When we were done mking love and the adrenaline subsided, Susan said, “I knew it.”

“What? What did you know? What are you talking about?”

“You’re a criminal, just like me. You were in your element back there.”

“I was scared shitless.”

“But you handled it David. You came through for me. You fired that gun and I saw your face as you did it. All you needed was war paint.”

Maybe it was true, but all that frenzy had leaked out of me now.

“If he dies, I’m a murderer.”

“If you hadn’t shot him he would have killed me. Or you. Or both of us.”

“And he would have been right.  We were robbing his store. I can’t do this, Susan.  It’s too crazy. I have to turn myself in.”

“And go back to jail? Back to Corcoran?”

“No, but -- ”

We were sitting on the floor, facing each other She grabbed my shoulders. ‘Don’t you see? Everything is different now. There’s nothing else out there for you. You can’t go back. There’s nothing to go back to. We burned it all down today. When you shot that old man everything changed. It’s a different world now, We’re on the run. We’re fugitives. We have to stay ahead of the cops or you will go back to Corcoran.  And that’s not an option. That’s hell on earth. But you can never go back to your straight life, either. That’s good, though, David. Look at me. I’m telling you, it’s good. That part of your life is over. You always hated it, anyway.  You know it’s true. I saw it right from the start. You never would have played that game with me – faking a grade so I’d flash you? If you were the man you think you are, you would have turned me in right then, gotten me suspended. But you went along with it. You loved it. I knew that.  I wouldn’t have started things in the first place, otherwise. I could sense the crazy outlaw side of you, David. The real you. The pirate.”

I knocked her hands away, ran my hand through my hair, pulling tight as if that could yank the synapses straight, untangle the confusion.

“You said you were done with all this,” I said.

“I said I was done with playing ‘get Daddy’ by fucking with guys for fun. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be a good girl forever and turn into some kind of social robot and clank through my preprogrammed life until the battery runs down and follow orders and live by everyone else’s rules. I won’t do it. I don’t want that and neither do you. What you felt in there, shooting that Mexican – you think that’s the worst part of you, the sick fucked up part of you. But I love it. And you have to learn to love it because it’s too late to change anything.  You can’t just step back onto the cliff now. Neither of us can. We’re falling together. And it feels good. It feels like flying.”

“Until you hit the bottom.”

“Everyone hits the bottom, David. Everyone dies. But at least we get to live a little first.”

She was right. I admit it. Why not? This is a confession. Why cop-out now? She knew me better than Monica ever had, better than I knew myself, just like she claimed. And she put it in perspective for me. I had one choice left: crawl back to prison -- or live the outlaw life with the girl of my dreams. Which would you choose? The endless jail term, caged and bitten away to nothing, dead before you’ve even had a chance to die, or the sex-fueled crime spree, living on the wild edge and going down in a blaze of glory?

For me, it was the ultimate no-brainer.

So listen up: I did it. All right?  I did it all. I robbed the 7/11 and Book Soup and the Mevlana Boutique on Melrose and Kramer’s Pipe and Tobacco shop on Santa Monica Boulevard. But I wasn’t alone. Susan Bishop did it all with me and she never even got arrested. She played the victim from the moment she came running out of that jewelry store into the arms of the SWAT team leader.

But listen to me now: it’s all bullshit. She was with me in every store we burgled and she chose the stores and planned the heists and orchestrated the whole crime spree, right from the beginning, from before the beginning, from the moment she saw me at the door of her little Craftsman house on Ashby Street.

It was her idea, her obsession, and I never understood why until the very end. It was a brilliant idea, I give her that, I bow down to her there -- an inspired strategy. Here’s the proof: it worked. She’s America’s sweetheart, survivor of the most shocking scary story since Patty Hearst --  the tragic orphan, off to film school with a free ride and People Magazine cover and a sympathy card from Barack Obama.

Nice work.

