Stolen (11 page)

R
uby and I went to a 7:00 p.m. movie. The film was irrelevant—an action comedy featuring well-paid, well-known actors traipsing about in exotic locales, having lots of chases, driving and crashing lots of cars, firing guns and wisecracks with equal frequency. We didn’t get any snacks. Neither of us could eat. We sat in the back of the theater. I watched the happy couples in front of us laughing at all the jokes and nibbling away on their munchies. It was impossible for me to focus on the make-believe world of this film while I was being held prisoner by my reality.

My conversation with Uretsky brought back a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt. I hadn’t thought about that quote since I stopped climbing, but when I came across it in a book I was reading, I thought it appropriate for a guy who trudged himself to great heights and into potentially perilous situations. Roosevelt said during his Pan American Day address of April 15, 1939, “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” I used to think about those words while navigating a particularly tricky route—ascending a steep section of rock, negotiating a path around a crystal forest of seracs, which are nothing but giant ice pillars that are prone to collapse. To think I would die on the mountain was, for me, akin to summoning that very fate. Freeing my mind from negative thinking assured me—or so I believed—of a safe ascent and descent.

Here I was, secure footing, no ropes required, and yet I was a prisoner of my mind. Sure, I could go to the police, but I could not free myself from Uretsky’s grasp. Whenever I tried, I saw Dr. Adams struggling with her restraints and then flashed on her dead body, fingers missing. I imagined the police, with Dobson in tow, coming to arrest me. I pictured Ruby, alone and vulnerable, being stalked by a predator with pruning shears while I sat helpless in a jail cell. Men might not be prisoners of fate, I thought, but I was certainly a prisoner of Elliot Uretsky.

By the number of explosions and gunshots that sounded in rapid succession, I guessed the film was nearing its denouement. Ruby must have sensed the same, because she nudged me and asked, “What time is it?”

I checked the time on the iPhone, covering the bright display with my hands.

“Eight forty,” I said, whispering in her ear.

“I think we should have kept a lookout. We would have been able to identify him if we had.”

I shook my head slightly. “We don’t even know if he’s here,” I said. “All he said was that if we left the theater before the film ended, he would know it, and we’d lose the round. You know what that means.”

“Dr. Adams,” Ruby said. “We did this to her, John. All she did was try and help, and now she’s going to die.”

“No, she’s not,” I said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

Soon as the movie ended, Ruby and I got up from our seats and headed for the exit. We were the first people out the doors of our theater, but I saw a number of men—some with their kids—already entering the men’s room directly to our right. We stepped aside to let the rest of the crowd filter out. Ruby and I waited against the wall until the people entering and leaving the restroom dwindled to a trickle and eventually stopped altogether. The next round of movies was starting up.

“Wait here,” I said.

Ruby looked horrified. “What if he tries to take me?” she said. “He won’t,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” I said. “God help me, but I’m starting to understand his game, his rules, the way he thinks.”

“But, John—”

“You just scream, scream as loud as you can if anybody even comes near you. But nobody will. Trust me on this, Rube. I’ll be right back. I promise.”

I pushed open the restroom door and entered the bathroom. There was nothing special about the space—urinals, stalls, sinks, and a wastebasket overflowing with crumpled-up brown paper. There wasn’t a security camera to be seen, of course. That was all part of Uretsky’s plan. He could be filmed coming into the movie theater, but we didn’t know what he looked like, so he couldn’t be identified. He could enter the restroom, carrying something, probably concealed underneath his coat, but there would be no evidence or recording of what he left behind.

I looked under the stalls for shoes but didn’t see any poking out. I checked the door. Nobody was coming in. The bathroom was empty. Time to make my move. I dug my hands into the overflowing wastebasket, feeling sticky, wet paper towels, crumpled soda cups, and half-eaten bags of popcorn. If anybody came into the bathroom, I was prepared to say that I’d accidentally tossed my wallet into the trash. Nobody came in. I kept feeling around, digging my hands deeper and deeper into the oily mess, until my fingers brushed up against what felt like a plastic bag.

I hauled up the bag, spilling the discarded contents resting above it onto the floor. I was cleaning up the droppings and putting them back in the wastebasket when the bathroom door opened and somebody came inside and caught me, literally, holding the bag—a thirteen-gallon white kitchen garbage bag, to be precise.

“People have no respect for public places,” I said to the man as he squeaked past me to get to his chosen urinal.

He didn’t say anything in reply. I wouldn’t have said anything to me, either.

I left the bathroom, returning to the carpeted hallway of the Cineplex. Ruby saw me with the bag.

“Anything strange happen?” I asked her. “See anybody hanging around, watching you?”

“No,” Ruby said. She pointed to the bag. “Is that it?” she asked.

I hefted up the bag to show Ruby that it had weight, and said, “I haven’t looked yet, but I assume so.”

“Uretsky put it there?”

I nodded.

“John, what are we going to do?” Ruby’s voice pierced my heart with the sound of pure desperation.

