Passion for the heist, p.1
Passion for the Heist, page 1
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PROLOGUE
Rush hour was just starting as Ruth Tolbert descended the stairs of the Columbus Circle subway station on 59th Street. She wore a dark-colored wool dress that was threatening to swallow her petite frame. She had borrowed it from one of her “cousins” who happened to be a little thicker than Ruth’s size-four body. It was short notice. Ruth didn’t have anything clean to wear to her appointment that afternoon and wanted to make sure she looked presentable. The material was light, but you’d have thought it was made of lead instead of wool if you judged by her stooped shoulders. This had not been one of Ruth’s finest days.
Ruth found herself sucked into the crowd of people moving through the subway station, most just getting off work and in a hurry to get home. She was jostled this way and that as people bumped, pushed, shoved—and in one instance she was pretty sure someone groped her—as she moved toward the platform where the northbound A train would arrive. When she finally made it to the platform she found an unoccupied pillar and placed her back against it. She could’ve fallen asleep right there. Ruth was exhausted, but her fatigue was more spiritual than physical. She was so tired.
Her eyes drifted to an ad that was slapped on one of the subway’s white tile walls. It was a poster depicting an image of a bearded white man who bore a striking resemblance to Jesus Christ. The only difference was that instead of a robe, the man in the picture was wearing a suit. His image levitated over a small group of people who seemed to be offering praises to the knock-off Jesus in the cheap suit. His hands were outstretched as if he was about to bestow a blessing upon them. Printed across the bottom of the poster in Gothic letters was the slogan, PUT YOUR FAITH IN TOD, followed by an 800 number where you could contact the law firm of Tod Leibowitz, Esq.
Ruth wasn’t sure why, but the borderline blasphemous advertisement made her laugh. It started out as a chuckle, but built to a maddened cackle that caused the few people who had been standing near Ruth to take a cautious step back. She could only imagine what they were thinking, and there had been a time when she would obsess over other people’s opinions of her. Ruth had never been the most attractive girl, rail-thin with a pointy nose and big feet. This made her the last picked by boys at functions where guys and girls usually paired up, and her subpar wardrobe didn’t earn her any points with the fly girls. She had spent most of her youth trying to crack the glass floor of social acceptance, beholden to other people’s opinions of her. That day, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Something moist splashed on the back of her hand. She looked down and found a droplet of water rolling over her knuckle. It was shortly joined by another. She hadn’t even realized that she was crying. Her tear-stained hand drew her attention to the sheet of paper clutched in it. She smoothed it out and scanned over it again for the fifth or sixth time, as if it would somehow read differently than the first. It didn’t. It was a grim reminder that her entire life had been altered by the few strokes of a stranger’s keyboard.
“Are you okay?” Ruth heard a small voice ask. She looked up to find a boy of about ten or eleven giving her a concerned look. It was an innocent-enough question, but it cut her like a knife.
“No, I don’t think I am,” Ruth said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
“Malik, what did I tell you about talking to strangers?” A woman appeared behind the boy. From the resemblance, Ruth assumed that it was his mother.
“But she’s crying, Mama.” Malik confirmed Ruth’s assumption.
“Which is none of your concern.” The woman snatched her son away and ushered him farther down the platform. Before departing she cast a pitying look over her shoulder at Ruth.
“Fuck your opinion,” Ruth mumbled under her breath.
In the distance she saw the approaching lights of the A train coming through the tunnel. This was the signal for everyone who had been waiting on the platform to move forward so as to ensure they were able to board the likely already-crowded train in hopes of finding a seat or somewhere to stand. Ruth pushed off the pillar and stood with her toes touching the yellow caution line that ran along the edge of the platform. The train was getting closer. She cast one last glance at the advertisement on the wall. Put your faith in Tod. What a fucking joke, was her last thought before stepping off the edge of the platform and into the path of the approaching train.
The subway station was filled with the sounds of the train’s brakes grinding against the metal tracks as the conductor attempted to bring the train to a complete stop, followed by screams. Little Malik found himself knocked to the ground as the crowd surged forward, toward what was sure to be a gruesome scene. He lost sight of his mom and barely managed to scramble out of the way to avoid being trampled by the stampede. In his quest to find cover, he spied a crumpled piece of paper lying on the ground near where the crying girl had been standing. He wasn’t sure what made him pick it up. Malik read over the paper. Most of it read like Chinese arithmetic, but he did understand two words: HIV and reactive.
PART I
TWILIGHT
CHAPTER 1
Percy Wells, known to those who had found themselves on the wrong end of his skill set as Pain, was no stranger to violence. In fact, his earliest memories of life had been born of violence. One that stood out to him was when his father had laid his mother out with a short right hook. Seeing his father lay hands on his mother wasn’t an unusual thing. The few times he could ever remember his father sparing enough time to come around his mother, they were either fighting, getting high, or fucking. Sometimes all three in one visit.
