Duke City Split (3 page)

She nodded but didn’t look at him.

Bud sighed, then spooned more gumbo into his mouth. The stew had gone cold, and it seemed bitter now.

Johnny Muller kept looking at the clock on the showroom wall. The hands crept ever slower toward quitting time. No customers for the past hour, which left him with way too much time to think.

Johnny was the top salesman at Big Blast Audio, but even with his ten percent commission, he barely scraped by. His boss, an old-timer named David Herrera, raked in all the profits, drove a Cadillac, lived in a big house in the South Valley. As long as Johnny worked for someone else, he’d get the scraps and nothing more.

He wanted to open his own business, a car stereo shop that carried only high-end brands like Blaupunkt and Alpine, a prestigious shop that would run Herrera out of business. Up-to-date decor, cute babes behind the counter, Europop over the sound system. Johnny had the know-how, and he had youth and energy on his side. All he needed was a stake, enough money to get him through the first year. Then he’d be the one raking in the dough.

Faced with such success, Johnny’s father would have to get down off his high horse, stop bitching all the time about how he’d decided to skip college. Johnny had moved to Albuquerque from Dallas, trying to escape his old man’s noise, but he still caught it over the phone, his father’s Texas twang wheedling like a goddamn buzz saw. Nothing would shut him up short of a big wad of money.

It was stuffy in the store, as usual, and Johnny longed to go outside into the spring breeze. He checked the clock again. Two minutes had passed. Shit.

He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, trying to cool off. The boss always wanted him in long sleeves, covering up the tattoo on the inside of his left wrist. It was a simple tattoo, a star inside a circle, didn’t even mean anything. But Herrera thought tattoos looked trashy, and he regularly ragged Johnny about his.

As if three-quarters of the customers who came into this place didn’t have tattoos of their own. The old man had no complaints about all the
cholos
in their bandanas, the prison ink crawling up their necks, in here pricing the biggest speakers they could fit into their shitty cars. Long as their money was green.

Herrera came out of his office in the back, and Johnny got busy dusting off a
display case of CD players. The old man bent over behind the cash register, came up with receipts, then tottered back to his office and closed the door. Probably spent the afternoon counting his money and jerking off.

Johnny tossed aside the dust rag and went to the front of the shop. He watched the traffic go by on San Mateo Boulevard, car windows reflecting the afternoon sun.

He wondered whether the robbers were scoping out the bank,
his
bank, as he now thought of it. What did they need to see? He wished they would take him into their confidence, explain to him about the security cameras and the guard and how the robbery would go.

Would they burst into the little bank, guns bristling, forcing everyone to the floor? Or would it be quieter than that, one of the robbers slipping a note to a teller? Johnny thought about a movie he’d seen where bandits kidnapped a bank manager’s family and forced him to open the vault. Would these guys pull something like that? He didn’t want any part of kidnapping.

Johnny was no criminal. Other than smoking a little weed occasionally, he never broke the law. He’d told the bank robbers he wanted to learn from them, trying to appeal to their egos, but really he just wanted one big score. Enough to set him up in a new life.

He turned away from the window. Rosita, the cow of a cashier, was the only other person in the showroom. She sat on a stool, flipping through a parts catalog, slowly chewing gum.

God, he couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Make a pile of dough, open his own business, give his dad the finger.

His phone tweedled inside his pocket, and he turned back to the windows. The boss didn’t like him taking personal calls at work, but Johnny was in no mood to obey the rules. He stabbed the phone with his thumb and held it up to his ear.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.” The bank robber’s voice. The tough guy with the mustache. “You free tonight?”

“Tonight? Sure. After I get off work—”

“We’ll pick you up at your place at eight.”

Click
.

Johnny felt a thrill in his belly as he stuffed the phone back in his pocket. Another meeting with the robbers. They must be planning to pull the job, or they wouldn’t have called. They’d had time to check out the bank, and now they were on board.

Rosita looked up at him and a frown creased her fat face. Johnny realized he was grinning. He gave her a wink. She rolled her eyes and went back to her catalog.

He checked the clock again. Another hour here. Three hours until his meet with the robbers. He could barely wait to hear their plans for the bank.

