Marcus Sakey: Good People

“I’ll think about it.” Marshall gestured to Will. They moved down the line to the bodyguard.

As he worked, Marshall saw double. One part saw backs of heads, knots in muscles, beads of sticky sweat on necks. The other saw the pool at Caesars, a pretty waitress in Roman garb running him whiskey, the sun on his chest and his eyes on the sports boards.

When it happened, it was faster than he’d expected. The bodyguard let Will take one of his hands, started to go along, but then ducked and twisted back, Will yelping as the guard reversed the hold, forcing the smaller man to his knees.

Marshall didn’t hesitate. Just blinked back to single vision and pulled the trigger twice. The holes he’d drilled in the barrel muffled the.22, changing a roar to a clapping whoosh and a wet splash. The bodyguard’s face crumpled, and he went down.

JACK KNEW THE SILENCE would last only a fraction of a second, so he broke it first, before anybody started screaming. “Don’t any the rest of you fucking move.” He lashed them with his voice. “Don’t move, you don’t get shot.”

Marshall reached up with his left hand and brushed blood spatter off his face. He shook his head. Panic flared in Jack’s belly, but he fought it down. The grip of the.45 was slick. Goddamnit . They were supposed to be in and out, ghosts. Easy money. The civilians wouldn’t have been able to report a thing, and the dealer wouldn’t want to.

Then he saw Bobby. His brother was frozen, one hand to his face. What skin the mask revealed was pale as November. Guilt flooded in to mingle with the panic. He’d promised the kid it would be an easy job, that no one would get hurt. Now there was a corpse on the floor, a murder rap on all of them.

Get control.

Jack looked around the room, hoping for something that could make the difference, some way out of this. Saw only the playthings of a class he had never belonged to. Silk pillows and thousand-dollar champagne. His fingers tightened on the grip.

“You two,” he said, gesturing to Bobby and Will. “Get the bags and get out of here. Go ahead the way we planned.”

Marshall looked over sharply, but Jack ignored it, his mind working fast. They had the dangerous men under control. The drug dealers were both bound, and the bodyguard, well, he wasn’t going to be a problem any longer. The rest were sheep. He and Marshall could handle them. And he had to get Bobby out of here. No way he was letting his little brother stand for a murder charge. “Go. We’ll meet up later.”

Bobby didn’t move, just stared at the ruin on the floor. Jack grimaced,then, keeping his gun on the civilians, walked over and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Trust me,” he said softly.

Bobby stared at him. Blinked once, then again, then nodded. He ducked down to grab the handle of the case. Will stepped forward and handed him the bundle of zip-ties, eyes unreadable. “You’re the boss.”

“We’ll meet you in an hour.”

Will nodded, then grabbed the case with the drugs and headed for the stairs. Bobby followed, stopping at the doorway to look back. Jack gestured him on, then watched him go. He turned back. “The rest of you, foreheads against the wall and don’t try anything. We’re going to tie you and then we’re walking out of here. You stay cool, in two minutes you have the best cocktail story of your life.”

WILL WAS BLASTING down the stairs three at a time, and Bobby hurried to catch up. The case was heavier than he would have imagined, banging against his thigh. His heart hit so fast and hard it didn’t seem like a pulse so much as a continuous rumbling. The music grew louder as they went.

They’d killed someone. Jesus Christ, they’d killed someone.

At the bottom of the stairs, Will slowed, stripped off his mask. Bobby did the same, tucking it in his pocket. The bouncer was still crumpled beside his stool where they’d left him. Bobby stepped over, and then they were back in the alley, the music cutting off with a slam as the door swung home.

His hands shook like palsy. “Jesus.”

“I know it.” Will blew a breath beside him. They walked south, away from the stolen Ford they’d arrived in. “That bodyguard.”

“What the hell happened?”

“He didn’t listen.”

“What the fuck , man?”

“It’s the job. It happens.”

“That’s it?” Bobby wanted to scream. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever wanted to scream, to just open his mouth and howl.

“That’s it.” Will turned left toward a loading dock.

“It can’t be that simple.”

“It is.”

“Wait.” Bobby stopped, looked around, seeing the alley for the first time. “This is the wrong way. The Chrysler’s over there.”

“I know it.”

The flash of light registered first, a strobe of white. Then Bobby heard the sound. He gasped, dropping the case, his hands going to his chest, finding it wet. The ground, he could still see the dirty concrete in the afterimage of the gun flare, it was rushing up, concrete and broken glass, his knees hit and the world jerked, and then he fell back, still not understanding, seeing the puzzle pieces but not putting them together until Will stepped over him, holstering his pistol as he reached for the case Bobby had carried.

No. Oh, no, no, no.

For a moment Will just stood looking down, a shape cut out of the sky. He reached up to his ear, drew something from behind it. A cigarette. He snapped his lighter, the flame sucking hungrily through the smoke, the light harsh against Bobby’s eyes.

I’m a bad man , he thought, and then his eyes closed.

TOM REED COULDN’T SLEEP for rain and acronyms.

The rain wasn’t real. It came from the sound gizmo on Anna’s night table. The noise wasn’t actually much like rain, more like a hum of static. She said it helped her sleep, and he didn’t mind, though it made him smile when she turned it on while real rain fell. Rain from a machine to mask the sound of rain on the windowsill, the same way they had thick curtains to block the daylight and an alarm clock that simulated the sunrise. They’d laughed about it, years ago, how they’d lost the battle against yuppiehood without firing a shot.

But the rain wasn’t really the problem. It was the acronyms.

TTC. HPT. IUI. D &C. IVF. ICSI.

At first they’d seemed amusing, if a little precious: TTC for trying to conceive, HPT for home pregnancy test. Anna found a whole community online, thousands of women sharing stories on fertility Web sites, posting their most intimate details on message boards, analyzing basal body temperature and cervical mucus consistency like oracles peering at tea leaves. The Web sites had made Anna feel better, had provided something it seemed he couldn’t. The first acronyms had come from there.

The later ones came from the doctors, and they were neither amusing nor precious. They were cruel and costly. Tom rolled on his side, careful not to disturb her. They used to sleep spooned, the heat of her back nestling his chest, the smell of her hair, the sense that their bodies snapped together like Legos. Sometimes it seemed like a long time ago.

IUI, intrauterine insemination.

He tried to think about work, about the specific, boring mundanity of it. He pictured his office, eight by ten, drop ceiling, metal modular desk, the slim window through which the mirrored side of the neighboring skyscraper bounced a view of his own back at him. But that led to thoughts of the 9:30 status meeting he was going to miss, of sighs and shaking heads. He tried to guess how many e-mails would be waiting when he made it in.

IVF, in vitro fertilization.

The light that slipped past the curtain glowed faint silver. The clock read 4:12. There weren’t many reasons to be awake at 4:12. In his twenties, sure: a Saturday night, he and Anna and the old crew, candles burning, beer gone, Leonard Cohen on the stereo, a last joint circling as people fell asleep against each other on garage-sale furniture. In his twenties, 4:12 made sense.