Crumbtown

by Joe Connelly

  “We never blew up a door.”

  “I think you did, though. It was in the papers, wasn’t it?”

  Don shrugged.

  “Well how did you open it?”

  “We asked.”

  “You asked, that’s right; you ask, they say no, and you blow it up.” Rob turned to the phone, “Sammy, I’ll call you back,” and closed it in his pocket. “Come on, Don. Follow me.” He started across the street, the parked trucks surrounding the bank. “They’re trying to take the show from me, Don. They’re taking it away from you too. It’s your story. We’re not going to let them have it.”

  “Okay,” Don said. “Maybe I should read the script.”

  “It’s too late, Don. They’ve already got it.” Rob turned and walked ahead, up the front steps clogged with pieces of lumber and plaster statues, workers carrying up smoke machines, trays of explosives. He stopped on the top, watching Don come up. “All I care about is this robbery we’re rehearsing today, that we start shooting tomorrow morning. I’ve given in on everything else, not this. If we get it right the rest of the show is going to write itself. I’m sure of it. We’re taking it back, Don, starting now.”

  “I just want to stay out of prison,” said Don.

  “Of course you do. Just tell me how it really happened. That’s all I’m asking. Come on.” Rob pulled him through the open doors, the workers inside scraping windows and painting murals. Rob pointed at the lobby, “I’m using three cameras here here here and special effects people from Apocalypse Vision. The actual explosion will be after we shoot everything else just to be safe but we’ll need the smoke and fire starting tomorrow, and we’ve got fans set up so that when Eddy throws the money the bills kind of hang there and float down slow. We did a bunch of tests; it has to be just right. That’s why we’re using real money, fifties and hundreds. Fifty thousand dollars’ worth. Because we tried the fake and it didn’t look the same. You just can’t fake real money.”

  A young man wearing a headset and suspenders came running up and into Rob, a pile of papers falling out, “Mr. Landetta, this just came in.”

  Rob picked up the pages, Dyan’s changes in pink and blue. “Call everybody together,” he said. “I have an announcement to make.” When the cast and crew had forced themselves into half a circle, Rob waved the new script over his head. “I guess everyone has seen this, and now I want you to forget it, just put it out of your mind, okay, because we are going to write our own script today. I want you to say hi to Don Reedy; he’s the man who robbed this bank back in ’86, and who this show is about. Let’s give him a big hand.” As the clapping finished, he said, “Don is here as a consultant. I want everyone to listen to him. How many banks did you rob, Don?”

  “Six,” Don said, “counting this one twice.”

  “Okay, I think he knows what he’s talking about, don’t you. Now Don, I want you to tell the cast where they should stand, and then give us a little run-through, just like it happened.”

  Don circled the lobby slowly, “The security guard stands here,” he said, “and the bank customers over here.” A group of about twenty extras ran in, Don forming them into a line. “All right, the bank manager goes there. Tellers over there, and that’s about it.”

  “Looks great,” said Rob. “Now where’s the gang? Where’s the rest of the goddamn gang?”

  “They’re on their way,” said the boy in the headset, “two minutes.”

  Then the only sounds were of Don’s shoes on the polished floor, everyone in the bank watching as he walked into the rays of light standing slanted by the front door. Remembering. “It’s all about timing,” he said. “Everything has to happen at once. One guy covers the guard. One for the bank manager, one for the door, and the one who goes straight through to the tellers.”

  “Where’s Eddy?” said Rob. “He has to see this.”

  Two production assistants went to the bathroom in the back of the bank, banging on the door until Eddy ran out, stopping in the middle of the floor, “Where am I?”

  “Just watch this, Eddy, please, everybody, let’s be quiet,” Rob pointed to the doors, “Don I want you to come in just like you did back then. This is a stickup. Wait, you need a gun, hey Sammy,” Rob yelled, “bring us a gun.”

  “He’s got my gun,” Eddy said.

  “That’s right,” Rob laughed, “he’s probably got a bunch of them, hey Don how many guns did you pick up today.”

  Don pulled out the gun from his jacket. Everyone laughing.

