Stage Left by Devin James Leonard

Stage Left by Devin James Leonard

I was sitting in the coffee shop, splicing a video on my laptop, when a pasty, wrinkled face with a thinning head of white hair crouched beside me and breathed one word into my ear: “Filmmaker.”

“Pardon?”

“You are a filmmaker,” the old man said.

I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. I said, “Yes.”

“My name is Alan August. You may have heard of me,” the old man said, and before I could say yes or no—it would have been no—he asked if I was interested in getting my hands on a better camera.

Which I was.

We were.

The name’s JT. My friends and I are amateur filmmakers with aspirations to make legitimate movies in Hollywood. The only issue, we’re a couple of penniless twenty-somethings from upstate New York, thousands of miles away from the glitz and glam of Tinseltown. Not only can we not afford professional film equipment, but we’ve been working with the cheapest outdated camcorder available and an editing program with limited to no capabilities. Alan August had taken one simple glance at the low-quality shots I was piecing together on my laptop and deduced that not only was I in the market for an upgrade, but likely desperate.

I asked the old man what he was selling and for how much, and instead of giving me a price, he pulled up a chair and proceeded to bombard me with his entire life story, a monologue so well-versed it sounded like he’d memorized and repeated it many times over. According to Alan, he was a moderately famous podcaster who delved into the world of inexplicable supernatural occurrences, UFO sightings, paranormal incidents, and unexplained phenomena.

Get this: Alan August claimed to be an alien abductee!

He explained how his success and popularity came about once he started recounting his abduction story to the public. Network television channels were the first to invite him to share his alleged experience. Streaming services and local news interviews followed, and soon after, he was speaking to dozens of podcasters across various platforms. It was how he got the idea to form his own channel, and not only did he record his episodes for the audio networks, but he also filmed them using top of the line high-definition video cameras. All was a modest success for the old geezer, but now, he said, due to circumstances, he was pulling the plug and selling off his production equipment at a cheap price.

I didn’t ask him about his situation, nor did I care. All I’d heard was expensive equipment, and cheap.

I told him I was interested, and he invited me over for dinner.

& & &

I went home and told Desmond the news and we left for Alan’s around seven. I was bringing Des with me to help appraise the camera and any other miscellaneous gadgets we might buy. At least that’s what I’d tell Alan—that Des was the expert.

Des was there as my backup in case the situation turned into something else. What that something else could be, I didn’t know. From the start, I’d gotten a weird vibe from the podcaster. Not only had he proclaimed to have been taken aboard a spaceship and experimented on by little gray men—that’s weird enough—his behavior, his tone, was that of someone who didn’t have their head screwed on tight. His eyes had the lost and aimless glaze of a senile old man who’d wandered out of an assisted living center, and throughout our first interaction, his speech was monotone and full of disinterest, as if I were the one who had approached and bothered him. He spoke like a robot, not a single rise or fall in inflection, his straight-forward, matter of fact, humorless facial expression never changing. Now, I don’t necessarily believe he was abducted by aliens, but I do believe something must have happened to him to have caused his abnormal personality. I sure as hell wasn’t going to this total stranger’s home to find out all by my damn self.

The address was twenty minutes away, and upon our arrival we steered into a cul-de-sac stocked with homes whose electricity bills more than likely cost more than the market price of the crummy house we rented on the rough side of town. Tons of money on this dead-end road, and I felt as if I were doing something illegal just by parking my car here. Alan’s house was the last one on the street, a massive white two-story structure with four concrete columns out front. Des took the lead, walking a few steps ahead of me, and rang the bell.

We waited for what seemed like forever, unsure if Alan’s tired old bones were inching to the door or if the place was so big he couldn’t hear the doorbell.

Des rang again, and this time Alan answered. He cracked the door just enough for one eye to peek through, and when he recognized me, he opened it. He was wearing a black T-shirt featuring the label of his podcast channel, UFO-XPO, on the front, and what few strings of hair remained on his head were wet and combed to the side. “Hello, JT,” he said. “I see you brought a friend.” No surprise or disappointment in his voice, only the same old matter-of-fact emptiness as when I’d first met him.

“This is Desmond,” I said.

“Can he be trusted?”

Des’s eyes widened. He gave me an irritated glance, as if already reconsidering going inside. He’s known on occasion to fly off the handles, born with patience so thin he could erupt into a rage at the slightest annoyance or inconvenience. Des is my best friend, and an actor—a leading man at that—which makes for an overdramatic, cagey, insecure diva, whose personality changes from one moment to the next. Try living with the guy.

“Trust me with what?” Des said to Alan.

Before Alan could say anything, I interjected. “Desmond just wanted to see the cameras.” And I added, with a wink, “We can trust him.”

Alan remained perfectly still, not even blinking, as he stood in complete silence for ten long seconds. Then, he gave a single nod, said, “This is fine,” and walked back into the house, leaving the door open.

