= TWO-TIMING
  by Anthony Neil Smith


Al takes out an ATM in the Biloxi Mall early that morning and is sure he'll be a hundred miles gone before anyone figures out what happened. He pulls a blue pillowcase from under his shirt and loads the cash into it. The only people in the building are mall-walkers and some maintenance workers with mops, rolling buckets, aerosol cans.

Al will ditch the sweatsuit and wig that had him looking like a retiree, but not until he's in the car, down the road, heading towards New Orleans on Highway 90 where a suite waits under the name he's using for the weekend.

The ATM is near the door where Diana has the car running. Al loses his footing on the slick freshly mopped mall tile. He recovers but bangs his arm up. There's none of that mall music playing this early, and everything smells like chemical fumes but still clean. The arm throbs. Al is out the door.

* * *

Diana waits in the Buick. She's on her cell phone with her other boyfriend, Evan, the Biloxi cop she met at the 3rd & Goal Sports Bar two weeks ago. She likes him because he plays rough but fair. Not at all like Al, but she's worked with Al on these jobs for over a year now. Can't give him up so easily, but no love there, that's long gone.

It's the Two-Face in Evan that she loves so much. No, it's the gun. It's both guns, the literal and the metaphor. It's Evan's short hair and naive country boy drawl. It's the way he says Perpetrator. Al is too simple. She didn't see that at first because criminals are the bad boys, on the edge, in your face, flaunting the law. But the cop--Boy Scout by day, a monster off-duty. Amoral and self-destructive, and he damn well knows it. He likes to flex when he's naked, and Diana wonders if it's meant to impress her or himself.

She's talking to Evan and staring at the beach across the Highway, running her finger through her blonde hair that tumbles across her shoulder, when Al yanks the handle, door's locked, raps the windshield. Diana punches the Auto Unlock and mumbles something into the phone, presses the off button.

Al opens up, plops down, pillowcase of cash in his lap, and tells her to move it, then, "You never lock me out, see, because I might need those three seconds."

"Sorry." She puts the car in gear.

"It s not a paint-by-numbers thing."

Diana thinks she's figured Al out. Something about the way he once planned a convenience store robbery for two weeks, but when they pulled up to the store, there was one more person inside than he had planned for. A couple teenage kids playing an old video game machine. Al wouldn't do it "They're wild variables."

"It's two stupid kids."

"Two stupid kids can be a problem."

Diana got it. He's anal retentive. He's all compulsive-obsessive.

Then she really began picking up on his habits, his behaviors, his likes/dislikes (every dish washed immediately, lemon-scented Lysol everywhere, liked most of his clothes beige or shades of brown, liked doggy style, he checked every light in the house three times before leaving, he couldn't fire a gun just once had to be twice always), and saw that he was a big baby, scared of the world, had to have control. That's no DeNiro. She started looking elsewhere.

Out of the parking lot, down the road, Al squints, looks at Diana, says, "Who were you talking to on the phone?"

* * *

Evan stares at the silent phone handset a moment. He's in the small weight room at the police station, pumping some iron before the day's motorcycle duty. She had called, kinda early, easy chit-chat, before he had heard a rustle and her fast high voice saying, "Gottagoseeyoulaterlove."

He rubs a towel absently across his chest and sets the phone down. He walks over to the dumbbells, does some reps, thinking about how little he knows about Diana. She says she's a kindergarten teacher, but he never asked where. She doesn't talk about past boyfriends except in some vague, lump-them-together way, "losers all, I've gotten smarter." But at night when the lights are out, she pulls at his clothes and his muscles like she's starving for him. Only two weeks. Evan wonders if he should have taken things slower. But Diana was always in a hurry, never stayed the night.

Another guy? Is she two-timing? Is she in trouble? Evan gets a twisty stomach, words like married, addicted, infected flash in his mind. So much that he sets the weight down and stalks back to the phone handing on the wall, hits *69. Two rings. Maybe he expects a nice lady's voice to say "St. Peter's Kindergarten" or something public, but does not expect this-- a man answers, "What?"

"Yeah, Diana Bowler, please?"

"Who are you?"

Evan says, "Who are you? This is her workplace, right?"

"It's her cell phone."

Oh. Well. "Tell her it's Evan, okay? She just called me."

He watches the weight room door, sees cops pass by the windows in an unrecognizable zip as he listens to the low voices on the phone, the man saying, "Evan? Who the hell is Evan?"

Diana saying, "Just someone I know. Let me have the phone."

"How well do you know him? Really well? Better than me?"

"Please, Al, please."

The man's voice louder, the phone back at his ear, Evan guesses. "She can't come to the phone, Evan. Got a message?"

"I heard her. I heard everything you just said."

"Look, pal. Don't call me a liar."

"I heard her. She said to give her the phone, Al. How about you do what the lady asks?"

"Mind a question? You sleeping with her? She told you about me?"

Diana's voice, yelling, "We're going West on the highway. Just past the mall, towards Gulfport, brown Buick "

Line goes dead.

Evan slams the phone and rushes to his locker, no time for full uniform. Grabs a jacket, his gun, his helmet. Runs to his bike shouting that he needs help, a kidnapping, something. No one understands a word he says. He's out the door.

* * *

Al bangs the cell phone on the dashboard over and over, not harming either. He makes like he's going to slap Diana backhanded, and she flinches, but she knows he won't. He'll get loud, bang up stuff at the house, but with her Al's all threat. About the only good thing about him.

