by Ian Bull
“Oh baby, that’s it! That’s the spot, oh my God, keep going!” Kath shouts, as she and Sam yank Frederick’s head up and tie the napkin behind his neck, gagging him. He groans as loud as he can, but Kath groans right along with him, disguising his anger as mutual passion.
Frederick shakes his head and pulls at his straps, but there’s no escape.
Kath looks at her watch. “You have about forty-five minutes.”
“I won’t need that long,” Sam says, and opens the sliding closet door, revealing the safe inside. “This is a Herring-Hall-Marvin, about 40 years old.”
“Does that mean it’s easy to open?”
“It means it's easy to cut. This thing will melt like butter," and he makes a cutting motion with his yellow-gloved right hand.
Sam unzips the duffel bag and pulls out four hand towels and hands them to Kath. "Put each of these under each corner," he says, and then pushes hard on the safe. As he gets one corner off the floor, Kath slides a towel under the claw foot. After putting towels under all four corners, Sam squeezes into the closet. He gets behind the safe, gets his back against the brick wall and pushes. He only moves the steel box a few inches, but there's now enough space for Sam to squat down, secure his back against the brick wall and get his feet on the metal back of that big boy. He pushes with his thick legs like a powerlifter, and the safe slides across the hardwood floor into the middle of the room.
Sam and Kath kneel behind the safe, leaving Frederick groaning on the bed. Sam digs latex gloves out of the duffel bag and hands them to Kath. “Put these on, and then wipe down everything you touched,” Sam says, holding out another hand towel.
While Sam unloads all his equipment, Kath wipes down the glasses, the serving tray, the bed frame, the doorknob, and even Frederick’s pill bottle. Frederick glares at her with hatred, and Kath kisses him on the forehead. “I won’t tell anybody, Professor. Your tiny little secret is safe with me,” she says, and squeezes his crotch through his pants.
Kath kneels next to Sam and all the gear he pulls from his bag. Sam holds up a long metal prod with a bent tip. “This is an electrical welding torch,” he says. Next, he holds up a heavy metal vacuum with a canister like a circular bullet holder on an old Tommy Machine Gun from the 1920s. “And this is a vacuum with a charcoal canister to suck up the smoke. And these are goggles,” he says, and holds up two sets of goggles with smoked glass to wear.
They each pull goggles onto their foreheads. Sam plugs in the electric welding torch, turns it on, and then tapes a wire from the torch to the metal of the safe. “Your job is to suck off any smoke with that vacuum, but be careful, the metal on the safe is electrified now,” he says.
Kath plugs the vacuum into the socket. Sam lowers his goggles over his eyes and nods at Kath, who copies him. Sam snaps the welding torch on, and a blue spark appears, and Kath turns on the power vacuum, and a loud hum fills the room. Sam lays the blue flame against the metal, and a red line appears. Kath holds the vacuum just above the rising smoke, and it gets sucked right into the canister. Within a minute, they've already cut one long line in the metal.
Kath hears a high tune. Where is that coming from? Kath then glances at Sam. He’s whistling. Her heart is racing, she’s so scared. But Sam? He seems to be having the time of his life. He loves the planning and the details, with all his tools and tricks arranged just right, yet when there’s a bump in the action he can roll with it, no problem. He’s smart, he’s good-looking, he has all the qualities to be a success, he’s funny –
– but he's still a lying criminal, Kath reminds herself. Remember that. And remember what Paul wants from him, and from her. Sure, he's good tonight, and sure, he's saved her ass before, but it's his jackass mistakes that made Paul stick them together in the first place.
Sam’s already cut three sides of the square hole when there’s a knock on the door. Frederick moans louder. “Frederick? Are you in there?” Marjorie asks through the door, shaking the doorknob. Sam and Kath turn off their devices and look at each other with wide eyes.
“Unzip me,” she whispers to Sam and turns her back to him. Sam zips down the zipper on the bodice of the circle dress. Kath jumps up, drops the spaghetti straps off her shoulders, exhales and pushes the dress down to the floor. She steps out of it, leaving her wearing just her pink heels and black panties. She darts over to the bed, grabs Frederick’s open pants and yanks them and his underwear down to his knees, and then rips his shirt open, leaving him naked from his chest to his thighs. He howls in anger through his gag as Kath then tosses her beautiful dress over his flaccid paunchy nakedness.