  “Okay Don let’s do it.”

  He walked out the doors and crossed the street and stopped and waited one minute, to give everyone a chance to relax a little. He stared at the glass entrance, the surrounding granite, windows covered with rusted fencing—the bank in front of him, a gun in his hand, the only time in his life he ever felt in charge. He started back, his heart starting to beat, the blood marching to his head, louder with every step.

  He hit the doors with his shoulder, the crack of glass breaking behind, and headed straight for the tellers, in one motion his hand in and out of his pocket, the gun so much larger than before, the barrel as wide as his arm, rising up from his shoulder, spreading apart the customers, the tellers seeing it, and hearing at the same time, three quick shots at the ceiling, cast and crew diving to the floor, Don’s voice echoing in the space where they’d been standing, “All right this is a stickup.”

  Everyone agreed to be silent.

  “Sorry about that,” Don said.

  Little Eddy started clapping, more applause as the cast and crew climbed back on their feet. The young man in suspenders shook Don’s hand and shouted, “Mr. Reedy, your story has been such an inspiration.” Others followed, including Teller Two, who’d fainted briefly.

  Rob was still applauding when the twins walked in, “Hey Mr. Director,” Tom said, dragging the actor Cam in by the shoulder. “What’s the idea of killing my character.”

  “Come on, you’re late,” Rob pulled them toward the bank manager’s desk. “We’re showing these people how to rob a bank. Your partner Don has already stolen the first scene.”

  “Which Don?” asked Tim.

  “Hey Don,” Rob shouted.

  Don weaved his way through the tellers around the vault, the gun raised in his hand, finding Tim and Tom at the front door.

  They jumped to the side, behind an actor playing the security guard. “Don, don’t,” they said.

  Don put the gun in his jacket and walked up and placed his hands on their shoulders, a pat, then a squeeze, the same way he always greeted them, back when they were friends, only it was friendlier then. “Ow,” said Tim.

  Don squeezed harder, bending them over, “I don’t want any trouble,” he whispered. “We’re doing the first robbery now, so this is before you ran on me and you got Happy killed. We’ll talk about that later. Not here.”

  “You swear,” said Tom, “no trouble?”

  “Smile for the director.”

  Rob stepped in, “This is great. This is why we’re here. What’s next?”

  41

  The actor playing the bank manager backed to the wall behind his desk and held his briefcase over his chest. Tom faked a punch to the man’s stomach, then tickled him under the chin. “Mr. Landetta,” the bank manager said, “I don’t think I like working without a script.”

  Tom pointed to the man’s ear, “Basically, I just hit him right here, and after that he does exactly as I say.”

  “Tom knows how to make them bleed without knocking them unconscious,” said Tim.

  “Mr. Landetta,” the bank manager cried.

  “Okay. Okay,” said Rob to the men. “I understand you have to threaten the bank manager, but do you have to hit him over the head. I’m just afraid of sending too many conflicting signals here. You only hurt the bad guys, right?”

  “But the bank manager is a bad guy,” said Tom. “That’s why I had to cut him like that, so he would look like a good guy.”

  Rob smiled, “Wh
at?”

  Don said, “What he means is that the bank manager was in on it. He helped set the robbery up. He asked us to hit him so that the feds wouldn’t suspect.”

  Rob turned to the crew, “Okay everyone, take fifteen minutes.” He sat down in the bank manager’s seat and told Don and the twins to pull up chairs. Little Eddy stood behind them, folding his arms like Don. “Please explain,” Rob said.

  “We robbed the banks for Maury Threetoes,” said Don. “He had some outstanding loans there, and this was his way of paying it off.”

  “You worked for Maury Threetoes?”

  “Everybody worked for him. In the banks, too. They’d report that they lost fifty grand when all we took was some files Maury needed, that the manager left in the vault for us.”

  “But what about the money. You threw the money.”

  “I threw the marked bills, mostly, that they keep in the drawers for the bank robbers. You throw a little and everybody goes nuts and no one even sees us walk out. Then it was like something we did, and once you get a good story going, everybody goes with it, especially the feds. Nobody ever saw this for what it was.”

