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and sticks him into his seat. “We need to think this through.”
    Oh goody. I’d do anything for Mike, but he’s more of a brute-squad kind of guy, more of a cuff-you-in-the-ear kind of guy, not the thinker. Thinking just makes him more mad, more likely to start breaking shit.
    “Turn around, Danny. We can’t just leave him behind,” says Greg.
    Everything I got inside me drops into my shoes. Goddamn
Henry. Him really not being in the car with us sinks in. Henry isn’t here and it’s my fault. But we can’t turn around. “Yeah, brilliant idea, right? We’ll just swing by, pick him up on the corner, no problem.” Then I say to Mike, “No going back, but I’m pulling over.”
    “Why?”
    “I want to see what’s in the trunk.”
    Greg says, “We can’t leave Henry, man.”
    Mike is looking at me. Or the me in the rearview mirror. Maybe that me is different somehow. Mike says, “We’re not turning around. You’re not pulling over. We can’t stop, not yet. Keep driving.”
    I nod. Maybe I’m wrong and Mike always was our thinker, not Henry. Mike’s right. About everything. But if Mike told me to turn around, I would. He’s known Henry as long as I have, and we both owe him everything.
    We pass hotels, the local arena, and UMass medical center. Highway ramps all around us. I should probably take one, head out of Wormtown. I put on the interior lights instead. “Is the duffle bag there?”
    Greg roots around the trunk. “The shotgun and the duffle are here.” He lifts the bag up, and it sounds like a pocketful of change. “There’s a ton of blood. Oh man, what the fuck?”
    “Did Henry get hit?” Never did hear the end of the pawnshop story, what happened after the old man went over the counter, and then the three gunshots.
    Mike says, “The old man got off a shot, some semiautomatic piece of shit, but I didn’t think he hit Henry. I was right next to him and he didn’t say nothing about getting hit.”
    I don’t ask about the other shots I heard. I see now what I didn’t see before. I say, “All right. How did the tailgate get shut, then?”
    “Huh?” Mike has his ski mask off. He rubs his shaved, bald head and the thick stubble around his goatee. His eyes closed, arms folded across his chest. Greg sits back down, holding his hands out. Showing off the wet paint. It’s red.
    I say, “The tailgate. How’d it shut? While I was waiting for you guys, it was open. Like it was supposed to be. So I’m thinking I didn’t see what I thought I saw, right? Henry was hit, got in the trunk, but because of the blood loss he wasn’t strong enough to pull the tailgate closed behind him, and maybe I started moving before it was totally shut and he fell out onto the parking lot. But that doesn’t seem right. How’d the tailgate get shut? I mean, what, did Henry get up after he fell out and shut it for us, tap the back twice and wish us bon voyage?”
    Greg says, “Oh fuck. Nah, that ain’t it. Henry ducked his ass out and he’s gonna turn us in, pin the robbery and shooting on us. That blood came off the duffle bag, man. He didn’t get hit. That bag was sitting in the old man’s blood after Henry took care of him, right, Mike?”
    Mike says, “I don’t remember. I don’t know.”
    Greg says, “That’s gotta be it. He dumped the duffle bag and his shotgun back there to pin the whole thing on us while he slinks away. That fucker.”
    Mike turns to look at Greg, and looks at him like a kid staring at a real ugly bug about to get squished. “If he did, I don’t blame him. It all went to shit because of you.”
    Greg doesn’t fire back. He’s scared of Mike. So am I. I drive into a residential neighborhood and early morning commuters are starting to fill the roads. Maybe that’s good. We can lose ourselves in the everyday traffic.
    Greg says, “So what do we do now, boys? Where we gonna go?”
    We’re supposed to drive across Wormtown, into Auburn, to Henry’s old girlfriend’s