Miguel kept hoofing it; the house had been blown, his gym was a good five miles away, but he was in good enough shape he could handle it. He should make it a little after sunrise; maybe 8 am? And thanks to the tendency of pretty much every police officer in the universe to ignore older people, he knew he had a near zero chance of being stopped for any reason.
And even if he was, it’s not like he was carrying anything incriminating in his backpack. He was just an older loser, on his way home from an early shift at work, if anyone tried to stop him.
The drink with the Hanging Judge had put him in a much better mood. But what were they all gonna do next?
Miguel had a pretty good idea. He was going to go back to his life, and the rest were going to disappear into the paintjob of the world again. He had very little anger this time; back when things had fallen apart before, he’d been seething with rage over feeling abandoned and cut out of the team’s plans. He’d spent the first year formulating plans of revenge, the second through tenth year fantasizing about what he’d say as he got each member of the team alone and scared the crap out of them for ditching him, and the eleventh through the twentieth year keeping too busy trying to pay bills for his business to even think seriously about revenge, especially once Calamity Jane had been good enough to show up unannounced and give him his share of the loot, with a little extra.
Nah, it hadn’t been a bad life. He wished he could have some more of those blue crystals, though. Being under-forty again was pretty nice, actually. It made him want to take seventy a little differently. Maybe he’d sell the business, do a little traveling, find a little job he could do down in some Spanish-speaking island in the Caribbean; being poor there couldn’t be easy [it wasn’t easy anywhere, he guessed], but it was better than being poor in the city.
He was in the home stretch to his place, now. The sun was up, and he was looking at opening the gym, putting one of the vatos in charge of the place for a few bucks while he got some much-needed rest, and started waiting for a phone call he knew wasn’t going to come. Still, hope springs eternal. And his hope managed to . . .
What the hell? The van?
Dang, it was, and he saw Jake jump out and run to a phone booth, followed by poor old Mitch the Bi- no, he was alright now. Mitch had grown up, like the rest of them. He hadn’t seen Mitch try to put any moves on Jane, which was probably better than Miguel would have done in his position.
Monty was out, too. Miguel was maybe ten minutes’ walk away from them. Should I get involved or not?
#
“Well?” the cop said. He looked all of fourteen years old to us, but I think we all knew if we didn’t shake him somehow that he’d be strong enough to take us all apart. The question went through our minds, I think, all at the same time, the kind of dilemma that hit the main character in every noir crime film we saw in the forties and fifties when we were stupid kids and the world didn’t have as many hooks in us as it did now.
The simple question was: What should we do? Use our stuff to cripple, maybe even kill a cop who’d really done nothing to us? Dead men tell no tales, but we had maybe millions in stolen merchandise in the back of the van. What if he asked to see it? Were we acting suspicious enough that he’d detain us, get a warrant? Or should we make a run for it, try and get to Miguel’s gym, ditch the van somehow after hiding the stuff?
The whole thing was making me more nervous than an alligator in a handbag factory. I knew we had only a few options, but I also knew we were three, very stubborn old men who might just decide not to play along if one person tried to put a solution into play. Damn, damn damint, I thought, though I’d never say the words out loud. Dammit, we went over plans after plans, but we never thought we’d get stopped by a cop with a wagonload of stolen goods, after the home base got blown up and we had to find a new rally point.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Fortunately, Jake solved that problem by falling back on his old standby: Confidence, loud and proud.
“Well, I’m certainly glad you’re here, officer! Maybe you can talk some sense into these two morons before they get me fired!”
“I said, what’s the problem?”
“We’ve got to be at work, on the job, in the booth, butt in chair no later than seven a.m., and dickless here loses the address, after he picks both of us up at carpool! I’ve gotta get out and and find the goddam address from a fu- sorry, officer, language. From a phone booth, and now he’s got the gall to say that I’m too old to find an address in the yellow pages!”
Now, truth be told, I’m not always the fastest on the uptake, but thank God and His Blessed Momma Mary [another reason we’re probably gonna go Catholic one day], that day I was good enough.
“Well,” says I, going along with it, “If’n you weren’t such an idjit about everything else, maybe I would trust you! Who’s the one who got us fired at the Thomson site? I’m amazed we didn’t get let go by the whole danged company for that one!”
Monty did his part; playing the long-suffering friend who was suffering mightily in the presence of his two moronic companions. Rolling his eyes, slowing walking to the officer and trying to pretend he was the rational one in the group.
“Thank you, officer. I think your presence here is warranted. Look at these two fools; I made the mistake of convincing them to join me in this venture after their retirement, and yet all they’ve done is drag me down in reputation and achievement. Now, we may be late for our shift due to their incompetence.”
...You know, Monty did all right, too. Me’n Jake started yellin’ an’ squabblin’ at each other, him holdin’ a piece of paper an’ me saying I wasn’t gonna give him my pen unless he managed to actually give me the right address first. An’ then him sayin’ he didn’t hafta, ‘cause I was the most brainless piece of shit God gave eyes an’ ears to, and Monty droning on in the background with his ten-dollar words and his rolling eyes . . .
We were trying to make the cop want to get out of there, and it was working.
The cop hadn’t even hit thirty winters yet, so he didn’t know the difference between a real fight and two old men just bein’ stupid. More important, he thought he knew, and he hadda push past Monty and get between Jake an’ me, tryin’ to make sure things didn’t get as bad as the last bumfight he’d hadda break up, maybe as early as this morning or far back as last Saturday night between a couple of drunks behind some bar.
It didn’t take much longer. I could tell, in his mind, the young cop knew we were just three old guys on the way to nowhere, and we’d had an argument. It took about thirty seconds before he’d written us off as not being a big deal, and he was back in his patrol car and driving away.
And then Miguel showed up! The so-and-so was there, and had pretended just to be some lookie-lookie while we ran the risk of getting arrested and the whole score taken.
We were on the side of the road, a parking lot nearby of some department store. It was still so early in the morning that hardly anyone was even driving by, much less actually in a place where we could be seen. No real witnesses, and no real worries of any kind now. We piled into the van, and drove it to Miguel’s place. No need for a page out of the phone book now! We were in like flynn, and ready to sell the stuff we’d stolen and rake in some serious cash!
Of course, we didn’t know then what we do now.
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TO BE CONTINUED...