After Xochitl left, I lay around feeling lonely. I thought of calling her, but knew that was desperate. I thought about recording something on the tape player like she wanted, but couldn’t think of anything.
Around nine at night I heard someone climb the stairs, real slow, with a strange, almost unnatural rhythm to his step. I realized it had to be Pelón with his bad hip.
I opened my door and went to the top of the stairs. He was halfway up the last flight, but he rested against the wall.
“Diablo,” he said, out of breath.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I can’t visit?”
I went back to my room, left the door open, stretched out on the bed with my hands behind my head. Slowly, Pelón hobbled the rest of his way up, then down the hall to my room. He caught his breath and grinned.
“Shut the door behind you.”
He did. He turned and stood and leaned on his cane. He was wearing glasses, and I remembered that he sometimes used to wear them in the past, but realized that I had not seen him wearing any since I got out. His prescription had gotten very thick. I didn’t invite Pelón to sit.
He looked around the room. “Antonio say he no see you no more. You don’t return his calls.”
“Are you his secretary now?”
Pelón pursed his lips. “Who bit you to put you in such a bad mood?” He hobbled over to my window and nodded.
I knew Pelón would not leave until he got his point across. “Help yourself to that chair.”
He plopped in it, gritted his dentures, and released a burst, like a machine that depends on compressed air might do when it breaks down. In Spanish he said, “Bones don’t help like they used to.”
“That’s what you get for living so long.”
Pelón creased his eye. “Think you can offer me somesing to drink?”
“I got nothing.”
“Not even a glass of water?”
I almost said no, but I got up, got a cup, went to the bathroom, and half-filled it.
Pelón smiled. “This didn’t come from the toilet, did it?”
“Taste it and find out.”
If that made Pelón nervous, he didn’t let on. He took a pillbox out of his breast pocket, and popped two of them. “Percocet. Don’t know how I could make it without them.”
“Why did you come here?”
Pelón nodded like, Yes, yes, business. “I wanted to talk to you about the police.”
Pelón tapped his cane against the floor. “They dirty.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“No,” he said. “They real dirty. Evil.”
I don’t know if Pelón paused to give me a chance to respond, but I waited for whatever else he had to say.
“They gonna try to turn you, Eddie.”
“Turn me against what?”
“You own people. Antonio. Me.”
“Who says I’m with you jerk-offs?”
“They want what I got.”
“Why would they think they can leverage me against you, Pelón? Who the fuck am I to you?”
“You the fourth man, Eddie. I need you to get the job done, and they know it. They can smell these things. They want everything.”
“Whatta you mean, ‘everything,’ Pelón?”
“Everything. La Esquina Caliente. They buying property around there.”
“Real estate?”
“Sí. That’s what they do.”
“Coltrane and Johnson?”
Pelón nodded. “They buyin’ lots of buildings. Houses.”
I thought about that for a second. I didn’t see what anything like that had to do with Pelón. Or with me, for that matter. “That sounds expensive. But why do I give a fuck?”
“That’s why they keep this war going.”
“What war?”
“Between Antonio and Cucaracha. That’s why they like it. They know while everything hot around there, the values ain’t gonna go too high. They can just buy, buy, buy. Then when they own as much as they can, they clean up the block and the value goes up.”
It sounded far-fetched. “What’s your angle on all of this?”
“I’m the one who came up with the idea.”
Now we skated way out there. Pelón just admitted that he was in business with Coltrane and Johnson. In Spanish he said, “Who you think poisoned Roach’s material?”
“The cops?”
Pelón raised his eyebrows like, Who else?
“That’s crazy.”
“That kid in the park?” he said. “Who you think shot him? Follow the money.”
I thought about the fact that the kid was shot with a .38 on the same night that the narcs had recovered a .38 from Tony’s car. And how later they were real cocky about their ability to link that very weapon to the murder.
I said, “What could they possibly gain from all that?”
“I tole you. They keep the war going and keep the property values down until they can’t buy no more. They tryin’ to control the market. Tony’s operation is on the corner, out in the open. Any enemy can drive by and spray bullets. Roach thinks Tony is his enemy. Tony thinks Roach is the enemy. They both just puppets.”
“You got a wild imagination.”
