Page 4 of I Am the Messenger

"There's no need for that!" Ritchie yells from under the Lego table.

"Shut up, you!" the gunman yells back, and he's off.

His only problem is the fact that Marv's car has about a 5 percent chance of starting first time round.

The gunman bursts through the doors of the bank and is on his way toward the road. He stumbles and drops the gun near the entrance but decides to keep going without it. All in a second, I can see the panic on his face as he decides whether to pick it up again or go on. There's no time, so he leaves it and continues running.

As we all get to our knees to watch him, we see him approaching the car.

"Watch this." Marv begins to laugh. Audrey, Marv, and I all watch, and Ritchie's on his way over to us.

Outside, the gunman stops and tries to work out which key opens the car. That's when we all crack up laughing at the incompetence of him.

He eventually gets in and tries to start the car countless times, but it never kicks over.

Then.

For some reason I'll never understand.

I run out, picking up the gun along the way. When I cross the road, I lock eyes with the gunman. He attempts to get out of the car, but it's too late now for that.

I'm standing at the Ford's window.

I have the gun pointed at his eyes.

He stops.

We both do.

He tries to get out and run, and I swear I have no idea I'm firing the gun until I've stepped toward him and hear the glass shatter.

"What are you doing?" Marv cries out in pain from the other side of the street. His world is crumbling. "That's my car you're shooting!"

Sirens arrive.

The gunman falls to his knees.

He says, "I'm such an idiot."

I can only agree.

For a moment, I look down and pity him because I realize that I'm quite possibly looking at the most hapless man on earth. First of all, he robs a bank with unutterably stupid people like Marv and me inside it. Then his getaway car vanishes. Then, when he's onto a good thing because he knows how to get his hands on a different car, it's the most pathetic car in the Southern Hemisphere. In a way, I feel sorry for him. Imagine it--the humiliation.

As the cops put the handcuffs on him and lead him away, I say to Marv, "Now do you see?" I continue on and become more forceful. Louder. "Do you see? This only goes to show the patheticness"--I point to it--"of this car." I pause a moment to let him think it over. "If it was even half decent, this bloke would've got away now, wouldn't he?"

Marv admits it. "I guess."

It's actually hard to tell if he would have preferred the gunman to get away simply to prove his car isn't so useless.

There's glass on the road and all over the seats of the car. I try to figure out which is more shattered--the window or Marv's face.

"Hey," I say, "sorry about the window, okay?"

"Forget it," Marv answers.

The gun feels warm and sticky, like melting chocolate in my hand.

Some more cops arrive to ask questions.