Going Out With a Bang

by Joan Boswell

  “Okay, Harry,” I said as soon as the coast was clear. “Time to get the lead out.”

  In our line of work, timing and optics are everything. Less than two minutes later, an old couple lumbered along the hospital corridor, by-passing the Emergency Room, in case the day shift triage nurse was working overtime and noticed something familiar about the faces of the pair whipping past, the old fellow wheeling the wife’s wheelchair. The heavy set husband had a full head of rusty hair and moustache that could have won a competition. He peered through a pair of horn-rimmed bifocals that had last been fashionable in the seventies. The wife was more attractive, if I do say so myself. A slender, angular face with a silver bob and black glasses that gave her the look of an aging artiste. Not a speck of five o’clock shadow. She clutched an overstuffed shopping tote on her lap and dabbed at unseen tears with a fresh tissue. She hissed, “Slow down. We don’t want people to look too closely.”

  “What are you on about? They wouldn’t glance at me if I slapped on a feather boa and danced out every scene from the Kama Sutra. I’m old, in case you haven’t noticed, Nev.”

  “I have noticed, Harry. You’re also a fool who likes attention. And we are counting on not blowing this job by getting the wrong kind. Watch out for that pillar.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  In just over two minutes, we’d rolled to the nondescript Ford Focus parked in the handicapped parking lot, and the game was afoot. Twenty minutes to the bank, one hundred and twenty seconds more to keep on going around the corner. One minute to park the car in the handicapped space. The public bathroom in the small mall was a perfect place to change wigs, gloves and bags on the way. It’s not like people pay attention to elderly people when they’re not dancing in feather boas. Seven more minutes, and we were on our way again. I left the wheelchair carefully tucked behind a row of garbage cans, ready for our return trip.

  Harry said, “You haven’t lost your touch, Nev. Still got the split second timing.”

  “You better hope I haven’t lost it.”

  It was just before closing time when the two ancient ladies teetered up the front door of the bank. They were a vision in tweed and polyester, with strong overtones of Phentex. Their hairdos were firmly rooted in the roller sets of the early sixties, only the colours had kept pace with the time: one pinkish, one bluish, both sprayed to a hard shellac finish.

  The chunky one walked slowly with a pair of canes, the other’s manoeuvres were quite stylish and elegant, if I do say so myself. Harry may be a dashing devil, but he makes a spectacularly ugly woman, particularly with that blue-toned wig and the bulldog jowls. At least he’d shaved. Just be glad your granny looks nothing like him. I was quite taken with my pink roller set and ancient cat’s-eye glasses, also pink with small rhinestones at the tips. I had leather gloves to match. There’s nothing like vintage to make an impression, and I’d been thrilled to find a pair that fit. You never know what fingerprint info might have made its way across The Pond.

  “Whatever you do, resist the urge to flirt,” I cautioned in a low voice. “It’s not womanly.”

  “Don’t worry,” Harry said, making sure the camera caught the back of the wig and the get-up, but not the face. We’d practiced that during reconnaissance. They can do so much to enhance images now, and who knew what images of Harry and me might surface. Facial recognition technology has created a lot of new wrinkles. All to say, they’d have a good shot of my backside and welcome to it, but I kept my head averted.

  Harry’s teller looked up, and smiled condescendingly. “And what can I do for you today, dear?”

  Harry warbled in his ugly old lady voice. “You can do this,” He slid his note across the counter and let the barrel of his Glock show. “And don’t hit the alarm, missy, because that would be a very bad idea. It’s only money. And may I remind you, it’s somebody else’s money at that. Not really worth taking a chance.”

  Her face drained of blood. I only hoped that Harry didn’t mess up by feeling too sorry for her and admitting his so-called Glock was nothing but a replica. The supply of weaponry wasn’t that great at Laurel Woods.

  Face to face, that wasn’t the easiest. I’d been worried about Harry, because it must be obvious he has a soft spot for the ladies. Didn’t we both spend a spell in Wormwood Scrubs because of a slip with a playful widow in the old days? But that’s another story. Then there’s the fact that pain can make him unpredictable, although he was dosed to the ears today in order to walk with those canes.

