The Mirror Thief(182)

Curtis fumbles a little at the keycard slot. When the green light clicks on and the handle turns, Albedo lunges forward and slams his shoulder into Curtis’s upper back. Curtis sprawls through the door, face-plants on the carpet. Albedo is right behind him, kicking him in the side, stepping over him, keeping him covered with the little Smith revolver as he clears the suite with his own pistol. Curtis sucks air through his clenched teeth. The Mirror Thief is on the floor, a few inches from his chin. Albedo’s plastic bucket hangs from Curtis’s upraised left foot.

Albedo disappears into the bedroom for a second. Then he reappears, both pistols leveled at Curtis’s face. Albedo’s gun has a thick blunt taped-up suppressor on its barrel that looks like it might have been made from a can of beans. The gun is a matte-black semiautomatic, similar to the one that Argos had this morning. Curtis thinks of the pink column of dust he saw on the lakeside road, and then he thinks: no, not similar, the same. The thought makes him feel sick, and scared, and angry. Angry most of all.

So, Albedo says, another twenty, thirty minutes, you reckon?

Fuck you, man, Curtis says.

Albedo laughs quietly. He seems tired, strung-out. Yeah, he says. I reckon maybe twenty, maybe thirty minutes.

Curtis kicks the pail off his foot, rolls over, sits with his back against the wall. You’re playing this wrong, he says. You’re too late. Killing Stanley and Veronica is not gonna fix anything for Damon. NJSP has issued warrants based on physical evid—

Not for my ass, they ain’t, Albedo says. C’mon, Curtis, don’t act like a retard. I ain’t looking to fix shit for Damon. That boy’s gone and f*cked hisself. Which is his prerogative, but he’s damn near gone and f*cked me, too. Soon as I clean up here, I’m getting on a damn airplane. And ol’ Damon better be a-wishin’ and a-hopin’ that the Jersey cops get hold of him ’fore I do.

That’s a bad plan, Curtis says. You don’t think—

Lemme give you some advice, Albedo says. Shut your f*cking mouth. While you’re at it, start thinking about how I’m gonna round Damon up when I get back to AC. You come up with a fool-f*cking-proof plan of which you are an indispensable goddamn component, and you don’t say another word till you got one. Because right about now, Curtis, you are looking mostly like a problem to me.

Albedo slides a chair away from the table with the toe of his boot. Then he sits, puts the two guns on the tabletop—their barrels parallel, aimed at Curtis—and begins to examine his damaged hands, plucking at cactus-spines with his long fingernails. I told Damon, he says. I told him on numerous occasions that bringing you in on this would be a dumbass move of pretty much the highest order. And I bet you wish more than just about anybody—don’t you, Curtis?—that he’d paid me a little more attention on that point. Well, nobody ever listens to my f*cking advice. I mean, I told you, didn’t I, that this shit was gonna go wrong, and to make some other plans. Did you listen? Hell, no. I told Damon that he had only one advantage, only one thing working for him in this whole ugly shitstorm, which was that nobody he’d got crosswise with was apt to talk to the cops. And what’s the first thing that ingenious motherf*cker does? He brings in a cop.

Albedo glances up, warming to his subject, then jerks and freezes. He’s staring slackjawed at the wall to Curtis’s left; his widened eyes are all pupil. He spasms, blinks hard, gives his head a violent shake. Then he snatches Argos’s pistol from the tabletop. Waving it around as if targeting a phantom housefly. Fuck, he says. He turns back to the wall, sights along the pistol’s slide. No, he says. No way. Fuck.

He fires. Then he fires again. The suppressor swallows the muzzle-blasts, but not the cracks—loud, like a yardstick slapping a table—of the bullets going supersonic. A cloud of pulverized drywall bursts over Curtis’s head, and then the air is full of glitter: sharp stinging grains that strike his scalp. He curses, shields his eyes. Whoa, he says.

A high-pitched cacophany fills his left ear: glass breaking and falling. Albedo has just shot out the big mirror that hung over the room’s dressing table; Curtis couldn’t see it from where he sits. Jesus, Curtis says. What the f*ck, man.

Albedo’s laughing silently, trembling, shaking his head. Oh, buddy, he says. Holy shit. I am tweaking for sure. I coulda just sworn—

The phone rings. Albedo jumps, puts a third bullet in the wall; Curtis’s hands go to his face again. On the second ring, Albedo sighs—a little sheepishly—and points to the phone with the pistol’s fattened barrel. I’m guessing that’s gonna be for you, he says.

Curtis rises to his feet. His knees are wobbly; he stumbles on his way to the desk. He reaches the phone on the fourth ring, lifts the handset. This is Curtis, he says.

Curtis, it’s Veronica.

He’s badly shaken: he has to fight hard to steady his voice, to pay attention. A lot is riding on the next few seconds. Behind Veronica’s voice he can hear more crowd noise and PA pages: the airport again. She sounds tense—irritated and fatigued—but not scared. Listen, she says, Stanley’s jerking us around. He wasn’t on the flight.

Curtis blinks. Say again? he says.

Stanley wasn’t on the plane he said he’d be on. He called while I was at baggage-claim. You’re not gonna believe this, but he’s in—He’s gone. He’s long gone.

Curtis feels as though he’s just stepped off a cliff, he’s hanging in midair like a cartoon coyote. Then a crazy thrill creeps up his spine to his throat, and he fights to keep a smile off his lips. Okay, he says. Go on.