***
CHAPTER 26
I sooooo would have preferred to be in the jeep instead of the van.
Mostly because Mario would have been driving that jeep instead of Albert driving this van.
And that's even despite the fact that the last (and only) time I was in Mario's jeep was when we were in a hit and run accident.
But nooooo ... that was not the case. I was in the back of the creepy van, and Albert and Rodney were up front, driving us all to the scene of the evening's task -- stealing dirty money from the local Haitian drug lord.
Papa Kalfu, as he was known, had been a whisper throughout my incarceration in the basement of the bar ... and he had even made an appearance of sorts in one of my dreams.
If that even was a dream ... that whole "follow the stray cat through the looking glass" courtroom scene I had been through felt like it was something else ... something more. But with my frequent "andante" attacks and my propensity to spend so much time within my own head, I wasn't always sure what was normal reality and what was some other version of MY reality, warped as it was with the painful memories of those with whom I had come into contact.
Now we were headed to *his* bar.
Ironically, that was the same bar where I had first met Mario ... and first interacted with Albert ... and first caught a glance of Mria in the distance.
It was the bar that I had found during my service trip vacation with my college group ... and the bar where I had collapsed in the parking lot at the goodbye party.
Albert parked the van in that same parking lot, and turned to face us.
"Are you guys ready?"
***
"I said ... 'are you guys ready'"!?
If I didn't know better, I'd have thought that Albert was trying to pump Rodney and I up for the evening ahead.
Before he asked a third time or made us say "yes!" repeatedly at increasing volumes until we reached an uproarious crescendo, I decided to answer his question.
"Yes," I muttered. "Yes, I am. We are. I mean, I don't want to speak for Rodney, but ..."
Rodney gave me the look to let me know that I indeed was NOT to speak for him.
Satisfied, Albert went through a few last minute reminders.
"I will stay out here ... in the back of the van so as not to arouse any suspicion in case anyone else parks here in the lot ... but you should only come back out here to me IF you run into some kind of trouble."
I nodded my head to make clear that I understood.
"Oh ... and I almost forgot ... gloves for you to wear."
I took what he was handing out, but I was confused. Confused enough to speak again.
"Ummm ... what are these for?"
It was Albert's turn to throw me a look -- a look that let me know he clearly thought I was stupid.
"You don't want to leave fingerprints behind on the safe, idiot."
***
"Well this idiot, for one, doesn't intend to sit in a bar drinking all night wearing gloves. Isn't the point that we're supposed to blend in until we strike?"
I immediately regretted referring to myself as an idiot as soon as I said it.
Rodney joined in with more insults.
"You dolt. The gloves are for when we get into the back room and raid the safe. They're not for you to wear all night long. It's Florida for God's sake."
I decided to push back on my point.
"Right. I get that. But if I'm drinking a few, and there are cameras in the establishment -- which is why these guys are sending the two of us in as unknowns -- then our fingerprints are going to be left behind on the glasses, and the video is going to enable them to connect the dots."
Albert sat quietly while Rodney considered my complaint.
It didn't take long until my partner-in-about-to-be-crime snapped his fingers.
"Got it. Make sure your last drink is from a bottle ... and throw it out when you leave. Everything you drank before will be mixed in with the waste from the night -- if it's a glass, it will already be cleaned as part of his closing tasks and if it's a bottle, it will already be in the trash. No one will be able to go back and connect those dots."
I had to give it to him ... he thought like a criminal ... and his solution kind of made sense.
Albert finally weighed in.
"Sure, sure ... that sounds right ... but in the end, I don't really think that this is even going to be reported. What's Papa Kalfu going to do? Call up the cops and complain that someone took all his drug money before he could launder it?"
***
"Okay. That's it. You go first."
Albert was giving me the equivalent of the old heave-ho out of the van.
I checked my pockets one last time to make sure that I still had the thirty dollars they had given me to cover my bar tab, and I tucked the gloves into one of my other pockets.
"Gotta love cargo shorts," I muttered mostly to myself.
Well, *definitely* to myself, seeing as how neither one of them did anything but sit there and stare at me.
"Ok ... see you inside!"
That I did say *to* them, even if they didn't say anything in return to me.
The second time I was in this place -- the night of the wrap-up party on our spring break senior service mission, I commented to myself how I was "back at the bar ... back at the back bar in the bar in which I was back."
This time, the back bar in the bar in which I was back for a third time wasn't being staffed, so although I was back at the bar ... I was back at the front bar in the bar in which I was back.
As predicted, I was one of just a handful of customers, and it seemed that almost everyone was there by themselves.
I scouted out my options and quickly settled on a spot in the corner, where I could see the whole bar ... and the door ... and everyone who was in the establishment.
That's the way I liked to solo drink.
And my preference was on point for what was to come.
***
I settled into my seat and took in the lay of the land.
There were four others drinking, scattered around the bar.
Four lonely souls, not really communicating with each other ... alternately staring up at one of the flat screen TVs near the ceiling and looking down into their drinks as they debated whether they'd call it quits for the evening or order anew.
Make that *five* lonely souls ... I had forgotten to count myself in the bunch.
Oddly enough, the person who wasn't anywhere to be seen was the bartender.
We had been promised a bartender named Stanley ... and he was not among the lonelies.
For a moment, I started to panic. Should I leave right away? Go back out to the van where Albert was waiting and tell him and Rodney that the mission had to be aborted?
An older man to my right made eye contact with me.
Maybe he sensed that I was thinking about leaving ... or maybe he was just desperate for any kind of connection.
Either way, he spoke.
"He's in the back. Should be here in a moment."
I nodded my head that I understood and relaxed on my bar stool.
And waited patiently ...
***
"What can I getcha?"
The bartender appeared, bar rag in hand and apologized.
"Sorry about that ... I was in the back. Slow night and all ..."
I looked him up and down before answering. He seemed normal. Just another kid from the islands, judging from his slight accent, trying to earn some money. I had a hard time guessing the ages of people, but he didn't seem to be much older than I was.
"You carry Guinness?" I asked.
I knew they did. I had been here twice before and had drank a few. But I wanted to keep my cover and blend in.
He pointed to the empty bottles on the wall behind him, where there was indeed a Guinness in the collection.
"Thanks ... one of those please."
I pulled out my twenty and watched as he got a cold bottle out of the cooler, flicked the cap off with a contraption attached to the wall, and sat it down in front of me on a coaster.
No additional words ... he took the twenty, and headed to the register.
When he brought the change to me, he posed a question while he waited for me to decide the amount of tip I'd be giving.
"We don't get many young kids in here this time of night. You vacationing?"
Keep my cover. Blend in.
But still I had to answer ...
***
Keep my cover. Blend in.
But yet answer the question that bartender Stanley had just asked me.
"Kind of. I'm visiting. Family. In the area."
It wasn't an interrogation. It was small talk. So small that my answer satisfied him and he walked away, after sliding his tip off the counter into his hand.
The exchange was so shallow that I probably could have said anything and he'd have performed the same action.
I'm not even sure if he was listening.
"I'm here to capture your thoughts and to use them against you in order to break into the special safe in the secret back room to take all the drug money that's hidden there."
I could have maybe said that ... after all, *that* was the truth about my intentions.
It probably wouldn't have mattered one bit.
While I was contemplating that alternate reality, the gentleman directly across from me at the oval shaped bar flagged Stanley down.
"Where's Papa K?" he queried.
Stanley leaned his elbows on the counter and bent down to make eye contact.
"He's not here on Sunday nights. Down in Miami making his rounds."
It surprised me that Stanley would talk so openly about the drug activity. Maybe this guy on the other side of the bar was in on the business model.
"He has to drive all over to take those church ladies home after the service."
***
Talk about a crisis of conscience.
Part of my conversion to this caper was in convincing myself that I was joining the good guys.
I mean sure, we were kind of about to hold someone against his will and rob a place ... but it was drug money that we were taking. And it was going to go to a good cause.
I mean ... come on ... Mario's sister's cancer care, am I right?
Now, to hear that Papa K (whom I knew by his full name as Papa Kalfu and whom I knew to be the drug dealer that owned the place in which I was drinking) was out driving little church ladies around ... I began to wonder whether I had been played.
Of course, it didn't much matter ... we were in place and ready to pull the trigger, metaphorically.
Well, *I* was in place. I was still waiting for Rodney to mosey in and take his position at the bar.
I took a few more swigs of my drink and sat there doused in my doubts.
The goal was to wait out the other patrons, so I did more doubting than drinking.
And that strategy worked.
The old man across the bar who had inquired about Papa K took one last swallow of his drink, and got up to leave.
"Okay Stanley," he said. "Give my regards to him the next time you see him. I have to work tomorrow so I'm heading out."
One down, just a few to go ...
***
Old guy out. Rodney in.
Finally, my partner in crime for the night made his way into the establishment.
It was an odd feeling ... because I was a little happy to see him, but also apprehensive about showing any kind of emotion since the gig called for us to ignore each other until we were the final two customers at last call and the bartender was all but kicking us out.
He took the seat that the old man had just vacated, which was convenient since it was right across from me ... but it didn't exactly help my cause seeing as how he was in my direct line of sight, so I couldn't help BUT make eye contact every so often.
I decided to actually take that as a cue to get up and walk around for a moment, pretending to be interested in the assorted signs that were around the bar. I picked up my drink and browsed in a slow walk.
Past the gambling machines.
Past the spot for the bloody mary bar on the weekends.
Past the magazine rack displaying the local bar rags.
I found myself at the jukebox.
Which is when I realized that there wasn't any music playing ... the only background noise was from one of the televisions tuned in to the local news.
I was on a limited budget ... but could I spare some of my change to pick a tune or two?
***
My go-to jukebox song always had to be something from the Pearl Jam collection.
A quick glance around the bar, though, and I started to doubt whether that would be the best choice in this particular situation.
There was my heist buddy Rodney, the giant of a man from the streets of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago ... and Stanley, the bartender from the islands. I knew I was being all Judgy McJudgerton and buying into stereotypes, but my hunch was that neither of them were fans.
The couple back in the corner were too into each other to notice whatever song I would have picked, but it was also true that most Pearl Jam songs weren't necessarily for lovebirds -- at least on the hard driving surface. I hadn't even noticed them when I first came in and scoped out the place -- or maybe they were in the restroom at that time -- separately, I assumed, but maybe together for all I knew and based on the amount of PDA that was on display.
Close to them was an overweight guy who just couldn't stop smiling. He was looking at the television, but the news was on, and I couldn't have imagined there being that much happy news in the nightly edition. Of course, he was close to the couple, so maybe that scene was titillating him. Whatever it was, he was clearly engaged in something, so my song choice might interrupt that.
An old man, closest to me and the jukebox, was either so drunk or so tired ... or both ... that he was having a real struggle just to keep from nodding off into his drink. Loud music might have scared him from his snooze.
My best bet was the one other young-ish chap at the bar. He was probably a little older than I was, but it was hard for me to tell because his nose was in his cell phone the whole time. He reminded me a little of the first time I was in this place, except he wasn't texting as angrily as the guy had been whom I eventually learned was Albert.
But he was the only one who looked like he would be familiar with a tune from Eddie and the boys.
I reached into my pocket for some change, only to realize that the machine took dollar bills.
Five of them, to be exact ... which was a lot of dollars for songs when I had a limited budget for an undetermined amount of drinking.
It was time to make a choice.
***
Eight songs for five dollars.
I did some quick math.
I had started with thirty bucks, given to me by Mario and Mria to keep the facade going leading up to the night's climax -- the robbery.
My beers were costing seven bucks, including the tip. If I spent five bucks juking on the box, I'd only be able to get two more beers before I was out of cash. Of course, I could actually get three IF I stopped tipping the bartender.
But then I wouldn't have any change to take back to my crime bosses, and Maria had specifically encouraged me to do that.
Also -- it would have been a bit of a dick move to not tip the guy we were going to rob later. That was definitely "insult to injury, salt in the wound" type stuff.
On the other hand, eight songs would help me pass the time while I was waiting for the establishment to close.
So ... I did more math.
Eight tunes at approximately three and a half minutes each would provide me some kind of entertainment for ... what ... about thirty minutes.
Although I had no way of knowing whether thirty minutes would be enough to get me through to the time that Stanley would call out "last call", it would certainly be a way to make the minutes go by.
Then it hit me ... there was an easy way I could prolong my juke time ...
***
"A long long time ago."
The first words of the first song I programmed into the jukebox began to play.
"I can still remember how."
My strategy for extending the amount of time that would be tied up listening to my eight tunes was now apparent to anyone who knew the song.
"That music used to make me smile."
Although I had done my math based on the average song being about three and a half minutes long ...
"And I knew if I had my chance."
Not every song was average.
"That I could make those people dance."
Eight songs for five dollars wasn't a transaction where I'd be paying by the minute anyway.
"And maybe they'd be happy for a while."
Don McLean was going to help me maximize my time.
"Bye, bye Miss America pie ... drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry ... And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye ... singing ..."
***
All together now ...
"Singing ... this'll be the day that I die ... this'll be the day that I die ..."
Except we weren't all singing together. The eight of us still in the bar before closing time (including bartender Stanley) weren't *together* at all. And my first song selection at the jukebox wasn't going to magically create unity ... no matter how much it might tempt folks to join in with the lyrics.
Ironically, in my attempt to prolong the amount of time I'd get out of the jukebox, I never considered that my song selection might inspire folks to commune when I really was simply trying to out-wait all of their departures so that Rodney and I could rob the place.
To be clear, our instructions were *just* to rob the place. The words of the song weren't intended to be prophetic at all. Nobody was supposed to get hurt, so long as we stuck to our plan. At that point in the evening, we had no way of knowing the plan would get un-stuck.
I chose the rest of my songs -- all seven of them -- and made my way back to my stool.
With this particular tune going on and on through multiple verses and repeats of the chorus, it was still playing as I sat down and took another swig of my Guinness.
I glanced across the bar where Rodney was sitting and felt like I caught a look of displeasure that he shot my way.
I couldn't be sure if he had done so or not, seeing as how we weren't to let on that we knew each other in order to keep the element of surprise when we struck later.
I also couldn't be sure if he was displeased with what I had done ... or just with the song I had chosen.
Ultimately, it didn't much matter ... because, by that time, the "Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost" had "caught the last train for the coast".
If I had any luck, a few of the straggling patrons would take the hint and skedaddle as well.
***
My first tune played off uneventfully.
It was very odd. No one left in the bar had responded to the music ... every single person continued as they were.
The old man kept nodding off ... the young kid kept looking at his cell phone ... the PDA couple in the back corner kept displaying affection publicly ... the smiley chubby guy (whom I was convinced was being a voyeur to their activities) kept smiling creepily ... the bartender kept on wiping down the bar.
Not that I was expecting a singalong or anything ... despite my choice of song being a perfect fit for that phenomenon ... but I still thought that someone might nod his or her head in my direction, implying that the change of mood was appreciated.
In the end, though, I knew that I hadn't made any selections for anyone other than myself.
"So screw them", I concluded.
Damn it ... I wanted music to accompany me as I drank ... and I needed something to keep me occupied waiting for everyone to leave ... so THAT was *that*.
Another swallow of Guinness, and my second tune began.
In another setting, I would have expected to hear a gasp of recognition as the drum line kicked in, what with it being one of those classic songs with a beat that reached into the depths of the soul ... causing most people to be unable to escape from the repetition that slowly drove toward that crescendo and the primal scream ...
"Don't tell me that you love me!"
***
This time I did get a reaction.
The PDA couple in the corner of the bar seemed to enjoy my second choice of song on the jukebox.
As Fleetwood Mac's 'Tusk' played on, the only woman in the bar started to channel Stevie Nicks, and began to flit around her man ... or the guy I assumed to be her man ... in time to the tune. With it being southern Florida in the summer, she didn't have a scarf to use to express herself ... but I could tell by the flailing of her arms that she wasn't letting that stop her.
Her circling of her mate ... or the guy I assumed to be her mate ... got larger and larger, until she did a round around the bar.
Everyone else was watching her, which means that everyone else saw when she stopped behind my stool.
"Great song choice," she whispered into my ear.
I blushed. And felt uncomfortable. She wasn't moving from her spot behind me.
I felt like maybe she was waiting for me to say something.
I turned halfway around in my stool, being certain to keep a shoulder between us so as not to invite her to start an actual conversation.
"Yep. Just looking to break up the monotony tonight."
She smiled ... and then pointed to her beau ... or the guy I assumed to be her beau ... before she continued.
"And *he* says he was in the band!"
I gave my best smile that likely looked more like a grimace, raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders.
"Huh. What do you know?! *Go* figure."
I subtly emphasized the "go" in my last statement ... but it was too subtle, because she didn't go.
***
"So ... do you wanna buy me a drink?"
Not only was my Stevie Nicks wannabe in no hurry to leave, she was trying to take money out of my own pocket.
And it wasn't even *my* money.
There was no way I could possibly explain that I had limited funds to tide me over until we robbed the place, and that as soon as the few stragglers left the bar, Rodney and I could launch our plans.
Speaking of Rodney, I didn't know him well enough to be one hundred percent certain of my interpretation of all of his facial expressions ... but he was obviously watching me from across the bar with a mix of bemusement and alarm.
We were supposed to be blending in. Not standing out.
Yet apparently my song selection had the exact opposite effect.
Not only was *Rodney* watching intently ... but so was the guy with whom the woman had been drinking AND the chubby guy who couldn't stop smiling that had been watching them canoodle in the corner.
Update ... the chubby guy had stopped smiling.
He did not seem to be too happy with the fact that the Stevie Nicks wannabe was flirting with me instead of him.
Actually, neither did the guy that had been the other participant in the canoodling session.
And, much to my chagrin, the both of them got up and started heading toward me.
***
Smiling chubby guy was the first to reach us, as he was seated the closest to me at the bar.
Correction -- glaring chubby guy was the first to reach us as he was smiley no more.
I braced myself for confrontation, but he actually walked right past us. He paused at the door of the restroom to throw one more dagger-glance my way, and then disappeared inside.
That was not the case for her canoodling partner, who arrived at the same time as bartender Stanley did. For a moment, I thought that he was demonstrating proper skill and stepping in to prevent any trouble on his shift ... but that idea went out the window once I saw he was bringing the Stevie Nicks wannabe a new drink.
The problem was ... I had never agreed to buy one ... and I had most certainly NOT interacted with Stanley in any way to suggest that I was ordering a drink for her.
I looked at Stanley ... then at her ... then at the canoodler ... and all I could muster was a stammered "Uh ..."
Canoodler spoke first.
But not to me ... to her.
"Is he going to join us?"
She slapped at his arm playfully, before answering.
"Quiet, silly ... you're going to chase him away."
She bent down and reached across me to grab the drink.
"This for me?" she asked.
***
I was saved by Bonnie Tyler.
Not like in some "come to Jesus, everlasting life shall be yours" kind of way.
But because 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', my *third* song selection on the jukebox, started playing ... and the Stevie Nicks wannabe started wanting to be Bonnie Tyler instead.
She turned to the guy she was with ... the corner canoodler ... and started singing along directly to him.
That spared me from having to explain that I didn't order her a drink ... and from having to be involved in their conversation at all.
"Turn around bright eyes ..."
By the time they got to the "every now and then I fall apart", they were both going full throttle, and weren't paying attention to anyone else, including the chubby smiley/glare-y guy, who was working his way back from the restroom.
Luckily for me, I was seated at the bar ... so I didn't get swept up in their theatrics. That wasn't the case for the poor guy trying to get past us and back to his seat, and he had to step between them awkwardly as if he had suddenly found himself on stage.
Not only did he end up interrupting their movements, but he also interjected into their singing.
"I got you a drink."
He pointed to what Stanley had just dropped off next to me ... and I felt relieved that I wasn't on the hook for paying for something I couldn't really afford.
She nodded her head and kept on singing ...
"Forever's going to start tonight."
***
I know the words of the song were that "forever's going to start tonight" ... but it was kind of starting to feel like "tonight was going to last forever".
I was three songs into my eight on the jukebox, and the number of people in the bar that I was trying to out-wait so that Rodney and I would be the last ones there hadn't yet been diminished at all.
The reenactment of the video that was taking place behind me was quickly changing from cute to annoying, and, in many ways, it was all my fault.
There was nothing for us to do but to hope that they would burn out. Or that the jukebox would "skip". Or that the bar would get struck by lightning, and the power would go out. Or that bartender Stanley would put his foot down and tell the couple to sit down and shut up and get back to drinking.
None of those things happened.
Finally, the last words were being sung-spoken ... and the last call to action for bright eyes to turn around was stated.
I had my back to them, being on the stool as I was, so I didn't know for certain, but I still felt pretty sure that they paused as if waiting for applause.
That didn't happen either.
With a free drink in hand, she worked her way down to the chubby guy.
"Thanks for the drink," she said, loud enough that we all were uncomfortably part of the conversation.
"We're heading out to another club ... do you want to join us?"
Finally ... I was going to get my wish.
***
She didn't have to ask him twice.
"Yes, please," he replied, almost too quickly.
At that point, though, the fact that I found his whole appearance a tad slimy and a touch creepy didn't much matter to me. What happened to the three of them when they left this bar was of no consequence to my plans ... I was just happy to see them get ready to go.
She turned back toward me and flashed me the type of smile that made me uncomfortable all over again.
Still staring at me, she took a sip of the drink that there new drink-a-tois partner had bought for her.
Just sipping and staring.
Nothing else.
Knowing that I had chosen the music at the jukebox, and seeing as how excited she had been for the last two tunes that had played ... maybe she was waiting to hear my fourth song.
I was just as surprised as she was when the strains of the oom-pah accordion began blare out into the bar.
That being said, *she* was the only one who executed a spit take.
"Oh sweetie," she said, after drying off her chin. "You struck out with this one."
I didn't know how much it was worth it to protest, but I did any way.
"No. No. I ... I ... I didn't pick this. I don't know why it's playing!"
My comments fell on deaf ears -- possibly on ears that were being willed to be deaf, as no one wanted to hear the 'Chicken Dance' whilst drinking at the bar.
***
If I could have appealed ... or filed some kind of protest ... I would have.
But the truth was that I had never been in this situation before.
And I knew of nowhere to turn.
For sure, I did NOT play the 'Chicken Dance' on the jukebox. For just as sure, it was the only song blaring in the bar at that moment.
I could sense the collective disappointment of everyone still there drinking -- none so strong as from the threesome that was forming to my left.
Before it came on, *I* was the one being invited to join the group as they continued their bar crawl.
Afterward, I was persona non grata ... all from what I could only presume was a slip of the finger on the keypad when I was picking songs.
They were strangers. And strange strangers at that. Plus I couldn't have gone out with them any way as, in conjunction with Rodney, I had a bigger task ahead of me.
But still ... it was embarrassing. No one likes to lose an opportunity.
Over the 'Chicken Dance' of all things.
Before the last round of "na na na na na na na, na na na na na na na, na na na na na na na, ba ba ba ba" was over, canoodler one, canoodler two and smiley chubby guy had taken their leave -- together.
In the overall scheme of things ... that meant three more were gone ... and we only had two to go.
***
It got a lot quieter after half the bar left.
I mean, sure ... my songs were still playing.
But now it was just Stanley the bartender, the young man all up in his phone, the old man nodding off and my partner in crime (to be) Rodney across the way.
I finished my beer, ordered another and just sat there waiting ... hoping that the other two would leave and that Stanley would start to close up shop -- our queue for taking action.
After the audio-disaster that I couldn't explain that was 'The Chicken Dance', the next song on the jukebox was one that I *did* select.
And I had been tickled to locate the old obscure country song from the 80's that I always used to sing in the shower. Well, actually just the first verse, over and over again. A little ear-worm of a ditty ...
Could've been the whiskey
It might have been the gin
Could have been the three or four six packs, I don't know
But look at the mess I'm in
My head is like a football
I think I'm going to die
Tell me, me oh, me oh my
Wasn't that a party
If only I could have let loose and pounded my Guinness and had myself a grand old time.
But no ... I had limited funds and I had work to do.
I was on the clock ... the ticking clock ... and I was getting more and more anxious with each passing song.
***
If I ever were to lose you,
I'd surely lose myself
Everything that I have here,
I've not found by myself,
The next tune of mine came on the jukebox ... and it was an about face from the party song that had just ended.
It seemed to fit the new quieter mood of the place, now that the bar was emptying out.
Of course, it was a slightly melancholy love song, and the five of us left (including bartender Stanley) didn't know each other well enough to be singing to each other.
But it didn't matter. The Pearl Jam song played on ...
I believe,
And I believe 'cause I can see,
Our future days,
Days of you and me
"Did you see these guys in concert?"
The younger kid next to me that had has his nose in his cell phone the whole time I was there was speaking in my direction.
I felt pressured to respond.
After all, I *had* seen them. A *few* times. It would be bad karma to not engage in a conversation with a fellow fan.
Before I could swap stories, Stanley interrupted.
Speaking over the music, he announced: "I'm getting ready to close up."
***
"Wait a minute."
It was imperative that I understood Stanley's statement.
"Is this last call?" I asked.
After all, if last call had been announced, that wouldn't have been the trigger for the beginning of the end of my night ... but the end of the beginning of it instead.
And, Rodney and I were supposed to work it out that we were the last two in the bar ... and there were still two other patrons, so we would have to come up with something pretty quickly to get our plans back on track.
"Not the last last call. But kind of a last call." was Stanley's less than helpful reply.
