“We won’t say a thing to your father,” she said, and cooked it for their Sunday lunch.
Lou’s father would have said that they would not appreciate someone distributing the contents of their shop around the neighborhood like some modern-day Robin Hood, and presumably the butcher’s shop that had been done over felt the same.
Lou and his mother thought it easier not to go too far down that road. Lou thought of the big man as Robin Hood, and when he saw him around the place he would just nod at him. “Howaya.”
And the big man would laugh back at him and say: “How’s it going, Lou?”
In a way Lou hoped that Robin would get in touch again. He knew that the debt had been paid by the gift of the lamb. But he felt excited at the thought of being so close to the underworld. He wished Robin would give him some kind of task. He didn’t want to do a smash-and-grab himself. And he couldn’t drive a getaway car. But he did want to be involved in something exciting.
THE CALL DIDN’T come while he was at school. Lou was not a natural student, at sixteen he was out of the classroom and into the job center without very much hope there either. One of the first people he saw was Robin studying the notices on the board.
“Howaya, Robin,” Lou said, forgetting that was only a made-up name.
“What do you mean, Robin?” the man asked.
“I have to call you something. I don’t know your name so that’s what I call you.”
“Is it some kind of a poor joke?” The man looked very bad-tempered indeed.
“No, it’s like Robin Hood, you know the fellow…” His voice trailed away. Lou didn’t want to talk about Merry Men in case Robin thought he might be saying he was gay, he didn’t want to say a band or a gang. Why had he ever said the name at all?
“As long as it’s not a reference to people robbing things…”
“Oh God no, no,” Lou said, as if such an idea was utterly repulsive.
“Well then.” Robin seemed mollified.
“What is your real name?”
“Robin will do fine, now that we know there’s no misunderstanding.”
“None, none.”
“Good, well how are things, Lou?”
“Not great, I had a job in a warehouse but they had stupid rules about smoking.”
“I know, they’re all the same.” Robin was sympathetic. He could read the story of a boy’s first job ending in being fired after a week. It was probably his own.
“I’ll tell you, there’s a job here.” He pointed at an advertisement offering a cleaning job in a cinema.
“It’s for girls, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t say, you can’t say nowadays.”
“But it would be a desperate job.” Lou was disappointed that Robin thought so little of him as to point him in such a lowly direction.
“It could have its compensations,” Robin said, looking vaguely into the distance.
“What would they be?”
“It could mean leaving doors open.”
“Every night? Wouldn’t they cop on?”
“Not if the bolt was just pulled slightly back.”
“And then?”
“And then if other people, say, wanted to go in and out they would have a week to do so.”
“And after that?”
“Well, whoever had that cleaning job could move on in a bit, not too quickly, but in a bit. And would find that people were very grateful to him.”
Lou was so excited, he could hardly breathe. It was happening. Robin was including him in his gang. Without another word he went up to the counter and filled in the forms for the post as cleaner.
“Whatever made you take a job like that?” his father said.
“Someone’s got to do it.” Lou shrugged.
He cleaned the seats and picked up the litter. He cleaned the lavatories and used scouring powder to get rid of the graffiti. Each evening he loosened the bolt on the big back door. Robin didn’t even have to tell him which, it was quite obvious that this was the only way that people could get in.
The manager was a nervous fussy little man. He told Lou that the world was a wicked place now, totally different to when he was growing up.
“True enough,” Lou said. He didn’t engage in much conversation. He didn’t want to be remembered one way or another after the event.
The event happened four days later. Thieves had got in, broken into the little covered-in cash desk and got away with the night’s takings. They had sawed through a bolt, apparently. They must have been able to reach through a crack in the door. The Guards asked was there any way that the door could have been left unlocked, but the nervous fussy manager, who was by this stage nearly hysterical and confirmed in his belief of the wickedness of the world, said that was ridiculous. He always checked at night, and why would they have had all the sawing if they had got in an open door. Lou realized they organized that to protect him. Nobody could finger the new cleaner as being the inside contact.
He stayed on at the cinema, carefully locking the newly fitted bolt for two weeks to prove that he was in no way connected. Then he told the manager he had got a better position.
“You weren’t the worst of them,” the manager said, and Lou felt slightly ashamed because he knew that in a way he was the worst of them. His predecessors hadn’t opened the doors to admit the burglars. But there was no point whatsoever in feeling guilty about that now. What was done was done. It was a matter of waiting to see what happened next.
What happened next was that Robin came in to buy a pack of cigarettes and handed him an envelope. His father was in the shop, so Lou took it quietly without comment. Only when he was alone did he open it. There were ten ten-pound notes. A hundred pounds for loosening a bolt four nights in succession. As Robin had promised, people were being grateful to him.
LOU NEVER ASKED Robin for a job. He went about his own work, taking bits here and there. He felt sure that if he was needed, he would be called on. But he longed to run into the big man again. He never saw Robin anymore at the job centre.
