They each took hold of one end of the dungarees and the naked man led Arnold across increasingly rougher terrain, presumably farther into the park, warning him at intervals to step over a root or to brace for a culvert. Soon the drone of automobiles gave way to the rhythmic cries of whippoorwills and the low-pitched groaning of night toads, though the men never fully escaped the periodic honking of distant yellow cabs. At one point, a barred owl swept across their path—or at least its shriek sounded like that of a barred owl—and the botanist fell belly-first to the trail. He landed himself with a mouthful of woodchips and windfall leaves. Birches, he thought, by the flavour. It crossed his mind that the Bandit might be toying with him, leading him to a secluded spot before subjecting him to some sort of creative and perverse depravity. Wasn’t this the same man who’d once stolen the scrubs from an operating room full of surgeons and insisted they proceed with the appendectomy in their underwear? And hadn’t he forced a Chasidic rabbi and the imam of a storefront mosque to exchange garb in an act of “religious reconciliation”? Arnold couldn’t help second-guessing his decision to trust an outlaw with such a track record. But what was the worst that could happen? The man might steal his clothing. Humiliate him. Make him wade naked into the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, singing By the Sea, as he’d done to the Lithuanian consul. But all of this was nothing compared to having lost his wife, his home, his garden. Besides, he was the Tongue Terrorist. He imagined that ought to win him some respect, even from a character as depraved as the Bandit.
They marched until Arnold’s ankles throbbed. The botanist sensed they’d circled back over their path several times, and after two hours, he wasn’t sure whether they’d covered a great distance or had returned to where they’d started. His guide, it seemed, was taking no chances. “Stop right here, man,” said the Bandit. “Give me a second.” Then Arnold heard the sound of stone grating against stone, as though the naked man were sliding aside a large boulder. “Come forward and take hold of the guide-rope. It’s nineteen stairs down. When you get to the bottom, you can uncover your eyes.” Arnold considered for a moment that this might be another of the Bandit’s antics, even that the lunatic might be planning to bury him alive. But then the man gave him a gentle push between the shoulder blades and Arnold started off toward the stairs he could not see. He tested the first step with his toe before placing his weight upon it. The air temperature dropped precipitously as he descended. Several of the steps sloped downward, as though chiseled out of the rock-face. When he reached the bottom, he pulled the blindfold from his eyes, expecting to find himself entombed in darkness. Instead, he looked out upon a tidy, well-lit efficiency apartment with limestone walls. The Bandit had secured a boulder over the entryway and was now climbing down the stairs. “Pretty impressive, don’t you think?” asked the lunatic. “I built it myself.”
“Where are we?”
“Under the park,” answered the Bandit. “If I told you any more than that, I’d have to give you the old run-through with my saber.”
The naked man patted the hilt of his sword; he was smiling, but he didn’t sound as though he were speaking in jest.
Arnold surveyed the chamber. One half of the apartment was furnished with a folding cot, a pair of threadbare easy chairs, and a bridge table upon which lay a half-played game of solitaire. A porcelain washbasin and flush toilet stood exposed in a far corner. The opposite side of the room contained row upon row of clothing racks—enough to fill a small department store. Even at first glance, the range of apparel was noteworthy: everything from dark business attire to vintage lingerie to what appeared to be a Native American headdress. The Bandit’s wardrobe vastly exceeded the selection at Gladys and Anabelle’s.
“I bet you have masks in my size,” observed Arnold.
“What are you in the market for?” asked the Bandit. “Would you like the disguise that Ronnie Biggs wore during the Great Train Robbery or one of George Washington’s death masks?”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Help yourself to whatever you’d like,” answered the naked man. “If you’ll excuse me one moment, I’m going to put on some clothing.”
The Bandit disappeared into the thicket of garments. Arnold heard the rustle of fabric as the lunatic rummaged through his trove.
“I don’t need anything, thanks. Not anymore,” called Arnold. He took advantage of the Bandit’s absence to reclothe himself. “But when I first escaped, I was stuck wearing a dreadfully suffocating Nixon mask.”
“Do you still have it with you?”
Arnold fished into his pants pocket. “Sure. You want it?”
