Not The Heisting Kind

“Son of a bitch!” John slapped both hands against the wood paneled door.

“What?” I asked, spinning toward him.

“The stupid door.”

“What’s the problem?”

He glared at me over his shoulder. “It’s locked.”

“Locked?”

“Yeah, locked.” He turned fully around and kicked the door with the heel of his foot. “Shit.”

“Who locked it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s self-locking. Maybe you locked it. What matters is it’s locked and we’re on the wrong bloody side.”

John, or Johnny D as he’s known in the neighborhood on account of his getting straight D’s through grade school, was the official leader of our gang. I say ‘official’ in the sense that his leadership was uncontested – no one else was interested. Where John lacks the intelligence to pull off better grades or, say, operate an ATM, he makes up for with street smarts. Petty crimes? John’s your man, we’re your gang: knocking off corner conveniences, shaking down food vendors, muggings, that sort of thing.

That’s why, when this heist was brought to us, I was naturally surprised when John pushed us to move on it. It felt like someone asking a basset hound to go up against a team of greyhounds in a quarter-mile sprint. The idea of burglarizing a mansion out in the suburbs seemed ridiculous. It was simply not something we did.

“I didn’t lock the door,” I offered.

“I don’t care. Let’s just figure a way out. I think the oxygen’s thinning in here.”

“It’s a wine cellar, John, not an air-tight vault. The oxygen’s not thinning.”

“You want to argue with me now?”

“No,” I said. “Where’s Mick?”

“He’s probably upstairs rooting through the fridge.”

“He’ll find us.”

“Not if he’s eating.”

“Eventually he’ll come looking for us.”

“I think you put too much stock in Mick. Odds are, we don’t come get him, he’ll figure he’s not needed and just sit down like a lump – maybe even fall asleep - the dumb ass.”

Mick was the third member of our gang. Picture the stereotypical not-so-smart-but-sweet-as-pie hulk of a man. That’s Mick. I sometimes wonder why he’s involved with us; his demeanor is at constant odds with what we do. If John or I ask him to hold a guy while we rob him, he’ll bear down with the unmovable force of an African Bush Elephant, but he’ll always be polite: “I’m not hurting you am I?” “I’ll do my best not to wrinkle your shirt, okay?” These niceties are constantly met with bewildered complacency. No one expects a walking minivan with a face like an abused fire hydrant to be so civil.

Mick’s downfall, however, is his appetite. The guy can eat. He tips well over three-hundred pounds, and if he’s not sitting down to eat, he’s on his way to the table. This is not to say he’s just some big glob; he spends hours every day at the gym pressing iron in all directions. He’s a massive solid man who requires constant fueling. So it’s not beyond the realm of comprehension to suggest Mick could, at this very moment, be eating and not thinking about us at all.

“So, what you’re saying,” I began with an even measure of calm and angst, “is we’re screwed and on our own.”

John nodded. We stared at each other for a long moment, and then frantically began looking for a way to break out.

I started scanning the racks and walls for a set of keys or a how-to-open-door instruction booklet. “So, just how did the door end up locked?” I asked, tilting my head toward John.

“I don’t know! It just shut on its own. I grabbed for the knob, but it won’t turn,” John explained. “I pushed on the door, but it won’t budge.”

“Hmmm.”

“Go ahead,” he said, stepping aside, perhaps sensing my slight disbelief, “you try.”

I backed as far from the door as the room would allow – about four yards. I gauged the target and took off, pumping full tilt, and at the last moment leapt at the door Bruce Lee style, my left foot forward, heel angled for a perfect strike, whistling through the air like a laser-guided missile. Contact!

Door strong like Ox; ankle fails to support and buckles; knee gives up on keeping a straight leg and collapses; body folds in on itself; failed knee slams into sternum blasting the air from chest. I ended up on the floor in a sick fetal position gasping for air and holding my left foot.

“What the fuck was that, Karate Kid?” John stood over me shaking his head.

“Enter the Dragon,” I gasped.

“Quit fuckin’ around and help me find a way out of here.”

