“We’ll wait’ll he leaves,” Frank said. He finished his beer. When he took a cigarette out Stick did, too, and got a light from him.
Dolly Parton was singing on the jukebox. Stick had been in love with Dolly when he used to watch the “Porter Waggoner Show” and paused to listen before he said, “You want to do it, huh?”
Frank looked at him. “What’s the matter, you nervous?”
“No more than usual. You bring a bag?”
“Shit, I forgot,” Frank said. “They probably got something behind the bar. Wrap it in the broad’s apron or something.”
“She doesn’t have an apron on.”
“We’ll put it in something, okay?”
“I don’t know,” Stick said. “I don’t feel we’re a hundred percent this time. You know what I mean?”
“When’re we ever a hundred percent sure?”
“I don’t mean sure. I mean ready, wanting to do it. We come in, right away we hang back.”
Frank was looking past him. “Here he comes.”
Stick saw the change in Frank’s expression and heard him say, “Jesus Christ,” softly, with a sound of awe. He heard that and heard Loretta Lynn now saying they didn’t make men like her daddy anymore, as he turned and saw the guy in the yellow-satin jacket and the door of the men’s room behind him, the guy raising a pump-action shotgun level with his waist.
“Don’t nobody move! This is a holdup!”
The guy shouted it, drowning out Loretta Lynn. “I’ll shoot the first one moves!”
When he swung the shotgun at their table, Frank and Stick were looking right at him about fifteen feet away. “You two—don’t make a move. Don’t anybody. I’m warning you. I’ll shoot to kill.”
“Wants everybody to know he means business,” Frank said.
They watched him move hesitantly toward the bar, telling people who were looking over their shoulders at him to turn the fuck around. Loretta Lynn was finished and it was quiet in the place now as he got around behind the bar and moved down to where the woman bartender was standing at the cash register.
“How come he doesn’t make ’em lay on the floor?” Stick said. “You believe it?”
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Frank said. “Dumb poolhall cowboy. Tells everybody on his jacket where he’s from.”
“That shotgun’d be a pain in the ass,” Stick said, “wouldn’t it? You imagine carrying a shotgun around?”
“Keep your hands on the bar!” the guy shouted at somebody.
“He’s pretty nervous,” Frank said. “Maybe it’s his first time.”
“He’s more nervous than I am. Look at him wave that scattergun,” Stick said. “Doesn’t know where to point it.”
“What he ought to do,” Frank said, “is put it on the waitress. Tell ’em he’ll blow her off if anybody moves, or if the broad doesn’t give him the money.”
“Yeah, get ’em laying down first, they don’t see where he’s at.” Stick shook his head. “Dumb cowboy, I wouldn’t be surprised he had a horse outside.”
“Runs out in the street waving his shotgun,” Frank said. “Or you suppose he puts it back in the case first?”
“He goes in the toilet,” Stick said, “and comes out again pretending he’s got pool cues in it. Now he’s getting the change off the bar. What’d she put the money in? The broad.”
“Looked like her purse.”
“Runs out with a shotgun and a purse,” Stick said. “That’d be a sight, wouldn’t it? How much you think he got?”
Frank was silent for a moment, watching the guy as he moved carefully toward the end of the bar.
“He isn’t out of here yet.”
Stick looked at Frank, then back to the guy, who was coming around the bar and now backing toward the door.
“It’s an idea, isn’t it?” Stick said.
“If we see the chance.”
“I think when he goes to open the door,” Stick said.
The guy seemed more nervous than before. He glanced over at their table but was concentrating on the people at the bar. “Don’t nobody move,” he said. “I go out, I’m liable to come back in to make sure. Anybody I see moved gets a load of twelve-gauge, and I mean it.”
“He talks too much,” Stick said.
The guy turned to the door, raising the shotgun barrel straight up in front of him, and started to push it open.
“Drop it,” Frank said.
The guy hesitated, his back to them and the shotgun upright against the door. He had a moment, but when he finally turned, it was too late. Both Frank and Stick, standing away from the table, ten feet apart, had their revolvers on him, aimed at arm’s length.