“If you don’t,” answered the lunatic, emerging from the maze of astronaut suits and ballroom gowns. He was wearing a long beige trench coat and flip-flops; the point of his scabbard protruded beside his bare, hairless calves. “You never know when an extra costume will come in handy.”
The Bandit took the mask from Arnold and tried it on. “Can I offer you a drink?” he asked. “Maybe a cup of cappuccino?”
“No, I shouldn’t,” replied Arnold.
“Really, I insist,” said the Bandit. “I just acquired a new espresso maker.”
The use of the verb ‘acquired’ struck Arnold as somewhat sinister.
“You’re wondering about the electricity,” observed the Bandit. “It comes from tapped lines. But I only borrow a little from a large number of customers, so nobody ever notices. Same with the water.” The lunatic removed the rubberized mask and stashed it in his coat pocket. Then he set two coffee cups atop a stone countertop and switched on his new appliance. The machine let forth a low-pitched whir. “And as for food, that’s where you come in….” For a moment, Arnold feared the Bandit might be hinting at cannibalism. He felt genuine relief when his companion added, “Your books on foraging are totally priceless, man.”
“Thanks,” said Arnold.
“Really, man. I mean it. I’d have starved down here if not for you,” the lunatic added. “You know I went on one of your walking tours once. Years ago. Before I found my calling. It was a winter expedition out in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, as I remember. You taught us how to chew the roots of bulrushes for nutrients.”
“I’m glad I could be of help.”
“I make a mean fern and scallion manicotti,” boasted the Bandit.
“I’m sure you do.”
The lunatic carried the two cups of cappuccino over to the bridge table. He set them down on a pair of round cork coasters and cleared away the playing cards. Arnold opened up a wooden folding chair and sat down opposite him.
“You don’t mind if I ask you something personal, do you?” asked the Bandit.
“Why not? Everybody else seems to.”
“I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, too. But why’d you stick out your tongue? I mean, you had such an awesome job. Why give it all up like that?”
“You’re right. I have been asked that before.” Arnold remained on guard, watching the Bandit carefully. He was struck by how young and innocent the Bandit appeared close-up, far nearer to Cassandra’s age than to his own. “It’s hard to explain. That’s like asking you why you steal people’s clothes.”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Sure,” admitted Arnold. “It has roused my curiosity.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” agreed the Bandit. “But drink up. Before it gets cold.”
Arnold eyed the cappuccino nervously. Who knew what toxic herb his companion might have added to the beverage? It was even possible the Bandit had learned his poisoning techniques from the botanist’s own book. Arnold had devoted an entire chapter of The Flower Power Diet to “plants to avoid” with warnings that even one azalea leaf or castor bean seed might prove fatal. Never had he considered that his writings could prove a trove for would-be assassins, that arrowroot might easily replace arsenic as the nation’s poison-of-choice. He looked into the foamy cup and then downed the now lukewarm drink in one shot. It was hard to discern whether it tasted like foxglove and laburnum, or just like bad coffee.
“Believe it or not,” explained the Bandit. “I used to be a lawyer. That’s after they threw me out of the army on account of my being psychologically unfit—whatever that means. Basically, they said I frightened my commanding officer. So I went to law school and I specialized in intellectual property of the non-technological sort. Copyrights, trademarks. My expertise was in defending corporations with allegedly offensive names or logos. I spent an entire year of my life insisting that the term Redskins, when applied to football, had nothing to do with Native Americans, and another six months arguing that the Hooters restaurant chain took its name from the mating call of owls. Day after day of nonstop, futile document searches….It was hard to imagine that I’d spent six years in Special Forces and three more in graduate school to end up pushing papers in circles….And then 9-11 happened and it changed everything, man.”
“Were you downtown that day?”
“No, I didn’t even live in New York at the time,” continued the Bandit. “But that doesn’t mean the plane attacks didn’t have a profound effect on my life—though my reaction was apparently different from most other people’s. I guess I actually found the attacks exciting—a break from the daily grind. Like an action movie, but genuinely unpredictable. Maybe that makes me sociopathic. I kept thinking what a great job the terrorists had. Not the idiots who flew the planes, but the guys behind the hijacking. The guys in Afghanistan and Yemen who got to sit around campfires hatching new plots. It sure sounded a lot more challenging than filing endless briefs on behalf of a San Francisco Dairy Queen being sued by a group of homos.”
