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SKIERS 4/19/2014 9:34:03 AM
ROBBED – April 26, 2014
It was very late that April night in 1944 when we left the park-like Hague, crossed the southern edge of Lafayette Park and came out on North Ferry Street. It had begun to rain, as it often did in the Tidewater, a soft mist, a motionless spray; it was very warm, and the air was a heavy, hooded cloak.
And it was dark with no street lights because of WWII, no glow from rows of houses, their blinds drawn, hardly any cars on the road — and those that were had headlights dimmed to a pale beam, struggling through tiny slits across their lenses. The streets were empty but for an occasional air raid warden who would sweep his flashlight in our direction.
The Lafayette Park-Hague region was Tombstone and Death Valley combined. The Hague is actually a tributary off the Elizabeth River, and there was a museum and an art gallery hugging the shoreline leading into Lafayette Park. I often went there, alone and in the daytime in the summer, to sit on the sloping green banks and fantasize that I was in Holland on a spy mission for the OSS.
My buddy said, “We run inna any more air raid wardens, just ignore ‘em. There ain’t no curfew ‘til the end of August, an’ anyway, y’all gonna be thirteen on July 17th.” To him, that made a difference.
I wondered how he knew that was my birthday.
“You always remind me,” he said; “that’s why!”
We had reached the corner of Fern Alley, and we stopped walking now and had stopped talking, and we stood in the mist looking down the alley. It was pitch dark; no lights from anywhere. And totally silent.
My buddy took the flashlight from his belt and turned it on. I did likewise, and we shined our twin beams at the wet pavement in front of us. With the ¼” slits over the lenses, the field of illumination was limited to a horizontal swath about six inches long – enough to keep us from tripping over our own feet. We started to move.
“Ah, chrissake an’ crimanittly!” my buddy whispered.
“What's the matter?” I asked.
He pointed his flashlight at the metal grillwork covering the back door to Ben Wu's Laundry and Dry Cleaning.
“The sonabitch has gotta iron fence cross the gol-dang door!” he said, between clenched teeth.
We stood still in the faint rain and stared in disbelief that Ben Wu felt was necessary to discourage burglars by sliding a barricade across his alley door at night. Behind the metal grate was the door, windowless and for certain locked. Even if the iron accordion grate were not there, I wondered how we were expected to open the door itself.
“Le’s try da front.”. . . “Le’s not an’ say we did.”
“Well, you right — le’s jes stand out here inna stupid rain, moanin’ fer the rest of the gol-dang night,” he snarled. “Or we gonna git in there an’ git us some real dough!”
He kicked at a shallow puddle and sent a single sheet of water up his pant leg. “Goddamn-it-all, anyhow!” he shouted.
I pointed my pale beam up the wall of the building, revealing a small window, rectangular, short but fairly wide, about eight or nine feet off the ground. The tilt of the glass made me think maybe the window was open, or at least ajar. I glanced at my buddy.
“How y’all know that was up there?” he asked.
We stood staring at the window as if Ben Wu's head would suddenly pop out and invite us in: “Oh, hello dere, boys! Come on in! I got lotsa good American dollahs unner my counter! Come on, velly fas’! Take all you want!”
“Hokay,” said my buddy, “here's what we kin do: I am gonna lean against the wall an’ boost you up, so’s y’all kin stand on muh shoulders, an’ you see if’n da window is unlocked an’ we can git in!”
I did not think it was a great idea, but I said, “All right, but — no ticklin’, no droppin’ me!” He leaned against the brick wall and cupped his hands.
“Hokay! Alley oop!”
My one soggy sneaker started in the stirrup of his palms, my other found the fabric covering his right arm, and with a grunt and a groan, I got both feet astride his neck to balance myself on his shoulders (with a tilt full against the building); much to my surprise, I found my face even with the window — which, it turned out, was unlocked and ajar, a top-hinged window that swung inward with a gentle push.
“I ken git in here!” I whispered.
“Do sumpthin’!” he grunted. “Yore killin’ muh shoulders!”
Without actually thinking about it, I pushed the window open full and hooked my arms over the sill, lifting my body off his shoulders, stepping flat on his head, and hoisting myself half in and half out — suddenly realizing I was actually inside the back room to Ben Wu's Chinese Laundry!
I was about seven feet up the interior wall over a huge washer and rinse-tub that appeared, in the glow of my flashlight, right under me.
I pulled the rest of my body over the sill, carefully turned around, and letting my feet slowly touch the top of the washer; I was able to lean my head back out the window and look down at my buddy.
“What're y'all doin’?”
“I’m inside! Come on!” I said.
“How? Y’all want I should pole vault?”
I was inside. My buddy was out in the alley. Better he stayed outside so he could get me down when I came out the window. Better I stayed inside and . . . and what?
I carefully turned around and surveyed the room with my limited candlepower. The place was a mess of wash-baskets, a couple of dryers, maybe three mangles and a long worktable on the far side of the room, near a door that must have led to the front, to the outside.
The worktable was littered with sleeping laundry waiting for the start of a new day. The pungent, dank odor of cleaning fluid and naphtha stung the lining of my nostrils.
