Freddie Bork, a portly man with his left pinkie finger cut to the knuckle, rattled the newspaper and yelled, “Huey, get out of the bathroom. We’re in trouble! Two little punks from L.A. squealed on us!”
Freddie Bork and Huey “Crybaby” Walker were the thugs who had robbed the armored car and tied the drivers into knots. Huey had cried over the roughhousing, but later felt pretty happy when he held bundled packets of hundred-dollar bills, all clean and smelling sweet. With tears on his eyelashes he slapped his wrist with a package of bills and joked, “Bad boy!”
Huey came out of the bathroom, his face stinging from after-shave lotion called Brisky Day. His face was nicked where his razor had glided recklessly over a hairy mole. His eyes were small and red as the crayon scribblings of a mad child. He looked scared, worried, dark with suspicion. He snatched the newspaper from Freddie Bork and read the news, his purplish lips moving over each word. Huey read about the airplane that had taken pictures of the heist, and read about a photographer with a Nikon and a zoom lens. He read about kids named Hector and Armando and the A average they maintained at Virgil Junior High in East Los Angeles. As he reached the end of the article, true to his name, he started to cry.
“Crying won’t get you nowhere,” said Freddie, the brains behind the heist and the muscle when things got rough. His face was dark with anger. He snapped a wooden match between his thumb and index finger and sneered, “I hate it when kids try to be do-gooders.” He hated most kids. He thought they got too much of the world, and he should know. He had been married five times and had fathered five children, each with demands for sweets and love.
Freddie lifted the newspaper and studied the faces of Hector and Mando, both smiling from ear to ear. He took a slurp of his coffee, which was barely warm. “They’re lying,” he muttered between his teeth. “They don’t look like A students to me.”
“What are we gonna do?” Huey asked from across the kitchen table where they sat. He was staring at the floor, popping the knuckles on his huge fists.
“We’ll get rid of the car first,” Freddie said.
“But I like that car,” Huey said.
“What do you want, a nice car or a prison cell?”
Huey sighed but didn’t say anything. A few of his tears fell like rain on the thin, fuzzy carpet.
“Then we’ll take care of those two punks!” Freddie snarled. He massaged the nub of his pinkie, which throbbed whenever he was upset. “Huey, quit your cryin’ and get me some coffee—black!” He was feeling irritable. He got up with a groan and, kicking off his shoes, sat on the bed of their motel room. He took out a pair of nail clippers and began paring his fingernails. He pared them and then filed them, whistling as he worked.
“Those punks. I got four punks of my own,” Freddie said.
“I thought you had five punks,” Huey said as he brought them both cups of coffee.
“One doesn’t like me, so I don’t count him.”
Huey took a sip of coffee. “That’s a shame, your own kid not liking you. Shows no respect.” He took another sip of coffee and remarked, “Freddie, you’re good people. The best.”
“I try to be,” Freddie said, touched by the compliment.
They clinked mugs to that, and turned on the motel television to kill time.