by Robert White
I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Drugs were keeping him high. I walked back up the steps, dragging myself, my bones aching with every step. I went into the small bathroom near Brandi’s room, put the light on and immediately shut it off. The glare was painful. I had bouts of insomnia before but they were always connected to Montreal. My body and my mind were both exhausted, crossing wires indiscriminately. I splashed cold water on my face and looked at the changes in the mirror. Domestic life and a laboring job had put twenty-five pounds on my frame since my hitchhike up to Northtown. Now I was going backwards. The environment, time, and my body were collapsing in at once. I returned to Brandi’s room and put her pillow over my head. The scent of her on the pillow was strong.
I closed my eyes and let the dark have what was left of my consciousness. At one point I remember jolting upright in the bed because I thought Randall was standing in the room with that butterfly knife in his hand. He had come to do what he promised. I lay back down and waited for the light in the window to change to smoky grey.
Downstairs, Brandi and Brad exchanged a look as I stepped around them. One end of the duct tape covering David’s face had slipped down. He looked at me but I didn’t meet his eyes as I replaced it over his mouth. Even in the poor light of early morning, I could see their red-rimmed eyes and haggard faces and knew sleep had been impossible for all of them.
I walked into the kitchen and saw my brother still talking to Alicia. They seemed to be frozen in place.
“Have you slept?” I asked her.
“She’s doing fine, just fine,” Carlos said cheerily.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” I said and poured myself a cup of coffee.
She wouldn’t look at me. I suppose she kept featuring me as the nitwitted yard man and couldn’t reconcile me with this other, darker persona. I looked at Carlos and wondered what loony charm he exuded to dispel the notion that he was any less responsible than I for the brutalizing of her family. In the deepest cockles of my heart, I admired her. She didn’t whine about the injustice of what we were doing. She was wise to avoid making a fuss. Randall was playing second fiddle to my brother, who gave off too much kinetic energy. At that moment, I was worried myself. He was a different creature in this house than he had been in mine. As repulsive as he was, a little antic buffoonery from him would have put my mind at ease. A somber, purposeful maniac is a scary one.
“Change of plans,” Carlos said. “You’re going with her.”
I stared at him. It wasn’t the constant improvising that appalled me. It was the fact he was telling me this right across the table from her.
“Let’s talk over here,” I said.
Carlos apologized profusely to Alicia for having to handcuff her to the cupboard handle but she didn’t seem to mind. We walked into the den.
“Where’s Randall?” I asked him. “What’s he saying to your change of plans?”
“Relax, Jack, will you? It’s all right. Look, that fucking FBI agent’s got a hardon for us right now. He might have alerted cops in this county, too. We can’t take a chance by hanging our faces out in front of that bank.”
“I don’t like this,” I said. “This whole dog’s breakfast of a plan is insane.”
“She knows what to do. Go with her. Sit in the parking lot. Wait for her to come out with the money. Like that. It’s over, done.” He slapped his hands – presto.
“Jesus, you’re really pushing it,” I said. “You think because she’s listened to your doped-up bullshit all night she’s your trained monkey now?”
“Listen to me, Jack. Alicia knows exactly what to say. She’s going to walk into her bank with all her staff looking her right in the face and she’s going to tell them that three very bad guys are in her house right this second. They will kill her husband, the girl and the boyfriend if she doesn’t follow their instructions to the letter.”
“You’re so sure, are you?”
“Yes, yes, I am, Jack. Because she knows we’ll blow up her husband.”
“Knows? How does she know that?”
“You mind not shouting so they can hear you across the street?”
“We’ve all left enough DNA in this house to keep a hundred crime-scene technicians busy. Do you think you’re just going to fade away with bags of money?”
“Yeah, like fade into Bolivian,” Randall said behind me so close I felt the hackles on my neck rise.
I never heard him come down the steps but Carlos did and never gave him away with his eyes. That’s how they must have done it in prison when somebody was about to get sucker-punched.
Randall whispered softly in my ear like a lover: “That’s what we’re all going to do right after the split.”