Des shot me another cautious look. “Guy’s acting like we’re buying drugs, for Christ’s sake.”

“Keep your voice down,” I muttered.

“Why am I even here? I don’t know anything about video cameras.”

“Just relax. You’re getting a free dinner out of it.”

“Ain’t nothing free in this life, JT,” Des said. “We might wake up in his probing chamber that he recreated from his spacecraft memories.”

We went inside and entered a long hallway lined with various, I guess, supernatural knickknacks: sculptures of aliens, spaceship drawings, models, and framed photographs of UFOs in the sky and aerial views of crop circles in cornfields. There were items displayed on podiums, encased in glass, one a piece of metal that had come from a supposed crashed aircraft, another a chunk of brown hair belonging to an alleged sasquatch. Des shook his head and said, “I see why you didn’t want to come alone.”

We crossed the hall into the next room, a pristine, expansive kitchen, where Alan stood at the sink, rinsing his hands as slow and deliberate as his speech. “I’m just starting dinner,” he said.

“Say, Alan,” Des said, “do you do your podcasting here, or…?”

Alan, with his head down, not missing a beat of rubbing his hands together, said, “In the kitchen?”

Des looked at me. I could tell by his expression he’d already had enough of this old man’s awkward energy. I felt the same.

“Uh, no,” Des said. “The house, I mean. JT said you had a studio.”

“No,” Alan said. He shut off the sink, dried his hands with a towel. “The studio is not in the house.”

“So, where is the equipment?”

Alan held up a single finger, as though he were instructing Des to stop asking questions. “Dinner first,” he said, and turned away from us.

I shrugged at Des—Hey, at least we were getting a meal out of this. We could sit through a decent home-cooked dinner if we had to. Des and me and our other friend Ollie all lived together, and none of us knew how to cook. The worst that could happen tonight, I hoped, is if we went home empty-handed, we’d at least leave with our bellies full.

Alan went to the refrigerator and opened the freezer compartment, saying, “A little about myself. I was abducted when I was nine years old.” Looking over his shoulder at us, he said, “Has JT told you of my experience, Desmond?”

I hadn’t, and didn’t want to listen to it again, but Des, quick on his feet, said, “Oh, yeah, for sure. Crazy.” Shaking his head, feigning disbelief.

“Indeed,” Alan said, and turned back to the icebox, where he retrieved two small cardboard containers and brought them to the counter where Des and I were standing. I recognized the food, the frozen store-bought lasagna dinners; after all, we had our own freezer at home packed to the gills with them. A cheap meal, and disgusting.

Des shot another one of his all-too-occurring glances at me: What the hell.

“I’ll skip ahead and explain the important details I left out when telling JT,” Alan said. “And that is, I have a podcast co-host who was an experiencer like myself. An abductee. We started the channel together. Only now he’s been getting more coverage than I, and the fame has gone to his head, changed him. Arguments ensued, which led to an all-out feud. Now Tom wants to venture out on his own. Fine by me, except he’s been going around slandering my name to other reputable people in the UFO community, calling me a fraud, claiming I’d fabricated my abduction, for profiteering purposes.”

Des leaned toward me and mumbled, “Guy sure as hell ain’t living in a dump.”

“Do you boys like lasagna?”

“Sure,” I said.

“No,” Des said, straight-faced.

“No?” Alan said.

“Well—” Des regarded me, cleared his throat, and suppressed his urge to throw a fit. “How about we just skip the food and get right into the cameras?”

Alan waved his hand. “It’s no trouble.”

Des’s next expression conveyed: What’s no trouble?

While Alan slid the two rectangles of frozen garbage into the stove, he said, “As I was saying, Tom is out to destroy our channel and ruin my reputation in the process.”

“And that’s why you want to sell your equipment,” I said, “before your co-host does? Or tries to take it with him?”

“Not exactly. Our studio is in a small townhouse. Only he changed the locks on me and has forbidden me to enter.”

I could see Des struggling to remain patient. He was biting his lip, his foot was tapping the floor, and now his chin dropped, and he shook his head, no longer holding it in. With a deep sigh, he said, “So, you want to sell us some gear that you can’t get to. Is that it?”

“That is not my main concern,” Alan said.

“It concerns me. If you’re locked out of the place that holds the equipment, it sounds to me to me like you want us to break in.”

“Precisely.”

Des shook his head. “Nope. Not happening.”

“You haven’t asked why,” Alan said.

“Don’t care why,” Des said. “We’re not doing it.”

“Well, hold on,” I said to Des. “Let’s hear him out.”

“I’ve heard enough, JT. He wants us to buy his stuff, but we gotta steal it first? That’s ridiculous.”

“No one has mentioned an exchange of currency,” Alan said. “I am offering you the equipment as payment for what you will retrieve for me when you infiltrate the studio.”

