The Weight

by Andrew Vachss

  I’d X’ed out my old apartment the minute they’d clamped the cuffs on. I wouldn’t ask anyone to go back there for me; anything of mine was long gone by now. The super wouldn’t know nothing. The landlord was some company name. And the cops weren’t running a storage facility.

  I didn’t have much in there, anyway.

  They’d vouchered what I had on me when I was picked up. Only the three grand and change got turned into six C-notes.

  I wondered what they’d done with the pistol, but I wasn’t worried about trace evidence on any of my clothes. After the job, we’d all gone back to this place Solly had rented. Left every stitch of clothes in these plastic bags he’d left behind. Took a good, long hot shower. Rubbed ourselves down with alcohol. Nails, hair, everything.

  Then we each put on the stuff we’d been wearing when we first met up there.

  “A good thief takes money, not chances,” Solly said. He was always saying it.

  He believed it, too. Solly never went along on any job he put together.

  I had a phone number for him. I knew it was just a pay phone, someplace in Manhattan. Indoors, so nobody could try and set up shop with it.

  But first I had things to do.

  I had almost seven hundred left over—what I had on the books and my gate money. Not enough. I wasn’t going anywhere near my share until I was carrying more than high hopes.

  The money was enough for a prepaid cell and a night at this hotel every loser in the city knows about. One step above a flophouse, and they still charge over a hundred a night. Taxes, you know.

  I didn’t even bother to undress. The room made my cell look ritzy. The lock wouldn’t stop a drunk who forgot his room number, never mind a guy who knew where to kick. No phone.

  I could smell the disinfectant they probably hosed down the dump with every day. Didn’t see any roaches, but I wasn’t going to take a chance on bedbugs—or worse—in that foul-looking pad they called a mattress.

  After I fixed the place so I’d get some warning if anyone tried to visit me, I rolled up my jacket on the floor and closed my eyes.

  The next morning, I found a pay phone.

  “What?” is all the guy at the other end said.

  “I’m an old pal of Solly’s,” I said. “Haven’t seen him for quite a while. About five years.”

  “Ain’t no Solly here, friend.”

  “Let me leave you my number, just in case he walks by.”

  When he didn’t hang up, I knew I was connected.

  I went back to that fleabag. They kick you out at eleven-thirty in the morning, pounding on the doors like they had search warrants. When I hadn’t heard anything by noon, I checked in for another night, just to be off the street.

  The same desk clerk took my money. If he remembered me from the night before, you couldn’t tell. I signed the register with a different name. He didn’t look at it, just gave me the key and the usual speech about how I’d be held responsible if … It was a long list; I walked off while he was still talking.

  My new cell rang a little after dark. I pushed the button, heard: “Don’t say my name.” Solly’s voice.

  “Okay.”

  “Say something that’ll show me you’re who I think you are. Nothing stupid, understand?”

  I knew then that Solly had already recognized my voice from the “Okay.” Solly liked me. He knew I was certified stand-up. Hell, he knew I’d just finished proving it all over again. But he never had too high an opinion of my IQ.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said.

  I could hear him chuckling before he said, “You got a place?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Why don’t you drop by? We’ll talk over old times.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll keep a light on for you.”

  The light was at the back of an old apartment building, hanging over the stone steps down to the basement. It sat inside a little cage of wire mesh. You couldn’t break the light by accident, and if you tried to poke something through the wire, a pair of giant navigation lights like they use on fishing boats would blast off right in your eyes.

  There was a camera mounted behind the door. The lens was like the peephole for an apartment door, and the camera’s motor drive would start firing as soon as the lights went on. A cable ran from the camera to some kind of computer. Solly once told me that even if someone used a battering ram on the door, their pictures would be in a safe place before they could get to the computer, so I guessed the computer automatically sent the pictures someplace else.

  I didn’t know all this because Solly trusted me. I know why he told me. Me and anyone else who knew where to find him. That’s why I called and got the okay from him first.

  Even so, I stood under the light long enough for him to see whatever he needed. Then I rapped two knuckles on the door. Three times, tap-tap-tap. I waited a couple of seconds, then I did it again. Seven, that time. Another wait before I slapped my palm against the panel. You had three shots to hit blackjack, and a flat palm counted as an ace.

  I heard the metal-against-metal sound of a deadbolt being thrown open. Heavy metal. I didn’t wait after that. Just turned the knob and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind me.

  The room was so dark all I could make out was the shape of a man behind a desk.

  “What more do you need?” I said.

  “I didn’t get to be this old taking chances,” Solly said. Not from behind the desk. That shape was a dummy. If you walked in shooting, you’d be punching holes in some plastic thing with clothes on it. Solly would be off to the side, one of those old Jew submachine guns in his lap. One long burp, everything on the wrong side of the barrel is dead.

  And if more men were waiting outside, Solly still had an out. There was a second room behind the first one. Nothing in there but a giant freezer and piles of old books. And a door that would take him out to the hall. By the time anyone got a flashlight working, he’d be upstairs, in the apartment he lived in.

