by Ws Greer
Once Shelly finishes taking orders and brings all of the drinks back, I step on the silver button at the base of the couch and morph the Privacy Smart Glass from clear to dark opaque, obscuring the vision of everyone in the club so we can get down to business without having to worry about who’s watching. I doubt anyone in Club Asylum is a lip reader, but safe is always better than sorry.
“I’m glad you all could make it tonight,” I say to the group before taking a sip from my bottle of Cristal and setting it back down on the red coaster in front of me. “As you all should know by now, I don’t call upon many people for business more than once. I prefer bringing on help that’s desperate, scratching and clawing to get out of whatever gutter their stuck in. However, what we have in mind requires a certain amount of professionalism and skill, and experience has taught me that you four have both of those things in abundance.”
“We appreciate you reaching out, Solomon,” Donny speaks up. It goes without saying that when Donny Fontane is talking, he’s speaking for himself and his brother at the same time, because Ricky is usually the quiet one of the two. So as Ricky sips the Corona he ordered, Donny leans forward and rests his arms on the table, the sleeves of his white shirt lifting a bit and exposing the heavily tattooed flesh completely covering both of his arms. “I figured this is going to be a big deal if you’re calling us in on it. You know we don’t come cheap.”
“Have you ever known me to be cheap, Donny?” I reply with a smile, to which Donny grins and gives his head a single shake back and forth. “Right. Then give us your undivided attention while my good friend Nix lays out the details.”
“We’ve got a job we’d like all of you to be a part of,” Nix jumps in, his voice low and rumbling as always. “There’s a cash delivery being made to Hyperion Bank in three days.”
“Hyperion Bank?” Rock cuts in. “Unless there’s another Hyperion Bank in another freakin’ country, I think I see why you want us. You guys sure know how to go big.”
“Wait, wait,” Marcell says now, leaning forward. “Hyperion Bank is in the middle of Philly and only a few blocks from police headquarters. If you’re suggesting what it sounds like you’re suggesting, then you guys must’ve started drinking way before we showed up tonight. That drop is going to be extremely high in value, which means it’ll be heavily guarded like it always is, and any escape route you use will be crawling with cops. You’re not actually considering hitting that drop, are you? Because you may as well walk into police headquarters and demand to be let into a cell.”
“I didn’t take any of you for the scared type,” Nix replies, smartly.
We’ve been doing this a long time, and over the years, we’ve learned how to say exactly what is necessary to get what we want out of people. If you want to get a criminal to do your bidding, there are only two things you need to say to convince them: the job will make them rich, and turning the job down out of fear makes them a coward. In our lifestyle, you never let anyone believe you’re a coward, and if word gets out that you actually are a coward, it’s as good as a death sentence. Not only can cowards not be trusted to act when needed, but cowards crack under the pressure of even the lightest police interrogation, and that’s not the kind of thing people like us can tolerate. Cowards don’t live long in this lifestyle.
“Whoah,” Rock snips, lifting his extra-large hand off the table towards Nix. “No one said anything about being scared. It’s just that this ain’t some tiny little credit union at the edge of the city, with all kinds of winding highway escape routes waiting for us to make a quick getaway. This is Hyperion Bank, in the middle of Center City, a few minutes down the street from the slaughterhouse. The pigs will be all over you. They know how big that payload is at Hyperion. They’ll know when the drop is being made, and they’ll already have guys on it. They always do, because the damn commissioner probably has an account with Hyperion. It’s not about being scared, it’s about being smart.”
“I have to say that I agree with Rock’s big muscle-bound ass on this one,” Marcell says, leaning back in his chair and lifting the short glass of Hennessy to his lips. He sips it and sets it back on the table, eyeing me to see how I’ll react.
“It’s an interesting idea, Nix,” Donny says as his brother Ricky nods his head in agreement. “But turning that idea into reality probably isn’t gonna happen. That one’s just a little too big, even for you guys.”
