The Thin Line

Noir Fiction by Andrew Hart

The metal husk of its body glinted, its barrel full of promise. They were sitting at a table pooled in darkness except for a single lantern which dispelled enough shadow for the two men to see each other’s faces. One face was lean and scarred, the other softer and rounder with dark olives for eyes. In between them was a gun that looked silver embodied in the lantern’s light. The gun was lying on top of several stacks of bills. The mouth of it was pointed out into the dark, away from both men. Their hands waited restless on their laps as they looked at one another.

“I lifted it out of that man’s pocket, it should be mine,” said the scarred fellow whose name was Wrinkle. A name which he got from the scar whose trimmed line looked like it was from the ravages of age rather than the talon of a knife wielded by a toothless wrestler in a Tijuana back alley.

“Yeah, but I held the gun on him while you did it.” The voice belonged to the other man with the rounded face. He was called Carrot for his red hair which he had long ago shaved to a buzz as it started to fall out. The hair was gone but the name had stuck. He often glanced at Wrinkle’s full head of hair darker than midnight and felt a twinge of irritation.

“Pedantry,” said Wrinkle. “The man who takes it, should be the man who makes it. That’s the rule and you know it.”

“Pedantry? The hell does that even mean?”

“It’s not my fault I got an education.”           

“And look where you ended up.”

“Jealousy is an ugly color, my friend.”

“So is greed.”

“You’re confusing greed with fairness.”

Carrot rubbed the top of his head in frustration. They had agreed on a fifty-fifty split for what they had taken from the vault of the bank. But everything that had come out of the pockets of the hostages in the bank had been divided based on who took what. The dispute revolved around the fact that Wrinkle had gotten a cramp in his hand and had to lay his gun to rest for a moment. This meant that Carrot had to train his own weapon on the frail, white-haired man who had stuttered obscenities at them while Wrinkle filched the money from his pockets. They had already cut up the rest but had reached an impasse when Carrot had insisted on taking half the cash that Wrinkle had lifted from the old man. In his mind, it was only fair.

Whenever a disagreement like this took place, they had agreed that they would lay the disputed amount in the middle of a table and place a gun on top of it. The money was there to remind them both what they were fighting over. The gun was to remind them that perhaps it wasn’t worth fighting over in the first place. It was a delicate balance and it always seemed in danger of tipping into violence. So far, it never had.

“Remember Farlow?” said Carrot, trying a different tact.

“This isn’t Farlow.”

“Well, it’s like Farlow.”

“In Farlow you shot the guy before he could shoot me. That was a split that made sense. A split based on the debt that I owed you for saving me.”

“And you owe me now too. For keeping my gun on the guy.”

Wrinkle threw up a dismissive hand. “I didn’t need you to do that. The man looked like a warmed-over corpse. If he had tried anything, I would have handled him.”

“You remember what we always say?”

“Don’t even think about touching the money until we’ve counted it twice?”

“No.”

“Make sure you check both pockets?”

“No, not that one either.”

“It’s okay to rob someone blind, even if they’re actually blind?”

“No, no, no. Although that’s a good one. I was thinking more along the lines of, you never know what someone is capable of. It doesn’t matter if he was old. We still needed to have a gun pointed at him. That’s how we do things.”

Wrinkle nodded as if the point Carrot was making was becoming clear to him. “You’re saying he had the potential to hurt me?”

“Yes.”

“Schrodinger’s old man? Both non-violent and violent until the situation resolves itself?”

“More or less.” Carrot gritted his teeth, knowing he didn’t understand the reference. It was better to pretend but still, he felt a familiar rankle at Wrinkle and his prized “education”.

“I don’t agree with your logic. Even if we supposed that the old man could become violent, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t ask you to help me. If I had asked, then yes, you would be entitled to at least half. As it were, you’re entitled to none of it.” Wrinkle gave Carrot a look of half-lidded contempt. He had always considered him a bit of a drag on their business ventures because of situations like this. The need to argue these finer points as if to prove something.

“You didn’t ask for my help when I shot that guy in Farlow.” Carrot sneered, thinking that he had got him.

“Ah, but that’s different. There was no time for me to ask and so it’s okay to make the assumption that I don’t want to fucking die. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Not if you were off your meds.”

“Not back then I wasn’t. And I wasn’t today either. And even when I’m off my medication, I don’t want to die either.” Wrinkle felt his lip curl. Carrot dared to bring up something like that just to win an argument over a little bit of cash. The man had no sense of decency sometimes.

“Either way, the rule remains. We keep a weapon trained on someone when we take from them.” Carrot was digging in his heels. He wasn’t going to let this go. He had lost the last two arguments and he would be damned if he would lose this one.

“The rule. The fucking rule. It doesn’t mater. The rule that matters most is that you make what you take. That supersedes the other rule.”

“All rules are equal. If No Ears were here, he’d agree with me,” said Carrot in bitter quiet. No Ears had been their other partner who had died last year. He had gotten his name after being tortured during the war. His death had come about because he hadn’t heard the train coming.

Wrinkle looked away for a moment, a fleeting note of shame on his face. “It was a mistake. One mistake. Anyone could have made it.”

“Yeah, but you made it.”

They had been laying spurs on a train track. The idea was to puncture the wheels of the train and then board it and rob it from end to end. One of them always took on the responsibility of telling No Ears to stop what he was doing and get off the tracks when the train was coming. Carrot had already left to go talk to a woman in a wide white brimmed hat and a curvaceous smile elsewhere in the train station and so it had fallen to Wrinkle to let No Ears know. But Wrinkle had spied a dapper dressed man with a gold-plated watch clipped to his wrist and all notions of telling anyone anything had emptied from his head. He got that way when he saw something he wanted.