The knocking gets louder. Kath steps to the door. She exhales and cracks it open, making sure that her nakedness fills the opening. She catches Marjorie’s evil eye and glares right back.
“You said we had an hour,” Kath says.
Marjorie stares at Kath's perfect small breasts, then catches herself and peeks past her and sees the half-naked Frederick tied up on her bed, with Kath's dress making a little tent over his groin. He groans at Marjorie, his eyes glancing down at the foot of the bed, where Sam kneels just out of view.
“What’s wrong with him?” Marjorie asks.
“He's mad that you interrupted us," Kath says, putting her hand on the door jamb to block Marjorie's view into her bedroom.
Sam holds his breath. It will be a hasty and naked exit if she pushes the door open.
“Why are you wearing plastic gloves?” Marjorie asks, looking at Kath’s hand on the door.
“He gave them to me," Kath whispers, nodding over her shoulder at Frederick. "We're playing doctor, and he wants me to give him a prostate exam."
Marjorie furrows her brow as if she’s confused, intrigued and disgusted, all at the same time. She shakes her head, exhales, and stares back at Kath. “Your partner is not back yet with the champagne. He’s been gone thirty minutes,” she says with a teacher’s stern voice.
“What, you want me to look for him? I’m a little busy in here,” Kath says, and then wiggles her gloved fingers at Marjorie. “Or do you want to take over and finish the exam?”
Marjorie rolls her eyes. “Carry on,” she says, and walks away.
Kath closes the door, locks it, and leans her back against it and exhales. When she opens her eyes, both men stare at her in silence – Frederick lying on the bed tied and gagged, and Sam kneeling in front of a ruined safe with an electric welding torch in his hand. Kath feels her nakedness and grabs her dress off Frederick, steps into the middle, yanks it up and gets the straps in place. She tosses the hand towel over Frederick's crotch to hide that most unwelcome hairy sight and kneels back down next to Sam. She snaps her fingers in his face, like a hypnotist ending a spell, and he blinks back to life.
Sam pulls his goggles back over his eyes and sparks the torch back up, and Kath turns the vacuum back on again. Sam lays the torch against the metal and cuts the last line of the square, and the hot metal drops into the safe. Sam turns off the torch, then sticks in his hand and pulls out smoldering stacks of money. Kath tries her best to suck up the smoke pouring off the burning bills.
“The money is burning!” she hisses.
“A little charcoal never hurt anybody,” Sam says.
“It’s money, not steak on a barbecue. Do something,” Kath says.
He grabs another hand towel, sticks in his hand inside the safe, pulls out the blazing hot piece of metal and tosses it onto the floor. He flicks the heat off his burnt fingers, wincing. He then reaches back into the hole and yanks out wads of hundred-dollar bills. “I figured right. Marjorie likes to be paid in cash,” Sam says as he shovels the bills into the open black duffel bag.
The fistfuls of cash flying past her face make Kath put down the vacuum and help Sam load the duffel bag, but with the vacuum off, the room begins to fill with the smell of burnt paper from the burning bills still in the safe. Sam zips up the bag, then pushes aside the curtain and steps through the window back onto the fire escape. He waves his hand at Ka
th. “Come on!”
Kath darts over to Frederick and kisses him on the forehead.
“Do you need another pill, Professor?” she asks, but he just blinks his red-eyed fury at her. The smoke sets the fire alarm off. Bells ring throughout the building.
“Come on, the firemen can help him more than you can now!” Sam yells, and she steps through the window onto the fire escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
T he fire alarm blasts a wave of noise down the alley as dozens of people dash out of the building. Sam and Kath lower the bottom ladder of the fire escape, but no one looks up at them. The ringing alarm, in fact, gives them a perfect reason to be using the ladder.
Sam climbs down first with the duffel bag on his back, then looks right up Kath’s dress as she comes down the ladder after him. As she dangles from the last rung he grabs her by the waist like she’s a leaping ballerina and helps her jump down to the ground.
