“We might be able to cut him in too. This job involves some lifting. Two guys should be able to handle it.”
“You can count me out if it’s your shot at the big times. I’m quite content being a nickel-and-dimer.”
Her eyes roamed around the apartment. “That’s obvious.”
“You know, you still look pretty good, a broad pushing forty,” I said.
Judy wasn’t one for flattery or idle conversation. Within minutes of finishing her second beer, she was moaning underneath me. Then, a half hour after the awkward act, she lay against me. We talked about mortality and darkening streets, the smell of sex permeating the tent we’d built from the covers over our heads.
We’d gotten our clothes back on and stared at each other over a pot of coffee as we discussed business a half hour after getting out of bed. She’d scored a job as a bartender a couple of years ago. A dive so low they didn’t even take credit cards. The owner, Steve, liked the way her ass played under her jeans. She said she let him touch it once in a while to distract him as she took a little out of the till to add to her tip money.
They’d sleep together occasionally, but she didn’t respect him. According to her, he was weak in both body and spirit, had less ambition than me. Figured it was time to move on to greener pastures in pursuit of the elusive big score, but she needed a little stake money.
She’d thought about just emptying the cash drawer one night after closing, but Steve was cautious. He’d bring the loot home with him and put it in a safe in his house at night after the bartenders finished counting out the evening receipts. In the morning, he’d deposit money into the bank on his way to work.
Steve had recently decided to bring his place into some semblance of the nineteenth century. He’d made a half-assed arrangement with a fly-by-night company to put an ATM next to the men’s room. He couldn’t be there the day they installed the thing, so Judy supervised the workmen, showing a little more tits and ass and a little more curiosity about the project than the installers were used to.
Three bolts through the floor held the whole thing in place. Nuts on the other side of the planks secured the bolts. Drop-ceiling panels in the basement hid it all from the public. The downstairs portion of the bar generally only saw weekend use by over-the-hill punk rock bands the owner was still enthusiastic about twenty years after anyone else cared.
An armored car drove by every Thursday morning and put six grand into the thing. Steve usually worked Thursdays, but he had a dental appointment this week for a root canal. Judy would put an Out of Order sign on the machine as soon as it was filled-to ensure we would get our maximum return. Then she’d leave the back door open at the end of her shift and we could use the hand truck in the storage room to wheel the machine into my pickup truck. After that, we could take our own sweet time breaking into it up in Dell’s parents’ garage.
I had to say I was impressed. Judy might not have gotten her big score, but she’d made huge strides in her criminal repertoire. I’d done all of the significant planning during our time together. She’d served as eye candy and the bait on the end of the hook.
“What’s in the bag?” I asked just before she left.
She held it open. “I knew you’d ask.” I guess she knew me better than practically anyone. “Some picture frames for my apartment.”
“Do you know how to hang pictures?” I asked.
“Sure, you just stick these into the wall and put the wire through it.” She pulled out a small packet of hangers from the bottom of the bag.
Laughing, I said, “You can’t just stick them in by hand. You need a hammer or something.” Maybe her planning skills hadn’t advanced as far as I though they had.
“Are you sure? The guy at the store didn’t say anything.”
I grabbed a hammer from a drawer in the kitchen, and placed it in the bag she held open. “I’m sure. Just get the hammer back to me before we pull this job. It might come in handy.”
My partner and I stopped in on a Monday, their slowest night of the week, and checked things out. An alley ran along the back of the bar, between the rear of the place and a bail bonds office. Plenty of room to pull my pickup to the back door.
Dell was a little too distracted trying to burn an outline of Judy’s figure into the gray matter of his brain as she bent over the coolers retrieving beer. I wished he could have concentrated a little more on the casing, but I wasn’t too worried. It didn’t look like we’d be running into any trouble.
The front of the place was typical of the corner bars fast disappearing across America. A row of booths on the left side, the bar and stools on the right as you walked in off the street, a pool table in front of a jukebox toward the rear of the joint.
Judy sent me down the stairs at the back when the bar was slow. I’d have liked for Dell to come down with me, but he said he had to use the bathroom. I stood on a chair under the place where I thought the ATM would be, lifted up the ceiling tiles, looking for the bolts with a pocket flashlight. The setup was exactly like Judy said it would be. Just three bolts anchoring our cash in place.
A selection of ratchet heads downstairs, unplug the phone line and electric upstairs, a quick boost up into my pickup truck, a three-way split, and, if everything worked out right, we’d each be two grand richer. Not exactly Judy’s elusive big score, but enough to get her started on it.
Dell and Judy leaned across the bar from each other, talking, their foreheads almost touching when I came back up the stairs. Dell jerked away guiltily when he saw my reflection in the bar mirror behind him. He didn’t have to worry. I’d gotten used to it years ago, hadn’t ever let it bother me. Judy was naturally flirtatious, a quality that had opened up many doors when we’d worked together as a team.
Still, I was a little pissed. We were supposed to be checking the place out, and here he was goofing off. I didn’t say anything to him as we left. Dell was only twenty-two years old. I tend to make exceptions for youth.
I work at UPS every Christmas season as a temporary driver. I’m actually surprised that I’m pretty good at it. They ask me to stay on permanently every year, but I turn them down without an explanation. It’d be a little awkward telling them I only worked there two or three months a year so I can have something to show Uncle Sam during tax time.
Dell was assigned as my helper three years ago. He was giving community college a shot, and figured he could pick up some extra cash working through the break. He was a blond-haired kid with a lopsided smile the women on the route went crazy for. One of the secretaries who worked at an architectural firm on our route once told me she had fantasies about Dell, dressed in the cutoff summer version of the uniform, bending her over the desk.
Caught him trying to stuff a case of iPods in his uniform one day when I had to go back to check something on the truck.
I’d thought about turning him in. This had been a steady gig for me for years, and I could get in a lot of trouble if stuff disappeared from my truck. We talked it out, and I turned his natural larcenous instincts to our advantage. His way with the ladies opened some doors, but not as many as Judy’s way with the men.
“You used to hit that?” Dell asked, rolling the windshield halfway down before it jumped the tracks holding it in the door well. I’d have to unscrew the side panel and work it back in place before the next time it rained.
“Back in the day.”
“I wasn’t trying anything on her back there. Just being friendly.” The guy had been riding in the passenger seat of my truck for three years now, and he still broke the window every time he touched it.
“Doesn’t really matter to me. We’re mostly business partners.”
He stopped struggling with the window, said, “She still looks pretty good for an older chick. I’d definitely throw her the hammer.”