Drawing Dead (17 page)

They looked at each other. The older one did all the talking.

We got a live one here!

He laughed some and then rough as he could grabbed her by the hair and worked the gun into her mouth. Gun metal scraping teeth. I gotta say, I liked his style.

That’s it you bitch, open wide.

He looked at me.

That shut her the fuck up didn’t it?

Sure did.

He jammed it in further and Evie gagged. He cocked the weapon and repeated the question and she nodded with her head to the bedroom. Her eyes open wide and watering. My penis was at the beginnings of rapid solidification. The younger guy took his winged ass in there and found the case in less than ten seconds.

This is the case…it’s locked though.

Evie tried to speak but it came out as nonsense. Geez that gun in her mouth gave me warm feelings all over. He took the weapon out her gob and told her what to do.

Don’t talk bitch, just get’em.

She went in for the handbag. I piped up.

You don’t have to kill us you know?

All I could smell was bourbon, which was lucky 'cause I’d possibly already made toilet in my pants.

That’s not what my boss told me asshole.

Good point he had. I kept trying.

I can’t see how you could get away with it, they got more cameras than people in this place.

That’s what we pay off cops for dickhead.

He had me covered on every goddamn point.

Now how about you shut the hell and up and instead of thinking how you’re gonna get outta this mess, start savoring your last hour of existence, 'cause you ain’t ever gonna see the sun come up again my fuckhead friend.

Real way with words this cocksucker. He looked over at Evie, coming back out, smoking hot, faking crying, rifling like a maddened harpy through her bag.

Her, on the other hand, I can see myself putting more than a bullet into.

I had nothing. Well, I was gonna tell him to go and fuck his mother, and it woulda gone straight to his heart, but I figured he may just shoot me on sight rather than later on when I’d dug my own grave and probably Evie’s too. I kept my mouth shut. Bided my time. Kept my cool. But still, he could go and fuck his mother.

How’d you make her?

He made a sound like a pig choking on a bone, I took it to mean ‘Come again, Sir?’ He really was a fat goombah piece of shit.

How did you make her?

What do you care? And who the fuck are you?

I’m the Zigzag man, who the fuck are you?

He chuckled to himself with that one. Sounded like a gorilla dry-humping a tree-stump.

What a fucking asshole you are. Balls on you, you believe this guy…

He was talking to the other guy, who seemed like a shell-shocked soldier. I was thinking maybe Rob had done that to him. Maybe he was so pissed about Rob’s ass not being here that he just couldn’t speak. Fats just kept on talking, and spitting while he was at it. I woulda hated to have seen this yard-ape eat.

I’ll kill you quick ok, bullet between the eyes I’m thinking, that suit yah?

Sure Fats, whatever blows your hair back…how’d you make her?

He was fed up; he coulda given me a few hard shots, but I think he settled on shooting my ass later.

We got a call, word was out you know, everywhere, the bands on the money, pink bands. Someone spotted’em at the table. Called Melbourne, they called us. Comprende smartass.

I nodded. Evie was taking forever with the key. I was watching her. She had the bag dangling on her left forearm and was fucking about inside it with the other hand. She gave me a look. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I sure found as fuck out.

The shots fired out in muffled p-tings. Two of. Dull donks that ended quick in a smack sounding somewhat like a man beating his head against a block of wood. The older, fatter asshole rocked back with the impact and clutched his chest while the blood spurt out over his stout gold-ringed fingers. The winged guy didn’t know what had happened, mishandled his gun and before he could do anything about it Evie had shot him too. Right in the head. Brain matter and sauce all over the expensive wall. His limp body dropping forward and to the floor. There was a split-second when I thought I was next. She may as well have. I saw Lexy. I saw her wrists. I fell in that tub screaming. I kissed her cold, dead lips. Droning horror and nothing but unending dark. I saw it, felt it. But she skipped it. Spared me. Evie dropped the bag and the let the gun go down with it. The blood was pooling over the tiled floor in a two black-red spreading filled-in hoops that soon enough met the way raindrop ringlets do in a dirty puddle. I ran in and grabbed the case. Tossed her bag, waistbanded the gun. She just stood there, the sprawl of the blood was almost at her high-heeled toes.

