How to Rob an Armored Car (23 page)

The room was in a neighborhood called Bratenahl. Mitch knew right away it was what he wanted: Bratenahl was neither seedy nor flashy, just the kind of place you should live if you were trying not to be noticed. The door was answered by an old woman with a German shepherd, which reminded him of Ramone. For a brief moment, he was nostalgic for Wilton, for that comparatively secure life of dog-walking and pot-smoking and hanging out with Doug and Kevin. Then he remembered Accu-mart and the metal-refinishing plant. Things were better now. He had what everyone who lived a successful life had: secrets and money.

Mitch and the dog, named Lucy, hit it off right away, which turned out to be all the ID Mitch needed.

“What brings you out here?” the old lady asked as he was carrying his bags up the stairs to his room.

Mitch was going to make up a tall tale, something about a lost love or an undercover police mission, but decided to stay as close as possible to the truth. You had to be careful with old people. Some of them acted like they had no memory just to see if you were the type of person who would take advantage of someone with no memory. “I got laid off in Pittsburgh,” he said flatly. “Managed to find work here on a road crew.”

“Yes, times are tough,” the old woman agreed. “My James, when he was alive, he was a union electrician. He got laid off six times in forty-seven years. You never know.”

But when she left, she gave Mitch a look, which he understood perfectly. The look said, “I know you’ve done something and there’s some story as to why you’re renting a room in a town you’ve never been to before. But my dog likes you and that has to be worth something.”

MITCH BROUGHT HOME $320 a week for forty hours of splattering himself with boiling toxins. He didn’t really need the money, of course, and sometimes he thought he only kept the job so his landlady wouldn’t be suspicious of him. Because the money he earned was all extra, he blew it in bars, buying drinks for girls. Going out, enjoying himself, and talking to women were all things he hadn’t done in Wilton. And he owed it all to his Little Bag of Security.

“Let’s take a smoke break for a couple of minutes,” Mitch yelled to the Mexicans over the roar of the traffic. The noise was the worst part of the job. Sometimes, falling asleep in his room, he could still hear the cars whizzing by, an endless parade of traffic in his head. He liked it more when the work caused a traffic jam, because the idling, creeping cars didn’t make as much noise. But then you had to work faster, or else the people stuck in traffic would call the company and complain.

Fucking people.

The Mexicans, who were furiously sweeping the tar flat, looked over at him. They liked working with him because he took a lot of breaks. The oldest one, Jorge, who could speak good English, came over and bummed a cigarette.

“You like party?” he asked Mitch.

“Do I like to party? I think so. What exactly do you mean? ‘Party’ means different things to different people.”

“No. You like to go to party?” Jorge made dancing motions. “
Fiesta.
”

“Oh, fiesta. Yes, I like fiesta.”

“My wife birthday. We have a party tonight. You come?”

Well I’ll be damned. It had been a while since anyone had asked him to a party. His social calendar had been a blank slate for the last few years. Why yes, he decided, a party would be just excellent. He nodded enthusiastically at Jorge.

When a man is waiting for the statute of limitations to expire, Mitch thought, a man ought to enjoy himself.

WHEN HE FIRST got to the party, Mitch was overwhelmed by feelings of nostalgia and loss. He sat in the corner while samba music blared and thought morosely of better times. He remembered hanging out with Doug at the community-college parties they had crashed, laughing at the host’s lame CD collection, trying to spot the slutty girls with the hearts of gold whom they both openly yearned for, hoping they might take them somewhere to enjoy the White Widow that was reeking in his pocket. Now Doug was in a cage and Mitch was fresh out of English-speaking friends, a foreigner in his own country.

There were plenty of girls here, as Jorge had promised him. But as far as Mitch could tell, none of them spoke English, and on the few occasions they made eye contact with him, Mitch sensed suspicion rather than the hot-blooded Latino lust he had been hoping for. He had the vague feeling that before his arrival, his attendance had been discussed, and he imagined Jorge announcing to the crowd that a white guy was coming, and they all had to be nice. This paranoid thought, combined with the language barrier, was what was giving him his first pangs of homesickness for Wilton.

“Meesh,” Jorge yelled jovially, slapping him on the shoulder with a huge grin. “You have fun?”

Mitch had been studying some family photos on the living room mantel with far more attention than they deserved, as if he were so engrossed by the fading photo of an elderly Mexican woman that he had become unaware of the dancing and drinking all around him. As he turned to face Jorge, he got a face full of hot, tequila-laden breath

“Yeah, man,” he said, holding up a bottle of beer, as if that were all that was required for a good time.