  My own teller was younger, a bit more panicky. “Be calm, child,” I said, soothingly. “I certainly don’t intend to shoot you. You remind me a bit of my own lovely granddaughter. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. Of course, you don’t want that either, do you?”

  She shook her head, lower lip quivering, her huge black eyes not leaving mine for a second. I reminded myself that there was a serious purpose to this activity, and I took no joy at this poor child’s emotional trauma.

  “Money in the bag, please. Everything you have. No dye packs. No pressing silent alarms. No holding back. No tricks. This will be a rough day for you, and you’ll want to be home having dinner with your family tonight, alive and in one piece. Probably have your own granny to see you and give you a hug. You look like a smart girl. You should get a better job than this, afterwards, something less risky. I would certainly advise that.”

  Harry was transmitting the same message to his teller. I only hoped he hadn’t already fallen in love with her.

  Anyone who knew us in the old days would be stunned. The pair of us got up like old girls, and not too stylish at that. Willing to take a chance for the takings at the cash of a bank branch in an unremarkable Canadian city. Us! Neville and Harry. The villains who’d looted the vault at the Merchant Bank, the job they still talk about in hushed voices in London. Harry and Nev, who did the job at Barclays. The digging, the dirt, and the flash of acetylene torches, the dust it took a week to get out of your skin, the months of planning, the watching, the waiting, the thrill of the drill into those safety deposit box doors. The final touch—the fountain of champagne we poured straight into our mouths. Those were the days for sure.

  But, of course, we couldn’t get to the vault this time. So close and yet so far away. As they say. Our days of digging a tunnel from a nearby building to the vaults on the right long weekend were gone forever. It’s not like we could leg it if we were rumbled. We need our naps at this stage of life. We need our footstools and our tummy medications. We needed our nurses. Wouldn’t want to miss movie night or bingo. And how could you ever get a gang together these days? Hard to recruit the type of person with attention to detail, even if you could find one with loyalty. You’d be hard-pressed to find a driver you could trust. What the hell, there was something splendid about walking right in the front door, getting it over with, no muss, no fuss. No grabby colleagues to roll over on you to get themselves a better deal the first time some copper flashes them a dirty look.

  You’d rarely rake in more than twenty large, but at least you could take the money and run.

  The Irish couple plowed along the hospital corridor, again disappearing somewhere along a long green corridor and into a washroom, after a quick glance around making sure that no one was watching. Five minutes later, I emerged in my ratty silk dressing gown, nudged back to my curtained gurney by my guardian angel, Harry, in his wheelchair. I wobbled down the hallway, just in time to see a young doctor in scrubs that suggested he’d been on for more than twelve hours. He was peering into my alcove and scratching his head.

  “Here we are. Hold your horses. Don’t go scampering off after we’ve been waiting all this time,” Harry boomed.

  “You two back again?” he said with a tired grin. “What is it this time? Malaria?”

  I liked that. It meant he remembered us, and he’d recall us if it ever came down to that.

  Harry went into fake whisper mode again. “Worse. The galloping trots. And we’ve been here for hours. B
adgered the people at the front desk to no avail. Had to use the facilities. Let me tell you, Nev’s colon waits for no man.”

  “Welcome back, fellas,” the night nurse at Laurel Woods said as the medical transport driver deposited the two of us at home.

  “Long night for these gentlemen,” the driver said. “Emergency was backed up the worst I ever saw it.”

  “It was hell,” I said, not too cheerfully, I hoped. Trying not to smirk. The sack of money in my overnight bag was unaccountably amusing. Harry would be heading south of the border for a new knee, and I’d had my fourth thrill of the month. The outfits were long-gone in a dumpster on the outskirts of town. The pilfered Ford Focus sat stranded in the parking lot, the phony license plates tucked away for future need.

  “I hope the hospital wasn’t too rough on you. We heard it was a false alarm about your heart at least, Neville. That’s great news. Sorry to hear about the tummy bug.”

  Bad news obviously travels fast.

  “We don’t know what we’d do here without you. But it’s a terrible thing that it takes so long. All those hours, just stuck there.”

  “No one pays a bit of attention to you,” Harry bellowed.

