Crumbtown

by Joe Connelly

  107

  Don walked on his knees to the TV. He turned it off. “There’s nothing on.” He grabbed her ankle and kissed her shin, “Let’s go to bed.”

  “No, they are coming,” she ran to the door, looking down the stairs. “Please, we have to go,” running back to him, pulling his hand as hard as she could, whispering, “Now.”

  Up the stairs to the roof, the island of twisted steampipe, an abandoned chicken coop, a wooden rowboat full of holes. To the edge, no fire escape, the crowd erupting when Don looked down. He reached for another bundle and threw it over the side.

  “Don please,” she said as Arnold and King came firing through the door. They fell together, rolling over one another to get behind the old boat, Don holding her head as he shot back. Three, then two more, bullets beating on the pipes.

  He pulled out the clip. Four left. Firing the one in the chamber. Three. When Arnold and King finished shooting back, he kissed Rita once behind the ear and with the clip still out he squeezed the trigger, click click click.

  “What’s that?” King raised his head. “Did you hear that, partner?”

  “No bullets?” Arnold stood, the two men stepping around the pipes, their guns pointed at the empty boat, Don and Rita behind.

  “Man’s out of bullets,” said King. “Man’s out of time.”

  Rob kept the two men centered in the frame as he moved right, his eye never leaving the lens, the shot of them coming toward the camera. Everything was perfect, the rain soaking into the tarp, the black angled piping, background calls of the crowd. From the moment he stepped from the car, Rob and his machine were one, through the people on the street, the money falling out of the air. This was how he started in the business, a cameraman, nineteen years old, his first love, the eye to the lens, the lens the world; everything passing through, existing by his will.

  He shifted the camera, focusing on Arnold now, on the big man’s chest, a gunshot cracked from behind, a red circle in the jacket. Arnold dropped his gun to the roof, dropping to his knees. Rob pointed the camera at King, another gunshot, King looking at his own shoulder, taking a seat to study more carefully, one hole, another crack, the hole below. King moved his gun to his left hand and fired up in the air, fired at the roof, then, steadying it one final shot, directly at the camera.

  Rob looked at the sky, a darkening ocean, rain falling on the lens, no longer fighting to keep it off, drops bouncing off the glass. It made for a beautiful shot, a better finish than he could have thought, thunderclouds at the bottom of the sea. Rob saw Don’s and Rita’s legs stepping over him, the sound of their feet on the stairs going down, then the silent arms of the water lifting him up, holding him close above the world, floating into black, widening the unlimited, the big picture.

  108

  Eddy twisted back and forth against Dyan, his wooden stool banging on the bar’s floor, arms twitching like he’d been plugged into the wall. Of all the roles he’d played today, this one came easiest, a part he’d been playing his whole life, the trapped animal, the wolf in the net. No acting to it, no thought, only instinct, writhing violently against the tape.

  Dyan elbowed him in the ribs, shouting through the gag in her mouth, “You’re hurting me.” Eddy froze, panting dryly a few seconds. Then howling as he bent her forward, wriggling up her back, inching himself through the tape at his chest. He bent her further, her head against the bar, the tape sliding down to his stomach, stuck around his hips.

  Dyan bucked once, twice, she’d had enough, driving her head into his face, her elbows against his legs. Eddy tilted over, pivoting around the tape at his waist, still wrapped around her chest. His head swung to the bottom of her chair, his hairless legs rising up from his pants, clapping around her head, tightening the tape severely between her ribs. She couldn’t breathe. He was killing her.

  His face at her feet, the towel loosed from his mouth, he reared backward and began gnawing at the tape around her ankles, that still connected her to the stool. In a moment he was through. Dyan stood, the seat falling between them, Eddy upside down at her back, suspended from the tape at her chest, his legs crossed over her face.

  She stumbled forward, then back, toppling stools and tables, into the fabricked wall. She lunged at the bar, then back to the wall, as hard as she could, trying to break him off. Eddy grunting as his head hit the baseboard. “Again,” he said.

