“Stupid road!” Tito groused, as he wove his way through the rutted road to Willie’s mobile home. Slender, sickly palm trees that bordered the dirt road, swayed gently in the evening breeze. Tito was trying desperately to keep the dust from getting on Pedro’s truck. Pedro had just washed his truck the day before and he told Tito to be careful not to get it dirty. Tito was elated when the generous Pedro offered to let him use the truck this weekend. He and Willie’s plan to take out Dr. Joe was somewhat dependent on Tito having the use of Pedro’s truck.
With the night of the planned crime so close, Tito’s anxiety level was rising by the minute. He was very anxious to meet with Willie and go over the final plans. He hoped that once he understood exactly what he had to do, he would feel better. He glanced ahead and saw Willie’s green Honda parked at the rear of the short driveway that bordered Willie’s mobile home. Upset that Willie had not pulled up and left room for Tito to park, he yanked to the left and pulled so close to Willie’s mobile that he almost hit it. Relieved that he hadn’t damaged Pedro’s truck, he slowly opened the driver’s side door and carefully slid out of the truck, being careful not to bump the trailer hitch on the front of Willie’s home. He walked briskly to the side entrance and started banging angrily on the rickety door.
“Coming, coming, don’t knock the door down!” Willie shouted from inside. The door swung open a few seconds later.
Eyes narrowed, Tito glared at Willie, “Why did you park at the end of the drive dumb ass! There’s no room for me.”
His face covered with stubble, a somewhat contrite Willie gazed at Tito through heavily bloodshot eyes. “Sorry man, I didn’t think about it. I was kind of out of it last night, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled nervously. “ Come on in.”
Tito pushed through the door forcing a wide-eyed Willie to back away. He was greeted by a pungent odor upon entering the badly cluttered mobile home. It smelled like a mixture of pizza, whiskey, body odor and stale cocaine. “It smells like a shit can in here and you look like hell. I thought we were going out tonight.” An angry Tito wondered how he ever got mixed up with a loser like Willie.
“Hey, no problem man. I can be ready in ten minutes.” Willie quickly stepped over and yanked open the door on the faded white metal cabinet and snatched a bottle of Febreze off the shelf and began spraying it all around the kitchen and nearby living room area. “There, that should help.”
“You’re pathetic, you know that?” Tito groused.
“Hey man, I’m single. I ain’t got no chick around to tidy things up for me.” Willie grinned at Tito. “Have a seat.” Willie pointed at the small Formica-top table pushed up against the wall in the kitchen just below a window. He quickly slid a half-eaten Pop Tart off the table and threw it in the sink.
Tito sniffed the air, “You lucky, it smells a little better now. Otherwise, I would leave this shit hole.” Tito stepped over and sat on the edge of one of the chairs.
“Coffee?” Willie asked as he wiped the crumbs off the table with a paper towel.
“No, let’s talk. I don’t want to stay in this pig sty any longer than I have to.” Tito watched as Willie tossed the paper towel in an overflowing waste basket in the corner of the room, reheated a cold cup of coffee in the microwave and took a seat across from him. With strands of black hair dangling over his eyes, Willie pulled a wrinkled hanky out of his jeans pocket and blew his nose making a loud snorting sound. He wiped his nose clean and stuffed the moist hanky back in his pocket. “Now, where were we?”
Incensed at the grossness of his friend and the filthy surroundings, Tito leaned forward, grabbed Willie by the front of his dirty t-shirt and yanked him violently toward him. “You listen to me, stinking gringo. I’m putting my ass on the line and we have to get this thing right. You look like hell! You look like you’ve been snorting coke for two days! You better have a good plan or I kick the shit out of you and go home right now, you understand?”
“Yea, yea, I understand.”
Tito loosened his grip and pushed Willie away.
Willie took a sip of his coffee and shrunk back against the folding chair, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the angry Tito. ‘You ready for the plan?”
“No, I want to play fucking bocce ball.”
