The Case
Page 27
“The good news - and this is relative, you understand - is that while I may not have the package, no-one else has either. So while I may not have gained, there isn’t another soul on this planet who has profited at my expense.
“For this reason, and for this reason alone, I shall spare your life.”
My eyes widened at the thought I was seconds away from death.
“But you need to be punished, nonetheless. So I am banishing you. I never want to see you again, understand?”
My head nodded consent.
“I don’t want to hear about you, read about you or any other way come into contact with you. This means you must never set foot in New York, Boston, LA, Chicago or any other city I may visit. If, by some chance, you hear I am coming to the place where you live, you must leave immediately. Do you understand me?”
“Yes ... yes, I do.” A tear departed my left eye as the sorrow and grief implied in his words came through.
Just before he dismissed me, he sent his goons out of the room and we talked some more. He let me sit down and we shared a glass of Scotch. The Don told me he realized I meant no malice and he had respected the work I had done for him over the years. We spoke about the people whose lives had intersected ours and I gave him all the details about what had happened the last couple of days.
We shook hands and, just before he called his men back into the room, he opened his safe and passed me an envelope. He had kept his word and paid me what he owed and a whole lot more; hush money you might call it. What a mensch.
SO HERE I am in Florida - I’m not saying where in case the Don is alive and hears. Picked the place because it has casinos, albeit illegal ones, and the weather is good most of the year. I found a secluded spot by a pretty lake, bought an acre of land and built a wooden shack smack in the middle of it. I call it a shack but in reality it’s a large bungalow.
My investigator’s license expired many years ago and, since then, I’ve spent my time pottering about the local community and dispensing advice to the few who’ll listen. I mentioned the casinos: I enjoy spending a few bucks there as a way to relax and there’s a cathouse next door where I relax some more. Never had a wife, never found the need for a wife. I still have my gun and I keep it in a box under my bed.
And I’m in bed now because my doctor explained that a lot of black coffee and no exercise gave me bowel cancer, which has eaten away at my insides. I shall be dead in a few hours because I have nothing more to do in this life and I see no reason to prolong my agony for the sake of saying I survived. Survived what, for Chris’ sake?
Under my bed is my gun box, but under the gun box is a wooden floor. If you look carefully, you can see a rectangular edge in the middle of the floor under the bed. Touch the edge of that rectangle and you will feel the trap door. Open it, why don’t you? Put your hand into the inky blackness. You’ll need to lie down on the ground and stretch because the drop is three or four feet. Don’t worry, it’s big enough for you to jump down if it is easier for you.
At the bottom you will find a metal box. It has a big fat padlock on it needing a key. If you ever find the key then you’ll be able to open the box and inside, you’ll find some paper.
This isn’t any old paper. When I said I hit the head on the plane, I sure was telling the truth, but again, not the whole truth. I brought the case with me because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing it so close to the end game. And even though there wasn’t much space to maneuver, I prised the lock open and gazed inside.
There was an enormous pile of papers and I only could glance at them, but I understood pretty quickly what it was all about. The first ten or twenty pages had print and the rest were blank, presumably to give weight to the case. No idea why, but I took the printed pages and folded them into my front pants pockets. Then I shut the lid and locked the case again. Turns out I didn’t do a very good job of that.
And the paper you’ll find in that box is the paper I stole from the Don’s case. I’ve read it, reread it and the more I do so, the more I understand why everyone wanted to get their hands on those sheets and why blood was shed trying to do so.
Want me to tell you? Let these be my last dying words: Los Angeles Water...
THE END
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ADDENDUM
IN 1917, TP O’Connor, the second president of the British Board of Film Censors issued 43 categories of material that could not be portrayed on British celluloid. All have been violated in this novel:
1. Indecent, ambiguous and irreverent titles and subtitles.
2. Cruelty to animals.
3. The irreverent treatment of sacred subjects.
4. Drunken scenes carried to excess.
5. Vulgar accessories in the staging.
6. The modus operandi of criminals.
7. Cruelty to young infants and torture to adults, especially women.
8. Unnecessary exhibition of underclothing.
9. The exhibition of profuse bleeding.
10. Nude figures.
11. Offensive vulgarity, and impropriety in conduct and dress.
12. Indecorous dancing.
13. Excessively passionate love scenes.
14. Bathing scenes passing the limits of propriety.
15. References to controversial politics.
16. Relations of Capital to Labour.
17. Scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions.
18. Realistic horrors of warfare.
19. Scenes and incidents calculated to afford Information to the enemy.
20. Incidents tending to disparage our Allies.
21. Scenes holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule.
22. Subjects dealing with India, in which British officers are seen in an odious light, and otherwise attempting to suggest the disloyalty of Native States, or bringing into disrepute British prestige in the Empire.
