Denis Johnson - Nobody Move

Inside, he left the front door open behind him and waited for her. By the front door, a hat-tree. On the hat-tree a dark suit coat on a hanger. He ran a finger down its empty sleeve. Italian silk. Gambol stood in the kitchen mistreating the jacket’s owner. Above them and around them, tinted skylights and green potted plants gave the kitchen and dining areas a cool, pleasant feeling.

Even in his wheelchair the man gave an impression of height, some of it established by his coiffure — brilliant, silver-white, layered like a toupee, which plainly it wasn’t, as Gambol had his fingers tangled in it, pulling the man’s head backward in his wheelchair to prevent him fixing the buttons of his shirt. When the man let his hands down, Gambol let go of his hair.

“I found him in the bathroom.”

Except for the omission of his suitcoat, the man had dressed for business, his slacks perfectly creased, shoes a

brilliant black on the wheelchair’s metal footpads, but beneath the knot of his crimson tie his shirt was unbuttoned and its tails untucked, and a colostomy bag jutted from under his left armpit.

The door slammed behind the Tall Man, and Anita strode past him toward the kitchen. In her lumberjack costume, in her bare feet, still this female knew how to walk — head up, shoulders back — away from a flaming wreck. She bore down on the man, saying, “I’m guilty, Judge.”

The judge possessed a histrionic flair. At the sight of Anita his chin went up, and his eyes grew shiny.

“I killed Hank.” Now Anita stood before the wheelchair. With both her hands she grasped the bag under his armpit and jerked it free and struck him across the face with it, putting half a pirouette behind the blow, and Gambol leapt aside as feces erupted down the man’s neck and chest and behind his back, so that he was wearing it and sitting in it.

The judge raised his hand to wipe at his face but seemed to think better of it. He tilted his head, probably to direct the flow, and breathed through his open mouth.

Gambol said something too softly to be heard, and the Tall Man said, “Shut up. We’re out of our depth.”

Juarez drove right-handed, the heel of his left hand stanching the flow of blood from his forehead. “I love getting

pistol-whipped. It means I’m dealing with a

puto

He can’t pull the trigger.”

“Get to the highway.” Luntz switched the gun from his right hand to his left, keeping the weapon pressed against Juarez’s kidney, and sat back in a posture he believed more natural-looking for a passenger and added, “Shut up.”

“I wasn’t talking.”

“You were before.”

“Where to?”

“Shut up.”

“Where are we going, Luntz?”

“Turn left up here. Left. What do you smoke?” As they accelerated onto the highway, he reached into Juarez’s shirt pocket. “Lites. Crap.”

“No, they’re good. Really.”

“Low-tar. Silk shirt. Hey. Got any money?”

“Money?” Juarez lowered his window, and the hot breeze thudded around their heads.

“Give it here.”

Leaning forward and squirming in his seat, Juarez got his money clip from the pocket of his slacks and threw it out the window.

“You fucking

fuck

.” Luntz put the muzzle under Juarez’s jaw and pressed until Juarez craned his neck and grimaced. At the sight of oncoming cars, Luntz lowered it to the area of Juarez’s ribs.

Juarez wiped the blood out of his eye and then onto

the seat, between his legs. “What’s your next move? Go to this judge’s house and waste everybody? Run off with the girl over your shoulder?”

Luntz ignored him and made use of the Jag’s cigarette lighter.

“What a hero. You never even thought about Anita. You don’t deserve her.”

“What’s the address?”

“I don’t know, Luntz. Don’t you know?” A sports convertible pulled around on their left. Juarez said, “Look — those girls are laughing at your chest.”

“Let them pass. Asshole.”

Juarez accelerated gently, keeping abreast of the convertible. “You’re an embarrassment. If Anita’s your woman, then save her.”

“She’s not my woman,” Luntz said. “And nobody can save her.”

Juarez clenched the wheel, working his thumbs. “You’re an embarrassment from the beginning.” He turned his face toward Luntz. He was red-eyed, almost tearful. “When you pull a gun, you know what’s the next thing to do?

Shoot

the gun.

Shoot

somebody.” The Jaguar lurched into passing gear.

“Slow down, Juarez.”

“Let’s put on a show.”

“Slow down.”

Juarez stomped and released the accelerator rhythmically and rocked the engine in and out of passing gear. “See up there, the overpass?”

“I’m serious, Juarez.”

“What I’m going to do, I’m going to drive into the abutment.”

Luntz stuck the gun barrel in Juarez’s ear and was pressed back in his seat. The engine’s noise rose steadily.

“Fuck you, Luntz. Put the gun down, or I swear to fuck.” Juarez levitated in his seat as he locked his leg, holding the pedal to the floor. “We’ll break one-twenty.” He was shouting above the engine’s noise. “I die, you die. Come on, I been waiting for a reason to crash this piece-of-shit Jag. I think I’ll get a Lexus.”

Thinking, What a good line, how cool is this guy Juarez, Luntz blew his head off. Juarez’s window collapsed into rice grains while a two-inch-wide fissure opened above his ear. Luntz clutched the wheel with one hand and then with both hands, and the gun fell into Juarez’s lap while Luntz nearly followed it, working his left leg over the console and kicking at Juarez’s pointed boot on the accelerator. He found the brake with his foot and pulled the wheel to the right, and now they traveled backward, and the view smeared itself across the windshield, and now they’d swapped ends again and were stopped diagonally on the gravel shoulder. The engine had quit. In the silence it ticked, and Luntz heard himself breathing hard and saying, “Wow. I think I just shot you.”

“We wrap a towel around here, just below the knee,” Gambol explained to the judge, “and we go berzerk with a tire iron. What the fuck is this?”

“My catheter bag.”

“Jesus,” Gambol said.

“Make him beg,” Anita said.

“I’m seventy-six years of age. Do you understand? My bones won’t heal.”

The Tall Man suspected the judge’s resistance had more to do with his shock at bad manners than with any worldly desire to keep his money. The man was very ill, with a jaundiced tint to his faded suntan and a papery, tentative quality to his flesh, to say nothing of his colostomy bag — and the catheter bag too, peeking from the cuff of his slacks.

“Don’t worry,” Gambol told the judge, “you’ll probably talk before the bone splits.”

“I’ll talk now,” the judge said. “It won’t help you, but I’m at your mercy.”

“That’s how it works,” Gambol said.

“No. No,” Anita said. “He’s the father of lies.”

“What the fuck,” Gambol asked her, “is your name?”

“Anita.”

“Shut up, Anita.” With the corner of a dish towel, Gambol wiped shit from the judge’s cheek. “The Tall Man’s got some questions.”

The judge took the dish towel in his fingers and rubbed

his neck with it. “I’m sure I know what you want.” He folded the cloth around the soiled portion and rubbed at his chin.

“You’ve hidden some funds,” the Tall Man said. “We want account numbers, passwords, all of that.”

“Look under the kitchen trash.”

Gambol hauled a white plastic bucket from under the sink and set it by the wheelchair. “Go through your own trash.”