Whorl Read online

  “You’ll have to forgive my partner, he was raised by wolves,” Dave told the new kid, who wasn’t sure what to make of their exchange.

  “Taylor-tucky trailer trash, born and bred,” Aaron said proudly. “Dave’s gonna drive today,” he told Mo. “You’ll be my guard. They tell you what a guard’s supposed to do?”

  “But they said--”

  “I don’t give a fuck what they said. I’m the messenger on this run, which means I’m the boss once we get out that door. I tell you to sit on the hood and wave your cock at the hookers, you do it. Driving an armored car ain’t like regular driving, and I’m not going to have you behind the wheel your first day out. Dave’ll show you how it’s done. Every run’s different, but you’ll get the idea. He’s good. He can make this beast dance. Hell, you know he got this thing airborne once? Four feet of fucking daylight under the tires.” Aaron loved telling this story. Mo’s mouth opened in awe and he stared at the truck towering above them.

  “Not on purpose,” Dave assured him, shaking his head.

  Dave wrestled the big truck up onto the sidewalk in front of the ugly gray building and parked. They had eight feet of clearance between the truck and the building, with the driver’s side of the truck flush with the curb. There was parking allowed on the street, but Aaron preferred it this way, and knowing his reasoning Dave wasn’t sure he was wrong. Dave looked back through the steel mesh at Aaron, then back out the windows. As Mo went to open the passenger door and jump down Dave stopped him.

  “I’ll get out here,” he told Mo. “You just stay in the cab.”

  “You sure? Why?”

  “Because for one thing you were about to open that door, again, without looking around,” Aaron chastised him from the back. “For another, this is a hot location.”

  “Hot? You mean, like robbery attempts?”

  “Not so far, but between the cars and the foot traffic you need to keep your head on a swivel here. Vernor and Junction, baby, estamos en el ghetto Mexicano.”

  “What?”

  Aaron just sighed. Most of the signs along Vernor were in both English and Spanish, and of the ones that were in only one language, most of those weren’t English. It still wasn’t as bad as Dearborn, though. No women dressed as ninjas walking around, all the signs looking like they’d been vandalized by scribbling toddlers.

  “You see who’s having lunch again?” Dave asked his partner with a jerk of his head.

  Aaron glanced back over at the blue Michigan State Police Charger parked in front of the coney island across the street. Even after all these years they still only had one big red gumball light on the top. “Yeah, I saw ‘em. Fucking ramp roosters, they practically live there.”

  “That’s good, right? That the cops are there? So it scares away anybody thinking about robbing us?” Mo looked back and forth between the two of them. Dave let Aaron take it.

  “Maybe,” Aaron said. “As a general rule, though, cops get the fuck out of the area when they see us, just in case there’s a robbery attempt. They don’t want to get caught in the crossfire. That’s why you probably won’t see them come out and leave while we’re sitting here. Our stop here is, what, ten, fifteen minutes? And we’ve seen an MSP car there probably two dozen times over the years. How many times have they finished lunch, walked out, and driven off while we’ve been parked here? Dave?”

  “Never.”

  Aaron looked at the new guy. “Never. That, dude, is what they call a statistical anemone.” He looked back at his partner. “You see anything?”

  “Just that guy sitting in that piece of shit gray Chevy down there in front of the thrift shop, been there since we rolled up.” There was a decent amount of foot traffic on the sidewalk on both sides of the street, but other than the occasional glances no one was paying the armored car much attention, or loitering close by.

  “Yeah, I saw him.” All the cars in this neighborhood were pieces of shit, although half of them were layered with extra chrome or gold or decals of the Virgin Mary on the back window or some such. Hadn’t these people ever heard of stereotypes? Aaron’s mouth spun up again. “What the hell is with all the ‘In Loving Memory of Pablo’ or whoever the fuck family member who died, commemorated by a big sticker on the back window of their car? What’s in loving memory, the sticker? The back window? The car? Did they buy their shitty Buick with dead Pablo’s life insurance benefits? I swear to God.” He shook his head, then peered out the dirty windows to either side, studying the cars and pedestrians. “Okay,” he said to Mo, “what’s company policy if you’re a driver and someone grabs your messenger, tells you to open up or they’re going to shoot him?”

