“With a shotgun on me?”
“I told you I won’t kill you.”
“My rifle is on the chair over there, and you could see I hadn’t loaded it yet.”
Carver sighed. “There’s a pistol in your jacket. That’s fine if it makes you feel better. My shotgun means it doesn’t matter. At this range I’d be able to see through the hole in you.”
“I won’t try for it. I’m not a killer either.”
“Kapak acts as though you are.”
“I killed a guy once, and Kapak found out. A girl I knew, a close friend of mine from school, got raped and murdered. The guy went to trial and got convicted. The verdict was overturned because of mishandled evidence. The only family this girl had was a mother and two little sisters, so it was up to me. I found out the killer was moving out to southern California, so I came and waited for him.”
“And today you were waiting to get me.”
“I’m starting not to be entirely happy about that. I think you didn’t rob Kapak, which means we’ve been chasing you around for nothing.”
“But you’ll do it anyway?”
“No, I won’t. I’m thinking you and I ought to try something different.”
28
CARRIE ROLLED CLOSE to Jeff on the bed and propped her head on her hand. “You know what I think we need?”
He lay on his back feeling his breathing slowly returning to normal. He had a strong urge to keep his eyes closed, not answer, and doze off.
“You know what we need?” she repeated.
“I wasn’t planning to guess. Maybe you could get it and surprise me.”
“A machine gun.”
“Why not an atomic bomb?”
“Because it’s not practical.”
“I’m not so sure. We could get one of those little ones that you can carry in a briefcase—the kind that only blows up the city and not the whole state. We could go up to somebody, hand it to him and say, ‘Hold this for me.’ Then we’d drive away, and when we got to the next state, blow them up. Next time we had a briefcase we’d get some respect.”
“You’re making a joke out of this.”
“A machine gun is a joke. What would you do with it?”
“Say I walked into a bank with one. I could fire a burst into the ceiling, maybe ten or twelve rounds, and say, ‘Give me the money.’ I’ll bet people would give me the money.”
“Sounds like the 1920s.”
“I don’t mean one of those old-fashioned ones with the magazine that looks like a big disk. I mean the modern kind, the ones that soldiers carry in battle.”
“Very good choice. You’re a truly scary person and you’ve outdone yourself this time.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. There’s a big difference between sticking up an old man with a sack of cash in the street outside a bank in the middle of the night and going into the actual bank and holding it up during business hours. The first is relatively easy and not very dangerous. The second is the opposite: hard to do at all, and very risky. They have armed guards, surveillance cameras, silent alarms, bulletproof glass. If you succeed, they’ll try to slip you a bag of money that blows up and covers you with indelible ink.”
“See? That’s why a machine gun is so useful. This is just taking a rational look at all of the bank’s defenses and thinking of a single way of defeating them—fear.”
“Then the nuclear bomb would be more like it. And if we had to use it, there wouldn’t be any witnesses for miles.”
“That again?”
“Every year, thousands of banks get robbed. And every year, thousands of bank robbers get caught. The failure rate is one of the things you have to look into when you want to commit a crime. You look at what your chances are of getting caught. For bank robbery it’s like ninety-nine percent.”
“Well, what’s your idea of a better crime?”
“Let’s see. White-collar stuff. They only catch, like, ten percent of tax evaders, maybe one percent of people who sell fake designer clothes. Even murderers-for-hire get caught only about sixty percent of the time, and that’s because their client is married to the victim.”
“I don’t think we’re ready to do murders for hire.”
“That’s a relief. I like working for myself.”
“I mean no murders at all. Look, baby. What you’ve been doing lately is like a childish prank—robbing one business over and over. We’re going to have to grow up.”
He opened one eye and looked at her. “In what sense?”
“Let me describe what you do. You pull a small robbery and get maybe twenty thousand dollars if you’re lucky. Then you spend the next couple of months going out all night, drinking and picking up girls, and sleeping all day until the money is gone.”
“I haven’t picked up any girls since I met you.”
“I’m describing nature. A giraffe is a giraffe, and it eats leaves, whether it’s eating leaves right now or not.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Sure.”
“Do you also see what’s wrong with it?”
“Eating leaves?”
“No.”
“Picking up girls?”
“No again.” With her free hand she swung her pillow in a rapid arc downward onto his head like a sack of disdain. “There’s no progress. Every month or two, you start all over again with nothing.”
He pushed the pillow off his face. “I’ve made great progress lately.”
“You have?”
“Sure. Now when I go out all night and sleep all day, I’ve got you with me. That’s a big improvement. And now, instead of twenty thousand, we’ve got, like, eighty thousand in cash. We could go on like this for a long time, since there’s no need to flash a lot of big bills picking up girls. You are one already, and we only need one.”
“It’s just over a hundred and twenty thousand.”
“The money?”
“Yes. You don’t even count it, do you?”
“No. That’s the whole point of being a bandito. You don’t have to count your money.”
“Are you challenged by arithmetic?”
“No, but I’ve thought about this.”
“No, you haven’t.” She sat and glared at him for a few seconds. “What is it?”
“Limits. If I count the money and match it off against a certain number of days, then there are things I can’t do, can’t afford. If I don’t, then I’m free. If I want something, I buy it. I know that when I need to, I can get more money. I give up knowing exactly how many dollars are in the bag at every moment in exchange for not having to know. It’s a good deal.”
She looked at him in alarm. “Oh my God. You’re starting to sound smart, like a wandering Zen master or something. Let me get over that feeling. It’ll take a minute.”
“Take your time.”
She sat motionless for a few seconds, then stood up. “I can’t take my time. This brings me to another topic that’s loosely related, and urgent.”
“What is it?”
“I know you hate it when there’s something you ought to know, but I don’t tell you.”
“No, I don’t.”
“This you would.”
“Is it your boyfriend?”
She got up off the bed and looked down at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “Yes.”
“What about him?”
“He’s flying into LAX in just over—oops, just under—three hours. When he gets there, he’s going to pick up his suitcase at the baggage claim, and he’s going to want someplace to put it.”
“Like your house.”
“It’s his house, technically.”
“What’s the technicality?”
“He bought it and paid for it, his name is on the deed, and he lived here before I met him.”
“Three hours isn’t a lot of time.”