New York City
Late 1999
It seemed like the last place on earth to me, this little Chinese restaurant on the ground floor of an eight-story building on 128th Street. The family who ran the place had a lease for the first floor only, and the top floors were supposedly locked up tight and scheduled for renovation by the owner at some undetermined point in the future. So naturally, those boards that were blocking the stairwell got taken down and a number of people ended up living upstairs. Extended members of the family first, the cousins and second cousins who came over to America to work ninety hours a week in the restaurant. Then the occasional outsider who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut, and who could pay the family a certain amount of money every month. In cash, of course.
I was passed along to the family, after the man who sold me my new identity passed me along to this other guy he knew, who in turn passed me along to somebody else. My room ended up being on the third floor. That was about as high as you wanted to go. Any higher and the heat from the first-floor kitchen wouldn’t quite get to you. Plus nobody had an extension cord that was long enough to reach to the fourth floor. So it was dark and freezing cold, and on top of that the rats had already claimed those floors as their own.
I hadn’t thought to change my appearance yet. That would come later. But I figured being officially on the run from the State of Michigan, a violator of my terms of probation, and having done my first real money job… No turning back now, right? Hence the New York driver’s license with the made-up name of William Michael Smith and the made-up age of twenty-one. I didn’t use it to get into bars, though. Believe me. I stayed inside as much as I could, because I was convinced that every police officer I saw was actively looking for me. Even in the middle of the night, when I’d hear a siren down on the street… I’d be convinced that they had finally found me.
It was getting colder every week. I stayed inside and I drew and I practiced on my portable safe lock. I ate the food from the restaurant that the Chinese family gave me. I paid them two hundred dollars a month cash to stay in the upstairs room they didn’t own, and to use the bathroom and shower in the back of the kitchen. I had one lamp that I had plugged into the extension cord. I had paper and art supplies. I still had my motorcycle bags with all of my clothes in them. I had my safe lock and my lock picks.
I had the pagers.
There were five of them, all in a beat-up shoebox. One pager with white tape on it, one with yellow, one with green, one with blue. Then the last with red tape. The Ghost had told me, if any of the first four pagers go off, you call the number on the little screen, you listen to what they say. They’ll know that you can’t speak in return. If they don’t seem to understand that, it’s a good sign that the wrong person is on the phone and that you should hang up. Assuming they’re on the level, you listen to what they say, and then you go to meet them at the location they indicate. If everything still feels right, you go do the job with them. You handle your business the right way and everybody wins. They’ll take care of you because they know if they don’t, you won’t be picking up that pager the next time they call.
They’ll also take care of sending the ten percent “usage fee” to the man in Detroit. Because they want to keep living.
That’s for the first four pagers. The last pager, the one with the red tape… that’s the man himself. The man in Detroit. You call the number right away. You do what the man says. You show up exactly where and when the man says to show up.
“This is the one man you do not fuck with.” The Ghost’s exact words. “You fuck with this man, you might as well go ahead and kill yourself. Save everybody the trouble.”
I knew the Ghost had been telling the truth. I had seen enough myself to know that this was the one piece of advice I should never forget. But what was I supposed to do while I was waiting for the next job? How long would I have to stay here, hiding out in this abandoned room above the Chinese restaurant on 128th Street, before somebody paged me and I got to make some money again?
Would I starve first? Would I freeze to death?
The Ghost never covered that part.
____________________
By the time Christmas rolled around, I was finally leaving the building once in a while. I’d go to a park a few blocks to the south and sit on one of the benches. I finally had to buy some new clothes. I wasn’t broke yet, mind you. I had been well paid for the job in Pennsylvania. Still, I could do the math and see where it was all headed.
To make matters a little worse, one of the men who worked in the restaurant told me I needed to help him if I wanted him to keep giving me food. He gave me a big stack of menus and told me to go to all of the buildings in the neighborhood, to get inside somehow, and to put one menu under each door. I knew that some of the buildings had a doorman at the entrance, and that at the other buildings you had to have somebody who lived there buzz you in. So I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to deliver the menus. I mean, I could have found the back doors on most of these buildings and picked the lock, but was that really worth it?
