The Best American Mystery Stories 2004

Richard Lange Bank of America

From StoryQuarterly

After we take control of a bank and subdue the security guard, it’s my job to watch the customers while Moriarty slides over the counter and empties the tills. I’m not sure why this task fell to me. Even after all this time, I’m not the most convincing bad guy. I’ve worked on my posture and stuff in the mirror, practiced evil glares and unnerving twitches, but I still worry that someone is going to see through me.

The gun I carry helps. A big, ugly, silver thing, it’s fairly undeniable. I’m careful not to abuse the upper hand it gives me, though. You see psychos playing those games in movies, and you’re always glad when they get theirs. And I’ve been on the other end of it, too, shortly after I moved to L.A. I know what it feels like. As I left a liquor store one night, a couple of peewees rushed me and flashed a piece. My wallet practically flew out of my pocket and into their hands. It took me weeks to stop shaking. I vomited right there on the sidewalk. I keep that in mind when we’re doing our thing. No need to push it.

It’s a special day. We’re gathered in the cramped little office that Moriarty peddles cut-rate car insurance out of to review his plans for our final job. Moriarty, because he’s the mastermind of our crew. Under his direction, we’ve pulled off twenty-seven successful bank robberies in three years — more than Jesse James — and in all that time we’ve never been caught, never had the cops on our trail, never even fired our weapons.

It must be a thousand degrees outside. Even with two fans whirring and all the windows open, the air just lies there, hot and thick as bacon grease. One story below, down on Hollywood, an old Armenian woman is crying. She sits on a bus bench, rocking back and forth, a black scarf wrapped around her head. Her sobs distract me from Moriarty’s presentation. He asks a question, and I don’t even hear him.

“Hey, man,” he scolds. “Come on. Really.”

“I’m with you, I’m with you.” I get up off the windowsill and go to the Coke machine he keeps stocked with beer. The can I extract is nice and cold, and I press it to the back of my neck and motion for him to continue.

It’s the same scenario as the last job and the one before. There’s not much finesse at our level. We’re not blowing vaults or breaching high-tech security systems. Basically it’s hit-and-run stuff. We grab as much cash as we can before someone activates an alarm, then run like hell to our stolen getaway car. Moriarty has always wanted us to look like amateurs. He has a theory that the cops will pay less attention to us that way. We’ve taken other precautions as well. No two jobs are ever less than twenty miles apart, and we vary our disguises: ski masks, nylons, wigs and fake beards. We wore alien heads once, and once we went in turbans and shoe polish, trying to have a little fun with it.

Moriarty has me trace our route in and out with my finger, then crumples the map and burns it in an ashtray. I admire his thoroughness. It makes me proud to be his partner. And the control he exerts over himself — my God! He has mastered the messy business of life. Every day he eats a banana for breakfast and a tuna sandwich for lunch. Every day! And his whole week is similarly cast in stone. Thursday nights: pool at the Smog Cutter from nine to eleven and two beers — no more, no less. Saturdays, a movie, target practice, an hour of meditation, and the evening spent studying history. Sundays he’s up at six to read the New York and L.A. Times from cover to cover. I believe him when he says that living this way gives him time to think. It makes perfect sense: He’s a speeding train, and his routine is the track; all he has to concentrate on is moving forward. That doesn’t mean he’s perfect — he still lives with his mother, gets a little too spitty when he talks about guns, and seriously believes Waco was just a taste of things to come. But that will of his!

“So everybody’s clear?” he asks. “No muss, no fuss?”

“Clear, mon commandant.” This from Belushi, the third member of our crew, who’s lying on the couch, smoking another cigarette.

Moriarty steps out from behind his desk and opens the office refrigerator. He tosses a Popsicle to Belushi and one to me, and we sit sucking them in silence. The Armenian woman is still crying downstairs, and it starts to get to all of us. Belushi snaps first, growling, “For fuck’s sake, put on some music or something.” Moriarty slips a CD into the boom box, and “Whole Lotta Rosie” blasts out of the speakers.

“Maybe we should go down and see what’s wrong,” I suggest.

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Belushi says, a chuckle rattling the phlegm coating his throat. “It’s too hot, the air’s for shit, and the world is run by evil old men. You could rip your eyeballs out, and the tears would keep right on coming.”

He’s one of those hard-core doomsayers, Belushi, and a junkie, too — hence the nickname — but he also understands money like nobody I’ve ever met before. Rumor has it he comes from a rich family, so maybe it’s in his blood. He’s been the driver on all our jobs, and our accountant. Our goal when we started this thing was a quarter million each — serious fuck-you money — and today the balance of my Swiss bank account stands at $248,320. You’d never guess it, seeing him sprawled out like he is now, grinning that yellow, broken-toothed grin, but Belushi has taken all of our booty and, through some serious offshore hanky-panky, more than tripled it. That’s why this is our last gig. It’ll be little more than a formality, but we have to stick to the plan, because sticking to the plan is what brought us this far.

Moriarty plugs in his vintage Ms. Pac-Man machine, and it comes to life with a barrage of beeps and whines. A sticky drop from his rapidly melting Popsicle falls onto the screen, and he wipes it away with his thumb.

