The Last Kind Word (12 page)

This is good,
my inner voice told me.
You're doing God's work.

“You da man,” I said aloud as I did a little dance.

I thought I was alone in the cabin. Josie poked her head around the doorway that led to the bathroom and looked at me.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“Hmm? Me? No.”

“Thought I heard something.”

She stepped into the living room. Gone were the boots, baggy coveralls, sweatshirt, and ball cap that she used to disguise herself the previous day. They were replaced by flip-flops; khaki shorts that revealed long, slender legs; and a light, pink sweater that Josie had buttoned from her waist to just below her chin. She had allowed her auburn hair to cascade around her shoulders.

“Dyson, what are we going to do first?” she asked.

“Get some breakfast,” I said.

Josie had grilled chicken on the deck the evening before, and I hadn't eaten anything since, although I had consumed plenty of cheap beer. Afterward, everyone except Skarda and myself departed to their separate homes, taking their thin stacks of currency with them. Jill didn't get a share, and I had asked Josie about that.

“It's the way Roy wants it,” she told me. I took that to mean Roy was desperate to keep Jill under his thumb. Give her money and she might use it to leave him.

Only Skarda and I had remained overnight. When he wasn't looking, I took the grocery bags filled with checks and receipts and stashed them beneath the cabin.

Early in the morning, we went fishing, using the late owner's boat and equipment; he had a nice Shakespeare rod and reel outfit and an impressive tackle box. Yet despite Skarda's promise of fish, we were both skunked. While we were on the lake, I unceremoniously dropped the Glock overboard, making sure Skarda saw me do it. When he asked why, I told him there was an unsubstantiated rumor that it had been employed in the commission of a felony and I didn't want the authorities to get the wrong idea should they find it on me. “Never keep the gun, Dave. Never.” He nodded his head in agreement as if my advice had come straight from the mount. 'Course, I didn't mention that I dumped the Glock to make sure nobody discovered it had been loaded with blanks. (You had to give Bullert credit; he didn't leave much to chance.)

By the time we got off the lake, the Iron Range Bandits were already gathering on the deck. I went inside and changed clothes. I didn't have much to choose from, just the stuff we had tossed into the nylon bag in the back of the Explorer before staging the escape. I thought I was the only one in the cabin until Josie appeared.

“What are we going to do after breakfast?” she asked.

“It's like I told Jimmy last night. We need to find an armored truck and follow it around for a few days. Armored trucks generally have a tightly choreographed routine of stops and starts—supermarkets, bank branches, department stores, casinos, anyplace with an ATM. What we're looking for is a weakness, something we can exploit. I remember there were these two armored car guards working outside San Francisco a couple years ago. Turned out they always stopped at the same coffeehouse. They'd stop there at different times of the day, but it was always the same coffeehouse. One afternoon a crew met them at the front door with guns, took their keys, forced them back into the truck, drove to a prearranged location, looted the truck, and left them tied up in the back. Feds said the crew got away with the proverbial undisclosed amount of cash. I'm here to tell you that it was nearly eight hundred thousand dollars.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know…” Josie was watching my eyes. They told her to stop asking questions, so she did.

I'm getting good at this, I thought.

“Where do we start?” Josie asked.

“I'm not familiar with the area, so I'm going to need someone to drive.” I pointed at her.

“Me?” she said.

“Can't use Dave. He and I are still wanted, and while it's unlikely that anyone will recognize me, Dave is known up here. All things considered, I think it's best that Roy and I keep our distance as much as possible. The old man—with due respect, he's too old for what I have in mind, and Jimmy, he's a little too enthusiastic. That leaves you.”

“Jillian…”

“I want her kept out of this. She should never have been involved in the first place.”

“You seem to have taken quite a fancy to her.”

“She's the little sister I never had.”

“Is that it? She's quite beautiful, you know.”

“I make it a point not to lust after any woman who hasn't voted in at least three presidential elections.”

