Casey's Slip

by Richard L. Wren

  I didn’t know how to reply. I wanted to prolong our conversation, but I was afraid of saying the wrong thing.

  “Classics. Mysteries. Horror. History?” I generalized, looking for some reaction to guide me. “I guess I’ve got a pretty catholic interest in books, in the general sense of the word.”

  God, I sounded like some kind of pontificating nerd. I tried to minimize the impact by saying that my reading was limited because I could usually only take a few paper backs on my boat trips. “You know, space limitations”

  She simply said, “Me too,” and asked me if I’d brought any books with me.

  I hadn’t, being so rushed by her dad.

  She said she hadn’t either but told me there were a bunch of books upstairs.

  “Maybe we should take a look at them,” she suggested.

  “If you like mysteries and gore, you’ll find plenty,” she went on.

  Good thing she wasn’t a mind reader. I’d been thinking along the lines of ‘come up and see my etchings’.

  “I like mysteries but not gore. Maybe I’ll find something.”

  Upstairs we found rows and rows of paperbacks in a bookcase in somebody’s bedroom. As we thumbed through them, I took the opportunity to find out a little more about her. I asked her if she lived here with her dad. I knew she didn’t but hoped she didn’t know I knew.

  “Oh, no, I live by myself down in Oakland. I’ve got my own place, thanks to a really good divorce agreement. I couldn’t stand living with my dad. He’s one of the last living advocates of male supremacy. He doesn’t know it, but he is. In fact,” she added after giving it some thought, “most of the Devils are male chauvinist pigs – but in a nice way. They treat their wives and girlfriends very, very well, but certainly not as equals.” She shook her head in disapproval. “They put them on a pedestal, then neglect them. In fact, did you know that there are absolutely no women members of the Devils? Nowhere in the whole world!”

  This I didn’t know.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she went right on. “I love my dad. I evenlike my dad. I enjoy being around him – but live under the same roof with him? Never! I feel the same way about the whole gang. To a man, they’ve been extraordinarily nice to me, but they’re still chauvinists.”

  “Are you telling me that there are Devil’s chapters all over the world?”

  “Sure. Big ones. You don’t read about them so much any more, but they’re there.”

  I’d heard about the gang in Oakland, of course, even in other parts of California, but thewhole world? Good god, what had I gotten I tangled up in?

  We found a book about sailing and spent most of the afternoon talking about sailboats and sailing in general. She really was interested in becoming an honest-to-goodness sailor, not just a passenger. She actually seemed to have an aptitude for it. We got into which sail was which, and before long she could tell the difference between jibs and Genoas, mizzens and mains, spinnakers and staysails. A little more tutoring and she could tell me the difference between a sloop, a yawl and a ketch, and port and starboard.

  We would have gotten into knots and lines and leeway and more, but we ran out of time. Smitty called up to us to come down to the rec room. “We’re gonna have a fashion show of police motorcycles and uniforms.”

  CHAPTER 18

  In the garage four black and white motorcycles were lined up for our inspection. They looked like the real thing to me, but I wasn’t the best judge. The gang had a few criticisms but pretty much agreed they’d pass general inspection, particularly in the dark and if it didn’t rain. The four guys who’d be riding them said they thought it’d work, but they too were worried about rain, and the fact that the paint had a tendency to rub off on their legs.

  “So you ride bowlegged,” Smitty said. “What? I gotta do all the thinkin’ around here?”

  The uniforms looked like no city police uniform I’d ever seen. For one thing, they weren’t blue, they were khaki. The pants weren’t really made for boots and cycles, but the guys had adapted them so they looked okay if you weren’t too close up. The shirts and jackets looked pretty good. The helmets were great. They’d painted them uniformly black and white and they looked pretty authentic. The best you could say was they looked like official uniforms of some sort.

  “Not perfect, but I think they’ll do,” Smitty said passing judgment.