“Too big,” I repeat, finally speaking up and drawing every eye in the room to me. I take a deep breath and rise out of my seat, lifting up the entire bottle of Cristal with me as I start to walk around the room, making sure to have eye contact with each individual as I go. “Let’s be clear about one thing, gentlemen—there is no such thing as too big. Not when it comes to me. I’ve been living this life for a while now, and I have conquered everything that so many others before me couldn’t. Were any of you big-dicked enough to hit Philly First National? That bank is taking a shit just ten minutes away from Philadelphia’s finest, and Nix and I went in there and wiped its ass to the tune of four hundred-seventy-five grand! We split that take five ways after only being in the bank for ninety seconds! And you tell me something is too big? Well how’s this for too big? Nix, please tell our guests what two-point-five million is when you split it five ways.”
At the sound of the numerical value, all four of their mouths drop so low I think they’ll shatter my glass table.
“Five hundred grand,” Nix barks confidently. “Each.”
“What the fu . . .” Donny starts to say, but I cut him off.
“No, no. Shhh. You had your chance to speak, and you chose to say that the job was too big. It’s obvious the only thing that’s too big in this room is the amount of limitations you’re willing to put on yourself. Oh, and my cock and balls, of course.”
The four men in front of us look to Nix to see if I’m being serious, as if they’re unsure if it’s okay to laugh, and the awkwardness of it is like a joke in itself. However, I’m seriously offended that they’d act as though I can be held back by the proximity of a police station. The cops have never stopped me before, and they won’t do it now. Why? Because I’m Solomon King. I’m a god in this city, and no cops or enemies formed against me shall prosper. I’m not satisfied with how I’ve managed to change my life over these past seven years. I’m not finished! I’m just getting warmed up, and I won’t be held back by other people’s fear or lack of ambition. Giants do not shrink themselves to appease the weak.
“Is something I said amusing?” I ask the group in all seriousness. Every smirk disappears. “I called you all here because I trusted that you could do what other people would say is impossible. Instead, you’re the one’s saying this is impossible, and I don’t think that shit is funny at all! I want results, and if you can’t help us get them, this is your opportunity to get up and walk out of my club right now.” I turn my back on the entire table and wait in silence.
No one moves. No one smiles. No one breathes. After fifteen silent seconds, I turn around, approach the table and set the bottle of Cristal down, slowly taking my seat with a blank stare on my face.
“You’re all still here,” I continue. “And if you’re still here, I assume that means you remember who you’re dealing with, and you’ve gotten your heads out of your asses. If you want small, go deal with someone else who will even do the small things half-assed and probably still get you killed in the process. If you want to change your life in ninety seconds, start thinking of how we can make the impossible possible. Now, who’s in, and who’s out?”
Slowly but surely, every one of these lowlife criminals starts to nod their heads. I’ve got them.
Rock is the first to answer. “I’m in.”
“Alright, Solomon. Let’s do it,” Marcell agrees after chugging the rest of his drink.
“I guess it’s go big or go home. Get rich or die trying,” Donny says with a smile.
“You had me at two-point-five million,” Ricky finally speaks up with a
wide grin on his pale face.
I look at every one of them, then I glance at Nix, who simply nods his head once with a feint grin teasing the edge of his mouth.
“Good,” I reply, just as the intercom to the Box comes on and Lenny’s booming voice fills the room.
“Solomon, someone’s here to see you,” he says nervously. “Says he has something you asked for.”
Nix looks at me in confusion as I smile to myself and answer. “Let him in, Lenny.”
The thick glass door swings open and with the sound of booming bass following him, Tim Sandusky walks into the room wearing an all-black hoodie and black sweatpants. His thin, smooth face is dripping with sweat, and he has a black backpack slung over his right shoulder as he looks to me for approval. I wave him over and take the backpack from him.
“Don’t be nervous Timmy. Everyone in here is a friend of mine. Did everything go according to plan?” I ask him, looking the young, ambitious kid square in the eye.
“It did,” Tim answers.
“And our friend?”
“He’ll live. The shot to his leg wasn’t serious, and I heard an ambulance once I was a block or two away. I’m sure it was for him.”
“His family?”
“They saw it all, but none of them were hurt.”
I nod my head in approval.
“Well done, Tim,” I praise the kid, placing a hand on his shoulder as I turn to address the rest of the men in the room, who all look confused as hell. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce someone to you. This young man right here is Tim Sandusky. He’s one of the ballsiest little bastards I’ve ever met. You can think of him as kind of an intern of mine. Just a young man trying to earn his stripes, and tonight he earned his first one.”