He got the watch while No Ears got the train.

“You know I feel bad about it.”

“You feel so bad about it, why are you still wearing that goddamn thing?”

Wrinkle shifted his right wrist so the glint of gold was lost in the folds of shadow. “Why shouldn’t I wear it?”

“Because No Ears died for you to have it.”

“All the more reason to wear it.”

“You disgust me.”

“Guilt trip me all you want, but you’re still not getting the money.”

“What if I said I needed it?”

Wrinkle gave a short laugh. “We both need it.”

“But I really need it.”

“For what?”

“I aim on marrying Abby before the end of the year.”

Wrinkle leaned back in his chair and tried not to let the scowl show on his face. “That’s wonderful,” he managed to spit out.

“Yeah, it is. And I need the money. It will help me buy her a ring. I’m saving up.”

“Like I said, that’s great. But I’m not sure why you need this money,” he said pointing to the stacks of green beneath the gun. “It’s not even that much.”

“It’s enough,” said Carrot quietly.

“Either way, we’ll do more jobs. You’ll make more than enough.”

“You don’t understand. I want to buy the ring as soon as possible.”

“You worried she’s going to run off on you?”

Carrot shook his head. “This is why you’re alone. When you meet someone good, someone you can actually fucking stand, you hold on to them.”

“You think I don’t understand that?” said Wrinkle quietly.

“I think you’ve let plenty slip through your hands.”

The words were like knives sliding into him and Wrinkle felt the familiar feeling of envy creeping up his neck. He had to listen to this man, this ugly man, talk about his relationships all the time. If it wasn’t with this woman, Abby, it was with another.

The gun sat unspoiled in the middle of the table while they talked. The handle was rough and worn from use. It was a gun they had shared with one another. Passed back and forth. It belonged to both of them in a way.

Wrinkle eyed it.

“I’m happy for you. I really am,” he said.

“Sure you are.”

“But we don’t do handouts. You know that. It’s based on merit, not need.”

Carrot clenched his fists. “Just for once. Just for fucking once could you help me out? Could you just do a favor for me?”

Wrinkle stared at him. “Why?”

Carrot sighed and shook his head. “You remember that time we robbed the bank and the manager with the tiny mustache came out with that shotgun, pumped and ready to go?”

Wrinkle nodded. “I remember. He slipped on the floor and shot himself in the face. It was hilarious.”

“Yeah, yeah it was. We had a good laugh about it at the time.”

“That we did.” There was a brief softening in Wrinkle’s hard features. Wearied lines stretching themselves out.

“You wanna know why I’m asking you? Because you’re my partner. I’ve known you for ten years. We’ve worked together for five. Isn’t that enough?” Carrot gave him a meaningful look.

Wrinkle stiffened and his face became stone once more.

“You see this? This right here is why you should never do business with your friends. They pull out the sentimental card and make you eat it. The whole, we’re brothers crap, so just do me this favor, okay? That sort of thing drives me wild. You know it does. And yet here you are, saying it anyway. You think I’m gonna give you the money just because you want to get married or because we’re partners? You know better than that. And yet you say it anyway. You say it because you just want to find any way to win an argument because you can’t bear to lose.” The words came out like razors gliding off his tongue.

Carrot sat back and pursed his lips, feeling the anger course through him, poison in his veins. He spared a hateful glance at Wrinkle’s full head of hair.

“I’m not going to lose,” he said, his voice a thin-bladed whisper.

They both looked at the gun. They had reached the point where the threat of violence had almost sharpened into reality. The point where it all balanced on the edge of a knife, getting ready to tip one way or the other.

They had reached this precipice before. They would let the silence stretch until one of them would give. It would only take a word. An admission that the other person was right or just a simple magnanimous gesture that would allow them to have their way. Most of the time it had been Carrot who had given in. He wasn’t in a mood to do so today.

But there was a word spoken.

“Don’t,” said Wrinkle.

Carrot reached for the gun, his fingers about to close round the handle as Wrinkle hit him in the side of the head with the lantern. Carrot crashed back off his chair and onto the floor, leaving the gun untroubled. Wrinkle picked it up slowly and with care and then walked around the table. In one hand, he held the lantern. In the other hand, the gun.

Carrot lay on the floor, a bloodied gash on his head. The light from the lantern lit a fire in the dark glass of his eyes. He looked up at Wrinkle. “It’s mine. It’s mine you bastard. You can’t have i—”

Wrinkle raised up the gun and shot him. The noise of it echoed into the dark.

He looked at his dead partner, his rounded face in ruins. Then he saw something gleam in Carrot’s pale hand. It was a gun and there was smoke dripping from its dark mouth. The noise of one gunshot had covered the sound of the other. They had fired at the same time.

He put a hand to his shirt and felt the wetness of the wound against his skin. He gave a grunt.

With one last look at Carrot’s reposed form, he drifted over to the table where the money still lay. He picked it and held it up to the lantern’s light.

What had made the difference? Why had it gone this way when all the other times it had gone the other? That thin line of violence that separated night from day, light from dark, death from life. Wrinkle pondered the question as his fingers turned the money over and over, admiring the rough sort of softness of it. The crinkling of the paper in his hands.

He wore a thin smile that was more jagged than his scar. “Mine,” he whispered and fell over without another sound.

---

Bio: Andrew Hart is a social worker by trade who likes to write fiction in his spare time. He’s been previously published in Mystery Tribune and Ever Day Fiction.

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