I don’t wanna go to jail Jack.

I grabbed her. Shook her. Got her to look in my eyes.

We gotta move.

I said not a thing else. Instead I took her hand tight and went for the door, she wouldn’t have moved without me, she couldn’t. She just would have stood there watching those dead bodies drain onto the plush floor. Would have let it get on her shoes and probably slipped in it and then looked like she was hemorrhaging herself. It was shock. She’d never done anything like that before. Never killed anyone dead.

We made a frenetic break, rushed out the room, beat it down the hallway. Pulse racing, mind spinning out of control. Then we had to wait there for the elevator to slowly climb to our floor. I felt like jumping off the walkway. Twenty-five storeys down. A freeing swandive into oblivion. Evie just stood agape doused in the abject horror of her present reality. Neither of us could say a word. The trip down in the elevator took what felt like three hours. Standing in a lake of the ultimate repulsion. Out in the middle of it, with no place to go but down. We must have looked like hell, as we crossed that lobby floor. Like ragged, blood-lost bodies spat freshly from the grave.

Evie, cut the shit honey, just cut it.

I was there, we did the job together. I was distraction, playing dumb and lost and while they were flirting with me Rob shot’em both. I thought he’d killed them.

And?

And then when we were half-way across South Australia I hit him over the head with a rock when he was taking a piss. Stole the car. Drove to Perth.

One hit?

I hit him three times and then dropped it on his head from waist high.

I let go and she came up for air. The window was opaque with her breathy fog.

Why?

Because he changed the plans.

The fuck you mean?

There was more money than he thought there would be, much more, he wanted to hole up for three months. To avoid the heat that was gonna come down on us.

Good plan.

It wasn’t what I agreed to.

Willful little hussy ain’t she.

So I'm guessing he hits you because you’re being a headstrong whore and then you beat his head in with a rock when he’s making pee-pee. Leave him for dead in the desert then drive straight into a death sentence that he was trying to save your out of this world ass from.

She didn’t answer that. So I went on.

I’d better watch myself huh. Stole his gun too didn’t ya. It has a homemade silencer on it Evie. Rob must be a real badass, I really ain’t sure what that makes you.

I almost shot you in the hotel room.

Girl is a goddamned hazard. A viper in your sock drawer.

I know it. But I got the gun now Evie. And I ain’t anywhere as nice as I seem to be.

For some unknowable reason this made her smile, and that smile, as I’ve previously stated, was God’s own finest hour, better than sunrise or set. I could tell she wanted me to kiss her. But I didn’t. Instead I seized a handful of hair again and drew on it harder than the last time.

So behave yourself won’t you now. You may be the most willingly goddamned sexy girl I’ve ever come across, but I’ll hack you in half if you put it to me Evie.

I winked at her like I’d just won first prize in an asshole parade.

You know I would.

I let go of her and she kinda exhaled all the air she had stored up in her lungs. A sigh of sorts. I kicked over the ignition, lent back for a bottle of wine, uncapped that sucker and then wheeled us the fuck outta there.

We zoomed north-west all night. I knew where we were going and how long it would take. We had a one way ticket to Dogdick, Western Australia. I drove the car like a torpedo, gunning it expertly along the road in wanton excesses of speed and in barefaced fearlessness of consequences and the dark. Evie slept with her head in my lap after about two hours of sulking. I stroked her hair and tried to make sure she had sweet dreams. Occasionally caught sight of her heavenly thighs in whatever scraps there were of moonlight. In honesty I had no fucking clue what I was doing. Moving seemed correct. As did getting the fuck out the city. A different car would work too, perhaps just steal some plates, but it was gonna have to wait until we got to the place I was planning on going to 'cause getting there was the main objective.