But how to get my money and not have those two crooks try to take it from me or follow me?
I smiled the big smile I usually reserve for the ladies and occasionally my landlord.
I had an idea.
At a bargain store, I bought a duffel bag.
At a free newspaper box, I transferred the contents into the duffel bag until it was bulging.
At my car, I put the bag into the backseat.
Whistling a merengue to myself, I drove calmly down the boulevard to where the tractor trailer almost ran me down, and where I almost ran down the old woman with the grocery cart. I made the turn and then drove to where the storage facility was. I drove past once, and sure enough, I saw the orange Malibu parked down the block, in an alley. I guess they thought that if I returned I would not think to check to see if their car was nearby. Idiots.
I drove around the block and into the storage facility, through the gate, and parked. I did not see Fanny or anyone else suspicious hanging around. It would not have mattered if I had.
There was a pay phone just inside the entryway, and nobody around. I dialed 911 and got the dispatcher, told her I saw a man and a woman with a gun outside the storage facility, and hung up.
I went to my locker and opened it.
Inside was the Scottish suitcase. I unzipped it a little. The cash was still there. Just checking. After the key had vanished, I felt anything could happen.
I went back downstairs and from inside watched the police arrive. They began to talk with the guard, and he jerked a thumb toward the entrance.
That is when I exited.
One of the cops cocked her head at me. She was a strapping brunette with a French braid and slight mustache. Her hands were on her gun belt. “Hey, you, mister. You call 911?”
“Me? No, officer.”
She looked me up and down a moment and then went back to talking to the guard. Nobody could prove I made that call—or let us just say it was not worth the effort. I put the Scottish suitcase with the eight hundred grand in my trunk.
I started the car and drove from the lot. Wherever Fanny and company were, I was sure the police scared them off. They probably did have a gun if they intended to take the money from me.
This would be the tricky part, but I was pretty sure that Fanny and whoever were not hardened criminals like Danny.
I drove by where the orange Malibu had been, and it was gone.
Taking my time, I stopped for a soda at a deli and then made my way home as the skies were getting dark. Not from night, but from storm clouds.
The Camaro tucked into a parking spot up the block, I took the duffel bag from the backseat and headed toward my door.
Footsteps were behind me, and I was sweating but moving slowly and casually.
“Morty!”
I turned.
It was only Speedy.
“Speedy, my friend. Qué pasa?”
He smiled and pulled a gun from his pants pocket.
Do not ask me to tell you what kind of gun, Father. It was not a rifle, if that is what you are thinking. It was a revolver, I guess, black.
“Por favor, amigo. The bag.”
Fanny emerged from the alley up the block but did not come near. Clever girl—staying clear of danger, let Speedy take all the risks.
“Speedy, what are you doing . . . do you mean to tell me you and Fanny . . .” Of course. I am an idiot. It was he who knew to look under my battery for the paperwork to the storage locker. Remember? His father in Central America somewhere used to keep the family’s meager savings under the battery of a Ford Fairlane. The lipstick on his neck at the chica bar would have been Fanny’s pink lipstick, and that would have been her waiting for him, her shadow on his window, when I dropped him off. While I went to see Dexter, she left Speedy to go search my place and then wait for me. “You do not drive a Malibu.”
“My car broke, so I borrowed this one from my cousin.” Speedy shrugged, looking cheerful. Cheerful probably because Fanny had serviced him in the car to build his courage.
“She came to the house on Vanderhoosen as we were working, after you took the tight ones away. It was her uncle’s money. He used to tell her about it to torment her, even though she—his only surviving relative—brought him food. He even showed her a tight one once to prove it. He hated Fanny and would not let her in the house after a while because he knew she was looking around for the money. It was a sick game. Even after he died, there were instructions that she receive nothing and have no access to the house. She tried breaking into the house once after he died and the neighbors saw her and the cops came and the estate lawyer had a restraining order put on her to stay away from the house. The lawyers were giving everything the old man had to the Catholic Church, but they didn’t know about the tight ones, though Fanny didn’t know if they had found them or not.” He shrugged apologetically, smiling. “Give me the bag.”
“You are my friend, Speedy. I cannot believe . . .” Now my mouth was agape. There were tears in my eyes—partially genuine, I must tell you. Even though he was stealing a duffel full of free newspapers, it hurt me that he would do such a thing. Yet I told you before that his trustworthiness was untested.
He held his hand out. “The bag.”
Slowly, I slipped it off my shoulder and handed it to him.
“Speedy, you fucking bastard. I will get you for this.”
“No, I do not think you will. We are going away together, just me and Fanny.”
“You better go far and fast, old friend.” I was acting real mad, you know, like Clint Eastwood, my eyes all squinty, my jaw working, my hands flexing at my sides like I was ready to draw my six-shooter. My imaginary six-shooter, of course.
“I am sorry, but it is rightfully her money.” He backed away, and the two of them went around the corner into the alley.
I backtracked to my car and drove to a pay phone. I called 911 again and told them that I had seen a Hispanic male in a straw hat and flannel shirt with a taller woman with great tits and elegant nose in an orange Malibu rat-rod with a gun, and they drove off onto the Belt Parkway. How did I know they would be on the Belt Parkway? Because it is the nearest highway. If they were to go far and fast, that would be the way, and it is near enough that I hoped they would wait that long before opening the bag.