  “I see,” Rob pushed back his chair, hands on the table. “It was like a show.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay,” Rob said, lifting his chair, putting it down. “Okay,” he picked up his script, “excuse me.”

  They sat around the desk, Tim, Tom, Don, and Eddy, watching Rob walk out the door. For several seconds no one spoke, until Little Eddy climbed on a chair, pointing at Don. “I knew it. When I first met this guy I said this don’t seem like someone who’d be throwing his good money away.”

  Tim reached across the desk, faking a punch to Don’s chin, “Just like old times, hey buddy.”

  Tom pulled him back to his chair. “You said no trouble, Don.”

  “That’s right, no trouble,” said Tim. “Anyway it wasn’t our fault.”

  Don stared at his old friends, sitting together and talking like it was all a misunderstanding. The story had changed while he was in prison. No one had bothered to tell him. It happened so long ago. Who could remember?

  He stood slowly, the gun rising from his pocket, “You ran on me,” he said, the gun coming down, knocking Tim off the chair. He raised it again, this time on Tom’s head, twice more until Tom was on the floor.

  “Here we go,” Eddy said, hopping on his chair. “About time.”

  Don bent over, swinging the gun under the desk, his arms striking the legs, standing up straight to kick at the twins instead, his toes hitting the floor, shins against the drawers. “It wasn’t our fault,” they shouted up, the same words coming out, until Don finally heard. “It was Maury who did it. Maury Maury, he set you up.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “They’re lying,” Eddy said. “Let me hit ’em.”

  Don kicked at the twins twice more, banging his ankle on the fake wood, his heart not in it, out of breath. He sat on the chair, the gun in front of him. They weren’t lying. He knew that now. In a way, he had always known.

  They took turns with the story, voices under the desk. How angry Maury had been with all the publicity Don was getting, the stories in the papers, everyone always asking him what Don thinks, why Maury Threetoes couldn’t be more like Don Reedy. He wanted to teach Don a lesson, that this is what happens to people who like to show up their bosses. Don never learned it because of the masks they were wearing. The security guard thought Happy was Don.

  Tom raised his head above the desk. “We didn’t know the guard was supposed to shoot you.” Tim’s head appeared next to his brother’s, like they were joined at the collar, “We had no choice, Don. It was you or us. Maury’s Law.”

  He watched the twins stand and take one step back, then two, crossing the same marble floor where Happy bled out. All the nights in prison he’d spent going over that day, never once asking himself how the cops got there so fast, how none of them were his friends, all new faces, like Hammamann’s.

  The twins were twenty feet away now, the middle of the lobby. “That’s why we told the story the way we did,” Tom said, “we made you look good, Don.” His brother Tim calling across the room, “Now the joke’s on Uncle Maury.”

  Don looked up at the ceiling, the painted sky, clouds flattened against the bricks, remembering how much he loved robbing these banks, standing there with the money in his hand, throwing it in the air, watching the people, the bills coming down. Maury told him to stop playing Robin Hood, said it was a waste of escape, it wasn’t respectful. Don didn’t want to stop, didn’t think it was that important. One of those little things that make the outside of prison different from in.

  “Don,” Eddy’s voice standing behind him, “Don come on,” moving around in front of the desk, pointing at the twins, “you’re just gonna let them leave?” He followed Don’s eyes to the ceiling. “What’s wrong with you?” Eddy picked up the gun and shoved it into his pants, shaking his head a little as he walked away. “I got to do everything myself here.”

  42

  Rob walked out the doors and stood on the steps and stared at the sun until his head felt significantly worse. What he thought was real had been built out of lies, and what was real, the truth behind the lies, had been made from lies as well. He thought he’d found a story that would return television to the world, make it a better mirror. Instead he’d found that the world was also a mirror, and the only thing left that was still real was the camera, the videotape, because that never lies; it shows exactly what it sees.

  He paged through the script, the changes that had taken place since the day he first heard the story, the changes telling their own kind of story, of Rob’s surrender, of going from director to directed, of letting himself become a player in his own show. Waiting for the camera like everybody else. Well he wasn’t giving in yet. No script, no true story to back him up, but he still held the camera.

