The Interloper

by Dave Zeltserman

  “Okay, folks,” Lowenstein announced after all the hostages were lying face down on the floor, “the easiest way for me and my associates to handle this would be to shoot each and every one of you. We’re going to tie you all up instead. So I’d think long and hard before giving us any excuses to go the easy way. Now, put your hands behind your back and don’t move as much as a muscle.”

  One of the household staff began weeping, but all of them did as they were ordered. While Willis trained his Glock on the hostages, Lowenstein and Hack bound their wrists with plastic cuffs and wrapped their ankles together with duct tape. About half of them had been taken care of when Pruitt burst into the room dragging the maid that Willis had seen earlier. He threw her onto the floor and the woman curled up with her knees to her chest crying hysterically. Pruitt was breathing hard under his ski mask, and started to raise his .38-caliber pistol toward the maid, but Hack wisely moved to her and rolled her onto her stomach, then bound her wrists and ankles, and Pruitt reluctantly lowered his gun. Like the rest of the crew, Pruitt had put on a ski mask, but even with that on it was obvious that he was near exploding. Lowenstein asked him about the wife, but Pruitt seemed incapable of answering him. For a good minute he stood fuming, his breathing ragged, a demented burning in his eyes. He walked slowly over to Landistone, as if it took every ounce of strength he had to keep himself under control.

  “You know your bitch wife was upstairs nude as a fucking jaybird with another man?” Pruitt demanded, and then he reared back and kicked Landistone hard in the side, who let out a dull oomph sound, but otherwise was smart enough not to say anything.

  Lowenstein had been moving toward Pruitt, and after that kick he moved quickly to grab Pruitt and pull him away. It was almost like a steam valve had been opened and that act of violence released just enough pressure from Pruitt to allow himself to get under control. He let himself be pulled away by Lowenstein, only putting up a token resistance.

  “Not now, for Chrissakes,” Lowenstein implored Pruitt.

  “His idiot wife and her hero lover tried jumping me,” Pruitt said incredulously. “I should’ve shot them both in their fucking heads.”

  “Are they both still breathing?” Lowenstein asked Pruitt as he pulled him further away from the hostages.

  “She is. He might be. I don’t know. I cracked him good a couple of times, and might’ve split his head open. But the moron asked for it. If he’s still breathing, he won’t be waking up for a while.”

  “You can’t cry over spilt milk,” Lowenstein offered philosophically.

  Hack had finished securing the last of the hostages, and Willis and the rest of the crew approached The Dame. They stood before it for a long moment. Outside of two of the hostages sobbing, the room was quiet. Pruitt remarked that the painting didn’t look like much to him. “Fucking rich people,” he added.

  Hack had left the room to get the laptop computer that the surveillance system had been running on, and Pruitt and Lowenstein worked to carefully remove the painting from the wall, then to wrap it in some of the material it had been packed in. When they left the room, Willis led the way with Pruitt and Lowenstein carrying The Dame. Willis was the first to see Alicia Landistone lying near the front doorway. She was still naked, her hands and feet bound, her eyes red and puffy. She was fighting hard to keep from crying, instead struggling to give them a defiant look but failing miserably.

  “What she’s doing down here?” Willis asked.

  “I’m taking the bitch with us,” Pruitt stated.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t, huh? Too bad.”

  “Be reasonable,” Lowenstein pleaded. “We can’t take her with us. If we do this turns into a kidnapping or worse.”

  “Yeah? Take a look at what she did to me with her claws” Pruitt let go of his end of the painting with one hand so he could lift up his ski mask to reveal ugly and deep scratches that ran down the side of his neck. “You better believe I’m going to pay her back for these. Don’t worry. I won’t be a hog about it. The rest of you can take your turns if you want.” Pruitt pulled his ski mask back down, his tone taking on a defeatist note. “Besides, I probably killed that guy upstairs, so it’s not going to much change anything if we take her or not.”

