The television cameras dolly over to another part of the lobby.
The interviewer turns his back on my companion, looks around for something more to his taste.
“This man holds the key to the heist,” she shouts after him.
“You’re missing out on the biggest story of the decade.”
“What did you mean by a vow of silence?” I ask her.
She shakes her head at me and stomps off in the direction of the television cameras. “If we’ve blown it, I’ll never forgive myself,” she mutters.
Last seen she is doing a seductive dance for the eye of one of the TV cameras, fixing her hair, shouting that she has been misunderstood.
I decide — the confusion presents me with the opportunity — to return to the penthouse and finish what I had started. To avoid crowds, I go around the back and take the service elevator. An odd coincidence: two of my former partners appear in the same elevator. “We saw you on television,” they say with undisguised jealousy.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” I ask.
Gabbo says, “We’re returning to the scene of the crime, which is traditional. Is it the same with you?”
I push another floor number but the elevator refuses to acknowledge my request, slides past my stop as if better informed of my intention than I am myself. We are caged in this pen together for the duration of the ride.
I try to forgive them their betrayal of me but it is easier to say than feel. We reminisce about our last elevator ride together.
“God, were we scared,” says Pinky. “I was afraid I would mess my pants I was so scared. I didn’t think we’d ever pull it off, did you?”
I tell them how it was with me. “While we were riding in the elevator I couldn’t remember a single detail of the plan. The only image that came to mind was that when we got to the top the police would be waiting for us with handcuffs. What a humiliation that would have been.”
“I was thinking about what I would do with the money,” recalls Pinky. “I thought I’d get the kid a pair of shoes and the rest of us would take a vacation.”
“I was going to open a swank boutique,” says Gabbo. “Quit the 9 to 5 job and go into business for myself.”
“What did you do with the money?” I ask.
“Inflation ate it up,” says Pinky. “Debts and taxes got the rest. I don’t believe I spent a nickel of that loot on my own comforts.”
“Still, we brought it off,” says Gabbo. “The success of the idea was the important thing.”
I recall riding up in the elevator at the speed of eighty feet per second, the recollection as vivid as if it were being lived at the moment, fragments of machine gun under, the coats of three of my colleagues. I recall trying to remember who had the various parts. There were six of us in the elevator, seven including the operator, an old man with a European accent who listened to English-speaking programs on the radio to improve his pronunciation.
Pinky, Gabbo, and I got off at the penultimate floor, the other three electing to go all the way. There was nothing for us to do on the thirty-ninth floor, nothing serious or important. We disguised our disappointment.
“It was our modesty,” says Gabbo, “that made us get off first.
Why us and not the other three? When we finally got to the top, all the excitement was over.”
The other three were playing cards when we finally arrived, a witless game of their own invention, our circumstantial hosts imprisoned in one of the closets.
It was a relief to find that everything had been taken care of, but at the same time it meant that we were only of peripheral consequence in the affair. One wants to be of some use.
The card playing seemed a reality-denying tactic. It was as if, having gotten this far successfully, they had willfully forgotten the point of it all. This is a heist, I had to remind them. I took charge since someone had to, got them up and moving, ordered them to collect whatever was of value. Our anonymous tipster had told us that the apartment was filled with priceless jewels.
Gabbo’s version is different from mine. In Gabbo’s version, he is the central figure, the well-meaning if tragically limited hero. “As soon as I stepped into that upper-middle-class jungle, I knew it was a mistake. Why should we want what they had? It was only material wealth, nothing enduring or nourishing. Their lives were more impoverished than my own. I was prepared to go to the closet and release them. Then I thought it would not be a real favor, would only return them to the same empty life. It struck me that stripping them of their most valued possessions would force them into a new life. Was that presumptuous, do you think? At the same time, I didn’t want what they had, wanted none of it. I resolved to go along for the sake of my companions and for no other reason.”
Pinky has no separate vision of the event. “I’ll do anything,” he says, “if it seems like fun.”
Why was I in it? I am not like Pinky or Gabbo or the other three, men with limited respect for the integrity of others. I wanted to do something surprising for once, something no one would expect me to do. And the money was attractive. I won’t deny that I wanted the money, was in it for the quick killing. My share, if all went according to plan, was to be upwards of two years’ salary. And the people we were heisting were themselves reputed to be ethically suspect, fingers in the till here and there, eyes looking the other way. Perhaps I’m inventing reasons as a way of explaining to myself behavior that has no rational explanation. Frankly, I don’t understand my involvement in the heist. It was fitting that I ended up in the closet with our circumstantial hosts.
We have five more floors to travel. “Tell you the truth, I’m more nervous this time,” says Pinky.
“I want to see if it’s the way I remember it,” says Gabbo. “I expect to be disappointed.”
It may be, I think, that it hasn’t happened yet. It may be that we imagined the heist the first time, a way of deflecting pressure, and when we enter the penthouse, as we will, our engagement in the actual caper begins. It is possible of course, no less possible perhaps than the notion that we are returning to the scene of the crime.
It’s only the imagination that ever returns to the scene of a crime, erasing one’s guilt by canceling it out.
The elevator will arrive at the penthouse floor in a matter of seconds. It will not open right away, but will wheeze to a stop before the sliding doors release us, the machine not without its own mechanical remorse.
The penthouse will not be as we remember it, will not be the same in, a single significant detail. There will be no card players on the rug this time.
There will be a family this time around the dining table, a mother, father, grandmother, and three sons, eating what looks like a Sunday dinner. The father is slicing the roast beef with an electric carving knife when we come in from the elevator.
“This is a heist,” Gabbo will say. “If everyone behaves himself, no one will get punished. I hope I’ve made myself understood.”
“Where are the bloody jewels?” Pinky will ask.
I will construct the machine gun from its parts, set it up so that everyone at that table is in its sights.
The family will go about their business, eating and drinking, laughing about this and that, untouched by the impact of our presence.
Their blind unconcern, which I don’t believe for a moment, which I refuse to believe, puts the whole daring enterprise into perspective.
The Return of Service
I am in a tennis match against my father. He is also the umpire and comes to my side of the court to advise me of the rules. “You have only one serve,” he says. “My advice is not to miss.” I thank him — we have always been a polite family — and wait for his return to the opposing side. Waiting for him to take his place in the sun, I grow to resent the limitation imposed on my game. (Why should he have two serves, twice as many chances, more margin for error?) I bounce the ball, waiting for him — he takes his sweet time, always has — and plan to strike my first service deep to his forehand. And what if I miss, what if ambition overreaches skill? The ordinary decencies of a second chance have been denied me.