“You have nice fine face,” the man said. His English wasn’t quite up to speed yet. “People let you in.”
So I took my nice fine face and my stack of menus and I went to the buildings, one by one. I figured instead of hiding it, I’d come right out and let everybody know exactly what I was doing. Show them the menus, make like I was slipping one under a door. I’d throw in a little sign language once in a while, too. That seemed to help. I got into more buildings than not.
One day, when I was working my way down a long hallway, a door opened just as I was about to slide a menu under it. Before I could even stand up, I felt two hands on my shoulders. I was pushed backward against the far wall, so hard I lost my breath.
I looked up and saw the man’s face. It took me all the way back to that man who held up my uncle’s liquor store when I was nine years old. It was that same animal fear in his eyes. A horrible smell of unwashed clothes, urine, maybe that fear itself, it all washed over me. I kicked at his knees and he fell back away from me. Then he ran down the hallway. He slammed open the door and disappeared down the stairs.
I got up, rubbing my shoulders. When I looked through the open doorway, I saw the wreckage inside. The man had trashed the place, looking for anything of value. So he could buy more drugs. Or whatever it was he needed in his life so bad. I could see the refrigerator still open, even the food inside ransacked and ruined now. I closed the door to the apartment and left.
When I got back down to the street, I wrote the apartment number on the back of a menu and gave it to the doorman. Then I went back to the restaurant.
I went up to my room. I counted what was left of my money. I’m living on borrowed time here, I thought. How long until you turn into that man breaking into apartments?
It got colder and colder. The snow came down that night. White at first, but dirty by morning.
I woke up to hear one of the pagers beeping.
I met the men in a diner in the Bronx. A simple cab ride over the Hudson River. It was the yellow pager they had called me on. Now, I knew what the Ghost had said about the yellow pager. This was the general number that just about any knucklehead could use to reach me. Therefore proceed with extreme caution. But I was feeling especially motivated, shall we say. So on that cold afternoon I went into the diner and stood there for a few minutes until I got waved over to a booth in the back, right next to the kitchen doors. There were three men sitting there. One of them stood up, grabbed my right hand, and pulled me close to him for a halfway hug.
“You must be the kid,” he said to me. He was wearing a bright green New York Jets jacket and a gold chain. He had a close-cropped Caesar haircut that he probably spent too much time on. He had one of those razor-thin lines of stubble that ran perfectly along each side of his jaw, meeting in a little soul patch on his chin. You know, a white boy trying to look anything but white.
“These are my boys,” he said, gesturing to the other two. “Heckle and Jeckle.”
So at least he was saving me the trouble of thinking up nicknames. He slid back into the booth and made room for me.
“You want something to eat? We just ordered.” The thin little beard thing seemed to make his mouth look bigger somehow, and I’d come to find out he could never let a minute pass without saying something. Or many somethings. So right off the bat I nicknamed him Bigmouth. He called over the waitress, and she got a menu for me. I pointed to a hamburger.
“What, you don’t talk?” she said.
“That’s right,” Bigmouth said. “He don’t talk. You got a problem with that?”
She took my menu from me and walked away without another word.
“I heard about you,” he said when she was safely out of earshot. “You just did a little something with a friend of a friend of mine.”
That answered my first question, about how on the phone he had seemed to know I was in the city somewhere. I couldn’t help imagining a thousand more shady characters out there, all of them knowing my general location at all times.
“I mean, damn,” he said. “I heard you were young-looking, but God damn.”
Heckle and Jeckle weren’t saying anything. They had milkshakes in front of them, one chocolate and one vanilla it looked like, and they were content to suck on their straws and nod their heads at everything Bigmouth said.
“So here’s the basic situation,” he said, lowering his voice. “We’ve got this buddy of ours…”
He’s actually doing this right here, I thought. He’s laying out the whole plan in a diner.
“He works at this bar uptown. They’ve got this fancy room upstairs for parties and big events and stuff. So couple weeks ago, they got this Christmas party going on. Bunch of Jewish guys from the diamond district. Wait a minute, did I just say a bunch of Jewish guys were having a Christmas party?”