  109

  Tim knelt over his brother. “Tom,” he pleaded, “talk to me.” He placed his hand over Tom’s eyes and brushed them closed and looked up at the TV, his own eyes half shut from crying, straining to see the picture of himself crying on the screen, his brother on the floor.

  There was a loud thud behind, Eddy hitting the wall one more time.

  “Stop that,” Tim said. “Have a little respect.” He lifted his brother’s hands and folded them over the chest, his arms under Tom’s neck and waist, lifting him up, stumbling to the TV, shouting at the screen, “It’s your fault.” Then forward to the shattered window, all the strength he had left, the faceless cameras across the street, and there, to the right and behind, his wife Loretta, standing with the detective, twenty feet away. “Loretta,” he cried, “help me baby I don’t know what to do,” shaking his brother in his arms, “Come on,” kissing his cheek, “oh Tom.”

  110

  Loretta took one step forward, a reflex from twelve years of marriage, before stopping herself and turning to the man at the cameras, as if they could change what she’d just seen. It was supposed to be Tim. Harry shot the wrong man. She looked again at Tom’s blood-soaked shirt, Loretta backing into the building behind her. All the mistakes she’d made in her life, which started the day she met Tim. She’d taken him back so many times, and she knew if he kept asking she’d take him back again, the one thing she couldn’t bear. His heart broken on the phone, lying on the front steps, flowers in his hand, begging her forgiveness. Who was going to forgive Loretta?

  111

  Brian Halo sat on the floor in the back of Truck One, tears running over his eyes, into his mouth, laughing in great bursts as Eddy’s taped hands became caught between Dyan’s legs, his head hitting the wall as Tim cried his brother’s name. “It’s so sad,” Halo moaned, “it’s so funny,” wiping his eyes as he pushed himself to the door, his crew in front of him. “We did it,” he said, “we did it,” like he’d just invented a new pill.

  Detective Hammamann stepped into the middle of the street, facing the window, the rifle in his arm. He raised it to his shoulder, pointing at Tim inside. “My God no,” Halo said, running up and tackling the officer from behind, fighting for the gun.

  Harry pulled the rifle free, butting Halo in the head. Up to his shoulder again, looking for Tim in the sights and finding Loretta, her arms around her husband, and a sound he’d never heard before, Loretta crying. He lowered the barrel to her chest, the two of them joined in the window, tears in Harry’s eyes as he felt for the trigger, hands shaking, he didn’t want this, squeezing as someone tackled him from the side, the rifle shooting out of his hands, into the air. Harry lay on his back, looking up at Don over his chest. “Thank you,” Harry said, “I quit.”

  Don picked up the rifle and turned to Rita, two steps to her arms, “Where’s the car?”

  “In the alley,” she said, “behind the bar.”

  A cheer struck from down the street as the crowd turned the corner and spied Don holding the bag. Their numbers had grown to more than two hundred, many of them sick and injured, crippled and bedridden. Even Big Debbie had joined in, so fat she hadn’t left her bed in three years, and had recently been featured in a commercial for construction equipment.

  Into the set, toppling cameras, overturning a coffee truck. Brian Halo running toward them, his arms wide, crying “Wait, wait,” his suit disappearing at their feet. Don opened the bag, the last two bundles. He threw up one, then the other, then he threw the bag. Windows smashed, light poles exploding where they fell, crowd and crew fighting for the bills, tearing
at the ground like starving gulls. When the street was picked clean they flooded into the bar, sweeping Eddy and Dyan before them, Tim and Tom and Loretta, pushing them to the rail, their money raised high, shouting “Bartender, bartender.”

