AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

"No sweat, Beaumont. We're stealing from a crook; he can't afford to call the cops."

  Beaumont tugged on the suction cup and a circular piece of glass popped free of the back door window.

  "I know you told me that Antoine hides his money in one of them packages under his Christmas tree, but I still have a hard time believing he'd go to all that trouble."

  "You got to see it from Antoine's side,” replied Yarnell. “The man gets so much into the holiday spirit every year during the twelve days of Christmas, that he wraps up his dope in Christmas paper and puts name tags on each bundle for his buyers. Then as the buyers drop by and Antoine gets paid, he stashes all the cash in one of the other specially marked packages under the tree. Man figures it's a safe hiding place from the po-leece right up until about New Year's."

  "So how's he mark the money package?"

  "Don't know. Antoine was a little closedmouthed about that part."

  "Then how do we know which package has the money in it?"

  "We don't, that's why we take everything wrapped in Christmas paper."

  Beaumont gently laid the circular piece of cut glass down on a nearby snowbank.

  "I hate these hurry-up jobs, but at least that part of it makes sense. And you know I don't like to stay inside a place I'm burglarizing any longer than necessary. Let's just unwrap the gifts later at your apartment, see what we got, and split the proceeds there."

  "Good enough for me,” replied Yarnell. “So how much longer do I have to wait till we get inside the man's house?"

  Beaumont stuck his chubby arm through the fresh hole in the window and unlocked the deadbolt.

  "Door's open now."

  "Then let's go."

  "Wait a minute. You never told me if Antoine's got an alarm."

  "Nope, no alarm."

  "Okay then. Just keep in mind, as quiet as I work, I'm always careful not to disturb the victim's sleep, but you might want to drop the level of your whispering a couple of notches so as the man keeps on sleeping."

  "Lighten up, Beaumont. This time of year, everybody's dreaming about a visit from Saint Nick coming down the chimney. You know, reindeer on the rooftop, click, click, click, and all that happy stuff. Got childhood visions of Santa carrying a big bag with lots of presents in it. Only difference tonight is we're on the receiving end instead of the giving end."

  Yarnell moved up the last two steps onto the back porch as he talked. Snow crunched under his boots.

  Beaumont winced at the sound.

  "Shhhhh."

  Yarnell passed him by at the doorway and walked inside.

  "Don't worry about it."

  Pausing to wipe his boots on the welcome mat, Beaumont then stepped into the kitchen and tried to get his bearings. Two steps later, he bumped into the kitchen table. He stopped. Oh yeah, Yarnell had told him earlier if he had vision problems to close his right eye, which as it turned out was Beaumont's dominant one. But because Yarnell had stolen both sets of night vision equipment, and then tried them out on himself to make sure they worked, the single lens strapped on his head had been set up for Yarnell's one good eye, the left eye. Beaumont was starting to think maybe he should've practiced using this stuff before they got to Antoine's back door. He swiveled his head. Now where the hell did Yarnell disappear to?

  Both hands extended in front of him like a semiblind man wandering through a dimly lit cave, Beaumont lurched forward, hoping not to run into anything else. He kept muttering to himself, “Keep right eye closed, keep right eye closed.” With the right eye shut tight, objects in the interior of the house appeared to his left eye as shades of blurry green and dark grey with lots of blackness in the background.

  Working his way out of the kitchen and through the dining area, Beaumont heard the sounds of munching coming from the living room.

  "Yarnell,” he whispered.

  "I'm in here."

  "What are you doing?"

  "I'm eating a cookie. They're fresh-baked chocolate chip. You ought to try one."

  "Well stop it. We're here to steal the man's money, not eat his snacks."

  More sounds of munching, then a full-mouthed mumble.

  "They're still warm. I really like ‘em like that. Reminds me of the way my mom used to..."

  "Get back on track here, Yarnell, and show me where the packages are. We got work to do."

  "Gimme a minute, I got to wash down all this cookie dough. Think I saw a glass of milk here somewhere."

