Flagged Victor (17 page)

I
accepted the new reality like you accept a diagnosis of cancer. You know that everything has changed. You rationally acknowledge that a new lifestyle with new limitations will be imposed on you as the treatment commences. You recognize the possibility of death, and it’s always on your mind, but you also don’t believe it, even though you wake in a cold sweat sometimes, or lose your train of thought and stare off in the distance when you catch a simple moment of beauty, a chipmunk in a park or the sun peering between two buildings, and think how strange it will be to leave this world.

Chris, on the other hand, became more steady and serious, even as he seemed to glide with ease from one moment to the next. If he was feeling any nervousness or doubt, he never showed it, not even a tremor, and that’s all it would have taken, I believe, for me to abandon him in terror. As it was, his calm, professional certainty was hypnotic. I told myself, because he stated it with so much conviction, that we would never be caught, and if it was impossible for us to be caught, what was the harm in going through with it? No one would know. No one would be hurt. We would be richer and we would have
accomplished something worthy of a novel, maybe even a movie, and the rest of our lives would be enhanced by that secret thing.

We did nearly a dozen dry runs, so many that I became bored of the practice and the planning. At some level, the preparation felt pointless. Even to me, the doing seemed simple. It was only the decision to do that had so many jagged edges.

On the appointed morning, however, I woke up before the alarm, dry-mouthed and clear-eyed, in awe of the moment that had finally arrived. As I moved about the house, every routine gesture was heavy with consequence. Of course, I saw lightness in Chris as his car pulled to the curb outside with as much impatience as if we were late for a movie.

It was 7:15 a.m. I got in without a word, and even sitting there, I still couldn’t believe we were actually going to go through with it. The fact that we were up so early was the most compelling evidence of the seriousness of what was about to happen, like the executioner appearing at your cell door before dawn. Chris did a U-ey at the end of my cul-de-sac, where the swamp and woods began, then headed back through the neighbourhood and down the endless hill of Celtic Drive. Every house we passed had a familiar face. They’d seen us do a lot of crazy shit over the years, but I am inclined to believe they could not even begin to guess what we were up to on that quiet Saturday morning.

Lake Banook and Lake Micmac at the bottom of the hill were mist-shrouded and ghostly; if you listened, you might hear the paddles of war canoes slipping by. We shot through the rotary and onto the highway, no more than a half dozen other cars in sight. It seemed odd to me, at some level, that I was not
behind the wheel, especially on this errand. But we both knew I was a lousy driver, prone to daydreaming, lacking good judgment, unable to make quick decisions, uncertain of the power of the engine.

We got a bit of time, Chris said. You want a coffee?

The question was typical of his thoughtful awareness of other people’s needs, the limits of which could also be rather abrupt. I said yes because yes was all I could manage.

We went to the Tim Hortons by our old junior high school. The squat, brown brick building with the tin roof looked a little like a coffee cup to me and felt reassuring in that moment. We’d spent many freezing cold lunch breaks in there, during middle school, pooling our resources to split a fritter or a Dutchie. It seemed possible that by doing something as innocent now we could ward off the evil to come.

We did the drive-through rather than get out of the car. I couldn’t stomach a doughnut. We broke our lids and took sips. When the requisite minimal amount had been drained away, we set out again, passing strip malls on our right and our left, and finally pulled into the parking lot in front of a gym Chris occasionally worked out at, called Nubody’s.

Nubody’s was not officially open until 8:00, and usually opened later than that in practice. This was one more element in Chris’s master plan. Since the bank drop took place at 8:00, more or less exactly, and Nubody’s never really opened its doors until 8:15 or 8:20, we had a built-in excuse for me to be sitting in a running car waiting for Chris to get back. We’d even brought gym bags along for cover. In mine, I had my gym shorts and an extra pair of underwear. In Chris’s bag, he had a
ski hat, gloves, a pair of ski goggles, a motorcycle helmet, and his father’s stainless steel .357 Magnum with the custom rubber grip. The one that had a tendency to blow the head right off the shoulders.

