The Bricklayer

A
S MICKEY STILLSON STARED AT THE GUN IN HIS HAND, HE ABSENTMINDEDLY
reached up and adjusted the fake ear that was his entire disguise and wondered how a born-again Christian like himself had wound up in the middle of a bank robbery.

A year earlier, he had been so certain of his religious con-version that when he went before the Illinois parole board, he let his inner peace sell itself. He asked its members to address him as Michael—a name that he felt emitted a soft, evangelical glow—because like Saul giving way to Paul, prison had been his personal road to Damascus. Confinement, he explained to the stony faces in front of him, had actually been his salvation. Without it, he would never have found God, the void that had sent his previous life tumbling end over end, resulting in a three-year-long incarceration for forgery.

He couldn’t help but wonder now if finding God hadn’t
in fact been strictly a means of survival. After all, his ear had been cut off by an inmate they called “Nam” the first week Mickey had been released into the prison’s general population, leaving little argument that surviving on his own would be difficult. Although Nam had never been in the military, Stillson’s was the third ear he had collected in as many years. No matter how thoroughly Nam’s cell was searched after each incident, the appendages were never found, giving rise, due largely to inmates’ need of fiction, to the rumor that he had devoured them in some sort of ritual he had become addicted to in Vietnam.

Within a month, Stillson had found God. As his wounds healed, he found the gnarled stump did have some benefit. While some men displayed tattoos or scars as warning to others, Stillson was missing an ear—an entire ear—which was something that even heavyweight champions couldn’t claim.

He pulled his hand away from the fake ear in disgust. Maybe he
was
just a jailhouse Christian, but none of that seemed to matter at the moment. He would have liked to believe that just committing an armed felony demanded that his faith be reevaluated, but he had to admit that the police officers who had surrounded the bank probably had something to do with it. He cursed himself for thinking he could ever be a real bank robber. Hell, he wasn’t even much of a forger.

He peeked outside, around the frame of one of the bank’s full-length front windows, to see if the police had moved any closer, but they were still the same distance away, lying with weapons at the ready across the trunks and hoods of their
cars, apparently waiting only for the slightest provocation. At a safe distance behind them were satellite dishes on top of the television news vans, ensuring this was going to play out to the end.

Greedy—that’s what he and his partner, John Ronson, had become. They hadn’t been satisfied with just robbing the tellers. Instead, they decided the take could be doubled, or even tripled, by “getting the vault.” It was Ronson’s idea; actually he had insisted on it. Stillson had deferred to him, since he was the expert, if a previous conviction and prison stretch for bank robbery could be considered know-how.

Nervously, Stillson reached up again and touched the artificial ear. Ronson had made him wear it. “Don’t you watch TV? The cops are lousy with technology since we went inside. All they got to do is check their computers for convicted felons with one ear and they got you. And once they got you—no offense, Mickey—they got me.” So they went to a costume shop and bought a half-dozen fake ears, trying, with minimal success, to match the color of Stillson’s skin. He also had to let his hair grow a little longer so when they tied the ear in place with clear fishing line, he could comb his hair over the almost invisible filament. Ronson thought the disguise looked good; Stillson was fairly certain he looked ridiculous.

Stillson stood on his tiptoes to look over the counter and into the vault, where Ronson was stuffing bundles of cash into an optimistically large hockey bag. Tall and extremely thin, Ronson had been released six months earlier from the state prison at Joliet, where he had been paroled after serving one-third of his twenty-year sentence for attempted murder
and the armed robbery of a bank. The deadly assault charge stemmed from shooting it out with the arresting detectives. He had surrendered only after running out of ammunition.

Stillson’s job during the robberies was to keep all the customers and employees covered while Ronson vaulted the counter and cleaned out the tellers’ drawers. This time, as Ronson was taking the time to force the manager to open the vault’s day gate, the first police car showed up in response to a silent alarm. At the moment, everyone was aware of the increasing potential for violence and was lying facedown obediently, trying not to be noticed.

“How are we going to get out of here?” Stillson yelled over the counter.

“One thing at a time,” Ronson shot back, and continued stuffing the bag with money.

“How can you think about the money?”

“Because if we get out of here, we’re going to need every dime of it.” After zipping up the bag, Ronson threw it ahead of him and vaulted back over the counter. He yanked an elderly woman to her feet.

“No, no, please don’t!”

“Shut up, you old broad. You’ve already lived long enough.” He pushed her toward the front door, and as they disappeared around a wall that separated the door’s alcove from the rest of the bank, he yelled back to Stillson, “Just keep everybody covered.”

