Swag (6 page)

As he came over the counter, the bag in one hand—the top of it rolled tightly closed—and the Python in the other, Stick said, “Where's the guy?”

“On the floor.” Frank looked over the counter and said, “Stay down there, if you will please. Because if you raise up too soon, if you see me again, then I'll see you, won't I? And if I see you again, I won't hesitate to shoot and probably kill you.”

Stick said, “Tell him the other people're in the icebox.”

“You hear that, sir?” Frank looked over the counter again. “In the icebox.”

“Tell him much obliged,” Stick said.

“Yeah, much obliged. Maybe we'll see you again sometime.”

Neither one of them wanted to look anxious. They walked out, taking their time.

In the car Stick put the gear into Drive and waited, looking at the rearview mirror, until he saw the big guy with the gray curly hair appear suddenly in the doorway and stop dead. Stick got out of there then, tires squealing as he peeled away from the curb.

Frank turned around to look straight ahead again. “He saw the car, I'm sure. Maybe even the license.”

“You bet he did,” Stick said. “Now I drop you off at your car, head back to the picture show, and you pick me up there.”

“It seems like a lot of trouble,” Frank said.

“Yes, it does,” Stick said. “But it sure keeps the police busy, looking for a '74 Cutlass Supreme, doesn't it? How much we get?”

Frank held the bag on his lap, the top tightly folded. “Rule Number Six,” he said.

As soon as they were in the apartment Stick took off his sport coat. He was sweating. The Duster didn't have air conditioning. He looked at Frank, who was sitting on the couch lighting a cigarette like he had his lunch in the bag and there wasn't any hurry getting to it.

Stick said, “You going to count it or you want me to?”

“Why don't you make us a couple of drinks?” Frank said.

Stick went out to the kitchen. He poured Scotch in one glass and bourbon in another, then got a tray out of the refrigerator and began filling the glasses with ice. It was all right that Frank counted it, but he wanted to watch, at least. He put a splash of water on the drinks and went back out to the living room.

“I don't believe it,” Frank said.

He was hunched over the coffee table, looking down at the neatly stacked piles of bills, like a guy playing solitaire. He laid a twenty on one pile, a fifty on another. As Stick approached he was peeling off tens from the wad he held in his hand.

“Jesus,” Stick said. “How much?”

“Don't talk, I'll have to start over.”

Stick put the drinks down carefully, got a cigarette and lit it and walked over to the window that looked out on the parking area behind the building. It was quiet back there, sunlight on the cars and long shadows, the end of the day. The cars looked hot. The tan Duster without air conditioning was parked there. A VW and a Pinto wagon and a Chevy pickup and a bike, a big Harley that made a racket every morning at seven fifteen—

“All right, how much you think?”

Stick turned from the window. “Why don't you tell me?”

Frank was sitting back with the Scotch in his hand, all the bills stacked in front of him, now in five neat piles.

“How about six grand?” Frank said. “How about six thousand two hundred and forty-eight fucking dollars, man? Tax free.”

Stick came over to the table and stared at the money.

“Six, comma, two four eight,” Frank said. “Most of it was in a box under the counter.”

“Jesus, what a business,” Stick said. “One day he makes that much?”

“You mean one day
we
make that much. No, what it is,” Frank said, “the guy cashes paychecks.”

“Yeah?”

“See, to get the hourly guys to come in, working in the shops. So he's got to have a lot of cash on hand payday. Keeps it in the box with the checks he cashes, from all different companies around there.”

Stick looked up at him. “Endorsed? I mean the checks were signed?”

“I thought of that,” Frank said, “but I figure it's not worth all the trouble, unless you know somebody likes to buy checks.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Stick said. “Then you're dealing with somebody else.”

“I figure we hit him earlier, we could've gotten even more. You know? Around three thirty or so, before the first-shift guys start coming in.”

“You complaining?” Stick said. “First time, Christ. I don't believe it.”

