Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  "Morning, Cidro."

  Cidro startled. He saw their fucked-up faces and the guns pointed at him and his Monday-morning eyes died like stabbed yolks.

  Jem was at Doug's elbow. "We're here for the popcorn."

  Doug told Cidro, "Inside."

  Cidro unlocked the door, Doug's gloved hand pushing him through. The warning tone was shrill, the alarm keypad flashing on the wall. Jem shut the door on the daylight behind them and got right up in Cidro's face. "Bet you couldn't even remember the panic code right now, if you wanted to."

  Doug said, "And you don't."

  Cidro looked incapable of much of anything at the moment. He took one more quick glance at their faces-- yes, this was happening-- then turned his eyes to the geometric pattern of the dark carpet, barely looking up again for the next two hours.

  Growing up, Halloween had always been Doug's and his friends' number one holiday. Christmas brought presents, Independence Day bottle rockets and cherry bombs, but only Halloween allowed them to be criminals: wearing masks, roaming the night, marauding.

  Gloansy, in his legit life as a sometime union driver for local movie productions, was always nicking stuff off sets. Props, cable, snacks-- anything he could eat or move. Off an Alec Baldwin movie called Malice he had taken a makeup kit that looked like a big fishing tackle box, to which Doug had since added clearance rack Halloween disguises.

  Doug and Jem had used the mirrors inside the stolen Caravan to apply their faces in the hour before Cidro pulled up. The point was to intimidate as well as disguise. Jem wore a gargoyle application over his nose and cheeks, an old man's chin, some Frankenstein-style ridging over his eyebrows, and a clown's red mustache. He looked like sort of a dog-man, a human mutt, and when he had turned to Doug for a quick check, Doug said from the backseat, "Christ, that's fugly. Take my money too."

  Doug had made himself look like a cross between a burn victim and an ugly man with a creeping skin disease. They wore vests underneath the blue repairman jumpsuits and matching service caps, with pale blue latex gloves and wide, mirrored sunglasses. Doug carried a Beretta, Jem a Glock 9.

  "Key in the disarm," said Doug, his hand squeezing Cidro's shoulder. "Go."

  The theater manager did, five digits, the aliens' tune from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The warning tone ended on two beeps, the keypad lights blinking out.

  Cidro Kosario was a mix of Portuguese and black, a dark-eyed, mournful young man with short, kinky hair and an eagle beak, his flesh nearly silver. The two types of citizens who got hurt in heists were assholes and superhero-in-waiting movie fans. Accordingly, Doug had tailed Cidro. "What's your baby, Cidro, boy or girl?"

  "She's a... huh?" He almost looked up at them again.

  After seeing Cidro and his short wife walking their baby stroller outside a Quincy apartment building, Doug knew the manager would give them no trouble. "A girl, that's nice." Doug kept his hand heavy on the skinny man's shoulder. "So this is a robbery, okay? Everything's gonna go smooth, and then we're out of your life for good. Nothing's gonna happen to you-- or them-- so long as you follow along and do as you're told."

  Doug felt the guy starting to shake.

  Jem took Cidro's keys from him and said, into the crew's walkie-talkie, "We're in."

  "Yah," came back Gloansy's voice.

  They started past the individual theater doors toward the brighter light of the central lobby. Being in a quiet theater in daytime reminded Doug of matinees, and how going to them had always felt like playing hooky-- before he went into playing hooky full-time.

  Doug asked, "How long until the armored truck comes for the money?"

  Cidro was sagging, twisting a little, buckling into a standing squat.

  Doug said, "About an hour and a half or so, am I right?"

  Cidro tried to nod, breathing funny.

  Doug said, "You're gonna take a shit, aren't you."

  Cidro froze, his face a mask of pain.

  "Lucky for you, we got time. Can you still walk?"

  * * *

  DOUG WAITED AGAINST THE wall across the handicapped stall, his gun on Cidro, the guy's pants around his ankles, hugging his bare knees as he exploded himself into the toilet. "Yeah, go ahead, wipe," said Doug. The humiliation on Cidro's face was genuine, boylike. "Okay? Let's see the office."