He tugs her hand and they run down Bluxome Alley, then turn right on 4th Street, and then they keep turning and running down the short tiny streets south of Market Street until they are on yet another short alley with a dead end. The whine of the fire engines fades in the distance, and Marjorie’s loft seems a long way away.
Sam walks up to a small purple car and finds the keys on the front left wheel, as requested. He unlocks the car, pops the hatchback, throws the bag in, slams it shut, slides behind the wheel…and notices that Kath is still standing in the middle of the street.
“That’s a 1975 Pinto. I’m not getting in that,” Kath says.
Sam looks at the odd wedge-shaped car with the sloped hatchback. “I didn’t pick it. This is Paul being cheap.”
“Well, you should have picked it!”
“I brought you here in a limo. That was the ‘date' part of the evening. This is now the ‘robbery' part. The getaway car is supposed to be cheap and anonymous, okay?"
“You don’t get it! I can never be in a Pinto! Never again!” she shouts.
Kath regrets shouting the moment she does it. She must already seem crazy to him, and she doesn’t want to confirm it all by dragging up her boring childhood. She spent years riding around in the backseats of cars like this, speeding across empty American landscapes. Her desperate yammering mom was always in the front seat, throwing herself at yet another loser behind the wheel who was somehow going to change everything for them.
Kath waits. This is the moment, she realizes, when a typical man would scream at her until spittle flew from his mouth, or throw something, or even hit her. That's what Paul would do. That's what her mother endured.
Sam gets out of the car, grabs the black bag from the back, pulls off his rubber gloves and sticks them into his jacket pocket, and heaves the bag onto his shoulder. “Let's find a taxi," Sam says and walks back up the alley towards 4th Street.
Feelings of relief and then worry sweep through Kath. Relief that Sam isn’t pressing her, and worry that they’ll now get caught because of her.
It's not even midnight yet, so 4th Street is busy. They hear police sirens but see no squad cars, and there are plenty of taxis cruising the South of Market neighborhood looking for club hoppers. Sam hails a red and green Veterans Cab, and he and Kath slide in the back. A Vietnam vet with a long grey ponytail and granny glasses sits behind the wheel. Sam tosses a fifty-dollar bill onto the front seat for the man.
“Take us to the zoo. We’re staying at a motel out by the Great Highway,” Sam says.
The veteran nods and pulls back out into traffic. Within a minute, they’re on the onramp for 280 Freeway heading south. As they rise above The City, Kath spots the flashing red lights from the fire trucks and squad cars that are clogging the narrow streets below. We caused all that madness, she thinks, with a mixture of mischievous pride and adult shame.
Her heart flip-flops in her chest. That was too much of a risk, she thinks. If they got caught, she wouldn’t last a day in prison, and Bella would lose her apartment in a minute. She must make Sam reveal his secrets. Sam’s a nice guy and Paul’s a pig, but she can’t keep having these close calls. Hell, she’s thirty years old and smart enough to be doing a lot more with her life. She must make a change.
They exit the taxi at the Ocean Park Motel. The fog tastes like salt and is so thick it puts rainbow halos on all the street lamps. Waves crash in the distance. There's no traffic on the street at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. Sam walks up the stairs to the second floor of the motel, and stops three steps from the landing and starts feeling under the handrail.
“What are you doing?” Kath asks. “Looking for gum?”
“Getting the room key. I wasn’t going to take it with me. That wouldn’t have been smart,” Sam says as he unpeels a room key that he taped there earlier.
Kath is nervous again. There’s only one key. Does that mean there’s only one bed?
Sam spots her worried look. “The motel was supposed to be for just me. If I was driving the Pinto, we could have counted the money at your place and I would have left you there. But you don’t want a taxi driver knowing where you live, right” he asks, and tosses her the key, which she catches in mid-air. “It’s room 24. Go make sure it’s to your liking.”
Kath pushes past him on the stairs, finds the room and opens the door. Despite it being an older motel built in the 1930s, the upper floor rooms are refurbished Art Deco suites with a small kitchenette. At one time this motel was a beach vacation destination long before the neighborhood and the zoo were even here.