“We’re going to get out of this,” I said. “You’ve got to trust me.” We walked in silence back to the car, a bright red Ford Fusion that Ruby referred to as Ziggy, in honor of the David Bowie CD of the same name, which always seemed to be in the CD player whenever we went for a drive. We parked in the garage, away from other cars, but I still looked around to make sure we were far from prying eyes when I finally opened the bag.

I showed Ruby the first item, a black ski mask with red stitching around the eye and mouth holes. Ruby had to look away. Next, I pulled out a white T-shirt and green army jacket. Uretsky had pinned a note to the jacket. His penmanship was impeccable.

There was something else in the plastic bag. I reached inside and took the object out. I held it in my hand, surveying its weight, and though I knew steel felt cool, it still burned like a hot coal against my skin.

“Do you have to use it?” Ruby asked.

“That’s his rule.”

“How will he know if you don’t?”

“It’ll be on the news,” I said. “At least, I imagine it will be.”

“Not it, John, you. You’ll be on the news.”

“I don’t know what kind it is,” I said. “I don’t know anything about these things.”

“Is it loaded?” Ruby asked.

I raised the gun, careful to point the barrel out the car window in case of an accidental discharge. It took a bit of fumbling, but eventually I figured out how to drop the clip. Sure enough, it was fully loaded.

“What now?” Ruby asked.

I showed Ruby the note Uretsky pinned to the olive-green army jacket that had been stuffed inside the white plastic kitchen garbage bag. She was still reading—or probably rereading—the note when my iPhone buzzed. I looked at my phone’s display: Uretsky, who had sent me a text message. He had my phone number, but I knew his would be untraceable. Either he was using a disposable phone or he’d sent it using one of the many text-messaging services that provide the sender with absolute anonymity.

Uretsky’s text read: It’s now ten o’clock. Giovanni’s Liquors on Kent Street in Somerville will close in exactly one hour. You have that amount of time to rob the proprietor at gunpoint of one hundred fifty dollars cash.

Uretsky sent Giovanni’s exact street address, but I already knew the store well and could get there without GPS guidance. The liquor store was just a few blocks from where we lived before I became Elliot Uretsky. I’m sure that was intentional. The next text from Uretsky made me fire up Ziggy’s four-cylinder engine and burn rubber peeling out of the parking garage.

He had sent me a picture of blood-stained pruning shears.

I
tried to keep my speed down as we crisscrossed Boston’s maddening one-way and dead-end streets. Now, it’s a myth that the winding roads of Boston were originally carved out by aimlessly wandering cows. In truth, it was probably bad planning and topography that determined the haphazard layout.

Despite the dizzying and vexing street design, I somehow managed to avoid making any wrong turns. We didn’t get pulled over by the cops, either. The ski mask and gun were resting on the floor between Ruby’s feet, and I was sure they would have generated more than a question or two.

Ruby, meanwhile, had my cell phone out and was using Google Maps to plan our escape route.

“I could park on Kent Street,” Ruby said, talking fast and in a loud voice. The anxiety came shooting out her throat like an angry swarm of bees.

“Go on,” I said, punching the gas to pass a slow Honda.

“You come out of Giovanni’s, and then you run left,” Ruby said, staring at the display screen. “Kent Street will be the first street you come to. You jump into the car, and I’ll turn left onto Somerville Ave. Then I should be able to take a right on Lowell Street.”

“What about the plates?” I said. “Somebody might see our plates as we’re driving away.”

“What do you want me to do?” Ruby shouted at me. Her hands and arms were shaking. Strawberry-colored splotches—stress marks—marred her face and neck.

I heard an angry horn blast to my right, and I jumped a little, not realizing I had drifted into the wrong lane. I got Ziggy back on course and waved to the irritated driver, who delivered a proper Boston salute.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I said to Ruby. My brain kicked into another gear, one honed from years of climbing, which had heightened my ability for impromptu thinking.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “You park on Kent Street. You get out of the car. You walk away. You’ll leave the trunk open. Got it? You leave it open.” I glanced over at Ruby, then back to the road. A fender bender would mean a death sentence for Dr. Adams. “Got it?” I asked again, this time more forcibly as I changed lanes.

“Got it,” Ruby said, a stab of disgust to her voice.

“When I get to the car, I’ll climb inside the trunk and close it myself. You wait twenty, thirty minutes, and then get back into the car and drive away. Don’t open the trunk to let me out until we’ve got Ziggy parked in the alley behind the Harvard Street apartment. It’s dark back there. Nobody will see me climbing out.”

Ruby stayed quiet for a moment, showing me her profound displeasure. “Shit, John,” she said. “You know something? You sound like a real criminal.”

 

I parked Ziggy a few blocks away from Kent Street, and then I checked the time. Ten thirty at night already. The minutes were passing.

“I’ll walk from here,” I said. “You’ll have plenty of time to get Ziggy over to Kent Street. You can hang out at the Arrow Lounge while you’re waiting the twenty or so minutes I need to pull this off. It’s close by.”

Ruby and I had been to the Arrow Lounge before. We both knew this neighborhood well. Hell, I’d bought booze from Giovanni not that long ago. I reached over and picked up the gun from between Ruby’s feet, dropped the clip—this time without fumbling—and emptied the bullets into the palm of my hand.

