No Lesser Plea (2 page)

“What’s this shit! You never said nothing about no hotel.”

“Donald, be cool—use your head. What if somebody see your car? You want to lead them right up your front walk? Wait a day, two days, see if there any heat …”

“What kinda heat? I don’t like this, Stack. What the fuck I gonna tell my wife?”

“Goddam! What you worryin’ about? You some kinda man can’t even lie to a woman. Make up something.”

“And you said I get paid right after. You said! When I’m gonna get my money?”

“You get it when I give it to you.”

“No way, man. I want it then.”

There was a pause on the line. When Louis began to speak again, it was in a low, whispery voice, slow and measured, like an adult recounting the crimes of a child to whom he is about to give a savage beating.

“Donald, let me explain something to you. You
in
this. You mind me now, cause if you crap out on me, if you mess with me now, you in more deep shit than you ever been in your whole life. Now you don’t know me Donald, but I know you. I know your little house out there in Queens. I know your pretty little wife and your three pretty little children. What you want, Donald, is you want to keep old Stack real happy with you, and with your house and your little family. So how you gonna keep me happy? It real simple. You do what I say, when I say it, and you keep your fat mouth shut. Now, do we have an understanding?”

Walker’s mouth was cotton-dry. He croaked out a sound.

“I didn’t get that, Donald.”

“Yeah, Stack, you know I didn’t mean nothing. I just strung out, is all. You said you gonna get me some …”

“That’s my man. I am gonna get you something to fix you right up, Donald. I got some
bad
shit, Donald, and a big piece got your name right on it. Now you fix it with the wife, and you be there, hear?”

“I be there, Stack. Don’t worry.”

“I got nothin’ to worry about, Donald.”

The line went dead.

“Who was that on the phone, Donald?” his wife, Ella, called from the upstairs bedroom.

Walker shivered and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a dish towel. He walked slowly up the stairs.

“Donald?”

“It was Billy Cass, from the plant, he say they hiring up by that computer factory in Stamford. He say, maybe him and me should go up there, go for a job interview.”

His wife was in her robe, sitting at her vanity table and applying face cream. Walker started to get undressed. He was a poor liar and he kept his face averted as he spoke.

“That sounds great, Don. When were you fixing to go?”

“Well, he say we should leave after work tomorrow and drive up. His sister live somewheres around there—he said we could spend the night there and be first in line the next morning.”

Ella finished her face and got into bed. Walker joined her. “That sounds good, Donald. You be back Saturday, then?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. I’ll call you from there and let you know how it comes out.”

As he lay back and switched off the bedside light, Walker tried to compose his racing thoughts. Stack had promised him $500 for the job. That would be enough to pay off the two month’s arrears on the mortgage. He had a letter from the bank that told him that unless they saw some money by the end of the month—in less than two weeks—they would start foreclosure proceedings. Walker had busted his hump, working double shifts at the commercial laundry, to get together the down payment, but it wasn’t the thought of losing the house that bothered him as much as explaining to his wife where the mortgage money had gone.

Walker was an easygoing young man who had married into a family of strivers. In six years of marriage it seemed to him that he had not drawn an easy breath. His wife had a year of college and his in-laws were all civil servants of one kind or another. He had not finished high school himself, and Ella was bound and determined to show her clan that she had not made a mistake in marrying the good-looking but feckless Donald Walker.

So he worked like a dog, and got pushed harder, until each demand seemed like a razor-toothed little animal chewing away inside his skull. But lately he had found a way out. He would drive out for an evening after dinner and go to a local pool hall, and shoot a few games of eight-ball or snooker. After a while, a man named Paradise would come in, and Walker would follow Paradise into the men’s room and would give Paradise ten, or twenty, or fifty dollars, and Paradise would give Walker a glassine envelope filled with white powder. Then Walker would sit in his car and for a few hours he would be on top of things, in charge, together. He wasn’t a junkie, hell no! He could kick it easy after things settled down a little. But that’s where two months of mortgage had gone to, and that’s why Mandeville Louis had picked him, with the mystical vulturelike radar that led him to the Donald Walkers of this world, to be his wheelman.