“Come on,” Frank said, “put it down.”
When the shotgun was on the floor, Stick walked over to the guy and took the purse from him.
He said, “Much obliged, partner. We appreciate it.”
The story in the Detroit News the next day described how for six hours the would-be holdup man and the bar patrons were locked up together in a storeroom where all the liquor and bar supplies were kept. When they were found the next morning, the newspaper account stated, the would-be holdup man appeared to have suffered a severe beating, while the bar patrons were in a festive state of intoxication.
“Can you see it?” Stick said. “The Port Huron Bullet comes out, blood all over him, can’t open his eyes. Hasn’t got any idea what happened to him. Keeps asking himself, over and over, ‘What went wrong?’ ”
“A customer comes out,” Frank said, “absolutely fried. Cop says to him, ‘Sir, you want to tell us how much you had stolen? Any valuables?’ The guy, the customer, looks at him with these bleary eyes and says, ‘Who the fuck cares?’ ”
They got a kick out of the Hazel Park bar robbery, plus a little better than eleven hundred in cash.
They decided they didn’t like bars, though: too many people and too unpredictable with booze involved. So they crossed off bars along with gas stations and would concentrate on other types of establishments.
9
THREE OF THE CAREER LADIES were at the pool when Frank and Stick came down: two of them lying face up, eyes closed—Mary Kay, the skinny nurse with the wide hips, and Jackie, the cocktail lounge kitty—and one on her stomach, face hidden in an outstretched arm. Frank knew by the short, dark hair and deep tan it was Karen, the schoolteacher. Karen had her bra strap unfastened, out of the way, and there was no line. Her brown skin glistened with oil, smooth and bare all the way down to where the little bikini bottom almost covered her can.
Stick, with his towel and a rolled-up magazine, eased into the first empty lounge he came to, near the edge of the grass.
Frank made a production out of it. He stood with his gold beach towel over one shoulder, looked at his watch, checked the angle of the sun, then dragged a lounge chair around—with the sound of aluminum scraping on cement—to catch the direct rays.
Without opening her eyes Jackie said, “Frank’s here.”
“I’m sorry, honey, the chair wake you up?” He brought a tray table over for his towel, his watch, and for the drinks he’d have later on.
“You’re supposed to lift it,” Jackie said. “It leaves marks.”
“Yeah, I always forget.”
Karen’s face rose from her arm.
“Frank, while you’re up, you want to do my back?”
“I’ll force myself,” Frank said.
Stick had his magazine, the latest issue of Oui, folded open. He had looked at the pictures already, the boob and crotch shots. Now he was reading about Alex Karras and what Alex thought about Howard Cosell and doing NFL color on TV. Looking over the top of the magazine, he watched Frank sit down on the edge of Karen’s lounge.
The nurse, Mary Kay, was watching them, too. Mary Kay usually didn’t say much. She listened; sometimes she laughed.
Stick wondered what she thought of them. Probably nothing. She probably saw so many weird things up in that nut ward nothing down here would shock he
r.
“Cut it out,” Karen said.
“What am I doing?”
Stick looked over there again. As Frank’s hands caressed her back, one of them slid into the space between her arm and body.
“Fra-ank!”
“What’s the matter? I’m not doing anything.”
“That’s enough.”
“Little more right . . . there.”
“Frank—”
As he stood up and moved about idly, wiping his hands on his chest and stomach, Stick said, “Sure is full of the devil, isn’t he?”
Frank looked up at the sun, raising his arms and stretching.
“Oh, man. Perfect day, isn’t it? Sun, the sky’s clear, little breeze so it’s not too hot . . . Jackie, you got a perfect navel, you know that? Anybody ever tell you?”
She pressed her chin to her chest to look down at it.
“What’s so different about it?”
“It’s round,” Frank said, “like a bullet hole. Pow, right in the navel.”
“I don’t know, Frank,” Jackie said, “sometimes I wonder about you.”
“What do you wonder?”