  Jem staggered away from the draft caused by the opening restroom door. "Ho! Armed robbery enema."

  They walked Cidro behind the triple-wide Independence Day cardboard display into the locked manager's office. It was a drop safe, a small manhole in the floor with twin locks like eyes over the flat grin of a one-way deposit slot.

  Doug said, "Why don't we get your safe key now, so we're ready."

  Cidro pulled it from a cash box full of stamps and gift certificates at the back of a desk drawer. That weekend's deposit receipts were paper-clipped to a cash sheet on the calendar blotter, waiting to be tallied and phoned in. Doug glanced at the slips and liked what he saw.

  Jem yanked the phone lines out of the wall, cutting them while Doug scanned the room for potential weapons. "What time does your day shift arrive?"

  Cidro glanced at the wall clock, stalling. Doug decided not to give him the opportunity to lie.

  "About eleven fifteen, right?" said Doug, collecting Edward Scissorhands scissors, an American Me letter-opener shiv, and a heavy Jurassic Park paperweight. "All right, back out. Lie down here on the carpet, on your stomach. We're gonna chill for a while."

  Cidro did as he was told, lying on the floor of the lobby with his face turned away from them, his wrists bound with a plastic tie.

  Jem's impatience allowed Doug to hang cool at the end of the candy counter, watching him pace. Jem wandered around the lobby inspecting the posters and the freestanding cardboard displays, studying the stars' faces up close as though trying to see what they had that he hadn't. Later he opened up a $2.50 box of Goobers on the glass counter, popping one after another into his mouth.

  Gloansy's voice squawked on the radio, "First one's on the way."

  Doug's watch read 11:12. "Cidro," he said, using his Leatherman to cut the manager's hands free. "You're gonna stand up now and let in the first of your day shift. You've had a lot of time to think, lying there, and I hope it was all about your family, your home in unit eleven on the fourth floor of the Livermore Arms, and not about alerting your employees or trying to bolt on us once you open up that side door."

  Cidro let in the first worker, the second, the third, fourth, and fifth-- all without incident. The old projectionist held his chest after seeing mutt-face Jem, but he seemed okay once they laid him down and cuffed him with the others. Jem yelled out, "Stop fucking trying to look over here!" every few minutes, just to keep them properly terrorized. Doug brought Cidro to the front to unlock the outside doors as usual, then re-locked the inside ones and brought him back to the lobby, laying him down to wait.

  Jem was popping Sour Patch Kids now. "Too fucking easy, man," he hissed, resuming his pacing. He didn't mean that something seemed wrong. He meant that he wasn't having any fun. It was all going too smoothly and he wasn't enjoying himself.

  The radio squawked again at 11:27. "Yogurt Man."

  Doug stepped to the tinted lobby doors and saw, way out at the far edge of the parking lot, the white Neon, Yogurt Man climbing onto the hood with his lunch.

  Gloansy's voice: "It's on. Heading your way."

  Doug yawned, pulling oxygen into his lungs, enriching the blood feed to his heart, his brain. The old fear rising nicely. Jem waited back with the prone workers as Doug pulled Cidro to his feet and at gunpoint told him how it was going to go.

  They heard the can pull up outside, the squawk of the heavy brakes, a fart-like sigh.

  Gloansy's voice was different now: juiced, in motion. "Road's set. Good to go."

  This meant that Gloansy had blocked off Forbes Road, the only way in, with the boxy green Boston Globe delivery truck he had boosted from South Boston that morning-- in the early hou
rs of what was supposed to be the frogman's honeymoon.

  Doug returned the keys to Cidro, then stood behind a Striptease standee.

  A shadow moved to the doors. The click-clack of a key tapping against glass.

  "Go," whispered Doug, and Cidro went, fumbling the key into the lock and admitting the white-brush-mustached courier, pulling the handcart behind him. ID card on the collar, patch on the shoulder, big badge on the pocket, gun in holster, black wire earphones.

