by Thomas Laird
He walks away to some other habitué of his saloon, and Doc and I are left in peace, for the moment.
*
My wife has been a school teacher for ten years. She teaches at the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School on 81st and Laflin on the southside. The school is primarily black, and the neighborhood is African-American because of the success of those cocksuckers called “blockbusters” back in the mid to late ‘60s. The blockbusters devoured neighborhoods by the score by frightening the tenants into running because the tenants were told that the blacks were going to swallow up the southside. People began to sell cheap, and the hood changed for the worse. Poverty was the culprit, not the color of anyone’s skin.
Erin loves these children the way she loves our own. She is the poster child for dedication. She thinks what she does makes a difference, and even though she could easily find a position in lily-white suburbia, she stays where she is because she knows these kids won’t have the advantages of the well-heeled, in the surrounding ‘burbs.
I love to lie in bed with her on summer days when there’s no school and when I have a day off. The kids sleep late because they’re of that age, and they don’t require our constant attention now, as they once did. They make their own breakfasts, and they can dress themselves and entertain themselves by watching TV or reading or going out in the backyard with the swing set.
So Erin and I have these fleeting moments of intimacy, when we’re allowed. We make love, of course, but we have a lot of other ways to be close. She knows I love to have my back scratched, and I know she likes full body massages. Inevitably, both activities lead to sex, and I’m amazed to find that she and I share the same passion and heat we had when we first made love, a little before we were legal and married. Jesus won’t mind that we coupled before we walked the aisle. If Jesus knows how we feel about each other, he knows that being joined with Erin makes everything I do right and true and moral.
My wife’s human, of course, and she gets angry and lets out a string of naughties from time to time, but other than that she doesn’t have a mean bone in her frame. She’s not immaculate, I’m saying—except in my eyes. I tend to downplay her deficiencies because of the inordinate number of strengths she possesses. She’s not saint material, but in my eyes….I suppose I am biased. I cannot imagine how I ever got through a day without her there with me, but obviously we weren’t a pair for all our lives.
Today is one of those rare days that we have the morning together in bed. I wake at about 6:50. The sun has been up since five because this is June, and the longest day of the year is still to come.
I roll over and admire the sleekness of Erin’s back and legs. She’s lying on top of the covers because she is always warm, she says, even though our house has central air and even though I set it at 69 degrees at night to give our home a slight chill. I like having it cool enough that we need a blanket. But I could set it at 50 degrees, and I think I’d find her just this way in the morning.
I stroke her back as lightly as I can with my fingertips, and she stirs just slightly, and I hear her moan softly.
“Previews of coming attractions?” she purrs.
“All you can handle, baby.”
“Don’t call me baby,” she laughs, and then she turns over.
Her breasts are small but almost perfectly round. The nipples are dark, almost purple, and they are fully erect, maybe from the chill in the room.
“You want to get under the covers?” I ask her.
“Why? Feels good out here,” she smiles, foggily.
I have to grab hold of her, and she slides right into the embrace.
“If I wasn’t fixed, I’d think you were trying knock me up again,” she whispers.
“We have enough children. I want you all for myself again, the way it was in the beginning.”
“We still have needy children,” she tells me. “Just because they’re smart enough not to barge in on mommy and daddy anymore—”
“They’ll get a live version of the birds and bees talk.”
“Maybe we should put a lock on the door, Jimmy.”
Chapter 13
Casey McCaslin, 1980
The crew is nervous about doing business, and so am I. It’s late June, and there’s no money coming in. The Robbery dicks are nowhere in sight, and neither is Parisi. I think my lawyer’s last threat about harassment got through to the guy at the top of the shit mountain, and I think some of the crap finally made it down to Parisi and his partner. Whatever, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them in about two weeks, and I can’t keep spending the settlement for the false arrest much longer. Money’s getting too tight in the collar.
