Keeplock: A Novel of Crime (14 page)

“Ya know how Avi didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink? Well, one day I conned him into takin’ some speed. That was the hard part, gettin’ him to drop that dexie. But it got him talkin’, cuz. I got his whole life story. He was so pissed off, he didn’t come back to the courts for a month.”

“But he did come back.”

“What was he gonna do, cuz, spend the rest of his bit walkin’ the flats with the losers? He
had
to come back.”

“When you’re right, you’re right.” I forked a chunk of meat into my mouth and chewed slowly. “Any more surprises, Eddie?”

He laughed. “Nah, that’s it. The rest is all details. We got a big garage in the Bronx where we’re gonna make the split. The van we’re usin’ came from Westchester. We took it out of a garage with the keys still in it. The plates came off another van in Jersey. We didn’t buy nothin’ in our own names. The apartment, the phones, the electric—everything was done with a phony i.d. that’s goin’ right in the sewer after we make our move. Also, we didn’t buy no guns on the street. We picked ’em up in Pennsylvania, where you could buy an arsenal with a driver’s license.”

I nodded my agreement. Eddie’s profession was crime and he was good at his job. “When do you want me to come over, Eddie?” It was Morasso time.

He looked at his watch. “It’s eight-thirty. What time you gotta be back at the shelter?”

“Ten-thirty.” I didn’t tell him that my deadline involved a phone call to Condon and Rico.

“There ain’t enough time to get out to Queens and back tonight. Come tomorrow morning. See if you could fuck up Tony’s breakfast for him.”

H
E WENT ON AND
on, piling up the details. Tony Morasso and John Parker would stay out of sight in the van while Eddie and I secured the loading dock. Morasso would then come out, but Parker would remain inside to play with his electronic toys. The guard locked in the armored car would try to radio the base before opening the door, but Parker had pulled the radio’s frequency from the company computer and we would jam the guard’s transmission by broadcasting a wave of static.

Another myth is that guards locked in the backs of armored cars are supposed to hold tight in the face of a hijacking. In reality, they’re instructed to give up the loot before allowing their co-workers to be shot to death. Tony Morasso would make sure the guard in the truck understood that “shot to death” was imminent. There would no attempt to stall.

There are two highways within spitting distance of the department store, and one leads directly to the Throgs Neck Bridge and the garage where we’d empty the canvas bags, split the loot, and deal Tony Morasso the kind of justice he deserved. Morasso’s body would be left in the garage, but the money would be transferred to the trunk of a car. The van, fitted with still another set of plates, would be abandoned on a Bronx street, miles away.

I listened carefully while Eddie laid it out, nodding occasionally, asking questions. My eyes remained hard and skeptical, my posture casual. Telling him that I wasn’t about to accept any bullshit, but the potential for violence, even death, didn’t trouble me at all.

Business being business, why should it? Human beings are potential problems and problems have to be dealt with in a forthright, businesslike manner. Let’s see … we need a van, a computer, false identification, and several murders. No problem, bro.

I recalled a half-remembered Biblical quotation, a holdover from some forgotten Sunday school class:
Whatever the work of thy hands finds to do, do it with all thy might.
Eddie Conte was a prime example of that philosophy and I was not. Eddie Conte’s stay in Cortlandt had been used to good and proper ends. My stay had been characterized by a ludicrous attempt at education and independence. The books hadn’t come easy, not after thirty plus years of hating every authority figure who stood between me and anything I desired. Now, sitting across from Eddie, my goals seemed as childish as those of a schoolyard shortstop dreaming about the major leagues.

It was nine-thirty when I finally shook Eddie’s hand and said goodbye. I threaded my way past the whores and the pimps, the dealers and the junkies, the knuckleheads and the johns. I knew what was coming. I was going to dream and I didn’t want to dream. I didn’t want to go to sleep at all.

Sing-Sing was at his post. I got him to open McDonald’s office and began to work out as soon he closed the door behind him. My body was doubly sore, from my workout of the prior morning and my workout with Rico. The pain would be a blessing. It would keep me awake. Or so I thought.