  “Uh, um, I drive away.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Ummmm, I guess ‘cuz they figure the dude only wants the cash, so if I drive away….”

  “…they’ve got no one to bargain with, so they just get pissed off and walk away,” Aaron finished for him. “It’s a good theory, and it might even work part of the time. Maybe even most of the time.” He leaned forward and his voice dropped an octave. “But when it doesn’t, they’ll put a bullet in your messenger’s head because they’re so pissed off, or because he’s already seen their face, or because he already has some cash on him that he took out of the truck.”

  Mo didn’t really have an answer for that. Aaron leaned even further forward.

  “So what you need to do is work out with your messenger beforehand what he’s okay with you doing. I don’t care what company policy is, you ever drive off and leave me standing there with a gun to my head, you better hope I die, otherwise I’m coming for you.” He looked at Dave as the new employee’s eyes went wide and said cheerfully, “You ready?”

  Dave popped the door and jumped down, and by the time he had the door shut again he had his pistol in his hand, per company policy. He kept it down along his leg, walked around the back of the truck, across the sidewalk, and stood against the building next to the front door, looking up and down the street.

  A middle-aged man in dirty work clothes approached the bank. He registered the truck, then Dave in uniform standing next to the door, then the pistol in Dave’s hand, but all he did was nod as he headed into the lobby. Just another day in Detroit.

  Aaron popped the back door, lowered the dolly to the ground with a clank, jumped down, and began stacking boxes of coin. The tendency was to watch the messenger, but the trick was to fight your natural instincts and look away from the target. Dave checked out anybody on foot within fifty feet, any passing car, and even scanned the few second floor windows nearby, just looking for something out of the ordinary, some disruption in the natural pattern and flow.

  “We good?” Aaron was finished with the coin and was about to start with the cash bags.

  Dave’s head kept moving. “So far.” He glanced up at the cab of the truck and saw the new kid watching the two of them, instead of what he should have been, which was everything else. Moron. Nice enough, but not a whole lot going on upstairs.

  Past the bank was the parking lot, then another narrow building that at the moment was vacant, and then an alley. Dave saw the squad car as it nosed out of the alley and paused halfway across the sidewalk.

  It was a two man DPD squad car, and both officers were scanning the street. They saw him a second later and he stared back, expressionless, giving them a nod. There was a slight pause, and Dave saw they were taking in the scene—the truck, his and Aaron’s uniforms, the dolly stacked with tan canvas cash bags, and the gun in Dave’s hand. Then the driver gave him a slight nod in return, and pulled out—heading away from them. Quickly.

  “Who dat white boy think he is, standing there with a gun in his hand in my city?” Aaron said with a smile, watching the squad car drive away. “We be the po-lice, ain’t nobody else should have no guns. Ain’t got no respect. Muthafuckin racist, dat’s what dat shit is, whitey with a gun, just another perpetration by the man to keep a brutha down!” His voice kept getting louder. “Can you dig it? I s
aid, can you dig it?”

  Dave threw his free hand up in the air. “You know, just ‘cause I’m standing here with a gun in my hand doesn’t mean I want to get into a gunfight today.”

  “Relax,” Aaron said dismissively. “Man, nobody has a sense of humor anymore. You can’t even mention race without being called a racist. Archie Bunker’d get arrested for hate crimes.”

  “You need some help wheeling that thing in or something?” Dave asked him, glancing up and down the sidewalk. Maybe they’d be able to clear the stop without Aaron causing a race riot.

  “Nah, I’m good,” Aaron said cheerfully, his voice back to normal. Dave opened the lobby door for him, scanned the interior quickly, then stepped aside for his partner.

  “You need to lighten up,” Aaron told him as he pushed the heavily laden dolly by. “Have some fun. And I’ll give you five bucks if you can figure out what movie I was quoting.”

  “Seriously? The Warriors. Try something hard next time.”

  “Shit.”