But let me repeat: I did it. I did it all. I was tricked into the first robbery, but I participated fully in the others.   I saw the surveillance camera picture in the paper and so did everyone else, including my ex-wife.  One way or another, I was going down, and it didn’t matter if I robbed one store or a hundred stores. There was a kind of nihilistic glee to it -- a nothing-to-lose fugue state: just me and Susan and the blood-rattling screech of the alarms, and the rubber-burning getaways, and the cheap motel hide-outs and most of all, the raw adrenaline high of committing real crime – yes, it was fun, just like you always guessed it might be. It felt good to scare people and it felt good to take what we wanted and it felt good to run. It was good and the sex afterward was even better, with or without the drugs. Yes, there were drugs –  ecstasy and coke and weed, the new super weed and yes, it does make sex better. You feel like a god and you have no fear or inhibition and you want to go on forever and we almost did. We exhausted ourselves on each other and always wanted more. I finally did memorize her body, imprinted it on my cortex. I can close my eyes right now and feel her taut stomach under my palm, her stiff nipple between my teeth, my hands on her ass as I drive up into her, as deep as I can go, her kegel muscles pulling me deeper.

But the Adnan Mevlana boutique  robbery -- that’s the one I have to explain. We didn’t bother at the trial: my version sounded ridiculous, even to me.  I was fighting for my life, and people will say anything to save themselves. My lawyer advised dignified remorse and contrite silence. We all know how well that plan worked out. But I don’t care any more. I’m not bitter, I don’t hold a grudge. I’m running out of time, that’s all, and I need to tell the truth.

Here’s how it really happened:

She said, ”Let’s have some fun today. I’m bored.”

We had spent the night in a stolen Ford van, parked on one of the fire roads above Rustic Canyon. The Econoline was a nice ride, complete with mattress, a hot plate and microwave, all powered by an Amico 1200 watt portable generator. It would be tough in the summer without an air-conditioner but in late February the nights were cold. We kept it for a few days and dropped it off in the parking lot at Griffith Park.

She rolled over on top of me. “I’m tired of being us. Let’s be other people today.”

“Other people?”

“When we rob the boutique. I could be trans-gendered -- we could be trying to raise the money for you to have the operation. So we could both be lesbians. Like Dog Day Afternoon, squared. Twice as random and fucked up.”

“I can’t believe you’ve seen that movie.”

“I’ve seen every movie. But I prefer the old ones. Like Gilda, Out of the Past, and The Paradine Case.”

“I must have missed those.”

“Well, We’ll have our own film festival some day. My favorite old movies – and your sister’s cheesy new ones. So, anyway, what do you think – lesbians?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then how about … I’m your dominatrix? Forcing you to rob the store?”

“Do they do that?’

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

We both thought for a few seconds.

“We could be Jihadists,” she said. “I’ll wear a burkha.”

“That’s the worst idea yet.”

She laughed. “But if we can’t make fun of them, the terrorists win.”

“I don’t think so. Corcoran’s bad, but it’s better than Gitmo.”

“Okay, okay. No Al Qaeda dress up.”

Another silence; crows squawking.

“I have it,” she said. “The Hibernia bank robbery!”

“What?”

“Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. I’m Patty and you’re Cinq.”

“No one’s going to get it. No one remembers that stuff.”

“You do.”

“Thanks a lot. I was, like, a one-year-old when that shit happened.”

“But your parents talked about it. It’s in the culture – Patty in her Che beret  and the weird snake logo. Besides, it’s not for them, it’s for us.”

I shook my head. “No, no --  it’s too complicated. They had automatic weapons.”

She sat up, grinning. “We can get automatic weapons.”

“No we can’t. No gun shop would sell to us and even if they did there’s a waiting period anyway those guns are expensive. And they’re not like some prop. You have to know how to use them. One mistake and you could really kill someone.”

“We don’t have to shoot the guns. They have safety catches. And I know where to get them. We won’t have to pay a cent.”

“So we’re going to steal guns now?”

“Just from my Dad. He’ll never miss them.”

So that’s how we wound up burglarizing the Bishop residence on Benedict Canyon Drive. It wasn’t exactly breaking and entering, though. We didn’t need to break anything: Susan knew the gate code, she had a house key and she disarmed the alarm when we opened the front door. The swinging gate, the curving drive lined with eucalyptus trees;  it was all just as I remembered it, right down to the Bentley convertible under the port-cochere.