Heckle and Jeckle spit up their milkshakes over that one. That’s exactly when I should have got up and walked out.
“A holiday party, I mean! A Hanukkah party, whatever. Anyway, they’re having this party, and this one guy, he gets totally lit up, right? I mean, he’s just falling down drunk. And my buddy, he’s helping the other guys carry him down to the street, so they can call a cab for this guy. They get him down to the coat check room, and they sit him down there, you know, so they can find his coat and everything. My buddy goes off to find it, and when he’s gone, this drunk guy gets talking to his friends. Nobody else is around, right? They’re just having this private conversation. And this drunk guy, he’s saying about how he’s got all of these diamonds stashed away at his house in Connecticut. Like a million dollars’ worth, all in a safe. And this guy’s friends are like, watch what you’re saying, man. You can’t go around talking like that or the wrong person will hear you. You know? And the drunk guy’s going, oh, you guys have been in business with me for years, I’d trust you with my life. That whole thing. Only the whole time they’re having this conversation, my buddy’s right around the corner there in the coat check room, and he can hear every single fucking word they’re saying!”
The waitress came back with the food just then, so Bigmouth hushed up until she walked away. Then he finished his story while we were eating. Bottom line, his friend looked up the man’s name on the invitation list, then found out where his house was in Connecticut. It was just over the state border, in Greenwich. When the friend called the man’s place of business, they told him that the man was down in Florida until after the new year.
So lo and behold, these guys were going to break into the house and steal that million-dollar stash of diamonds. With my help, of course. Then Heckle and Jeckle would finally get to do their part in this whole deal, by turning those diamonds into cold hard cash. They both had connections in the jewelry business, I was assured, and they’d be able to move them even if they had laser-inscribed identification numbers.
Now, I had already gotten my bad feeling about these guys the first second I saw them, and everything that happened next just made me feel even more uneasy. I remembered what the Ghost had said about this kind of situation, how I should just get up and walk away if my gut told me to.
But hell. I needed to make some more money eventually, right? They were talking about a big score, and they seemed to have everything covered.
So I got in the car with them. Okay? I got in the car.
Bigmouth was driving. Heckle and Jeckle were in the back. I had shotgun for once in my life. “The seat of honor,” Bigmouth said as he opened the door for me, making a big deal out of it. “For the man of the hour.”
It was New Year’s Eve. Did I mention that yet? We were riding up to this man’s house on New Year’s Eve.
“My buddy lives in New Rochelle,” Bigmouth said. “We’ll pick him up on the way. It’ll be just the five of us. That sounds about right, eh?”
He looked over at me. He was driving fast on I-95, heading straight to Connecticut. Like a lot of New Yorkers, I figured, he didn’t drive more than once a month, and it showed.
“So this is what you do, eh? You’re a safecracker? I mean, that is so fantastic. How’d you ever get started doing that?”
I shrugged. I didn’t figure he’d know any sign language.
“Hot damn, you really don’t say one fucking word. Ever! That is so fucking cool, isn’t it, guys?”
Heckle and Jeckle both agreed that it was fucking cool.
“You’re like a silent assassin. Except you assassinate safes instead of people, right?”
The Ghost was right, I thought. You walk away. No matter how big the score seems to be, if it doesn’t feel right, you turn around right then and there and you walk away.
“Besides, what’s this guy doing with all those diamonds in his house, anyway? Am I crazy here? Isn’t he just asking somebody to come take them?”
But how do I do that now? I can’t tell him to stop the car, tell him to leave me here by the side of the road.
“I mean, just the sheer stupidity of this guy, right? Actually talking about it in public? Are you kidding me? We need to do this just on general principle, wouldn’t you say?”
More nodding in the backseat. I looked out my window as we whizzed by every car in the right lane.
It didn’t take us more than a half hour to hit New Rochelle. We rolled up to a little house not far from the Long Island Sound. Bigmouth’s buddy came out and squeezed into the back with Heckle and Jeckle. He reminded me of half the football players back at Milford High School. Big in a white middle-class kind of way, strong as an ox, but probably just as slow on his feet.
