Denis Johnson - Nobody Move

Mary popped the champagne and said, “In honor of — fuck, you name it,” and the cork shot out of the kitchen and landed God knows where.

She didn’t go after it because the Tall Man lay on the living room couch with his shoes on the fabric and his hat over his face.

“I’m not celebrating yet. I’m hungry.” Juarez pointed to the steak on the plate before him. “What about this one?”

Gambol said, “That’s hers.”

“Then after you eat,” Juarez said, “you can watch me. We’ll drive around. We’ll find some breakfast. Especially we’ll drive around, because I think we saw our friend — Mr. Jimmy. Ten minutes ago.”

Gambol said, “Yeah?”

“A blue pickup? Ford? Real beater? But we couldn’t see the license.”

“The license?”

“Our other friend, he got in touch and gave me some numbers. Missy Sally.”

Gambol said, “Oh.”

“Yeah, Sally’s still dirtying up our planet. So, you know, that other party you mentioned, the unknown person that you ran into — it’s a collateral thing. Bad luck came in on a wind.”

Gambol finished his steak and sopped the eggs with his toast while Juarez observed and Mary drank Mumm’s from the bottle. Gambol pointed with his fork. “Your steak’s getting cold.”

“Go ahead,” Mary told him.

Gambol exchanged his plate with hers, and Juarez sighed and said, “Mr. Gambol is a talented person. I’m glad we’re associated. Proud.” He turned his chair a bit and looked Mary up and down. “The Army didn’t turn you into a dyke.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” She took a slug of champagne.

“You put on a little weight?”

The bubbles jammed her sinuses, and she choked and whispered, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“You look good.” Juarez got up and went to the living room and spoke to the Tall Man and came back holding a bulging letter-sized envelope. “Gambol also looks good. You

fixed him. Look at that appetite.” Even in his boots, Juarez was a bit shorter than Mary in heels. He bowed slightly, envelope extended.

She pried open the fold and thumbed through the packets. Ten of them, each wrapper marked $2000. “Paid in full.”

Juarez took her hand, but he didn’t shake it. He just held it. To Gambol he said, “Don’t say thanks.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know. All right, Mary. We’re done here. T-Man and I need a good breakfast. Can you recommend a place where we could also talk business?”

The Tall Man came into the kitchen now. He stood under the ceiling light with his hat tipped forward and his face in a shadow and a hooked pinky traveling toward one of his nostrils, if he had nostrils.

Juarez said, “Mary?”

She turned and stood looking down into the sink.

“Where do we go for breakfast?”

“The mall. Downtown. Across from the mall.”

“Is there really a downtown?”

Jesus Christ, she wanted to shout, get him out of my house.

Loose items scraped across the floorboard as Luntz took the first possible turn off the highway at the greatest possible

speed. He tried to speak in a conversational tone. “Are they turning around?”

Anita righted herself and looked behind. “No. I mean yes. Now they are.”

“It’s them. They know the truck.”

Anita grabbed his arm for stability as he took the next road coming. “I don’t see them now.”

“That Caddy will eat this thing.” They passed between open pastures, completely exposed. “Watch behind. Hang on.”

“Not this one.” With her left hand she stopped the wheel. “Go two more.”

He checked his mirror. “There they are. It doesn’t matter where we turn.”

“Next one. Next one. This one.”

“Stay off my gearshift.”

The pastureland ended. They sped through a tract of homes. He zigzagged among the blocks, feeling safer with walls around him. He didn’t see the Caddy. But it had to be near.

“Go faster.”

Luntz went slower. “We have to ditch this truck.” He watched for any kind of alley, an open garage door, any semi-enclosed space.

Anita leaned hard against him and grabbed and forced the wheel, saying, “Left, left, left,” and would have steered them onto somebody’s porch if he hadn’t braked hard and cut the corner across a lawn and onto a perpendicular street.

“Jesus. Where are they?”

“No. No. See the house up there? We can go in.”

“Here?”

“That one, that one.” She was digging for something in her purse. “Not the driveway. Don’t block the car. Park beside the house.” She was opening her door as he floored it and whipped around a large sedan in the driveway and fishtailed around the side of the house and scraped against the neighboring fence and stopped, trapping his own door shut. He took hold of the shotgun and scrambled to follow her out the passenger door, hesitated two seconds, and lay across the seat and felt for Anita’s revolver on the floorboards.

She was already at the front door. He followed, concealing, he hoped, the shotgun between his arm and his ribs, its muzzle in his hand and the pistol grip in his armpit, meanwhile sticking the revolver in his waist and untucking his shirt to cover it. He joined her on the porch.

She held a set of keys. She was reading a red notice fixed to the door, its message printed in black capital letters. Across the door a stretch of yellow flagging — CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.

She tore away the yellow flagging, and Luntz said, “Hey.”

She unlocked the door and threw it wide and strode inside.

Luntz took two steps into the interior and was stopped by the silence it held — a sunken living room with a thick

cream carpet and a wooden bar, a hallway beyond it prohibited by the same yellow flagging, and something in the hallway, maybe a lamp or a sculpture, shrouded with a black plastic bag.

He heard Anita in the kitchen banging cabinets open and closed and saying, “Fucker. Fucker. Fucker.”

Luntz stepped down into the living room and crossed the carpet and broke the yellow banner and traveled the hallway to the open door at its end. A king-sized bed, mussed bedclothes, a wine-red hardwood floor, not much blood on it — maybe half a cup of coagulated jelly around the left armpit of a white outline with upflung arms and very short legs. For some seconds, Luntz couldn’t take his eyes from it. The chalk-person had no legs below the knees.

Outside the bedroom lay a garden. Large leaves and large dark blossoms nodded at the window. Luntz wiped his mouth with a fist and felt his lips moving. He edged sideways out the door, and halfway down the hall he turned and hurried to the kitchen.

Anita stood at the counter, unscrewing the lid of a cookie jar. “Come on.” Car keys.

“Get me out of here,” he said. She turned the deadbolt, and he followed her out the kitchen door, saying, “This is destroying my nerves.” She led him into the garden and around the side and then to the sedan out front. “I gotta say, you have a calm disposition.” They got in the car, and she was out of there fast but quiet, not quite peeling rubber.

“Yeah. A calm exterior.” They were topping seventy-five on a suburban street. “You’re efficient. That’s what it is.” He swiped his forearm across his sweaty face. Under his shirt the perspiration poured over his ribs. “Holy Toledo!” he said. “Don’t you ever get nervous?”

Jimmy laid the shotgun between them on the seat. Anita covered it with her purse, as much of it as she could, and lowered the windows for air while Jimmy lit up and blew his smoke all over the place. “Damn,” Jimmy said, “this is a Jaguar. This is yours?”

“Nothing’s mine.”

“This is real wood, isn’t it?” He was touching things.