I furrowed my brow and gave him my best quizzical look.
"That's now how this works," I muttered to myself. "That's now how ANY of this works."
I don't think he heard me mumbling, but he did clarify all the same.
"Just know that I'm not staying open 'til 2 tonight. I'm closing early ... it's too dead. And it's been a long weekend. So drink up."
I followed his instructions.
After all, seeing as how we were about to hold him up and rob him of the drug money in the back, it was the least I could do to be amenable.
So much was yet to happen.
It was the end of the beginning of this night.
Indeed.
***
CHAPTER 27
I checked and double-checked.
Sadly, I only had enough money left for one more drink.
What with the overall scheme for the night being about waiting until last call and making sure that I was the last one at the bar, Stanley the bartender's announcement that he was closing up soon, along with the clarification that it was "not last call, but kinda last call" -- which, to be clear, wasn't a clarification at all -- was giving me cause for pause.
Then he had to go and push the issue.
"You want another Guinness?" he asked.
"Uhhh ... ummm ..." I stammered -- clear evidence of my confusion. "In a minute ..."
Stanley all but harrumphed and returned to his task of restocking various corners of the bar.
Rodney caught my attention from his seat directly across from me.
No one was supposed to know that we knew each other ... and, by "no one", I meant the only other two patrons -- the young kid and the old man.
He surreptitiously tapped his index finger on his opposing wrist, where a watch would be if people still wore watches back then.
The message he was sending was clear ... the clock was ticking.
It was only a matter of time.
Just a little bit of time.
"Do you know anywhere else in town to go drink?"
The young kid who had been engaged in his cell phone the whole evening *until* I had played the Pearl Jam song on the jukebox was re-starting the conversation he had begun prior to bartender Stanley's announcement.
"Oh sorry," I replied. "I'm not a local. Just here for work."
I was such a bad criminal.
Earlier, when I had first arrived and Stanley asked what brought me to the bar, I had said I was visiting family. This kid had been sitting in the seat right next to where I had positioned myself.
Lucky for me, he could have cared less about that small talk at that time, and my conflicting comments went by unnoticed.
"Yeah, I think it's a dick move to close so early. I've been trying to get my friends to come out and join me and now those plans up in the air. I thought closing time was 2am in this town?"
The kid was perturbed ... and wanted to vent.
I just wanted him to leave -- I could have cared less about his now interrupted plans.
I decided to give him some hope.
"That last group that left was talking about going *somewhere*. I didn't catch the name of the bar or anything, but they definitely had plans to keep on drinking."
The kid flagged down Stanley, and turned his line of questioning to him.
"Hey -- where else can I go to drink? I'm just getting started ... and you're harshing my buzz."
Bartender Stanley took the bait.
Kind of.
"I don't care *where* you drink, but you won't be doin' it here!"
I couldn't tell if there was a smidgen of humor intended in his reply ... or whether he was starting to get defensive.
"That's right. I won't. Ever again."
Alcohol and unpredictability have a direct relationship, in that as the first one increases, the probably of the second one showing itself goes up as well.
This kid who had barely said a word during the whole part of the evening I was sitting next to him at the bar -- the whole length of six or seven songs that I played on the jukebox, to be specific -- the one who had been minding his own business lost in his cell phone the whole time was about to demonstrate the concept.
He punctuated his declaration by tossing his mostly empty bottle into the middle of the bar, taking delight in hearing it crash to pieces on the floor.
He grabbed at the bills that were in front of him and walked briskly to the door before anyone could respond.
Stanley stood there just as surprised at the emotional display. I figured he was debating whether he should go chase the boy ... but seeing as how he was alone in the bar, he really didn't have much of a choice.
What WAS squarely within his power?
"That's it. LAST CALL!" he yelled angrily. "Last call for alcohol."
I raised my hand to make sure that Stanley knew that I wanted in on this "last call" business.
He hesitated.
"Did you know that guy?"
He motioned to where the kid had been seated up until the moment before when he had thrown his bottle on the floor of the bar.
"No, no. He's not with me," I answered, protesting any association between us.
"Well ... you were just talking to him before he flipped out," Stanley countered.
"Barely," I replied. "He just liked the song I had played."
The bartender was weighing all the facts before rendering his judgment.
"Okay. You can have another one."
Of course, by "have", he really meant "buy" ... but that's the outcome I had been seeking and I still had those few dollars in my pocket that my little crime triumvirate had floated me.
"Hey Joe."
After sliding me my goodbye Guinness, Stanley had turned his attention to the old man at the end of the bar.
"Hey Joe!"
Neither of his attempts to get his attention had worked.
"JOE! HEY!! LAST CALL, OLD MAN!!!"
It did make me stop and think.
What if this Joe guy's last call was *literally* his last call? Like *last* call as in ... LAST call.
He wasn't responding to the bartender ... he hadn't reacted to any of the songs I had played on the jukebox ... he didn't seem to be doing much of anything other than almost sleeping the whole time I was in the bar.
Although if he had passed, maybe he went as he had lived.
Maybe dying on a bar stool after an evening of drinking was a fitting ending for someone like Joe.
Or maybe not.
"Who played this crap?"
Joe finally made a move and offered up a comment.
The fact that it was pejorative with regards to my song selection didn't matter ... at least he was alive.
I doubted that he knew the tune I had chosen. I doubted that anyone knew the tune I had chosen. I had specifically selected it to maximize the time, and it was indeed another 10 minute song.
Although not as popular as the first long song that had kicked off my stay in the bar, Genesis' 'Driving the Last Spike' wasn't even yet halfway over.
No one answered Joe ... but he didn't care anyway.
He was over it.
Ironically, the second to last song I had chosen in the jukebox, Genesis' 'Driving the Last Spike', had driven the last spike, so to speak, into old man Joe's evening.
"You want me to call you a cab?" asked bartender Stanley now that he was up and responding.
"Yeah. Do that," was his reply.
He stood up and balanced himself on the back of his chair.
"I gotta piss," he mumbled, and then off he went to the bathroom.
It was soon going to be the moment of truth. I looked across the bar at Rodney and waited for him to glance in my direction. I subtly nodded my head, and he looked quickly away -- probably for fear that my nod to him wasn't subtle enough.
I measured the amount of my beer that I had left. I had to make it last just long enough to be permitted to stay in the bar to finish, but it had to look like I was trying to obey the command for last call.
Old man Joe was taking an inordinate amount of time in the loo.
I debated with myself whether I should go in and prompt him to leave.
After all, Rodney and I couldn't do our deed until he was gone.
I decided to give him until the end of the song until I took action, and I drew courage from the words blasting through the bar:
Showing no fear of what lies up ahead
They'll never see the likes of us again
Can you hear me
Can you see
Don't you hear me
Don't you see
The final words of the song played out.
Luckily for me, I didn't have to go check on old man Joe in the toilet as I had promised myself I would when the tune ended.
Bartender Stanley did that for me.
He walked from behind the bar, went to the bathroom door and pounded on it.
"Cab's here! Let's GO!"
Joe stumbled out, paused to balance himself briefly in the doorway, and shuffled toward the door of the drinking establishment.
Stanley followed, a few steps behind. It looked as if he was ready to catch Joe if he fell backwards ... which made me think that this was a pretty regular routine for the two of them.
The bartender watched as the old man made it to the taxi. As the door closed, he locked it from the inside.
Turning to Rodney and I, the last two patrons, he declared, "You guys have a minute or two to finish. Drink up."
Then, he went to the jukebox and unplugged it.
"Whoa. Wait. I still had a song left!" I exclaimed.
Stanley said nothing.
I considered protesting again that he turned off my jukebox too soon, but decided against it.
Well, it wasn't MY jukebox so much as it was HIS jukebox on which I was playing MY songs, what with *me* being the customer and *him* being the agent of the bar owner in his role as bartender.
He finished fussing over other things on my side of the bar, pushing in stools and picking up trash.
Then he walked back behind the counter and popped the register open.
If Rodney and I were about to rob that cash drawer, we both would have left with not much money at all. But our charge was to do something greater ... for a much bigger payout.
I thought he was going to count out his drawer in front of us, but he was working on something else. I saw him pull out a calculator and punch the buttons. Then he headed in my direction.
He slammed his palm right in front of my beer, and when he lifted his hand, there was some loose change in front of my almost-finished Guinness.
I quickly counted it ... two quarters, a dime and three pennies.
63 cents.
I didn't understand, which he quickly realized.
"Your jukebox refund. Now drink the hell up."
You know, I had never before used my special talents to dig inside someone's mind to learn the code for a safe where a small town drug kingpin kept his ill-earned gains so that I could turn the cash over to the three people who had kidnapped me and were holding me hostage in the basement of a bar until I executed the task.
But seeing as how that was exactly the undertaking I was about to begin, the fact that the bartender was being a jerk was going to make it a little easier to stay on task.
That ... plus I was still a bit of a convert to the cause knowing that a good portion of the money we were redistributing was going to further Mario's sister experimental cancer treatments.
In my mind, I had fully convinced myself that we were just turning *one* kind of drug money into a *different* kind of drug money.
And that game was about to begin.
I "cheers"-ed the air and finished my Guinness in one swallow.
Rodney, across the bar and still acting like he had no idea who I was, followed suit.
I took a deep breath, slid the token 63 cents into my hand and then into my pocket, and headed toward the front door that Stanley had locked when he had let old man Joe out of it so that he could get in his taxi a few moments earlier.
I didn't turn to look, but I knew that Rodney was also headed my way.
"I'll be right there. One moment," yelled Stanley from the counter.
With the jukebox off and the silence in the all but closed bar, I was worried that my heartbeat would be loud enough to give away our plan.
*This* was the moment for which we both had been waiting.
I knew it would happen quickly, because he had already done it to me once before -- that crazy night in Albert's guest room at that crazy party.
As Stanley reached toward the lock on the front door of the bar to undo it, Rodney quickly grabbed him from behind and put him into a choke hold.
Poor Stanley. He had absolutely no chance. Rodney was a mountain of a man ... and Stanley was a tall skinny thing who had no way to fight back. As for me, I had nothing to offer in this part of our adventure. After all, I was only tall in China. This part was a physical maneuver and I was just there to watch it all go down.
Stanley's face was turning colors, and he was trying to tap out as if tapping out was an option.
But it wasn't.
I'm sure the last thing he saw as he lost consciousness was me watching him fade away. He couldn't make eye contact with Rodney, since he had grabbed him from behind ... but he knew that we were the last two patrons. In those final moments, he must have realized that we were working together.
Rodney threw Stanley over his shoulder and said the two words that everybody said to me all the time since I was brought into this group ... "Let's GO!"
"Wait!" I yelled at Rodney.
"What now? I got to tie up this kid before he comes to."
I reminded him that we were already skipping a step. "The lights. We have to turn out the lights."
Turning out the lights was the signal to Albert, who was waiting and monitoring our progress in the creepy white van out in the parking lot.
Now we just had to find the light switches ...
Not being able to find the light switch at the bar wasn't the only problem we had executing our plan.
Nor would it turn out to be the biggest.
But, at that time, it was THE most pressing matter.
"I'll figure it out," I muttered at Rodney. "You get him back to the office and secured."
He bristled at my having given him instructions.
"You don't tell me what to do," he countered.
So much drama. So little time.
"Fine. I'm finding the lights."
I turned away from him and the unconscious bartender Stanley and started walking around the perimeter of the bar, searching for the switch.
"Fine," he responded. "I'm tying this guy up in the back."
Rodney dragged Stanley around the corner, and into the back office.
We had the benefit of having seen a crudely drawn map of the space in the bar that customers never enter -- thanks to Mario having worked there and Mria still doing duty as the bar manager.
Except ... neither one of them had thought to highlight where a robber-to-be would go to turn off the lights.
I made a complete circle around the front bar and found nothing.
So to the back bar I went.
The first rule of trying to find something when you don't know where it is ... is to stop looking.
In that moment, though, I had forgotten all about that rule, and so my search for the light switches went on ... and on ... and on ... fruitlessly.
Being back in the back of the back bar was a place I knew well. My whole original Florida adventure had started there. I paused to look fondly at the stool where I had sat and first met Mario when he was the bartender ... and Albert when he was the angry texter.
I stopped in front of the little table in the corner on the night of the after-party when I had interacted with Mario right after he had been suspended, followed by Joey, followed by Laura, followed by a stay in the hospital.
On the first night, I could never had predicted that return visit. And on that return visit, I could never had predicted that I'd be in the space again, alone, wandering around aimlessly.
Well not exactly aimlessly, for my aim was to find the way to turn off the damn lights.
It was only after I had given up and started back toward the back room off to the back of the back bar that I stumbled across the panel, on the other side of the door at which I had first seen Mria disappear so many nights ago.
Now I was the one walking through that door.
I flipped the switches and went looking for Rodney and Stanley.
It didn't take me nearly as long to find them.
The office was as we were told it would be.
Nothing special ... just a place for one or two people to manage a bar -- with the desk space mostly crowded out by alcohol bottles.
Full ones -- not empty ones. It was about stock overflow, not alcoholics functioning as management.
Although I *had* seen Mria pretty sloshed the night of the after party, when I was worried she was going to fall down the stairs as she took me from Mario's apartment down one floor to Albert's. That was the night I had met Rodney -- up close and personally.
Speaking of the man, he had "redecorated" the place.
Just in one corner.
Bartender Stanley had been tied securely to a folding chair, and he had a bar rag stuffed in his mouth and tied around his head. For his sake, I hoped it was at least a clean one.
He had clearly come to from having been in the sleeper hold, and his eyes were open wide in a panic, darting back and forth between Rodney, who had taken a seat on the desk, and me, who had just walked into the room.
Every now and then, he would struggle against the ropes that bound him. The chair would shuffle a little this way and that way, but ultimately he had been secured.
Rodney was looking smug, obviously pleased with himself.
He pointed to Stanley.
"You're up!" he said with a smirk.
"Well, hold on a minute. It doesn't quite work like that," I protested.
Rodney wasn't having any of it.
"Well, you better make it work like that, 'cause I don't want to be in here any longer than we have to be. We're on the back end of this, and it's time to wrap it up. I didn't sit around all night out there to do the same thing in here."
"I understand. But I need *him* to be thinking about opening up the safe in order to get the memories from him that I'll need to get the combination."
I barely understood all the ins and outs of my special skill ... I don't know how realistic it was to expect that I could make Rodney comprehend what I needed in order to do what I did.
And that's even though I had interacted that way with Rodney once before ... learning about him and his mother and that night back in Chicago when he accidentally shot her.
"Is the safe where they said it would be?" I asked.
Rodney got up from his roost and walked over to the wall, stopping in front of an electric panel.
He swung open the door, and it looked like it might just be a fuse box ... except for a keypad in the corner.
"Just like they said."
I turned to Stanley, knowing full well that he was watching us intently.
His eyes narrowed as he processed why it was he had been tied up.
It only took a few steps to be right in front of the tied up Stanley the bartender.
Despite him having been a jerk at the end of the evening and his having turned off the jukebox before my final song played, I felt a touch of pity for the kid, stuck in our situation, only a pawn in our plans.
"This will be over in a moment," I whispered to him as I crouched down over him, stared into his eyes and grabbed a hold of his forearms.
Unexpectedly, he met my gaze directly. I could feel him tense up, and he stopped any kind of struggle, looking just as intently into my eyes as I was looking into his.
The transfer of memories that I expected to begin didn't happen.
The all too familiar feelings of absorbing the pain and fear and anger of the person with whom I was coming into direct physical contact were nowhere to be found.
"Was I doing something wrong?" I wondered to myself.
Sure I hadn't heard him tell tales of woe, which normally was a prerequisite for triggering my talent, but he had been complaining about work all night long, and so that should have been my way in -- especially with our surroundings and the access to the safe being the obvious reason we had gone to all of this trouble.
Knowing that, I had been prepared to possibly have to try a little harder ... to use the work stuff to get into his thoughts, and then to stay with it and push through any memories that rose to the surface to pull out what I actually had come there to get.
But instead -- I was getting nothing.
Nothing but a murmur -- almost indistinguishable -- words and sounds I didn't recognize, repeated over and over again.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
Stanley was repeating that phrase over and over again in his mind, as if it were the key to a counter-offensive to stop me from getting into his head.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
Somehow, he *expected* what I could do ... as if he knew ahead of time ... as if he had been coached.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
His defense had started strong, but my talent was stronger. And he couldn't hold on to his mantra forever.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
I stayed my course, knowing that I could wear him down. But while I was waiting, I tried to shake the feeling I had that something wasn't right.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
After all, if he knew what I could do, then did he know who and what I was all along ... which would mean that he was expecting this outcome and that he let us grab him and tie him up?
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
He had been forewarned. But by whom? And how much of our plan did he knew? Were we at risk?
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
That last repetition was the weakest yet. I was about to get access to his fears and emotions ... and answers to all of my questions.
So close ... and then stymied at the last minute.
Stanley's repetition of his Creole mantra "pa sonje" was fading, and since that's what he was using to block me from gaining access to any of his memories and absorbing any of his emotions ... because, you know ... that's what I did now when I made actual physical contact with someone ... I was only moments away from getting access to what I needed to find the combination to the secret safe where the drug kingpin's dirty money was stashed.
But there was another pre-requisite to my talent working ... and that was that I had to make direct eye contact with said individual.
Stanley, who had stared back at me intensely the whole time he was fighting me off with his thoughts, had another trick up his sleeve.
He closed his eyes, breaking our connection.
So simple ... and so effective.
Also -- so telling. I was now convinced that he knew things about me that only few people knew.
Not only did he have a plan to block me once, but now he demonstrated that he had a back up plan to block me twice.
Something was definitely amiss.
And we were getting nowhere.
"What's taking so long?" yelled Rodney from his spot across the office in front of the safe.
"He won't look at me. He has to look at me. It doesn't work if he doesn't look at me!" I yelled in response.
You HAVE to be ready for anything.
If only I had remembered that Rodney had emphasized that that was his motto, back when I was eavesdropping on him telling stories to Mario on the porch at that after-party.
Maybe then I would have paused before I told him that our plan was being derailed because Stanley the bartender had decided to simply close his eyes to keep me from getting inside his head and rifling through his emotions for the sole purpose of stealing the safe's combination right out from under him.
But I didn't remember ... and so I didn't pause ... and so I screamed again: "He won't look at me. He has to look at me. It doesn't work if he doesn't look at me!"
Rodney calmly reacted -- the opposite of how I was presenting the situation.
"Got it," he muttered under his breath.
Calmly, he handled things the way he did back in Chicago.
He reached into the waistband of his pants, pulled out a gun, and shot Stanley in the knee.
I jumped, completely caught off guard by that turn of events.
But I'll be damned if his maneuver wasn't the solution I needed.
Stanley opened his eyes right quick, letting out a scream and locking eyes with me again.
I had to move just as quickly as Rodney had. I grabbed his forearms again, and the transfer that he had almost blocked started happening.
Rodney was indeed ready for anything. That could never again be disputed.
I had to admit.
It was my very first "knee-capping".
Although, to be clear, I was neither the capper nor the capped ... but I *was* a witness.
And boy did it look painful.
There was much more blood than I thought there would be for a gunshot that basically blew up a knee. In my mind, I would have expected it to be more like a shattered plate, patella pieces lying on the ground.
Not that I would have expected this to have happened *at all*, in the first place.
Rodney had shocked and surprised me. Stanley too, for that matter -- but that probably went without saying.
It also *felt* painful.
I knew this two ways.
First, and loudest, Stanley hadn't stopped screaming since it happened. He let out one wail after another such that I worried he might have regressed to the moment he came out of the womb and had exercised his lungs for the first time.
Second, and most directly affecting me, I was absorbing all of his terror via my talent, and it was overwhelming me in much the same way it was taking over every thought of his.
I had one task.
One all important task.
One task that had been the reason that I had been kidnapped, and driven down the east coast in a creepy van, and hidden away in a locked room in the basement of a bar.
One task that had forced me to be part of a team of people who were hell bent on a cash grab from a drug dealer.
One task that had brought me to this point ... in this bar office ... in this scenario.
As such, I had to focus through all of the transferred pain from Stanley and I had to start sifting through his emotions and his memories and his feelings.
I had one thing going for me.
Although I had proven previously that my touch couldn't physically heal people -- so Stanley was out of luck with regards to his bloodied knee that had just been shot clean through -- it did put the person on a bit of a high from me being able to take away their emotional pain just by coming into contact with them.
For those few moments where I held on to his forearms, his extreme pain was being buffeted by a new sensation of being relieved of anxiety about the situation at hand.
All I had to do was exploit that and focus.
Focus on my one task.
My one all important task.
The gunshot wound had shaken loose so many of Stanley's emotions that I was being bombarded.
I tried my best to laser in on what I had come to get -- the safe combination -- but I had to sift through snippets that I didn't understand. What I was feeling most was fear and apprehension.
Unlike the past people with whom I had interacted using my special skill, I knew very little of Stanley's story. There had been no sharing of something from his past immediately before I made contact with him like had happened with all the others.
As such, there wasn't much of a base, so I wasn't getting complete memories.
He had complained about work, though, and we were sitting in front of the safe waiting to open it, so the parts of what I was absorbing of his that made the most sense were work related. Many of them featured an imposing figure with a thick accent and a booming voice.
All the other times I had done this, a character from a memory whom I had never met came across as a faceless mannequin -- the creatures I had named "andantes". But this one was different.
He was represented in the shadows, but his voice was recognizable.
The man that drove Stanley's fears at this moment was the same one I had seen in full feathered-mask regalia in my dream sequence that wasn't quite a dream when I followed Jinx the cat into the air duct vent back when I was locked up in my room under the other bar.
The man about whom Stanley was petrified was Papa Kalfu himself.
I had the upper hand.
The more fearful Stanley was of what might happen to him from Papa Kalfu, the more I alleviated that fear courtesy of my absorbing his strongest emotions that were at the forefront of his thoughts.
Which meant that I was closer and closer to getting the combination.
But before that happened, we took a very interesting and very disturbing bypass through some other very recent memories.
I saw my version of Papa Kalfu -- the feathered mask-wearing man of shadows -- instructing Stanley on how to deal with what I could do.
Thanks to Stanley's vivid recall, I was there in the same office as it happened.
"To fight the 'blan's' magic, you must shut off your mind. Just say 'pa sonje' -- not remember -- over and over again. Block him from getting inside."
In the memory, Stanley started repeating those two words that I had heard as his mantra. Now I knew what they meant.
"And if that doesn't work," Papa Kalfu said as he leaned in directly in front of Stanley and whispered menacingly, "then take out your eyes -- or I will do it for you!"
As Stanley relived that instruction, his anxiety skyrocketed to new heights ... and it took all I could muster to stay on the emotional rollercoaster ride because I knew the information about the safe was right there under the surface.
That explained why he closed his eyes so tightly before he was shot ... that seemed like a more reasonable action then plucking out his own eyes.
Yet I knew that he knew that Papa Kalfu might just make good on his threat.
Something was wrong.
From the memories that I was taking from Stanley, it was clear that Papa Kalfu not only knew we were coming ... but he knew what I could do.
Seeing as how I had never even met the man, not counting that crazy dream/not dream, it made no sense.
Stanley had done all that he could to block me, based on Papa Kalfu's advice, but he hadn't counted on Rodney shooting him.
So it was all for naught ... because underneath the fear and dread that Stanley was feeling over what would happen to him as punishment, the next memory of his to which I gained access was indeed the combination to the safe.
I said it aloud at the same time that I watched him open the safe in that memory.
"42 ... 48 ... 44 ... 38 ... 37"
And Rodney said it aloud after me as he opened up the safe in real time in the office.
"Success!" he yelled. "We're *in*!"
I had completed what I had been sent to do. My job was done ... but the night wasn't over.
As Rodney pulled out stacks of cash on top of stacks of cash, I felt obligated to warn him.
"Something's wrong," I said excitedly. "He knew. Papa Kalfu knew. This might be a set-up."
Rodney wasn't phased.
"Well then, let's get the hell out of here," was his ready reply.
Except, as I feared ... the three of us weren't the only people in the bar.
Sadly, I only had enough money left for one more drink.
What with the overall scheme for the night being about waiting until last call and making sure that I was the last one at the bar, Stanley the bartender's announcement that he was closing up soon, along with the clarification that it was "not last call, but kinda last call" -- which, to be clear, wasn't a clarification at all -- was giving me cause for pause.
Then he had to go and push the issue.
"You want another Guinness?" he asked.
"Uhhh ... ummm ..." I stammered -- clear evidence of my confusion. "In a minute ..."
Stanley all but harrumphed and returned to his task of restocking various corners of the bar.
Rodney caught my attention from his seat directly across from me.
No one was supposed to know that we knew each other ... and, by "no one", I meant the only other two patrons -- the young kid and the old man.
He surreptitiously tapped his index finger on his opposing wrist, where a watch would be if people still wore watches back then.
The message he was sending was clear ... the clock was ticking.
It was only a matter of time.
Just a little bit of time.
***
"Do you know anywhere else in town to go drink?"
The young kid who had been engaged in his cell phone the whole evening *until* I had played the Pearl Jam song on the jukebox was re-starting the conversation he had begun prior to bartender Stanley's announcement.
"Oh sorry," I replied. "I'm not a local. Just here for work."
I was such a bad criminal.
Earlier, when I had first arrived and Stanley asked what brought me to the bar, I had said I was visiting family. This kid had been sitting in the seat right next to where I had positioned myself.
