“He’s a new man,” pronounced Smithy. He raised his voice. “Hey, Dom, should we still call you Big Dom?”
“Yeah,” came the shout back. “But more importantly, shut up. It’s against company policy for people to ride in the back.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“S’alright. We’re five minutes out. You sure about this?”
“Damn it, Dom – not you too?”
“I’m just saying … Whatever, man. We’re three blocks away. Time to batten down the hatches.”
The two men hopped down and Smithy turned on the flashlight on his phone. He pushed the wooden lid off the crate and looked inside.
“Helium – check. Balloons – check. Bag full of clothes – check. Paintball gun – check. Crowbar – check. Douchebag Bluetooth headset – check. Phone …” Smithy waggled the device in his hand. “Check.” He pulled on the pair of leather gloves he had also brought with him. “Gloves – check. Right, that’s—”
Diller pointed into the crate. “Leprechaun hat. You didn’t say ‘leprechaun hat’.”
Smithy sighed. “Yes, alright. Leprechaun hat – check. I was trying to preserve the small amount of dignity I still have.”
“Oh, right,” said Diller. “Sorry.”
“OK, then.”
Smithy swung the beam of his flashlight around the back of the truck.
“Something wrong?” asked Diller.
“Not as such, but …” Smithy sighed again. “I can’t see anything to stand on. Could you lift me into the crate, please?”
“Oh. Right. Yeah.”
Chapter Three
Sitting in the dark of the crate, Smithy listened to the thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk rhythm of the hand truck as it trundled across the sidewalk. It provided a slightly out-of-sync backbeat to the sound of Diller whistling “Born to Run”.
Diller wasn’t a fan of Springsteen any more than he was a fan of Lou Reed. Dale Grayson, however – the name of the character he’d come up with for the delivery guy he was playing – was. He had gone into far too much detail, but Smithy had let him run with it. Diller tried to turn every situation into some form of acting exercise, and today he was a 23-year-old UPS guy from Jersey, adopted by white parents at the age of six.
‘Dale’ had found acceptance in his new world through sport. He’d been offered a shot at playing baseball in the minors – but had declined, because his mother was sick. Instead of playing ball, Dale had stayed home and taken night classes in aquatic engineering at the local community college.
If that’s what it took for Diller to help out with the plan, Smithy reasoned, then fine – he could be all that. As long as he also delivered the crate.
Big Dom actually worked for a rival courier firm to UPS. While he was happy to give them a lift with the crate, he would not take part in a fraudulent delivery, he said – it was against the code of the courier. Smithy was pretty sure the code of the courier didn’t exist – not to anyone other than Dom, at least – but he hadn’t queried it. Dom was an especially serious guy and Smithy could respect that.
They had met when Dom was the prop manager at a theatre company he’d worked with briefly before it had imploded, as so many of these things do. Big Dom was a great guy, and when he occasionally needed someone to listen to him while he talked, Smithy was happy to be that ear. It was just over a year since the big guy had been jilted while standing at the altar – literally – and it had left him with some understandable trust issues. The best man and Big Dom’s intended had taken the honeymoon to Cancun. In spite of it all, Dom remained a kind soul with a good heart. Even now, he was sitting around the corner in his van, waiting to give Diller his bike back on his return.
Smithy had more confidence in the plan than Diller had, but that was because he hadn’t wanted to tell his friend exactly how much time he had dedicated to its formulation. For the last two weeks, Smithy had taken a job in the florist across the street from Lousy Louis’s apartment building, just so he could watch the comings and goings.
The two daytime doorpeople split shifts – four days one week, three the next. The woman was in her late forties and conscientious. She liked things to be just so. She paid a great deal of attention to deliveries, kept the reception area studiously neat, and was polite to the other staff. The man, on the other hand, was in his late twenties, and while he was gushingly effusive to the residents, laying the charm on thick, he was lazy and rude to the other staff, particularly the Guatemalan cleaner who had rebuffed his sexual advances.
He was, in short, a lazy douchebag – which was perfect. You could rely on a lazy person to be lazy, and him being a douchebag meant that if it cost him his job, well – instant karma. If the building’s owners had any sense, they would give the job to the nice Guatemalan cleaning lady, who would be an awful lot better at it.
Smithy had learned all of this by carefully watching the building’s toings and froings from his vantage point between the roses, tulips and peonies in the window of Petal to the Metal. It was amazing how much you could learn if you paid enough attention. He’d also discovered that he both enjoyed and had a flair for arranging flowers.
That’s not to say he’d been sad to give up the gig two days ago. Being hit on by Phillip, the bitchy old queen who owned the place, hadn’t bothered Smithy in the least, but Phillip’s statement of “I find myself weirdly attracted to you” meant he could go take a long walk off a short pier. “Weirdly”? Seriously, did he think that was some kind of compliment? It always amazed Smithy how some people seemed to have no grasp of even basic manners. There were a lot of weirdos out there. Coming from a dude dressed as a leprechaun who was hiding in a crate so he could take vengeance on someone who’d paid him five grand for an afternoon’s work, that was really saying something.
The crate took a right turn and Smithy steadied his breathing. He heard the whoosh of the automatic doors opening and the change in sound as the hand truck’s wheels moved from the sidewalk to cold, smooth marble.
“Hey, how ya doing?” said Diller – or rather Dale, in his admittedly well-judged New Jersey accent.
“I am fine, thank you. How are you today, my friend?” said a bright and chipper voice that was not supposed to be there. Smithy had planned it so that the lazy douchebag doorman would be on duty. He’d never heard the man speak, but he was willing to bet that he didn’t have a West African accent.
“Yeah, y’know, I’m getting by. Like the Boss sang, it’s just the working life.”
That seemed a little much.
“What boss?” said the unknown doorman. “Whose boss? I don’t understand.”
“The Boss. Bruce Springsteen.”
“Ah, right, the singer. Is that crate a delivery from him?”
“No,” said Diller. “I was just … Hey, never mind. I got a delivery here for apartment 2601. The penthouse.”
“I see,” said the doorman. “Well, I have nothing on the list here. I will take it and put it into the back room.”
“What? No. I was told it’s gotta be delivered up into the apartment. Got to be left in there.”