Negative Spaces

Annie Reed

The first premature burst of fireworks nearly made Benny jump out of his skin.

Eleven-twenty. Forty minutes before midnight, and some yahoo just couldn’t wait. Probably too drunk to read a watch, even the digital kind that spelled the numbers out for people too dumb to learn how to tell time the old-fashioned way.

Benny didn’t have that problem. Drunk or sober, he always knew the time of day. Just something he’d been born with, like how some people always knew where true north was or could hit a middle C dead on without half trying. Or like he could lift a wallet from the back pocket of a skin-tight pair of pants without the guy—or girl—feeling a thing.

The people crowded around him on the main drag through casino row oo’d and aww’d as a second set of amateur fireworks set off a few blocks north of downtown followed the first with a pathetic spray of white-gold sparkles. The pops from the fireworks echoed like distant gunshots off the casinos’ hotel towers a moment later. Somebody else set off a Roman candle nearby in response, probably from the roof of one of the high-rise apartment buildings a block or two away. The rhythmic bursts sounded like pistol shots. Combined with the anticipation of tonight’s big event, the shots spiked Benny’s adrenaline again.

At least the second set of fireworks hadn’t made him jump like the first.

The official New Year’s fireworks show sponsored by the city and the downtown casinos wouldn’t start until the clock fixed to the top of the tallest hotel tower struck midnight. Then casino row would sound like an artillery battle from the war Benny’s granddad used to reminisce about when he’d had one too many and wanted to tell Benny and his brothers how great life had been back in his day. Only this particular battle would be accompanied by patriotic music blasted from stadium speakers so loud they would put the heaviest heavy metal concert to shame.

Benny’s experience with armies and battles and artillery was limited to cheap afternoon matinees at movie theaters equipped with digital surround sound and widescreen views of fictional death and carnage. Granddad had died before the days of IMAX theaters, so Benny’d never had a chance to ask him how the movies compared to the real thing. Benny was just glad he’d never had to live through an actual war.

Real life was tough enough.

He kept his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket as he moved through crowd. New Year’s Eve was cold and clear here in Reno, the self-proclaimed Biggest Little City in the World, unlike down in Vegas. He wanted to keep his fingers warm and nimble for the job ahead, but now he was just glad the pockets hid how badly his hands were trembling.

Stupid to get so wound up about a few premature fireworks. Pickpockets with the shakes got caught, and he didn’t let himself get caught. Ever.

He still had thirty-eight minutes before the official show. He kept threading his way between the people already out on the street to scope out the best picking grounds. Once the official fireworks show started, the main drag would be packed shoulder-to-shoulder with partiers, and empty spaces to slip into would be few and far between. He’d have a good fifteen minutes during the show to work one small area of the crowd of drunks who had their faces turned up toward the sky, their ears rendered useless thanks to the overhead explosions and thundering music, their attention everywhere else but on where they’d stashed their money.

New Year’s Eve had always been his best night of the year. With any luck, he’d nab enough cash and I.D.s that he could take the first month of the new year off. Otherwise he might have to go back down to Vegas to work Fremont Street where the tourists never bundled up, no matter what time of year, and were always too busy watching half-dressed (or less) street performers to pay attention to average-looking people on the street. Benny worked hard to make himself look like the most average man on any given street.

A leggy blonde carrying a half-empty glass of something that wasn’t just orange juice bumped into him. She wore a red sequined minidress cut low in the front and lower in the back, far too much expensive perfume, and heels that added a good six inches to her already impressive height. Benny’s breath puffed out in a white fog as he muttered his excuses to somewhere in the vicinity of her ample chest. She giggled as she looked down at him, just another guy dressed in faded jeans, a plaid shirt, and a fleece-lined denim jacket. She didn’t even seem to care that his eyes weren’t focused on her face. The alcohol in her system was clearly keeping her as warm as his jacket kept him.

The guy she was with wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders as he gave Benny a friendly but firm warning glance. The guy was a good three inches shorter than his date, and not much more sober. The move lifted the guy’s coat up from the back of his jeans. Any pickpocket working the street would have a clear shot at the guy’s wallet, if he kept his wallet in his back pocket. Benny was standing at the wrong angle to notice.