  Beaumont tried shaking his head in disgust, but the rapid sideways movement blurred all the green objects in his one-eyed vision. Nausea set in. He stepped forward and knocked his shin on the coffee table. His left hand, whirling in tight circles to keep his balance, suddenly located the Christmas tree.

  From one of the upper branches, a small glass ornament slipped off its metal hook and dropped faster than Beaumont could reach for it. The bulb bounced across the carpet and rolled under the coffee table. Beaumont steadied himself and held his breath. The night remained silent, except for the loud swallowing of milk from somewhere behind him.

  And then, a strangled, “Ugh."

  "What's the matter?"

  "There's soy milk in this glass. I never figured Antoine to be some kind of health nut. Do all that prison time with a man and just when you think you know him, he changes on you."

  Beaumont started thinking maybe it was about time to make some well-needed partner changes in the very near future. Moving more carefully now, he pivoted to his left and prodded with the toe of his boot. The thin wall of a cardboard box yielded inward, followed by the light crinkle of wrapping paper being stressed against the counter pull of too much Scotch tape. He peered down through the one-eyed tube. A multitude of wrapped packages laid spread out on the floor under the tree. He started counting. When his count got higher than twenty, he quit.

  "There's too many gifts here for us to carry in one trip."

  Yarnell stepped up behind him and looked over Beaumont's shoulder.

  Beaumont quickly detected a surreptitious munching going on behind his left ear. His next inhale of breath took in the aroma of clandestine chocolate wafting from the direction of Yarnell's mouth.

  "Guess we'll have to make more than one trip for all this stuff,” Yarnell mumbled.

  Bits of what Beaumont assumed to be cookie remnants bounced off the back of his ear. He carefully brushed crumbs off the top of his shoulder.

  "How do we know which ones to take?"

  "Just grab the ones that look like they might have money in them."

  Beaumont picked up his first package and shook it. The contents of the box slid from side to side. Undecided but thinking it could be money, Beaumont stuffed it into the Santa bag he carried in his left hand. The next box rattled. He put it back under the tree. The next three boxes went into the bag on the side of “it might be money.” He tried reading the name tags to see if there was a pattern, but the combination of sloppy handwriting and green light from the night scope on blue ink name tags made most of the writing illegible.

  "Come look at this,” whispered Yarnell back in the vicinity of the cookie table again.

  Beaumont pictured cookie crumbs and warm gooey chocolate pieces spraying Jackson Pollock patterns on the wall as Yarnell's stage whispers and seemingly short attention span latched onto yet another freshly discovered snack, or maybe some other new found item of interest.

  "What?"

  "Antoine's got himself a trophy wall. And here's an award from—” Never a quick reader, and now even slower while reading through a night vision lens, Yarnell managed to drag out the pronunciation of all three large letters on the wall plaque. “—from the ... N ... R ... A..."

  Beaumont immediately stepped back to the cookie table.

  "Let me see that."

  Sure enough, the award had a large N, a large R, and a large A embossed on the wood and metal plaque.

  "That's the National Rifle Association,” exclaimed Beaumont.

  "I know that's what the letters
stand for,” replied Yarnell. “I'm one of their lifetime members. Even got me one of them full-size posters of Charlton Heston on my bedroom wall. Of course, he's got a long beard, and he's wearing a striped bathrobe, and he has two stone tablets cradled in his arms instead of carrying an M-16, but it was the only picture of him I could find at the time."

  "Omigod,” said Beaumont.

  "Don't think so,” said Yarnell. “Heston played the part of Moses in that movie."

  Beaumont grabbed the arm of his sometime partner and pulled him around so they were almost looking into each other's night vision lenses.

  "Quick question here, Yarnell. If Antoine is a felon and isn't supposed to have guns, then why does he rate an award from the NRA?"

  "I don't know. Go wake him up and ask him if you're so curious."

  "Not on your..."

  Beaumont suddenly clamped his hand over Yarnell's open mouth. His body stiffened like cast bronze.

  "Did you hear that?"

  Yarnell mumbled back through Beaumont's clenched fingers.

  "Hear what?"

  "That clicking noise."

  "You mean like reindeer hooves on the roof?"

