by Mike Faricy
He was presenting himself as a dealer-to-dealer business, a strictly cash dealer-to-dealer business. He had his routine down, telling them he wanted to move excess inventory and just couldn’t where he was located up in Memphis. No one asked any questions and couldn’t have cared less whether Val was coming from Memphis, Miami, or Minneapolis. When he mentioned strictly cash, no one blinked, at least that he could tell on the phone.
By early Monday evening, he was driving back to Tampa, a huge smile on his face and seven grand richer. To his way of thinking, with the fifty-fifty split they had worked out, that would be four thousand for Val and three thousand for Hub. Tax-free cash, with no questions asked. He thought he just might be onto the sweetest deal of his life. He had never worked less nor made more, and as far as he was concerned, it was all long overdue.
* * *
Over the next two months, Hub continued working to refine his knowledge and selection skills. Now he carried a jeweler’s eyepiece with him and had become reasonably adept at grading stone color and clarity on the spot, which was usually in someone’s bedroom. He continued to unload all the items he acquired during his evening forays in the storage unit he had rented in Val’s name.
He also started painting, not canvas but walls, with a roller. He worked the hours he wanted, plus he earned enough to pay his bills and provide him with a reasonable alibi should anyone check him out. He kept his painting equipment in the original storage unit they had rented with Jimmy’s help. If anyone ever checked, it was ladders, half-gallons of paint, and a few odds and ends, absolutely nothing of any interest. He kept his growing jewelry collection sealed in plastic bags and submerged inside half-full containers of paint.
The first time he and Val returned to the unit Hub had rented in Val’s name, Val looked at the door strangely. He looked around then looked back at the door, and Hub was sure he’d been caught right out of the box.
But Val shook his head and said, “I’m so damned lost in this place. Good thing you can find the right damn door,” and that was the end of it. As soon as Val was inside and saw their growing little pile of treasure, he was happy. He felt a little like a pirate, perhaps because he was a lot like a pirate. The steadily growing pile of acquisitions erased any questions he may have had concerning the location of the storage unit.
Val refined his Atlanta contacts. He actually carried a little shopping list from some of them, which he reviewed with Hub. “We’ve got some requests here, so and so wants this, so and so wants that.”
Hub rolled his eyes. “What? You think I’m going down an aisle in a store? Jesus, Val, great you’ve got a wish list there, but I’m the stiff getting in and out of these places as quickly as possible. Maybe we should call the folks just before I break in and ask them to put that stuff on the dining room table to save me some time.” That was the last Hub heard about the shopping list.
Val stuck to his story about coming down from Memphis, dealing only in cash. He was making the trip every other Monday when the dealers were flush with cash from a weekend of estate sale business. Hub was doing so well on the acquisition end that Val picked up a small trailer and towed it on his trips to Atlanta. Just to play it safe, he continued to rent a car.
They expanded into oriental rugs one night after Val learned of an elderly New York couple storing the rugs in a tool shed at the back of their property. Hub emptied the shed late one night, wrestling with the large rugs, carrying them to his truck and stacking them one at a time, then sneaking back along a hedge line for another and another, until he had taken all of them.
He drove away with eleven large rugs hanging out the back of the Ranger, expecting at any moment to be stopped by the Tampa police. He never really came up with a good explanation for driving a pickup truck full of expensive oriental rugs through Tampa at two in the morning. But Val cleared almost seventeen thousand dollars on that one score alone. His fifty-fifty calculation worked it out at eleven thousand for him and six thousand for Hub. Hub took the following week off after that one.
To the best of their knowledge, they were still flying well below any law enforcement radar screens. They routinely watched the news and scanned the papers for any mention of their activities but never heard or read a thing. Val kept an ear cocked for any mention of robberies from his dancing students and hadn’t picked up anything.