Lucky for me, he could have cared less about that small talk at that time, and my conflicting comments went by unnoticed.
"Yeah, I think it's a dick move to close so early. I've been trying to get my friends to come out and join me and now those plans up in the air. I thought closing time was 2am in this town?"
The kid was perturbed ... and wanted to vent.
I just wanted him to leave -- I could have cared less about his now interrupted plans.
I decided to give him some hope.
"That last group that left was talking about going *somewhere*. I didn't catch the name of the bar or anything, but they definitely had plans to keep on drinking."
The kid flagged down Stanley, and turned his line of questioning to him.
"Hey -- where else can I go to drink? I'm just getting started ... and you're harshing my buzz."
***
Bartender Stanley took the bait.
Kind of.
"I don't care *where* you drink, but you won't be doin' it here!"
I couldn't tell if there was a smidgen of humor intended in his reply ... or whether he was starting to get defensive.
"That's right. I won't. Ever again."
Alcohol and unpredictability have a direct relationship, in that as the first one increases, the probably of the second one showing itself goes up as well.
This kid who had barely said a word during the whole part of the evening I was sitting next to him at the bar -- the whole length of six or seven songs that I played on the jukebox, to be specific -- the one who had been minding his own business lost in his cell phone the whole time was about to demonstrate the concept.
He punctuated his declaration by tossing his mostly empty bottle into the middle of the bar, taking delight in hearing it crash to pieces on the floor.
He grabbed at the bills that were in front of him and walked briskly to the door before anyone could respond.
Stanley stood there just as surprised at the emotional display. I figured he was debating whether he should go chase the boy ... but seeing as how he was alone in the bar, he really didn't have much of a choice.
What WAS squarely within his power?
"That's it. LAST CALL!" he yelled angrily. "Last call for alcohol."
***
I raised my hand to make sure that Stanley knew that I wanted in on this "last call" business.
He hesitated.
"Did you know that guy?"
He motioned to where the kid had been seated up until the moment before when he had thrown his bottle on the floor of the bar.
"No, no. He's not with me," I answered, protesting any association between us.
"Well ... you were just talking to him before he flipped out," Stanley countered.
"Barely," I replied. "He just liked the song I had played."
The bartender was weighing all the facts before rendering his judgment.
"Okay. You can have another one."
Of course, by "have", he really meant "buy" ... but that's the outcome I had been seeking and I still had those few dollars in my pocket that my little crime triumvirate had floated me.
"Hey Joe."
After sliding me my goodbye Guinness, Stanley had turned his attention to the old man at the end of the bar.
"Hey Joe!"
Neither of his attempts to get his attention had worked.
"JOE! HEY!! LAST CALL, OLD MAN!!!"
***
It did make me stop and think.
What if this Joe guy's last call was *literally* his last call? Like *last* call as in ... LAST call.
He wasn't responding to the bartender ... he hadn't reacted to any of the songs I had played on the jukebox ... he didn't seem to be doing much of anything other than almost sleeping the whole time I was in the bar.
Although if he had passed, maybe he went as he had lived.
Maybe dying on a bar stool after an evening of drinking was a fitting ending for someone like Joe.
Or maybe not.
"Who played this crap?"
Joe finally made a move and offered up a comment.
The fact that it was pejorative with regards to my song selection didn't matter ... at least he was alive.
I doubted that he knew the tune I had chosen. I doubted that anyone knew the tune I had chosen. I had specifically selected it to maximize the time, and it was indeed another 10 minute song.
Although not as popular as the first long song that had kicked off my stay in the bar, Genesis' 'Driving the Last Spike' wasn't even yet halfway over.
No one answered Joe ... but he didn't care anyway.
He was over it.
***
Ironically, the second to last song I had chosen in the jukebox, Genesis' 'Driving the Last Spike', had driven the last spike, so to speak, into old man Joe's evening.
"You want me to call you a cab?" asked bartender Stanley now that he was up and responding.
"Yeah. Do that," was his reply.
He stood up and balanced himself on the back of his chair.
"I gotta piss," he mumbled, and then off he went to the bathroom.
It was soon going to be the moment of truth. I looked across the bar at Rodney and waited for him to glance in my direction. I subtly nodded my head, and he looked quickly away -- probably for fear that my nod to him wasn't subtle enough.
I measured the amount of my beer that I had left. I had to make it last just long enough to be permitted to stay in the bar to finish, but it had to look like I was trying to obey the command for last call.
Old man Joe was taking an inordinate amount of time in the loo.
I debated with myself whether I should go in and prompt him to leave.
After all, Rodney and I couldn't do our deed until he was gone.
I decided to give him until the end of the song until I took action, and I drew courage from the words blasting through the bar:
Showing no fear of what lies up ahead
They'll never see the likes of us again
***
Can you hear me
Can you see
Don't you hear me
Don't you see
The final words of the song played out.
Luckily for me, I didn't have to go check on old man Joe in the toilet as I had promised myself I would when the tune ended.
Bartender Stanley did that for me.
He walked from behind the bar, went to the bathroom door and pounded on it.
"Cab's here! Let's GO!"
Joe stumbled out, paused to balance himself briefly in the doorway, and shuffled toward the door of the drinking establishment.
Stanley followed, a few steps behind. It looked as if he was ready to catch Joe if he fell backwards ... which made me think that this was a pretty regular routine for the two of them.
The bartender watched as the old man made it to the taxi. As the door closed, he locked it from the inside.
Turning to Rodney and I, the last two patrons, he declared, "You guys have a minute or two to finish. Drink up."
Then, he went to the jukebox and unplugged it.
"Whoa. Wait. I still had a song left!" I exclaimed.
***
Stanley said nothing.
I considered protesting again that he turned off my jukebox too soon, but decided against it.
Well, it wasn't MY jukebox so much as it was HIS jukebox on which I was playing MY songs, what with *me* being the customer and *him* being the agent of the bar owner in his role as bartender.
He finished fussing over other things on my side of the bar, pushing in stools and picking up trash.
Then he walked back behind the counter and popped the register open.
If Rodney and I were about to rob that cash drawer, we both would have left with not much money at all. But our charge was to do something greater ... for a much bigger payout.
I thought he was going to count out his drawer in front of us, but he was working on something else. I saw him pull out a calculator and punch the buttons. Then he headed in my direction.
He slammed his palm right in front of my beer, and when he lifted his hand, there was some loose change in front of my almost-finished Guinness.
I quickly counted it ... two quarters, a dime and three pennies.
63 cents.
I didn't understand, which he quickly realized.
"Your jukebox refund. Now drink the hell up."
***
You know, I had never before used my special talents to dig inside someone's mind to learn the code for a safe where a small town drug kingpin kept his ill-earned gains so that I could turn the cash over to the three people who had kidnapped me and were holding me hostage in the basement of a bar until I executed the task.
But seeing as how that was exactly the undertaking I was about to begin, the fact that the bartender was being a jerk was going to make it a little easier to stay on task.
That ... plus I was still a bit of a convert to the cause knowing that a good portion of the money we were redistributing was going to further Mario's sister experimental cancer treatments.
In my mind, I had fully convinced myself that we were just turning *one* kind of drug money into a *different* kind of drug money.
And that game was about to begin.
I "cheers"-ed the air and finished my Guinness in one swallow.
Rodney, across the bar and still acting like he had no idea who I was, followed suit.
I took a deep breath, slid the token 63 cents into my hand and then into my pocket, and headed toward the front door that Stanley had locked when he had let old man Joe out of it so that he could get in his taxi a few moments earlier.
I didn't turn to look, but I knew that Rodney was also headed my way.
"I'll be right there. One moment," yelled Stanley from the counter.
With the jukebox off and the silence in the all but closed bar, I was worried that my heartbeat would be loud enough to give away our plan.
*This* was the moment for which we both had been waiting.
***
I knew it would happen quickly, because he had already done it to me once before -- that crazy night in Albert's guest room at that crazy party.
As Stanley reached toward the lock on the front door of the bar to undo it, Rodney quickly grabbed him from behind and put him into a choke hold.
Poor Stanley. He had absolutely no chance. Rodney was a mountain of a man ... and Stanley was a tall skinny thing who had no way to fight back. As for me, I had nothing to offer in this part of our adventure. After all, I was only tall in China. This part was a physical maneuver and I was just there to watch it all go down.
Stanley's face was turning colors, and he was trying to tap out as if tapping out was an option.
But it wasn't.
I'm sure the last thing he saw as he lost consciousness was me watching him fade away. He couldn't make eye contact with Rodney, since he had grabbed him from behind ... but he knew that we were the last two patrons. In those final moments, he must have realized that we were working together.
Rodney threw Stanley over his shoulder and said the two words that everybody said to me all the time since I was brought into this group ... "Let's GO!"
"Wait!" I yelled at Rodney.
"What now? I got to tie up this kid before he comes to."
I reminded him that we were already skipping a step. "The lights. We have to turn out the lights."
Turning out the lights was the signal to Albert, who was waiting and monitoring our progress in the creepy white van out in the parking lot.
Now we just had to find the light switches ...
***
Not being able to find the light switch at the bar wasn't the only problem we had executing our plan.
Nor would it turn out to be the biggest.
But, at that time, it was THE most pressing matter.
"I'll figure it out," I muttered at Rodney. "You get him back to the office and secured."
He bristled at my having given him instructions.
"You don't tell me what to do," he countered.
So much drama. So little time.
"Fine. I'm finding the lights."
I turned away from him and the unconscious bartender Stanley and started walking around the perimeter of the bar, searching for the switch.
"Fine," he responded. "I'm tying this guy up in the back."
Rodney dragged Stanley around the corner, and into the back office.
We had the benefit of having seen a crudely drawn map of the space in the bar that customers never enter -- thanks to Mario having worked there and Mria still doing duty as the bar manager.
Except ... neither one of them had thought to highlight where a robber-to-be would go to turn off the lights.
I made a complete circle around the front bar and found nothing.
So to the back bar I went.
***
The first rule of trying to find something when you don't know where it is ... is to stop looking.
In that moment, though, I had forgotten all about that rule, and so my search for the light switches went on ... and on ... and on ... fruitlessly.
Being back in the back of the back bar was a place I knew well. My whole original Florida adventure had started there. I paused to look fondly at the stool where I had sat and first met Mario when he was the bartender ... and Albert when he was the angry texter.
I stopped in front of the little table in the corner on the night of the after-party when I had interacted with Mario right after he had been suspended, followed by Joey, followed by Laura, followed by a stay in the hospital.
On the first night, I could never had predicted that return visit. And on that return visit, I could never had predicted that I'd be in the space again, alone, wandering around aimlessly.
Well not exactly aimlessly, for my aim was to find the way to turn off the damn lights.
It was only after I had given up and started back toward the back room off to the back of the back bar that I stumbled across the panel, on the other side of the door at which I had first seen Mria disappear so many nights ago.
Now I was the one walking through that door.
I flipped the switches and went looking for Rodney and Stanley.
It didn't take me nearly as long to find them.
***
The office was as we were told it would be.
Nothing special ... just a place for one or two people to manage a bar -- with the desk space mostly crowded out by alcohol bottles.
Full ones -- not empty ones. It was about stock overflow, not alcoholics functioning as management.
Although I *had* seen Mria pretty sloshed the night of the after party, when I was worried she was going to fall down the stairs as she took me from Mario's apartment down one floor to Albert's. That was the night I had met Rodney -- up close and personally.
Speaking of the man, he had "redecorated" the place.
Just in one corner.
Bartender Stanley had been tied securely to a folding chair, and he had a bar rag stuffed in his mouth and tied around his head. For his sake, I hoped it was at least a clean one.
He had clearly come to from having been in the sleeper hold, and his eyes were open wide in a panic, darting back and forth between Rodney, who had taken a seat on the desk, and me, who had just walked into the room.
Every now and then, he would struggle against the ropes that bound him. The chair would shuffle a little this way and that way, but ultimately he had been secured.
Rodney was looking smug, obviously pleased with himself.
He pointed to Stanley.
"You're up!" he said with a smirk.
***
"Well, hold on a minute. It doesn't quite work like that," I protested.
Rodney wasn't having any of it.
"Well, you better make it work like that, 'cause I don't want to be in here any longer than we have to be. We're on the back end of this, and it's time to wrap it up. I didn't sit around all night out there to do the same thing in here."
"I understand. But I need *him* to be thinking about opening up the safe in order to get the memories from him that I'll need to get the combination."
I barely understood all the ins and outs of my special skill ... I don't know how realistic it was to expect that I could make Rodney comprehend what I needed in order to do what I did.
And that's even though I had interacted that way with Rodney once before ... learning about him and his mother and that night back in Chicago when he accidentally shot her.
"Is the safe where they said it would be?" I asked.
Rodney got up from his roost and walked over to the wall, stopping in front of an electric panel.
He swung open the door, and it looked like it might just be a fuse box ... except for a keypad in the corner.
"Just like they said."
I turned to Stanley, knowing full well that he was watching us intently.
His eyes narrowed as he processed why it was he had been tied up.
***
It only took a few steps to be right in front of the tied up Stanley the bartender.
Despite him having been a jerk at the end of the evening and his having turned off the jukebox before my final song played, I felt a touch of pity for the kid, stuck in our situation, only a pawn in our plans.
"This will be over in a moment," I whispered to him as I crouched down over him, stared into his eyes and grabbed a hold of his forearms.
Unexpectedly, he met my gaze directly. I could feel him tense up, and he stopped any kind of struggle, looking just as intently into my eyes as I was looking into his.
The transfer of memories that I expected to begin didn't happen.
The all too familiar feelings of absorbing the pain and fear and anger of the person with whom I was coming into direct physical contact were nowhere to be found.
"Was I doing something wrong?" I wondered to myself.
Sure I hadn't heard him tell tales of woe, which normally was a prerequisite for triggering my talent, but he had been complaining about work all night long, and so that should have been my way in -- especially with our surroundings and the access to the safe being the obvious reason we had gone to all of this trouble.
Knowing that, I had been prepared to possibly have to try a little harder ... to use the work stuff to get into his thoughts, and then to stay with it and push through any memories that rose to the surface to pull out what I actually had come there to get.
But instead -- I was getting nothing.
Nothing but a murmur -- almost indistinguishable -- words and sounds I didn't recognize, repeated over and over again.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
***
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
Stanley was repeating that phrase over and over again in his mind, as if it were the key to a counter-offensive to stop me from getting into his head.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
Somehow, he *expected* what I could do ... as if he knew ahead of time ... as if he had been coached.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
His defense had started strong, but my talent was stronger. And he couldn't hold on to his mantra forever.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
I stayed my course, knowing that I could wear him down. But while I was waiting, I tried to shake the feeling I had that something wasn't right.
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
After all, if he knew what I could do, then did he know who and what I was all along ... which would mean that he was expecting this outcome and that he let us grab him and tie him up?
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
He had been forewarned. But by whom? And how much of our plan did he knew? Were we at risk?
Pa sonje. Pa sonje. Pa sonje.
That last repetition was the weakest yet. I was about to get access to his fears and emotions ... and answers to all of my questions.
***
So close ... and then stymied at the last minute.
Stanley's repetition of his Creole mantra "pa sonje" was fading, and since that's what he was using to block me from gaining access to any of his memories and absorbing any of his emotions ... because, you know ... that's what I did now when I made actual physical contact with someone ... I was only moments away from getting access to what I needed to find the combination to the secret safe where the drug kingpin's dirty money was stashed.
But there was another pre-requisite to my talent working ... and that was that I had to make direct eye contact with said individual.
Stanley, who had stared back at me intensely the whole time he was fighting me off with his thoughts, had another trick up his sleeve.
He closed his eyes, breaking our connection.
So simple ... and so effective.
Also -- so telling. I was now convinced that he knew things about me that only few people knew.
Not only did he have a plan to block me once, but now he demonstrated that he had a back up plan to block me twice.
Something was definitely amiss.
And we were getting nowhere.
"What's taking so long?" yelled Rodney from his spot across the office in front of the safe.
"He won't look at me. He has to look at me. It doesn't work if he doesn't look at me!" I yelled in response.
***
You HAVE to be ready for anything.
If only I had remembered that Rodney had emphasized that that was his motto, back when I was eavesdropping on him telling stories to Mario on the porch at that after-party.
Maybe then I would have paused before I told him that our plan was being derailed because Stanley the bartender had decided to simply close his eyes to keep me from getting inside his head and rifling through his emotions for the sole purpose of stealing the safe's combination right out from under him.
But I didn't remember ... and so I didn't pause ... and so I screamed again: "He won't look at me. He has to look at me. It doesn't work if he doesn't look at me!"
Rodney calmly reacted -- the opposite of how I was presenting the situation.
"Got it," he muttered under his breath.
Calmly, he handled things the way he did back in Chicago.
He reached into the waistband of his pants, pulled out a gun, and shot Stanley in the knee.
I jumped, completely caught off guard by that turn of events.
But I'll be damned if his maneuver wasn't the solution I needed.
Stanley opened his eyes right quick, letting out a scream and locking eyes with me again.
I had to move just as quickly as Rodney had. I grabbed his forearms again, and the transfer that he had almost blocked started happening.
Rodney was indeed ready for anything. That could never again be disputed.
***
I had to admit.
It was my very first "knee-capping".
Although, to be clear, I was neither the capper nor the capped ... but I *was* a witness.
And boy did it look painful.
There was much more blood than I thought there would be for a gunshot that basically blew up a knee. In my mind, I would have expected it to be more like a shattered plate, patella pieces lying on the ground.
Not that I would have expected this to have happened *at all*, in the first place.
Rodney had shocked and surprised me. Stanley too, for that matter -- but that probably went without saying.
It also *felt* painful.
I knew this two ways.
First, and loudest, Stanley hadn't stopped screaming since it happened. He let out one wail after another such that I worried he might have regressed to the moment he came out of the womb and had exercised his lungs for the first time.
Second, and most directly affecting me, I was absorbing all of his terror via my talent, and it was overwhelming me in much the same way it was taking over every thought of his.
***
I had one task.
One all important task.
One task that had been the reason that I had been kidnapped, and driven down the east coast in a creepy van, and hidden away in a locked room in the basement of a bar.
One task that had forced me to be part of a team of people who were hell bent on a cash grab from a drug dealer.
One task that had brought me to this point ... in this bar office ... in this scenario.
As such, I had to focus through all of the transferred pain from Stanley and I had to start sifting through his emotions and his memories and his feelings.
I had one thing going for me.
Although I had proven previously that my touch couldn't physically heal people -- so Stanley was out of luck with regards to his bloodied knee that had just been shot clean through -- it did put the person on a bit of a high from me being able to take away their emotional pain just by coming into contact with them.
For those few moments where I held on to his forearms, his extreme pain was being buffeted by a new sensation of being relieved of anxiety about the situation at hand.
All I had to do was exploit that and focus.
Focus on my one task.
My one all important task.
***
The gunshot wound had shaken loose so many of Stanley's emotions that I was being bombarded.
I tried my best to laser in on what I had come to get -- the safe combination -- but I had to sift through snippets that I didn't understand. What I was feeling most was fear and apprehension.
Unlike the past people with whom I had interacted using my special skill, I knew very little of Stanley's story. There had been no sharing of something from his past immediately before I made contact with him like had happened with all the others.
As such, there wasn't much of a base, so I wasn't getting complete memories.
He had complained about work, though, and we were sitting in front of the safe waiting to open it, so the parts of what I was absorbing of his that made the most sense were work related. Many of them featured an imposing figure with a thick accent and a booming voice.
All the other times I had done this, a character from a memory whom I had never met came across as a faceless mannequin -- the creatures I had named "andantes". But this one was different.
He was represented in the shadows, but his voice was recognizable.
The man that drove Stanley's fears at this moment was the same one I had seen in full feathered-mask regalia in my dream sequence that wasn't quite a dream when I followed Jinx the cat into the air duct vent back when I was locked up in my room under the other bar.
The man about whom Stanley was petrified was Papa Kalfu himself.
***
I had the upper hand.
The more fearful Stanley was of what might happen to him from Papa Kalfu, the more I alleviated that fear courtesy of my absorbing his strongest emotions that were at the forefront of his thoughts.
Which meant that I was closer and closer to getting the combination.
But before that happened, we took a very interesting and very disturbing bypass through some other very recent memories.
I saw my version of Papa Kalfu -- the feathered mask-wearing man of shadows -- instructing Stanley on how to deal with what I could do.
Thanks to Stanley's vivid recall, I was there in the same office as it happened.
"To fight the 'blan's' magic, you must shut off your mind. Just say 'pa sonje' -- not remember -- over and over again. Block him from getting inside."
In the memory, Stanley started repeating those two words that I had heard as his mantra. Now I knew what they meant.
"And if that doesn't work," Papa Kalfu said as he leaned in directly in front of Stanley and whispered menacingly, "then take out your eyes -- or I will do it for you!"
As Stanley relived that instruction, his anxiety skyrocketed to new heights ... and it took all I could muster to stay on the emotional rollercoaster ride because I knew the information about the safe was right there under the surface.
That explained why he closed his eyes so tightly before he was shot ... that seemed like a more reasonable action then plucking out his own eyes.
Yet I knew that he knew that Papa Kalfu might just make good on his threat.
***
Something was wrong.
From the memories that I was taking from Stanley, it was clear that Papa Kalfu not only knew we were coming ... but he knew what I could do.
Seeing as how I had never even met the man, not counting that crazy dream/not dream, it made no sense.
Stanley had done all that he could to block me, based on Papa Kalfu's advice, but he hadn't counted on Rodney shooting him.
So it was all for naught ... because underneath the fear and dread that Stanley was feeling over what would happen to him as punishment, the next memory of his to which I gained access was indeed the combination to the safe.
I said it aloud at the same time that I watched him open the safe in that memory.
"42 ... 48 ... 44 ... 38 ... 37"
And Rodney said it aloud after me as he opened up the safe in real time in the office.
"Success!" he yelled. "We're *in*!"
I had completed what I had been sent to do. My job was done ... but the night wasn't over.
As Rodney pulled out stacks of cash on top of stacks of cash, I felt obligated to warn him.
"Something's wrong," I said excitedly. "He knew. Papa Kalfu knew. This might be a set-up."
Rodney wasn't phased.
"Well then, let's get the hell out of here," was his ready reply.
Except, as I feared ... the three of us weren't the only people in the bar.
***
CHAPTER 28
"What about *him*?" I asked my partner-in-crime Rodney, referring to Stanley the bartender, tied up on the office chair, bleeding from the gunshot that had shattered his knee.
I was more than certain that his pain was unbearable, and I had serious fears that the bleeding wouldn't stop without some kind of medical intervention.
Rodney was ready with a reply.
"Sorry. Not my problem. Collateral damage."
And then he repeated what I now knew to be his mantra.
"You HAVE to be ready for anything."
He grabbed the stash of cash we had pulled from the safe in the office of the bar owned by the drug dealer I knew as Papa Kalfu, and took a few steps toward poor Stanley.
"I was ready. And this guy wasn't. It is what it is."
I would never have called myself a fan of Rodney. It wasn't my choice to be partnered with him for this heist.
Hell, it wasn't *exactly* my choice to be a part of this heist in any form or fashion in the first place.
Many of the circumstances were beyond my control ... even if, toward the end, I had decided to go along with the plan -- mostly for the sake of Mario's sick sister.
I hated him more when he offered up his conclusion of "it is what it is".
I fundamentally disagreed with that approach to life so popular with my peers.
"It is what you MAKE it," I muttered under my breath.
I was determined to demonstrate my hatred of the "it is what it is" approach to life that Rodney had just espoused.
That attitude had spread like wildfire with my peers, and I equated it to a general collapse of accountability and disassociation with the concept of community. My skin crawled and my blood boiled any time I heard someone proffer that phrase as an excuse.
Of course, there was probably a better time and place to stop and stew on the issue than while we were tasked with making our getaway.
And, truth be told, I had never tied a tourniquet before, which is what I *should* have been thinking about.
All the same, I looked around the bar office to see what I could possibly use to give Stanley a chance at survival and I located what looked like it was a bar-branded t-shirt.
By this time, the poor bartender was so confused. He had gone from almost being done for the evening to getting choked out ... and tied up ... and shot -- not to mention what I had done to his mind to get the safe combination from him against his will.
Now, as the two of us were headed out the door with the cash we had acquired illegally, here I was stopping and doing something to help him.
Because ... it is what you MAKE it. Or so I believed.
Except it didn't matter what I believed.
Rodney, who had left the office ahead of me, had quickly returned.
And he wasn't alone.
"You're not supposed to be here. What about the cameras?"
I greeted the person who accompanied Rodney back into the office with questions and complaints -- because he was violating our plan.
Albert replied. "And *this* wasn't supposed to happen. At all."
He was pointing to Stanley, who was still bleeding all over the floor.
"Yeah. Talk to Rodney. I had nothing to do with it," I protested.
He bent over and took a closer look at the damage to Stanley's knee, before announcing his conclusion. "I don't think they're going to be able to put that back together again."
Rodney offered no comment on the situation. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and noticed that he had a tighter grip on the bag of cash.
There was an increased tension in the room, with everyone in near silence. Stanley had stopped whining in pain, Albert was standing quietly taking it all in, Rodney was perched back on the desk waiting for further instruction, and I was standing in the middle of the room, bar shirt in hand, having been stopped from taking action trying to tie it on to Stanley's leg to prevent more bleeding.
I was the next one to speak -- again directed toward Albert.