  “Okay, everybody, I think we’re ready,” he announced. “We’ve got about an hour before we should leave. Time to break up into our own groups and rehearse what you’re going to do. I’ll check in with each group and answer any questions.

  “You rowdies go downstairs to the garage and see if you can gimmick your bikes to be noisier than they already are.” He told the police group to meet in the rec room and compare notes on how the police had acted the last time they’d been arrested. Evidently they’d had a lot of experience being arrested and thought they could handle that assignment easily.

  When he finally got back to our group, I had questions.

  “One. What do we do if a neighbor or someone accidentally sees us or hears us breaking in?” I read from my notes. “Two. What do we do if there are more guys in the house than we expect? Three. What if Carpenter comes back while we’re there? Four. What do we do with any guys we catch and tie up?”

  “Any others?” Smitty asked. The other guys shook their heads.

  “Casey” he said, “you’re doing okay. I’ve been asking myself the same questions. Alright,” he said, “to answer your question. “I know there’s a lot of ifs in my plan, but you can’t predict everything. Part of the answer is why I chose you guys. We may have to punt if any of those if-things happen, but I really think the five of us have the cool to handle just about anything that comes up. The answer to all your questions, Casey, is I don’t know. We’ll figure it out on the fly.”

  Needless to say, I didn’t know Smitty the way the Devils did. They accepted his plan without a question. I couldn’t do that. However I didn’t have any choice in the matter.

  Smitty paused, leaned back in his chair, linked his hands behind his head and calmly generaled us.

  “The plan’s really simple.” he reminded us. “We leave at five thirty, park close to the course and wait until we get the signal the last foursome’s coming in. We follow the last group to Carpenter’s yard and hide in the bushes. That’s it. The rest of the plan depends on what time its dark enough for us to sneak across the lawn. Everybody straight with that?”

  Several nods of acquiescence and one “no problem” was the response.

  “Now get rid of your cell phones. No surprise calls. I’ll have mine and it’s already on vibrate. I’ll use it to coordinate the ruckus out front, and call for help if we need it. Now, golf clothes on and ready to leave in ten minutes, fifteen tops, okay? And relax, it’s gonna work just fine.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Five people plus four golf bags is a tight squeeze in a standard sedan. Three of us ended up in the back seat with one of the bags across our laps. Fortunately it wasn’t a long trip.

  Near Carpenter’s house, Smitty told the three of us in the back seat to scrunch down out of sight while he drove around and looked for a good place to park. Smitty found a street about two blocks from Carpenter’s house that dead-ended against the golf course. From the front seat, Smitty could see the course. He could see the fancy stacked log fence.

  “It seems like a quiet street, nobody walking around, but keep your heads down, just in case.

  It was getting too dark to even think about playing golf when we finally got the call that the last foursome was coming in. Smitty said to watch for them. He’d been told that one of them was wearing pink pants. Pink pants? At least they should be easy to spot.

  “Now we need a bit of luck,” Smitty said, checking the rearview mirror. “We don’t need anybody driving by ’til we get on the course.”

  Luck came our way. The street was totally quiet. Fortunately, the dead end street had only one house on ei
ther side.

  We exited the car, retrieved the rest of the golf bags from the trunk and snuck onto the course. The final foursome was about a hundred yards ahead of us and had no idea we were there. We walked big as life up the middle of the course as if we owned it. Smitty made a big deal out of having me carry his bag as his caddy. Promised me a good tip.

  Carpenter’s house, which looked exactly as Dave had described it, was easy to spot from the fairway. Dave verified that it was indeed the right house and we all melted into the shrubbery beside the course and waited for dark.

  Smitty whispered, “Okay, when I judge the time is right, I’ll call the guys and have them start doing their wheelies. We’ll hear them, for sure. After they’ve been doing it long enough to attract attention, we’ll start going in. Number Two’ll go first because he’s the youngest, smallest and the fastest of us.”

  Number Two. Oh, right – me! I’m going first? Why? I didn’t have time to object before he continued.

