AHMM, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Each of them agreed in turn.

  "All right, then. Fame and fortune, here we come!"

  * * * *

  One thing I hadn't counted on was the heat.

  I mean, it was quarter to noon, and already it was in the eighties. Most days, that didn't seem so bad, but today? Today I was decked out in a powder blue thrift-store tux over a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, the latter of which were soaked through before I even got off the bus. You shoulda seen the looks the other passengers gave me on the ride over. I confess, I got a little nervous with them staring at me like that—after all, one of ‘em might remember my face! But I told myself the plan was sound, so there was no point wigging now. Not when we were so close. I just hoped I wouldn't collapse from heatstroke before the job was done.

  "You guys get the stuff?” I asked, tugging absently at my collar, and wiping sweat from my brow with one mothball-scented sleeve. We were once more standing in the alley behind the bank, and my eyes kept darting to the unmarked service entrance just a couple yards away. I was edgy, nervous. My stomach was in knots. My hands were cold and clammy despite the heat.

  "Got mine right here,” Pollock said, hefting the two duffel bags in his hands. “They don't shoot or nothing, but they look real enough.” He set the bags down on the Dumpster beside us and unzipped them. Both were chock full of handguns in every shape and size imaginable. Huge Dirty Harry-style revolvers, and little snub-nosed ones as well. Sleek automatics in black and brushed steel. An ornate flintlock pistol with a filigreed handle. A couple chromed-out ray guns.

  "What the hell is all this?” I said.

  "Whaddya mean?"

  "We're not pirates, Josh. We're not aliens. We're bank robbers. Not to mention, there's only four of us."

  "Hey, this is what my cousin gave me, okay? And let's not forget, they're free. Besides, it's not like we have to use all of them."

  "Good point,” I said. “Just grab a couple of those automatics and toss the rest."

  "Are you nuts? I'm not throwing them away—if my cousin doesn't get these back, I'm a dead man."

  "Fine,” I said. “Stash the ones we don't need in the clothes bag. Or had you forgotten we're gonna need an empty bag to carry the money?"

  "Of course I hadn't forgotten,” he snapped, snatching four nine-milli-meters from the bags and consolidating the remaining contents. “I'm not an idiot."

  "Yeah? Well if you're so smart, where's your outfit?"

  "You mean this?” He pulled a hot pink i'm with stupid T-shirt from the bottom of one bag and pulled it on. “I figured I'd wait till just before to put it on so nobody'd spot me on my way here, you know?"

  "Right,” I said, once more uncomfortable at the attention I'd attracted on my bus ride here. “I changed just around the corner,” I added lamely.

  "Didn't I see you wearing that when you when you got off the bus?” This from Rufus, who was wearing one of his grandmother's muumuus over his street clothes, and looked for all the world like an upholstered whale.

  "Musta been somebody else,” I said, and quickly changed the subject. “You bring the masks?"

  "Uh-huh.” He pulled a plastic shopping bag out from under his muumuu and handed it to me. I opened it, and my heart sank.

  "Rufus, these aren't the masks I asked for."

  "They're not?” he replied, feigning ignorance.

  "No, they're not. I asked for masks of presidents."

  "Yeah, but the thing is, they didn't have any president masks. There were a couple McCains in the discount bin, but I didn't figure that'd count. So I went and got the next best thing."

  "How the hell are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the next best thing?"

  He frowned a moment, all hurt and chastened, and then he brightened. “Well, there's four of them, and there's four of us, you know? Plus they're ninjas. Besides, didn't Point Break already do the president thing? It just didn't seem right, ripping Swayze off like that."

  "I wasn't ripping Swayze off—it was an homage. God, do you people know nothing about writing? I guess it's too late to turn back now, though, so these are gonna have to do."

  Rufus cracked a cautious smile. “Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  "I call Donatello!” he said.

  I passed around the masks, and we slipped them on. It was then I noticed Nigel wasn't wearing any kind of funky outfit, just a black turtleneck, black leather driving gloves, and a pair of black jeans. “Dude, why aren't you dressed like we talked about?"

  "Rafe doesn't do color,” he growled, his odd American monotone unnerving from beneath his turtle mask. “Rafe's clothes are as black as Rafe's soul."