Not that he’d steal anything from this guy. The guy had seen Benny’s face. He might not be drunk enough to forget what Benny looked like. That was too much of a risk to take when a little patience would equal a bigger payoff in a mere thirty-six minutes.

Besides, both the leggy blonde and her possessive date were carrying drinks on the street. That sort of thing might be legal in Vegas where bars were set up out in the open on Fremont Street, but in the Biggest Little City, open carry—even on New Year’s Eve—was illegal. The casinos had signs by their doors advising patrons not to take their drinks outside when they left to watch the fireworks or they could get ticketed by the cops, and there were plenty of cops out on the street tonight. Some casinos even hired private security guards to work the exits to the main drag just to tell guests they couldn’t take their drinks outside.

That didn’t stop people from drinking out on the street, of course, but the extra cops meant extra scrutiny. Benny never targeted people carrying drinks on the street up north. Save that for down in Vegas. It was much too risky here.

And he was already nervous enough.

Too nervous, in fact. He’d worked New Year’s Eve crowds for nearly a decade. Tonight was no different, so how come he was so wound up?

Benny gave the possessive man a little shrug and lifted his eyebrows in apology. The man nodded back—no harm, no foul—and the two of them went on their way, the blonde wobbling on her heels.

The crowd oo’d and aww’d again as a third set of premature fireworks flashed overhead and louder gunshot pops sounded a moment later. If the yahoos jumping the gun didn’t cut it out, they’d make themselves easy to find, and then they’d be looking at hefty fines to start out the new year. Just like drinking alcohol on the street was illegal, fireworks were illegal too except for officially licensed shows. But fireworks could be purchased legally in California, a mere twenty minutes away from downtown, and carted back over the state line to set off in town.

Benny’s hands were still trembling inside his pockets. The first burst of fireworks had set off the adrenaline in his system, that hyper-awareness he needed to do his job right, but hyper-awareness only lasted just so long and then he’d get sloppy. He still had twenty-eight minutes to showtime. A drink would calm his nerves, but a drink would make him feel invincible, like the blonde out in the cold without a coat. He’d get greedy, then he’d get caught.

The main drag through casino row had been shut down to automobile traffic. People were really starting to pour onto the street from the casinos, drawn away from their table games and slot machines by the early fireworks. The press of bodies brought the smell of alcohol and cigarettes, perfume and body spray, and most of all easy money and greed.

Benny needed a moment to himself to settle down. He needed a cigarette and a drink, but he’d settle for a bottle of water.

He wove his way through the crowd, picking out and then ignoring easy targets. No more leggy blondes bumped into him, no more possessive boyfriends gave him the evil eye, and three minutes later he’d made his way to a liquor store half a block off the main drag. The crowd was thinner here, mostly people walking toward the crowded main street even though they’d be able to see the fireworks just fine right where they were.

The liquor store sold cheap bottled water along with overpriced booze and the kind of trinkets tourists bought to memorialize their trip once they figured out they wouldn’t be bringing home a fat wad of cash from the casinos. Benny took a single bottle of water from the cooler even though a sign pasted on the cooler door advertised a deal, two bottles for the price of one, Tonight Only! Instead of the pack of cigarettes he really wanted, he tossed a pack of cinnamon flavored gum on the counter along with the water. The clerk didn’t even look at Benny as she rang up the sale.

Not that it mattered. No customer-relations firm contacted this store’s clientele for feedback on whether the clerk did her job with just the right amount of friendly service. All that mattered here was the money, and Benny knew without looking that this store would have cameras over the register and both the front and back doors, as well as in the liquor aisles.

The liquor store’s back door opened onto an alley that ran down the back side of the casinos on the west side of the main drag. Decades ago the city planners had decided to give the service alley an actual name, and had repaved the alley with brick-patterned cement. The businesses that backed up against the alley gussied up their back doors with neon signs and decorative awnings and cutesy murals, and for a while a little bar and a sandwich shop complete with wrought iron tables and chairs had taken up space at the far end of the alley where it dead-ended into the side of one of the bigger hotel-casinos.

