By the time Henry Walsh got from his car to the door, he was out of breath. His knees hurt. A hip hurt. The neighborhood he was in – drooping roofs, sagging porches, boarded-up windows – was worn out, just like him. Left hand on the doorframe, he lifted his cane and tapped on the door … cocked an ear, listened, tapped again, and was considering giving up when the door opened and a rag doll of a woman was staring at him. He didn’t hesitate. “I’m here to pick up the trophy,” he said.
The rag doll blinked, stepped back, puffed her cheeks, looked away and mouthed the four-letter word that immediately told him he was at the right place. She shifted her eyes to him, studied his face and said “You couldn’t make the funeral?”
Walsh stepped sideways and leaned on his cane. “I just heard yesterday,” he said. “Sorry.” It was a lie. He’d seen the obituary and had been weighing this moment ever since. Coming here, being on the porch, it was a crap shoot, yet here he was, at what he’d discovered was Leo Sparks’ last known address.
She opened the door further. “Got a name?” she asked, then turned and walked down a hallway, glancing back over her shoulder as he followed. She turned into a small living room and took a chair. There was a couch there, worn out. She pointed at it. Walsh hobbled to it, sat, rocked back a bit then straightened up, keeping one hand on his cane.
“Okay, tell me the story,” she said. “That’s what my old man said before he passed. He said don’t hand it over until I hear the story.” She let go a dry laugh and swiped at her hair. “A trophy in that box?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.
Walsh thought she looked like Leo. Sounded like him, too. She had to be, what? Early fifties? Henry Walsh was seventy-six years old. He had some savings and a railroad pension and lived in a better neighborhood than the one he was in. He got Meals on Wheels on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. His wife was dead. He had a daughter who called occasionally and a son somewhere who was, as far as he knew, still alive. That was his story.
The story Leo’s daughter was asking about?
Over fifty years ago, three friends, amateurs, all in their early twenties, spent a night pulling holdups: two successful, one a flop. The next day, word on the street was three guys caused serious heartache the night before, and were being sought – not by police, the robberies would never be reported – but by local wiseguys. Ripping off wiseguys? Wiseguys don’t like being embarrassed. Money was one thing, but embarrassment? Those guys paid to run their little rackets; that’s how it worked. Positive or negative cash flow, payments were due. Now, robbed, they looked weak, and looking weak was the last thing they needed, so they offered rewards. Money. Favors. Whatever it took. They wanted their money back, and they announced – publicly – severe punishment would be administered.
Hearing this, three childhood friends realized they couldn’t spend a nickel of the take. It was out of the question. They’d have to wait, which they did. They waited a year. Unfortunately, the rewards didn’t go away, nor did the story. The story – three guys hit the rackets and get away with it – now it’s legend. Two years, then three years, and the legend becomes myth. Four years go by, and the three are older – probably wiser – and not as close as they once were. Leo Sparks was married to his first wife. Henry Walsh? His uncle got him on at the railroad. Carl Singer? First he tried the military. They kicked him out. He drove a truck, local, then over-the-road. That worked a little while, but he drank too much, used drugs, and lost the CDL. He got careless with his life and fell in with some wrong guys, then Henry Walsh and Leo Sparks lost track of him. Then the neighborhood lost track of him. Rumors popped up occasionally, all bad. Time went on, people heard less and less, and then his name just wasn’t heard anymore.
The rag doll sighed. “My dad swore someone would show up eventually.” She paused, picked at her bottom teeth with a fingernail. “He told me don’t give up the box ’til I hear the story.” She wasn’t comfortable with eye contact, her eyes wandering around the room. “He said it was three of you.” She coughed and rubbed his mouth. “I’m Loni Sparks,” she said, “from his first wife. She’s dead for years.” She winced. “If he had other kids I never met ’em.” She leaned toward Henry Walsh and said, “Your name?”
***
“It’s time,” Leo said. He was all in black: slacks, t-shirt, tennis shoes, socks, jacket. Walsh and Singer the same. They bought that stuff in a bargain store, paying cash… Leo’s idea.