  Willis had moved to Pruitt’s side and in one quick motion pressed the barrel of his Glock hard against Pruitt’s skull.

  “I’ll make this simple,” Willis said. “If you try taking her, I’m leaving another body here.”

  Pruitt froze where he stood. Hack was joining up with them, carrying a laptop computer under an arm, and he slowed to a stop, first staring at Willis with a gun against Pruitt, then at the naked woman lying on the floor.

  “I think you’re overreacting,” Lowenstein said.

  “I’m done trying to placate this psycho,” Willis said.

  Pruitt’s body had gone rigid. He had gone back to holding his end of the painting with both hands, and he remained that way, probably knowing if he let go to reach for his gun he’d be dead.

  “You’re making a mistake there, pal,” Pruitt forced out.

  “What? In not shooting you already? Maybe.”

  “Guys,” Lowenstein said, “let’s be reasonable. Now is not the time for this. Can we agree to leave the girl here?”

  “Fine,” Pruitt spat out. “But first take that gun out of my face. And get me a fucking knife. I’m cutting off her fingers. I’m not leaving behind any DNA.”

  Willis laughed at that. “If they catch up with any of us, it won’t matter whether or not they have our DNA.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Lowenstein said.

  “I don’t care. I’m not leaving my DNA under that bitch’s fingernails. And I said get that gun out of my face!”

  “I’ll scrub under her fingernails,” Hack offered.

  Willis lowered the gun and took a step back. He wanted to get the hell out of there and leave those clowns far behind, but he didn’t want to walk away from Pruitt and give him any sort of opening to shoot him in the back. He also didn’t trust what Pruitt would do if he left him alone with Landistone’s wife. So he stayed where he was while Hack went running to get what he needed. Pruitt and Lowenstein both lowered the painting to the floor, but Pruitt didn’t make any move for his gun, content instead to glare hotly at Willis.

  “If you ever pull a gun on me again I’ll make you eat it,” Pruitt spat out. Even with the ski mask on, Willis could make out that the muscles were clenched around Pruitt’s jaw.

  Hack came back a minute later with a pan that from the smell of it must’ve been filled with vinegar. “This will get rid of any trace of DNA,” Hack promised. He kneeled next to Landistone’s wife, forced her hands into the pan, and scrubbed at her nails with a small brush.

  “Are you satisfied?” Lowenstein asked.

  Pruitt picked up his side of the painting, “Let’s just get out of here,” he said in a near strangled voice.

  They left the house then. After opening the door, Willis stood back and let the others leave first, and then they all moved in a half jog to the side of the house where their cars had been parked. As they approached the van Willis drove, which was the best vehicle they had for transporting the painting, Lowenstein cried out and dropped his end of the painting. He fell to one knee and grasped his ankle which was now covered with blood. There had been no sound of gunfire, so a silencer had to have been used. Willis dropped into a crouch and searched for where the shot came from. From the corner of his eye he saw the top of Hack’s head fly off, and then Pruitt’s throat explode into a bloody mess. He realized then how many shots had actually been fired and the source of the gunfire, but before he could turn his gun on Lowenstein, he took two bullets to the chest.

  Chapter 8

  Lowenstein pulled onto a dirt road within the South Mountain Reservation area and ten minutes later found himself giggling like a crazy person. He still couldn’t believe he’d pulled it off. It seemed more like a strange dream than
anything real, as if it couldn’t be possible that only twenty-five minutes ago he had killed all three of them. His giggling stopped and a hardness settled over his features. He held out his hand and studied it. No tremors, nothing. Perfectly level. He might’ve been bouncing around in his stolen Buick, but his nerves were holding steady. He breathed in deeply and let the air out in a slow exhalation as he thought about the sleight of hand he pulled off. Seconds before he had fallen to one knee, he had palmed a theatrical blood packet, and that was what he smashed against his ankle to make it look as if he’d been shot. That was the distraction he needed. While they searched wildly for the shooter that didn’t exist, he slid a .32-caliber pistol with an attached silencer from where it had been secured to his lower leg and got off a perfect shot that blew Hack’s head into pieces, then a less than perfect shot where he hit Pruitt in the throat, and back to a better shot as he drilled Burke twice dead center in the chest.