“I already ran this scam. Over there by Wicker Park. You remember how that was? Now for this piece, I brought in these two, and it was my biggest mistake. I was the bank, their name was on the deed with me, through some dummy companies. I thought it was perfect because they could give protection. That was my mistake. Now, these hijos de putas are X-ing me out.”
“They don’t need me no more.”
I didn’t follow.
Pelón’s face began to sag. “Estoy pela’o.”
“Huh?” It’d been so long since I’d heard it put that way, it took me a second to figure out what he meant. “You’re broke?”
I thought about Pelón’s apartment. His peacock’s fan worth of hundreds in the back of the limo after the racetrack. But I also remembered how the narcs had said he was “bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”
I said, “Tony said you own bodegas.”
“I used to.”
“A bunch of buildings in Wicker Park?”
“Gone. I lost it all.”
“How?”
“Taxes.”
“The IRS?”
Pelón made a face. “Uy. Don’t even mention those animals. They’re the ones who got Capone.”
“Why didn’t you pay?”
Pelón looked at the floor. “Everybody has a weakness.”
“You spent all that money on hookers?”
“Gambling. Those goddamn casino boats. The freaking high rollers’ table.” Pelón shook his head. “I used to think that I was in control.”
Pelón talked about the cycle. First he went for the fun, entertainment, with friends. Then by himself, because he was lonely and bored.
“I bet, and sometimes I win big. Then I bet more. That’s how it sucks you. You put more on the table every time, trying to get back what you lost. You start chasing it. Everything disappears down the little hole. Is like a slow fire.”
“Your condo?”
“We in court right now. The bank is taking it.”
“What about the money Tony brought to your house that night?”
“That was nothing. Just a loan. The Mexican is a shylock.”
“Your winnings at the racetrack? Curly-Q?”
Pelón shook his head. “After I drop you and Antonio off that night, I went straight to a casino boat. I came home with eight hundred dollars.”
“You blew seventy thousand in one night? How’s that possible?”
“When the Devil is determined, he doesn’t sleep.”
“Jesus. What about your limo?”
“I bought that car used. Is not worth much. I had to lay off my driver. Now I’m driving it myself.”
If I were more sophisticated, I might’ve thought that the way in which Pelón had an answer for everything was proof that he thought about it too much and was therefore lying. Somehow, instinctively, I saw past all that reasoning, and I took Pelón at his word.
I said, “So you’re really busted. That’s why you’re so hot to do this job.”
“They got a lotta money on that boat. A lot of it was mine.”
I nodded.
“I know that boat inside out. I know every routine. The schedule, the movements. I ain’t done nothing but think about this. Success is guaranteed.” Pelón put his hand out. “You gonna be the fourth man.”
I stood and shook his hand, the one with the missing fingers. “I wish I could say that everything is gonna work out for you, Pelón, but I don’t think that’s the case. For the last time, count me out.”
Pelón’s weak smile went straight to shit.
I went to the door, opened it, and kept my hand on the knob. “I’m sure I’ll read about your adventures one day.”
Pelón sat in my lone chair, in the middle of my tiny room, disappointed, not believing that he’d just been dismissed.
My posture left room for no doubt.
Pelón hoisted himself out of the chair slowly and hobbled up to me. “Sometimes the young, they don’t know what’s good for them.”
“I’m not that young anymore.”
“You should see yourself through my eyes.” Pelón put his hat on, tilted it, and went out.
I shut the door and went to the window to watch. The limo was across the street. A long time later, Pelón emerged from my building. He hobbled slowly. Sure enough, he let himself in behind the wheel of the long white limo, and chauffeured himself to wherever else he had to go.
After Pelón left, I thought about the things that I knew about him, the money I knew that he made all those years before, when Tony and I were affiliated with him on the burglaries. The money he tried to make. Pelón always had his hand in something.
After the stash house job, where Pelón made like a raging elephant and crushed the wheelchair guy’s head with a tusk, my crew and I avoided doing anything but routine burglaries with him. Mansion jobs where we were assured of nobody being home were a staple. Breaking into warehouses at night was fun too. My crew and I also made money flipping cocaine. We didn’t need to do anything more dangerous than that. Eventually, Pelón came to our loft and spoke to me, Tony, and GQ about another high-risk venture.
