How to Rob an Armored Car (21 page)

Detective Scott knew from twenty-seven years on the police force that old people were hard to deal with. Civilians always thought it was young people who were rude to the police. It was certainly young people who committed most of the crimes, but old people were less likely to show respect, more likely to scream curses at you. Maybe they figured that, as death was relatively near, they had less to lose. Scott hoped this was one of the other kind of old people, the deferential, friendly kind, but something about the appearance of the house made him suspect otherwise.

The door flew open and an old man glared at them. “Whaddya want?”

“Evening, Mr. Wright. Are you Reginald Wright?”

“Whaddya want? Goddamn hammering on my door at this time of night.”

It was only eight thirty, but Scott let it go. “Mr. Wright, I’m Detective Robert Scott of the Wilton Police Department, and this is Officer Peskey.”

“Whaddya want?”

“Mr. Wright, do you own a 1980 Chevy Impala?”

“What? That’s was this is about? I took the ad out of the paper. Sold it . . . last week.”

“Did you transfer the title and get the paperwork—”

“I sold it, I tell you. What would the goddamned cops want a car like that for? It was a piece a’ shit.”

“Mr. Wright, we don’t want to buy it. We want to know who you sold it to. When you sell a car, you have to do a title transfer and—”

“I’m eighty-four years old,” said Mr. Wright.

“Well, that’s actually not an excuse to not transfer the title.”

“That’s bullshit. All a bunch a’ bullshit.” Mr. Wright started to slam the door shut, but Detective Scott gently inserted his foot in the doorway to stop him.

“Mr. Wright, that car was used in a robbery. And if you don’t talk to us, I’m going to assume you had something to do with it and have Officer Pesky here arrest you.”

Mr. Wright, who was used to having his demeanor interpreted as lovable elderly dottiness, became lucid and agreeable in a hurry. “What do you want to know?”

“What did the guy who bought the car look like?”

“There were three of them. One of them looked like a hippie.”

“A hippie?”

“Long-haired. You know. A damned hippie.”

Scott wondered whether it was feasible to get this guy to a sketch artist with a snow storm developing and decided to leave it until tomorrow. This wasn’t exactly the crime of the century. The guys had been unarmed and he didn’t want to force either the sketch artist or this old guy to be out and about on icy roads at all hours of the night. He was about to suggest a visit in the morning, when Mr. Wright offered one last piece of information.

“They buried something. In my yard.”

AFTER BURYING THE money, Kevin came home around midnight and noticed Linda’s car was not in the driveway. He sat in his truck for a full five minutes before he resolved to go inside. It didn’t necessarily mean she had left him. She could have just spent the night at her mother’s.

In the dining room, there was no note, which was a good sign, but all of Ellie’s toys and books were gone, which wasn’t. He flipped on the bedroom light and went through Linda’s dresser. All the drawers were empty.

It was over.

Sitting on the bed, he looked at himself in the dresser mirror. It was over. He had snow in his hair and he had just robbed a bank and his wife and daughter were gone. How long had he been playing the role of father and husband without actually being one? Almost from the beginning, his family had been an afterthought. He had married too young, for all the wrong reasons, he decided. He had been envying Mitch and Doug, as they sat around baked and bunny-eyed in front of their TV, for the last few years. Maybe that was what adult males needed—a few years of baked, bunny-eyed behavior before they took on the roles of father and husband. He had rushed into things without ever taking the time to decompress from his teens.

Fuck it. He felt relief rather than regret, or at least, he told himself he did. It was too much for one day. First an armored car robbery and then your wife leaves you on the same damned day. He’d have to figure out what he felt later.

Was it fixable? Could he have everything back the way it used to be, after they had first been married? Possibly, he decided. It would take a lot of work. But with $62,214 and eleven cents, he might actually have the time and resources to work things out. The thought gave him a lift.