“So how’s your love life?” he asks Belushi. Here they go again.

“None of your business.”

“There’s nothing wrong with paying for it, you know. It’s a victimless crime.”

“Not according to the women who end up with you.”

“Is your mom bad-mouthing me again?”

Belushi fakes a belly laugh and draws his long, thin arms and legs in to push himself up off the couch. The hottest day of the year, and he’s dressed all in black. “I’ll see you bastards Thursday,” he says.

When the door closes behind him, Moriarty shakes his head.

“My man’s a trip, ain’t he?” he says.

“He’s something,” I reply.

A sheet of paper with the current scores for our never-ending tournament is taped to the side of the Ms. Pac-Man machine. Moriarty checks it, then starts his game. I move back to the windowsill to drink my beer and try to catch a breeze. From there, I watch Belushi exit the building and approach the Armenian woman, who’s still crying, even though I can’t hear her over the music. I can’t hear what Belushi says to her either, but Whatever it is stops her frenzied rocking. He reaches into his pocket for some money and gives it to her. She takes his hand in both of hers and kisses it, and he pats her on the back before scuttling down the street.

Yes, my man is definitely a trip.

Belushi and Moriarty call me John Q because I’m the normal one, which means I’ve got the wife and kid, and I hit the floor running every morning, looking for some way to scrape together the cash it takes to keep my family afloat. When we reach our goal after this last job and finally, by mutual consent, get access to our money, Belushi is splitting for Amsterdam, where he’s going to register as an addict so he can receive free government-issue heroin, and Moriarty’s finally moving out on his own, to Idaho, the last free place in America, or something like that. Me, I just want a Subway franchise somewhere quiet with good schools. A three-bedroom Kaufman and Broad and a decent car. Bank robbery is a hell of a way to get a little boost up the ladder, I know, but aren’t they always saying to go where the money is? You can make anything mean anything if you try.

When I get home Maria’s peeling potatoes in the kitchen for her famous french fries, to go with the burgers I’ll throw on the barbecue. I told her I was going out to bid on a painting job. She asks me how it went.

“Looks good,” I say. “It’s a big place. Might keep me busy for a month or so.”

“Hooray for our team, huh?”

“We’ll see, we’ll see.”

She picks up a knife and slices the potatoes into long, thin strips, which she places in a bowl of water.

“Someone broke in next door and stole their television,” she says.

“You’re kidding.”

“They were asleep when it happened. Didn’t hear a thing.”

“Man oh man.”

“I know. Scary.”

She’s not trying to make me feel bad, but I do. I should have pulled her and Sam out of this neighborhood years ago, when the graffiti first sprouted, the first time the car was broken into. I kept thinking things would turn around. I was like that back then, all silver linings and never say die. Now, though, I acknowledge the impossible. And after Thursday — the Hole in the Wall Gang’s last ride — we’re saying good-bye to bad luck.

“Let’s start looking for another place,” I say, moving up behind Maria to wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her hair. I love her hair. I have always loved her hair.

“Maybe over in Glendale,” she says.

“How about farther? How about the mountains? Completely the hell away from here.”

“Don’t be a joker.”

“Baby, I’m serious. It’s time.”

She turns to kiss me. Her wet hands on my face smell of potatoes and dirt. She’s Cuban, brown and smooth-skinned. Her parents begged her not to marry me. They had a friend of the family lined up, a medical student, but she was as stubborn then as she is now.

“Okay, the mountains,” she says.

“The mountains.”

We rest against each other for a second, then she laughs and pushes me away. “Ahh, you’re crazy. I brought some quizzes home to correct. Go check on Sam and let me work.”

I pause in the doorway and watch as she sits at the table and takes up her pen. The curtains billow in the window behind her and dance in the evening breeze, and the shadows of the refrigerator and the toaster grow longer and cooler by the minute. She rests her forehead in her hand and smiles, and I finally understand why people are so afraid of dying. I want to be with her forever.

“Papi,” Sam says. “Hey, Papi, look.”

I jerk back out of a deep and dreamless catnap, and the sudden return of sight stings my eyes. One minute I was contemplating the brittle droop of the fronds of the palm tree outside our living room window, and the next I was gone. Even when I’m not working I’m tired all the time.

“Papi!”

Sam is almost five. He told me last week that he wants to be a doctor when he grows up so he can fix broken hearts. This evening he’s busy pulling apart his collection of action figures and recombining the pieces to create new forms of life. He slides one across the coffee table for me to look at.

“This is the man who found out he was a robot,” he explains. “He watched in the mirror and took off his face, and there was a robot head underneath. Now he drinks oil and is very, very sad. He gets mad sometimes and breaks things.”

“Does he have any friends?” I ask.

Sam purses his lips, thinking. “He’s too scary and too sad. He cries too much. If he had some money, he would buy a new head, but he doesn’t.”

“How much would a new head cost?”

“Around ten dollars, I think.”

“Here,” I say, pretending to hand the little man something. “Here’s ten dollars. Go buy yourself a new head.”

“He can’t hear you,” Sam says. “He’s got robot ears, too.”

