Shoedog

  Jackson was through with gambling now and he had kicked the freeze, and maybe with this job he’d take his thirty and be through with Grimes. He watched Isaac cross the cracked concrete sidewalk, walking toward his place—the raggedy-ass motherfucker had a job, and he still had to go home and eat his lunch—and he thought, yeah, if this brother comes around, and this job goes down clean, I’m out of the life. Out of it, in a large way.

  CONSTANTINE looked across the buckets, over at Randolph. The man sat low, pressed jeans and a pressed cotton shirt, one arm straight out on the wheel, the other at his side, his free hand stroking his black mustache. They had not spoken since Randolph had driven them east on Pennsylvania Avenue, straight out of the city on Route 4.

  “That skinny guy,” Constantine said, cutting the chill. “He called you Shoedog.”

  “Just a name,” Randolph said.

  “He told you to pick up your ‘thirty-fours.’”

  “Yeah. ‘Thirty-four,’ as in ‘three-four, out the door.’ Those the shoes left over from the bitches who didn’t buy. The bitches who walked out the door. I let ’em pile on up. It gets the other boys all … emotionally distracted, and shit. Makes ’em forget what they’re doin’.”

  Constantine checked out the T-Bird’s cockpit. The Detroit R & D men had turned an American original into a Jap lookalike, an imitation rice rocket. “You like the car?” Constantine asked.

  “It’s all right,” Randolph said, his eyes ahead.

  Constantine offered, “I never been much of a Ford man.”

  “For city cruisin’, it’ll do.” Randolph shifted in his bucket. “You know somethin’ about cars?”

  “A little.”

  “What else you know? You know why Grimes called me out?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “How about fillin’ me in.” Randolph turned smoothly onto the unmarked two-lane.

  Constantine looked out the window at the wild dogwoods dotting the woods. “Two liquor stores. Day after tomorrow.”

  “You in?”

  “Yes,” Constantine said, thinking of the woman. “I’m in.”

  “As what?” Randolph asked.

  “A driver.”

  Randolph shook his head thoughtfully. “Man, you greener than a motherfucker.” He added, “Grimes does like ’em green, though.”

  “What about you?” Constantine said.

  “What about me.”

  “What do you do?”

  Randolph ran his hand along the top of the dash. “I’m a driver, too, man.”

  Constantine looked at Randolph’s pressed clothes, the man’s style. “I don’t get it. I mean I watched you back there, in the store. You’re already hooked up, man. You don’t need it.”

  Randolph laughed sharply. “You ought to know better than that, Constantine. What’s Grimes got on you, anyway?”

  “Nothing,” Constantine said, still thinking of Delia.

  “Grimes got something on everybody.”

  “What’s he got on you, Randolph?”

  Randolph slowed the car, stopped it between the pillars of the black iron gate. He turned, stared into Constantine’s eyes. “Look, man, you seem all right. But you don’t know me all that well to be askin’ those kinds of questions. Okay?”

  Constantine nodded, looked away. The gate opened in and Randolph drove through, up the drive to the parking area in front of the house. A few more cars now stood in the group.

  Randolph parked next to the Caddy. The two of them climbed out of the T-Bird and walked up the steps to the house. Constantine turned the knob without a knock and walked into the marble foyer. Randolph walked behind him.

  Gorman stood on the landing above, leaning over the railing, his face drawn and gray. “You’re late,” he said, directing it down to Randolph.

  Randolph ignored Gorman, looked back at Constantine. “Motherfucker’s a glue head. You know that?”

  Constantine hit the stairs and said, “I figured it was something.”

  Chapter

  9

  THE meeting had been set up in a room adjacent to Grimes’s office at the top of the stairs. When Polk saw Randolph enter, he rose from his chair, crossed the room, and held Randolph by the arm, looking in his eyes as they talked. Constantine could see that the two of them had worked together before.

  The room had two rows of metal folding chairs facing an easel and desk. A coffee urn and setups had been placed to the side. Weiner sat on the edge of the desk at the head of the room, one foot on the floor.