Johnny knew he’d need to be on guard. There was still the possibility these guys would try to cut him out. Now that they knew about the bank, they didn’t need him. They pick him up tonight, after dark, seen by no one. What’s to keep them from driving him out into the desert, putting a bullet in his head?

He turned back to the windows, saw his reflection there. He wasn’t grinning anymore.

Mick Wyman knocked promptly at eight. Johnny answered the door, black leather jacket in hand, ready to go.

“Invite me in,” Mick said.

“Huh? Oh, okay. Come on in.”

Mick closed the door behind him, then said, “Let me see that jacket.”

The kid looked puzzled, but he handed over the jacket and Mick went through the pockets, finding nothing but lint. He felt the jacket all over, trying to see if anything was hidden in the lining.

“What’s this about?” Johnny asked as Mick dropped the jacket onto a gray sofa that stood in the center of the room, facing a flat-screen TV.

“All right. Now you. Hands in the air.”

“You’re gonna
frisk
me?”

“That’s right.”

“Come on, man. You think I’m carrying a gun? I don’t even own a gun.”

Mick lifted his faded denim shirt and showed Johnny the .45 stuck in his belt.

“I’ve got one. Now put your fucking hands in the air.”

“Jesus, man. Okay.”

Johnny wore a starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, and loafers. Mick went over him carefully, feeling for wires and recording devices. Came up with nothing.

“Empty your pockets onto that coffee table.”

Shaking his head and muttering, Johnny did as he was told. Mick looked through the wallet (a hundred bucks in twenties, the usual credit cards and ID), the keys, even opened his little bone-handled penknife.

“Okay,” Mick said. “You’re clean. Get your stuff and let’s go.”

Johnny’s face was flushed, and Mick wasn’t surprised when he erupted in indignation. “I’m
clean
? You still think I’m a cop or something? Is this the way you always treat your partners?”

Mick stepped close to him, so they were practically nose to nose. “We’re not
partners. I don’t know you. We’re about to go down to my car and talk business. I want to be sure no one else is listening.”

Johnny stuffed his wallet and keys in his pockets, still muttering under his breath.

“Let’s go,” Mick said.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

The Charger was around the corner, in the shadow of the apartment building, the parking lot’s darkest spot. This time the kid looked inside before he climbed in. He spoke to Bud in the backseat.

“No mask this time?”

“No need,” Bud said. “If our friend here were worried, he wouldn’t have brought you downstairs.”

As Mick slid in behind the wheel, the .45 jabbed him in the stomach. He pulled it out and passed it back to Bud.

“Hold on to that for me, will you?” he said casually.

“Sure.” Bud pointed the gun at the back of the kid’s bucket seat, ready to drill him if he made the wrong move.

Nobody said anything until the Charger was on the road, headed into town. Then Johnny, still steaming, said, “You guys don’t trust anybody, do you?”

“Nope,” Mick said.

“I brought you this job,” he reminded them. “Without me, you wouldn’t even be considering this bank.”

“That’s right,” Bud said. “So far, all we’ve done is listen to you and look around the bank. We’ve broken no laws.”

Johnny sighed and shook his head. “Man, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not a cop. I’m not a crook. I’m just a guy who noticed those armored cars.”

“But you have ambitions,” Mick said. “You want to make something of yourself.”

“That’s right. I want to start my own business.”

“I thought you wanted to be a bank robber.”

“No, man. You’ve got me wrong. I want to participate, want to make sure I get what’s coming to me. I’m up for this thing. But I’m not making a career of it. I’ll leave that to you guys.”

“Wise decision,” Bud said from the backseat. “A life of crime isn’t for most people. It wears on the nerves. Makes it hard for you to trust other people.”

“No shit,” Johnny said. “I don’t even know your names.”

“You can call me Mick. That’s Bud in the backseat.”

Johnny gave him a sour look. “Your real names.”

“They’re close enough. We’re not building a long-term relationship here, kid. We’re doing business together for a few days. After it’s done, you’d better forget you ever met us.”

Johnny’s face lit up. “Does that mean you’re gonna do it?”

