“You think everything will be fine?”
“You won’t go back to jail. I guarantee you.”
Kevin started the pickup’s engine. “Come on. Let’s get outta here.”
CHAPTER 11
THE NEXT DAY, Mitch went down to the Wilton Mall and looked around in the bookstore for books on leadership. There were dozens of them but most of them were full of advice for middle-management professionals. Dressing professionally was a common theme. Red ties were encouraged. So was drinking water, lots and lots of it, while constantly showing a positive attitude. Great leaders must smile and pee a lot, Mitch figured, as he put the last of the books back on the shelf. He decided to try looking for something more practical, but nothing offered advice on robbery.
That was the problem with crime: there was very little helpful literature on it. A simple manual would have been invaluable, written, say, by a guy who had pulled off an armored car robbery. But obviously, anyone who had successfully done that would be trying to lay low and would not want to attract the attention of the publishing industry. The only place you could find people willing to discuss such matters was in jail, where one would be able to find an authority on every aspect of robbery except how not to get caught, which was the most important part.
So he tried to rent a movie about robbing an armored car. After a half hour in the video store, the only film he could come up with was Heat, which he had seen in the theater when it first came out. The guys in that movie just made Mitch feel inadequate. They had thousands of dollars worth of equipment: radios, complex codes, night vision goggles, and M16s. The Robert DeNiro character lived in a beach house. Mitch wondered why people who could afford all that shit didn’t just invest the money rather than rob an armored car. If he had his own beach house, he and Doug would just toke on the deck all day; screw all this robbery crap. Why risk freedom when freedom was great? Mitch estimated it would take him about a year to save up for an M16, let alone all the drills, pistols, duffel bags, and binoculars. He put Heat back on the shelf.
When Mitch got home, bookless and movieless, Doug was sitting at the kitchen table looking at a toothbrush in a clear plastic container.
“What’re you doing, man?”
“I just applied for a job at Chicken Buckets,” he said.
He sounded forlorn. Mitch felt that it was his job as unrespected gang leader to keep everybody chipper, but he was confused as to why Doug would try to find employment just a few days before they were going to rob an armored car. Robbing an armored car involved a great deal of uncertainty, but the one thing you could be certain of was that, whether things went really well or really badly, you damned sure wouldn’t need a job at Chicken Buckets afterward.
“Why?”
Doug shrugged. “I dunno, man. I’ve, like, always had a job. Sitting around all day drives me nuts.”
“What’s with the toothbrush?”
“It’s for a drug test,” he said. “I filled out an application and they gave me this toothbrush to swab my mouth with. You don’t even have to do it there. It’s a take-home drug test. I guess they figured that if you made the guys do it on the spot, they’d never be able to hire anyone.”
Mitch picked up the toothbrush. Instead of bristles, it had a little absorbent sponge.
“Cool, huh? They can test your saliva now,” Doug said, taking the brush back. “The thing is, I don’t even know anyone whose saliva I can use. They give me a take-home drug test, man, they’re basically just asking me to cheat on it, and I’m still not gonna be able to pass it.”
Mitch opened the fridge and cracked open a beer, then sat down at the kitchen table next to Doug and thought about it. Linda? No, she smoked occasionally. The landlord? You didn’t want to ask your landlord to help you pass a drug test. Besides, he seemed a little freaky sometimes, wired up; maybe he dabbled in meth or coke. That would be all Doug needed-to get busted on a drug test for one of the few drugs he didn’t use. “How about Ellie?”
“Kevin’s daughter?”
Mitch shrugged. “It’s human saliva, right? That’s all they need.”
They stared at each other. Mitch burst out laughing but Doug remained serious. He pushed the toothbrush, still wrapped in plastic, toward Mitch. “When you see Kevin tomorrow, can you ask him to have Ellie stick that in her mouth?”
Mitch was still laughing, snorting beer out of his nose. He nodded. He got up and went into the living room to watch TV. Maybe that was what leaders did. They solved other people’s problems.
FEELING UNCHARACTERISTICALLY CONNECTED to the world, Mitch decided to watch the news. There was something about the idea of robbing an armored car that, rather than making him feel removed from society, made him feel accepted by it. While he walked dogs, he was devoting an unusual amount of his time to daydreaming about the good times that awaited him, the beers he and Doug were going to have on the beach on a Caribbean island, the island that always appeared in films, peopled only with thong-clad young women who loved to flirt. Then, upon his return home, the move to Pittsburgh, where he would find a nice apartment downtown, furnish it elegantly with a flat-screen high-def TV and a black leather couch, and finish his education. Maybe he’d get accepted to Carnegie Mellon or Pitt and actually get a degree in something like computer science, then go on to start his own company doing something computer-science related. He’d have money and a nice apartment and plenty of time to figure things out.
The news began to sour his mood, however. They were covering campaign speeches of various political candidates and Mitch amused himself by counting the number of times he heard the candidates say the word freedom. They all said it, no matter what they were running for. The city comptroller could get applause by saying, “FREEDOM.” It was a magic word that instantly overstimulated any crowd full of gullible chumps, and what other kind of crowd went to see one of these yokels give a speech?
Freedom, Mitch thought to himself. Who would try to enslave us? We’re a military powerhouse thousands of miles from anyone. Mitch imagined most countries in the world kept their heads down and hoped the U.S. wouldn’t notice them, praying that a mineral or ore desperately needed for American creature comfort was never discovered on their soil. Freedom, my ass. The only real threats to freedom were the guys giving the speeches, even the city comptroller, who Mitch just didn’t like the look of.
Doug came in, bringing the bong with him, and sat. “Wanna hit?”
“Maybe in a little bit.”
Doug set about packing the bowl and Mitch watched him rather than the TV. Doug was careful and meticulous. The bowls he packed somehow always hit better than the ones Mitch packed for himself. Doug possessed an attention to detail that Mitch knew he would never master, some fundamental difference in brain function that probably would have been evident even in early childhood. But Doug would never have thought of, nor planned, the robbing of an armored car. Everyone had their skill set, Mitch decided. Perhaps he had been born for this very purpose, to rob armored cars. He sure as hell had never felt born for anything else he had tried.
“It’s on for Friday,” Mitch said. “We meet at two o’clock.”
“Why two o’clock? I have to hand in my drug test at Chicken Buckets at three o’clock.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Mitch groaned. “You’re just gonna have to be a little bit late.”
Doug shrugged. “OK.”
That was cool. Mitch had been expecting an argument, which he would have interpreted as a sign of Doug’s reluctance to join them. “Chicken Buckets,” Mitch said with a half-smile. “That place sucks.”