“This is the kid,” Bigmouth said to him. “Shake his hand.”
The Ox put his right hand over the back of the seat and squeezed mine. “Fucking kid is right. Are you sure you can do this?”
“He don’t talk,” Bigmouth said. “He just opens safes. That’s all he does.”
We got back on the expressway. Through Mamaroneck and Harrison, past a dozen golf courses all closed up for the winter. To the Connecticut state line.
“So here’s the deal,” the Ox said. “The safe is right in the guy’s office. On the first floor. There’s a window there that’s already open and waiting for us.”
“Vinnie did a little advance work on this,” Bigmouth said, actually dropping his friend’s name. “What he did was, he went to the guy’s house and tried a couple of the windows, until he found one that was open, right? He opens it and then he runs away. And he waits. Does the alarm go off? Do the cops come? He waits and he waits. Nobody comes. So he goes back, throws like what, a big rock through the open window?”
“A branch,” the Ox said.
“A branch, okay. He throws a big branch in there, in case they’ve got one of those motion sensor things, right? He runs away again, he hides. He watches for somebody to come. Nobody comes. So he goes back again! He climbs right in the window, right? Walks around, I don’t know, does jumping jacks. Climbs back out, runs away, and hides. Nobody comes.”
“So then I finally know the alarm system isn’t on,” the Ox said. “So I go in and look around the place. First painting I see on the wall, right there in the office… Bam! I lift it up and there’s the safe.”
“It’s right there waiting for us,” Bigmouth said. “We go and we get it. Happy New Year.”
“I think I get a little bigger share, too,” the Ox said. “I mean, all the advance work I did? Putting my neck on the line, crawling into the house? Not to mention the fact that this guy was my lead to begin with.”
I tuned them out at that point. They wrangled over the shares while I ran down all the things that could go wrong. It actually sounded pretty simple. As long as everything the Ox was saying was true, we should be able to get in there, take the diamonds from the safe, and be back on the road in half an hour. Forty-five minutes tops. The only problem might be getting my share of the haul, but I figured what the hell. If I’m out, I know I get nothing. I was already getting nothing today. If I’m in, at least I’ve got a chance at seeing some big money.
Another half-baked idea, I know. The wrong way to think about it. I know!
We rolled over the border, into Connecticut. The house was only a few minutes farther. The more money you’ve got, I guess, the closer you can live to New York City, even if you’re in a different state.
The Ox directed Bigmouth to the house. It was a big brick Tudor-style mansion, on top of a long sloping lawn. We drove past it and turned about a half mile down, looping back to a playground that was just on the other side of the house’s backyard. I didn’t like the sight lines on the back of the house, but it was thirty degrees outside, the sun was going down, and the playground was totally deserted.
Bigmouth pulled off the street and turned the car off. We all sat there for a few minutes, waiting for somebody to say something.
“We’re actually gonna do this shit,” Bigmouth finally said. “Can you believe this?”
“Piece of cake,” the Ox said. “What are we waiting for?”
“You’re the expert,” Bigmouth said to me. “What do you think? Do we go now or do we wait a while?”
As if I hadn’t already known this was Amateur Hour. I shook my head and opened my door. Everyone else followed me. When we were outside, I put my hands up to stop them.
“What? What is it?”
I put one finger up. Then I pointed to my eyes, pretended I was looking around in every direction. Then I pointed to the steering wheel of the car and pounded on an imaginary horn.
“Somebody should stay here and be the lookout? Is that what you’re saying?”
I gave him the thumbs-up. Either Heckle or Jeckle got elected for that job. Then the rest of us were on our way to the house. We walked down the edge of the backyard. I kept looking around us, trying to find a potential problem. Everything looked clear.
When we got to the back of the house, I stopped everyone again and pointed to my eyes again. Whichever of Heckle or Jeckle was still with us got positioned on the corner of the house, where he could see up to the car in one direction and down to the street in the other. That left Bigmouth, the Ox, and me to go inside.
