Red Room Where the Writers Are

Issue/Publication: none

Web Links

The uniformed police one on either side of each handcuffed man exited the building into the springtime sunshine. They quickly led the assumed criminals across the sidewalk to the waiting patrol cruisers. Jason watched as one of the officers opened the door, and the other one spun their captive around and helpfully placed a hand on top of the head and shoved them into the back seat. The door slammed and the officers then faced one another as they conferred on their next steps.It looks like a drug bust, Jason thought as he leaned against his old Impala and drew a long drag from his Marlboro. That confirms the report he had heard on the scanner now lying on the duct tape repaired seat behind him. Now, he just had to get the timing right. He looked at the watch on his left wrist and wrote some notes on the pad in his left hand. The cruisers that the handcuffed men had been assisted into, now containing their uniformed passengers as well, pulled out from the curb.Jason made another note to himself on the note pad. He had been standing in front of the two-story building in downtown Bend since before the cruisers had pulled up. He had listened to the dispatch on his hand help band scanner, and since he lived just a few blocks away the time for him to casually come to watch the show was negligible. Now the street and sidewalk outside the old brick building was relatively quiet. Casually he stood, slipped the note pad into a back pocket and strolled along the walk to stand parallel to the crime scene van parked by the curb. He stood and listened to the radio in the van cab talking to itself, then leaned against the brick wall and fished another cig from his pack. He lit the new stick from the glowing cherry of its predecessor. With a flick Jason tossed the butt into the puddle in the gutter just ahead of the van.Nothing was happening here. He took another drag from his cig and stepped out into the sidewalk, looking up at the windows of the apartments on the second floor. A curtain moved as he watched. It was the third from the corner. It must have been in the corner apartment. Movement again, then the dark head of the CSI he had seen taking a large case from the back of the van came into his view. Hurriedly while still trying to appear casual, Jason stepped back over to the brick wall and leaned against it looking down the still awakening street. His right hand was busy with the cigarette, the left shoved into his pants pocket.The fingers of Jason's hand shoved down in his pocket once again brushed then grasped the wide metal disk resting there. His finger tips once again explored the embossed surface gently tracing the embossed character on the surfaces. Two different figures that Jason knew well; in fact all he had to do was close his eyes to see the gold disk he was fondling. The image was seared into his brain now after staring at the thing for hours, hell days, since he first received it. He was gently spinning the disk, still in his pocket when he heard the door where the police had come out open with a hydraulic whoosh. Jason turned his back to the wall again taking a long drag off his cig, while he nonchalantly watched the young woman CSI he had see working in the window above him walk quickly to the van and unlock the side door. In his peripheral vision Jason watched as she retrieved a package from the interior of the van, slammed the door closed again and hurried back to the building door.Jason took a last drag off of his smoke, and flicked the butt the same way he had the earlier one. He pulled the pad from his hip pocket, flipped back a couple of pages and read his entry. Then he checked his watch.A slightly nervous look crossed his weathered face as he now closed the pad and slipped it into a pocket inside his worn work jacket. Nervously he adjusted the knit hat on his head with his right hand and fished the heavy disk out with his left. He blew out his breath hard, causing a huge cloud of breath steam to encircle his head in the cold air, and held the gold disk in both hands before him. For a heartbeat he froze, then for another. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do this, wasn’t sure it would even work like he was told it would. Then he shrugged, either it will work or it won’t. He checked the digital time on the LCD face of his watch, 7:00 am. A quick glance to the right at the round face of the clock in front of the jewelry store confirmed it. Then he looked down at his hands, each clasping a portion of the ornate heirloom.“Fuck it,” he said quietly to himself, then turned the two halves of the disk opposite ways … and was gone. The light was different.This was the first sensory input that told him things had changed. It was darker. It was colder too. And the white CSI van was gone.Jason quickly looked around himself, still holding the heavy disk in his hands. The street lights were brighter too, or he could see them better because of the darkness, and there were no cars on the street at all. He opened his hands and looked at the disk lying there, like he was holding a scorpion instead of an embossed hunk of gold.Then the real test, he looked at his watch. The digital face was blank. That didn’t seem right. He looked up at the lighted clock face on the ornate post set on the sidewalk in front of the jewelry store and noted the time. 6:00 am.