Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(40)

“Did you get the album?”

László shook his head. “I didn’t have the opportunity. There were too many cars there, too many people, and too many dogs. I don’t know how many, but I couldn’t chance it. I looked inside her house through the window.”

Viktór paused, mid-bite. “Did she see you?”

László looked down at the top of his boots. “She might have for only one second.”

“Mi a fasz bajod van?” Viktór hissed in Hungarian.

“English.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I wanted to make sure we knew where the librarian lived. I didn’t want to make another mistake.”

Viktór saw the sense in that. “So when do we go back and get it?”

“Not today,” László said. “There will be too many people there.”

“How do you know that?”

“When I looked in the house, I could see a big dining room table that was set with a lot of place settings. I think they’re going to have a big feast with a lot of guests. I suppose that’s what Thanksgiving is all about.”

“Why didn’t we know this?”

László shrugged.

“We have to stay here? In this shithole?”

“We have to lie low. It’s best that we don’t get noticed,” László said. “I thought about that guy in the pickup who saw us on the road last night, so I stopped at a rest stop on the way back here and took a set of license plates off of a car and put them on ours. We’re not from Colorado anymore. Now we’re from the state of Illinois.”

“What did you do with the Colorado plates?” Viktór asked.

“I threw them in a trash can.”

“So we go get the album tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“What if the guests stay there?”

“Then we wait. But I don’t think they’ll stay. Americans don’t ever stay very long in one place,” László said.

“So you think you know Americans now?”

“Yes. They’re always moving. Walking fast, talking loud, waving their arms around. They don’t like to sit still ever. They’re all like that. I don’t understand why they’re all so fat, the way they move around.”

To make extra money when he was in college on the wrestling team, László had worked as a waiter and bartender on a small luxury cruise ship in Budapest where the majority of the guests were from the U.S.

“I think those were different people,” Viktór said. “They were rich Americans. Not like here.”

“All Americans are rich.”

“How can you say that? The old man wasn’t rich. The old lady wasn’t rich. People who stay at a shithole like this aren’t rich.”

László didn’t respond, but his cheeks flushed red. Viktór knew that as an early warning signal. László had a volcanic temper, especially when he thought he was being mocked. Or when someone wouldn’t do what he demanded. Ask the old man about that, Viktór thought.

“These Americans are different, I think,” Viktór said. He kept the challenge out of his voice so as not to further provoke his brother. “We’ve been led to believe that Americans are soft, stupid, rich, and weak. But there is something different with these people here. They’re stubborn and mean and it means nothing to them to grab a rifle and aim it at my face. We can’t think that they’ll give us what we want.”

Viktór paused, then said, “Even a librarian.”

“Even a librarian,” he echoed.



* * *



—

    An hour later, they were both laid out on twin beds beside each other, watching the television. They hadn’t slept together in the same room since they were boys.

American football was on. Viktór understood that one of the teams was the Detroit Lions. The Dallas Cowboys would play later in the day.

“This is a stupid game,” Viktór said. “I don’t understand it. There’s a lot of standing around having meetings. Then they try to kill each other. What’s the point of it?”

László tried to explain the rules. “If you get the ball across the goal you get more points. One team tries to get it across the goal and the other team tries to stop it. It’s kind of like rugby.”

“It’s not like rugby at all.”

There was a knock on the door and the brothers looked at each other. They’d not heard a car approach outside.

The door opened inward as far as the safety chain would let it. “Housekeeping,” a man said.

“We don’t require a service,” László responded.

A young man with thick glasses and a wispy beard peered in through the crack of the door at the two of them on the beds.

“Are you sure?” the man asked.

“We are sure,” László said firmly. With a side-eye, Viktór could see his brother reach beneath the bed for something. Probably the Pulaski tool.

“Not even towels?” the man asked.

“We’re okay, I said,” László replied. “Close the door. You’re letting the cold in.” He was getting angry.