I’m dressed to the nines. Black, double-breasted Ungaro silk jacket with shoulder pads like gargoyles on a cathedral wall. Scarlet linen shirt (fitted, of course) with the top buttons open to expose a dark blue t-shirt that hugs my sculptured body like a second skin. Balloon-legged trousers that flop around my calves and ankles as I strut into a downtown jewelry store.

No adrenaline. I’ve perfected my craft, my art. I don’t have to pump myself up with bullshit justifications. The worm behind the display case rushes out to greet me, gesturing to the rows of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. His eyes glitter in anticipation.

“What may I show you, sir?”

He has every reason to welcome me. A week ago, after handling every watch in the store, I bought a two-thousand-dollar Rolex with a forged credit card.

I can see the wheels turning in the worm’s greedy mind. Am I back to make a really big purchase? One of the designer pieces? One of the antiques? An intricately filigreed brooch, its huge emerald surrounded by perfectly cut rubies? “You wanna live, pops?”

I’m moving from one display case to another, examining each piece as I go along. The worm follows behind me, begging.

“Please, please, please.”

I like big, heavy guns, Colt .45s straight from WWII. I watch the one I’m holding glide through the air, describing a graceful arc before slamming into the worm’s face. The worm’s mouth opens, but I don’t hear his scream. I see it come out of his mouth. I see his scream and I hear the blood running along the side of his face.

“Wanna shut up, pops?”

I’m holding a watch up to the light, a Patek Philippe worth about ten thousand dollars. Something’s wrong with it. The diamonds set into the face are slightly out of balance.

The worm is right behind me, still begging for his property, ignoring the blood and the pain. I stare at him for a moment, lost in admiration. At least he’s got his priorities straight. A good surgeon will sew up his face without leaving a scar. His property is about to vanish forever.

“This a fuckin’ knock-off, pops?”

“Please, please, please.”

“It’s a knock-off, right? It’s phony. Patek Philippe? It looks more like Taiwan Tommy.”

“Please, please, please.”

What a waste. The worm doesn’t hear me. He can’t hear anything. I give him another tap and his skin splits open. Now he’s cut on both sides of his face. Maybe they’ll give him two surgeons when he gets to the hospital.

“I asked you a fuckin’ question.”

I push the watch into his face and he manages to focus long enough to hear what I’m saying.

“I’m talkin’ about this fuckin’ watch. It’s a knock-off, right?”

The worm looks horrified, then offended. His bloody features assume a sullen distaste.

“I do not handle counterfeit merchandise.”

I can’t believe how much crap there is in this high-class jewelry store. This is where the big boys shop. The bankers, the builders. David Rockefeller comes here every Christmas to pick up a little something for the grandchildren. There’s a picture of him on the wall behind the cash register. He’s shaking hands with the worm.

Everything I touch seems to be shit. Cubic zirconia diamonds set into gold-plated rings. Paste rubies on base-metal chains. Emeralds the color of dishwater. I toss the garbage at the worm, bouncing the pieces off the top of his head.

Do worms say “please”? Maybe they make a sound that sounds like “please.” You’d have to put your head very close to a worm’s mouth to hear it make any sound at all. I’ve never put my ear close to a worm’s mouth. How do I know they can’t make a sound that sounds like “please”?

There’s no way for me to express my disappointment. I expected to net at least a hundred big ones, but I’ll be lucky to pry ten grand out of my fence. I sift through a small pile of loot at the bottom of a large canvas bag. It’s just not fair. I once spent sixty days in Rikers for shoplifting a twenty-dollar scarf. The worm sells phony watches for a thousand and up, but he goes home to Scarsdale every night.

“How do you get away with it? Huh, worm?”

Where the fuck is he? Hook around the shop and find him crawling toward a door in the back
.

“It’s not enough you rip me off, you fuck? Now you’re gonna try to escape, too?”

“Please, please, please.”

“Can you wiggle? Worms wiggle.”

“Please, please.”

“I want you to wiggle.”

There’s nothing like the roar of a .45 automatic. It fills the store with black light. For a moment I can’t see anything. Then a small red dot at the very center of the blackness begins to expand. It doesn’t seem to be liquid, but I know it must be.

It must be the worm’s thieving life running out of his body.

I woke up on the floor of McDonald’s office and heard the echo of the expected denial.