The people they robbed through the Moonlight Dance Academy were still coming in, dancing their hearts away Tuesday, Thursday, and weekends. No one was putting two and two together yet. Val continued to grow a solid list of potential candidates to rob from his list of students. In fact, they had so many potential candidates Hub was now out three or four nights a week, still sticking to the same routine, never taking everything, just taking the best.
In fact, things were going so well, even the Moonlight Dance Academy was turning a profit. Val was competing in sectionals for the swing competition, and word of his dancing talent brought in more and more people for dance lessons and, of course, private reviews to determine if they made the ‘A’ list, which qualified them for an evening visit from Hub.
During the daylight hours, Hub continued painting away at his own pace but nothing too strenuous. He continued to acquire and store their new acquisitions three or four evenings a week. Val loaded up the trailer every second Sunday and drove north to Atlanta, returning Monday night with a pocket full of cash and his own version of a fifty-fifty split. It all worked, as long as no one got too greedy.
Chapter 21
Up in Atlanta, there wasn’t much that surprised J.W. Brooks. John Wilkes Brooks had begun using his initials J.W. at age seven, the same day he began to grasp the extent of his father’s deep-seated paranoia for anyone living outside the confines of Coon, Georgia.
Now, sixty some years later, J.W. had seen it all, more times than he cared to remember, and done most of it at least twice. He sucked a bit of breakfast bacon out from between his front teeth, nibbling gently while he thought. He bought Val’s story the first time they met, at least part of the story. J.W. could not have cared less what city Val was coming from, how he got his inventory, or why he was selling it now.
The inventory was good, and paying cash offered its own incentives for a profitable discount, so the first time Val showed up, J.W. thought, why look a gift horse in the mouth? The second time he showed up, J.W. started making mental notes. Now, at the end of three months, J.W. was convinced of a few things. Val wasn’t coming down from Memphis every other week, not with Florida rental plates on his car and Florida plates on the trailer. The inventory he was offering J.W. was hotter than a gas grill. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of Val’s inventory. Either that or the man had an industrial-sized warehouse, the likes of which J.W. had never seen nor heard of.
None of those fine points really worried J.W. just now. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Of course, being J.W., not only did he want in, he wanted it all. He had a friend in the Georgia Motor Vehicles Division, who, for the right enticement, could get a registration on Val’s vehicle and perhaps, with proper incentive, a name and address for J.W. It had taken a little more than he had wanted to pay, and he only got a portion of the information he wanted, but it was a start, and he was nothing if not patient. The cars and trailers, always rented, were coming out of Tampa.
J.W.’s idea was to squeeze Val, and once he had the information he needed, he could squeeze him hard. He wanted a substantial discount and first pick. First pick to J.W.’s way of thinking meant that he wanted it all. As a matter of fact, what he wanted was to pay Val a generously discounted price for the entire load. He would move the goods, and Val could turn around and bring him another load. They’d do it all over again, and again, and again.
He planned to talk to Val today, explain things reasonably and present his offer in a fatherly sort of manner. If that didn’t work, well, he would just threaten Val with getting the Atlanta police involved. If that didn’t work, he’d just have the tar beaten out of Val and see if mayb
e that got his attention. Val could still make money. J.W. didn’t have a problem with a man being compensated for his labor. Val just wasn’t going to make as much money.
At 10:00 Monday morning, Val drove down the alley like he always did and backed carefully into the rear of J.W.’s Georgia Gallery. It was his first stop of the morning, just like every other trip. J.W. wasn’t just another regular customer. He had become Val’s best customer. It had been J.W. who had taken the eleven oriental rugs off his hands for seventeen thousand, cash, not to mention a majority of the other items he had been moving for the past few months. So he didn’t expect anything different on this particular Monday.
J.W. glanced over the contents of Val’s trailer and directed his two employees, Todd and Cyril, to lay the items out on tables in the rear of the warehouse. He liked to examine Val’s inventory and carefully make his choices. He had to give Val credit. Even at first glance, it was another load of quality merchandise, and he knew, without so much as a first glance, he would have no trouble moving it.
