Never Play Another Man's Game (8 page)

Franky shook his head and put two hands firmly on the wheel. “I'm driving,” he said.

“Move the fuck over,” D.B. said from the passenger side. “You know we gotta keep our shit tight.”

“New plan,” Rick said, turning from the doors. He was pointing the
AK
in our direction.

“S
tep away. Both of you. Keep moving until you hit the wall. When you do, turn to face it and get down on your knees.”

“What the fuck, Rick?” D.B. said.

Rick shouldered the rifle and aimed it at D.B.'s chest. “Use my name again and you won't have to worry about getting on your knees — I'll put you on your back.”

“Little fuck. I take it back, bro, your plan sucks balls.”

I watched Rick moving the
AK
back and forth. The rifle would cut us both down at this range before we could get to cover. I had to do what he said until he had to lift the door. When he turned to pull the door, I would pull the Glock from the holster at my lower back and cut him down. The van would have to work to drive through the closed metal door. I would use the time to put enough rounds through the driver side door of the van to stop Franky from leaving.

“Listen to him,” I said as I moved one step to my left.

“Are you serious, bro?” D.B. said from the other side of the van. “I say we rush him. He can't take us both.”

“I could,” Rick said.

“He's right,” I said. “You don't have to be Annie Oakley to kill somebody with an
AK
. Think of all those kids in Afghanistan who do it everyday. Just do what he says.”

“Fuck that,” D.B. said.

“Recognize when you're beat,” Rick said. He was looking at D.B., but the muzzle was trained on me.

“Listen,” I said. “We just want to get out of here ahead of the cops. Open the door and go.”

I put it out there for D.B. I wanted the kid to go for the door. D.B. got it. I saw Rick swing the gun towards D.B. and I watched the barrel inch towards the other side of the room as it followed the huge biker to the wall opposite me. I took my own steps to the left. I moved nice and slow so that I wouldn't spook the kid holding the assault rifle and cause his finger to twitch just enough to aerate my torso. The gun in the holster at my back suddenly felt like it weighed more than it did. With each step, I felt it waiting for my hand to free it. The draw would be from my knees. My hand would have to move from above my head to my waist and then back up to shoulder height. The movement would take less than a second. I watched Rick and his gun and mentally drew the Glock in my mind. I had been in front of guns so many times before that my hands didn't shake when I looked at the wrong side of a Russian machine gun. My breathing slowed and everything around me seemed to go into slow motion. I once saw a baseball player on television say that time seemed to change when he was at bat. He got into the zone, and in it, he was able to notice things that he usually never picked up on. The pitcher's finger position, the spin of the ball, the sound of the air being split by the hundred-mile projectile heading straight for him. In front of Rick and his gun, I was in the same zone. I saw the tension on Rick's trigger finger, his pinprick-dilated pupils, even the quick rise and fall of his chest. When the time came, I would see him alter his focus and I would kill him.

D.B. got to his wall before me and I heard Rick tell him to get on his knees.

“Now put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers. Now stay like that.”

It was my turn next.

“On your knees,” he said.

I moved slow — I didn't want Rick thinking that I gave up too easily.

“Move it. Don't make me kill you.”

My knees touched the pavement and I felt cold concrete through the heavy material of the green cargo pants I wore. I put my hands up and watched Rick.

“Eyes on the fucking wall!” he screamed.

I looked back at the wall as Franky yelled out, “Let's go, man!”

I didn't need to see Rick. The noise from the door would let me know when the time was right. I waited for the sound of metal on metal, but instead I heard two loud bangs. I risked a look and saw the rifle aimed at my face.

“Eyes on the wall, motherfucker. I swear, next time you look, I pull the trigger.”

Before he had even finished speaking, someone else started rolling the door up.

“Let's go,” Ruby said.

She was supposed to have gone straight to the safe house unless we called. She had made a detour.

“We're all done,” Rick said. The van started and I heard Franky put it in gear.

“Almost. They need to go,” Ruby said.

“What?”

“Did you think we could just take the money and that was it? I know these men. They will hunt us forever. They need to die.”

“That wasn't part of the plan,” Rick said.

“It was always the way it had to be and you know it,” Ruby said.

There was a short silence. Rick was hesitating, but he would realize there was only one choice soon enough. For him there was no other option than to kill us. Ruby was right; if they left us breathing we would never let them get away clean.

I didn't give Rick a chance to come to his own decision — I made the choice for him. The Glock was in my hand in under a second. Rick still facing me meant that I had to make myself less of a target. Instead of staying on my knees and bringing the gun to shoulder height, I flopped onto my back, bringing my shoulder down to the gun. As I fell to the concrete, I saw that Rick had let his gun droop while he steadied himself for the final part of his betrayal. It was coming back up a second behind my pistol. I put two rounds in Rick and Ruby's direction. The slugs punched the concrete between the two doors and sent the pair running for the other side of the van.

