the wrong day for us. The big bucks should be delivered in the morning.”
Hoxie looked askance at him. “Lewis, are you saving what I think you’re saving?”
“Next thing you know,” Potts said, “you’ll be wanting to hold up a bank.”
“I thought about that,” Lewis admitted, “but with the security and alarms and all, I figured it was nine to five we’d get caught.”
“And you think we won’t get caught if we rob the same place tomorrow that we robbed today?” Hoxie asked incredulously.
“That’s exactly what I think,” Lewis said. “Right now, Cicero Charley thinks he’s lucky that we hit him on Thursday. Ralph’s already admitted to him that he let me in on Thursdays only. Cicero Charley’s got no idea I even know that Friday is a count day, too. Plus which, by now he already knows from the news what else we done, springing the kid, and he knows the law’s after us. Right now, he figures we’re running for our lives. He wouldn’t think in a million years that we’d hit him again tomorrow.”
“That friend of yours, Ralph, ain’t gonna open the door again,” Potts pointed out.
“He won’t have to. Look, we got guns. We take down the couriers on the sidewalk, after they get out of their car. We can do this in two minutes, be in our own car, and be gone. We’ll slash their tires so they can’t follow.”
Potts leaned forward, a look of intense interest on his thin face. “What do you think the odds are, Lewis?”
“Eight to one, our favor,” Lewis said confidently.
“Hmmm,” Hoxie said, “that high?”
“Absolutely.”
It only took a moment for them to decide.
“I’m in,” Potts said.
“Me too,” Hoxie added.
Lewis smiled.
Potts telephoned out for pizza and beer, and when it was delivered, the three dying men began planning their second stickup.