[ 4. Cognac and Cigarettes ]

Old houses at night never ceased to creep me out.

I didn't like the way it seemed like every feather-light touch on the hardwood floors would send an echoing creek across the entire house. Or how not even the best company could make a silent home feel any less eerie. Add the factor of the house belonging to a crotchety old man and it was off the charts.

Mr. Ciraulo left the front door unlocked, as expected. I walked right in, securing it shut behind me and turning the lock the best I could with my hands behind my back.

It was silent. Not even Missy, the mayor of Yapville, made a peep. I tip-toed into the kitchen and started opening drawers until I grabbed the first sharp object I could reach. It was a bit difficult to maneuver a kitchen knife without the gifts of sight or coordination, but somehow I ended up breaking free of my restraints.

Elated by the returned usage of my arms, I accidentally dropped the knife and it clattered on the floor loudly. The sound made me freeze, clenching my teeth together to listen for any movement down the hallway.

It was silent. But not for long.

A tiny, high-pitched growl from across the house was followed by a light turning on somewhere. I smacked my hands to my face at my own negligence. Way to go, Vincent!

I waited with my back to the fridge anxiously while listening to the sound of something scraping wood in the distance, then a grumbled string of swear words from the man himself. A moment went by before I heard the sound of Mr. Ciraulo's slippers sliding on the hardwood floor while he shuffled towards me.

It would serve useless to run now. If Hayes had been paying any attention, this would be the first place to check. For one, it was within a mile of my home. I wouldn't have made it anywhere else safely without hiding out in someone's backyard until daylight, which I'd never do. And two, where else would I go? I didn't catch the time before I left my home, but the clock on Mr. Ciraulo's microwave read past two-thirty in the morning.

What if I ran outside and he was already cruising the streets looking for me?

"Come out, you son of a bitch!"

My hands shot up over my head as I tried not to shout at the sight before me. Mr. Ciraulo turned the corner into the kitchen in nothing but underwear and slippers with a shotgun pointed at my neck. Thankfully, his trigger finger wasn't too eager since he lowered his weapon as soon as he saw me.

"Mr. Ciraulo, let me explain—"

"Get the hell out!" he exclaimed, waving his gun towards the front door.

I wrung my hands together in a pleading gesture and stepped towards him. "I'm in some serious shit and I really need to just hide here until morning," I begged, staring at him with any shred of hope that he'd have mercy on my soul.

Mr. Ciraulo huffed and gave me his signature scowl. I watched his eyes fall to the cut zip-tie on the floor beside the kitchen knife, then to my reddened wrists, and I thought he'd kick me out then and there, feeding me to the wolves. Instead, he set his shotgun on the table and walked to a liquor cabinet in the corner. He pulled out a bottle of cognac and two glasses.

"Sit down, then."

I sighed in relief and took a seat at the small wooden table, running a nervous, shaking hand through my unruly bed head.

Mr. Ciraulo left the room, but returned only a moment later with an ash tray and a pack of cigarettes. I wasn't aware that he smoked, but boy, was I glad he did. He joined me at the table and poured us both a glass, then offered me a cigarette. I accepted graciously.

The brandy was warm and it burned my senses, clouding the panic that had settled in the last hour. My shoulders instantly relaxed, the sweet, oaky liquor serving as a welcomed distraction in my time of distress. I was sweating, despite the crisp night, and the heat was cranking from the vent overhead.

"Do I want to know?" he asked, furrowing his thick white eyebrows toward me.

I looked out the window, thinking of the fate I may have just escaped. If Mr. Ciraulo's house wasn't quite literally around the corner, would I have made it very far at all? I blew out a shaky puff of smoke and cleared my throat.

"That depends," I said. "Would you have my back if someone came looking for me?"

The old man looked out the window, as if someone would be out there right now, ready to interrogate the geezer who I thought hated me until this very moment. Even now, I wasn't convinced he didn't.