This was in the mid-nineties. Pelón was in his late fifties then, but he still filled a shirt, wore a hoop earring, and kept the handlebar mustache dyed black. He said, “You ladies gonna wet you pantaletas when you see the money on this one.” He looked around our circle. “The only thing, since this is more money, is gonna be a little complicated. We gonna disarm one guy.”
Beto snorted a line of coke.
I shook my head. “Complicated, Pelón? You lose your marbles. Remember the stash house?”
Pelón’s skin was dark brown, yet he clearly reddened. “Eduardo, I told you never to speak of this.”
“We don’t need any more bodies, Pelón.”
Pelón looked at Tony and pointed at me. “Oye pero, mira este.” He gestured around the loft. “You doing real good from all the business I send you. Maybe before you preach, you go to church and give the money back, eh?” He looked at Beto. “And you, GQ? You ready to give back the jewelry and the BMW?”
“Fuck that.”
Pelón slapped Beto five. “Fuck that in the fondillo.”
Tony said, “Pelón, don’t be such a hard-on. Eddie’s only sayin’ we can’t be offing people just for kicks, that’s all.”
“That’s right. And we can’t be risking that kind of time, Pelón. It ain’t proper. And the money ain’t worth it.”
Pelón squinted. He leaned back. “Maybe what you say is true.”
Nobody else said anything for about half a minute.
Tony said, “So what’s this new gig, Pelón?”
Pelón sat up straight. “An armored car.”
Tony and Beto looked at each other, then at me.
I turned my nose up. “The fuck you talkin’ about, Pelón?”
“They deliver money to banks and check-cashing places.”
Tony grabbed the rolled hundred from Beto. “They look like tanks. Ain’t those things stuffed with Benjamins, like this one right here?” Tony snorted a line using the hundred-dollar bill. In a higher-pitched voice, he said, “Armored cars are like a fuckin’. . .” Tony searched for the words. “Like a money buffet, ain’t they, Pelón?”
Beto laughed.
Pelón grinned. “Eso sí. Dinero para los pobres.”
I said, “Bullshit, Pelón. Armored cars ain’t nothin’ but a party for anybody with a death wish. The name itself says it all. They got trained marksmen who’ll blast you just for dreaming about it.”
“No,” said Pelón. “They train those guards to let the money go. Insurance pays for it. The company gets more headaches if they hurt somebody, ’cause then they get sued.”
“The fuck you know about any of this?”
“Is true.”
Beto sneezed and wiped his runny nose. “But, Pelón, where you gettin’ your info?”
Pelón combed his handlebar mustache in mock humility. “I got a jevita on the inside. She a cashier at this check-cashing place. She watch them come and go, every week, every month. They come in, holding big bags of money. The best day is the day before the welfare checks. They stock up on cash. This spot we taking is the first stop of the day.” Pelón rubbed his fingers together and worked his accent. “The bags gonna be fluffy and eh-stuffy.”
Tony said, “Your girlfriend’s gonna just give up the scoop?”
Pelón grinned. “I already got that from her. I don’t even need her anymore.”
I crushed a cigarette in the ashtray. “What happens when the cops grill her and she gives you up, Pelón? No offense, but our names’ll be dripping from your lips the minute you see dicks in the showers.”
Pelón slammed his fist on the table. “Freaking watch you tongue when you talk about me, Santiago! I never rat on nobody! You hear me? I eat time in Pontiac when you was busy sucking you momma’s titty and sticking a finger up you own culo.”
The guys held their place. Pelón came down several notches. He took a folded handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his bald head.
“Listen. That girl’s not gonna say a goddamn thing about me. She don’t know me. She never see where I live. She don’t even know my real name. I never let her see me in the same car twice. She nothin’ but a little pendejita with a nose problem. I don’t even fuck her, she just suck my bicho. After the job she ain’t never gonna hear from me again.”
Tony and Beto looked at me.
Tony said, “I don’t know, Eddie. What if this broad’s got good info?”
“What if she don’t?”
Pelón screwed his eyes up. “This is simple. Two guards in one truck. They double-park in front of the store. The passenger gets out, goes to a door on the side. He open it, get the bags, and carries them into the store. That’s it. The driver, he stay inside. He can’t leave the steering wheel. This way nobody drives off with the truck.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “How the fuck’re we gonna deal with their guns, though?”
