Эд Макбейн - Guns

And finally, there was something sexual in the way they worked together, a trio that had in the short space of eight months learned each other’s skills and shortcomings, and moved now to supplement or correct, the thrill of what they were doing undeniable; Teddy confessed one night that he always waited at the wheel of the car with an erection. There was for Colley and Jocko — Teddy never experienced this, or at least mentioned it — the feeling that they were on dope. That everything was being slowed down by a fix. Not all the way down to slow motion, but somewhere much slower than what the real tempo was.

Colley saw Jocko’s hand reach out in the shimmering August neon, saw clearly and precisely the small heart-shaped tattoo on the ball of the hand where thumb and forefinger joined, saw the fingers grasping the brass knob, and turning the knob, and easing the door open, slowly, slowly — everything moved so slowly when the juices ran high. He heard the tinkling of the bell over the door as though it were coming from a distant lush valley, and he moved into the store behind Jocko, moved on feet that seemed cushioned — he was somehow in sneakers again, though he was wearing black-leather loafers, he was running in high-topped Keds, he was ten years old and going for a base that had been chalked onto the asphalt, running in slow motion, Go, Colley, they are yelling at him. Go.

He closes the door behind Jocko. Jocko is moving across the store. The bottles are catching light and reflecting it; brilliant color explodes from the shelves and the stacked displays, bourbon browns and Scotch ambers, sauterne yellows and burgundy reds, crème de menthe greens. Jocko is walking toward the counter and Colley watches him and sees him moving through a stained-glass window toward an altar where a baldheaded priest stands in a brilliant red surplice: the counterman wearing a red cotton jacket, the pocket of it embroidered in white with the words Carlisle Liquors. Colley wonders if this is Mr. Carlisle himself, he wears the name so proudly, Carlisle Liquors, it might easily be a family crest, a proud and ancient family name, like Donato is a proud and ancient family name if your grandmother happens to come from a slum in Naples. Or is Carlisle the man’s first name? Is he perhaps Carlisle Abernathy the Third, standing there beaming behind the counter as Jocko takes forever to cross the stained-glass room.

Colley closes the door.

Has it taken him all this time to close the door? He hears the snug whisper of the door easing into the jamb, hears a tiny ear-shattering click as the strike plate engages the bolt. There is a shade on the door, he wonders if he should pull down the shade. He has never had a door with a shade before. Never on any of the dozen jobs they pulled. He wonders now if the shade on the door is the big mistake the mastermind made. Is the shade on the door the thing that is going to wreck the caper? But this is not a caper. This is a job. The job is armed robbery. You fuck up on this job, mister, you go to jail for twenty-five years.

Is Jocko at the counter yet? Colley turns from the door, glances toward the counter for just a moment, sees that the baldheaded man in the red cotton jacket is looking suspiciously at Jocko as he approaches, the smile more tentative now: Is this a holdup here? Are these two guys together, the one coming toward the counter and the other one standing over there near the door? They have to be together, otherwise why doesn’t the one near the door either start looking at the wine bottles on the rack there to the left, or else come toward the counter himself to state what sort of alcoholic beverage he wishes to purchase here in Carlisle Liquors, a proud and ancient family name... the gun is coming out of Jocko’s pants.

He holds the gun like a huge cock, waving it in the bald guy’s face. Colley suppresses a sudden urge to giggle, and looks out at the street. People are moving past slowly in the stifling heat, cool here in the store, though, air conditioner humming, no chance of anybody doing anything stupid in here, too cool in here for anything stupid. Behind him he hears the words he’s heard a dozen times before, spoken exactly the same way, the same voice-level and tone, the same inflection, “See this, mister? I’ll shoot your face off you don’t open the register fast. Now do it!”

There is another voice.

Colley ignores the words at first; they are too loaded with everything he has feared since he woke up this morning. He hears the words, of course, and he knows what they mean, but he chooses to react instead to the fact that there is another voice in the store, an unexpected voice that follows so quickly upon Jocko’s set opening speech that it seems like an altar boy’s response to a priest’s litany, and makes suddenly valid the image of the counterman-priest in his stained-glass store.

Colley is suddenly trapped inside a movie. It is a caper movie, and everything is going wrong. It is the next-to-the-last scene in the picture, where everything goes wrong. The mastermind forgot something. Or a character flaw exposes itself. In the instant before he turns toward the counter, he tries to think what it is that possibly could have gone wrong, knowing full well what it is because he has heard the words and understood them, but refuses to accept the words and the meaning of the words until he can see for himself that what the voice claims is actually so. He knows, too, that he cannot do anything to change this situation. This is the scene where everything goes wrong, and there is nothing that anyone can ever do to change it.

This is the hoodoo-jinx scene; it cannot be changed because it was filmed too long ago. Jocko said his lines a long time ago, and they were recorded on film, just as the other voice was recorded. The movie is playing here in this liquor store for the first time anywhere, folks, it is a world premiere. But it really all happened a long time ago, when it was being filmed, and nothing the actors can do or say now will change a frame of what has been frozen for posterity. Colley knows the Penal Law, he now thinks, “the actor or another participant in the crime,” and he thinks yes, Jocko has said his lines, the scene is progressing nicely. The voice that answers Jocko raps into the store with machine-gun authority. Jocko knows his lines because he’s said them so often, and the man responding on cue has surely said his lines at least as often — oh, the scene is going beautifully. If only Colley wasn’t so scared shitless, he could maybe eat his popcorn and enjoy the rest of the movie. He is scared only because of what the other voice has just said, even though he has not yet turned toward the counter to make sure this isn’t merely old bald Carlisle Liquors making his voice big and barrel-chested; there are some short guys like that who can find a voice deep in the soles of their feet someplace and imitate wrestling champs.

“Police officers!” the voice says. “Don’t move!”

Instead of not moving, Colley moves. He turns from the door, where he has been watching the street, which suddenly seems like a foolish occupation, since the thing that is going wrong is not coming from the street but from inside the store. At first he thinks he has made a mistake. Nothing seems to be changed there at the counter. Jocko is still holding a gun in his fist, the barrel pointed up at Carlisle Liquors’ face, and the old man is looking into the muzzle, nothing has changed, it is all a mistake. Not the mistake, not the big blunder that fucks up the caper, but simply an auditory mistake. Colley didn’t really hear anybody saying anything about cops, all he really heard was the counterman saying “Yes, sir, I will open the register in a jiffy,” and somehow, probably because of the shitty acoustics, thought he heard “Police officers! Don’t move!”