by Al Lamanda
“What if they have no self respect?”
The roll down door closed. The lights switched on.
“Now!” Gavin yelled.
“Now…what?” Ian yelled.
Gavin charged out from behind the workbench just as the man at the light switch turned around. On the fly, Gavin uncorked a left hook to the man’s jaw that spun him around three hundred and sixty degrees.
Before the second man could react, Gavin moved forward, stuck the man in the nose with a perfectly timed jab and followed that up with a huge right hook to the man’s stomach.
As the second man slumped to his knees, he made a noise that sounded very much like, “Aaoweee,” followed by a noise that sounded very much like, “Awowow.”
Gavin spun back around to the first man, who was shaking his head and making a noise that sounded very much like, “Brrrrrrr,” or something close to it.
Gavin hit the first man with two stiff jabs and followed them up with right hook to the man’s jaw that flattened him silly.
In the meantime, Ian stood frozen behind the workbench. He looked at the third man, who was about his size. The third man suddenly charged right at Ian, screaming loudly in a high-pitched voice.
Ian panicked until he spotted a long cane on the workbench. He grabbed the cane, waited for the third man to be in range, then swung the cane as hard as he could and smacked the third man right in the face.
Except that the cane, belonging to a magician, was not really a cane but a magic trick and as Ian swung the cane, it assumed the rigidity of overcooked spaghetti and harmlessly slapped the man against his ski mask.
This so infuriated the third man that he jumped onto the workbench and punched Ian in the nose, knocking him to the floor.
“Hit me with a noodle, will ya!” the third man cried in his high-pitched voice and jumped on top of Ian.
Satisfied both men were disabled, Gavin looked around for Ian, but there was no sign of him or the third man. “Ian!” Gavin cried.
“Lee…Help!” Ian cried from behind the workbench.
Gavin rushed around the table where Ian was flat on his back with the third man on Ian’s chest. They seemed to be engaged in some kind of…biting contest. The third man was close to Ian’s nose, snapping away like a sea turtle, while Ian held him at bay with his hands and snapped away at the man’s fingers.
“Cut that out,” Ian said.
“You first,” the third man said in a squeaky voice.
“You jumped on me,” Ian said.
“You hit me with a noodle,” the third man said.
“Cane,” Ian said.
“Cane,” the third man said.
“Okay…snap, snap, snap…together,” Ian said.
“No…snap, snap, snap…tricks?” the third man said.
“What am I…snap, snap, snap…a magician?” Ian said.
“Okay, on…snap, snap, snap…three,” the third man said.
“One…snap, snap…two...snap…three,” Ian said.
Ian and the third man released their grips and immediately Ian grabbed the ski mask and yanked it off the third man’s face.
“Molly?” Ian said, shocked.
Molly, the third man who wasn’t a man at all, but a middle-aged woman with thick shoulders and a potbelly.
“Ian Nelson?” Molly said. “Is that you?”
Ian and Molly jumped to their feet and hugged.
“What’s it been, three years?” Ian said.
“More like three to five, but hey, it wasn’t so bad,” Molly said. “I lost twenty pounds and got down to a size twelve.”
“Where’s your husband?” Ian said.
“Wally, he’s around here somewhere,” Molly said. “With my brother Sully.”
Ian looked around.
Molly looked around.
They looked at the two unconscious men on the floor.
They looked at Gavin.
“How did I know?” Gavin said.
Gavin and Ian stood before Wally and Sully, who were seated on bar stools in front of a workbench.
Wally rubber his chin. “Christ, Lee, what did you hit me with?”
Ian looked at Gavin. “Bully.”
“If I knew it was you, I never would have hit you, Wally,” Gavin said.
“Well, that’s alright, Lee,” Wally said. “We should have checked to see if anybody else marked this place for a score.”
Molly returned from the back of the warehouse with a silver tray full of teacups and a pot of tea. “There’s a whole kitchen back there,” she said as she set the tray on the bench.
“Really?” Ian said. “Any snacks, cake back there?”