I grab the backpack, unzip the bronze zipper and turn it over, letting all ten thousand dollars fall onto the table in front of everyone. Detective Mason’s ten thousand dollars.
“Like I said earlier, Timmy, nothing is free in this world,” I tell him as I pick the bottle of Cristal back up and take a long swig. “Now that you’ve passed your first test by taking this money back from that arrogant little prick, Mason, I hope you’re ready to step your game up, because we’re about to go big!”
“What?” Nix replies with deep grooves in his forehead. “Hold on. Did you say this money came from Mason? You mean Detective Mason?”
I don’t answer with words. I just let a smile slowly take over my mouth.
“Hold up,” Marcell interrupts next with a raised, skinny finger. “You had this intern of yours steal all of this money from a detective?”
“Let me get this straight,” Rock is next, now standing up and gesturing with his massive hands for emphasis. “This kid right here went into a detective’s home, shot him in the leg in front of his family, and walked out of the house with a backpack full of the detective’s cash? Is all of that right?”
I nod, still smiling as I take another swig from the bottle and the familiar sensation of a feint buzz starts to flow through my body, warming me up from feet to head. I let it fill me as the expression of shock and amazement takes over the faces of every man in the room except Timmy and me.
“Shit,” Nix grunts.
“Damn, Solomon,” Donny says.
“That’s crazy,” Ricky manages to say, grinning in admiration.
“That’s right,” I say to all of them. “Now go ahead—tell me the impossible can’t be done.”
THE NERVES UNDER my skin are as sensitive as the tip of my dick as I lay my head back on the headrest of Nix’s black GMC Denali. Surrounded by the calming black interior, leather seats, and blue display lights, Nix and I look out the windshield across the street. Past the bright green leaves of the trees in front of us, and on the other side of the four-lane road that flows with light traffic, sits Rock’s navy blue Cadillac Escalade, lying in wait between the bright yellow lines of the parking lot of Hyperion Bank. Inside of Rock’s SUV is the crew we’ve officially commissioned to pull off this job: Terry “Rock” Brenham, Marcell Pemberton, and Ricky and Donny Fontane.
My little wonder boy, Tim Sandusky, isn’t in the Escalade with them. He’s a rookie who’s still trying to earn the right to be a part of my long list of associates, and he’s yet to earn his place. Just because he was able to successfully sneak inside that pig’s house and steal my ten grand back doesn’t mean he’s ready to step up to the big time, and it doesn’t mean he’s ready to be trusted enough to even take out my trash. Kid’s got a long way to go, but pulling off the Detective Mason job three days ago was a good start. This will be considered just another single step in a marathon. I’ve got a little bit of faith in the kid after the Mason job, but Nix isn’t convinced.
Even as we sit here, watching our latest plan getting ready to unfold in front of us, I can still feel the anxiety wafting off of Nix. Through his all-black outfit and black hat that he has pulled down low to hide most of his face, I can tell he’s not comfortable as he usually is in moments like this, and I know Tim has a lot to do with that. He’s been telling me this is a bad idea since I first informed the crew that Tim would be helping with the heist that night at Club Asylum, and even though he hasn’t said anything about it yet today, I know it’s coming. I can tell from how he lifts his over-sized, tattooed hand and rubs his chin, ruffling the thick black hairs that hang from his face. I’ve known Nix for fifteen years now, and when you’ve been friends that long, you really know each other.
“Say it, Nix,” I tell him, instead of waiting for him to do what I know he will.
“You already know, but it’s too late now,” he replies in his signature low growl of a voice.
I release a deep breath and stare out the windshield at the dark gray concrete building that is Hyperion Bank, anxious to get this show on the road, eager for the chaos to erupt in front of me.
“The kid’s gonna be fine, Nix. He’s a criminal at heart,” I respond as calmly as I can.
“You don’t feel like this is a risk?”
“Everything we do is a risk.”
“This is different, Solomon,” Nix snips, still staring straight ahead even though we don’t expect anything for another ten minutes. “You’re right that everything we’ve ever done has been risky, but this kid is an unnecessary risk. We don’t know him, and he came to us. He came to us in the middle of the club, like he was trying to make sure he was seen. I don’t know why, but something about him just doesn’t feel right to me. Something’s off. I can see it in that baby face of his.”
