"Smith, Anthony Neil - Two-Timing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Anthony Neil)

= TWO-TIMING
by Anthony Neil Smith


Al takes out an ATM in the Biloxi Mall early that morning and is sure he'll be a hundred miles gone before anyone figures out what happened. He pulls a blue pillowcase from under his shirt and loads the cash into it. The only people in the building are mall-walkers and some maintenance workers with mops, rolling buckets, aerosol cans.

Al will ditch the sweatsuit and wig that had him looking like a retiree, but not until he's in the car, down the road, heading towards New Orleans on Highway 90 where a suite waits under the name he's using for the weekend.

The ATM is near the door where Diana has the car running. Al loses his footing on the slick freshly mopped mall tile. He recovers but bangs his arm up. There's none of that mall music playing this early, and everything smells like chemical fumes but still clean. The arm throbs. Al is out the door.

* * *

Diana waits in the Buick. She's on her cell phone with her other boyfriend, Evan, the Biloxi cop she met at the 3rd & Goal Sports Bar two weeks ago. She likes him because he plays rough but fair. Not at all like Al, but she's worked with Al on these jobs for over a year now. Can't give him up so easily, but no love there, that's long gone.

It's the Two-Face in Evan that she loves so much. No, it's the gun. It's both guns, the literal and the metaphor. It's Evan's short hair and naive country boy drawl. It's the way he says Perpetrator. Al is too simple. She didn't see that at first because criminals are the bad boys, on the edge, in your face, flaunting the law. But the cop--Boy Scout by day, a monster off-duty. Amoral and self-destructive, and he damn well knows it. He likes to flex when he's naked, and Diana wonders if it's meant to impress her or himself.

She's talking to Evan and staring at the beach across the Highway, running her finger through her blonde hair that tumbles across her shoulder, when Al yanks the handle, door's locked, raps the windshield. Diana punches the Auto Unlock and mumbles something into the phone, presses the off button.

Al opens up, plops down, pillowcase of cash in his lap, and tells her to move it, then, "You never lock me out, see, because I might need those three seconds."

"Sorry." She puts the car in gear.

"It s not a paint-by-numbers thing."

Diana thinks she's figured Al out. Something about the way he once planned a convenience store robbery for two weeks, but when they pulled up to the store, there was one more person inside than he had planned for. A couple teenage kids playing an old video game machine. Al wouldn't do it "They're wild variables."

"It's two stupid kids."

"Two stupid kids can be a problem."

Diana got it. He's anal retentive. He's all compulsive-obsessive.

Then she really began picking up on his habits, his behaviors, his likes/dislikes (every dish washed immediately, lemon-scented Lysol everywhere, liked most of his clothes beige or shades of brown, liked doggy style, he checked every light in the house three times before leaving, he couldn't fire a gun just once had to be twice always), and saw that he was a big baby, scared of the world, had to have control. That's no DeNiro. She started looking elsewhere.

Out of the parking lot, down the road, Al squints, looks at Diana, says, "Who were you talking to on the phone?"

* * *

Evan stares at the silent phone handset a moment. He's in the small weight room at the police station, pumping some iron before the day's motorcycle duty. She had called, kinda early, easy chit-chat, before he had heard a rustle and her fast high voice saying, "Gottagoseeyoulaterlove."

He rubs a towel absently across his chest and sets the phone down. He walks over to the dumbbells, does some reps, thinking about how little he knows about Diana. She says she's a kindergarten teacher, but he never asked where. She doesn't talk about past boyfriends except in some vague, lump-them-together way, "losers all, I've gotten smarter." But at night when the lights are out, she pulls at his clothes and his muscles like she's starving for him. Only two weeks. Evan wonders if he should have taken things slower. But Diana was always in a hurry, never stayed the night.

Another guy? Is she two-timing? Is she in trouble? Evan gets a twisty stomach, words like married, addicted, infected flash in his mind. So much that he sets the weight down and stalks back to the phone handing on the wall, hits *69. Two rings. Maybe he expects a nice lady's voice to say "St. Peter's Kindergarten" or something public, but does not expect this-- a man answers, "What?"

"Yeah, Diana Bowler, please?"

"Who are you?"

Evan says, "Who are you? This is her workplace, right?"