Night Prey

into the street.
    Thinking: Fourteen, thirteen, twelve . . .
    At zero , he’d turned the corner and was heading down the hill to West Seventh Street. Fifteen seconds later, he was in heavy traffic. He never did see a cop.

    KOOP CHECKED THE bags in a Burger King parking lot. The first contained forty-five hundred dollars in cash: twenties, fifties, and hundreds. The second bag held fifty gold coins, Krugerrands. Already, one of the best scores he’d ever had. The first box held a gold chain with a ten-diamond cross. The diamonds were small but not tiny. He had no idea what they were worth. A lot, he thought, if they were real. In the second box, earrings to go with the necklace.
    A wave of pleasure ran through him. The best score; the best he’d ever done. Then he thought of Jensen, and the pleasure began to fade.
    Shit. He looked at the gold in his lap. He really didn’t want this. He could get money anytime.
    He knew what he wanted.
    He saw her every time he closed his eyes.
     
     
     
    KOOP CRUISED JENSEN’S apartment. The apartment was lit up. He slowed, and thought he might have seen a shadow on the window. Was she naked? Or was the place full of cops?
    He couldn’t loiter. The cops might be watching.
    He thought about the dog, the feet scratching on the vinyl floor. He wondered why they did that. . . .
    The night had pushed him into a frenzy: exhilaration over the take at Posey’s, frustration over the lights at Jensen’s. He drove down to Lake Street, locked up the truck, and started drinking. He hit Flower’s Bar, Lippy’s Lounge, the Bank Shot, and Skeeter’s. Shot some pool with a biker at Skeeter’s. Scored another eight-ball at Lippy’s and snorted most of it sitting on the toilet in the Lippy’s men’s room.
    The coke gave him a ferocious headache after a while, tightening up his neck muscles until they felt like a suspension spring. He bought a pint of bourbon, went out to his truck and drank it, and started doing exercises: bridges, marine push-ups.
    At one o’clock, Koop started back downtown, drunk. At five after one, drunk, he saw the woman walking back toward the hotel off Lyndale. A little tentative, a little scared. Her high heels going clackety-clack on the street. . . .
    “Fuck her,” he said aloud. He didn’t have his ether, but had muscle and his knife. He passed the woman, going in the same direction, pulled the truck to the curb, put it in neutral. He popped the passenger seat, groped beneath it until he found the bag, stripped out the knife, and threw the keys back in the box. Did a quick pinch of cocaine, then another. Groped behind the seat until he found his baseball hat, put it on.
    “Fuck her,” he said. She was walking up to the back of the truck, on the sidewalk. The night was warm for Minnesota, but she wore a light three-quarters trench coat. Koop wore a T-shirt that said “Coors.”
    Out of the truck, around the nose, a gorilla, running.
    The woman saw him coming. Screamed, “Don’t!”
    Dropped her purse.
    Everything cocaine sharp, cocaine powerful.
    Plenty of fuel, plenty of hate: “FUCK YOU.”
    Koop screamed it, and the knife blade snicked out, and she backed frantically away. He grabbed her, got the shoulder of her coat. “Get in the fuckin’ truck.”
    He could see the whites of her eyes, turning up in terror, pulled at her. The coat came away, the woman thrashing, slipping out of it, trying to run. She went through a sidewalk flower garden, crushing pink petunias, lost one of her shoes, backed against the building and began to scream; the odor of urine rode out on the night air.
    And she screamed. A high, piercing, loud scream, a scream that seemed to echo down the sidewalks.
    Koop, drunk, stoned, teeth as large as tombstones, on top of her: “Shut the fuck up.” He hit her backhanded, knocked her off her feet. The woman sobbing, trying to crawl.
    Koop caught her by the foot, dragged her out of the flower garden, the woman trying to hold on to petunias. Petunias . . .
    She began screaming again; no more words, screaming, and Koop, angrier and angrier, dragged her toward the truck.
    Then, from above:
    “You stop that.” A woman’s voice, shrill, as angry as Koop was. “You stop that, you asshole, I’m calling the police.”
    Then a man’s voice: “Get away from her. . . .”
    From the apartment across the street, two people yelling down at him, one, two or three floors up, the other five or six. Koop looked up, and the woman began to