Sam splashes in his inflatable wading pool while I set up the grill and start the briquettes. Some of the people who live in the other bungalows in our complex are cooking outside, too, and we wave at each other across the courtyard all of our doors open onto. There’s plenty of shade now. The sun is low on the horizon, coating every leaf of every tree with honey, and the birds are deep into their happy hour. The air is filled with raucous screeches as they swarm a freshly seeded patch of lawn.

“Look, Papi.”

Sam lies on his stomach and drops his face beneath the water. Bubbles fizz around his head. He rises and waits for my smile and nod, then goes under again. One of the neighbors turns on a radio, and Mexican music competes with the chatter of the birds. When we move to the mountains, I’ll build our house myself. One of those wooden dome jobbies you can order plans for, kind of a futuristic log cabin kind of a thing. I picture myself sawing boards and pounding nails. It seems entirely possible.

We eat on the porch, citronella candles pushing back the bugs and the darkening night. Burgers, Maria’s fries, and a salad of avocados and sliced ripe tomatoes dressed with oil and vinegar and lots of pepper. Sam’s damp hair clings to his forehead, and the towel Maria dried him with is still draped around his shoulders. Maria scolds him when he burps, but then I burp, too. She wrinkles her nose in disgust and pours more iced tea. The birds have quieted, and in the distance there is the faint pop pop pop of gunfire. I glance at Maria and Sam, but neither reacts, and I tell myself that it’s because they haven’t heard the shots, not that they’ve grown used to the sound.

Later we watch an old monster movie together, that one about the giant tarantula running amok in the desert. I switch from iced tea to beer. Sam is curled around a pillow on the floor in front of the television, and Maria lies with me on the couch. The weight of the day presses down upon me, and my eyelids grow unbearably heavy. I fall asleep to the sound of a woman screaming. When I awaken after midnight, Maria has moved to the floor, next to Sam, and they’ve both sacked out. I pick Sam up and carry him to bed, then gently rouse Maria, who wobbles into the bathroom.

Someone famous is selling something cheap on TV. I shut it off. A rustling outside the front door tightens everything in me like a knot. I turn out the light and edge over to the window. Pulling the curtains aside just a bit, I peek out at the porch, but there’s nothing there, just a napkin we missed when we cleaned up. Maria returns in her bathrobe and wants to know what’s wrong. I tell her not to worry, that I’m just paranoid after what happened next door. We share a glass of ice water and go to bed.

In the morning, Sam’s wading pool is gone.

Moriarty has me meet him up at Lake Hollywood. They call it a lake, but it’s actually a reservoir tucked into the hills where the movie stars live, a concrete-lined hole surrounded by a chain-link fence. Pretty enough, if you squint. Moriarty does six miles a day on the road that circles it, round and round, rain or shine. He makes me feel like a slob.

I park where he instructed me to and walk over to the fence. The still, black water is covered with a layer of dust that sparkles in the sunlight, and the smog is so thick the trees on the far shore are barely visible. Above me a big house juts out from a hill, propped up by a few spindly wooden supports. The view from the deck must be terrific in October or November, when the air clears; you can probably see all the way to the ocean, and I bet the people who live there step out every evening to lean on the railing and watch the sun set.

Moriarty pounds past me in a flat-out sprint and continues on for another hundred yards or so before turning around. He returns at a jog, throwing punches.

“Hey,” he huffs. “How you doing?”

“I’m good,” I reply.

He lifts his T-shirt and wipes away the sweat on his face with it. Another runner passes by, and they exchange nods.

“Wait at your truck,” he says to me.

I walk across the road and lean against my Nissan. Fingers intertwined behind my head, I stare out at the reservoir and contemplate the golden film of dust that floats upon it. It doesn’t seem very sanitary, this system of storage. Maria’s been after me to spring for bottled water, and I’m beginning to see her point. If the stuff that comes out of our tap originates here, who knows what kind of deadly crap it’s laced with.

Moriarty is parked a short distance up the road. He pulls a duffel bag out of his trunk. I know the song he’s whistling as he approaches. It’s a Sousa march my dad had a set of dirty lyrics for:

Something like that. Used to crack me up when I was a kid.

Moriarty sets the bag in the bed of my truck and unzips it to show me the sawed-off shotgun inside.

“There’s a box of shells, too,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Lock it away where the kid can’t get at it. Don’t be stupid.”

“Come on, man.”

“Do you know how to use it? You probably won’t have to, because the sound of the shells sliding into the chamber will send your average burglar packing with a pant load, but just in case?”

“I can’t imagine it’s too difficult.”

Moriarty grins and closes the bag. “Just point and shoot.”

An old lady steps out of his car and shouts, “Stuart, I don’t want to be late.”

“Yeah, Ma, okay,” Moriarty shouts back. “Church,” he says to me with rolling eyes. “See you Thursday.”

“You betcha.”

We shake hands and he jogs to his car. I take another look at the big house above me, and I can’t help it — call it jealousy, Whatever you want, but I can’t help picturing the Big One hitting and the surprise and terror on the owners’ faces when those supports snap like toothpicks and they end up riding that fancy sonofabitch down the hill and through the fence and straight to the bottom of poisonous goddamn Lake Hollywood.

