Leave the Living

by Hart, Joe

  The top of the shelf was dusty, as was the container, which wasn’t very deep, but wide, like that of a mechanic’s toolbox. Mick slid it toward him, balancing on top of the ladder. There was a small lock set between two hasps but no key visible upon the shelf. Flipping up the clasps, he waited a beat, listening to the house below. There had been a sound, there and gone, but now nothing but the wind, a distant moan within the confines of the closet. Returning his attention to the box, he raised the lid and looked inside.

  A shining revolver rested atop a layer of aged newspaper articles, its snubbed nose and black grip familiar the moment he saw it. It was his father’s Ruger .357, what the older man had dubbed “the wrist breaker” because it kicked so hard when fired. He’d shot the weapon himself multiple times over the years when they’d gone targeting. Mick drew the gun out of the box and inspected its cylinder. Dark, sunken heads of hollow-point rounds occupied the five holes. He hefted the pistol once and then set it aside on the shelf. Tipping the box forward, he reached in to draw the articles out, their touch dry and brittle between his fingers. As he lifted them free, the closet light sputtered like a candle flame in a breeze, withering then brightening before winking out.

  Darkness flooded the closet. It flowed over everything, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Mick wavered on top of the ladder, blind as a fish at the bottom of a moonless sea. The utter detachment from his surroundings was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and when he reached out to touch the wall for balance, he was certain it wouldn’t be there anymore.

  His hand met the drywall, and he steadied himself, his heart thundering as he clutched the newspapers in his other palm. By touch alone, he climbed down from the ladder without falling and walked forward, waiting to encounter something in the dark, something unyielding that might touch him back. He emerged into the bedroom and welcomed even the sick glow from the windows. It was enough light to make his way into the hall and then down the stairs.

  In the kitchen, he set the papers on the table and sidled down the cupboards, counting the drawers in his head until he came to the correct one. Inside, his fingers found the round barrel of the flashlight his father had always kept there. He flicked it on and sagged with relief as the lens shot a cool white beam of light onto the floor. Returning to the table he saw that he’d set one of the papers in the spilled water of the vase and picked it up, shaking it free of moisture. Only one corner had soaked up any water, and he blotted it the best he could on his shirt.

  Standing at the table, he shone the light around the room. The breaker panel was downstairs behind his father’s chair. There was a possibility that the main had tripped somehow, but likely?

  “Not very,” he said to the empty room. The wind answered in a gust that rattled something against the side of the house before quieting.

  Mick sat in one of the chairs and twisted the adjustable head of the flashlight so that it expanded into a wide beam. He stood it on end and let the light wash the ceiling so that it gave an ambient glow to the room. When he finally looked down at the newspapers, the headline of the uppermost stood out in dark, narrow letters that he read twice before continuing on to the article below.

  ARMORED TRUCK ROBBERY REMAINS UNSOLVED

  Authorities are still mired waist-deep in the investigation surrounding a shocking robbery that rocked the small town of Felling, Minnesota, two days ago. At approximately 2 p.m. on Thursday, an armored truck owned by Lockheed Security, based out of Minneapolis, was run off the road outside the city limits of Felling by two armed men driving a 1968 Dodge pickup. The two men were able to gain access to the interior of the truck as one of the Lockheed guards attempted to fire his sidearm at the robbers.

  “I climbed out of the truck to engage the assailants and try to scare them off,” Martin Taylor, a ten-year employee of Lockheed, said in his statement yesterday. “I fired two shots at one of the men and missed before my gun jammed. They then approached the vehicle and held me and my partner at gunpoint before demanding we open the truck. They were both wearing masks and gloves, and they were jittery, like they were nervous or real young, but I couldn’t tell for sure.”

  The robbers then proceeded to force the security guards to open the armored truck, taking several containers filled with cash that was being transported from four separate banks in the area. The assailants then drove away in their pickup, leaving the Lockheed employees tied up in the armored truck’s cab. A state patrol came upon the scene a half hour later and released the two bound men.

  “I was really scared,” Daniel Pell, Taylor’s partner, said when asked about the experience. “They were both carrying shotguns, and I thought Marty and I were dead for sure.”

  Police have no suspects in custody, and the Dodge pickup was found abandoned in a stand of brush near a Mississippi River public water access three miles from the scene of the crime. Local authorities have employed law enforcement assistance from the neighboring towns of Enfield and Warren to aid in the investigation. Andrew Klous, CEO of Lockheed Security, made a statement condemning the act and vowed to “take measures to assure nothing like this ever happens again.” Klous went on to state that this is the first successful robbery of an armored vehicle in Lockheed’s twenty-six years in operation. He did not comment on the amount of money that was taken in the robbery.

  Mick stared at the article before flipping through the other papers below it. All of the headlines were about the theft, chronicling the case’s progress, or lack thereof, over a month’s time. The last article stated at its end that the authorities had still not located the missing money or the assailants.