The Bandit sipped his cappuccino while he spoke. He seemed perfectly calm, but Arnold found his placidity unsettling. If the lunatic had toyed neurotically with a carving knife, or rolled steel ball-bearings between his fingers—anything to confirm his status as a lunatic—it would have brought the botanist a great deal of reassurance. As it was, Arnold felt slightly loony himself in doubting the sanity of his host. He understood exactly why the Bandit’s commanding officer had been terrified.
“After September 11th, I had a hard time concentrating on my work,” said the Bandit. “I’d sit at my desk all morning and I’d think up countless ways of becoming a terrorist. One day, I’d map out plans to leave explosives in women’s purses on the seats at half a dozen Broadway theatres, and the next night, I’d wake up with a scheme to put cyanide in the municipal swimming pools. One of my best ideas involved smuggling explosives into Disneyworld via carefully-weighted helium balloons and blowing up several rides simultaneously. At worst, that could kill fifty kids and cripple another hundred or so—not to mention the economic damage it would cause the tourism industry. I don’t want to sound cocky, but I think some of my plans were well ahead of anything Osama bin Laden could come up with.”
The Bandit looked at Arnold for approval.
“Children are a weak spot for a lot of people,” said the botanist.
“That’s the way I see it, at least,” agreed the Bandit. “But there were a couple of problems with my plan. I didn’t exactly have any of the advantages Osama had—a band of loyal followers…an attractive and coherent ideology…cash… a hiding place in Pakistani mountains. Your book proved really helpful to me on the poisons, and I learned a lot about explosives from the Internet, but none of it made a difference. The bottom line was that I just wasn’t a violent person at heart. I learned that in the service. It’s not that I’m against violence. I mean: Who cares if a bunch of strangers get blown up? I don’t even know them. But violence doesn’t have any particular… allure for me. And I’m not the sort of person to butcher a large number of innocent people if I’m not even going to enjoy it.”
“What would be the point?” asked Arnold.
“Exactly. But then I read about how our interrogators in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay would torture their prisoners by making them stand naked for long periods of time and by forcing them to wear women’s undergarments—and I thought, ‘Hey, that’s something I could do.’ Besides, what’s the use of wearing clothes anyway? I mean, at least in the summer. It doesn’t make much sense. So I resigned from my firm, and sold my stuff, and transformed myself into the Bare-Ass Bandit. It’s not the name I would have chosen—I’d have much preferred Naked Osama or the Mad Clothesnapper or something a bit more ominous—but that’s just how the media is. I may file for trademark protection anyway. And I came back to New York for all the obvious reasons. You know. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”
“And I guess you’ve made it.,” Arnold offered.
The Bandit shrugged. “What exactly is making it, man? Maybe that’s easy to say if you’re a doctor or a jazz musician, but the benchmarks for bandits are much murkier. How can you compare yourself with John Dillinger or Jesse James? You see what I’m saying.”
“You’ve got a point,” agreed Arnold—though he wasn’t sure what it was.
“So now your turn. Why the tongue?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m also sociopathic.”
“The great ones always are,” said the Bandit. He grinned and removed a large plastic clock from his pocket—the sort one might use to teach analogue time to a child. This apparently served the lunatic as a pocket watch. “Anyway, I’d better get going,” he said. “It’s getting late and I’ve still got at least one more job to take care of tonight.”
“You’re going to leave me here?” demanded Arnold.
“Unless you want to come with me,” answered the Bandit. “You’re more than welcome to tag along, man. I could use a partner.”
Maybe because he’d been a fugitive himself for over a month, the offer didn’t sound so unreasonable to Arnold. Although the Bandit made him nervous, he found that after days of social isolation, he actually enjoyed the man’s company.
“What are your plans?” asked Arnold.
“No plans.”
“You don’t choose your victims in advance?”
“Not usually. I just wander around until something comes to me,” said the Bandit. “Say, man, you don’t have any enemies, do you?”
“It seems like all I have are enemies.”
“I mean real enemies. Anyone you want to screw over.”
Arnold sensed where the conversation was headed—and he liked it.
“You ever heard of the Reverend Spotty Spitford?”
“They guy with the sunglasses?” asked the Bandit. “The one who’s got the thing against nudists.”