The city fathers might have intended to make the alley a welcome little haven for tourists, a place off the beaten path to get a drink or a bite to eat, but the tourists were more interested in gambling. The sandwich shop had closed up, the tables and chairs carted away, and even the locals who supported the little bar couldn’t keep it open. The awnings and the murals and the neon signs remained, but for the most part the only people who used the alley were those looking for a shortcut from one casino to the next. A few years ago a pedestrian walkway had been built over the alley, so tourists didn’t even have to go outside into the winter cold or summer heat to get from one casino to the next.

These days the alley was one of the few places a person looking to get away from the crowd downtown could find a place to be by himself without chancing getting caught on one of the ever-vigilant security cameras in the casinos.

Benny left the liquor store by the back door. Twenty-one minutes to midnight. Time enough to finish off most of the water and chew his way through the after-effects of his early burst of adrenaline. He intended to chew the hell out of that gum.

He wasn’t the only one in the alley tonight. On the other side of a sliding glass door on the other side of the alley half a block away a couple was wrapped in a boozy embrace.

The woman facing Benny, a short-haired brunette bundled up in a puffy down jacket that looked two sizes too big, held an open beer bottle in one hand. Probably brought the beer with her from the casino whose name was emblazoned in neon over the sliding glass door. Good thing no cops were likely to take a stroll down the alley. They were all too busy working the main drag.

The woman with the beer had her other hand wrapped around her partner’s neck. The partner looked vaguely female from the back. Dark-skinned, either Latino or Native American, maybe, stocky with short-cropped hair died a garish raspberry red, although the neon red in the casino’s sign probably enhanced that impression. The partner wore faded jeans and a dark-colored hoodie with the hood down, and had one hand inside the brunette’s coat, probably feeling her up if the brunette’s body language was any indication. The partner’s other hand clutched the top of the brunette’s head, and the two of them were sucking face like the world was going to end in the next twenty minutes.

Benny felt vaguely like a Peeping Tom for paying that much attention to the couple. They weren’t marks, just two random people having a good time with each other on the last night of the year.

He leaned one shoulder against the wall of the liquor store, his back to the couple, and unscrewed the lid on his water bottle. Good for them. More power to them, in fact, and he was surprised to realize he really meant that. He hadn’t let himself get that close to anyone in more years than he cared to remember. That thought brought with it a hollow little ache inside his chest where his nerves had been.

He hoped they were happy, that it was the real thing, not some alcohol-fueled impulse one or both of them would regret once the fireworks were over.

He downed half the water in one continuous chug, then popped two sticks of gum in his mouth. In front of him, someone else came out the back door of the liquor store, a guy holding a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. He was just a kid really, no more than nineteen, if that. Not old enough to purchase booze, at any rate. The clerk probably hadn’t looked at him any more than she’d looked at Benny.

The kid gave Benny a nod—he must have thought that was something adults would do with each other—and Benny nodded back.

The kid strolled out the alley, giving Benny a nice view of the back of his low-rider jeans. He’d be an easy enough mark if not for the chain that attached his wallet to a belt loop on his jeans. Not an impossible lift, but not worth the bother on a night like tonight when easier pickings would be available.

Thanks to the gum and the water, Benny finally started to feel more like himself. Another Roman candle went off somewhere nearby, but this time the staccato bursts didn’t make him jump or his hands tremble. The fake pistol shots from the Roman candle echoed off the walls about the same time a wave of slot machine and crowd noise flowed into the alley from the casino as someone came out the sliding glass doors next to where the couple stood.

Before Benny could glance behind himself—he wasn’t the only crook working the streets tonight, and he didn’t want to be mugged in a nearly deserted alley—another louder report echoed down the alley as more amateur fireworks went off.

Benny glanced up automatically, looking for the burst of sparkles in the sky. All he saw was the dirty underside of the pedestrian walkway.

That was embarrassing. He knew better, but he wanted to check the alleyway behind himself anyway, so he kept turning his head into what he hoped could be mistaken for a casual glance just in case the couple came up for air long enough to catch sight of him.

They weren’t kissing anymore. They were sprawled on the brick-patterned concrete of the alley, the brunette on her back, her partner on top of her. The brunette’s beer bottle had shattered on the concrete next to where she lay.

They weren’t screwing—they weren’t moving at all—and the stain spreading on the concrete beneath them wasn’t just spilled beer.