  Mick let the papers drop into place and sat back from the table. His mind was a cautious octopus, extending tendrils toward the ideas that floated just outside the light of his thoughts. It began to pull them toward him, revealing a broken mosaic that he refused to look at, to even consider. His breath started to hitch in his chest, and the light glancing off the ceiling was dimming at the edges as if the night was encroaching into the kitchen, closer and closer like a predator stalking its prey. His eyes fell upon the corner of the newspaper that had gotten wet, and he blinked, seeing how the moisture had seeped into the dry fibers, how it had veined downward like poison flowing through a circulatory system. The curled lines of water formed something where they bled through the paper, something familiar. Mick twisted the article counter-clockwise and saw that they were letters—r-u-n.

  “Your dad had just turned nineteen, and I was seventeen when we robbed that truck.”

  Mick leapt from his chair, knocking the flashlight over as he stood. It rolled in a swiveling flare, illuminating the far side of the room along with his Uncle Gary who stood in the doorway.

  13

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Mick said in a strangled voice, as he put a hand on the counter behind him to keep from falling. The shock of hearing his uncle’s words come out of nowhere was almost debilitating.

  “Stopped by to see how you were doing, kiddo. I see you found your dad’s articles. Never knew why he wanted to keep them around, kind of an admission of guilt, I’d say.”

  Mick studied his uncle’s lined face, now stranger-looking in the odd light, alien somehow, his eyes hidden in shadow.

  “You…you’re the ones who robbed the truck?” Mick felt his head shake before he realized he was doing it. “No, I don’t believe it. You’re fucking with me. Dad would never have done something like that.”

  Gary laughed. It was a hoarse, sick sound.

  “Come on, Mickey. You’re all grown up now. You know as well as I do every man keeps his secrets. Secrets from his wife, his friends, even his kids.”

  Mick stared at Gary through the darkness that separated them, watching for a tell, something that would assure him his uncle was joking. The other man didn’t move.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said at last.

  “Afraid so. Like I said, we were young, dumb, and full of come at the time, balls like
brass bells on us. We were poor, Mickey. I’m sure your dad told you we never had much growing up.”

  Mick nodded and stepped forward to grab the flashlight from the table before aiming it at the ground.

  “Well, that didn’t sit well with your dad. He wanted more, hated going without. And when it looked like our father was going to enlist us both as workers in his sawmill, he thought of a plan.”

  Gary moved closer to the table, his wet boots squeaking on the floor as he walked. His pants were sodden with melting snow. Mick stepped to the side, keeping the table between them.

  “Originally he wanted us to rob a bank, the First National right here in town. He had this crazy idea to call in a bomb threat on the north side of the city and time it perfectly with when the pulp train came through at the paper mill. Then he was gonna pop the tracks with some dynamite, enough to derail the train and block all the main roads to the south end of town, which would give us enough time to pull off the robbery without getting caught.”

  Gary laughed again and looked at the ceiling. “God we were stupid back then. Anyways, in the midst of planning and trying to find out where to steal some dynamite, your dad was in the bar one afternoon after putting in twelve hours at the sawmill. Back then the minimum age to drink was eighteen, and he liked being superior to me and going in for a beer while I waited outside. So he’s sitting at a little corner table, and a guy comes through the door wearing a suit and tie, but messed up, like he’d fallen down somewhere and hadn’t taken the time to dust himself off. Well, this fella’s already drunk, but he gets a whiskey anyways and plops himself down next to your dad, starts talking like drunks are apt to do. Turns out this guy was an employee of Northern Trust Financial over in Felling. He’s on a bender because he was let go for coming in late too many times over the last year. Well, he goes on and on to anyone that’ll listen about how it was unfair because he’s got a wife with health issues that he has to take care of and that’s why he’s late some mornings, and if they’d have paid him more, he could’ve hired someone to watch his wife while he got to work on time.”

  Gary continued to move around the table. Mick matched his pace and circled the opposite way.

  “So he says to your dad that he’d shit down both legs if he knew how much money went through that bank and that they’re a bunch of greedy bastards for not paying the employees more. Your dad, he’s got his thinking cap on already and this turns on the light bulb in his old brain, so he asks the guy how much money? This stupid sonofabitch tells him that an armored truck comes once a week to do a transport from four local banks. He mentions the day, the time, even the guard’s names. He tells him that on a good week, the truck might be hauling two and a half million dollars.”

  Gary stopped pacing and leaned casually on the back of a chair.

  “Let me tell you, Mickey, it was a good week.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  Gary raised his hand, holding up two fingers. “Scout’s honor. Your dad got the info, and he came up with the plan. We watched the truck for weeks, knew its route and where we were going to hit it. During that time, we snuck into Olson’s junkyard and found an old truck that needed work. Your dad and I fixed it up good enough to run and then stole it the night before the robbery. We had a canoe stashed in the weeds near the river, and after we ditched the truck, we just floated downstream about ten miles and then hid the cash.” Gary smiled in the dim light, the shadows making his mouth appear to stretch much wider than it should. “The canoe, that was my idea.”

  “So what were you going to do if the guards didn’t surrender? Blow them away?” Mick heard the anger in his words. The fear and doubt when reading the letter came back but was overridden by rage. Rage at his father for being someone he never knew, for wearing a mask of morals all these years while beneath he was a common criminal.