  "Okay,” I said, equal parts incredulous and annoyed. “Black it is. You guys ready to do this thing?"

  "Wait a sec,” Pollock said. What about the cameras?"

  "Don't worry,” I said, smiling. “I've got ‘em covered. We good to go?"

  One by one, they nodded their assent.

  "Good,” I said. “It's showtime."

  * * * *

  "Everybody be cool, this is a robbery! Just give us the effing money and nobody gets hurt!"

  Okay, I confess, I borrowed that first bit from Tarantino. But the way I see it, he and I are kindred spirits—outsiders of uncompromising artistic vision—so I figured he wouldn't mind. Heck, he'd probably be honored. Or chuffed, as Nigel would say—that is, if Nigel hadn't gone bye-bye.

  I confess, I didn't realize there'd be so much screaming. We four hit the door running, and fanned out like we'd planned. Rufus took the front door. Nigel took the back. Pollock was the bag man, so he headed for the tellers’ counter. And I was smack in the middle of it all, calling the shots. Or at least, I would have been calling the shots, only nobody could hear me over all that shrieking. The worst of it was coming from some tacky track-suited, bottle blonde who'd been in line to see a teller when we stormed the place. I swear, if she didn't shut up soon, I was gonna lose it. That's when I remembered that as far as she knew, I was carrying a gun.

  "Listen, lady, if you don't shut the hell up, I'm gonna gut you like a fish.” I brandished my prop gun at her as if to punctuate my point.

  She stopped screaming, her face a mask of fear and confusion. “You're going to stab me?"

  Man, what is it with these people? “I might, if you don't keep quiet."

  "Hey, dude?” This from Pollock. “Those cameras ain't going to take themselves out."

  The cameras. Right. “On it,” I said. I pulled out the paintball gun I'd stashed beneath my jacket and popped off a couple rounds at the camera in the corner. Problem was, with this mask on, I couldn't see a bloody thing, and my shots went wide, spraying paint across the faux marble wall. I tried again—the same result. The third time, the gun musta slipped ‘cause next thing I know, Rufus is squealing like a pig, and his muumuu is dotted with a splotch of neon green.

  "Watch it, Alan, you freakin’ shot me!"

  "Lance!” I corrected.

  "What?” Pollock replied.

  "No,” I snapped. “I'm Lance."

  "Then who am I?” Pollock asked.

  "You're Slade."

  "I thought Rufus was Slade!"

  "DON'T SAY MY NAME!” Rufus shouted, red faced and teary. “It's bad enough that Alan shot me and ruined Gran's muumuu—the last thing I need is to go to jail!"

  "Oh, I get it,” I said, my words dripping sarcasm. “We can't say Rufus ‘cause you don't want to go to jail, but saying Alan is just fine?"

  "Well you did shoot me!"

  "With a paintball! I mean, for God's sake, Rufus, grow up!"

  "STOP SAYING MY NAME!” Rufus's hands balled into fists. He took one angry step toward me. Mask or no, I was pretty sure he was crying.

  Nigel abandoned his post at the back door, instead positioning himself between me and Rufus. “You two ladies wanna quit your yammering?” he said, in that awful American accent of his. “We got a job to do."

  Nigel. I swear, I'd had about enough of him. “Do you h
ave any idea how stupid you sound right now?” I yelled at him. “I swear to God, that's the worst American accent I have ever heard! You know Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins? Well that's how you sound to us! Trust me, Hugh Laurie you ain't!"

  He closed the ground between us in a flash, grabbing me by the ruffles of my tuxedo shirt and pulling me close. “The last time someone spoke that way to me on a job,” he said, “I cut out his tongue."

  "No you didn't, you idiot—you're from Kensington! Your last job was captain of the H.M.S. Pinafore!"

  "Don't test me, boy,” he said.

  "Uh, guys?” Pollock tried to interject, but we didn't pay him any mind.

  "Don't test you? Are you kidding me? Listen, pal, I put you in this picture, and I can yank you right back out."

  "Guys?"

  "When I'm through with you,” Nigel said, “your own dentist won't be able to identify the remains."

  "Oh, yeah?” I shot back. “Well the joke's on you, you Limey bastard—I don't have a dentist!"

  "Guys!" Pollock shouted. “I think we've got a problem."