The Ox carefully raised the window he had left ajar. I was thinking maybe I should make us all wait again, but then I thought, hell, let’s just go for it here. Assume the dumb bastard did everything he said he did and the alarm system is really off. Why would a rich man go to Florida for the holidays and not turn his alarm on? Because like Bigmouth said, some people are just plain stupid and deserve everything that happens to them. That’s the one thing Bigmouth got right that day.
The Ox climbed into the window first, with about as much grace and delicacy as I would have expected. I went in next. Bigmouth came in behind us. We were already standing in the office. The Ox went right to the nearest painting on the opposite wall. A sailboat battling the waves, the usual high-class crap. He made a big show of putting one finger on the picture’s frame and lifting it from the wall. There was a safe there, all right, recessed a few inches into the wall’s surface.
“Do your thing,” Bigmouth said to me. “How long’s it gonna take, anyway?”
I went over to the safe. The Ox stepped aside. I could feel them both staring at my back now as I put my fingers on the dial. It was a brand I’d never seen before. Some European-sounding name. A tiny ray of doubt started to flicker in the back of my mind. What if this one was different from every other safe I’d ever opened before? I certainly didn’t know the tryout combinations, so I wouldn’t be able to try those first. Which was a shame, because a man who leaves his alarm system off is the same kind of man who’ll buy a safe and never change the combination.
But first things first. Try the handle, see if the damned thing is even locked. I put my hand on it, gave it a little twist. I didn’t really expect it to move. It’s just the thing you do first, to eliminate the possibility.
The handle moved.
I froze on the spot. In two seconds, I saw the whole thing unfolding in my head. When the Ox got in here the first time and found the safe, he didn’t even bother trying the handle. If I open the door right now and show them that it’s unlocked, they’ll know that they didn’t need me here at all. Hell, I didn’t even open the back door for them. We came in through the damned window.
So what’ll happen next? They’ll jump right in here, take the diamonds. They’ll take me back to New York, at least. I hope. Then they’ll dump me on the street corner and say, Thanks for nothing. Unless they’re honorable thieves, of course. Fat chance. Or unless they ever want to work with me again. Fat chance again. Like this isn’t a once in a lifetime thing for all of these guys.
I could feel that the bolts were already retracting into the door. One little pull and the door would be open. I slowly let the handle slide back. Then I turned and sneaked a look back at Bigmouth and the Ox.
“Is it a hard safe?” Bigmouth said. “Can you do it?”
I shook out my hands, worked my neck around like I was about to attempt the impossible. I pointed at my eyes, then out the room in one direction. At my eyes again, then in the other direction. You two guys get the hell out of here and keep watch.
They both seemed a little reluctant to leave, but I stood my ground. I didn’t move a muscle until both of them were gone. Then I let my breath out.
I went back to the safe and opened it. There was a black velvet bag inside. Like something out of a movie, exactly what you’d expect to see holding a million dollars’ worth of diamonds, right? With a little drawstring on top? It was perfect.
I opened the drawstring and looked inside. Twenty, maybe thirty glittering stones. Not quite as much as I would have expected, but what did I know about diamonds? I took a few of them out, thought about maybe keeping some for myself. Then I realized that was probably stupid. I’d never be able to do anything with them, and I’d just be reducing the overall take. So I closed up the drawstring and put the bag on the floor. Then I went back to the safe. I knew I needed to kill a few minutes, so I thought I might as well check out the locking mechanism. I spun the dial a few times, pretended that it was locked and tried to open it. I parked the dial, picked up three wheels. Pretty standard so far. I cleared the dial and started going through the numbers, feeling for the contact area. It seemed very well defined to me. When I got to the first short contact, it stood out immediately. This was not a hard safe. I was almost sorry that I didn’t get to crack it.
What the hell, I thought. At least I’ll know this now, if I ever see another one. In the meantime, no sense taking any longer than you have to. Let them think you’re really, really fast at doing this.
I wiped off the dial and closed the door. Then I replaced the picture on the wall. I left the room and found Bigmouth standing by the front door, looking out the little window. He almost jumped through the ceiling when I tapped him on the shoulder. He got over that when I handed him the bag.
“What? Are you kidding me? Did you open it already?”