My mouth was as dry as cloth, my palms wet, my guts twisting in a painful knot. Chris, on the other hand, did not seem nervous, just highly focused, as though mentally running through some last technical details.

Okay, he announced, I’ll be back in a few.

And he was gone, his gym bag in one hand, his motorcycle helmet in the other.

He left the keys in the ignition and the engine on. I watched in the side mirror until he had hopped over the guardrail and trotted across the main road to the parking lot on the other side of the street. Then I got out of the car and stepped into the cold air. I could have slid across the seat to the driver’s side but didn’t want to spill our coffees or knock the gearshift. The second after I slammed my door, however, I realized that I had locked the keys inside with the engine running.

There are some moments of panic that last an eternity. I aged during that micro-forever. The emotions that attacked me were complex and exquisitely specific, like a torturer’s gleaming tools. Not just the horror of being caught. Not just my life being over. Not even the pain of my parents finding out. But also the stupidity and the shame of my clumsy, idiotic failure, exposed for all to see. My knees gave way in a nauseated faint. I lurched forward to attack the door and then saw, in the next instant, that the lock on Chris’s side was still in a popped-up position. I didn’t believe in the mercy of my reprieve until I had stumbled
around the other side of the car like a drunk and pulled up the handle. I sat in the driver’s seat and leaned my head into the steering wheel, gripping it with shaking hands, and moaned. Then I realized that I’d sat on something, and leaned to the side to lift one buttock and retrieve the crumpled remains of Chris’s silver-mirrored aviator sunglasses.

Across the street, Chris walked through the misshapen parking lot, passed Rocky’s Billiards and the strip club, and ducked into the alley. The buildings had no identity from the back, all brick and aluminum siding. The pavement of the alley was cracked. The steel guardrails were flaking red paint, dented, warped, and caved in from years of trucks trying to manage that tight space. Emerging on the other end of the alley, Chris walked by the actual bank drop slot and crossed the next street to the pair of half telephone booths that stood on the edge of the sidewalk before the empty vastness of the mall parking lot. He hung the gym bag strap on his wrist and picked up the receiver to mimic making a call.

Though this was late May, and the sun painfully bright, it was also bitter cold. The early light bounced off the metal awnings of the building, the chrome framing of the telephone booth, even the long strip of white sidewalk. Chris had a clean line of sight to the store and the bank drop. That would allow him to watch the employees leave the store with the deposit bag and get into the pickup truck to make the brief drive to the bank.

A cop car drove through the traffic light and approached.

Most people, seeing a cop at such a moment, would have lost their nerve. Not Chris. Even as it neared, he kept it together. Yes, his heart thumped wildly and he wondered, ever so briefly,
if they were on to him; but he assumed that its appearance was purely coincidental. Sure enough, it rolled on by.

I wish I could make even a small claim to Chris’s grace under pressure. Sitting in the parking lot on the other side of the block, I saw the cop car appear in my own rear-view mirror a minute or so later. The vision hit me like a physical blow. I lurched forward, twisted around to look, and then slammed myself back into the seat in a single massive spasm as though defibrillator paddles had been applied to my chest. A moan escaped my throat. Then I saw it was going to the Tim Hortons. Fifteen minutes before, the lot had been empty; now it was full of cops. I counted four units up there, like a posse of sheriffs on a ridge, waiting to nab us as soon as we made our move.

My breath was so rapid, my vision started to sparkle. I realized that the cops were most likely gathering at the doughnut shop for the same reason cops have always gathered at doughnut shops. At eight in the morning, this was probably a shift-change ritual. I laughed then, a cynical, insane, desperate guffaw, and realized that for all Chris’s planning, he had failed to take into account the fact that more cops would be in the vicinity on a Saturday morning than if we were trying to break into the precinct itself. I knew he would have to abort. I waited anxiously for him to appear, walking casually, plans cancelled. I could hear the blood squishing through the narrow capillaries of my head.

