Mitch had been studying some family photos on the living room mantel with far more attention than they deserved, as if he were so engrossed by the fading photo of an elderly Mexican woman that he had become unaware of the dancing and drinking all around him. As he turned to face Jorge, he got a face full of hot, tequila-laden breath
“Yeah, man,” he said, holding up a bottle of beer, as if that were all that was required for a good time.
“Come meet my uncle. He want to talk to you.”
An uncle? Mitch had been hoping for an introduction to a niece or a sister, but even an uncle was preferable to staring at more pictures of Granny. He nodded and followed Jorge through the house, past amorous dancing couples and chatting housewives, their eyes glazed over with an early evening buzz, their voices louder than usual. Some of the children turned to look at the gringo, but to the adults he was simply invisible. Outside of this house, in the streets of America, he knew, it was the other way around.
Jorge took him out into the yard, which was a few square feet of weeds and dirt with a small garage at the back with an unpainted, broken door. Jorge pushed the door open with a great deal of effort and they stepped inside. The gathering here was all men and the atmosphere was very different from the festivities and dancing going on in the house. Four young men, tattooed and aggressive-looking, were sitting around the garage on buckets and rusted metal chairs, and they stared hard at Mitch with what he felt was deep suspicion. Mitch tried to hide his unease by nodding cheerfully to everyone. No one returned his greeting.
An older man with a potbelly was sitting on a torn green vinyl couch. He stood up as Jorge closed the door behind him and unsmilingly offered Mitch his hand. “I am Armando, Jorge’s uncle. You are Meesh?”
“Yeah, hi,” Mitch said. Maybe is was just unpronounceable for these guys. Meesh would do fine.
“Jorge tells me you know banks.”
Whaaaaat? Mitch hoped his reaction didn’t show and he exhaled slowly, trying to preserve his cool. He looked quizzically at Jorge, who was looking down at his shoes. How… who? As long as he had been in Cleveland, he hadn’t mentioned a word of anything to anyone.
His shock and confusion must have been visible to Armando, because he broke into a smile, and even one of the brutal-looking tattooed young men sitting on a bucket allowed himself a flicker of amusement.
“Banks?” asked Mitch. He wanted more information before he told them anything. How had they come to this conclusion? Was his picture in the post office? He had figured that his little crime, for what it was worth, had been swept into the morass of the decaying social fabric, forgotten with yesterday’s news cycle. His current life had depended on this. How had they found out?
“Come on,” Armando said cheerfully. “Who wants to spread tar with Mexicans except a guy who’s wanted? I can tell you don’t rob liquor stores or bodegas. You’re smart. You go where the money is. You do banks.”
This logic confused Mitch. Apparently, all the time he had thought he was invisible, they had been sizing him up. He had thought his guy-who-just-got laid-off routine was working like a charm. He shook his head. “No,” he said.
There was a moment’s silence in the garage while they looked at him, disappointed either in his refusal to come clean or their own error of judgment. Mitch cleared his throat. “Armored cars,” he said finally.
“Ah hah!” roared Armando and the young men sitting around also laughed. Mitch had the feeling he was on stage and giving a killer performance. He smiled sheepishly, unused to the attention.
Armando pushed forward an overturned bucket and motioned for Mitch to sit. His demeanor was suddenly serious. Everyone had their own version of the embattled paratroop commander. “So what do you know about security systems?”
“Security systems?” Mitch shook his head. “Not much.” He sensed that he might lose the crowd with this confession and that a full explanation of his crime would provide more amusement than respect. But he wasn’t sure. Wasn’t there an element of learning to all crime? He had, after all, successfully robbed an armored car. He doubted anyone else in the room could say that.
“I don’t know anything about all that technical shit,” Mitch said. “I just know that a security system is only as good as the people who respond to it.” He sat down on the bucket and pulled it up next to Armando, surprised by his own intensity. He was realizing that he did have knowledge, and a work philosophy, and experience, all the things he had faked at Accu-mart. “It’s all about efficiency, about timing. If you can do what you have to do and get back in your car in ninety seconds, the security system doesn’t matter.”
He looked around the garage and saw expressions he wasn’t used to. Respect. People were actually interested in what he had to say. He knew enough to stop talking and sat back on his bucket, waiting for a response from one of the others.
There was a moment of silence while looks were exchanged. Then one of the tattooed men in a white T-shirt pulled his bucket up next to Mitch and glanced at Armando, as if to give approval.
“We have this thing we’re working on,” said Armando, leaning forward, his voice low to accent the gravity of his disclosure. “You might be interested?”
Mitch leaned in too, keeping his own voice low. “Yes. I might be.”
About Iain Levison
Iain Levison was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1963. Since moving to the United States, he has worked as a fisherman, carpenter, and cook, and he has detailed his woes of wage slavery in A Working Stiff's Manifesto. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