Des pinched his eyes shut and said, “Pray tell, what do you want us to retrieve for you?”

“There is a USB flash drive within the office of our townhouse,” Alan said. “A thumb drive. Do you know what a—”

Des’s eyes snapped open. “We know what a thumb drive is, Alan. What about it?”

“It has an audio recording on it I must obtain,” Alan said. Then he went silent. He was waiting for us to ask the million-dollar question: What was on the audio recording?

When no one said anything for a long moment, Des, with a tortured, shaky voice, said, “Jesus Christ, what’s on the thumb drive?”

“An admission of guilt,” Alan said. “One night when we were recording an episode, Tom confided in me he had made up his entire experience. I kept it just in case a situation like the one I have currently found myself in ever presents itself. I need it. To ruin him. Before he ruins me.”

“And you want us to get it,” I said.

“In exchange for any equipment you can carry out when you do so.”

“Breaking and entering,” Des said.

“Breaking, entering, and retrieving.”

Des swiveled his entire body toward me. “Why are we still here?”

I completely understood Des’s disappointment, his resistance. Committing a crime for some video cameras was too risky. But Des, he needed the gear more than anyone else. He was an actor—self-proclaimed, at the very least—with nothing to show for it. Much like Alan August’s labeling himself as an alien abductee, Des didn’t have any extensive proof to brand himself a thespian. Aside from a couple of jobs as a background actor, he’s never acted professionally. But all that could change with professional equipment, the cameras that would give our videos the upper hand. We could produce an actual movie with that stuff, we really could. Even though we still hadn’t technically looked at the cameras, had no idea how top of the line they were, what we had seen were Alan’s YouTube videos, the quality of the picture, the crisp clean audio, the high-value production of it. We didn’t need to see what made Alan’s content look so good. We’d seen the result of it. And we knew we had to have it to get the right eyes on our movies and Des’s talents. It’s what we required to render our content worth watching. With the proper tools at our disposal, we could leave this crappy upstate New York town and potentially make it to Hollywood. All we had to do was this one thing that this strange old man was asking of us.

It had been less than five minutes since Alan had placed the lasagna in the oven. He took them out and inspected them on the counter, and if there was an inkling of steam rising off the tin trays, it wasn’t from the heat but from the exposure of the frozen meal to the warm air. “I believe dinner is ready,” he said.

“No,” Des said, glumly, “it’s not.”

& & &

Alan placed the lasagnas on the dinner table where Me and Des were seated. Both of us leaned back in our chairs, neither of us enthralled nor in any rush to pick up a fork and knife.

Alan sat across from us and said, “My co-host Tom initially came to me when he first saw my appearances on some TV shows. We grew up in the same town and he told me he too had been abducted on that same fateful day as I, even proclaimed to have remembered seeing me on the craft as a boy.”

Des rolled his eyes.

Alan continued, saying, “So, naturally, I believed him—gave him the benefit of the doubt, at least—and together we formed our podcast channel. When he first went off to do his own interviews, I started to see some inconsistencies in his story. I questioned him about it one day and he went off on me, even threatened to break my legs if I so much as spoke out of turn about him or ever again declared my doubts about his so-called truths. Shortly after, other people caught on to his conflicting narrative, and began posting slanderous videos of him. Videos trying to debunk him, articles calling him a fraud. The heat, as they say, had been slowly but surely coming down on him. That’s when he turned on me and tried to get everyone to look into my case, so the attention was off of himself.”

“And then he admitted it to you,” I said, “and got it on tape.”

Alan confirmed with a nod, then said, looking at the untouched lasagna, “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“No,” Des said, crossing his arms.

“It took me some time to prepare that for you.”

“The only time it took you was to take it out of the freezer and stick it in the oven.”

“Well, Desmond, you cannot place aluminum foil in a microwave. It had to be cooked in the oven.”

“What?”

“Metal appliances,” Alan said, “are reflective, and such foils and utensils can cause the radio waves to bounce around and destroy the device.”

“Do you have radio waves bouncing around your head?” Des said. “The appliance with which you attempted to cook this crap is not my concern.”

I placed a hand on Des’s arm, hoping to stifle a tantrum. “Settle, Des.”

“No,” he said. “This is horseshit. I was promised a home-cooked meal, and I didn’t even get that.”

“We are in my home, aren’t we?” Alan said.

“What?”

“Then it was home cooked, was it not?”

While shutting his eyes and rubbing his temples, Des said, “Please…please God, no more.”

I sat forward, elbows on the table, and said, “Alan, if we agree to get your USB for you, is there anything we need to know before we go over there? Any way for you to help us get in and get out, so to speak? Where exactly is the USB located?”

“Finish your food first,” Alan insisted.

“I will not even start,” Des said.

