The Pineville Heist (2 page)

And Aaron was caught in the middle. The only son of the rich man on the hill. Still seen as part of the cursed Stevens' clan, yet disdainful of his father's actions.

“Hearing you right now it becomes more and more obvious every day how right your mother was,” Derek said, shaking his head, returning his attention to the text messages on his smartphone.

“About what?” Aaron asked quickly. Discussions about Sandra Stevens always got the hair on Aaron's neck up. Struck down with breast cancer in her prime, the loss was crushing for 14 year old Aaron. As his Dad was always at the Mill or away on business, Aaron gravitated to his mother. It was Sandra that raised him and encouraged his creative endeavors. Losing her was tough. Now a single parent, Derek was forced to be a father and he wasn't having an easy time.

“How you just don't… get it.” The words “get it” hung around in the air like a bad smell. Aaron had heard it all before, of course, but this time it seemed more personal an insult than usual–it was only a matter of time before his emotions would untangle from the knot in his stomach and join the heated conversation.

“Get it? Yeah, well, listening to you lately makes me realize how wrong she was about you!” Aaron said in an explosive outburst, as he pointed his finger precariously close to his Dad's face.

Derek waved his hands. “Stop the car.”

A pair of eyes unplucked themselves from the road to look into the rearview mirror. “Sir?” the driver enquired, as the limo rolled up on Main Street.

“Stop the goddamn car!” Derek spat, saliva beading in the corners of his mouth.

The driver immediately slowed the limo next to a white van, just as it was about to pull out from the curb. Aaron heard the squeal of the brakes and took it as his warning signal to get ready to be ejected. “You want me to walk from here? It's your fault I'm already late.” But, it was pointless. Aaron could see the serious look on Derek's face–daggers protruding from his irises, with the cutthroat vengeance of a businessman who had done his share of dog-eat-dog deals. “Fine!” Aaron shouted as a parting shot, exiting the limo into the cool morning breeze.

The chill in the air was all the more eerie when the man behind the wheel in the white van pounded his fist on the horn, honking in protest at being cut off by the limo. Aaron kept his eyes on the ground, until he heard Derek call out, “Hey!”

Aaron turned back to the limo just as the Hamlet book was contemptuously tossed out of the lowered rear window. It hit him in the chest and fell to the ground, in a shallow puddle that had pooled near the gutter. Aaron cursed under his breath as he squatted to pick it up.

As he straightened and stepped onto the sidewalk, he watched the limo disappearing in a cloud of exhaust smoke. His eyes aimlessly crossed paths with the man in the white
van, who was looking directly at him. Although a beard consumed much of his face, above it, the man's beady bloodshot eyes were piercing and fixated on Aaron. He pumped his balled hand at Aaron as the driver pounded on the horn again, letting rip with a blare that almost tore holes in Aaron's eardrums.

Aaron started walking as the bearded man and his partner peeled away in the white van and then he glanced down at the damp squelchy object in his hand. “Oh man!” The book was sodden and dripping. He shook it off as he walked up Main Street, passing outside the town's bank.

With a strip of silver chrome running along the exterior, the bank almost appeared futuristic in comparison to the surrounding stone and brick buildings. However, the Pineville Savings and Loan was still very much in Pineville, evidenced that morning by a handwritten sign, hanging in the bank's window:
Gone To Lunch. Rosie.

Leaving behind the confines of the overly cheerful Main Street to take a shortcut through the woods, Aaron began to push the limo ride with his father into the recesses of his mind. Here he was, in the forest, his favorite place to get away from everything–the materialism, the expectations, the boredom. Towering, ancient tree trunks surrounded him, along with the sounds of a babbling brook and a few birds, chirping in the branches above. This was Aaron's own private stage where he could rehearse, relax, and forget about his troubles. Nobody would judge him, he could speak his lines as loud as he wanted, and nobody would burst in and boss him around. It was just him and nature.

A twig snapped, and Aaron stopped in his tracks. He looked around to make sure his private oasis wasn't invaded by an intruder. Nothing–then a flash of movement. A rabbit, running from its burrow. Aaron sighed and smiled at himself.
“Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane!”
he called after the fleeing rabbit.