"You were supposed to wait in the van. Now you'll be on the cameras and Papa Kalfu will recognize you. Our whole cover's blown!"
Albert was quick to reply.
"Yeah ... but I heard the gun shot. So I came rushing in."
There was something wrong with that timeline, but I couldn't quite yet put my finger on it.
"Well, whatever. But we should get out of here. We should have *already* been out of here."
Rodney had finally broken his silence.
"Yeah ... about that ..."
Albert's reply only contributed to my feeling that something was wrong. Very wrong.
And that's when it hit me. Unfortunately, I didn't think to stay quiet about it.
"Wait a minute. If you came running in here when you heard the gunshot ... did we not lock the front door? How do you have a key if you're only a customer?"
I *knew* we had locked the door. That was our job ... and up until the gunshot, we were doing everything as planned -- and on task.
"Yeah ... about that ..."
Albert's answers were less than satisfactory.
"There's been a change of plans."
It struck me that maybe I was the only one not aware of the revision. After all, I had come into the bar before Rodney, leaving him and Albert plenty of time to chat it out in the creepy white van in the parking lot and to create a 2.0 version of the night's events.
I took a peek at Rodney to get a gut check, but I couldn't read him.
Except for the fact that, for sure, he wasn't letting go of the big bag of cash.
"It turns out that we won't be needing any more of your services."
Albert was too cool ... too nonchalant ... too much of the dick that I always knew him to be.
I had almost figured it out ... but I knew one more question would make it all come clear.
"So ... are you meeting Mario and Mria outside? Or are they coming in here now?"
Albert flashed a grin that made my stomach turn.
"Mario and Mria aren't relevant any more. It turns out I could get paid more to keep the cash OUT of their hands. I came along tonight to stop you from leaving with Papa's money."
Albert had sold us all out.
He waved to Rodney.
"Don't you worry though -- you will get exactly what you were promised. And then you need to get out of here, because Papa is unpredictable and I can't be responsible for how he reacts once he sees what you did to Stanley."
Papa. Papa. Albert said his name like he was under his spell.
And for all I knew, he was exactly that.
*That* was the missing connection. It explained how Stanley had seemingly been briefed before my arrival as to how to avoid my powers. Albert was working both sides of the con, sharing secrets and telling stories.
He calmly held out his hands.
"The money, please."
We had a standoff situation.
Albert expected Rodney to hand over the cash to him. Rodney was hesitating, trying to process the turn of events now that Albert explained that he had double-crossed Mario and Mria.
And Stanley and I were stuck in the middle -- him still bleeding all over the floor and me kicking myself for not seeing this coming. In that moment, I recalled that strange dream I had had, and how both Albert and Papa Kalfu were in it ... and how Albert had called him his "boss".
In the perfect vision of hindsight, my subconscious had known that there was a connection, even if I didn't understand it at the time.
Rodney pulled me out of my thoughts.
"You are going to pay me the same amount?" he asked.
Albert answered in the affirmative.
"Hell ... I can even give you a bonus!" Albert paused. "Although, I can't do it ... until you give me the bag."
Rodney didn't seem convinced.
"And what about *him*?"
I was not expecting that. My partner-in-the-original-crime was looking out for me.
"Oh, he already knows what I have planned for him. Where he's going, he won't need anything."
Unfortunately, I *did* know exactly what he meant.
The night I met Rodney at the after-party was also the night that I found the closet in Albert's guest-bedroom that he was preparing for me.
Mria had promised me a bus ticket home and an end to this whole adventure.
Albert had promised me that I would be moved from one locked room to another one -- and a smaller space at that.
He had told me before that he planned to keep me around to bring out at parties and that I was just a freak to him.
That was NOT the way I had wanted this to go.
While I was wallowing in my own worries, I almost didn't notice that Rodney wasn't convinced. He still had more questions.
"And what about Mario's sister? Are you going to see to it that she gets what she needs?"
"Well what do you know?" I thought to myself. Rodney had been affected by the reason Mario had given for the heist in the first place.
Albert said nothing. He stared at Rodney, thinking carefully about what to say next.
Or, as it turned out, what to DO next.
He rushed at him, startling us all.
I don't know what he was thinking.
In no world would he have been a match to take on Rodney ... Rodney also known as Mario's gym buddy ... Rodney also known as a mountain of a man ... Rodney also known as the guy who choked out both me and Stanley the bartender as the situation had called for it.
Maybe the only thing that he had going for him was the element of surprise.
Because it sure was surprising ... and a surprisingly stupid move ... for Albert to bum rush Rodney.
He must have realized that Rodney was hesitating when it came to turning over the bag of stolen cash.
They tussled, and I just stood there watching as Rodney maneuvered to get the best position.
He did let go of the bag of cash as they grappled, and I dove into the melee to grab it.
But it wasn't all that I grabbed.
The gun that Rodney had used to shoot Stanley in the kneecap prior to Albert's arrival fell out of the back of the waistband of his shorts and clattered to the floor of the bar office.
It all happened so fast ... and I was in the right place at the right time to claim it.
The problem was that I had never held a gun before ...
And the second problem was that Albert was about to turn it up a notch and play dirty ...
It was suddenly straight up 1997 in the mismatched scuffle in the bar office between Albert and Rodney.
Everybody knows that if you're losing in a fight, you have to do something dramatic -- or else just lose.
Albert was not going to lose.
Which gets me back to the scene from 1997 that was being recreated -- with the role of Evander Holyfield being played by Rodney ... and the part of Mike Tyson being portrayed by Albert.
Of course, I don't know if they were going for 100% accuracy -- and in the heat of the moment, I couldn't see whether it was the right or the left one ... but I did know for sure for certain by the noise that Rodney made that Albert had indeed bitten into one of his ears.
I couldn't believe what was happening ... and I wasn't sure any more where my loyalties were as to whether I should use the gun that I had picked up off the floor or not.
The fight did end immediately -- with Albert spitting out what was in his mouth onto the floor and Rodney scrambling to find it -- in the shock of the moment, at least having the presence of mind to find the flesh in hopes that it might be reattached.
It was fight or flight time for me ... despite me having all the power what with me having all the cash and all the gun.
And I was self-aware enough to know that I was more capable of the flight than the fight.
I waved the gun around wildly and yelled loudly.
"Nobody move!"
"Or what? What are *you* gonna do?"
Apparently, I did not look convincing enough to Albert despite the fact that I had Rodney's gun.
So I did what I felt I had to in order to get my point across.
I squeezed the trigger and shot randomly into the ceiling.
"I said DON'T MOVE!"
It was time for my getaway.
"Give me the keys. To the van. Now!"
Albert didn't move. Or at least, not quickly enough for me. I decided to encourage him to pick up the pace.
"There doesn't have to be any more bloodshed tonight -- there's already been too much. But this is NOT what was supposed to happen. And I am getting this back on track ... and fulfilling my end of the bargain ... and getting the hell out of southern Florida."
I was just getting started.
"This ends HERE. This ends TONIGHT. YOU choose how ..."
I paused for dramatic effect, and then repeated my demand.
"Now give me the damn keys!"
Albert reached into his pocket ... and pulled out the keys. He held them out at arm's length and smiled a sickening smile.
"No, no ... I don't trust you. Slide the keys on the floor to me."
I wasn't about to shorten the distance between myself and Albert. I knew better. Keep him at gun's length. That was safer.
Keep him AND Rodney at gun's length.
Although Rodney was just cowering in the corner, probably in some kind of shock that he was holding a piece of his ear in his own hand, courtesy of Albert's Tysonesque maneuver.
Albert's smile that had sickened me just got wider.
"Oh come on. Here they are. Why don't you trust me?" he said as he smirked up a storm.
"Really?" was my reply. I waved the gun hand around wildly again, this time more for effect. "Perhaps ... you know ... exhibit A. *This* scenario?!?"
He winked at me, and then continued his comments.
"You're not going to get far, even if you do get the keys to the van. You can't escape Papa. He's got tricks too, you know. He's already inside your head. He'll know where you are at all times ..."
Albert's voiced trailed off as he started to tap on the side of his own head.
"Because he's in here. You can't get away from him."
Albert's smile faded, and the tone in his voice changed.
"He told me he *already* came to visit you while you were locked up in the basement of the bar."
Sadly, I knew what he was talking about. That dream that wasn't a dream that had a courtroom setting -- I knew at the time that something was off about that experience.
While I was pondering what he was saying, I didn't notice that Albert was reaching behind the desk.
Albert's comments about not being able to escape Papa Kalfu had distracted me just enough for him to reach behind the office desk.
Luckily for me, what he retrieved didn't interfere with my latest plans ... to get a hold of the keys to the van so I could leave with all the cash.
It didn't *interfere* with my plans ... but it did shock and surprise me all the same.
Albert held up a blood stained shirt as if it were a trophy.
"He knows where you are because of this!" he said triumphantly.
I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.
"I don't understand," I commented honestly.
"I told you ... Papa's got tricks as well. This is *your* blood. From that night I gave you a beating when you were pounding on the ceiling of your ... um ... accommodations in the other bar."
I remembered that beating. I actually still bore some bruises from that beating.
"He can use this shirt with your blood on it to get inside your head."
If this were true and not just some attempt to confuse me enough to get the upper hand in our exchange, then Albert had been working with the enemy for a long time.
"You're not the only freak in this town!"
Then Albert laughed. A disturbing noise, making me think that he might not be of sound mind.
I needed to get out of there.
"The keys! Slide me the keys!"
"The keys. The KEYS! Give me the damn keys!"
I had had enough.
I wanted no more of this.
I just needed to wash my hands of the whole thing ... it was getting way too creepy with Albert's revelation of Papa Kalfu's freakiness.
I was worried that I'd have to fire another shot before he would take action ... but Albert suddenly changed his mind.
"Sure. Sure. Whatever. It doesn't matter. He'll find you."
And with that, he slid the keys to the van across the floor to my feet.
I bent over very carefully, keeping my eyes AND the barrel of Rodney's gun focused on those in the room -- Stanley, Rodney and Albert -- picking them up in the same hand that was holding the bag of cash.
Finally, something was working in my favor.
I didn't have time to celebrate, but it did flash through my mind that just a few weeks before at my college graduation that I would never have predicted that I would be in this situation -- a criminal waving a gun to keep back those who also wanted the cash I had stolen from another criminal.
There was absolutely nothing in that commencement speech that would have prepared me for what *had* happened ... or for what was about to happen.
The end was in sight.
"Hey. What about him? He's going to need medical attention."
Seeing as how Albert could have said that about Stanley OR Rodney, I had to engage in order to know which wounded person he meant.
"Look, I tried -- but now it's not my problem. I suggest you use that bloody shirt of yours and create a tourniquet for Stanley. And if you were talking about Rodney, then you best find some ice and put that ear on it."
I moved closer and closer to the door.
Still aiming Rodney's gun into the room at a spot between Albert and Rodney, I took a quick peek into the hallway ... and saw what I wanted to see.
I continued my goodbye.
"I doubt that you're going to want to call the police and explain all this to them ... but if you can figure out a story for how he got shot ... all the more power to you. Just know that you're going to be in here awhile."
I had learned a thing or two in the time I was locked in that room in the basement of the other bar.
I quickly closed the office door, and started moving boxes of liquor that were stacked up in the hallway to block it. There was also a shelf of assorted supplies that I was able to shift just far enough to create another obstacle.
I may not have had a way to lock them in, but I had tricks of my own.
And it may not have supplied me with a LOT of time to make my escape, but I figured it would be just enough.
I was getting while the getting was good.
Stolen cash, borrowed keys and purloined gun in hand, I checked one last time that my barricade of the bar office door would hold against Stanley, Rodney and Albert, and I high-tailed it toward the front door to make my escape.
To do so, I had to pass the jukebox, and I was briefly tempted to turn it back on so I could hear my final song that I had programmed in earlier that evening.
Stanley had turned it off before what I had planned as the prophetic finale had played ... and as much as I wanted to listen to the Steve Miller Band's version of 'Take the Money and Run", I resigned myself to a singing a single "woo-hoo-hoo" that I would have heard in the chorus as I passed the machine in the dark.
It was so dark that I didn't notice the rather large shadow that was standing in my way and blocking my exit.
What stopped me was the unmistakable voice ... a voice I had heard before in my head but never in person.
A voice that belonged to someone I had been warned who would always find me.
A voice to which I could now match a face.
"I believe you have something that belongs to me," said the voice -- low and slow, cool and calm and collected.
I had waited too long.
The getting was no longer good.
"Of all the bars in all the world ... YOU had to walk into this one."
My Casablanca reference didn't get any traction.
"Of course I did. It's MY bar!" was the shadow's reply.
I was cornered. Kind of. I had left the guys locked in the bar office behind me, and now I had to deal with this obstacle blocking my only exit. It was time to bargain.
"I have a gun!" I warned.
The shadow laughed -- which wasn't the response I had hoped for.
"Sure. You have a gun. But I don't think you have any aim. Or any conviction to fire it again."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I've been watching. The whole thing. And I am willing to bet that you won't pull the trigger. Because if you were the kind that easily pulled a trigger, the three monkeys in that room wouldn't be alive right now."
The shadow had a point.
And the shadow was way too logical and creepily calm in this whole scene. He was too confident for my liking.
"So why don't you hand over my money ... and then we can start the discussion as to what we do with you ... and with them."
I had a decision to make. One I had never been faced with before.
He who hesitates is lost.
I had learned that proverb before -- earlier in my life. What I hadn't learned earlier in my life was confidence in firing a gun.
And so I paid for my hesitation ... with a backhanded slap across the face that sent me reeling. In that moment, I couldn't hold on to both the gun and the bag of cash. It was the gun that went flying across the bar, out of sight in the darkness.
Priorities, right?
My cheek was stinging -- which made sense considering what had just happened.
I licked my lip, and tasted blood -- which didn't make sense to me.
In the ambient light of the darkened bar, I caught a glint off of the hand of the shadow that had slapped me. There must have been a ring or jewelry of some kind that had cut me open.
Despite the skin to skin contact of the back of his hand to my face, I didn't have any reaction. Maybe that was because the "touch" was so rapid, or maybe it was because the shadow knew me too well already -- despite only having never officially met me before that moment -- and he was using a trick to keep that exchange from happening.
After all -- I had been told that Papa Kalfu had tricks ... and the provider of my slap was indeed Papa Kalfu.
He didn't have to introduce himself.
I knew it.
He stepped out of the shadow, and stretched out the hand with the ring. A long finger made longer by an overgrown nail was pointed directly at my face.
I couldn't help it. I was mesmerized.
Papa Kalfu's long finger with its longer nail was right in front of my face. He scraped the nail gently along the curve of my cheek until it caught at the corner of my lip.
The same corner of my lip where I had just tasted the blood from the cut his jewelry had opened up when he had slapped me.
Completely creeped out, I stood there paralyzed as I watched him draw the finger away ... and I could see my blood pooled on the underside of the nail that he was holding upright so it wouldn't spill.
Our eyes locked, he put the nail up under his nostril and he snorted.the blood drip.
He closed his eyes, breathed through his nose a few times and let loose a laugh -- a deep throaty evil sound that filled the room and reverberated in my head.
Apparently what Albert had said was true. Papa had tricks. And those tricks somehow involved my blood.
He took one last deep breath at the end of his demonic chuckle, leaned down right into my face and opened his eyes. I would have sworn that I saw my reflection in his pupils.
I heard him whisper ... yet I didn't see his lips move ... like a ventriloquist from hell, I could hear the voice inside my own head.
"I will always be with you. I will always know your thoughts. I will always find you."
Then the laugh again. But only heard internally.
The face that stared at me was motionless.
Papa Kalfu reached behind and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, spinning me around and propelling me back toward the office in the back room of his bar.
"Now let's go clean up your mess," he directed.
I made a mental note as to the general direction where I thought the gun had gone. And then I also noted that I still had the bag of cash in my hand ... and the keys to the van in my pocket. One of those things I felt certain that he knew ... the other, though, I was hoping was still my secret.
At this point, if I could get away, the keys were going to be more important than the cash.
Although, without the cash, the mission would clearly be judged a failure.
Those thoughts were all a little premature. The immediate problem was literally right behind me, and I had to find a way to escape my new captor -- before he surprised me with a locked room of his own at his bar.
"Wouldn't have that been just my luck," I thought to myself. "Freed from one stupid situation and stuck in another one."
At the rate this was going, I was close to deciding that I would never set foot in Florida. Ever again.
To uphold my boycott, I'd have to first figure out how to leave the damn state.
Every step I took toward the office felt like I was getting deeper and deeper into quicksand.
Papa let go of my shirt and growled out more instructions.
"It's time for you to put things back the way they were ... starting with these debris in front of the door."
With these actions, I was literally going backwards.
My night was nowhere near being finished.
I was more than certain that his pain was unbearable, and I had serious fears that the bleeding wouldn't stop without some kind of medical intervention.
Rodney was ready with a reply.
"Sorry. Not my problem. Collateral damage."
And then he repeated what I now knew to be his mantra.
"You HAVE to be ready for anything."
He grabbed the stash of cash we had pulled from the safe in the office of the bar owned by the drug dealer I knew as Papa Kalfu, and took a few steps toward poor Stanley.
"I was ready. And this guy wasn't. It is what it is."
I would never have called myself a fan of Rodney. It wasn't my choice to be partnered with him for this heist.
Hell, it wasn't *exactly* my choice to be a part of this heist in any form or fashion in the first place.
Many of the circumstances were beyond my control ... even if, toward the end, I had decided to go along with the plan -- mostly for the sake of Mario's sick sister.
I hated him more when he offered up his conclusion of "it is what it is".
I fundamentally disagreed with that approach to life so popular with my peers.
"It is what you MAKE it," I muttered under my breath.
***
I was determined to demonstrate my hatred of the "it is what it is" approach to life that Rodney had just espoused.
That attitude had spread like wildfire with my peers, and I equated it to a general collapse of accountability and disassociation with the concept of community. My skin crawled and my blood boiled any time I heard someone proffer that phrase as an excuse.
Of course, there was probably a better time and place to stop and stew on the issue than while we were tasked with making our getaway.
And, truth be told, I had never tied a tourniquet before, which is what I *should* have been thinking about.
All the same, I looked around the bar office to see what I could possibly use to give Stanley a chance at survival and I located what looked like it was a bar-branded t-shirt.
By this time, the poor bartender was so confused. He had gone from almost being done for the evening to getting choked out ... and tied up ... and shot -- not to mention what I had done to his mind to get the safe combination from him against his will.
Now, as the two of us were headed out the door with the cash we had acquired illegally, here I was stopping and doing something to help him.
Because ... it is what you MAKE it. Or so I believed.
Except it didn't matter what I believed.
Rodney, who had left the office ahead of me, had quickly returned.
And he wasn't alone.
***
"You're not supposed to be here. What about the cameras?"
I greeted the person who accompanied Rodney back into the office with questions and complaints -- because he was violating our plan.
Albert replied. "And *this* wasn't supposed to happen. At all."
He was pointing to Stanley, who was still bleeding all over the floor.
"Yeah. Talk to Rodney. I had nothing to do with it," I protested.
He bent over and took a closer look at the damage to Stanley's knee, before announcing his conclusion. "I don't think they're going to be able to put that back together again."
Rodney offered no comment on the situation. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and noticed that he had a tighter grip on the bag of cash.
There was an increased tension in the room, with everyone in near silence. Stanley had stopped whining in pain, Albert was standing quietly taking it all in, Rodney was perched back on the desk waiting for further instruction, and I was standing in the middle of the room, bar shirt in hand, having been stopped from taking action trying to tie it on to Stanley's leg to prevent more bleeding.
I was the next one to speak -- again directed toward Albert.
"You were supposed to wait in the van. Now you'll be on the cameras and Papa Kalfu will recognize you. Our whole cover's blown!"
Albert was quick to reply.
"Yeah ... but I heard the gun shot. So I came rushing in."
There was something wrong with that timeline, but I couldn't quite yet put my finger on it.
***
"Well, whatever. But we should get out of here. We should have *already* been out of here."
Rodney had finally broken his silence.
"Yeah ... about that ..."
Albert's reply only contributed to my feeling that something was wrong. Very wrong.
And that's when it hit me. Unfortunately, I didn't think to stay quiet about it.
"Wait a minute. If you came running in here when you heard the gunshot ... did we not lock the front door? How do you have a key if you're only a customer?"
I *knew* we had locked the door. That was our job ... and up until the gunshot, we were doing everything as planned -- and on task.
"Yeah ... about that ..."
Albert's answers were less than satisfactory.
"There's been a change of plans."
It struck me that maybe I was the only one not aware of the revision. After all, I had come into the bar before Rodney, leaving him and Albert plenty of time to chat it out in the creepy white van in the parking lot and to create a 2.0 version of the night's events.
I took a peek at Rodney to get a gut check, but I couldn't read him.
Except for the fact that, for sure, he wasn't letting go of the big bag of cash.
***
"It turns out that we won't be needing any more of your services."
Albert was too cool ... too nonchalant ... too much of the dick that I always knew him to be.
I had almost figured it out ... but I knew one more question would make it all come clear.
"So ... are you meeting Mario and Mria outside? Or are they coming in here now?"
Albert flashed a grin that made my stomach turn.
"Mario and Mria aren't relevant any more. It turns out I could get paid more to keep the cash OUT of their hands. I came along tonight to stop you from leaving with Papa's money."
Albert had sold us all out.
He waved to Rodney.
"Don't you worry though -- you will get exactly what you were promised. And then you need to get out of here, because Papa is unpredictable and I can't be responsible for how he reacts once he sees what you did to Stanley."
Papa. Papa. Albert said his name like he was under his spell.
And for all I knew, he was exactly that.
*That* was the missing connection. It explained how Stanley had seemingly been briefed before my arrival as to how to avoid my powers. Albert was working both sides of the con, sharing secrets and telling stories.
He calmly held out his hands.
"The money, please."
***
We had a standoff situation.
Albert expected Rodney to hand over the cash to him. Rodney was hesitating, trying to process the turn of events now that Albert explained that he had double-crossed Mario and Mria.
And Stanley and I were stuck in the middle -- him still bleeding all over the floor and me kicking myself for not seeing this coming. In that moment, I recalled that strange dream I had had, and how both Albert and Papa Kalfu were in it ... and how Albert had called him his "boss".
In the perfect vision of hindsight, my subconscious had known that there was a connection, even if I didn't understand it at the time.
Rodney pulled me out of my thoughts.
"You are going to pay me the same amount?" he asked.
Albert answered in the affirmative.
"Hell ... I can even give you a bonus!" Albert paused. "Although, I can't do it ... until you give me the bag."
Rodney didn't seem convinced.
"And what about *him*?"
I was not expecting that. My partner-in-the-original-crime was looking out for me.
"Oh, he already knows what I have planned for him. Where he's going, he won't need anything."
***
Unfortunately, I *did* know exactly what he meant.
The night I met Rodney at the after-party was also the night that I found the closet in Albert's guest-bedroom that he was preparing for me.
Mria had promised me a bus ticket home and an end to this whole adventure.
Albert had promised me that I would be moved from one locked room to another one -- and a smaller space at that.
He had told me before that he planned to keep me around to bring out at parties and that I was just a freak to him.
That was NOT the way I had wanted this to go.
While I was wallowing in my own worries, I almost didn't notice that Rodney wasn't convinced. He still had more questions.
"And what about Mario's sister? Are you going to see to it that she gets what she needs?"
"Well what do you know?" I thought to myself. Rodney had been affected by the reason Mario had given for the heist in the first place.
Albert said nothing. He stared at Rodney, thinking carefully about what to say next.
Or, as it turned out, what to DO next.
He rushed at him, startling us all.
***
I don't know what he was thinking.
In no world would he have been a match to take on Rodney ... Rodney also known as Mario's gym buddy ... Rodney also known as a mountain of a man ... Rodney also known as the guy who choked out both me and Stanley the bartender as the situation had called for it.
Maybe the only thing that he had going for him was the element of surprise.
Because it sure was surprising ... and a surprisingly stupid move ... for Albert to bum rush Rodney.
He must have realized that Rodney was hesitating when it came to turning over the bag of stolen cash.
They tussled, and I just stood there watching as Rodney maneuvered to get the best position.
He did let go of the bag of cash as they grappled, and I dove into the melee to grab it.
But it wasn't all that I grabbed.
The gun that Rodney had used to shoot Stanley in the kneecap prior to Albert's arrival fell out of the back of the waistband of his shorts and clattered to the floor of the bar office.
It all happened so fast ... and I was in the right place at the right time to claim it.
The problem was that I had never held a gun before ...
And the second problem was that Albert was about to turn it up a notch and play dirty ...
***
It was suddenly straight up 1997 in the mismatched scuffle in the bar office between Albert and Rodney.
Everybody knows that if you're losing in a fight, you have to do something dramatic -- or else just lose.
Albert was not going to lose.
Which gets me back to the scene from 1997 that was being recreated -- with the role of Evander Holyfield being played by Rodney ... and the part of Mike Tyson being portrayed by Albert.
Of course, I don't know if they were going for 100% accuracy -- and in the heat of the moment, I couldn't see whether it was the right or the left one ... but I did know for sure for certain by the noise that Rodney made that Albert had indeed bitten into one of his ears.
I couldn't believe what was happening ... and I wasn't sure any more where my loyalties were as to whether I should use the gun that I had picked up off the floor or not.
The fight did end immediately -- with Albert spitting out what was in his mouth onto the floor and Rodney scrambling to find it -- in the shock of the moment, at least having the presence of mind to find the flesh in hopes that it might be reattached.