“I didn’t look,” Molly said as she poured a cup of tea and gave it to Wally.
Ian wandered off to the back of the warehouse.
“Thank you, dear,” Wally said.
“Lee?” Molly said.
“Please.”
“Give me a minute to drink my tea and we’ll clear on out, Lee,” Wally said.
“We’re not here for a score, Wally,” Gavin said.
“No?”
“No. This Mike the Magnificent idiot took a keepsake from Ian’s wife and…”
“The blonde? Looks like Anna Nicole Smith on steroids?”
“Muffie-Jo,” Gavin said. “He took her keepsake at a show and she wants it back.”
“Why not just ask him?” Sully said.
“He’s in jail,” Wally said. “Remember the newspapers? That’s how we figured this place would be ripe. We should have figured something was up when the alarms in the lobby was off.”
Gavin sipped his tea. “So, anyway, that’s all we want. You guys help yourself.”
“You sure?” Wally said.
“No problem.”
Ian returned with a lemon cake on a plate. “Look what I found in the fridge back there,” he chirped.
“We have work to…” Gavin said.
“That smells pretty good,” Wally said.
“You got plates?” Sully said.
“I saw some on a counter,” Molly said. “Plastic forks, too.”
Gavin glared at Ian.
“Everything is better with cake,” Ian chirped.
Several hours later, last suit in hand, Gavin said, “It’s not here.”
“Maybe we missed it,” Ian said.
Knee deep in Magician’s junk, Gavin and Ian looked down at the pile of junk.
“We didn’t miss it,” Gavin said.
“You think he screwed us?” Ian said. “Want me to call Jack-Jack?”
“Not yet.”
Wally approached the spin rack. “We’re all loaded up, Lee.”
“Wally, do me a favor,” Gavin said. “The keepsake, we can’t find it. When you go through your haul, it’s a little white egg, hard as rock. Call me right away.”
“A little white egg?” Wally said. “Like a chicken?”
“About.”
“Jewel encrusted?”
“No, nothing. In fact, it’s worthless, except as a keepsake.”
Wally shrugged. “We find it, it’s yours.”
“Thanks, Wally.”
“Okay, we’re off,” Wally said. “Don’t be strangers.”
Gavin looked at his watch. “It’s two in the morning. Let’s go.”
“Home?”
“Queens.”
THIRTY-ONE
Mike the Magnificent opened his eyes when Gavin’s very large mitts grabbed him by the pajama shirt and yanked him out of bed. Besides the crazed look in Gavin’s eyes, Mike the Magnificent couldn’t help but notice the thick purple vein pulsating along Gavin’s neck.
“I warned you, didn’t I?” Gavin snorted.
“Like a cop on a speeding ticket,” Ian said.
Mike the Magnificent shifted his eyes to Ian beside Gavin. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”
“At the moment, I’m going to squeeze your head like a tube of toothpaste,” Gavin snarled.
“An empty tube,�
�� Ian said. “G’head, Lee, roll him up from the feet.”
Gavin lifted Mike the Magnificent off the ground and held him eye to eye. “It wasn’t there,” Gavin spat.
“Gone like the wind,” Ian said.
“You mean Gone With the Wind?” Mike the Magnificent said.
“What?” Ian said.
“You said…” Mike the Magnificent said.
Gavin shook the magician like an old rag doll. “Never mind the wind,” Gavin snarled. “The egg, it wasn’t there.”
“Are…you…sure?” Mike the Magnificent stuttered as Gavin shook him.
“Beat it out of him like he was a rug, Lee,” Ian cried. “G’head.”
Gavin raised a rock hard right fist, reared back, but at the last moment lowered the fist and tossed Mike the Magnificent to the bed. “Where is it?”
“The egg?” Mike the magnificent said.
“No, the Marine Corps Marching Band,” Gavin said. “We misplaced them. I thought they might be hiding under your bed. Of course, the egg.”
“It wasn’t in my suits?”
“The only thing in your suits was a bunch of junk, plus a whole lot of colored hankies,” Ian said. “And fake flowers that squirt water.”
