Frank Sinatra in a Blender

by McBride, Matthew;Bruen, Ken

  Sid unlocked the door and they stepped into Joe Parker’s living room.

  He called out for Cathy Parker; just to be sure she hadn’t come home for lunch.

  When Sid felt confident they were alone, they turned and went down the hall.

  They never saw the curtains moving as Doyle stepped out onto the balcony with the hockey bag full of cash.

  The first thing they did was walk to the closet and check for the bag. They looked at each other, grinning. Sid nodded, said, “We did it, Johnny.”

  Johnny still couldn’t believe it. He wanted to spit in Parker’s face for all the abuse he’d taken over the years. He wished he could see the look on Joe Parker’s face when he realized he and Sid just restole his stolen money.

  They walked back into the kitchen and Sid opened up the fridge. He removed a jug of orange juice, took a big shot from the bottle. He opened up the crisper, removed a package of deli meat and crammed it in his mouth. “This is pretty good shit, Johnny.”

  Johnny didn’t answer.

  Sid rummaged through a few cabinets but didn’t see anything worth pinching. His mind was in overdrive, his thoughts spiraling. He had to maintain his cool. Had to think things through. Once Parker realized the money was on the street he’d know the first two guys to chop up.

  And it wouldn’t just be Parker, but the people Parker worked for. People with connections in New Jersey and worse.

  Sid finished slamming the bottle of Tropicana. He looked around, but he couldn’t find No Nuts.

  “Hey, Johnny?”

  Johnny yelled something from the other room.

  Sid walked into the bedroom, asked, “What the bloody hell. . .” But he stopped mid-sentence. Johnny No Nuts was squating on the Parker’s bed with his pants rolled down to ankles, propping his back up against the headboard, pissing and shitting on Joe Parker’s silk pillow.

  “Good Christ, Johnny! You’ve bloody lost it mate, haven’t you?”

  Sid was drunk with laughter; he stepped back out of the bedroom in tears. No Nuts was shitting on the boss’ pillow. Son-of-a-bitch. It looked like there was no turning back now.

  •••••

  Doyle had rehearsed this situation from the balcony of the room he was supposedly checking out for his parents. He prepared for it. Just in case he’d have to climb up onto the balcony above. Something he could do, but not with a hockey bag full of money weighing him down.

  Cautiously and with great reluctance, he tossed the bag off the ledge. He watched it fall slowly then crash to the ground in an explosion of snow and ice. He’d have to come back around the building to recover it later. He just hoped nobody came across it while they were out walking their dog. The irony of stealing stolen money only to lose it to some curious resident with a schnauzer was difficult to bear.

  With the pilfer bag firmly attached to his belt, Doyle grabbed the bottom of the balcony above him and pulled himself up. The purple dildo poked him in the stomach as he shimmied. He tried to remember why he stole it.

  When he practiced the climb two months ago it was October. The weather was 68 degrees and sunny. There were no gale force winds. Nor was there ice. And when he practiced, he never actually made the climb, but he did eyeball it. In his mind Doyle was pretty sure he could do it.

  He held the railing tight and worked his hands up over the top until he could find the concrete ledge with his knee. Anyone driving by the Indigo and paying attention would see a man in a dark jumpsuit dangling two hundred feet up. His left hand slipped momentarily, the metal was enclosed in ice, difficult to grip, but he was finally able to pull himself up over the top and fall onto the floor of the terrace. He lay on the ground long enough to find his breath, but he had to get that money.

  The one comfort he reserved was the knowledge the unit above the Parker’s was vacant. A stroke of luck admittedly, and a deciding factor that allowed him to do the job in the first place.

  After breaking in through the sliding door, Doyle walked across the empty apartment and through the front door of Apartment 302, exactly one floor about Parker’s apartment. He took the first elevator down. He was still nervous and sweating like a cross-country runner, despite the astringent cold.

  The elevator stopped on the next floor. When the door opened, a stranger stepped inside and gave Doyle the once-over. The stranger noticed the sweating.

  “Hot out there, huh sport?”

  Doyle recognized the accent. It was that British asshole.

  Doyle shook his head. Sweat was running down his face and raining on the floor. When he looked down Doyle remembered his pilfer bag was still attached to his waist. He wondered if English Sid would see the outline of Mrs. Parker’s significant dildo.

