The following events took place on an Easter Sunday. Morocco Swain, the protagonist, and his partner Caleb are robbing a church being used to filter drug money by a dealer named Kenny Kavanagh.
I kept the apartment dark while I watched outside for Jones casing me. Caleb packed the tools and other essentials for the job. A pellet pistol, ice pick, two power drills with back up batteries, drill bits, mini sledge-hammer, two punch rods, flat bar, ski masks, an extra duffel bag, gloves, pepper spray, ASP batons, and voice controlled 2-way radio headsets. We scrambled into coveralls, loaded the truck and left.
Cigarette smoke filled the cab of my truck before we were half way there. Caleb cupped his hands over the cherry to keep them warm. He hadn’t exhaled anything but smoke. The coveralls were too small on me and bunched in the crotch and armpits. It wasn’t that bad until I had to turn the wheel to make a turn. Then, the small move became cumbersome. Headlights, black tar, yellow and white lines, and ice creeping from the snow banks on the shoulders were the only things on the road. When we got to the church, Caleb smoked another cigarette before we made our way through the woods.
At the edge of the woods we watched for movement until my knees began to ache. Caleb leaned against a small pine next to me scanning the buildings across the street. The windows of Pastor Robert’s house showed murky reflections of the iced-over tree branches outside. We skirted the edge of the light from the street lamp to the back of the church and squatted under the back window. Caleb moved to the edge of the building and watched around the corner while I stood up and shot a hole through the window with the pellet gun. The slapping sound of the discharge echoed against the trees and the back of the church. I put the ice pick through the hole and moved the latch enough to unlock the window. I slid the window up and crawled into the darkness.
Inside the church, I fit the earpiece of my two-way radio in and turned it on. Caleb inserted his then moved back to the edge of the woods and continued scanning. I sat beneath the window allowing my eyes to adjust and listened for anything outside. There was a picture on the wall but I couldn’t make out what it was. A picture of Jesus? Churches didn’t have many pictures besides that. The room was carpeted and smelled like damp cement. The safe was in the next room.
After a deep, solid breath, I tasted the mustiness in the room and moved through the door into the congregation area. The pews sat long and open like rows of coffins. The office door was locked. Before the door knob finished rattling I’d kicked the door open. Screws through the hinges ripped from the jam and the door wobbled backwards on the bottom corners and fell to the floor. Papers fluttered on the wall.
The drawers of the desk were empty except for a few scattered pens and pads of yellow legal paper. A picture of Roberts’ wife sat on his desk with a bible pushed up next to it. The safe was bolted to the floor along with the desk so I had to squat beneath it holding a pen light in my mouth. The pen light was cold and tasteless like something a dentist would use. Saliva seeped from the corners of my lips. After spinning the dial to the try out numbers, combinations pretty much universal with safe manufacturers and no luck, I clamped the drill brackets on the safe and started drilling into the lock face.
The first few seconds of the drill grinding instantly placed me inside the cold office of that restaurant where I’d taken down the first safe. What I thought about the first time I did a safe I began thinking about again—my father and the last time I saw him alive.
We had sailed the entire morning without speaking. The wind thudding into the sails and the slapping of the bow cutting the waves were the only sounds we heard. My father’s calloused hands and mangled fingers worked the helm to maneuver the boat between lobster buoys. I watched the sunlight shimmer off the sweat of his shoulders and freeze cones of light in the waves. At midday we dropped the sails and anchored off the Isle of Shoals. Seneca was only a few weeks old and my father needed the quiet. I shoved my face in a book by Celine until night came and the stars stabbed through the black skin of the sky.
He spoke then, only to point out constellations—a ritual we’d had when I’d been a kid. When I was a kid, though, he pointed them out through the fourth floor apartment window when we were poor and my mother spent nights cutting coupons waiting for his contracting business to take off and for him to marry her. He pointed out Ursa Major and Minor, Cassiopeia, Ares, and Orion, the great hunter killed by Scorpio. I would stare into the sky and follow his crooked finger as he pointed out every star. My father would catch me looking at his finger then curl it into his palm and push it into his pocket. I remembered he would only touch my mother with the back of his hands because that part was smooth and unharmed from how brutally he worked them. Me drilling that safe was the closest I’d ever come to know what his hands suffered.
My neck was cramping from being ducked beneath the desk. The tightness worked its way down the muscles along the edge of my spine. After a few short minutes I had the door open and was pulling stacks of cash from it. I’d hoped the safe was empty. Things would have turned out better. Kavanagh came to mind and the duffel bag grew with heft. Someone had tried to rob Kavanagh once. They ended up with their bones pulverized in a heap of garbage waiting to die.
I had one leg out of the church window ready to duck through it when headlights hit the trees behind the church.