  "And how're you today, sir?" said the courier, blustery, efficient.

  "Good," said Cidro, a blank.

  "Good, good."

  Cidro stared at him a moment, then the courier moved to the side, waiting for Cidro to lock the door. Cidro did.

  "Inside, and all clear," said the courier aloud. Then, less automatedly, he said to Cidro, "Rough weekend?"

  Cidro was staring at him again.

  "Or is that new baby of yours keeping you up? Yep-- been there, done that."

  Cidro nodded. "Okay," he said, then started them toward the office.

  Doug stepped out from behind the cardboard Demi Moore with his Beretta up, moving straight at the courier. The courier halted, seeing everything at once, the gun, the cap, the shades, the face-- his mind waking up to ROBBERY!-- but before he could speak or even let go of the cart, the Beretta's muzzle was in his face like a bee on his nose.

  Doug unsnapped the guard's sidearm, tugging the .38 free of his belt. Jem appeared and pulled Cidro away, then Doug traded Jem the guard's gun for the walkie-talkie and Cidro's keys.

  Adrenaline made Doug's voice loud and strange. "Arnold Washton," he said in the direction of the microphone in the courier's chest, "driver of the truck. You have a wife named Linda. You live at 311 Hazer Street, Quincy, with three small dogs. Do not make the distress call. I repeat-- do not make that call. Morton, tell him."

  The courier stared, dumbfounded.

  Doug said, "Morton Harford, 27 Counting Lane, Randolph. Wife also named Linda. Two grown children. Tell him, Morton."

  "There's... two of them," said Morton, the good-natured bluster evaporated from his voice. "Two I see, Arnie. Masks. Guns."

  Doug said, "Arnold, do not make that call. The two Lindas join me in telling you that you are to sit tight in the truck and do nothing. There is a van pulling up next to you now, the driver wearing a dinosaur mask. He is monitoring a police radio and will overhear any dispatches. If you understand and agree with me, raise both hands off the wheel now so that the driver of the van can see them."

  They waited, Doug holding up his radio. Gloansy's voice squawked, mask-distorted. "Hands are up."

  "Good." Doug took one step back from Morton the courier. "Open your shirt, Morton. I want your radio and earphones."

  Morton did, but slowly, as though stalling were the same as resisting. He lifted the microphone off the V-neck collar of his undershirt and, with Jem holding Morton's own gun on him, surrendered the wires and the black box to Doug.

  Jem patted Morton down for an ankle holster while Doug miked himself, hanging the wires inside his ears. "Arnold," he said, "say something to me."

  No static over the two-way channel, Arnold's voice entering his head crystal clear. "Look here, no money's worth anybody getting-- "

  "That's fine. Turn off the engine using one hand, then raise them both up again."

  Jem was getting goosey, holding the guard's gun on him palm-down like they do in gang movies. It occurred to Doug only then that maybe he hadn't given Jem enough to do.

  Outside, the rumble died. Gloansy said, "It's off."

  Doug told him, via radio, "We're good." Then to the truck, via the microphone now clipped to his jumpsuit collar, Doug said, "Sit tight, Arnold. We won't be long."

  He motioned Cidro and the open-shirted courier toward the office. Cidro entered first, then Morton pushing his hand truck. Doug remained in the doorway.

  "Empty the bag on the desk."

  The courier lifted the blue-and-green canvas bag off the tray of rolled coins at the bottom of the dolly. He opened the bag and pulled out a standard-sized bundle of currency, ten packs of one hundred fresh-cut one-dollar bills banded in blue Federal Reserve Bank straps. Then he lowered the handles of the sagging bag, facing Doug with an If it weren't for that gun expression.

  "Is that it?" said Doug.

  Morton did not respond. Doug cocked his head at Morton, then pulled the first safe key from his pocket. He tossed it to Cidro.

  Cidro caught it and looked at Morton. "C'mon, man, just do what they say."