“It worked! Holy shit!”He gripped the gold device tightly in his elation, and then quickly slipped it into his pants pocket where he had taken it from. He only had ten minutes, so if he was going to do it, he had better hurry.Jason rushed along the sidewalk to the glass door he had seen the police using and opened it. Quickly he entered and climbed the stairs to the second floor quietly trying to keep mental track of the passage of time and the amount he had left. 9 minutes.He walked along the hall to the last door on his left, set into the wall of the hallway, near where it bent to right continuing to other apartments. Carefully Jason put his ear to the door and listened. He could hear nothing beyond the wooden door, but that didn’t mean anything. If the drug guys were in there, the cops would be carrying a body out later along with the drug guys. 8 minutes.Jason went on around the corner of the hall to the right, and the next corner the left. Here the hallway ran along the front of the building and windows opened to a small courtyard next to where he had been standing. He opened the nearest one and looked out. In the slowly growing dawn light he could make out a ledge that wrapped the front of the building and ran beneath all the windows.7 minutes.Should he take the time to go along the ledge, see if anyone is home, come back then pick the lock, or take a shot and pick the lock? Jason hesitated for three seconds, and then turned away from the window, back the way he had come. If he was going to make this happen he would have to be ballsy. Quickly and quietly he went back to the wooden door. He slipped his Leatherman from its sheath on his belt and unfolded the sharp blade. Carefully he slipped the point into the deformed keyhole of the old door knob and judiciously began to wiggle and turn.6 minutes.Suddenly the tired old lock gave and the door swung open with a slight protest of over painted and rusted hinges. He was looking into an extremely dim apartment, though the gray light was beginning to filter through the high windows. He heard a snore and froze. Soon he heard another further back into the space and decided the occupants were all asleep for now. Slowly he stepped onto the worn carpet of the apartment and swung the door closed with a gentle thud.5 minutes.Money was what Jason was looking for of course. Drug guys always had money around, he thought as he cast about for where it might be. To his right was a small living room. Here were two men asleep, one sprawled on a couch, the other laying on a love seat his feet thrust uncomfortably into the air. To the left was the kitchen, he could barely make out and in the growing light a door beyond that was probably the bathroom. He heard another snore fro what must have been the only bedroom.4 minutes.Slowly he walked into the living room, it looked like several things were piled near the TV. When he was closer he was able to make out several taped cellophane bags full of a white powder, and near this a large gym bag. Carefully Jason clasped the straps of the bag and gently hefted it. It was heavy, but not too heavy. Carefully he touched the slightly rough nylon fabric of the bag and his fingers confirmed; a corner, a bulk an edge, more corners, more bulk. This must be their money.3 minutes.He was running out of time anyway. For all I know, I’m stealing a bag of paperbacks, but I don’t have time to find out now. He turned to the door and tip toes to it. Gently he turned the knob. Carefully he swung the door open. Quickly and cautiously he stepped over the threshold. He heard a yawn and a cough from the couch area. He carefully closed the door. He heard a male voice say, “HEY, what the FUCK!”2 minutes.Running now Jason ran down the hall, around the corner to his right, and then the one to his left. There was the window he had left open and the court yard below. He slid the nylon bag through the opening and dropped it. Behind him heard, “Some mother fucker just stole our fuckin’ money man! Get him” Jason now heard bare feet running toward him as he slid the window closed.1 minute.He turned and ran down the hall, just making it around the next corner, to his right, as the bare feet entered the portion of the hall by the windows. He ran around another corner, this one to his left and he found himself in a long straight hall. It looked to Jason like it was at least a quarter of a mile long and just wide enough for one man to pass down. They were going to get his for sure, but he only needed a few seconds … Jason started running his booted feet pounding on the wooden floor beneath the worn carpet of the hallway. Suddenly he heard, “there he is.” And then a pistol shot.Zero. He was goneStaggering slightly Jason spun to look behind him, expecting a bullet to come ripping through the air. But there was nothing there but the blank brick wall, and the empty sidewalk. Suddenly he realized he wasn’t about to die and that he was standing once again on the gray concrete sidewalk outside the brick building.Quickly he looked at his watch. There were the gray numbers as they had always been, indicating 7:01 am. He looked up at the jewelry store clock; also 7:01 am.Suddenly Jason giggled like he had lost his mind, a bit uncertain that he hadn’t and slammed his right fist into his thigh. “Yeah!” he said. He turned and quickly went to the back of the small courtyard, just beginning to fill with dawn light. There at the base of the brick wall was the duffle bag. Now he could tell it was blue with a red strap sewn to it for a handle. Carefully he picked it up, feeling somewhat like he had seen this bag in a dream and it might disappear in a puff of smoke. But it was real.Slowly he walked to a nearby park bench and sat down, the cloth duffle laying zipper up on his lap. Slowly he found the tab and pulled the zipper open; his eyes hungrily taking in the greenish gray bundles of cash tumbled together in the shaded interior. Now Jason didn’t giggle like a maniac, but began to laugh a full throated belly laugh.