“That would be him. He’s not too big on terrorists either.”
“I’d love to toy with Spitford, man,” said the Bandit. “Add one of his Brooks Brothers suits to my collection… But we’re not going to.”
The lunatic’s words surprised and disappointed Arnold.
“Why not?” demanded the botanist. “He’s an asshole.”
“No argument from me,” said the Bandit. “But he’s a famous asshole. A very famous one, especially now that he’s leading the crusade against the Tongue Terrorist. I’ve got a rule against going near big-name celebrities…You can screw with ordinary people all you want to, even prominent upper-middle class folks, and the authorities come after you with one arm tied behind their backs, but the minute you mess with some hotshot athlete or movie star or politician, it’s kiss your ass goodbye. Sorry, man, but I’m not getting sent down to settle your score with Spitford.”
“I knew it was too much to hope for,” said Arnold.
“Anybody else on your hit list?”
Lots of people, thought Arnold. Dozens. Hundreds. Not to mention a few individuals he felt genuinely conflicted about—like Cassandra and Gilbert Card. “I have this neighbour of mine,” he said. “Ex-neighbour, I guess. Ira Taylor. A real prick.”
“You want to dish out a little payback?” asked the Bandit.
“Sure,” said Arnold. “Why not?”
Of course there were a thousand reasons why not. Because it was illegal, for starters. And because he’d be working side-by-side with a madman. But all of that seemed small potatoes when compared with the prospect of humiliating the bond trader.
“I like the sound of that,” said the Bandit. “Maybe you are sociopathic.”
He clearly meant this as a compliment. “Thank you,” said Arnold.
The Bandit rummaged through one of the garment racks. “Let’s get you some clothes.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Nothing, if you’re a fugitive botanist,” said the Bandit. “But any successful racket has to have a distinctive M.O.” He stepped from behind a pile of angora sweaters, holding a long grey mackintosh. “Here, try this on.”
Arnold put on the coat.
“Not like that, man,” said the Bandit. “Take your clothes off and then put it on.”
Arnold had little choice but to comply. He hadn’t undressed in the company of another man in many years—possibly since junior high school—and he found the process of removing his clothing in front of the Bandit utterly mortifying, particularly because the man made no effort to look away. In fact, he watched closely as the botanist undressed. Arnold was beginning to sense what the lunatic’s victims must have experienced. Wearing only the long coat, he felt like a flasher. If he could somehow get hold of a horn, at least he might pass as Harpo Marx.
“There you go,” said the Bandit, pleased. “How does that feel?”
“Airy.”
“You’ll get used to it. Now all we need is to find you a weapon.”
“What if I don’t want a weapon?”
“Trust me, you’ll want a weapon,” said the Bandit. “Besides, it reduces the chance of violence….How are you with swordplay?”
“What do you mean?”
“Any experience fencing? Or in martial arts? Maybe kendo…?”
“What’s kendo?
“Okay, let’s skip the sword….”
“I like the sound of that,” said Arnold.
“If you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re much better off with a gun.”
“A gun—?!”
The Bandit didn’t answer directly. Instead, he dragged a large steamer trunk out from beneath one of his clothes racks. It contained an extensive assortment of pistols, rifles, shotguns and even a crossbow. “How about a .38 Smith & Wesson?” he offered, handing Arnold a jet black revolver. The lunatic might just as well have suggested a water pistol or an AK-47—Arnold wouldn’t have known the difference. “Watch the recoil on that,” warned the Bandit.
“The what?”
“Jesus,” muttered the lunatic. “It jolts backwards when you fire.”
“I don’t intend to fire it,” answered Arnold.
He tucked the revolver into the holster that the Bandit provided. The weapon had Philadelphia Police Department engraved in the barrel.
“I’ve got to blindfold you again,” added the Bandit. “Nothing personal.”
He quickly secured a cloth rag around Arnold’s eyes.
“Ready to roll?” asked the Bandit.
“I guess,” answered Arnold. “But Ira Taylor lives all the way down in the West Village. Aren’t we going to look pretty damn conspicuous dressed like this.”
“Don’t worry,” responded his companion. “There’s a police station very close by here.
“That’s supposed to reassure me?”