But it did not matter. I drove west, inland, on back streets, away from the Belt Parkway, until I found a smaller storage facility called Storage Hut on a corner a few blocks from East Brooklyn Hospital. There was a Sudanese security guard who showed me to my new rental locker.
The money was once again secure. Next time I needed the bag, when I left town, I would hire a security guard or private detective to accompany me.
This Storage Hut key was smaller, and so I wrapped it in the paperwork, stuffed it in an envelope, and mailed it to my business P.O. box. It could sit safely and comfortably in my box under the watchful and protective eye of the U.S. Postal Service.
I was clever, wasn’t I, Father? I think I saw something like this in a movie once, so I am only really clever for having remembered it.
And it was idiotically easy, yes? You see, Speedy and Fanny were amateurs, and they thought that the element of surprise was all they needed. I am quite certain that any professional criminal would have had me open the bag and show them the money.
Yes, of course, Fanny and Speedy could come back at me, but the element of surprise was gone, their trap sprung, and the rat now wise to the danger of cheese. In the mind of the amateur criminal, I think there is a big difference between trickery and robbery, even though both can land you in jail. If they are going to commit a felony like any common criminal by pulling a gun on me and making me take them to money, then why not go to Manhattan and hold up Donald Trump? Or kidnap Oprah for ransom? The effort is essentially the same, the reward greater with millionaires.
I will be brutally honest, and please do not think less of me, Father: I still get a great deal of satisfaction thinking about those two
opening the bag, and Fanny giving Speedy an earful about how it was all his fault somehow, and the subsequent gloom in the Malibu. Perhaps they would pull over to a rest area on the Belt Parkway to try to think of their next move; maybe they would pull over next to the Verrazano Bridge. You would not have to hear a word that was said to understand their defeat. Just watch them from afar, Speedy downcast, Fanny pacing and flailing her hands around, the approaching storm clouds roiling the sky over the giant expanse of the bridge over the narrows.
Devastation and defeat. What a glorious sight.
I sigh contentedly every time I imagine it.
Never saw either of them again outside of my mind.
CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
I HOPE YOU ARE SITTING down, Father. I was not when I heard this next part, but fortunately I was at Oscar’s, so a bar stool and a stiff drink were at hand. Mim was reading aloud from her paper, and Slim and Buddy and Buddy Dyke and Oscar were riveted.
I could give you the straight newspaper account Mim read to us from the Daily News, but it does not do the story justice, so I will tell it to you my way, the way I imagine it all happened, knowing the people involved, painting you a picture. It is for dramatic effect, yes? Any idiot can read the Daily News account. They did not even mention the storm.
Lightning flashed and crackled across the sky as Danny entered the white hospital corridors by way of the delivery entrance. There were too many cops standing around the emergency room entrance. After killing four people, Danny figured there might just be a description of him if one of the bodies had been discovered, and no criminal enjoys the company of cops under any circumstances.
He passed between two oxygen supply trucks loaded with canisters. Both were idling, and nobody in them. Even in his tense and eager mood, Danny reflected how it was nefarious that oxygen suppliers would leave their engines running. Perhaps in an effort to reduce the amount of free, unpaid-for oxygen?
Climbing the stairs to the loading bay, he went through the swinging doors, past a room where the oxygen supply men were drinking coffee and chewing the fat, past the doorway to the shipping and receiving room crowded with boxes, and through more swinging doors into the main corridor of the hospital, next to the elevators. He pushed the up button, and it lit up.
Danny waited with hands folded before him, Mr. Manners in his brown plaid shirt, brown jacket, brown Gap ball cap, and brown Donna Karan sunglasses.
Some nurses came and stood next to him. They smiled at him, and he nodded.
See, Father, these are the details the newspaper would not supply. Isn’t this much better? I think so.
So Danny is standing with these nurses, waiting, and an elevator arrives with someone on a gurney and an IV. They exit, Danny and the nurses enter, and a doctor arrives at the last second. So there are four of them.
“I’m sorry,” Danny began, smiling sadly at the nurses and doctor. “The nurse told me which floor to go to, and I’m so worried that I forgot what floor she said. A friend of mine was assaulted. I don’t know how bad he is. Could you tell me which floor I should go to for someone like that?”
Danny exited at the fourth floor and went to the nurse’s station. There was a large black woman in a white uniform cradling a telephone between her jowl and prodigious shoulder.
“Excuse me, sorry to bother you, but my brother is here. Louie Franco.”
She held up a finger. Wait.
She muttered something about how they needed more oxygen tanks for someone and hung up. Then she flipped through some computer printouts.
“Room 404.” She pointed a thick finger down the hall. “Visiting hours are almost over. You have fifteen minutes.”
Room 404? That was the number of the motel room at the thump and bump where he had beaten Dexter’s face into a bloody pulp with the telephone. Danny smiled at the absurdity of the coincidence. It was coincidence, wasn’t it? “Thank you. I won’t be long.”