Carl Singer was nervous, nodding continually, telling himself be ready. He had a handgun in his pocket and couldn’t take his hand off it. Henry Walsh’s gun was in the glove box of the car he’d parked a block away, on the other side of the park they were sitting in. They’d been chain-smoking, pumping themselves up, waiting for it to get late. Henry had hotwired the car the night before, in a town an hour away.
“Time to go,” Sparks said.
It was his plan, him saying it would be easy. Three of them thinking they were studs, muscled-up and bulletproof.
Leo watched television and movies, that’s where the idea came from. Henry Walsh and Carl Singer had listened to Sparks babble, thinking the idea was crazy, but Leo was, if nothing else, entertaining. Was he serious? They wondered. Was he serious about robbing wiseguys?
“These guys ain’t tough,” he told Walsh and Singer. “These guys are on the bottom rung of the ladder. We’re taking the low-hanging fruit, that’s all.”
Leo Sparks wasn’t all that smart, but he was persistent. He wasn’t all that big, so how was it he could be intimidating? He wasn’t all that convincing either, but how much convincing did it take? Walsh, four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, considered Leo a little brother, and got a kick out of him. Leo opened up the world for him, that’s what it was. Walsh was shy; when he was with Leo Sparks, he was just who he wanted to be. Carl Singer? He had a bit of a stutter and lacked confidence. Leo had the confidence Carl lacked. Carl lacked all kinds of things. Carl didn’t have much of a home life, that’s what you say about a guy like Carl Singer.
The car Walsh hotwired? A 1963 Ford Falcon, four-door, snot green. Sparks was pissed when he saw it, but Walsh convinced him the car’s lack of glamour made it perfect for getaway.
When they stubbed out their last cigarettes, when they got in the car, it was eleven-forty-eight p.m.
Most of the money – and all the heartache – came from their first stop, a private card game in the back room of a restaurant outside city limits. Tommy Russo ran the game. His family owned the restaurant, Cibo Russo. The Russo’s were connected. They kicked back. Ain’t that how it works?
Tommy was a good looking guy, but he wasn’t muscle. He figured muscle wasn’t required. The game was protected, right? Tommy played host, mixing drinks, managing the tables, making change. He’d congratulate twinners and console losers.
Walsh parked the Falcon off the road, behind some pines. The three of them pulled down masks, walked across gravel and through the front door of Cibo Russo. The dining room was dark. Through the dining room, through the kitchen, into the half-lit event room in the back where they saw the two tables, five men playing cards at one table, six at the other. Russo was standing away from the tables, a drink in hand.
Leo Sparks walked to the tables, held up his gun, pointed it at Russo and said “Everybody, eyes down. Right now. Eyes down. Get on the floor and do not look up.”
Tommy Russo? Give him credit. He walked up to Leo, eyes trying to catch any and all details of the three pissants who thought they could storm his game, and said “You are making the mistake of a…” and Sparks knocked him to the floor, dropped on top of him and punched him repeatedly until Tommy was done talking for the night. Leo jumped up, nudged one of the men on the floor with his foot and said “stand up.” That man hesitated until Leo placed the barrel of his pistol near the man’s ear and said, “Please.” That worked.
“Where’s the bank?” he asked. The man pointed to a table, half in the dark. Henry Walsh walked to the table holding the bank, inspected it, looked at Leo and Carl and nodded. Carl Singer jumped. He had a bag, and went to work emptying that table.
They’d been in the room less than five minutes.
Bank secured, Leo said, “Everyone stand up, empty your pockets onto the tables, then lay back down again. Quickly, please.”
Henry Walsh couldn’t believe it was going like Leo Sparks said it would go. Could it be this easy? Ten minutes and they had everything. Wallets, cash, jewelry… everything in the bag in Carl Singer’s hand. At the door Leo Sparks turned to those still on the floor and finished with these words: “Do not look up. Do not follow us. Stay down. Half hour. Maybe more. Anybody following us out the door gets shot. Don’t think we won’t do it.”
