CHAPTER 20
Ruby 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.
Bingo.
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.
Sometimes games provide instructions to help you along the way, read Uretsky’s note. Here’s my instruction for you. Wear these clothes when you commit the robbery, and change back into your clothes afterward. That’s what a real criminal would do. I’ll text you with your next steps.
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.