"I suppose I would," he said quietly.

And so I told him everything. I left out the obvious bits, the thieving and unlawful resale of stolen goods, and just told him I had unconventional methods to getting my money. He listened while he sipped his brandy and soon our glasses were empty and the room was silent. Missy was in the corner watching me stoically like an old painting, paws crossed in front of her. It seemed I wasn't the only one skeptical of my newfound alliance in this War Against Hayes.

"And this person that tried to take you, he's not with the police?" Mr. Ciraulo asked. I shook my head. "All right. Stay here tonight but don't make it a habit. I'm only allowing it because you feed Missy."

At the sound of her name, the little terrier cocked her head to the side, one ear having gotten stuck folded backwards. I resisted the urge to simultaneously weep, throw my arms around the old man, and run around the kitchen with my hands in the air. I could make it one night without keeping my eyes off of the door. I just needed to recruit help from Ron in the morning.

I didn't want to involve Georgette. With how things were looking, running from an insane person after my head and all, it was far too dangerous to put her and her little girl's lives at stake. Not to mention, she would react in one of two ways: insist I turn myself into the police to, at the very least, earn some protection in prison, or worry herself to an extraordinary case of arrhythmia. Neither of those things were on my list of solutions.

Mr. Ciraulo let out a big breath. "I'm going back to bed. Make sure the windows are locked, would ya'."

I finished another cigarette before doing as he asked, securing the lock on the door three times until I was comfortable enough to sit down in Mr. Ciraulo's recliner. The base scraped the floor with a screech when I rotated it towards the front door. I wasn't going to die here tonight, therefore I wasn't going to sleep.

As I stared into the dark abyss of Mr. Ciraulo's house, I fell into the memory of the day Ron and I came up with the idea to start heisting.

It was a lazy Friday. The end of the week usually meant the lot of us were dragging our feet at work in anticipation of the weekend. I had grown fond of Ron the second I met him, so he was my main source of conversation on days like those. Ron was complaining about wishing he could go home to a cold case of beer and a steak. I was feeling the same way, emphasis on the home part.

At that point, I was still couch-hopping. Home was still a foreign concept to me after Bethany died and took the only home I'd ever known away with her.

I said to Ron as a complete joke with absolutely no sincerity behind my words, "I guess we ought to rob a bank," to which he replied, "Better make it a jewelry store with no security." And after I thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it some more, until I physically could not stop thinking about it, I decided:

What a brilliant fucking idea.

After all, the greatest way to make money is with the least amount of effort and the most amount of inherent philanthropy.

What bothered me most about this Hayes character and my brush with death tonight was the big question: Why? We never stole more than a few thousand dollars worth of goods and only ever aimed for businesses that wouldn't take much of a hit by the loss. I didn't know what, exactly, was worth trying to kill me over. This was all under the assumption that Hayes was perhaps one of the business owners with a vendetta. He knew my name, what I looked like, where I lived, and how to find me.

The biggest lot we obtained was four grand worth of diamond jewelry from a store called Petrov's Jewels. A fine collection of diamond earrings, a platinum Figaro chain necklace, and a handful of assorted rings I'd managed to swipe at the last minute. It was worth a hell of a lot more than four thousand, but that was all we managed to get out of the six different pawn shops we visited the following week. If there was anyone who wanted blood, it was probably Petrov's.

But even then, was a petty loss in product really worth my blood?

The adrenaline was melting into fear at a steady pace, my pounding heart slowing as a pit formed in the midst of my stomach. I could hear the sound of Mr. Ciraulo's snores down the hall and the frogs outside. It was doing nothing to ease my anxieties. Every hour, or it may have been every few minutes, I would stand up and take a peek through the blinds in surveillance. I'd return back to the recliner on high alert each time until my heart rate would slow again.

I didn't even realize I dozed off to sleep until I was jolted awake the following morning by a smack to the side of my head.

"Vincent, I'm going to kill you."