So I call them in, Andy and the whole bunch, and we meet at The Pig’s Ass, a saloon on 35th Street. Andy’s is the first face I see as I enter, and the other eight are in attendance, too. It’s got to the point where I have trouble remembering all their names, but that might be a good thing, too. Too bad they can’t forget my name when they get pinched doing work for the crew. We’ve been lucky that no one has had a brush with the cops since I’ve been out of Joliet. All these clowns are on probation, and if they get caught doing anything felony-sized, they’re going away for ten years minimum, some of them might do twenty or more.
Mick O’Brien is the threat. I always knew he was. Andy Shea is too stupid and too loyal. I don’t have to worry about Shea. But O’Brien is a sly motherfucker. He’s ambitious, too. I can see him putting one in my back to take over this crew of thieves. He has those black fucking eyes. There’s no life in them. Nothing at all. Just pitch. You never know what he’s thinking, and that’s what makes me leery of him. He’s the joker in the fucking deck.
“Mick,” I say to him when I approach them all at the bar. There are only a few street girls in here, and there are a few dozen shift workers, and there’s a handful of The Disciples biker gang who hang out in here.
The Pig’s Ass is appropriately named because this place reminds you with its smell of the back end of a porker. Visually, it ain’t much prettier, either. There’s a juker. And there’s sawdust on the floor which the patrons use for puking and spitting. The ownership doesn’t like anyone who tosses in the barroom, and they’re asked never to return—sometimes with the business end of a sawed off shotgun that the owner, Jason, has no difficulty pointing at you if you decide to upchuck elsewhere than the toilet. But spitting is okay. Jason says that’s what the sawdust is intended for.
But the Health Department recently gave Jason a warning about the expectorating, and I think hocking on the sawdust is on its way out. Too bad, it’ll be the end of an era.
We have two beers before we retreat to the big table in front of the pool table that no one ever uses. They’re all here: Andy Shea, Mick O’Brien, Billy Hardesty, Tom Tracy, Jack Finerty, Colin Jones, Terry Murphy, Stevey Darcy, and Frank Joyce. We used to call ourselves The Shanty Irish, but that was when we were punks, just starting out.
We retreat to the table, and I buy us two pitchers just to show good faith. Jason delivers the pitchers to us, and when he ambles in the opposite direction, I begin the meeting.
“Time to get up and get started again,” I tell them.
It’s a rectangular table, big enough for a dozen patrons. O’Brien sits on my left, with his coal-ass eyes glued on me. I’m going to have to kill that cocksucker eventually, but he’s a good earner. Andy Shea can’t do dick without my help, but he carries his load and he kept his mouth shut when I was inside. The rest of them are capable thieves, but nothing outstanding, as individuals. They’re worker drones, except for Mick O’Brien. He always appears as if he’s coiled, ready to spring. But I can’t let him know I’m wary of him. It’s a sign of weakness with these types of animals.
“What are we going to do?” O’Brien suddenly pipes in. “They’re still looking at you for tearing up those little bitches, aren’t they?”
“That’s over, done with. My lawyer got them to back off.”
He looks over at me with these
piercing charcoal eyes, and I have to stare right back at him.
“All right then,” O’Brien mutters. “What’s up? This fuckin’ drought is killin’ us all, Casey.”
“It’s about to pour,” I tell them all. “We’re going after a payroll at a trucking outfit in Cicero.”
“Where’d you hear about this?” Andy Shea wants to know.
I see I have the complete attention of all eight of them.
“I know a guy who works their docks. His brother works in the office.”
“And they’ll have to get a piece,” Billy Hardesty chimes in. He’s a short little Mick, maybe five-four, who’s got a weightlifter’s body on a sawed off frame. He has tattoos of snakes on either forearm.
“Of course. What’d you think, dumbass?” I counter.
“I was just sayin’…”
“Information ain’t free,” I tell them all.
They all nod and mumble some unintelligible shit, and I continue.
“With what our takes will be on this thing, you won’t mind a split of more than the usual parts. I’m talking five figures for everybody.”