In the meantime, he would just enjoy having the house to himself. Then a thought occurred to him. The reason Linda had left was because he was always living in the meantime. He had secretly wanted the house to himself for eight years. Obviously, it had shown.

He was thinking too much. He would deal with everything tomorrow. He went down to the basement, got his bong and little stash, took it up to the bedroom, and smoked. Couldn’t do that with Linda and Ellie there.

He exhaled a long, slow stream. Nobody to criticize him.

Freedom.

THE NEXT MORNING, as so often was the case after a big storm, it was sunny. The snow was melting fast, the icicles hanging from the gutter of the back porch dripping furiously over the disused plumbing equipment, splattering Mitch’s socks as he tried to smoke a cigarette. The bad feeling from after the robbery had returned full force. Mitch kept having to stifle the urge to grab his prepared bag of money and sundries and tear off without even saying goodbye to Doug. Couldn’t these guys see anything coming?

There was a knock on the door and Mitch froze. Jesus Christ, this was it. He began to tremble and watched the cigarette shake in his hand as he wondered where he had left his bag. Could he get to the bag and over the neighbor’s fence before the cops kicked the front door in? He tiptoed to the edge of the porch and peered around the side of the house and saw Kevin’s truck.

Shit. He was going nuts. He exhaled, surprised at his panicked reaction. He answered the front door, hoping that his little fear episode wasn’t still evident on his face.

“Dude, hope I didn’t wake you up,” Kevin said cheerfully. “I gotta walk some dogs today and I was hoping you could spot me a bud or two.”

“Sure.” Mitch went to get his bag of weed and a baggie. “Why are you walking dogs on a Saturday?”

“A couple of clients are out of town for the weekend.” As an afterthought, he added, “Linda left me last night.”

Mitch didn’t know what to say. He felt he should offer something supportive, but the only comment that came to him was that a blind man could have seen that one coming.

“That sucks, dude,” Mitch said finally, not sure if Kevin even agreed. From his cheerful demeanor, he looked like he had shed a burden rather than lost a family. Some marriages were better ended, Mitch thought, aware that he knew nothing of the subject and didn’t really intend to find out.

Doug came downstairs, sleepy-eyed and bed-headed, and nodded to them. Mitch handed Kevin the weed as Kevin’s cell phone rang.

“Dude, you want some coffee?” Doug called from the kitchen.

But Mitch was watching Kevin. “Yeah,” Kevin was saying into the phone. “I took him in my car and we buried him. I mean,
I
buried him. In a yard.”

Mitch could hear the other person talking; Kevin was nodding. Then he hung up. “That was weird,” he said.

“Do you want coffee?” Doug called again.

“What do you mean ‘weird’?” Mitch stood up.

“The cops found Scotch Parker’s body. He had a collar on him with a phone number. That was Mrs. Parker. She wanted to know why the cops came to her house this morning asking about her dog being buried in that guy’s yard.”

“The cops came? Over a dog?”

“Huh?” Doug shouted from the kitchen. “What’s this about a dog?”

Mitch felt his heart start thumping again, like it had a few moments before. He searched for an excuse that would make everything all right. “Maybe the guy was just pissed . . . about the dog being buried in his yard. Maybe . . .”

“She said there were three cops. They were very serious.”

Doug came out into the living room and saw the looks on Kevin’s and Mitch’s faces, confused, yet worried. “The cops went to that old dude’s house?” he asked.

They began finishing each other’s sentences again. “Which means—”

“They found the car.”

“Fuck!” yelled Kevin. “I told you we should have found a ravine. You gotta have a ravine. You can’t just leave a getaway car just sitting there.”

“But . . .” said Mitch slowly, still piecing things together, “ . . . they knew to go to the lady who owned the dog.”

The three of them stood in the living room in silence while this information sank in, staring at each other, each hoping another would say something obvious and comforting which would make everything OK.

“And the lady must have given them your number,” said Mitch.

“She did,” said Kevin.

“We are fucked.” Mitch sat down heavily on the couch.