“We’re leaning that way,” Mick said. “We want to watch the bank tomorrow, see the coming and going. But if still looks good, we’ll do it on Monday.”

“That’s perfect,” Johnny said. “Monday’s my day off work. I won’t have to call in sick or anything.”

Mick looked in the rearview, met Bud’s eye.

“You still want to do this with us, huh?” he said to Johnny.

“If you’ll let me.”

They’d been traveling south on Wyoming, most of the stores already shut up tight for the night. Mick steered the Charger into a parking lot across the street from the bank. Pulled into a slot and killed the engine and the lights.

He turned to Johnny, found him staring at the darkened bank across the way. Streetlight glow spilled on his face.

“Here’s the deal,” Mick said. “Bud and I have a system. We’ve worked together before, and we’re comfortable with each other.”

“Sure, I understand that—”

“We’re less comfortable having you involved, but we think we’ve figured out a way to manage it. We’ll go in first, get everyone on the floor. You’ll wait outside, keeping a lookout, until we tell you to come in. Then you and I will load up the money while Bud handles crowd control.”

Johnny nodded.

“When you come in the bank, you’ll be wearing a ski mask, long sleeves, gloves. No way for anybody in there to identify you. You don’t get captured on film.”

“Sounds good—”

“And,” Bud said, “you don’t carry a gun.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because we’ve got enough to worry about, doing this job,” Mick said. “We don’t need to worry about getting shot.”

“I wouldn’t shoot you—”

“You wouldn’t
mean
to. But you might get excited.”

“Come on, man, I know how to handle myself.”

“You told me before, you don’t even own a gun. You’re not used to handling them. We’ve had lots of practice.”

Johnny frowned. Behind him, Bud said, “The guns are mostly for show anyway. Just to keep people in the bank from making a mistake.”

“Besides, we need you to keep your hands free,” Mick added. “For loading up all that money.”

The kid’s face creased into a smile.

Mick spent Saturday morning watching the bank. He parked a block south and across the street, in the shade of a bedraggled pine. The drive-through window was busy, but only a few customers got out of their cars and went inside. He saw nothing that worried him.

After the bank closed at noon, he ate lunch at a Mexican café, then drove across town to a West Central Avenue storage unit he’d rented a year earlier under the name of Charles Franklin. The unit was one of thirty arranged in a horseshoe around a paved lot, all surrounded by a chain-link fence with razor wire coiled on top. An office with tinted windows fronted the place, but Mick drove past without stopping. No one came out to check on him as he drove to the units at the rear of the lot.

He backed the Charger up to his unit and got out of the car. He opened the unit’s padlock, then rolled up the door, letting daylight spill inside. A few boxes were stacked against one wall, but they were decoys.

The item that mattered was an Army-green footlocker against the back wall. Mick looked it over carefully. The wooden box was covered by a fine layer of dust, and its padlock appeared untouched. He opened the footlocker and made sure nothing inside—guns, disguises, masks—had been disturbed.

He pulled a black trash bag out of his pocket and popped it open, then began selecting the items he thought they’d need. He put them in the trash bag, one after another, then twisted the top closed and hefted the bag into the trunk of the Charger. Then he locked up the footlocker and the storage unit and drove home.

Mick lived in a furnished apartment in central Albuquerque, in an area where the streets were named after presidents. Only eight units in his quiet complex, mostly occupied by senior citizens. Across the street, a bare-dirt lot populated only by weeds. He had lived in number 6 for nearly a year, which meant he’d be moving again soon. He never stayed in one place for long, a habit picked up when he was a kid, bumming around the desert Southwest with his dad, a shiftless, violent drunk. The only family Mick had, and he was long dead now. Best day of his life had been when he buried the son of a bitch.

The only time Mick had kept the same address for long was four years in the New
Mexico correctional system, starting when he was nineteen years old. He’d stuck up a gas station and walked outside right into the waiting arms of a state cop. The usual whirlwind followed: an armed robbery charge, his picture in the newspaper, a public defender, a judge with a chip on his shoulder. Next thing he knew, he was spending all his time fending off amorous cellmates. It wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat.