How to Rob an Armored Car (16 page)

One of Doug’s three superpowers, in addition to being able to identify and recite the effects of any pill and being able to name the performer of any rock song from the 70s to the 90s, was an ability to tinker with things and get them running. Once they got the car running, they would slap the old Nevada license plate on it and park it in the street across from the bank and wait, hoping that no cops showed an interest in the plate. There was, they decided, no other way but to take that small chance. It was Mitch’s job, each time he walked Ramone, to monitor the police activity in the neighborhood, to make sure that the chance that some cops would drive by and notice their illegal plate was minimal.

When the armored car showed up, Mitch and Doug would simply push the old guard aside, grab the money, leap into the getaway car, and drive a mile and quarter to an old access road. There, Kevin’s truck would be parked. They would remove the old Nevada plate, roll the junker car into a ravine, and drive back to Wilton with the money.

As the Great Plan would take place in broad daylight, it depended on the element of surprise. There would be witnesses, so ski masks were a must, but as long as there were no police, everything would go smoothly. They would buy a Taser, they decided, so they could “subdue” the guards if any problems arose. But definitely only as a last resort. Mitch liked the word
subdue.

It had been discussed as much as their pot-soaked brains could handle, and finally the energy the subject inspired had petered out, and they had stretched out on the sofas and begun discussing the décor.

“Man, every time someone moves out of an apartment, they paint the place,” said Kevin. “The security deposit is just for shit like holes in the wall or destroyed carpet.”

“I’m just saying,” Mitch said. “We should keep the place looking decent. I mean, look up there.” He pointed lazily to a gray patch next to the light fixture, and Doug and Kevin dutifully looked but said nothing, frustrating him more.

Despite having neither a great respect for authority nor much interest in paying his bills, Mitch had a genuine respect for landlords which went beyond fear of eviction. His father had, during a slow season in the Smoke-Eeter selling business, tried his hand at property management, and Mitch remembered his tales of horror about how badly people treated rental property. He would come home and relate how some tenants had ground dog shit into a carpet rather than clean it up, because they knew they were moving out soon, or just bailed out on their tenancy and left a refrigerator full of rotting food. So in his efforts to be the perfect tenant, Mitch demonstrated a passive obedience to his landlord, an agreeableness he showed to no one else. And he took abuse for it.

“I think Mitch has a crush on the landlord,” Doug said.

“Are you gay for the landlord, Mitch?” Kevin asked.

“I think that’s why we stole the TV for him from Accu-mart. Because Mitch wants some landlord dick.”

“Will you guys shut the fuck up? Seriously. I mean look at these walls, man. They were white when we moved in.”

“
Mitch wants the landlord,
” Doug sang merrily.

“Fine,” Mitch snapped. “Let’s just leave the place a mess.

Hey, why don’t we just . . .” He paused as the marijuana temporarily interrupted his thought processes, then finished a moment later without any of the intensity. “Burn the place down,” he said and yawned.

Time passed. How much was hard to say because everyone was stoned, but long after Mitch thought the subject was forgotten, Doug finally said, “I think you’re right. We should paint the place. After we rob the armored car.”

“It’ll look a lot nicer,” Mitch said. “You’ll appreciate it.”

“And we can get some new furniture,” Doug added.

“What’re you guys, interior decorators? I thought we agreed not to spend any of the money on anything but necessities for sixth months.” Kevin sat up straight and looked at them both. “That’s the plan, right? We have to stick to that. We just sit on the money for six months.”

“Yeah, man,” Doug said, nodding to placate him. “It’s cool. I meant six months after we rob the armored car.”

“No you didn’t. We gotta be serious about this.”

“We’re serious, man.”

“Because everyone in town is going to be looking for three guys who are suddenly acting like millionaires,” Kevin said. He, too, began to lose intensity and he slumped back down on the couch.

“It’s cool,” said Mitch. “No spending money on anything but necessities for six months. That’s the deal.”

“That’s the deal,” Doug said.

“Bullshit,” Kevin sighed. “I’m gonna come over a week after the robbery, and there’ll be, like, a construction company putting a swimming pool in the backyard, and there’ll be two Ferraris in the driveway. I know you guys, man.”

“Definitely not a Ferrari,” Mitch said. Then he adopted a British accent and added, “Frankly Douglas, I wasn’t that impressed with the Ferrari, were you?”

“Decidedly not, Mitchell. I do think perhaps a Rolls-Royce though. That would be splendid.”

“And a butler. We must hire a butler.”

“Oh, we just must.”

“You two are fuckheads,” said Kevin, standing up, shaking his head slightly to get the cobwebs of dope and relaxation off his brain. “I gotta get home. Linda’s gonna be wondering where I am.”

“Later,” Doug said. “I’ll see if I can drum up some interest in those pills.”

“Hey,” Kevin said. “I have an idea.” Then he paused for long enough that Mitch and Doug both figured the idea had disappeared into the marijuana wasteland and he would just turn to leave. But he continued. “You guys do that British accent thing pretty well.”

“Yeah. So? What’s the idea?”said Mitch.

“Well, when we rob the armored car, man, we should all wear ski masks and talk with British accents. You know, like . . . uh . . . the guys in
Reservoir Dogs.
Remember, they were all calling each other Mr. Pink and Mr. Green? Well, we’ll talk with British accents.”

“Cool,” said Doug.

“Splendid,” agreed Mitch.

“All right, I’m outta here,” Kevin said, turning to go.

“Cheerio, then,” said Mitch.

“Ta-ta,” said Doug.

9

CHAPTER

L
IKE ALL GREAT plans, the Great Plan required an initial down payment. Cars, even junk cars, weren’t free. Neither, for that matter, were Tasers and ski masks. The money was to be acquired by Doug, who would be selling pills. When he heard this, Doug reminded Mitch and Kevin that pill-selling could be quite a profitable enterprise and that the original plan had been for Doug to keep all the money, as he was taking all the risk. Therefore, the pill-selling money was technically his and should be repaid upon receipt of the huge bags of bills. As Mitch and Kevin figured Doug’s total input would be in the neighborhood of five hundred dollars, and the take from the robbery would be in excess of a million, they put up no argument. Doug didn’t seem to understand that when they were splitting up a million dollars these distinctions wouldn’t matter so much. So they surrendered the point and agreed that Doug would first take out his five hundred, and then they would split up the million.

But Doug began having trouble right away. He had put word out that he had pills the day Kevin had told him of them, but still, six days later, no phone calls. Even the cooks from the restaurant, who used to come in hungover every morning and loudly proclaim a wish for pain pills, had not called. Perhaps they had prioritized their expenses and found that, after being laid off, there simply wasn’t enough money around to pay for a pain-pill addiction. Doug decided he needed to find a richer clientele.

He called Mitch’s cell phone. “Dude, we gotta go to a fancy club or something,” he said when Mitch answered.

“Why?” Mitch was walking Ramone, keeping a close eye out for the police. He had been cheered to see that they didn’t seem to be around.

“I need to get rid of these pills. Man, we can make hundreds of dollars a night and really get this thing moving.”

“I’m not going to a club, man. Those places suck. They closed all the clubs in Wilton anyway.”

“We might have to go someplace else. Out of town.”

Mitch rolled his eyes, imagining Doug coming up with this idea as a convoluted way to get him to drive for an hour to see one of those shitty bands he liked so much. “Dude, just talk to some people around here. I’m not going to a club. No way.”

Holding the phone to his ear with a raised shoulder while watching a muted TV, Doug could hear Mitch rolling his eyes. Mitch didn’t get bands like Left Outlet and Portishead, and Doug secretly thought it was because Mitch was insensitive, even deaf to some of the world’s more obvious vibes. He rolled his eyes in turn and wondered about Mitch’s value system, whereby it was OK to Taser a seventy-year-old man but in no way was it OK to visit a dance club.

“Dude, I’ve asked, like, everyone I know. Nobody can afford pills.”

“All right then,” said Mitch, adopting his commando persona. “But we’re gonna have to sell
some
pills so we have money to go to a club.”

“I can’t sell
any
pills, man.”