It was fight or flight time for me ... despite me having all the power what with me having all the cash and all the gun.
And I was self-aware enough to know that I was more capable of the flight than the fight.
I waved the gun around wildly and yelled loudly.
"Nobody move!"
***
"Or what? What are *you* gonna do?"
Apparently, I did not look convincing enough to Albert despite the fact that I had Rodney's gun.
So I did what I felt I had to in order to get my point across.
I squeezed the trigger and shot randomly into the ceiling.
"I said DON'T MOVE!"
It was time for my getaway.
"Give me the keys. To the van. Now!"
Albert didn't move. Or at least, not quickly enough for me. I decided to encourage him to pick up the pace.
"There doesn't have to be any more bloodshed tonight -- there's already been too much. But this is NOT what was supposed to happen. And I am getting this back on track ... and fulfilling my end of the bargain ... and getting the hell out of southern Florida."
I was just getting started.
"This ends HERE. This ends TONIGHT. YOU choose how ..."
I paused for dramatic effect, and then repeated my demand.
"Now give me the damn keys!"
Albert reached into his pocket ... and pulled out the keys. He held them out at arm's length and smiled a sickening smile.
***
"No, no ... I don't trust you. Slide the keys on the floor to me."
I wasn't about to shorten the distance between myself and Albert. I knew better. Keep him at gun's length. That was safer.
Keep him AND Rodney at gun's length.
Although Rodney was just cowering in the corner, probably in some kind of shock that he was holding a piece of his ear in his own hand, courtesy of Albert's Tysonesque maneuver.
Albert's smile that had sickened me just got wider.
"Oh come on. Here they are. Why don't you trust me?" he said as he smirked up a storm.
"Really?" was my reply. I waved the gun hand around wildly again, this time more for effect. "Perhaps ... you know ... exhibit A. *This* scenario?!?"
He winked at me, and then continued his comments.
"You're not going to get far, even if you do get the keys to the van. You can't escape Papa. He's got tricks too, you know. He's already inside your head. He'll know where you are at all times ..."
Albert's voiced trailed off as he started to tap on the side of his own head.
"Because he's in here. You can't get away from him."
Albert's smile faded, and the tone in his voice changed.
"He told me he *already* came to visit you while you were locked up in the basement of the bar."
Sadly, I knew what he was talking about. That dream that wasn't a dream that had a courtroom setting -- I knew at the time that something was off about that experience.
While I was pondering what he was saying, I didn't notice that Albert was reaching behind the desk.
***
Albert's comments about not being able to escape Papa Kalfu had distracted me just enough for him to reach behind the office desk.
Luckily for me, what he retrieved didn't interfere with my latest plans ... to get a hold of the keys to the van so I could leave with all the cash.
It didn't *interfere* with my plans ... but it did shock and surprise me all the same.
Albert held up a blood stained shirt as if it were a trophy.
"He knows where you are because of this!" he said triumphantly.
I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.
"I don't understand," I commented honestly.
"I told you ... Papa's got tricks as well. This is *your* blood. From that night I gave you a beating when you were pounding on the ceiling of your ... um ... accommodations in the other bar."
I remembered that beating. I actually still bore some bruises from that beating.
"He can use this shirt with your blood on it to get inside your head."
If this were true and not just some attempt to confuse me enough to get the upper hand in our exchange, then Albert had been working with the enemy for a long time.
"You're not the only freak in this town!"
Then Albert laughed. A disturbing noise, making me think that he might not be of sound mind.
I needed to get out of there.
"The keys! Slide me the keys!"
***
"The keys. The KEYS! Give me the damn keys!"
I had had enough.
I wanted no more of this.
I just needed to wash my hands of the whole thing ... it was getting way too creepy with Albert's revelation of Papa Kalfu's freakiness.
I was worried that I'd have to fire another shot before he would take action ... but Albert suddenly changed his mind.
"Sure. Sure. Whatever. It doesn't matter. He'll find you."
And with that, he slid the keys to the van across the floor to my feet.
I bent over very carefully, keeping my eyes AND the barrel of Rodney's gun focused on those in the room -- Stanley, Rodney and Albert -- picking them up in the same hand that was holding the bag of cash.
Finally, something was working in my favor.
I didn't have time to celebrate, but it did flash through my mind that just a few weeks before at my college graduation that I would never have predicted that I would be in this situation -- a criminal waving a gun to keep back those who also wanted the cash I had stolen from another criminal.
There was absolutely nothing in that commencement speech that would have prepared me for what *had* happened ... or for what was about to happen.
***
The end was in sight.
"Hey. What about him? He's going to need medical attention."
Seeing as how Albert could have said that about Stanley OR Rodney, I had to engage in order to know which wounded person he meant.
"Look, I tried -- but now it's not my problem. I suggest you use that bloody shirt of yours and create a tourniquet for Stanley. And if you were talking about Rodney, then you best find some ice and put that ear on it."
I moved closer and closer to the door.
Still aiming Rodney's gun into the room at a spot between Albert and Rodney, I took a quick peek into the hallway ... and saw what I wanted to see.
I continued my goodbye.
"I doubt that you're going to want to call the police and explain all this to them ... but if you can figure out a story for how he got shot ... all the more power to you. Just know that you're going to be in here awhile."
I had learned a thing or two in the time I was locked in that room in the basement of the other bar.
I quickly closed the office door, and started moving boxes of liquor that were stacked up in the hallway to block it. There was also a shelf of assorted supplies that I was able to shift just far enough to create another obstacle.
I may not have had a way to lock them in, but I had tricks of my own.
And it may not have supplied me with a LOT of time to make my escape, but I figured it would be just enough.
***
I was getting while the getting was good.
Stolen cash, borrowed keys and purloined gun in hand, I checked one last time that my barricade of the bar office door would hold against Stanley, Rodney and Albert, and I high-tailed it toward the front door to make my escape.
To do so, I had to pass the jukebox, and I was briefly tempted to turn it back on so I could hear my final song that I had programmed in earlier that evening.
Stanley had turned it off before what I had planned as the prophetic finale had played ... and as much as I wanted to listen to the Steve Miller Band's version of 'Take the Money and Run", I resigned myself to a singing a single "woo-hoo-hoo" that I would have heard in the chorus as I passed the machine in the dark.
It was so dark that I didn't notice the rather large shadow that was standing in my way and blocking my exit.
What stopped me was the unmistakable voice ... a voice I had heard before in my head but never in person.
A voice that belonged to someone I had been warned who would always find me.
A voice to which I could now match a face.
"I believe you have something that belongs to me," said the voice -- low and slow, cool and calm and collected.
I had waited too long.
The getting was no longer good.
***
"Of all the bars in all the world ... YOU had to walk into this one."
My Casablanca reference didn't get any traction.
"Of course I did. It's MY bar!" was the shadow's reply.
I was cornered. Kind of. I had left the guys locked in the bar office behind me, and now I had to deal with this obstacle blocking my only exit. It was time to bargain.
"I have a gun!" I warned.
The shadow laughed -- which wasn't the response I had hoped for.
"Sure. You have a gun. But I don't think you have any aim. Or any conviction to fire it again."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I've been watching. The whole thing. And I am willing to bet that you won't pull the trigger. Because if you were the kind that easily pulled a trigger, the three monkeys in that room wouldn't be alive right now."
The shadow had a point.
And the shadow was way too logical and creepily calm in this whole scene. He was too confident for my liking.
"So why don't you hand over my money ... and then we can start the discussion as to what we do with you ... and with them."
I had a decision to make. One I had never been faced with before.
***
He who hesitates is lost.
I had learned that proverb before -- earlier in my life. What I hadn't learned earlier in my life was confidence in firing a gun.
And so I paid for my hesitation ... with a backhanded slap across the face that sent me reeling. In that moment, I couldn't hold on to both the gun and the bag of cash. It was the gun that went flying across the bar, out of sight in the darkness.
Priorities, right?
My cheek was stinging -- which made sense considering what had just happened.
I licked my lip, and tasted blood -- which didn't make sense to me.
In the ambient light of the darkened bar, I caught a glint off of the hand of the shadow that had slapped me. There must have been a ring or jewelry of some kind that had cut me open.
Despite the skin to skin contact of the back of his hand to my face, I didn't have any reaction. Maybe that was because the "touch" was so rapid, or maybe it was because the shadow knew me too well already -- despite only having never officially met me before that moment -- and he was using a trick to keep that exchange from happening.
After all -- I had been told that Papa Kalfu had tricks ... and the provider of my slap was indeed Papa Kalfu.
He didn't have to introduce himself.
I knew it.
He stepped out of the shadow, and stretched out the hand with the ring. A long finger made longer by an overgrown nail was pointed directly at my face.
***
I couldn't help it. I was mesmerized.
Papa Kalfu's long finger with its longer nail was right in front of my face. He scraped the nail gently along the curve of my cheek until it caught at the corner of my lip.
The same corner of my lip where I had just tasted the blood from the cut his jewelry had opened up when he had slapped me.
Completely creeped out, I stood there paralyzed as I watched him draw the finger away ... and I could see my blood pooled on the underside of the nail that he was holding upright so it wouldn't spill.
Our eyes locked, he put the nail up under his nostril and he snorted.the blood drip.
He closed his eyes, breathed through his nose a few times and let loose a laugh -- a deep throaty evil sound that filled the room and reverberated in my head.
Apparently what Albert had said was true. Papa had tricks. And those tricks somehow involved my blood.
He took one last deep breath at the end of his demonic chuckle, leaned down right into my face and opened his eyes. I would have sworn that I saw my reflection in his pupils.
I heard him whisper ... yet I didn't see his lips move ... like a ventriloquist from hell, I could hear the voice inside my own head.
"I will always be with you. I will always know your thoughts. I will always find you."
Then the laugh again. But only heard internally.
The face that stared at me was motionless.
***
Papa Kalfu reached behind and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, spinning me around and propelling me back toward the office in the back room of his bar.
"Now let's go clean up your mess," he directed.
I made a mental note as to the general direction where I thought the gun had gone. And then I also noted that I still had the bag of cash in my hand ... and the keys to the van in my pocket. One of those things I felt certain that he knew ... the other, though, I was hoping was still my secret.
At this point, if I could get away, the keys were going to be more important than the cash.
Although, without the cash, the mission would clearly be judged a failure.
Those thoughts were all a little premature. The immediate problem was literally right behind me, and I had to find a way to escape my new captor -- before he surprised me with a locked room of his own at his bar.
"Wouldn't have that been just my luck," I thought to myself. "Freed from one stupid situation and stuck in another one."
At the rate this was going, I was close to deciding that I would never set foot in Florida. Ever again.
To uphold my boycott, I'd have to first figure out how to leave the damn state.
Every step I took toward the office felt like I was getting deeper and deeper into quicksand.
Papa let go of my shirt and growled out more instructions.
"It's time for you to put things back the way they were ... starting with these debris in front of the door."
With these actions, I was literally going backwards.
My night was nowhere near being finished.
***
CHAPTER 29
What could I do but comply?
I mean ... I guess I could have tried to fight back.
To find the gun on the floor of the bar ... to push past Papa Kalfu ... to jump in the van and to drive away with the stolen cash and to never look back.
To leave southern Florida and to travel up the coast and to reconnect with my puppy dog and to start my life anew with a bunch of dirty drug money.
To forget everyone I had met and everything I had done.
To ignore my special skill.
To retire fresh out of college, to never have a career ... to find a cottage in the woods and to be self-sufficient ... just me and the puppy ... 'til the end of time.
To never touch another person ... so as to never get mixed up with someone else's drama ... so as to never have to absorb the emotions of another ... to live life free of feeling.
Yeah ... but no.
That wasn't my destiny.
That wasn't where I was headed.
That wasn't the task before me.
So I complied. Like a good little prisoner ... just with a new warden.
So there I was, unblocking the bar office door I had only just finished blocking moments before.
I expected to hear more noise from the other side, considering Stanley, Rodney and Albert were all in there ... but that wasn't the case.
As I was pushing the desk that I had used out of the way, I could finally hear the sounds of a scuffle.
Papa Kalfu pushed me forward, and I could see how the tables had turned in the few moments since I had left.
Not for Stanley -- he was still tied up to the chair. Although there was more blood pooling at his feet from his wounded knee.
When it came to turned tables, it was Albert and Rodney who had flipped roles. Rodney had him pinned against the wall, hands around his neck, with what looked like the goal of *actually* choking him instead of just choking him out, the more polite mma way that was his go-to move.
"Release him!"
Papa Kalfu's voice, which had been so calm and confident in his exchange with me, was now commanding. He made his demand again -- not necessarily any louder, but definitely with more bite.
"I said RELEASE HIM."
Rodney looked over his shoulder at the two of us.
"And who the *hell* are you?" he asked.
Papa Kalfu flashed his best dastardly smile before he answered.
"I'm the reason you're going to regret everything you did."
The blue sparks were a surprise.
I had been warned that Papa Kalfu had tricks.
I knew that he could somehow get inside my head ... apparently through some kind of creepiness involving my blood.
I knew that he seemed to have been aware of everything that went down in the bar, as if he was there even though we knew he wasn't.
I knew that he prepared Stanley for the tricks that I had up *my* sleeve, so he had special insight into my skills.
But blue sparks? That was unexpected.
Of course, it turns out that there *was* an explanation.
And it had nothing to do with mystical powers or secrets from the old country or voodoo hoodoo as I was staring to suspect.
Instead, Rodney - the recipient of the blue sparks -- was getting tazed by Papa.
"You should have listened to me when I told you to let him go," he said, standing over Rodney's twitching body.
Albert collapsed against the wall, gasping for breath.
Papa turned to him next, pressing the button on the tazer for effect.
"And you. YOU talk to much. I'm going to fix that."
"But first -- first you untie him and use those to secure Rodney."
Papa Kalfu was taking charge.
Albert did as he was told, unworking the knots we had used to tie up Stanley the bartender before he was shot.
Then he worked quickly to bind Rodney where he lay after he was tazed, tying his hands behind his back and his ankles together with the same bloody ropes.
I just stood there, taking in every change of dynamic in the room -- trying to keep my head clear in case I saw an opportunity to take quick action.
"Now get him cleaned up."
I was watching Albert and Rodney so intently that I didn't notice that Papa Kalfu had applied a makeshift tourniquet to Stanley's upper leg at the same time -- as I had first suggested.
He helped Stanley stand up, and Albert jumped in to offer support on the side that had been shot.
They limped out of the office, headed toward the bathroom in the bar -- the walking wounded from the night's events.
Somehow I had managed to survive with nothing but a scratch on my face from where Papa had slapped me with his hand that was wearing a ring.
He grabbed a bar rag from off of the desk, and knelt down to Rodney.
First, he touched the ear where Albert had taken a bite, and again, he licked his finger of the blood that was there. I knew that that action is what fed his power.
Then, instead of wiping it off and cleaning it up, he stuffed the bar rag in Rodney's mouth.
"Now -- what to do with you," he said, turning toward me menacingly.
"What do you want with me?"
Ironically, Papa Kalfu was asking ME that question ... when I could have very easily been the one making that query of HIM.
"Well ..." I started. "That's kind of a long story."
"I don't have the time." He gestured around the bar office. "I have to clean up this mess."
He thought for a moment before continuing.
"Well -- I have to *supervise* someone cleaning up this mess, but that should go without saying. So then tell me what I REALLY want to know."
Papa reclined on the edge of the desk.
He stared deeply into my eyes, and spoke again in measured tones.
"Teach me how to do what you do."
I returned his stare, and matched his speech pattern.
"There is NO possible way I can do that."
Papa sighed and leaned toward me.
"*That's* the wrong answer! You're not leaving here tonight until I have your power."
"You don't understand," I protested. "I can't control my powers. I've just barely started figuring them out."
I thought I saw a pained look go across Papa Kalfu's face.
"That's not good enough for me. Why do you think I let this all happen in the first place?"
I had wondered about that. Seeing as how Albert had double-crossed Mria and Mario and was working for Papa, then he would have had to have known that we were going to be at the bar that night to rob him of his drug money. And if he was watching the whole scene unfold, as he had hinted he was, he was likely on site the whole time and could have stepped in at any moment to stop us from what we were doing.
He answered his own question.
"I let this happen just so I could meet you. Of course, it wasn't supposed to go this far and I had equipped Stanley with a way to block you from getting in his head and getting the combination, but he failed ... and he will be punished for that."
Papa paused, and I got the distinct sense that he was crafting an appropriate punishment right then and there.
He tapped his finger repeatedly on the desk.
"No this ... *this* ... THIS was about getting an audience with you. You should be flattered."
I wasn't feeling flattered. I was feeling frightened.
"I can do bits and pieces of what you can do. I want to be able to do it all!"
He rapidly closed the distance between us.
"Start talking. Now."
"I don't know what you want me to say."
I really didn't. It wasn't a bluff. I had no way to school him on my talents.
But he wasn't giving up.
"Let's start with how you initiate things. All you have to do is make skin to skin contact. I can do something similar, but I have to intake their blood. That's something I'd rather not have to do. I mean sure, blood has always been a part of my people's history, but if I can cut out that step ..."
His voice faded away as he imagined a future where "intake of blood" was no longer a part of his routine.
Since I didn't answer ... seeing as how I wasn't asked a direct question ... he continued.
"It's as if you have the next iteration of MY ability to get inside someone's mind. You can do it easier and you can do more things when you're in there. I need your upgrade."
I shook my head and finally responded.
"I can't help you with that. I don't even know *how* I got this way in the first place."
Papa Kalfu stood up and fumbled with some equipment that was on a shelf behind the desk. He took down a bunsen burner and turned it on.
"I know *how* you got it. It's your birthright. Just like it was for me."
The flame burned bright blue. He opened a desk drawer and took out two things ... a large spoon and a butcher knife.
"And if you don't know how to pass it on to me, then I'll have to resort to doing things the only way I know how."
He picked up the knife, and stuck it in the flame.
"My people have been doing blood sacrifices for ages."
Papa Kalfu continued sterilizing the butcher knife in the bluest part of the flame.
"Of course ... usually ... it's a chicken. But ... then again ... I'm more unusual."
He was toying with me.
Or maybe he wasn't.
That was what I had to decide.
Would he actually go through with slicing me open?
Or was this all for show to get me to talk -- even though I had already told him that I had nothing to say to help him understand my talent for taking away the painful memories of those with whom I came into contact.
"And, come to think of it ... you are kind of a chicken, aren't you? Afraid to share your power."
He took the knife and touched it quickly to his fingertips, making a judgment that he didn't share out loud.
All the same, I could easily determine his conclusion.
He was satisfied with the prep work.
I knew that because he stopped what he was doing and stood directly in front of me again.
"Your gift is in your blood. So your blood shall be my gift."
For all the reasons I didn't like Albert, I had to admit that he was suddenly my best friend.
I mean let's face it ... he was allegedly the mastermind behind kidnapping me in the first place, since he developed an obsession with me after I took away his painful memories back in this very same bar during my first visit to Florida.
He gave me a beating the night I tried to tap my way out of the locked room at the other bar.
He intended to lock me up in the closet of the guest room of his apartment after the others were done with me in direct defiance of their plan to send me back home.
He ruined the robbery attempt by double-crossing everyone and following Papa Kalfu.
There was absolutely no reason why I should suddenly switch my opinion of him.
No reason except one.
One big one.
Before Papa Kalfu could slit me open to get at my blood in hopes of taking on my powers, Albert came back into the bar office and interrupted whatever was about to happen with regards to the hot knife and my body.
"Okay boss ... what's next?" he asked as he entered the office, unaware of the sacrifice that was about to be undertaken.
Papa Kalfu answered his question with a few of his own.
"Where is Stanley? Aren't you supposed to be helping Stanley? Why can't you follow instructions?"
Poor Albert.
He stood there silently -- the child getting chastised for something he thought he was doing to be helpful.
Papa's anger was growing quickly, and his speech showed the rage that was reaching a crescendo.
"I asked you where Stanley is? You were supposed to accompany him to the bathroom to get cleaned up and to bring him back here ... together ... the two of you. WHY did only ONE of you RETURN?"
Albert -- still looking like the schoolboy in trouble -- stammered his response.
"He said ... he told me ... well Stanley said he could handle it. And I figured you'd need me back here to help you ... so I ... told him ... okay ... and to ... to yell if he needed anything."
Papa Kalfu wasn't quite yet at the peak of being perturbed ... but he was pretty damn close.
"And WHAT makes you think that I need HELP? You must learn your place, BOY!"
In some odd way, it was comforting to know that I wasn't the only one getting the giant backhand from the giant black man that night. Papa Kalfu struck him across the face so hard that he lost his balance and fell to the floor next to the tied up and gagged Rodney.
Papa towered over him, repeating his threat from earlier.
"AND you talk too much. I can fix that."
To the surprise of us all, a shot rang out at just that moment.
"No no no no no no NO!"
Now Papa had reached the peak of his anger.
Each "no" built on the power of the one before it, until the final "NO" reverberated around the bar office.
Just like the sound of the gun being fired did the same thing.
Stanley, propped up on a push broom that he was using as a crutch, appeared in the office door with Rodney's gun that he found on the floor of the bar where I had dropped it when I had been struck during my escape attempt.
"How you like it now, BITCH!" he screamed. "Karma sucks, don't it!"
Tied up and gagged Rodney let out a roar of pain, muffled as it was through the bloody shirt that was in his mouth to keep him quiet, as the bullet shattered his shin.
Papa Kalfu was losing control of the situation, and mayhem was about to ensue.
He leaped over to Stanley, grabbed the gun from his hands and knocked the broom out from underneath him. Stanley crashed to the floor, writhing in his own pain from having aggravated his injury.
Albert slowly got to *his* feet, and made a lunge for *me*, because he correctly deduced that I was about to take advantage of all of this and to attempt making a run for the exit.
He tripped over Stanley's body, but succeeded in grabbing a hold of my leg just above the ankle.
If everything weren't happening at once, I would have refrained from making eye contact with him. But that's not what happened.
I had enough feelings about the events of the evening in that bar office.
I didn't really need to amplify them by absorbing the feelings of someone else in the midst of the same excitement.
But I didn't have a choice.
Albert grabbing my leg above the ankle was skin to skin contact, and, surprised as I was to feel someone holding on to me, I made eye contact with him -- which initiated the transfer.
My fear and anxiety and apprehension about the robbery going wrong, and about Papa Kalfu showing up, and about needing to find some way to make an escape ... all of those distractions that were an obstacle to me staying focused were only the tip of the emotional iceberg.
I immediately began to see things through Albert's eyes.
His sense of betrayal at having been bitch-slapped just then by Papa Kalfu.
His feeling of fear at the threats that Papa had made implying he'd be punished soon enough.
His desire to do what he could to stop me in order to save some face with Papa.
His confusion over how quickly the state of affairs was deteriorating.
I knew that I had to be careful not to be over-stimulated. After all, it was at this very same bar that I had collapsed at the after-party because I had had too many interactions with too many people in too short of time.
Remembering that incident, though, reminded me that I had learned a few things since that night.
And that included a trick that I could now use in my favor.
I had to take action right away.
No time for dilly-dallying.
No hesitation.
No weighing a list of pros and cons before making a decision.
No doubts.
No fears.
No postponements.
No waiting for a sign.
No turning it over to a higher power.
No pausing to see if a different moment would feel better.
No concern for the well-being of others.
No counting to ten.
No hoping for a white horse to ride in at the last moment.
No delay of action.
With Albert still holding on to my leg, I reached out and grabbed Papa Kalfu tightly by the forearm.
Here's the trick I had learned.
My special talents didn't work so well in a threesome.
That early morning I had met Mario's sick sister, and I was connected to her in that way that only I could be ... despite her being in a drugged haze that transferred to me as well ... when Mario had also grabbed me at the same time, the collective energy from all that was happening was so strong that he collapsed and his heart stopped.
In that moment in the bar office, faced with a tiny window that I could use to my advantage, I did my best to recreate that exact scene.
Except my best wasn't quite good enough.
I should have known that Papa Kalfu, who had proven himself to be a formidable foe with special skills of his own, would be strong enough to handle such a charge.
Luckily, he was startled by my having grabbed his forearm to make eye contact, which was the spark sufficient to cause the energy explosion, but he was powerful enough and quick enough to fight back.
I had gotten used to the feeling of absorbing the feelings and emotions of another, no matter how strong or how dark or how painful.
I was NOT used to a feeling that I only imagined was what one felt when one touched an electric fence. Except I couldn't let go. And there was a distinct sensation that I was in some bizarre crowd wave like at a sporting event, with the energy flowing to Papa Kalfu, and then back through my body to Albert, who was still holding my leg, and then a diminished wave-let returning through me and back to Papa.
There was another sensation that was just as unsettling -- the smell of singed hair so close to me that I knew it was mine.
The wave of energy continued ... from Papa ... to Albert ... and back to Papa.
Through me, though. And it turned out that I wasn't intended to be a conduit. I smelled the singe of my arm hair again and I instinctively knew that if I didn't break the threeway connection, I would be in even more trouble.
To be honest, I'm not even sure if the movement in my leg to kick toward Albert, who still had a hold of it above my ankle, was a voluntary motion or a twitch from all of the "electricity" coursing betwixt us all.
Regardless, it definitely happened, and I definitely succeeded in breaking free of his grasp.
It was only then that I connected the dots as to the consequence of Papa pushing back the bulk of the charge to Albert. The reason it was so easy to break free from him was because HE was the one that wasn't moving.