  Don and Rita ran to the alley, splashing through water over their feet. The Bollinger whined when he touched the wires, then kicked in suddenly, dragging them backward into Van Brunt, the green lights on Lemmings to the water risen half a block over the sandbagged fence. A right on Drywell, up Marginal to the pylons of the expressway, the long ramp circling to the top, clouds breaking over. When the city was behind them he reached for her knee, driving the warmth of her leg. She kissed his shoulders with her cheek and in less than a minute she was asleep.

  He got off the highway in Seagram, onto 25 that used to be a flea market and was now eight lanes, cement blocks of every width. He couldn’t think about anything except keeping his eyes open, his hands awake, the sleep after the dream is done. They drove through the Morgans, town and ville and field. It stopped raining and the sun cracked in and the trees moved up to the side of the road to block it out. Rita lifted her head and pulled in her hair. “I’m hungry,” she said.

  He ordered the Tomahawk Scramble and she had the Indian Toast. He poured ketchup over everything. “I dreamed,” she said. “It was a good dream. I was telling you of another dream, like I am telling you now but we were in bed in a bedroom that’s where we lived and in the dream the dream I was telling it was about these things that happen to us, how we meet and robbing the bank and the television show and escape and then I am finished and you laugh and you say that is a good dream Rita and you put your hand right there.”

  “Right there.”

  “Yes, right there.”

  “And then what.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Try to remember,” he wiped some dark toast from her lip.

  She looked at the tables next to them, everyone sleeping, snoring while they ate. “I love your hand.”

  “Let’s find that room.”

  “Maybe it was in the house where we’re going, the Gale.”

  “Someplace closer.”

  “The Las Vegas,” she said.

  He picked up the check, watching her the whole time, trying not to blink. Every breath she took he took two. “In this dream were we rich?”

  “No.”

  “It’s true,” he said, holding up two singles.

  “No, it is okay,” reaching into her bag, a stack of credit cards.

  The Las Vegas was ten miles up the Post. A neon tail fin leaning over the road: gold coins falling on a green blonde, day rates and clean beds. The man watching the TV in the office wore a pink turban over a Hawaiian shirt. He glanced at Don and Rita coming through the door, then back to the TV, a picture of Dyan Swaine driving a police car, Little Eddy riding next to her. “Don’t hurt me,” the man said, and pulled a shotgun from under his desk. Don smacked the barrel down as he rolled over the counter, taking the man to the floor. He came up with the gun, pulling Rita out the door, the man following with a pistol, shooting at the car.

  112

  Little Eddy and Dyan Swaine drove into the Las Vegas an hour later, responding to a call from the motel. They waited for the camera trucks to unload, then they got out of the car and walked toward the owner, who was sweeping up the remains of his door.

  Little Eddy drew his gun and crouched down, “Freeze,” he said. “Drop the broom.”

  “What are you doing, Eddy?” Dyan walked over to him. “You’re so stupid.”

  “I get the reward?” the owner said.

  “Just step away from the broom,” Eddy said. “That’s real good.” He spit on the ground, wiped his mouth with his gun.

  “Pig,” Dyan said.

  Eddy lowered his gun, “I’m sorry.”

  She held his head with her arms, “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

  113

  In the back of Truck One Brian Halo pointed at Screen Three as he yelled into Phone Five. “Look at them together. Look at them, Dyan and Eddy. Did I tell you these two have chemistry? You can’t take us off. We got a seven-point rating for that scene in the bar and it’s still picking up. The girl has the phone. We can trace it if they answer. We’re right behind them. Enough?” He threw the phone in the box in the corner and picked up another from the basket by his chair. “Get me Don Reedy.”

  114

  They drove through the dead trees of Keene County, miles without seeing a house. Rita stared out the window, her head pressed into the seat. They hadn’t spoken since the Las Vegas, and she didn’t know how to begin.

  Her bag began to ring. “It’s your phone,” she lifted it out. “Hello?” covering it with her hand. “Don, are you here?”

  “What?” he said, like he’d been talking to the engine.

  “The phone,” she held it over his nose. “It’s for you.”