Frank started to grin. “Guy took one look at the Python—you see him?—I thought he was going to shit. I say to him, very polite, ‘You can empty the cash register, sir. But I see anything in your hand isn't green or made of paper, I'm going to blow you right through the fucking wall.' ”

Stick was grinning, too, shaking his head. He said, “I gave the two guys over by the beer cooler a flash of the Smith. I didn't take it out, I just showed it to them. I said, ‘Hey, fellas, you see what I got here?' Just the grip sticking out. The guy drops his six-pack. The fella out in back's eating his lunch. He says, ‘Can I help you?' ”

“We're home counting our wages,” Frank said, “they're still looking for the car. Or they got it staked out. The guy comes out of the show and they bust him.”

“It's the only way to do it,” Stick said. “Takes a little longer, but you keep your car clean, off the sheet. Yeah, it's a very good rule. In fact, that told me right away you had it pretty well thought out.”

“You think it's worth it then, uh, all the trouble?”

“What trouble?”

“That's the way I see it,” Frank said. “If they're all this easy, I believe we found our calling.”

5

FRANK WOULD STAND AT THE
bar in the living room with one leg over a bamboo stool, pick up his Scotch, and say, “Well, here we are.”

Stick would say, “You sure?”

And Frank would say, “You look out and see if the broads are still there. I'll go count the suits.”

It was a ritual after three months in the business and twenty-five armed robberies—after they'd bought the clothes and the new car and moved into the apartment building where nearly half the occupants were single young ladies. Frank liked to strike his pose at the bar and say, “Well, here we are.”

During the first few weeks, when they were still in the small, one-bedroom place, he'd say, “You believe it?” He'd finish laying out the stacks of bills on the coffee table, look up at Stick, and say, “You believe it? They're sitting out there waiting for us. Like they want to get held up, dying for it.” Going in, Frank had told himself over and over it would be easy—if they observed the rules and didn't take chances—but he never thought it would be this easy.

After the first few weeks he began to take it in stride. They were pros, that's why it was easy. They knew exactly what they were doing. Look at the record: twenty-five armed robberies, twenty-five stolen cars, more money coming in than they could spend, and they had yet to get on a police sheet, even as suspects.

Frank would say, “Partner, what do you want? Come on, anything. You want it, buy it.”

Frank didn't waste any time getting five new suits, a couple of sport outfits, slacks, shirts, and a safari jacket. Stick bought a suit, a sport coat, and three pairs of off-the-shelf pants for sixteen dollars each, studied the pants in the mirror—clown pants, they looked like—and had the store cut off the big bell-bottom cuffs before he'd buy them. They traded the Duster in on a white '75 Thunderbird with white velour upholstery, air, power everything, and went looking for a bigger apartment.

The third place they looked at was the Villa Monterey, out in Troy: a cream-colored stucco building with dark wood trim, a dark wood railing along the second-floor walk, a Spanish tile roof, and a balcony with each apartment overlooking the backyard where shrubbery and a stockade fence enclosed the patio and swimming pool. There was also an ice machine back there, a good sign.

Stick said he thought it looked like a motel. Frank said no, it was authentic California. He told the manager, the lady who showed them the apartment, okay, gave her the deposit and three months in advance to get out of signing a lease, and that was it. They got two bedrooms, bath, bar in the living room with bamboo stools, orange-and-yellow draperies, off-white shag carpeting, off-white walls with chrome-framed graphics, chrome gooseneck lamps, chrome-and-canvas chairs, an off-white Naugahyde sectional sofa, and three dying plants for four and a half a month, furnished. Stick didn't tell Frank but he thought the place looked like a beauty parlor.

The first Saturday they were in, Frank went out on the balcony. He looked down at the swimming pool and said, “Holy shit.” He said it again, reverently, “Holy shit. Come here and look.”

