“I might be, at that,” he said.
Another step and he’d be close enough to chest-bump, like back in the yard when you wanted to see if a guy had the balls to fight.
“Prove it,” he said.
He did it with three words: “Mall of America.”
Bob turned out to be one of those kinds of men the FBI profilers liked to call “angry loners” on their wanted posters. He hated his job, he hated his ex-wife, he hated his neighbor’s dog for barking when he had to work the swing shift, and he hated anybody who couldn’t see he wasn’t just some nobody like everybody else.
After a couple days of going over the plan, Bob grew to dislike Steve Pine, the name given by the man from the parking lot. Bob thought of him much like he did his ex.
Bob was no criminal, the man calling himself Steve Pine thought, that much was clear. What he had going for him was a grudge against the world the size of Australia. Maybe, he thought, that’ll be good enough this time. Pulling into Bob’s driveway at dawn and there he was, waiting in his car at the curb.
“Fuck me, you. I knew you’d be here early,” Bob complained. “Look, I’m dead tired, man. They had us doing inventory and emergency drills all night long.”
Too much whining as they headed to his front door. Bob walked like an old man with bent shoulders as he pawed at his pants pockets for his house key. There was booze on Bob’s breath.
“I don’t think your neighbors across the street caught all of that,” Pine said to Bob, steadying his arm. “Why don’t you repeat it a little louder?”
“You’re real hilarious, Pine,” Bob said. He was still fumble-fucking with keys on a ring trying to unlock his front door. “That ain’t even your real name, I’ll bet.”
“Don’t bet,” Pine said to him and gripped his upper arm tighter. “You’ll lose.”
As soon as they were inside, Pine punched him — once, very hard, in the gut. Bob dropped to the floor as if somebody had handed him a basketball-sized lump of uranium. He gagged and started bucking sideways. The solar plexus was a quick way to get someone’s attention. Pack wolves held a misbehaving pup’s snout into the dirt; cons used their fists in their cells to settle friendly differences.
He waited for Bob to recover. A foul reek filled the tiny foyer where he stood looking down. A ropy string of yellow bile had come up last.
“Stupid motherfucker,” he said quietly. “We’re two days from something that’s either going to make us wealthy men or put us in prison for twenty years and you’re dicking around.”
Bob said nothing, didn’t even try to stand up. He lay on the floor and whimpered. He was tempted to double him up again with a kick to the same place.
A jolt for aggravated first-degree armed robbery in Minnesota was twenty years. That was what Bob faced. He faced LWOP, life without parole. He surprised himself when he realized his fist was still balled and cocked.
He brought Bob a glass of water and helped him drink; then he raised him to his feet, gently, like a mother with a just-walking child.
“Let’s go over it again, Bob.”
Bob slapped the glass out of his hand. It flew across the room and landed unbroken in his La-Z-Boy, the one article of furniture in Bob’s living room besides the hi-def TV.
“Feeling better?”
“Fuck you, Pine.”
He watched him stomp off to his room and slam the door. Robbing was like playing poker, Tom used to say. You don’t play the cards as much as the people sitting across from you. But with partners, it was more like pinochle, and he wasn’t sure Bob could go through with it. Bob swiped copies of paperwork from the place, loading schedules, and staff shifts. He xeroxed them when he was alone. He said the supervisor left them lying around on her desk.
“Lazy bitch leaves her door wide open,” Bob bragged, sounding like a TV bad guy.
He didn’t mention to Bob the copier was counting every duplicate while he was on closed-circuit TV no matter where he was in that vast complex of stores. Tom had called Bob Captain Obvious when he first mentioned his inside man to him.
Bob was a gold-star employee of five years, ten years, and then fifteen years. His “dedicated service” certificates were computer-signed by the company’s CEO, who had probably never heard of his dedicated employee. They were lined up on the wall encased in glass photo frames. He found the letter denying Bob’s application for promotion shoved in a drawer, ripped in two, and then taped together. Bob heaped abuse on the female supervisor every chance he got, calling her “a stupid hatchet wound,” and accusing her of “sucking her way to the top.” The whole thing nearly came crashing down during a final rehearsal when Bob decided to surprise him with a dozen photos he’d taken with his cell phone. “So you’ll know your way around better,” he said.
“I didn’t... tell you... to do that,” he said. The words were fishbones in his throat; he could barely suppress the rage pounding in his veins. You stupid, stupid fuck, he thought.
“Relax, Pine. Nobody saw me take them,” Bob said.
He had to go into the bathroom, shut the door, and douse himself with water before he felt it safe to come out again.
It was too late to back out, though. The following night would either be payday or doomsday. He let Bob drink himself shit-faced that night. He’d kept him away from the Triangle for fear he’d say something stupid. Prisons were jammed with braggarts from bars. It was always in the back of his mind that he’d already talked in that bar anyway. How many guys had he drunkenly approached before he met the real deal in Tom? In the joint, they loved those crime shows where one spouse murders the other and the narrator reveals how many barflies and snitches they’d buttonholed looking for a hit man. The killer never had a chance.
It didn’t surprise him that Bob never once tumbled to his final role as the tethered goat. The tiger would spring once he was gone with the swag and all the arrows of guilt were pointing straight at dumbfuck Bob. Without a second man, there wouldn’t be four hands stuffing cash into garbage bags, only his two. Half the take, but if Bob’s numbers were accurate, there would still be plenty to retire on even after allowing for Tom’s cut. That was understood, too, once Tom had got himself jammed up. Don’t trust anybody not to sell you down the river. Better to keep everyone happy. Except for the dumbasses, the clueless assholes that couldn’t hurt you.
The next day was another fall day with leaves in bright colors, gold and red all over town, not the soggy, all-day drizzle Bloomington of the past week. Bob’s sour mood was abetted by the hangover.
“Just be yourself,” he had told Bob all day long. “Act your part. Everybody will be on the floor with you when I come into the room. Look scared.”
“I am scared,” Bob said.
Bob never understood that it was too risky to meet up right away to split the cash. He grudgingly accepted his explanation, but Pine didn’t want to shine too bright a light into Bob’s dim-bulb of a brain. He needed some time before the company figured with certainty the robbery had been an inside job. Bob had to be prepared for an FBI interrogation, he reminded him.
“I don’t know If I can go in tonight,” Bob moaned. “My stomach is all messed up. Maybe tomorrow is better—”
“Just pre-fight jitters, Bob,” Pine told him soothingly.
They were dressed in matching security guard uniforms sitting at the Formica kitchen table. Bob’s one foot was rabbit-thumping the floor, beating a nonstop tattoo of fear.
“Those patches you made,” Bob erupted suddenly, “they look like shit. They look like fuckin’ Frankenstein stitches.”