Stolen

CHAPTER 23



By the time I came through the doorway, Giovanni had his hands high in the air. I could see the white folds of fat where his shirt had lifted up, black hairs peppering his ample midsection. Under the glow of overhead fluorescents, I ran across the linoleum toward the cash register while Giovanni was saying, in a thick Italian accent, “Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot! Please!” His plaintive cries rung in my ears but didn’t deter me.

I wanted to rip off my mask and tell him everything. Show him the picture of the bloody pruning shears Uretsky would use to sever Dr. Adams’s fingers, but I knew he wouldn’t believe me, so I didn’t lower my weapon.

I thought there weren’t other patrons in the store when I burst inside. Prejudging situations I couldn’t foresee was what got me off so many mountaintops, but this time around, that sixth sense failed me, and in a big way. A bespectacled elderly woman with a hard-bitten face and crinkly hair—mostly gray—wearing a ratty navy overcoat, emerged from behind the aisle of peach schnapps, holding two plastic bottles of the worst kind of vodka. I didn’t expect to see an old woman in the store at this late hour, but she had veins that looked like they had absorbed a lot of alcohol over the years.

The lady shrieked when she saw me and dropped both bottles onto the floor. They thudded and rolled but didn’t break. I looked at her long enough to see her slip into an aisle, one black orthopedic shoe disappearing, followed by the other.

I returned my attention to Giovanni. How must I have looked to him—gun shaking in my outstretched hand, head covered by a dark mask with red stitching around the eyes and mouth? He looked frightened enough, but his mouth kept on working.

Chewing. Chewing. Chewing.

I approached Giovanni with prudent steps, as if I was crossing a ridgeline and not a floor. Without turning my head, I called out “Ma’am” to the old woman who had vanished down an aisle behind me. “Please come out where I can see you. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

Giovanni was shaking. He looked pale and sweaty, but that didn’t stop him from working whatever he had in his mouth.

“Ma’am,” I shouted again. “Just come out where I can see you.” I didn’t like the quaver in my voice. It sounded nervous. I closed the short gap between the cash register and myself with shuffling side steps. Twice I glanced behind me, but seeing no sign of the old lady, I snapped my neck back to look again at Giovanni. I got close enough to poke Giovanni’s chest with the gun barrel. Close up, I could see his big teeth gnashing away on something black and pink. Gum mixed with tobacco? That’s what it looked like to me. My suspicion was confirmed when I spied a dribble of brownish spittle that slid between his lips and snaked down his chin. Giovanni risked lowering his hand to wipe away the dribbling mess. He lowered his hand calmly, without asking permission, which made me think he was pretending to act nervous. I should have paid more attention to that fleeting thought.

“I’m really, really sorry about this,” I said. “I don’t want to do this, but I need a hundred and fifty dollars in cash from your register, or a woman will die.”

“What?” Giovanni said.

I could see him try to puzzle through my explanation for this crime. Cash from your register, he got, and got that pretty clearly, too. The woman will die part? Well, that must have been nonsensical.

“Please,” I said, glancing behind me again for signs of the old woman. “If you give me a hundred and fifty dollars, you’ll save a woman’s life. I’ll repay you. I promise.”

“You a crazy man,” Giovanni said, gesticulating with his raised hands. “Please don’t hurt me, crazy man. Please. I give you what you need. Please. A hundred fifty dollars, right? I get it. Right now. I get it for you. Just don’t shoot.”

Giovanni patted the air with the palms of his hands, a gesture that implored me to remain calm. Then he bent at the knees and started to drop out of my view. He didn’t ask my permission to move. That should have been my second clue that something wasn’t quite right.

All of this happened in a matter of seconds, but that was all the time Giovanni needed. He popped back up like a jack-in-the-box, wielding a twenty-eight-inch metal bat.

I’d never seen a 250-plus-pound man vault a four-foot counter, but Giovanni went up and over like he was hurdling a laundry basket. Before I could back away, he swung the bat at me, level with my arm, while shouting a string of expletives in Italian. I could see the veins on his neck bulge like thick strands of climbing rope. His protruding muscles were rippled from years of hauling boxes of booze.

I dodged his swing just in time to avoid a direct strike. The head of the bat, however, connected with my gun hand, and I felt a flash of pain rocket up my arm. The gun fell with a clatter—no risk of discharge there.

Giovanni charged. Streams of brown spit sprayed from between his snarled lips. His eyes, clear and focused, narrowed on me. He raised the bat again and swung.

I ducked, allowing the bat to strike a triple-high stacked display of Two-Buck Chuck wine instead of my head. Half a dozen bottles set atop a sealed cardboard box shattered on impact, spewing a geyser of red wine that splashed my face and clothes in a splatter that looked a lot like blood.

Giovanni came at me again, the bat slung over his right shoulder, like a plus-size Babe Ruth with a vendetta. He backed me up against a magazine rack, so there was no place for me to go but down to the floor. I shielded my head with my hands, readying myself for the strike, but it didn’t happen.

I looked up just in time to see Giovanni’s feet slip out from underneath him—the wine had turned the linoleum into an ice rink. He crashed hard onto his back, shaking the floor on impact. The bat dropped from his hand and rolled noisily into the shattered wine display.