“That’s not the way it happened.” I was right and I was wrong. It hadn’t happened that way, but over the years my dreams have come to be more powerful than reality. There was no designer suit, no Patek Philippe watches, no hope of a big score. I’d been sitting in the same chair in the same room of the same apartment for three days. Doing line after line of first-cut cocaine. My companion, Armando Ortiz, had been matching me, line for line. The two of us stunk of a continual sweat brought on as much by the coke as the unbearable New York summer. My jeans clung to my legs, and my hair was pasted to my skull, but, of course, I wasn’t terribly concerned with my appearance. Not as long as a pile of white powder remained on top of the mirror.

But the coke was running out, as it always does, and there was no money to buy more. I was gearing myself up to face the hard-edged comedown. It would be hours before I fell asleep, hours of terror alternating with dark depression. I would wish myself dead a dozen times, close my eyes only to open them minutes later, wide awake and terrified.

My companion had other ideas.

“Petey, we got to go out an’ do a job. We in a good thing, man. I know a bodega on Avenue C which is wide open.”

I glared at him contemptuously. “Just what I need, Mando. A fuckin’ twenty-dollar score. Twenty bucks, a can of red beans, and a bag of rice.”

Mando dipped into the dwindling pile of cocaine. I waited until he finished, then matched him.

“Petey, man, this bodega is a place where people go to buy weed. The old man is takin’ in hundreds of dollars every night. He don’t go to no bank with his money. The whole thing gonna take fifteen minutes. I know these two sisters. Soon they will be
putas,
but for now they are schoolgirls who like to play with the snow. They will do
anything
for us.”

I knew it was stupid. I had less than no interest in Armando’s coke whores, was deeply in love with a woman who had no idea where I was or what I was doing. Who loved
me
enough to believe my lies, to pick me up whenever I fell, and I fell as often as an infant learning to walk. Each time I put a line of coke up my nose, I betrayed her. And each time I betrayed her, I consoled myself with a line of coke.

“You know how much time you could do for an armed robbery?” I asked. “You want to take that risk for a few hours of cocaine?”

It was Armando’s turn to show contempt. “Fuck the pigs. Fuck their
maricon
jails. You got to take what you want in this life. Hombres like us? How long we gonna live? You got to enjoy your life while you got it. How come you packin’ that pistola if you wantin’ to be safe?”

I didn’t have an answer that would meet the macho code I was expected to personify. The Llama .380 tucked into my waistband was proof positive that I aspired to the heights implied by the word “macho.” If I wasn’t a tough guy, ready to go at a moment’s notice, why was the gun laying against my clammy skin?

Maybe I could have gotten away with declaring myself to be a
professional
, not a two-bit stickup artist with a dirty gun and a bad attitude. Mando Ortiz was a street junkie who lived a crime-to-coke existence with an occasional bag of heroin to season the stew. I’d been doing lofts and hijackings, carefully planned jobs that took weeks to set up. Mando’s apartment might be as good a place as any to do cocaine, but Armando was the last person I’d take along on a job. Like Tony Morasso, he was violent and unpredictable.

“You got to be a
man,”
he insisted. “You mus’ to take wha’ you want. The old fuck is jus’ sittin’ there, countin’ his bags of weed. We goin’ to cover our faces. Nobody gonna know what we done.”

“Drop it, Mando.”

He jerked in his seat, but held his tongue, which was okay by me. I thought the issue was dead, but an hour later, as the coke dwindled down to the last lines, I was the one to resurrect it.

“If this bodega’s so easy, how come you don’t take it yourself?”

Mando grinned happily. “There’s a kid there. Like maybe fifteen. He got a little pistola in his jeans an’ he thinks he’s
muy hombre.
They won’ say nothin’ when we go in there, because they know me.”

If they knew him, they’d come after him, but that had nothing to do with me.

“All right, Mando, but if I see it’s wrong, I’m walkin’ away.”

“No pro’lem, Pete.”

The bodega was exactly as advertised, from its sagging yellow awning to the bags of rice and the shelves of Goya beans. The old man was fat and tired, his pants belted so far below his hanging belly, they barely covered his butt. The kid was pimple-faced and bone-thin. He nodded to Mando as we walked inside the store, then turned white when Mando put the barrel of a .357 in his face. I put my own piece on the old man, who raised his hands and began to speak in rapid-fire Spanish.