“We’ll go by squad car, man. I do it all the time,” explained the Bandit. “You know how cops are. They leave their cars in front of the stationhouse day and night—with the engines running. They figure: Who the hell is going to be stupid enough to steal a police cruiser from in front of a stationhouse? Arrogant bastards. Besides, if you turn on the sirens, you can make damn good time….”
“You’re totally nuts.”
“Maybe. But it works.”
It sounded too easy to Arnold. “Don’t they have tracking devices in police cars these days?”
“You must think I’m a total moron, man. Of course they do. But the tech is newer than the cars themselves are, so it’s not built in. There are special boxes attached under the hoods,” explained the Bandit. “That makes it real simple. Before you borrow a car, you exchange the tracking box with the tracker on another cruiser. That confuses the hell out of them. By the time they figure out what you’ve done, you could have driven cross country.”
“You really have thought of everything,” said Arnold.
“More or less,” said the Bandit. “The best part is listening to the police on the radio in the cruiser. There’s nothing more fun than a bunch of confused cops searching for their own vehicle.”
They turned on the sirens and arrived downtown in record time. While they darted their way through late-night traffic, the police radio did broadcast a heated argument between two cops over whether their car had been stolen or merely misplaced. When the Bandit tired of this debate, he flipped off the radio and quizzed Arnold about the botanist’s animosity toward the bond trader. “I try to custom design my projects,” explained the Bandit. “In the army they called this a God-complex. But I don’t have the foggiest idea why. Does it seem to you like God custom designs his projects?”
“I guess not,” said Arnold.
He was struck by the ease with which the Bandit relied on a personal vocabulary of euphemisms: not just ‘acquire’ and ‘projects’ and ‘calling,’ but also ‘beneficiary’ for victim and ‘comfortable’ for naked. If he were ever to give another media interview, Arnold decided, he intended to refer to the baseball game incident as his ‘project’ and the Yankees fans as ‘beneficiaries.’
“I’m the opposite of God,” said the Bandit. “God is careless.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Most people don’t. They assume that God has some sort of grand design. But He doesn’t, as far as I can tell,” said the lunatic. “That’s why I have to help Him out sometimes in the meting-out-justice department.”
The Bandit cruised down Ninth Avenue and then cut west on Seventh Street. As they approached Arnold’s own home, the familiar sites of the neighbourhood—the leafy branches of the linden trees, the brickwork advertising Goldstein’s Packaged Meats—sent a shiver down his back. “We’ll sneak up on him from behind,” explained the lunatic. “That way we’ll avoid the chaos outside your place.” But when they reached the block behind Arnold’s townhouse, that street was also lined with police and a handful of determined demonstrators. The protesters had brought along aluminium lawn chairs and pup tents. The authorities must have discovered Arnold’s ladder trick—maybe Cassandra had given him away—and they were taking precautions to prevent him from sneaking back inside.
“What now?” demanded Arnold.
“Easy,” answered the Bandit. “We’ll have to go in through the opposite building.”
“Dressed like this?” asked the botanist.
“Just watch.”
The Bandit parked the car and opened the wrought-iron gate of the renaissance brownstone immediately behind Taylor’s. An unambitious row of pansies lined the short slate path leading up to the house. Garbage cans and recycling bins stood beside the bright-yellow Dutch doors; the brass knocker was shaped like an elephant. Arnold’s companion rang the bell and waited patiently.
They heard footsteps approaching. A studious-looking, sallow-skinned man in a cashmere pullover opened the door and examined the two of them suspiciously. “Yes?” he demanded. Arnold noticed that he wore a flesh-coloured hearing aide.
The Bandit reached into his jacket and produced a badge. “NYPD,” he barked. “We need access to your back yard.”
“Well, all right…” stammered the sallow-skinned man.
“We’re undercover,” explained the Bandit. “Backup is on its way.”
“Is there a problem….?”
“You’re fine,” said the Bandit. “It’s your neighbour we’re after.”
“Oh, the tongue fellow—”
“No, not Brinkman. We’re after a man named Ira Taylor. You know him…?”
“Taylor….Taylor….I know the one. His son used to throw rubbish on my lawn. Until a couple of years ago. Then I paid the kid $100 and he stopped. Carrot always works better than the stick, as they say.”