I was a wreck when Moriarty happened upon me, so twisted inside that at times I couldn’t even breathe deeply enough to fill my lungs. Driving along the freeway or standing in line at the supermarket I’d find myself gasping for air like an astronaut unmasked on Mars. A year earlier, after my third paycheck in a row had bounced, I’d told the contractor I’d been working for to get fucked and drawn out all of our savings to set myself up as an independent. I didn’t love painting houses, but I figured that in a short while I’d have enough capital to move into buying and renovating neglected properties and reselling them at a profit. Twelve months later, though, I’d only had four jobs, and to get those I had to bid so low that I barely broke even. One beer in the evening turned into three, then six. “What kind of idiot did you marry?” I’d ask Maria, and she’d say something nice, but that’s not what I wanted to hear, so I’d ask again, “What kind of idiot did you marry?” I’d keep asking until I brought her to tears.

Moriarty found me at the unemployment office in Hollywood. I ignored him on his first approach, because everybody there seemed so strung out and crazy, and who knew what this blond bastard with the crooked smile was up to. Just let me fill out my forms and be on my way was my philosophy that morning, but he kept at me, asking to borrow some of my newspaper and following me outside to the catering truck parked at the curb, where we stood eyeing each other through the steam rising from our coffee.

He says he could tell right then that I was the one, but I don’t know how. That first conversation, as I recall it, was nothing more than your standard two strangers shooting the shit kind of thing: a little sports, a little music, and each of us maybe trying a little too hard to convince the other that we were worth more than the three hundred bucks a week we were waiting in line for. In my version it wasn’t until later — when we retreated to a bar to wash the shame of the morning from our craws — that the truth began to come out. When Moriarty wrapped his hands around his beer like he was praying and sighed, “I’ll tell you what, getting by is killing me,” that’s when I first thought we might have something in common.

Turned out we lived in the same part of Hollywood, so we started getting together for drinks once a week or so. Bank robbery was a running joke from the beginning, or at least I took it as a joke. Moriarty would say, “I’m serious,” and I’d laugh and say, “I know you are.” To me it was like, “Hey, let’s make a movie,” or, “Let’s open a pizza place,” one of those shared pipe dreams guys sometimes use as an excuse to keep meeting when they’re too uptight to admit they enjoy each other’s company. You know, “This isn’t just drinking; we’ve got business to discuss.” You get to fantasize together, share your plans for all the money you’re going to make, act a little foolish.

Even when Belushi came into the picture — an old college buddy of Moriarty’s — and Moriarty got into the insurance racket, and we started meeting at his office instead of the bar because he decided we shouldn’t be seen together in public anymore, I still didn’t take it seriously. And how could I? I mean, the three of us — us! — sitting around hefting pistols and discussing timing while studying maps Moriarty had drawn of the various banks he’d cased — it was hilarious. I remember laughing to myself the first time we actually drove out to scout an escape route, because I knew an hour later I was going to be home playing patty-cake with Sam and helping Maria clean the bathroom. That was real life. My life.

So how, then, do I explain what happened next? I don’t. I can’t. BOOM! There I am, standing in one of those same banks on legs that are shaking like a pair of Slinkys. I’ve got a gun in my hand and pantyhose pulled over my head, and when I yell, “Get down on the floor!” you’d think it was the voice of God rumbling out of a thundercloud, the way the customers throw themselves at my feet. I’d always imagined that when you crossed the line you saw it coming, but it turned out to be more like gliding over the equator on the open sea. Don’t let them kid you, it’s nothing momentous, going from that to this.

El Jefe phones early Monday morning with an offer of a few days’ work on a house in Los Feliz. He was a bigwig in the Nicaraguan army until they ran his ass out on a rail after the revolution. Now he’s got a rinky-dink painting business here, with most of his jobs coming through flyers he leaves in mailboxes and under windshield wipers. When white people hire him, he calls me in, because he jacks up his prices for Caucasians and figures they won’t complain as much if some of it is going to a fellow gringo. Besides that, white women feel more comfortable with one of their own around, he says, “to keep an eye on us thieves and rapists.” It’s a hundred tax-free bucks a day, and it’ll keep my mind off the heist.

The house is a big, two-story Spanish-style that we’re taking from dull tan to something slightly darker. It’s me and a couple of short, silent Guatemalan Indians doing the labor, with El Jefe supervising between cigars and chats on his cell phone. The best thing about painting is that it has a rhythm that allows you to drift away. On this morning I run through our first Christmas in the mountains, tweaking the vision bit by bit until it snaps into perfect focus, right down to the broken-glass sparkle of the new snow, the pop and hiss of the logs burning in the fireplace, and the smell of the tree that Sam and I will cut down and drag home through the wintry woods. It’s such a pretty picture that the sun chewing on the back of my neck doesn’t bother me at all, and I’m almost reluctant to put down my brush and descend the ladder when lunch rolls around.

I get the sandwiches and thermos of lemonade that Maria made for me out of the cooler in the bed of my truck and settle against the shady side of one of the palm trees planted in the strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk. The Guatemalans sit on the curb some distance away, talking quietly as they peel back the foil from their burritos. We haven’t exchanged two words all morning, but that’s the way it goes on these jobs. I think they know why El Jefe brings me around, and I’m not about to stroll over and plop myself down beside them and give them a “we’re all in the same boat” speech, because we’re not, and they know that, too.