He looked inside the bag. He seemed at a loss for words, maybe for the first time ever.
“Happy New Year,” he finally said. “Happy Fucking New Year.”
We collected everybody and got back in the car. I rode shotgun again. This time, when we got back on the expressway, I put my hand on Bigmouth’s arm and got him to ease up on the gas. Everybody was just a little bit too excited, and I didn’t want us all to get killed on the way back.
“He did it!” Bigmouth screamed, for the third or fourth time. “How long did that take, like four minutes? Five minutes? The kid is a fucking genius!”
“He’s ice,” the Ox said. “I gotta admit it now. I had my doubts at first, but this kid is a fucking ice cube.”
“Hey, I just thought of something.” Bigmouth took his eyes off the road to look at me. “When you were in there alone, you didn’t put any of those diamonds in your pocket, did you?”
“I could pat him down,” the Ox said. “You think?”
“No, no. I’m just saying. All he has to do is look me in the eye and tell me he didn’t put any of those diamonds in his pocket. Then we’re cool.”
The car went quiet. Everybody was staring at me. I put my hands up. Like what the hell, guys? What am I supposed to do here?
Then everybody started laughing. The moment passed. The radio came on. A bottle of schnapps got passed around. I declined. Bigmouth kept driving too fast, until I reminded him with my hand on his arm, again and again, to take it easy. We didn’t stop at New Rochelle to take the Ox home. He needed to be with his boys that night, to celebrate until the sun came up.
When we were back in the city, I pointed to the sign for the Hamilton Bridge. They seemed eager to do just about anything for me, so they went ahead and took me over the river and down to 128th Street, let me off across the street from the Chinese restaurant.
“You gotta move to a better neighborhood,” Bigmouth said as I got out of the car.
I had one last card to play that night. I figured what the hell, it might be the only thing I get out of this. I stood there on the sidewalk and pulled out both side pockets.
“Fucking A, why didn’t you say something?” Bigmouth got out his wallet, made everybody else in the car do the same. He collected together about three hundred dollars and gave it to me. That didn’t seem like quite enough to him, so he parked the car and he made everyone march right down to the bank on the corner.
“Whatever your fucking limit is,” he said. “You hear me? Your absolute max. It’s the least we can do for the kid.”
Between the four of them, they were able to withdraw another thousand dollars.
“That’s just an advance, kid. Wait till we unload those diamonds! I’ll be beeping you to pick up your share! I promise! As soon as we have the money, I’ll beep you!”
A few more hugs and handshakes and carrying on. Then they piled back into the car and took off down the street.
When they were out of sight, I crossed the street and went into the restaurant. I paid the family the two hundred dollars I owed them for the month. Then I went upstairs and celebrated New Year’s Eve in my empty room. I couldn’t help but think about my uncle. I wondered what he was doing, back in Michigan. Probably having a busy night, selling champagne.
I thought about Amelia. Of course.
Then I got out my paper and my pencils and I started drawing. I put my whole day on the page, panel by panel, playing the whole thing back for her. Showing her what I had been through. It was the thing I did almost every day, just for my own sanity, and for the small amount of hope it gave me. That maybe someday these pages would find their way to her. That she’d read them and that she’d understand why I had to leave her.
As I finished the last panel, I looked back over the whole thing and it seemed totally comical. The more I thought of it, the more I realized that I’d probably never hear from them again. I mean, they had no reason to contact me with my share of the money, right?
No more amateurs, I told myself. Never, ever again. Even though you did make thirteen hundred bucks today.
I went back to Amelia as I turned off my light, got in my sleeping bag on that cold dusty floor, and closed my eyes. I would have given anything to have her right there with me. For just one hour. I would have given my life for it.
Happy New Year to me.
The yellow pager woke me up the next morning. I went downstairs and used the pay phone. I dialed the number. It was the same number I had used the day before.
“Hey, kid,” Bigmouth said. “Hope I didn’t wake you. Is everything okay?”
I waited for him to realize he wouldn’t get an answer.
“Sorry, I’m kinda hungover. Not thinking straight. Anyway, can you come back to the diner? Soon as you can? We’ve got a little problem.”