I didn’t feel like an accessory to anything – this was just Daddy’s girl popping home for a visit. She waved at the Fillipino gardener, mulching the flower beds; she nodded to his wife when we got inside, finishing the breakfast dishes, a tiny woman who burst into a huge smile and waved as Susan moved past the kitchen toward the big curving stairway to the second floor.

“They think I still belong here,” she said as we mounted the steps. “They don’t speak much English and Dad doesn’t fraternize with the help.”

“So Daddy doesn’t want you here.”

“Daddy would have an aneurism if he saw me here. But Daddy’s at work.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t change the locks. Or at least get a new alarm code.”

“It’s his birthday. That’s the only set of numbers he can remember. And changing anything would mean admitting I might come back. Not really an option for the Imperial Patriarch. Come on, it’s just through here.”

She led me into an opulent master bedroom, complete with cathedral ceilings, fan window, fireplace and a canopied four-poster bed that belonged in a European palace somewhere. What the hell, this was a palace, too. A fake palace for fake royalty; the bed was probably a fake antique, right out of the Pottery Barn catalogue. It all smelled like warm stone and flowers, silent and uninhabited.

“The house was so big we had to use the intercom to talk to each other. I always thought that said it all. Here we are.”

She opened the closet, dozens of charcoal suits and Navy suits packed as tight as books on a shelf  -- there were no books visible, maybe reading had been her first mutiny -- and behind them a wide high safe was set into the wall. Susan brushed the suits aside and kneeled down, showing a pale inch of her lower back and the ribbon of thong disappearing below the waist of her jeans.

She looked up at me, caught me staring, chose to ignore it. She was all business, for the moment. “Want to guess the combination?”

“His birthday?”

“You may be on to something there.”

She spun the little dial, clockwise and counterclockwise and clockwise again. The thick steel door swung open and she pushed it wide.

“In case the government comes to get us because we’re left handed,” she said.

The safe was stacked with automatic weapons, silencers, laser sights, packets of ammunition and wooden boxes that held various handguns. Susan pulled a short blunt looking weapon out of the pile and twisted around to hold it up.

“Uzi,” she said. “Not what we’re looking for. Nice gun, though.” She set it down on the floor. “Here we are. There was a clatter of shifting metal and she pulled a much longer rifle out, with a curved bullet clip extending down from the main body like a tusk. “AK- 47,” Susan said. “Most popular automatic weapon in the world. Designed my Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1946. They’ve tweaked it a little since then, but the basic gun is still the same. Why fuck with success? There are more than seventy million of them in use right now. Thirty round magazine, killing range, around thirteen hundred meters. Nothing but the best for the Symbionese Liberation Army.”

She handed it to me. It was heavier than I expected, slick to the touch, smelling of gun oil.

“I’m not shooting this,” I said.

“All we have to do it brandish it.”

I held it away from me, lifted it a little, my elbow tucked into my ribs for leverage.

“Perfect.” She said. She stood up, holding the other gun by the barrel. “Now let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

She really was nervous. I had never seen that before. We scurried out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out the front door. No sign of the help this time.

We were down the driveway and out of the gate, heading west on Sunset,  before we spoke again.

“That was weird,” she said.

“You can’t go home again,” I said.

“Thomas Wolfe. We’re probably the only two people in a thousand mile radius who’ve ever read that gasbag.”

“The guy in the white suit, right?”

“Very funny.”

We drove along, skirting UCLA then across the 405 overpass.

“What’s next?” I asked.

“There’s an army surplus store in Culver City – the corner of Motor and Venice. We get some brown army fatigue jackets, combat boots and cargo pants. And a special forces beret for me, if they have one. It really doesn’t matter. Patty wasn’t wearing a beret when they robbed the bank. But image is everything.”

And hour later we were parked on Melrose, getting into character, smoking one of her super joints. The sun was high and the van was baking, even with the windows open. The Mevlana boutique, which sold high end designer clothes and shoes, was busy as the lunch hour approached.

“There’s a lot of people in there,” I said, as Susan moved to open the car door.

“The more the merrier.”

She had one foot on the pavement when she turned back to me. “I’m going to change things up a little. Just follow my lead.”