Chapter 2

W
alker had heard the expression “living hell” before, but he had never thought much about what it meant before the day he spent waiting for the night he was to debut as a wheelman for Mandeville Louis.

His environment helped. A commercial laundry would encourage even a soul washed white as snow to imagine the infernal realms. The air was gray with steam and thick with the sweetish reek of solvent. Periodically, there would occur a great hissing noise from the pressers, or someone would throw open a boiler hatch and release an even heavier cloud of vapor. Through this jellied air trudged indistinct figures dripping sweat, often stripped to their waists, bearing heavy loads or pushing carts heaped with bags. Urging them on were overseers in white, short-sleeved uniforms, with their names embroidered in red on their breasts.

“Hey, Walker, whaddya doin’? You been here two hours, you ain’t done half a rack.”

Walker looked across the steam presser at the foreman. “Sorry, Jack, I guess I don’t feel so hot.”

“Yeah? Well, be sick on your own time. You can’t do the work, punch out, we’ll get somebody else.” He walked off and Walker cursed him vehemently under his breath.

Walker had been working at Ogden’s Martinizing Dry Cleaners and Launderers for three years. The job required nothing but the ability to stand heat and endless boredom. Ordinarily Walker had the ability to shut his mind off and put his flesh on autopilot: remove the crumpled garment from the bin, arrange it according to its type, drop the cover, steam it, shift, steam, shift, steam, hanger it, next.

Now, however, he could not get away from his thoughts at all. He had to think about every motion; his body would not slip into its accustomed grooves. Walker was also extremely uncomfortable; every cell in his body was whining for a bath in smack. Heroin withdrawal symptoms are very similar to those of a bad case of flu: Walker’s nose ran, his joints ached, he had the chills, and he was ferociously constipated. At first he cursed himself for a fool and a coward and swore that if he could only get past this night, he would never,
never
touch the stuff again, would never have to see Stack again, or hear his voice. After a while, he stopped thinking about anything but his next hit; that seemed enough to think about, the only thing worth thinking about.

So the day passed. Walker’s noon-to-eight shift came to an end and he walked out into the evening toward his car. The air was cool, at least, and after what he had been breathing, almost pure. He made himself take deep breaths, hoping to calm his pounding heart and calm the tremor in his limbs. But his anxiety was deeper than he could reach with his own resources.

It took him half an hour to change the license plates; he kept dropping the bolts and skinning his knuckles. Afterward, he collapsed on the front seat of the car. He had intended to be straight for the drive, but he thought, “Gonna go off the goddam road if I keep shaking like this,” and reached for the envelope taped to the roof of his glove compartment.

Ten minutes later, through the miracle of dope, Walker had to strain to remember what he was so worried about. It would be a piece of cake tonight—no different from driving the wife and kids to church, except he would be $500 richer. He thought about the money. Maybe he would give half to the mortgage company, keep them off his ass for a while, and see Paradise with the rest. Then he could get a little ahead, maybe taper off without too much trouble, be cool, clean up his act, and get a better job. Yeah, things were starting to look a lot better; it was amazing how every problem kind of fell into place when you got your head straightened out.

Thinking these and similar thoughts, Walker nodded off. He came to with a bolt of adrenaline shooting like a hot stake through his innards. He yanked his wristwatch out of his pocket, where he stashed it before starting work. It was 10:15.

Shaking and sick with fear, he cranked the car, almost flooded, started up, stalled, released the hand brake, started again, and peeled rubber out of the company lot. He whipped onto Queens Boulevard going fifty, heading west, sweating again, chanting, “Oh Jesus, clear the way, oh, Jesus muthafucka move your ass, you asshole move, oh no don’ stop in the lane for no fare muthafuckin’ cabbie oh Jesus don’ make me be late, that man kill my ass for sure …”

Driving better than he ever imagined he could drive and with improbable luck, Walker reached 50th and Lex at 10:45. Stack and another man he didn’t know were waiting by the subway entrance. They walked quickly over to the car; Stack got in the front seat and the other man got in the back.

Walker said, “Hey man, I got hung up. There was a wreck on Queens Boulevard.”

Stack reached over and grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him over so that their faces were inches apart. Walker noticed that his eyes were light-colored with yellow flecks, and burning.