Caleb whispered, “Heads up,” through my earpiece.
Tires crunched against the gravel. The tools in the duffel bag bit into my back when I rolled back inside the church. The sheriff’s cruiser was behind the church before I could reach up and shut the window. My heart pounded against my chest like it wanted to jump from my body and leave me there. Another pinch for robbery put my ass in a cell for ten to fifteen. The engine cut off and the lights went out. Confusion. Cops didn’t cut their engines off when they arrived on scene, but he was a county officer and in that area they were invalids. They couldn’t direct traffic with a working stop light. Kneeling, I peeked through the corner of the window.
“Bail,” I whispered.
“Fuck off. I’m not leaving. There’s only one.”
His gun cocked through the earpiece.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
The deputy’s uniform stretched open between buttons revealing an oval pattern with his white undershirt. He spun out of the driver’s seat and removed his jacket and gun belt. He placed them on his seat. A young girl climbed from the passenger side. Both of them got into the back seat of the cruiser. The girl shut her door. The deputy left his open. She opened his pants and went down on him. The girl was small and from the short distance, though the lighting was poor, she didn’t look like she could have been half way through high school. Sweat from my palms drenched my gloves.
I pressed my back against the wall. A wind picked up and came through the window whispering in the corners of the room. Skin chilled behind my ears where sweat had moistened. A grunt came from outside. The deputy’s shoes kicked over stones. A door closed. Footsteps moved around the car and the other door opened then shut.
“Son of a bitch,” Caleb said, slightly louder than a whisper.
“What?” I asked.
“He’s staring at the window.”
I felt like I’d been jawed and waiting for my brain to shake itself from the daze. The girl’s voice called, “Hurry the hell up. My father will kill me if he finds out I’m gone.” The deputy’s footsteps were quieter as he approached the window. Click. A light jumped into the room shining on the small canvas painting of Jesus’ crucifixion. He was looking down to his right and grinning. Despite his arms being stretched and his ribs crushed, the grin and the angle of his head looking down gave no sense of suffering. Instead, he seemed content in his fate as if those around him would suffer one much greater. It was a smile of revenge. My mind charged and I pulled the canister of pepper spray from my back pocket.
Pushing myself closer to the wall, I spread my legs apart so I was squatting and pulled the ski mask over my face. The circle of light grew smaller with each footstep until they stopped and the end of the Mag light poked through the open window. The deputy’s breath blew against the glass with a slow quieted wheeze. The light lowered and the deputy’s hand poked beyond the sill. The beam moved from the far corner of the room to the other and the deputy’s arm, up to his elbow, was inside the room. I figured, half hoped, it had been enough time for Caleb to move closer. I dropped the pepper spray and stood grasping the deputy’s forearm with both hands and yanked. His face came through the glass. He let out a yelp just before glass and wood shattered and splintered. Shards clanked against gravel.
The deputy drew back and dropped the Mag light to clutch his face. The light cart-wheeled over the sill and thumped against the carpet. A half-moon beacon shined at the wall below the window and blood had spattered on the carpet and baseboard. Caleb’s footsteps shuffled closer. He grunted before the signature smacking sound of the ASP baton against skull silenced the deputy’s groaning and he collapsed to the ground. The metal objects of his uniform tinged against small stones. I swept the broken glass from the window sill with the cash filled duffel bag and pulled myself from the building. Caleb was already moving towards the cruiser where the girl was sitting. I left the bags by the window.
Cuts and stripes of blood painted the deputy’s face and neck. His cheek into his teeth from the weight of his head against the ground. His exhaled breaths pushed bubbles of blood through the corner of his mouth. His shirt was un-tucked and his arms beneath his torso at angles verging on fracture. His shoes pointed in, and the cuffs of his pants and pushed high on his calves. There were specks of blood on his white socks. My breath was hot against my cheeks as I breathed into the fabric around my mouth. Caleb was already pulling the girl from the car by her ankle. She hadn’t even noticed what had happened or what was going on until Caleb smashed out the cruiser window. She screamed and clawed and kicked but when he pulled, her body jerked from the car like a hand away from a burn. Her screams became whimpers and sobs as Caleb held her down.
I trotted to the car to take a set of handcuffs from the handle of the beacon light and ran back to the deputy. After cuffing him, I dragged him to his cruiser. The heels of his shoes made paths in the gravel that widened and narrowed in the shape of hour glasses. The second set of cuffs Caleb used to snap around the girl’s wrists. We opened the back doors of the cruiser at the same time and pushed the two bodies inside. The girl whispered “Please don’t kill me.” I took the shotgun and the deputy’s service revolver from the front seat and threw them into the shrubs. He should have never walked to that window without his pistol anyway. Caleb slashed all four tires while I went back to get the pepper spray I’d dropped and the duffel bags.
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