  Valdez sat in a chair in the second row, staring ahead, sipping his coffee. Gorman entered, grabbed an ashtray off the coffee table, and had a seat next to Valdez. Jackson sat in the second row as well, away from Valdez and Gorman. He picked at his thumbnail with his metal file.

  Constantine poured black coffee and took it, along with an ashtray, to a seat in the first row of chairs, where Polk and Randolph had settled. Constantine dropped the ashtray, along with his smokes and matches, on the seat next to Polk, and sat to the right of that. Polk shook a smoke out of the deck, struck a match to his, leaned across the seat, and lighted Constantine’s.

  “Thanks for picking up Randolph,” Polk said, smoke dribbling from his mouth. He winked. “Get along all right with the girl?”

  Constantine brushed that away. “I left your car downtown, Polk, out on the street.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” Polk made a short head movement to his right, in the direction of Randolph. “His man will feed the meter, make sure it doesn’t get towed. We’ll pick it up later.”

  The door opened and then closed behind the men. Grimes entered, took a seat in a large chair—the only one with arms and upholstery—at the back of the room. No one turned around. Weiner moved off the desk and stood next to the easel. Constantine heard a match strike and afterward the pleasant aroma of fine cigar drifted toward the front of the room.

  Weiner checked his wristwatch, cleared his throat. “All right, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

  Constantine pigeonholed Weiner: an old, bookish hipster—the hipster tag came from the goatee and the cocked beret Weiner sported on his bald head—with three rings on one hand. A small-time gambler, no casino action, a backroom poker player or maybe a pony romancer. Constantine could picture the guy at the track, standing under the odds board, head down, specs low-riding his nose, his hand gripping a stubby pencil, drawing circles on the racing form.

  Weiner picked a wooden pointer off the coffee table, draped it shotgun style across one arm. “Two liquor stores,” he said, “this Friday, on opposite ends of town. Two three-men teams. Each team has two inside men, and a driver. The first hit goes down at eleven-fifteen, the second at eleven-thirty.”

  “Talk about the teams,” Valdez said.

  “I’ll get to that,” said Weiner. He tapped the end of the pointer to the diagram on the easel. “The first hit is Uptown Liquors, on the east side of Wisconsin Avenue, just north of Brandywine, past where Forty-first splits off. It’s your basic market-style setup, except for the counter”—Weiner pointed—“right here. Two cameras point down at the counter. Alarm buttons underneath. Next to the counter, the stockroom.”

  “Describe the staff,” Polk said.

  “Three Jewish gentlemen,” Weiner said. “They stay behind the counter. An old lady works part-time. And there’s an African-American gentleman, a stockman, does the heavy work.”

  “Guns?” Valdez grunted.

  Weiner shook his head. “I don’t think so. Nothing out front, anyway. They’ve never been touched, not in that neighborhood. If there’s heat in there, it’s coming from the back—the stockman’s the one to watch.”

  Jackson nodded, thought of Isaac. As usual, the hymie had it nailed.

  Valdez said, “What kind of take?”

  “I put it at a hundred grand, in three separate spots from what I could make out, all under the counter, with a little in the registers. They keep the Thursday deposit out, combine it with Friday’
s. They need cash up there for money orders, their own payroll. And to line their own pockets. Friday’s the day they skim their nontaxable income. Which I figure, from what the gentlemen are driving, is four times the amount they declare.”

  “So we just stroll in,” Gorman said. “Right? Is that what you’re saying, Weiner? I mean, it’s that easy. And we wear stockings on our faces, on account of the cameras, and we raise our voices a little, and we walk with a hundred grand. And all we got to worry about is some old spade—I mean, African-American gentleman—who works in the back room.”

  Randolph turned in his seat, spoke slowly to Valdez. “You tell the little bitch to watch his mouth, hear?”

  Valdez grinned, gave Randolph the once-over.

  Gorman said, “Maybe after this, you and me take it outside.”

  “Maybe,” Randolph said. “Soon as you pull your head out of that glue bag.”