“After all that. A fucking dead dog,” marveled Kevin. “I shoulda just thrown his body out the fucking window.”

“OK, we’re fucked,” said Mitch, his paratroop commander persona taking over. He jumped up and flung open the closet door and took out his coat and started looking around for his shoes. He found them and put them on.

“Here’s the deal,” he began while hurriedly tying them. “You give us up. We’ll be ready for it. All your money’s hidden. Just say you drove us out there to buy the car and that was it. Go walk dogs.”

Kevin turned to go. “Sorry, dudes,” he said.

“Sorry, man,” said Doug, still holding a coffee pot in the kitchen doorway.

“Later, man.” Mitch was a blur of activity, flying around, getting everything together. He opened his duffel bag and saw the money, the socks, and the underwear. He tried to decide if he needed another pair of jeans. Fuck it, he had enough to buy a new pair if it came to that. Kevin was still standing in the doorway.

“Gimme that weed back, man,” Mitch said. “The cops’ll be going through your shit later.”

Kevin, whose hand was noticeably shaking, handed the little baggie back to Mitch.

“Get outta here. Go walk dogs.”

As they heard Kevin’s truck pull out of the driveway, Mitch turned to Doug, who still hadn’t moved.

“Dude, last chance. I’d come with me if I were you.”

Doug didn’t look panicked or even slightly freaked out. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, coffee pot in his hand, with a serene smile on his face. “Nah, man. I’ll be OK.”

“You know you’ll go to jail. You’ll wake up in jail by tomorrow morning.”

Doug nodded. Mitch went over and shook his hand. “Later, dude.”

“Later.”

Mitch turned to leave, then turned back. “I gotta be able to get in touch with you, to pay for a lawyer.”

Doug shook his head. “I’ll have Kevin handle that.” They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Doug asked, “Where are you gonna go?”

“I dunno.”

“Good luck.”

“Same to you.” The door slammed, and he was gone. As he was running down the steps and out into the street, Mitch thought, Guess I’m not going to get a chance to paint the ceiling.

14

CHAPTER

T
HEY CAME FOR Kevin when he returned from walking dogs. The whole time he was walking Duffy, the St. Bernard, he had been expecting cop cars to come screeching up to him. But they had just sat outside his house waiting for him to come home.

They were very polite and Kevin was very prepared. He was expecting to be wrestled to the ground and have his face pushed into the wooden floor of his porch, his mouth filling with paint chips, as had happened when they busted him for pot. But the detective was the kindly looking older man he had seen on TV and he just showed Kevin his badge and asked a few questions.

“How are you today, Mr. Gurdy?” the detective asked.

Kevin nodded. “Is this about the dead dog? Because Mrs. Parker just called me,” he said, looking at the three police officers. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know there were all these laws about dog burial.”

The detective gave him a skeptical smile and nodded. “Where were you yesterday afternoon at about three P.M.?”

Kevin gave the prepared answer: walking dogs. He described the schedule exactly. He had, of course, walked his dogs an hour early that day. Once again, the detective looked skeptical.

“When you bought the Impala, who was there with you?”

It hurt to do it, but it had been the plan all along. Kevin gave them Doug and Mitch’s names. He stressed that Doug had just been laid off from his job and that his car had been impounded, and he tried to think of other things to say which might give the cops a better impression of the two. Then he remembered to ask the question that only a guilty man would forget to ask. “What’s all this about? We just buried a dog.”

DOUG WAS SITTING on his couch watching television when the cops arrived. After Mitch had left, Doug made the coffee and tried to figure out the only thing he still had control over—what exactly he would be doing when they came for him. He imagined a few different poses. He could be reading. He could be smoking pot. (What difference would it make at this point?) He could be watching TV. He could be cleaning the apartment, but clearly there was no point to that, as he would not be around to enjoy the cleanliness. Why go through the misery of cleaning unless you could enjoy the fruits of your labor?

