Taking It on the Lam by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Page 105
After turning on the bare bulb, he got on his knees by the safe.
I said; “How nice! A home safe!”
David said; “You have to have one. People are now robbing banks and post offices.”
“Ever hear of the FDIC?”
“I don’t trust the government.”
“I just love the playful badinage.” I gave him a little encouragement with my roscoe barrel and continued; “But time to open up.”
Cohen fiddled with the combination lock for what seemed like a week. He stopped and looked up at me saying; “Your presence has
made me lose my touch. If you come back later I can probably work something up for ya.”
“For your sake, I hope that’s the last lousy put off you try.
Open it!”
“It might be damaged. That Fed bag man may have been here. I have reason to suspect as much.”
“ .................. “
“You have no idea of what you’re getting into.”
I cocked my gun and pressed the barrel against the back of his noodle.”
He said; “There it goes,” as the safe door swung open, revealing passports, insurance documents, watches, birth certificates, diamond rings, war gaming miniatures, and a roll of cash held together by a strained rubber band wrapped twice.
I said; “Would you be so kind as to count out the cash for me.”
Cohen mournfully undid the roll as if he was burying a family member, and plodded through the double and single sawbucks now freed from their bondage. The procession ended at $2,200. I said; “That will never do, David. Unfortunately, I’ll have to insist on the rest.”
“There is no ‘rest’.”
“You’re beginning to bore me. Yes, there is no rest for the wicked. However, I am not that. ........ So where is the other safe?”
“Up your ass.”
“David, David, my man; you’re forgetting who has he gun here.”
“ ................... “
“Okay, this place is absolutely appalling. You have some furniture re-arranging to do.” I directed him to move everything which could be hiding a safe or valuables, including the sofa cushions. That proved fruitless, excepting some small change under the sofa cushions and the amusement provided by the
“exhaustive” toll the physical labor had taken on Cohen’s breathing mechanism.
Out of ideas, and more than a bit disgusted I wanted to put an end to the operation, and said; “Cohen, you got any Irish luggage in here?”
“Yes.”
“Get it and put the stuff from the safe in it.”
“Be reasonable, Li’l Dill. That’s not all yours. You should at least let me keep the watches and diamond rings. ........ The passports, birth certificates, ............ “ were the last negotiating words Cohen ever uttered, as I lost my patience for a second, and with disgust put a lug through his forehead.
He seemed quite brown bread. There was not a dicky bird, not a sound, not an utterance. He was as motionless as a sleeping hyena, and his beezer emitted as little air as a contagious virus. I think everything fell out of his ass, but chose not to verify my olfactory suggestions. Never having previously put the chill on anyone, I had from time to time wondered how I would feel if my Postal job necessitated it. This didn’t fully answer my question as this was an adjunct operation, but it gave me a strong hint. I felt nothing other than a curiosity as to why there wasn’t more blood. Rather than dawdling over the speculative aspect, I recalled that the second rule of crime is to blow the scene before becoming famous. It was enough to know that I had taken distinct pleasure of a sort, through the drilling of the shylock known as David Cohen. No doubt it would be a continual source of pride.
I filled the Irish luggage myself, and got out of there.
Back outside I immediately discerned my tail as it scampered back into the safety of deep shadows. Feeling frisky, confident, and reet Jake, I decided to have some useful fun. I briskly walked right toward him, he no doubt expecting me to try to be evasive.
It didn’t take long for me to get close and I told him that it was actually I who was tailing him. I told him; “I’m a confidential lay and I got you to think you were tailing me as I was tailing you. Made it duck soup, sap. Got a new assignment as Cohen just sold you out. You’re also probably getting a new assignment courtesy of J Edgar. The man doesn’t seem to trust you a whole lot.”
He was silent, and I kept on; “I know what you’re thinking and you are so wrong it suggests a fundamental lack of smarts. They don’t want me. They had me and let me go. Why, you dumbly ask too late? Because they want me to put the finger on others, jerk. I can tell them that you’re cheesing contraband through McConnell’s, faster than a dirty dinge who just saw a cop boiler.”
When he reached toward his pocket, I outdrew him as I pulled out my warm roscoe, pointed it at him, and continued; “You don’t want to do anything more stupid than you’ve already done, sap.
You don’t have anything to sell them, so you can either count on a dime in the hard time hoosegow or get lead poisoning right here. Give that to me!”
He handed me his gat, as he shuffled and opened his mouth, with nothing coming out. “You a fucking mute or something? Look!
Don’t tempt me. I’m tired of seeing your stupid, fucking ass anyway.”
Mouth now shut, he stared like an opossum in the headlights, a noodle like a swine, the tail like a rat, and of the bigness of a pussy cat. He looked so useless and ugly in his chosen shadows, I couldn’t help but use his own gun to put a lug in his malformed noodle. I wiped the warm roscoe clean on my shirt before placing it back in his hand backward with the corpse’s thumb on the trigger. I was surprised how duck soup it was to do that as my former tail’s fingers had now transformed into pliant rubber digits. He was ready for his Chicago overcoat. Once again, there was not a dicky bird, not a sound, not an utterance. I wondered where that fickle and aloof dicky bird was hiding.
It was gross to have to touch him at all, but necessary and arguably no worse than the time I had to clean up the shards of
the shaving mirror I had broken through a lack of attention paid to the attached and flimsy stand.
Having eliminated any testimony which could place me in the vicinity of the “crime,” and providing a scenario in which it would be duck soup for the lazy investigators to dope out that my corrupted tail shot Cohen, and then unable to escape his demise, decided to end it all, pulling the Dutch act. Now all I had to do was get my heap and put the Irish luggage in it, drive to Winnie’s, and relocate us to somewhere I wasn’t known.
Illinois has many rural enclaves, many within short driving range of the wonderful fun and excitement of Chicago. I wanted to only semi-realize that that was much easier said than done.
Pop Tate wasn’t always right about people. He had his unasked for reservations about Winnie, without even having met her.
Absurd. I’m clobbered by that Winnie doll-faced dish.
If one believes in math, the odds strongly think me long overdue for some good luck, if there is such a thing this side of Eden.
I suspect that in the future I’ll often think of this strange and dark night. But, tonight, like a somnambulist from the pre-war days of Pabst’s German expressionism, I was unable to stop and think, though my thoughts were not needed. I knew what I had to do. I knew what was in it, not only for me, but for everyone
else, and despite being behind the eight ball I just shrugged it off. There was just the show, and in this show the two corpses played demons who the world was better off without. It was all abstraction; a pushy, annoying abstraction that followed me everywhere I went. All I felt was the atmosphere pulling me in.
It was persistent and overwhelming, as if the fog had rolled in with the rain falling from a low sky when the tide was way out.
That’s all.
Taking It on the Lam