Benny lost his grip on his half-empty bottle of water. It slipped from his numb fingers and bounced on the concrete at his feet, spilling the little bit of water left in the bottle over his boots and the legs of his jeans. One of the brunette’s legs was bent backwards at an unnatural angle.

The dark stain grew larger. In the neon light it looked black, but Benny knew it was blood.

Their blood.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Someone else was in the alley.

The man had his back to Benny and was walking toward the far end of the alley where it dead-ended into the back of the hotel-casino that took up the entire end of the block. The casino had a small access door off the alley. The man wasn’t rushing, just walking in a steady, easy pace toward the door. An overweight white guy, no hat, dark coat, dark pants, going bald on top.

As the man neared the door, he tossed something into a trash bin at the far end of the alley. Not a drink, not a fast-food wrapper. Something heavy and dark that the neon light in the alley glinted off of in the split second before it disappeared in the trash bin.

A gun?

The gun?

The murder weapon? Had to be.

Benny’d never seen a dead body before, but he knew dead. The brunette had a hole in the center of her forehead, and the back of her partner’s head was wet with something that wasn’t beer.

The couple had been murdered right behind Benny, and the fireworks, premature as they were, had masked any sounds the murder weapon had made.

His heart skipped a beat as he realized the man could have shot him just as easily, might have shot him except Benny was standing with his back to the man. Standing next to the back entrance to the liquor store where anyone approaching him from the rear might be caught on camera.

The man hadn’t robbed the two women. There hadn’t been enough time for that, even for someone as accomplished as Benny.

He’d just walked out the casino’s sliding doors and shot them in the alley in a spot where there weren’t any cameras to catch him in the act.

And now he was getting away.

Benny’s hands started to tremble again, but this time with anger.

He didn’t think, he didn’t stop to consider the possibilities or the angles or the potential outcome. All he could think about was the couple sucking face just moments ago, their whole lives in front of them. The couple who lay dead on the cold concrete. They hadn’t even made it to midnight.

Benny pushed himself away from the wall and started walking down the alley, following the murderer.

***

Benny had rules he’d set for himself once he realized that his only real skill meant he’d be living his adult life on the wrong side of the law.

First and foremost, he didn’t steal from poor people.

His parents had been poor, although he didn’t actively think of his family as poor when he’d been a kid. They just didn’t have much money.

Granddad lived with Benny and his family and contributed his pension, Benny learned when he was older, which was the only way his family managed to raise Benny and his two brothers. Benny was the middle child, which meant he got his older brother’s hand-me-downs, which were then passed on to his younger brother. The family ate a lot of macaroni and cheese with hotdogs for dinner, along with cheap pizza. Anything to fill the boys up and give them a bit of (questionable) meat for dinner. His mom made meatloaf with lots of oatmeal for filler, and the boys always took peanut butter sandwiches on white bread for school lunches.

After Granddad died, Benny’s father found a white-collar job keeping books for a construction company. Times were better then for a while because his dad brought home what his mom called good money. Benny actually got new shoes and new jeans from an outlet store, and the amount of oatmeal in the meatloaf decreased.

Then Benny’s father had been convicted, along with the manager of the company, for embezzlement. Benny’d had to look the word up.

The few times his mom let the boys visit their dad in prison, he’d looked so small to Benny. Not like the man who’d taught him to throw a softball or taught him how to walk a quarter over the back of his hands.

Benny’s brothers had been ashamed of their dad. His oldest brother had to go to work at a fast-food joint to help support the family, and the discounted fast food he brought home took the place of their mom’s meatloaf. Benny got a paper route for a while to help out until the newspaper stopped home delivery when the number of subscribers tanked. His brothers quit going to see their dad, and after a while, so did his mom. But Benny’d kept going even when he had to take the bus. He loved his dad, no matter what.

His dad had died behind bars when Benny was nineteen. One of the last things he’d said to Benny was that he wasn’t sorry for what he did. “I’m sorry for what happened to the family,” his dad had said, “and I’m sorry I got caught, but those people had more money than they knew what to do with. They could have paid us a living wage, but they didn’t. So I took some of what they had. Didn’t think they’d miss it, but I guess we took too much.”

That became Benny’s second rule, a two-parter: don’t get greedy, and don’t get caught.

