23 Minutes (14 page)

“Before he goes in …,” Daniel muses, as though once again coming to the conclusion that this seems the best option.

Zoe says, “He enters the bank at 1:29.”

Daniel takes out his phone to check the time.

Zoe cranes her head to see. 1:25.

He's noticed her movement and is looking at her quizzically. “Two minutes ago, you knew exactly what time it was, and now you need to look?”

Zoe explains, “I don't have a watch or cell phone. Time always
resets to 1:16. The rain starts at 1:23. These are things I've learned along the way.”

He looks at her incredulously. “You're doing life-and-death maneuvering that requires precision timing without a watch or cell phone?”

“Well, not intentionally.” Her own patience is fraying. She hesitates, unsure whether she is once again pushing too fast. But there's no time for niceties. She says, “If you believe me, we'd better get moving. Or even if you just think you
might
believe me.”

He collects his envelope, stands, and sprints up the stairs.

Which looks more like running away from her than believing her.

But then he calls back down, “Creepy Nick might as well make himself useful.”

Which is still not exactly a
yes.

And yet, seconds later he's back, having traded his trust fund papers for an umbrella. Seeing her questioning look, he explains, “If I'm going to be hanging around outside the bank in the rain, I'll be less conspicuous if I'm carrying an umbrella as though I'm waiting for someone.”

She's about to say
Good thought
, but he doesn't need her affirmation.

Seeing that she's followed him to the front door, he tells her, “You wait here.”

“No,” she says. “In case this doesn't work, I need to see what goes wrong.” She assures him, “I have absolutely no intention of getting any closer to the bank than across the street.”

“Still too dangerous,” he objects.

“We've already covered this.” Well, they have. They just didn't
come to an agreement. She compromises. “I'll wait inside the card shop. There really isn't time to argue.”

He hesitates.

“Eighth out of ten possible tries,” she reminds him.

He's distracted by her papers, which she's left on the stairs: He's assuming they're as important to her as his are to him. They were. Once. She sees him glance from them up to the second floor.

“Don't need them anymore,” Zoe says. Which is only partially true. She's trying to convince herself this is the time everything will work out, and she doesn't like the idea of abandoning her history here where a proven busybody like M. Van Der Meer can pry to his heart's content. But some things are more important than others.

On the front stoop, Daniel snaps open the umbrella, then angles out his elbow so she can take his arm and have cover from the rain. Which is sweet, but not exactly graceful for two people at a run.

Still, there's no car in front of the card shop yet, so they aren't too late.

Daniel must be anxious about the time, too. Outside the bank, he hands her his cell phone so she can keep track. It shows 1:28.

“Good luck,” Zoe says—which sounds so clichéd, so bland, so hollow she thinks she'd have been better off saying nothing. What she wants to say is,
Keep yourself alive.
And, even as she ducks out from under cover of the umbrella to dash across the street, she regrets that she didn't. If anyone ever needed a remedial course on Not Getting Yourself Killed 101, it's Daniel. From the far curb, she turns back to call him a warning to please, please be careful, but she sees the silver car approaching.

It's on the wrong side of the street, which for a second confuses
her, but in a moment she realizes there are no parking spaces in front of the bank because that's where the lady with the stroller has her car. The robber drives past, then makes a U-turn—strictly illegal (where's a traffic cop when you need one?)—and pulls to the curb right in front of where she's standing. Zoe turns her back to the street and opens the door of the card shop so as not to alert the robber that he is being watched, but not before pointing at the car in case
Daniel
needs alerting.

In the store, the woman with the hair rollers looks up from a display of souvenir-type caps that celebrate the Erie Canal:
Spencerport Canal Days, Colonial Belle Canal Cruise Tours, Sam Patch Packet Boat.
The woman smiles at Zoe and comments, “Nice weather for ducks.”

Zoe, recalling the woman's former kindness and concern, smiles back but never takes her gaze from the man who is about to try to rob the bank. She watches him put on his Red Wings baseball cap and start across the street. Once he's safely facing away from the card shop, Zoe steps outside. At any sign that he's going for the gun, she assures herself, she can retreat—indoors or back to 1:16. But she needs to be outside, in case there's anything to hear.