  "No, more like ... the hammer on a large handgun."

  Yarnell was in the midst of saying he didn't hear a thing when a searing burst of light flashed through the living room.

  Beaumont's ears immediately reverberated from the shock waves of a gigantic boom. His memory registered a vague video of the huge glass star on top of the Christmas tree exploding into a thousand glittering shards. At that point, his night vision deserted him.

  "What the hell was that?” screamed Beaumont.

  "I think,” Yarnell screamed back, “it was a .44 caliber magnum, but it could've been a .45. I'm not really sure ‘cause we're in a small room and it's compressing the sound."

  Beaumont forced his right eye to open. He could see again without using the night vision lens.

  Someone had evidently turned on the lights in the living room.

  Beaumont quickly realized he stood naked in the light, not that he didn't have any clothes on, but rather that he stood out in the open under the bright glare of an overhead baby spotlight. To his bruised left ear, as though the noise were muffled in thick wool, came the soft sound of another click.

  And now, Yarnell seemed to be screaming directly into his right ear.

  "I think that according to number eight of The Rules for a Gunfight, we should run."

  "Run?” screamed back Beaumont.

  "That's right,” returned Yarnell. “The rest of Rule Eight says only hits count, and the only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss."

  Beaumont felt Yarnell tugging at his Santa sleeve and pulling him toward the rear of the house where they'd come in earlier through the kitchen door. He wasn't sure what a slow miss was or how anybody would recognize one, but since he felt like he was already running in slow motion, Beaumont didn't particularly want to stop and debate the concept.

  Approaching the dining room table, he split left and Yarnell went right. On the tabletop between them, a purple vase seemed to vaporize. Curled plastic flowers floated sideways through the air. Fake yellow petals now falling from the ceiling plastered themselves to the sweat on Beaumont's forehead. For a second, he thought he smelled something burning. A loud ringing intensified in his ears.

  "This isn't working,” yelled Beaumont as he rounded the far end of the table. “Give me another rule."

  "Rule number five,” hollered Yarnell. “It says move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. Lateral and diagonal movements are preferred."

  It registered on Beaumont's mind that he was on approach to the dining room's double-wide doorway, which opened out into the kitchen. Choosing this time to take up lateral and diagonal movements meant he would miss the open doorway and would then have to make an exit through the wall.

  "Rule Five doesn't apply under these circumstances,” he screamed.

  "Try Rule Fourteen then, use cover or concealment as much as possible."

  Preferring cover that was traveling about as fast as he was, plus moving in the same direction, Beaumont grabbed the back of Yarnell's coat and pulled himself around front into the lead. Unless the shooter fired an elephant rifle or had armor-piercing ammo in his weapon, Beaumont felt he was relatively safe running in first place as they entered the kitchen.

  Two steps from the rear door and possible safety, Beaumont felt a whoosh in his right ear as if all the air had been sucked out by a passing object moving at a high rate of speed. With his inner ear no longer sending the proper signals to his brain to coordinate his sense-of-balance program, Beaumont's stride faltered and he was knocked sideways, with his back becoming wedged up against one side of the door frame. Yarnell's massive Santa bulk quickly jammed up the other half of the wooden frame. Their legs kept moving, but forward progress had ceased. They were stuck.

  For once, Beaumont reflected, he should've been more serious about his resolution from the previous New Year's to lose some weight. Just a mere twenty pounds and he wouldn't be vertically high centered here in the middle of the exit. Of course it didn't help that Yarnell had eaten all those chocolate chip cookies, nor that Yarnell was pushing so hard they only got jammed in tighter.

  "Quit pushing,” yelled Beaumont, “so as I can squeeze my shoulders through, then we can both get outside in one piece."

  However, with all the noise descending upon his now swollen eardrums, Yarnell must've only heard about every other word, something to the extent of “...push ... as ... can ... through ... we ... both ... outside,” because Yarnell nodded as if he understood and then redoubled his efforts to move them through the doorway.

