“Let us get out of the car!” Ilya said.
“The money!” Cosmo cried. “We have money!”
“Fuck money,” Ilya said.
The engine almost started, but he flooded it. He waited and tried again and it kicked over, and the Mazda began lurching south on Gower.
Cosmo decided that she was right, that they must get out and flee on foot. “Son of bastard!” he screamed. “I kill fucking Georgian that give me this car!”
“We leave it now?” Ilya said. “Stop, Cosmo.”
Then the idea came to him. “Ilya,” he said, “you know where we be now?”
“Yes, Gower Street,” she said. “Stop the car!”
“No, Ilya. We be almost at the house of the miserable addict Farley.”
Ilya had never been to Farley’s house and could not see the significance of this. “So who gives damn about fucking tweaker? Stop the car! I get out!”
Cosmo realized that he was a block and a half away, that was all. A block and a half. “Ilya, please do not jump out. Farley has little garage! Farley always park his shit car on the street so is easy to push it.”
“Cosmo!” she screamed again. “I am going to kill you or me! Stop this car! Let me out!”
“Two minutes,” he said. “We be at house of Farley. We put this car in garage of Farley. Our money shall be safe. We shall be safe!”
The Mazda bucked and shuddered its way down Gower to the residential street of Farley Ramsdale. Cosmo Betrossian was afraid that the car wouldn’t make the final turn, but it did. And as though the Mazda had a mind and a will, it seemed to throw itself in a last lurching effort up the slightly sloping driveway, where it sputtered and died beside the old bungalow.
Cosmo and Ilya got out quickly, and Cosmo opened the garage door and threw some boxes of junk and an old, rusty bike from the garage into the backyard, making room for the Mazda. Cosmo and Ilya both had to push the car into the garage. Cosmo tucked both pistols inside his belt, grabbed the container of money, and closed the termite-riddled door.
They went to the front door of the bungalow and knocked but got no answer. Cosmo tried the door and found it locked. They went to the back door, where Cosmo slipped the wafer lock with a credit card, and they entered to await the return of their new “partners.”
Cosmo thought that now he had more reason than ever to kill the two tweakers, and that he must do it right after they entered the house. But not with the gun. The neighboring homes were too close. But how? And would Ilya help him?
The canister contained $93,260, all of it in twenty-dollar bills. By the time they had finished counting it, Ilya had smoked half a dozen cigarettes and seemed calm enough, except for her shaking hands. Cosmo began giggling and couldn’t stop.
“Is not so much as Dmitri promised, but I am happy!” Cosmo said. “I am not greedy pig.” That tickled him so much he giggled more. “I must call Dmitri soon.”
“You kill the guard,” Ilya said soberly. “They catch us, we go to the house of death.”
“How can you know he is dead?”
“I saw bullets hit him. Three. Right here.” She touched her chest. “He is dead man.”
“Fucking guy,” Cosmo said, testy now. “He did not give up money. Dmitri say no problem. The guard shall give up money. Not my fault, Ilya.”
Ilya shook her head and lit yet another cigarette, and Cosmo lit a smoke of his own while he stuffed stacks of money back into the can, leaving out eight hundred, which he divided with Ilya, saying, “This make you not so much worried about the house of death, no?”
He took the container back out to the car, wanting to lock it in the trunk, but the ignition key did not work the trunk lock. He cursed the Georgian again and put the container in the backseat of the Mazda and locked the door.
When he returned to the house, Ilya was lying on the battered sofa as though she had a terrible headache. He went over to her and knelt, feeling very aroused.
He said to her, “Ilya, remember how much sex we feel when we rob the diamonds? I feel that much sex now. And you? How would you like to fuck the brains outside my head?”
“If you touch me now, Cosmo,” she said, “I swear I shall shoot the brains outside your head. I swear this by the Holy Virgin.”
Less than a mile away, Farley and Olive sat in Sam’s Pinto, having borrowed it once again, parked by the cybercafé. They saw several tweakers entering and then leaving after having done their Internet business, but they saw no one who they thought might have some decent crystal for purchase.
“Let’s try the taco stand,” Farley said. “We gotta get Sam’s car back to him before it gets dark and pick up our piece of shit. He musta fixed the carburetor by now. One good thing about tweakers, Sam can sit around his kitchen table with my carburetor in a million pieces and he actually enjoys himself. Like a fucking jigsaw puzzle or something. There’s fringe benefits from crystal if you stop and think about it.”
“I’m glad the police cars and ambulances stopped their sirens,” Olive said. “They were giving me a headache.”
She was like a goddamn dog, Farley thought. Supersensitive hearing even when not tweaked. She could sit in a restaurant and hear conversations on the other side of a crowded room. He thought he should figure out a way to use that, the only talent she possessed.
“Something musta happened at one of the stores in the mall,” Farley said. “Maybe some fucking Jew actually charged a fair price. That would cause a bunch of greasers to drop dead of shock and tie up some ambulances.”
He was driving out of the parking lot and turning east when a southbound car at the intersection also turned east and drove in front of him, making Farley slam on his brakes.
“Fuck you!” Farley yelled out the window at the elderly woman driver after he flipped her the bird.
He hadn’t gone half a block when he heard the horn toot behind him. He looked in the mirror and said, “Cops! My fucking luck!”
Benny Brewster said to B.M. Driscoll, “You’re up.”
The older cop wiped his runny nose with Kleenex, pushed his drooping glasses back up, sighed, and said, “I’m really not well enough to be working tonight. I shoulda called in sick.”
Then he got out, approached the car on the driver’s side and saw Farley Ramsdale fumbling in his wallet for his driver’s license. Olive looked toward the policeman on her right and saw Benny Brewster looking in at her and at the inside of the car.
“Hi, Officer,” Olive said.
“Evening,” Benny said.
As B.M. Driscoll was examining his driver’s license, Farley said, “What’s the problem?”
B.M. Driscoll said, “You pulled out of the lot into the traffic lane, causing a car to brake hard and yield. That’s a traffic violation.”
Benny said to Farley, “Sir, how about showing the officer your registration too.”
Farley said, “Aw shit, this ain’t my car. Belongs to a friend, Sam Culhane. My car’s at his house getting fixed by him.”
When he quickly reached over to the glove compartment, Benny’s hand went to his sidearm. There was nothing in the glove box except a flashlight and Sam’s garage opener.
“Tell the officer, Olive,” he said. “This is Sam’s car.”
“That’s right, Officer,” Olive said. “Our car is getting its carburetor redone. Sam has it all over the table like a crossword puzzle.”
“That’ll do,” Farley said to her. Then turning to B.M. Driscoll, he said, “I got a cell here. You can use it and call Sam. I’ll dial him for you. This ain’t a hot car, Officer. Hell, I just live ten blocks from here by the Hollywood Cemetery.”
Benny Brewster looked over the top of the car to his partner and mouthed the word “tweakers.”
Then, while B.M. Driscoll was returning to their car to run a make on Farley Ramsdale and the car’s license number and to write up the traffic citation, Benny decided to screw with the tweakers, saying to Farley, “And if we followed you to your house just to verify you’re who your license says you are, would you invite us inside?”