We walked across the pavement in the blazing spotlight of the desert sun, guns held at our sides under our jackets, butts tucked into our armpits. As we pushed into the chilly store, with its elegant racks of clothes and circular blond-wood central counter, I released the pressure and let the rifle slide down my body until it was clear. Then I was brandishing it with the best of them. Susan had her gun out, too, but she looked like a scared rabbit and she was staring at me, waiting. I had to take the lead this time, obviously.

“Everybody on the floor,” I shouted. “This is a robbery! You, behind the counter. Step away from the alarm button. Now!”

“Don’t make me do this,” Susan said. “Please … I can’t -- I don’t -- ”

“Open the register! Grab the cash. And check these women’s purses. Move it.”

Looking more terrified than the customers, she popped the register, grabbed the cash and stuffed it in her pockets. A woman came in and I threw her on the floor with the others. Susan apologized as she rummaged in their Gucci and Chloe and Bottega Veneta handbags. She grabbed a black crocodile one with a bamboo handle, without even opening it. She stood absurdly, gun dangling from one hand, fancy purse from the other.

“Is this okay? Did I do all right? Please – don’t … this is an expensive purse. It’s a Gucci, it’s worth… I don’t know, a lot. Thousands of dollars. You wouldn’t know that without me. I helped. Please don’t hurt me any more.”

She wanted to change things up? That was the understatement of the decade. This wasn’t Patty Hearst, this had nothing to do with Patty Hearst. She was a full participant in the Hibernia bank robbery -- that was the whole point. Still, I have to admit, there was something exciting about this new cringing, subservient Susan, even if it was only an act. She was an excellent actress, but of course you know that already. You’ve seen it all on YouTube. Someone leaked the surveillance tape, after the trial. Even without sound she gets the message across; she was the poet laureate of body language. The tape became primary piece of evidence in the State’s case against me, an indisputable record backed up by half a dozen eye-witnesses, with nothing but my lame story about “role playing” to stand against it. But convicting me wasn’t even the point.

The real function of that tape was to exonerate her.

I was high the day we knocked over the boutique, and I thought she was, too. Now I wonder if she even inhaled the pot before we left the car. She had the smoke in her mouth but I seem to remember she was breathing through her nose. Not me. I was so wasted I never even noticed that this was the one surveillance camera she didn’t bother to shoot out.

She wanted people to see this robbery. She wanted people to remember.

And they did.

So what was it all about?  Why did Susan do it, what did she really want?

That’s the big question. I got the answer on the morning of Saturday March 14^th 2010, the day we robbed Eisenstadt’s Jewelers on Rodeo Drive.

I’ll tell you what happened that day, but I’ll tell you this first: I don’t regret it. I regret a lot of what I did – I regret giving Susan that A grade for the puerile upskirt glimpse that I never got; I regret fucking her and getting caught and robbing Anathan’s office and the Mexican stand-off blackmail brinkmanship that landed me in jail. I regret losing my job and my wife and my child. I regret every minute I spent in prison, and getting poor Tyrese killed, and the urge that led me to track Susan down when I finally got out. I even regret losing my job at Carlos Estrada’s flooring emporium, and I regret disappointing Chester Tompkins, my parole officer, a decent guy who worked hard and who did well by me and kept his hopes high for my future. I regret the people I physically hurt and emotionally traumatized during our robberies. That poor Mexican 7/11 clerk will never get full use of left arm back. That was the worst thing, but, I might as well say it:  I regret pretty much the whole last five years of my life.

But I don’t regret killing Susan Bishop’s father.

That’s the one thing I’m proud of. Does that make me a monster? Read my version, scrutinize that day as I set it down here: the most significant, calamitous bizarre day of my life, then make your own decision.

You be the jury. I know you’ll be an improvement over my last jury. Maybe you’ll sleep on it, at least.

They reached their verdict in forty two minutes.

 

Susan woke me up that morning, propped on her arms over me, her hair dangling in my face, performing a half-push-up to brush her nipples across my chest. I blinked in the garish desert sunlight and the traffic noise from Hollywood Boulevard. We were holed up in a Motel 6 on Whitley, west of Cahuenga.

She said: “Let’s go to Mexico.”

“What?”

“Nancy Ehlers’ family has a house on the beach in Barra de Navidad, on the costalegre in Jalisco. It’s beautiful there and the house will be empty. They only go down for February vacation. We can rest up at the house for a few weeks and then and go anywhere we want – down into Oaxaca – to Catalotepec or Mazunte. They have a turtle museum in Mazunte. You’ll love it.”