  Polk laughed while Constantine butted his cigarette. Grimes dragged on his cigar, watching the bunch from the back of the room. Jackson kept his eyes clear and ahead, thinking of Randolph, the driver: he was down but just too sensitive. This here was only business.

  Weiner said, “If the Uptown job’s too simple for you, Gorman, then you’re in luck. You’re not on that team. You’re on the second hit, at eleven-thirty.” He turned the page back on the easel to reveal another diagram. “EZ Time Liquors, on the northeast corner of Fourteenth and R.”

  Randolph said, “Talk about it.”

  Weiner shifted his weight “As you can see, this is a small place, about eight thousand square feet. Liquors, beers, a small selection of fortified wines. And convenience store items, inner city style—condoms, dream books, disposable lighters, a numbers machine—that sort of thing.” Weiner pointed to a small square in the right area of the store. “Here’s the counter where the staff stand. Two Irish gentleman, father and son, and another Irishman, older, an uncle I’d guess. Hard guys, all of them.”

  “Guns,” said Valdez.

  “All over the place,” Weiner said. “No plexiglass between the customers and the staff. The Irishmen wear vests under their shirts. I figure each one of them’s got access to a gun behind that counter. Also, I’ve been in the place on two separate days, and on both occasions I saw the same newspaper spread out—same date, same edition—under the left register. I figure there’s a sawed-off underneath the paper.”

  “So they’re heeled,” Polk said. “What’s the take?”

  Weiner smiled, made a victory sign with his fingers. “Two hundred grand.”

  Polk thought it over. “That’s why the hits are staggered, fifteen minutes apart. You make some noise uptown, where they don’t hear that kind of noise too often, and you draw all the units up that way, and then you make the jackpot hit down on Fourteenth and R. Am I right?”

  “Precisely,” Weiner said.

  Constantine put fire to another smoke, heard Gorman do the same. Everyone stared at the diagram then, all of them considering the alternate weight of money and death.

  Constantine exhaled, blew a jet of smoke across the room. “Why not just rob a bank?” he said.

  Gorman snorted a laugh while Valdez shifted his wide ass. Jackson moved his eyes to the right but did not move his head.

  “What’s mat?” Weiner said. He had not expected the young man with the long hair and blue eyes to speak.

  “Why not rob a bank?” Constantine repeated. “I mean, you’re going in there against more guns man you’ve got, and these guys are protecting their own turf, so why not hit a place that’s got one uniformed gun, a security guy, a guy who’s got nothing at stake?”

  “It’s a good question,” Grimes said from the back of the room. “Answer it.”

  “All right,” Weiner said. “Simply put, we are going to rob a bank. For the people of the inner city, the liquor store is the bank. Most African-Americans, Hispanics down there, they aren’t able to open checking or savings accounts—they have no credit, or they can’t afford the charges, or they don’t trust the primarily white banking institutions. So the liquor store is where they cash their checks, get money orders to pay their bills. On the morning of the second Friday of each month—which is this Friday—EZ Time Liquors brings in a hundred and fifty grand via Brinks just to fill those orders. Combine that with the fifty they’ve got stashed, and you’re looking at a possible two hundred, if you hit it just before the noon rush. It’s payday in the ghetto, and the liquor store’s the bank. Only this time, gentlemen, the payday is ours.”

  Gorman put his hands together, clapped three times. It was just like Weiner to make a political speech in the middle of a business meeting. So the spades in the ghetto couldn’t get no credit, couldn’t get no jobs, didn’t trust whitey’s banks, blah, blah, blah. Fuck ’em all, anyway.

  Valdez stroked the whiskers of his mustache and said, “Now the teams, Weiner.”

  “Right.” Weiner used his pointer. “On the Uptown job: Jackson, Polk, and Randolph. On EZ Time: Valdez, Gorman, and Constantine.”

  Valdez stood out of his chair, pointed his finger at Constantine’s back. “That green sonofabitch is not gonna be my driver, understand?”

