“This some unnecessary bullshit,” the man continued, his head back, addressing the night sky.
Stoner could just make out a dark SUV behind him at the curb. “See if anybody’s in that truck,” he whispered to Hawkins.
Crouched by the window, Hawkins shook his head.
Stoner reached for the deadbolt with his left hand, grasped the doorknob with his right.
Hawkins scrambled around to the other side of the doorway, hefted his Maglite over his head.
“Tell him to bring it in,” Stoner said.
“BRING IT IN!”
Stoner yanked the door open.
The man on the porch did not step inside.
When three seconds had passed, Stoner and Hawkins collided in the doorway.
“Oh, hell no,” the man on the porch said. His hands were dropping from behind his neck. He seemed to be caught between kicking the bag and reaching to grab it when Stoner swung the Maglite into the side of his head.
They met at the Ford plant bar the next afternoon. Hawkins was talking to the pretty bartender as she worked a rag over the top of the bar.
“Hey, Stoner, tell Kiley what part of Detroit you work in.”
“The Central Business District.”
The bartender laughed convulsively, held the back of her wrist to her mouth, trying to stop.
“See? What I tell ya?” When she moved away to draw a beer for Stoner, Hawkins leaned toward him and said, “We gotta go back.”
“Where?”
“What? Come on. Thanks, Kiley.” Hawkins picked up both of their glasses and started walking toward a booth.
“Eddie, did you see the newspaper?” Stoner’s own voice sounded crazy to him, almost as crazy as Hawkins did.
“Yeah, I saw it. One of those crackheads had the decency to call an ambulance like you told them.”
“And?”
Hawkins sat down. “And — everybody’s in Detroit Receiving with a headache?”
“And the fucking FBI is in town investigating the police department.”
“That just means the dickheads the bagman was looking for are gonna be laying low.” Hawkins drummed the tabletop, grinning widely. “Fucking three grand, dude!”
Stoner sat down, shaking his head. “Think about it, man. Even the cops who’re total jackoffs have got to be thinking about finding the guys who took down that house, before Internal Affairs tries to pin it on them.”
Hawkins nodded. “They’re closing ranks. But that’s what always happens when some shit hits the news. I’ve been doing this for three years, remember.”
“Doing what for three years?”
“Been a security man three years.”
“They gotta be looking at the patrolmen,” Stoner said, thinking aloud, “because who else is gonna go to the trouble for a few hundred bucks?”
“We did better than that.”
“They don’t know how much we got. We took three thousand off the guys they’re looking for. And those guys have got to be looking for us.”
He waved the folded Detroit News he was still carrying.
“And now the FBI is watching everybody,” Stoner added.
“They’re looking for dirty cops, not for us.”
“They’re looking for dickhead cops. They have no idea that they’re looking for cops as dirty as the cops we ripped off.”
“Still — they’re looking for dirty cops, so the dirty cops will lay low.”
“Yeah, well, that’s also pretty good incentive for the good cops to find us, don’t you think?”
“That’s why we have to act fast. We have time for one more score, while they’re still all bumpin’ dicks.”
“Man, what are you talking about? You want to shake down another house?”
“I want another gym bag.”
Stoner looked into his cousin’s crazy eyes and laughed. “Dumb luck, man.”
“We need two months’ rent. Stationery and business cards. I’m telling you, dude, we’ve got to act now. The Super Bowl. The All-Star Game. Terrorists coming over from Canada. There’s big money to be made.”
Stoner thought about the money again.
He’d already set aside a grand from the bag — a third of the take, less than a full share. That was money enough to fix his truck, or make a down payment on another used car. His cousin could keep the rest, and five hundred of Stoner’s share, and put it toward the business. He’d help him tonight, because he could see there was no way Hawkins wasn’t going, but that would be the end of it.
“There’s no way we can know about another house that’s paying off those cops. What do you want to do, stake out the entire fucking supermarket?”
“No, dude. We don’t have time. We gotta do the same house.”
They went that night.
They turned off Grand River Avenue onto Fullerton and moved in a grid, staying at least two blocks away from the street the house was on. Hawkins drove slowly, with the headlights off and the windows rolled down. They both sat leaning forward, watching and listening.
Stoner thought it was a good strategy, but it was hard to see much: The houses were set too close together, the spaces between filled with overgrown shrubs and bedsprings.
Finally he saw yellow police tape poking through the backyards. “Stop,” he told Hawkins, pointing.
Hawkins put the car in park and killed the engine, right in the middle of the street. “That’s not the house,” he said finally.
“It’s not, is it?”
“Nope,” Hawkins said. “Wrong side of the street. Too far down.”
“Think something else happened?”
“What do you think?”
“I think they moved them to this house, here, then called the cops.”
“There must’ve been something in that house. I mean, we didn’t find shit. But there was some shit in there they did not want to give up, or there was too much of it to move.”
“I think they’re still in business, at the other house.”
“Man, those guys didn’t seem together enough for this.” Hawkins sounded scared.
Stoner shook his head. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I think you’re right,” Hawkins said.
“Let’s try someplace else. Let’s try southwest Detroit. Along Michigan Avenue somewhere.” Stoner held his wristwatch up to his face, but without any working streetlights, it was too dark to read it. “What time is it?”
Hawkins poked a finger at the dashboard radio, as if he’d forgotten the ignition was off and was trying to summon the digital clock.
“Let’s just go,” Stoner said.
Hawkins turned the key in the ignition, and country music, badly distorted at full volume, blasted out of the speakers and pinned them back in their seats.
They both shrieked like girls. Their hands collided, trying to turn the radio off.
“Jesus Christ!”
They looked at each other and laughed in the sudden quiet, true partners at last.
“Man,” Hawkins said, listening, “not even a dog barking.”
“Guess we didn’t wake anybody up.”
“I wonder why they don’t like dogs.”
They came to the end of the block, and a dark four-door with its headlights off slammed into their front end, spinning the Grand Marquis ninety degrees.
Four broad-shouldered men, moving the way cops moved, scrambled out of the car. They said nothing Stoner could hear. They were dressed nothing like cops. The car looked nothing like a cop car: It looked like one of the cars jamming the Hawkins family’s driveway, or up on cinder blocks in their side yard, back when Stoner and Hawkins were kids.
The man who’d gotten out of the driver’s seat shot Hawkins in the chest, twice.