23. The exploitation of tragic incidents of the war.
24. Gruesome murders and strangulation scenes.
25. Executions.
26. The effects of vitriol throwing.
27. The drug habit, eg opium, morphia, cocaine, etc.
28. Subjects dealing with White Slave traffic.
29. Subjects dealing with the premeditated seduction of girls.
30. ‘First night’ scenes.
31. Scenes suggesting immorality.
32. Indelicate sexual situations.
33. Situations accentuating delicate marital relations.
34. Men and women in bed together.
35. Illicit sexual relationships.
36. Prostitution and procuration.
37. Incidents indicating the actual perpetration of criminal assaults on women.
38. Scenes depicting the effect of venereal diseases, inherited or acquired.
39. Incidents suggestive of incestuous relations.
40. Themes and references relative to ‘race suicide’.
41. Confinement.
42. Scenes laid in disorderly houses.
43. Materialisation of the conventional figure of Christ.
SNEAK PREVIEW
IN THE HEIST…
Frank was out the can two minutes and already he
knew he wanted money. A lot of money. So much money he knew he wasn’t getting it from the recruitment pages of the local paper. He wanted dirty money. Money you can only get if you mix with the kind of guys who’ve got ideas. The kind of guys Frank was stuck in a cell with. The kind of guys who’ve got connections. Real connections with real guys. Frank was hungry for greenbacks.
Like many of us, Frank had dreams, big dreams. Big dreams of a big life. Fast cars, faster girls and a fancy suit or two. The kind of life he’d seen on a million TV shows. Only Frank thought it was real. Thought he really could have one of those TV lives.
There’s nothing wrong with dreams. Unless they catch you full in the chest and knock you for seven. Then there can be something wrong with dreams. But Frank’s problem wasn’t his dreams. It was his wallet and his wallet was empty. So he needed to find a way to fill it. To plug his gap.
People say that being in the joint is like going to a criminal university and Frank had passed his final exam with flying colors. He’d spent his two years of incarceration keeping his head down, so he’d get paroled early. And he listened and learned from the men around him. How to pick a good location, how to find someone on the inside you can leverage. All the little details that turn a half-baked plan into a complete apple pie.
So when Frank walked through the gates of the Baltimore penitentiary, he knew exactly what he was going to do. Knew exactly how to get that pot of money he had spent two long years dreaming about.
Of course, there was something else he’d been dreaming about too. Or rather, trying not to dream about. Because some dreams just leave you weak, not able to concentrate on the matter at hand. And in the joint that kind of concentration can get you killed.
When the last gate clanged shut and Frank was standing on free soil and breathing in free air, there was the other thing of his dreams. Mary Lou’s tight-fitting pants and all that was hidden beneath them.
There she stood, with one hand on her hip and the other holding a bottle of tequila in a brown paper bag, nice and legal like. A denim shirt with the ends tied on one side to show off that flat stomach and the tattoo of a rose three inches below her belly button, just peeping out from her jeans and a thick brown belt.
Frank smiled and Mary Lou ran towards him, teetering on her high white plastic heels until she reached him and flung her arms round his neck and planted her lips on his. She sure was pleased to see him. And how has it been these last few days since my last visit? And do you think my hair looks good as I got it cut special for you, Frank? And this and that and the other. And all Frank wanted to do was to lie down with that bottle of tequila and fuck Mary Lou’s brains out.
To grab your copy, go to www.books2read.com/theheist
ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Lagotti Family
The Stickup (Free Prequel Novella)
The Heist (Book 1)
The Getaway (Book 2)
Powder (Book 3)
Mama's Gone (Book 4)
The Girl in the Striped Bikini (Book 5, Short story)
Other Releases
The Case
The Death and Life of Penny Pitstop (Due 2019)
Alex Cohen
The Bowery Slugger (Book 1 - Due 2019)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leopold Borstinski is an independent author whose past careers have included financial journalism, business management of financial software companies, consulting and product sales and marketing, as well as teaching.
There is nothing he likes better so he does as much nothing as he possibly can. He has traveled extensively in Europe and the US and has visited Asia on several occasions. Leopold holds a Philosophy degree and tries not to drop it too often.
He lives near London and is married with one wife, one child and no pets.
Find out more at LeopoldBorstinski.com.