The Bandit stepped past the home owner, and they crossed through a study into a kitchen. The air smelled of mildew and the appliances might easily have come from the set of a 1950s sitcom. Arnold followed the lunatic down the back stairs, through a garden of Bell peppers and patty-pan squash, and over a low retaining wall into the bond trader’s yard. It was immaculately tended and without so much as a gum-wrapper or cigarette butt. All grass, no clover. A large variety of tea roses blossomed beside the stockade fence. Arnold was still admiring the greenery, which included a series of topiary hedges cut to resemble human breasts, when the Bandit pounded on the back door of Taylor’s townhouse.
Taylor came to the door in his weekend casuals: a cambric shirt, beige khakis, penny loafers. “What the hell—?” He hadn’t unhooked the latch, but the Bandit barrelled into the door and snapped the chair off the moulding. That sent the bond trader stumbling backwards, where he landed on his behind. The lunatic kept him pinned to the ground by levelling the saber at the man’s abdomen. Arnold followed the Bandit through the shattered door.
“You!” shouted Taylor when he spotted Arnold. “Mother-fucker!”
“Watch your language,” ordered the Bandit. “Is there anybody else home?”
“No….” spluttered Taylor. “They’re out on the Island already. I’ll be joining them in the morning.”
“I highly doubt that,” observed the Bandit. “But first things first. My friend Arnold here will need your clothing.”
“It’s in the bedroom. First door on the—”
The Bandit jabbed Taylor lightly. “What you’re wearing,” he clarified. “Stand up slowly and remove your clothes.”
“You have to be out of your mind if you think—”
Arnold’s companion jabbed him harder with the sword. He drew blood.
“Okay, okay,” said the bond trader. “Just let me up.”
He stripped out of the shirt and slacks. The Bandit slammed his sword against a seascape in the foyer, slashing the canvas in two, and Taylor quickly handed over his boxer shorts as well. “That’s an original Winslow Homer,” he said in alarm.
“Was an original Winslow Homer,” countered the lunatic. “Now it’s confetti.” He slashed the canvas several more times. “What do you say, Arnold? Shall we tar and feather him?”
“You’re the boss.”
“That’s right, I am,” agreed the Bandit. “Why don’t you put those clothes on, man, and then we’ll get the hell out of here.”
Arnold tossed the bond trader’s shirt over his shoulders. He was disappointed that the Bandit didn’t intend more damage. Taylor must have had the same thought, because he appeared somewhat relieved.
“You got a car?” asked the Bandit.
The naked bond trader stood with his arms folded across his muscular chest. His limbs were blanketed in curly auburn hair.
“I asked you a question,” shouted the Bandit. He held his saber above his right shoulder with both hands as though wielding a sledge hammer.
“In the garage. The Mercedes….Amelia took the Hummer to the Island.”
“Then let’s go for a drive,” said the Bandit.
“You want me to come with you?” Taylor asked incredulously. “Like this?”
“It’s an invitation I wouldn’t turn down if I were you.” The lunatic then walked around the ground floor of the apartment overturning furniture and slashing paintings. A cabinet of figurines toppled onto the piano with a cacophonous reverberation. “Just so you don’t forget us, Ira,” the Bandit explained.
The victim—the beneficiary—endured the destruction stoically. He was either searching for an escape route or calculating his insurance payouts. Arnold continued changing into Taylor’s outfit. The clothes fit loosely.
“You ready?” the lunatic asked Arnold.
“Lead the way.”
“Let’s have our special guest lead the way,” countered the Bandit. He prodded the naked bond trader with his sword and they followed him down the basement steps into the two-car garage. Arnold’s companion ordered Taylor into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and instructed Arnold to sit up front as well. “If he makes any sudden moves,” urged the lunatic. “Pop him one.” The Bandit settled in behind Taylor with his saber resting on the driver’s scalp. He instructed his victim to pull onto the street.
“Drive north up Broadway,” ordered the Bandit. “Keep driving until I tell you to stop.”
“Where are we going?” asked Arnold.
“Staten Island,” said the Bandit.
“Staten Island?”
“You said our friend here has a thing for garbage. Well I figured he wouldn’t mind a trip out to see the municipal landfill.”
Ira Taylor didn’t dare turn his head, but his eyes darted nervously from the gun to the rear-view mirror. “You won’t get away with this,” he warned. “I’ll sue the pants off you, Brinkman. I’ll take you for every last dime.”
