“You’re not.” Sherm grinned. “I’m gonna help you.”
“Bullshit.”
“Straight up, Tommy. You said it yourself. No way you can pull this shit off by yourself.”
“I’m in too,” John promised.
“Fuck that.” I spat. “No way I’m letting either of you guys get involved in this shit. I need you guys to look out for Michelle and T.J. after—after I’m gone.”
“That’s why I want to help,” John argued. “You can’t do it by yourself, Tommy. Sherm said so. If we help you, then there’s a better chance it goes right. Which makes things better for them.”
“No way, John! No fucking way. End of argument.”
“Tommy, I love Michelle and T.J. as much as you do. I was best man at your fucking wedding. I was there when T.J. was born. I want to help them, and the best way to do that is to help you.”
“Forget it!”
“Fuck that.”
“He’s right, John,” Sherm said. “You know what you’re looking at if you get caught? First time offender, you’re looking at forty-one to fifty-one months. We’re talking a haul of more than ten thousand dollars easily; so add one more offense. We stole it, so add two more. Use a weapon or even fucking display one? Add a bunch more. You could end up in there for half your life, and unlike Tommy, that’s a lot of fucking time.”
“I don’t care.” He stuck his lip out stubbornly. “I want in on it.”
“Pull over, now,” I demanded.
“Why?”
“Because I’m gonna bitch-slap the living shit out of you, that’s why.”
He slowed down, gripped the wheel tightly, and looked at me.
Slowly, deliberately, he said, “If you don’t let me help, I’ll tell Michelle.”
I opened my mouth but he cut me off.
“I mean it, Tommy. You’re my friend. I need to do this. And if you don’t let me, I swear to fucking God I’ll tell her everything. The cancer. The robbery. Everything.”
I looked into his eyes and saw that he meant it.
“Please?”
“Okay.” I sighed, exhausted. “All right, you’re in. But Sherm, I still don’t understand why you want to help.”
“Hey, man,” he flashed his teeth, “we’re boys. Besides, I believe we can actually pull this shit off, and I’m bored in this town. Hanover fucking sucks, yo. This will be the first fun thing I’ve done since I left Portland.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“Like a fox, man. Crazy like a motherfucking fox.”
John parked at the lake and we stared out at the water in silence. The moon reflected off the rippling waves. Somewhere in the darkness, a whippoorwill cried out. John popped out Ice-T
and slipped in Ice Cube’s War and Peace disc instead. I suddenly felt very old, and very tired, and I wondered if I should plan my funeral in advance, or leave that detail to Michelle after I was gone.
One thing was for sure. If we pulled this off, she wouldn’t have to worry about paying for it.
“So where do we get the guns?” I asked. “We don’t have time for the seven-day waiting period and the background check.”
“I know a guy,” Sherm leaned forward. “He lives in York, down on South Queen Street. One for me, one for you—should cost us about two hundred even. Let me hit him on the cell and see if he’s around.”
“What about me?” John frowned. “Don’t I get a gun?”
“No,” Sherm told him. “You’re driving the getaway car.”
“Cool! Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
“Two hundred bucks? Sherm, all I’ve got is this last paycheck and I just deposited it this afternoon.”
“So? You got an ATM card, right?”
“Yeah, but we needed that money for bills. What the hell am I gonna tell Michelle if she finds out I spent it?”
“Dude, think about it. In less than a week, you’ll have all the money you need to pay the bills. All the money you fucking need…”
He flipped open his cell phone and made a call. John ate his slice of pizza and I smoked. Ice Cube’s “Until We Rich” played softly, the lyrics matching the echoes of what Sherm had said. Finally, Sherm snapped his cell phone shut and poked John in the back of the head.
“Let’s go, boys. We’re taking a trip to York. He’s got what we need.”
Halfway to York, as we stopped at an ATM machine, I felt the world closing in on me. I coughed blood, spat it out, and grimaced at the rawness in my throat. It felt like somebody had sandpapered my insides.
While Sherm and John waited impatiently in the car, I fumbled my wallet out of my pocket. My fingers didn’t seem to work properly. They felt thick and swollen. I fished out the card and slid it into the slot. The machine asked me for my pin number and it took me two tries to get it right. I entered the amount for withdrawal. Two hundred dollars.
It asked me if that was the correct amount. I pressed YES.
It asked me to please wait while it dispensed my cash.
As the bills, all twenties, rolled out of the machine, I knew there was no turning back. I’d lied to my wife about the cancer, and now I was going behind her back like this with the money, draining our account. Sure, in the long run, I was doing it for her and T.J., but it was still fucked up. And now, on top of everything else, we were going to go buy guns with the cash. Just like real-life gangsters.
I put the money in my wallet and crammed the wallet into my back pocket. It felt heavy, like it was made out of lead.
No turning back now, I thought.
The enormity of it all hit me then, and for the next few minutes, I forgot all about the fact that I was dying.
I looked up at the moon, pale and cold and lifeless, and saw my face in its reflection.
“No turning back now…” the moon whispered.
I got back into the car and slammed the door. It sounded like a gunshot, and John and Sherm both jumped. A gunshot—or a closing coffin lid.
Sherm fired up a bowl and passed it up to me. I inhaled, trying not to choke—and trying to ignore the bad feeling in my gut. A feeling that had nothing to do with cancer.
SEVEN
So what’s this guy’s name again?” I asked Sherm as we drove into the city.
“Wallace.”
“Is that his first name or his last name?”
Sherm shrugged. “I don’t know. Never asked the dude. I just know him as Wallace. That’s what everyone in his crew calls him.”
We rolled down West Market Street, past crumbling brownstones and crack houses, abandoned factories and burned-out apartments, tattoo parlors and seedy bars. York is a small city, but it has the crime rate of a big metropolitan area. If you look on a map, it sits right in the middle of things, an hour or less from Baltimore and Harrisburg, and within a few hours’ drive of Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, and New York. This makes it ideal for drug gangs, mostly crews from New York City and North Philly, but some from as far away as Chicago and Detroit. Back in the day, the Greek Mafia had controlled most of York’s crime, but those days are gone—old and feeble like the men who made them, men who were now serving life terms upstate. Their children had turned their backs on a life of organized crime, and the families died out, replaced by the gangbangers.
John turned onto South Queen Street. A drunken Hispanic woman lurched in front of the car and he swerved to avoid her. She shot him the finger, shrieked something in Spanish, and stumbled on. He sank down in the seat, turning off the Cypress Hill disc we’d been jamming to.
“Sherm,” he whispered, “we’re the only white people down here.”
“Chill, John. You don’t fuck with nobody and nobody will fuck with you.”
“What’s the big deal, John?” I asked. “You’ve been to downtown York plenty of times.”