EQMM, June 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  A tow truck pulled up behind them and pushed the old box truck out of the tunnel, into the dark December, onto a gritty trash-strewn shoulder of the road where they waited while the tow truck hooked them up and a transit cop wrote them several tickets. While Larry smirked at the rushing Yuppies, and Dan breathed a sigh of relief at being out of the crushing tunnel.

  Back at the plant, in the darkest part of Long Island City, so near yet so far from the glitter of Manhattan across the river, the old box truck was dropped off. Along with Larry and Dan, who paid for the tow out of their own pockets. The plant was closed for the night and the old man was long gone. He never kept much petty cash around anyway.

  “He owes us big for this one.” Larry tucked the receipt in his wallet, as the tow truck drove off, and he and Dan went to their cars. “Lucky we had enough money between us.”

  Dan nodded. Both of them lived from paycheck to paycheck, with no raise for more than a year, expecting only a meager Christmas bonus. And Dan lived with his mother, a recent widow who was barely getting by on Social Security, in a cracker-box house in nearby Maspeth.

  Getting into his car, a beater parked behind the plant next to Dan's equally beaten ride, Larry said, “Back in the tunnel, a thought hit me.”

  “A thought?” Dan could only think of the tiles from the tunnel's roof falling off and hitting him, before it split wide open and the river engulfed them.

  “The old man's loaded,” Larry told him.

  “With boxes?”

  “Think about it. Everything comes in boxes, from Cracker Jacks to car parts. You need them for everything.”

  Dan looked around at the grimy, graffiti-scarred building. At the leaky roof and dilapidated loading dock. The painted-over windows behind rusted iron bars that stained the crumbling brickwork.

  “Don't let the looks fool you,” Larry said. “Business is bad, but the old man's been making and selling boxes forever. You should see his house, out on the Island. He's rolling in clover.”

  “So what?” Dan shivered in a chill night wind that was building off the river. One foot planted in his car, the other poised on the tarmac, he was anxious to get home. It was getting late and his mother would worry. She would also have a hot meal for him, but Larry would not let him go.

  “So it's time we got our share,” Larry insisted.

  “Our share of boxes?” Dan scoffed. “I'd rather have what they put in them. Sound systems, computers, flat-screens.” Dan and his mother had only an old TV, with basic cable, past-due mortgage payments, an overdue college loan. He had nightmares about losing the house and having to live in a refrigerator box under the Queensboro Bridge.

  “Let's get a beer,” Larry said.

  “I'm tapped,” Dan reminded him. “That tow truck—”

  “Me too, but I can put it on my tab,” Larry said.

  “Well . . .”

  “Don't worry. You don't have to pay me back.”

  Larry had said the magic words. Dan followed him in his car to The Depot, a workingman's bar on Grand Avenue. An oasis to lumpers and day laborers who worked in the area. A hellhole to Yuppies.

  “Here's the deal.” Larry leaned close over a corner table, careful not to topple their Bud drafts. “The old man's an art collector.”

  “Art?”

  “Paintings.”

  “We sell him our paintings?” Dan laughed in his beer. “I don't know about you, but the only painting I've ever done is my mother's kitchen.”

  Larry wasn't an artist either, unless you meant bunco. And not so hot at that. The law was onto him long before he tried to score. He'd been better at robbing convenience stores, until his temper got the best of him. He should never have beat that cashier so bad, he thought, not on camera anyway.

  “Valuable paintings,” Larry explained, “by one artist in particular, who's pretty damn famous.”

  “Da Vinci?” Dan thought back to a college art-history course he had taken to get close to a certain coed. And to the bestselling book she had urged him to read, by Dan-something, that he never finished.

  “Not that famous,” Larry said. “A starving artist he befriended in Greenwich Village back in the fifties. You wouldn't recognize his name.”

  “Try me.” Dan and his mother enjoyed watching Jeopardy! together during dinner. Her broad range of knowledge was impressive, while he was limited to pop culture.

  “Franz Kline,” Larry told him.

  “Never heard of him.” Dan wondered if his mom had.