Twenty-five minutes later the three parked a block away from a bar at the south edge of Linville, the county seat of Perry County. Nolan’s was the name of the bar. It had a reputation. Weekends, it was frequented by older, successful, well-dressed men and younger, attractive, well-intended women looking to help those older, successful, well-dressed men relax a bit. Entering, every pair of eyes in the place swung to them, still in black, masked.
Leo held up his firearm. “Apologies,” he said, “but we need your valuables. Quickly. Please.” He stepped into the bar, gun out in front of him, motioned for Singer and Walsh to become active, and they did. Leo went behind the bar, looking for and finding the handgun and the shotgun beneath the cash register, picked them up and carried them into the back-bar area. There was no one there. He emptied the guns, opened the rear door and pitched the guns into a dumpster, closed and locked the door and returned to the bar where he guided the two bartenders to the far corner. Singer was making the rounds of the men and women, relieving them of wallets, keys, whatever they offered up, then went behind the bar and emptied the cash register.
Work done, Leo and team stepped to the door, nodded, and Leo gave a parting speech similar to the one he’d given earlier. The place was silent as a tomb.
Eight minutes. Done.
Back on the road, Henry Walsh looked at his watch. It was 12:28 a.m. He couldn’t believe it. He felt like he was floating.
The final stop was optional. Inside the car, Henry and Carl waited for a sign from Leo that indicated they had the one last stop, William Harmon’s house.
Raised in the same town, attending the same schools, they’d all heard the stories about Harmon. William Harmon, with determination and long hours, had managed in his life to move from half-ass student and halfway-decent athlete to boss of a township road crew, to road commissioner, to township commissioner, to county chairman, and then mayor for two terms, before getting elected to the state House of Representatives, after which he was handpicked to get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served three terms. He was tight with a dollar and the talk was he kept a ready supply of cash at home. A small-town rumor? Maybe.
Leo, riding shotgun, pulled his mask off, scratched at his hair, look at Henry, turned and looked back at Carl, and said “What the hell, let’s do it.” Mask back on.
The Harmon home was situated on a couple acres just outside city limits. The front door was unlocked. The team entered at 12:46 a.m., Leo in the lead. Almost immediately, a female voice from upstairs: “William? That you?”
That was Elsbeth Harmon, William’s wife.
William Harmon was supposed to be in Washington, DC, doing whatever retired politicians do to help their communities. At least that’s what Sparks had heard. Harmon wasn’t in DC? That was disappointing. Leo had no Plan B, so he decided departure was their best course, but as they turned around, an automobile pulled into the driveway. The driver exited and headed toward the house. It was William Harmon.
Leo Sparks hadn’t seen Harmon, face down on the floor at Nolan’s. Harmon was the first one up after they left, the first out the door, after explaining to the well-dressed men and their attractive friends that he’d hadn’t been there. In fact, he’d never in his life set foot in Nolan’s. He made that clear.
Seeing the same three men he’d seen at Nolan’s exiting his front door, Harmon immediately turned back to his car. Leo Sparks ran to him, grabbed him, looked into his eyes and said “Mr. Harmon, you’re needed inside.”
Harmon cursed, yanked his arm away and was attempting to resist when Leo pointed his gun at his face and said “Be realistic.”
Elsbeth Harmon was, by this time, down the stairs and standing outside, in a robe, obviously distraught.
Once more, Harmon attempted to yank his arm from Sparks’ grasp. Seeing that, Henry Walsh hustled to Sparks’ side, grabbed Harmon’s arm, kicked his legs out from under him and, getting him on his back, put a hand on his chest and shushed him: “ssssssshhhhhh.”
That worked.
Sparks made an executive decision. He hustled Elsbeth Harmon into the house, got her on the couch, said “nobody needs to get hurt,” found the telephone in the living room, ripped it out of the wall, held it to Mrs. Harmon and asked “this the only one?” She fainted. Going back outside, Leo tapped Walsh on the arm, got Harmon to his feet, hustled him into his back yard, and said: “take off your shoes.” Harmon hesitated. Leo pointed his gun at him. Harmon took his shoes off, pitched them aside, and Leo Sparks pointed out at the farm field behind Harmon’s house and said “start walking.”