I had wanted that outcome for Papa Kalfu but I was going to have to make do with what was before me.
What was before me was now a one way connection with the king of all evil, and there was a indeterminate darkness creeping up around the edges of my mind.
On top of that unsettled feeling, I was also extremely worried that I was at risk for my brain getting fried ... literally ... so I decided to release the forearm of Papa before I ended up with irreparable damage to my psyche.
That was the first time I realized that he had grabbed the bag of cash in his other hand when all the drama had started.
It was also the first time that I realized that Papa wasn't moving anything other than his eyes, which were darting all around the room.
I didn't exactly have time to spare ... but I decided I had to take a chance and to confirm my suspicion.
So I poked Papa in his chest.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
And no response.
Well no motor-physical skill response, anyway.
His eyes never stopped moving. I would even have sworn on a stack of Bibles that they turned a different darker color.
But there wasn't even ONE Bible -- let alone a whole stack of them -- in the office of the bar ... and I for sure didn't have time for any swearing ceremonies.
My suspicion WAS confirmed, though, and although Papa had repelled enough of the charge of energy so that Albert took the brunt of it, he still had a consequence with which he had to deal.
He was stunned ... temporarily paralyzed ... and I had to seize the opportunity.
After all I had been through, I decided to make one last play for the money.
I yanked on the bag that Papa was holding tightly in his hand.
Except it didn't move. The same "stun" that was working in my favor and was going to let me escape was also working *against* me in that he had an unbreakable grip on the sack of cash.
"If at first you don't succeed ... try, try again."
I had always felt attracted to the truth of that adage ... and that may have been because of all the various places I had called "home" during my mixed up youth and time spent in the system.
So the fact that the stunned Papa Kalfu had too tight of a grip on the bag of cash that we were trying to steal from him wasn't something I was going to let be the determinative factor of the scenario.
There were other mantras in the back of my mind ... "time is running out" and "the clock is ticking", for instance.
I had no way of knowing how long Papa would be subject to the stun.
But still. That cash, though. To leave without it seemed somewhat ridiculous if I could get it easily and still make my escape.
It all came down to HOW easy and HOW quick.
I was in a bar office. Near an office desk. So my plan came together quickly.
I rummaged through the office supplies in the top drawer until I found what I was seeking.
Then, with a few snips from the scissors I located, I left Papa Kalfu holding what was left of the original bag.
The remaining cloth and cash fell to the floor, and I scrambled to gather it all like I was on some crazy game show and the mayhem around me was all just props to distract me.
The problem was that I hadn't cut the bag carefully enough, and it was no longer useful to carry out the cash in my getaway.
I looked around for some other way to transport the stolen funds.
I didn't have to look far.
I was already on the floor scrambling for the cash that was scattered all over it due to my cutting the bag that was in the stunned Papa Kalfu's too tight grip.
Which meant that Rodney was directly in my line of sight.
Tied up and gagged Rodney. Now that I was close to him, I could see that what I had thought was a bar rag that Papa had stuffed in his mouth was *actually* Albert's bloodied shirt that he had bragged about from the night he beat me -- the same shirt that he implied Papa used for his voodoo trick of keeping track of me and getting inside my head.
That damn shirt was going to get repurposed yet again.
I took it from Rodney's mouth and stuffed it full of the stolen money, folding it up at the edges so I could carry it more easily.
Rodney gasped, still in fresh pain from having just been shot by Stanley in an act of revenge.
"Untie me!" he demanded.
Staring at him helplessly, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Papa released the remnants of the bag that had been in his hand. I quickly turned to him and noticed that he was focused on moving his fingers, and that they were twitching.
"Rodney, I'm sorry. I'm running out of time. I'll call and send the police as soon as I get near a phone."
With that promise, I stepped over everyone -- the now abandoned Rodney, the lifeless Albert, the knocked down and crippled Stanley -- and I ran past the still physiologically stunned Papa Kalfu.
I fumbled for the keys to the van as I made my way to the front door of the bar.
This time ... THIS time ... I was going to succeed in escaping.
Had I time to celebrate, I would have paused at the point where I made it farther than the last time I tried to leave.
But I didn't have any spare time.
I already knew that Papa's "stun" was wearing off.
So instead of stopping, I ran right past the jukebox and reached the exit of the bar.
I turned the manual lock of the front door ... and pushed ... but before I could step outside, I froze.
In the distance ... in the direction of the bar office where I had left everyone else ... I heard the roar of Papa Kalfu.
"You'll all PAY FOR THIS!"
Knowing that he was back in charge of his faculties was enough motivation for me to kick it into high gear.
I knew if I looked over my shoulder and back at the scene I was leaving that I'd be in more trouble than Lot's wife leaving Gomorrah. And I had absolutely no intention of letting Papa's voodoo tricks turn me into a bag of salt ... or worse.
I ran through the parking lot, and located the creepy white van right where we had left Albert at the beginning of the evening.
Of all the things that had gone wrong, at least I had managed to get the keys before Papa's arrival.
I jumped in the driver seat, put the folded up shirt full of cash on the passenger side and turned the key in the ignition ...
For an old creepy white van, I was particularly pleased that it started up with the initial turn of the key in the ignition -- which was the first of two things that went really well for me in the course of a few minutes.
In my humble opinion, I was overdue for a turn of luck from bad to good.
Earlier, I had fired a gun for the first time ... and now I had another first that I could scratch off the list.
Never before had I peeled out of a parking lot like I did to escape Papa and the boys I had left behind.
With tires squealing and parking lot pebbles flying, I pushed my foot so hard against the gas pedal, that I briefly thought I might actually lose control of the van -- and had it been a greater performance vehicle, I just might have.
I passed another van in the parking lot ... and a car. The car I figured to be the bartender's ... which made the van likely something that belonged to Papa Kalfu. I couldn't read all of the lettering on it, but I was pretty sure that it had the name of a church on its side.
In the rear view mirror, I saw Papa exit the front of the bar.
That's when it hit me that there might be yet another first for my list ... seeing as how I was also never in a car chase before -- or a *van* chase for that matter.
Which brings me to the other thing that went really well for me.
As I sped out of the lot and into the street, I saw railroad tracks directly in front of me ... with lights that started blinking.
Just barely, I made it through the crossing as the barriers were closing.
It was the best timed train of my whole life ... and I knew that I couldn't be immediately followed and I *could* make my escape.
Now I just had to figure out my destination.
I mean ... I guess I could have tried to fight back.
To find the gun on the floor of the bar ... to push past Papa Kalfu ... to jump in the van and to drive away with the stolen cash and to never look back.
To leave southern Florida and to travel up the coast and to reconnect with my puppy dog and to start my life anew with a bunch of dirty drug money.
To forget everyone I had met and everything I had done.
To ignore my special skill.
To retire fresh out of college, to never have a career ... to find a cottage in the woods and to be self-sufficient ... just me and the puppy ... 'til the end of time.
To never touch another person ... so as to never get mixed up with someone else's drama ... so as to never have to absorb the emotions of another ... to live life free of feeling.
Yeah ... but no.
That wasn't my destiny.
That wasn't where I was headed.
That wasn't the task before me.
So I complied. Like a good little prisoner ... just with a new warden.
***
So there I was, unblocking the bar office door I had only just finished blocking moments before.
I expected to hear more noise from the other side, considering Stanley, Rodney and Albert were all in there ... but that wasn't the case.
As I was pushing the desk that I had used out of the way, I could finally hear the sounds of a scuffle.
Papa Kalfu pushed me forward, and I could see how the tables had turned in the few moments since I had left.
Not for Stanley -- he was still tied up to the chair. Although there was more blood pooling at his feet from his wounded knee.
When it came to turned tables, it was Albert and Rodney who had flipped roles. Rodney had him pinned against the wall, hands around his neck, with what looked like the goal of *actually* choking him instead of just choking him out, the more polite mma way that was his go-to move.
"Release him!"
Papa Kalfu's voice, which had been so calm and confident in his exchange with me, was now commanding. He made his demand again -- not necessarily any louder, but definitely with more bite.
"I said RELEASE HIM."
Rodney looked over his shoulder at the two of us.
"And who the *hell* are you?" he asked.
Papa Kalfu flashed his best dastardly smile before he answered.
"I'm the reason you're going to regret everything you did."
***
The blue sparks were a surprise.
I had been warned that Papa Kalfu had tricks.
I knew that he could somehow get inside my head ... apparently through some kind of creepiness involving my blood.
I knew that he seemed to have been aware of everything that went down in the bar, as if he was there even though we knew he wasn't.
I knew that he prepared Stanley for the tricks that I had up *my* sleeve, so he had special insight into my skills.
But blue sparks? That was unexpected.
Of course, it turns out that there *was* an explanation.
And it had nothing to do with mystical powers or secrets from the old country or voodoo hoodoo as I was staring to suspect.
Instead, Rodney - the recipient of the blue sparks -- was getting tazed by Papa.
"You should have listened to me when I told you to let him go," he said, standing over Rodney's twitching body.
Albert collapsed against the wall, gasping for breath.
Papa turned to him next, pressing the button on the tazer for effect.
"And you. YOU talk to much. I'm going to fix that."
***
"But first -- first you untie him and use those to secure Rodney."
Papa Kalfu was taking charge.
Albert did as he was told, unworking the knots we had used to tie up Stanley the bartender before he was shot.
Then he worked quickly to bind Rodney where he lay after he was tazed, tying his hands behind his back and his ankles together with the same bloody ropes.
I just stood there, taking in every change of dynamic in the room -- trying to keep my head clear in case I saw an opportunity to take quick action.
"Now get him cleaned up."
I was watching Albert and Rodney so intently that I didn't notice that Papa Kalfu had applied a makeshift tourniquet to Stanley's upper leg at the same time -- as I had first suggested.
He helped Stanley stand up, and Albert jumped in to offer support on the side that had been shot.
They limped out of the office, headed toward the bathroom in the bar -- the walking wounded from the night's events.
Somehow I had managed to survive with nothing but a scratch on my face from where Papa had slapped me with his hand that was wearing a ring.
He grabbed a bar rag from off of the desk, and knelt down to Rodney.
First, he touched the ear where Albert had taken a bite, and again, he licked his finger of the blood that was there. I knew that that action is what fed his power.
Then, instead of wiping it off and cleaning it up, he stuffed the bar rag in Rodney's mouth.
"Now -- what to do with you," he said, turning toward me menacingly.
***
"What do you want with me?"
Ironically, Papa Kalfu was asking ME that question ... when I could have very easily been the one making that query of HIM.
"Well ..." I started. "That's kind of a long story."
"I don't have the time." He gestured around the bar office. "I have to clean up this mess."
He thought for a moment before continuing.
"Well -- I have to *supervise* someone cleaning up this mess, but that should go without saying. So then tell me what I REALLY want to know."
Papa reclined on the edge of the desk.
He stared deeply into my eyes, and spoke again in measured tones.
"Teach me how to do what you do."
I returned his stare, and matched his speech pattern.
"There is NO possible way I can do that."
Papa sighed and leaned toward me.
"*That's* the wrong answer! You're not leaving here tonight until I have your power."
***
"You don't understand," I protested. "I can't control my powers. I've just barely started figuring them out."
I thought I saw a pained look go across Papa Kalfu's face.
"That's not good enough for me. Why do you think I let this all happen in the first place?"
I had wondered about that. Seeing as how Albert had double-crossed Mria and Mario and was working for Papa, then he would have had to have known that we were going to be at the bar that night to rob him of his drug money. And if he was watching the whole scene unfold, as he had hinted he was, he was likely on site the whole time and could have stepped in at any moment to stop us from what we were doing.
He answered his own question.
"I let this happen just so I could meet you. Of course, it wasn't supposed to go this far and I had equipped Stanley with a way to block you from getting in his head and getting the combination, but he failed ... and he will be punished for that."
Papa paused, and I got the distinct sense that he was crafting an appropriate punishment right then and there.
He tapped his finger repeatedly on the desk.
"No this ... *this* ... THIS was about getting an audience with you. You should be flattered."
I wasn't feeling flattered. I was feeling frightened.
"I can do bits and pieces of what you can do. I want to be able to do it all!"
He rapidly closed the distance between us.
"Start talking. Now."
***
"I don't know what you want me to say."
I really didn't. It wasn't a bluff. I had no way to school him on my talents.
But he wasn't giving up.
"Let's start with how you initiate things. All you have to do is make skin to skin contact. I can do something similar, but I have to intake their blood. That's something I'd rather not have to do. I mean sure, blood has always been a part of my people's history, but if I can cut out that step ..."
His voice faded away as he imagined a future where "intake of blood" was no longer a part of his routine.
Since I didn't answer ... seeing as how I wasn't asked a direct question ... he continued.
"It's as if you have the next iteration of MY ability to get inside someone's mind. You can do it easier and you can do more things when you're in there. I need your upgrade."
I shook my head and finally responded.
"I can't help you with that. I don't even know *how* I got this way in the first place."
Papa Kalfu stood up and fumbled with some equipment that was on a shelf behind the desk. He took down a bunsen burner and turned it on.
"I know *how* you got it. It's your birthright. Just like it was for me."
The flame burned bright blue. He opened a desk drawer and took out two things ... a large spoon and a butcher knife.
"And if you don't know how to pass it on to me, then I'll have to resort to doing things the only way I know how."
He picked up the knife, and stuck it in the flame.
***
"My people have been doing blood sacrifices for ages."
Papa Kalfu continued sterilizing the butcher knife in the bluest part of the flame.
"Of course ... usually ... it's a chicken. But ... then again ... I'm more unusual."
He was toying with me.
Or maybe he wasn't.
That was what I had to decide.
Would he actually go through with slicing me open?
Or was this all for show to get me to talk -- even though I had already told him that I had nothing to say to help him understand my talent for taking away the painful memories of those with whom I came into contact.
"And, come to think of it ... you are kind of a chicken, aren't you? Afraid to share your power."
He took the knife and touched it quickly to his fingertips, making a judgment that he didn't share out loud.
All the same, I could easily determine his conclusion.
He was satisfied with the prep work.
I knew that because he stopped what he was doing and stood directly in front of me again.
"Your gift is in your blood. So your blood shall be my gift."
***
For all the reasons I didn't like Albert, I had to admit that he was suddenly my best friend.
I mean let's face it ... he was allegedly the mastermind behind kidnapping me in the first place, since he developed an obsession with me after I took away his painful memories back in this very same bar during my first visit to Florida.
He gave me a beating the night I tried to tap my way out of the locked room at the other bar.
He intended to lock me up in the closet of the guest room of his apartment after the others were done with me in direct defiance of their plan to send me back home.
He ruined the robbery attempt by double-crossing everyone and following Papa Kalfu.
There was absolutely no reason why I should suddenly switch my opinion of him.
No reason except one.
One big one.
Before Papa Kalfu could slit me open to get at my blood in hopes of taking on my powers, Albert came back into the bar office and interrupted whatever was about to happen with regards to the hot knife and my body.
"Okay boss ... what's next?" he asked as he entered the office, unaware of the sacrifice that was about to be undertaken.
Papa Kalfu answered his question with a few of his own.
"Where is Stanley? Aren't you supposed to be helping Stanley? Why can't you follow instructions?"
***
Poor Albert.
He stood there silently -- the child getting chastised for something he thought he was doing to be helpful.
Papa's anger was growing quickly, and his speech showed the rage that was reaching a crescendo.
"I asked you where Stanley is? You were supposed to accompany him to the bathroom to get cleaned up and to bring him back here ... together ... the two of you. WHY did only ONE of you RETURN?"
Albert -- still looking like the schoolboy in trouble -- stammered his response.
"He said ... he told me ... well Stanley said he could handle it. And I figured you'd need me back here to help you ... so I ... told him ... okay ... and to ... to yell if he needed anything."
Papa Kalfu wasn't quite yet at the peak of being perturbed ... but he was pretty damn close.
"And WHAT makes you think that I need HELP? You must learn your place, BOY!"
In some odd way, it was comforting to know that I wasn't the only one getting the giant backhand from the giant black man that night. Papa Kalfu struck him across the face so hard that he lost his balance and fell to the floor next to the tied up and gagged Rodney.
Papa towered over him, repeating his threat from earlier.
"AND you talk too much. I can fix that."
To the surprise of us all, a shot rang out at just that moment.
***
"No no no no no no NO!"
Now Papa had reached the peak of his anger.
Each "no" built on the power of the one before it, until the final "NO" reverberated around the bar office.
Just like the sound of the gun being fired did the same thing.
Stanley, propped up on a push broom that he was using as a crutch, appeared in the office door with Rodney's gun that he found on the floor of the bar where I had dropped it when I had been struck during my escape attempt.
"How you like it now, BITCH!" he screamed. "Karma sucks, don't it!"
Tied up and gagged Rodney let out a roar of pain, muffled as it was through the bloody shirt that was in his mouth to keep him quiet, as the bullet shattered his shin.
Papa Kalfu was losing control of the situation, and mayhem was about to ensue.
He leaped over to Stanley, grabbed the gun from his hands and knocked the broom out from underneath him. Stanley crashed to the floor, writhing in his own pain from having aggravated his injury.
Albert slowly got to *his* feet, and made a lunge for *me*, because he correctly deduced that I was about to take advantage of all of this and to attempt making a run for the exit.
He tripped over Stanley's body, but succeeded in grabbing a hold of my leg just above the ankle.
If everything weren't happening at once, I would have refrained from making eye contact with him. But that's not what happened.
***
I had enough feelings about the events of the evening in that bar office.
I didn't really need to amplify them by absorbing the feelings of someone else in the midst of the same excitement.
But I didn't have a choice.
Albert grabbing my leg above the ankle was skin to skin contact, and, surprised as I was to feel someone holding on to me, I made eye contact with him -- which initiated the transfer.
My fear and anxiety and apprehension about the robbery going wrong, and about Papa Kalfu showing up, and about needing to find some way to make an escape ... all of those distractions that were an obstacle to me staying focused were only the tip of the emotional iceberg.
I immediately began to see things through Albert's eyes.
His sense of betrayal at having been bitch-slapped just then by Papa Kalfu.
His feeling of fear at the threats that Papa had made implying he'd be punished soon enough.
His desire to do what he could to stop me in order to save some face with Papa.
His confusion over how quickly the state of affairs was deteriorating.
I knew that I had to be careful not to be over-stimulated. After all, it was at this very same bar that I had collapsed at the after-party because I had had too many interactions with too many people in too short of time.
Remembering that incident, though, reminded me that I had learned a few things since that night.
And that included a trick that I could now use in my favor.
***
I had to take action right away.
No time for dilly-dallying.
No hesitation.
No weighing a list of pros and cons before making a decision.
No doubts.
No fears.
No postponements.
No waiting for a sign.
No turning it over to a higher power.
No pausing to see if a different moment would feel better.
No concern for the well-being of others.
No counting to ten.
No hoping for a white horse to ride in at the last moment.
No delay of action.
With Albert still holding on to my leg, I reached out and grabbed Papa Kalfu tightly by the forearm.
***
Here's the trick I had learned.
My special talents didn't work so well in a threesome.
That early morning I had met Mario's sick sister, and I was connected to her in that way that only I could be ... despite her being in a drugged haze that transferred to me as well ... when Mario had also grabbed me at the same time, the collective energy from all that was happening was so strong that he collapsed and his heart stopped.
In that moment in the bar office, faced with a tiny window that I could use to my advantage, I did my best to recreate that exact scene.
Except my best wasn't quite good enough.
I should have known that Papa Kalfu, who had proven himself to be a formidable foe with special skills of his own, would be strong enough to handle such a charge.
Luckily, he was startled by my having grabbed his forearm to make eye contact, which was the spark sufficient to cause the energy explosion, but he was powerful enough and quick enough to fight back.
I had gotten used to the feeling of absorbing the feelings and emotions of another, no matter how strong or how dark or how painful.
I was NOT used to a feeling that I only imagined was what one felt when one touched an electric fence. Except I couldn't let go. And there was a distinct sensation that I was in some bizarre crowd wave like at a sporting event, with the energy flowing to Papa Kalfu, and then back through my body to Albert, who was still holding my leg, and then a diminished wave-let returning through me and back to Papa.
There was another sensation that was just as unsettling -- the smell of singed hair so close to me that I knew it was mine.
***
The wave of energy continued ... from Papa ... to Albert ... and back to Papa.
Through me, though. And it turned out that I wasn't intended to be a conduit. I smelled the singe of my arm hair again and I instinctively knew that if I didn't break the threeway connection, I would be in even more trouble.
To be honest, I'm not even sure if the movement in my leg to kick toward Albert, who still had a hold of it above my ankle, was a voluntary motion or a twitch from all of the "electricity" coursing betwixt us all.
Regardless, it definitely happened, and I definitely succeeded in breaking free of his grasp.
It was only then that I connected the dots as to the consequence of Papa pushing back the bulk of the charge to Albert. The reason it was so easy to break free from him was because HE was the one that wasn't moving.
I had wanted that outcome for Papa Kalfu but I was going to have to make do with what was before me.
What was before me was now a one way connection with the king of all evil, and there was a indeterminate darkness creeping up around the edges of my mind.
On top of that unsettled feeling, I was also extremely worried that I was at risk for my brain getting fried ... literally ... so I decided to release the forearm of Papa before I ended up with irreparable damage to my psyche.
That was the first time I realized that he had grabbed the bag of cash in his other hand when all the drama had started.
It was also the first time that I realized that Papa wasn't moving anything other than his eyes, which were darting all around the room.
***
I didn't exactly have time to spare ... but I decided I had to take a chance and to confirm my suspicion.
So I poked Papa in his chest.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
And no response.
Well no motor-physical skill response, anyway.
His eyes never stopped moving. I would even have sworn on a stack of Bibles that they turned a different darker color.
But there wasn't even ONE Bible -- let alone a whole stack of them -- in the office of the bar ... and I for sure didn't have time for any swearing ceremonies.
My suspicion WAS confirmed, though, and although Papa had repelled enough of the charge of energy so that Albert took the brunt of it, he still had a consequence with which he had to deal.
He was stunned ... temporarily paralyzed ... and I had to seize the opportunity.
After all I had been through, I decided to make one last play for the money.
I yanked on the bag that Papa was holding tightly in his hand.
Except it didn't move. The same "stun" that was working in my favor and was going to let me escape was also working *against* me in that he had an unbreakable grip on the sack of cash.
***
"If at first you don't succeed ... try, try again."
I had always felt attracted to the truth of that adage ... and that may have been because of all the various places I had called "home" during my mixed up youth and time spent in the system.
So the fact that the stunned Papa Kalfu had too tight of a grip on the bag of cash that we were trying to steal from him wasn't something I was going to let be the determinative factor of the scenario.
There were other mantras in the back of my mind ... "time is running out" and "the clock is ticking", for instance.
I had no way of knowing how long Papa would be subject to the stun.
But still. That cash, though. To leave without it seemed somewhat ridiculous if I could get it easily and still make my escape.
It all came down to HOW easy and HOW quick.
I was in a bar office. Near an office desk. So my plan came together quickly.
I rummaged through the office supplies in the top drawer until I found what I was seeking.
Then, with a few snips from the scissors I located, I left Papa Kalfu holding what was left of the original bag.
The remaining cloth and cash fell to the floor, and I scrambled to gather it all like I was on some crazy game show and the mayhem around me was all just props to distract me.
The problem was that I hadn't cut the bag carefully enough, and it was no longer useful to carry out the cash in my getaway.
I looked around for some other way to transport the stolen funds.
***
I didn't have to look far.
I was already on the floor scrambling for the cash that was scattered all over it due to my cutting the bag that was in the stunned Papa Kalfu's too tight grip.
Which meant that Rodney was directly in my line of sight.
Tied up and gagged Rodney. Now that I was close to him, I could see that what I had thought was a bar rag that Papa had stuffed in his mouth was *actually* Albert's bloodied shirt that he had bragged about from the night he beat me -- the same shirt that he implied Papa used for his voodoo trick of keeping track of me and getting inside my head.
That damn shirt was going to get repurposed yet again.
I took it from Rodney's mouth and stuffed it full of the stolen money, folding it up at the edges so I could carry it more easily.
Rodney gasped, still in fresh pain from having just been shot by Stanley in an act of revenge.
"Untie me!" he demanded.
Staring at him helplessly, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Papa released the remnants of the bag that had been in his hand. I quickly turned to him and noticed that he was focused on moving his fingers, and that they were twitching.
"Rodney, I'm sorry. I'm running out of time. I'll call and send the police as soon as I get near a phone."
With that promise, I stepped over everyone -- the now abandoned Rodney, the lifeless Albert, the knocked down and crippled Stanley -- and I ran past the still physiologically stunned Papa Kalfu.
I fumbled for the keys to the van as I made my way to the front door of the bar.
This time ... THIS time ... I was going to succeed in escaping.
***
Had I time to celebrate, I would have paused at the point where I made it farther than the last time I tried to leave.
But I didn't have any spare time.
I already knew that Papa's "stun" was wearing off.
So instead of stopping, I ran right past the jukebox and reached the exit of the bar.
I turned the manual lock of the front door ... and pushed ... but before I could step outside, I froze.
In the distance ... in the direction of the bar office where I had left everyone else ... I heard the roar of Papa Kalfu.
"You'll all PAY FOR THIS!"
Knowing that he was back in charge of his faculties was enough motivation for me to kick it into high gear.
