Twisted: The Collected Stories Read Online Free PDF

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 for a minute and just sat back in the chair where Toth put him. But then he said again, “Why’d you shoot them? You didn’t have to.”
    “Quiet!”
    “Just tell me why.”
    I took out my knife and snapped that sucker open then threw it down so it stuck in a tabletop. Sort of a thunk sound. “You hear that? That was a eight-inch Buck knife. Carbon-tempered. With a locking blade. It’d cut clean through a metal bolt. So you be quiet. Or I’ll use it on you.”
    And he gave this laugh again. Maybe. Or it was just a snort of air. But I was thinking it was a laugh. I wanted to ask him what he meant by it but I didn’t.
    “You got any money on you?” Toth asked and pulled the wallet out of the guy’s back pocket.“Lookit.” He pulled out what must’ve been five or six hundred. Man.
    Another squad car went past, moving slow. It had a spotlight and the cop turned it on the driveway but he just kept going. I heard a siren across town. And another one too. It was a weird feeling, knowing those people were out there looking for us.
    I took the wallet from Toth and looked through it.
    Randall C. Weller, Jr. He lived in Connecticut. A weekender. Just like I thought. He had a bunch of business cards that said he was vice president of this big computer company. One that was in the news, trying to take over IBM or something. All of a sudden I had this thought. We could hold him for ransom. I mean, why not? Make a half million. Maybe more.
    “My wife and kids’ll be sick, worrying,” Weller said. It spooked me, hearing that. ’Cause there I was, looking right at a picture in his wallet. And what was it of? His wife and kids.
    “I ain’t letting you go. Now, just shut up. I may need you.”
    “Like a hostage, you mean? That’s only in the movies. They’ll shoot you when you walk out and they’ll shoot me too if they have to. That’s the way the cops do it in real life. Just give yourself up. At least you’ll save your life.”
    “Shut up!” I shouted.
    “Let me go and I’ll tell them you treated me fine. That the shooting was a mistake. It wasn’t your fault.”
    I leaned forward and pushed the knife against his throat, not the blade ’cause that’s real sharp but the blunt edge, and I told him to be quiet.
    Another car went past, no light this time but it was going slower, and all of a sudden I got to thinking what if they do a door-to-door search?
    “Why did he do it? Why’d he kill them?”
    And funny, the way he said he made me feel a little better ’cause it was like he didn’t blame me for it. I mean, it was Toth’s fault. Not mine.
    Weller kept going. “I don’t get it. That man by the counter? The tall one. He was just standing there. He didn’t do anything. He just shot him down.”
    But neither of us said nothing. Probably Toth, because he didn’t know why he’d shot them. And me, because I didn’t owe this guy any answers. I had him in my hand. Completely, and I had to let him know that. I didn’t have to talk