“What was that about pants?” asked the Bandit.
The bond trader’s cheeks and ears turned a fiery pink.
“I wouldn’t say you’re in a great position to be levelling threats, Ira,” observed the Bandit. “Besides, aren’t you the one who’s always telling people to lump it? What happened to all that community spirit? Taking one for the team? You’re not the sort of stickler who’d sue over a minor kidnapping, are you?”
“Fuck you,” snapped Taylor.
The Bandit tapped the man’s skull with the saber blade. Taylor winced.
“I think it’s time for a silent contest,” said the Bandit. “Just like when we were kids. Let’s see how long our friend Ira can stay quiet for. Do you know what the winning prize is, Arnold?”
“What’s the winning prize?”
“If he stays quiet long enough, I won’t scalp him.”
The Bandit’s threat betrayed absolutely no emotion—he could as easily have been speaking of filleting a fish. They continued driving up Broadway. It was already late in the evening, so traffic was light.
“Isn’t Staten Island south of here?” asked Arnold.
“It was last time I checked,” said the Bandit. “But we can’t risk crossing the Hudson in the city. Too many cops guarding the bridges and tunnels. What we’ll do is drive up to the Catskills on local roads and cross there, then we’ll come back down on the New Jersey side.”
“The Catskills!” shouted Taylor. “That could take hours.”
“You just earned yourself a scalping,” said the Bandit. “I’m afraid that will have to wait until we get there. But one more word and I’ll cut your testicles off on the spot.”
That silenced the naked man for the remainder of the four hour drive.
They crossed into the countryside, cutting through secondary growth forests of hickory and basswood. Orion’s bow grew visible in the night sky. Deer grazed on the grassy mounds at the roadside. While they drove, the Bandit spoke at great length on the potential benefits of castration and the historical contributions of castrati. He told of Cai Lun, the Chinese eunuch who’d invented writing paper, and the Byzantine general, Narses, who’d reconquered Italy for the Emperor Justinian. He also shared with them his expansive knowledge of the self-castrating skoptzy of nineteenth century Russia. Listening to the lunatic’s eloquent soliloquy was almost enough to convince his audience that only a true fool would want to hold onto his testicles. But just when the Bandit’s words were actually starting to make sense—far too much sense—the lunatic broke off his lesson and started singing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” at the top of his voice. Then he stopped as suddenly as he’d begun and gave Ira Taylor orders to turn down a narrow gravel road. By now they were already on Staten Island, near the municipal landfill, and a series of increasingly hostile signs warned them against trespassing.
The Mercedes pulled up in front of a gatehouse. It was a small, wooden structure with a mansard roof; moss covered one of the exterior walls. A bright orange control bar blocked their farther advance. Beyond the access point rose mounds of household garbage, some five stories high, surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Coils of barbed wire rimmed the upper edge of the gates. A pair bulldozers and a backhoe stood lifeless on the opposite side. At the window of the gatehouse, a pot-bellied, grey-haired guard sat listening to a transistor radio. When they stopped, the guard looked up indifferently.
“You guys are lost, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Do you mean that in a physical sense or a moral sense?” retorted the Bandit.
That’s when the guard must have noticed that Taylor wasn’t wearing any clothing, because he reached for his phone, but by then it was too late. The Bandit was already outside the vehicle with his saber point resting against the guard’s flabby throat. Arnold kept his revolver trained on the bond trader.
“I’ll have to ask you to step outside and remove your clothes,” said the Bandit.
The guard looked as though he might weep. “Please, please don’t do anything to me,” he begged. “I have money. In my wallet….”
“We don’t need your money,” answered the Bandit. “We need your clothes.”
“Oh my God,” blubbered the guard. “Perverts. Like… Deliverance.”
The Bandit opened the gatehouse door and pushed the guard out onto the pavement. “We’re not perverts,” he said. “But the man driving that car is a very dangerous sexual predator. Aren’t you, Ira?”
The bond trader said nothing.
“Okay, pop him one, Arnold,” order the Bandit.
“—No!” cried Taylor. “I mean yes! I’m a famous sexual predator. A dangerous one too.”
The bond trader bared his teeth in an effort to look threatening.
