They marched until Arnold’s ankles throbbed. The botanist sensed they’d circled back over their path several times, and after two hours, he wasn’t sure whether they’d covered a great distance or had returned to where they’d started. His guide, it seemed, was taking no chances. “Stop right here, man,” said the Bandit. “Give me a second.” Then Arnold heard the sound of stone grating against stone, as though the naked man were sliding aside a large boulder. “Come forward and take hold of the guide-rope. It’s nineteen stairs down. When you get to the bottom, you can uncover your eyes.” Arnold considered for a moment that this might be another of the Bandit’s antics, even that the lunatic might be planning to bury him alive. But then the man gave him a gentle push between the shoulder blades and Arnold started off toward the stairs he could not see. He tested the first step with his toe before placing his weight upon it. The air temperature dropped precipitously as he descended. Several of the steps sloped downward, as though chiseled out of the rock-face. When he reached the bottom, he pulled the blindfold from his eyes, expecting to find himself entombed in darkness. Instead, he looked out upon a tidy, well-lit efficiency apartment with limestone walls. The Bandit had secured a boulder over the entryway and was now climbing down the stairs. “Pretty impressive, don’t you think?” asked the lunatic. “I built it myself.”
“Where are we?”
“Under the park,” answered the Bandit. “If I told you any more than that, I’d have to give you the old run-through with my saber.”
The naked man patted the hilt of his sword; he was smiling, but he didn’t sound as though he were speaking in jest.
Arnold surveyed the chamber. One half of the apartment was furnished with a folding cot, a pair of threadbare easy chairs, and a bridge table upon which lay a half-played game of solitaire. A porcelain washbasin and flush toilet stood exposed in a far corner. The opposite side of the room contained row upon row of clothing racks—enough to fill a small department store. Even at first glance, the range of apparel was noteworthy: everything from dark business attire to vintage lingerie to what appeared to be a Native American headdress. The Bandit’s wardrobe vastly exceeded the selection at Gladys and Anabelle’s.
“I bet you have masks in my size,” observed Arnold.
“What are you in the market for?” asked the Bandit. “Would you like the disguise that Ronnie Biggs wore during the Great Train Robbery or one of George Washington’s death masks?”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Help yourself to whatever you’d like,” answered the naked man. “If you’ll excuse me one moment, I’m going to put on some clothing.”
The Bandit disappeared into the thicket of garments. Arnold heard the rustle of fabric as the lunatic rummaged through his trove.
“I don’t need anything, thanks. Not anymore,” called Arnold. He took advantage of the Bandit’s absence to reclothe himself. “But when I first escaped, I was stuck wearing a dreadfully suffocating Nixon mask.”
“Do you still have it with you?”
Arnold fished into his pants pocket. “Sure. You want it?”
“If you don’t,” answered the lunatic, emerging from the maze of astronaut suits and ballroom gowns. He was wearing a long beige trench coat and flip-flops; the point of his scabbard protruded beside his bare, hairless calves. “You never know when an extra costume will come in handy.”
The Bandit took the mask from Arnold and tried it on. “Can I offer you a drink?” he asked. “Maybe a cup of cappuccino?”
“No, I shouldn’t,” replied Arnold.
“Really, I insist,” said the Bandit. “I just acquired a new espresso maker.”
The use of the verb ‘acquired’ struck Arnold as somewhat sinister.
“You’re wondering about the electricity,” observed the Bandit. “It comes from tapped lines. But I only borrow a little from a large number of customers, so nobody ever notices. Same with the water.” The lunatic removed the rubberized mask and stashed it in his coat pocket. Then he set two coffee cups atop a stone countertop and switched on his new appliance. The machine let forth a low-pitched whir. “And as for food, that’s where you come in….” For a moment, Arnold feared the Bandit might be hinting at cannibalism. He felt genuine relief when his companion added, “Your books on foraging are totally priceless, man.”
“Thanks,” said Arnold.
“Really, man. I mean it. I’d have starved down here if not for you,” the lunatic added. “You know I went on one of your walking tours once. Years ago. Before I found my calling. It was a winter expedition out in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, as I remember. You taught us how to chew the roots of bulrushes for nutrients.”
“I’m glad I could be of help.”
“I make a mean fern and scallion manicotti,” boasted the Bandit.
“I’m sure you do.”
The lunatic carried the two cups of cappuccino over to the bridge table. He set them down on a pair of round cork coasters and cleared away the playing cards. Arnold opened up a wooden folding chair and sat down opposite him.
“You don’t mind if I ask you something personal, do you?” asked the Bandit.
“Why not? Everybody else seems to.”
“I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, too. But why’d you stick out your tongue? I mean, you had such an awesome job. Why give it all up like that?”
“You’re right. I have been asked that before.” Arnold remained on guard, watching the Bandit carefully. He was struck by how young and innocent the Bandit appeared close-up, far nearer to Cassandra’s age than to his own. “It’s hard to explain. That’s like asking you why you steal people’s clothes.”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Sure,” admitted Arnold. “It has roused my curiosity.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” agreed the Bandit. “But drink up. Before it gets cold.”