  I said, “Ah well, that’s the health scare system for you.”

  Harry winked. “Look at the bright side. We don’t get out much. Have to take our fun where we get it.”

  The night nurse’s eyes were bright. “Did you hear that a pair of old ladies robbed the bank?”

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “That’s shocking!”

  “Girls will be girls,” Harry added. “See, Nev, we miss all the fun.”

  She shook her head. “But that’s the fourth time. The fourth! They got fifteen thousand this time. Elderly women! All different ones. It must a gang of them. And then they just vanish. Imagine that. You can’t count on anything these days.”

  “Not so, my darlin’,” Harry said, with a wink just this side of salacious. “If you spend enough time in the hospital, you’ll find you can always count on wait times.”

  Mary Jane Maffini is the author of the Camilla MacPhee (RendezVous Crime), Charlotte Adams (Berkeley) and Fiona Silk (RendezVous Crime) series. Among her acclaimed titles are Speak Ill of the Dead, The Cluttered Corpse and Lament for a Lounge Lizard. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario and can be visited on the web at www.maryjanemaffini.ca

  A Priest, a Cop and an Undertaker Walk into a Hunt Camp

  Vicki Cameron

  In Margaret’s red and purple living room, we resembled white stamens in an exotic flower: five women in white terry robes with white towels wrapped around our heads. Our intrepid leader Samara fussed around at the CD player, loading disks of mantra-inducing new age music. Our helpful hostess Margaret delivered our personal china pots containing kelp deep cleansing and erasing mask.

  Connie slathered hers on her face with several more fingers than recommended. “This feels great, getting away from the house for a while. I left Ashley minding my brood. She’s old enough now to baby-sit, so I told her, kiddo, I am going to be your number one client. Just because I’m your mother doesn’t mean I don’t get to hire you. So, Elizabeth, I hear John has the pharmacy up for sale, and you’re moving to the city. Is that true? Is it?”

  Elizabeth’s brow furrowed just a hair. “John enjoys new challenges. One cannot hold a man back from an interesting career move.” She dabbed another layer of the green goop on her flawless cheeks. “This tingles, doesn’t it? Almost painful.” “We can’t eat these wonderful lime nacho chips with this stuff on,” Lois said.

  “No, you can’t, and you can’t talk either,” Samara said, her voice low and breathy. “Relax. Close your eyes. Let go of your mind. Allow your skin to absorb the treatment and push out impurities. Allow yourself to become a new woman. Relax.”

  The new age music floated into the air like poisonous gas in a mine shaft, sneaking up on us and erasing our will to move.

  Relaxation was not going to be my strong point today. Brian was out of cell phone reach as of six this morning. Yesterday, I could have called him home. Today, he was on the float plane on his way to the hunt camp.

  He’d left The Room in readiness, as insurance. He always said if you’re not ready, something happens. His stainless steel table glistened, his embalming tools stood in formation on the counter beside a brand new box of surgical gloves. Despite his attempts to outwit Chaos, something always happened when he was away. If he was at a four-day conference, I’d run into a glitch, solved by a scoop of panic and six phone calls. This time, two weeks, and I expected the worst. Funeral service is a team sport. If the coach is away, the equipment manager has to run the game.

  I felt a breeze float around me, the kind you get from a peasant skirt wafting into your personal space. Gentle fingers began massaging my shoulders.

  “I can see you are not relaxed, Hilary,” Samara whispered in my ear. “Your worry lines are showing through the mask. Let go. Let it all go.”

  My skin started to itch and burn. I wondered if I could politely race to the bathroom and stick my face in the toilet bowl to cool it down. The creeping discomfort totally occupied my brain.

  Until Elizabeth started shrieking “Margaret, Margaret, Margaret,” and I opened my eyes to see Margaret on the floor tangled in a gate leg side table with a bowl of salsa and chips trickling over her white terry cover-up.

  And so it starts, I thought, as Elizabeth wailed, Samara felt for a pulse, Connie flapped in circles and Lois dialled 911. The entire first string players are off moose hunting, and I’m left to call up the bench.