“I don't think Jill's voted in any yet. Besides, she's married.”

“There's that, too.”

“If you need a woman…”

“Excuse me?”

“I'm just saying…”

“Josie, are you offering yourself to me?”

She blushed, actually blushed—you don't often see that in a grown woman. Her eyes grew wide, her freckles sparkled, her mouth opened, and she took a step backward.

“No,” she said. “I should say not. I mean—I meant a married woman, Jill is a married woman, and Roy—Roy has a temper and, and there are others who would be willing, that you can, but not—dammit.”

She spun on her heel and quickly walked out of the cabin, letting the door slam behind her.

“Oh, well,” I said.

*   *   *

I joined her on the deck a few moments later. The Bandits watched me expectantly. I didn't want them to think too much, so I told them what I had in mind.

“Josie will be my driver,” I said. “Jimmy, you're the tech guy.” Jimmy grinned widely and jumped up from the picnic table as if he had been chosen first in a game of dodge ball. “I want you go to your computer and locate all of the cash-intensive businesses you can. I don't mean in a ten-mile radius, either. I mean throughout the Iron Range. Compile a list. Afterward, I want you to mark their locations on a map of the area. A big map.”

“I'm on it,” he said.

“Roy, you're my procurement officer. We're going to need vehicles, coveralls, gloves, masks, nylon restraints like the kind cops use, weapons, of course—I'm not sure exactly what we'll need, but I need you to think about where we're going to get this stuff, anyway.”

“Are we going to buy or steal?” he asked.

“We'll steal the cars.” Roy's pupils grew larger. “Don't worry, I'll show you how.”

“You should have seen how he stole the Jeep Cherokee,” Skarda said. “It was beautiful.”

“Dave,” I said. “You talk way too much.”

“Sorry.”

“Try to work on that.”

“I will.”

“Which reminds me—I don't need to tell you all to keep quiet about this, do I? You're conspiring to commit a major felony. You can be arrested just for that alone. Please, please don't tell your friends. Don't tell your relatives. Don't get drunk and brag about it in a bar. If you want to stay out of prison, this is a secret you take to your graves.”

“Hear, hear,” said the old man. He seemed to have recovered nicely from the Silver Bay raid. He was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and sitting in his frayed lawn chair at the head of the picnic table. An unlit joint hung from his lips. The look in his eye suggested it wasn't his first of the day. I asked the obvious question.

“Are you smoking dope?”

“It's medicinal marijuana,” he said.

Does he have cancer?
my inner voice asked. I glanced at Josie for confirmation. She was rolling her eyes.
I guess not.

“It's important that we keep a clear head,” I said.

“You got a job for me?” the old man asked.

“Not today.”

He spread his arms wide. “Still say you look like a narc.”

“Keep it to yourself.”

“What do you want me to do?” Skarda asked.

I gestured at the old man again. “Take your father fishing. And keep out of sight. You're hot, remember?”

“So are you.”

“No one will recognize me. You, on the other hand, are known hither and yon. Don't worry about it, Dave. You'll have plenty to do when the time comes.”

“Should I be doing anything?” Jill asked. Her voice was so soft I barely heard it. I found her eyes. They betrayed her apprehension.

“No,” I said. “I won't ask you to do anything on this job. You'll be left completely out of it. All I want you to do is go home and pretend that you're not surrounded by a bunch of lowlife maniac thieves, okay?”

She didn't quite smile, but her face seemed to brighten a bit just the same. “Thank you,” she said.

Roy glanced from Jill to me to her and back to me again. “What do you mean, she's out of it?” he asked.

I ignored the question, although I knew it would come up again, and soon.

“One more thing, people,” I said. “I'm not a big believer in this honor among thieves BS. Everything you heard about being a stand-up guy and not snitching, not informing—forget that. It's okay to look out for yourself. I highly recommend it. All I ask is that you give everyone the same courtesy that the CIA asks of its operatives—a twenty-four-hour head start. If you're arrested, don't even give out your name, rank, or serial number. Keep absolutely quiet for twenty-four hours; give the rest of us a chance to run and hide. After that, I advise you to do whatever you need to to protect yourself, and good luck to you.”