I heard a single shot, probably from D.B.'s gun and then a burst of automatic gunfire sounded. The van started to move forward with Franky low in the seat and I put three rounds into the door and two in the side window. The tail end of a shriek leapt through the shattered window just before I heard the door on the other side of the van open. The door slammed shut as balding tires spun on the smooth garage floor. The rubber found purchase and the van shot forward out of the repair bay, leaving only black marks behind. Without the van between us, I saw D.B. again — he didn't look the same.

T
he
AK
had punched three dots into D.B.'s guts as though it had let a sentence trail off. The first bullet had entered just under his right lung and the third looked like it had bored into his pelvis.

“Little fucker shot me. I was wrong. The job had three problems.”

“Forget that, we need to get out of here.”

“No problem. I'm in the mood for a fuckin' jog.”

I could hear sirens in the distance. I checked my watch and saw that thirteen minutes had passed. The sound was the first squad cars responding to the scene less than a kilometre away. Rob and Donna must have heard the sounds too. They frantically mumbled under the tape like they were doing a bad duet. I told them to shut the fuck up, and saw that they had both wet themselves.

“Stay here,” I said to D.B.

“No problem, bro. Take your fuckin' time. Hey, Rob, you and your lady shut up. If I'm not complaining, you sure as hell can't.”

I ran out to the lot and saw the Jeep Ruby had been driving outside the garage. The engine was still running. She had probably planned to follow the van to the safe house after her boy killed me and D.B. along with the guard and his missus. Shooting at Ruby and Rick had made them think on the fly; it was something the con artists weren't used to. They chose flight over fight and piled in the van, which was the fastest way out. With the automatic rifle, they could have killed D.B. and used the truck for cover while they took a run at me. They had better firepower and the numbers to do the job — a little patience was all that had been missing.

I got in the Jeep and reversed into the garage. I was moving so fast that D.B. brought his hands up in fear of getting run down. I got out and opened the trunk hatch. The seats went down with a little fidgeting and I hoisted D.B. inside. He screamed when I moved him. The scream wasn't through bared teeth; D.B.'s mouth was open wide and strings of spit billowed off his lips with the force of the yell. I slammed the lid and pulled out of the garage. The Jeep idled for ten seconds while I closed the door and then we were on the road.

“Press on the wounds as best you can, D.B.”

“Three bullets, two hands, Wilson. Do the fucking math.”

I pulled off the road into a Walmart parking lot. I took the handicap spot and said wait here to D.B.

D.B. laughed and then groaned. “Where the fuck am I going to go?” As I got out of the car I heard him say, “Get me some Smarties, bro.”

The bastard was tough, but blood loss didn't care about tough. I ran inside and bought fifteen Tensor bandages meant for sprains along with some tape and gauze. I was back in the car within three minutes and D.B. was barely conscious. Shock was teaming up with the blood loss to put him out.

I drove around to the side of the building where there was only an emergency exit, pulled to the curb, and climbed over the seats to D.B.

“Hold the wound under your lung,” I said while I unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants.

“You got it,” D.B. whispered.

I taped huge amounts of gauze over each of the wounds and then ripped open the boxes of Tensor bandages with my teeth.

“You got a guy you can call? A doctor for the Thieves that can keep his mouth shut?”

“Get my phone,” he whispered.

I pulled the disposable phone I gave him for the job out of the inner pocket of his leather jacket and let him dial the number while I worked the bandages around his torso. He screamed loud enough to hurt my ears and told someone on the phone to hold on. I took the phone and held it against my shoulder with my ear so I could keep wrapping.

“D.B., what the hell is going on? D.B.?”

“You a friend of D.B.'s?” I asked.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Doesn't matter. You a friend?”

“Yeah.”

“He's been shot. Bad. Three times, low in the body. We need a place to take him.”

“I know a guy. You need to get him to Brantford. I'll give you directions.”

“No good,” I said as I moved D.B.'s hand off the third shot. “The car we're in is going to be real hot real soon. You need to meet me somewhere and pick him up.”

“Where?”

I pinned the bandage in place and jammed a fresh one under D.B.'s back. He screamed louder than before as I wrapped it around his thick abdomen.

“What the hell was that?”

“Bowling alley at the end of the Lincoln Alexander Parkway. You know it?”

“Yeah. I'm sending people. You want to tell me what happened?”

“Just get to the bowling alley,” I said. “I'll park around back.”

I ended the call and finished wrapping. D.B. looked like half a mummy when I was done. I could already see blood getting through the bandages, but the flow had slowed considerably from the pressure of the wrappings.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“That was the Big Dawg,” he whispered.