“For... I was... Just...” I struggled to sit up. John looked at me with a thoughtful expression, as though sizing me up for a helmet. “Catching breath,” I whispered, patting my chest for emphasis.

He shrugged and grabbed the wine rack he stood beside and shook it, bottles rattling, testing its sturdiness as he sized it up. “We’re supposed to be stealing these, not locked in here with them.”

I rolled on to my hands and knees and studied the floor waiting to regain a normal breathing rhythm. How did I end up here? Not here on the floor, but here, as in living my life with two felonious childhood mates running about town for a few stolen dollars? How did I end up here?

My name’s Jay, Jason C as I’m known around the neighborhood for the fact that my last name is Castaneda. Of me, John, and Mick, I most definitely rank as the most intelligent (my attempt at the door notwithstanding), best looking, and the coolest. I know how to keep it together.

“John, I think my foot’s broken.”

“Serves you right, Jay. Did you really think you’d bust through like some superhero?”

Standing with most of my weight on the foot I knew for sure wasn’t broken and leaning against a wine rack, I shrugged at John’s rhetorical question.

“Come on Jay, you’re supposed to be the brains. Figure this out.”

I swiveled on my good foot and refaced the door. “MICKY!”

“Really? That’s your plan?”

“MICKY!”

“Are you done?”

“Do you think he heard?”

“No,” he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and then leveled them back at me. “Were you paying any attention when we came down here?”

“Huh?” My ankle was starting to swell.

“We came down two flights of stairs. Mick’s two floors up, probably in the kitchen at the front of the place.” He gestured wildly with his hands, loose locks of hair danced around his forehead as he continued making his point, “Odds are, if he heard anything, he’ll think his food is talking to him: ‘Mick, eat me first, Mick...’” He snickered at his own joke.

I turned back to the door and punched it. The pain was instant, “Damn it!”

“Nicely done, Kill Bill,” John said with a chuckle. He watched a lot of movies, even though he constantly got the stories mixed up. In his addled brain, it was Rambo who destroyed the guns of Navarone.

“You know, I think we could wiggle-walk one of these racks away from the wall and tip it against the door,” John suggested. Sometimes he surprises me with his turn of phrase. Wiggle-walk?

“I hit the door with a lot of force, John. If it didn’t open from my impact, a wooden rack tipping into it from a few feet away isn’t going to do the trick either.”

“Well, fuck!” He slammed his open palm against the rack he’d been eyeballing, “Should we just sit here with our thumbs up our asses?” Again with the rhetorical line of questioning? “Or do we keep trying to escape?”

“I think we should crack open a bottle and mull over our options.” John grabbed the first bottle within reach and tossed it to me.

“Do you have a corkscrew?” I asked.

“You ever know me to carry a corkscrew?”

I looked around the room, my eyes searching for an opener of any sort. I gave up. “Should I just crack it open?” and mimed swinging the bottle down like a hammer. “You know, just bust the neck off?”

“Good luck.”

I held the bottle with both hands, one hand a little more sure of itself than the other, and after a three-count swung the bottle’s neck down on a cross piece of the nearest rack. The bottle shattered entirely showering my legs and shoes in burgundy. I jumped back from the catastrophe like a house cat jarred into action by an oncoming Jack Russell Terrier. I danced around hoping to shed the wine before it soaked through.

John laughed at the spectacle. “You tit,” was all he could manage to say between guffaws.

“Fuck me!” was all I could say.

“You want to try that again?” John asked, his hand on another bottle.

“No,” I replied. I took stock of my current state: mangled foot, twisted ankle, bashed hand, a chest bruise for sure, all topped off with a good waist-down soaking of red wine. How did I get here? “I think I need a doctor, John. I think my ankle may be broken.”

“Think of a way out and we’ll get you one.”

I thought about it. I scanned the cellar for anything that would serve to get us out. “There’s got to be a way out! I mean, would some guy really build a wine cellar that could so easily trap someone? Does that make any sense?”

“Don’t ask me, what do I know about wine rooms?”

“Cellars, they’re called wine cellars.”

“See?”