El Jefe pulls himself out of his dented BMW, where he’s been sitting with the air conditioner blasting for the last half hour. He mutters something to the Guatemalans, who bow their heads and nod, reluctant to meet his gaze, then marches across the yard to check our progress. Out of habit, I guess, he still carries himself like a military man — back straight, shoulders squared, one hand always resting on his hip, where his sidearm would be if he were in uniform. It’s funny seeing him strut around like this now that he’s gone soft and sprouted a belly, but I don’t dare laugh, not with those crazy eyes of his and his history.

He walks into the backyard and then returns a few minutes later and motions with a quick snap of his wrist for me to join him. We step softly along a stone path that leads to a covered patio where we can look down onto the swimming pool, which sits at a lower elevation than the house. Two nude men are sunning themselves, side by side on chaise lounges. As we watch, one of them stands and kisses the other before diving into the water.

“Fucking maricones,” El Jefe whispers. He raises an imaginary rifle to his shoulder and aims it at the men.

“What’s the big deal?” I ask.

“It makes me sick, those putos.” He removes his mirrored sunglasses and wipes the sweat from his eyes with the palm of his hand. “We flushed our shit in Managua.”

I shrug and say, “Free country and all that.”

“And this is freedom, to fuck another man?”

“To fuck whoever you want, I guess. Who cares?”

“What?” he says, staring at me with disgust.

I don’t want to get into it, so I return to the front yard and prepare to go back to work. El Jefe’s all fired up, though, and won’t leave it alone. He hovers behind me and says, “This country has lost its way.”

“Yeah yeah,” I snap. “And you used to be hell with a cattle prod and a pair of pliers. I’m busy here, okay?”

I’ve never popped off to him like this before, and I’m afraid to look up to see what effect it’s had on him. Sweat is running down my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, and a few drops fall into the can of paint I’m stirring. After a while his shadow slides away, and I hear him walking across the lawn. When he reaches his BMW, he calls to me.

“Hey, gringo.”

I try to strike a defiant pose as I stand to face him.

“You think I am a bad man?”

He looks almost sad now, almost ashamed, but I’m not about to back down. “I think you’ve done bad things,” I reply.

An unripe date drops from a palm tree above his car and bounces off the hood with a loud bang. He stiffens at the sound, a slight flinch, then relaxes again and says, “So it’s lucky that only God will be the judge of both of us.”

Before I can fish up a response, he gives me a quick salute and slides into his car and drives away. At quitting time he returns with liquor on his breath and hands each of us our pay sealed inside an envelope, as is his usual custom. I open mine at a stop sign on the way home and find an extra fifty-dollar bill tucked among the twenties.

The bedroom is dark; darker still the figure filling the doorway. I strain my arms and legs, try to sit, roll to the floor, yell, but nothing works. He walks slowly to the side of the bed and jams the barrel of a pistol into my mouth, twists it past my lips and teeth, pulls the trigger. An awful goddamn dream. I awaken with ringing ears, my heart heaving against my ribs like an animal struggling to escape a trap. I taste gunpowder and oiled metal, and even before the world has fully congealed, I’m on my feet. The shotgun and shells Moriarty loaned me are hidden on the top shelf of the closet, inside an old gym bag. I carry them out to the living room and sit on the couch.

The porch light stains the curtains orange. A moth’s shadow flashes huge across them. It’s bright enough in the room for me to make out the TV, the DVD player, the stereo, everything where it should be. I’ve never been out here naked before. My balls feel funny, resting on the cool vinyl of the couch. I raise the gun to my nose, and the smell brings back my nightmare. A shudder runs through me.

There’s something sharp beneath my bare foot. I reach down to pick up Whatever it is, one of Sam’s toys, the man who found out he was a robot. It seems important that I help the little guy by giving him the new head he wants. I’ll fix him and leave him for Sam to find in the morning, a kind of miracle. Thinking there must be more of the figures scattered about, I slide to the floor and lie on my stomach. I sweep my hand through the dark and dusty cavern beneath the couch, but find nothing except an old soda straw and a penny.

“Honey?”

Maria startles me. I roll over and grab the shotgun and point it at her, and then lower it just as quickly when I realize what I’ve done. My God. My fucking God.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“Is that a gun?”

The refrigerator grumbles under its breath in the kitchen while I nod stupidly and say, “I had a dream,” as if that explains everything.

I pull myself back onto the sofa, upsetting the box of shells. They fall to the floor one by one, clank and roll, clank and roll. I’m an idiot. Maria slips into the orange glow, arms crossed over the front of her robe, her worried look tempered by a quizzical smile. My shame only burns more intensely when she sits beside me and reaches out, probably afraid, to lay a hand on my shoulder. Her lips touch my cheek, and I feel as soft and black as a piece of wormy fruit. I squeeze the man who found out he was a robot so hard he cuts into my palm. How do normal people live with all the mistakes they’ve made?

After work on Wednesday I stop off at the supermarket to pick up milk and eggs, and who do I spot but Belushi. He’s slouched in the condiment aisle, brow furrowed, rubbing his temples with his index fingers. His black-clad frame sways like a tree rocked by the wind.