Retired U.S. House of Representatives member William Harmon knew exactly who Retired U.S. House of Representatives member William Harmon was, even if this knucklehead in a mask didn’t. He humphed and turned toward his home and Leo Sparks said, “I won’t shoot you, Mr. Harmon, but what about your wife? I could shoot her in the leg … maybe the foot? You want to be the cause of that? A man like you?”
Harmon turned and trudged out into the field behind his home, deflated. Every time he stopped and looking back, Leo said “keep going.” Leo watched Harmon until Harmon was a tiny speck out in the dark, still moving.
Before leaving Harmon’s – empty-handed – standing behind the Falcon, the three shed their clothes, pitched them into the trunk and slipped into jeans and sweatshirts and sneakers.
Half an hour later Henry Walsh dropped Leo and Carl a block from Leo’s apartment. An hour-twenty after that, Henry was walking away from the Falcon as it rolled into a farm pond way out in the country. He’d walk home, arriving at sunrise, dodging car lights all the way.
***
Loni Sparks had a fingernail digging at her teeth the whole time Walsh talked. When he stopped, she asked “End of story?”
He nodded. “Yeah, end of story. We woke up the next morning with targets on our backs, and that was that. We agreed to sit on the take. That was your dad’s idea. Time goes by and we drifted apart, I guess. But we had that thing we did together, and that still seemed to matter. Nobody got shot, right? We never killed nobody, right?” Walsh swallowed, rubbed his nose and took a moment. “Carl wandered off. We heard all kinds of things about him, including he was dead. I never looked into that. The years kept going by and whenever we bumped into each other, Leo promised he’s still got it all boxed up. We agreed: last man standing gets the trophy. Crazy, but true.” Walsh rubbed his neck. “The story just wouldn’t go away. Somebody was always asking around about it. Wiseguys robbed? Can’t find their money? A story like that don’t die. And Harmon? Hell, feds showed up because of what we did, and feds are serious. We shoulda never did that. That was a mistake. Anyhow, your father and me, we decided what I just told you. I know it’s crazy.” Walsh sighed. He wanted to get it and go. Give her a little? Would he have to do that?
She stood up, walked into the hall, took a left and right away he heard her mounting stairs. Footsteps overhead, some clatter, he heard something scraping, then it went quiet. He stood up, walked to the hallway and listened, turned and hobbled to the front door, peeked out to make sure his car was still there, heard a thump and turned back to the hall.
She was coming down the stairs and appeared in the hallway carrying a box. She looked at him and turned, going back into what he would discover was the kitchen.
He followed.
She plunked the box on a kitchen table.
It was smaller than he remembered. Cardboard, waxed, like something from a butcher shop or a florist, wrapped in duct tape and binding tape, lots of it, discolored and curling at the edges. She found scissors, moved to the box, held the scissors up and looked at Walsh. “You say this is yours?” Walsh looked at her, trying to picture Leo Sparks, all those years ago. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Leo. “Yeah,” he said. “Leo’s idea. We agreed, last man standing.”
Walsh wondered if she was going to make trouble. “Maybe don’t open it,” he said. “I could just take it and go.” He hoped she’d buy that, but her expression went sour.
“Nah,” she said. She took a half-step back. “Nah. I put up with my old man’s last couple of years. He didn’t promise me a damn thing, and that’s what I got.”
She stepped forward and went to work with the scissors.
The tape was brittle in places, mildewy in others, tough, all of it, in layers. When she’d made it through it all she looked at Walsh and pulled up the flaps – front, back, right, and left – and peered in.
She looked at him and sniffed. “How much in here? You know?”
Walsh was leaning over, trying to see. “Was thirty-one thousand, six hundred and eighty-four dollars,” he said. “Rings, too. Maybe a necklace, I don’t remember.”
“That all?”
His chin dropped and he took a breath. “That was a lot of money back then.”