Val wasn’t going to guess at the relationship between the three men at the Georgia Gallery, other than it gave him a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. It was just all a little too much for Val’s taste, the larger of the two, Todd, with a partially shaved head and ponytail, a bit too over the top. Val guessed piercings in places he really didn’t want to know about. The other one, Cyril, small, quiet, gentle, effeminate, ‘God, make it stop,’ Val thought. J.W. was not the sort of person you’d want around your children. He’d probably forgotten more perversions than Val would ever know. The one redeeming factor was his money spent just as well as anyone’s.
“Let’s go into my office, get some coffee in you, and talk about this some more,” J.W. said to Val. “I may just want to take it all. Unload everything, boys,” he said, walking to the front of the building, his departure the signal for Val to follow.
That was just what Val had wanted to hear. He could be home by late afternoon, not have to fool around, making any additional stops. Drive back down to Tampa and set Hub in motion building up another load of quality inventory.
J.W. closed the office door and pointed to a chair. “Sit your ass down there, boy.” He paused for a moment as he stepped behind his heavily carved desk. He made a loud sucking noise with his tongue against his stained front teeth. He looked Val in the eye, and said, “Son, I’ll give you two grand for the whole lot.”
Val was sort of waiting for the cup of coffee he’d been promised and, at first, didn’t think he heard correctly. He sat still for a very long moment, replaying the sentence in his head.
“Two grand? For everything? What the hell are you thinking? J.W., that doesn’t even begin to approach what those items are worth, let alone cover any of my costs. I’ve been working with a number of estates in Memphis and elsewhere, and these are the same sort of quality items I’ve always delivered to you. Two grand? For everything? You gotta be kidding? No, no, that won’t work. No, that won’t work at all,” Val said.
J.W. leaned back in his office chair. He had a bit of a paunch on him, and he placed his hands over it, interlocking his fingers. He stared at Val, letting him sweat in the uncomfortable silence.
Val, the hyper hustler, felt he had to interject something. “J.W., these items are from some of the finest families in Tennessee. I do a lot of this on consignment, as you know. I just could not let this go for anywhere near that amount.”
J.W. attempted to suck something from between his teeth.
“I thought… well, frankly, I’m a bit shocked. I thought we had a better working relationship than this,” Val sputtered.
J.W. waited patiently, sitting quietly for what seemed to Val a very long time. Finally, he let out a long sigh and said, “Boy, you doing all this consignment outta Memphis? How come you’re living down Tampa way? Hmm-mmm? How come you’re driving every couple weeks up here from Tampa St. Pete, but you’re telling me you’re coming outta Memphis? Seems to me like you’re trying to pull a fast one on ole J.W. You thinking of doing that, son? Maybe tie me up as an accessory on whatever it is you got going down Tampa-St. Pete way. I don’t like no fast ones pulled on me, boy. Don’t like that one damn bit.
“What makes you think you always got to tell me lies? All I ever did was work with you, real nice like. And this here’s how you go and repay me. I make you a decent offer,” he waved his hand in the air before dropping it atop his paunch, “and you go and insult me.”
He shook his head back and forth. His eyes were a cold blue. Icy, like the thin ice on a lake in very early winter, unsafe and dangerous. His pock-marked skin was pale and carried a slight, oily sheen. Long strands of hair, dyed black and oiled, were slicked back and plastered along the contour of his skull with a streak of gray down the middle, giving J.W. a bit of a skunky look.
“What am I gonna do here? What am I gonna do?” J.W. said.
“J.W., I don’t know what exactly you’re talking about, and to tell the truth, I don’t really care. I can’t go back to my clients, accepting an offer like this. Thank you, sir, for your time, but I have a number of other stops to make today.” Val stood up and headed toward the door. “So, if you’ll just excuse me. I’ll be on my way.” He didn’t waste time looking back at J.W. as he spoke. He walked out of the office and across the small warehouse floor to his car and trailer. Todd and Cyril had just finished stacking the last of the items onto a long table.
