Swag (5 page)

“All I said was I didn't know him very well.”

“But I do.” Frank was tense. “I've known him a hell of a lot longer'n I've known you. You don't like the way I'm handling it, go back working cement, maybe I'll see you around.”

“You're handling it,” Stick said. “You made up the rules. It seems to me one of them, it says don't even tell a junkie your name. The first guy we talk to, it happens, runs a dope store.”

“You don't know anything about him.”

They got in the car and drove off and didn't say anything for a while, each feeling the other's presence. Finally Frank said, “Listen, this is kind of dumb. We got something going or we haven't. We don't blow it over a few words.”

“I'll tell you the truth,” Stick said, “I thought the guy was all right. I probably wasn't talking so much to him as I was to you.”

Frank looked over. “I don't follow you.”

“There you are,” Stick said. “And I don't follow you around either, you say go pee-pee, I do it. You don't say to the guy I don't want a smoke. If I don't want it, I tell him.”

Frank glanced away from the windshield again. “Is that all that's bothering you?”

“That's all,” Stick said. “I thought I might as well mention it.”

4

THEY SPENT THE WEEKEND ON
a slow tour of some of Detroit's industrial suburbs on the northeast side—Clawson, Madison Heights, Warren, Roseville—Stick driving. Frank taking notes, writing down the names and locations of bars, supermarkets, liquor stores, with a few words to describe the traffic and the fastest way out of each area. There was a liquor store in Warren that Frank especially liked and said maybe ought to be the first one. The liquor store was on a four-lane industrial street that was lined with machine and sheet-metal shops, automotive supply houses. Hit the place on a Friday, payday. How'd that sound? Stick said if they were going to start, the liquor store was probably as good a place as any.

Monday, Frank went back to Red Bowers Chevrolet and told the sales manager he was leaving the end of the week. The sales manager didn't seem too upset about it. Frank looked around the used-car lot and gave himself a good deal on a tan '72 Plymouth Duster that needed a ring job and some transmission work. If they had any luck at all, they wouldn't have the car very long.

After he got home he drove Stick around downtown Royal Oak until Stick spotted Al's Plumbing & Heating on South Main and said, “There. I think I like that one.” He liked the way they parked the panel trucks behind the building with no fence or spotlight to worry about.

Tuesday, Stick took his green sport coat to the cleaner's, then stopped at an auto parts store and had some clips made for shorting and hooking up electric wires. The guy at the place didn't ask him any questions. He bowled and drank beer most of the afternoon, rolling a one eighty-six he felt pretty good about.

Wednesday, Frank called Sportree, who told them to come down, he had something they might like.

What it was: a sheet of Ace tablet paper, lined, with the addresses of two homes in Bloomfield Hills and a list of the goods they'd find in each place. The words looked like they'd been written by a child, in pencil, but that was all right. They could read the words without any trouble. Especially the one that said
GUNS.

“This one place, LaGreta say the man's got a gun collection in his recreation room, down in the basement,” Sportree explained. “The whole family's out to the lake for the summer. Sometime the man stop off home, but usually he drive out there from his work. How's that sound to you for forty dollars? Whole mother collection to pick from.”

Thursday night, they went to a ten o'clock show in Royal Oak, watched Clint Eastwood kill some people, and at twelve walked out of the movie theater, across the street, and down two blocks to Al's Plumbing & Heating. Frank waited on the corner while Stick went around the back. A few minutes later a panel truck with Al's name on the side stopped at the corner and Frank got in.

“That was pretty quick.”

“It used to take me less than a minute,” Stick said, “but with these newer models, I got to figure things out.”

“You jump the wires?”

“Not under the hood.” Stick patted the dashboard. “All the work's done underneath here. You look, you see some clips I had made.”

Driving out to the gun collector's house in Bloomfield Hills, he told Frank what he used to do when he spotted a certain car he liked that had the dealer's name on it. Get the serial number off the car, then go to the dealer and tell them you lost the key and have one made. Simple.

They found the address and Stick pulled into the side drive of the big Colonial.

It was Frank's turn now. “They all do the same thing,” he said, “leave two lights on downstairs and one up, and you're supposed to think somebody's home.”

Stick sat in the truck while Frank rang the bell at the side door and waited. He rang it again and waited almost a minute before he broke a pane of glass in the door, reached in, and unlocked it. Stick got out of the truck and went inside, down a hallway past the kitchen to the family room, where a lamp was on. Frank was looking at the TV set, a big Motorola that was like a piece of furniture.

“What do you think!” Frank said. “Use the top for a bar, get rid of that little black-and-white I got. Except it's a big mother, isn't it?” He looked at Stick. “You think we can handle it?”

“If I remember right,” Stick said, “we come here for guns.”

There was a locked cabinet full of them down in the recreation room. Three rifles, three shotguns, and an assortment of handguns: several new-looking revolvers, a couple of Lugers, a Japanese automatic, and a Frontier model Colt .44, the kind Clint Eastwood had carried in the movie.

Stick had a feeling Frank would pick it up first. He did—pulled the hammer back and sighted and clicked the trigger, then hefted it in his hand, feeling the weight and looking at it from different angles. Frank held the Colt .44 against his hip, then threw it out in front of him and did it again.

“Fastest gun in Royal Oak,” Stick said. “You know how to shoot?”

“Pull the trigger,” Frank said. “Isn't that what you do?”

Stick considered a P-38 Walther, it looked pretty good, but chose a Smith & Wesson .38 Chief's Special with a two-inch barrel. After Frank finished fooling around, he picked a big Colt Python 357 with a ventilated rib over its six-inch barrel. They found boxes of cartridges for both revolvers and got out of there.