“That’s the spirit, Ira,” said the Bandit. “Now if you don’t start removing your clothing by the time I count to three,” he warned the guard, “I’m going to hand you over to our naked friend. He prefers to work with children, you understand, particularly little boys, but he’ll take what he can get.”
“One,” counted the Bandit.
The guard’s entire body was shaking.
Now the guard reached for his shirt buttons and began undressing. He fumbled with them one at a time.
“Good job,” said the Bandit. “I thought you’d see it our way.”
The man continued blubbering while he undressed, but the Bandit ignored him. He took off his own trench coat and put on the guard’s overshirt.
“Wait a second,” said the guard. “That guy in the car. He’s the asshole from the baseball game.”
“That is Mr. Brinkman,” said the Bandit.
“You never think it will happen to you…” muttered the guard.
“Underwear too,” the Bandit demanded. “And socks.”
“Please,” pleaded the guard—but he didn’t stop undressing. “Okay, I’m naked,” he finally said. “Now will you let me go?”
“You don’t look naked to me,” observed the Bandit. “Say, Arnold, does he look naked to you?”
The guard did appear decidedly naked to Arnold. His hairy barrel of a belly hung forward over his flaccid, uncircumcised penis; a blotchy rash covered much of his chest. Even a lunatic should have been able to tell that the man had run out of clothing. “I can’t see from here,” said Arnold.
“Well, I can see from here,” answered the Bandit. “What’s that?”
He poked at the guard’s throat with his saber.
“That’s my Saint Christopher’s medal. It brings me good luck.”
“Obviously, man,” answered the Bandit. “You’re clearly a very lucky guy.”
The guard gulped. Arnold watched his Adam’s apple moving.
“Next time, you’re better off with Saint Jude. He’s for desperate causes, right?”
The guard’s face had gone white; he looked as though he might vomit.
“I asked you a question,” barked the Bandit.
“St. Jude,” stammered the guard. “Desperate causes, yes. I think so.”
“You think? Or you know?”
“I know. Yes, I know. I know.”
“Aha!” declared the lunatic, lowering his sword. “You’re a religious man. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Oh, please,” begged the guard. “I’m very religious.”
“That changes everything. I’d never decapitate a religious Christian.”
The guard exhaled audibly. “You wouldn’t?”
“It’s much more fitting to crucify one,” said the Bandit.
Arnold hadn’t been prepared for this. But he’d exposed himself to the mercies of a lunatic, so now he had to follow through. He waved the gun as a reminder to Taylor.
“Hand over the medal,” commanded the Bandit.
The guard unclasped the chain and gave it to him.
The Bandit handed the medal to Arnold. “Here’s a souvenir for you. St. Christopher’s the patron saint of gardeners.”
Arnold wrapped his fingers around the chain.
“Now up against that fence,” insisted the Bandit. “Arms above your head. Legs spread.” Then he ordered the bond trader out of the Mercedes and had him tie the naked guard to the fence in a giant X formation. “They should find you in the morning, man,” observed the Bandit. “This is a good lesson for you. Always wear sun block… even if you’re not headed out to the beach.” He tested the guard’s bonds. “But no screaming until then. Or we’ll have to come back and use nails.”
“I won’t scream,” promised the guard. “I swear I won’t scream.”
“That’s the spirit,” said the Bandit. “And now that leaves only you, Ira.”
The bond trader stood helpless on the macadam. It was a chilly night and he’d started to shiver.
“I think it’s into the garbage with you,” mused the Bandit. “How does that sound to you, Arnold?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“You heard him,” said the lunatic. “Into the garbage. Now!”
Taylor looked from the saber to the gun and walked toward the nearest mound of household waste. The light from the guard house illuminated the millions of soiled packages, left-over wrappers, and undigested meals. It let off a truly noxious stench.
“Now!” shouted the Bandit. “Garbage or death!”
To emphasize this point, Arnold discharged the revolver. It actually bounced off the waste pile far closer to the bond trader than he’d intended, but that sent Taylor scurrying into the mounds of human refuse.
Arnold fired again and again and again. He was careful to keep his weapon pointed far from the bond trader, but he kept firing until the man disappeared into the dunes of rubbish. Then he started laughing. Terrorizing his enemies was far more enjoyable than he’d ever imagined.