“If you’re all there.”
“I’m all here. Hey, look at me. Jackie, look. You see anything missing?”
“The exhibitionist,” Karen said. “You ever see him go out with his raincoat on? Sunny day, he’s wearing a raincoat. We heard about guys like that, Frank. Our moms told us a long time ago.”
Frank looked over at Stick, and Stick said mildly. “He’s insecure is all. Wears drawers under his pajamas, and socks to bed.”
“See, I’m right,” Jackie said. “He’s a little strange.”
Frank liked it there in the center of things, playing around with the career ladies. He looked over at the nurse, to get them all involved.
“Mary Kay, honey, you got room for me in your psycho ward? Maybe I better have some tests.”
“We’re overcrowded,” Mary Kay said. “We don’t have enough beds the way it is.”
“How about if I stood up?”
Stick felt sorry for her—put on the spot and not having a smart-ass reply ready. Everybody had to be a smart-ass, get a laugh and make it look easy. It wore you out, thinking, just staying in a conversation.
He said to Mary Kay, “How about giving him a shot, then, to quiet him down? Case anybody wanted to take a nap?”
Mary Kay smiled but didn’t say anything.
Stick let it go. It looked like too much of a job to bring her out. And if he got her out, then what? There had to be something better to do. He went up to the apartment, poured a half bottle of vodka and a quart of tonic into a plastic pitcher, threw in some limes and ice and carried it down on a tray with a half dozen plastic poolside glasses.
Arlene was in his lounge chair, looking at the magazine. She didn’t notice him right away. Frank was talking to Karen.
“It’s funny nobody ever asked before. What’d you think we were, retired?”
“Are you kidding?” Karen said. “We thought you were out of work.”
Frank looked up at Stick and moved his towel, making room on the table next to him.
“You hear that? She thought we were out of work.”
“It just looks like it sometimes,” Stick said. He picked up the glasses as Frank poured them. Mary Kay shook her head and said no thanks. Jackie took a sip and made a little sound of appreciation. Karen was snapping her bra and he had to wait for her to take the glass. Arlene smiled at him. She said, “Here, there’s room. Come on.”
Stick sat down on the edge of the chair, feeling the aluminum tube beneath his thighs. He saw Mary Kay watching and then look away.
“What we are,” Frank said, “we’re sales motivators. We go in a place, say a car dealership, okay? We motivate the salesmen, get them off their cans, by actually showing them how to cultivate prospects and close deals. I demonstrate what we call the frank approach, how to appear open and sincere with customers, sympathetic to their needs. Then Ernest here, better known as Stick, shows them how an earnest, confident attitude will close the sale every time.”
Arlene gave Stick a little poke. “You must travel a lot. You ever been to California?”
Frank answered her. “Many times. Write us care of the Continental Hyatt House, Sunset Boulevard.”
“I’d love to go out there,” Arlene said. “I’ve got a friend in Bakersfield.”
She went into the pool after a while and Stick got a chance to stretch out again with his magazine, half-listening to Frank bullshitting the ladies. Finally he heard Frank say, “Which reminds me, partner. We got a sales meeting this afternoon.” As Stick got up Frank was telling the ladies they hated to leave but would see them again real soon. Stick kept trying to think of something to say, something a little clever.
Walking away from the patio with the pitcher and tray and magazine under his arm, he glanced back and said, “You all be good now.”
10
THERE WAS A SIX O’CLOCK wedding at the Shrine of the Little Flower, on Woodward in Royal Oak. Stick took a Chevrolet Impala that was parked in line at the side of the church—washed, key in the ignition, ready to go.
Frank was waiting in the T-bird, in the lot behind the Berkley Theater on Twelve Mile Road. They changed from their suit coats to lightweight jackets, took off their ties, and got their revolvers out of the glove box. Frank put on sunglasses; Stick, a souvenir Detroit Tiger baseball cap. They left their suit coats and ties in the T-bird, got in the Impala, and drove over to the A&P on the corner of Southfield and Twelve. On the way, Stick said he almost took the car with the pink-and-white pompoms all over it. He didn’t because he was afraid Frank might feel a little funny riding in it.