There were five of them lying around the pool in their skimpy little two-piece outfits. Nice-looking girls, none of them likely to be offered a screen test—except one, who turned out to be a photographer's model—but all of them better than average, and they were right there, handy. Frank and Stick went to the pool just about every afternoon they weren't working—Frank in a tank suit with his stomach sucked in, and Stick in a new pair of bright blue trunks—and got to know the regulars pretty well. Frank called them the career ladies.

There was a nurse, Mary Kay something, an RN who worked nights on the psychiatric floor at Beaumont Hospital. Dark hair, very clean looking. Also very skinny, but with wide hips. A generous pelvic region, Frank said. Mary Kay was a possible. Stick said, Maybe, if you looked sincere and told her you loved her.

There was a redheaded girl, frizzy red hair and bright brown eyes, who wore beads and seven rings with her bikini. Arlene. She was a little wacky and laughed at almost everything they said, whether it was supposed to be funny or not. Somebody was paying Arlene's rent, a guy in a silver Mark IV who came twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, at six, and was usually out by ten thirty. Arlene said he was a good friend.

There were several Jewish career ladies. Frank was glad to see that. He told Stick he liked good-looking Jewish girls because they had a lot of hair, big tits, and usually pretty nice noses once they had them fixed. He told Stick he'd been out with plenty of Jewish girls, including the little starlet in LA. Stick said he wasn't sure if he ever had. He asked Frank if it was all right to mention the word
Jew
in front of them or refer to them as being Jewish in any way. Frank said, “You dumb shit, that's what they
are
. Don't you think they know it?”

There was a schoolteacher named Karen who didn't talk or look like a schoolteacher. Stick didn't think she looked Jewish either. Karen said some funny things about her sixth-graders being sex-crazed and how the little girls stuck out their training bras for the horny little boys. Frank started taking Karen out and sometimes he spent the night at her apartment. Stick didn't think she seemed too impressed with Frank, though. She was off all summer with nothing to do.

There was a dental hygienist by the name of Donna who had a boyfriend but wasn't going to marry him until he made as much as she did. She told them how much a dentist with a good practice could make and referred to net and gross a lot. Donna was way down at the bottom of Frank's list of things to do.

Sonny, the photographer's model, was the winner of the group. But she was unresponsive to drink offers. She seldom came up to their apartment with the others. She'd lie there behind her big sunglasses and hardly ever laugh when they said something funny. Frank said she was battery-operated. You pressed a little button on her can and she'd say, “Hi, I'm Sonny. I'm a model. So fuck off.”

Stick noticed that Frank watched her, studied her, more than he did the others. Sonny was the only one Frank had trouble talking to.

There was a girl in the next apartment—a career lady but not one of the group—who they found out was a pro. Stick called her Mona because sometimes, through the wall, he'd hear her in there with a guy, saying things to him and moaning like she was about to die it was so good. Frank called her what's-her-name. He was polite to her but not interested. He said a guy would be out of his mind to pay for it at the Villa Monterey. Stick never mentioned it to Frank, but he liked her. He liked her straight dark hair parted in the middle. He liked the calm expression in her eyes and the quiet way she talked, though she never said very much. She was fragile-looking, a thin little thing with bony shoulders sticking out of her sleeveless blouse. When he'd see her outside he couldn't believe she was the same girl he'd hear moaning and carrying on through the wall. Maybe sometime, when Frank wasn't around, he'd get talking to her in private and find out which one was the real Mona.

They both liked the cocktail waitress, Jackie, who worked at a place called The Ball Joint and wore a kitty outfit with little ears and a tail. Jackie wasn't the smartest girl there, but she was very friendly. Also she had the biggest pair at the Villa Monterey, even when they weren't pushed up by her kitty outfit. She showed the group one time, in her bikini, how she placed drinks on a table, bending her knees and keeping her body straight so they wouldn't fall out. Frank said if they ever did and hit somebody, they'd kill him. Jackie worked nights and usually didn't drink in the afternoon, but was liable to bang on their door when she got home, two thirty in the morning, if she saw a light on and heard the hi-fi playing. It wasn't unusual.