  He screwed up with how he shot Pruitt. He still couldn’t believe he hit the little prick in the throat. He had the shot lined up to nail him square between the eyes, but the son of a bitch had been in a crouch and must’ve straightened up at the last moment. If the shot had killed him instantly it wouldn’t have mattered. But it didn’t.

  A harsh, rigid grin formed over Lowenstein’s mouth as he thought about what happened afterward. The plan had been to load the bodies into the stolen van that Burke had been driving, but that vengeful pisher Pruitt had to still be alive. Lowenstein had walked over to where Burke lay to deliver a coup de grace when a loud blast almost made him jump out of his shoes and he damn near felt a bullet whiz by his ear. That was when he saw that Pruitt had pushed himself up to one elbow. The little pisher was grasping his throat with one hand while he used the other to take potshots at him, his gun barrel waving wildly in front of Lowenstein as if Pruitt was in a boat that was listing badly and he was having trouble steadying himself. Even though blood was spurting past Pruitt’s splayed fingers and his eyes were glazed enough to show that he was seconds from death, the vindictive little prick still had to try to shoot him, and it was just dumb luck on Lowenstein’s part that Pruitt missed, especially with Lowenstein standing only five feet away from him. Of course he wouldn’t have missed if his hand wasn’t shaking as much as it was, and it couldn’t have helped that he couldn’t have been seeing straight. From all accounts, Lowenstein should’ve been hit from that distance, but somehow he wasn’t. After that first shot, Lowenstein moved fast for cover while Pruitt fired off two more rounds.

  If they had been in Newark or Jersey City or any other number of nearby towns, Lowenstein could’ve waited for Pruitt to bleed out or maybe even shoot it out with him, but he couldn’t do that in toney Short Hills. If any neighbors heard the gunfire and called the police, the cops would be swarming Landistone’s address in minutes. So Lowenstein had to change his plans and leave the bodies behind while he got the hell out of there. But it probably didn’t matter. Hack was dead. Pruitt must’ve been dead within minutes of Lowenstein driving off—he’d have to be with that hole in his throat and a nicked carotid artery. And Burke should damn well be dead too after taking two rounds point blank in the chest. The odds were the police weren’t going to be able to connect him to either Hack or Pruitt, and certainly not to Burke. He had exaggerated to Burke how often he and Pruitt had worked together, and while he might’ve done some jobs with that psycho nut bag over the last few years, the police wouldn’t have any reason to think of them as known associates. And even if the police eventually made the connection, it wouldn’t matter. Very soon, Lowenstein would be having a new face, new identity, and twenty million dollars so he could live out his life in comfort in the Bahamas. In a couple of months, he’d even have a new body. He was determined to lose the weight he had packed on since his thirties, and without the stress of having to worry about planning heists and other jobs, he’d be able to concentrate on a diet and exercise program.

  Lowenstein turned the Buick down what was little more than a dirt path and drove another three hundred yards before stopping. He was in a dense enough wooded area to give him privacy for what he was going to do next—even given the remote chance that someone drove down the dirt road that he’d been on. He got out of the car and took from the trunk The Dame still wrapped in a protective cloth. He removed the cloth and dropped the painting on the ground, then stood over it for a moment to study it. To him it was just a chunky, unattractive chick, and he couldn’t see what the fuss was about, or why the painting was supposed to be worth a hundred and twenty million dollars. The seven million price Tania threw at them the other day was only a smokescreen for his now-dead crew. Lowenstein decided that you’d have to be fucked in the head to put that kind of value on a painting like that. Hell, if he was going to hang a picture of a dame on his wall, he’d rather it be a nude shot of Tania. Now that would be a dame worth looking at!

