The Waiting
A cool new print magazine launched in the spring of 2010, a snub-nosed Saturday Night Special of a mag called Needle: A Magazine of Noir. This creation featured nothing but noir short fiction. No book or movie reviews, no opinion pieces, nothing to take your focus away from hard-hitting, sometimes brutal noir fiction. The minute I saw Issue #1 I knew I had to get a story into Needle. I would move heaven and earth if necessary; that’s how impressed I was with the quality of the thing. Fortunately for me, being scrawny as a string bean, I didn’t have to move heaven OR earth. I just had to submit “The Waiting.” This story first appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Needle; A Magazine of Noir.
There’s am old Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song in which Tom claims, “The waiting is the hardest part.” The first time I heard those lyrics I wondered whether maybe Tom had worked on a few scores before hitting it big in the music business, because he hit the nail right on the head with that one. The waiting really is the hardest part in any criminal enterprise.
This time was no different, except maybe it was worse than usual. We were holed up inside one of those cheap no-tell motels, where cheap wood paneling covers the walls and everything is literally bolted to the room—television, clock, remote, everything—and we were passing the time uneasily by trying to cheat each other at cards. On the TV, which had to be twenty years old if it was a day, a baseball game was playing, one group of millionaires kicking the crap out of another group of millionaires. Nobody paid any attention to it but nobody turned it off, either.
We had added a chick to the crew to replace Stupid Tommy Mitchell when he got tossed back into the can on a parole violation, and everything just felt awkward. Different or something. Stupid Tommy probably couldn’t spell the word “irony,” he really was pretty dumb, but he could’ve had his picture in the dictionary next to the word after getting busted for drunk driving while celebrating our latest score.
Our wheelman going down on a DUI beef. See what I mean? Irony.
Anyway, the leader of our little band of criminal misfits and malcontents was a guy named Gary Newton—“G,” we called him—and no sooner had the cops shoved Tommy into a cell than this hot young babe came out of nowhere to take Tommy’s place. It was almost like it had been planned out or something, that’s how fast G found her, and it should have been the first clue to anyone paying attention that something was wrong. But of course no one was; attention to detail is not any of these guys’ strong suit.
Bobby Sturgis and I pissed and moaned to G as soon as we found out he had taken on a girl, but Bobby’s objections vanished the second he got a good look at her, just as I had known they would. The girl was average height, but that was the only average thing about her. Glossy jet-black hair hung to just below her shoulders, Hollywood starlet hair, and it framed a face that would inspire jealously in an angel.
Her body was perfect, and yes, I know what you’re thinking: There’s no such thing as a perfect body, but take it from me, this chick was perfect. And she knew how to dress to accentuate that perfection, too. Tight jeans, tight shirts, short tight skirts and dresses. You get the picture?
Bobby sure did. The minute he laid eyes on her he morphed into some stupid horny kid, losing what few brain cells he had, and just like that I became the only one who had a problem with our new addition. Not that it would have mattered. G was the guy who made all the decisions for this crew, but at least with Bobby on my side it would have been two against one; or, I suppose, two against two if you included Gina’s vote.
With me as the only holdout my objections became a moot point, as I had known they would. Gina became an official member of the crew and it was only a matter of time before she took on the moniker “G2.” It was like Gary suddenly had his very own Mini-Me. He loved the nickname but it pissed off Bobby to no end.
The first time the guys saw her drive she eliminated whatever lingering doubts anyone might have had about adding her to the team. She was better than Stupid Tommy from the get-go, and Tommy was no slouch as a driver. It was pretty much the only thing he was good at, but I always figured, hell, if you’re fortunate enough to be outstanding at even one thing in this world, you’re better off than most people. Driving was Stupid Tommy’s thing.
Driving drunk he sucked at, though, which explained why he was now cooling his heels inside a jail cell. I had known if I bought him enough Jameson he’d eventually get busted and he came through like a champ, thereby opening up a spot on the crew for Gina.
But G2 was a better driver than Stupid Tommy on the best day he ever had, everyone could see that the minute she goosed that old GTO on the Southeast Expressway. It was Tommy’s car I suppose, technically, but with him in the can, what the hell was he going to do with it? So we appropriated his ride. It was what Tommy would have wanted if anyone had bothered to ask him, not that anyone did.
Gina raced that Goat like nobody’s business, blowing the doors off the few vehicles out on the highway at 3:00 a.m. like they weren’t even there. During the day, that section of pavement becomes one long, skinny parking lot, known to locals as the “Southeast Distressway,” thanks to the near-constant jam-up of cars and trucks. It’s been called that for as long as I can remember, but at this time of the night the interstate was so empty you could practically see tumbleweeds blowing down the middle, which was why we picked it for the test run.
Oh sure, it was possible a Statie could have been patrolling, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Although you might have guessed from looking at her body that Gina was born for sex, it became crystal clear the moment she got behind the wheel that she was born to drive. There was no way one lonely State Trooper would ever have had the juice to keep up with Gina, much less force her to the side of the road.
After her impressive debut behind the wheel, I made a show of reluctantly accepting her onto the team. I didn’t want to appear too eager, although, like I said, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I wasn’t the one making the decisions; my job description was to do what was necessary, to act as sort of a jack of all trades, and if that doesn’t sound clear enough to you, then you’ve never been part of a crew.
Next we pulled a job just to see how Gina would perform under pressure. This heist was something a little different for us, a little riskier than our typical job. Gary had been tipped off to an arms transaction taking place down on the waterfront, a little four a.m. guns-for-money deal, so we crashed the party. It was relatively small-time as these things go, and it was perfect for our purposes. We grabbed the cash, leaving the weapons behind. What the hell were we going to do with six crates of AK47’s?
Then we tied up the monkeys and dumped them next to an old warehouse like the suckers they were, and G2 got us out of there pretty as you please. It was smooth and simple and everything went off without a hitch.
After that it was like Gina had been with us forever, which made me happy in a way because I was now no longer the new kid in school. Every crew I’ve ever been a part of has a pecking order, and it’s usually based on seniority. That was the case here and I had gotten damned tired of having to do all the scut work just because I had only been around for six months.
After the stealing the cash from the gunrunners, we decided to cut out for a while, head down to the Florida Panhandle while Stupid Tommy finished his stretch. Gary had some connections down there and he figured we could run some profitable jobs while working on our tans during what was sure to be a long, cold winter in Boston. Plus, those arms dealers are some crazy motherfuckers, so everyone kind of agreed in an unspoken way that it might be a good idea to vacate for a while until things cooled down.