  Doyle got off on the first floor. He assumed Sid was going down to the parking garage but he wanted off that elevator the first chance he had. He cursed the fucking luck he was having. He knew the Englishman had to recognize him. Any minute now the shit would hit the fan and Doyle’d be fucked.

  He walked as fast as he could down the hall, then made a right, found the exit he needed. When he opened the door he saw the bag waiting in a quiet nook between two shrubs. Doyle grabbed the duffel bag and the expression on his face was a mix of pride, excitement, and satisfaction.

  And worry. He couldn’t believe it. It was too easy.

  Doyle got back to the van and his heart thumped loud enough that everyone in the garage could hear it. The scene in the elevator was too fucking close. He was sure English Sid recognized him. He had to. It was a small city.

  They’d seen each other around, most recently at Cowboy Roy’s not two months ago. Doyle was pretty sure Sid had been nailing one of the strippers on a semi-regular basis. He couldn’t remember her name, but he was sure he could ID her by her tits. Something about her rack just left an indelible impression in Doyle’s mind.

  He’d have to ask Big Tony about her. Big Tony knew all the strippers at Cowboy Roy’s and tracked all of their personal comings and goings for his own amusement.

  Doyle’d sent him a text earlier that said: Meet me at titled kilt in Arnold. 1 hour. Although he couldn’t imagine Big Tony’s fat fingers pawing the keyboard with legitimate success, he at least hoped he’d managed to read the message.

  They needed someplace new. They couldn’t trust Cowboy Roy’s. They had to stay low until they could get out of town. Doyle knew the perfect place.

  Doyle opened the bag and pulled out a package of $100 dollar bills. He put his nose down in the bag and smelled all the money. Split three ways, it was still a fortune worth dying for.

  So far, everything they’d done was worth the risk.

  He walked to the back of the van and dumped the money on the floor. He wanted to hide as much as he could before he had to divide the rest up. He deserved an extra share. He’d done all the work.

  Doyle stuffed piles of cash into the toolboxes he had in the back. He stashed bundle after bundle in a roll of carpet, hide a few more stacks of hundreds under a blanket. He put the rest back into the hockey bag.

  Once he assumed the Lexus was long gone, he stripped out of his jumpsuit, changed into a pair of khakis with a button-down shirt and a winter coat with a hood. He didn’t look anything like the man in dark coveralls who walked around the building and picked up a hockey bag full of money. He didn’t look anything like the man English Sid talked to in the elevator. At least that was what he hoped.

  Doyle left the Indigo, escaped the Central West End, and made his way to Interstate 44, which he took to Interstate 270. Ten minutes later he walked into the Tilted Kilt and ordered a double cheeseburger, onion straws, and a root beer. The regulars did shots as a big guy in a Pearl Jam t-shirt destroyed the other regulars in a trivia contest.

  Doyle watched the girls in their trademark low-cut uniforms with their short skirts that stopped just below each ass cheek. His waitress was Courtney, she was beautiful and he gave her a twenty-dollar tip. The hair fell around her face in dangling strands and he fought
every urge to tell her to quit her job and move away with him to their own private island, where they would spend the rest of their lives fucking and doing cartwheels on the beach.

  •••••

  While Sid waited for No Nuts in the Lexus he scrolled through his phone, scouting the different locations in Florida for him to call home. He raced out of the room once he saw No Nuts depositing his stool sample on the pillow. He told No Nuts to bring the bag downstairs with him when he came.

  Sid was listening to Jason Ellis on satellite radio and having a good laugh when Johnny finally made it down to the car. When No Nuts stepped from the service elevator Sid could read the distraught lines that were carved deep in his worried face. He popped the trunk, but No Nuts walked up to the driver’s side and dropped the duffel bag on the ground. Sid noted the bag made a weird tink sound when it hit concrete.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “Somebody robbed us, Sid! Somebody robbed Parker! They broke into his safe and they took our money. They filled the bag with scuba gear or somethin’.”

  Sid did a double take. “Scuba gear? What the fuck are you talkin’ about, Johnny?”

  No Nuts bent down and unzipped the bag to show his partner the acetylene tank and the sledgehammers. He held up a pair of asbestos gloves.

  Sid looked up, his eyes as big as the pewter salad plates at Scupper Jack’s. He slammed his palm against the side of his door. “What the fuck is this?”