  Time and action now seemed to slow down so much Beaumont swore when he looked back toward the living room that he actually saw the next bullet coming at him. To his dominant eye, the projectile loomed as huge as a streaking baseball headed directly for his midsection. Quickly, he sucked in his stomach to let the bullet pass. A large black button popped off the front of his Santa coat and disappeared in a fine powder mist.

  Due to the small vacuum currently residing in the center of the doorway, a vacuum created by Beaumont having rapidly sucked in his stomach, Yarnell no longer had anything holding him back. Yarnell fell through the rear doorway, rolled across the porch, and sprawled facedown into the backyard snow.

  Beaumont's slow-motion action string suddenly snapped from too much tension, and he followed his partner's departure at a racehorse pace. Leaping from the back porch, Beaumont trampolined off Yarnell's alligator-crawling body and bolted over the top of the rear fence. With a flat-footed lope, he huffed and puffed his way down the alley. Not sure which eye to keep open now, he plunged along the dark alleyway, fearful that he was being followed by some humungous black doom.

  At the point of sheer exhaustion and hearing the banshee scream of police sirens approaching in his general direction, Beaumont ducked in behind a trashcan at the end of the alley. A large dark bulk squeezed in beside him. Beaumont jumped.

  "Damn, Yarnell, don't scare me like that."

  "I've been right behind you all the way, Beaumont."

  Placing two fingers on his own carotid artery, Beaumont checked his pulse rate. When the rapid drum cadence finally slowed down to a mere gallop, he thought it might be safe to plan something for the near future, like maybe an impromptu trip to lower Mexico.

  "You know,” said Yarnell after a moment of his own deep gasping, “I'm not so sure we were in the right house tonight."

  "I thought you said Antoine's was the third house from the corner."

  "I did, but now I'm not sure which way Antoine was facing in front of his house when he gave me directions, so I might've counted from the wrong corner. In any case, the guy shooting at us had a loud wheeze to his breathing, a wheeze that Antoine don't have."

  "It's a wonder you could hear anything in there."

  A police car with a flashing red and blue light bar on top o
f the roof sped past the mouth of the alley. Brakes and tires squealed as the car slid around the corner and onto the street where Antoine lived.

  "Now what?” inquired Yarnell.

  Beaumont made a short dash to the exact end of the alley and peered around the corner of the fence. He felt the large bulk of his partner following close behind.

  "Now, we run across the street and into that drainage ditch over there until we find a bridge we can hide out under. When everything quiets down, we'll head for home and go our separate ways like nothing ever happened here."

  Half a mile later in the snow- and slush-filled drainage ditch, the two men climbed a cement slope to get up underneath the foot of a four-lane vehicle bridge. Shivering from the cold night breeze, Beaumont huddled up against the protection of a concrete wall.

  Yarnell paused just outside, gazing off to the east. An almost empty Santa bag lay at his feet.

  "What are you doing, Yarnell? Get back under cover before someone sees you."

  "It's Christmas Eve, I just wondered if there would be one of them bright stars in the east like Mom used to read to me about."

  "Too much light pollution these days, Yarnell. All you're gonna see is high-rises and skyscrapers. Get in here."

  Yarnell slowly ducked under the edge of the bridge and huddled beside Beaumont. He dragged his Santa bag in behind him.

  Beaumont eyed the lump riding inside Yarnell's cloth bag.

  "At least you got something out of the deal. I think I lost the bottom of my Santa bag when I leaped the fence. Open up your gift; let's find out what we got for this night's work."

  Yarnell stretched one arm into the bag and extracted a solitary package. Red and silver wrapping paper glittered in the frosty air.

  "I don't know, aren't we supposed to wait for Christmas morning?"

  "All the trouble I've been through tonight, I want to know what we scored. Open the damn package."

  Yarnell removed the red ribbon bow and slowly peeled away the outside paper. When the cardboard box was laid bare, he took off the lid and stared inside.

  "What'd we get?” asked Beaumont. “Please tell me it's money."

  "Nope,” replied Yarnell, “but it's something I wanted ever since I was a kid. It's one of them shoot-'em-up video games with a machine to play it on. Wish I had some batteries to go with it."