“Where we gonna stop and break out weapons?” James asked.
“Wow. I have to pee. I have to piss so bad,” Burris said. Bill Houston didn’t like to hear the undercurrent of whining in his youngest brother’s tone of voice. It turned his stomach. It made him afraid.
Dwight leaned forward and put a hand on Burris’s shoulder. “You are the weakest link in this operation. We’re taking you right up to your limit. But you’re with us because I am absolutely certain that you’ll smoothly and efficiently carry out everything required of you today. Understand?”
“Sure,” Burris said.
“You know your job. You stay parked out front as long as it takes. What if we never come out?”
“I never move.”
“A-plus. You never move. You stay there as long as it takes. You’re going to feel anxious, but you’re not going to move. If I thought you were the kind to break, somebody else would be driving this car. Now we’ll stop at a gas station and bring the guns up front, and you can piss. Head over to Seventh Street.”
It was as if the hand on Burris’s shoulder communicated serenity. He relaxed.
Under Dwight Snow’s direction he drove slowly over to Seventh Street and then north to a gas station of dubious quality, keeping his right hand at all times on the dashboard and its thumb on the buttons of the radio, pushing the buttons regularly to change the stations and cut off the DJ’s and get the talking out of his life.
When Burris was finished in the bathroom he came back and rested against the car while Bill Houston went inside to empty his bladder. Bill Houston didn’t like the way Burris looked. Anything could go wrong now. He could step outside to find squad cars flanking the Chrysler, thanks to the merest bit of the vast unforeseen, the unconsiderable factors and the twists of dumb luck.
In the hacked and vandalized service station restroom he stood before the commode with one hand on his hip, unzipping the fly of his pants — but when he saw the tiny specks of blood dotting the mirror’s glass above the sink, he lost any desire to relieve himself and his stomach turned hard as ice. He felt he was looking, now, at what hadn’t been foreseen.
“What do you think you’re trying to do?” he said to Burris when he stepped outside. “You figure we’re just playing here? You think we’re going to get high and then go to the drive-in?”
Dwight was at that moment getting out of the car and going around to the trunk. “Problem, Bill?” He untied the wire, raised the trunk’s lid, and hoisted out the duffel bag full of firearms.
“This son of a bitch went in there and shot his arm full of dope,” Bill Houston said. “There’s blood on the mirror in there.”
“Blood on the mirror,” Dwight repeated.
“I used to play cards with a couple dopers on the Reservation up by Tacoma,” Bill Houston told his brother. “They were always spraying shit on the wall like that when they were done shooting up. You think I don’t know what that blood is?” He appealed to Dwight: “Didn’t even try to hide it,” he said
Burris shrugged, examining his boots and behaving as if there were something on one of his boots that needed to be scraped away.
“I ought to jerk your fucking head off for you,” Bill Houston said. He was on the brink of tears.
“We’ll discuss this in a minute. I’ve got to get these out of the public eye,” Dwight said, and moved to carry the duffel bag into the bathroom. “Bring the flowers,” he told James over his shoulder. “Burris, stay with the car.”
When Bill and James had joined him inside, James holding the bouquet of flowers, Dwight said, “I think we should just proceed as planned.” He knelt on the floor and took the machine pistol from the duffel bag along with two boxes of rounds. “If he’s too high to function, we can improvise.”
James had nothing to say. He looked deep into the mirror stained with grease and a string of minute bloody flecks; his expression, as he greeted his own face, like that of someone suddenly released.
“Improvise?” Bill Houston said. “Jesus Christ, improvise?” He accepted the sawed-off shotgun from Dwight, and then a box of one dozen shells. He looked about them at the walls and floor of the obliterated john, but couldn’t find anything to point to that would explain why he felt it necessary to abort their plans. “Hey,” he said to James finally. “Unwrap them daisies, how about.” He broke open his weapon and began inserting shells. It was a pump-action Remington, and it made him feel happy in spite of himself.
“You never can tell. He just might function with a little more finesse.” Dwight opened his garish tropical shirt and slipped the machine pistol into a holster rigged with a cowboy belt and black electrician’s tape that girded his chest, the pistol resting along his rib cage under his left arm. He helped Bill Houston unwrap and re-wrap the flowers, the sawed-off Remington now among them. James loaded both revolvers — a nine-millimeter Ruger of stainless steel and his own long-barrelled Colt — and replaced them in the duffel bag along with the boxes of ammunition.
They all three stood up straight and looked at one another — Bill Houston clutching the lethal bouquet, James with the duffel bag, Dwight holding his arm close alongside like the victim of a stroke — with something akin to love, a kind of immense approval, because now they were in one another’s hands.
“I’m getting excellent vibes here,” Dwight said. “Obviously no one wants to scrap this thing. Let’s just take it along the projected route. If Burris fucks up, we’ll shut down and do it all over again tomorrow.”
Neither brother dissented. The time was now, it was obvious.
Burris had another shrug for them when the three got into the car and nobody said anything except, “Drive on.” He knew they sensed his incompetence. “Where’s my piece?” he said.
“In the bag here. You can keep my little monster when we go into it,” James told him. “I’m taking the Ruger.” As he said these things he looked out of the window, and spoke casually.
Burris followed Dwight’s orders carefully, turning west only when directed, north only when directed, taking it one block at a time. He wanted them to know that he was competent: that half a bag — not a lethal dose, by any means — was just about right here, focusing his attention and rounding off some of the corners. He was in a good place, and felt relief beyond the mere action of heroin: he’d taken a chance getting off like this, that went without saying. He could have taken too much, he understood that. But sometimes the proper induction of chemicals was a requirement. He was surprised when Dwight said, “Stop here.” They were in front of the Central Avenue First State Bank. “We’ve come to where the flavor is,” James said. He set the forty-four Colt on the seat between them, touching Burris’s thigh. “Street looks sunny and calm,” Bill Houston said, and Dwight said, “Remember: motor running at all times.”
And Burris’s Adam’s apple filled with wet cement and his eyes clouded with burning teardrops. “We’re going to be seven minutes maximum,” he heard Dwight’s voice telling him. “But suppose we’re in there for seven hours?”
“Nothing,” Burris said. “I stay here,” he said. Although he knew they all knew he wasn’t competent.
They went into it slowly, testing each inch of space.
As they went into it James felt his nostrils dilate painfully, and jism dripped from his penis and stained his underwear. The stainless steel barrel of the revolver touched his thigh like a loving finger, and he said to it in his mind, You’re everything to me. For the next seven minutes you are my wife, my lawyer, and my money.