by Robert Ward
Bob hit the preset button on his cell phone and waited.
“Yeah?” Tony said.
“Go,” Bob said.
He watched as Tony and Cas went barreling into the yard, through the gate. Cas quickly set the ladder against the side of the house. Tony climbed it so fast he looked like a primate.
Ray smiled tensely in the darkness.
“Wait till you see how quickly he disarms the alarm,” he said. “You’re getting your money’s worth.”
Bob shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his nerves screaming inside him. He hated it out here in the alley, but if they headed into the backyard they’d activate the motion sensor lights and maybe even the burglar alarm.
He took out his binoculars and saw Tony on the roof. He was working on the fuse box, about two feet away from the high-tension wires. For the first time Bob realized the affinity between criminals and athletes. They were both about physical performance under pressure. No wonder the public liked clever criminals so much more than they did psychologists. They risked more, and they were physically brave. Psychologists had more in common with, say, movie critics and other wimps.
Even standing in an alley next to a can of rotting trash, Bob felt glamorous. He shut his eyes and imagined a young woman, someone in her twenties, checking him out: so cool, so composed, waiting in the alley with a SIG Sauer in his coat pocket. Compare that to a nerd sitting in an office saying, “Hi, Elmo. Tell me all about your mom.”
“Get your gas mask on,” Ray said. “Time to rock ‘n’ roll.”
They found the first guard, a big black man, snoring on the kitchen floor. He looked peaceful, and they quickly relieved him of his automatic weapon. The second guard, a Latino, was sprawled in a less comfortable way, right on the second-floor steps. His head had hit the edge of the step when he fell and there was a bit of a bump on it. In spite of himself, Bob felt sorry for him and had to restrain himself from waking the guy up and offering a towel wrapped around some ice cubes. Ray took the second guard’s pistol out of his holster and dragged him to the landing.
After tying and gagging both guards, they raced up the steps to the third floor and quickly found the floor safe under the right corner of an expensive maroon rug.
Bob wanted to stay there with them, where the action was, but dutifully headed down a narrow hall to the master bedroom, which overlooked the street. His job, the only reason Ray had relented and let him come inside, was to keep watch on the front of the house.
He looked out the front window. The street was empty.
He started to sit back down on the bed when he was jolted out of his skin by his vibrating cell phone.
Jesus, who the hell would call him now? Of course, he wasn’t going to answer it, unless …
He looked down at the display and to his shock and surprise he saw Emile’s cell phone number.
What should he do?
Not answer it. Right, of course. Emile was out at the Havana Club, dancing and seeing his girlfriend.
But what if he wasn’t?
Bob looked at a little door, which led from Emile’s bedroom to a small balcony covered with dying plants.
Where the hell was Emile? What if his girlfriend was sick and he was coming home?
Bob slid out on the balcony, crouching down so no one could see him from the street. He quickly took off his gas mask, then answered the call.
“Hello, Emile?”
“Doc? You there?”
“Right here,” Bob said in a shaky voice.
“Listen, Doc, I just need to talk to you a second. You have a minute?”
“Of course, Emile,” Bob said. “Where are you?”
“I’m over at the Havana Club,” he said. “I just started having a really bad feeling, Doc.”
Bob swallowed to keep the panic down in his stomach.
“Tell me about it,” Bob said.
“It’s like he’s here, watching me,” Emile said.
“Have you actually seen him?” Bob said.
“No. But I thought I did. I’m having a tough time telling what’s real and what’s not.”
“Of course,” Bob said. “You’ve been under a very great strain. That makes perfect sense.”
Bob was suddenly swept away by a surge of warm feeling toward his patient. Even though he was robbing him, he still felt sort of protective toward Emile. He didn’t want him to suffer, not unduly, anyway.
“Listen to me,” Bob said. “Look all around the room.”
“Okay,” Emile said. “But I’m getting a sick feeling. That he’s going to try and finish me off tonight.”
“Are you looking?” Bob said.
“Yes,” Emile said. His voice was small and scared. Bob felt a wave of guilt so strong that he nearly vomited.