“I see,” Mike the Magnificent said.
“No, you don’t see,” Gavin said.
“Like Stevie Wonder you don’t see,” Ian added.
“If I don’t get that egg, you go back to jail and a public defender takes over your case,” Gavin said. “You’ll be on social security by the time you get out.”
“And we all know how far that goes,” Ian said.
“I swear to God, I left the egg in my suit jacket,” Mike the Magnificent said. “For Christ sake, would I screw over the man who bailed me out and paid for the best criminal defense attorney in the city? I ask you, would I be that stupid?”
Gavin and Ian looked at each other.
“One more time,” Gavin said. “Tell us again every detail.”
At the kitchen table of his Queens, Tudor style home, Mike the Magnificent took a sip of tea from his cup and looked at Gavin. “I’ve already told you every detail.”
Digging around in the fridge, Ian poked his head out with a bag of frozen bagels. “These any good?”
“Yes, if you toast them in the toaster oven and not the toaster,” Mike the Magnificent said.
“The details?” Gavin said.
Mike the Magnificent sighed. “When the fire seemed out of control and they cleared the club, I thought if I started my own fire I could collect on the insurance and use the money to expand and get out from under. You know how that is.”
“Under is Lee’s middle name,” Ian said as he tossed several bagels into the toaster oven.
“Never mind, go on,” Gavin said.
“I use oil lamps on the tables instead of candles,” Mike the Magnificent said. “They last longer and don’t drip on the tables. I tossed some oil on the wall and lit a match. Unfortunately, the walls are solid cinderblock to prevent fire in one building from spreading to another.”
“And all this time the egg is in your pocket?” Gavin said.
“Like I told you, yes, yes and yes.”
Ian arrived at the table with two toasted bagels slathered with cream cheese. “I think we should have Jack sit on his head, Lee.”
“Look, look,” Mike the Magnificent said, stood and dashed out of the kitchen.
“Nervous guy, isn’t he?” Ian said as he tore into a bagel.
Mike the Magnificent returned wearing a suit jacket over his pajamas. “See, look,” he said and picked up the sugar bowl from the table. Holding the bowl in his left hand, he waved his right hand over the bowl and the bowl vanished.
“See, look,” Mike the Magnificent said and opened the suit jacket to reveal and long, deep pocket that was connected to a tunnel in the sleeve. He unzipped the zipper, reached in and pulled out the sugar bowl. “That egg should have been in the pocket of the suit I wore the night of the fire,” he said.
“Only it isn’t,” Gavin said.
“I’m at a loss,” Mike the Magnificent said. “Truly.”
“You know what, I believe you,” Gavin said.
Ian cocked an eyebrow at Gavin. “You do?”
“Like you said, would you be that stupid?” Gavin said.
“Exactly!” Mike the Magnificent said.
“Maybe you’re telling the truth…hold on,” Ian said as he bit into the second bagel, chewed and swallowed. “But then where is the egg?”
“Is it possible you missed it?” Mike the Magnificent said. “Those pockets are deep and well protected.”
“Impossible,” Ian said. “We’re consummate professions. We miss nothing, not even the smallest detail.”
“It’s possible,” Gavin said. “I didn’t think so until I saw the pocket and how it works, but all those suits and all those pockets, we could have missed it.”
“After all, we’re only human,” Ian said.
“It’s a risk I’d gladly take and go with you to my warehouse,” Mike the Magnificent suggested.
Gavin and Ian glanced at each other.
“No, we’ll go alone,” Gavin said.
“We’re loners,” Ian said.
“I feel bad enough about the way I bullied you into helping me as it is,” Mike the Magnificent said. “The least I can do is stick my neck out for the men who stuck their necks out for me.”
“That’s the kind of men we are,” Ian said. “Neck stickers.”
“And if by some chance the cops find out, you could be up on evidence tampering charges,” Gavin said. “Trump doesn’t have enough money to bail you out then.”
“I see,” Mike the Magnificent said.
“You sit tight,” Gavin said. “We’ll check again and get back to you.”
