Twisted

well, he was dead. You could see. And I’m going, “What’re you doing, what’re you doing?” And he’s going, “Shut up, shut up, shut up. . . .” And we’re like we’re swearing at each other when we figured out we hadta get outa there.
    So we left. Only what happens is, there’s a cop outside. That’s why the kid threw the bottle, to get his attention. And he’s outa his car. So we grab another customer, this guy by the door, and we use him like a shield and get outside. And there’s the cop, he’s holding his gun up, looking at the customer we’ve got, and the cop, he’s saying, It’s okay, it’s okay, just take it easy.
    And I couldn’t believe it, Toth shot him too. I don’t know whether he killed him but there was blood so he wasn’t wearing a vest, it didn’t look like, and Icould’ve killed Toth there on the spot. Because why’d he do that? He didn’t have to.
    We threw the guy, the customer, into the backseat and tied him up with tape. I kicked out the taillights and burned rubber outa there. We made it out of Liggett Falls.
    That was all just a half hour ago but it seemed like weeks.
    And now we were driving down this highway through a million pine trees. Heading right for the Lookout.

    Winchester was dark.
    I don’t get why weekenders come to places like this. I mean, my old man took me hunting a long time ago. A couple times and I liked it. But coming to places like this just to look at leaves and buy furniture they call antiques but’s really just busted-up crap . . . I don’t know.
    We found a house a block off Main Street with a bunch of newspapers in front and I pulled into the drive and put the Buick behind the place just in time. Two state police cars went shooting by. They’d been behind us not more than a half mile, without the lightbars going. Only they hadn’t seen us ’causa the broke taillights and they went by in a flash and were gone, going to downtown.
    Toth got into the house and he wasn’t very clean about it, breaking a window in the back. It was a vacation place, pretty empty, and the refrigerator was shut off and the phone too, which was a good sign—there wasn’t anybody coming back soon.Also, it smelled pretty musty and had stacks of old books and magazines from the summer.
    We brought the guy inside and Toth started to take the hood off this guy’s head and I said, “What the hell’re you doing?”
    “He hasn’t said anything. Maybe he can’t breathe.”
    This was a man talking who’d just laid a cap on three people back there and he was worried about this guy breathing ? Man. I just laughed. Disgusted laughing, I mean. “Like maybe we don’t want him to see us?” I said. “You think of that?” See, we weren’t wearing our ski masks anymore.
    It’s scary when you have to remind people of stuff like that. I was thinking Toth knew better. But you never know.
    I went to the window and saw another squad car go past. They were going slower now. They do that. After like the first shock, after the rush, they get smart and start cruising slow, really looking for what’s funny—what’s different, you know? That’s why I didn’t take the papers up from the front yard. Which would’ve been different than how the yard looked that morning. Cops really do that Colombo stuff. I could write a book about cops.
    “Why’d you do it?”
    It was the guy we took.
    “Why?” he whispered again.
    The customer. He had a low voice and it sounded pretty calm, I mean considering. I’ll tell you, the first time I was in a shootout I was totally freaked for a day afterwards. And I had a gun.
    I looked him over. He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. But he wasn’t a local. I could tell becauseof the shoes. They were rich-boy shoes, the kind you see all the Yuppies wear. I couldn’t see his face because of the mask but I pretty much remembered it. He wasn’t young. Maybe in his forties. Kind of wrinkled skin. And he was skinny too. Skinnier’n me and I’m one of those people can eat what I want and I don’t get fat. I don’t know why. It just works that way.
    “Quiet,” I said. There was another car going by.
    He laughed. Soft. Like he was saying, What? You think they can hear me all the way outside?
    Kind of laughing at me, you know? I didn’t like that at all. And, sure, I guess you couldn’t hear anything out there but I didn’t like him giving me any crap so I said, “Just shut up. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
    He did