I look over to Mick O’Brien, and I see that the last bit whetted his lust for a buck.
“How big in the five digits?” Andy Shea asks.
“Maybe fifteen, twenty apiece.”
“Are you shittin’ us?” Colin Jones asks.
He’s the heartthrob of the bunch. He plays lead guitar in a bar band that never got their break into the big time, but they do a nice job with “Louie Louie.” He’s a tall, lean guy who sports that flat stomach that his bitches swoon over. He’s the cunt hound of the crew.
“You assholes in on this business or out? I ain’t got time to deal with a bunch of gashes on this deal. This is major. No copper pipes over the fence shit, this time. Well? What’ll it be? If you don’t want in, I’ll find somebody who does.”
I go around the table, and all the answers are the same.
Affirmative.
*
I use my other car to take off, the night we’re busting into the trucking outfit. The cash is to be transferred to the bank tomorrow, my source, Pete Brewster told me. It’s to cover payroll and some bills the company has to pay out. There’s over 140 K in that cheesy assed safe they have. Pete tells me we can open it with a drill. He says the door’ll fall off if we give it some help. They don’t usually use the old piece of shit for cash, but there was some hitch about using their regular bank, Brewster explained. He says this is a very opportune moment for all of us.
I don’t really need nine of us to knock over the trucking place, but it’s been so long between scores that I figure I have to give them all a taste, or maybe O’Brien might have the bright idea to take over and set up his own jobs with them.
Mary stops me before I go out the back door. I have the old Chevy parked about two blocks away. The Mustang stays at home from now on when it’s a job.
“Where are you going, this late?”
All she has on is a tee shirt. The bottom barely covers her quiff. She comes up to me and rubs her lower half against me, and I feel the immediate surge.
“Lunch money for you and me.”
“And I suppose I gotta sit here all night wondering if you’re ever coming home,” she pouts.
Her face is humorous, however. She just wants to fuck. She’s young, and she’s developed a taste for getting it regularly in a bed with the same man every time. She’s losing the street in her after only a matter of weeks.
I kiss her, and she thrusts a tongue into my mouth that I return to her. She grabs my crotch, and I start to think maybe I’ve got time, but I force her back gently.
“I’ll only be gone a few hours. Why don’t you warm up with one of your toys?”
She laughs.
“They’re not the same.”
I’m beginning to wonder about the monster I’ve created. I’m starting to get floor burns on my dick. But it’s something you can’t say no to when you have her around for a while. It’s worse than any drug, even though I’ve never been a user, except for the beer.
“I gotta go.”
“Then get back here. I’ll make you wish you never left.”
I open the back door, and I get the hell out before she changes my mind.
*
“Pete didn’t say anything about a night watchman,” Mick tells me as we pull up across the street.
“He’s an old fucking man,” I answer.
We see the geezer walk around at the front gate. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else out there with him in front of the chain link entry with the barbed wire roped over the top. We’ve got bolt cutters to make our way through the fence, but we weren’t going to cut our way through the fucking gate, and still we don’t need the old guy around to set off some alarm.
The other five guys are in another car. They’re just here for backup, as I said. They’ll be our eyes outside the trucking outfit. They’re supposed to blast their car horn twice if any cops should roll up. Not bad work for getting an equal share, but I said I had to keep this crew happy and together, so they’re getting the same slice as me and the other three in our car: O’Brien, Darcy, and Shea.
“Let me take care of the old guy,” Mick says.
“Are you going to waste him?” I ask.
“Accidents happen.”
“You don’t gotta kill him, Mick,” Andy says from the backseat of my Ford.
“No, you don’t have to,” Darcy adds.
Darcy is a prematurely bald thirty-year-old with a fifty-year-old’s paunch.
“What’s wrong with you twats?” O’Brien says. His voice is matter of fact.
“You don’t need to kill the old fuck,” I repeat. “Cold cock him. That’ll work.”
He’s about to protest, sitting next to me in the front, when I put a hand up.
