The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (19 page)

“No plans.”

“You don’t choose your victims in advance?”

“Not usually. I just wander around until something comes to me,” said the Bandit. “Say, man, you don’t have any enemies, do you?”

“It seems like all I have are enemies.”

“I mean real enemies. Anyone you want to screw over.”

Arnold sensed where the conversation was headed—and he liked it.

“You ever heard of the Reverend Spotty Spitford?”

“They guy with the sunglasses?” asked the Bandit. “The one who’s got the thing against nudists.”

“That would be him. He’s not too big on terrorists either.”

“I’d love to toy with Spitford, man,” said the Bandit.
“Add one of his Brooks Brothers suits to my collection… But we’re not going to.”

The lunatic’s words surprised and disappointed Arnold.

“Why not?” demanded the botanist. “He’s an asshole.”

“No argument from me,” said the Bandit. “But he’s a famous asshole. A very famous one, especially now that he’s leading the crusade against the Tongue Terrorist. I’ve got a rule against going near big-name celebrities…You can screw with ordinary people all you want to, even prominent upper-middle class folks, and the authorities come after you with one arm tied behind their backs, but the minute you mess with some hotshot athlete or movie star or politician, it’s kiss your ass goodbye. Sorry, man, but I’m not getting sent down to settle your score with Spitford.”

“I knew it was too much to hope for,” said Arnold.

“Anybody else on your hit list?”

Lots of people, thought Arnold. Dozens. Hundreds. Not to mention a few individuals he felt genuinely conflicted about—like Cassandra and Gilbert Card. “I have this neighbour of mine,” he said. “Ex-neighbour, I guess. Ira Taylor. A real prick.”

“You want to dish out a little payback?” asked the Bandit.

“Sure,” said Arnold. “Why not?”

Of course there were a thousand reasons why not.
Because it was illegal, for starters. And because he’d be working side-by-side with a madman. But all of that seemed small potatoes when compared with the prospect of humiliating the bond trader.

“I like the sound of that,” said the Bandit. “Maybe you are sociopathic.”

He clearly meant this as a compliment. “Thank you,” said Arnold.

The Bandit rummaged through one of the garment racks. “Let’s get you some clothes.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“Nothing, if you’re a fugitive botanist,” said the Bandit. “But any successful racket has to have a distinctive M.O.” He stepped from behind a pile of angora sweaters, holding a long grey mackintosh. “Here, try this on.”

Arnold put on the coat.

“Not like that, man,” said the Bandit. “Take your clothes off and
then
put it on.”

Arnold had little choice but to comply. He hadn’t undressed in the company of another man in many years—possibly since junior high school—and he found the process of removing his clothing in front of the Bandit utterly mortifying, particularly because the man made no effort to look away. In fact, he watched closely as the botanist undressed. Arnold was beginning to sense what the lunatic’s victims must have experienced. Wearing only the long coat, he felt like a flasher. If he could somehow get
hold of a horn, at least he might pass as Harpo Marx.

“There you go,” said the Bandit, pleased. “How does that feel?”

“Airy.”

“You’ll get used to it. Now all we need is to find you a weapon.”

“What if I don’t want a weapon?”

“Trust me, you’ll want a weapon,” said the Bandit. “Besides, it reduces the chance of violence….How are you with swordplay?”

“What do you mean?”

“Any experience fencing? Or in martial arts? Maybe kendo…?”

“What’s kendo?

“Okay, let’s skip the sword….”

“I like the sound of that,” said Arnold.

“If you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re much better off with a gun.”

“A gun—?!”

The Bandit didn’t answer directly. Instead, he dragged a large steamer trunk out from beneath one of his clothes racks. It contained an extensive assortment of pistols, rifles, shotguns and even a crossbow. “How about a .38 Smith & Wesson?” he offered, handing Arnold a jet black revolver. The lunatic might just as well have suggested a water pistol or an AK-47—Arnold wouldn’t have known the difference. “Watch the recoil on that,”
warned the Bandit.

“The what?”

“Jesus,” muttered the lunatic. “It jolts backwards when you fire.”

“I don’t intend to fire it,” answered Arnold.

He tucked the revolver into the holster that the Bandit provided. The weapon had Philadelphia Police Department engraved in the barrel.

