No Beast So Fierce (16 page)

“Yeah, a couple large-caliber pistols and a twelve-gauge shotgun.”

“You can cop a shotgun at a pawn shop.”

“If I had the bread. What I'd really like is some kind of submachine gun, a Thompson or a Schmeiser.”

“Somebody called Abe the other day and wanted to sell an M16.”

“Motherfucker! That's just what I want.”

“I don't remember who called Abe. I'll find out.”

“How much did he want?”

“Three bills.”

“Goddam! How long will he have it?”

“Who knows? I'll talk to him. I'd loan you the bread but I don't have it either.”

“What about pistols? Got any ideas? If you know somebody who'll loan 'em to you—it'll pay off for both of you.”

“I might be able to help there. I know a dude. Yeah, there's a revolver in the office. One of the bartenders kept it while he was working. He had a heart attack and won't be back for a couple more months. I think it's only a .32. Want it?”

“Damn right.”

Manny started for the office. I followed.

The revolver was a snub-nosed .32 made by a company I'd never heard of. As pistols go it wasn't much, but the checkered butt felt good against my palm. “What about the others—that guy you know?”

“I'll see him tonight. I know he's got some. Call me tomorrow.”

When I left the office, Abe was still with the man at the bar. He saw me starting to leave and waved goodbye.

The motel was immense and gleaming new. There was an Olympicsized swimming pool and a putting green for golf fanatics. There was also a large coffee shop. To arrive at the rooms and suites, which were two stories high, all facing inward toward the pool (upstairs was a balcony running all the way around) it was necessary to pass down a drive between the coffee shop and office, both of which had large windows. Walking in to take the score this way would be easy, but leaving, especially if I were in a hurry, might attract risky attention.

Red parked a block away and we walked back, turned in, and sauntered around the pool. The day was hot and middle-aged, middle-class tourists were supine on canvas lounges, sunning fish-white flab and hiding their eyes behind dark glasses. Once again Red's presence discomfited me, but not because of embarrassment. He stood out and this would cause him to be remembered. If the caper blew up and someone was shot the investigation would include tracing and questioning the guests. I always tried to be inconspicuous, hide my criminality.

The suite where the game was held was the last one on the balcony. As we walked below it, I saw that the balcony ran around the corner and we (whoever went with me) could drop ten feet into a vacant lot outside the motel. We wouldn't have to go back down the drive between the windows. Good.

A possible problem, besides something going wrong inside the suite, was that some guest might be taking a night swim and see us charging through the door. I decided it was a calculated risk worth taking.

“Let's blow,” I told Red.

“What about inside the room?”

“I can't afford to rent it. But how many mysteries can a motel have?”

We went back to the car.

The freeway through the San Fernando Valley was raised so that the view through the chain link fence—protection for dogs, cats and children—was panoramic. Smog shortened the horizon, but as far as it went I could see roofs of houses through lines of trees marking the avenues. Houses of soft pastel, TV antennas defacing the roof line. Frequently there came an instant of pale blue, a swimming pool. The skyline was flat except for an occasional cluster of a shopping center. This was the Mecca of the American Dream, the world that everyone wanted. A world of sleek young women (allied with Slenderella to be so) in shorts and halters, driving 400-horse-power station wagons to air-conditioned, music-serenaded supermarkets of baby-sitter corporations and culture condensed into Great Books discussion groups. A life of barbecues by the swimming pool and drive-in movies open all year. It didn't appeal to me. Fuck health insurance plans and life insurance. They wanted to live without leaving the womb. It made me more alive to play a game without rules against society, and I was prepared to play it to the end. A tremor almost sexual passed through me as I anticipated the coming robbery.

I decided to visit Willy and Selma and told Red to head toward El Monte. When the traffic thinned, he eagerly, almost plaintively, wanted an assurance that I liked the score. Such servile eagerness aroused a reflexive resistance. I answered monosyllabically, but when he pressed me I agreed that it was “pretty good”. That agreement sent him on a circuitous tangent. He sketched over what good friends we were, the parties we'd had, the parties we would have. He wanted one more fling. He was getting old; his health was bad; he needed money.

