“Are we going to buy or steal?” he asked.
“We’ll steal the cars.” Roy’s pupils grew larger. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you how.”
“You should have seen how he stole the Jeep Cherokee,” Skarda said. “It was beautiful.”
“Dave,” I said. “You talk way too much.”
“Sorry.”
“Try to work on that.”
“I will.”
“Which reminds me—I don’t need to tell you all to keep quiet about this, do I? You’re conspiring to commit a major felony. You can be arrested just for that alone. Please, please don’t tell your friends. Don’t tell your relatives. Don’t get drunk and brag about it in a bar. If you want to stay out of prison, this is a secret you take to your graves.”
“Hear, hear,” said the old man. He seemed to have recovered nicely from the Silver Bay raid. He was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and sitting in his frayed lawn chair at the head of the picnic table. An unlit joint hung from his lips. The look in his eye suggested it wasn’t his first of the day. I asked the obvious question.
“Are you smoking dope?”
“It’s medicinal marijuana,” he said.
Does he have cancer? my inner voice asked. I glanced at Josie for confirmation. She was rolling her eyes. I guess not.
“It’s important that we keep a clear head,” I said.
“You got a job for me?” the old man asked.
“Not today.”
He spread his arms wide. “Still say you look like a narc.”
“Keep it to yourself.”
“What do you want me to do?” Skarda asked.
I gestured at the old man again. “Take your father fishing. And keep out of sight. You’re hot, remember?”
“So are you.”
“No one will recognize me. You, on the other hand, are known hither and yon. Don’t worry about it, Dave. You’ll have plenty to do when the time comes.”
“Should I be doing anything?” Jill asked. Her voice was so soft I barely heard it. I found her eyes. They betrayed her apprehension.
“No,” I said. “I won’t ask you to do anything on this job. You’ll be left completely out of it. All I want you to do is go home and pretend that you’re not surrounded by a bunch of lowlife maniac thieves, okay?”
She didn’t quite smile, but her face seemed to brighten a bit just the same. “Thank you,” she said.
Roy glanced from Jill to me to her and back to me again. “What do you mean, she’s out of it?” he asked.
I ignored the question, although I knew it would come up again, and soon.
“One more thing, people,” I said. “I’m not a big believer in this honor among thieves BS. Everything you heard about being a stand-up guy and not snitching, not informing—forget that. It’s okay to look out for yourself. I highly recommend it. All I ask is that you give everyone the same courtesy that the CIA asks of its operatives—a twenty-four-hour head start. If you’re arrested, don’t even give out your name, rank, or serial number. Keep absolutely quiet for twenty-four hours; give the rest of us a chance to run and hide. After that, I advise you to do whatever you need to to protect yourself, and good luck to you.”
“Hear that, Roy?” Skarda asked.
“What’s that suppose to mean?” Roy said.
“Your gun dealers—you’ve been keeping their names a secret so that you have something to trade to the cops if you get arrested, make a deal to help yourself while the rest of us go to prison. Well, now you’ve got our blessing.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dave,” I said. He looked at me, and I ran my thumb and index finger across my lips like I was closing a zipper.
“I was just saying,” he said.
“Okay.” I clapped my hands together and rubbed them back and forth. “Let’s get to work.”
Josie and I left the deck and circled the cabin to where Josie’s Taurus was parked. We were going to take her car because my Jeep Cherokee, after all, was stolen. Roy followed us. I kind of figured he would.
“Wait a minute, Dyson,” he called.
“What do you need?” I asked.
His fingers curled into fists as he approached, and his eyes darted from my hands to my chin, nose, eyes, throat, groin, and knees—they were target glances, something I was taught to look for when I was at the police academy. The sonuvabitch is going to throw a punch, my inner voice warned. I waited.
“What is this bullshit?” he asked.
“Could you be more specific?”
His fists tightened and his teeth clenched. “I saw the look you gave my wife.”
“What look?”
He stopped with his left foot forward and his right foot back, a pugilistic stance. He cocked his right arm. I hit him hard in the jaw with a left jab, but he took it like a bitch-slap from an old man with arthritis. I hit him again with my right, this time putting all of my weight into it. He fell backward, bounced against the cabin wall, and slid slowly to a sitting position. For a moment he looked like a pile of laundry before being tossed into the washer.