  The paramedics, Constable Sanjit Dharwarkar, and Elizabeth’s husband John arrived in rapid succession. While this team huddled in the living room, I dove at the bathroom sink like a person about to vomit. The green stuff came off in shale-like wafers but softened quickly and rolled down the drain. Connie and Lois elbowed me out of the way and madly scraped at their own faces. I had a half-glance at my face in the mirror before I retreated into the hall. Puffy blotched skin, swollen nostrils, fat lips.

  I stood in the hallway, trying to be unobtrusive, and watched the activity in the living room, with a partial view of the kitchen. The paramedics loaded Margaret on a gurney and trundled her out the door. John clutched a wailing Elizabeth and eased her out to his car. I hoped he wouldn’t take her to the hospital in her terry robe and green face. Samara in multicoloured cotton flitted around the fridge like a butterfly headed for Mexico without a compass. I guessed from the package in her hand she was trying to make a calming pot of Tao Relaxing Herbal Infusion. Connie and Lois squabbled over the sink. Their faces were a mess, too.

  Sanjit paused at Margaret’s kitchen door, notebook in hand and stared at us. “Wait here,” he said. “I will interview you in the kitchen.” He frowned at his notebook as if he wished it was his procedure book, and he could flip to the page that dealt with distended faces. “I will start with Ms Samara.”

  Samara, who was normally my rock in tense situations, abandoned her tea mission when she saw me. “What happened? This isn’t right.” She pushed Sanjit out of the way and felt my face. Her fingers were cool, like icicles on the eaves. Her eyes flooded with tears. She made a move as if she were going to run out the door and chase the ambulance down the street.

  With a snap of his notebook, Sanjit blocked her escape and waved her to a chair. Connie, Lois and I retreated to the bathroom.

  “We’re a mess, aren’t we?” Connie said, fingering her newly bulbous chin. “Samara’s stuff doesn’t usually do this.” She pulled on her jeans and shirt and tossed her bathrobe into the tub. “I’m not getting interviewed in my underwear.”

  “Do you think Margaret will be all right?” Lois asked. “She never moved, after she stopped twitching. Elizabeth was some upset. The nachos were ruined.”

  I said nothing, just stared at my face and wondered how much makeup I’d need to make myself presentable for the funeral.

  Samara fled the scene in her hand-crocheted shawl four s
econds after the conclusion of her interview, leaving her entire beauty invigoration kit behind. Connie leaped forward to take her turn, saying she was anxious to get back to her children. I suspected she was more anxious to get back to her telephone, but what do I know, I’m the undertaker’s wife and not welcome to hobnob with the regular folk.

  After slipping into her street clothes, Lois wet a face cloth and held it to her flaming cheek. “Did it look like a heart attack to you? Their mom died young, you know. Margaret left town soon after. Ran off to the city to some art college. Got herself a fancy job decorating hotel rooms coast to coast. That’s why she’s hardly ever here. This was her parents’ home, although it wasn’t decorated like this when they were alive. Elizabeth got the money, and Margaret got the house. Poor Margaret. Not much of a deal. The house needed a lot of work, and Elizabeth invested the cash. Did okay on it too, so I hear.”

  We heard the front door open and close. Lois went to the kitchen for her turn under the interrogation spotlight, and I waited alone in the bathroom, splashing cool water on my face and getting dressed. Lois slithered out when her interview was over, with the briefest of pauses at the pile of donuts on the dessert table, where she filled her purse.

  I settled on the zebra bench seat in Margaret’s kitchen. Sanjit was trying to look professional on a purple swivel chair, notebook square on the table.

  “Could you tell me what happened?” he asked.

  “Margaret invited us for a ladies’ spa day. We had some snacks, listened to Samara’s lecture on “The Benefits of Omega Three in the Micro Universe of the Soul”, and changed into the white terry. That green gunk can destroy your clothes. We were to sit with eyes closed, relaxing, for twenty minutes. Samara put on some music and massaged shoulders.” I rubbed my face. “This is itchy. Sorry. Then Elizabeth started yelling. I opened my eyes and saw Margaret on the floor with the salsa. Lois called 911. Elizabeth was so distraught, Lois phoned John. The room filled up with paramedics.”