The Ravine (6 page)

Around seven o’clock the next night, Danny, Bags, and Tony met in the Turners’ finished basement, ostensibly to play cards and have a few beers, but the real reason was to review their plans and gather their equipment for the night. Because they had easy access to the house, they would not need the usual glass cutter or other tools to bust a lock. Tony pointed out that they would not need to take the pistol they had stashed in the shed or any other weapons, because the house would be empty and they would be in and out in a matter of minutes.

Danny shut the basement door and locked it. He went over to the stereo and turned it up a few notches so his parents wouldn’t hear what they were talking about. Bags lit a bowl and passed it to Tony, trying to hold in the hit for as long as possible. Robert Plant began quietly singing “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” and the guys were completely stoned by the time Jimmy Page started his famous riff. Before long they were on their feet, playing some mean air guitar.

“Okay,” Tony said, “let’s get down to business.” They would all dress in dark clothes and wear knit caps. He laid out three flashlights. “We can’t turn on the lights. The neighbors might see, and they’d be suspicious if they saw the lights on. We’ll have to do this in the dark, with just the flashlights.” Tony then took out three pairs of white surgical gloves. “Make sure you put these on before you leave the car.”

Bags started to get a bit concerned. “What if the neighbors see the flashlights in the house and call the cops?”

“Yeah, and what if your ass falls off?’ Danny said. “We can do this; we just have to use our heads.”

Tony and Danny would drive their pickup, and Bags would bring his beat-up Volkswagen Bug. Most important of all, Tony and Danny would bring the two gym bags sitting in the corner for the cash.

“Okay, we’ll leave at two on the dot, and take two cars over to Chagrin,” Tony whispered in his best conspiratorial voice. “Bags, you park across the street and Danny and me will park in front of the house. When we leave we’ll go in opposite directions, and meet back at your apartment.” As an actual matter of fact, Tony and Danny had decided they would stop at home first, leave some of the cash behind, and then meet up with Bags at his place. However, they didn’t call him “the Bagman” for nothing; Bags had already decided to bring his backpack, so he would get his fair share. By now, he’d spent enough time around the Turner boys to know that honesty was not one of their strengths.

With the plans laid out, they hid everything in the closet, unlocked the door, and played a few hands of poker. Danny made a point of loudly protesting the bad hand he’d been dealt so his parents wouldn’t think anything suspicious was going on. The Monday Night Football game was on and Howard Cosell droned away in the background. It was just a month ago that he was the first to announce John Lennon’s death to the nation. Now the shock was starting to wear off. When Mrs. Turner came down with bowls of potato chips and popcorn, it looked like a typical Monday night. They’re not such bad boys after all, she thought as she headed back upstairs.

At roughly the same moment, over in Chagrin Falls, a car was pulling into the Grants’ garage. Kevin Grant and his wife, Missy, had driven from Chicago that day, and were planning to head to Florida on Wednesday. Kevin’s parents had helped him and Missy get a start in the antique business, and every January they too would close their shop and go down to Boca for a visit to escape the Windy City at the worst time of year. The young couple was especially excited because they planned to surprise Don and Linda with the news that they would be grandparents
before the end of the year. They smiled at each other as they watched the garage door open, relieved to have arrived safely after their harrowing eight-hour drive along some very icy and snowy roads.

Once inside, they disarmed the security system, and they sat down to relax and have a sandwich and a slice of the crumb cake Linda left out with a note: “We can’t wait to see the two of you. Don’t forget your bathing suits! Love, Mom.” At around eleven, Kevin checked all the doors and re-set the alarm system. Missy turned off all the lights (including the lamp on the timer), and the couple went upstairs to Kevin’s old room, which now served as the guest bedroom. As they slid under the cool sheets, Kevin said he expected to “sleep like a stone,” and Missy came back with “like a log!” Kevin laughed and gave her a goodnight kiss. Within a few minutes they were both dead to the world.

At the same time, at around eleven, Tony and Danny got antsy, and decided to do another drive-by just to make one last check. The coast was clear. “Measure twice, cut once,” Tony said as they drove off to their destiny. Tonight would be the night.

Tony cut the engine as he glided into the space in front of the Grants’ home. A few minutes later, they heard the signature grind of Bags’s Bug coming down the road, and Danny and Tony rolled their eyes at each other as their fear that they might have a weak link in the chain was confirmed. Now that they were there, really there, ready to do the job, much of their bravado was gone, though neither would admit it. There was no turning back now, in any event, and besides, an easier job was never going to come their way. That magnificent fifty-thousand-dollar figure had burrowed its way into their minds and wouldn’t let go.

Yet the unspoken, or perhaps unrealized, sense that it was all too good to be true hung in the air. If they had taken the time to think
things through, they would have realized that the entire plan rested on a stranger whose last name they did not even know, who was now hundreds of miles away, along with one James K. Bagneski, who barely would have qualified to carry their spikes a few years earlier. But greed, ignorance, and delusion kept those nettlesome thoughts tucked away, out of site, and made certain they were delivered to this very moment.

So, on the short journey from their home to the Grants’ house, as the pickup seemed to drive itself, the brothers sat in silence, each lost in his own thoughts.

Tony planned to take his share of the cash and move to another part of the country. He wasn’t quite sure where, but a girl he’d dated had moved to Monterey, and the last time they spoke he promised he would come out for a visit. He figured that was about as good a place as any, and now he would have the money to do it. Who knew? Maybe he would stay there for a while, or go someplace else, but it sure was time he got out of his parents’ house. He needed to start over where no one knew him and had all of these big expectations. He hated the look of disappointment when he told local folks what he was up to these days, which was basically nothing, or nothing he could talk about. Tony knew there had to be something better for him out there, but at twenty-two, he didn’t yet know what it was.