Kath flips on the light and walks through the suite while Sam leans against the door. There's a pull-out sofa bed in the living area. The bedroom has a queen size bed and a door that locks. Kath opens the refrigerator and sees that he's stocked it with eggs, bacon, beer, and fruit. There's also a bottle of champagne chilling in the back, but she doesn't let the possibility of drinking it rise too high in her consciousness. She slams the fridge door and spots bread, butter, jam and potato chips on the counter, and a red and white tin of Lazzaroni cookies, the ones with the paper wrappers. She remembers lighting them and the wish she made for Bella.
“I was planning on laying low here for a few days,” Sam says. “I already paid in cash.”
“It’ll do,” Kath says, and Sam drops the duffel bag on the floor and shuts the door.
Ten minutes later they each sip beers at the round kitchen table while stacking one-hundred-dollar bills into piles of ten, until they cover the linoleum with piles of cash.
“Eighty-four thousand," Sam says. "That's twenty-eight each for you, me and Shorty."
“Money always stinks. Too many people have touched it,” Kath says. She holds up a fat wad of charred bills from their cash barbecue back at Marjorie’s loft. They have small burn marks on one side. “What about these?”
“I wouldn’t spend them. It raises too many questions,” Sam says.
“That was stupid. This is ten thousand bucks, but we can’t use it because it’s burnt?” Kath slaps the money on the table. Little pieces of burnt money flake off and rise into the air. Kath crosses her arms and scoffs with disgust. Sam sips his beer and then leans back and crosses his arms too, mirroring her.
I'm being a bitch, she thinks to herself. The job is over and done, so she wants the night to be over too, and wishes he was gone. But they're stuck together.
“I wouldn’t have burned them if I’d had the time I needed,” Sam says.
“I had a little trouble with pushy Frederick, thank you very much,” Kath spits back.
“I know, you left me on that balcony for twenty minutes.”
“I saved your ass tonight,” Kath says.
Sam downs his beer, gets up and throws the dead soldier in the trash. “And I saved your ass on the last job, but I don’t rub your face in it,” he says. He pops open the Lazzaroni tin and unwraps a cookie. “Just once I’d like to hear you admit that I’m not so bad.”
He pops the cookie in his mouth and chews it slowly, staring at her. Then, out of habit and without thin
king, he folds the cookie wrapper and slides it into his breast pocket. Kath wonders what his next wish will be, which softens her heart.
Kath gets up and walks over to him. “I admit it. You did a good job. And you were fun to watch,” Kath says.
“So were you,” Sam says, raising his eyebrows. “But I did get jealous of Fredrick.”
“Jealous? I almost killed him," she says, and they both laugh, breaking the tension in the room. Sam takes a step forward. They are inches apart. Sam looks down at her and smiles. He touches her forearm and runs his fingernail along the inside of her arm, and she feels a shiver shoot up her spine to the back of her neck.
“Why are we fighting this so much?” Sam asks.
“Because I still don’t trust you,” Kath says.
“And I don’t trust you either. But maybe a decrease in trust creates an increase in lust,” Sam says, and cracks his titled sideways grin.
“You are so lame," she laughs. Sam moves close and pulls her tight to him. She leans her head back and closes her eyes, giving him permission to kiss her. He does.
After a long kiss with just the right amount of moisture and pressure, he pulls away. “There’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge,” he whispers.
“We don’t need champagne,” she whispers back, and they crab walk sideways toward the open bedroom door, kissing and pulling at each other’s clothes as they go.
Sam falls onto the bed and fumbles out of his pants, kicking his shoes and socks off his feet at the same time. Kath exhales and pulls the dress down past her feet and then drapes it over the back of a chair. Sam rips his tie off, and Kath falls on top of him and yanks his shirt open, sending the buttons flying everywhere. She runs her hands across his muscular chest and inhales with pleasure.
Last time, things went bad for them right at this point, Kath thinks. She's got to keep the party moving. She falls back into his arms and gives him another long kiss. He rolls on top of her, and she feels the hardness between his legs, but she also sees the growing fear in his eyes. She rolls back on top, and almost bangs her head on a metal box attached to the headboard. She stares at the printing on the side.