Arnold eyed the cappuccino nervously. Who knew what toxic herb his companion might have added to the beverage? It was even possible the Bandit had learned his poisoning techniques from the botanist’s own book. Arnold had devoted an entire chapter of The Flower Power Diet to “plants to avoid” with warnings that even one azalea leaf or castor bean seed might prove fatal. Never had he considered that his writings could prove a trove for would-be assassins, that arrowroot might easily replace arsenic as the nation’s poison-of-choice. He looked into the foamy cup and then downed the now lukewarm drink in one shot. It was hard to discern whether it tasted like foxglove and laburnum, or just like bad coffee.
“Believe it or not,” explained the Bandit. “I used to be a lawyer. That’s after they threw me out of the army on account of my being psychologically unfit—whatever that means. Basically, they said I frightened my commanding officer. So I went to law school and I specialized in intellectual property of the non-technological sort. Copyrights, trademarks. My expertise was in defending corporations with allegedly offensive names or logos. I spent an entire year of my life insisting that the term Redskins, when applied to football, had nothing to do with Native Americans, and another six months arguing that the Hooters restaurant chain took its name from the mating call of owls. Day after day of nonstop, futile document searches….It was hard to imagine that I’d spent six years in Special Forces and three more in graduate school to end up pushing papers in circles….And then 9-11 happened and it changed everything, man.”
“Were you downtown that day?”
“No, I didn’t even live in New York at the time,” continued the Bandit. “But that doesn’t mean the plane attacks didn’t have a profound effect on my life—though my reaction was apparently different from most other people’s. I guess I actually found the attacks exciting—a break from the daily grind. Like an action movie, but genuinely unpredictable. Maybe that makes me sociopathic. I kept thinking what a great job the terrorists had. Not the idiots who flew the planes, but the guys behind the hijacking. The guys in Afghanistan and Yemen who got to sit around campfires h
atching new plots. It sure sounded a lot more challenging than filing endless briefs on behalf of a San Francisco Dairy Queen being sued by a group of homos.”
The Bandit sipped his cappuccino while he spoke. He seemed perfectly calm, but Arnold found his placidity unsettling. If the lunatic had toyed neurotically with a carving knife, or rolled steel ball-bearings between his fingers—anything to confirm his status as a lunatic—it would have brought the botanist a great deal of reassurance. As it was, Arnold felt slightly loony himself in doubting the sanity of his host. He understood exactly why the Bandit’s commanding officer had been terrified.
“After September 11th, I had a hard time concentrating on my work,” said the Bandit. “I’d sit at my desk all morning and I’d think up countless ways of becoming a terrorist. One day, I’d map out plans to leave explosives in women’s purses on the seats at half a dozen Broadway theatres, and the next night, I’d wake up with a scheme to put cyanide in the municipal swimming pools. One of my best ideas involved smuggling explosives into Disneyworld via carefully-weighted helium balloons and blowing up several rides simultaneously. At worst, that could kill fifty kids and cripple another hundred or so—not to mention the economic damage it would cause the tourism industry. I don’t want to sound cocky, but I think some of my plans were well ahead of anything Osama bin Laden could come up with.”
The Bandit looked at Arnold for approval.
“Children are a weak spot for a lot of people,” said the botanist.
“That’s the way I see it, at least,” agreed the Bandit. “But there were a couple of problems with my plan. I didn’t exactly have any of the advantages Osama had—a band of loyal followers…an attractive and coherent ideology…cash… a hiding place in Pakistani mountains. Your book proved really helpful to me on the poisons, and I learned a lot about explosives from the Internet, but none of it made a difference. The bottom line was that I just wasn’t a violent person at heart. I learned that in the service. It’s not that I’m against violence. I mean: Who cares if a bunch of strangers get blown up? I don’t even know them. But violence doesn’t have any particular… allure for me. And I’m not the sort of person to butcher a large number of innocent people if I’m not even going to enjoy it.”
“What would be the point?” asked Arnold.
“Exactly. But then I read about how our interrogators in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay would torture their prisoners by making them stand naked for long periods of time and by forcing them to wear women’s undergarments—and I thought, ‘Hey, that’s something I could do.’ Besides, what’s the use of wearing clothes anyway? I mean, at least in the summer. It doesn’t make much sense. So I resigned from my firm, and sold my stuff, and transformed myself into the Bare-Ass Bandit. It’s not the name I would have chosen—I’d have much preferred Naked Osama or the Mad Clothesnapper or something a bit more ominous—but that’s just how the media is. I may file for trademark protection anyway. And I came back to New York for all the obvious reasons. You know. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”
“And I guess you’ve made it.,” Arnold offered.
The Bandit shrugged. “What exactly is making it, man? Maybe that’s easy to say if you’re a doctor or a jazz musician, but the benchmarks for bandits are much murkier. How can you compare yourself with John Dillinger or Jesse James? You see what I’m saying.”
“You’ve got a point,” agreed Arnold—though he wasn’t sure what it was.
