he goes walking down that sidewalk, and a damn cop pulls over just to say hey.” He took a cracker from the pack. “Some of Zeke’s best customers are cops. He’s good at playing both sides of the law. Says to me, ‘What’s the difference between a cop and a crook? Nothing, man, a cop’s just a cop until he gets caught, and then he’s a crook like anybody else.’” Jesse stood and looked out the kitchen window. “Hey, Larry,” he whispered. “Yeah, you, Larry of Larry’s Pawnshop and Trade, not you other Larrys out there. You, Larry Watts. You were one lucky bastard on this day. The blue truck, it saved your ass. And you, Larry, you just walk on down that sidewalk and talk to your cop. But they’ll be another day, Larry boy.”
“They’ll be looking for who stole her truck,” Mike said. He was doing the dishes.
Jesse ate another cracker. “Nobody gonna worry about that truck sitting by Lake Waccamaw. First thing her fiancé is gonna think is she ran off to Randy. He said the name like he hated it. Randy. Can’t any bitch besides Nicki Lynn and my mom be happy with one man? And meanwhile, cops will be looking all over Lake Waccamaw. She told me herself she went there all the time.” He raised a finger to Mike. “Her pattern, man. She gave it right to me. You gotta work your pattern into her pattern, that’s the way you disappear.”
“What about the girl?”
“What the hell is she gonna say?” Jesse shook his head. “Positive, think positive. We gonna be just fine, Michael Man.”
Mike smiled. He liked the way Jesse called him Michael Man. Back in juvy, Jesse wouldn’t let anybody give him shit. “That’s my boy,” he’d say. “Nobody gonna fuck with my boy.” Then he’d call him Michael Man.
“So what’s the next hit gonna be?”
Jesse kept staring out the window. “I’ve got another little piece of action in mind. Right there in Land Fall, just around the block.” He glanced at Mike. “I’m doing this one on my own. It’s a big house. Just a mom and her daughter. They gotta have all kinds of jewelry, crystal, silver. I fit it in my backpack. Zeke fences it. There you go. And that daughter, man, she’s hot. Nice ass, always running around the block. Looks at me, don’t even see me, man. No, the princess, she sees only what she wants to see. Jenny says nobody knows what they’re looking at when they think they’re looking at me.”
Mike took the dishes to the sink, turned on the faucet. “Doesn’t Jenny get nervous around you sometimes?”
Jesse looked at him, squinted like he was making up his mind about something. He refilled his glass with tea, took a long drink. “Not Jenny,” Jesse said, “I’ve known her since we were kids. A hippy chick. Why would I screw things up with a girl who gives me free massages anytime I want? Says she has to practice on somebody to get her license.” He smiled. “And she likes that somebody to be me.”
Mike washed the dishes, set them in the drain, kept his eyes off Jesse. “So you two really have something. She ain’t just some chick.”
Jesse rummaged in the cabinet, found a bag of cookies. Mike knew there were just a few left. He’d been saving them for his granny “Yeah, we got a thing. None of that going-steady shit, just a thing.” He shoved the last of the cookies into his mouth and rubbed the back of Mike’s head the way he would a dog. “I’m staying here tonight,” he said. “In the morning you gotta drive me back home.”
“Man, I can’t take my car. Cops might be looking for my car. I get pulled over just for being in your neighborhood in that piece of shit I drive.”
“Don’t worry. Nobody remembers half the shit that walks right by. They just see what they want. People don’t notice anything. I thought you knew that an eyewitness is the worst lead a cop can have. How many people notice what kind of car you drive?” Jesse walked across the kitchen and looked out the window toward the lights of a distant neighbor’s house. “Take you and me here. You think anybody noticed us pull up in your granny’s drive? No, they’re all watching some trash on the television. Shit, you think the folks in my hood see who I am?”
“You don’t live in a hood.”
“No, it’s a gated community. I’m inside the gate keeps the bad dudes out, right? My daddy’s got money. People see him, think he’s my old man. People see me, think I’m one of the luckiest guys in the world.”
Mike wished he had some more dope. The only weed left was in Jesse’s pocket. “So,” he said, “you want to finish up that weed?”
“Nah,” Jesse said. “I’m saving it.” He turned, stared out the kitchen window into the darkness. From where Mike sat, he could see Jesse’s distorted reflection. The eyes narrowed, sharp cut of his jaw. He was good-looking, but sometimes when his face went a certain way, he looked like some kind of fiend. Mike wished he had that. If he lost some weight, worked out, maybe if he changed his hair, he could be something like Jesse: the guy the chicks wanted, the man who didn’t give a damn.
Jesse exhaled a whistling breath between his teeth. “This place I’m gonna hit. Rich lady. College girl, long red hair. Nice. Drives around in this silver Sebring with the top down.” Jesse leaned against the counter, rubbed his belly. “Man, my stomach still ain’t right. Your granny got any Coke? I could use a Coke. That always eases me.”
Mike shrugged. He knew there was one Coke in the fridge behind the milk, but that was his granny’s Coke. She liked to save it for when she got a sour stomach. “Ice water might help.” He took out some ice cubes, dropped them in a glass, ran the water cold. Jesse drank a few sips, ran his tongue over his teeth, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I know they got some good shit in that house, man. It’d be easy. Her momma works, spends evenings out, I’ll bet in one of those I’m-rich-and-divorced-so-help-me support groups. And this chick, she’s in and out of school, out with this baby-faced boyfriend. And man, she’s running around in these shorts. Whew. Runs right by me, doesn’t even look.” Jesse rubbed his belly again, looked around the kitchen.
Mike nodded. “Just don’t get caught, man. Like Zeke told you, it ain’t smart to mess around in your own hood.”
“My folks, they’ll always cover me.” Jesse grinned. “Remember that crack whore? The one they popped me for?” Jesse opened the refrigerator, and as if he knew where it was, he pushed the milk aside, grabbed the Coke. Mike knew he’d have to slip out in the morning and buy another one for his granny. Jesse twisted the top off, sipped. “Good thing she had a record. Drugs, shoplifting, bad checks, credit cards. I nearly did time for that one.” He went into the living room, opened the front door, looked out, took in a long breath, let it go. “Now I’ve got two years suspended hanging over my head.” He stood in the doorway, rolled his shoulders. “Is that fucked or what?”
Mike could see the tension in his back just by the way he moved. When he got this tight, Mike had to be careful. Jenny at the marina had to be a pretty cool chick if she was willing to rub Jesse’s back. Mike took the quilt off his granny’s chair, laid it on the couch. He arranged a pillow and gave Jesse a grin so he wouldn’t take things too seriously. “You put her in a coma for two weeks.” Jesse rolled his head to loosen his neck. Mike could hear a pop. “You scare me sometimes, the risks you take, man.”
“Don’t you worry.” Jesse drained the Coke. He stood there, muscles bulging as he squeezed the doorframe in his hands “You ever just want to pull a house down?”
Mike shook his head.
“I want to be like the night, man. Be like the dark seeping into everything when the sun goes down.” He turned, shut the door,