Pelón waved him off. “When you sneak up behind a man and put a cañón in his ear, tell him you gonna spray the sidewalk with his brains? He let you take the gun, the money, the keys to his car, his girlfriend’s toto, whatever you want. It ain’t his money.”
Beto cut coke on a mirror. “What about the driver?”
“I told you. He no gonna make a move. He’s protected inside the truck and he cannot leave that steering wheel. Company rules.”
I said, “What if he doesn’t follow the rules?”
“That’s why there’s gonna be four of us. Number one, Antonio, he gonna cover the driver with a big gun so he don’t get no ideas. Once he see that barrel pointing at his face? And he already behind bulletproof glass? Even if he Chuck Norris, he not gonna open that door. Me and Eddie, we take the other guard’s gun, put him on the floor; then all three of us take bags and jump in the car. Beto gonna drive again.”
I said, “What happened to your policy of never letting us carry weapons?”
Pelón bit the tip of his cigar and spit. “On this one we need guns for them to take us serious.” He popped the cigar in his mouth and slapped Beto on the shoulder. “Everybody gotta graduate sometime.”
Tony and Beto each had their fingers laced, waiting for my response. Their lust for money had been tweaked by the waves generated by that first stolen kilo we put on the street. We had grown that business over time and were all doing pretty well. We did carry guns sometimes when we made major deals or transported weight from one locale to another, but we had an agreement, a code, I guess, that the guns were just for self-defense. After Tony and I shot those kids in the projects, I never again wanted to be the first one to shoot. I led my crew in that same way. But Pelón’s vision of money bags that we could just sneak up on and take with a simple show of force was impossible to ignore.
I took the rolled hundred from Tony and snorted a line. A hundred bedbugs marched, one by one, up my nasal passages and down my throat, into my ear canal, along the grooves inside my brain.
I looked up at the wooden beams that held up the loft’s ceiling and fixated on a cobweb that I had not noticed before. “If we’re gonna do this, Pelón, you gotta let me take the lead.” I looked around the circle. “Beto, you’re gonna be inside this time, on the set, with me and Tony. Pelón, you drive.”
Pelón’s handlebar mustache drooped. “¿Qué-qué?”
“That’s it,” I said. “No arguments. I don’t want you anywhere near the action, Pelón. I don’t want you near people. You are not to handle any weapons, especially not a gun.”
“Oye, ¿pero quién carajo dijo que tú eres el que manda?”
“That’s the bottom line, Pelón. It ain’t a negotiation. We do this how I say, or not at all.”
Pelón looked at Tony, then at Beto.
Beto said, “We’re all in it together, Pelón. What does it matter who does what? Whyn’t you hear Eddie out at least?”
Pelón looked at Tony, who just shrugged. He looked at me. “Fine. Tell me your great ideas, then, jefe.”
I got up, grabbed paper and pen, asked Pelón a few factual questions, and sketched out the first draft of the plan.
I cased the check-cashing place on the days Pelón said. It was a few doors from an intersection. There was a diner on the corner and I sat there and ate a pepper-and-egg sandwich and watched the armored car as it came and went, per the schedule that the girl had given Pelón. I did this several times.
The uniformed guards’ routine was the same each time. As Pelón said, the driver, always the same, a young black man, double-parked, threw on the hazards, and waited. The passenger guard, always the same, a large white woman, dismounted, opened a side door, unloaded a dolly, loaded the dolly with a couple small boxes of coins, then stacked packed bags of paper money on top. She would angle the dolly and walk the money into the check-cashing place, then walk out with the dolly empty. In and out, the whole thing never took more than three or four minutes.
The last time I cased the routine, I brought Tony along.
I said, “See that? We let the lady guard unload the cash. While her hands are occupied tipping back the dolly, you sneak up behind her, Tone, let her feel the barrel in her temple to freeze her. I’ll come from the front of her, and once I see you connect with her, I whip out my piece to emphasize the point. I’ll remove her gun from the holster and toss it. We’ll have GQ cover the driver from the front, demand that he keep his hands visible, let the driver see the gun so he knows jumping out of the truck is pointless. Meantime, you put the lady guard facedown on the pavement. I’ll jump into the truck with my piece trained on the driver—”
Tony said, “Won’t the driver start shooting once you try to climb inside?”