“And what do you see?”
“The band, the dance floor, people eating, drinking.”
“Right,” Bob said. “And no sign of Colin, right?”
“No,” Emile said. “No sign of him. Ah, he’s not here, Doc. I’m just a screaming paranoid.”
“Not at all,” Bob said.
His back hurt from stooping by the huge, dead balcony plant, so Bob stood up and looked at the street below.
There, on the opposite side of the street, three stories down, a man walked a dog. What if the guy happened to look up at him? Bob crouched back down and his back began to ache again.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Emile said. “Hope I didn’t disturb you, Doc.”
“Not at all,” Bob said. “I suggest you and your girlfriend dance and, though I don’t want you to overdo it, have a couple of drinks and relax.”
“You don’t think I should just go home and crawl into bed?”
“No!” Bob said. “I mean, the thing about anxiety is if you try to run away from it you legitimize it to yourself, which, of course, only increases it. But if you face it head-on, and deal with it for what it is—just a feeling, not a reality—then you back it down.”
“You make it sound like a person,” Emile said.
“It is like a person,” Bob said. “Fear is a bully. You back a bully down, he loses his power.”
There was a pause. Bob looked inside down the hallway. Still no sign of them.
“Okay, Doc,” Emile said. “I get it. I really do. Thanks a lot. I’m starting to feel better.”
“No problem,” Bob said. “I’m glad I could be helpful. Now you go have a Cuba libre and enjoy your night.” He felt that generally he’d given Emile excellent advice. In most cases, where the phantoms were illusory, staying and facing up to your demons did disempower them.
Tonight, of course, was an exception.
Bob flipped his suffocating gas mask back on and took a step inside. Just as Ray Wade came walking in from the back bedroom. In his hands was a black carbon-and-steel box. Silently, he held the box in the air over his head, like a boxer displaying his championship belt.
Bob moved forward and Ray placed it in his hands.
There was a glass window on one side of it. And there, staring him in the face, was Utu the sun god, seeker of justice and vengeance.
Bob felt his heart skip a beat.
The eyes were carved in such a way that they seemed to stare through his own eyes, leaving them craters of ash. The face was strong and cruel. He felt, suddenly, that the mask was passing judgment on him.
The thought sent shivers through his body and he quickly handed the box back to Ray.
“We did it, Doc Bobby,” Ray said. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It had started to rain. As they drove in Ray’s ‘79 Camaro I-Roc to the old American Brewery Building, it came down in driving sheets and pounded on the windshield. Suddenly, rookie criminal Bob began to worry about 911. Was he out in the rain catching his death of cold? And what about Ethel Roop and all his other patients? Did they need him? Would they miss him? Maybe his kindness and insights were all that kept them from falling apart?
He suddenly felt sick to his stomach. What was he doing here in this car with these men? He had a stabbing impulse to leap out of the car, go to a church, confess the whole caper, and beg the priest for forgiveness.
“I heard you back there on the phone, Bobby,” Ray said, barely able to see through the windshield. “Really threw me for a minute. Thought you might be calling our local gendarme, Officer Garrett.”
“Get serious,” Bob said.
“But I gotta say, given the caller, I think you played it just right,” Ray said.
“Hey,” Tony said. “Giving a guy therapy while you’re breaking into his pad? I never heard of anything like that before. That’s exceptional villainy. I think Dr. Bobby should maybe get a special bust in the Hall of Shame.”
“Exceptional villainy,” Cas said in the backseat.
“I gotta agree with you,” Ray said. “It should read like, ‘For his originality and brilliance in the midst of his first criminal outing. Rookie Crook of the Year. Dr. Bobby Wells.’ “
“And you say the guy’s thanking you at the end of the call, for what? Being there for him?” Tony said.
“Yeah,” Bob said, trying to get with the twisted happiness of it all. “Kinda like that. He was very grateful.”
“That’s fucking great,” Ray said. “You were very cool under fire, Bob. I would have to say that it augurs well for your new career.”
“Augurs extremely well,” Tony said.