“I’ve got to blindfold you again,” added the Bandit. “Nothing personal.”

He quickly secured a cloth rag around Arnold’s eyes.

“Ready to roll?” asked the Bandit.

“I guess,” answered Arnold. “But Ira Taylor lives all the way down in the West Village. Aren’t we going to look pretty damn conspicuous dressed like this.”

“Don’t worry,” responded his companion. “There’s a police station very close by here.

“That’s supposed to reassure me?”

“We’ll go by squad car, man. I do it all the time,” explained the Bandit. “You know how cops are. They leave their cars in front of the stationhouse day and night—with the engines running. They figure: Who the hell is going to be stupid enough to steal a police cruiser from in front of a stationhouse? Arrogant bastards. Besides, if you turn on the sirens, you can make damn good time….”

“You’re totally nuts.”

“Maybe. But it works.”

It sounded too easy to Arnold. “Don’t they have tracking devices in police cars these days?”

“You must think I’m a total moron, man. Of course they do. But the tech is newer than the cars themselves are, so it’s not built in. There are special boxes attached under the hoods,” explained the Bandit. “That makes it real simple. Before you borrow a car, you exchange the tracking box with the tracker on another cruiser. That confuses the hell out of them. By the time they figure out what you’ve done, you could have driven cross country.”

“You really have thought of everything,” said Arnold.

“More or less,” said the Bandit. “The best part is listening to the police on the radio in the cruiser. There’s nothing more fun than a bunch of confused cops searching for their own vehicle.”

They turned on the sirens and arrived downtown in record time. While they darted their way through late-night traffic, the police radio did broadcast a heated argument between two cops over whether their car had been stolen or merely misplaced. When the Bandit tired of this debate, he flipped off the radio and quizzed Arnold about the botanist’s animosity toward the bond trader. “I try to custom design my projects,” explained the Bandit. “In the army they called this a God-complex. But I don’t have the foggiest idea why. Does it seem to you like God custom
designs his projects?”

“I guess not,” said Arnold.

He was struck by the ease with which the Bandit relied on a personal vocabulary of euphemisms: not just ‘acquire’ and ‘projects’ and ‘calling,’ but also ‘beneficiary’ for victim and ‘comfortable’ for naked. If he were ever to give another media interview, Arnold decided, he intended to refer to the baseball game incident as his ‘project’ and the Yankees fans as ‘beneficiaries.’

“I’m the opposite of God,” said the Bandit. “God is careless.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Most people don’t. They assume that God has some sort of grand design. But He doesn’t, as far as I can tell,” said the lunatic. “That’s why I have to help Him out sometimes in the meting-out-justice department.”

The Bandit cruised down Ninth Avenue and then cut west on Seventh Street. As they approached Arnold’s own home, the familiar sites of the neighbourhood—the leafy branches of the linden trees, the brickwork advertising Goldstein’s Packaged Meats—sent a shiver down his back. “We’ll sneak up on him from behind,” explained the lunatic. “That way we’ll avoid the chaos outside your place.” But when they reached the block behind Arnold’s townhouse, that street was also lined with police and a handful of determined demonstrators. The protesters had brought along aluminium lawn chairs and pup tents.
The authorities must have discovered Arnold’s ladder trick—maybe Cassandra had given him away—and they were taking precautions to prevent him from sneaking back inside.

“What now?” demanded Arnold.

“Easy,” answered the Bandit. “We’ll have to go in through the opposite building.”

“Dressed like this?” asked the botanist.

“Just watch.”

The Bandit parked the car and opened the
wrought-iron
gate of the renaissance brownstone immediately behind Taylor’s. An unambitious row of pansies lined the short slate path leading up to the house. Garbage cans and recycling bins stood beside the bright-yellow Dutch doors; the brass knocker was shaped like an elephant. Arnold’s companion rang the bell and waited patiently.

They heard footsteps approaching. A
studious-looking
, sallow-skinned man in a cashmere pullover opened the door and examined the two of them suspiciously. “Yes?” he demanded. Arnold noticed that he wore a
flesh-coloured
hearing aide.

The Bandit reached into his jacket and produced a badge. “NYPD,” he barked. “We need access to your back yard.”

“Well, all right…” stammered the
sallow-skinned
man.

“We’re undercover,” explained the Bandit. “Backup
is on its way.”

