East watched Ty working, recognized his careful pace. Taking time at each window, noting the rooms, the layout and angles. Shooters thought things through two ways. Where were people likely to be, before they knew about you? Then after, when they did, where were they likely to go? Where was shelter? Did they cover? Head for a closet where the guns were? If they shot back at you, from where? Or would they flush right out to the yard? A shooter understood a home just as well as the people who lived there. But to different ends.
Less cautious by the moment, Ty worked around the back. A car rolled by slowly on the stony road without slowing. East stood inside the clearing now, drawn to the house by impatience.
After four minutes Ty had made a full lap. No caution in how he stood now. Contempt for the house that had no people in it. Contempt for the time he’d spent working slowly. He spotted East along the face of the woods and approached, sticking the gun away with a swagger.
East felt almost apologetic. “Any minute he could be home.”
“No.” Ty shook his head. “No. No clothes, no suitcase. No dishes in the sink. No soap in the bathroom. Water’s switched off. House is cold. Nobody’s been here. Or if they were, they won’t be back for a while.”
“You want me to look?” said East.
Ty laughed. “Be my guest.”
East made his own circuit. His eyes were hungry in the dark. He peered inside but nothing broke with Ty’s account. Items to interest a thief — nice speakers, espresso maker, a flat TV up high. People with houses like this didn’t skimp. Stealing wasn’t his game but he knew enough from listening — most of the boys he’d led were thieves at some time. Once they stopped stealing, they stopped being quiet about it.
The back glass door was braced against sliding but not barred, like in the city. Probably an alarm, probably a glass-break sensor. No security badge on the windows, but he would have bet. It didn’t matter much. If Ty saw his man, he’d be making noise.
Walter wandered up. “What you want to do? Stay here and stake out?”
“Wish we could bring the van up,” said East. “It’s cold.”
“Scare him straight away too. Van full of black boys idling by the house?”
“I know.”
Now the chill penetrated him. But the heat of the van seemed a hundred miles away.
“You want to go?” Walter said.
East slit his eyes. “No.”
“I’m even getting cold myself,” Walter said, undulating his bulk.
East turned away, played the judge’s features in his head again. What he could remember.
“You want to go?” said Walter.
“Didn’t you just say that?” said East viciously.
Ty came out around the corner, face pinched in, like he was chewing it up from the inside. “Shit. Forget it,” he said. “I’m done with this.”
East said, “Let’s give it another hour.”
“Oh?” said Ty. “You in charge? Fine, stay here. I know you like standing by a house. Me, I’m finished.”
“I second that,” said Walter.
East rolled his eyes at the sky. Fading but still silver above the grave-black square the trees made.
“We can call Abe back up. Might be a plan B,” said Walter. “Come on, East. Sitting out here ain’t gonna be nothing but cold.”
“But what if they don’t answer.”
“Then they don’t. Let’s warm up at least. Get some food.”
“I don’t need to warm up.”
Ty snorted. “Listen to him. Fucking cowboy, man. I seen you get cold last night.”
Darkly East glared.
“I don’t know,” protested Walter. “I don’t know if they’ll answer. But maybe he’s at a hotel or buying gas or at an airport. But I do know if he’s somewhere else, we can find that out.”
“How you gonna find that out?”
Walter pressed his lips together grimly. “Stuff you don’t know about, man.”
“You saying—”
“I’m saying I can’t talk about it. But it’s real.”
“Fuck it,” said Ty. “Fuck you both. I’ll be in the van.”
Walter glanced at Ty as he went. “I gotta agree,” he said.
Quiet now. Even the birds stopped shifting in their trees.
“You coming?”
“Just trying to do my job,” East said.
“Okay. I hear you. But I’m ready to get out of this icebox, man. Come on.”
East hesitated, then followed Walter out to the road. Ty was a hundred yards ahead, out in plain view. At least it was dark. East hurried to catch up with Walter.
“Tell me one thing,” he said. “The judge, could he have gone to LA already?”
“I guess,” Walter said. “Possible. But I’m going to say no.”
“Because of what?”
Walter winced. “Stuff you don’t know about,” he repeated.
“More stuff. Shit.” East kicked a pinecone. “Burn these woods up, man.”
—
Somehow they’d gotten low on gas. All tired. All angry. East took it personally. The empty house was another house lost. He had tried to keep it straight. But now everyone would kill one another at the first sideways look.
East fired the van through the little bubble of light that was the town and back into the dark, pine-jagged night. The big highway home lay to the south, so he took them north — toward the other lake, the ghetto lake, just by instinct. Just a glimpse of the big highway and it was over. The job would be over. If it weren’t already.
All the miles, he thought. Nothing.
“Why we ain’t got a cell?” grumbled Ty. “So much time wasted finding these phones.”
“You know why,” Walter said.
“You know there’s a way to do it. You just too scary of everything.”
“I’m Murder One scary,” Walter replied. Staring out at nothing.
“All right. All right,” East broke in. “Look. Wasn’t there a pay phone up at Welfare Lake?”
“Yep.”
“Do you know, while we were sleeping, some dude tried to rob us up there?”
Walter giggled. “What do you mean, tried to?”
“White dude with a little gun in his hand. I gave him three.” Before it had seemed funny, a story he could save up and tell. Now it didn’t have much in it.
“So he did rob us,” said Ty. “Whyn’t you wake me?”
“Think about it,” said Walter. “Think for a minute why he didn’t wake you.”
—
Yes: a phone booth, a fisherman’s phone, at the second lake. It hung on a power pole beneath a light, the last few buzzing insects struggling through the cold air.
One woman, maybe thirty, forty, in dirty pink sandals, was on the line. Dolefully they watched her.
“What do you want to do?” asked East.
“Wait,” said Walter. “What are we gonna do? Drive around? Go back and freeze? How long you think she can stand there in that housedress?”
“That housedress looks warm,” Ty put in from the back. “I say she’ll be there all night.”
East parked the van two rows of spaces out and killed the lights. Left the van to idle. He broke open a water bottle, but it only made him colder.
“Wonder what she’s talking about,” Walter said, cracking his neck side to side.
Her feet were bare in the fuzzy sandals. She looked over her shoulder and winced at the sight of the van. Then turned back.
“When we get on there, talk if you want. But I got to ask a few questions,” Walter said.
“I don’t even care. You talk,” East said. “What is stuff I don’t know about? That’s what I want to know.”