She put the scissors on the table next to the box, clamped her lips tight and started pulling money out, placing it beside the box, making stacks. When she pulled the last of it out, she gasped and yanked her head back.
Walsh looked in, moved his cane from right hand to left, raised his right hand and was about to reach into the box when she reached past his outstretched hand, into the box, and drew out a pistol.
She looked at Walsh and stepped back – her mind racing and her eyes blinking and her lips moving and her face getting red – and she raised the gun and pointed it at Henry Walsh and said: “Nuh uh.” She stepped back, put two hands on the gun, backed up to a counter, dropped a hand and used it to reach behind her to steady herself.
Walsh looked back down the hallway, toward the front door.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, so … you just go on and go,” she said. “We’re done here. Right now.” She waved the gun, craned her neck, took a hesitant step back to the box and peeked in. He said there was rings in there somewhere. What would they be worth? Walsh took a step toward the hallway, him more wobbly than when he entered. She looked at the money, wanting it back in the box and wanting him gone.
Thirty-one thousand dollars was a lot of money. That’s what she was thinking. A lot of money then. Now, too. Whenever.
“That thing loaded, you think?” It was the best he could come up with. He looked to his right, a window, still light outside. How long had he been in this house? Afternoon when he came in, wasn’t it?
She raised the gun and pointed it toward Walsh. “Let’s not find out.”
A minute later she had him outside, at his car. She got him in and before she closed the door she put the gun in his gut. “How I see it, I earned that money. My daddy, lying and dying, left me more broke than I ever was, so that money’s mine, for what I put up with.” She raised up, looked around the neighborhood, leaned back down. “Don’t you ever come back here. Ever.”
***
He’d never owned one in his life, but getting one was easier and cheaper than he thought it’d be.
Using a burner phone, it took Henry Walsh two days and twenty-two phone calls to locate a Tommy Russo who fit a simple description: old and alive
“That’s my husband’s grandfather!” a woman named Cristina Russo told him. She sounded excited. “Oh, he’ll be so excited to hear from an old friend!” She rambled on, Walsh listened, and when he finally asked for Russo’s cell number: “Oh, he won’t own a cell phone. Hates ’em. Absolutely hates ’em, but you can call the home. They’ll get you through to his apartment. Call the switchboard.” She gave him a number. “That’s how it works. They’ll put you right through, He’ll be so happy … and you said your name was?”
Tommy Russo was at The River’s Edge, a retirement community an hour’s drive from Walsh’s home. Walsh made the drive, sat outside and stared. It was nice. Nicer than his decent-enough home, and in a better neighborhood. He walked in, curious, asked a few questions, dodged questions about himself, passed on a tour of the facilities, and finally departed after saying he’d been considering his future. He drove home and waited two days, then dialed The River’s Edge and asked to be connected with Tommy Russo. Two clicks later …
“Hello?”
“Tommy Russo?”
“Speaking.” Russo’s voice was strong.
“The Tommy Russo that ran the game at Cibo Russo?”
Quiet.
Henry Walsh in his living room, on his couch. He has a pension and some savings. He has a decent-enough house in a decent-enough neighborhood. He gets Meals on Wheels three times a week. He’d been with Leo Sparks and Carl Singer and willingly done the stuff they did over fifty years ago, and he’d waited, just like he and Leo agreed. It was a deal they made. He’d honored it, hadn’t he? Hadn’t Leo?
No trophy? Her refusing him his trophy? Him doing what they’d agreed on? Him, with the bad knees and that hip? It galled him. It was humiliating. But then, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. That’s what he finally decided. Maybe the story didn’t end that way. Hell, he watched movies, too. There’s all kinds of endings, isn’t there? He could survive without the trophy, couldn’t he? He could do that. He would do that. But was that how the story should end? Fifty years on, nothing in it for him, it ends that way?
“Who is this?” Russo asked.
Henry Walsh didn’t feel bad about what he was doing.
“You remember that night?” Walsh asked. “Three of us. Remember?” He paused, listened and heard nothing, not even heavy breathing. “You got beat up bad. Remember?” Walsh pictured Tommy Russo in his nice apartment at The River’s Edge, hunkered down, an old man listening.