“The USB is in the drawer of a desk on the left-hand side of the podcast room, which is in the upstairs bedroom of the town house. Since Tom changed the locks, you will have to sneak in. And because it’s a tight community of townhouses, there will be many neighbors. You must do it quietly. My best advice would be to wait until nightfall and come in from the back—there’s a wooded area where you can park from the next street over, so you won’t have to drive into the community—from the backyard you’ll see a small deck and a sliding glass door that we never lock. You could go in through there.”

“If the door is unlocked,” Des said, “then why don’t you just go over there yourself?”

“The deck is on the second floor. It is too dangerous for an old man like me to climb.”

“How high is it?” I asked.

“A ten-foot ladder should give you enough clearance.”

“That’s not bad,” I said, conferring with Des.

“Do we really wanna do this?” he said. “Is the equipment that important?”

“Do you want to keep making shitty-quality videos that no one watches on YouTube that keep getting rejected from film festivals?”

“Of course not.”

“Then yes, it’s important,” I said. “Once we park the car, it’ll take us five minutes, in and out.” I said to Alan, “Obviously this Tom guy won’t be there?”

“He has an interview tomorrow in Philadelphia,” Alan said.

“Great,” Des said, “so he’ll be out of town.”

“Over video chat—in the studio.”

“In your studio?”

“Yes.”

Des said, “Man, you really gotta work on putting in the important details first.”

“He will be at the townhouse until four o’clock,” Alan said. “He’ll be gone long before it gets dark. Once he leaves, he won’t be back.”

Des and I deliberated with each other in silence.

“Then we go in tomorrow after dark,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess tomorrow could work,” Des said half-heartedly.

“Tomorrow will not work,” Alan said. “Tom’s interview is to slander my name before I can get to the truth of his lies. It must be done before then. You must go tonight.”

Des threw his hands up. “Details,” he said, then shouted, “Details! First! Important details first!”

“I thought I was conveying them quite adequately, was I not?”

“No, you were not. Don’t mention tomorrow if tomorrow is too late.”

Alan bobbed his head. “Tomorrow is too late. Good, so you understand.”

“Understand after deciphering your failure to put it plainly,” Des rambled in a fluster, losing whatever cool he’d already lost. “Why’s he mentioning the guy will be gone tomorrow if tomorrow is too late?”

In an attempt to calm him, I patted his shoulder. “I know, I know, just—” and considering Alan, I said, “It has to be done tonight, right?”

“Correct.”

“USB is in the drawer to the left.”

“Yes.”

“Any other details we need to know?”

“Important details,” Des urged.

“Important details,” I said, “that we might need to be aware of before going in?”

“The USB is this big,” Alan said, sticking out his thumb. “I don’t know if you know this, but that is why they are sometimes called thumb drives—”

“For fuck’s sake, we know what a fucking thumb drive fucking looks like,” Des said. “What else?”

“It’s black.”

“Okay.”

“It’s in the center drawer.”

“All right.”

“I think that’s it.”

“Are you sure?” Des said, insistently.

“Yes,” Alan said, then, quickly, “No. The drawer is locked. Tom stole the key from my ring without my knowing. You’ll need a tool of some sort to pry it open.”

“A ladder, a crowbar,” Des said. “How are we supposed to take gear out when we’re going in with our hands full?”

“We’ll make it work,” I assured him. “Anything else, Alan?”

Alan inhaled slowly, thinking, and when he exhaled, he said, “That’ll be all,” and got up and walked away from us, out of the kitchen and out of sight.

Des frowned at me. Was that it?

On our way out, Des said, “Hands are gonna be full carrying a ladder. Crowbar to pop the drawer. If we wanna do this and make it worth it—”

“We’re gonna need more hands,” I said, nodding.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“We need a mule.”

“Or someone built like a mule.”

“Ollie,” I said.

& & &

We sat in aluminum chairs in the stale, wet dampness of our basement, all the lights out except for a dusty bulb directly above our bearded roommate, Ollie Anderson. He puffed on a fat cigar, and every time he blew smoke, the light caught it and thickened into a cloud between us.

“So, you need me for a job, uh?” Ollie said, his voice deep and ominous, a tough-guy accent. “What’s it pay?”

I wafted my hand at the smoke, clearing it away so I could see. “We told you what it pays already. The equipment.”

“Sounds risky. I’ve got priors. If I get busted again, I’m locked up for good.”

Ollie took another pull on the cigar and blew the smoke across the table, straight into our faces. This time Des fanned at the cloud and said, “Knock it off, Ollie. Are you in or are you out?” And then, peering around at the darkness of the basement, he said, “And what the hell are we doing down here? Is this a bit? Why are you talking like that?”

Ollie’s shoulders sank. “I was trying something out,” he said, his voice returning to the normal way he spoke, which was more of a nervous and high-pitched tone. “The thief who wants out but gets sucked in on one last job. Was it working? My accent?”