But by then, Chris had forgotten the cop car and was fixated on one concern:
Where the fuck was the money?
It was later than usual, and he wondered whether he hadn’t blown the timing. Despite the cold, he was beginning to get hot and uncomfortable. No wonder. He wore his dad’s down hunting vest under
his own black jacket in the belief that the extra bulk would give him a heftier appearance. He also had a ski mask on, but it was rolled up over his forehead like a winter hat, and he was ready to put the motorcycle helmet on when the moment came. He’d chosen the helmet because that was what the suspect in the original robbery had worn. But his own helmet lacked a visor, so he had goggles too. He figured driving off in a car instead of on a motorcycle would help confuse the escape.

Just then the doors of the Canadian Tire finally swung open and two figures walked out. At the same moment, a car driving along the street veered suddenly to the curb and a young woman jumped from it and ran to the empty telephone booth next to Chris. This, even more than the appearance of the cops, seemed like a bizarre and unforeseeable event. Who uses a pay phone at eight o’clock in the morning? Since he already held the receiver to his ear, he began to talk into it as though in the middle of an actual conversation. He laughed and grunted a few times and kept his face turned away. Trapped, he could only watch the two Canadian Tire employees (one lugging a green deposit bag) hop into the pickup truck. Before it exited the parking lot, the girl’s own telephone call ended just as abruptly as it began and she slammed the receiver down and ran back to her car at the curb. She drove off and passed the pickup truck going the other way.

Chris’s mind cleared. The gods may have been having fun with him but he knew they were still on his side. He put the receiver down, then put on his goggles and popped the helmet over top. It was a tight fit. The world had yellowed. He was a predator able to see in the darkness. The pickup truck pulled into the parking lot across the street and Chris stepped away
from the phone booth and walked toward it, feeling top-heavy, like a space alien. Until then, he’d been in complete control of his body, but as he neared the truck, his entire system flooded with a power surge. The muscles of his lower belly bunched together, his heart knocked against the wall of his chest, his legs felt as though they were moving faster than his torso. Everything peripheral—cars, cops, girls making sudden phone calls, even me waiting in the getaway car—was forgotten.

Except suddenly things were moving too fast. The truck was already in front of the drop-off slot, parked at a lazy angle to the corner of the bank. Chris had to reach the guy carrying the deposit bag before the money got dumped, irretrievably, into the deposit slot. At the same time, he realized his own heavy breathing was fogging up the goggles, making it impossible to see. He pulled them down so that they dangled around his neck, choking him with the chinstrap. He broke into a run and reached into the gym bag for the .357 Magnum with the custom rubber grip. The young man carrying the deposit bag turned around, startled by the motion behind him. Chris saw the muscles on the employee’s face lose their strength and his expression slide away. Without breaking stride, Chris reached out and pulled the deposit bag from the young man’s hand. He’d never before thought of what bank-robberish thing to say, however, and could only stammer, Don’t look.

He bolted for the safety of the alley but shoulder-checked when he heard the truck gunning toward him, lurching over the curb, and heading for the wall at ramming speed. They’re trying to kill me, he thought, but the driver was wild-eyed with panic, struggling to control the truck like a spooked horse, pull it back around,
and flee. They were more afraid of him than he was of them.

I can’t fully explain why I did what I did while this was happening. Waiting in the car, my mind began to play tricks on me. I’d turned the engine off, despite Chris’s strict orders, because the exhaust was streaming out of the tailpipe and into the cold morning air like a distress signal. Twenty minutes had gone by since Chris left, and I knew something was wrong. Unable to stand it any longer, I got out of the car, climbed over the guardrail, and trotted across the street.

As Chris exited the alley, he was running so fast that his feet seemed to barely touch the ground. To me, he had become a demon out of hell. Silver helmet, black ski mask with that O around his mouth, yellow ski goggles giving him an extra set of bulbous insect eyes around his chin, jacket so bulky that he could have been a child in a snowsuit. In his right hand he held what could only be described as a hand cannon.

I expected some wave or shout telling me what to do, but Chris headed straight for me as if I was not even there. Then I glimpsed the money bag and understood that this job, this act, this big-balled robbery, had actually taken place. So I turned back toward the car and ran.