Aaron continued to stroll deeper into the forest; thick brush at his legs made him walk in high steps, while spindly branches near his face made him duck and weave. As it became denser, he pushed the copy of Hamlet inside his red binder, and slotted both into his jacket, zipping it to his neck. The shadows were closing in around Aaron; the sky was now barely visible through the shroud of intermingling tree boughs. He looked up, looking for the sun, only to find the towering pines he knew so well reaching toward the sky. He forged on, looking for the path he had accidentally strayed from.

Breaking off a piece of branch, Aaron emerged onto a muddy pathway, smudged with tire tracks. At the end of a long line of tread marks, the white van was parked, with dirt specks sprayed all across its back doors. Aaron's brow furrowed. “What the hell?” he thought as he tentatively plodded in the direction of the van, each footstep mired in muck.

Slowly, Aaron leaned over to peer inside the driver's side window. There was no sign of the bearded man, just the interior of a well-lived-in van, with a dangling tree air freshener and empty paper coffee cups. Then something caught his eye–beneath the car seat, there appeared to be a pair of gloves and some kind of uniform rolled up, like it was hastily hidden away.

Another crack caught Aaron's ear. Much farther away this time. Probably just the rabbit, hopping along. Probably.

Jake in a sweat-stained checkered shirt, filled out by burly shoulders, worked away with a shovel. This was the bearded man. He stopped to catch his breath and then turned to another man just as gruff-looking who was standing over him watching. “Pass it over, Gordie.”

The man, Gordie, a clean-shaven 30-something, handed Jake what he wanted–a stuffed green backpack. Jake shoved it into the freshly-dug hole and admired it for a second. It looked tiny and lost inside the large hole.

“Should I put a stick in to flag it, Gordie? He won't be able to find it without a bloody tour guide.”

Gordie reached into his jeans' pocket and retrieved a black GPS unit. “That's why he gave me one of these, genius.” Gordie recorded the coordinates as he moved deeper into the woods. “Come on–we still need to stash the other backpack and dump the van.”

Jake groaned and watched Gordie walking away as he wiped the perspiration from his neck with a handkerchief. “Lazy bastard,” he murmured. “Wouldn't take so long if you picked up a shovel.”

With a second thought, Jake reached down and unzipped the backpack, carefully, easing through each tooth of the zipper to ensure an almost silent opening. He touched the canvas bag within the backpack–stenciled with the words: PINEVILLE SAVINGS AND LOAN.

“Don't take all day,” Gordie called out.

Nervously, Jake retracted his hand and turned his coveting eyes away. Zipping the backpack closed, he proceeded to bury it in a pile of dirt. “Goodbye–for now.”

Leaving the hole mostly unfilled, he dragged a wooden board over and placed it on top. Then he kicked some soil and leaves over the plank of wood, disguising it, blending it with the rest of the forest groundcover.

“About time, genius,” Gordie coughed as Jake joined him.

“No need to be a jerk,” Jake said. Finally he'd had enough.

Gordie turned to face Jake, examining him with his steely unblinking eyes. He recognized he was pushing boundaries. “Okay, Jake. Relax. Stash this second backpack and be quick about it. Unless I've hurt your feelings?”

Jake shook his head. That was good enough, he supposed. “Give it to me.” Jake snatched the backpack and ventured off into the woods.

Gordie scanned the trees and breathed a sigh of relief. A smile crept across his face. He called out to Jake. “C'mon! Hurry up.”

Soon both men were returning to the white van. “That was just too frigging easy,” Jake laughed, suddenly feeling free of the burden of what was safely stowed in the backpacks, deep in the woods.

“Don't count your chickens just yet,” said Gordie.

Jake opened the passenger's side door and turned around, holding the gloves, two security uniforms and two Halloween masks, what appeared to be a zombie and a Frankenstein's monster. “Why do you always have to be so serious? Come on, relax. We did it. We're on easy street now, man,” Jake said, oblivious to the teenaged-sized footprints in the mud, which he was obliterating with his every step.

The Pineville High School was imposing as approached from the expanse of the athletic field. An older three-level brick and mortar monstrosity, the school housed 235 young minds week on week. One of the oldest buildings in Pineville, the school stood strong on the horizon. Built in the late 1800's as part of the railway expansion, the building converted to a school in 1935 when the commuter trains stopped slipping past the town.