Roland “Big Dawg” Simcoe. The head of the Forty Thieves. A man in charge of an army of bikers with less sense than D.B. A man who would want some answers about what happened to his number two.

“Hey,” D.B. whispered. “Where the fuck are the Smarties?”

B
ehind the bowling alley were a few Dumpsters and a chain-link fence running along the other side of thesingle-lane road that sat like a dry moat behind the building. Through the fence, I could see the parkway. Worse, the parkway could see me. The black Jeep wasn't hot before the job, but it was parked outside the garage. When they found the armoured truck, they might find someone who noticed the Jeep. There was also a chance Ruby could do something rash. She was panicked and on the run. She might decide to leak the Jeep to the police, hoping that they could finish what was started inside the garage with their police issue pieces. It was a stupid and risky idea; if we got caught instead of killed, we wouldn't have the money on us. Even a uniform would be smart enough to figure out that meant we had accomplices. We'd have no reason to keep Ruby, Rick, or Franky's names out of the cop's ears. Ratting was nothing but a bad idea, but so was trying to shoot us. I couldn't plan for only good ideas; they didn't seem to be in big supply today. I had to plan for anything that could happen and that meant I had to get rid of the Jeep.

I pulled in tight against the building and left the engine running.

“You still alive, D.B.?”

“Yeah.” His voice was so quiet I could barely hear it over the heat blowing out of the vents.

“I know this will sound insensitive, seeing as you're shot up, but I need to know. Should I expect Roland to show up ready to kill me?”

I heard D.B. laugh. “Yeah,” he whispered.

I had thought as much. Whether or not I was directly at fault, I was delivering the Big Dawg's number two all shot up. I was the messenger, and the messenger doesn't have a lot of luck in what I do. If Roland didn't try to kill me outright, he would at least want to take me for a trunk ride. He would want to know why D.B. could now be confused with Swiss cheese. If he found out about Ruby, Franky, her kid, and the money, he would cut himself in and edge me out.

“Go,” D.B. said.

It was unnecessary; my mind was already made up. I got out of the Jeep and opened the trunk.

“Give me your phone,” I said.

D.B. didn't move anything but his eyes. He tried to look at the floor beside him, but he only managed a glance at his shoulder. I followed the path and saw the phone beside him on the floor of the Jeep. I picked it up and touched redial. Roland picked up on the first ring.

“Yeah?”

“You coming for D.B.?”

“I got people on the way. They should be there any minute. Sit tight. We'll take care of both of you.”

The both of you sounded predatory. “We're in the Jeep parked behind the bowling alley,” I said.

“Who are you? D.B. said he had something to do today, but he never gave me any specifics.”

“I'm just a guy who was raised right,” I said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I don't talk to strangers.” I hung up the phone and patted D.B. on the shoulder. “They're a few minutes out. You were right about Roland.”

“Going?”

I nodded. “I got to take care of some things.”

“Ruby,” he whispered.

“Her kid and Franky too. They have our money.”

“Fuckers.”

I nodded. “After I catch up with them, I'll find you.”

“Roland,” he whispered.

“I know,” I said.

I closed the rear hatch and jogged around the building. Beside the bowling alley was a large furniture store — the kind that had a once-in-a-lifetime sale every other month. I crossed the parking lot and walked inside. I toured the giant store with my cell to my ear. I got Steve on the phone and told him where to pick me up.

I killed twenty minutes in the bathroom until a text buzzed my phone. The message read
Outside
. I left the washroom and walked straight out the door into Steve's Range Rover. He had the old model that still looked like it could climb a mountain. There were no heated leather seats, just worn upholstery and a roof rack.

“Rough morning?” Steve asked.

“Ruby and her kid double-crossed us.”

“Hunh.”

“Yep.”

I told Steve where I needed to go and he pulled into traffic.

“Stupid,” Steve said when we stopped at a light.

“Me or her?”

Steve took his eyes off the road long enough to give me a look. “Her. She broke the rule.”

“What rule?”

“Never play another man's game.”

Steve was right. Ruby was a grifter, probably one of the best cons I had ever known. She got to me using a feint I would recognize a mile out. She had me think that she was trying to use her bastard kid as leverage when she was really baiting me with the job.

A good con is better than a shrink; they can get in a person's head and get them to give up everything without having them feel like they lost anything. Ruby was better than good — she was great and she got in my head enough to know that deep down inside me there was something primal that wouldn't be able to sit still. That part of me was dying to work and she tapped into it. She knew me growing up, knew my uncle. She knew a challenge like an armoured car full of cash would give me a boner that just wouldn't go away. The sly bitch worked me and used the dumb kid, if he really even was her kid, to slowly move me into the driver's seat. I thought I saw through her. I thought I had the upper hand, but that was what she wanted me to think. The whole thing was a thirty-move checkmate that I never saw coming.