I know he lives in the neighborhood, but our paths have never crossed before, and I marvel at how strange he looks compared to the other shoppers. Big bubble sunglasses hide his eyes, and tattooed leopard spots tumble out of the sleeve of his T-shirt, which advertises five-cent mustache rides.

I don’t have it in me, the guts it takes to set yourself apart like that. I had my ear pierced once, but it only lasted a week, until a carpenter on the job I was working at the time made a smart remark.

“Boo,” I say to Belushi when I finally sidle up next to him.

He glances over at me and smiles like we do this every day. “Twenty-five kinds of barbecue sauce,” he says. “And all that mustard, man.” His speech is slurred, and thick strings of saliva stretch between his lips.

“You shopping?” I ask.

“Nah, nah. I came in for cigarettes and got distracted.”

He loses his balance and almost topples over. A security guard at the end of the aisle pays close attention.

“Truthfully, I’m pretty fucked up. Could you give me a ride home?”

His apartment is only a couple of blocks away, in a nice building, much nicer than mine. It must be true what Moriarty says about him coming from money. He invites me in for a beer, and I say sure, because it looks like he might need help getting to his door.

The walls and ceiling of the elevator are covered with a mosaic of tiny mirrors. I crouch and make a monkey face, and it’s like watching myself on thousands of little TVs. Belushi staggers into the kitchen when we reach his apartment. He’s got a computer and a plasma screen, and there are two or three electric guitars lying about. Instead of a couch, fat pillows surround a low table covered with those religious candles they sell in Mexican stores.

Belushi returns with a bottle of Heineken and hands it to me, then drops onto one of the pillows. It feels a little hippy-dippy, but I join him. I wish he’d open a window or at least twist the blinds to let some sun through. It’s like an animal’s den in here, or the end of some dark road. I imagine bones in the shadows, jagged rocks, old burned wood. He takes a noisy hit from a purple bong and asks in a high, choking voice whether I’m nervous about tomorrow’s job.

“Sure,” I reply. “I’ve barely been sleeping. You?”

“I’m a fucking mess,” he says with a smile. “This is the last one. The big one. Your old lady doesn’t know what’s up, does she?”

“No way. No. She’d flip.”

“How are you going to explain coming into money?”

I shrug to avoid answering. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought, but he doesn’t need to know that. He’s got plenty of other things to make fun of me about.

“You and Moriarty have been friends for a long time, huh?” I say.

Belushi lights a cigarette. The ashtray is a coiled rattlesnake with red rhinestone eyes.

“Yep. Me and the buttfucker go way back. He’s my favorite Martian. The same spaceship stranded both of us on this prison planet, and we’ve been looking for a way off ever since.”

“Is that right?” I reply.

“It is,” he snaps.

“Can you do this?” I ask, flashing the Vulcan salute from Star Trek.

He laughs and says, “Make it so.” Picking up the remote, he turns on the stereo. Strange music fills the apartment, layer upon layer of squealing guitars over a flat chunk chunk drumbeat. It sounds like a factory coming apart in a hurricane. Belushi’s fist keeps time, pounding against his knee. There’s a poster on the wall of the pope marching with Nazis.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Belushi says, gesturing at the TV and guitars and everything, “but I need this money as much as you.”

“I understand,” I reply, and I guess I do. There’s more than one kind of miserable.

“I’m going to miss you when this is over,” he says.

This blindsides me, but I nod and say, “And I’ll miss you.”

I carry Maria’s coffee in to her, set the cup on the dresser while she’s getting ready for work. She smiles at me in the mirror when I crouch beside her and rest my chin on her shoulder. I run my hands up under her nightgown and cup her breasts. Turning my face to her neck, I tongue the beauty mark there and inhale deeply. I need to memorize it all in case something goes wrong.

“You have dark circles,” she says. “Still not sleeping?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

The big day is finally here. I could be rich by nightfall, or dead. What a wide-open feeling. I can’t put my finger on it.

Sam is sitting on the living room floor in front of the TV, a bowl of cereal in his lap. His eyes are locked onto the screen, where a cartoon spaceship goes down in flames.

“Invader X neutralized,” he declares, imitating the voice of some hero in a visored helmet.

I remember the joy of losing myself like that as a child. What a gift it seems now. I resist the urge to pick him up, to intrude, and instead sit on the couch and love him from afar.

The three of us leave the bungalow together, and I walk Maria and Sam to the Sentra. She’ll drop him off at kindergarten on her way to school. I kiss them both and wait to make sure the car starts, because the battery hasn’t been holding a charge lately. It’s hard to let them go this morning. Tears sting my eyes as the car crests the hill in front of our complex and pops out of the shadows and into the ravenous sunlight.

The plan is to meet at three o’clock in the parking lot of a mini-mall a few blocks from the bank. Until then it’s business as usual. The Guatemalans are already up on their ladders when I arrive at the house in Los Feliz. El Jefe steps out of his BMW and watches me unload my truck. He’s smoking a cigar and drinking from a quart carton of orange juice.