Keeping a wary eye on the volatile Tito, Willie quietly spoke, “I believe we both agree that you will come into The Villages from the south end and take the south entrance to Bailey Trail to get to Dr. Stone’s house. I think we both agree that around midnight would be a good time.”
“Yes, we went over all of that. I want to know what do I do when I get to the house. I have never been in his house and I need to know what to do.”
Willie leaned to his left and opened a drawer next to the kitchen sink in the narrow mobile home. He lifted out a piece of paper and set it on the table facing Tito. “I drew this diagram of the inside of Dr. Stone’s house for you so you can see exactly where to go tomorrow night.”
A surprised Tito looked at Willie, “You drew this?”
“Yea, I’m not stoned all the time.” Willie smiled cautiously.
“Go ahead.”
“Did you get Pedro’s truck for tomorrow night?”
“Yes. It’s in front of your house, dumb ass.”
“Good. Like we agreed, you will drive the truck into Dr. Stone’s driveway and park in the third lane in front of the golf cart garage. We are in luck, because Pedro’s truck looks very much like Dr. Stone’s truck and Dr. Stone sometimes leaves his truck out at night, so if a neighbor happens to wake up and see a truck parked in the drive late at night, it will not cause them any concern, it’s normal. If he happens to leave it out Saturday, I will pull it in the garage before I leave. He leaves the keys on a hook in the garage and I often move vehicles around for him.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“After getting out of the truck, you will walk around the house to this window.” Willie poked his dirty finger at the window about thirty feet from the garage door. “Getting inside quickly is important. Dr. Stone’s neighbors will be in bed, but like I just said, one of them might wake up and possibly look over at Dr. Stone’s house. It will be a dark, moonless night, but they still might be able to…”
Tito interrupted, “You checked to see if there is a moon tomorrow night?” Tito was starting to appreciate the planning that his scruffy friend had put into this project.
“Yes, of course. I wanted to know how visible Dr. Stone’s house will be to the neighbors if one of them happens to wake up and look that way. There will be no moon for tomorrow night, so if you get quietly out of the truck and go around the side of the house next to the golf cart garage, it will be very difficult for anyone to see you. The window you will be crawling into is in his den, which is right across from his bedroom.”
“Does he have one of those burglar alarm things?”
Willie grinned, “No, he’s too trusting. He says there is no crime in The Villages, so why should he have a security system?”
Tito’s brow lifted, “Good.”
“I went in the den and unlocked the window before I left the house this morning. He runs the air all of the time, so he never messes with any of his windows. He will have no idea that it is unlocked. I moved it up and down a couple of times to be sure it wasn’t hard to open or anything. The window slides up very easily, so you will have no problem opening it. Open it slowly, if you open it quickly it squeaks a little. I sprayed WD-40 on it, but just be careful.”
A surprised Tito, studied the diagram.
“I picked this window because there is nothing under it that you could stumble on when you get inside the house. Also, Dr. Stone has plugged a little nightlight in the outlet of the den so he can see if he can’t sleep at night and decides to do some work in his office. You will be able to see well enough to get across the room and into Dr. Stone’s bedroom. I would imagine that when you enter the den you will be able to hear him snoring. My mom says he snores very loudly. If you don’t hear him snoring, you may want to wait awhile until he falls back to sleep just to be on the safe side.”
Tito nodded and flashed a quick smile. “You spend a lot of time on this; maybe you not so stupid.”
“I have man, we can’t be too careful. Also, you should close the window behind you when you first go in. The silencer on the .38 will muffle most of the sound, but it will still make some sound, so you better close the window before you shoot the gun.”
The ‘shoot the gun’ comment sent a chill up Tito’s spine. It had all sounded like a game of chess or something until Willie mentioned shooting the gun. The seriousness of the situation shot through him like a bolt of electricity.
“You okay?” Willie asked.
The trace of concern that had been on Tito’s face soon disappeared, replaced by a cold, empty look--the hateful Tito was back. “Yes, I’m ready to go. I’ll plug him in the head a couple times to be sure he’s dead.”
