William Lashner - Marked Man

“Guys,” I said, breaking in. “This is sweet and all, quite the tender moment, but can we get moving? We still have a lot to do, and there are people trying to kill us.”

“Kill him,” said Joey, jerking his thumb at Charlie.

“I don’t think they care about the body count, do you? Let’s go.”

We piled into the cab, Joey and I in the front seat, Charlie sitting in the back next to Monica, and headed out of Ocean City. We drove around the traffic circle at Somers Point, with its bars and liquor stores. Signs pointed toward the Garden State Parkway, which led to the Atlantic City Expressway and straight to the heart of Philadelphia.

“Let’s go back the way we came,” I said.

“That’s way the hell out of the way,” said Joey.

“So it is, but we have another stop to make.”

“Where?”

“To buy some tomatoes. Nothing better than a Jersey tomato fresh off the vine.”

“We’re not hungry,” said Joey.

Charlie said, “I could use a little-”

“Let’s just get on with this,” said Joey. “We’re not hungry.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because they might be a little out of stock.”

We headed back, through traffic and past strip malls, toward the long two-lane road on which we’d come east. I had Joey keep careful check on his rearview mirror to see if he caught anything in the least suspicious, but he said it looked clean. About ten miles along, there it was on our side of the road. The broken-down shed of Schmidty’s Farmer’s Market.

Parked in front was a generic silver midsize rental. On the table to the side was a large picnic basket, red-checked tablecloth festively sticking out one of its sides. And sitting on the bench in front of the basket, her pretty legs crossed, her eyes crinkled in welcome and her hand waving hello, was Rhonda Harris.

I told Joey to park the cab in the weed-strewn lot behind the shed. A cab might attract some unwanted attention, while a single car and a few picnickers would look totally in place. Rhonda had taken verisimilitude to a new level. After a few moments of setup, we were all seated at the table with the tablecloth spread, our paper plates loaded with fried chicken and potato salad, our paper cups topped up with soda or wine. A few citronella candles burned in their clear plastic shades.

Rhonda started to ask Charlie a question, but I cut her right off. “Before you do anything, you have to promise to hold the story until I give the okay,” I said.

“I promise,” said Rhonda Harris.

“I don’t want the bastard behind it all to lam out before the cops can nab him. But I also want to give Charlie a chance to get his story on the record before the feds get hold of him.”

“To keep the prosecutors honest or your client honest?”

“Both,” I said. “And to make sure our friend in L.A. pays the full price for what he did.” I looked at Charlie. “Are we ready?”

Charlie nodded.

“Okay, Rhonda,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Hello, Charlie,” she said with a bright smile. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

“Ain’t you the lucky one, then?” said Charlie.

And right there, as cars whizzed by on their way to or from the shore, she conducted her interview, with both Charlie Kalakos and Joey Pride pitching in to tell the whole sad and fabulous story of the greatest art heist in the history of a city known for its robberies and rip-offs.

“What about your life on the run, Charlie?” said Rhonda once the old men had finished telling her the details of the robbery. “Tell me what you’ve been up to after skipping bail fifteen years ago.”

“What’s there to tell?” said Charlie. “It was a whole lotta crap.” And then he proceeded to give us a sad recitation about the long period of his exile: the mean apartments he was able to rent without identification, the menial jobs that kept him afloat, his inability, without his mother’s influence, to create any kind of meaningful life for himself. As he spoke, I kept changing my mind about Mrs. Kalakos. Was she a monster, an eater of dreams, or the rock of reality that kept those around her from floating into the ether and expanding into nothingness?

“Okay,” said Rhonda after Charlie arrived at the part about his first meeting with me and his decision to come home, “I think that’s everything except for the Rembrandt. What happened to the Rembrandt?”

“That’s involved with the girl,” said Charlie.

“Girl?”

“The girl’s the point of this whole thing,” I said. “It’s why you’re here. To write about the girl.”

Rhonda looked at me a little startled. In the darkening evening, with the red of the sky behind her and the yellow of the candles on her face, she had a weird, demonic glow. “No one told me about a girl,” she said. “What girl?”

“Her name was Chantal Adair,” said Monica. “She was my sister, and that’s why I’m here, too. To hear Charlie tell me about Chantal.”

“Joey knows what happened to her, same as me,” said Charlie. “We all did. We were all a part.”

“But you the one that was there,” said Joey. “You the one that was handed the painting. It’s your story, Charlie boy. You tell it.”

Charlie sat quietly for a long while.

“Go ahead, Charlie, and tell us about the girl,” said Rhonda Harris as she fiddled with her tape player. And after another long moment, as we slipped into the gloaming, Charlie did.

The whole night ofthe robbery, Charlie had been seized with terror, terror that they would be caught, terror that the guards would come out shooting, terror that his mother would have to bail him out from the police station and what she’d do to him when she finally got him home. In his entire life, nothing had worked out like it was supposed to, and he was sure this crazy scheme would be no different. But it was different. Teddy’s plan fell into place like the parts of a delicate lock, and the world clicked open for them.

As they headed back to the neighborhood in Ralph’s van, Joey driving, the rest of them hunkered down in the back, amidst a welter of metalworking tools and the plunder of a lifetime, a thrilling euphoria overtook Charlie, overtook them all. He could see it in the smiles and flushed faces, in the pumped fists and nerves. They felt powerful, sly, young and frisky, renewed, special, invincible. They felt like they had actually leaped Teddy’s abyss and reinvented themselves. And, more than anything else, they felt love, yes love, one for the other, each for all, as they made their way in that van toward their suddenly limitless futures.

Ralph’s mother was deaf and an invalid, and so his house was the perfect place to put into play the final pieces of the operation. In Ralphie’s basement, using his lock-picking tools, Charlie carefully removed the jewels from their fittings in the bracelets and necklaces and rings they had taken from the safe. Ralph and Hugo worked together with the precious metals. Gold figurines, silver medallions, platinum settings were melted and recast into simple bars of precious metals to be sold. Joey spent all day and night listening to the police radio, monitoring reports of suspicions and raids as the police worked desperately to find out who had pulled off the crime of the century. And Teddy was making arrangements to sell everything but the paintings. There had been some cash in the safe, a few thousand that had already been split up, with promises not to spend a cent of it until the heat cooled, but the bulk of the proceeds was going to come from the metal and the jewels.

It wasn’t going to bring in as much as they had hoped, though. The haul was less than they had been promised by their inside source, although it was more than they had ever seen before. Still, to be truthful, it wasn’t really about the money, it was about them all making the decision and taking the chance and pulling it off. Suddenly the sweet possibilities of life that once seemed as far away as the moon now loomed large and bright and close enough to touch.