  Lowenstein went back to the car for the laptop computer used by Landistone’s security system, also for a shovel and a can of gasoline. He dumped the laptop and the gasoline can on top of the painting, and then set about digging a hole. It was going to have to be wide enough and long enough to drop the painting into it, but since he no longer had three bodies to bury, he’d only have to make it about two feet deep. As he dug into the ground, he thought about the killings he had done and tried to decide how he felt about it. He had never killed anyone before. He never had to. Most of the jobs he’d been on had gone smoothly, although the ones he’d been on with Pruitt usually had at least one poor sap getting his head cracked open. But still, nobody ever ended up dead. Right then he was running on pure adrenaline, but later he’d have to live with what he had done, and he wondered how it was going to affect him. As the size of the hole grew larger and his physical efforts made him sweat to where his shirt became drenched, he decided it wasn’t going to be something he’d lose sleep over. Hack was already forgotten. Even when the guy was alive he barely registered to Lowenstein. As far as Pruitt went, if Lowenstein was going to be completely honest about it, he enjoyed shooting him and if he had a chance to do it over again, he’d do it gladly. The guy was a borderline psycho and a pain in the ass, and Lowenstein often had to tiptoe around the guy’s fragile ego. Over the past year, as he planned the job with Tania he found himself looking forward to when he’d be able to put a bullet in Pruitt’s head. With Burke, he knew the guy was a dead man from the very beginning so he never let himself think of Burke as anything but a guy walking his last mile. If anything, Pruitt keeping him from putting a final bullet in Burke’s head only made him nervous. Burke turned out to be smarter and more resourceful than Lowenstein would’ve expected. From what Big Ed Hanley had told him, he thought he was getting someone dependable, but green. After seeing the way Burke handled himself during that poker game heist, Lowenstein would’ve made the job a three-person one if he could’ve, but that wasn’t an option. The logistics for the job called for four people, but even if that wasn’t the case he would’ve needed a fourth person anyway—Tania insisted on it, something about the insurance company demanding a four-person security team. Finding a last-minute replacement for Burke wasn’t an option either—he didn’t have time to find someone else, and even if he did, it would’ve been too risky as it would’ve made both Pruitt and Hack suspicious. Fuck it, the guy took two shots to the chest. He had to be dead, but the thought of Burke somehow surviving those gunshots made him nervous. If Burke were still alive and the police didn’t have him, Lowenstein wouldn’t put it past Burke to track him down regardless of how many new faces and identities he bought himself.

  Lowenstein stopped his digging to wipe his brow and to catch his breath. A little physical activity and he was soaked through with sweat! Christ, he really was in rotten shape. As soon as he got down to the Bahamas that was going to change. Maybe he’d even try running a mile or two every day. As he tried to imagine what his new life in the Bahamas would be like, his thoughts kept drifting back to Burke. He found himself playing
back in his head the moment he shot Burke, and he tried hard to picture whether he saw any blood. It was a bang-bang shooting with Burke hitting the ground fast. But was there any blood? Lowenstein couldn’t say for sure. There was so much blood from both Hack and Pruitt, and that confused the issue with Burke. Lowenstein struggled to visualize the exact moment Burke was shot, but he couldn’t get that detail straight about the blood. After a minute or so, he gave up, deciding that it wasn’t worth giving himself an aneurysm over and went back to his digging.

  Once the hole became big enough and deep enough, Lowenstein pushed The Dame into the hole with his foot. A groan escaped as he picked up the cloth material that the painting had been wrapped in, and he used that to wipe off his perspiration, but it didn’t help much as the sweat kept pouring off him. He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and took several pictures of the painting and sent those to Tania, then he poured gasoline into the hole and set what was supposed to be a hundred and twenty million dollar rare painting on fire. He took several more pictures, sent those also to Tania, then tossed the laptop computer into the flames, also the cloth. Once the painting had been reduced to ashes and the laptop computer into a smoldering mess, he filled the hole up with dirt. When he was done he stopped to rest for a moment, and then something hard cracked him on the back of the head and his world went black.