  "For God's sake, what?" And then Nigel and I turned, and we saw what.

  He was a smallish man of maybe thirty-five, with tousled dishwater hair and a thick mustache to match. Truth be told, I hadn't even noticed him before. His clothes—a gray-brown polo shirt and khakis—were as bland and neutral as his hair, and when you factored in his unimposing stature, the net effect was a guy your eyes just skipped right over. Or rather, they would have, if it wasn't for the gun in his hand.

  The gun in question was pointed in the general direction of Pollock's stomach. Pollock's hands were in the air. All the oxygen seemed to drain out of the room, and Rufus's piteous wailing over his accidental paintballing ceased. Nigel, on the other hand, broke character and began to panic, babbling on in that poncey accent of his about the dangers of shattering the fourth wall.

  By instinct, I took a step toward the gunman. He tensed and trained the gun on Pollock's chest. “I wouldn't do that, if I were you."

  I stopped moving. He didn't lower his weapon.

  "Put your gun on the floor and kick it over to me,” he said. I did as he said, my movements slow and deliberate, my eyes never leaving his. “Good. Now go collect your friends’ guns and do the same."

  Again I complied. “Look,” I said, “nobody here wants anybody to get hurt. What say we leave the money, and you just let us go? No harm, no foul."

  "You think I'm gonna just let you guys walk out of here? No, you guys are staying right where you are until the cops get here."

  "The hell we are,” Pollock muttered.

  "Excuse me?” said the man.

  "I said, the hell we are! If you think I'm just gonna stick around so they can haul me off to prison, you're out of your freakin’ mind."

  "Josh—” I said, but he cut me off.

  "Oh, c'mon, Alan. There's four of us, and one of him!"

  "Josh,” I repeated, all calm and reasonable-like. I guess I hoped my vibe would catch on, but no dice.

  "What? He ain't gonna pull the trigger! Look at him—he doesn't have the guts!"

  "Josh!" I said again, in reprimand this time, but he wasn't having any of it.

  "Trust me, Alan,” he said. “We go on three. One..."

  I didn't know what to do. This wasn't in the script.

  "Two..."

  My feet were glued in place. My stomach was full of angry, crawling things.

  "THREE!"

  In my entire life, I've never heard anything so loud as that gun going off. The shot reverberated off the stone walls of the bank, and hit my eardrums with the force of a physical blow. I stumbled backward and fell. Pollock fell, too, with a whimper and a spray of blood. It spattered my hands, my face, my chest, and in that moment, I could think of nothing but escape. I scrambled toward the exit, shoving aside the stunned bank patrons who stood in my way. I tried to force myself to look back, but I couldn't. I was running on fear and instinct and adrenaline, certain that any second the gun would thunder once again, and that it would be the last thing I'd ever hear.

  I hit the sidewalk at a run, neither knowing nor caring whether Nigel or Rufus had followed. I was panicked, and drenched in acrid, stinking sweat—as much from fear as from the heat. The sweat blurred my vision, and the inside of my mask was slick with it. Said mask slipped sideways on my face, and suddenly, I saw nothing but turtle-green. Pedestrians grumbled as I careened off of them, running blind. I heard a car horn's blare, a piercing screech of brakes. Then there was a horrid, crunching impact, and I didn't hear anything at all.

  Everything just faded to black.

  * * * *

  I woke up four days later, cuffed to a bed in St. Vincent's ICU. The cops said I'd been hit by a city bus, and I was lucky I survived. I told ‘em it was better than I deserved, getting Pollock killed like that. They were all, “Pollock who?” and I was like, “The dead dude at the bank?” And that's when I found out I'd been had.

  Turns out, there was no dead dude at the bank. Witnesses said it was the damndest thing they'd ever seen. Once I bailed, it didn't take long for Nigel and Rufus to follow. As soon as they were out the door, the Great Blandini helped Pollock up off the floor, and then they fled together out the back. The cops found Pollock's mask and his i'm with stupid shirt in the alley, along with a shaggy brown wig, a false mustache, and an odd little contraption that turned out to be a spent pneumatic blood squib.

