We Are Both in the Dirt

As she talks to Montana she stands stock still in the threshold that seperates the living area from the bedroom and bathroom. Her heart is pounding so hard she feels faint. Mint and Mandrake stand before her watching her lips move. They hold the same stance, expression, the same damn face. She turns away in a sudden need for privacy. Words with as much venom as Montana's hold needed to be experienced and reacted to alone.

"You just try it you snake motherfucker!" She hisses back at him after she is safely inside of the bedroom with the door shut. "I made the first move, and that's why you're so upset," she can't help the smile that springs to her lips as he yells on the other end. She can almost feel the spit flying from his lips.

"Me, Mint and Mandrake are going to fuck all over your dirty money, Montana Jones." She lights a cigarette as he wails and screams. She is not certain that he is forming actual words any longer--gone mad with rage--literally. She laughs. "I'm going to take every cent you have and fuck on that, too."

The line goes silent except for his breathing, but she continues. "And the best part about all that is, you'll never, ever, catch me."

Her phone beeps as the line goes dead. She is shaking now as the fear returns to her gut. She enters the living room where they stand in the same place she left them.

"So?" Mandrake asks.

"So what? Let's go," she says lightly. Neither of them press it. "In due time," she says after a few moments.

The sun is coming up, it streams through the crystal chandelier of the lobby and it gives her a glimpse of some image, some memory of a day long ago, a good day, one of the few. She makes a mental note to purchase a chandelier when she settles down, something ostentatious like the one in the hotel, something that comes from a far away place and has to be installed by a team of men.

"You know what I really hate about this fucker Montana?" Mandrake says once they are in the car, Mira behind the wheel.

"What?" Mint asks.

"I hate that he's ruining the point of doing any of this suicidal shit in the first place."

"Tell me about it," Mira says. She stares into her phone, pulls up the navigation.

"We are sitting on millions and what are we doing? Running from a ruthless hood with the IQ of a stack of phone books," Mandrake says.

"Remember how fast you cracked that safe, Mira?" Mint asks suddenly.

"That, I will never forget," she says.

"In under a minute. A sea of green at our fingertips. It was then that I knew we were meant to be. It was too fantastic to ignore. The electricity in the air, everyone okay, no mess ups, all the customers on the floor, no heroes, a geriatric guard."

Mira laughs, the memory sharp in her mind. "Still can't believe everything went haywire the moment I left."

"Immediately, after you left," Mandrake says as Mira pulls onto the highway. "Me and Montana are joking and laughing, we are stuffing the money in the bags, not an alarm to be heard, not a fucking siren," Mandrake continues, "then some guy has a coughing fit that spooks Montana and he pistol whips the guy--and this act--to this day I feel like it set off some karmic turn of events because all hell breaks loose, we hear sirens and then Montana grabs the money and is out of there like lightening."

"All too ready to leave me hanging, I mean I know we agreed I'd be the one to take the fall but shit, at least Mandrake made a show of not wanting to leave me there."

"It wasn't a show, brother!" Mandrake says. "But you did agree to it," Mandrake says with a shrug of his shoulders. "Cut to Mint spending three years in jail, becoming more and more bitter as time passes and creating drama to revisit once his feet hit free soil," Mandrake says.

Mint laughs and a comfortable silence falls over the car. It is broken by Mira's lighter and the hiss of the flame against her cigarette, and then by her words. "This is all my fault, you know," she says. She doesn't know how far she plans to go when she starts talking, but as always, without fail, she will make sure she leads with the most important subject. The rest will fall into place behind it. "Montana spent every cent we stole that day."

"What?" Mandrake breathes.

"He took everything, he told me that you guys left him high and dry on the job, and that the money was his because of it. I didn't believe him for a second. If nothing else is true in this world, it is a fucking fact that Montana Jones is never to be trusted. I didn't believe him but there was nothing I could do."

"You could have run, you can mastermind heists that elude the very musings of a cop's mind but you can't figure out how to extricate yourself from someone as simple as Montana Jones?" Mint asks.

"Truly laughable," Mandrake says.

"Give me a fucking break. Neither of you know the whole story."

"We don't, but why don't you tell us? You always have it all figured out, don't you?"

"Mint, pull back a little, for the moment we should all be on the same side," Mandrake says. "But he is right. Lay it out for us."

"First, let's start at the end," she says.

"Let's," Mandrake says. "We pick the guns up from Lola Montgomery out in the sticks of Vegas."

"We head straight to Aspen Grove Casino and Hotel in Reno, Nevada."

"We hold up the counting room. Small place, you staked out security, logged the routines," Mint says. He removes a small green psalm book from his pocket and begins to read it.

"Logged and staked," Mira says. She turns down the space-age laser rhythms of the ubiquitous pop song giving background to their plan, throws her cigarette butt out into the passing scenery.

Aspen Grove is the type of place that is slow through the week, fast on weekend nights and holidays. It is a place where people mill around the tables and slots in jeans and T-shirts, sweatpants, bent on throwing away too much of a paycheck. It is the type of place with high employee turnover, the guards never fully trained, the men behind the eyes in the sky a little too complacent, the collective skill in wrangling a thing like a casino a little less sharp. Plus, Mira has a man on the inside. Not that she needs one with Mandrake along. Casinos are his specialty.

"How the tables look there?" Mandrake asks, tugging on the lapels of his dress shirt, checking his reflection in the mirror. He looks untrustworthy, yet he is somehow smooth enough to distract all but the most astute from that fact.

"Slow mostly but poker will be wild about the time we roll in, tables full, a few fat cats," she says.

"Fat cats?" Mandrake asks.

"Men with money, Mandrake," Mint says. "So who's running this place? Someone we know, someone we knew--?"

"You could say that," Mira says. She searches her purse for her pack of cigarettes.

"Just tell me what we could say, exactly, about the guy who owns this place. What's his name?"

"Montana Jones," Mira says evenly. "We're robbing Montana Jones. And this isn't the first place, but it'll be our first, together again," she checks the navigation screen, 2 hours until Lola Montgomery's. "I've got plans," she catches Mandrake's gaze in the rearview mirror. "He's going to pay, with every penny he has." And he will, she thinks, whether she has to do it alone or is blessed enough to be bookended by the aptly named Murder Twins.