  When it was over, Don threw the phone out the window, smashing it against a telephone pole. “That was Brian Halo. He wants us to rob a show in North-Central, it’s all set up, some general store in a talking-cow show. They’re gonna leave five thousand in the register.” He turned to Rita, “We can keep robbing stores on TV. He says it will be okay. I shot that man, Rita.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  And he explained to her how it was, the prison sentences that kept getting longer, “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  Don remembered the driveway behind the turn, the first hundred yards barely drivable, then two miles of paved road to the top of the hill. He’d only been to the Gail once, twelve years before. Maury had brought him there to talk about the bank robberies, and as a way of showing Don that he was second-in-command, next in line. Maury said he’d only shown the Gail to four other people, all of them murdered shortly after.

  “The Gale?” asked Rita. “Like a storm?’

  Don nodded, “The Gail was Maury’s mom.”

  They rounded the last curve to the top, the house built like a bunker, concrete walls with foot-high windows, a single door of steel rivets. Don went to the elm that hung over the barbed wire roof. He climbed a branch, reaching up and back. “The key’s still here.”

  “He built this for his mother?” she asked.

  Don nodded. “To keep her out.”

  He started the generators, the lights flickered and held, electric torches on wrought iron chandeliers, the main hall decorated like a dungeon. He led her down the stairs, the ice room and pantry, enough wine and food to keep them drunk and fed for years. There was no way to trace the place to Maury. It was owned by a Mr. Minanski, who Maury claimed was buried throughout the house.

  Don brought two beers back and sat on the plastic-covered couch and watched her walk around the hall, her torn stockings, telling him about growing up in Odessa, sharing three rooms with ten people, one bathroom for twenty. It was all about curtains, she said, already she knew how to fix it. She’d plant a garden, fresh vegetables in the summer, her grand-mother had a farm outside Odessa and the whole family would take the bus there every weekend. She opened a beer and carried it to the hall in the corner. She winked at Don and said, “What is this,” and went in.

  She was sitting on the bed when he came in, blankets of battleship gray. Over the headboard a giant portrait, of an angry Gail in a red and gold robe.

  He moved along the wall, the concrete against his back, until he stood across from where she sat, his hand climbing to the short window behind his head, feeling for the bulletproof glass. She leaned toward him, her arms under her shoulders like she was about to start rowing. This was his moment, to fall into her again, the way they’d fallen before, as easy as getting into bed. He stepped forward, then hesitated, a fraction of a second but she saw it and he saw her see, and she rowed back to bed alone, her elbows holding her up.

  “I’ll check the alarms,” he said, “be right back.” The door was stuck and he finally opened it and went into the hall and drank some whiske
y and when he returned she was asleep. He sat next to her, tracing her body with his finger in the sheets, remembering her dream, the same one that he killed the old man in, one and the same. All of it outside now, the concrete walls of the Gail, windows you couldn’t open, sheets on the bed as heavy as cement. They’d be starting with nothing, only the weight of what happened, build their own world, block by block. He’d led her here, now she would lead. She’d sew the curtains, collect the eggs from the cows. The garden would grow. He lay his head by hers and touched her lips, watching her sleep.

  115

  Joe Far came to work that morning to find two hundred men and women stuffed into the long space of the bar waiting with large bills for someone to get them a drink. He ran out to the street half a block before the crowd caught up and carried him back, passing him over their heads, one to the other, over the bar where he began to pour.

  It was a wake for Tom and a going-away-to-jail party for Tim, a salute to their hero, Don Reedy, and to themselves and their fortune, to live in the greatest city in the world. The party lasted seven days, the second longest in memory, rivaled only by the sinking of the casino Clementine, in ’84. By the third day the floodwaters had reached the door, bringing more people in, a steady stream of ambulances taking them out, more than thirty people hospitalized, all in serious condition, all returned. Even Tom, who despite every incompetence by the staff at Mercy was revived and twenty-four hours later drove himself backward to his own wake.