I continued surveying the room, paying particular attention to the walls and dimensions of the room. Then I had a thought, “John, this back wall and this side wall,” I pointed to and fro, “although they’re paneled in wood, are likely concrete, right?” My thought being, in recollection, this wine cellar was built into the corner of the sub-basement we’d stepped into off the stairs.

John nodded thoughtfully, “Yeah, probably.”

“So then, it stands to reason, this wall here is just studs and drywall, right?” I patted the wall like an old friend - an old friend I intended to smash in the face for ruining my day.

John nodded. “What’re you thinking?”

“Well, the door’s thick and heavy because it’s anchored to concrete, but maybe we can bust through the drywall here.”

“Have at ‘er.”

I looked at John with contempt, “Come on, man, I’m a mess here,” and I gestured with my good hand at my condition like a salesman pointing out the flaws in a used car as though they added character and warranted sympathy versus a cheaper price or a look at something newer. “Feel free to chip in and help me out, asshole.”

“Love to, but, when we do get out of here, someone has to carry these bottles to the van. I’ll help you, but I’m not gonna fuck myself up.”

“Fine. Just stand back, I got this.”

I hunched down like a linebacker, square to the target wall, pressed my weight into my good foot and tensed my shoulders, preparing to charge. On a silent count of three I lunged at the wall with the fierce determination of a lion pouncing on a lame gazelle. To my bitter surprise, it turned out my good foot was planted in the pool of red wine. The moment I summoned the thrust of power, my foot slipped back pitching my entire body forward like a broken catapult. I tried bracing for impact with my arms, but wound up hitting the wall head-first instead. I slid down the wall, scrambling like a lunatic, hoping for a purchase before I wound up doing a lip-stand on the floor. No luck. Floor, meet face. Nice to meet you, face. What are you doing down here? Fuck off, floor.

I rolled onto my back and used my one good hand to map the damage I’d done to my face. My nose didn’t feel right. John stood there, open-mouthed, and staring.

“Holy mother of God, what’s the matter with you? If I had a gun I’d shoot you now, put you out of your misery.”

“Thanks, that’s helpful. I think I broke my nose.” I gently pressed on it and screamed.

“Yeah,” said John helpfully, “sounds broken to me. I think you need to stay put, or I’ll end up having to drag your lifeless corpse out of here.” Only John would feel the need to liven up the word ‘corpse’ with the word ‘lifeless’.

Just then the door swung open and in stepped Mick. He held a sandwich in one hand as he looked down at me. His eyes registered shock as he announced, “Holy shit,” and rushed in, bending down next to the heap on the floor – which was me. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I know,” John offered before I could answer, “the guy’s a fuckin’ mess isn’t he? You know, Mick, I think we need a new partner. Jay’s a hot-headed loose cannon...” Shnick-click. “Fuck! The door!”

I rolled my eyes. “You have got to be kidding me,” I said through my clotted nose. John and I glared at Mick. He calmly took a bite of sandwich, mayonnaise oozing between his fingers.

“What about the door?” Mick said absently looking over his shoulder.

“We’re locked in here, damn it!” John said. “Now that you’re in here too, we’re triple-fucked. The oxygen’s definitely thinning!”

“What are you talking about?” He shoved the remainder of the sandwich in his mouth, turned to the door, and put a mayonnaise-stained hand on the large door knob. He gently pushed the knob and the door clicked itself free and swung open without effort.

John and I looked at each other, the unspoken question being, why didn’t you know?! I shook my head. John arched an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders, palms open, intimating whadda-ya-gonna-do?

“The door’s like one of those restaurant walk-in refrigerators I love so much,” Mick explained. “You just push the knob to open it – it don’t turn or nothin’ like that.” I wanted to hug him, but it hurt too much.

Mick carried me out the front door of the house. I'd have to wait half an hour to see a doctor; John was determined to empty the cellar, now that he knew the secret to the door.

I eased into the front seat of the van parked several yards from the house, and pressed a cold dishcloth taken from the kitchen onto my face. “That’s the last time we do a job like this,” I said. “It’s too fuckin’ dangerous.”