Daniel, pacing in front of the bank with his umbrella as though impatiently waiting for someone, sees her and gives a tiny shake of his head for her not following instructions. But he can't do more without the possibility of drawing the approaching robber's attention to her. Instead, he pretends to just now take notice of the man and calls out, “Ricky Wallace.”

This has to be purely for Zoe's benefit—an identification, should they have to go through this again—for there is little surprise and no warmth in Daniel's acknowledgment of the man.

As for the robber—Ricky Wallace, apparently—the friendliest thing that can be attributed to him is that when he gets to the sidewalk where Daniel is standing, he doesn't pull out his gun. He does, however, get right in Daniel's face. He's loud enough Zoe can hear every word. “Lentini, you son-of-a-bitch—you following me?”

From where she's standing directly across the street, Zoe can see Daniel's face clearly, and the back of Wallace's head. But Daniel is soft-spoken and the rain is muffling sound, so now that he's talking in a normal tone of voice, she can't hear him. Despite years of eavesdropping on resident evaluation meetings held behind closed doors at her various group homes, which have made her quite accomplished at extrapolating and filling in the blanks, she can't make out what Wallace is saying either—just, once in a while, a string of expletives.

Daniel continues to speak quietly and calmly, which Zoe finds remarkable, considering he's being sworn at by someone who has repeatedly shot and killed him.

Still, instead of mollifying Wallace, Daniel's composure seems to aggravate him even more. In a way, Zoe can empathize: There's nothing worse than trying to get a reaction from a therapist who only murmurs,
And why do you think you feel that way?
In any case, Wallace shoves Daniel, backing him up against the plate-glass window of the bank and shouting loudly enough that Zoe can catch: “Think you're better than me? You with your upscale East Ave. office, charging your five hundred dollars a day to ruin people's lives? Most of the people I know are lucky to clear five hundred in a week. What gives you the right (mumble) just because you been to some (mumble, mumble) college (mumble) …” Just as his words once more become unintelligible, he stops shouting and again
shoves Daniel for emphasis, hard enough the bank window must rattle, for Zoe can see one of the customers look up, startled, before returning to filling out his papers.

Zoe has stepped out from the protective overhang of the card shop without even being aware of doing so, without even being aware of the rain running down her hair and molding her shirt to her body.
You have a gun
, she mentally reminds Daniel.

But, frustrating as it is, Zoe guesses she understands Daniel's reluctance; Wallace has been belligerent, but he hasn't exactly demonstrated unequivocal intent to harm anyone. Clearly, the
we've-lived-through-this-before-and-Wallace-was-about-to-kill-people
defense would not stand up in court.

Though this would still be better than getting killed, Zoe reflects.

She finds herself nostalgic for the good old days of Mrs. Davies's black-and-white Westerns, where—in the absence of due process of law—simple townsfolk
knew
who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, and gave the good guys a certain leeway.

Of course, in those same days before due process, the simple townsfolk would have hanged, burned, or stoned Zoe as a witch, or put her in chains and locked her in an insane asylum. All Zoe has had to put up with are unneeded medications that made her sluggish and prone to gain weight, tedious group therapy sessions, and well-intentioned if clueless counselors.

Daniel has gone from shaking his head to saying something Zoe still can't hear, but Wallace isn't buying any of it.

“Liar!” he shouts. He raises his arm and Zoe can guess that he's about to flat-hand Daniel in the face, to smack his head against—if not through—the glass.

Daniel swings the handle of his umbrella hard against the side of Wallace's head.

You've got a gun
, Zoe thinks at Daniel,
and you're using an umbrella?

Zoe is unaware of the card shop door opening behind her, when out steps the woman in the hair rollers. Maybe she's done with her card-shop needs, or maybe she's come to check up on poor-little-duck Zoe. But her timing is perfect.

Perfectly wrong.

As a witness, the woman was still inside the store for Wallace yelling at Daniel, for Daniel's unruffled replies, for Wallace shoving Daniel against the bank window—twice—and even for Wallace raising his hand with the how-much-more-obvious-can-you-get intention to pummel Daniel. All she is outside to see is Daniel's purely defensive swing of the umbrella.