By the time his dad died, Benny had progressed from walking a quarter across the back of his hands to slight-of-hand magic tricks. Simple stuff, like making a coin disappear in his hand then reappear behind his mom’s ear. Card tricks. Juggling. Anything that required nimble fingers, higher than average coordination, and a light touch.

The first wallet he lifted belonged to the night manager at the 24/7 fast-food joint where Benny worked the deep fat fryer, a disgusting job if there ever was one. The night manager was a pig—a misogynist who leered at all the underage girls who worked the counter and drive-through—and Benny wanted to teach the man a lesson.

He also wanted to see if he could actually lift a wallet and get away with it.

Turned out it was easy peasy, as his dad said when he’d taught Benny the quarter trick.

The night manager’d had his back turned to Benny, his fat wallet in the back pocket of his sagging black uniform pants. The man had been too busy paying attention to the newest counter girl, and Benny’d pulled the wallet out as he walked behind the counter on his way out the employee door to the restrooms.

He’d fished through the wallet in a stall in the men’s room. He’d been disappointed to learn the guy only carried eighteen dollars in singles along with a fistful of credit cards, mostly department store cards they gave to almost anyone who applied. Benny had a couple of those in his own wallet. Credit limits on those things were less than a month’s wages slinging French fries.

The night manager might be a pig, but he was a poor pig. Benny put the money back and dropped the wallet on the floor behind the guy on his way back to his fry station. He’d even paused and pointed the wallet out to the guy, like it had fallen out of the guy’s pocket. Easy to believe since nothing was missing.

Benny spent the next six months seriously studying people. He asked for and got shifts working the counter. He watched where people stashed their wallets and the kind of stuff they kept inside. How much money, how many credit cards. He was astounded to learn that some people, mostly men, rubber-banded tens and twenties—sometimes even hundreds—around their driver’s license and credit cards and stuffed the bundle inside a front pants pocket.

Benny never tried to lift bundles like that, no matter how high the denomination of the outside bill. The rubber bands that held the bundle together would catch on the inside of the guy’s pocket, and that made the lift too noticeable. That’s how thieves got caught. The best part about lifting a wallet was the way the soft, slick leather slid nice and easy in and out of a pocket or an open purse.

Once he got used to studying people, he started studying the places they crowded together. How people jostled each other in crowds and no one really noticed, much less cared. He started lifting wallets here and there, targeting the people who wore designer clothes or carried handbags that cost more than he’d made in a month working fast food.

The third rule he’d made for himself was nearly as important as don’t get caught.

Don’t get involved.

Benny’s dad had told him the manager had been the one who’d suggested stealing a little at a time from the construction company. Benny’s dad had considered the man a friend, but when they both got caught, the man had ratted Benny’s dad out in exchange for a lighter prison sentence. Benny’s dad had no one else to rat out. The scheme had only involved the two of them.

“I didn’t realize that you can’t have friends when you decide to do something like this,” his dad had said.

He hadn’t been giving Benny advice at the time, just talking like a lonely man would to the only son who still came to see him, but Benny had taken his dad’s lesson to heart.

He didn’t form friendships. Friends asked questions. Simple, innocuous questions, like what do you do for a living? Where do you work? Hey, you want to meet my sister? She could use a nice guy like you in her life.

Benny didn’t date nice women. From time to time he’d go home with a woman he’d met at a bar, both of them knowing one night meant just that one night, and not all of the night at that. He went to movies by himself. Ate by himself. Never went to the same bar or restaurant enough times to become a regular. Spent Christmas mornings drinking hot chocolate by himself while he watched holiday movies from his childhood on television, and worked the crowds on New Year’s Eve.

Maybe that’s why he couldn’t just turn away from the dead women in the alley. Leave them where they lay wrapped up in each other’s arms in death like they’d been in life.

They’d had something he’d denied himself, something he only realized in his gut he was missing on nights like New Year’s Eve when he caught the unexpected sight of them, both so vividly alive. New Year’s Eve—the one night of the year when things were supposed to start over again at the stroke of midnight. When the new year was supposed to ring in the possibility of something better for everyone.