Willie glared at the heartless Tito, his eyes glossed over.
“What’s the matter with you? Tito demanded.
“It just hard for me to hear you talk like that about the old guy. He’s been good to me. I don’t like hearing the gory details; just be sure you get the job done.” Willie shifted nervously in his chair. “We don’t want any screw-ups.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Cry Baby, I will be sure the old gringo never sees the light of day again.” A cocky smile spread across the face of the heartless Tito.
Willie studied Tito’s face in mock disbelief for a couple of seconds and then spoke, restraining his obvious irritation at his cohort’s comments. “The next part is very important. You have to make it look like a botched robbery attempt. That will take the suspicion off people Dr. Stone knows, like you and me. Be sure you wear these.” Willie reached in the drawer again and pulled out a pair of latex gloves and tossed them in front of Tito. “Wear these and you will leave absolutely no finger prints.”
Tito nodded. “You want me to dump out all of the drawers and mess up the house and stuff? So it look like a robbery?”
“Yes, but don’t over do it. Just mess up a few drawers where a robber might think there are valuables, such as the desk in the den and his chest of drawers. Dr. Joe is very trusting, so he leaves his large jewelry box setting on top of his chest. It has a lot of old gold watches and rings and other stuff in that jewelry box. Be sure and take a bag of some kind with you and empty the contents of that box into the bag. That is the kind of thing a robber would do. The police are smart enough to know that a robber will not empty every single drawer in the house. A robber will be in a hurry and will just go through the areas where he thinks there will be valuables, so I think you should mess up the drawers in the chest and empty the jewelry box and go through a few drawers in the built-in cabinets in the den and then get the hell out of there. A good cat burglar won’t linger in the house any longer than necessary, especially if the homeowner wakes up and he has to kill him. He’ll want out of there in a hurry to improve his chances of not getting caught.”
Tito’s brow narrowed, “Cat burglar? Are you making fun of me?”
Willie grinned, “No, no. A cat burglar is a burglar that comes into someone’s house when they are home. That’s what a cat burglar is.”
Tito shook his head dismissively, “Who gets the money from the jewelry box? It sounds like a lot.” He glowered at Willie.
“You’re right, it will be a lot. I’ve kind of estimated that the jewelry in that box is worth about $20,000, but we don’t want to sell it right away. It might give us away. We should hold it for a least a year and then sell a few pieces at a time to avoid getting the cops on our ass.”
Tito frowned, “Okay, I will wait, but tell me right now how much do I get?”
“How about we split it 50-50?”
“I take all of the chances and we split 50-50? No way, I want six cents on the dollar.”
Willie exhaled slowly, “Okay, but we have to wait at least a year.”
“Okay.”
Willie took a sip of coffee and studied his diagram of the house for a moment and then turned his attention back on Tito. “After a little messing up of the living room cabinets for effect, you will leave the house through the same window, being certain to close it all the way and then wrap a handkerchief or something around your hand and break the window pane nearest to the latch on the window. That will make it look like a pure break-in with no inside help.”
Tito’s dark eyes scanned Willie’s face. “You know a lot about break-ins; it looks like you’ve done them yourself.”
Willie grinned, “You’re right and I’ve never been caught and we don’t want you to get caught either. Just do everything I told you and we should be alright. Pay attention to the little things, and you’ll be driving that bad ass low-rider before you know it.
Tito smiled broadly, all traces of angst were gone. “The chicks will love me when I’m cruising around in my Chevy!”
“After tomorrow our lives will change forever,” Willie flashed a grin.
The two men shared a half-hearted high-five. “You got a good plan and I know what to do. I gotta go now. I call one time if I have any questions.” Tito said matter-of-factly. He quickly stood, slipped around Willie and opened the front door. Without saying a word or making any eye contact with Willie, he hurried to the truck, started up and pulled away.
“I guess we’re not going clubbin’ tonight,” Willie mumbled under his breath.