Slices by Michael Montoure

or just shake his head.
    “It’s
getting worse,” Craig said, and for a moment Gary thought he
meant the landscape.
    Then
he asked, “What is?”
    “That
banging.” There it was. “That’s worse. I
think that’s — oh, fuck, I know what that is.”
    Gary
didn’t say anything.
    Craig
turned and stared. “There’s somebody back there.”
    Gary’s
eyes widened. “In the trunk?”
    Craig
nodded frantically.
    “Bullshit.
You’re just — ”
    “No,
no, listen. You weren’t there, right? Driving for Fat Larry,
that one time, taking that dumb sonofabitch who talked to the press
down to the waterfront. Larry had him taped up in the trunk and he
thrashed around and kicked and that was me driving, I was there, and
it sounded just like that, I swear to God.”
    Gary
still didn’t say anything.
    Craig
said, “That’s what he was trying to tell us. When he said
not to take the car. That guy. The guy I — ”
    “The
one you shot.”
    Craig
turned back to face the road. “It’s not like — ”
    “We
never killed anybody before,” Gary said quietly. “I
know.”

    Four
hours ago, they’d been in Gary’s own car, listening to
the crackle and hum of the police band radio. They had already hit
their convenience stores and their liquor store in record time and
were already on the highway, getting the fuck out of Dodge. They’d
been starting to think they were in the clear when they finally heard
the dispatcher telling all officers to be on the lookout for a red
Mazda, license plate BRS-307. Gary’s plate. Gary’s
goddamn car.
    “Shit.
Now what? Now what do we do?” Gary said, and he didn’t
know why he said it. He had never asked Craig to make a decision, not
once in his life.
    “We’ve
gotta get rid of this car,” Craig said.
    “Shit,”
Gary said again. “I loved this car. My mom gave me this fucking
car.”
    Craig
drummed his fingers on the dashboard. Then he pointed. “Rest
stop up ahead. We can ditch this car, get another one.”
    Gary
hesitated, not wanting to let Craig make the call, but his mind was
blank. He didn’t have any better ideas. So he took the next
exit, pulled into the rest stop.
    Something
felt wrong there. The air was too still, the wind too quiet. Gary’s
skin felt electric and too tight.
    Craig
felt it, too, or he looked like he did. He started to get out and
then hesitated, half-standing, and then stood the rest of the way up.
A sudden burst of static flared from the cop radio and startled him,
and he leaned back in and snapped it off.
    Gary
grabbed the battered brown suitcase that held all the money they had
in the world. Everything else he planned to come back for, but there
was no way he was leaving this in the car.
    They
walked, fake tight smiles on their faces, to the rest area’s
one small building. Two restrooms with a walkway between, drinking
fountains, vending machines, a state map with a red dot that said
“You are here.” A rack of brochures for local tourist
traps.
    The
gun in the holster under Gary’s flannel shirt felt ridiculously
heavy.
    “How
do we do do this?” Craig asked.
    What,
like I’ve done this before? Gary wanted to say. He looked around at people in their cars,
families with kids and couples out walking their dogs, and he said,
“We want one guy. By himself. We get him alone — in the
bathroom, so no one sees it — get his keys.”
    “Sure.
Sure,” Craig said. “Make him lie on the ground and count
to fifty.” Like they’d been doing to clerks all morning.
    They
waited, pretended to study the map. After a while, a man walked into
the bathroom wearing a suit — not an expensive one, but still a
suit — and carrying a briefcase.
    Gary
did the math. The guy wasn’t on vacation, that’s for
sure. Working man, no wife and kids with him — or, sure, he’d
have left his briefcase in the car, if there was someone to watch it.
Made sense.
    He
looked over at Craig, nodded, and in they went.
    Gary
stood by the door, in case someone came