He felt sure that Robin was involved in the job at the supermarket where they had got almost the entire contents of the liquor store into a van and away within an hour of late closing. The security firm just couldn’t believe it. There was no evidence of an inside job.
Lou wondered how Robin had managed it, and where he stashed what he stole. He must have premises somewhere. He had gone up in the world since the time years ago when he had come into their shop. Lou had only been fifteen. Now he was nearly nineteen. And in all that time he had only done one job for big Robin.
HE MET HIM again unexpectedly at a disco. It was a noisy place and Lou hadn’t met any girls he fancied. More truthfully, he hadn’t met any girls who fancied him. He couldn’t understand it, he was being as nice as anything, smiling, buying them drinks, but they went for mean-looking fellows, people who scowled and frowned. It was then he saw Robin dancing with a most attractive girl. The more she smiled and shimmered at him, the deeper and darker and more menacing Robin appeared to be. Maybe this was the secret. Lou practiced his frown as he stood at the bar, scowling at himself in the mirror, and Robin came up behind him.
“Looking well, Lou?”
“Good to see you again, Robin.”
“I like you, Lou, you’re not a pushy person.”
“Not much point. Take it easy I always say.”
“I hear there was a bit of trouble in your parents’ shop the other day.”
How had Robin heard that? “There was, kids, brats.”
“Well, they’ve been dealt with, the hide has been beaten off them, they won’t touch the place again. Small call to our friends the Gardai telling them where the stuff can be found, should be sorted out tomorrow.”
“That’s very good of you, Robin, I appreciate it.”
“Not at all, it’s a pleasure,” he said. Lou waited. “Working at the moment?”
“Nothing that can’t be altered if needs be,” Lou said.
/> “Busy place here, isn’t it?” Robin nodded at the bar where they stood. Ten-pound notes and twenty-pound notes were flashing back and forward. The night’s takings would be substantial.
“Yeah, I’d say they have two guys and an Alsatian to take all that to a night safe.”
“As it happens they don’t,” said Robin. Lou waited again. “They have this van that drives the staff home, about three in the morning, and the last to be left off is the manager, who looks as if he’s carrying a duffel bag with his gear in it, but that’s the takings.”
“And does he put it in a safe?”
“No, he takes it home and someone comes to his house to pick it up a bit later and they put it in a safe.”
“Bit complicated, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but this is a tough kind of an area.” Robin shook his head disapprovingly. “No one would want to be driving a security van round here, too dangerous.” Robin frowned darkly as if this was a monstrous shadow over their lives.
“And most people don’t know this setup, about the manager with the sports bag?”
“I don’t believe it’s generally known at all.”
“Not even to the driver of the van?”
“No, not at all.”
“And what would people need, do you think?”
“Someone to reverse in front of the van accidentally, and prevent the van leaving the lane for about five minutes.” Lou nodded. “Someone who has a car and a clean driving license and a record of coming here regularly.”
“That would be a good idea.”
“You have a car?”
“Sadly no, Robin, a license yes, a record of coming here, but not a car.”
“Were you thinking of buying one?”
“I was indeed, a secondhand car…thinking a lot, but it hasn’t been possible.”
“Until now.” Robin raised a glass to him.
“Until now,” Lou said. He knew he must do nothing until he heard from Robin. He felt very pleased that Robin had said he liked him. He frowned vaguely at a girl nearby, and she asked him to dance. Lou hadn’t felt so good for a long time.
Next day his father said that you wouldn’t believe it but the Guards had found every single thing that had been taken by those young pups. Wasn’t it a miracle? Three days later a letter and hire-purchase agreement form came from a garage. Mr. Lou Lynch had paid a deposit of two thousand pounds and agreed to pay a monthly sum. The car could be picked up and the agreement signed within the next three days.
“I’m thinking of getting a car,” Lou told his parents.
“That’s great,” said his mother.
“Bloody marvelous what people can do on the dole,” his father said.
“I’m not on the dole as it happens,” Lou said, stung.
He was working in a big electrical appliances store, carrying fridges and microwaves out to the backs of people’s cars. He had always hoped it might be the kind of place where Robin would come and find him. How could he have guessed it would be in a discotheque?
He drove his car around proudly. He took his mother out to Glendalough one Sunday morning, and she told him that when she was a young girl she always dreamed that she might meet a fellow with a car, but it never happened.
“Well, it’s happened now, Mam,” he said soothingly.
“Your da thinks you’re on the take, Lou, he says there’s no way you could have a car like this on what you earn.”
“And what do you think, Ma?”
“I don’t think at all, Son,” she said.
“And neither do I, Ma,” he said.
It was six weeks before he ran into Robin again. He called to the big store and bought a television. Lou carried it to his car for him.
“Been going to that disco regularly?”
“Twice, three times a week. They know me by name now.”
“Bit of a dump though.”