  By the time they got to Pollock's place, he was gone. His cousin the effects guy had up and vanished, too, along with my hundred and twenty grand. Or the bank's hundred and twenty grand, if you wanna be technical about it. My lawyer tells me they're still in the wind, but if I had to guess, I'd say they're probably getting their own independent feature off the ground in some quaint non-extradition country.

  As for Nigel and Rufus, it turns out they weren't long for the lam. The cops found Nigel on the bandstand in MacArthur Park, reciting Mark Antony's funeral oration from Julius Caesar, and crying all the while. They picked up Rufus at a laundromat around the block, where he was trying unsuccessfully to get the paintball stain out of his grandmother's muumuu. Once the cops explained to them that when it comes to armed robbery, there's no leniency for the guns not being real, they got cooperative in a hurry. They wound up with a year apiece in a minimum-security facility, in return for testifying against me. As for me? I got three-to-five in San Quentin. Turns out, sometimes it doesn't pay to be the man with the plan.

  You wanna know what really chafes me in all of this? I never had the chance to make my movie. I kinda figured the publicity from the trial might drum up a little interest, but so far, nada. I guess nobody ever said this show-biz thing was easy. That's all right, though, ‘cause I've been working on a new script. I'm pretty sure it's the best I've ever written—I think it's really gonna put me on the map.

  It's about this prison break...

  Copyright © 2010 Chris F. Holm

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  Fiction: DOMESTIC DRAMA by Lynn K. Kilpatrick

  He finds me in the bedroom. I have the butcher knife and I'm holding it in my right hand and with my left I'm looking through a pile of clean laundry on the bed. I'm looking for a red handkerchief which I gave him for his last birthday and which would make a good tool for wiping up blood, but that's not why I'm looking for it. I'm looking for it because it had just sprung to my mind as I was de-boning the chops for dinner. I hadn't seen it in months and I thought that maybe it was missing or, I thought, maybe it was in the pile of clean clothes on the bed. That was the only place it could be. I had done all the laundry, the laundry room was clean, empty except for some dirty washcloths which could wait until next weekend.

  I'm standing there with the knife in one hand and with the other expertly sorting the laundry into mine, his, and theirs, theirs being the kids, which they could deal with later when they got home from the various activities in which they were engaged. And then he comes in, accusingly,
with his feet making loud noises in the hallway to announce his approach, and the way he stands there, says what he wants to say, the way he fills up the doorway, his head almost touching the top and his shoulders about equidistant from each jamb, and he looks like a poster I once saw for a B-movie, I forget the name, but he looks like the villain. All he lacks is the black fedora and a pug-nosed gun. But his face is like that, his nose aimed at me, and he says, “What are you doing?"

  I'm sure he knows what I'm doing, that he has done something with the handkerchief, but he also could be referring to the fact that I hold a knife in one hand and the other is buried in clean clothes that smells of spring breezes or lilacs or fresh herbs or something. At an expensive boutique I saw a bottle of fragrance called “Fresh Linen” and it wasn't clear to me if it was something you were supposed to spray on your linen or if it was something you were supposed to spray somewhere else, say in your bedroom to make it smell like fresh linen, but that's what I think of when I look up and see him there, like a murderer or a detective, in the doorway. I think first of fresh linen and second of the butcher knife in my other hand. I might say “Oh, nothing” and go on nonchalantly, except for the butcher knife. I had been using it to remove bones from lamb chops, which I remember are oozing on a cutting board in the kitchen. I think of them, just lying there leaking blood out into the white cutting board the way a red handkerchief might bleed dye into a load of all white clothes, socks, say, or men's underwear. As I think of this I raise the butcher knife and I jab the end toward him, not at him exactly, as I'm sure he would claim, but just in his general direction. And I say something like “the red handkerchief, where is it?” I can see how someone who didn't know me might find the sight of the knife jarring, but I can't understand how someone like him, I mean we've been married for fourteen years, ever since we found out I was pregnant, how someone like him could perceive that gesture, the jab, how he could see that as threatening. I mean, I've never once in our whole marriage done anything like that. I'm just thinking of the lamb chops and the handkerchief and the laundry and I just want to know, where is it? Because I can't stand it when something is lost. I might not think about it for days, weeks even, but then when I remember it I can't think of anything else until it's found. So that's how it starts, innocently enough, I'm just looking for the handkerchief. With a butcher knife in one hand.