I knew if I looked over my shoulder and back at the scene I was leaving that I'd be in more trouble than Lot's wife leaving Gomorrah. And I had absolutely no intention of letting Papa's voodoo tricks turn me into a bag of salt ... or worse.
I ran through the parking lot, and located the creepy white van right where we had left Albert at the beginning of the evening.
Of all the things that had gone wrong, at least I had managed to get the keys before Papa's arrival.
I jumped in the driver seat, put the folded up shirt full of cash on the passenger side and turned the key in the ignition ...
***
In my humble opinion, I was overdue for a turn of luck from bad to good.
Earlier, I had fired a gun for the first time ... and now I had another first that I could scratch off the list.
Never before had I peeled out of a parking lot like I did to escape Papa and the boys I had left behind.
With tires squealing and parking lot pebbles flying, I pushed my foot so hard against the gas pedal, that I briefly thought I might actually lose control of the van -- and had it been a greater performance vehicle, I just might have.
I passed another van in the parking lot ... and a car. The car I figured to be the bartender's ... which made the van likely something that belonged to Papa Kalfu. I couldn't read all of the lettering on it, but I was pretty sure that it had the name of a church on its side.
In the rear view mirror, I saw Papa exit the front of the bar.
That's when it hit me that there might be yet another first for my list ... seeing as how I was also never in a car chase before -- or a *van* chase for that matter.
Which brings me to the other thing that went really well for me.
As I sped out of the lot and into the street, I saw railroad tracks directly in front of me ... with lights that started blinking.
Just barely, I made it through the crossing as the barriers were closing.
It was the best timed train of my whole life ... and I knew that I couldn't be immediately followed and I *could* make my escape.
Now I just had to figure out my destination.
***
CHAPTER 30
There was no time to stop and count the money.
It could have been hundreds. It could have been thousands. It could have been millions.
Well, no ... that's not true. It was the stash of a pretty low level drug dealer who also happened to own a bar that he was using as a cover. So it wasn't in the millions.
The thousands, though ... that was more likely.
I drove in the darkness, not sure of where I was going, but knowing that I wanted to put distance between me and the scene I had left behind.
Thanks to that well-timed train and the position of the tracks, I knew that Papa Kalfu wasn't following the creepy white van that I had taken with his own creepy white church van that I had seen in the parking lot of the bar when I had made my escape.
I had money.
I had a vehicle.
I had enough money to put gas in that vehicle to get me all the way up the coast and back to my home, as if I had never left it.
As if I had never been conscripted to be part of this thievery.
As if I had never met Albert and Mria and Mario and all the other characters with whom I had interacted since being kidnapped and locked away in the basement of the other bar.
I didn't know *exactly* where I was going ... but I knew that I was looking for Interstate 95, headed north.
The longer I drove in silence, happy to have escaped from Papa Kalfu, the more I had time to think through my actions.
I had embraced the life of a petty criminal and participated in the thievery at the bar because I had rationalized it as a noble cause to take "bad" money from a "bad" guy, especially once I learned that the majority of the cut that Mario and Mria was taking was going to go to his sister's experimental drug treatments.
As such, the guilt started to kick in that I was even thinking about leaving the state with all of the cash, however much it was setting there on the seat of the van beside me.
Plus there was the van itself. That wasn't mine. To the best of my knowledge, that didn't even belong to anyone in the group. From my long ride down to Florida after Mario and Albert had first kidnapped me, I remembered that I had overheard them talking to Jorge, who was the owner of the bar in whose basement I had been locked up.
This was Jorge's van.
And if I drove it across state lines, then I'd be substantially upgrading my criminal game.
I realized I had no choice.
I had to return to Mario and Mria, who were waiting for me, and I had to turn in the cash and return the van and claim my bus ticket that had been promised to me.
After all, they had no idea how the night had gone ... and that Albert had double-crossed them ... and that Papa Kalfu knew EVERYTHING.
Who knew? Honor among thieves was a real thing.
Of course, just because I had decided to return to Mario and Mria with the stolen money didn't mean that I couldn't come up with a back-up plan that was in my favor.
As confidently as I had determined my eventual destination, I just as confidently committed to an extra stop on my way to that other bar.
The challenge was that I had to flash back to my very first trip to town -- during our college's service mission to build houses destroyed in the hurricane -- because my plan was to go stash some of the money at the only safe place I knew of in the area.
In order to do that, I needed to orient myself enough to find Laura's rebuilt house.
Unfortunately, I was driving around in the dark without a map and with only hazy memories of a trip that had happened months before.
The good news -- I had been to the bar I had just left twice before during that trip -- the night I found the bar when I had vacationed before the service trip started and the night of the after party. So I at least had that as a starting point.
All I had to do was find the church where we staged our work each day ... or the resort where we had all stayed ... or some other landmark that would put me back in the routine from that trip.
Fate was still smiling on me.
Off on the side of the road to my right, I passed just such a landmark.
Although it was closed for the night, seeing Ruthie's Roadhouse was a much needed blast from the past.
You know how you're in a strange town ... where you've been before maybe once or twice ... but everything looks unfamiliar until you drive past that one location that clicks in your mind in a deja vu kind of way ... and suddenly everything falls into place and your memories take over ... and you feel really good about where you're going?
Yeah ... seeing Ruthie's Roadhouse on the side of the road was ... Just. Like. That.
So many memories ...
Like how her menu said "bacon is never a side dish -- it's always the main meal".
Like how she donated all the food at our going-away dinner on the last night of our service mission.
Like how her back room where we had all gathered for the ceremony was the place where I met my puppy Gator for the very first time.
I gave into the sense of recall, and I drove down the main street until I found the neighborhood where we had spent that long weekend in the spring rebuilding houses.
I knew I'd recognize Laura's house once I saw it, but I still had to drive around a few blocks to locate it.
It struck me at one point that I was now the creepy white van driving slowly through a quiet neighborhood staring at each house. If there was an organized neighborhood watch ... or just a nosy neighbor ... or even anyone who bought into the "see something, say something" credo of modern times ... then I would have been at risk for getting called into the police.
What could I do? I had come this far ... I wasn't about to turn back.
But I did turn the corner ... and two houses from the intersection on the right ... there it was.
The last time I was here was the last day of work we did on the house. Although, admittedly, by "work", I was only really on trash detail seeing as how I didn't have any specific house building skills.
The last time I interacted specifically with Laura, I was in the local hospital after she tried to kiss me in the parking lot of the bar at the after party and I had collapsed and that was when we spoke awkwardly on the phone. Although, admittedly, Joey did bring me that card from her.
I still remember what she wrote: "I know that I'll probably never see you again, except as a memory."
Dare I go right up to her door and knock and say, "Surprise! I'm more than a memory! Also -- do you mind holding on to these stolen funds for me?"
I pondered how she would react if I took that step ... and quickly determined that I'd have way too much to have to explain.
Under the cover of night, I could have it both ways.
I could hide some cash on her property, and I wouldn't have to tell her anything about what I was doing while I was doing it.
Kick the crazy-explanation can down the road. That was going to be my strategy.
I parked on the swale across the street, a few houses down from Laura's yard, grabbed a healthy handful of cash, and started walking toward her place.
I almost started to whistle, because I thought that that was what people did who were trying to appear nonchalant as they went about doing something illegal.
At the last minute, I decided against the whistle.
What I couldn't decide was whether I had the courage to sneak around to the back of her house as I had planned ... so I kept on walking ... right past her yard ... and down to the intersection.
"Courage," I said to myself.
I had been in stranger situations.
And, come to think of it, almost all of them had been in this silly silly state of Florida.
"You deserve this. You can make this happen. You just have to follow through with what you started."
My string of affirmations continued -- whatever I needed to say to get me to turn around and to walk back toward the van and to stop at Laura's house to hide this damn money.
On the cross street of the intersection, about a block away, I saw someone in the distance walking their dog. Toward this block.
"It was now or never," I thought.
I inhaled and then exhaled -- each on a ten count.
And then I marched back from whence I had just walked.
I got to Laura's quickly enough, and I ducked under the tree in her front yard to get to the side of her house. I found the outdoor faucet and the rolled up hose attached to the wall that I knew would be there, and I used them as my marker. I measured three paces toward the back yard and started to dig in the mulch of the flower bed.
I rolled the cash up into a ball, and dropped it into the hole I had made as if I were just doing regular planting.
That is, had it been "regular" to plant a wad of cash ... in the dark ... in the middle of the night ... at a house that wasn't mine.
Everything was going as planned ... until I heard the barking of the dog.
That person walking their dog that I had seen when I was in the intersection must have been booking it.
They came into view on the street in front of Laura's house, so I did my best to slink up against the house in the shadows, and I pressed my frame against the wall. I used my feet to push the dirt and mulch into the hole where I had buried the cash, and held my breath as the dog alerted to my presence.
Maybe.
Maybe it wasn't MY presence so much as the presence of the dog in the house.
Because it didn't take long at all for there to be TWO barking dogs.
In all the excitement of executing my plan, I had actually forgotten to take into account that Laura had the original pit bull in her possession -- seeing as how she had given Gator to me as he was part of the litter birthed during the storm.
I wanted the bark-off to end, but the dog walker didn't seem to be in a hurry to move along down the street.
I held my breath when I saw a light go on on the front porch.
"Don't worry, momma -- it's just someone walking a dog out front!" I overheard a female voice announce.
Of course. Britney, Laura's daughter, was conducting the investigation.
I think everyone was surprised when dog one and dog two were joined by the frantic whines of dog three.
The scratching.
The whining.
It all seemed familiar yet not familiar.
I didn't have time to stop and think about it ... I looked around frantically trying to determine how I could make my getaway without anyone seeing me.
I heard Laura in her house yell back to her daughter Britney on the porch.
"Oh my God he's going crazy! Shut the door! Shut the damn door! He's going to get through the screen!!"
I wasn't the only one who heard the exchange between mother and daughter.
The stranger out in the street in front of the house also picked up that there was about to be a meeting of multiple dogs if she didn't move along.
I heard the front door slam, as Britney did as her mother asked, and I watched the dog on the walk strain at the leash one more time in the direction of the house before its owner gave a tug to move it down the road toward where I had parked the van.
I still didn't know if the activity was because all the dogs knew that I was hiding against the wall of the house in the shadows ... and I wasn't going to wait around to find out.
I ducked out into the darkness and stopped under the tree to make sure that the dogwalker and dog had made it past the van.
And then I broke out into a jog as if that had been my true intention for being in the neighborhood all along.
Mission accomplished.
I made it to the van unnoticed by anyone in the neighborhood.
I successfully buried a wad of stolen cash for me to reclaim at a later time in Laura's side yard.
I had the beginnings of a back up plan in case things went awry again.
Because, let's face it: things had been going awry for me for quite some time.
On to phase two. Or was it phase three? I had lost track of the phase count, especially with how awry the original plan had gone.
For sure, I had the rest of the money. I had someone else's van. I had people waiting for me back at the other bar for a report on the evening.
True, they were waiting for the whole crew to return and I had left two thirds of our group with Papa Kalfu at the scene of our crime ... but that was no longer my concern.
I had a new concern.
I had lucked into getting to Laura's by way of recalling the drive from during our service trip back and forth from Ruthie's Roadhouse.
Now I had to find my way to Joey's -- that was the name of the bar where I had been locked up in the basement. Where Mario and Mria were waiting. Where I now needed to go.
Unfortunately, although I remembered the name of the place (I mean how could I forget it ... with it being the name of my classmate) ... I didn't remember the address. I had once had it in my hands from that flyer I took on the way to the after party ... and I had texted it when I had stolen Mario's cell phone to my cell phone that I had left back home in central PA in hopes that someone might get those messages somehow.
But I had no idea how to get from point A to point B.
There was no reason to stay in that neighborhood.
I knew I had to find a way to the bar named Joey's somehow ... and so I started up the creepy white van and backtracked toward the one spot in town where I felt the most comfortable -- to Ruthie's Roadhouse.
My thinking was that it was on a busy enough street that despite it being so early in the morning, I might find someone who could give me directions.
During the drive, I anxiously watched as I passed other vehicles, half expecting to see Papa Kalfu out patrolling the streets in his white church van looking for me.
Besides that, it was the first time I was behind the wheel since I had driven Mario's jeep that night of the after-party when we had been in that hit and run in that intersection.
Anxiety and nervousness were keeping me hyper-alert.
But they were also blocking me from thinking through my predicament
When I reached Ruthie's, I pulled into the parking lot and sat there for a moment planning my next move. Her place was already closed for the night, but I figured that there had to be some late night fast food restaurant where I could find another person in hopes that they knew how to get me to Joey's.
I rubbed the blur out of my eyes, and got ready to leave the lot.
On the corner of my mouth, I tasted my own blood again.
Moving the rearview mirror so that I could get a close look at my face, I saw that my rubbing must have opened up the cut I had gotten from Papa Kalfu's ring when he had backhanded me.
I looked around the van for something to wipe the trickle of blood off of my cheek, and found nothing.
Opening up the glove box, I discovered that the answer to what I was seeking was right there with me all along.
It was right there ... and I had been too dumb to figure it out.
Although, in my defense, my mind had been pretty occupied with a lot of other extremely urgent things.
There in the glovebox, next to the napkins (of which I immediately used one to dab the blood from my cut off of my cheek), was paperwork for the owner of the van.
I was NOT the owner of the creepy white van.
Neither was Albert .. nor Mario ... nor Mria.
I thought back to the first time I was in this same creepy white van -- on the drive down the coast from central PA to southern FL after my kidnapping.
Hooded as I was at the time, and after the restroom stop when my captors forgot to put the noise cancelling headphones back on me, I had eavesdropped on a phone call that they had made to someone named Jorge.
Someone named Jorge who happened to own a bar named Joey's.
Someone named Jorge who happened to also own a creepy white van that he used at his bar named Joey's.
Someone named Jorge who had his bar's address on the van registration that he kept in the glovebox of his vehicle.
I now had a specific destination to find, and all I had to do was drive down the main drag of town until I found the cross street I needed.
Although the creepy white van didn't have a GPS system in it, I now could play the role of my own directional navigation system, seeing as how I had the address to Joey's.
Lucky for me, the newer nightlife spots in town tended to be close together, and so I confidently drove down the main drag of town, with my eyes peeled for the cross street for which I was looking.
Sure enough, this Andrews Avenue was a big one ... which meant that it was a main intersection and not hard to miss.
I passed a number of businesses ... and a few housing developments ... and then crossed a bridge. About a block away, I saw the sign for Joey's.
"I have arrived at my destination," I said to myself.
As near as I could tell, Joey's was still open ... which made sense seeing as how the bartender at Papa Kalfu's bar had made it a point to close early ... not that that helped him in light of what had happened to him and the others.
To that end, I realized that I should be extra careful, and so I drove past the bar and checked the streets to make sure that I didn't see Papa Kalfu's white church van parked anywhere. The last thing I wanted to do was to walk in to another awkward situation.
A few blocks away, I made a u-turn and made my way back up the street.
I then had a decision to make ... waltz in the front door with the cut on my face and the folded up bloody shirt of cash ... or sneak around to the back.
I chose the back door ... and pulled the van into the alley that I already knew ran behind the bar.
It was time to tell my story to Mario and Mria ... and to explain why I was returning alone.
Do I leave the stolen cash on the passenger's seat? Or take it with me into the bar to meet Mario and Mria?
These are the types of questions for which I was not prepared during my college education.
Of course, when they offered "introduction to criminal procedure" courses, I'm pretty sure "best practices for dealing with the after effects of a robbery of a drug dealer of his dirty money" wasn't in the syllabus.
I grabbed the bloody shirt full of bills and headed toward the back door --
-- which was locked.
Good thing I had the van keys.
Bad thing that there were a dozen or so keys on the ring ... and I was going to have to attempt each one, one at a time, in order to make it in this way.
That's exactly what I did ... key after key ... attempt following attempt.
I think it was the eighth key that did the trick.
I tugged on the door, and it opened about as far as one could put one's foot in the space.
I had seen this exit before from the other side ... and I had forgotten until that moment that what I had seen was that they were chained shut.
"A fire hazard, for sure," I had said back then.
Now an obstacle for me.
I was ready to give up and waltz in the front door instead, when a female voice from the other side surprised me.
"Hey -- I know you!"
The girl on the other side of the chained back door of the bar recognized me ... and so I returned the favor.
"Julie, right?" I queried.
"Yeppers," she affirmed.
Julie was the blond girl who, a few nights before, had just walked right into the bar basement room where I had been locked up. The one who was looking for moscato at that time ... the one Mario had taken to the spot under the stairs where the alcohol was stashed ... the one who created enough of a diversion for me to have lifted two bottles of whiskey for my own enjoyment ... the one who I had told that I was on vacation and had just stopped by to help Mario clean out that room.
And with that introduction in our past, it was no wonder that she volunteered a solution to my problem.
"You want me to get Mario for you?" she asked.
I nodded my head in agreement.
"Yes, please. Thanks ..."
I peeked through the space in the doorway and watched her go up the second half flight of stairs toward the main bar.
"Hey Matthew ... have you seen Mario?"
I heard her question someone in the distance, but I didn't hear the reply or even make out the person.
As a matter of fact, the next face I saw was Mario's, glaring back at me through the crack.
Mario, understandably, was confused that I was the only one on the bar's back doorstep.
"Why are you by yourself?" he barked at me.
Once again, I had been so distracted by everything, I hadn't really taken the time to figure out how best to explain the evening's turn of events.
"Well ... it didn't quite go as planned," was all I could spit out.
There was a flurry of activity on the other side of the door, which led to me being able to open it all the way and to step inside the staircase.
I held up the bloody shirt full of cash triumphantly.
"But *this* part of the plan ... this part worked."
"Downstairs!" was his curt reply.
Before I could take a step down to the storage area, he grabbed at the shirt.
"I'll take that," he added.
I was putting my faith in my captors -- Mario and Mria anyway -- that they would come through as promised and release me with a bus ticket home.
I just had to get through this debriefing, and then I'd be on my way.
It was that thought that propelled me back into the darkness of the basement of the bar and toward the room where I had been locked up.
"One last thing ..." I muttered to myself under my breath.
"And then I'm done!"
There was something a little twisted that I felt like I was back home as I took a seat on my cot.
Mario and Mria had left the doors open, and it was clear to me that this was supposed to have been the rendezvous point for us all, post-heist.
It had barely been a week that I was in captivity, yet it seemed like it had been months.
And now, hopefully -- it was almost over.
There was something even MORE twisted that I was going to miss my janitor's closet of a bathroom, and my mini-refrigerator stuffed with basic rations, and my little cot and lonely pillow.
I was likely mid-sigh when Mria came flying around the corner at full speed.
"Where is Albert? And Rodney? And why do you come back here by yourself?"
I waited to see if there was another question ... and there was. Kind of.
"Why aren't you answering me?"
I finished my sigh -- just in time for Mario to join us in the room.
"I don't know how to tell you ... but Albert was working for Papa Kalfu."
Mria shook her head violently.
"No silly. *I* work for Papa Kalfu. Mario *used* to work for Papa Kalfu. Albert was just a regular customer over there."
"If only it were that cut and dry," I thought to myself.
"But I don't understand," she continued. "What does that have to do with *anything*?"
How do you break the news of betrayal to someone?
Do you rip off the band-aid? Ease into the disclosure? Pretend you don't know what you know for sure?
It was going to happen face to face. I didn't have the option of texting ... or calling ... or writing.
My initial attempt was already met with confusion, so I had to begin again.
"It all started as planned. Albert took Rodney and I to the bar. He waited outside in the van while Rodney and I went in for drinks to be positioned for last call. Rodney captured Stanley the bartender, and we made it to the bar office after closing, and I was able to use my ... talent ... to get into his head to claim the combination to the safe."
Mria was listening intently.
"Those were the only things that worked as planned," I continued. "Rodney had a gun ..."
"DAMN it!"
Mario interrupted me in anger.
"I *TOLD* him that he wasn't supposed to go into this with anything!"
Mario started pacing, clearly getting more and more agitated. Mria, however, was able to control her frustration better, and I could sense her mind racing to try to figure out where I was headed next.
"So who got shot? Whose blood is on that shirt? And if Rodney had a gun, then why the hell didn't he come back with you?"
"Rodney shot the bartender," I explained.
Mria gasped.
"Not dead," I quickly offered. "But in the knee. He wasn't making eye contact with me, and ... well ... that did it. It turns out that he had been prepped to expect me."
Mario was next to chime in.
"That doesn't make any sense. Who prepped him?"
"Papa Kalfu did," I answered.
I was not doing a good job of explaining what had happened to us. Mario was definitely confused.
"But I thought you never met him?" he asked.
"I didn't. Well, I hadn't. Until tonight. But I tried to tell you before ... Albert was working for him. Albert told him everything ... and I mean everything."
I paused in hopes that the news would sink in the second time I said it.
There was silence and so I started to think that it was. So I continued.
"After Rodney shot the bartender and we got the cash, Albert showed up ... and then Papa Kalfu did as well. He was apparently there the whole time, watching it all unfold."
Mria finally spoke.
"That doesn't make any sense. If Papa Kalfu was there, why would he let it get to that point? I mean, you brought back HIS money. To US. Why did he let that happen?"
I knew it was going to sound egotistical, but I also knew it was the truth.
"He wanted to meet ME."
"Bullshit!"
Mria was calling me out on my story.
Except my story wasn't a "story" ... it was the truth.
"That makes no sense," she clarified. "We chose tonight *specifically* because we knew that Papa Kalfu wouldn't be there. He's always down in Miami driving the church van around and dropping off little old Haitian ladies on nights like this. We knew that because we also knew that's how he delivers his drugs into the community. It's his perfect cover ... and it provided us with the opportunity we had tonight."
Mario came over to comfort her as she processed MY news against what she thought she knew to be true.
However, she wasn't having any of his comfort.
"You stay away from me. Albert was your friend. And Rodney was YOUR idea."
Rebuffed, Mario challenged me.
"So why do you think that this is all about you? You were a small piece of our plan. This is mostly about my sister ... not about you."
I had to tread carefully. Mario was clearly getting upset.
"I'm sorry," I started. "Papa Kalfu can do things too. He can get inside people's heads -- some of his voodoo tricks. Once Albert told him about what I could do, he wanted me to give him that same power. It was like I had evolved and he wanted to upgrade what he could do. And so he let it all play out in order to get to me."
They just stood there, finally starting to believe that what I was saying was the truth.
It was an interesting dynamic.
As Mario got angrier as I explained what had happened, Mria's processing skills were working overtime and she was getting more and more focused.
She was the next one to speak.
"So let me get this right. Albert ratted us out to Papa Kalfu, and he let you and Rodney take Stanley the bartender in the back office just so he could meet you ... and Rodney shot Stanley at some point in the evening. Yet, despite all that, you managed to get away with the stolen cash."
I nodded my head to show that I agreed with her summary.
"Pray tell ... how did *that* happen?" she asked.
"Well ... Stanley shot Rodney --"
Mario interjected.
"Wait a minute ... I thought you said that *Rodney* shot Stanley?"
"I did. And *he* did," I explained. "And then Stanley shot Rodney in revenge."
Mario was dumbfounded.
"I know. I know. You should have been there," I offered in an attempt to make light of the situation. A *failed* attempt at that, I might add.
I did my best to wrap it up.
"I took advantage of the mayhem, used a trick of mine, and ran away with the cash."
"So where is Rodney now?" Mria asked.
"I don't know. I left him there."
"And Albert?"
"I don't know. I left him there too."
"And the bartender?"
"Mria," I said. "I don't know. I didn't stick around."
"Papa Kalfu?"
"Same thing. I. Don't. Know. I drove up and down the street before pulling into the alley and I didn't see him here, but I literally ran out of there, jumped in the van and raced away."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Mria stood there, arms folded, staring down at me like a school marm dealing with her most problematic child.
After what seemed like an hour but was likely only a minute or two, she spun on her heel and left my room, calling behind to Mario in shorter and shorter sentences.
"We need to talk. Out here. Meeting. Now!"
Mario dutifully followed, and I stayed seated on my cot as they went through the outer storage room and into the hallway.
I had done what they asked me to do. It wasn't my fault that things didn't happen exactly as they had planned.
They owed me a bus ticket home and a release.
I was to get NEITHER a bus ticket NOR a release though that night/early morning.
Mario didn't even bother returning from the chat that he had had with Mria in the hallway. Instead, only she came back into my room.
"Everything has changed," she announced. "We don't think it's safe for you to go anywhere else tonight, so we'll return in the morning with your bus ticket."
That was it. She was already leaving.
"Wait a minute," I yelled after her. "What about you guys? What are you going to do?"
She didn't even bother to look at me as she replied.
"That's none of your business. We're done with you. We thank you for your service."
Door closed.
Chain drawn.
Boxes moved.
All was as it had been before this crazy night ... I was locked in a room in the basement of a bar.
The one thing different was that I was leaving it in a few hours.
*This* was the end. They were done with me ... and I was done with them.
I headed to the mini-fridge to raid my rations one last time.
I was wired.
The events of the evening were such that my adrenaline was still flowing.
Which is why it was all a very pleasant surprise to open the door of the mini-fridge to find that a mini-bottle of champagne had been placed in the mini-door of it at some recent point.
There was a post it note on it that read "mission accomplished".
I actually got a little misty-eyed, thinking that my captors had thought ahead and actually planned for a little celebration for me upon returning from stealing the drug dealer's secret stash of cash.