“Guys, would you mind giving me a hand, here?” Val began picking up two boxes full of silver place settings. “We’ve got to put this stuff back into the trailer. I’m not going to be leaving anything here today.”
At the same time, J.W. had stepped out of his office and was standing in the doorway, giving Todd, the larger of the two employees, a nod.
Todd Clemmons had a shaved head, save for his ponytail. He sported multicolored tribal tattoos on heavily muscled arms. He could have picked Val up and over his head without a second thought. Clearly, one of Todd’s avocations was weightlifting. Val had never wanted to learn too much about his other interests.
Once J.W. gave Todd the nod, Todd simply stopped Val by holding up his hand, like a polite bouncer in front of a trendy club. “I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Brooks said no.” He emphasized the word no, as in final, no appeal.
Cyril Harvey, overly gentle, cautious, and somewhat afraid of his own shadow, had never really even looked at Val. When he heard the tone in Todd’s voice, he immediately started backing up and vanished around the corner like a ghost.
Val looked back at J.W., standing at his office door.
“Seems to me,” J.W. said, pausing to suck his front teeth, “might just be a good idea if you come back in here and we talk some more. No point in going away all riled up and empty-handed.” He held his hands palms up as he spoke. “Come on, son. Get back in here and let’s talk.”
Val thought about hitting Todd across the head with one of the heavy boxes of silver. But that still left Cyril, wherever he vanished to, not to mention J.W. Worse, if Todd didn’t die immediately, he would most likely kill Val without so much as a second thought.
Val did the only thing he could do. He set the boxes of silver back on the table. “Please load this up for me, Todd,” he said as he turned and walked back to J.W.’s office, knowing full well, no one was going to be loading anything into his trailer.
“J.W., what’s going on? Why are you doing this to me? I mean, this is just plain stupid,” Val said.
“Son, I got a feeling, up till now, you been just giving me some crumbs off the table. All I want is a place at the table and maybe a little piece of the pie. That’s all, son. No reason for you to worry. I’m just afraid that ole J.W.’s not getting his fair share, not getting his due, if you catch my drift.”
“And how much, exactly, would be your fair share, J.W.?”
“Well, that all depends on what we can work out. Seems like I made you a pretty decent offer, two thousand dollars. That ain’t nothing to walk away from, son.
You don’t want that, well, maybe the Atlanta Police Department might be more interested. Maybe a whole lot more interested. Maybe interested enough to call down to their friends in Tampa, see what the Tampa police might find out about your consignments and the estates you been taking care of. What do you think?” J.W. sucked his teeth in satisfaction, flashed his impersonation of a grin at Val for the briefest of seconds. “I bet they’d be real interested down Tampa way.”
If Val was surprised by how much J.W. knew, he didn’t show it. “J.W., let’s not get carried away here. Let’s see if maybe we can’t come to some sort of an agreement here and make everyone happy, find some sort of common ground.”
That was the sort of talk J.W. Brooks liked to hear. He hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Son, let’s see if we can’t work this little misunderstanding out.”
After shaking hands with J.W. ten minutes later, Val walked out of his office with thirty-five hundred dollars cash, a smile plastered on his face, a shell-shocked look in his eyes, and a voice screaming inside that he couldn’t let J.W. rip him off like this.
He got in his car and drove the empty trailer three blocks before he pulled over and phoned Hub.
Chapter 22
It was almost noon, and Hub was lying on his new couch. He was splattered with paint from the morning’s work while thinking about Macey’s tan lines last night. Val’s number suddenly appeared on caller ID. Hub was more than a little surprised. They’d promised to call one another from pay phones just to play it safe.
“Jig’s up, man,” Val said, not wasting time with ‘Hello.’ “That bastard I told you about up here just ripped us off. Gave me about 25 percent of what we should have made. He took everything and gave me a couple grand. I had to fight just to get that much.”