“It’s settled,” Carlos said. “You go with her.”
“We’re trusting you, Jack,” Calderone said. He looped one of the blue duffel bags over my shoulder and handed me a walkie-talkie. “But not that much, see?”
She reversed her Lexus out of the driveway and waited for my brother to finish giving me instructions. Randall got in the Jeep. He would stay with her until we made it to the bank and then he was going to be in contact. My van brought up the rear. “Don’t climb up my ass with this thing, either. If I have to stop her, I’ll need some room.”
He leaned in the window and gave me the full benefit of his sour breath. “Keep it on that channel. You move it off three and you’ll pull back a bloody stump next time I see you.”
I asked him what was wrong with cell phones.
“You want to take a chance on a dropped call at this point, dummy?”
“Won’t this chatter get picked up by every two-way in the area?”
“Not these babies. We got special crystals cut for them. Cops and taxis won’t be able to pick us up. You got any more questions – shove them up your ass, motherfucker.”
A quip about his finesse in the teaching arts of crime died on my tongue. I had faced hunger and cold on my own. I knew the unbearable loneliness of being homeless in big cities with no familiar face passing me by. But the trepidation inside me at that point was like a scalding hot bubble in my stomach. My forehead was either clammy or hot to the touch. I wasn’t sure if this was fear acting out through my cells or the onset of a fever brought on by stress and going without food.
She drove her usual way and signaled at every turn. If she wanted to make a run for it, she had only to lose the Jeep in traffic. It had to be going through her mind right at that second: floor it all the way to the police station.
Randall gave Carlos reports at every crossing. He escorted her into the bank’s parking lot and did a quick U-turn out so the bank’s surveillance cameras wouldn’t get much of a look at him. As I passed he signaled me, two fingers to his eyeballs: watch her. I gave him my middle digit and drove around to the back. I put the van in idle and sat far off cater-corner in case I had to floor it to get out fast. Somewhere in my duffel bag, I left a cut-up stocking that was supposed to cover my face. So much for anonymity. She parked in her space and got out at a fast walk. No keys in her hand so she had to be admitted by her secretary. She cut her eyes to me once, fast, and looked away but not before her face wrinkled in one of those ugh-winces.
The door opened and I saw her disappear inside. This was decision time. I drove out front and parked far to the back of the last row in front of Sasha’s car. I couldn’t see anything inside her bank because of the distance and the drawn blinds across the windows. About thirty seconds later someone drew the blinds up, and my view improved. I saw the shadows of figures and some heads behind the teller windows but nothing else. I put the binocs on the part of the bank where I knew her office was. Too much glare to see very much, just the movement of shadowy figures passing by the window where the thick-plated glass cast off a green glow as if they were underwater. It looked as though all the shapes were heading for her office. I didn’t know if this was routine in her bank: did they have to attend a rah-rah session every morning and whoop like Wal-Mart workers?
I heard Carlos’ voice crackle beside me. “What’s going on, Jack?”
“She’s inside. They’re inside. I can’t see anyone. Nothing’s happening.”
“Stay cool,” he said.
“You’re not the tethered goat here,” I said.
Five long minutes passed. Then ten minutes passed. Every second was like the tick-tock of doom. I didn’t breathe. I had to fight panic. My foot actually touched the gas and my hand went for the gear shift.
Then she came outside.
I put on the stocking mask. A man in a security guard’s uniform came out with her. She looked around and saw my van and said something to the guard. She was carrying two canvas bags and he had three in his arms. They were all the same size and buff color and stamped with the bank’s logo. He had a gun strapped on his hip. When she got next to my window, I could see he was carrying an automatic instead of a revolver.
I rolled down the window, not taking my eyes from the guard’s hands.
“It’s too late for a mask, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s for him,” I said. “Tell him not to get any closer.”
“There’s eight-hundred-seventy-eight thousand dollars in these bags,” she said. “That’s all of it. The vault’s emptied.”
“Put them in,” I said. I nodded to the side door.