Russo said: “Go on.”
Henry Walsh let go a dry laugh. “Get a pencil,” he said. “I got an address for you.” He waited, expecting a reply, waited longer, hearing nothing, then finally Russo spoke. It was almost a whisper. “Go slow,” Russo said. “Say it slow so I get it right.”
Walsh gave the address slowly, spelling out the street, saying “the neighborhood there, it’s shaky.” Finished, he waited, then Russo asked again, “Who is this?”
“If you want that money, I’d get there quick,” Walsh said. He paused, thinking Russo would say something, and when he heard nothing he said “Don’t wait. Go right away. Knock at that door at that address, and whoever answers that door, you gotta say this.” He paused again, hearing nothing. “You listening?”
“I am,” Russo said quickly.
“Knock at that address,” Walsh said, “and say it like this: ‘I’m here to pick up the trophy.’ Say it just like that. Don’t say nothing else.”
Quiet. Walsh listening and Russo listening and Russo, as alert as a seventy-eight-year-old man has ever been, asked again: “Who is this?”
“This is Carl Singer,” Henry Walsh said, “and don’t bother looking for me. I don’t exist.” He clicked off the phone.
***
It took about two hours.
A car pulled to a stop and parked in front of a dreary two-story in a less-than-inviting neighborhood and two young men stepped out. Around them, drooping rooflines, sagging porches, cracked windows, doors needing paint. Weeds growing through the sidewalks.
The one from the passenger side walked around back. The driver went up the walk, up to the porch and knocked on the door. He waited, pounded, then waited some more. The man in back came around to the front, words were exchanged, and he went back. More rapid knocks, front and back, and finally, both doors needed to be forced. Pounding feet inside, down into the cellar, through the first floor, up the stairs to the second.
Empty.
A quick phone call to River’s Edge, where Tommy Russo answered on the first ring. “What?” he said.
“Empty.”
“Check the mailbox,” he said.
“We did. Empty.”
Some time was spent inspecting the house, rummaging through drawers upstairs and down, checking cabinets and closets and finding nothing of use.
In that neighborhood, no one looked out, police never came, and the two left without bothering to lock the doors.
How long would Tommy Russo keep an eye on that property? Just over a year. He’d have someone drive by on occasion, occasionally go inside. It was always empty. He had guys ask the neighbors questions, questions the neighbors didn’t want to hear and did their best to avoid answering.
Who did the work for Russo? Young men who were sure they were on a wild goose chase. Young men who would listen to him, nod, and walk out of The River’s Edge shaking their heads. “He’s old,” they’d say. “He says somebody’s holding out on him … from years and years ago.” They’d do what he asked, knowing it was little more than killing time. He claimed he’d been somebody years ago and their bosses – they men they actually worked for – they said yes, he’d been somebody, but not much of a somebody, and whoever he’d been back then, it didn’t much matter anymore. “Don’t spend a lot of time,” their bosses told them. “He’s old. How good you think his memory is?”
Russo lived just over a year after receiving the call from someone claiming to be Carl Singer. He asked around about Singer. Nobody knew a Carl Singer. Nobody ever heard of a Carl Singer. Tommy Russo would have liked to strangle Carl Singer.
Henry Walsh? He died before Russo did. Over a week in the living room of his decent-enough home before his body was found. His daughter put the funeral together. His son didn’t show.
Loni Sparks? Moved away. Never stopped looking back, worrying, but she was always a worrier. Dying, Leo Sparks, her old man, he’d say, “Loni, I’ll be dead soon. What you got to worry about?” She died at sixty-two, alone, in public housing where few of her neighbors knew her name. She left behind worn-out furniture and worn-out clothes and a box with all kinds of tape sticking to it. There was a ring in the bottom of that box, stuck in the corner. A piece of cheap costume jewelry. Green glass set in a zinc/copper band. Absolutely worthless.
[Image Credit : Photo by Geronimo Giqueaux on Unsplash]
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Victor Kreuiter
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