“So now your turn. Why the tongue?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m also sociopathic.”
“The great ones always are,” said the Bandit. He grinned and removed a large plastic clock from his pocket—the sort one might use to teach analogue time to a child. This apparently served the lunatic as a pocket watch. “Anyway, I’d better get going,” he said. “It’s getting late and I’ve still got at least one more job to take care of tonight.”
“You’re going to leave me here?” demanded Arnold.
“Unless you want to come with me,” answered the Bandit. “You’re more than welcome to tag along, man. I could use a partner.”
Maybe because he’d been a fugitive himself for over a month, the offer didn’t sound so unreasonable to Arnold. Although the Bandit made him nervous, he found that after days of social isolation, he actually enjoyed the man’s company.
“What are your plans?” asked Arnold.
“No plans.”
“You don’t choose your victims in advance?”
“Not usually. I just wander around until something comes to me,” said the Bandit. “Say, man, you don’t have any enemies, do you?”
“It seems like all I have are enemies.”
“I mean real enemies. Anyone you want to screw over.”
Arnold sensed where the conversation was headed—and he liked it.
“You ever heard of the Reverend Spotty Spitford?”
“They guy with the sunglasses?” asked the Bandit. “The one who’s got the thing against nudists.”
“That would be him. He’s not too big on terrorists either.”
“I’d love to toy with Spitford, man,” said the Bandit. “Add one of his Brooks Brothers suits to my collection… But we’re not going to.”
The lunatic’s words surprised and disappointed Arnold.
“Why not?” demanded the botanist. “He’s an asshole.”
“No argument from me,” said the Bandit. “But he’s a famous asshole. A very famous one, especially now that he’s leading the crusade against the Tongue Terrorist. I’ve got a rule against going near big-name celebrities…You can screw with ordinary people all you want to, even prominent upper-middle class folks, and the authorities come after you with one arm tied behind their backs, but the minute you mess with some hotshot athlete or movie star or politician, it’s kiss your ass goodbye. Sorry, man, but I’m not getting sent down to settle your score with Spitford.”
“I knew it was too much to hope for,” said Arnold.
“Anybody else on your hit list?”
Lots of people, thought Arnold. Dozens. Hundreds. Not to mention a few individuals he felt genuinely conflicted about—like Cassandra and Gilbert Card. “I have this neighbour of mine,” he said. “Ex-neighbour, I guess. Ira Taylor. A real prick.”
“You want to dish out a little payback?” asked the Bandit.
“Sure,” said Arnold. “Why not?”
Of course there were a thousand reasons why not. Because it was illegal, for starters. And because he’d be working side-by-side with a madman. But all of that seemed small potatoes when compared with the prospect of humiliating the bond trader.
“I like the sound of that,” said the Bandit. “Maybe you are sociopathic.”
He clearly meant this as a compliment. “Thank you,” said Arnold.
The Bandit rummaged through one of the garment racks. “Let’s get you some clothes.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Nothing, if you’re a fugitive botanist,” said the Bandit. “But any successful racket has to have a distinctive M.O.” He stepped from behind a pile of angora sweaters, holding a long grey mackintosh. “Here, try this on.”
Arnold put on the coat.
“Not like that, man,” said the Bandit. “Take your clothes off and then put it on.”
Arnold had little choice but to comply. He hadn’t undressed in the company of another man in many years—possibly since junior high school—and he found the process of removing his clothing in front of the Bandit utterly mortifying, particularly because the man made no effort to look away. In fact, he watched closely as the botanist undressed. Arnold was beginning to sense what the lunatic’s victims must have experienced. Wearing only the long coat, he felt like a flasher. If he could somehow get hold of a horn, at least he might pass as Harpo Marx.
“There you go,” said the Bandit, pleased. “How does that feel?”
“Airy.”
“You’ll get used to it. N
ow all we need is to find you a weapon.”
“What if I don’t want a weapon?”
“Trust me, you’ll want a weapon,” said the Bandit. “Besides, it reduces the chance of violence….How are you with swordplay?”
“What do you mean?”
“Any experience fencing? Or in martial arts? Maybe kendo…?”
“What’s kendo?
“Okay, let’s skip the sword….”
“I like the sound of that,” said Arnold.
“If you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re much better off with a gun.”
“A gun—?!”
The Bandit didn’t answer directly. Instead, he dragged a large steamer trunk out from beneath one of his clothes racks. It contained an extensive assortment of pistols, rifles, shotguns and even a crossbow. “How about a .38 Smith & Wesson?” he offered, handing Arnold a jet black revolver. The lunatic might just as well have suggested a water pistol or an AK-47—Arnold wouldn’t have known the difference. “Watch the recoil on that,” warned the Bandit.
“The what?”
“Jesus,” muttered the lunatic. “It jolts backwards when you fire.”
“I don’t intend to fire it,” answered Arnold.
He tucked the revolver into the holster that the Bandit provided. The weapon had Philadelphia Police Department engraved in the barrel.
“I’ve got to blindfold you again,” added the Bandit. “Nothing personal.”
The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up Page 17