She gave one of her bags to the guard and thanked him politely and called him Elliott. Then she swung the van door open and dropped in her two bags. She took each one from the guard and tossed them inside the van.
“I don’t have to remind you...” I started.
“That’s all of it except the coins,” she said to me. “You’re welcome to come in and check for yourself.”
“I was going to say, if there’s a single dye pack in there...” I hadn’t intended it as an accusation but as a concern about what Calderone might do.
“Your brother told me all about you two,” she said. “He’s mentally disturbed. That big one, the bald one with the tattoos who doesn’t speak or look at me. I know he’s dangerous. I’m trusting you to keep my family safe-”
She lost it then and her face collapsed like a wet balloon. Despite the lipstick and mascara, the wrinkles in the corners of her tired eyes were like guy wires stretching her skin to its limit. She looked at me from the darkened hollows of her eyes. She collected herself, a very brave woman.
Then I saw rage. “Do you think I’d risk my family for this money? You disarm that bomb, do you hear me? You make that call, right now!”
She spat in my face. So much for Carlos’ talking jag and the Stockholm syndrome. I saw the guard’s hand slide up his trouser leg to his holster and I decided not to wait for the rest of her invective. I didn’t need it. And I was on the clock. Twenty minutes to disarm the bomb and evacuate the house. That was the deal Carlos made with her.
“Jack, Jack! What’s happening?”
“I’ve got it,” I said to him. “I’m leaving now.”
“Oh baby, we did it!”
“I’m turning west onto twenty,” I said. “Approaching the first intersection at Grolier and Breckensale.”
“Take your time, Jackie boy. No speeding – easy does it now.”
A few minutes later he asked me for my position again. “Coming up on Vandetter and Demaris,” I said. “Still clear. Nobody’s behind me.”
“Bring those goodie bags home to daddy, you beautiful motherfucker!”
Randall’s voice came over harsh and guttural: “...the corner of Paternoster and Randolph, there’s some kind of accident with a semi and a gold Camry. Fuckin’ cop is on the scene directing traffic. It’s still good to go. One lane only. Get in the center lane when you reach Brandywine.”
“No traffic tickets, boys,” sang Carlos.
“You hear me, fuckface?”
“I hear you,” I said.
“Where are you now, Jack?” Meth or crack – whatever he was snorting was taking him to the top of the roller coaster. I was coming up on the last intersection before the city limits. On one corner was an avant-garde art house. Facing it was a Dunkin’ Donuts.
“I’m just passing Best Karate Dojo,” I said. “Dillon and Eureka.”
“Lead him home to me, Randall.”
“Carl, shut the fuck up for a second. How much she say?” Randall demanded.
“Eight-seventy-eight,” I said.
Carlos’ voice came over shrill as a banshee: “O marvelous Jesus, you see now what that lousy week cost us? Two hundred fucking forty, fifty grand! Who knows? Maybe three hundred thou!”
“Shut up. I don’t have you in sight yet,” Randall said.
“Shit! Cunt! Lying-ass bitch!”
“Shut up, Carl,” Randall said. “Where are you, Jack?”
“I’m at the intersection of-”
“I fucking told you we shoulda waited for the Labor Day delivery. No, no, no, you said-”
“-intersection of Maclaverty and Footeville,” I said. The names just popped into my head.
“Where the fuck... Jack, over. I don’t see you yet. I’m turning down her street right now. You should be close to me.”
“-motherfucker, we could have had the whole goddamned million.”
“That’s strange,” I said, “because I think it’s the next street right after Kiss-My-Ass and Fuck-You.”
Randall’s laugh chilled me deep in the marrow. “Shee-it, Jack. Oh, Jack. You’re not doing what I think you’re doing, are you? You’re not that stupid, are you, Jack?”
“Whoa, whoa, what’s this?” Carlos shrieked. “Hey, what’s going on? Somebody talk to me!”
I let out a long, deep sigh. It tasted like rotten air that I had been holding inside for what seemed like a month. My neck muscles were still cramped, but I felt all right considering.
“Come in, Jack.”