“Come meet my uncle. He want to talk to you.”

An uncle? Mitch had been hoping for an introduction to a niece or a sister, but even an uncle was preferable to staring at more pictures of Granny. He nodded and followed Jorge through the house, past amorous dancing couples and chatting housewives, their eyes glazed over with an early evening buzz, their voices louder than usual. Some of the children turned to look at the gringo, but to the adults he was simply invisible. Outside of this house, in the streets of America, he knew, it was the other way around.

Jorge took him out into the yard, which was a few square feet of weeds and dirt with a small garage at the back with an unpainted, broken door. Jorge pushed the door open with a great deal of effort and they stepped inside. The gathering here was all men and the atmosphere was very different from the festivities and dancing going on in the house. Four young men, tattooed and aggressive-looking, were sitting around the garage on buckets and rusted metal chairs, and they stared hard at Mitch with what he felt was deep suspicion. Mitch tried to hide his unease by nodding cheerfully to everyone. No one returned his greeting.

An older man with a potbelly was sitting on a torn green vinyl couch. He stood up as Jorge closed the door behind him and unsmilingly offered Mitch his hand. “I am Armando, Jorge’s uncle. You are Meesh?”

“Yeah, hi,” Mitch said. Maybe is was just unpronounceable for these guys.
Meesh
would do fine.

“Jorge tells me you know banks.”

Whaaaaat? Mitch hoped his reaction didn’t show and he exhaled slowly, trying to preserve his cool. He looked quizzically at Jorge, who was looking down at his shoes. How . . . who? As long as he had been in Cleveland, he hadn’t mentioned a word of anything to anyone.

His shock and confusion must have been visible to Armando, because he broke into a smile, and even one of the brutal-looking tattooed young men sitting on a bucket allowed himself a flicker of amusement.

“Banks?” asked Mitch. He wanted more information before he told them anything. How had they come to this conclusion? Was his picture in the post office? He had figured that his little crime, for what it was worth, had been swept into the morass of the decaying social fabric, forgotten with yesterday’s news cycle. His current life had depended on this. How had they found out?

“Come on,” Armando said cheerfully. “Who wants to spread tar with Mexicans except a guy who’s wanted? I can tell you don’t rob liquor stores or bodegas. You’re smart. You go where the money is. You do banks.”

This logic confused Mitch. Apparently, all the time he had thought he was invisible, they had been sizing him up. He had thought his guy-who-just-got laid-off routine was working like a charm. He shook his head. “No,” he said.

There was a moment’s silence in the garage while they looked at him, disappointed either in his refusal to come clean or their own error of judgment. Mitch cleared his throat. “Armored cars,” he said finally.

“Ah hah!” roared Armando and the young men sitting around also laughed. Mitch had the feeling he was on stage and giving a killer performance. He smiled sheepishly, unused to the attention.

Armando pushed forward an overturned bucket and motioned for Mitch to sit. His demeanor was suddenly serious. Everyone had their own version of the embattled paratroop commander. “So what do you know about security systems?”

“Security systems?” Mitch shook his head. “Not much.” He sensed that he might lose the crowd with this confession and that a full explanation of his crime would provide more amusement than respect. But he wasn’t sure. Wasn’t there an element of learning to all crime? He had, after all, successfully robbed an armored car. He doubted anyone else in the room could say that.

“I don’t know anything about all that technical shit,” Mitch said. “I just know that a security system is only as good as the people who respond to it.” He sat down on the bucket and pulled it up next to Armando, surprised by his own intensity. He was realizing that he did have knowledge, and a work philosophy, and experience, all the things he had faked at Accu-mart. “It’s all about efficiency, about timing. If you can do what you have to do and get back in your car in ninety seconds, the security system doesn’t matter.”

He looked around the garage and saw expressions he wasn’t used to. Respect. People were actually interested in what he had to say. He knew enough to stop talking and sat back on his bucket, waiting for a response from one of the others.

There was a moment of silence while looks were exchanged. Then one of the tattooed men in a white T-shirt pulled his bucket up next to Mitch and glanced at Armando, as if to give approval.

“We have this thing we’re working on,” said Armando, leaning forward, his voice low to accent the gravity of his disclosure. “You might be interested?”

Mitch leaned in too, keeping his own voice low. “Yes. I might be.”