He couldn’t just walk away. Couldn’t stay uninvolved, no matter the consequences. Maybe he was romanticizing them. They could have just met at the bar and come together out of desperation or loneliness, but he didn’t think so.

Not that it mattered. They deserved better. Everyone deserved better than to be left behind like so much trash.

He shoved his hands in his coat pockets where he could hide the fact that his fingers had formed fists almost of their own accord. He didn’t want to, but he glanced down at the women as he passed them. The brunette’s eyes were open, and her mouth had formed a little “o” in death. Her partner’s face was turned toward the side. Her eyes were closed, the back of her head wet, and her hand was still inside the brunette’s puffy, oversized jacket.

She hadn’t seen death coming. The brunette might have, but the woman with the raspberry red hair had died when her world was consumed by the woman she was kissing.

The hollow inside Benny broke wide open.

He fixed his gaze on the overweight white man in front of him.

Nobody should get away with doing what this man had just done. Benny only took money from people who could afford it. This man—this killer—had taken lives.

If he had to break every rule in his own personal rulebook, Benny wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

***

Twelve minutes to midnight.

For the last five minutes, Benny had followed the killer around the gaming floor of one of the major casinos in downtown Reno while he tried to figure out what to do.

Benny didn’t carry a cell phone. Whenever he needed a cell, he bought a cheap burner phone at a department store. The casino had a couple of pay phones by the back entrance, but what could Benny say if he called the cops? That he witnessed two murders, but he couldn’t give a description of the killer other than an overweight white guy he’d seen from the back, going bald on top, and wearing a dark coat and dark pants? There had to be at least a couple hundred men on the streets tonight, much less in the casino, who fit that description.

If the cops even believed him. They’d waste time questioning him, looking into his past, testing him for gunshot residue or whatever real police departments, as opposed to those on television, did when a man with no visible means of support reported a murder no one else saw and even pointed the police to the murder weapon.

Benny hadn’t seen the man’s face, and there weren’t any cameras at that end of the alley. He could give the cops an accurate time of death, and they might be able to catch the guy on a security camera when he walked out the sliding glass doors of the casino right before he’d shot the women, but that would take time. By then, the guy would be long gone, just another anonymous man in the New Year’s Eve crowd.

The man didn’t stop to gamble or even pay attention to anyone in the casino. He wove his way through the rows of slots, past the roulette wheel and the craps table, around the blackjack tables and the cashier’s cages like he knew the layout of the place. A local then, or a tourist who’d been in town for a few days. He didn’t push through people when they blocked his path, he just waited patiently for them to move. He kept his head down, like he was looking at the floor, and walked like a man whose back bothered him even on good days. A natural assumption for a guy who was overweight and old enough to be losing his hair, but a walk like that could be faked.

Benny followed the guy at a discrete distance. He caught a glimpse now and then of the side of the guy’s face, but the guy had no distinguishing marks—no moles, no scars—that Benny could see, and he didn’t wear glasses. He did have an extra roll of fat beneath his chin, but then again, he was looking at the floor.

Eleven minutes to midnight.

Now the guy turned to walk down a row of slots like he had a purpose. Benny quickened his pace when he realized where the man was headed.

Outside to watch the fireworks.

Outside, where he’d get lost in the crowd and Benny would have no hope of following him.

He was three people behind the killer when the man exited the casino. The group of women in front of Benny were all shorter than he was. They must have been drinking for hours because three of them had their arms wrapped around each other to the point he couldn’t tell who was holding who up. They were all dressed up nicely, with fuzzy or furry jackets over date-night dresses, and they had the good sense to set their drink glasses on tables near the exit set up for that purpose. A fourth woman off to one side, no doubt the designated driver of the bunch, kept her water bottle.

The women formed an effective barrier between Benny and the killer, but they also gave him an opportunity to study the man up close. He was a half foot taller than Benny and looked to be a good hundred pounds heavier. His dark hair brushed the collar of his coat in the back. This close, Benny could see the white cuffs of a dress shirt peeking out from the sleeves of his coat. His pants were black slacks, the kind worn by dealers, waiters, cashiers—any number of casino workers. No wonder he was familiar with the casino floor. He probably knew where all the security cameras were and how to avoid having his face caught on camera.