"Evan? How many more? Never mind, I don't care, that's fine." He stares out the window and nods, pats his pillowcase. He tosses the wig behind him. "Who am I kidding? This isn't a big score. We'd need a hundred more just to make it worth the effort."

Diana says, "Why don't I let you out here, and you run for it? I ought to. These little things, ATMs and car washes, that's like vampires sucking on pigs instead of people. It's wimpy, Al."

Al goes big eyed, O-mouthed, says, "Now you tell me? All of a sudden you've got a better idea? Maybe living off two guys, there's an idea for you."

"This sucks. I'm not your mom, but you're like a kid, whiny little snot. I'm just supposed to put up with it? We're done. I want my share, and then it's over. How about you let me out, you take the car, I go home and start over?"

He grips the bag tightly, and then he does it. He snatches her hair and she swerves, cars beside and behind honking, swerves back and veers close to the concrete divider. Al yanks, pushes Diana up, grunts. The guy in the car next to them is still honking, face wrinkled up like a horror flick baddie while he flips the bird.

"Let go!" Diana says, steering with her left hand, beating Al with her right.

"Soon as I leave, you'll have the cops on me. Think I'm stupid?" Al lets go. "Why do you want to make me crazy? That's not me at all."

* * *

Evan speeds through traffic, right down the painted lines, thinking it was a bad idea to ride the bike with shorts on, his jacket flapping and wind off the beach like a sand blast hitting his bare chest underneath. And Diana's clue? A Buick? He thinks, I check every Buick? Maybe they've turned off the road. This isn't going to work.

Then he sees the swerving ahead, the brake lights and squeals, a swerving Buick, and Evan flips the light and siren, guns it.

* * *

Al looks behind. "A cop? That little swerve flagged a cop?"

Diana smiles. "It's Evan."

"Evan's a cop? You're dating a cop?"

Diana drops her head a little, says, "An accident. I didn't know at first."

Al scrambles over the seat into the back, looks under, looks in the pockets, everywhere. "We still have a gun in here somewhere? Anywhere?"

"No guns. We dumped all the guns. I told you to keep a couple, didn't I?"

An intersection coming up, light turning from green to yellow. A gas station on the left. Al points.

"There, that road, turn off there, now."

Diana takes the car through the parking lot, almost clips a guy pumping gas into his Cherokee, takes out a garbage can, and swerves in front of a pick-up truck. Evan is closing fast, gets tangled behind the truck.

Al says, "Come on, floor it!"

"You know I told him to come get me. I just want to stop."

"You're not going to stop." Al reaches around Diana's seat, grabs her throat. "You'll drive or I'll choke you."

She whispers, "You choke me, we'll crash."

"I'm only choking if you stop, so we won't crash."

* * *

Evan gets around the truck. The brake lights on the Buick flicker, Al in the back behind Diana, scuffling. The car's going sixty or seventy, Evan keeping pace. He thinks about calling for backup, just in case, but then he thinks of headlines, a medal, Diana's appreciation, and tell himself, Not yet. Guns the bike forward.

* * *

Diana lurches forward, breaks Al's grip, and slams on the brakes, fights to keep the wheel straight.

* * *

Evan can't stop. The Buick screeches and the bike slams into the rear, skids sideways, burns Evan's leg. He goes up and over, slams into the back window, the roof, the hood, bounces off onto the side of the road, broken glass and gravel.

Diana jumps out of the car, rushes around. "Jesus, Evan, no!"

The bike is stalled out in the other lane, cars stopping now. Diana squats by Evan, a bloody mess as he wheezes and heaves blood and holds a bloody leg, a bloody chest, so broken.

"D-d-d," he says.

Diana hears the car door slam and she turns to see Al in the driver's seat, taking off like a rocket pilot in the Buick, her share in the car with him. The driver of the truck steps out. So does another driver with a cell phone who's already on to Nine One One.

"D-d-d," Evan says again.

"I'm here. You'll be okay," she says. Doesn't believe it. Evan's done.

"Don...leave. Stay. Don't leave." He's gargling words, crossing his eyes.

The lady with the phone shouts, "Ambulance is on the way. It's on the way."

The truck driver leans over Diana, cap in hand, and says, "What can I do?"

Evan reaches for Diana, says, "Don...lee...me." Like a baby. If she stays any longer, she thinks he might ask for his mommy.

She removes his cracked helmet, pats his jacket, finds the pistol. She tells the truck driver, "Just help him, stay here until the ambulance comes, okay?"

And then she walks to the bike, shoves the gun in her waistband and straps on the helmet. Evan will be dead soon, nothing she can do. She struggles with the bike, gets it up and straddles it. She cranks, throttles. Good to go. A banged up wheelguard but the tire is still okay, amazing. She points it down the road towards Al. She's going to chase Al. She's going to kill him and take the money. And if that might not pan out, she thinks about headlines, maybe a medal.


ANTHONY NEIL SMITH is from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He is co-editor of Plots With Guns, and a fiction editor with Mississippi Review Web. His stories have appeared in 12-Gauge Review, Blue Murder, Thrilling Detective, Crimestalker Casebook, Absinthe Literary Review, Nefarious: Tales of Mystery, Panic Attack, the Raleigh News & Observer's Sunday Journal (as part of the Southern Reader series), and the Barcelona Review. Forthcoming work will appear in FUTURES. He hates spiders because one bit him on the ear and made a nasty mess. Also, he's not ashamed to say whatever the hell he thinks about things, and thinks more people should follow his lead. He eats meat. And he has never seen a cat solve a mystery, dammit.

Copyright (c) Anthony Neil Smith 2001