“Are you sure we’ll be able to sell them at a nightclub?”

“Better bet than around here.”

“All right, man. I’ll put it on my credit card.” They said goodbye, and it began to snow as Mitch walked Ramone back to the house. Dammit, the last thing he wanted was to run up more debt, especially at a freakin’ dance club.

Nobody but Guidos and losers with gold chains around their necks went to those places, bathed in cologne and perfume, reciting hackneyed pickup lines to each other.

Mitch hadn’t been out to a bar for any reason other than to watch a Steelers game in years, and the last time he had been to a dance club he had felt like he was watching a Discovery Channel nature special on mating rituals. Doug, he knew, was a music lover and wasn’t opposed to dancing, and he had the vague feeling that Doug was just trying to get a financed night out of the house. Fine, if that was how he wanted to play it, Mitch would make him drink water at the bar. While he sipped martinis, which he didn’t even like.Yeah, he’d see how Doug liked that.

Then it occurred to him that he had been walking all over Westlake for half an hour and had not seen a single police car, and he suddenly knew that this thing, if done right, was going to net them some serious cash. Hell, maybe Doug really did need to go to a club to sell those damned pills. When it came to the retail of contraband materials, he seemed to know what he was doing. And he was one of the team. Mitch decided that Doug could have a martini too.

THE NEAREST CLUB that was worth going to was all the way down near Pittsburgh, an hour’s drive away over winding country roads and then a brief stretch of interstate. Mitch noticed the roads getting wider as they got closer to the city and he had a sudden urge to stay, to find work here, to never go back. As he merged onto Interstate 79, he saw the same endless rows of buildings and parking lots and fences that you found in any Pennsylvania town, but here they had an air of victory about them, as if they had triumphed over the landscape. In Wilton, it seemed like nature was always fighting back, and winning. Raised in Queens, Mitch always had the feeling that the endless walls of trees which lined the roads outside Wilton were plotting to retake the town, to evict the environmentally irresponsible inhabitants and grow back over the land that they had been cleared from by the original developers of the town. Here, though, in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, it was obvious that the trees had given up.

“It’s ugly,” Doug said, looking at the night landscape, a sprawling view of strip malls and carpet outlets illuminated by the yellow glare of streetlights. Mitch had been thinking just the opposite. It pulsed with energy, figuratively and literally. Wires and transformers and relay boxes and traffic lights and cell phone towers, every one of them representing a job, a person needed to maintain it, an opportunity. There were
things to do
here. Why would anyone want to go back?

“After we get the money, let’s move to Pittsburgh,” Mitch said.

“No way, man,” said Doug, and even as he was saying the words, Mitch became aware of a gulf between them and knew that this, more than anything, was the reason they would likely one day stop being friends. Doug had grown up in Wilton and liked the familiarity, and even though he frequently spoke of leaving, Mitch often noticed he had no real interest in the rest of the world, or even the rest of the country. He would travel to another city to see a Phish show, but not to see the city itself. He would talk of relocating to places like Aspen or Monterrey or any place with cliffs and girls in bikinis that he saw on the Travel Channel, sometimes with great enthusiasm. But the enthusiasm would quickly fizzle, and then he would hunker down and stare out the window at the warm glow of the metal-refinishing plant. It was an issue they had discussed only in the most superficial way, but it represented a difference between them that was beyond compromise.

“Tree-fucking hippie,” said Mitch.

“Sorry, I don’t like soot and trash and grime,” said Doug, referring to big cities, apparently unaware that he was also giving a fairly accurate description of Wilton.

He must look around Wilton with rose-colored glasses, Mitch thought. To Doug, it was home sweet home, but the thought of going back there empty-handed tonight gave Mitch a stab of anxiety.

To quell it, he asked, “You really think we can sell a box of pills to strangers?”

“There’s no telling,” said Doug, not providing the words of comfort Mitch was looking for. “Selling anything is a crapshoot.”

“But you think there’s a possibility?”

“Of course, man. I wouldn’t have suggested this if there wasn’t a possibility.”