“If you were trying to get on our nerves,” Des said, “it worked.” He got up and flicked the light switch on near the basement stairs, brightening the room, and said, “Come on, we only have tonight to do this. You coming or not?”

“I suppose,” Ollie said, “if I ever want to play a criminal in one of our movies, this would be good research, right? The Method way.”

“Right,” Des said, his tone flat. He wanted to move this along, get Ollie on board. Except Ollie was stuck in whatever this performance was, playing a part, a character, at the worst possible time. Before he’d shacked up with Des and me, Ollie had never acted before, never in his life had ever thought about it. But when he’d learned of our aspirations as actors and filmmakers, he threw himself into it, too far, wanting to join the club, take part in our artistic ventures. Often, he’d put on a character when we weren’t even filming a project, like he was doing now. All Des and I had said to him, when we came home from Alan’s, was that we needed his help to break into a place. And here he was, luring us down here, because he had heard break-in and immediately saw himself as an ex-con, and dove into this skit. A skit where he, for reasons Des nor I understood, hung out in dark, damp basements and smoked cigars, as if waiting for that one last job to come his way.

Des said now, “I’ll get the ladder and the tools. JT, you just get Ollie in the car.”

Ollie stubbed out his cigar and rose, saying, “I’ll get some masks.”

“For what?” I said.

“In case of security cameras. Did you ask this guy if there were any?”

“No.”

Ollie shook his head, his fake, tough-guy voice returning as he said. “Amateurs, I tell ya.”

Twenty minutes later, we were in Ollie’s Jeep Grand Cherokee, the ten-foot ladder shoved in through the back window. Ollie was behind the wheel, insistent on being the Getaway Driver. At the bottom of the driveway, he stopped, looked at the road in both directions, and said, “Left or right?”

Des was sitting beside him. “Huh?”

“Which way am I going?”

Des faced the backseat, where I was sitting, the top of the ladder an inch from my face. “JT?”

“I forgot to ask him where the studio was,” I said. “I’ll call him.”

While I got my phone out, Ollie slammed the gear into park and sat back with a groan. “Amateurs,” he said.

& & &

On the road now, after calling Alan five times before he answered and gave me the address, we were ten minutes out, in the darkness, headed for the next town over. Once more, we went over the plan because Ollie asked a thousand questions and was still absorbed in his role as a veteran crook.

“The only door unlocked is up top,” Ollie said. “Okay. Means the front door might have an alarm on it, so we gotta go out the way we came in.”

“That’s right,” Des said.

“So we gotta climb up and climb back down with all the stuff we’re taking.”

“I guess so.”

“Should have thought to bring duffel bags,” I said.

“I brought one,” Ollie said, and I thought, all right, maybe Ollie putting on this performance would benefit us after all.

“Got masks in the bag, too,” Ollie went on. “We’ll put them on when we get there. And gloves. We don’t wanna leave no prints behind.”

I nodded and smirked, beginning to appreciate Ollie’s dedication to the role. I didn’t seem to mind his con-man accent so much now, either.

When we were close to our destination, Ollie said, “The man gave you the address but said to park the next street over. Did he say which street?”

“I don’t think it matters,” I said.

“It’s a large community of townhouses,” Ollie said. “If we’re lugging stuff out from the back, we wanna be behind his place and not on the opposite end. It’s gonna matter.”

He’s right again, I thought.

I pulled out my cell and dialed Alan. “Yeah, Alan, which street should we park on? The one facing the back?” I listened, said thanks, and hung up. “Milo Street,” I told Ollie.

“Here it is,” Ollie said, “Just in time.”

He steered onto Milo Street, slowly driving past a straight shot of townhouses on our left, the backsides of them. He peered out the driver’s side window and said. “Well, that didn’t help.”

“What didn’t?” I said.

“Look at all these houses.” Ollie pointed. “They’re here on down to the other end. See the sign when we pulled in? It said Milo North. The other end’s gonna say South. We need to know if his place is closer to the north or south side.”

I didn’t want to call Alan again. “This is fine,” I said. “Just park somewhere where we’re hidden.”

Ollie slammed the brakes, the tires screeching. “This is not fine, JT. You wanna do this job the right way or the easy way?”

“I—”

“You wanna take charge,” Ollie said, “or do you wanna listen to the pro?”

Now Ollie was getting too deep into his character.

“Call him back,” Ollie demanded.

“Just pull the address up on your map,” Des said.

“Okay,” I said. “Is that all right with you, Ollie?”

Ollie shot a burst of breath through his nose. “Fine. But I ain’t moving till you figure it out.” We were stopped in the middle of a residential street. At least it was late enough when there wasn’t any traffic.

I typed the address into my phone, waited for the map to appear and to show the dot of the location of the townhouse. Looked out the window, squinting, conferred with the map again, and pointed out the windshield. “It’s right about there,” I said.