“I always look after you when you're right.”

“I don't want a couple hundred as a handout. I want a share.”

“Nobody gets a share unless they share the risk.”

“I know … I know. But damn, Max … Jesus, I need it bad. I'm old and I gotta buy pussy. My blood pressure is way up. I need one more ball … a decent car and a gray silk suit; then I'm gonna kill myself.”

The voice was impassioned and he undoubtedly believed every word. When the time came for suicide, however, he'd want yet another “last” hedonistic gasp.

He began a new tactic. He'd use his automobile as a trail car on the heist, follow us close, and if anyone pursued he'd block them off, ram them if necessary. He swore he'd do it for two thousand dollars. I promised to think about the trail car, though I rejected the idea when he mentioned it. On a different kind of score a trail car was sometimes a good idea—a daylight bank robbery, for example, where immediate pursuit is highly possible. Here there was virtually no risk of pursuit and, even if someone came after us, I doubted that Red would act. It takes nerve to ram a police car when you know you're going to jail and get your head whipped soft. Seldom can charges (beyond a traffic violation) be filed for such an “accident”, but the police know what's happened and knock all the curl out of the driver's hair.

I silently decided that if things went right I'd give him a grand. It was less than he wanted, but good wages for driving me around for a few days. No doubt Johnny Taormina would give him something, too.

3

W
ILLY
was still at work and not expected for at least half an hour. I decided to wait. Red had to pick up his check at the employment office before it closed. Red wanted to come back and take me barhopping on the money (his real purpose was to bind me closer), but I declined, easing his worries with a pat on the back and a promise that “everything is going to be all right, don't worry. I'll call you at the pool hall tomorrow.”

Selma was cooking supper. Quite pointedly she told me that Willy was taking her and the boys to a movie that evening. She was cold to the brink of rudeness. I went outside to wait.

The residence, with a long dirty driveway and weed-infested lawn, sat back from a semirural boulevard down which rolled cement and gravel trucks. I sat against the bole of a scrubby tree. The scene was banal and dreary, full of energy without beauty.

Three young boys came down the roadside, carrying sticks they used to whack at high weeds. Two of them were Willy's sons. The other, a year or two older, was fairer in color, slender, and with smooth complexion, quite a handsome boy. All were scuffed and smudged.

They approached me with the shy openness of children who have known enough love, whatever other deprivations they may have suffered. The third boy was addressed as “Joey”. I recognized his resemblance to Joe Gambesi. He was Mary's son. He went inside the house to telephone his mother; he was going to eat here and go to the movie with his cousins.

Moments later, Willy pulled up the driveway. The Darin boys immediately forgot me. They rushed to the car and mobbed their father as he exited, grabbing him around the legs, jumping up and down. He grabbed them, one in each hand, by the belt, and raised them from the ground, then swung them around. They screamed in delicious fear. Setting them down and gently hugging their necks in the circle of his forearm, he sent them inside to wash for dinner.

“Don't shake hands,” he said. “I'm greasy as a pig.”

“That job ain't treating you too good.”

“Yeah, what the fuck can I do with Selma on one side and the parole officer on the other? She doesn't dig you anymore, either. She says I'd better keep away from you.”

“I caught her vibes. She just wants someone to blame if you get out of line.”

“Where you been? I expected you to come around.”

I told him about the jail sojourn and my fugitive condition.

“So you're gonna start rippin' again.”

“That's my best game … along with doing time.”

“I hate to see it.”

“What else can I do?”

“Nothin', I guess. That reminds me. I saw somethin' the other day that might interest you. A market. It looks easy.”

“Right now I'm working on that crap game heist L&L ran down. I even met the great Johnny T. He's a pipsqueak has-been.”

“That's better'n a never-was, like me.”

A shadow appeared against the screen door of the house. Selma called out to Willy that supper would be ready in a few minutes.

“Let's go around back,” Willy said. “I need a fix.”

“So you're hooked … back in your bag just like I am in mine.”

