She said, “Family’s got to come for you when no one else will.”

He took out his cell phone and waved it at her to remind her to keep it near her and on, and Manny put the Toyota in gear and they drove up to the Wal- Mart at Jacksonville Road. Manny pulled the Toyota up to the door when Ray came out, and he piled the things he had bought in the back. Manny drove up to a U-Store- It around the corner. They rented a narrow, cinder-block storage unit for a couple of months and paid a hundred and eighty bucks.

They drove down the long, empty rows of doors and found the unit they had rented, number 181. They angled the car in and got out, and Manny mouthed the number to himself. Ray laughed, and Manny said, “What?”

“You’re going to play that number?”

Manny said fuck you and laughed and hauled the door open and went inside. Ray took some flashlights and batteries out of a plastic bag. They closed the door and turned on the flashlights and sat on the cement floor with the bags, the guns, and the money. Ray sorted out his cash from the money he’d been holding for Manny and the money they owed Danny, splitting everything between two imitation leather suitcases with the tags from the Wal-Mart still on them. Manny loaded and checked their guns and put them into the olive duffel. Ray had bought them some bottles of water, a couple of T-shirts, and candy bars, and Manny put them into a new knapsack.

When they were done they shared a bottle of water, their faces lined with sweat. Manny opened the door a crack to let some air in.

Ray put one of the flashlights up against his chin and made a moaning noise like a ghost in an old radio program. “It is later than you think.”

Manny made a face. “What’s that?”

“Something my old man used to do.”

“Christ, what, to help you sleep?”

Ray turned the light on the floor. “Yeah, he was a charmer. It was something from an old TV show. Used to scare the shit out of me.”

Manny lit a cigarette, waved the match out.

Ray said, “Guess we can’t stay here forever.”

“Nah. It’s too fucking hot, for one thing.”

“We had it sewed for a while there, huh? Set ’em up and knock ’ em down. How did things get so fucked up?”

Manny flexed his skinny biceps, his tattoos sliding and puckering on his arms. “Things are what they are. The thing I don’t get is why you think they should be any different.”

“We had it under control before. If it wasn’t for that fucking Rick, or that moron Danny…”

“Oh, will you please? If it wasn’t those two it would have been one of the tweakers. Somebody was going to go for a gun eventually. Somebody was going to dime us to the cops or just come to our houses in the middle of the night.” He stabbed the air with his cigarette. “You think, what? Shit can’t go wrong cause you’re smarter than they are? Cause you got a plan?”

“I used to think that. I used to be one smart motherfucker.” He watched a bee hover in the light from under the door, jinking back and forth, looking for an angle on something it wanted. “Now I don’t know shit.” He took the keys to the padlock out of his pocket and gave one to Manny.

“Listen, I got to say this out loud. You think there’s any point in giving the money back?”

“Only if you want to be standing still when they kill you.”

“Yeah.”

“You heard that fucking guy’s voice. What do you think he’s going to do? Say thanks and no hard feelings?”

Ray shook his head. He couldn’t say he saw it any different. He shifted on the cement. “If anything happens, we… split up or you don’t know what happened to me, just leave my bag here for a month and then come back and give the rest to Theresa.”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I know. See, I’m making the possibility that you could lose track of me but I could still be alive. Just by saying it out loud.”

“You think that’s how it works?” Manny smiled and shook his head. “So, we go into this fucking hornet’s nest and I don’t come out. And if I don’t come back and get my hundred and fifty thousand dollars, it’s not because someone stuck a gun in my mouth and punched my ticket.”

“No, not necessarily. You could’ve just gotten real busy doing something else and the money just slipped your mind.”

“I think you slipped your mind. Look, Ray, we’re just a couple of lowlifes. Guys like us, we make our run and we go out. We get locked up, we get killed.” Kilt, the way Manny said it. “We knew it going in.”

“Did we? I don’t remember going in, is the thing. It was like I was born in.”

“Yeah, well, I never got what you were doing anyway.” Manny scratched his neck. “I mean, you were smart enough not to get caught up in this shit.”

“I was? Why didn’t someone tell me before?”

Manny tipped a bottle of water over his hair and shook his head like a dog coming in out of the rain. “I don’t know. I figure it’s some kind of fuck- you to your old man. Something like that.”

“Maybe.”

“Anyway, you were always good company, and who wants to do this shit alone?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

AN HOUR AND a half later they were coming off of 202 in Malvern. The sky was full of clouds, white and dark blue moving across the sun. Things could go either way, more rain or more sun. There was a breeze, but it was just hot air moving. Ray kept trying Danny’s cell phone number but got nothing. It didn’t mean much. Danny used, and he could’ve lost the phone or had his service turned off or just been bingeing on dope and ignoring the ring. They turned onto a narrow country lane, and Ray began looking at the numbers on mailboxes. Finally they turned into a driveway that wasn’t much more than a trail into the woods.

The house where Danny lived with his mother was speckled with green’some kind of mold or fungus that made it seem as if the house were being reclaimed by the forest. There was a washing machine rusting in the yard and cracked and rotted asbestos tiles on the walls. A pickup truck sat in the carport with blue plastic covering a missing passenger side window. Manny turned off the engine, and they sat for a minute, watching the house. Somewhere far away a dog barked and birds moved in the trees. Ray began to open the door, and Manny put a hand on his arm and reached into the backseat for the vests. They struggled into them, sweat pouring down their backs, and then stretched and shrugged, trying to get used to the bulk. Manny lifted a hip and awkwardly dug a one-hitter out of his jeans, and they both did jolts of brown meth. Ray smacked his forehead while the dope burned in his sinuses like he’d fired a flare gun into his head.

They both got out and left the doors of the 4Runner open. Ray held up his hand for Manny to stay at the car. He nodded to Ray and pulled his shotgun from under the seat and stood with the open door between him and the house. Ray reached over the seat and got his Colt semiauto and worked the slide, putting a round in the chamber. Maybe it was all for nothing, maybe Danny was okay and they could give him some money and send him packing, but the house sat there closed and quiet in the woods, and Manny and Ray looked at each other, feeling wrong.

Manny wiped sweat from his face with the heel of his hand. He flexed his shoulders and whispered, “Christ, I can barely move in this thing. I feel like a fucking astronaut.”

Ray held the Colt behind his leg and walked to the front door. He looked back at Manny and then knocked on the door with his fist. “Danny!”

They stood for a minute. Ray blotted at the sweat at his temple with the back of his free hand. He knocked again, this time banging the butt of the pistol against the door. After a minute he tried the door and found it unlocked. He looked back at Manny, who put the shotgun sight on the door. Ray stood clear and pushed the door open, flattening himself against the outside wall. There was no sound except the door creaking as it opened. Manny shook his head.