“You think he’s a cop?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do with ‘I don’t know?’ When he first came to us, you looked into him and didn’t find anything, right? He’s not related to any cops, he lived with his parents until he was eighteen when they both died in a car accident, and he doesn’t have a job now, after being fired from his little car dealership gig a few months back. He’s got priors for petty crimes like theft and dealing weed. He’s just trying to come up, and he’s got balls of steel for coming into the Asylum like that.”
Nix doesn’t respond. He knows that he’s already done his homework on Tim Sandusky, and he came up empty. Whatever he’s feeling right now is simply his personal gut feeling, and it’s based on nothing, so he knows I won’t change my mind on this, but Nix and I friends, and he’s the only person who gets away with voicing his opinion against mine. After everything I’ve been through in my life, Nix is the only friend I’ve got, and he’s the only one I want. He could say anything to me and it wouldn’t break what we have. We came up together from nothing, the absolute bottom, the damn gutter, and we made it out by working together. So if he’s talking, I’m listening, even if we disagree.
“Alright, alright, Nix,” I say after another loud exhale. “You know we can’t go back on this now. The kid is literally standing on the corner, waiting to signal as the truck arrives, so
we can’t change the plan this late in the game. But after this is said and done, we’ll slow down with Tim. Watch him more closely when we’re not around to see what he’s into away from us, and we’ll go from there.”
“Good. I think that’s smart,” Nix replies, as satisfied as he’s going to get on this subject.
The rest of the crew wasn’t exactly thrilled with bringing along a nobody to a heist like this either. It wasn’t until I told them that Tim would be working pro bono that they started coming around, and I had to make sure his involvement was extremely limited before they would agree to work with him. So, Tim’s job has been reduced to merely standing his young ass in a bus stop at the end of the street and waiting to see the truck approaching, approximately six minutes from now, so he can signal to the crew in Rock’s SUV that it’s game time. He’ll send a text to Rock’s burner phone and mine, and as soon as the text is sent, he’ll dump his own burner and take a cab back to wherever he lays his pretty little head at night to await my call. That’s all he’s expected to do, and he’s doing it knowing he won’t get a dime of the money we steal. You’ve got to earn your keep in this game. Nothing comes free. You don’t become a somebody in this game by riding the coattails of real criminals.
As for the rest of today’s festivities, the job is simple when you’re working with a crew as experienced as the one we’ve assembled. Nix and I outlined the whole plan based on Nix’s assessment and reconnaissance over the past three weeks, and it goes a little something like this. The armored truck that drops the money will arrive approximately four minutes from now, and is usually right on schedule, give or take a minute or two. As soon as the armored truck comes into view, Tim signals the crew from the bus stop as it passes him, and the crew gears up with masks and gloves to cover every piece of skin they have, and they’ll lock and load as the truck approaches and slows near the back door entrance of Hyperion Bank. As the truck comes to a stop, the crew will exit the Escalade and rush the delivery boys after they get out of the truck and open the locked compartment in the back where all of that beautiful green money is. They go two at a time in intervals—first Rock and Marcell, then Ricky and Donny thirty seconds later. The delivery boys will be armed of course, so my guys will be going in hot and ready to shoot if one of these pigs makes them. Any body part goes towards their weapons, my guys drop them on the spot. Rock and Marcell force the deliverers into the back of the truck and toss their weapons and any communication devices they have out the back, while Ricky and Donny come from behind and start taking money. Every single bill they can see is to be snatched up. Once the deed is done, our guys exit and lock the two delivery boys in the back of their own truck, zip tied and gagged, while the four-man crew jumps back into the Escalade and slowly drives away. They’ll drive east while Nix and I drive west. Rock will keep the money until I know that we’re in the clear, at which point I’ll call the entire crew on their burners, and we’ll meet up at one of my warehouses on the edge of Philly to divvy up the cash. Simple, right? It’s a freakin’ piece of cake, and based on Nix’s assessment, we can expect the delivery truck to pull up in about two minutes or so. Game time, baby! Jesus-freakin’-McChrist, I love my job!