  “Kline was a contemporary of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning,” Larry said, as if he knew more than those three names and his interest in art went beyond forged checks and counterfeit twenties, adding for effect, “They were abstract expressionists.”

  “Sounds illegal.” Dan had lost interest in art history when the coed lost interest in him.

  “Should have been, the way they dripped paint all over the canvas and got paid big bucks.” Larry lit a cigarette, despite state law. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em was The Depot's motto. Any health inspector who tried to issue a fine wouldn't leave the place alive.

  “Before Kline made it big,” Larry continued, “the old man bought a shitload of his paintings on the cheap. Now they're worth a bundle.”

  Waving away the secondhand smoke, Dan said, “So the old man's a patron of the arts?”

  “Con artist is more like it.” Larry spat out a piece of tobacco from his unfiltered Camel. “Kline did all the work, the old man reaped all the rewards. Read all about it in an art magazine I found in his office.”

  Wondering how far he could trust this kid, Larry bought another round. Seemed he wasn't a wild child, and wouldn't be a loose cannon. He was always at work on time, never took a sick day, more than earned his pay. Drug or drinking problems would have been obvious by now. Living with his mother was a little strange, though the only way to go for too many financially-strapped families these days. He also had no trouble with the law, as far as Larry knew. Too good to be true, maybe, but he couldn't risk either of them losing control, like at that convenience store. And he couldn't risk the kid ratting him out, to the cops or the old man, whether or not he went along. But he could use the extra muscle, and a fall guy in case everything fell apart.

  “The old man's paying us peanuts,” Larry reminded him. “Like I said back at the plant, he owes us big-time.”

  Dan thought about the plant, the dust, the chemicals, the blown clutch, that awful tunnel, and his mom in that Maspeth cracker-box. He forced a laugh, and said, “Let's get him to give us a painting for a Christmas bonus.”

  “Then we sit around and stare at it?” Larry said. “I don't know about you, but I'm tired of eating takeout, and driving that heap outside.”

  “Then we sell it.” Dan drew the obvious conclusion. “I got my eye on a Corvette convertible.”

  “What if it's hot? And I don't mean the ‘Vette,” Larry tried, angling the kid away from fantasy land. Watching his eyes.

  Raising an eyebrow, Dan said, “The old man stole it?”

  “Technically no,” said Larry, convinced the old man had screwed the starving artist, and should share some of the ill-gotten gains.

  “Oh.” A light went on inside Dan's head, like the courtesy light in a new Corvette. “We're gonna steal it.”

  “I never said that.” Larry looked around the barroom, making sure that no one could hear them, adding, “Keep your voice down.”

  * * * *

  The old man lived with his wife in upscale Garden City, out on Long Island, a forty-five minute drive from the plant, traffic willing. He kept his art collection at home, protected by a high-tech security system. The plan was to follow him home, burst inside the house behind him as he opened the door, tie up him and his wife, without hurting them, and abscond with several of the most valuable paintings. Wearing masks, of course. Thanks to his time in the slam, and a few discreet inquiries, Larry knew of a less-than-reputable art dealer who would take the paintings off his hands at a fair
price, and take them to his villa in France. Coveting them for his private collection, having enough stolen art already in the collection to keep him from trying any funny stuff.

  The following night an arctic front moved in, crystallizing the sky as they waited across the street from the plant in Dan's car. Having left work before the old man, leaving him to lock up. It wasn't safe for anyone after dark in that area, but the old man never seemed to mind. Nothing had ever happened to him in the fifty years he had been there, and there was nothing but boxes to steal.

  Larry had talked Dan into using his car, lying that his defroster was broken, his windshield would fog, and they would lose the old man in the mad rush out of Manhattan on the Long Island Expressway. He insisted that Dan do the driving, blowing smoke up his ass by telling him he was the better driver. That always worked with guys who love Corvettes, who think they're Mario Andretti, even if they've only owned beaters all their lives. It also helped if they were young, impressionable, and desperate. You could talk them into almost anything.

