Eddie watched a pair of kids riding tandem on a single sled, saw them fly off as the sled overturned, heard their laughter.

  “Why’s he doing it? This guy?”

  Billy shrugged.

  “Hates his boss, I guess. And that’s the funny part. It’s his father.”

  “What?”

  “Greek guy. Has every dime he ever made. Forces his son to work there but treats him like shit. Kid’s tired of it, wants something of his own.”

  “Won’t the father suspect him?”

  “That’s what the camera’s for. The gun too. He can tell the story afterward, and most of it will be true.”

  “He hates his old man that much?”

  “Can you blame him?”

  Eddie walked off a few feet, boots crunching in the snow.

  “Second thoughts?” Billy said. “If so, I understand. I can get someone else. It’s not too late.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “That’s not what I mean, man. And you know it.”

  Eddie walked back toward him.

  “What time?” he said.

  “Seven. They close at eight. Christmas shopping hours. It’ll be dark then, but a lot of people still on the street – nothing but stores up and down that block. I’m in and out, then back in the car. No one will even know what happened until we’re out of there. He’s going to give us as much time as he can before he hits the alarm.”

  “We should go by first, a couple times. Have a look.”

  “We will. That’s the way I figured it. We get up there and something doesn’t look right, we turn around and go home. If I walk in the store and something’s wrong, I turn around, walk out. We go home.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  ††††

  The store was on Lexington Avenue, between 39th and 40th. They cruised slowly, letting the traffic flow around them, Eddie feeling exposed, as if everyone on the street and in each passing car knew what they were there for.

  “That’s it,” Billy said.

  Pandera’s Stereo Center was sandwiched between a boot store and a camera shop. There was a narrow doorway and a single display window filled with equipment. Handwritten cards were taped to the units with prices Xed out, new ones written in with red ink and exclamation marks. Tinny Christmas carols came from a speaker above the door.

  Eddie slowed the Torino to a crawl. A lot of people on the street here, walking fast, some carrying shopping bags. The sky was gray, the day still holding on. Flecks of snow dotted the windshield.

  “Keep going,” Billy said. “We’ll swing around again, see if we can spot the guy.”

  A horn blew loud behind them and Eddie jumped, hit the gas, braked quickly again as an elderly woman stepped out from between two parked cars in front of them. The Torino juddered to a halt a foot from her, Billy putting a hand on the dashboard to brace himself. The woman looked at them, spit, her phlegm spattering the left front fender, crossed the street.

  “Jesus Christ,” Billy said. “That was close.”

  The horn again and Eddie saw the delivery van in his rearview. He pulled back into the flow of traffic, and the van double-parked in front of the camera store.

  They went up a block, waited at the light. More flurries now. Even with the windows closed they could hear competing Christmas music from the storefronts.

  “Busy, this street,” Eddie said. “A lot of people. More than I thought.”

  “That’s good for us. The more, the better. More people, more cars. I vanish the second I leave the store.”

  The light changed and they turned onto 38th Street. A cab blew through the light, nearly hit them, the driver swinging around at the last second. Eddie spun the wheel to the right, braked hard.

  “Easy,” Billy said.

  “I’m trying, it’s just ...” A bus pulled away from the curb in front of them, belching clouds of dark exhaust. He got behind it. “It’s this fucking city, man.”

  Thinking then that would have been the answer. Wishing the cab had hit them. A fender bender, police, a report. The whole thing off.

  Billy was craning his neck, looking back the way they’d come.

  “One more time round,” he said. “Then we go somewhere, park, watch the time.”

  The bus picked up speed. They went up a block, made a right, headed back uptown.

  “How do we know it’s still on?” Eddie said.

  “I talked to the guy today, before we left. Called him from a payphone in Avon.”

  “What did he say?”

  “The old man’s out on the Island. Some wedding. Might not make it back into the City at all tonight. We’re good to go.”

  Another turn, down a block and then back onto Lexington.

  “After this, I don’t think we should drive past anymore,” Eddie said. “Somebody might notice us.”

  “All these cars going around the block? Looking for a parking space, dropping people off? No one’s going to pay any attention to us. Day like this, in this city, we’re invisible.”

  The store was ahead on their right, the delivery van gone. A dark-haired guy in his late twenties stood in the doorway, smoking a cigarette.

  “That’s him,” Billy said.

  A cab stopped in front of them, and Eddie had to brake, waited while it let people out. He saw the guy in the doorway puff quickly on the cigarette, glance up and down the street. He dropped the butt, twisted it out with a heel, went back inside.

  The cab pulled away, and Eddie slipped into traffic behind it.

  “Go down to 23rd and turn,” Billy said. “We’ll head across town. Find a place to park for awhile.”

  Eddie counted streets, made the turn, drove west. After a few blocks they were in a warehouse area, the traffic sparser. Water ahead, the Hudson. On the other side, hills and trees and highway. Jersey.

  “Here’s fine. Pull over.”

  They parked on a side street, beside a building that had once been a bus terminal, the walls covered with graffiti.

  Eddie turned the engine off, put his hands atop the wheel. His palms were slick, his breathing fast.

  “You okay?” Billy said.

  “Yeah.” He wiped a hand on his jeans. Snow was spotting the windshield now, sticking.

  “Turn the radio on,” Billy said. “Let’s get some music.”

  “You kidding?”

  “Might as well. We’re just going to sit here.”