“I can’t tell you how badly I feel about this,” Mike the Magnificent said.
“Ian, let’s go,” Gavin said.
“Lemme make some of these bagels for the road,” Ian said. “It’s close to breakfast time.”
“By all means,” Mike the Magnificent said. “And there’s some extra creamy spread there in the back. Three flavors.”
“This three flavor cream cheese is wonderful,” Ian said as he drove his Mustang south on Queens Boulevard.
Gavin bit into a plain toasted, buttered bagel. “I don’t think we missed it,” he said as he sipped coffee from a container.
“A hit of garlic with maybe some chives,” Ian said.
“I think we checked every pocket and sleeve on each and every jacket on the rack,” Gavin said.
“Has just the right amount of bite without overpowering the flavor of the bagel,” Ian said.
Gavin took another bit of his bagel without tasting it. “Still, we have to double check to make sure.”
“I say we keep what’s left of the expense money and cut our losses,” Ian said. “When a job is jinxed, it’s jinxed and this job has been jinxed from the beginning.”
“Keep a few hundred grand in expense money and let a couple of million slide through our fingers?” Gavin said. “That’s what you want to do?”
“Well, when you put it that way.”
“What other way is there to put it?”
“So you want to go back to the warehouse?”
“It’s the only way we’re going to be one hundred percent sure.”
“And if it’s not there?”
“Then it’s someplace else.”
“There’s a whole lot of someplace else’s in this city, Lee,” Ian said. “We can’t check them all.”
“I need this for my kid, Ian.”
Ian drove a full mile before he looked at Gavin. “How about this? We hit Wallace for more expense money, a ton of it. He wants the stupid egg so bad; he won’t blink about paying it. Then we keep the money and blow him off. It’s not exactly like he can report to the police the crooks he hired stole from him. At least we walk away fat instead of empty.”
; “And the egg?”
“Nobody cared about the stupid bird for four hundred years, who is going to care now,” Ian said. “Except some very stupid rich people who think their God.”
“Let me think on it,” Gavin said. “Come for dinner tonight and bring Muffie-Jo. We’ll talk about it then.”
“What’s my sister cooking?”
“Does it matter?”
Ian licked his lips. “Not one single bit.”
THIRTY-TWO
“Would you care for more peas, Jack?” Patience said as she entered the living room, holding a bowl.
“Why, yes I would,” Jack-Jack said, politely.
Patience passed the bowl to Fubar, who passed it to Double D, who passed it to Jack-Jack. “Thank you kindly, Mrs. Gavin,” Jack-Jack said.
“Call me Patience,” Patience told Jack-Jack as she returned to the kitchen.
“Yes, Mrs. Gavin,” Jack-Jack said, politely.
Earlier, Gavin called an emergency meeting of the gang. He pulled the holiday table from behind the sofa and assembled it so that it would seat a dozen comfortably. At the table were Jack-Jack, Fubar, Snafu, Double D, Wheezer, Johnny Peru, Ian, Muffie-Jo, Patience and Gavin.
Jack-Jack took up three spaces, but there was still enough elbowroom.
“I gotta say, my vote is with Ian,” Fubar said. “Take the expense money and run. The hell with the egg.”
“Me, too,” Snafu said.
“We’re not taking votes,” Ian pointed out. “We’re just discussing things.”
“You’re sure the egg ain’t there?” Double D said.
“Why can’t we take votes?” Snafu said.
“More chicken breasts?” Patience said as she toted a platter of baked, stuffed chicken breasts to the table.
Immediately, Ian speared two.
“I told you, we went back and searched each and every jacket and pants,” Ian said. “It’s not there.”
“What about Wally and Molly?” Fubar said. “I never did trust them.”
“No way,” Ian said. “They don’t know anything about it. They just read about the fire and cashed in on the warehouse is all.”
“Why didn’t we think of that?” Fubar said.
Snafu stuck his fork into a tender chicken breast and buttery garlic sauce ran out. “It’s something to think about for the future,” he said. “Read the papers, see who has a fire and then go rob them.”