“Still. You’ve got to dance somewhere, drink somewhere.” Lou knew that Robin liked people to be relaxed.
“Very fair point. I was wondering if you’d be there tonight?”
“Certainly I will.”
“And maybe not drink anything because of Breathalyzers.”
“I think a night on the mineral water’s very good for everyone from time to time.”
“Maybe I’d show you a good place to park the car there tonight.”
“That would be great.” He asked no other details, that was his strength. Robin seemed to like him wanting as little information as possible.
About ten o’clock that night he parked the car where Robin indicated. He could see how it would obstruct the exit from the alley into the main road if he pulled out. He realized he would be in full view of everyone in the staff van. The car would have to stall. And refuse to start despite his apparent best efforts. But there were about five hours before that happened.
So he went into the disco, and within fifteen minutes he met the first girl he ever thought he could love and live with for the rest of his life. Her name was Suzi and she was a tall, stunning redhead. It was her first time at the disco, she told him. But she was beginning to vegetate at home in her flat, and she decided she would go out and see what the night brought.
And the night had brought Lou. They danced and they talked, and she said she loved that he drank mineral water, so many fellows just stank of beer. And he said he did drink beer sometimes, but not in great quantities.
She worked in a cafe in Temple Bar, she told him. They liked the same kinds of films and they liked the same music and they loved curries and they didn’t mind swimming in the cold sea in the summer and they each hoped to go to America one day. You can learn a lot about other people in four and a half hours if you are sober. And everything that Lou learned about Suzi he liked. Under normal circumstances he would have driven her home.
But these were not normal circumstances. And the only reason that he had a car at all was that the circumstances were so very far from normal.
I’d offer you a lift home but I have to meet this guy here a bit later. Could he say that, or would it be suspicious later when he was questioned? Because questioned he would be. Could he walk her home and then come back? That might have been possible, but Robin wanted him to establish his presence as being on the scene all night.
“I’d really like to see you again, Suzi,” he said.
“Well I’d like that too.”
“So will we say tomorrow night? Here or somewhere quieter?”
“So is tonight over now?” Suzi asked.
“For me it is, but listen, tomorrow night can go on as long as we like it to.”
“Are you married?” Suzi asked.
“No, of course I’m not. Hey, I’m only twenty. Why would I be married?”
“Some people are.”
“I’m not. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Where are you going now?”
“To the men’s room.”
“Do you do drugs, Lou?”
“Jesus I don’t. What is this, an interrogation?”
“It’s just that you’ve been going to the loo all night.” It was true he had, just to get himself noticed, seen, remembered.
“No, I don’t. Listen, sweetheart, you and I’ll have a great night out tomorrow, go wherever you want, I mean it.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“No, not Yeah…Yes. I mean it.”
“Good night, Lou,” she said, hurt and annoyed. And picked up her jacket and walked out into the night.
He longed to run after her. Was there ever such bad timing? How miserably unfair it all was.
THE MINUTES CREPT by until it was time for action, then he went to his car, the last to leave the club. He waited until the minivan filled and the lights went on. At that very moment he shot backward in its path. Then he revved the engine over and over, flooding it, ensuring that it wouldn’t start.
The operation worked like clockwork. Lou looked at none of it, all the time he played the part of a man desperate
to start his car, and when he realized that dark figures had climbed a wall and got away, he watched astounded as the scarlet-faced manager came running out crying help and wanting the Guards and panicking utterly.
Lou sat helpless in the car. “I can’t get it out of here, I’m trying.”
“He’s one of them,” shouted somebody, and strong hands held him, bouncers, barmen, until they realized who it was.
“Hey, that’s Lou Lynch,” they said, releasing him.
“What is all this, first my car won’t start and then you all jump on me. What’s happening?”
“The takings have been snatched, that’s what’s happened.” The manager knew his career was over. He knew there would be hours ahead with the Guards. And there were, for everybody.
One of the Guards recognized Lou’s address. “I was up there not long back, a crowd of kids broke in and stole all before them.”
“I know, Guard, and my parents were very grateful you retrieved it all.”
The Guard was pleased to be so publicly praised for what had been after all a tip-off out of the blue. Lou was regarded as the most unlucky accident to have happened for a long time. The staff told detectives that he was a very nice fellow, couldn’t be involved in anything like that. He got a good report from the big electrical store, his car payments were up-to-date, he hadn’t an ounce of alcohol in his body. Lou Lynch was in the clear.
But he didn’t spend all the next day thinking about Robin and wondering when the next envelope would come and how much it would contain. He thought instead about the beautiful Suzi Sullivan. He would have to lie to her and tell her the official account of what had happened. He hoped she wasn’t too annoyed with him.
He went to her restaurant in his lunch break with a red rose. “Thank you for last night.”
“There wasn’t much of last night,” Suzi complained. “You were such a little Cinderella, we all had to come home early.”