“We won’t give him a chance. GQ’ll keep his eyes on him from outside, and the driver’ll have his hands up, he’ll be totally focused on G. I’ll surprise the driver by hopping in through the side door with my gun out—remember, Tony, that side door’s behind him. He won’t have time to try anything.”
“You’re that confident?”
“In myself right now? Yeah. Anyway, I disarm the driver, then make him toss every bag down out of that truck. Pelón pulls up the van, Beto starts loading. Once the armored truck is empty, we get the woman up in there. I cover both guards, you help Beto finish loading, and when we’re done, we jump in the van and drive off to the warehouse for the drop. Simple, right?”
Tony ping-ponged his head like, Maybe. Maybe not. “We gotta be quick, calm, cool, and collected.”
I sipped my coffee. “Aren’t we always?”
Tony said, “What if some cop drives by?”
“I already thought of that. When the operation starts, we can have Pelón park across the street there. From that position, because of that empty lot, he can watch the whole thing go down. He can monitor all directions, especially north/south, since we basically got east/west covered. If he sees blue lights on a roof, he signals with the car horn. We’ll hustle inside the truck until they ride by. In that scenario, same thing, if I haven’t been in the truck yet and disarmed the driver, we do it then. Beto keeps an eye on him, I jump in, you follow with the lady guard. Beto goes in last.”
Tony mopped syrup with a big piece of French toast. “What about if the cops don’t come until Pelón moves to the loading position? He won’t be in the same position, so he won’t have the same view. He won’t see cops coming either north or south until it’s too late.”
“Well, he’s not going to move those—what is that, you figure—thirty feet? He’s not gonna move those thirty feet from that first position unless he sees that the coast is clear, right? Once he pulls up next to us, it’s gonna be bam, bam, bam, ten seconds, fifteen seconds, the bags are tossed in the van and we’re ridin’. Like you said, we just have to be quick and collected.”
Tony mopped more syrup. “Sounds reasonable.”
I looked sideways at Tony. “I have one concern.”
“Shoot.”
“Beto. You really think he can handle this kind of drama? This ain’t pedal-to-the-metal shit. This is looking a man in the eye, communicating, ‘I’ll blast you,’ even if you don’t mean it.”
“GQ’ll be a’wight.”
“And you, Tone?”
Tony shoved in a whole wedge, with syrup and butter dripping down his chin. He chewed and spoke with his mouth full. “You know me, brother. Just take me to where the action is.”
We set up exactly as imagined. It was a crude plan, but we weren’t knocking over Fort Knox. We had stolen a car two days prior, changed the plate, and parked it strategically on the same side of the street as the check-cashing place, two spaces behind where the truck usually made its stop. Fifteen minutes before the truck was scheduled to arrive, GQ popped the hood, and he and I stuck our heads under it and pretended to work on the engine. Tony was on a pay phone next to the door of the check-cashing place, shielding his face with the phone’s box and pretending to have a conversation. Pelón sat in a stolen van, a fast one, with forged plates and the engine running at the intersection, facing south as a lookout.
The armored car came down the street headed east, right on schedule. As always, it double-parked right in front of the check-cashing joint. GQ and I watched the hazards come on, our faces shielded by the raised hood. The lady guard stepped down, went to the side door, opened it, took down the dolly, and began to stack. She had a red ponytail hanging out of the back of her uniform baseball cap.
GQ and I checked for rolling cops and bystanders, saw nothing, and pulled the nylons down over our heads. Tony hung up the phone, pulled his nylon down over his face, and made his move. Beto and I stepped quickly toward the truck. There was a second where the lady guard was oblivious to us descending upon her, and that was all that we needed.
Tony was behind her in a flash. He put a .44 Magnum to her temple and she froze. Beto jumped in front of the armored car, covered the driver, and shouted, “Freeze! Keep your hands where I can see them!” I pointed my Glock between the lady guard’s eyes and said, “Don’t move, sweetheart.”
The woman gulped and let me remove her revolver from its holster and throw it under a parked car.
“I have three kids,” she said.
“So kiss the earth then, lady, and keep your mouth shut.”