I’m painting up under the eaves this morning, which is nice because it keeps me out of reach of the sun, but hell because of the spiders. If this was my job, I’d have sprayed the webs down with a garden hose yesterday and let the wall dry overnight, but El Jefe’s not much for prep, so I use a brush to sweep the webs away. They’re as thick as cotton in places, and studded with dried-out flies that jump and crackle. The webs wrap around me when they fall, cling to my face with ghostly tautness, and slither into my lungs on the current of my breath. And the monsters that spun them! Fat black spiders drop like poison rain. I swat them away when they scrabble over my arms, my neck, but it’s too much. I have to take a break, sit on the lawn with my head between my knees.

After lunch I begin to work myself up to sticking my finger down my throat. That’s how I’ll get away, by vomiting and telling El Jefe I’m too sick to keep going, maybe blame it on a spider bite. I’m prying open a new can of paint when my pager goes off. I bought it when I went into business for myself. After that fell apart, we decided to keep it active in case of emergencies. The readout shows Maria’s number at school, followed by 911.

“Jefe!” I yell, approaching his car at a run. “I need to use your phone.”

He rolls down the window. Chilled air breaks over me like a wave. “It’s expensive, you know.”

“It’s my wife. Something’s wrong.”

“You pay for the call?”

I snatch the phone from his hand, dial, and Maria answers. There’s worry in her voice. Sam has f allen at kindergarten and may have broken his leg. She can’t leave school right now and wonders if I can pick him up and drive him to the hospital. No problem. I say. Relax. Everything’ll be okay.

“Gotta go,” I tell El Jefe. “I’ll pick my shit up later.” I throw the phone into his lap and run for my truck. It’s not until I’m driving away that I think to look at my watch. Quarter after one. I’m supposed to have a gun in my hand and a bulletproof soul in less than two hours.

Sam is lying on his back on a cot in the school nurse’s office. He stares at the ceiling, afraid to move, his face pale and sweaty.

“I’m hurt,” he says, “but not bleeding.”

He whimpers when I scoop him up, cries for his shoes, which the nurse has removed. She gives them to him, and he twines his fingers through the laces, clutching them tightly. I shield his eyes from the sun as I carry him across the parking lot. A bell rings behind us, doors open with a whoosh, and hordes of screaming children run for the playground.

He lies across the seat of the truck. The top of his head rests against my thigh. He looks up at me as I drive, his bottom lip held between his teeth. I know he’s in pain, but he doesn’t complain once, though every block seems to have a pothole that makes the truck shake like an unwatered drunk.

“Want to play music?” I ask. He’s not usually allowed, but I need to see him smile. I turn on the radio and say, “Go ahead.”

He reaches out tentatively, as if this might be a trick, and pushes one of the buttons, changing stations. When no scolding follows, he sets to work in earnest. We listen to snatches of some rapper, the Eagles, news, a Mexican station, and back again, and he laughs at the cacophony he’s creating. I feel awful for ever depriving him of this pleasure, for ever slapping his hand and shouting, Knock it off.

Meanwhile my partners are waiting, and the ticking of my watch grows louder with each passing second. If I don’t show up, they’ll call the job off, but I know Moriarty and his completion principle. He’ll just plan another, and that’s unacceptable. I want this to be over now. I want to be a citizen again. I want to spend my fucking money.

I lay my hand on Sam’s chest. His heart is beating as fast as mine.

“I’ll teach you a song,” I say. “Oh, the monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole...”

When they wheel Sam off for his X-rays, I call Maria at school. Her phone is off, so I try the office. The secretary puts me on hold, then comes back on to ask if I’d like to leave a message, because Mrs. Blackburn is unavailable at the moment.

“This is her husband. Tell her I’ve got our son here at Kaiser in Hollywood.”

“Let me write it down,” she says. “You’re her husband?”

I don’t have time for this, so I hang up on her and call Moriarty. No answer, but I decide not to leave a message. You never know who’s listening. Then I try the school again. The same woman answers, and I slam the receiver down.

I’m clenching my jaw so tight, my teeth hurt. Any minute something inside me is going to burst. I lean against the wall, close my eyes, and breathe deeply, which only makes me feel worse, because the air in the corridor reeks of shit and medicine. There’s a TV on somewhere. A woman on it asks, “Do you love me?” and a man answers, “I don’t know right now.” “Do you love me?” the woman screams. I begin to pace, ten steps up the hall and ten steps back. The world narrows into a strip of snot-green linoleum over which I have complete control. It should always be this easy.

Maria arrives, flushed and sweaty-palmed. Another teacher took over her class, allowing her to leave school early. She’d left her phone in her desk. The doctor informs us that Sam has a hairline fracture of the tibia. Nothing serious, but he’ll need a cast. It’s two-thirty. I can still make my rendezvous with Moriarty and Belushi if I go now.

“Hey, I left my stuff at the site,” I tell Maria. “I should probably pick it up before they quit for the day.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“You’ll be fine here by yourself?”

“See you at home.”

I kiss her on the cheek and force myself to walk until I’m out of her sight.