Pain would’ve been lying if he told you that he could remember what had prompted his father to strike his mother that particular time. What made this situation remarkable was the speed of the strike and the amount of blood it drew. It was akin to watching a rattlesnake tag an unsuspecting rodent. The gash opened by the punch was a small one, but it bled like his father had hit an artery in his mother’s head. That day was one of only three or four times Pain could remember ever seeing the man who creamed in his mother and passed on not only his name, but the generational curse he carried. Pain was born into and had lived with violence all his life, but none of it was quite like what he currently found himself in the middle of.
There were over a dozen men clustered into the common area shared by the unit of the prison Pain had occupied for the last eight months of his four-year stretch. He used the word occupied instead of resided because the latter would’ve implied he could even fathom the thought of ever looking at prison as somewhere he’d gotten comfortable enough to make a home of. As far as he was concerned the few correctional facilities he’d passed through during his bid were simply temporary stops on the road he found himself on. Now that he’d traveled it once, he knew where the potholes were and would be able to avoid them if, God forbid, he ever had the misfortune of coming that way again.
Fists flew while homemade blades flashed in the dim yellow lights that hung from the ceiling of the unit. A good portion of the men who were in the common area that day were engaged in a hellish battle that teetered along the lines of becoming a riot, had the numbers been greater. Those who weren’t getting into it did their best to try and avoid being mistaken for an enemy of one of the opposing sides and attacked by accident, or try to keep from being splashed by the blood that seemed to be flying everywhere. It was no easy task for the neutral parties because as far as the active combatants were concerned, anybody that wasn’t on one of their sides was fair game. When the stakes you were playing for were life and death, there were no gray areas.
To Pain’s right, a man yowled. Pain turned in time to see his belly being ripped open with a jagged screwdriver that was wielded by another inmate. The wails of the wounded were deafening in his ears, and twice he almost slipped in the blood that was rapidly coating the floors. If he had to describe the situation in a word it would’ve been chaos. What made it worse was that this was a chaos of his own making. Pain had been the match that ignited this powder keg.
A shadow descended over Pain, cast by a man who stood around six-five with a body mass that easily tipped the scales at three hundred pounds. His ugly face was one that was familiar to Pain. He had never bothered to learn the man’s Christian name, but he was known to inmates and guards alike as Brute. The moniker spoke to his character because for all intents and purposes that’s just what he was, a brute. In every facility he’d been a guest of, he survived by preying on both the weak an
Had it been a movie this would’ve been the part where the hero and villain exchange some well-scripted banter about what had brought them to that point, but this wasn’t an action film. It was real life. There were only five words spoken, all by Brute, but they carried the weight of everything that was going on around them: “You owe me a kiss.” Then it was lit!
Brute moved with a speed that should’ve been impossible for a man his size. Pain barely avoided the strike from the pipe/spear that was thrust at his face. The blow had been meant to blind him, but missed its mark. A coolness settled in Pain’s cheek, just below his left eye. Then the burning kicked in. Pain knew that he was cut, but didn’t have the chance to assess the damage before Brute was back at him. This time he went for Pain’s gut in an attempt to impale him. The spear met with some resistance when it contacted the body armor under Pain’s shirt. The armor was comprised of nothing more than duct tape and the jackets of a few hardcover books Pain had stolen from the prison library. The book covers kept Brute’s spear from emptying Pain’s insides, but didn’t stop the point from piercing the fat of Pain’s stomach.
Brute smirked triumphantly before driving his weight at Pain, forcing him against the nearest wall. The more pressure he applied, the deeper Pain could feel the spear pushing into his gut. There was no question that he was about to become another notch on Brute’s belt. As his wound leaked, his life began to flash before his eyes. He thought of all the things he had done, as well as the things he would never do and the people he would never see again. His eyes latched onto an image of his grandma reaching out to him. He’d never have a chance to thank her for all she’d done for him. No … he couldn’t go out … not like this.
As if by an act of sorcery, a weapon appeared in Pain’s hand. It was a bedspring that had been hammered as straight as it could be and sharpened into a needle-like point. The end was wrapped in toilet tissue and held to the spring by layers of heavy tape, which allowed a more secure grip. Pain studied it for a brief moment as if trying to figure out what it was and where it had come from. Then the homemade weapon spoke a single word that would make everything clear to Pain: Live.