“Susan -- ”

“No one will find us. No one will even be looking. We’d fit right in with all the eco-tourists. It’s paradise, David. It’s like what California used to be before we ruined it. And it’s so cheap we could live there forever.”

I was fully awake now. I rolled her over and sat up on the bed. You could hear the low roar of the air-conditioning, and a siren somewhere. Always, the sirens, like a tinnitus in my head. I looked down at her. ”What are you talking about?”

She sat up to face me. “We have to get away, David. Everyone’s looking for us. We’re on TV, our pictures are in the newspaper. Someone recognizes us and makes a phone call -- that’s it. … I thought the clerk looked at me funny last night. No, no, it was just a paranoid moment, but – it’s going to happen, we both know it. We have to get out of the country and if we don’t do it soon -- ”

“But, wait a second. Hold on. I mean … Mexico? How could we even get there? They’ll be watching the border. Sitting in a stolen car on that long line at the customs check point … ”

“We’re not driving. My Dad has a forty-four foot Sea Ray stashed at the Chula Vista Marina in San Diego. He won it in a poker game. The slip fees are paid with company money. He thinks no one knows about it and he’s not going to tell. Once we’re in the open water it’s less than eight miles to the border. We can reach Mexican waters in less than ten minutes, David.”

“What about the Coast Guard?”

“They’re spread pretty thin right now, and if we have to race them we can win.”

“It sounds crazy.”

She smiled. ”It’s a little late to start worrying about crazy. If we stay in this country, they’ll catch us. You know they will. And then we’ll both go to jail for a long, long time. I’d rather take my chances with the Coast Guard. It’s a fast boat and a short trip. Ten minutes and we’re home free. Think about it. We’ll be drinking margaritas on the beach by sunset.”

“But -- ”

“What?”

“It’s just … I mean – we … I don’t see how we can afford to do this. You know? We have a total of, like, eight thousand dollars in cash right now. That won’t take us very far, even in Mexico.”

She pressed her hand to my knee and smiled at the instant response and I knew we were going to make love before anything else happened that day; but that was later. Now she had an idea to sell.

“We’ve been working small-time, that’s why, David. Convenience stores? A book shop? We need one big score, one last jackpot. Then we can go to Mexico and live the rest of our lives without even thinking about money.”

“You want to rob a bank?”

“I want to rob a jeweler.”

“I don’t know, Susan. Those places -- ”

“There’s one in particular – Eisendstadt’s, on Rodeo Drive. Just north of Wilshire? I’ve been going in there for years, our class rings were made there. I’ve been studying the place since I was twelve years old. All my birthday presents came from there. They have one security camera and an alarm button that someone has to actually push. It’s like they never got out of the nineteen fifties. I mean – the windows are wired and the place is alarmed at night  -- you’d be crazy to try and break in. But during regular business hours? Once they let you inside, it’s easy.”

“So this is what rich girls from Beverly Hills think about when they get their sweet sixteen necklace?”

“Yeah, just before they sell it. My fence only gave me forty cents on the dollar, but I didn’t care. Diamonds are just rocks to me.”

“You’re so sentimental.”

“I mean it. They’re a scam.”

“They’re pretty.”

“You do like pretty, don’t you?”

“And they cut glass.”

She nodded. “You like that, too.”

It was quiet for a few seconds. I thought I heard the hollow percussive beating helicopter rotors: a medevac chopper, headed for Cedars? TV traffic guys? Or, most likely -- a police helicopter, flying low, watching for unusual movements, running figures, some frantic pantomime of transgression. They knew what to look for. All criminals behaved the same way. Panic was universal. They would never mistake Flight for jogging, even flying along at thirty miles an hour, two hundred feet in the air.

“Do you really think we can do this?” I said.

“We’re going to do it. Today.”

She moved her hand up my thigh and touched me where I was straining to be touched and we made love just as I had known we would.

Then we got dressed, grabbed breakfast from a  McDonald’s take-out window (They never look at the customers and our faces were getting a little too familiar); then we drove into Beverly Hills to rob a jewelry store.