It was about thirty yards ahead of us. Ollie said, “Apologies for losing my cool. I can’t go back. Not again.”

The Jeep rolled toward the spot where I’d pointed. Ollie pulled over alongside a small cluster of bushes, the backside of the townhouse a stone’s throw away.

Des’s face shifted to every window in the car as if in search of something. “What woods is he talking about? Those two trees in his backyard?”

“It is what it is,” I said.

“Not much for cover. I take it when he said there’d be a lot of eyes out front, he forgot to mention all the houses over here.”

To our right was a row of homes, but none were lighted from the inside.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

“We’re not even off the road!” Des yelled. He pressed his face against the passenger window and looked down. “Look! Half the car’s still on the pavement. How is this hidden?”

“It’ll have to make do,” Ollie said, and we exited the vehicle.

Ollie dragged the ladder out the back window, and I hefted the crowbar. Des grabbed the duffel bag and stuck his hand inside. I’d expected him to find some mesh ski masks for disguises, but instead, he yanked out a white rubber face with a big round red nose and rainbow-colored hair. A clown mask.

Des held it up to Ollie. “Halloween masks?”

“It’s all I had,” Ollie said.

Des retrieved two more disguises that were identical to the first. “Why do you have three of these, Ollie?”

“This is not the time for questions,” Ollie said. “Put it on and deal.”

We put on the masks and gardening gloves and moved off the road into the bushes. Ollie led the way, carrying the ladder one-handed at his hip like it weighed no more than a book. I took the middle, clutching the crowbar with both hands and only letting my grip loosen to adjust the oversized mask that was constantly sliding down over my eyes and obstructing my vision. At the rear, Des carried the empty duffel bag, his clown face darting left to right, on the lookout.

There were four windows in sight from the backyard, two downstairs and a pair up top, all dark. All the neighboring townhouses were also lightless.

It was clear.

We crossed the lawn and approached the house. Ollie propped the ladder against the deck post, skirted up the rungs in what seemed like three steps and was over the railing and on the second-story patio in an instant. He leaned over the rail, looking down at Des and me, still standing on the ground. “Move it,” he said, and I climbed up next. When I was in reach, Ollie put his hand out, and I handed him the crowbar and pulled myself the rest of the way. Des followed, throwing the duffel over when he reached the top.

We convened at the sliding glass door. Ollie discarded his clown mask, sweat beading down his face and slightly out of breath. “I don’t think we need these anymore.”

Des stripped off his facial covering, also perspiring. “I don’t think we needed them at all,” he said.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said, removing my mask. “Desk on the left. Right, Des?”

Des nodded. “Right.”

Ollie slid the door over and stepped into the darkness. Me and Des followed, the three of us bumping into each other when we entered.

“Hold up,” Ollie said. “I can’t see. Anybody got a flashlight?”

“Isn’t that your department?” Des said in a condescending tone.

“Yeah, it is,” Ollie said, and a flame sparked. The room went from pitch black to a light cast of gold illumination as he flicked his zippo lighter. He moved further inward, said,

“Found it,” and the overhead lights came on with bright blinding whiteness.

Here we were, in Alan August’s studio, a marvelous sight for any filmmaker to behold. All around were video cameras mounted on the walls, large puffy microphones, laptop computers, plus many other gadgets I’d never seen before. Des and I stood dumbfounded, awestruck, gazing upon all this incredible equipment.

The center of the room featured two desks, pushed together, and positioned to face one another. Ollie pointed to the one nearest us, and said, “This one?”

I nodded. “The one on the left. That’s what Alan said.”

Ollie took the crowbar from me. “I’ll get the thumb drive. You guys start snatching the gear.”

While Ollie stuck the crowbar into the seam of the drawer and quietly wiggled the tool up and down, Des and I moved to the two video cameras mounted on the wall closest to us. Des reached for one, gave it a tug, but it didn’t move. Pulling on it, he said, “These mounting brackets are screwed in. Anybody happen to bring a screwdriver?”

I was busy grappling with the metal arm of the other camera mount, huffing and tugging with everything I had and getting no leeway. “They must have something lying around somewhere from when they put this stuff up.”

We checked the studio for tools, the few drawers in the desks that were open, a couple cabinets, but found nothing.

“Maybe downstairs?” I suggested, and we left the room and entered a hallway just as dim as the studio had been before our arrival.

I placed my hands on the wall, feeling my way around until I landed on a switch and flipped it up. The stairway lights came up. We leaped down the stairs, turned on more lights in the kitchen, and started ripping open drawers. There was nothing inside them but a few instruments of silverware.

“We’re not gonna find anything,” Des said.

“They gotta have tools somewhere,” I said, and that’s when an alarm sounded from the second floor.

REET! REET! REET!