Aaron looked up from his mud-caked shoes and picked up the pace. He was really going to be late at this rate.

With a squeak, Aaron entered the polished locker-lined corridors, and didn't pay much attention to the boiler-suited janitor with a mop in his hand, who was aghast that Aaron had left footprints marking his freshly clean floors.

Aaron made a beeline for the nearest classroom on the left – he passed by the walls, covered with famous literary quotations and paper flyers touting various school productions of plays by Steinbeck, Miller, Mamet, and Shakespeare. He knew by the noises inside the room that he was indeed late for English, with Miss Becker.

Miss Amanda Becker. She wasn't like the other teachers. In her mid-20s, in a skirt, heels and a blouse, she was the thing of teenaged fantasies. A teacher in the ballpark age of her students – and in the tight clothes that challenged every boy's mind to focus on Shakespeare. She tossed her straight sandy blonde hair often, and her glossed lips looked angelic as she helped the students speak in 17
^th
century prose.

It wasn't inconceivable that any one of them had a shot with her. It wasn't outside the realm of possibilities. One day their age differences wouldn't matter. So, perhaps, maybe, who knows. It happens all the time; there was a case recently featured on CNN, thought Aaron, before shaking it off. Too weird. His mind wandered back to waiting for the right moment to make his entrance.

“This is Shakespeare guys, not Tennessee Williams,” Amanda announced from the side of the room. She was watching two boys dressed in Elizabethan clothing as they acted out the final scene in Hamlet in front of an audience of fellow students. “He wrote the words that way for a reason. Keep going.”

One of the boys, Mike, leaned on his sword. The plastic blade bent and he looked down as it was starting to give way under his weight. “Do we get to use real ones on Monday, Miss Becker?”

“Yes, Michael, you get to use the real one during the play, now please continue.”

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince,”
Mike said, jumping back into character, as Amanda stepped towards the stage.

Peering into the room, Aaron knew he couldn't wait any longer; he decided to slip in now, and hopefully Miss Becker wouldn't interrupt the rehearsal just to bite his head off. He sauntered in and slid into the nearest empty seat. “Aaron! What time do you call this?”

Aaron released a long sigh. It was going to be one of those days. He looked over his shoulder at Miss Becker and she was already crooking her finger, beckoning him to the back of the class. Her face was a mask of displeasure and nothing like the fantasy conjured up by his television fantasies.

“I thought you took this role seriously, Aaron,” Amanda whispered in hushed tones.

“I do, Miss Becker, I do,” Aaron whispered back to her, lifting his copy of Hamlet–considerably worse for wear after its dunk in the puddle. Amanda cast her eyes over the disheveled book and it appeared that her disappointment was gaining momentum.

“If you really want to be a professional on Broadway someday, you need to realize how the simple act of being late can affect the entire production. The play is called Hamlet… and you're Hamlet,” she said, poking him in the chest with a ruby-polished nail. “That means this whole thing rests on your shoulders. Understand?”

Aaron looked down at his dirty shoes and then back into Amanda's eyes. “Yeah, but it's not my fault. My dad's in the middle of some stupid deal and couldn't drive…”

“Another part of being a responsible actor is taking your lumps and not passing the buck. Okay?”

“Okay, Miss Becker. I apologize for being late,” responded Aaron. “Should I jump in?”

“Yes, Aaron, please join the group. We can't practice 'Ham-let' without Hamlet,” Amanda said as she patted Aaron on the shoulder.

Aaron moved to the front of the class, glancing back at Miss Becker, who was staring out the window, arms crossed. Just when Aaron was becoming worried that Amanda was extremely angry with him, she pulled herself away from the window, smiled and focused on the group of teens at the front of the stage, assessing their stances and stage placements.

Aaron also assessed the small group, but with a less Shakespearean focus. The group consisted of about ten students, who played the characters of the last scene. Most of the students were dressed in modern clothing, most of which were
cheap knock offs from discount stores. With t-shirts, baggy shorts, and tank tops matching the shaggy modern hairstyles, the group looked more apt for a run on the beach than recite classic lines.