Mitch nodded. Doug had what Mitch considered a rare social gift, a genuine enthusiasm for meeting people. When they went to parties or concerts, Doug would often disappear with random people he met and be found hours later, having had soul-searching conversations with strangers which he would claim had enlightened him somehow. And before Kevin had been busted, Doug had managed to parlay this openness with strangers into a thousand-dollar-a-week business. Since it had been so long since Mitch had seen Doug using his gifts, he had forgotten there was a creature with insight and energy inside the stoned blob of protoplasm who now spent his days on the couch, a remote control in hand.

The club was exactly the kind of place Mitch dreaded: a neon-lit, garish, New York City–wannabe dance club, where the crème de la crème of Pittsburgh’s northern suburbs could buy eight-dollar drinks and spend the evening pretending they were Eurotrash. Mitch groaned as he pulled into the parking lot and saw two Italian men in silk shirts opened to the navel going in the front door.

“Aw, come one, man. This is the best place you could think of? Look at those guys. I don’t wanna go in there.”

“We’re here to sell pills, right?”

“Yeah, but . . .” Mitch sputtered. “This is Guidoville. Isn’t there, like, a country bar or something around here?”

“Since when do you like country music?”

Mitch groaned again and banged his head on the steering wheel. Doug knew how he felt about dance clubs; they had discussed it a number of times and never reached agreement. Dance clubs were supposed to facilitate meeting women, but for Mitch they did just the opposite. He was good at conversation and bad at dancing, and the loud music in the clubs robbed him of his weapon. These clubs, he felt, gave the advantage to dumb people who couldn’t carry on a conversation about anything except shopping but who looked good gyrating.

“Man, you just gotta chill out,” Doug said. “We’ll have a good time.”

“This is a sacrifice,” Mitch said. “I’m sacrificing here. I’m taking one for the team.”

As he parked, two women in tight miniskirts and high heels walked past the car. Mitch watched, open-mouthed, as they went in the door, suddenly aware of how long it had been since he had seen a real, live, attractive woman in the flesh. He
had
to get out of Wilton. “Shit, man, who knows?” he said, suddenly cheerful, eyes riveted to the marching asses. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

INSIDE, THE CLUB was exactly what Mitch had expected. Thumping, raging sound—he hesitated to call it music— filled every inch of the place like dirty floodwater, and there wasn’t enough square footage to accommodate all the patrons, a situation that apparently made the business “happening.” People crushed together was the club owner’s dream, but to Mitch it looked like a fire marshal’s nightmare.

“This place sucks,” he told Doug conversationally, who nodded, unaware of what had just been said. Doug made the motion for drinking and pointed Mitch toward the bar. Then, with the calculating gaze of a sniper, he surveyed the terrain, looking for people who appeared to want pills.

And he found them. He grabbed Mitch’s arm to make sure he had his attention and pointed to two guys standing by a rail. They were holding beers but didn’t seem interested in the women or the dancing, and they were scanning the crowd with the same sniper intensity that Doug had just displayed. One of them was bald-headed and muscular, wearing a tight T-shirt, and looked more like a bouncer than a patron. The other was just a normal-looking guy, perhaps a bit underdressed, like Doug and Mitch.

Mitch would never have noticed them. Doug pointed to them and nodded, then pointed to the bar again, instructing Mitch to go and buy beers. Mitch began to push his way through the crowd, feeling the driving beat from the speakers vibrate in his gut. He hadn’t had this much fun since he had been stuffed in the back of an armored personnel carrier in the army, bodies pressed against him, the rifles and entrenching tools of the other soldiers poking him everywhere, comfort impossible. The endless monotony of the beat reminded him of the thumping of the APC’s engine. All that was missing was the diesel fumes coming up from the floorboards. People paid a cover charge for this, he thought.

The crowd at the bar was three deep and customers were holding their money high to get the bartenders’ attention. Mitch was wondering how long it would take him to run out to the parking lot, drive to a beer distributor, and get a beer there, and considering whether or not that would be a time-saving alternative when Doug tapped him on the shoulder. He had the two guys with him. Doug motioned that they should go outside, which was cool with Mitch.