“What the fuck is an ‘augur’?” Cas said.
“Jesus, you are ignorant, Casmir,” Ray said. “It isn’t a thing. It, like, foretells the future.”
“Really?” Cas said. “And I thought it was a fucking tool that bored its way through shit.”
“No, Cas,” Tony said. “You are the fucking tool.”
This drew laughs all around. Bob didn’t bother telling them that “augur” and “auger” were two different words, and that Cas was right. Why ruin their fun? But still, the crew’s retrograde vocabulary skills and casual cruelty bothered him almost as much as their failure to understand that he didn’t feel all that great about fucking over his patient.
That was the crummy thing about humanism; it kind of stuck to you even when it wasn’t useful anymore.
Ray parked the car in the old American Brewery parking lot, and for a second Bob felt as if they were just a bunch of working stiffs headed in for the night shift.
They slipped through the barely opened side door and up the old steps, stepping over old hot dog wrappers, condoms, and a seemingly endless supply of beer cans, liquor bottles, and homemade crack pipes.
“Sure it’s the fifth floor?” Ray said.
“Positive,” Bob said.
Cas groaned, but kept up the pace.
When, exhausted and panting, they finally made it to their destination, Ray opened the door and looked inside.
“Don’t see anybody,” he said.
“Maybe we’re here first,” Bob said. He held the mask in his hands, looked down through the glass window, and felt a strange and sinful smallness. It was almost as though Utu was staring into his ulcerated soul and passing a harsh and overwhelming judgment.
“You gonna stand out there in the hall, Bobby?” Ray said, politely holding the door for him.
Bob managed a weak smile and joined the rest of them inside.
The room was huge and filled with old conveyor belts and dead refrigerators. Bob looked around and saw broken windows. A rat scurried into a hole in the wall.
“Anybody here?” Tony said.
“Of course,” said a voice from the dark corner.
Tony and Ray swung their flashlights that way and saw Colin Edwards approaching them, a shotgun in his hands. He looked dapper, Bob thought. Next to him there was a boy in his mid twenties with acne and blond shoulder-length hair. He held a tan suitcase and a .44 Magnum.
“Is that the mask, Bob?” Edwards said.
“It is,” Bob said.
“Let me see.”
“The money first,” Ray said.
Edwards looked at Ray’s SIG, which was pointed at his well-coiffed head.
“Of course,” he said. “Show them the money, Rafe.”
Rafe moved forward one step and snapped open the case. There in his hands were packages of hundred-dollar bills.
“Hey,” Cas said. “That’s a lot. Tony, I think maybe we’re being robbed.”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “How come all we get is a lousy sixty grand?”
Ray turned and aimed his gun at Tony’s head.
“You both made your deals,” he said. “You want, I can cancel them now.”
“That’s all right,” Tony said.
“It don’t seem fair, though, Bobby,” Cas said.
Bob felt a lance of pain. He hated cheating good-natured Cas. He was about to say, “Well, you’ve both done such a good job, maybe we could tack on a bonus. How does twenty-five grand apiece sound?” But before he could get the words out of his mouth, Ray had turned around and was giving Cas a terrifying look, all crazed eyes and bared teeth. The color drained out of Cas’s face as he shrank back into the darkness.
“Now the mask,” Edwards said, handing the shotgun to Rafe, who took it after laying the briefcase on the floor next to him.
Bob handed it to him, and Edwards’s left hand trembled with eagerness. He hit the release button on the side of the box and the glass window popped open. Carefully, Edwards reached into the box and removed the mask.
He turned the mask over in his hands, once, then again. He placed it over his face and peered at Bob through it.
“Boo,” he said.
“Hey,” Ray said. “Give us the fucking money and you can play with it all morning.”
Colin Edwards shook his head. It was, Bob thought, as though he were aging right there in front of them.
Then he threw the mask of Utu to the brewery floor, where it smashed into a hundred pieces.
“No,” Bob yelled. He fell to his knees, scooping up bits of the sun god’s broken face.
“What the fuck?” Ray said. “Why?”
