The man didn’t say anything. He gave me a little nod of his head and walked away from me. That’s the exact moment I knew he had a gun.
You’re going to have to go with me on this one. Nine years old, and somehow I knew this. You’re thinking I’m just looking back at it a certain way, and because I was about to find out what happened next, somehow in my mind I’m filling in this detail. That in my memory I’m adding this part. But I swear to God. You can freeze time right there and I already knew exactly what was about to happen. He was going to go back up and he was going to take the gun out with his right hand and he was going to point the gun at Uncle Lito’s head and tell him to empty out the cash register. Just like in one of my comic books.
As soon as the man turned away from me, I closed the door. There was a phone in the back room. I picked up the receiver and dialed 911. It rang twice, and a woman’s voice answered. “Hello. Do you have an emergency?”
An emergency. Maybe that’s what it would take. When it was time for me to speak, when I really needed to… the words would come.
“Hello. Can you hear me? Do you need help?”
I held the phone tight in my hand. There were no words coming out. It wasn’t going to happen. I knew that. I knew that without any doubt at all, and in that same moment I knew something else. The sick feeling I had been living with… the living, breathing fear I had been feeling, every second of every day… it was all gone. Every bit of it. At least temporarily. For those next few minutes, when I did what I did next. It was the first time I didn’t feel scared about anything since that day in June.
The operator was still talking, her voice fading to a faraway squeak as I dropped the receiver and it hung swinging by its cord. Turns out that was enough to get the police there, by the way. You call 911 like that and leave the line open, they have to come check it out. But on this night, it wouldn’t be soon enough to stop the robbery.
I opened the door and walked out into the store. Down the long aisle of bottles. I could hear the man talking in a quick, high voice.
“That’s right, man. All the money. Right now, man.”
Then Uncle Lito’s voice, an octave lower. “Just take it easy, friend. Okay? Nobody has to do anything stupid here.”
“What’s that kid doing back there? Where’d he go?”
“Don’t you worry about him. He’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Why don’t you call him up here? I’m getting nervous. You don’t want that.”
“He can’t even hear me if I tried. He’s deaf and dumb, okay? Just leave him out of this.”
That’s when I turned the corner and saw them. I can still remember every detail in that scene. Uncle Lito, paper bag in one hand, bills from the open register in the other. The wall of sample bottles behind him. The coffee can on the counter, my picture taped to the rim, above it the sign asking for money to help out the Miracle Boy.
Then the man. The robber. The criminal. The way he stood there with the gun gripped tight in his right hand. A revolver shining in the fluorescent light.
He was scared. I could see that as clearly as I could see his face. This gun in his hand, it was supposed to take the fear away, to make him the master of this whole situation. But it was doing exactly the opposite. It was making him so scared he could barely think straight. This was an instant lesson for me, even at nine years old. It was something I’d remember forever.
The robber looked at me for the first two seconds, swung the gun my way in the third.
“Michael!” he said. “Get the hell out of here!”
“I thought you said he was deaf,” the robber said. He came over to me and grabbed my shirt. Then I felt the barrel of the gun pressing against the top of my head.
“What are you doing?” my uncle said. “I told you I’ll do anything you say.”
I could feel the robber’s hands shaking. Uncle Lito’s face had gone white, his own hands outstretched like he was trying to reach me. To pull me away. I didn’t know which one of them was more terrified at that point. But, like I said, I wasn’t scared myself. Not one little bit. It’s the one advantage you have maybe, being scared all the time. When it’s time to really be scared, when all of a sudden you’re finally supposed to be scared… it just doesn’t happen.
My uncle fumbled with the money, trying to stuff it all into the paper bag. “Take the money,” he said. “For God’s sake, just take it and get out of here.”
The robber pushed me away, grabbing the bag with his left hand while he kept the gun aimed with his right, swinging it back and forth between us. Me, my uncle, me again. Then he backed away, toward the door, passing right by me. I didn’t move. When he was two feet away, he took one quick look down at me.
I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t try to take the money away from him, or try to take the gun. I didn’t stick my finger in the muzzle and smile at him. I just stood there and looked at him like he was a fish in an aquarium.
“Fucking weirdo kid.” He pushed the door open with his left elbow, nearly dropping the bag of money. He recovered and ran to his car and drove away, spinning his wheels as he hit Main Street.
Uncle Lito scrambled out from behind the register and went to the door. By the time he got there, the car was out of sight.
He turned back to me. There was so much adrenaline pumping through his body by now, he was practically vibrating.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he said. “What in goddamned hell…”
He sat down, right there on the floor, breathing hard. He stayed there until the police showed up. He kept looking at me, but he didn’t say anything else. So many questions in his mind, I’m sure, but why bother asking them when he knew he’d get no answers?
I sat down next to him, to keep him company. I felt a tentative hand on my back. We sat there and waited, sharing the silence.
Four
New York City
Late 1999
It seemed like the last place on earth to me, this little Chinese restaurant on the ground floor of an eight-story building on 128th Street. The family who ran the place had a lease for the first floor only, and the top floors were supposedly locked up tight and scheduled for renovation by the owner at some undetermined point in the future. So naturally, those boards that were blocking the stairwell got taken down and a number of people ended up living upstairs. Extended members of the family first, the cousins and second cousins who came over to America to work ninety hours a week in the restaurant. Then the occasional outsider who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut, and who could pay the family a certain amount of money every month. In cash, of course.
I was passed along to the family, after the man who sold me my new identity passed me along to this other guy he knew, who in turn passed me along to somebody else. My room ended up being on the third floor. That was about as high as you wanted to go. Any higher and the heat from the first-floor kitchen wouldn’t quite get to you. Plus nobody had an extension cord that was long enough to reach to the fourth floor. So it was dark and freezing cold, and on top of that the rats had already claimed those floors as their own.
I hadn’t thought to change my appearance yet. That would come later. But I figured being officially on the run from the State of Michigan, a violator of my terms of probation, and having done my first real money job… No turning back now, right? Hence the New York driver’s license with the made-up name of William Michael Smith and the made-up age of twenty-one. I didn’t use it to get into bars, though. Believe me. I stayed inside as much as I could, because I was convinced that every police officer I saw was actively looking for me. Even in the middle of the night, when I’d hear a siren down on the street… I’d be convinced that they had finally found me.