Des and I rushed back upstairs, where smoke was filling the hallway. Ran into the studio where, amidst a thicker cloud of smoke, Ollie was standing atop the desk he’d been trying to pry open, waving a clown mask at the ceiling. The alarm above him was screaming, and the cigar he’d been smoking earlier was now pinched between his teeth and smoldering.

“What the hell are you doing!” Des yelled over the deafening noise.

Ollie wildly fanned the mask three more times before the alarm stopped. Panting, he plucked the cigar from his mouth and dropped to the desk on his ass, his face and beard dribbling with sweat. “Needed a smoke break,” he said, huffing and puffing. “I can’t…get…the drawer open.”

“Nothing’s going right so far,” I said.

“What else?” Ollie asked.

“We can’t get those brackets off the wall.”

Ollie considered the camera in front of him, and with a tired snicker, he said, “That? I can take care of that.” He hopped off the desk, stubbed out his cigar on the top of it, and drove the crowbar underneath the flat part of the metal support frame. He pushed and pried on the bar, struggling and straining. The drywall cracked under the pressure, but the camera mount moved no more than the drawer he’d been attempting to open. Soon he lost his breath and stepped back with his arms sagging.

“Must be screwed right into the studs,” Des said, and extended his hand. “Here. Let this stud have a try.”

Ollie shook his head. “I got it,” he said, and with a powerful swing, he attacked the wall with the crowbar, obliterating the drywall. Over and over, he relentlessly smashed, the sound of his strikes filled with aggression. It seemed to vibrate the room.

I cupped my hands to my ears. “Ollie! Too loud! Stop!”

Ollie paused mid-swing, let off the bar, and jumped, grappling the metal arm of the mount. He raised his legs off the floor and hung from it, attempting to use his weight to bring it down. Still, it wouldn’t budge. Wincing as he pulled, Ollie curled his knees to his chest, pressed his feet flat against the wall, and wrenched with all his might. Des and I let him have at it, saying nothing as he groaned and howled, the tendons in his neck sticking out. Because it was working. I could hear screws whining as they were being squeezed away from the unseen boards, the wood crackling as they splintered. He was giving it everything he had, and with one last strained yank, he tore the entire bracket off the wall and went crashing to the floor. He fell on his back, and the camera came down on top of him, also the mount and even a large broken sheet of drywall. White charcoaled dust and flecks of pink insulation floated from the exposed framework of the wall he’d decimated.

REET REET REET!

The alarm sounded once again. Smoke was rising off the desk and drifting to the ceiling. Ollie had failed to fully extinguish his cigar.

I jumped on the desk, stomped it out, and waved the mask at the smoke detector until it quieted.

But there was another siren now, not as loud, but audible. It wasn’t in the studio, nor was it coming from anywhere inside the townhouse. It screeched from the open doorway of the patio. Outside.

Des picked his head up, listening. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Fire company?” I said.

“Someone next door must have heard the alarm,” Ollie said, climbing to his feet with the camera, mount, and hunk of wall in hand. It looked like he was holding a satellite dish he’d just torn off a roof.

“Well, we got one camera,” Des said. “That’s enough. Let’s get the hell out of here.” As he made his way to the patio door, I jumped down from the desk and grabbed him and spun him back.

“Take the camera with you,” I said. “Ollie and I will get the drawer open.”

“We don’t have time,” Des said.

“Yeah, it’s no use,” Ollie said. “Plus, I’m tired.”

“We have to get it,” I said. “That was the deal.” I snatched the mount from Ollie and shoved it into Des’s arms. “Go.”

Des fumbled with the mount on his way out, bumping into the door before reaching the patio. I hefted the crowbar and, taking a page out of Ollie’s book, jammed it into the seam of the desk drawer and applied pressure, putting all my weight onto the crowbar, pressing as hard as I could.

The siren was getting closer.

The drawer still wouldn’t give, but I kept on prying.

Until I heard Des yelp outside and a loud metallic crashing sound.

I handed Ollie the bar and ran out to the deck, stuck my head over the railing to find glimpses of Des in the dark, sprawled on the grass, the equipment beside him, and the ladder no longer propped up but lying on the ground.

“You okay?” I called out.

Des lay stiff and motionless, only his hand rising to give me a thumbs-up. “Aces,” he groaned.

“Set the ladder back up,” I said, “and get to the car.”

Red lights reflected off the trees to my right. Beyond Milo North and the main road where we’d first come in, a firetruck was seconds from reaching the townhouse entrance.

I rushed back inside the studio to tell Ollie to forget it, but as soon as I opened my mouth to speak—Clunk! The end of the crowbar closest to him shot down, and the tip wedged into the drawer jolted up. The distinct echo of metal or some component busting followed.

“Got it,” Ollie said.

“Black thumb drive,” I said, and as I moved closer to help in the search, Ollie stuck his hand out to ease me back.

