Caught Stealing - Charlie Huston [56]
Counting.
—First, he pins the card game heist and all their other jobs on these niggers up in the Bronx. Those chumps get the Amadou Diallo treatment, so they don’t dispute any claims made against them. Next, he starts picking gigs for them, using his scoop from being on the force and all. He starts local, then pretty soon he’s got Ed, Paris and Lum working all over the tristate, right. Mmmm. I have my hand in, too, like, fence this or get that tool or ditch a car or whatever, nothing too big. Every now and then, Roman comes up with something superheavy and for those he sends in, like, his right-hand man. Bolo. Bolo was a longshoreman. Roman busted him for jacking cargo and then put him to work for the cause. Made Bolo his enforcer on the street. Mmmm. Tell you what. Seeing Ed, Paris, Lum and Bolo go into a room and work it over? That was, like, something else. Pure fear. Those boys all together just radiated fucking fear. People just gave them whatever the fuck and if they, like, got belligerent or some shit, then the hammer came down and that was that. Like, woe betide the motherfucker.
I look at what’s left uncounted in the bag. I’m in the home stretch.
—Mmmm. So, so, this goes for years, right. They work a handful of jobs a year, then lie low, then go at it again. All is well. Roman spots a potential job, does the research, sends in his team, they knock it down, he chills any possible heat and all the rest is profit. Roman, he still suffers from that gambling bug. So he’s, like, investing his share in Atlantic City stocks and bonds, if ya get me. Bolo and Lum, they’re all about good times, so they just party down. Ed and Paris, they live like fucking monks; I mean, the duds and the wheels aside, these are very simple men. They go in for booze and whores, but no drugs, no gold, no bling, no fucking Lexus, no palace. Just that Caddie and the best guns money can buy. They stockpile their cash, like, not in a bank, but under a damn mattress or some shit. Mmmm.
I finish counting, lean against the wall next to Russ, stare at the money and chew more gum while he finishes the story.
—At some point, there’s a brouhaha. The boys are doing a chip heist. Silicon chips. The markup on that shit is, like, unreal. That tech shit, it’s, like, changed the whole economy. Anyway, turns out some other crew is already there making the same fucking heist. Gunfight, man. All hell and then some. Cops roll up on the scene and Ed, Paris, Bolo and Lum end up shooting their way out and this time they kack three officers. Mmmm. Well, that’s the kind of mess even Roman can’t clean up, so it’s time for the gang to, like, disband. Roman keeps Bolo stashed in Jersey so he can still use him if he needs to, but he, like, cuts Lum and the boys loose. Fine with Ed and Paris. They, like, pack their bags and head south again. Mmmm. They, like, stay mellow for a year, but then they get an idea and they give me a ring. See, Ed and Paris, they, like, want to retire, but they don’t figure they have quite enough put away, so they want to do a series of jobs, cash in their chips and head down to Mexico or someplace.
Mexico. I think about Mexican beer with a squeeze of lime.
—Mmmm. Mmmm. Ed, now Ed, he’s been, like, learning from Roman, so he’s got this plan. He wants to loop through the South and back up through the Midwest doing bank jobs. No major branches, he just wants to hit a whole shitload of little, like, farmers’ and merchants’ banks in all those little towns. They hook back up with Lum so he can be their wheelman and take care of any alarm action and technical issues. What they want from me is help with the cash. Mmmm. Bank cash is all dirty cash, so it has to be, like, cleaned off. They know I can’t really do that on my own, so that’s when they call Roman back in. Mmmm. Roman has all the connections, including, get this. Mmmm. Including the Russian Mafia,