  I’d never been in that apartment. Couldn’t even tell you what floor it was on. Or even if Solly was telling the truth about it. What he told me was all I knew. I never asked him any questions.

  “So?” Solly says. “Come on over and sit with an old friend.”

  A soft light showed me Solly’s chair and another one, empty. One, only. Solly never let more than one person at a time in his basement.

  That’s what he told me, anyway.

  I sat down. The chair looked old. It was comfortable, though. And soft, real soft. You sank deep down into it. Like sitting in quicksand.

  There was some kind of little table to my right. Fresh ashtray, little box of matches.

  “Go ahead,” Solly told me. “Don’t worry about the windows. I got a machine, filters out the smoke.”

  What he meant was, the basement windows had all been bricked up.

  “I gave it up.”

  “Yeah? Good for you, kid. You want something to drink, maybe?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Relax, okay? I was gonna do anything, I could have done it already.”

  “I know.”

  “You got the money, right?”

  “The money you sent me Upstate? Yeah. I appreciate that. Made the time a lot easier. Those magazines, too. I never heard of cons subscribing to magazines before.”

  “Depends on the joint,” Solly said. “Some, you can mail in just about anything. Others, you’d be lucky to get even a letter from your own lawyer.”

  “Yeah. Well, like I said, Solly, I’m grateful and all, but—”

  “—where’s the rest of your money, huh?”

  “I don’t care where it is.”

  “You didn’t use to be this cute, Sugar. What’d you do, take one of those college courses while you were away?”

  “I’m not the one being cute here, Solly. Everyone else got their money. Me, I waited a long time for mine. I don’t even know how much there is, but we had to have cleared enough to give me a vaca
tion. A long vacation.”

  “You don’t want to work anymore?”

  “Fuck, what is this? I don’t know how big a pie there is to slice, but I know it won’t be enough for me to live on the rest of my life, okay? So, yeah, I’m going back to work. But not for a while. There’s something I’ve got to do first.”

  “What are you—?”

  “Just give me my fucking money, Solly.”

  “Ah. Now, that’s the Sugar I know. You want the numbers; I got the numbers. The stones came out to around five mil, retail. Even when loose stones are GIA-registered, you can still usually get about half for them. Overseas, I mean.”

  When Solly said “overseas,” I knew he meant Asia. Just something I found out on my own. Solly never tells people anything, except what to do.

  “So,” he said, “figure around two-point-five. Take off expenses, came out to a little more than two. You, Big Matt, and Jessop did the job, so it’s a three-way split.”

  He didn’t bother to say that it was a three-way split of half. That’s always Solly’s deal. He sets up the job, does all the planning, deals with disposing of whatever the team he puts together takes, turns it into cash. For that, his piece is 50 percent.

  One time, Solly even had to turn cash into cash. The thick stack of bills we found in one of the safe-deposit boxes I pried open sure looked used, but Solly said the consecutive serial numbers meant it couldn’t be spent here. “Overseas,” again.

  I figured that box belonged to a bent cop. That’s what some of them do—take cash out of the buy-money bin and replace it with their own stuff. The count comes out right, so nobody catches wise. Maybe that blows a buy-and-bust for the narco boys somewhere down the line, but a cop on the take wouldn’t care about that. What he’d want was a way to track down his own money, in case some guy like me got his hands on it.

  “So I’ve got about three-fifty coming.”

  “Not quite. Pretty close, though.”

  “You didn’t send me that much money while I was—”

  “You think I’d take off for that?” He sounded insulted.

  I just shrugged.

  “Big Matt and Jessop each anted up five. Me, I put up ten. Only fair, am I right? In fact, I didn’t send even that much. You end up with a salary of about seventy-five K a year, Sugar. Three sixty-nine, total.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Yeah, it is. And it might even be that you come out ahead.”

  “Yeah? You do a pound for that much money?”

  “I don’t mean that,” he said, waving his hand like he was brushing away a pesky fly. “The statute of limitations—”

  “It’s up.”

  “It’s up for you, Sugar. Big Matt and Jessop, they both took off right after they got paid. Me, I spent some time down in Florida. Couple of years, in fact.

  “The only thing keeping the heat off is that this was just money. No big-deal ‘cold case,’ like an unsolved murder. Nobody’s gonna do a TV show about some drill-through heist. But if either of the others got popped for something else… who knows?”

  “Big Matt wouldn’t give us up.”

  “I agree,” he said, real solemn.

  “And you put this Jessop guy in yourself.”

  “That I could have been wrong about.”

  “What!?”

  “Jessop has been … hard to reach lately.”

  “Maybe somebody took him off the count,” I said. That happens to men like us more than usual, I’m pretty sure. You steal for a living, you’re going to make people mad. You pull off a big job and start living too large, you call attention to yourself.

  And it doesn’t matter who notices. Not too many people are real thieves anymore. Some punks, they think you’re holding heavy cash, they might come in shooting. That’s not a win-or-lose for you; it’s just three different ways to lose.

  You win a gunfight in your own place, the cops still aren’t going away. Self-defense isn’t worth much if you can’t explain how you got your hands on all that cash the dead guys had been trying to jack you for.