  The mustached courier's scowl intensified. He reached back into the canvas sack and pulled out Pinnacle's safe key.

  "Down on your knees," Doug said. "Take the coin tray off the cart, open the safe, and start stacking bags."

  They were bringing deposit bags out of the floor well when gunshots cracked in the lobby. Doug ducked automatically, wheeling and pointing his Beretta out the office door, seeing nothing. He didn't know where Jem was-- stopping himself from calling out his name. He turned back the other way and put his gun on Morton and Cidro, who had both dropped facedown onto the floor.

  Then another smattering of gunshots. Doug was wild with incomprehension, yelling "Fuck!" as Arnold's voice in his head said, "Dear God, no."

  Doug backed through the doorframe, low, still seeing nothing. Glass cracked and tinkled, the employees screaming, Arnold yelling in Doug's head, "Morty? Mort!"

  Doug backed straight out of the office, crouching, keeping Morton and Cidro in sight as he scanned the lobby, smelling cordite, searching for Jem. Then another crack and thump-- this time followed by Jem's voice: "Goddamn! That's a pretty fuckin' good milk shake!"

  "THE FUCK!" bellowed Doug at him, backing into a fake ficus tree.

  Jem moved into view, the guard's .38 at his side. He spun and brought the gun around fast, firing twice, crack-crack, shootout-style, shuddering Bruce Willis on a cardboard standee for Last Man Standing, singing, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" Then a shot-- "Ain't gonna be no rematch!"-- into Stallone's chin, on a standee for Daylight. "Say hello to my leettle-- " Pacino got one in the gut, a promo for City Hall.

  The gun clicked twice, finally dry, sparing the animated stars of Beavis and Butt-head Do America. Jem tossed the piece aside, slipping his Glock back into his right hand and then seeing Doug crouched beneath the plastic tree. Jem's vested chest was heaving, his face a slicing, fucked-up smile.

  Arnold screaming, "Morty!"

  Gloansy shouting from Doug's hip radio, "Fuck is that?"

  "Arnold!" Doug said, rising to full height, elbowing the tree out of his way and checking Morton and Cidro again. "Arnold, everything is fine."

  "What in fucking hell-- !"

  "Do not make that call, Arnold. Your partner is fine, everyone is fine-- no one has been hurt. Here-- " His body pounding, Doug returned to the office and pulled the mustached courier to his knees. "Talk to him, Morton. Speak, tell him."

  Morton said slowly, "I'm okay, Arnie. I think."

  "He's not hurt," said Doug.

  "I'm not hurt," said Morton, checking himself over, making sure it was true.

  "Mort, what they shooting at?" said Arnold-- confused, thinking his partner could still hear him.

  "Do not make that call, Arnold," said Doug, getting his breath back now, grabbing Cidro by his shoulder and hauling him to his feet. "Here is the manager." Doug pulled Cidro out of the office and showed him his employees: still lying on the carpet, hands covering their heads. "Tell him, Cidro."

  Cidro looked around at the target practice Jem had made of the lobby. "I don't-- "

  "Just tell him!"

  "No one is hurt!"

  "No one is hurt, Arnold," said Doug, shoving Cidro back into the office.

  Gloansy said from his hip, "Fuck is going on, man?"

  Doug grabbed the radio. "We're cool, everything's cool."

  Gloansy said, "Everything's cool?"

  "Yogurt Man, what's he doing?"

  "Nothing.
No movement."

  "All right. Sit tight. Almost fucking there."

  * * *

  WHEN THE SAFE WAS empty, Doug had Morton wheel the cart out into the smoke-hazed lobby. Jem got the employees up, hustling them into the windowless office-- "Let's go, fucking move it, go, go!"-- putting them in there with Cidro. "Now if you're thinking about opening this door, I am going to be standing right fucking here." He slammed it shut and hustled away.

  Morton pushed the hand truck ahead of him to the lobby doors, looking a little hinky, his head not moving as he walked, his mind working hard. Doug came up abreast of him and caught Morton's eyes searching the lobby for something, anything.