But this time, he hadn’t aimed at the cashier’s window. He pointed backwards at the gaggle of hostages. Not breaking eye contact with the old man, he shot at random angles. Leo cackled every time a bullet was ejected from the muzzle. As Ryatt squeezed the trigger, the old man’s demeanor changed. His half-closed, laid-back, you-don’t-shock-a-New-Yorker-with-violence eyes became big and glassy like a fiend high on meth.
On Ryatt’s seventh shot, someone in the back screamed. A lady. The old man clasped his hands in front of his chest. Should be a big wound. Good. Some random citizen was hurt, and the resolute cashier would now think it was his fault. His adamance was to be blamed, the people would complain.
Ryatt ejected the mag, pocketed it, and clipped on a new one.
“Round two.” Ryatt lifted the gun again.
“No!” the old man finally yielded.
He opened a steel door behind him, and a minute later, handed Ryatt a full bag.
When Ryatt turned to leave the booth, the old man called, “Stop!”
Ryatt did.
“Look around you,” the old man said, his voice shaky. “Look at the chaos you’ve caused.”
Ryatt did, curiously. Thomas guarded his post, the front door, wearing his blue demon mask. Leo besieged the hostages. The security guard lay on the floor, missing a quarter of his head and leaking red. A woman crumpled in fetal position and held her torso, blood seeping between her fingers.
The scene really was chaotic. But so what? Wasn’t chaos the natural order of how everything ended? The old man needed a lesson in entropy.
“God’s watching you,” the old man said.
That made Ryatt turn back. Hiding beneath his zombie mask, he stared at the old man. “Is he now, Gramps?”
“You bet,” the old man said with so much conviction that Ryatt actually believed it.
“Good. Then I hope that voyeur sees this.” Ryatt lifted his gloved hand and pointed a middle finger at the bullet-pocked ceiling.
And that was how he had pulled his biggest robbery to date. $98,000.
In order to live this good a life, Ryatt had done sixteen jobs, killed seventeen people, and robbed around $1,250,000, including his first two robberies in ‘81.
As he reached above the dirty closet, his Giza cotton shirt lifted over the hem of his underwear. Manicured fingers found a key that he used to open its door.
Displayed on the back wall was his threadbare NBA jersey, at the bottom lay his old shoes that suffered at least a pair of holes each. Literally rags to riches, Ryatt thought.
The Desert Eagle, locked and loaded, and dozens of boxes of .44 rounds rested on the shelf to his left. Under it hung the gun with which he broke into this business. SW model 63 22LR. A special little guy.
On his right was the tool he simply couldn’t put a price tag on. Yet it was the most invaluable thing he owned. A jackhammer with blackish brown stains on the tip of its chisel.
Ryatt sat on his haunches, lifted the board on the floor, and recovered a bunch of magazines that had pictures of naked women on top. He understood his mom couldn’t see, but he considered it utterly disrespectful to have them lying around.
He selected the one which had two girls, one black and one white, hugging each other erotically, their breasts pressing against each other like water balloons. This would do. With porno in one hand, he picked a rose-flavored lubricant and got up. He hadn’t used spit since his teenage years. Why would he have shower sex like a hobo when he lived like a king?
Iris had tried to talk marriage to him, but he’d paid no heed. He didn’t think he’d ever felt love. Except the love he had for his mom and his best friends. Maybe he was scared, not willing to pull another woman into his life.
And he didn’t dare break the cherry with the help of a prostitute. A hypochondriac like him would never live peacefully after that. However, his partners had dragged him along to a brothel once.
Ryatt, in a room alone with the service-girl, begged her to lie to his friends that they did it.
Ryatt and the girl came out from the room. Leo and Thomas both looked at him expectantly, because they knew he had never had sex. It was the argument they had used to coerce him into a brothel in the first place.
“So?” Thomas asked.
“I-it was wonderful,” Ryatt said, cursing himself. His friends very well knew he stammered whenever he lied.
Leo looked up at Thomas who shook his head disapprovingly. Leo burst out laughing. And the girl joined them too, massaging Ryatt’s tense shoulders. “It’s a’ight, lover boy. You good.”
So yeah, Ryatt was the most wanted bank robber in the US, but also a twenty-seven-year-old virgin. A fact neither Thomas nor Leo failed to exploit.
Sighing, he took the sex kit to the bathroom, readying himself to waste yet another million sperms into the shower drain.
Chapter 13
November 24, 1994. 01:39 P.M.
Dabbing the towel on his shiny head, Ryatt unlocked the bathroom door and ambled to the clean closet. Leo, who had been losing hair in patches, had gone full bald a few years ago to conceal his condition. So Ryatt began shaving his beloved dreadlocks to support Leo. He had asked Thomas to do the same, but the narcissist was too proud of his looks to even consider it.
Clad in a Gucci button down and jeans, $990 and $2,990 respectively, Ryatt exited his second-floor bedroom and walked down. In the dining room reposed a Brazilian rosewood table, complete with a rotatable marble top and chairs. $18,280. Made illegal