But where had he hidden the gun? He came out into the alley through the sliding glass doors of a casino, which meant he would have had to walk across at least part of the gaming floor with the gun. It didn’t have to be a big gun—the women had been shot up close—but he would have had to conceal it somewhere not obvious. This was a big guy. Benny’d bet he used his belt to cinch his pants up tight to give his back some support. He wouldn’t be able to stuff a gun, no matter how little, in the small of his back. A holster rig would only slow him down.

So where? The pocket of his coat?

The pockets were certainly deep enough. If he kept his hands stuffed in his coat pockets like Benny did to keep his fingers warm, the extra bulk of a gun wouldn’t be noticeable.

But this guy didn’t keep his hands in his pockets.

He also wasn’t wearing gloves.

Benny’s heart skipped a beat.

Had the killer really been that stupid, or just that arrogant? Had he fired a gun and then tossed it away without thinking about the prints he left behind? Weren’t casino workers fingerprinted?

Or had the guy wiped the gun down before he’d thrown it away? So sure that no one would see him in the alley, he’d chanced doing that out in the open? After all, who’d be there to see him?

Only Benny, and Benny’d had his back turned. Even after he’d turned around and noticed the man walking down the alley, given the guy’s bulk, Benny hadn’t seen what, if anything, the guy had been doing with his hands.

Okay. So assume he’d wiped the gun clean. Then what about the bullets? Would any bullets left in the gun have this guy’s fingerprints?

Benny had no clue. He’d avoided cops all his life. He’d wiped down every wallet he’d ever stolen before he disposed of them.

His gaze went back to the deep pockets of the guy’s coat. The pocket on the right side was ripped along the edge, like something had gotten caught in the fabric. Something heavy, like a gun? Thanks to the rip, anything the guy put in that pocket now wouldn’t stay there long. Fibers from that pocket might even be caught somewhere on the gun itself.

Benny got the beginning of an idea. With any luck, it might actually work. He just needed to find the right mark at the right place.

He’d be violating all his rules, but he couldn’t think of another way to keep this guy from slipping away into the crowd.

The biggest problem was Benny only had nine minutes left to make it happen.

***

The first thing he had to do was lift a wallet from someone within shouting distance of a cop.

Not easy, not with the crowd nearing that shoulder-to-shoulder capacity on the main drag, most of them drunk and loud. And totally out of the question if he couldn’t get the whole thing done before the fireworks show started.

Benny ruled out the three drunk women and their sober companion who’d been between him and the killer. He managed to squeeze his way around them, still following the killer, while he kept looking for the perfect mark.

He began to think his plan didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell when he spotted the leggy blonde in the red sequined minidress and her overly protective companion being ticketed by a cop only a few people in front of where the killer was headed. The killer either hadn’t noticed the cop, or he didn’t want to look suspicious by abruptly changing directions.

A couple of lookie-loos had stopped to watch the cop, including a woman carrying one of those open-top purses.

Seven minutes to midnight.

Benny worked his way through the crowd until he managed to get himself in front of the killer and behind the woman with the open purse. He lifted her wallet easy peasy, then turned and deliberately bumped into the killer.

The man was solid as a rock, but he didn’t see Benny coming. Benny slipped the woman’s wallet into the ripped pocket of the killer’s coat while he grabbed the man’s arm, pretending to help him catch his balance but in reality overbalancing the man until he ran into the woman whose wallet Benny had just lifted.

“Sorry,” Benny mumbled, pretending to be a little drunk himself. “Happy New Year, right?”

The killer grunted at him.

The woman glared at the killer. “Watch where you’re walking,” she said with the clear tone of a woman who hadn’t had anything to drink and was annoyed with everyone who had.

The killer glared back at her. “His fault,” he said, gesturing at Benny.

Not exactly what Benny had planned, but he could work with that. He only had five minutes left. It was now or never. He wouldn’t get a second chance.

He made the kind of exaggerated “who, me?” gesture a drunk might make, waving his arms wide and knocking into the killer again, only this time he made sure to brush his arm against the killer’s coat.

His fingers caught the coat pocket where he’d dropped the woman’s wallet.

Sure enough, the wallet fell out of the pocket and landed next to the killer’s feet.

“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” Benny said. He made sure to wobble a little as he bent over to pick up the wallet. “Here you go.”