  Grimes spoke calmly. “Sit down, Valdez. I picked the teams. You can drop out or you can do it the way I say. Those are your options.”

  Valdez sat, lowered his head, shook it slowly from side to side.

  “The rest of it’s standard,” Weiner said. “I’d like you gentlemen to drop in on your respective targets between now and Friday, get a feel for the place. We meet here at ten A.M. on Friday morning, pass out guns and ammunition for those not already carrying.”

  “I won’t need a gun,” Constantine said.

  “Everyone carries,” Weiner said. “Equal responsibilities, equal risks, equal rewards.” Weiner turned to Randolph. “You and Constantine pick out your vehicles, tomorrow morning, nine A.M.”

  “Rego?” Randolph said.

  “Right. He’ll explain the procedure on the drop.” Weiner cradled the pointer. “Any other questions?”

  The room went silent except for the long, heavy exhales of cigarette smokers and the creak of hinged metal chairs. Grimes stood, said, “That’s all, then. Good luck, all of you. Constantine—see me in my office, right after this.” Grimes turned and exited the room.

  When the door slammed shut behind him, the men relaxed. Valdez stood once again and kicked his chair back with his heel. Constantine did not look back, knowing that the gesture was meant for him.

  Polk put his hand on Constantine’s arm. “I’m sorry, partner. I thought the two of us could ride together on this one.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Constantine said, thumb-flicking some ash off his cigarette, noticing the unsteadiness in his hand.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs,” Polk said.

  “Right.”

  Constantine sat in the chair and finished his cigarette, waiting for the others to leave the room. Weiner left last, putting his notebooks and pencils into a battered briefcase, patting Constantine’s shoulder on the way to the door. Eventually, Constantine was alone. He heard their voices out in the hallway—Valdez and Gorman’s anger, Jackson’s simple laughter—and then their heavy footsteps on the marble stairs.

  Constantine ground the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray, rubbed his face around with his hand. The gray smoke of the meeting hovered in the center of the room, turning slowly in the light. Constantine got out of his seat and moved through the cloud.

  Chapter

  10

  GRIMES put his hand to his temple and smoothed back his steel gray hair. He had a seat behind his desk, then randomly rearranged the accessories that sat on the blotter of the desk. He placed his cigar in the lip of his crystal ashtray. His hand came to rest on the mound of magnetic chips piled on the black plastic base. He fingered the chips, listened to the footsteps of the men descending the marble staircase outside his office door.

  These meetings exhilarated him but tired him as well. Go
rman and Valdez always asked the wrong questions. And Jackson, his own stupidity magnified by his groundless self-confidence, asked no questions at all. But Jackson did as he was told, absolutely, and the value of that was great.

  The cleanest of them was Randolph, and with him Grimes never worried; Randolph had always done his job, and done it precisely and without incident. He knew Randolph’s worth, and the importance of keeping him in the fold.

  Polk, too, had always been a professional. There was no reason to believe he would not acquit himself well on this one. Still, this would be Polk’s last job. Polk was becoming irrational, careless, dangerously close to spoiling it. He would have to go. Friendship meant little now, its worth receding with time, fading behind the primary concern of self-preservation. Grimes believed in nothing if not protecting the things he valued most.

  And there was Constantine. The young man with the long black hair asked the right questions, and kept his mouth shut when there was nothing pertinent to say. Grimes believed he would deliver when things heated up. Constantine’s strengths, though—his lack of emotion, the absence of a moral center—also made him a dangerous man. If Constantine had a weakness, it was the weakness that plagued most men. He had seen it in Constantine’s eyes when Delia had entered the room. But Grimes wouldn’t use it. He would find something else in Constantine, some kind of opening. And then Grimes would break him, like he had broken the others.

  Grimes looked at the brown spots on the back of his hand as his fingers moved through the magnetic chips. He had noticed the spots only recently, and then he had noticed the cracks and deep wrinkles around his knuckles, and the thinness of his fingers at their joints. He pictured the brightness in Delia’s eyes when Constantine had touched her hand. He tried to remember the time when Delia had looked at him in that same way.