“Shut the fuck up! I told you, mutha, I
told
you. You in trouble now, boy, I mean it. Now move this piece of shit, and don’t make no more mistakes.” He gestured to the backseat. “This here Willy Lee. He gonna make sure you don’t.”

Walker did as he was instructed, easing the car down the avenue. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Stack open his attaché case and take out a sawed-off shotgun. He put it on the seat next to him. “This here Thirty-ninth. Turn and pull up at the end of the block,” he said.

As the car slowed to the curb, Louis stuck the shotgun down between his belt and his body on the left side. It was a 16 gauge Remington Standard Model 870 pump gun, which Louis had bought in a pawn shop in Passaic the week before and cut down himself from its normal length of forty-eight inches to slightly over sixteen inches. It had five double-aught shells in the magazine.

Louis also had a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber Bodyguard Airweight in an ankle holster on his right leg. He had never used this particular gun, since pawnshop shotguns had proved sufficiently deadly for all the killing he had ever done. Still, Louis didn’t believe in taking unnecessary chances. There was always the possibility of pursuit after a job and the pistol was insurance.

“Wait,” he said, as he picked up his case and swung out of the car and around the corner. Three minutes later he was back. He opened the door and got in. Walker said, “What happened. You do it?”

“What happened? You
shit!
What
happened?
I tell you what happened. Bullshit happened, that’s what. They gone, boy, long gone. You made me late, and goddam Snowball, I call myself ready to tear your fuckin’ junkie head right off.”

“Shit, Stack, I said I couldn’t help it,” Walker whined.

“Ah, shut your mouth, just drive. Get goin’.”

“Where to now?”

Louis turned to Elvis. “Hear him, now. Think he a fuckin’ cabbie. ‘Where to?’ my ass. Just go to the next robbery, Donald, you miss the first one. What the fuck I care, just move it.”

Louis was blazing, not just because he had missed the robbery, but because he had built himself up as perfect to the kid in the back. For some reason he didn’t quite understand, he wanted to impress Pres Elvis. He needed an acolyte to admire the perfection of his technique, to learn from him, and maybe set up in business on his own, using the same style. Louis also had in the back of his mind the idea of maybe starting a franchise. He’d show some likely youngsters how it was done, and then sit back and take a piece off the top each time they pulled a job. Let the younger dudes take the risks now. Louis was an avid reader of the business press and considered himself in the entrepreneurial mainstream of America.

Now it was turning to shit before his eyes. Louis, like most people in his line of work, had an extremely low tolerance for frustration. Since he spent most of his working life armed to the teeth, he did not need a high one.

The car had turned north on Madison. Walker was hoping Stack and Willy would get out and leave him alone, and he planned to loop back to Lex at 50th and maybe drop them off at the station again.

But at 48th Street he heard Stack say, “Right, turn right, dammit!” He turned the corner. “Park here now, I wanna check out that liquor store.” Louis had spotted a lighted window with a figure standing behind the counter. He never pulled an impromptu job, but he was driven to bring something off tonight, to show Elvis he was a pro. To show himself, too.

Angelo Marchione, the proprietor of A&A Liquors, was spending the last few minutes of the night placing bottles of Chivas on the high-class Scotch shelf behind the register counter. His son, Randy, was working in the basement storeroom. The door ringer sounded and Marchione looked up to see a well-groomed coffee-colored man dressed in a black pinstriped three-piece suit, and wearing gold-rimmed glasses, walking toward him.

“Can I help you?” said Marchione.

Louis favored the classic approach. He pulled his shotgun out, stuck it in the other man’s face and said, “OK, muthafucka, this is a stick-up. Let’s have the cash drawer, NOW!”

Marchione did as ordered. He’d been robbed before and knew the routine. He pulled the cash drawer out and slid it across the counter.

“Now take out all the bills and put them in a bag,” said Louis. “No, not no paper bag—use the cash bag from the bank.”

Again Marchione complied, stuffing about $500 in bills from the drawer into the plastic zipper bag supplied by Bankers’ Trust. (What was with this guy—did he want a deposit slip too?) The shotgun never wavered from his face.