Swag Read online

  “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.

  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.