  Seven minutes later they came back out, Dave in front. He had to step out of the bank onto the sidewalk before he could check left and right, and when his partner didn’t get jumped or shot Aaron followed him out with the dolly. He didn’t need the dolly as the cash bag, even filled with $86,000, didn’t weigh that much, but Aaron wasn’t about to fill both his hands. Keep your gun hand free if at all possible.

  Dave stood with his back to the front of the bank and swept the area with his eyes while Dave rolled the dolly toward the side of the van. The door could be opened by the driver, but neither of them heard a click.

  “That moron listening to his iPod again?” Aaron asked.

  “Looks like it.” Mo hadn’t even noticed them come out of the bank yet, he was bobbing his head and staring off down the street. The State Police cruiser was still parked in front of the Coney, the troopers nowhere in sight.

  “Jesus, I’m going to shoot him myself before the day is out.” He banged the door violently with the flat of his hand. “Pop the door!” he yelled.

  Dave used the remote on the garage door but parked in his driveway out front. The Mustang was parked inside the garage on the left side, with about three feet between the car and the wall, which had a small, curtained window. Technically it was a two-and-a-half car garage, but preventing door dings on the ‘Stang was a constant battle.

  He went into the house through the garage, shutting the overhead door behind him. The canvas lunch bag he tossed onto the island in the kitchen, then hit the switches which flooded the kitchen with light.

  The house was quiet, with a few dust motes floating in the air before him. Dave checked his watch and saw that it wasn’t even four thirty yet—early day, but that was all for the better. Aaron had been about ready to kill the poor kid by the end of the day’s run. He seemed nice, but actually paying attention to his surroundings seemed a little beyond Mo, which is not what you want in an armored car company employee.

  “Nice kid, he’ll probably be President of the United States some day, but he’s not fucking driving for me again,” Aaron told Joe back at the vault, never mind that Mo hadn’t spent a minute behind the wheel of the truck. His lack of observational skills, an attention span, and his apparent addiction to his iPod had been enough.

  “Somebody put you in charge when I went to go take a dump?” Joe asked him, peering through his thick glasses. Dave had just walked away as the arguing commenced.

  He grabbed a plastic bottle of Diet Coke out of the refrigerator, took a swig, then headed upstairs to change. Gun, magazines, holster and magazine pouches came off the belt and went onto the bed. It was a big bed, King-size, and he’d made it before going to work. Black uniform belt got hung in the closet on a hook, shoes on the floor in the closet neatly lined up, and the uniform shirt and pants into the hamper.

  A fresh pair of jeans came out of one dresser drawer, a black t-shirt out of another. He grabbed the brown reinforced leather belt off the hook in the closet, then the holster and Glock went back on his belt. The double magazine pouch he only carried when he was in uniform for Absolute, and he grabbed a single magazine carrier off the dresser and clipped in onto the belt on his left hip. The other spare mag and the double magazine carrier he left on top of the dresser.

  The doors to the other bedrooms on the second floor were open but Dave didn’t glance into them as he walked down the hallway and headed downstairs to the big kitchen. The kitchen cabinets were really dated. Had he noticed that before? They might have been original to the house, which was built in ’78. Maybe he should paint them, or replace the doors. The appliances weren’t that old. He stood there for a while, thinking, then noticed the noise, or lack therof. The house was really quiet when he was the only person there. A dog would be nice. He’d had a dog growing up, Lacey, but she’d died at the ripe old age of fourteen. But he couldn’t get a dog. He was gone too much for a grown dog, never mind a puppy, with all that housetraining. And no fucking way he’d get a cat. Single guy with a cat? Might as well pierce his ears and start wearing pink shirts with popped collars.

  No surveillance job tonight, or over the weekend for that matter, so he was on his own until Monday morning. He decided it wasn’t too early to eat and dug around in the fridge to see what he had. The leftover pizza he’d save for Saturday….hmmmmmm. Half a steak, already cooked, some lettuce…..simple enough. He heated the steak in the microwave while he chopped up some of the lettuce, added a few grape tomatoes and sliced onions. He sliced the steak into thin strips and laid it on the salad, then drenched the whole thing in Italian dressing.