The next day, Friday, Frank bought the Deluxe Anniversary Edition of
Gun Digest
and read off the vital statistics of the two revolvers, his forty-seven-ounce number and Stick's stubby little fourteen-ouncer. The Colt Python listed for a hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-five cents new. Stick's little Smith only cost ninety-six. Stick said, “But I don't have to carry four pounds of metal around in my pants, do I?”

At noon Frank reported in at Red Bowers Chevrolet for the last time, sold two late-model used cars and made eighty-six bucks in commission. A good sign, everything was working. Stick got his sport coat from the cleaner's and had it on with a starched white shirt and a green-and-yellow-print tie when Frank got home. Frank didn't say anything about the coat or the tie. He changed and they each had a couple of drinks. At six thirty they couldn't think of anything else they had to do, so they went out to hold up the liquor store.

Stick got a car from a movie theater parking lot in Warren, a '74 Olds Cutlass Supreme, drove it up the street to where Frank was waiting in the Duster, and picked him up. Frank asked if he had any trouble and Stick said, “What'd it take me, two minutes?”

Frank felt pretty good, anxious and a little excited, until they were approaching the liquor store. Then he wasn't sure. They came even with the building that was in a block of storefronts. There was plenty of parking space. Stick slowed down but kept going, his eyes on the rearview mirror.

“I wanted to look at it again,” Stick said.

They went around the block, past vacant lots and plant-equipment yards.

“What we have to consider,” Frank said, “what if we don't get much? Like fifty, sixty bucks, something like that. The guy could have most of his dough locked up somewhere, hidden. Then what do you do, he refuses to tell you where it is, shoot him?”

Stick was looking around. His eyes kept going to the rearview mirror. “Or try another place,” he said. “There's plenty around.”

“What I mean is,” Frank said, “maybe it's more trouble than it's worth. Nobody's forcing us. We go in a place because we want to. We try it or we don't. What're we out? Nothing. We could sell the guns. Maybe even the car, dump it off on somebody.”

They were on the four-lane street again, with very little traffic going either way. A quiet, daylight-saving-time early evening in the summer. A car pulled away from the liquor store, leaving the curb empty for at least sixty feet.

“Well,” Frank said, “what do you think?”

Stick swung the Olds in to the curb. “What do I think about what?” he said. “Let's do it.”

He pulled up a little past the store entrance and put the lever in Park, then accelerated to make sure the engine was idling.

As Stick opened his door, Frank said, “What's Rule Number One?”

Stick paused. “Always be polite. Say please and thank you.”

Frank said, “You know, when I worked at the dealership a man came in to teach us how to sell cars over the phone. Call up people, find out if they're in the market. He says to me, ‘What's your name?' I tell him Frank Ryan. He says, ‘No, it's not.' He says, ‘Not over the phone. You call a prospect, you say, “Hi, I'm Frank Duffy of Red Bowers Chevrolet.” Duff-
ee
. You always use a name that ends in
y
or
i-e
. Because when you say it you got a smile on your face.' ”

Stick waited, staring at Frank for a moment before he got out of the car.

The counter and shelves of liquor ran along the left wall. Down the middle of the store were wine bins and displays of party supplies. Along the right-hand wall the beer and soft drinks were in coolers with sliding glass doors. Two guys were standing over there.

Frank and Stick walked up to the liquor counter. The guy behind it was about sixty but big, over two hundred, with tight curly gray hair. He laid his cigarette in a chrome ashtray and said, “Can I help you?”

Frank wanted to look around, but he didn't. He hesitated and said, “Yes sir, you can,” unbuttoned his suit coat, took out the Colt Python, and rested the butt on the counter so that the gun was pointing directly at the man's wide expanse of stomach. The man closed and opened his eyes and seemed tired.

“You can empty your cash register,” Frank said. “But sir? I see anything in your hand's not green and made of paper, I'll blow you right through the fucking wall.”

It was happening. Frank watched the guy punch open the cash register without a word. Maybe it had happened to him before. He held the gun on him and his hand was steady. He motioned with his head then.

Stick walked around the rack of potato chips and Fritos to the two guys standing by the beer cooler. They were hunched over, trying to decide, one of them reaching in then for a six-pack of Stroh's.

Opening his sport coat, Stick said, “Excuse me, gents.” When they looked at him he said, “You see what I got here?” They didn't right away, until they saw he was holding his coat open.

The one with the six-pack said, “Jesus,” and dropped it on the floor. Stick kept himself from jumping back.

The other one didn't say a word, his eyes on the butt of the .38 Special sticking out of the waistband.

“You don't want to get hurt,” Stick said, “and I certainly don't want to hurt you. So let's march to the rear, see what's in back.”

Past the potato-chip rack he could see Frank holding open a paper bag and the man behind the counter dropping bills into it.

There was a young clerk in the storeroom, sitting on a stack of beer cases holding a sandwich and eating from a half-pint container of coleslaw. He looked surprised to see three men coming in, but he was also polite. He said, “Can I help you?”

Stick spotted the big walk-in reefer and said, “No thanks, I guess I can handle it myself.”

He walked over, opened the door to the refrigerator, and nodded for the two customers to go inside.

The clerk said, “Hey, you can't go in there. What do you want?”

“You, too,” Stick said. He held open his coat again. “Okay?”

When he came out into the store he thought the place was empty and got an awful feeling in his stomach for a moment. Then, near the cash register, Frank rose up from behind the counter with the paper bag.