It was a good-looking A&P, in a high-income suburban area. But Frank didn’t like all the cars in the parking area. Too many.
They drove back to a bowling alley-bar on Twelve in Berkley to kill some time and had a few vodkas-and-tonic in the dim, chrome-and-Formica lounge. Sitting in a bar in the early evening reminded Stick of Florida. He didn’t like the feeling.
“I was thinking,” Stick said, “you could tell them the truth and nobody’s believe it. Girl says, ‘What do you do for a living?’ And you say, ‘Oh, we hold up stores, different places.’ And Jackie or one of them would say, ‘I believe it.’ Only she wouldn’t. None of them would.”
“You think that’d be funny, uh?” Frank said.
“You’d think it was funny if you’d thought of it,” Stick said.
“You heard what Karen said about wearing the raincoats?”
“She thinks you’re queer, that’s all.”
“That’s what she does,” Frank said, “thinks. She’s got those big knockers, she’s got nothing to do all day, she sits around and thinks.”
When they got back to the A&P, there were only about a dozen cars in the lot. Stick pulled up, almost at the front entrance, where there was a NO PARKING—PICKUP ONLY sign.
“I’ll see you,” Stick said.
Frank slid over behind the wheel when Stick got out. He lit a cigarette and took his time smoking it, five or six minutes, then left the motor running and went into the store.
The manager was inside the cashier’s enclosure. Frank could see his head and shoulders through the glass part of the partition. Stick wasn’t in there.
Another employee, maybe the assistant, was working the Kwick-Check, eight-items-or-less, counter, where several people were lined up waiting. Only one other checkout counter was open. A woman was unloading a cart with a week’s supply of groceries while a checkout girl in a red A&P smock rang them up.
The assistant, or whoever it was at the Kwick-Check counter, looked over at Frank, then down at the counter again.
Frank got a cart and pushed it down to the end of the store, turned left at baked goods, stopped at dairy products for a wedge of Pinconning cheese and some French onion dip, found the potato-chip counter, and was two aisles over before he ran into Stick.
Stick was putting two boxes of Jiffy Corn Bread Mix in his cart. He already had lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, a sackful of potatoes, and four cans of Blue Lake mustard greens.
“Hi there,” Frank said. “It certainly does save to shop at A&P, doesn’t it?”
“It saves your ass if you got your eyes open,” Stick said. “You see the guy at the counter?”
“I thought he might be the assistant.”
“He might’ve been,” Stick said, “if he hadn’t gone into police work instead.”
“You sure?”
“There’s one just like him over in produce weighing tomatoes. You know the look, their face, when they look at you? Like they see clear through and can tell you what color drawers you got on.”
“I don’t know,” Frank said. “You thought the guy in the bar was a cop.”
“I could be wrong,” Stick said, “but I got no intention of finding out if I’m right. I think we ought to get out of here.”
Frank shrugged. “Well, if you don’t have your heart in it, I guess that’s it.”
“Go over and look at the guy in produce,” Stick said. “Big, hardheaded-looking guy. He might just as well have his badge pinned on his apron.”
“I’m not doubting your word,” Frank said, “you want to go, let’s go.”
“I’ll be right behind you.” Stick turned his cart around and started back up the aisle.
“Where you going?”
“Get some salt pork for my mustard greens.”
They cruised down Southfield looking for another store and passed two shopping centers, one with a Wrigley, the other with a Farmer Jack, before Frank said anything.
“You didn’t like either of those?”
Stick was driving. “I don’t know. The parking, all the stores there, it looked congested. I see us trying to get out and some broad in a Cadillac’s got everything fucked up.”
“How about over there?” Frank said. “Nice neat little post office.” It was a red-brick Colonial with white trim. “You ever hear of somebody knocking down a post office?”
“There’s a good reason,” Stick said. He saw determined-looking, clean-cut guys in narrow suits who never smiled. “It’s called the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
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