  “I’ll go second. Number three, you go after me. I want Nips – I mean, number three in there ASAP so he can get started doing his thing on the doors right away. Four and five, you better come across in your number orders.

  Once again we waited, giving me time to contemplate the problem I had with this numbering system of Smitty’s. Every time one of guys called me Number Two, I had a silly flashback to when I was a kid and bathroom breaks were called going number one or number two, number two being, to put it delicately, the more odious of the two. The mind sure does funny things when you’re under pressure.

  I think we waited about twenty minutes. When we ducked into the bushes, we’d just had enough light to see our way in. Now it was pitch black. Smitty admitted we were just lucky there was no moonlight. He’d forgotten to check for that.

  He quietly phoned the gang. “Anytime you’re ready, we’re ready.” He slid his phone back into his pocket, then whispered to me, “Real soon now.”

  All too soon for me I could hear motorcycles approaching. Just cruising in, all four of them together, made a lot of noise. Then the noise ratcheted up. I could picture them racing one or two at a time, up and down the short street, practicing wheelies.

  In a minute, Smitty was gonna shove me out into no man’s land. What if I get shot? Did he know something I didn’t know? Why did he want me to go first? Probably because I was the most expendable? How in hell did I get into this mess?

  “Get ready,” Smitty said.

  CHAPTER 20

  A couple of the guys with really old bikes had poked holes in the mufflers to make them even noisier. “With the mufflers holed out,” Smitty’d told me, “they’ll shake his whole house down.”

  Unless the whole household was deaf, there was no way they wouldn’t be at the front windows watching.

  “It’s time,” Smitty said and gave me a shove toward the fence.

  Turns out, it was a breeze. No one shot at me. One step up on a lower log and I could slide over the top of the fence. Nobody had told me exactly how to get across the lawn. I figured I’d crawl on my belly, but Smitty immediately stopped that. “Stand up and crouch down,” he stage whispered at me. “Walk really, really slow to the porch steps. Sudden movements are what people see when it’s really dark like this.”

  Against my better instincts, I followed his directions. It was the longest ten or fifteen yards I’ve ever walked, but I made it and threw myself into the welcoming arms of a shrub which, in retrospect, I’m happy to say was not a rose bush.

  One by one the others came, all without setting off any alarms, all disappearing into the landscaping except for Nips, who went directly up on the porch.

  In a few minutes Nips whispered for us to come on up. He had simply opened the screen door and walked right in. The back door was gonna be a snap, he assured us as we joined him on the porch.

  “Hold on. Wait a sec before you force the door,” Smitty stage whispered to Nips.

  “I just want you all to remember, there’re probably only two people home, and they’re probably in the front of the house watching all the ruckus. But we can’t be positive. One might still be in the kitchen.”

  “I’ve already cased the door and given the lock a good dose of WD 40, it ain’t gonna make a sound,” came from Nips.

  “Great. All I’m saying is, we’re not breaking in, we’resneaking in. So, Nips, we need to open that door as quietly as possible. And we want to get ourselves inside as quietly as possible that way, if anyone’s there, we can still surprise ’em. Hopefully, they’re in the front and when they return to the kitchen, we can grab them without a struggle. And that’s the other thing. Remember – we grab these guys without hurting them. Throw a towel over their head or something, then tie ’em up and gag ’em.”

  In the dim light from the kitchen window, we could barely see each other.

  “Ready?” Smitty asked.

  Whispered okays.

  “Okay, Bandanas up.” I felt ridiculous. I hadn’t worn a bandana bad guy style since I was eight.

  With that, he signaled Nips to go ahead and open the door, and we tiptoed in. The kitchen was empty and almost dark. Just one light on over the sink.

  So far, so good.

  Just then we heard sirens in the distance. Smitty smiled with the satisfaction of a plan well executed. “Ah, you gotta love it,” he whispered. “Here come our cops, right on time!”