BOOM! Here we go, rolling in out of the heat and noise and destroying the silky air-conditioned calm of the bank. Today it’s Mexican wrestling masks and happy-face T-shirts, party clothes to commemorate our final heist. “Get down,” I yell, “down on the floor,” showing my gun. There are one, two, three customers, and they drop like trapdoors have opened beneath them. Moriarty beelines for the security guard, who meekly holds out his hands to be cuffed. One, two, three customers, all secure. I wonder if the plants standing in the corners are real or made of plastic. Something tickles my neck. I reach up and snag it, a long black hair, Maria’s. I raise it to my lips as Moriarty hurdles the counter and makes his way down the line of tellers. No trouble there. They’ve been trained not to resist. Just push the silent alarm and back off. Well, supposedly silent. The signal zips up my spine like a thimble on a washboard, and all of my pores are screaming. One, two, three, old lady, fat man, vato. Each second is disconnected from the one that came before it, so that they bounce around like pearls cut loose from a necklace. Moriarty’s finished. He heads for the door, the bag slung over his shoulder. I follow him out to the car, dive inside, and Belushi slams his hand against the steering wheel and screams, Yes! He swings out into traffic and we’re gobbled up into the steaming maw of the city, where we disappear for good.

If it’s true that the same God will judge both El Jefe and me, I want this added to the record: In the end, I didn’t lie to my wife. When she wondered about the money, I came clean. I hadn’t planned to, but I did.

“Where did you get it?” she asked.

“I robbed a bank. Lots of banks.”

She stiffened in my arms — we were in bed at the time — then rolled over to watch my face.

“Will they catch you?”

“No.”

It took the rest of the night to work through it. Maria felt I’d put the family’s future in jeopardy and wanted answers to a lot of questions I hadn’t dared ask myself before for fear that the answers would have pulled me up short, destroying the ruthless momentum that had enabled me to do what had to be done. I explained as best I could while she waffled between tears and outrage. Dawn found us silent and drained at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of coffee. The walls of the bungalow ticked and popped in the gathering heat, and the fresh light of the new day stumbled over the cracks in the plaster left by the last earthquake. Her decision was conveyed by a simple gesture. She reached across the table and took my hands into hers: We would go on.

I’m sitting on the couch, using a Magic Marker to draw a spaceman on Sam’s cast. He keeps leaning forward to monitor my efforts, and isn’t pleased with how it’s turning out.

“No, Papi, his body’s not right.”

The phone rings, and Maria picks it up in the kitchen. Another real estate agent. We’re driving up to Big Bear on Saturday to look at houses. Only a week has passed since the robbery, and already things are changing. So many options, so many decisions. To tell you the truth, it leaves me a little dizzy. I’m like a dog that’s finally managed to jump the fence and, rather than running like hell, sits in front of the gate, waiting for his master to let him back in.

Sam asks me to give him the pen so that he can finish the spaceman himself. I leave him to his work and walk into the kitchen, where Maria is making notes on a legal pad, the phone’s receiver pressed to her ear with her shoulder. I’m too big for the bungalow tonight. If I move too quickly, I’ll break something.

“I’m going out,” I whisper, motioning to the door.

Maria frowns and holds up her hand to indicate that I should wait for her to finish. When I come out of the bedroom after putting on a clean shirt, she’s still on the phone, so I just wave and go. Sam is busy with his drawing. He doesn’t hear me when I say good-bye.

I stop in at the Smog Cutter. There’s a country song playing on the karaoke machine, and old Fred is singing. I grab a stool and settle in to see if Moriarty will show up for his regular Thursday-night session at the pool table. We haven’t seen each other since the robbery, since Belushi presented us with our account numbers and the partnership was dissolved. For security reasons we agreed to go our separate ways from that moment on, but I just want to say hey and find out how he’s doing.

Because I can, I buy a round for the house, and I’m everybody’s best friend for five minutes. It makes me laugh to see how easy it is, and how quickly it fades.

Nine comes and goes, then ten, and still no Moriarty. He must have changed his routine. Hell, he may already be in Idaho. And Belushi’s not home either, or at least he doesn’t answer when I push the button for his apartment on the intercom downstairs. Well, fuck it, then. “Here’s to us, fellas,” I say, raising a pint of bourbon in the parking lot of a liquor store. The only good thing about the moment is that I’m pretty sure that as long as I live I’ll never feel this lonely again.

The shotgun Moriarty loaned me is locked in the toolbox in the bed of my truck, where I put it when Maria told me to get it out of the house that night. I’ve been meaning to dispose of it, and this seems as good a time as any.

I drive up to Lake Hollywood. The lights from the mansions in the hills circling the reservoir are reflected in its inky blackness. I press my face against the chain-link fence, then turn to gaze up at the stilt house that caught my attention on my earlier visit. Someone inside is playing a piano. Another belt of bourbon, and I swing the shotgun up and fire twice into the air. The blasts roll across the reservoir and back.

I toss the shotgun over the fence, where it plops into the water and sinks from sight. The piano is silent, and a shadowy figure crouches on the deck of the house, watching me. I stare up at him and tip the bottle again, hoping to spook him even more, but when I slink away, it’s with darkened headlights, so that he can’t make out my license plates.

On my way home I pass one of the banks we took off, and something wild bucks inside me. BOOM! The full moon is rising over the mountains, all orange and smiley, and without even thinking I lift my trigger finger and trace its shape against the sky.