“Hey!” Hair Roller Woman shouts. “Don't you hit that poor defenseless homeless man! He's gotta live, too.”

Zoe can see the situation through Hair Roller Woman's eyes: Daniel, young, well put together, the picture of someone with all the advantages of life; Wallace, older, an edge of desperation to him, his raincoat a bit shabby, a bit dirty. Hair Roller Woman is assuming Wallace has tried to wheedle a buck-or-two handout from Daniel, and that Daniel, full of himself and disdainful of others' troubles, has heartlessly lashed out at him.

And what Hair Roller Woman has done is to distract Daniel, who for one brief second glances away from Wallace.

“Gun!” Zoe screams, even as Wallace's hand goes for his raincoat pocket.

Daniel is quick to tackle Wallace, but he is not acting on thorough information. Zoe told him Wallace is armed, but she had not thought to mention
where
he is carrying his gun. The way Daniel grabs hold of him to restrain his upper body, Zoe can tell that Daniel is assuming a shoulder holster, such as the one he himself is wearing.

Without even drawing his gun from his pocket, Wallace fires.

At a distance of fewer than six inches away, there is not a chance of his missing. Daniel doubles over, the umbrella dropped, his arms crossed over his midsection, but unable to stop the flow of blood spilling out between his fingers. As that other time in the bank, when Zoe was hit, the bullet has once again passed through Daniel—this time striking and shattering the bank window behind him.

Hair Roller Woman, finally realizing she has thoroughly misjudged what's going on, screams.

Wallace whips around and fires a second shot.

Zoe drops to her knees behind his silver car, her heart beating so hard she can't even tell if she's been hit.

Apparently not.

Not this time.

Hair Roller Woman, on the other hand, has fallen to the sidewalk beside her, face up in the rain, a single red dot on her forehead, almost like a Hindu woman's bindi. Was it her scream that caused Wallace to want her dead? Or, more likely, Zoe's warning shout? Has Wallace in fact realized there were two witnesses, or is Hair Roller Woman dead in Zoe's place?

Without knowing if Wallace has seen her, there is no telling whether he'll cross the street to come after her.

She desperately wants to be away from here. Her chest and shoulder ache from the memory of the other story line, the one in
which she was shot. She does not want to die. But meanwhile, what of Daniel? If there's any chance he's still alive, she does not want to desert him. She will not be the brain-dead observer she was when her father was shot. There is no receptionist now.

Only Zoe.

And Zoe is determined not to abandon Daniel.

A glance at the cell phone he loaned her shows 1:33. Still lots of time. For good or ill.

She hears a third gunshot. More glass breaking. Now she can hear the screams from within the bank. She hopes this means Wallace has not fired a second shot at Daniel. Though she feels awful for thinking it, she hopes this means Wallace has turned his attention away both from this side of the street and from Daniel, returning to his Daniel-interrupted original plan to rob the bank.

Zoe flattens herself on the rain-wet sidewalk and tries to see beneath the car to what is going on, but she can't make out much of anything. So she gets to her hands and knees and scuttles toward the back of the car. The hood is lower than the trunk, but to get there would mean skirting around the dead Hair Roller Woman, and Zoe can't bring herself to look at her again.
My fault
, she thinks.
My direct fault she's dead.

Her indirect fault about Daniel.

Zoe peeks over the trunk and sees that Wallace has kicked in a section of the broken window and stepped into the bank.

And, more than Zoe dared hope, Daniel is still alive. Wallace must have left him, not considering him a threat, not thinking it worth the time to finish him off when there's a bank that needs robbing. Unable to stand, Daniel is dragging himself away from the opening that was formerly a window, heading to the brick corner of the building.
With his left arm pressed against his stomach, still unsuccessful with slowing down the flow of blood, he has drawn his gun with his right hand. He uses the bricks to pull himself up to his feet. He has left a prodigious blood trail on the sidewalk, and Zoe tries her best to convince herself that it has been diluted and spread by the rain, that there is not really as much blood as there appears to be.