He strode down the corridor and pushed through the partially open door. There were two beds, one left, one right, separated by a curtain. On either side was a dark window splashed with rain and vibrating with the storm’s thunder.
In the bed on the right was an older gentleman with ginger hair on his head and a lot more covering his arms and the one leg that was out of the sheets. He was watching television and looked at Danny.
Danny removed his sunglasses and hat out of politeness. “Sorry,” he said to the man, who stared at him as if he had intruded. Or was it something else? “Are you Louie?”
The man stared blankly and jerked his thumb toward the other side of the curtain.
Against the wall was a bed and one of those tables that swings over the bed so that the patient can eat and drink. In the bed was a man with slicked-back long blond hair. His eyes were closed. His face was badly bruised on one side, and his left arm was in a fresh white cast.
There was a chair next to the bed, and Danny sat in it. He leaned in close to the man’s ear.
“Excuse me. Louie?”
Frog awoke with a start. “Hmm?” He turned his head and looked at Danny with confusion. “Yeah? Who are you?”
Danny smiled serenely. He suddenly felt he would get the five million dollars after all.
“We need to go.”
“Go? What d’you mean?” Frog held up his cast, as if to demonstrate that he was injured.
“We need to go. Now. To get my five million.”
Frog looked confused a moment, narrowing his eyes, and then he suddenly understood what was about to transpire.
Danny had an ice pick to Frog’s throat.
“Please, let’s go,” he whispered, securing the Gap hat back on his head.
“But . . . but . . .”
Danny just shook his head sadly. No buts. He threw back the covers and put a finger to his lips. Quiet.
Frog slid to his feet, looking feeble in his flimsy hospital gown. Danny put his arm around Frog as if to help him walk and led him past the partition. Charlie Binder was in the next bed frantically pushing the nurse call button under the sheets.
Danny led Frog out of the room, the point of the ice pick dimpling the captive’s flank. Right where the kidney was. If the shiv plunged four inches it would penetrate the kidney and Frog would be dead within minutes. Well, they were in a hospital, they might be able to save him, but Danny did not know or care. The way he had his arm around the patient, it looked like he was helping him walk. The large nurse was just leaving her nurse’s station as they approached the elevators.
“Where are you taking him?” she demanded.
Danny smiled politely. “He wanted to get some circulation to his legs. Just down and back, is all.”
She did not look happy about it but continued on her way to answer Charlie’s frantic call.
The elevator doors opened as they approached. Two policemen inside. The cops stopped talking and looked at Danny, who decided he had better go ahead and get in with them.
Frog goggled at the police, trying to ask for help with his eyes, but they continued their conversation, not looking at him.
On the ground floor, the police turned one way, Danny and Frog the other. The policemen’s radios squelched with some excited chatter as Danny led Frog through the doors marked LOADING DOCK.
They passed by an oxygen deliveryman going the other way, rolling a tank, a delivery for the big nurse on the fourth floor. The man looked back at the duo curiously, but Danny saw no need to explain anything to a deliveryman. They passed the storage area, and there was a redheaded hospital worker with tinted glasses and a clipboard. He looked up and said, “Hey!”
Danny walked a little faster, even though Frog was stiffening his legs.
“Please don’t,” Danny warned, breaking the skin over Frog’s kidney with the point of the ice pick.
In the loading bay were the two oxygen trucks, still idling, rain pounding their roofs. Danny opened the driver’s door to the one at the bottom of the stairs.
�
�You drive.”
Frog, his long blond hair already sopping wet, held up his cast pitifully. “I can’t, I . . . Danny, listen, the money . . .”
Danny backhanded Frog hard across the mouth. “Please get in and slide over.”
The red-haired hospital worker with the clipboard was standing on the loading platform.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he yelled over a clap of thunder. Curling his lip with resolve, he added, “I’m calling the cops.” He pulled a radio from his back pocket and began speaking into it rapidly. By the time he got a response, Danny was in the driver’s seat, and Frog was shoved to the opposite side fumbling for the door handle to get out. The door was locked, but in his panic he did not notice.
Danny threw the truck in reverse and cut to one side, clipping a brick wall. It had been a long time since he drove. He slammed the truck into drive, and the oxygen bottles in back rattled as he roared from the hospital loading zone onto the street.
Frog was still fumbling with the door, so Danny took the ice pick and lanced him through the cheek, right into the teeth. Frog howled with pain and left the door alone to massage the searing pain in his injured cheek and gums.
Danny came to a halt at a light. He began feeling the dashboard for the switch to the windshield wipers, and his forearm rubbed the indicator handle, turning them on. He did not know what he did to make that happen, but as long as it happened he could not be bothered to think about what caused it.
In the side mirror, he saw police cars with their blue flashing lights, and they swung into the loading dock area. Before him, car headlights flashed by in both directions on the avenue, the angry black skies beyond rippling and flickering with electricity.
The traffic light was still red. Danny peered through the downpour both ways on the avenue, inching the truck forward. Rain thrummed the truck’s roof.
He checked the side mirror again.
“The money’s not here,” Frog sobbed from behind where he held his bleeding cheek. “We can’t get it now, it already went.”
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