In the Shadow of Sadd

They helped each other. The doors to the two apartments were open, Victoria kept an eye on the staircase and the elevator, and Paul carried the boxes quickly into Jimmy Sadd’s apartment, directly into the room behind the bookcase. The bookcase door was open. The process took several minutes.

“Finished,” he said breathlessly to Victoria.

“Do you have your cell?” she asked.

He fished it out of his pocket and nodded.

“And it’s turned on and charged?”

“Yeah, baby,” he said. It felt like they were in a James Bond movie – exciting, but in a silly and unreal way.

“Then let’s go,” she said, and gave him a kiss.

***

He closed the door to Jimmy Sadd’s apartment behind him, went into the hidden room and pushed the bookcase door until it was nearly closed. Then he sent a text message to Victoria, who was in her apartment.

Check, he wrote.

He waited. His cell beeped when she responded, Check.

It was a simple plan. He couldn’t keep an eye on anything from inside the room. It was like a burial chamber. But Victoria could both keep an eye on the street and an ear on the staircase. He pictured her, with a cigarette in her mouth, moving from window to staircase, ready to warn him should a car pull up down on the wet street, or if the cables in the old elevator should suddenly be set in motion. The latter was something he tried not to think about. If someone was on their way up in the elevator, he wouldn’t have time to get out. And if he did, and it turned out to be Bruno Hanson or – God forbid – Jimmy Sadd himself, and if they coincidentally had chosen this evening to check on the stacks of cash, the moving boxes would obviously tell them that something was up. It would only be a matter of seconds before there was a hard knock on Victoria’s door. Who was up to something? The first name on the list would naturally be the nice man next door, who had the key, and who had had ample time to examine Jimmy Sadd’s apartment.

“If they come up the stairs while you’re inside, our goose is cooked,” Victoria had said. He didn’t understand why she had used the expression with the goose. Sometimes she used similarly rural expressions, and he had thought of a fat goose in a large pot atop an old-fashioned stove. He had even smiled a little, but mostly because he knew that if it really happened, both he and Victoria would likely end up envying the aforementioned goose.

***

He worked quickly. It was now all about filling the boxes and reestablishing surveillance of the landing while he moved the full boxes back to Victoria’s apartment. Then they would wait until later that night, before they stacked the boxes in the elevator and sent it down. It was a smart move. If the elevator went down without passengers, no one could know who had sent it down. He would stand at the ready down below, hidden in the semi-darkness of the foyer, so he could quickly get away if necessary. Victoria needed only to lock her door upstairs.

He packed and packed. There was no ventilation in the little room, and after just a few minutes, his T-shirt was stuck to his back. He knew he would continue to feel this way for some time – maybe all the way up to the moment they sat down in the cafe among the old men reading their papers. Maybe … forever. But this was the leap. He was in the middle of the leap. There was no way back now, and he put the image of a cooked goose and rumbling elevator cables out of his mind.

His cell phone beeped.

***

He shut off the camera light, then he pulled out the cell phone and read her message. The words Someone coming appeared in the green-yellow glare of the little screen. He put the phone back in his pocket. The artery in his neck was already pounding. He pushed the bookcase door all the way in. He thought of Pharaoh’s sarcophagus, deep inside the great pyramid. He thought of airtight rooms. And then he started to hope – no, pray, pray, pray to the Almighty that the person on their way up was not Bruno Hanson or Jimmy Sadd, whom he had never seen, and hoped never to see, as long as he lived.

He listened. There was not a sound. He waited and listened. And waited. The thumping in his throat showed no sign of abating, and for a moment he nearly panicked at the thought that the sound of his own heart pumping could be heard in the living room.

He fumbled carefully around in the dark.

His hand found the pistol.

***

He had forgotten about it. Now he was grateful it was there, even though he had groaned with displeasure when Victoria had gathered it up and taken aim like a gangster in a film. Now it was suddenly his friend.

He didn’t know if it was loaded. He didn’t know if the safety was on. He knew nothing about guns.

But the weight of the gun in his hand gave him courage. Somehow the presence of the pistol convinced him that there was no reason to be frightened.

How long had he waited?

Five minutes?

Ten?

Or just half a minute?

He stood just behind the bookcase door with the pistol in his left hand. He was nearly convinced that it was a false alarm. His pulse wasn’t pounding as violently now.

Then he heard a man cough out in the living room.

***

Paul closed his eyes.

***

His thoughts turned to his father, his old father – a decent old-fashioned man who had never stolen anything. Maybe he had never had a reason to steal anything, maybe he had. Paul couldn’t know how the old man would have reacted if he’d found a secret room full of money. But now that he found himself imprisoned in his own sarcophagus room, he imagined that his father would have stayed far away from the money, even if it had demanded to be taken.

You’re an idiot, he thought. Your goose is cooked.

It seemed almost improbable that it had gone this way. They had considered it, talked it over – but it had always seemed ridiculously improbable. Like getting the only exam question you weren’t prepared for; like slamming your bike right into the only parked car on a quiet, dark street.

Yet here he was, and now it had happened.

The man coughed again. It sounded like Hanson – Big Bruno, who had always treated him, and Victoria, in a kind and peaceable way. For a moment, Paul played with the thought of bursting out into the living room, acting like nothing had happened, and saying, “What the f*ck, Bruno?” Act surprised and say that there had been uninvited guests while he was feeding the fish.

Yeah, right ...

The moment had passed.

It could have worked, if he hadn’t closed the door so meticulously behind him, if he hadn’t so obviously been inside for quite some time. And what about the boxes? Uninvited guests? How would they have gotten in?

“I thought you were getting ready to empty out the whole place,” he could say. Right, like Bruno would buy that. Nope, you dimwit, he told himself bitterly, Bruno is going to open the door in a moment, and then it’s all over.

He realized that he probably would never see Victoria again. How could he? Unless Bruno left in a minute, and he then received a text message (all clear, honey!), he didn’t have a chance.

No, he had one chance.

***

He pictured it. The bookcase door swings open, and Bruno Hanson fills the illuminated opening, while he stands against the back wall with the pistol raised. He fires at the man’s bald head. Bruno crashes backwards onto the floor, stone dead before his heavy body hits the mahogany parquet.

Yeah, if Bruno does just that.

And if the gun is loaded.

And the safety isn’t on.

And if Bruno himself is not so adept with firearms that he manages to fire first, instead of being fired upon.

How did I get here? he thought. How can I rewind the tape?

***

He heard the voice once again, slightly muted, but clearly discernible. The man speaks calmly, under his breath.

“I know you’re in there,” he said.

Paul didn’t move. He held the heavy pistol down in front of him. A moment went by before the voice said, “Come out now and you’ll be okay.”

That’s what they always say, he thought. And they always say it so convincingly. And then they whack you, plop, so you barely even hear the bang.

Maybe that’s best, he thought. He was already at the point where he hoped that, if nothing else, it would be quick. No torture, no steel wire, no having his head dunked in the aquarium, no having his fingers cut off with a pair of garden shears, no having to watch while Victoria –

He stopped his train of thought.

“Come on out,” said the voice in the living room. “Nothing will happen. It’ll be okay.”

Paul breathed deeply, in and out. He thought of Victoria, he thought of the lagoon with the pebbles, of their stone house on the mountainside, of Victoria under a mosquito net, her brown body naked, slumbering, anticipating … he tensed his body, like a boy on a diving board for the first time, knowing that if it didn’t happen now, it would never happen.

***

Paul pulled the bookcase door in and stepped out quickly into the living room, holding the gun in both hands, his finger on the trigger. He found his target and said, “Freeze, or I’ll blow your head off.”