“What are you doing?” Ruby asked.

The look I gave suggested the intent of my actions should be obvious. “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m not going in there with a loaded weapon. Did you think I was?”

“John!” she yelled, sounding more frightened than angry. “What if Giovanni is armed?”

I shrugged my hands.

“You’ll have no protection,” she went on.

“I’m not going to shoot Giovanni, no matter what,” I said.

Ruby covered her mouth with her hands. “Maybe we should just forget this,” she said in a muffled voice. “Let’s go to the police right now. Let’s do it.”

I grabbed my phone and showed Ruby Uretsky’s last text message—the one with a picture included. She sucked in a horrified breath, grimaced, and quickly looked away.

“That’s Rhonda Jennings’s blood on those pruning shears,” I said. “Next, it will be Dr. Adams’s. I can’t face the guilt of causing another death. You can’t either, Ruby. She helped save your life. We need to do the same.”

“How would he even know you robbed the store?” Ruby asked.

I threw my hands in the air in a “Beats me” gesture. “Like I said, maybe he thinks it’ll be on the news. I don’t really know. I mean, how did he find out our real identities? How did he know I was talking to Clegg outside O’Brian’s? How?”

Ruby’s expression became contemplative. She turned her head and gazed out Ziggy’s fogged-up window.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“When we got back to the apartment . . . after . . . after what happened to Rhonda, you told me that David arrested somebody right before Uretsky called.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, nodding.

I glanced at the time. Five minutes had ticked past; time kept moving like it was high on speed.

“The guy he arrested was inside Clegg’s car when Uretsky called.”

I nodded again. “So?” I asked, back to watching the time.

“Could you see inside the car, John?” Ruby asked.

I swallowed hard.

“No,” I said.

“I’m just saying—”

I understood right away. “You think that the guy Clegg arrested was Uretsky?” I recalled the man’s face: boyish features, sharp nose, thin frame, buzz-cut hair. Could he be Elliot Uretsky? “But he’d be in jail if that were so,” I said.

“He could have posted bail.”

I nodded. “But that doesn’t explain how he knows so much about us,” I said. “Or how he made a phone call with handcuffs on.”

“Not if . . . not if Clegg . . .”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, what if Clegg is in on it?”

“You think Uretsky is working with Clegg?”

My incredulousness was evident.

Ruby nodded, and vigorously. “What if David snapped? Survivor’s guilt, or something like that, and he blames you for picking him over Brooks. You said he’s getting divorced, right?”

I nodded.

“Maybe that pushed him over the edge,” Ruby continued. “Some kind of stress-induced insanity. I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud here.”

I brushed the idea off like it was something crawling up my neck.

“No,” I said. “That’s crazy.”

I wouldn’t admit it—not then, anyway—but Ruby had dug a foothold into my rock of denial, and I’d begun to imagine the impossible. I recalled what Clegg had said to me inside the bar.
Here’s your living proof that crime doesn’t pay.
Why did he say that?

I glanced again at the time. Ten forty.

“We’ll talk about this later,” I said. “After.” I moved to open the door.

Ruby reached across her seat and grabbed my arm. “John, what if there are other people in the store?”

I gripped her hand. “I’m going for the cash, and then I’m gone.”

“Yeah, well, what if somebody tries to stop you? You know, plays the hero.”

“I’ll wait until the store is empty.”

“What if you can’t?”

“I don’t know, Ruby!” I didn’t mean to shout at her, but my nerves were already frayed and on edge.

“Maybe you can hand him a note?”

“A note?”

“Explaining what’s going on,” Ruby said.

“And then take his hundred fifty dollars?”

“Tell him you just need to pretend to steal the money.”

“He won’t go for it. He’ll think I’m crazy.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’d think I was crazy.”

“I want to kill him,” Ruby said.

“Me too,” I answered.

I tried to move, but Ruby wouldn’t let go of my arm.

“What if he sees you running toward Kent Street?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Giovanni. What if Giovanni sees you running toward Kent Street?” This made me pause.

“Shit,” I said.

“The police might start searching the cars.”

“Make it an hour,” I said.

“An hour?”

“Leave me in the trunk for an hour. They can’t just pop the trunk without having probable cause. A parked car isn’t probable cause.”

Ruby looked pleased by something. “I don’t know if you’ll even have enough air for an hour. I’m not going to wait that long. There’s a railroad track running perpendicular to Kent Street,” she said, remembering. “I saw it on the Google map. Maybe they’ll think you ran down the tracks.”

“Maybe,” I said.

She clutched my hands and looked intently into my eyes. “Don’t do this, John,” she said.

“I don’t have a choice.”

I took off my shirt and put on the clothes Uretsky had provided for me. Just the feel of the fabric made my skin itch, and the thought that Uretsky might have once worn these clothes made me want to burn them. I decided I’d do just that—each article of clothing I’d incinerate into ash. I got the shirt and jacket on. Next, I pulled the ski mask over my head, just to test it out.

“How do I look?” I asked Ruby.

I watched Ruby gulp down her concern.

“Scary, John,” she said. “You look really, really scary.”