It struck him that it might be a good day to go down to the convenience store and ask out the Mexican girl. He realized that the reason he had never done it before was that he lacked the confidence of a man who knew what he would be doing tomorrow. Today, he had that confidence but he decided not to bother because it just seemed like a bad way to start a relationship.

Perhaps she’d still be there when he got out.

He finished his coffee and smoked a bowl, then hid all the bongs and bowls, and put the last of his stash in the garbage. It hurt to throw the pot away but he decided he was in enough trouble as it was, so why make it worse?

Then he settled in to watch television, one ear tuned to every vehicle turning onto the street.

Around noon, he heard it and knew right away. Two cars, both with large engines, but not large enough for them to be trucks. They were driving slowly, as if checking addresses. Doug turned the sound down on the television, which he hadn’t really been watching, just staring at it as if it were a campfire. He felt strangely serene.

The engines stopped. Doors were opened and closed.

He clearly heard one police officer walking around to the back of the house, trying to be quiet about it, but his feet crunched in the new-fallen snow. That, Doug figured, was in case he tried to bolt out the back door.

There was a hard knock on the door and he got up and answered it. A kindly faced older detective and a younger, uniformed officer stood on the front step, both looking extremely serious.

“Are you Douglas Keir?”

“I am,” said Doug. He opened the door wider to allow them in and noticed that the action caused the two policemen to look at each other, surprised. They came inside.

“Is Mitchell Alden at home?”

“Mitch left.”

The plainclothes detective turned to the young officer and said, “Check upstairs.”

As the officer walked up the stairs, his gun unholstered, the older man turned back to Doug. “Can you tell me where you were yesterday afternoon, around three P.M.?”

“Three P.M.,” Doug said thoughtfully. He screwed up his face, as if thinking very hard. The younger officer came down the stairs.

“It’s clear,” the officer said. “No one up there.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Doug. “At some point around three P.M. I think I was, uh, like, in Westlake.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was, uh, like, robbing an armored car.”

CABS, BUSES, AND trains. He caught a cab from the convenience store to the bus station, a bus from Wilton to Pittsburgh, and from the Pittsburgh train station he got the Amtrak to Cleveland. As he was buying the ticket with cash, making sure to crumple the bills in case they looked too fresh, Mitch congratulated himself on an act of sly genius. He doubted that anyone in the history of the world had ever before fled to Cleveland.

Why, he wondered, as snow-covered Ohio farmland shot past, does security go apeshit checking your luggage at airports but just let you take any damn thing you want onto a train? You could get on a train with a ticking suitcase with wires sticking out of it and no one would care, but you couldn’t get on a plane anymore with a bottle of water. He wondered if there was some hidden agenda he wasn’t seeing. Maybe the security was all for show, the shoe removal and the metal detectors just an act in a piece of terrorist-prevention theater. As he hugged his duffel bag full of cash to chest, he figured that having everyone scared shitless was always good for whoever was running the show.

Mitch was giving the issue thought because it was making it necessary for him to take trains rather than planes. No Homeland Security doofus was going to go rifling through his bag of money, no sir. But this meant that a trip to Cleveland would take seven hours rather than one, and Seattle or LA, if he decided to go there, would take days and days. And he couldn’t leave his duffel bag alone, even for a few moments, so eating on the train was out. Still, no matter how much the ride sucked, Mitch figured that it had to be better than what was happening to Doug.

He wondered what to do when he got to Cleveland. He would get a hotel room, maybe buy some clothes and get a haircut so he looked a little more professional. Then he’d try to get most of the cash turned into traveler’s checks. He needed to see about getting a fake ID from somewhere, though that could be risky. Maybe he’d just get a job for a few months that paid under the table, wait until everything died down, and then figure something out. Maybe he’d go to Canada. Maybe to Seattle.

Despite having a bag full of money and an open road in front of him, Mitch didn’t feel as free as he had imagined he would.