  Eddie switched the ignition to Accessory. Billy turned the radio on, adjusted the tuner, WABC and Johnny Donovan coming in strong and clear. Billy sat back as the next song started. He listened to it, frowned.

  “We had joy, we had fun ...”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Are they ever going to stop playing this fucking thing?” He turned the radio off. “Summer’s over. Enough with this shit.”

  “End of the year,” Eddie said. “They’re doing their Top 100 countdown.”

  “Make me happy to never hear that fucking song again.”

  Billy looked out the window, watching the snow, the car ticking and cooling around them. They waited.

  ††††

  The snow was heavier, the roadway slick, when they turned onto Lexington the final time. Billy had the gun in his lap.

  “Here,” he said. “Here. Don’t go past it.”

  Eddie braked smoothly, nothing in front of them. Billy reached across with his left hand, popped the lock stem, pulled the door handle and then was out of the car, cold air rushing in before the door swung closed. Eddie watched him ease between parked cars, narrowly avoiding a couple on the sidewalk. The gun was down at his side, almost hidden against his leg. He put his left arm out, pushed the door to the store open. It closed behind him.

  The windshield wipers clacked, pushed snow away. A car beeped behind him, then swung around, passed. His foot on the brake, the car in Drive, he watched the door. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” came from the speaker above it.

  The shots were loud, close together. Eddie jumped. The car seemed to move around him. People on the sidewalk looked at the store, kept walking.

  Another shot, and then the door flew open and Billy came out, walking carefully. He held a metal strongbox to his chest with his left arm. His right hand was empty.

  He saw the Torino, started for it and Eddie leaned over, pushed the door open. Billy was between the parked cars when a man with slicked-back gray hair and a mustache came out of the store, a gun in his right hand, aiming.

  The gun rose and fell. People on the sidewalk screamed. Billy jerked the passenger side door open, swung in, fell across the seat. Another shot, high, somewhere above them, and then Eddie hit the gas, pulled away from the curb, the momentum slamming the door shut. The strongbox hit the floor.

  He blasted through the amber light, swung around a bread truck, accelerated, weaved between two cabs, hit the next intersection and turned right without using the brake. Tires squealed near them, a horn blared. Traffic cones ahead, an open manhole. He swerved around them, pulled back into his lane, hung the next left and then they were alone on a one-way street, faceless concrete garages on both sides of them.

  Billy sat up. Eddie looked at him, not taking his foot off the gas.

  “What happened?”

  Coming up on Ninth now. He couldn’t miss the turn, wouldn’t know how to get back to the Tunnel otherwise. He made the left, alternating brake and gas, saw the sign up ahead. He swung the Torino down the access street, and there was the Tunnel ahead of them, no line, Christmas lights glowing above the entrance.

  Gas, brake, gas and into the Tunnel, the whoomph of the tile walls closing in. Sickly yellow light filled the car.

  Billy was unzipping his jacket slowly, pulling the folds apart. Eddie looked over, saw his jeans were soaked with blood, his gray t-shirt black and wet with it.

  “The old man ...” Billy said, winced. He put his left hand on the dashboard to steady himself. When he took it away there were four bloody fingerprints on the vinyl.

  “I dropped the gun,” he said. “I left it there. I dropped it and I couldn’t pick it up.”

  Out of the Tunnel and into the night. A sign welcomed them to New Jersey. Eddie dragged the wheel to the right, crossed two lanes of traffic, saw the sign that said HOBOKEN, went up a curving ramp and under a railroad bridge, and then was on a residential street, cars parked on both sides, houses, trees.

  He slowed. Two blocks and he turned left. A park ahead. He slid to a stop against the curb, shut off the engine and the lights.

  Billy was looking out the window. Eddie saw his breathing was shallow, his face pale in the glow of a single streetlight. Eddie rolled the window down, listened for sirens. Nothing.

  Billy sat back, turned to him.

  “They’re going to be looking for you,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything more.

  Eddie looked into his eyes for a long time, sitting there, the night quiet around them, snow falling softly on the car.

  ††††

  It took him almost three hours to get back to Bradley Beach. He’d wandered until he saw a bus, ridden it to Newark. There he caught the Penn Central train south, walked the mile from the station in the snow. He’d left the strongbox in the Torino, pushed the bills into his jacket pockets without looking at them.

  Now, walking the last block to the apartment house, he took them out. Counted as he walked. Mostly twenties, a handful of fifties, two hundreds.

  He could hear the ocean now, at the end of the street. Blackness out there, snow dancing in the boardwalk lights.

  He’d counted twice by the time he reached the building. Four thousand even.

  It was enough.

  He stopped in the street, the snow blowing around him, folded the money, put it back in his pocket.

  He didn’t know what he would say, how he would tell her. Wondered if she was up there in one of those lighted windows right now, looking down at him.

  The front door was propped open, the foyer dimly lit. He stood there for a while, in the wind and the snow. Then he went up the stairs and knocked on the door.

  ¥¥¥¥

  AFTERWORD: An earlier version of this story appeared in the 2005 anthology “MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER: Stories Inspired by the Haunting Bruce Springsteen Song," edited by Jessica Kaye and Richard Brewer, and published by Bloomsbury USA.

  Copyright 2011 - Wallace Stroby

 

 

  Wallace Stroby, Lovers in the Cold

 

 

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