Stillson couldn’t deny that he liked the control he had over everyone during the robberies. And for some reason, with the cops outside, that feeling was even more intense. To demonstrate his willingness to fully execute his partner’s
orders, he backed up a couple of steps and slowly swung his gun from side to side. That was when he noticed a man lying next to a watercooler. His gold-colored Carhartt work pants as well as his boots were covered with concrete dust. His faded black T-shirt clung to his thick shoulders and arms. He was the only one with his head raised, and he seemed to be watching the gunman with a mixture of curiosity and insolence.

The one-eared bank robber didn’t know it, but the man had been tracking and analyzing his movements, measuring his agility, the length of his stride, his reaction time. He judged Stillson as a man who had not built a career on physical prowess or intimidation. His only authority seemed to be the gun in his hand, which he was holding too tightly.

As the man continued to stare at Stillson, he admonished himself:
You don’t carry a gun anymore, stupid. Next time, you use the drive-through.

“What’re you looking at?” Stillson demanded.

The man’s mouth went crooked with a sneer as he silently mouthed words, causing Stillson to think he was having trouble hearing. He reached up and checked the rubber ear to make sure it wasn’t blocking the auditory canal. When he found it in place, he realized that the man had figured out it was fake and was taunting him. “Think that’s funny?”

The man spoke a little too loudly now. “I
said,
I’m watching you so I’ll get it right at the lineup.”

Stillson took two quick steps toward him, thrusting the black automatic forward, being careful not to get too close. “Are you nuts? You some sort of tough-guy construction worker? Is that it?”

“Bricklayer.”

“What?”

“I’m a brick mason,” the man said.

Stillson took another half step, raising the gun to eye level. “Well, meat, you’re about to undergo a career change. You can be either a floor kisser or a brain donor. Your call.”

The bricklayer slowly lowered his head.

Next time, meat, definitely the drive-through.

Shielded by the woman hostage, Ronson opened the front door enough to expose her and yelled a demand for the cops to leave and, even though he couldn’t see any, to clear out the snipers. Almost before he finished speaking, a loudspeaker ordered him to surrender. Ronson cocked his gun and pressed it against the side of the woman’s head. “You’ve got five minutes, and then I’m going to begin shooting people, starting with this old goat. Understand?”

Stillson couldn’t hear exactly what was being said and took a couple of steps back, trying to get a more advantageous angle to see and hear. Then he heard something he couldn’t immediately identify—a couple of deep liquid
glugs
.

The watercooler!

He swung his gun back toward the bricklayer, who was up off the floor and coming at him, just a couple of steps away. In front of him, he held the almost-full five-gallon water bottle sideways, pressed tightly between his hands to keep the water from escaping.

Stillson fired.

The bottle exploded, absorbing the impact of the bullet. It was all the time the man needed to close the distance
between himself and the robber. In a blur, he stepped sideways, minimizing himself as a target, and grabbed the barrel of the gun, twisting it outward in a move that seemed practiced. With Stillson’s wrist bent back to its limit and his finger being dislocated inside the trigger guard, the gun was easily ripped out of his hand. As the robber started flailing, the man used the weapon to strike him once in the temple cleanly, dazing him.

Then the bricklayer grabbed him and with relative ease hurled him through one of the bank’s full-length windows. Amid a shower of glass, Stillson skidded across the concrete and lay unconscious. Fluttering in the air and then landing on top of him was the rubber ear.

The bricklayer ran to the wall that separated the front door from the rest of the bank’s interior and flattened himself against it. The woman hostage was pushed around the corner of the alcove, followed by Ronson, who was screaming at Stillson, demanding to know what he was shooting at. The mason’s hand flashed forward, and the muzzle of the gun he had taken from Stillson was pressed against Ronson’s throat.

Ronson hesitated, and the man said, “Do me a favor—try it…. Do everyone a favor.” Ronson recognized the seething tone; he had heard it many times in prison; this man was willing to kill him. Ronson dropped his gun. As the man bent down to pick it up, the bank robber started to run toward the opening left by the shattered window, but the bricklayer caught him. Ronson swung and caught him full on the jaw, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. The mason countered with a straight right to the middle of the robber’s
face, snapping his head back violently and buckling his knees. The bricklayer grabbed him, turned, and launched him through the adjoining window, shattering it as well.

Outside, one of the reporters yelled to his cameraman, “Did you get it? Both of them?”

“Oh, yeah. Every beautiful bounce.”

Suddenly the front door flew open and the hostages came streaming out, running past the police line and into the safety of the crowd. While one group of officers ran up to search and handcuff the two gunmen, a SWAT team rushed into the bank, leapfrogging tactically to secure the building and ensure there were no more robbers. It was empty.

With the aid of a couple of bullhorns, the police rounded up the hostages and herded them back inside. Each told the same story: that the man in the gold-colored Carhartts and black shirt was the one who had disarmed both robbers. When the detectives asked the witnesses to point him out, they were astonished to find that the bricklayer had vanished.

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