“Hear that, Roy?” Skarda asked.

“What's that suppose to mean?” Roy said.

“Your gun dealers—you've been keeping their names a secret so that you have something to trade to the cops if you get arrested, make a deal to help yourself while the rest of us go to prison. Well, now you've got our blessing.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Dave,” I said. He looked at me, and I ran my thumb and index finger across my lips like I was closing a zipper.

“I was just saying,” he said.

“Okay.” I clapped my hands together and rubbed them back and forth. “Let's get to work.”

Josie and I left the deck and circled the cabin to where Josie's Taurus was parked. We were going to take her car because my Jeep Cherokee, after all, was stolen. Roy followed us. I kind of figured he would.

“Wait a minute, Dyson,” he called.

“What do you need?” I asked.

His fingers curled into fists as he approached, and his eyes darted from my hands to my chin, nose, eyes, throat, groin, and knees—they were target glances, something I was taught to look for when I was at the police academy.
The sonuvabitch is going to throw a punch,
my inner voice warned. I waited.

“What is this bullshit?” he asked.

“Could you be more specific?”

His fists tightened and his teeth clenched. “I saw the look you gave my wife.”

“What look?”

He stopped with his left foot forward and his right foot back, a pugilistic stance. He cocked his right arm. I hit him hard in the jaw with a left jab, but he took it like a bitch-slap from an old man with arthritis. I hit him again with my right, this time putting all of my weight into it. He fell backward, bounced against the cabin wall, and slid slowly to a sitting position. For a moment he looked like a pile of laundry before being tossed into the washer.

“Dyson,” Josie shouted.

“What? I'm supposed to wait until he hit me?” I moved close to Roy and leaned in. “You were going to hit me, weren't you, Roy?”

He nodded even as he brought a hand up to cradle his jaw.

“I guess you're upset that I cut Jill out of the crew, am I right?” He nodded again. “Maybe you think I have the hots for her.” His eyes locked on mine. “Not true. It really isn't. She's out because she doesn't have the stomach for any of this; she doesn't have the heart for it. Jill's gone along with you so far because you made her. Every step of the way, though, she's been thinking she should run—you can see it in her eyes, in her demeanor. Your slapping her around isn't helping any, either. All it does is make her want to run that much more. Where do you think she's going to run to, Roy, if you keep punching her out? She's going to run to the cops, and then we're all screwed.”

“She won't go to the police.”

“What's stopping her, Roy? Her undying devotion to you? I have no doubt that Jill loved you once, but I think you've pretty much beaten it out of her. I understand that times are tough; I understand that they're tougher on some than on others. Beating on the one person who has vowed to stick with you for better or for worse, tell me how that helps? Look, your personal life is your business. If you don't love your wife, that's fine with me—”

“I love my wife.”

“I hadn't noticed, but that's not my concern. My concern is staying out of prison, so Jill is out of it. It wouldn't kill you to be nice to her until the job is over, either. You might try to remember why you married her in the first place—I bet you had some pretty good reasons.”

I stepped back and offered Roy my hand. He took it, and I helped hoist him off the ground.

“No hard feelings, okay?” I said. “I need you, Roy. These kids, they don't know which end is up. If we're going to pull this off, it'll be you and me doing the heavy lifting. I know I've been giving you a hard time since I arrived. That was just to establish hierarchy for the kids. You're army; you understand what I'm talking about.”

He nodded, and I patted his arm.

“Good man,” I said. I started walking toward Josie's car. Roy called to me.

“Dyson. When this is over, I'm going to kick the shit out of you.”

“Roy, Roy, Roy,” I said. “When this is over, you're going to be too busy counting your money to even think about that.”