  Shortly after seven the old man left the plant, shut the front door, shook the knob to make sure it was locked, turned up his overcoat collar, pulled down his fedora, and shambled across the empty parking lot toward his car. Looking as if the icy wind would blow him away. Betraying every one of his eighty-something years. Piece of cake to pull off this heist, Larry thought. Candy from a baby, and all those trite expressions. Dan would call them platitudes, thinking he's smart. What did college kids know, other than beer pong and what their popinjay professors told them. Setting him up would be almost too easy.

  Following the old man wasn't easy. Not because he drove a nondescript sedan that was easy to lose in heavy traffic. He drove so fast and ran so many stop signs and red lights they worried about Dan's beater keeping up, and about the cops stopping one or both cars, blowing the whole thing. At least he never looked in the rearview mirror to see who was chasing him.

  “He's the guy you always see on the evening news and read about in the morning paper.” Larry said.

  “Whoa!” Dan hit the brakes, nearly rear-ending the old man, who had decided to stop for a yellow light for some strange reason.

  Grasping the dashboard, loosing a stream of curses, Larry hissed, “He's the old fart who thinks he's hitting the brakes when it's really the goddamn gas and plows through plate-glass windows and pedestrians. It's a crime to give him a driver's license,” he added, as if he had a license to steal.

  The old man slowed to a tick above the posted thirty-mile limit when they reached Garden City, creeping, crawling, obeying all the traffic lights and signs. Surprising Dan but not Larry, who knew from experience that cops in upper-crust towns like this were dedicated to busting anyone who looked sideways at them.

  The old man's house was a massive English Tudor, with tall chimneys, steep gables, slate roofs, slashes of dark wood set off by stark white stucco, similar to some of the Kline paintings. Down a cul-de-sac, ending at an outlying hole of a golf course, one side of the property bordered the course, the other was adjacent to a recently cleared lot with a new house under construction.

  “We should have waited out here for him” Dan said, “instead of risking our lives, and a slew of summonses, trying to follow him.”

  “This is not Long Island City,” Larry said. “Cars like ours can't sit around in these fancy neighborhoods.”

  “We could have told them we're construction workers,” Dan said, “building that new house next door.”

  “In the dark?” Larry smirked. No wonder the kid couldn't figure out why he wanted to use his car on this job.

  “Guess that rules out pretending we're golfers,” Dan said.

  “You're a quick study,” Larry said, as if he meant it. You're so wet behind the ears you're still dripping, he thought. Wouldn't you be the prize of the prison showers.

  The old man's car suddenly sped up the long driveway, like an old horse nearing the barn. Dan worried that he'd get swallowed by an electric garage door, and they'd lose him behind the security system. Larry assured him that the old man hadn't used the electric doors since backing through one before it opened.

  “How do you know?” Dan said.

  “I watch the evening news instead of MTV.” Larry snickered. “Happened over a year ago, before you started at the plant, while you were playing drinking games and chasing coeds. I've been here before, couple of times, delivering work orders he needed to sign. He never let me inside, but I know he leaves his car behind the house in the driveway and walks around to the front door, where he codes in the keyless entry. It's bright under the front porch light, but dark along the driveway side. Kill the lights and coast up, but not too far, while he walks around. There's plenty of time, and his eyesight's as bad as his hearing.”

  Dan killed the lights and coasted up the driveway, in remarkable silence for a car on its last legs. Coat collar covering his ears, fedora shielding his brow, the old man struggled out of his car, shut the door, shuffled along a flagstone path leading around the house, leaning into a stiff wind off the golf course. Wind that rattled the skeleton trees and muffled Dan's squeaking brakes and groaning doors.

  Lurking behind an evergreen, donning ski masks that Larry had bought from a street vendor, the would-be art thieves watched the old man edge toward the front door, seeming to move in slow motion. Pausing so long at the keyless entry he must have been frozen, or had an attack of Alzheimer's and forgotten the code. He punched in the numbers, painfully slow, the door cracked open, the thieves darted around the evergreen and shoved the old man inside the house ahead of them.

  And Larry pulled the gun.

  “What's that for?” Dan said.

  "Shhhh." Larry raised the gun barrel to his lips, reminding him not to talk. Damn rookie.