He handed the wallet to the killer, who looked at Benny like he was nuts but reached out to grab the wallet anyway. In Benny’s experience, most people took whatever you handed them, whether it belonged to them or not.

The woman had been watching the whole thing, like Benny hoped she would.

“Hey,” she said, “that’s my wallet!” She turned wide, angry eyes on the killer. “You stole my wallet!”

The killer’s eyes went wide.

“Help! Police! He stole my wallet!” The woman was shrieking now, and sure enough, she caught the attention of the cop who’d just finished giving the woman in the red sequined dress her ticket.

Things happened fast after that. The woman’s companion, a distinguished-looking man in an expensive black suit, grabbed for the killer, who dropped the wallet like it burned his fingers. He tried to run into the crowd, but by now someone in the crowd had started an off-key rendition of Auld Lang Syne and no one moved out of his way. They did part for the cop, who cuffed the killer and called for backup.

Benny stood by watching the whole thing. By the time the clock struck midnight and the first fireworks exploded into the night, backup had arrived. The cop had given Benny his card and shouted in his ear, asking him to come by the station to make a statement. He’d also given Benny a slip of paper to write his name and address down on. “For the report,” the cop had shouted.

Benny had written a fake name and address on the paper. Yes, his prints were on the wallet, but everyone—including the woman who’d been an unwitting accomplice to Benny’s charade—had seen him bend over to pick up the wallet after it fell from the killer’s pocket. And Benny’s prints weren’t in the system.

After he handed the slip of paper back to the cop, he took one more chance.

On the back of the cop’s business card, Benny had written the alley’s name and “check the trash bin.” Then he’d added, “Sorry I couldn’t do more.”

He slipped the business card into the back of the cop’s belt, and then Benny faded away into the crowd.

***

A week later Benny was strolling along Fremont Street in Vegas, looking for opportunities. He surprised himself by looking at the Help Wanted signs as much as he looked for easy marks among the tourists.

He’d spent the first couple of days of the new year holed up in his apartment checking news reports about the New Year’s Eve murders. Reports were sparse, but when an arrest was announced, the mug shot shown on the local news was the face of the killer Benny had tailed through the casino and framed for picking the woman’s purse.

Why he’d killed those two women, Benny would never know. Crime of opportunity or crime of passion, or maybe just good old-fashioned homophobia in a country where every yahoo with a bug up his ass could buy a gun.

After that story aired, Benny caught a bus for Vegas. The cops might be looking for him, and while he’d given them a fake name and address, he didn’t want to take the chance of being spotted on the street. Time to relocate.

His family had moved a lot after his dad went to prison. His mom had tried to create as normal a life as possible for Benny and his brothers. They did a lot of things that were free, including trips to the local arts district for monthly shows during the summer.

Benny didn’t think too much about art, but on one of those trips, he’d spotted paintings that had caused him to stop dead in his tracks.

The paintings were of people who weren’t there. The artist had created exquisite backgrounds, fully detailed, but the people were empty silhouettes. Not ghosts, just not there.

“Negative space,” his mom had said. “She’s good at using negative space to create something, don’t you think?”

He hadn’t known what to think, but those negative spaces were kind of like his dad. Still a part of the family, but not really there.

Sometimes Benny thought of himself like a negative space. He’d spent his adult life living in the cracks of a society that by and large didn’t give two shakes for their fellow human beings. Go ahead and steal something provided you’re stealing from someone who can afford it. Get the adrenaline rush from the risk, but don’t get caught. Above all, don’t get involved. Don’t care. Become a living ghost who notices everything and everyone around himself but who’s never seen in return.

He’d violated all those rules up in Reno on New Year’s Eve, and here he was, considering violating them again by getting a real job like a regular Joe. Going to a restaurant more than once because he liked the food.

Maybe even making a friend.

That idea alone should have scared him silly. Just think of the risk. He had a past he couldn’t talk about and an uncertain future. But this was a new year, a time for starting over, and you know what?

His hands hadn’t trembled once since he’d stuffed that card in the cop’s belt.

~~~

Negative Spaces, Copyright © 2025 by Annie Reed

“Negative Spaces” was first published in Cold-Blooded Christmas (WMG Publishing, 2021)