I rose from my crouch and went for the cash register. I was thinking I could grab the cash and make it out the door before Giovanni regained his footing. Ah, but “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men go often awry,” or so the Robert Burns poem goes (Ruby was an English lit major in college). I made it to the cash register all right, but when I got there, I saw that Giovanni wasn’t trying to get up off the floor. Instead, he lay on his back with his legs kicking wildly and his hands clutching at his meaty throat, gulping for air. He made a slight coughing sound, but nothing more. One of Giovanni’s thrashing feet kicked the gun down an aisle and out of my view.

I forgot all about the cash and thought only of Giovanni. Was he having a heart attack? I wondered if he might be having a seizure, but saw his skin turn a disturbing bluish gray and his fingernails darken. I went over to him and bent low. I approached cautiously.

“Can you talk?” I shouted. “Are you all right?”

Obviously, he wasn’t. Giovanni responded with another wheezing cough, all the while keeping his hands wrapped firmly around his throat. Choking, I thought. He’s choking to death on that hunk of gum and tobacco he’d been chewing.

I knew how to administer first aid, so I didn’t feel panicky about what to do next. It would be impossible for me to get him into a standing position to administer the Heimlich maneuver. I needed to employ a different approach.

Still wearing my ski mask and green army jacket, I straddled Giovanni’s thighs. I placed the heels of my hands, one on top of the other, against the middle of his fleshy abdomen and administered two thrusts, pressing inward and upward to help dislodge the object.

Before I could administer the third thrust of five, I felt a heavy thud against my head. I winced, but the blow was more startling than painful. I looked to see what struck me and saw the old woman, purse in hand, hoisting the makeshift weapon above her head, ready to make another strike.

“You get off him!” she yelled, though the force of her voice had clearly diminished with age. “You stop hurting him right now.”

I felt like John trying to save a life, but the woman’s petrified expression reminded me that I still had my frightening black ski mask on.

“Ma’am,” I said. “This man is choking to death. I’m trying to help him.”

At least I had the wherewithal to address her as “Ma’am.” Meanwhile, she had the wherewithal to strike me again with her purse, repeatedly. Ignoring the blows, I administered three more thrusts. Whirling around, I straddled Giovanni again, this time facing his head. He bucked beneath me like a wild stallion, but my thighs dug into his side hard enough to hold me fast. I pulled apart Giovanni’s jaw and reached my hand into his mouth, grasping hold of his thick, slimy-to-the-touch tongue, and pulled it away from the back of his throat. The blows from the old lady’s purse struck my shoulder again.

“Please, ma’am!” I shouted. “Let me save his life!”

“You should be ashamed,” she said, delivering three quick, successive blows with her purse.

Whap. Whap. Whap.

I managed to work my finger deep inside Giovanni’s cheek and, using a sweeping, hooking motion, slid it across the interior of his mouth to the other cheek. The tip of my finger sunk into a pliable substance blocking his windpipe. Caution here was critical, else I risked pushing the tobacco wad deeper down his throat. Feeling like I had a good hold, I removed my finger from Giovanni’s mouth, carrying with it a saliva-soaked blob of tobacco leaf and gum.

Giovanni inhaled a breath that was loud with relief. He lay on the floor, panting, the proper color already returning to his skin and nails.

I climbed off Giovanni, and the old lady backed away several paces, positioning herself between the front door and me.

“Please give me a chance to get away,” I said to her. “I’m doing this to save a woman’s life. I’m not a bad person. Please.”

I tried to imagine that my ski mask made me look like some sort of superhero, but suspected that I looked more like the devil.

“Turn your life around, young man,” the old lady said.

I thought I knew what she meant by that, but I wasn’t sure. I said a prayer, my second in a night, that I was right. The old lady vanished out the door as I made a dash for the cash register. I fumbled about with the buttons until I found the one that opened the drawer. I took a hundred fifty dollars—five twenties, five tens.

Giovanni worked himself from his back onto his stomach, where he lay heaving in a puddle of wine. The red liquid pooled around his body like blood spilled from a grave wound.

I went to him and knelt close to his face.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Are you okay?”

Giovanni muttered something in Italian.

I don’t speak Italian, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t say, “Thank you.”

I retrieved the gun, which wasn’t too far away, and raced to the front door, half expecting to see the old lady standing in the middle of the street, screaming for help. I looked both ways, but the street was deserted. No cars. No pedestrians. Nobody. The old lady was gone.

Turn your life around, she had said. I wondered if that meant she’d give me a chance to get away. I guess saving Giovanni’s life inspired her to believe that I could be redeemed.

I listened for the sirens but didn’t hear any. I pulled off my ski mask, used it to wipe down the front door handle, and took off running. I got to Kent Street, no problem. I looked behind me, but Giovanni must have still been on the floor, wine-soaked and all, trying to regain his breath. Nobody came barging out the door in pursuit.

I turned the corner and saw Ziggy parked where I expected. I pulled on the trunk, and it popped right open. I climbed inside, shaking off the last remnants of the adrenaline rush, feeling like my heart could burst from exertion. Reaching above me, I grabbed hold of a hook and pulled the trunk closed.

Enveloped in darkness, I didn’t know how many minutes had passed before I heard the sound of police sirens, but they came, all right, seemingly from all directions. It wasn’t too long after that that I heard the squawking sound of a police radio. It was coming from directly outside the car where I was hiding.