“Is there a problem….?”

“You’re fine,” said the Bandit. “It’s your neighbour we’re after.”

“Oh, the tongue fellow—”

“No, not Brinkman. We’re after a man named Ira Taylor. You know him…?”

“Taylor….Taylor….I know the one. His son used to throw rubbish on my lawn. Until a couple of years ago. Then I paid the kid $100 and he stopped. Carrot always works better than the stick, as they say.”

The Bandit stepped past the home owner, and they crossed through a study into a kitchen. The air smelled of mildew and the appliances might easily have come from the set of a 1950s sitcom. Arnold followed the lunatic down the back stairs, through a garden of Bell peppers and
patty-pan
squash, and over a low retaining wall into the bond trader’s yard. It was immaculately tended and without so much as a gum-wrapper or cigarette butt. All grass, no clover. A large variety of tea roses blossomed beside the stockade fence. Arnold was still admiring the greenery, which included a series of topiary hedges cut to resemble human breasts, when the Bandit pounded on the back door of Taylor’s townhouse.

Taylor came to the door in his weekend casuals: a cambric shirt, beige khakis, penny loafers. “What the hell—?” He hadn’t unhooked the latch, but the Bandit
barrelled into the door and snapped the chair off the moulding. That sent the bond trader stumbling backwards, where he landed on his behind. The lunatic kept him pinned to the ground by levelling the saber at the man’s abdomen. Arnold followed the Bandit through the shattered door.

“You!” shouted Taylor when he spotted Arnold. “Mother-fucker!”

“Watch your language,” ordered the Bandit. “Is there anybody else home?”

“No….” spluttered Taylor. “They’re out on the Island already. I’ll be joining them in the morning.”

“I highly doubt that,” observed the Bandit. “But first things first. My friend Arnold here will need your clothing.”

“It’s in the bedroom. First door on the—”

The Bandit jabbed Taylor lightly. “What you’re wearing,” he clarified. “Stand up slowly and remove your clothes.”

“You have to be out of your mind if you think—”

Arnold’s companion jabbed him harder with the sword. He drew blood.

“Okay, okay,” said the bond trader. “Just let me up.”

He stripped out of the shirt and slacks. The Bandit slammed his sword against a seascape in the foyer, slashing the canvas in two, and Taylor quickly handed over his boxer shorts as well. “That’s an original Winslow Homer,” he said in alarm.

“Was an original Winslow Homer,” countered the lunatic. “Now it’s confetti.” He slashed the canvas several more times. “What do you say, Arnold? Shall we tar and feather him?”

“You’re the boss.”

“That’s right, I am,” agreed the Bandit. “Why don’t you put those clothes on, man, and then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

Arnold tossed the bond trader’s shirt over his shoulders. He was disappointed that the Bandit didn’t intend more damage. Taylor must have had the same thought, because he appeared somewhat relieved.

“You got a car?” asked the Bandit.

The naked bond trader stood with his arms folded across his muscular chest. His limbs were blanketed in curly auburn hair.

“I asked you a question,” shouted the Bandit. He held his saber above his right shoulder with both hands as though wielding a sledge hammer.

“In the garage. The Mercedes….Amelia took the Hummer to the Island.”

“Then let’s go for a drive,” said the Bandit.

“You want me to come with you?” Taylor asked incredulously. “Like this?”

“It’s an invitation I wouldn’t turn down if I were you.” The lunatic then walked around the ground floor of the apartment overturning furniture and slashing
paintings. A cabinet of figurines toppled onto the piano with a cacophonous reverberation. “Just so you don’t forget us, Ira,” the Bandit explained.

The victim—the beneficiary—endured the destruction stoically. He was either searching for an escape route or calculating his insurance payouts. Arnold continued changing into Taylor’s outfit. The clothes fit loosely.

“You ready?” the lunatic asked Arnold.

“Lead the way.”

“Let’s have our special guest lead the way,” countered the Bandit. He prodded the naked bond trader with his sword and they followed him down the basement steps into the two-car garage. Arnold’s companion ordered Taylor into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and instructed Arnold to sit up front as well. “If he makes any sudden moves,” urged the lunatic. “Pop him one.” The Bandit settled in behind Taylor with his saber resting on the driver’s scalp. He instructed his victim to pull onto the street.