  This time of day there was nothing on TV but crappy local news or reality TV court shows. He didn’t do reality TV. Ever. “I deal with losers, liars, and idiots all day at work, why would I want to watch them on TV?” he’d said to one of his co-workers recently, and meant it. Daytime TV seemed to be specifically designed to keep losers and morons entertained and distracted from their shitty lives. He grabbed the book he was currently reading, Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa, his Diet Coke, and sat down at the small kitchen table by the bay window. When he was done eating he left the book on the table, bookmark slid into place (not as good as For Whom the Bell Tolls, but not bad), rinsed the bowl out in the sink, and put it in the dishwasher. He stood in the big kitchen for a while, leaning against the counter, looking toward the window behind the table but not seeing anything, lost in thought. The house was completely still.

  After a few minutes like that he took another swig of Diet Coke, then pulled the cardboard silhouette targets out from behind the couch and hung them on the nails on the mantel above the fireplace. As a kid he used to hang his stocking from them, but that was a long time ago….

  He spaced the targets about a yard apart then went back into the kitchen. From the edge of the kitchen to the targets was eight yards exactly. Not as far as he would have liked, but he made do. He unloaded his Glock and placed both the magazine that was in it and the spare on his belt onto the counter, with the round he racked out of the chamber next to them. Then he triple-checked to make sure his pistol was empty. The corner drawer held the weighted dummy magazine and the electronic timer, which he hung on his back pocket.

  The timer could be programmed for a random start, and had a par time function with a second beep programmable down to the tenth of a second. Dave checked the par time setting—one second even. Good enough to start. He hit the start button, relaxed his hands at his sides, and waited. Somewhere between three and five seconds later (closer to three this time) the timer beeped and he did a smooth draw of his pistol, getting the front sight settled evenly in the notch of the rear sight and centered on the chest of the center silhouette target, his finger lightly on the trigger, just as the timer beeped a second time.

  “Slow and sloppy,” he muttered to himself. He needed to work on his reloads and shooting on the move, but he started every practice session with the basics, beginning with the flat-footed draw. He took a deep breath, hit t
he button again, and let his arms hang naturally.

  An hour later, his right shoulder and forearm sore and aching, he put the timer and faux magazine away. The spare magazine went back into the carrier on his hip, and he reloaded his Glock and put it back in the kydex holster on his right hip. Glocks, with their polymer frames, weren’t heavy to begin with. Carrying it every day he didn’t even notice the weight anymore.

  Dave checked his watch. Shit, still barely six o’clock. He peered out the window again, then used his phone to check the weather report, to see if there was any rain rolling in. Nope.

  Only a few streets in the square mile subdivision in which his house was located were straight, to deter non-residents from cutting through the neighborhood. Well-maintained sidewalks lined both sides of every street, and as long as there wasn’t snow on the ground they were great to jog on.

  His four mile route kept him mostly inside his subdivision and the next one over, with only a brief stretch on a main road. He did a Figure 8 or the infinity symbol depending on how you looked at it. If he was just jogging and not working on his sprinting he normally did eight-minute miles, and much preferred to do them on pavement as opposed to a treadmill. Treadmills didn’t work the back of your legs nearly as much. The early evening weather was mild, and in a t-shirt and shorts he didn’t break a sweat until he’d done the first mile.

  Back at the house he kicked off his shoes and pulled the small Kahr 9mm out of the holster inside the front of his waistband and set it on the coffee table in the family room so he could stretch. He wasn’t very flexible, and not likely to ever become so, but knew that if he didn’t stretch regularly his chances of injury rose with physical activity. The little pocket auto had a polymer frame and a stainless steel slide and wasn’t likely to rust from his sweat, but he still made sure to wipe it down after every run.

  Dave grabbed the remote and scanned the programming guide on the TV to see what was on, then flipped over to HBO. They were doing a Godfather marathon in honor of Pacino’s birthday, the original and parts 2 and 3 all in a row. Part 3 was mediocre at best, but the first two……it was going to be a good night.