Thieves
by: Aaron James ShawErick removed his glove, put one tobacco stained finger to his mouth, and chewed, before spitting out a fingernail onto the dashboard.
“Hey, watch it,” Thomas said. “This is a brand new car.” Actually the car was stolen, but he didn’t want to leave behind any D.N.A so he made Erick put his gloves on and throw the fingernail out the window before going back to watching the bank.
“Sorry,” Erick said. “Nervous habit.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Thomas said, glancing at his watch. “Five minutes to go.”
Erick didn’t see the point in wearing gloves. They were going to leave D.N.A no matter what, but Thomas was careful bordering paranoid.
“What about…” Erick shuffled nervously in his seat. “Dye-packs—”
“Taken care of.”
“But I saw this movie once, where they got the money, but the dye-packs exploded and—”
“Taken care of.” Thomas repeated. “I know a guy who works for the electric company. In—” he looked at his watch “—three minutes there’s going to be a power-cut. The banks’ silent alarm won’t work and neither will the door sensors that activate the dye-packs.”
Erick ran a sweat stained palm through his hair. If only I’d stuck to convenience stores, he thought. If only.
“Two minutes.” Thomas said.
“Great,” Erick remarked, “I’m robbing a bank with the talking clock. My mother was right. I should have gone to college.
They waited in silence for a while, and then Thomas announced there was one minute left, so they gathered their equipment and put on their ski masks.
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Henrietta found the gentle rocking of the bus relaxing. For a moment she almost forgot her troubles, before the familiar nauseating feeling returned, and she remembered her purpose. She had to go to the bank, to ask for more time to pay back her loan.
She said a silent prayer to Jesus, as she always did when she was worried, and tried her best to believe it would work. Henrietta was seventy-seven years old, her husband was dead and her son, Peter—who owned a business, but was facing bankruptcy—couldn’t help her. Jesus was all she had. She put her purse on the seat next to her, and wiped the sweat from her brow.
She almost missed her stop, but managed to ring the bell in time. Mr Angry was driving the bus—she called him Mr Angry for obvious reasons—he scowled at her.
“If you don’t press the bell sooner next time,” Mr Angry said, “then I won’t stop.”
Henrietta walked off the bus and on to the street without a reply. If you don’t have anything to nice to say, she told herself, then don’t say anything.
“I hate old people.” Mr angry said, before the door closed and the bus drove off.
There was a lot more people crowded around the bank than usual. As she came closer she saw two paramedics carrying away a man on a stretcher. Poor man, she thought. I wonder what happened.
The actual bank itself was closed off with yellow tape that a burly policeman stopped anyone from crossing. Henrietta walked towards him.
“What happened?” Henrietta asked.
“Robbery,” the policeman stated. “Two men in ski-masks robbed the bank; they shot a teller and a security guard.”
“Oh, that’s terrible. Did you catch them?”
“Not yet, miss. But we’ll catch the bastards—excuse my language—soon enough.”
Henrietta sighed. It was a sorry thing when people killed for money. She started to walk towards the bus-stop, when she realised she’d left her purse on the bus—her bus-pass was inside.
Why me, Jesus? She thought, as she began the one mile journey home. Why me? Then Henrietta remembered the two dead people in the bank, and decided things could always be worst.
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“Fifty thousand,” Erick said. “Fifty thousand, smackarroo’s.” He picked up one of the neat bundles of money from the stack Thomas had just counted, turning it over in his hands.
“Put it down,” Thomas said.
Erick put the money back, and Thomas began to stack the bills into a battered, red imitation leather suitcase.
Erick chewed his fingernails as he watched Thomas work, A slight breeze ruffling his greasy hair. When all the money was in the suitcase, Thomas closed it.
“Why did you have to shoot that woman and that security guard?” Erick asked.
“I saw her put a dye-pack in with the money, and him, well, he tried to be a hero. th—”
“That dye-pack?” Erick’s yellow finger pointed at a small packet of blue ink sitting on the table next to Thomas. “But why? You said dye-packs couldn’t hurt us, with the power off.”
Thomas smiled coldly. It was the first time Erick had seen him smile. “Who did I shoot? A stupid bank-teller, who simply handed out money all day, and went home every night to feed her cat, big deal. And a security guard old enough to have played poker with Moses, big deal.”
Erick picked up the suitcase, and was about to open it when—click—he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.
“Put the money down,” Thomas was aiming his pistol at Erick’s chest, “I won’t tell you twice.”
“Thomas, calm down,” he backed away cradling the suitcase in his arms like a baby. He hit the windowsill, and almost fell out of the open window. “I just want to take a little bit out. For God’s sake, I’ve just seen two people die! I want a God-damn drink!”
“Can’t let you do that, got to clean the money,” Thomas said. His eyes were watery and unfocused. He almost looked like he was high. “Otherwise they can trace it.”
Erick could see Thomas’s mouth twist in anticipation. That scared Erick because he’d looked the exact same way when he’d killed the teller and the guard.
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Henrietta’s legs hurt. She’d only walked a half mile. She was in a bad neighbourhood, surrounded by tower-blocks that reached towards heaven like miniature versions of the Tower of Babel.
No doubt, there would be drug dealers here. She’d have to be careful, unless they tried to rob her; she had nothing for them to rob, but they didn’t know that.