  “Nah, kid, that’s where your dad’s soft side won out. I wanted live rounds in the shotguns in case we had to defend ourselves, but your dad, he wouldn’t hear of it. We never put a shell in either gun.”

  Mick stared at the floor, letting the typhoon of information soak into him. The sick feeling in his stomach rose and fell like a tide.

  “Why are you telling me this now? You two have some pact or something?”

  For the first time, Gary showed a hint of annoyance, his face falling into a scowl.

  “Of course we had a pact. How could we not? You know how things go wrong or why shit doesn’t work out most of the time? People talk too much. They share when they shouldn’t and word gets out. Your dad and I, we swore that we’d never tell anyone, not our parents, not our girlfriends, not anyone. And we kept our promise.”

  “I can’t believe this. You’re—”

  “We’re what, Mickey? Criminals? Sure, we stole that money. And guess what? It got replaced by insurance, no harm, no foul. No one got hurt. Even the drunk bastard who let the info slip probably didn’t remember he’d said anything. I bet he laughed when he heard the news.”

  “You didn’t hurt anyone? Really? How about all the people you lied to over the years? You never told your wife, and I’m sure Dad never told my mom because he sure as hell never told me. How about the people you cared about?”

  “It was for the best,” Gary growled, punctuating the last word by slapping the back of the chair. “We had options after that. We could do what we wanted. We weren’t going to be bound to our father’s sawmill for the rest of our lives. We were free.”

  “Free to drink and gamble? Great choice; you really went far.”

  “What the hell do you know about it, Mickey? Hmm? You with your weird ideas and living in a skyline apartment. Life is hard for some and worse for others. Your dad understood, at least he did for a while.”

  “Yeah, he understood enough to pay for your stay at Diamond Point, understood so you could just throw the treatment away after you got out.”

  “He didn’t do that out of the goodness of his heart. He wanted me gone. Out of sight, out of mind, kiddo. That’s how people deal with the ones they love when the going gets tough; they send them away.”

  “This is bullshit. I’m leaving,” Mick said, striding for the door.

  “With what keys?”

  Mick felt like he’d run into a brick wall. He stopped, the light in his hand shaking, jittering shadows across the floor. He turned back to his uncle, who had rounded the table and was leaning against the wall.

  “You took them?”

  “I had to. I wanted to make sure we could talk without you getting all emotional on me and running off.”

  “We talked. Now give them back.”

  “I filled you in, but there’s still more to discuss.”

  “Give me the fucking keys, Uncle Gary.” Mick stepped forward, shining the light in the other man’s face. Gary pulled something from his jacket pocket, holding it out at waist level.

  The pistol was black, but he had no trouble making out its shape in the flashlight’s glow.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Mick said, taking a step back.

  “Talking to my nephew, just having a nice, calm conversation that can end really well for both of us.”

  Gary moved another step forward, and Mick retreated, keeping the light trained on the handgun’s dark eye.

  “You’re right about one thing, Mickey. Gambling’s my first love, always has been. Problem is, it doesn’t always love me back.”

  Mick found his uncle’s eyes and held them, understanding washing over him.

  “You lost it all, didn’t you? You gambled it all away.”

  “Not all of it, just my half.” Gary smiled, but it was grim and without humor. “There was almost three million in that truck, Mickey, three million. We split it fifty-fifty, but we agreed it would look strange if we both up and bought mansions with cash, so we promised to spend it a little at a time. Your dad, he was a real hell-raiser back in the day, kiddo, he really was, but your mom, she changed him while they were together. Not in a bad way eithe
r. I wouldn’t ever say anything against your mother. I loved her like a sister, and it broke my heart when she passed giving birth to you. But that was the final nail in your dad’s past. He moved here and built this place, told me he was going to dedicate his life to you and making sure you were always taken care of no matter what. I never had someone to care about like that. Linda and I never truly got along, and when she left…”

  Mick watched the gun and how steady it was in his uncle’s hand.

  “So you want dad’s half, is that it? You burned up your own money and now you want his?”

  “Hey, hey, I’m not a greedy bastard. I only want half, same deal as your dad and I had. I want you to take the other half and use it to better your life. I’m sure Aaron could use more therapy or treatment. Am I right?”

  “Don’t you dare talk about my son. Don’t you say his name.”

  “Listen, Mickey, we can work this out. I know you know where the cash is. I’m not stupid. That pirate stuff your dad mentioned means something. So let’s just split it up, and we’ll go our separate ways. No one ever has to know about any of this. I’m sure you don’t want the truth coming out about your dad, and I don’t either.”

  “You don’t want to go to jail. That’s—” Mick halted, his words dying in his throat. “You read his letter? How? It was locked in the safe.”

  Gary squinted, his lips pressing into a tight line. The gun rose an inch.

  “You were going to steal it from him, weren’t you? You were going to take his half.”

  “I asked him for a loan, just a loan, Mickey, and he turned me down flat. He paid for that treatment bullshit and said we’d talk once I got out, but he was lying. He wasn’t ever going to give me anything, his own brother.”