How to Rob an Armored Car (12 page)

“Those shows are about people who got murdered, not dogs,” the cop said, equally evenly.

“I thought you guys protected and served,” said Kevin, letting his rising anger show now, which caused the cop to walk toward his car.

“We protect and serve people, not dogs.” He got in and started the engine. Then, apparently feeling he had been too harsh, he rolled the window down. “You can investigate but you’d have to pay for it yourself. I mean, you could fingerprint that container of antifreeze but a fingerprint test is, like, five hundred dollars. And if it was the lady of the house, all it would prove is that people touch their own antifreeze.”

Utterly deflated, Kevin just stared at the cop as he drove out of the driveway. He called Mrs. Parker at work and listened to her fake the emotion of shock for a while, then ask him if he could dispose of the dog’s body. So he put little Scotch’s body in a trash bag and placed it in the back seat of Linda’s car, then drove off to walk his next dog.

WHEN HE GOT to Jeffrey’s house, Jeffrey was alive, which was nice, and the shifty doctor who owned him was home, which wasn’t. Kevin groaned as he got out of the car. The last thing he felt like right then was face-to-face contact with another human being. Part of the reason he enjoyed his job was that such contact was a rarity.

“Hi,” said the doctor, whose name Kevin could never remember because the checks he got for dog-walking were from a pharmaceutical firm. The doctor was a young man, early to mid thirties, and he had the slicked back hair and fit appearance of a stereotypical eighties stockbroker, reminding Kevin more of an extra from the movie
Wall
Street
than of a health care professional. He also seemed too young to own this magnificent house, but hell, Kevin knew very little about how much doctors got paid.

“Hi,” Kevin said, trying to fill his voice with exhaustion to dissuade further conversation. Jeffrey bounced up to him and Kevin greeted the dog, hoping to get him leashed and be on his way.

“Come inside for a second,” the doctor said. “I want to talk to you about something.”

Shit.

Kevin went into the house, which was at least warm. It felt good to get out of the elements, if only for a few moments.

“Take your shoes off,” the doctor said brusquely. He had a manner about him that dissuaded argument of any kind. “Come back here.”

Kevin spent a good two minutes unlacing his boots, then went into the den, the same room where he had opened the safe a few weeks before. There was no way the doc could have found out about that, Kevin thought. Besides, the guy looked cheerful, not like someone about to begin a conversation about home invasion. There was a fire going in the fireplace, and the doctor sat down behind his huge cherry-wood desk and pointed Kevin toward one of the ornate European-style red felt chairs.

“I have to ask you something, Kevin, and I hope you won’t take offense,” he said, leaning back in his chair, folding his hands across his stomach as he put his feet on his desk.

Kevin shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“You were in prison for a drug charge, is that right?” The question caught Kevin off guard, but it was asked with such self-assurance and directness that Kevin could hardly take offense. How the hell did this guy know that? Obviously, as Kevin’s job entailed access to people’s houses, his prison record was something he preferred to conceal.

“That’s right,” Kevin said. “How did you know about that?”

“I give you the keys to my house, I’m going to run a background check on you,” the doctor said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I have a lawyer who handles these things.” Kevin figured that he was about to get fired, which would mean he had lost two clients in one day. Fine, dickhead, go get yourself a dog walker with no criminal record, he thought. It was a competitive business, he knew, and there was no shortage of dog walkers with clean backgrounds. He waited calmly for the news of his dismissal.

“That intrigues me,” the doctor said and looked at Kevin expectantly.

“How so?”

“Well, I’m curious. About, you know. What exactly you did.”

Kevin leaned back in the chair, aware that snow was dripping off his jacket onto this guy’s antique furniture, which made him feel even more out of place. “Look,” he said. “It was a long time ago. If you want to get someone else to walk your dog, that’s cool with me.” He got up to leave.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said the doctor, motioning for him to sit down, and what was supposed to be a friendly smile, but to Kevin seemed like a cheap salesman’s grin, flashed across his face. “No, no, that’s not it. I still you want you to walk Jeffrey. I’m just curious.”

If he still wanted him to walk Jeffrey, that made Kevin an employee again, so he had to tame himself and remember his manners. Having lost the freedom of the freshly fired, he said, “I dealt marijuana.” He decided he wouldn’t mention the growing.

“Did you grow it?”

“Yuh.”

“Because it says here manufacture and possession.”

“Damn. You got my rap sheet?”

The doctor took his feet off the desk and sat up straight in his chair, pulling it closer to the desk. “Kevin, I’ve got a problem. I was hoping you might be able to help me out with it.”

Kevin knew what it was right away. The freak was going to ask Kevin to deal off the thousands of pills he had in the safe. Obviously, Kevin couldn’t let on that he knew the guy had thousands of pills in a safe, so he had to sit there for five long minutes while the doctor went on tangents about Medicaid and the health care system, and how this somehow caused thousands of white pills to wind up in his safe. It was far too complicated for a non–health care professional like Kevin to understand, the doctor explained delicately, but perfectly legal. This last part he said with a death grimace meant to be a trustworthy smile.

“I just don’t know that many people who would buy these,” he said. “I figure someone who knew the streets might be able to help.”

“I don’t know much about pills,” Kevin said, his mind whirring. He did know one fact, though, and that was that it wasn’t “perfectly legal” to have your dog walker sell them. To the doctor, Kevin knew, a guy who “knew the streets” was really just a euphemism for a scumbag. It might even be on his to do list: Find a scumbag. Kevin really didn’t want to have anything to do with this but maybe Doug would. Not that Doug was a scumbag but he had just lost his job, and he loved pills. “But I know a guy who does. I should introduce you to him.”