“Because,” Edwards said, “that’s not the real mask. It’s a fake!”
He snapped his fingers and from the corner came two more men, one a fat boy wearing plaid golfing pants, the other a Polynesian, as wide as two Hummers. Both of them were carrying automatic rifles.
“Drop your guns and tell me where the real mask is,” Edwards said, “or we’ll shred all of you.”
Ray looked at Cas and Tony and Bob and all four of them dropped their guns to the floor.
“It can’t be a fake,” Bob said. “You’re wrong.”
“Trust me, it is,” Edwards said.
“I don’t understand,” Bob said.
“Well, let me explain it to you then,” a voice said.
Behind them the elevator doors opened and Emile Bardan walked into the room. In his hand was a .38 Colt automatic. As he moved toward them, the blond boy turned and aimed his Magnum at him. Emile shot him in the forehead; Rafe fell at Bob’s feet.
Emile grabbed Colin Edwards around the throat and used him as a shield.
“I wouldn’t suggest anyone else try anything so foolish,” he said. “Everyone drop your weapons. Or I’ll shoot Colin in the ear.”
Colin said, “Do as he says.”
Edwards’s remaining boys dropped their weapons, while the blond boy lay on the floor, leaking a ribbon of velvet red blood.
“Hi Doc,” Emile said. “How are you?”
Bob, still on his knees, with the shards of the fake mask in his hands, felt his stomach heave, his heart pound.
“You set me up?” Bob said.
“Looks that way,” Emile said.
“You planned this from the start?” Bob said.
“Not right from the start,” Emile said. “It was harder than that. In fact, I almost gave up the game a couple of times. But it turned out you were the right man after all. Smart, but not too smart. Underpaid and bitter. Your
two patients, Ethel Roop and Perry Swann, were very helpful in filling me in on your marital and financial difficulties. And I also knew that Colin would probably get in touch with you to enlist you in his nasty little plans.”
“You bastard,” Bob said. He tried to get to his feet, but Emile kicked him in the face. Bob fell back, his lower lip split and bleeding.
Bob got to his knees and tried once again to stand. But Emile Bardan had other ideas.
“Stay like that,” he said. “I like you on your knees. At last we have the proper power dynamic in our relationship.”
He turned and looked at Edwards.
“Colin, old man,” Emile said. “How decent of you to bring all that money for me.”
“Well, since you’re the better gamesman, you certainly deserve it,” Edwards said.
“Thank you for saying so,” Emile said. “You know, Colin, I thought about selling you Utu, but this way is so much better. I get to keep the real mask and your money.”
“But not for long,” Colin said.
“Really?” Emile said.
“Of course. I’ll hunt you down, Emile, and then you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“I don’t think so,” Emile said. He shot Colin through the chest from only two feet away. Edwards flew backward and sagged against the wall. He looked up at Emile, groaned, then all the passion drained from his face as he slid down the wall and died.
Emile looked down at Edwards and sighed.
“Look how flat he is now,” he said.
He was right, Bob thought. As the blood drained from Edwards’s chest, his body turned from puffed peacock to plastic pancake.
“Now,” Emile said. “Give me that money, please.”
He reached for the suitcase, but the fat boy in plaid smashed it into his face. Bob watched in horror as they all dove for their guns. He told himself that he, too, should be going for his, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Instead, he crawled into the wall space on the other side of the ancient refrigerator and watched as the shooting began.
Ray shot Emile in the shoulder, hitting an artery. Blood spurted out like water from a fire hydrant on a hot day. Then Cas tried to shoot Emile in the back, but slid in a puddle of Edward’s blood and shot Tony Hoy in the chest. Tony had a look of horror and great surprise as he fell to the floor. Cas turned then and shot the big Samoan in the right eye. This drove the Samoan mad and he shot wildly back at Cas, hitting him in his massive stomach, which spouted a geyser of blood. The fat boy shot Emile in the other arm, which caused him to drop the suitcase full of money and start running for the exit door. Ray shot the fat boy in the right ear. Falling, he shot Cas in the ass as he was screaming, “Emile’s getting away!”