“It ain’t necessary, like I said.”
My eyes bore back into his, and I see him visibly back down.
“Now go take care of the old man.”
He takes one last look at me and sees that I haven’t taken my own glare off him, and then he gets out of the car.
When he walks across the street, he goes up to the guard station, and the geezer is dumb enough to walk out toward him. Mick promptly belts the guy, and the minimum wage cop goes flat on his keester. Then O’Brien follows with two vicious kicks to the noggin, and the security guy isn’t moving.
O’Brien motions for us to come on. The three of us get out of the car, and I motion for the guys in the other vehicle to keep their eyes on the gate.
“You won’t need to cut a hole in the fence. The front gate is open. Buster, on the ground there, was all there is between us and the office, back there. It’s too easy. Something’s wrong.”
Shea and Darcy and I push past him, and then O’Brien drags the old man inside his little building at the entrance.
“He’s still breathing,” Mick tells me.
We trot to the office building, but this door’s got a deadbolt on it. Darcy was carrying the sledge, and two cracks directly onto the lock get us inside the office.
Shea’s got the drill. He bores into the safe, right where Pete told us it would be, and we’re inside the box in less than three minutes. I was expecting alarms to go off, but Brewster was right again. O’Brien was right, too. It’s too easy. I’m expecting a bunch of cops to descend on us momentarily, but there’s no noise except for the droning of the drill, and now it’s quiet altogether.
I’m carrying the duffel bag, and I’m stuffing it with the cash. It’s in hundreds, mostly, so it won’t be a problem to get it all inside the bag. If it had been singles, there might have been a problem.
It’s like Christmas, this job, and I’m wondering if other businesses are this lazy and slack in security. They could’ve bought a fucking dog. Anything.
And I’m starting to wonder if the security man is in fact still breathing, the way O’Brien said he was.
It takes all of ten min
utes to bust in here and relieve them of their payroll. They’ll never get the chance to make the deposit tomorrow. I wonder if the cocksuckers are insured.
*
We take the money and ourselves over to Darcy’s house. He has a basement flat below his parents’ two flat building. He has his own entrance, and we’re careful to make no noise as we troop inside. Darcy snaps on a light over his kitchen table, and I flop the bag on top and then open it. There’s $140,000, I make it. I do the math in my head, and it’s fifteen five plus, apiece. It’s in hundreds, so I take the extra bills and tell the other eight guys that I’ll cash them into smaller bills and make the amount even all around.
A look of utter greed is on their faces. It’s like a cat ogling a wounded mouse, the way they look at all this money. They grab their shares and nobody bitches that they don’t have their full shares yet. What they have is far grander than any of the other pissant takes we’ve had boosting shit over somebody’s back fence.
And Frankie Amalfitano doesn’t get any piece of this deal, either. Just Pete and his brother, Joey, get a taste, and I sliced off theirs after I made the count.
We don’t want to wake up Darcy’s old man and old lady, so they’re all going to head out to The Pig’s Ass to celebrate. The bar stays open to four, and it’s only 1:45.
I tell them I’m not going because I had enough beer the last time I was there with them, and I don’t want to get into it with the bikers when these assholes get a bellyful, which is what I can predict will happen.
“Don’t take all that money into that fucking bar,” I tell them before we go outside. “Put it somewhere safe, and don’t make any big buys of anything. Don’t put the Robbery fucks on us. It was easy, tonight. Too goddam easy. And don’t fuck it up. The Robbery guys aren’t stupid. And the old man might remember O’Brien’s face.”
“I scrambled his fucking brains. He won’t remember a goddam thing. I guarantee it. He might become a fucking turnip, I hit him so hard.”
For some reason I want to avenge the security man and hand out an identical beating to O’Brien. But then I start to think I’m going soft from being with Mary. I remember I wanted to kill her, too, but I didn’t. And I shouldn’t give a fuck if the old guy at the trucking place survives O’Brien’s boots, either.