"The beeps of a hospital room are enough to drive anyone crazy," I thought "who do you have to bribe at this hospital to turn them off?" With a sigh, I rolled over to look out the window as the sunlight streamed in. It's the start of another day and already I can feel the dread coming on. The hospital was nice enough sure but I know myself and any time I spend too long in one place I grow a little restless. Add to that the boring humdrum of hospital life and I was tempted to call 911 from the bed and get transferred to another hospital just so I wouldn't die of boredom. So maybe I was wrong and I didn't get a little restless, I got a lot restless and this was only day two of my sentence. I sighed knowing that until we figured out what was going on with me, I wouldn't know when I would be let out. How did I get in this situation? Although I knew it was immature of me, I blamed grandpa Joe. Everything always was worse whenever grandpa Joe was involved. I remembered the day when it all went downhill.
Uncle Frank left me to collect the items while he picked up our new partners for the night. Why we needed to work with anyone new was a question I had no answer for. Uncle Frank, for all his faults was more than adept at planning and organizing work and when we had a need that had to be filled outside the two of us he filled that slot no problem. I guess it's like they always said, "When grandpa Joe wants you to do something…you do it." I sighed as I resigned myself to what seemed like only more inevitable frustrations as long as Joe was in my life. It didn't help that gathering the supplies was so easily done it left my brain time to stew on life's many frustrations.
Grandpa Joe, the patriarch of my family was about as ruthless as he was greedy. He is the reason my life is the way it is, setting those in his family down the path he was actively working to pave. It angered me to no end how just because he was able to procreate, he somehow had the power to shift the destinies of those around him. My parents were the most recent victims. Leo and Holly were two of the most proficient thieves of their times. Holly, ever the swindler was proud of the fact that she was the reason the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies had to change their profiles for con men, all because they weren't able to include the parameters of such a capable con woman. She always said the two honest things she did in her life was marry my father Leo and have me. Leo was a forger who could make Michelangelo look at a copied piece my father did of his work, and declare it better than the original. They met while both casing a museum in NYC and were literal partners in crime ever since. Joe was happy to induct my mom into his family. Not because it meant that his son found someone who made him happy, or because she brought with her a new perspective, skill set, and laundry list of suspected crimes that had never been proven. No, he welcomed her because of the baby that was growing in her stomach. Or as I liked to refer to myself, the captive.
I used to love my life, living with my parents. The travel never got boring, the museum casings…I mean outings were beautiful and full of masterpieces that set my imagination wild. My dad would stare at the paintings with me forever. Both of us marveling and the brush strokes that were deliberately done with care to create the desired look. The ability of someone to take harsh tones and use it to shade in the softness of an innocent neck. Or how the same blue used to create the river waters raging under a boat could be mixed and manipulated to also create the regal powerful uniform of the soldiers crossing the angry river. I loved our family games of who could pick pocket the most on one block before walking to the next. For years I would lose, even when partnered with my dad because we just couldn't keep up with my mom. It wasn't until I started growing that I was able to even it out to where it was more of a competition. Usually she would still manage to win, but I at least made us count up the winnings before we declared a ruling. They loved me and I loved them and Joe saw this as a weakness. He stepped in and meddled because he could, because he was concerned about his investments, just like he did with tonight's job. I took a deep breath before that thought could anger me too much. I heard the door start to open and knew that once Uncle frank came in, we were on the clock. I braced myself as the door opened and heard, "Mikey! I need to see you in the kitchen, now!"
I stood up and walked out of my room to see Frank walk through the door way, hurriedly going to the kitchen, two other men following him through the door. I had noticed immediately he hadn't used my real name and my attention quickly turned to high alert, this wasn't going to be our normal heist. I passed the two men, barely sparing any of my attention on them, I had to get to the bottom of what was wrong with Frank.
"Yeah Bill," I said as I walked in.
He was looking right at me and gave me a slight, stressed smile. Obviously he was relieved I picked up on the code names so quickly.
"We are going to do this job and then we have to head out to Spain for our next job so bring a passport in your bag."
"Oh" was all I could think. "What's wrong?" I asked in ASL, switching to our emergency plan. Then I said in English, "Ok, I can go pick one. Do you have a preference for the name I pick?
"It doesn't matter to me just grab me the same," he answered in English before respond in ASL "I don't like these two and have a really bad feeling this isn't going to end well so we are going to plan accordingly and be ready to vanish"
"Ultimately It shouldn't matter and if we need to change while there we can always do that." He ended his thought in English so the other two wouldn't catch on to our second conversation happening out of sight. Yet another benefit to American Sign Language.
"Got it, well everything is gathered and ready, let me grab my passport and then we can just head out."
I turned to go to the vault of identities we had and almost walked into our partners for the night as they were coming to the kitchen. Now that I was forced to acknowledge them I extended my hand.
"Hi, I'm Michael" I said while shaking the first hand. I saw it from the corner of my eye as I looked at his face. It was calloused and hard and his hand was the same. I gathered there were one to many errors in whatever he had been trying to learn using the trial and error method.
When I reached for the second hand, I was surprised to see it was already there. Bright white and extended ready to meet mine. I was captivated by the sheer lack of color to it. My mom taught me to look at hands and read what they tell me but this man's hand wasn't telling me anything. It was white, like really really white. No imperfections that I could see and nothing that made it seem he had lived any kind of life. No scars, dirt, calluses nothing, I was at a loss as to what this could mean. I reminded myself I was playing a role right now and started saying my introductions when I looked at his face. His face was just as white as hands which shocked me. Maybe he kept inside but a face should be exposed to the sun at least once more than your hands right? In fact, the only color to his face was the dark circles around his eye that told me this probably wasn't his first overnight heist. As I was looking at the circles I saw his eyes. They were a dark red, almost maroon that hinted at the idea that they used to be more vibrant. I was totally absorbed by the shear fascination that this man presented that I had forgetting to finish my hello. He stepped in saying "Michael was it?" I just nodded thinking I wish I could find a shade to paint those eyes, they were totally unique and I wanted to get the best likeness of them on canvas as soon as possible.
"That's me" I said, "Bill I'll go grab the Brights and we can just go with them then get it started." I turned to leave and retrieve the passports. I knew of course that what he really meant was to take the cash and various identities we had and bring them with us. We would not be returning anytime soon.