  Following their plan, Dan withdrew a length of clothesline from his coat pocket, tied the old man's hands behind him, sat him in a chair. Suddenly feeling sorry for him, with hands so cold and arthritic, too old and feeble to put up a struggle or even protest. Heaven help anyone who did anything like this to his mother.

  “The old lady,” Larry whispered harshly, aiming the gun at an ornate wooden staircase. “I heard her upstairs.”

  Dan bounded up the stairs, anxious to get the whole thing over. The old man watched him go, then begged Larry, “Take whatever you want. Anything. Please don't hurt us.”

  “This won't hurt.” Larry pulled a plastic bag out of his back pocket and pulled off his ski mask.

  The old man gasped, trying not to believe his eyes, blaming his cataracts. This could not be happening. He had given this ex-con a job when no one else would. Kept him on the payroll and picked up his medical benefits, though he constantly complained about the working conditions and thought the world owed him a living.

  Seeming to read his mind, Larry said, “You owe me,” as if that explained everything. He placed the plastic bag over the old man's head and tied it with clothesline around his neck. Making sure it was airtight, but not tight enough to leave marks.

  “He can't breathe!” Dan was at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed, starting down. Larry raised the gun and fired. The kid clutched his chest, more shocked than in pain, and tumbled all the way to the foot of the stairs.

  “Perfect,” Larry said, as if to the old man. He untied his hands, removed the plastic bag, laid him on the floor. There was not much left of the withered carcass. He had lifted stacks of boxes and bags of chemicals that were heavier. The gun was a Saturday-night special, with the serial numbers filed off, he had bought for a song on the mean streets of Long Island City. The old man could have bought it just as easily, and carried it everywhere for protection. The cops would think the old man had shot Dan, coming home late, encountering the robbery in progress, and suffered a fatal heart attack from the excitement.

  He went into the living room, more like an art gallery, and turned up the lights. A dozen paintings of various shapes and sizes, in an assortment of frames, adorned the walls. Stealing the
spotlight from a stone fireplace, priceless antique furniture, prohibitively expensive Persian carpets. Some of the paintings were done in vibrant colors, others exclusively in black and white. All intense and alive. Nothing like the washed-out photos in that outdated art magazine he had found in the old man's office. Larry had little respect for the abstracts, and even less understanding, but the representational pieces proved that Kline could draw, as well as splash stretches of canvas with buckets of color and slash them with housepainter's brushes. The portrait of a clown's head caught his eye, or was it a puppet? The saddest, palest puppet-clown he ever saw. More forlorn that Emmett Kelly sweeping elusive spotlights in empty circus rings. More like Frankenstein's monster than Pinocchio. He would sooner hang himself than hang that painting in his cheap motel room.

  Using his box cutter from the plant, he cut three of the most valuable paintings, according to the art magazine, out of their frames and rolled them up so they would fit in a poster tube he had left in the car. He would grab the tube on the way out and slip in the paintings before hiking across the golf course to the train station, less than a mile away. He would hide the paintings until the heat was off and he could get them to the art dealer. He would show up at work in the morning as if nothing had happened. The cops would be there, of course, with their rubber hoses out, and he would be a person of interest. Person of interest? A ridiculous misnomer, thanks to political correctness, considering his history of violence and crime. Detectives would be all over him as to his whereabouts the night before, about the missing paintings, and they would lean on him hard. But he had been down that road before, knew the procedure, could handle the pressure. He also had an alibi, arranged with the bartender at The Depot, a friend and former con, who ran the tab for him and occasionally slipped him free drinks, and did some drug dealing on the side. Larry would lie to the interrogators, with enough assurance to pass a polygraph test, that Dan had a friend who stopped by the plant occasionally. Another college kid, most likely, who had also taken an art history course and would have known the paintings were valuable. How could Larry know? He had never even graduated from high school. He would tell them the friend never stayed long at the plant, he had paid him little attention, and could never identify him. They would have to conclude the mysterious visitor was Dan's accomplice, who fled the scene with only a few of the paintings after everything went wrong.