Silently, I slid off the washer and made haste, tiptoeing toward the door. When I got there I was surprised to see it was not a door, but a doorway, an archway, actually, and it separated the front the back with a cascade of shimmering oriental beads. Just like in a Charlie Chan movie!
The front of the laundry had two large plate-glass windows and a glass front door. There was a sign on one of the windows which read: yrdnuaL s'uW neB — the sign on the glass door said: gninaelC yrD motsuC &.
There was just enough light coming in from North Ferry Street to lead me quickly to the section of the counter on which sat the cash register, and when I looked on the shelf underneath — again using my flashlight — I saw the shoebox. That is when I started to shake all over.
What am I doing? I knelt on the cold cement floor and stared at the shoebox. I held the flashlight in my left hand, barely able to keep it still, and with my right, I lifted the lid off the shoebox, trembling so badly I dropped it on the floor, oblivious of the racket it made. Carefully, I slid the shoebox closer and peered inside.
I actually whistled out loud.
The shoebox contained the biggest nickel-plated, pearl-handled revolver I had ever seen — not that I had seen many, or actually any, outside of the movies.
And under the pistol was something else: four parallel stacks of money, what appeared to be stacks of twenty dollar bills, maybe six or seven inches of twenty dollar bills, side by side by side by side.
I picked up the gun and set it on top of the counter; I placed the box on the floor and extracted about half an inch of the money, folded it once, and stuck it in my pants pocket.
I was about to grab a full wad when there was an alien tintinnabulary rustling noise behind me, and just as I turned back toward the beaded doorway, I heard the nine words that would end my life of crime forever: “Who is dere! WHAT CHEW WAN’? Who goes dere?”
The gun — which had to weigh three hundred pounds — was in my hand, but I had no idea how it got there. Light filtering through the windows was sufficient for Ben Wu (I assumed it was Ben Wu) to see that I was holding the gun, its nickel-plated finish shining in the dim light and sending off speckles that bounced off the walls and ceiling as though the room had become a spinning mirrored globe.
I pointed the gun directly at him. Instinctively, he reached his hands out in front, as if, were I to fire, he could catch the bullets and throw them back at me.
My own hands were shaking so badly I reached up and gripped the pistol like a baseball bat, my index finger outside the cage, nowhere near the trigger; I was literally so scared I expected, at any moment, to pee my pants. Perhaps I would have if Ben Wu had not spoken.
“Dont pull t’igger! Velly sensitive, hair-t’igger! You gonna shoot me!”
I tried to talk, but it came out a mean growl: “Garwwwraraagegawwwwrararwa!” I found my voice and breathed, rather than spoke.
“No shooting! — les’ y’all make me! Put your hands up over your face; cover your eyes — do not look at me!”
“Take all money! Doan shoot me! Take money! Take money! Go way!”
He placed his hands over his eyes, and I could see his hands were shaking worse than mine. I noticed that I could see him fairly well as he was facing the windows; my back was turned, and I was in the shadows, and there was no way he could identify me — now or ever. I think!
“Lay down on the floor, flat on your belly! Keep your hands over your eyes!” I thought of every gangster movie I had ever seen. Suddenly John Garfield, being led to prison, popped into my mind.
Ben Wu dropped down flat on his face and stretched out behind the counter, his feet still in the archway; his legs were trembling, and body shook in spasms.
“Make one false move an’ — I’ll shoot you!” I whispered hoarsely, disguising my voice. “When I go out the door, y’all lay there for ten, twenty minutes, y’hear! Count slowly to . . . to . . . four thousand five hundred — before you get up! My friend is in the back room, waiting by the rinse-baskets, an' he's got a gun, too, an’ he WILL SHOOT YOU DEAD IF YOU GET UP! Shoot you dead if y’all . . . git up sooner than ten hours!”
While saying all this, I was backing away to the end of the counter and toward the front door.
“An’ doan call no police! . . . If you do, I’ll tell them this is all dope money, an’ they’ll send y’all back to China an’ put y’all in prison!”
At the door I flipped the deadbolt, opened the door and backed out, slamming the door, turning and running like the wind. I was at the corner, around it, and heading back to my buddy in Fern Alley when I realized the shoebox full of money was still sitting on the floor, behind the counter, about four feet from Ben Wu's head—and several inches of it was in my pocket!
I tried to think how I would word the note when I sent Ben Wu back his wad of money.
They would never find the gun at the bottom of the Elizabeth River. I took it by the barrel and flung it as hard and as far as I could into the river. I heard it splash and be gone, about ten feet from shore.
This winter/spring, the shoreline in front of the museum and art gallery was covered with a thin sheet of snow; it rarely snowed in the Tidewater, but this year the entire east coast was inundated with cold weather and blizzard-like conditions. Even the Cleveland Evening News sent a reporter and photographer to tell the story of ‘Spring Break’ in the South.
A civic-minded citizen (Ben Wu, actually) built a ski-jump no more than five feet high, and one night that March, my buddy and I, holding Ben Wu’s hands, graced the front page of the Local Section of the Norfolk News Sentential, in our knee-length and hooded mackinaws, floundering two feet in the air.
Robert A. Mills Copyright. 2014, all rights reserved, cannot be re-written, published or broadcast without permission of the author