The whole experience had been a bit odd -- from being taken from my apartment in central PA to being driven to Florida in the creepy white van to being locked up in this very room in the basement under the bar I now knew to be named Joey's to being convinced to participate in a scheme that was ultimately to benefit Mario's dying sister to returning that very night to this place with most of the cash (minus what I had hid in the mulch bed of Laura's house).
It wasn't quite Stockholm Syndrome -- or at least that's what I had convinced myself -- but I was a part of a team for something I had rationalized as a nobler cause.
And now, even though I was by myself and dependent on part of that team to return in the morning with my way home, I was going to celebrate all that happened with a bit of champagne.
I popped the cork, and not having any glasses in my situation, drank straight from the bottle.
I had no way of seeing that the cork had been penetrated by a needle ... and so I had no way to predict the double vision that quickly ensued.
Luckily, I made it to my cot before the drug took full effect.
It could have been hundreds. It could have been thousands. It could have been millions.
Well, no ... that's not true. It was the stash of a pretty low level drug dealer who also happened to own a bar that he was using as a cover. So it wasn't in the millions.
The thousands, though ... that was more likely.
I drove in the darkness, not sure of where I was going, but knowing that I wanted to put distance between me and the scene I had left behind.
Thanks to that well-timed train and the position of the tracks, I knew that Papa Kalfu wasn't following the creepy white van that I had taken with his own creepy white church van that I had seen in the parking lot of the bar when I had made my escape.
I had money.
I had a vehicle.
I had enough money to put gas in that vehicle to get me all the way up the coast and back to my home, as if I had never left it.
As if I had never been conscripted to be part of this thievery.
As if I had never met Albert and Mria and Mario and all the other characters with whom I had interacted since being kidnapped and locked away in the basement of the other bar.
I didn't know *exactly* where I was going ... but I knew that I was looking for Interstate 95, headed north.
***
The longer I drove in silence, happy to have escaped from Papa Kalfu, the more I had time to think through my actions.
I had embraced the life of a petty criminal and participated in the thievery at the bar because I had rationalized it as a noble cause to take "bad" money from a "bad" guy, especially once I learned that the majority of the cut that Mario and Mria was taking was going to go to his sister's experimental drug treatments.
As such, the guilt started to kick in that I was even thinking about leaving the state with all of the cash, however much it was setting there on the seat of the van beside me.
Plus there was the van itself. That wasn't mine. To the best of my knowledge, that didn't even belong to anyone in the group. From my long ride down to Florida after Mario and Albert had first kidnapped me, I remembered that I had overheard them talking to Jorge, who was the owner of the bar in whose basement I had been locked up.
This was Jorge's van.
And if I drove it across state lines, then I'd be substantially upgrading my criminal game.
I realized I had no choice.
I had to return to Mario and Mria, who were waiting for me, and I had to turn in the cash and return the van and claim my bus ticket that had been promised to me.
After all, they had no idea how the night had gone ... and that Albert had double-crossed them ... and that Papa Kalfu knew EVERYTHING.
Who knew? Honor among thieves was a real thing.
***
Of course, just because I had decided to return to Mario and Mria with the stolen money didn't mean that I couldn't come up with a back-up plan that was in my favor.
As confidently as I had determined my eventual destination, I just as confidently committed to an extra stop on my way to that other bar.
The challenge was that I had to flash back to my very first trip to town -- during our college's service mission to build houses destroyed in the hurricane -- because my plan was to go stash some of the money at the only safe place I knew of in the area.
In order to do that, I needed to orient myself enough to find Laura's rebuilt house.
Unfortunately, I was driving around in the dark without a map and with only hazy memories of a trip that had happened months before.
The good news -- I had been to the bar I had just left twice before during that trip -- the night I found the bar when I had vacationed before the service trip started and the night of the after party. So I at least had that as a starting point.
All I had to do was find the church where we staged our work each day ... or the resort where we had all stayed ... or some other landmark that would put me back in the routine from that trip.
Fate was still smiling on me.
Off on the side of the road to my right, I passed just such a landmark.
Although it was closed for the night, seeing Ruthie's Roadhouse was a much needed blast from the past.
***
You know how you're in a strange town ... where you've been before maybe once or twice ... but everything looks unfamiliar until you drive past that one location that clicks in your mind in a deja vu kind of way ... and suddenly everything falls into place and your memories take over ... and you feel really good about where you're going?
Yeah ... seeing Ruthie's Roadhouse on the side of the road was ... Just. Like. That.
So many memories ...
Like how her menu said "bacon is never a side dish -- it's always the main meal".
Like how she donated all the food at our going-away dinner on the last night of our service mission.
Like how her back room where we had all gathered for the ceremony was the place where I met my puppy Gator for the very first time.
I gave into the sense of recall, and I drove down the main street until I found the neighborhood where we had spent that long weekend in the spring rebuilding houses.
I knew I'd recognize Laura's house once I saw it, but I still had to drive around a few blocks to locate it.
It struck me at one point that I was now the creepy white van driving slowly through a quiet neighborhood staring at each house. If there was an organized neighborhood watch ... or just a nosy neighbor ... or even anyone who bought into the "see something, say something" credo of modern times ... then I would have been at risk for getting called into the police.
What could I do? I had come this far ... I wasn't about to turn back.
But I did turn the corner ... and two houses from the intersection on the right ... there it was.
***
The last time I was here was the last day of work we did on the house. Although, admittedly, by "work", I was only really on trash detail seeing as how I didn't have any specific house building skills.
The last time I interacted specifically with Laura, I was in the local hospital after she tried to kiss me in the parking lot of the bar at the after party and I had collapsed and that was when we spoke awkwardly on the phone. Although, admittedly, Joey did bring me that card from her.
I still remember what she wrote: "I know that I'll probably never see you again, except as a memory."
Dare I go right up to her door and knock and say, "Surprise! I'm more than a memory! Also -- do you mind holding on to these stolen funds for me?"
I pondered how she would react if I took that step ... and quickly determined that I'd have way too much to have to explain.
Under the cover of night, I could have it both ways.
I could hide some cash on her property, and I wouldn't have to tell her anything about what I was doing while I was doing it.
Kick the crazy-explanation can down the road. That was going to be my strategy.
I parked on the swale across the street, a few houses down from Laura's yard, grabbed a healthy handful of cash, and started walking toward her place.
I almost started to whistle, because I thought that that was what people did who were trying to appear nonchalant as they went about doing something illegal.
At the last minute, I decided against the whistle.
What I couldn't decide was whether I had the courage to sneak around to the back of her house as I had planned ... so I kept on walking ... right past her yard ... and down to the intersection.
***
"Courage," I said to myself.
I had been in stranger situations.
And, come to think of it, almost all of them had been in this silly silly state of Florida.
"You deserve this. You can make this happen. You just have to follow through with what you started."
My string of affirmations continued -- whatever I needed to say to get me to turn around and to walk back toward the van and to stop at Laura's house to hide this damn money.
On the cross street of the intersection, about a block away, I saw someone in the distance walking their dog. Toward this block.
"It was now or never," I thought.
I inhaled and then exhaled -- each on a ten count.
And then I marched back from whence I had just walked.
I got to Laura's quickly enough, and I ducked under the tree in her front yard to get to the side of her house. I found the outdoor faucet and the rolled up hose attached to the wall that I knew would be there, and I used them as my marker. I measured three paces toward the back yard and started to dig in the mulch of the flower bed.
I rolled the cash up into a ball, and dropped it into the hole I had made as if I were just doing regular planting.
That is, had it been "regular" to plant a wad of cash ... in the dark ... in the middle of the night ... at a house that wasn't mine.
Everything was going as planned ... until I heard the barking of the dog.
***
That person walking their dog that I had seen when I was in the intersection must have been booking it.
They came into view on the street in front of Laura's house, so I did my best to slink up against the house in the shadows, and I pressed my frame against the wall. I used my feet to push the dirt and mulch into the hole where I had buried the cash, and held my breath as the dog alerted to my presence.
Maybe.
Maybe it wasn't MY presence so much as the presence of the dog in the house.
Because it didn't take long at all for there to be TWO barking dogs.
In all the excitement of executing my plan, I had actually forgotten to take into account that Laura had the original pit bull in her possession -- seeing as how she had given Gator to me as he was part of the litter birthed during the storm.
I wanted the bark-off to end, but the dog walker didn't seem to be in a hurry to move along down the street.
I held my breath when I saw a light go on on the front porch.
"Don't worry, momma -- it's just someone walking a dog out front!" I overheard a female voice announce.
Of course. Britney, Laura's daughter, was conducting the investigation.
I think everyone was surprised when dog one and dog two were joined by the frantic whines of dog three.
***
The scratching.
The whining.
It all seemed familiar yet not familiar.
I didn't have time to stop and think about it ... I looked around frantically trying to determine how I could make my getaway without anyone seeing me.
I heard Laura in her house yell back to her daughter Britney on the porch.
"Oh my God he's going crazy! Shut the door! Shut the damn door! He's going to get through the screen!!"
I wasn't the only one who heard the exchange between mother and daughter.
The stranger out in the street in front of the house also picked up that there was about to be a meeting of multiple dogs if she didn't move along.
I heard the front door slam, as Britney did as her mother asked, and I watched the dog on the walk strain at the leash one more time in the direction of the house before its owner gave a tug to move it down the road toward where I had parked the van.
I still didn't know if the activity was because all the dogs knew that I was hiding against the wall of the house in the shadows ... and I wasn't going to wait around to find out.
I ducked out into the darkness and stopped under the tree to make sure that the dogwalker and dog had made it past the van.
And then I broke out into a jog as if that had been my true intention for being in the neighborhood all along.
***
Mission accomplished.
I made it to the van unnoticed by anyone in the neighborhood.
I successfully buried a wad of stolen cash for me to reclaim at a later time in Laura's side yard.
I had the beginnings of a back up plan in case things went awry again.
Because, let's face it: things had been going awry for me for quite some time.
On to phase two. Or was it phase three? I had lost track of the phase count, especially with how awry the original plan had gone.
For sure, I had the rest of the money. I had someone else's van. I had people waiting for me back at the other bar for a report on the evening.
True, they were waiting for the whole crew to return and I had left two thirds of our group with Papa Kalfu at the scene of our crime ... but that was no longer my concern.
I had a new concern.
I had lucked into getting to Laura's by way of recalling the drive from during our service trip back and forth from Ruthie's Roadhouse.
Now I had to find my way to Joey's -- that was the name of the bar where I had been locked up in the basement. Where Mario and Mria were waiting. Where I now needed to go.
Unfortunately, although I remembered the name of the place (I mean how could I forget it ... with it being the name of my classmate) ... I didn't remember the address. I had once had it in my hands from that flyer I took on the way to the after party ... and I had texted it when I had stolen Mario's cell phone to my cell phone that I had left back home in central PA in hopes that someone might get those messages somehow.
But I had no idea how to get from point A to point B.
***
There was no reason to stay in that neighborhood.
I knew I had to find a way to the bar named Joey's somehow ... and so I started up the creepy white van and backtracked toward the one spot in town where I felt the most comfortable -- to Ruthie's Roadhouse.
My thinking was that it was on a busy enough street that despite it being so early in the morning, I might find someone who could give me directions.
During the drive, I anxiously watched as I passed other vehicles, half expecting to see Papa Kalfu out patrolling the streets in his white church van looking for me.
Besides that, it was the first time I was behind the wheel since I had driven Mario's jeep that night of the after-party when we had been in that hit and run in that intersection.
Anxiety and nervousness were keeping me hyper-alert.
But they were also blocking me from thinking through my predicament
When I reached Ruthie's, I pulled into the parking lot and sat there for a moment planning my next move. Her place was already closed for the night, but I figured that there had to be some late night fast food restaurant where I could find another person in hopes that they knew how to get me to Joey's.
I rubbed the blur out of my eyes, and got ready to leave the lot.
On the corner of my mouth, I tasted my own blood again.
Moving the rearview mirror so that I could get a close look at my face, I saw that my rubbing must have opened up the cut I had gotten from Papa Kalfu's ring when he had backhanded me.
I looked around the van for something to wipe the trickle of blood off of my cheek, and found nothing.
Opening up the glove box, I discovered that the answer to what I was seeking was right there with me all along.
***
It was right there ... and I had been too dumb to figure it out.
Although, in my defense, my mind had been pretty occupied with a lot of other extremely urgent things.
There in the glovebox, next to the napkins (of which I immediately used one to dab the blood from my cut off of my cheek), was paperwork for the owner of the van.
I was NOT the owner of the creepy white van.
Neither was Albert .. nor Mario ... nor Mria.
I thought back to the first time I was in this same creepy white van -- on the drive down the coast from central PA to southern FL after my kidnapping.
Hooded as I was at the time, and after the restroom stop when my captors forgot to put the noise cancelling headphones back on me, I had eavesdropped on a phone call that they had made to someone named Jorge.
Someone named Jorge who happened to own a bar named Joey's.
Someone named Jorge who happened to also own a creepy white van that he used at his bar named Joey's.
Someone named Jorge who had his bar's address on the van registration that he kept in the glovebox of his vehicle.
I now had a specific destination to find, and all I had to do was drive down the main drag of town until I found the cross street I needed.
***
Although the creepy white van didn't have a GPS system in it, I now could play the role of my own directional navigation system, seeing as how I had the address to Joey's.
Lucky for me, the newer nightlife spots in town tended to be close together, and so I confidently drove down the main drag of town, with my eyes peeled for the cross street for which I was looking.
Sure enough, this Andrews Avenue was a big one ... which meant that it was a main intersection and not hard to miss.
I passed a number of businesses ... and a few housing developments ... and then crossed a bridge. About a block away, I saw the sign for Joey's.
"I have arrived at my destination," I said to myself.
As near as I could tell, Joey's was still open ... which made sense seeing as how the bartender at Papa Kalfu's bar had made it a point to close early ... not that that helped him in light of what had happened to him and the others.
To that end, I realized that I should be extra careful, and so I drove past the bar and checked the streets to make sure that I didn't see Papa Kalfu's white church van parked anywhere. The last thing I wanted to do was to walk in to another awkward situation.
A few blocks away, I made a u-turn and made my way back up the street.
I then had a decision to make ... waltz in the front door with the cut on my face and the folded up bloody shirt of cash ... or sneak around to the back.
I chose the back door ... and pulled the van into the alley that I already knew ran behind the bar.
It was time to tell my story to Mario and Mria ... and to explain why I was returning alone.
***
Do I leave the stolen cash on the passenger's seat? Or take it with me into the bar to meet Mario and Mria?
These are the types of questions for which I was not prepared during my college education.
Of course, when they offered "introduction to criminal procedure" courses, I'm pretty sure "best practices for dealing with the after effects of a robbery of a drug dealer of his dirty money" wasn't in the syllabus.
I grabbed the bloody shirt full of bills and headed toward the back door --
-- which was locked.
Good thing I had the van keys.
Bad thing that there were a dozen or so keys on the ring ... and I was going to have to attempt each one, one at a time, in order to make it in this way.
That's exactly what I did ... key after key ... attempt following attempt.
I think it was the eighth key that did the trick.
I tugged on the door, and it opened about as far as one could put one's foot in the space.
I had seen this exit before from the other side ... and I had forgotten until that moment that what I had seen was that they were chained shut.
"A fire hazard, for sure," I had said back then.
Now an obstacle for me.
I was ready to give up and waltz in the front door instead, when a female voice from the other side surprised me.
***
"Hey -- I know you!"
The girl on the other side of the chained back door of the bar recognized me ... and so I returned the favor.
"Julie, right?" I queried.
"Yeppers," she affirmed.
Julie was the blond girl who, a few nights before, had just walked right into the bar basement room where I had been locked up. The one who was looking for moscato at that time ... the one Mario had taken to the spot under the stairs where the alcohol was stashed ... the one who created enough of a diversion for me to have lifted two bottles of whiskey for my own enjoyment ... the one who I had told that I was on vacation and had just stopped by to help Mario clean out that room.
And with that introduction in our past, it was no wonder that she volunteered a solution to my problem.
"You want me to get Mario for you?" she asked.
I nodded my head in agreement.
"Yes, please. Thanks ..."
I peeked through the space in the doorway and watched her go up the second half flight of stairs toward the main bar.
"Hey Matthew ... have you seen Mario?"
I heard her question someone in the distance, but I didn't hear the reply or even make out the person.
As a matter of fact, the next face I saw was Mario's, glaring back at me through the crack.
***
"Why are you by yourself?" he barked at me.
Once again, I had been so distracted by everything, I hadn't really taken the time to figure out how best to explain the evening's turn of events.
"Well ... it didn't quite go as planned," was all I could spit out.
There was a flurry of activity on the other side of the door, which led to me being able to open it all the way and to step inside the staircase.
I held up the bloody shirt full of cash triumphantly.
"But *this* part of the plan ... this part worked."
"Downstairs!" was his curt reply.
Before I could take a step down to the storage area, he grabbed at the shirt.
"I'll take that," he added.
I was putting my faith in my captors -- Mario and Mria anyway -- that they would come through as promised and release me with a bus ticket home.
I just had to get through this debriefing, and then I'd be on my way.
It was that thought that propelled me back into the darkness of the basement of the bar and toward the room where I had been locked up.
"One last thing ..." I muttered to myself under my breath.
"And then I'm done!"
***
There was something a little twisted that I felt like I was back home as I took a seat on my cot.
Mario and Mria had left the doors open, and it was clear to me that this was supposed to have been the rendezvous point for us all, post-heist.
It had barely been a week that I was in captivity, yet it seemed like it had been months.
And now, hopefully -- it was almost over.
There was something even MORE twisted that I was going to miss my janitor's closet of a bathroom, and my mini-refrigerator stuffed with basic rations, and my little cot and lonely pillow.
I was likely mid-sigh when Mria came flying around the corner at full speed.
"Where is Albert? And Rodney? And why do you come back here by yourself?"
I waited to see if there was another question ... and there was. Kind of.
"Why aren't you answering me?"
I finished my sigh -- just in time for Mario to join us in the room.
"I don't know how to tell you ... but Albert was working for Papa Kalfu."
Mria shook her head violently.
"No silly. *I* work for Papa Kalfu. Mario *used* to work for Papa Kalfu. Albert was just a regular customer over there."
"If only it were that cut and dry," I thought to myself.
"But I don't understand," she continued. "What does that have to do with *anything*?"
***
How do you break the news of betrayal to someone?
Do you rip off the band-aid? Ease into the disclosure? Pretend you don't know what you know for sure?
It was going to happen face to face. I didn't have the option of texting ... or calling ... or writing.
My initial attempt was already met with confusion, so I had to begin again.
"It all started as planned. Albert took Rodney and I to the bar. He waited outside in the van while Rodney and I went in for drinks to be positioned for last call. Rodney captured Stanley the bartender, and we made it to the bar office after closing, and I was able to use my ... talent ... to get into his head to claim the combination to the safe."
Mria was listening intently.
"Those were the only things that worked as planned," I continued. "Rodney had a gun ..."
"DAMN it!"
Mario interrupted me in anger.
"I *TOLD* him that he wasn't supposed to go into this with anything!"
Mario started pacing, clearly getting more and more agitated. Mria, however, was able to control her frustration better, and I could sense her mind racing to try to figure out where I was headed next.
"So who got shot? Whose blood is on that shirt? And if Rodney had a gun, then why the hell didn't he come back with you?"
***
"Rodney shot the bartender," I explained.
Mria gasped.
"Not dead," I quickly offered. "But in the knee. He wasn't making eye contact with me, and ... well ... that did it. It turns out that he had been prepped to expect me."
Mario was next to chime in.
"That doesn't make any sense. Who prepped him?"
"Papa Kalfu did," I answered.
I was not doing a good job of explaining what had happened to us. Mario was definitely confused.
"But I thought you never met him?" he asked.
"I didn't. Well, I hadn't. Until tonight. But I tried to tell you before ... Albert was working for him. Albert told him everything ... and I mean everything."
I paused in hopes that the news would sink in the second time I said it.
There was silence and so I started to think that it was. So I continued.
"After Rodney shot the bartender and we got the cash, Albert showed up ... and then Papa Kalfu did as well. He was apparently there the whole time, watching it all unfold."
Mria finally spoke.
"That doesn't make any sense. If Papa Kalfu was there, why would he let it get to that point? I mean, you brought back HIS money. To US. Why did he let that happen?"
I knew it was going to sound egotistical, but I also knew it was the truth.
"He wanted to meet ME."
***
"Bullshit!"
Mria was calling me out on my story.
Except my story wasn't a "story" ... it was the truth.
"That makes no sense," she clarified. "We chose tonight *specifically* because we knew that Papa Kalfu wouldn't be there. He's always down in Miami driving the church van around and dropping off little old Haitian ladies on nights like this. We knew that because we also knew that's how he delivers his drugs into the community. It's his perfect cover ... and it provided us with the opportunity we had tonight."
Mario came over to comfort her as she processed MY news against what she thought she knew to be true.
However, she wasn't having any of his comfort.
"You stay away from me. Albert was your friend. And Rodney was YOUR idea."
Rebuffed, Mario challenged me.
"So why do you think that this is all about you? You were a small piece of our plan. This is mostly about my sister ... not about you."
I had to tread carefully. Mario was clearly getting upset.
"I'm sorry," I started. "Papa Kalfu can do things too. He can get inside people's heads -- some of his voodoo tricks. Once Albert told him about what I could do, he wanted me to give him that same power. It was like I had evolved and he wanted to upgrade what he could do. And so he let it all play out in order to get to me."
They just stood there, finally starting to believe that what I was saying was the truth.
***
It was an interesting dynamic.
As Mario got angrier as I explained what had happened, Mria's processing skills were working overtime and she was getting more and more focused.
She was the next one to speak.
"So let me get this right. Albert ratted us out to Papa Kalfu, and he let you and Rodney take Stanley the bartender in the back office just so he could meet you ... and Rodney shot Stanley at some point in the evening. Yet, despite all that, you managed to get away with the stolen cash."
I nodded my head to show that I agreed with her summary.
"Pray tell ... how did *that* happen?" she asked.
"Well ... Stanley shot Rodney --"
Mario interjected.
"Wait a minute ... I thought you said that *Rodney* shot Stanley?"
"I did. And *he* did," I explained. "And then Stanley shot Rodney in revenge."
Mario was dumbfounded.
"I know. I know. You should have been there," I offered in an attempt to make light of the situation. A *failed* attempt at that, I might add.
I did my best to wrap it up.
"I took advantage of the mayhem, used a trick of mine, and ran away with the cash."
***
"So where is Rodney now?" Mria asked.
"I don't know. I left him there."
"And Albert?"
"I don't know. I left him there too."
"And the bartender?"
"Mria," I said. "I don't know. I didn't stick around."
"Papa Kalfu?"
"Same thing. I. Don't. Know. I drove up and down the street before pulling into the alley and I didn't see him here, but I literally ran out of there, jumped in the van and raced away."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Mria stood there, arms folded, staring down at me like a school marm dealing with her most problematic child.
After what seemed like an hour but was likely only a minute or two, she spun on her heel and left my room, calling behind to Mario in shorter and shorter sentences.
"We need to talk. Out here. Meeting. Now!"
Mario dutifully followed, and I stayed seated on my cot as they went through the outer storage room and into the hallway.
I had done what they asked me to do. It wasn't my fault that things didn't happen exactly as they had planned.
They owed me a bus ticket home and a release.
***
I was to get NEITHER a bus ticket NOR a release though that night/early morning.
Mario didn't even bother returning from the chat that he had had with Mria in the hallway. Instead, only she came back into my room.
"Everything has changed," she announced. "We don't think it's safe for you to go anywhere else tonight, so we'll return in the morning with your bus ticket."
That was it. She was already leaving.
"Wait a minute," I yelled after her. "What about you guys? What are you going to do?"
She didn't even bother to look at me as she replied.
"That's none of your business. We're done with you. We thank you for your service."
Door closed.
Chain drawn.
Boxes moved.
All was as it had been before this crazy night ... I was locked in a room in the basement of a bar.
The one thing different was that I was leaving it in a few hours.
*This* was the end. They were done with me ... and I was done with them.
I headed to the mini-fridge to raid my rations one last time.
***
I was wired.
The events of the evening were such that my adrenaline was still flowing.
Which is why it was all a very pleasant surprise to open the door of the mini-fridge to find that a mini-bottle of champagne had been placed in the mini-door of it at some recent point.
There was a post it note on it that read "mission accomplished".
I actually got a little misty-eyed, thinking that my captors had thought ahead and actually planned for a little celebration for me upon returning from stealing the drug dealer's secret stash of cash.
The whole experience had been a bit odd -- from being taken from my apartment in central PA to being driven to Florida in the creepy white van to being locked up in this very room in the basement under the bar I now knew to be named Joey's to being convinced to participate in a scheme that was ultimately to benefit Mario's dying sister to returning that very night to this place with most of the cash (minus what I had hid in the mulch bed of Laura's house).
It wasn't quite Stockholm Syndrome -- or at least that's what I had convinced myself -- but I was a part of a team for something I had rationalized as a nobler cause.
And now, even though I was by myself and dependent on part of that team to return in the morning with my way home, I was going to celebrate all that happened with a bit of champagne.
I popped the cork, and not having any glasses in my situation, drank straight from the bottle.
I had no way of seeing that the cork had been penetrated by a needle ... and so I had no way to predict the double vision that quickly ensued.
Luckily, I made it to my cot before the drug took full effect.
***
[to be continued ...]