Danny looked out the window and started to think about the voice. That’s what he called it: “the voice.” This was the voice inside of him that told him what to do and what not to do. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but he knew it was there, knew it was real, and knew it was his friend. When he was alone, driving the pickup or walking in the woods, he would talk out loud to it, but most times it was just there in his head. It really came alive in’78, on the field, when all of a sudden something would seem to take control of his legs and tell him to “cut right, turn left”; he would put his head down and run, and a few seconds later look over his shoulder to see the pigskin about to land in his hands.

He remembered one day when he was a little kid, maybe around nine or ten, and was in the supermarket. He had a Hershey bar in his hand and was heading for the cash register, when the voice said “just put it in your pocket and walk out,” and he did. “Just walk like nothing’s wrong,” it said. He walked to the corner, convinced the store owner was on his heels, but he did what the voice said to do. He resisted the urge to run until he turned the corner, and then he scooted behind a building. Much to his relief, no one came after him, and he squatted there, trembling, eating his free candy bar. As time went on, things like that became easier, because he came to rely upon the secret guidance he knew was his and his alone.

Once, when he was doing fifty-five on Mayfield, in a stretch where the limit was thirty-five, he looked into the rear view mirror and saw the flashing lights behind him. He thought, “I’ll make a break for it,” but the voice shouted, “Just pull over; I’ll make sure you get off.” And sure enough, the cop turned out to be the father of the kid who played center on the team, and there was no way he was about to give a Turner boy a ticket. “Just try not to have such a heavy foot, Danny,” he said. The voice knew.

So when Danny got a very strong message to reach under his seat and take the tire iron with him, he knew it was the right thing to do.

Tony looked at him like he was out of his mind. “What the hell are you bringing that for? You know the place is empty. We have to get in, open the safe, take the cash, and get out of there as fast as possible. You won’t need that!”

“Who knows if we will? What’s the difference? I’ll just leave it in the gym bag, just in case.”

“In case of what?” At times like these, Tony knew there was no talking sense to his brother, who could be so thick-headed. Anyway, Bags was on his way across the street, pulling on his gloves; it was time to get to work.

Tony unlocked the front door while Danny and Bags pressed into the shadows, following him inside once it was open. Great! The key worked. They shut the door. Now it was up to Danny to punch in the security code while Bags shined his flashlight on the keypad. It beeped a few times, but they were done in a flash, and, amazingly, good old Jack had given them the right code.

The plan was for Tony to take the lead, using only his flashlight to illuminate the way. They would head directly to the master bedroom, open the safe, take out every last dollar, scoot down the stairs, punch in the exit code, and close and lock the door. There would be no stopping to look for jewelry or pinching something one of them might want to grab. By the time the robbery was discovered, the crocuses would be forcing their way up through the earth. So far things were going just as planned. It bothered Tony that the lamp he thought was on a timer wasn’t on. The bulb must have burnt out, he reasoned.

They crossed the foyer and started up the steps. The house was old, so the steps creaked, but that didn’t concern them because they knew the house was vacant. In a hushed voice, Danny said, “Remember, we have to turn left at the top of the stairs.” He could hear his heart pounding and the blood rushing through his head; he barely could find the breath to speak. Suddenly he wanted this to be over with. Something was wrong; he knew it, but he dared not say anything to his brother because Tony hated it when Danny had one of his stupid “feelings.”

They gathered at the landing and the beam from Tony’s flashlight hit the chrome of the bathroom faucet, and then lit on the door to the master bedroom, which was closed. They were at the door in a few seconds, and it clicked open when Tony twisted the knob. Kevin stirred in the guest bedroom, mumbled something to Missy about hearing the alarm go off, and then turned over and went back to sleep.

Tony saw the three of them reflected in the blackness of the mirror, and thought how young and frightened they all looked—Danny
in particular, with those big eyes poking out of his head. He silently pointed to the closet door. “That’s the one,” he whispered. When they opened the door, it was just as they had imagined.

This was the real deal. The safe stood about two feet high, was gun-metal gray, and was bolted to the floor. There was no way anyone was ever going to carry that baby out of there. Bags was reputed to have nimble fingers, so it was his job to turn the combination lock to the correct numbers. He squatted down, and Tony realized for the first time that he was wearing a backpack.

Danny shined his light on the piece of paper Jack had given them the day after Christmas. Bags’s hand was shaking so badly that Danny had to reach down and hold his wrist. But within a few turns they heard the cylinders click into place. Bags turned the handle and pulled out one of the drawers; it was filled with piles of neatly stacked cash.

“All right!” Bags exclaimed. “We hit the mother lode!”

In their excitement, they forgot their promise to keep the noise down, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting the cash into the bags and getting the hell out of there. Tony unzipped his bag and started feeding the cash into it.

Missy and Kevin both bolted upright when they heard voices down the hall.

“Somebody’s in the house,” she whispered. “We better call the cops.”

“The only phone up here is in Mom and Dad’s room. I’m going to go check this out.”

Missy groped around, found a kids-size baseball bat, and whispered, “Here, you’d better take this; maybe it will scare them away. Be careful!”

Kevin crept down the hall in the dark, reached around the wall, and turned on the bedroom lights. He saw three men gathered around the open safe, and they turned around at once, clearly startled and shocked.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted, lifting the bat above his head.