“Just halfass hooked. I can clean up in two days.”

“Yeah, okay, clean up in two days.”

The garage had a storage room nestled to its side. Baskets of old clothes, a sofa and a broken refrigerator were stored in it. From beneath the refrigerator Willy brought a water glass, inside which was a polyethylene-wrapped outfit and a condom of heroin.

“Want a taste?” he asked, unfastening a knot capping the rubber prophylactic. It was a half ounce of heroin and Willy couldn't afford a hundred dollars on his wages. He had to be doing some slight peddling.

“Yeah, I'll go for a little taste.”

A minute later I pulled out the needle and suppressed the trickle of blood with my thumb. It had been many years, and I momentarily reviled my weakness. That was swept away in the quick flowering glow. Tendrils of warmth (an indescribable warmth) reached through every crevice of my body and the deepest recesses of my brain. Even loneliness was obliterated. This was peace on earth. Yet my fury was too precious to lose permanently in the addict's somnolent twilight.

“Good smack,” I said, voice slurred.

“Pretty good. Fuckin' shit's gonna be my death someday.”

“How are you passing nalline?”

“I'm not going. I don't fix for two days and take steambaths. Last week I missed; this week I've got a codeine prescription from a dentist, so it don't matter. Are you hungry?”

“What about Selma? She won't dig feeding me.”

“Man, fuck her. Let's go grease.”

“Where can I stash this pistol until I leave?”

“Damn! You sure got one of those quick. Here.” He took it and shoved it behind the sofa cushions. “Nobody'll come in here. That reminds me about that market. I was cashing my check and they sent me to the manager's office. It's upstairs just inside the parking lot door. Nobody can even see you go up. There's a fat Mosler safe in the office.”

“How big a market?”

“Not a huge Safeway or anything, but not a corner grocery either.”

“How many cash registers?”

“Three.”

“It might be worth something. Where is it?”

“On Santee, right near the freeway off ramp.”

“Speakin' of money, how are you fixed?” I saw his color rise with embarrassment. “Forget it. We'll be shittin' in tall cotton soon as I make a score.”

Decision was postponed while we went indoors. The children had already finished and were in another room. My appetite was good despite the heroin. Willy was shirtless across from me, leaning over the table as he shoveled in his food. His brawny torso belonged more to the image of a stevedore than to a drug addict. Selma saw that we were on drugs and glared at me accusingly. She scarcely spoke, rattled pans as she washed them—but she'd set a place at the table for me.

It was decided they would drop me at Mary's on the way to the movie. Joey was going to stay the night with his cousins. During the short ride in the stuffy, crowded, rattletrap automobile, I decided that the situation of hitching rides and sleeping on floors and couches was unbearable. Tonight, after dark, I'd steal a car and take off a small robbery. There was a motel near Santa Anita racetrack that I'd robbed years before; it would be good for a couple hundred dollars. Mary would have an old nylon stocking I could use for a mask. Stealing a car would be easy. All I needed was a pistol and guts. I had both. It was less than the smartest move in the history of crime, but fuck all that, too.

Stealing an automobile was unnecessary. Mary owned an eleven-year-old Plymouth. After a moment's lip-biting hesitancy, she gave me the keys, exacting a promise that I'd return by morning so she could go shopping.

By 9:00
P.M.
I was passing Santa Anita and saw a department store where the motel had been. I began driving the boulevards of the suburban towns, looking for something else to heist. Time was limited. As night deepened, lights turned off, money was put away, and cars would become so few that I would lack cover. I was looking for a business by itself with only a couple of persons inside, situated so pedestrians and passing vehicles would be unable to see what was going on. Several liquor stores fulfilled these requirements, but they were taboo. Liquor stores are to bandits as flypaper to a fly. Frequently robbed, it's usually by amateurs unaware that too many are owned by ex-fighters or ex-policemen or other pugnacious personalities. A pistol is often beneath the counter, or the proprietor's wife is in the back room with a shotgun. Invariably, the money (except for a few dollars) is hidden.