She hesitated. Not like defiance. More like she was paralyzed by fear. Her face contorted like she was about to cry.
I said, “C’mon, lady,” and without another word to her, Tony smacked the woman over the head with the gun butt, hard enough that her eyes rolled up and she just dropped to the ground, collapsing into the dolly, keeling the thing over. The money bags thudded to the pavement next to her.
“Great.”
Right then, Pelón honked the horn in the signal that meant cops in his rearview.
“Fuck, fuck!” I poked the woman. “Get up, lady! Inside!”
She was woozy from Tony’s hammer shot. Pelón rehonked the signal.
GQ was getting antsy in front of the vehicle. “C’mon, fellas, let’s move!”
I said, “Motherfucker! Tony! Let’s toss these bags inside and grab her under the armpits!”
We quickly tossed the money bags into the open door of the truck, but had to tuck our guns and each use both hands to lift the heavy woman from the asphalt and shovel her through the door. We got her up high enough that she spilled herself inside.
Pelón honked again, real quick, like the cops must be right up his ass. I grabbed my gun again and was about to hop up through the door and cover and disarm the driver, like we planned, but GQ was flaky, after all. He couldn’t wait any longer, so instead of keeping the driver in his sights until I had him, like we had gone over a hundred times, GQ spun around and jumped ahead of me to be the first inside the truck. I was right behind GQ, reaching, thinking I would ream him about it later, when I heard him say, “Oh shit!” followed by a loud gunshot inside the truck that made me spring back.
GQ shouted, “¡Diablo!”
A third armed guard had been sitting inside the truck. None of us knew he was in there. None of us had ever seen him, so none of us were prepared.
GQ jumped right off that truck without having been hit by that first shot, and it turns out that GQ’s gift for getaway driving was actually just a knack for getting away. He moved his feet so fast, it was like a scene out of Benny Hill, or a Charlie Chaplin flick, only faster. GQ was around the truck and out of my sight in the instant between my realizing that a shot had been fired and Tony shouting, “Let’s bail!”
Tony and I both bolted in the direction where Pelón idled. Pelón burned rubber toward us, but seemed not to see us the way he revved the van’s engine. I was just about to scream, “¡Para!” for Pelón to stop, when another shot spiderwebbed the van’s windshield before I even heard it pop. I glanced back and saw the guard, a white man who’d been hiding inside, now crouched in front of the armored car in a shooting stance aiming at the getaway van. I looked again at the van as it flew past and saw the driver’s-side window explode as Pelón had his right hand up to shield his face and a bullet lopped off his fingers with a spurt of blood. The guard shot at the van several more times as it flew, but Pelón just kept going.
Tony and I turned to run again, but the third guard’s next shot pinged on the sidewalk next to us and we dove behind a parked car. We didn’t know whether he had any bullets left. There was a moment’s silence, but then we heard several more shots, this time from an automatic, and heard a scream that sent an electric shock down my own spine. It sounded like you might imagine a crazed chimpanzee or baboon’s wail might sound, only wilder.
Tony and I had to look. We peered over the hood and saw Beto standing with the automatic in his hand, watching the white guard writhe on the pavement, hold himself, and howl from his wounds. I noticed then that the armored truck driver had indeed remained behind the wheel as Pelón had said, and figured he must now be on a radio calling backup, the police, whoever.
I shouted to Beto, “Run!” and he snapped out of it and took off down a gangway. Tony and I flipped around the corner, jackrabbited between parked cars, cut down an alley, jumped over a wooden fence, and we were gone.
Back at the loft Tony and I walked in circles, worried that we had been made, snorted gallons of coke, and considered driving to Mexico.
The news of the foiled robbery was all over TV. Me, Tony, and Beto were reported as unidentified white or Hispanic males, twenty-five to thirty, wearing nylons over our heads. Pelón, the getaway driver, was identified as a black or Hispanic male, no nylon over his head, but they got his age wrong, saying he was thirty-five to forty-five, when Pelón was already well past fifty. They showed a police sketch that didn’t look that much like Pelón, got his mustache all wrong, but otherwise you could sort of see where they got it from. The getaway van was reported to be found blocks away, full of holes, with the bloody dashboard confirming that the driver had been shot.
