A third party had assembled us and provided aliases—Vito, Michael, Sonny, and Fredo— to ensure anonymity. In balaclavas, we stormed in, waved automatic weapons, and shouted some version of get down, nobody move!
I was Sonny, on crowd control. Michael collected wallets. Vito bagged the cash from the registers. And Fredo drove.
I never had a tin can to piss in or a window to throw it out, so after, when the boss handed me twenty grand, I blew it at a strip club instead of paying child support. Patron. Lap dances. Cuban cigars. Cocaine. It went that way for three days. I could have blown town, sent some cash to my ex, and started fresh. But that isn’t me. I live for the mad rush of it all, the neon lights, and the chaos.
The cops hauled me in on that fourth day, played security footage from the bank, and I watched, still feeling okay, until I saw the adhesive tape covering the tattoo on my neck come loose. One cop, a big dude with unruly sideburns, pink skin, and a gut like he had a Christmas turkey stuffed in his shirt, hit pause.
“There…” he said, “you see that? That’s you, brother.” He smiled. “You are right fucked.”
You could see the word INVINCIBLE in cursive plain as day on my neck.
The other cop, a thin man with darker skin who I thought could be Portuguese, had a calmer demeanour than the first one.
“Anything to say?” he asked.
I’d done time in Hardee Correctional down in Florida, so my ink was in the system. No use denying it.
“Lawyer,” is all I said.
The DA offered eight years, five if I told them what I knew about Vito, Michael, and Fredo. And I knew a lot. As we planned the heist, I collected information about each man. Nothing much at first. I’d talk about the Grand Canyon or a midwestern city, watch for a reaction. Mention Boston or New York, see if their eyes flickered. When I discussed kids playing on a playground across the street from a taco truck we were eating at, did they stop, think about their own children? Did they mention a favorite sports team or food specific to a place? How’d they dress? What music did they like? Were they in tune to politics, and if so, who’d they show interest in? Did they like cars? Were they religious?
It was slow work, but by the time we pulled the job, I knew Vito was from Chicago, married, and that he’d done time there. He worked a straight job as a mechanic between scores. Michael walked with a limp he’d had since birth, courtesy of a muscular deformity. A Californian, he voted Democrat, was open minded for a crook, and fancied himself something of a history buff. Fredo grew up in Atlanta and he was in the Aryan Brotherhood. My guess is he got into that scene in his teens when his parents moved the family to Alabama. He had two kids and an ex who raked him over the coals like it was her job.
I thought about turning them in. In fact, I wanted to. It might be nice to see my boys, Arlo and Jeffrey, grow up. I mostly saw them on the big holidays, not enough to leave a mark, and with every passing year I felt the distance between us grow.
But sell out a member of your team and, in this game, you’d never work again. Eight years wasn’t that long. I’d be out by forty-five with a long life ahead of me. Plenty of time to connect with my boys, and plenty of time to pull more jobs.
“I’m no rat,” I said to my lawyer. “I’ll do the time.”
[Image Credit : Photo by Carles Rabada on Unsplash]
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Latest posts by Joel Nedecky (see all)
- Plenty of Time - December 27, 2024
Great story, and I love how it is presented by Close2thebone.