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Authors: RICHARD LANGE
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pace, ten steps up the hall and ten steps back. The world narrows into a strip of snot-green linoleum over which I have complete control. It should always be this easy.
Suddenly Maria arrives, flushed and sweaty-palmed. Another teacher took over her class, allowing her to leave school early. She’d left her phone in her desk. The doctor informs us that Sam has a hairline fracture of the tibia. Nothing serious, but he’ll need a cast. It’s two-thirty. I can still make my rendezvous with Moriarty and Belushi if I go now.
“Hey, I left my stuff at the site,” I tell Maria. “I should probably pick it up before they quit for the day.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“You’ll be fine here by yourself?”
“See you at home.”
I kiss her on the cheek and force myself to walk until I’m out of her sight.
B OOM !
HERE WE go, rolling in out of the heat and noise and destroying the silky air-conditioned calm of the bank. Today it’s Mexican wrestling masks and happy-face T-shirts, party clothes to commemorate our final heist. “Get down,” I yell, “down on the floor,” showing my gun. There are one, two, three customers, and they drop like trapdoors have opened beneath them. Moriarty beelines for the security guard, who meekly holds out his hands to be cuffed. One, two, three customers, all secure. I wonder if the plants standing in the corners are real or made of plastic. Something tickles my neck. I reach up and snag it, a long black hair, Maria’s. I raise it to my lips as Moriarty hurdles the counter and makes his way down the line of tellers. No trouble there. They’ve been trained not to resist. Just push the silent alarm and back off. Well, supposedly silent. The signal zips up my spine like a thimble on a washboard, and all of my pores are screaming. One, two, three, old lady, fat man, vato. Each second is disconnected from the one that came before it, so that they bounce around like pearls cut loose from a necklace. Moriarty’s finished. He heads for the door, the bag slung over his shoulder. I follow him out to the car, dive inside, and Belushi slams his hand against the steering wheel and screams,
“Yes!”
He swings out into traffic and we’re gobbled up into the steaming maw of the city, where we disappear for good.
I F IT’S TRUE that the same God will judge both El Jefe and me, I want this added to the record: In the end, I didn’t lie to my wife. When she wondered about the money, I came clean. I hadn’t planned to, but I did.
“Where did you get it?” she asked.
“I robbed a bank. Lots of banks.”
She stiffened in my arms — we were in bed at the time — then rolled over to watch my face.
“Will they catch you?”
“No.”
It took the rest of the night to work through it. Maria felt I’d put the family’s future in jeopardy and wanted answers to a lot of questions I hadn’t dared ask myself before for fear that the answers would have pulled me up short, destroying the ruthless momentum that had enabled me to do what had to be done. I explained as best I could while she waffled between tears and outrage. Dawn found us silent and drained at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of coffee. The walls of the bungalow ticked and popped in the gathering heat, and the fresh light of the new day stumbled over the cracks in the plaster left by the last earthquake. Her decision was conveyed by a simple gesture. She reached across the table and took my hands into hers: We would go on.
I’ M SITTING ON the couch, using a Magic Marker to draw a spaceman on Sam’s cast. He keeps leaning forward to monitor my efforts, and isn’t pleased with how it’s turning out.
“No, Papi, his body’s not right.”
The phone rings, and Maria picks it up in the kitchen. Another real estate agent. We’re driving up to Big Bear on Saturday to look at houses. Only a week has passed since the robbery, and already things are changing. So many options, so many decisions. To tell you the truth, it leaves me a
Suddenly Maria arrives, flushed and sweaty-palmed. Another teacher took over her class, allowing her to leave school early. She’d left her phone in her desk. The doctor informs us that Sam has a hairline fracture of the tibia. Nothing serious, but he’ll need a cast. It’s two-thirty. I can still make my rendezvous with Moriarty and Belushi if I go now.
“Hey, I left my stuff at the site,” I tell Maria. “I should probably pick it up before they quit for the day.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“You’ll be fine here by yourself?”
“See you at home.”
I kiss her on the cheek and force myself to walk until I’m out of her sight.
B OOM !
HERE WE go, rolling in out of the heat and noise and destroying the silky air-conditioned calm of the bank. Today it’s Mexican wrestling masks and happy-face T-shirts, party clothes to commemorate our final heist. “Get down,” I yell, “down on the floor,” showing my gun. There are one, two, three customers, and they drop like trapdoors have opened beneath them. Moriarty beelines for the security guard, who meekly holds out his hands to be cuffed. One, two, three customers, all secure. I wonder if the plants standing in the corners are real or made of plastic. Something tickles my neck. I reach up and snag it, a long black hair, Maria’s. I raise it to my lips as Moriarty hurdles the counter and makes his way down the line of tellers. No trouble there. They’ve been trained not to resist. Just push the silent alarm and back off. Well, supposedly silent. The signal zips up my spine like a thimble on a washboard, and all of my pores are screaming. One, two, three, old lady, fat man, vato. Each second is disconnected from the one that came before it, so that they bounce around like pearls cut loose from a necklace. Moriarty’s finished. He heads for the door, the bag slung over his shoulder. I follow him out to the car, dive inside, and Belushi slams his hand against the steering wheel and screams,
“Yes!”
He swings out into traffic and we’re gobbled up into the steaming maw of the city, where we disappear for good.
I F IT’S TRUE that the same God will judge both El Jefe and me, I want this added to the record: In the end, I didn’t lie to my wife. When she wondered about the money, I came clean. I hadn’t planned to, but I did.
“Where did you get it?” she asked.
“I robbed a bank. Lots of banks.”
She stiffened in my arms — we were in bed at the time — then rolled over to watch my face.
“Will they catch you?”
“No.”
It took the rest of the night to work through it. Maria felt I’d put the family’s future in jeopardy and wanted answers to a lot of questions I hadn’t dared ask myself before for fear that the answers would have pulled me up short, destroying the ruthless momentum that had enabled me to do what had to be done. I explained as best I could while she waffled between tears and outrage. Dawn found us silent and drained at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of coffee. The walls of the bungalow ticked and popped in the gathering heat, and the fresh light of the new day stumbled over the cracks in the plaster left by the last earthquake. Her decision was conveyed by a simple gesture. She reached across the table and took my hands into hers: We would go on.
I’ M SITTING ON the couch, using a Magic Marker to draw a spaceman on Sam’s cast. He keeps leaning forward to monitor my efforts, and isn’t pleased with how it’s turning out.
“No, Papi, his body’s not right.”
The phone rings, and Maria picks it up in the kitchen. Another real estate agent. We’re driving up to Big Bear on Saturday to look at houses. Only a week has passed since the robbery, and already things are changing. So many options, so many decisions. To tell you the truth, it leaves me a
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