The female guard that Tony had smashed over the head suffered a concussion. The black driver of the armored truck was unharmed. The white guard who maimed Pelón, the one who had surprised us by being inside the truck with a loaded gun, had died of his wounds.
“Sadly,” said the reporter, “a company spokeswoman told us the third guard is not usually assigned to that route. Since welfare checks arrive tomorrow, check cashers in this part of town stock cash a day early. Company policy requires a third armed guard inside the vehicle on those days for extra protection.”
I shut the TV off and looked at Tony. “Nice intelligence Pelón gathered, huh?”
Tony said, “We never cased the truck on a day before welfare checks hit?”
We hadn’t. That had been my mistake. I said, “Pelón got shot in the hand, I saw it. If he goes to the hospital for that, Tone, they’ll arrest him on the spot. We’re fucked.”
Tony said, “Maybe he bled to death.”
“Not from that wound. Motherfucker never lost control of the van as he kept going either.”
Tony said, “They got the FBI on this?”
“They’re sayin’ it’s a federal crime.”
“You think it’s true what that lawyer on the news said?”
“What?”
“How that one guard dying makes this a death penalty case?”
I bit my nail and didn’t answer.
We watched the news for days, ordered in, had some favorite girls come over, and never really strayed from the loft. Tony had a couple pit bulls then and walked them on the roof of our building just to avoid going outside. The FBI’s lack of progress on the attempted heist and murder was reported less and less, later and later in the newscast. Eventually, it fell off the radar completely.
Pelón was AWOL. So was Beto. Tony and I stayed close to the apartment, but little by little, we began to go out on short errands. Picking up toiletries. Renting videos once we got sick of all the favorites in our collection.
Over a few days we went back to normal. Beto never popped up and we didn’t look for him. We started tending our cocaine business again, but barely, only with well-known customers, and extra paranoid.
When Tony finally tried calling Pelón from a pay phone, just to see what the fuck ever happened to him, Pelón’s phone was disconnected. Eventually, we heard a rumor that he was hiding out somewhere in the hills of Puerto Rico. Beto, nobody knew about; he had become a ghost.
Tony and I wanted to believe that we had cheated the system once again and we began to tell ourselves, in our own subliminal ways, I think, that the matter of the attempted armored-car heist was resolved in our favor. We were golden. It wasn’t us who pulled the trigger. Things would soon be swinging again. We stopped worrying about the feds.
Tony’s pit bulls were safely walked and locked back upstairs in the loft one morning when a tactical unit of the Chicago Police Department took me and Tony down in a snap, just as we were about to climb into Tony’s racing green Jaguar and drive to Chinatown for some dim sum. In seconds flat detectives had us facedown on the pavement, our hands cuffed behind our backs. They called us scumbags and read us our rights.
The first thing I figured was that either Pelón or Beto or both had been in custody all along and one or the other had worked out a deal to finger us. But it’s a good thing that Tony and I had the habit of not confessing too easily, since it turned out that the armored-car job wasn’t anywhere near the reason that the cops had pinched us that morning.
It turned out that Tony and I were ratted out by J, the pig-nosed Mexican from our old hood who called other Mexicans “wetbacks,” the one who had driven that night all those years before, when Tony and I were teenagers and shot those black kids in front of the projects. J had gone on to commit many other crimes during his career, but when he got pinched for two bodies related to his chop shop, he turned canary and rolled over on every accomplice he had ever witnessed commit a serious crime, which among many included me and Tony.
There is no statute of limitations for murder. Nearly a decade and a half after Tony and I tried cocaine and committed reckless homicides, our crimes had returned to claim their toll.
Tony and I moved from the front of our loft, to the back of a squad car, to the Thirteenth Precinct holding pen, to Cook County Jail, to Stateville Correctional Center, in a slow, but certain, migration. Tony and I each copped a plea and drew a decade. We each understood that we could have bought ourselves time by ratting others, especially Pelón and Beto, who had just been hot news with the armored-car fiasco. But each of us agreed that this was not our way, and I think now that in some way each of us had always expected that awful night to return.
We did our time in maximum security. Tony did his eight and out, due to perceived good behavior. Me? I did not see another moment of freedom for a decade. Not until the day that Tony came to Stateville to collect me and ended up telling me about Pelón and his intention of trying one more ridiculous stunt, the casino job.