“I’ll find it,” he said. “Get your ass down the ladder. Go. Now.”

My last sight of Ollie, before running to the deck, was his hands frantically searching the open compartment, rustling and shuffling through papers. I raised one leg over the railing, climbed over, swung my other leg around, and started lowering himself while clinging to the top of the railing. And suddenly, my organs jumped as I went into a freefall. I was dangling, waving my legs in search of the ladder. I couldn’t find it. My feet couldn’t touch it. Holding on for dear life, I craned my neck to look down, and there it was, the ladder still lying on the ground.

“Goddamnit, Des!” I screamed. “Desmond! Des, where are you? The ladder!”

“Coming!” he called out from the back of the yard, rustling through the bushes.

I was hanging on by a thread, my arms stiff and searing with the pain of holding all my weight. Facing forward now, my eyes between two slats in the railing, Ollie continued his search in the desk drawer.

“Ollie?”

“It’s not in here,” he hollered.

Groaning, strained, weak, and breathless, I said, “Black…thumb…drive.”

“I know what I’m looking for,” Ollie said. “It’s not here.”

I couldn’t feel my fingers, but I sensed they were slipping, losing grip. Any second, I was going to fall.

“Desmond!”

“I’m here,” he said.

I looked down. Des was directly under me, staring straight up, his hands on his hips, as if waiting for his next direction. The ladder was still on the ground.

“The ladder, Des! Get the lad—!”

I fell. And crashed on top of Des. We crumbled to the lawn, tangled amongst each other, gasping for air. Des pushed me off him, and as I rolled over, a pair of heavy booted feet dropped out of nowhere and landed inches from my head. Ollie had jumped off the second-floor deck. He wrenched us up, pushed us in the direction of the parked car, and told us to run. In one hand he held the crowbar and duffel bag, and the other he used to scoop up the ladder. The three of us staggered through the bushes, two of us curled-over with pain, and loaded our supplies and peeled away the moment the sound of a large vehicle screeched to a stop in front of the townhouse.

& & &

While Ollie drove, quiet in his exhaustion, and Des swaddled his tummy and slept beside him, I climbed over the back cushions into the trunk and fished out the camera and mount and a significant chunk of drywall still attached to it. I sat it on the seat next to me and inspected it. It didn’t take long to notice this job was a bust. The camera was in complete disarray, the retractable video monitor on the side of it cracked and bent, only half of the broken lens cap still attached. The lens itself was splintered into a spiderweb of smashed glass. It was unusable.

I shoved the remnants of our lost equipment aside and said, “Camera’s destroyed. Des-troyed, that is. He must have squashed it when he fell off the ladder.”

Ollie made a tsk sound.

“No thumb drive, either,” I said. “Looks like nobody got what they wanted. Are you sure it wasn’t in there, Ollie?”

“Who cares?” Ollie said. “We didn’t get nothing. What’s it matter now?”

“But Alan said it was in the drawer. You’re certain it wasn’t there?”

Ollie looked in the rearview mirror. “There was nothing in there but papers, JT.”

“It had to be in there.”

“Maybe Alan’s partner knew about it and took it. If we had more time, we could have done a more thorough search of the place.”

“We didn’t need to. He said it was in the desk drawer.”

“You sure it was the right desk?” Ollie said. “There was two in there.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “He said it was the desk on the left.”

“The desk on the left?”

“That’s right.”

“Not the right?”

“No, the left.”

Ollie said, “JT, the desk you told me to pry open was on the right side.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was the left.”

“It was on the right.”

“On the right if you were coming in from inside the house,” I said. “But he told us to come in from the back deck. So, that would make it the left.”

“Did you make sure of this,” Ollie said, “when the guy told you?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I’m just saying, if the guy said it was the desk on the left—he’s not coming in through the back. He’d be coming in from the hallway, from the inside. In his mind, his desk is on the left, but in your mind, when he tells you to enter from the back, you’re looking to your left, but really it’s the right.”

I had to think about this.

No, I didn’t.

I knew Ollie was right—correct, that is. The way Alan had told us his story, he was leaving out the important parts, giving us details that didn’t matter. The man constructed a narrative like someone jamming pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into places that didn’t fit.

“Ollie, I think you might be right about this,” I said.

Ollie snickered. “Remember when I first came to you guys about acting in your videos? We were talking about plays, and Des was telling us about stage direction.”

“Stage direction?”

“He mentioned something about how the right side of the stage is called stage left and the left side is called stage right. Right?”

“Right. Because if you’re in the audience, the right is the actor’s left, but if you’re the actor on stage, facing the audience, your left is their right.”

“Yeah,” Ollie said. “I think what happened was we came in from the wrong side of the stage. Or this Alan guy gave us some bad stage direction.”

“When you’re right, you’re right,” I said, and left it at that.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Devin James Leonard 2024