  You take a homicide fall, anyone you ever worked with is going to wonder how you’ll stand up. Specially if you’re looking at the needle.

  Your partners wonder too much, you lose again. Someone you never heard of puts up your bail, that tells you you’re on the spot. Sure, you can refuse the bail; stay right where you are. But where you are, there’s no place to hide.

  “Maybe,” Solly said.

  “You got his for-real name?”

  “You think I’m stupid? I had that, I could find out what I need in an hour. I got a name, just like you did.”

  “The guy who sent him to you …?”

  “Gone. Not even two weeks ago, you believe that? Albie had a bum ticker. The fat fuck’s idea of exercise was chewing.”

  “So …?”

  “So—Albie, I trusted. Known him for more years than you’ve been alive. Jessop … Ah, I’m getting too old for this stuff. I never even asked Albie for his vitals, just his credentials, you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t like loose strings, Sugar.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “I … I don’t know. There’s guys in this business, nobody ever works for them twice. That’s not me. Who’s got a more solid rep? You don’t get that for nothing. It’s like everything else—you pay for it. I make my payments on the installment plan, understand?”

  “No. Solly, if—”

  “Look, kid. All I’m saying is, I always play it careful, okay? Careful, that’s not something you are; it’s something you do. Every job, every time. That’s how come I’m … trusted, okay?”

  “Sure. But I already—”

  “Will you fucking let me talk? Just listen, for a damn minute. I got no reason to think this Jessop is … a problem. But I don’t like not knowing where to find him.”

  “If he knew your pal, he’s in the business. How hard could it be?”

  “What, you think we’re like some fraternity or something? Get together once a year, tell stories about the good old days? I know a few people, sure. But every phone call, that’s somebody else I owe. Besides, this ain’t phone work, understand?”

  “Yeah. What I don’t understand is why you’re telling me all this. Tell Big Matt—he’s the one with something to lose.”

  “He’s out, Sugar.”

  “Somebody took him—”

  “No,” he cut me off. “The opposite. He’s gone total Square John. Married, kid on the way.”

  “How could he just …?” I couldn’t finish the sentence; I didn’t know what words to use.

  “Oh, he told me in front,” Solly said. “That last job, it was gonna be his last job, no matter what. We score, he’s got enough to get a house, all the stuff you need to go straight. That’s what he said. I remember it real clear. ‘When this is over, so am I. No more stealing diamonds for me; I’m going to be buying them. Buying one, anyway.’ His girl, she’s not in The Life. Didn’t have a clue what Big Matt did for a living. His real living, I mean.”

  “What did she think he—?”

  “He buys houses. Real wrecks. Somewhere way out west, where you can buy them for next to nothing. Then he fixes them up and sells them. Lives in the house while he’s doing the repairs.”

  “Pretty smart.”

  “It is,” Solly said. “Big Matt, he’s a thinker.”

  Meaning, I’m not, I thought, but I kept that to myself. Just sat and waited.

  “Prices have gone through the fucking roof since you’ve been away, Sugar. Actually, more of a spike. So the co-ops are down from what they were asking a few years ago, but rentals, they never go back. You’d be lucky to find a decent apartment for under two grand. And that wouldn’t even be the city—probably have to go out to Brooklyn or something.”

  “I’m not broke,” I reminded him.

  “No, you’re not. But you’re going to have to go back to work sooner or later.”


  “Sure.”

  “Aah!” he said, like he was throwing the word out of the room. “If Albie said this Jessop was stand-up, that should be good enough for me, right?”

  “I didn’t know him.”

  “It’s … it’s a respect thing, Sugar. I can’t just go out and cut my losses. I got no feeling from this guy. Nothing. Probably solid as a stone. But …”

  I kept quiet. Still couldn’t figure out what all this blah-blah was about. Solly was a talker, I knew. I mean, he liked talking. I guess there weren’t too many people he could talk to anymore.

  “How about if you nose around a little? Find the guy, talk to him, see if he’s righteous?”

  “What do I care? You said it yourself—I’m in the clear. Even if he walked into a police station somewhere and started running his mouth, how’s that my problem?”

  “I got a responsibility.”

  “To who? Everyone who sits in takes their chances; that’s the way it is.”

  “I got a responsibility to Albie, okay?” The old man was really getting worked up; I never heard him sound angry, like that. “I can’t just … you know. It’d be like one of those preemptive strikes. Tap the guy, and we can all rest easy. But that wouldn’t be fair to Albie. It’d be like I didn’t trust his judgment.

  “That happens, you know. Man gets old, he should get respect. Not for being old, but for the wisdom he has. Albie wasn’t soft in the head. Not fucking senile, okay? He still had it up here,” Solly said, tapping his temple.

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  “For you, sure. For me, it can’t be. A man gets old, he wants to leave a will, make sure he takes care of everyone who he should be taking care of. But you know what nobody should ever leave, Sugar? Loose threads, that’s what.”

  “I’m not going around playing private eye, Solly.”

  “I wasn’t asking for a favor.”

  “What? You want to pay me, to do this thing?”