Moving as if animated by some unseen force, Pain raised his hand and drove the bedspring into Brute’s neck. The bigger man paused as if trying to determine if he had just been stung by a bee or a mosquito. Pain didn’t leave him long to wonder. He ripped the coil from Brute’s neck and hit him again. This time it was in the forearm, which got him to slacken his grip on the spear. Pain ignored the fire in his belly and cheek and went into survival mode. He hit Brute over and over with the coil, striking him in the face, chest, arms, whichever parts of his body he could get to. Brute was so flustered he abandoned his spear and rushed at Pain. He managed to grab Pain around the throat and began choking him, sending them both falling to the ground. The whole way down, Pain kept hitting him with the bed spring. There was so much blood that there was no way of telling where Pain’s injuries began and Brute’s ended.
He couldn’t remember how it had happened, but somehow Pain found himself on top of Brute, straddling his chest. Fighting was going on all around him, but Pain shut it out. His focus was locked on Brute. The big man’s once-white T-shirt was now stained deep red. He was bleeding from the wounds gifted him. Brute was broken and probably not long for the world unless he received immediate medical attention. The king of the cellblock had finally been dethroned. It was done.
There was a moment of hesitation on Pain’s part until his eyes met Brute’s. Even on the threshold of death, there was still defiance in his predatory glare. Pain’s brain was suddenly flooded with the memories of the injustices he and so many others had suffered at the hands of the bully. There was only one way to purge his brand of evil from the world. Pain raised the hand holding the bed coil, poised for the killing blow, and struck with everything he had. Had his blow rung true it would’ve punctured Brute’s brain and ended him for all time, but this was not to be.
An unseen hand grabbed Pain by the wrist and pulled him from the giant just before the blade contacted his skull. Pain landed on his back and before he could right himself, the body of a fallen combatant landed on top of him. This was followed by another and then another and so on, to the point where Pain found himself trapped under the weight of the men. It was suddenly very hard to breathe, and for a time Pain experienced what it must’ve felt like to drown. Only he wasn’t drowning in water, but in blood. There was a sliver of light at the end of the dark tunnel of flesh that he was trapped in. An outstretched hand beckoned to him. Without thought, Pain grabbed the hand and held on for dear life. Slowly, he found himself being pulled free, and when he broke the surface of bodies he inhaled the precious life-giving air. Pain was thankful to whichever angel of mercy had pulled him free and was about to tell him as much, when he found himself pulled into a reverse choke hold. He struggled but could not budge the muscular arm that was crushing his windpipe. With some effort he managed to turn his head enough to get a glimpse of whomever was strangling him. Who he saw was no angel of mercy, but a demon.
Brute stood behind him wearing a sinister grin and flashing a mouth full of bloodied teeth. He leaned in and pressed his bloodstained cheek against Pain’s, his breath hot and foul. He ran his course tongue over Pain’s ear before whispering into it: “Now, about that kiss.”
* * *
Pain was awakened by the sounds of his own screams ringing in his ears. He instinctively leapt to his feet, ready to continue the fight for life or death that he had been locked in. Yet when he looked around he didn’t find Brute, as he was expecting, but an older man wearing a bus driver’s uniform.
“Take it easy, buddy. I was just trying to tell you that this was the last stop.” The bus driver finally found his voice. He was no longer touching Pain’s arm, and had moved himself to a safer distance.
The words came out like gibberish to Pain, as the sleep fog was only slowly rolling back from his brain, but his survival instincts were moving much faster. Near-feral eyes flashed to a point just beyond the bus driver. A woman had paused in her exiting of the bus to see what would become of the crazed man in the back seat. She wasn’t alone. There were at least a dozen pairs of eyes on him with looks that ranged from confusion to fear. Two young girls seated near the front of the bus were even recording him with their camera phones while trading snickers. Pain felt like an animal on display.
“Did you hear what I said?” the bus driver asked calmly.
Pain didn’t answer right away. He was still half expecting the mirage of being on a bus to fade and to discover that he was still behind the wall. His gaze went beyond the bus driver and focused on the road-stained windshield of the bus. Just outside, above the thickening traffic, the sun was just rising over a skyline that Pain knew all too well. “No more locked doors,” was all Pain offered in way of a response.
Pain brushed past the startled driver and through the gawking people toward the exit. He almost twisted his ankle and fell in his haste to get off the bus. The smells and sounds of the hectic city seemed to assault him all at once, making him feel like he was suffering from sensory overload. He had been caged so long that feeling the cool predawn air on his face felt like an extension of the nightmare he had been having on the bus. “No more locked doors,” he repeated like a mantra. When Pain looked up and saw the night sky had begun to fade, and the sun was just about to announce its presence, he felt his eyes moisten in joy. It wasn’t a nightmare, but a dream. After years of incarceration, Pain was really home.