  The single light over the sink barely lit up the large kitchen. We came through the door from the porch. There were two other doors, both closed. Les quietly edged one door open, it led into a dining room, empty. The other, a swinging door, had to lead to the front of the house. Smitty inched the swinging door open a little, then closed it again.

  “A hall,” he reported. “Bet they come back here that way. That’s when we grab them. Find some towels. However many there are, as they come through the door, one of us’ll throw a towel over their heads and a rag in their mouths, so they can’t yell. They’ll never know what hit ’em.”

  Smitty stationed Dave and Les behind the swinging door with towels at the ready. He, Nips, and I lined up just out of sight of the door, each of us holding a towel in our hands. We were ready… I hoped.

  CHAPTER 21

  Smitty whispered that he wished his guys out front would finish up and get going

  “Damn those guys. They’re having too much fun, taking too much time.” Smitty was getting antsy. “There’s been plenty of time for our cops to have made their arrests and gone on their way.” We waited. Finally the street noised went away.

  Shortly after that we heard footsteps coming down the hall. We could hear two guys talking to each other about the arrests and how noisy motorcycles were.

  The door swung open and the first guy came through, his head was turned back as he talked with the second guy. He never saw us. Les, being real tall, sized up the situation quickly, threw his towel over the head of the second guy and got the rag in his mouth simultaneously. The first guy whipped around but it was too late. Dave got his towel over his head, rag in his mouth, and we had both of them.

  We tied them up, carried them out and set them at either end of the porch, a good distance from each other. As a precaution we taped their mouths.

  Then, things began to go wrong. We had just got the guys stored on the porch when Smitty said, “Shhhh. What’s that?”

  He was standing next to the swinging door. I tiptoed over to him and listened quietly. Footsteps, that was what Smitty heard, and I could hear them too. There was someone else in the house.

  “Where the hell did he come from?” Smitty whispered.

  “Now what do we do?” I whispered back.

  “We need to find out who’s there. I tell you what; he probably doesn’t know we’re here. You get on your belly and crawl up the hall and see who’s there.”

  It’s hard to argue when you’re whispering. Smitty said we didn’t have any time to waste and to get going.

  I took off my shoes, got down on my belly and t
ried to slide along the baseboard to where I could peek around the corner and see who was there. Very slowly I inched my head into the room. In a moment or two I could just about see the whole room and I couldn’t see anyone.

  I had just started a reverse crawl out of the living room when an arm came out of nowhere and grabbed a handful of my hair. I was pulled around back into the living room and yanked up to my feet.

  Facing me was a big guy, much taller than me, and he had a gun in his left hand. With his right hand, he was holding me up by my hair so we were face to face, and shaking the hell out of me for good measure. That hurt!

  Whispering into my face, he said. “Who the hell are you, and where are Steve and Johnny?” I was simultaneously thinking that his breath stank, Smitty should have sent someone much bigger than me and he was tearing the hair out of my head.

  “I asked you a question, asshole.”

  It crossed my mind that he must be the bodyguard that was supposed to be with Carpenter.

  The only idea I could come up with was to answer him as loudly as I could. Hoping Smitty’d hear me and do something.

  “Ow,” I yelled, “that hurts!” Okay, you got me. I thought the house was empty.”

  He shook me harder.

  “Where’re Steve and Johnny?”

  “On the porch. They’re okay, honest.”

  “On the porch? What d’ya mean?”

  “They’re tied up on the porch. In the dark they thought I had a gun and I was able to tie and gag ‘em.” I spoke as loudly as I could.

  Shaking me like a rag doll he said “Shut up. You’re making too much noise.”

  I shut up.

  “You’re feeding me a bunch of crap. He whispered. “I don’t believe you. No way could you surprise those two. You got someone else out there. I ain’t afraid to use this gun, so you better tell me who the hell’s in the kitchen.”

  He still had my hair in his hand and we were still face to face. He was quiet now but very, very menacing.