  He stepped away from the doors and looked back into the bank and saw exactly how it would happen, the vault exploding, bills floating in the air, the crowd inside caught like barn animals in the hot light, men and women tearing at one another, unsure whether to stay and get the money or run from the flames. The masked men running from the old building, getting into the car as the cops pull up and give chase, the flames spreading to the second floor. He was going to need more fire.

  The boy in suspenders came up and said, “Ready in five minutes.” When Rob didn’t respond, the boy said, “Are you all right, Mr. Landetta?”

  “Where’s the cop who’s supposed to be watching over Don Reedy. Is he here?”

  “Detective Hammamann. He’s sleeping in his car the last time I looked.”

  “I want to talk to him right now. And get me some new bank customers, these don’t look hungry enough to me. I want starving bank customers, no more actors. And where’s Sammy the Robot. Let’s see those smoke machines going. What are you waiting for?”

  43

  Don sat at the desk, the bank manager waiting for him to get up, the customers in two rows in front of him, arms hanging like a jury just back with the bad news. The same people who were cheering him five minutes before, when he shot up the bank, had just watched him beat up his friends. He looked over to the front of the lobby, Rob standing at the doors with Detective Hammamann, each of them glancing in turn in Don’s direction. It was all coming down, like it always did, only faster this time. Don stood and raised his hands as the detective walked in, frisking his pockets. “Where’s the gun?”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell the director you don’t have the gun. He wants me to stay with you from here on, says you’re becoming a negative influence on the proceeding. What did you say to him?”

  Don shrugged.

  The detective dropped himself into the chair, big hands folding behind his head. “Remember when I arrested you, Don, outside this bank, and all you kept saying to me was how you were going to kill those two that got awa
y. You wouldn’t tell me their names, saying you’d take care of it yourself, but where is the resolve now, Don. After what they did to you, those two standing right there.” Harry pointed at the twins in the corner, shaking his head. “I tell you there is a crisis in this country.”

  The production assistant with the suspenders raced through the lobby, yelling at his hands, “Okay everybody, rehearsal starting, one minute.”

  Harry stood. “Come on, over here.” All the preparations he’d made, the new suit he was planning to buy for Tim’s funeral, Loretta wearing that black dress he’d seen in her closet, the day he broke into her house, lying in her bed with the clothes piled up on top.

  He led Don to an open corner by the vault, holding him by the shoulder. “So since I have to take care of you myself, it means my fees will be doubled, fifty for the first day, but from now on it’s one hundred.” He buttoned Don’s suit, brushing off the front. “I’ll be honest with you, Don, up to this point you’ve been a big disappointment.”

  44

  Outside the bank, Rob angrily circled the three actors, Eddy, Renaldo, and Cam, everyone waiting for the man playing Happy to show up, the rehearsal to start.

  “Happy is sick,” said Rob’s driver, Arnold, the bar owner’s son, slowly climbing the steps. “I am ready to be Happy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He cannot act. He is very sick. He leaves now. I will be Happy.”

  Sammy the Robot came by with the guns and handed one each to Renaldo and Cam. Eddy waved him off. “I’m all set,” he said, showing Sammy the nine-millimeter. “Also me,” said Arnold, who pulled out a .45 caliber.

  It was just a rehearsal, but the actors in the bank couldn’t have looked more real: the tellers carefully balancing their contempt, the customers seething languidly in the imaginary heat. On the steps outside, Little Eddy finished twenty push-ups and jumped to his feet, “Let’s go,” clapping his hands, “come on come on,” slapping each robber in the back as they went through. He waited two beats and charged in, pulling the gun as he walked, as he’d seen Don do, his arm in one motion unbending forward, like he was being pulled. Don had made it look like a fight, like he was holding the gun back from firing. Eddy tried to do the same and lost badly, the gun flying out of his hand, to clatter on the floor, one bullet squirting out with a roar, across the room past the bank manager at his desk, and through Cam’s shirt and into his back.