“No, no.” The doctor waved his hands about, shaking his head, a neurotic gesture which belied his bossy confidence of moments ago. “No, I don’t want to meet people. I’m sure you understand how sensitive this is. But there’s a lot of money to be made.”

“All right. I’ll deal with him. I’ll talk to him about it tonight.” Tonight was going to be another Ferrari mission and, judging by the developing tone of revolt among the troops, probably the last. Perhaps the offer of pill retail work would ease the pain of staking out the parking lot in the cold.

They shook hands and said their goodbyes. Kevin still could not remember the doctor’s name. “By the way, doc, what’s your name?”

“Doctor Billings,” he said. “Jeffrey Billings.”

Kevin nodded, and they shook hands, meaninglessly, again.

Sometimes, you only needed to know one fact about a person. The freak had named his dog after himself.

DOUG WAS SITTING in a tree, thinking about whether or not his thing with Linda was really Kevin’s fault. He was deciding it was. He knew that Kevin was still not 100 percent sure that Doug had not turned him in to the police, and perhaps the constant distrust Doug felt from him was what caused him to act dishonestly. Had Kevin trusted him more, he wouldn’t have slept with his wife. There, that made perfect sense.

“Dude,” Mitch said. He was a branch higher up in the tree. They were looking out over the wintry parking lot, waiting for the Ferrari that would never come. Mitch was handing down the joint and Doug took it. They had been smoking pot in the tree for over half an hour and Doug was so high he no longer really felt up to the task of stealing a Ferrari, should one actually show up. In fact, every night they had been out there since the first one, that had been the situation after half an hour, and Doug was secretly relieved when each mission ended in futility. And he had been doubly glad when Kevin had suggested on the way out there that this plan might not work after all, which meant

As time had gone by on their stakeouts, they had learned things. They had watched the valets so closely for so long they felt like they knew them. There was the Italian-looking dude, the fat dude, the gawky kid, and the girl, who worked Fridays and was kind of cute. They had watched her through binoculars and her appearance and attitude as she waited around with the other parking attendants had filled half an hour of conversation time. The Italian-looking dude was not nice, and Doug and Mitch had gathered from random words drifting across the windswept parking lot that the others thought he was not sharing tips. From their tree, they had spent an evening watching him very closely and had actually seen him putting money straight into his pocket when the others weren’t around.

“Let’s go down there and punch him,” Mitch had said and for a moment it had seemed like a good idea. Then they had remembered their mission, which was to sit in a tree and wait for a Ferrari. A wait that in a few hours would be over, Doug remembered, and then he could go back home and look for a real job, working a grill at another corporate restaurant, one that he could get to without a car.

Mitch’s cell phone rang, a loud, high-pitched sound that must have been audible to the diners in the restaurant and certainly, Mitch thought, to the two shivering parking attendants standing out front. He distinctly saw the Italian-looking dude look back into the forest to see why a tinny version of a Grateful Dead tune was coming from the trees and bushes. He fished it out and saw Kevin’s number.

“Shit dude, don’t call me. I’m on stakeout, remember?”

“Dude, why don’t you just put it on vibrate?”

“Because I’m wearing gloves. I can’t push the little buttons,” he whispered angrily. “What do you want?”

“We might have to go home soon. Linda just called. I think she knows I’m not out walking dogs.”

“Shit, man. I’m not going home without a Ferrari,” Mitch whispered. “We’ve invested too much time in this already.” Doug looked up from his branch, droopy-eyed. Damn, he looks stoned, Mitch thought. He looked happy too, and Mitch figured it was because Doug didn’t really want to steal a Ferrari. Damn them both. Mitch would steal the thing by himself.

Then Mitch heard angels singing. A Ferrari had pulled into the parking lot.

What a beautiful sight. For a full five seconds Mitch admired the car, its smooth lines, its stunning bright red color, beautiful even under the faded yellow lights of the Eden Inn parking lot. Mitch felt his heart pounding, felt his senses awaken and sharpen as his inner commando was unleashed. He put the cell phone in his mouth as if it were a combat knife and slid noiselessly out of the tree.

He heard Doug mumble “fuck” under his breath.

He took the cell phone and wiped his saliva off it and put it to his ear. Kevin was talking about something.

“Dude, the fox is in the henhouse,” Mitch whispered.

“What?”

“This is it. Go time. The fox is in the henhouse.” He hung up and put the cell phone back in his pocket. Behind him, Doug fell out of the tree like a dead elephant.

“Dude,” Mitch whispered. “Keep it down.” On an adrenaline high, Mitch turned around to look at Doug, whose body language was screaming reluctance. It was too late for him to back out now. It was a five-minute walk back to Kevin’s truck, through brush and thickets and there was no way Mitch was going to wait. “We’re going in.”

The gawky valet was talking to the Ferrari’s owner, who was probably telling him to take special care of it or some such crap. The kid was going to drive it eighty feet. Mitch didn’t think there was much to fear. Well, except for the Ferrari thieves lurking in the trees. The Italian-looking dude had gone around to the other side to open the door for a stunning blonde and Mitch watched intently as the couple went inside. The gawky kid started to get in the car, but the Italian-looking dude stopped him, almost pushed him away. What was that about? While he was trying to figure it out, Mitch’s cell phone rang.