Carlos was spluttering rage; he drowned out Randall’s voice.
“Listen to me, both of you,” I said.
“Go ahead, Jack. We’re listening,” Randall said icily. “Carl, you need to shut up, boy. Jack wants to say something.”
Carlos was hurling obscenities like verbal mud pies.
“First, I want him off the air,” I said. “Just us, Randall.”
“Okeydoke. Carl, you hear that?”
“Fuck you! Fuck you! I’ll kill you, Jack! I swear to God, I’ll kill you!”
“Get him off the air, or I’ll toss this walkie-talkie into the next sewer.”
Silence.
“Calderone, have you been keeping time?”
“I got us at sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds and counting,” he said. He was still calm and I knew I was hearing the prison side of him, the Aryan Brother who dished out beatings and sidled up to people he intended to hurt.
“Then you know she’s going to make the call in a little over eighteen minutes.”
“Yeah, so? We’ll be on the fucking interstate.”
“If that bomb isn’t defused right now, you and my brother will never see a dime of this money,” I said.
“Listen to me now, Jack. That ain’t enough time! Carl and me, we gotta get the fuck on the highway.”
“I thought the bomb wasn’t going to be a real one. Psychological pressure and all that.”
“Cut the shit, motherfucker. It had to be a real bomb! You think I’m going to take a chance on a woman spotting a fake and go to fucking jail for fucking life? Carl set the fucking timer when she left the house. That bomb is buying us time to escape-”
“Defuse it or I’m gone for good,” I said.
“I can’t do that in eighteen – Look, Jack, it’s got a boobytrap switch to keep the cops busy for a while. This is Carlos and me now, not you. The cops will have to take their good old time, see?”
“Then you had better gun it straight to wherever you’re going. Have a nice life.”
“Jack, shit, wait a second, dude! Let’s talk about this, motherfucker.”
“Start talking to my brother. Give him very prec
ise instructions. If I read in tomorrow’s paper that it was disarmed, I’ll make contact with you at one o’clock. If not...”
“He’s high, Jack. He’ll blow up the fuckin’ house. You want that?”
“Your problem now,” I said. “I don’t know what the township police response time is, probably not that much better than the sheriff’s, but I’d say you’re wasting it.”
“Listen to me, you fuckwad. I promise you. Oh, I’m going to make you feel pain like you never knew existed in the world-”
His words scored a path into my neocortex.
#20
The skin of my wrists had turned white around the cords. Calderone hauled me to my feet but I couldn’t stand up. I hit the floor so hard I bounced. The circulation in my legs had been cut off too long. His words made no sense at all. I might have been babbling strange words during this incoherence.
I was bound and gagged, ready for slaughter. He was going to make what he had said to me over the walkie-talkie on that day come true and there was nothing I had as leverage to keep it from happening. Being helpless is a strange thing when it happens and when it finally sinks in. Here’s the strange part: there’s a calm feeling that sneaks in around the corners of terror. It’s not denial, exactly. The old man considered himself a pain expert, too. He used to give us examples of people facing death like, say, some guy on a capsized boat treading water in the open sea. He’s just waiting for the first shark to hit before he takes a big gulp of salt water and ends it. The amygdala squirts an enzyme, my father said, so that when that shark comes close and you see his big black doll’s eyes, you don’t feel the pain so terribly. Your brain is getting you ready to die.
So I had a whole different perception of time while I was waiting to die – or, more likely, waiting for the torture to start – and I took a long walk down the various channels of my memory storehouse, secret places I built as a boy to hide me from the crazy reality of my sick world. I have a certain memory: it was one of the coldest Montreal winters I could remember. I see the old man sitting by the window, his hands twitching and fluttering on the arm chair, his brain wiring all shot to rags by then, not even looking out the windows because of the beaded condensation like bat wings. Carlos had been sick all winter with bronchitis and then pneumonia. I stole drugs from a corner pharmacy but it didn’t look as if his wasted face would ever come back to life. My father said: “You get caught, boyo, you’ll go to adult jail for at least a year.”