Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 1997

“So, what? I’m gonna give up my evil ways?” I laughed at him.

And he just lifted his eyebrow and said. “Maybe. Tell me. Jack, how’d you feel when your buddy — what’s his name?”

“Joe Roy Toth.”

“Toth, when he shot that guy by the counter? How’d you feel?”

“I don’t know.”

“He just turned around and shot him. For no reason. You knew that wasn’t right, didn’t you?” And I started to say something. But he said, “No, don’t answer me. You’d be inclined to lie. And that’s all right. It s an instinct in your line of work. But I don’t want you believing any lies you tell me. Okay? I want you to look into your heart and tell me if you didn’t think something was real wrong about what Toth did. Think about that. Jack. You knew something wasn’t right.”

All right, I did. But who wouldn’t? Toth screwed everything up. Everything went sour. And it was all his fault.

“It dug at you, right. Jack? You wished he hadn’t done it.”

I didn’t say nothing but just drank some more scotch and looked out the window and watched the flashing lights around the town. Sometimes they seemed close, and sometimes they seemed far away.

“If I let you go, you’ll tell ’em.”

Like everybody else. They all betrayed me. My father — even after he went blind, the son of a bitch turned me in. My first P.O., the judges. Sandra... My boss, the one I knifed.

“No. I won’t,” Weller said. “We’re talking about an agreement. I don’t break deals. I promised I won’t tell a soul about you, Jack. Not even my wife.” He leaned forward, cupping the booze between his hands. “You let me go, it’ll mean all the difference in the world to you. It’ll mean that you’re not hopeless. I guarantee your life’ll be different. That one act — letting me go — it’ll change you forever. Oh, maybe not this year. Or for five years. But you’ll come around. You’ll give up all this, everything that happened back there in Liggett Falls. All the crime, the killing. You’ll come around. I know you will.”

“You just expect me to believe you won’t tell anybody?”

“Ah,” Weller said and lifted his taped-up hands to drink more scotch. “Now we get down to the big issue.”

Again that silence, and finally I said. “And what’s that?”

“Faith.”

There was this burst of siren outside, and I told him to shut up and pushed the gun against his head. His hands were shaking, but he didn’t do anything stupid and a few minutes later, after I sat back, he started talking again. “Faith. That’s what I’m talking about. A man who has faith is somebody who can be saved.”

“Well, I don’t have any goddamn faith,” I told him.

But he kept right on talking. “If you believe in another human being, you have faith.”

“Why the hell do you care whether I’m saved or not?”

“Because life’s hard, and people’re cruel. I told you I’m a churchgoer. A lot of the Bible’s crazy. But some of it I believe. And one of the things I believe is that sometimes we’re put in these situations to make a difference. I think that’s what happened tonight. That’s why you and I both happened to be at the drugstore at the same time. You’ve felt that, haven’t you? Like an omen? Like something happens and is telling you you ought do this or shouldn’t do that.”

Which was weird ’cause the whole time we were driving up to Liggett Falls I kept thinking, something funny’s going on. I don’t know what it is, but this job’s gonna be different.

“What if,” he said, “everything tonight happened for a purpose? My wife had a cold, so I went to buy NyQuil. I went to that drugstore instead of 7-Eleven to save a buck or two. You happened to hit that store at just that time. You happened to have your buddy—” he nodded toward Toth’s body “—with you. The cop car just happened by at that particular moment. And the clerk behind the counter just happened to see him. That’s a lot of coincidences. Don’t you think?”

And then — this sent a damn chill right down my spine — he said, “Here we are in the shadow of that big rock, that face.”

Which is one hundred percent what I was thinking. Exactly the same — about The Lookout. I mean. I don’t know why I was. But I happened to be looking out the window and thinking about it at that exact same instant. I tossed back the scotch and had another and, oh man, I was pretty freaked out.

“Like he’s looking at us, waiting for you to make a decision. Oh, don’t think it was just you, though. Maybe the purpose was to affect everybody’s life there. That customer at the counter Toth shot. Maybe it was just his time to go — fast, you know, before he got cancer or had a stroke. Maybe that girl, the clerk, had to get shot in the leg so she’d get her life together, maybe get off drugs or give up drinking.”

“And you? What about you?”

“Well, I’ll tell you about me. Maybe you’re the good deed in my life. I’ve spent years thinking only about making money, lake a look at my wallet. There. In the back.”

I pulled it open. There were a half-dozen of these little cards, like certificates. RANDALL WELLER — SALESMAN OF THE YEAR. EXCEEDED TARGET TWO YEARS STRAIGHT. BEST SALESMAN OF 1992.

Weller kept going. “There are plenty of others back in my office. And trophies, too. And in order for me to win those. I’ve had to neglect people. My family and friends. People who could maybe use my help. And that’s not right. Maybe you kidnapping me, it’s one of those signs to make me turn my life around.”

The funny thing was this made sense. Oh, it was hard to imagine not doing heists. And I couldn’t see myself, if it came down to a fight, not going for my Buck or my Smitty to lake the other guy out. That turning the other cheek stuff, that’s only for cowards. But maybe I could see a day when my life’d be just straight time. Living with some woman, maybe a wife, living in a house. Doing what my father and mother, whatever she was like, never did.

“If I was to let you go.” I said, “you’d have to tell ’em something.”

He shrugged. “I’ll say you locked me in the trunk and then tossed me out somewhere near here. I wandered around, looking for a house or something, and got lost. It could take me a day to find somebody. That’s believable.”

“Or you could flag down a car in an hour.”

“I could. But I won’t.”

“You keep saying that. But how do I know ?”

“That’s the faith part. You don’t know. No guarantees.”

“Well. I guess I don’t have any faith.”

“Then I’m dead. And your life’s never gonna change. End of story.” He sat back, and it was crazy but he looked calm, smiling a little.

That silence again but it was like it was really this roar all around us, and it kept going till the whole room was filled up with the sound of a siren.

“You just want... what do you want?”

He drank more scotch. “Here’s a proposal. Let me walk outside.”

“Oh, right. Just let you stroll out for some fresh air or something?”

“Let me walk outside and I promise you I’ll walk right back again.”

“Like a test?”

He thought about this for a second. “Yeah. A test.”

“Where’s this faith you’re talking about? You walk outside, you try to run and I’d shoot you in the back.”

“No, what you do is you put the gun someplace in the house. The kitchen or someplace. Somewhere you couldn’t get it if I ran. You stand at the window, where we can see each other. And I’ll tell you up front. I can run like the wind. I was lettered track and field in college, and I still jog every day of the year.”

“You know if you run and bring the cops back everything’s gonna get bloody. I’ll kill the first five troopers come through that door. Nothing’ll stop me, and that blood’ll be on your hands.”