But all that guile and subterfuge didn't end with me doing the job. She went a step further than the con and tried to pull a robbery and a murder. Duping me might have been easy, but killing me is damn hard. Ruby was a trickster, not a killer. When it came time to use violence instead of grift, her plan fell apart. That thirty-move checkmate meant shit because the board was turned over and the pieces rolled out of place. Now Ruby was where she never planned to be. She, Rick, and Franky had the money, but they didn't have their endgame — they weren't away clean. There was one loose end and it was holding a gun. Ruby knew it was coming for her and she knew that all the cons in the world couldn't save her. She had given up playing chess for a new game with new rules and higher stakes. Steve was right — she dealt herself into my game.

Steve lapsed into silence. He wasn't ignoring me; quiet was just his default setting. The wordless drive gave me nothing to do but think. My mind went over the last few weeks searching for the scent of betrayal that I had missed. It became harder and harder to concentrate because of the sound. It was an angry, primal grinding that seemed to echo off the walls of my skull. The sound shook me out of my trance and I realized that it was coming from me. My jaw was tensed and my teeth were bared. The grinding of hard calcium on hard calcium was loud and the pressure was sowing the seeds of a migraine. My hand was tight on the door handle and my feet were pressing into the floor. I felt like an astronaut tensed for re-entry. The anger was everywhere. I put my hands over my face and buried my fingers in my eye sockets. I took a deep breath and forced the anger back down into whatever cage it had erupted out of. The emotion was no good to me. It wouldn't help me get anywhere near Ruby.

“Everything can get mad,” my uncle had once said. “Watch this.” He threw a rock at a cat eating out of a garbage can and the stone pinged off the rusted metal shell of the can. The cat leapt to the ground and raised its back. The hiss that climbed out of its throat was ferocious. The hiss said that his jungle cat ancestors weren't as far away as we might have thought. “See? The fucking cat is angry. Now what's he going to do about it? He's got two options hardwired into that feline grey matter. Fight or flight is all he knows. And where does that get him? He fights and he dies, or he runs and stays hungry. You'd be amazed how many people are wired the same way. They're on a job and someone takes a shot at them and they go to pieces. They forget everything and fall back on instinct. It's like they don't realize that they're better than a fucking alley cat. You have to force yourself to ignore feeling angry or scared. Letting those emotions run you just means you'll end up like the cat — dead or hungry. You have to learn to let yourself feel the anger without letting it change you. You learn to do that and you won't pick a fight you can't win or run away without what you came for. In our line of work, boy, going hungry isn't an option and neither is dying.”

I felt my jaw slacken and the rest of me soon caught up. I was still angry, but I wasn't riding it anymore — the anger was fuelling me, not controlling me.

Steve pulled into the parking lot of a home improvement store and parked in a space near the back of the lot. I got out, thanked Steve, and crossed the parking lot to the Dodge Neon I had left there the night before. I had stashed the car in case I needed to make my own getaway. I didn't tell anyone else about the car because no one needed to hear that part of me never fully trusted anyone else. The Neon was a close looking cousin to the Honda Civic I had boosted weeks before. There were so many Neons on the road that they attracted about as much attention as birds in the sky.

I took the key out of the wheel well and drove out of the parking lot in the opposite direction of the crime scene a few kilometres away. I drove through the city until the road hit a major intersection. I saw an independently run coffee shop on the corner and pulled into the lot. Inside, there was only a man behind the counter reading the paper. He was happy to get me two muffins and a tea without starting a conversation, and I took a seat in the corner where I could watch the lot outside with my back to the wall. I barely tasted the food as I thought things over. I had nine bullets left in the Glock and two spare magazines. The disposable cell was still in my pocket. I had shut it down and it would stay that way. Ruby knew the number and that meant I couldn't risk leaving it on. A lifetime in the business meant she knew a lot of people; some of them would know how to follow a phone. It was clear that I had underestimated Ruby and Rick, and I didn't want to do it again. I didn't want to lose the phone because it was still useful. Ruby knew the number and she might try to call it. I would check the voice mail twice a day and then shut it down again to keep it untraceable.

The second muffin was as tasteless as the first — Ruby, Rick, and Franky were all I could think about. They had all of the money and a head start. Where would they go? They could get on a plane, but the money couldn't travel with them. They couldn't bank it so soon after an armoured car job. They had to sit on it or travel with it. I had no idea what kind of roots Ruby had, but a sixty-something woman had to know a lot of people. How many would she involve in something like this? Before I finished the last of my tea, I knew what I had to do. Ruby had too many advantages — I had to take all of them away.