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rings and everything goes white for a second. Mike hitting me doesn’t make me feel any better, but I manage to turn left on Main Street without crashing.
    They’re trying to talk over each other in the back. My ear burns, and I’m looking all over Main Street for blue and white lights, trying to stay focused, and trying to think ahead. I yell over my shoulder, and have to yell it twice, “You assholes gonna tell me what happened?”
    Mike says, “Everything was going fine, got the cage open no problem, and then the tough guy over here decides to chuck the old man over the counter.” Mike pauses, daring Greg to say something different. Greg is smart enough to keep quiet.
    I can see it happening even if I wasn’t there: The three of them jumped the old man at the back door, right? Henry knew the old guy was going to be there. This was Henry’s gig. They’re always his gigs. So they jumped him and went inside, persuaded the old man to open the front counter’s cage. Henry talked to him slowly, calmly, hypnotizing the old man into believing everything would be okay. That’s what Henry is good at. When we were kids, he’d talk us into stealing cigarettes and porn mags. So Henry was telling the old man that all was well, no one would get hurt, that he was going to go behind the counter with him, go to the register and then to the jewelry and watches kept in the lockboxes. It was then that maybe the old guy said something and Greg didn’t like it, or the guy gave Greg an odd look because Greg was always getting odd looks, with his too-small-for-his-face eyes and a mouth like a cut, or maybe Greg got some wild itch he had to scratch, or he was trying to prove how tough and crazy he was to Henry, and I won’t say it to Mike right now, but it’s still Henry’s fault for taking Greg, for not planning for what Greg might do, which is throw a semiretired old man over the register counter.
    Mike says, “And when the old man got up, he was holding—”
    Greg cuts Mike’s bedtime story short, and yells, “Hey! Hey!”
    I’m looking through the small screen of the rearview mirror again and can’t see much, only Greg turned around, kneeling, hands on top of the back seats, and he’s looking into the trunk. He moves left, right, dancing around like a dog excited to go for a ride. Or maybe he just really has to go to the bathroom like I do.
    Greg says, “Where the fuck is Henry?”
    Great. The kid is bat-shit crazy. Why doesn’t Henry say something to him? Maybe Henry is waiting for Greg to stick his head over the seat so he can sucker-punch him, knock loose a few Chiclets.
    Greg starts bitching at me about leaving Henry, about me fucking everything up, and he bounces off the car walls and seats like one of those superballs you can get for a quarter. Now I’m yelling too, saying, “What do you mean?” and telling him to shut up, telling Mike to shut him up. No one answers me. I wish they would. Mike turns around next, but he’s too big to turn completely around. Mostly he twists in his seat and cranes his melon-sized head toward the trunk.
    Mike says, “He’s not in here.” He says it like it’s the last line in a movie.
    More Greg: “You left him there? You fucking left without him?”
    Mike repeats himself. “He’s not in here.”
    “Wait, wait, wait.” I say bullshit to all that. “Henry? Henry, quit fucking around!” No answer. He’s still fucking around, right? Hiding in the trunk, the duffle bag on top of him. It’s something he’d do. He isn’t answering me, though.
    “What did you do?”
    I say, “I watched Henry throw the duffle bag in, and then he climbed into the trunk. I watched him. I swear to fucking God. He used the rope, pulled the tailgate shut behind him.”
    Greg jams his head between the front seats and screams into my ear, the same one that got cuffed. The ear isn’t having a good time. “You didn’t see shit. He isn’t there.”
    “Enough,” Mike says, and pulls Greg back