She wondered why god would want to put an old lady like her through so much-
Bang!
It sounded like a gunshot to Henrietta, like the shows on T.V Bert used to watch. But, it could have simply been a car backfiring, perhaps an old—
She almost had a heart attack when the suitcase fell—practically—at her feet. And then there was a wet thump as the red-headed man fell next to it. There was a circular hole in the middle of his forehead which dribbled blood. Her fist thought was that they (the suitcase and the man) had fallen from the sky. But then, more logically, she supposed they’d fallen out of a window in the tower-block above.
She looked at the suitcase; it was red imitation leather, it looked pretty old. The suitcase had swung open when it had hit the floor and Henrietta could see the money. Fresh neatly ordered notes. They could cure all her debt problems. She felt terrible about the man who’d fallen, he was young, and he’d had his whole life ahead of him.
Shall I take the money? The thought was dirty and made her feel guilty. Thinking about murder was as bad as murder in her eyes; thinking about stealing from a dead man, was as bad as stealing from a dead man.
She was still wrestling with the moral implications of taking the money (was it taking what’s no longer needed or stealing?) when a deep voice in the doorway of the building said: “Ok, old lady, I’ve just ran down three flights of stairs so you don’t want to cross me, ok.”
Henrietta turned to see a bald headed man, breathing heavily, pointing a gun at her.
“Pick it up,” he said.
“Ok. “ She closed the suitcase and picked it up, being careful not to touch the dead man. “I hope the person you killed was worth this money.”
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“I would have killed that asshole for a penny,” Thomas said. “All he ever did was talk.”
Thomas couldn’t believe his luck. Four in one day, it had to be some kind of record. He’d never told anyone about the buzz he got from watching people die; better than any drug in the world. It all started when he was seven, when he’d gotten that puppy from his aunt Sylvie. The puppy was a golden retriever; everyone loved the little-slobber-bucket, everyone except Thomas. Every day a bus had gone past his house—regular as clock work—at five pm. At three minutes to five he’d put the puppy in the middle of the road and waited. The little-slobber-bucket had just sat there. And the bus went over it (maybe the driver never saw it) turning the puppy into a flat puddle of blood and guts.
The feeling that had washed through Thomas was like the high an addict has when they get their fist hit of the day. That feeling was starting to subside, now. Erick had died pretty easy; he’d just fallen out the window when Thomas shot him. But the old lady was going to be different. He was going to take her up to his apartment. She was going to die slow.
“Alright, you,” Thomas said. “Get in here and I wo—” Thomas paused, he could see a bus approaching.
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Henrietta had thought the bus was going to go straight past her, but, amazingly the bus stopped and its doors opened.
Mr Angry was behind the steering wheel. “Hey, lady, he said. “You forgot your buss pass. I don’t wanna let you walk home, because if something happens I’ll get the blame”
“Thank god you came,” she cried. She looked around at the man with the gun. He was still standing in the doorway. He had the gun hidden behind his back.
“Are you alright, lady?” Mr Angry was eyeing the man in the doorway suspiciously. “That guy giving you trouble?”
Henrietta took one more look at the man with the gun. He was grinding his teeth, he looked very angry indeed; as long as there’s people around, Henrietta thought, he can’t hurt me.
She stepped on to the bus and Mr Angry gave her the buss pass and said: “You’re lucky somebody handed it in.”
“I sure am,” Henrietta said, and then she started to cry.
“Holy shit!” Mr Angry shouted. “There’s a dead body over there!”
Henrietta sat down heavily on the nearest seat; the shouting around her seemed very distant. She wasn’t even aware she still had the suitcase.
“Let me on the bus, please.” Someone said, the voice was distant and Henrietta who was drifting into shock barely heard it.
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“No way, pal,” the bus driver said. “For all I know you could have killed him—“he pointed at Erick—”. I’m calling the cops.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Thomas brought the gun from behind his back, pointed it at the driver. He couldn’t afford such attention, but he wanted his money.
“Holy shit! He’s got a gun!” The driver fumbled with the gears accidentally putting the bus into reverse.
“Shit!” Thomas said. He tried to follow the driver with his gun, but he couldn’t get a good sight. The driver stepped on the brakes and Thomas stepped into the road and aimed at the driver through the windshield.
Thomas was about to shoot the driver when the bus came toward him too fast. He tried to jump out of the way but the side of the bus clipped him and he was mangled under the wheel. As he died, he thought about the puppy. It wasn’t so fun, being on the receiving end.
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She heard people screaming, and then the sound of an awful thump, and finally a woman screaming: “Oh my god, he went under the wheels.”
She was taken to the hospital suffering from acute shock. The police asked questions—she couldn’t remember any of what had happened to her, except a sound, an awful thump. After two days in hospital it was decided she could go home. She still could not remember what had happened to her, she had blocked it out she was told. When the police had finished questioning her they drove her home, convinced she knew nothing.
Among the things she was given upon leaving hospital was a red imitation leather suitcase. She didn’t know what was inside, and, she was told, neither did the people at the hospital. It was closed when she’d come in and not opened. It didn’t matter, she told herself when she was in the car, she would look inside when she was home.
posted by Tim @ 7:30 AM
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