  “Fuck if I know! After I finished takin’ a shit I went into the bathroom to wash my hands and saw the safe open. Where the fuck is our money Sid?”

  Sid was thinking. He looked around, told No Nuts to get in the car.

  “We gotta get outta here, Johnny.”

  He threw the bag of tools in the trunk and jumped into the passenger seat.

  Sid looked around the parking garage. He tried to figure things out. At first he thought Parker’d set him up, but that didn’t make any sense. He tried to think but No Nuts kept going on about how they were fucked. How Mr. Parker’d hang their nuts sacks from a pike.

  “Shut the fuck up, Johnny! I gotta think. Use you’re bloody head for once and help me.”

  The clues were in the bag. A torch, heavy-duty gloves, sledgehammers, hydraulic jacks, gauges to measure heat temperatures. Somebody planned a job, a serious job, but they didn’t end up using the gear. Why? Because they just so happened to find a large bag filled with money in a closet.

  Sid glanced down at his watch and did the math. Whoever robbed Parker did it within a two-hour window from the time No Nuts set the money in the closet and the time they got back.

  Sid opened the door and got out of the car. Somebody’d been following them. That was the only thing that made sense. Sid couldn’t figure it out how it all happened, but he was completely devastated by the sudden realization he had been so close to the money and now it was gone. GONE. And he had no idea who took it or how he’d ever get it back.

  No Nuts opened his door and started to get out, but Sid told him to forget it. They had to call Mr. Parker and tell him he’d been robbed. His stolen money, stolen once, had just been stolen again.

  They pulled out of the lot and Sid drove to another parking lot directly across from the Indigo’s parking garage. He sat embracing the quiet; he needed to think.

  The only sound they heard were the wipers sliding across the windshield until finally Sid broke the silence. He told No Nuts that tweaker fuck Telly must’ve been smarter than they gave him credit for. The whole time he was working with another guy besides Bruiser. He must’ve had this silent partner following him just in case.

  “Yeah, but that don’t add up, Sid. If the guy had a partner why’d he leave the money in the trunk for us to find it? Then let us take it, just to go through the trouble of stealing it back. That don’t make any sense.”

  Fuck! Sid pounded the steering wheel as the snow continued to fall, alternating between hard and light, but never letting up.

  “Why’d Telly meet in the first place if he had the money?” No Nuts asked.

  “Fuck if I know, Johnny. Maybe he was waitin’ to get hooked up before he left town. But who the fuck knows? Last thing I’d wanna do is try and speculate on the mindset of a fucking tweaker.”

  “Maybe he didn’t think we’d kill him?”

  “No shit, Johnny? Mr. Obvious over in the passenger seat. You bloody well right he didn’t think we’d kill him.”

  No Nuts shrugged and chewed on his thumbnail.

  They knew Telly was just a pawn. He was a disposable tweaker who took the blame so the cops could close the case and there’d be swift justice for the city. Regardless of who ended up with the money, Telly ended up dead. That’s how it was supposed to work. But nobody counted on Bruiser taking that hot lead in the back.

  The anxiety hit No Nuts harder than it hit Sid. “What’re we gonna do man? We are so fucked.”

  Sid knew there was professional grade burglary equipment in that bag. Somebody came to the Indigo ready to steal the whole bloody building. Whoever stole their money was prepared for anything.

  “Whoever hit Parker was a pro,” Sid said. “Telly was just a bloody tweaker. No way they coulda been workin’ together, Johnny.”

  “So how the fuck does some pro find out about this shit if there’s only five or six of us who knows?”

  Sid shook his head, said he didn’t know. He was looking through the windshield when a Chevy van pulled out of the Indigo that said Naramore Locksmith Co. on the side.

  He squinted to get a better look at the driver, then looked over at No Nuts.

  “You see that van, Johnny?”

  “Yeah, the locksmith guy? What about it? Think we just got robbed by a locksmith?”

  Sid checked his rear-view mirror and slapped the shifter into reverse. “I dunno, Johnny, but I got a funny feelin’. Maybe it’s nothin’, but let’s look into it.”

  Sid thought about that elevator ride. There was somethin’ about that guy in the coveralls. Sid knew him but he couldn’t remember from where. Just something about him—thieves’ intuition.

  Sid slid out of the parking lot with his iPhone in his right hand, searching with his thumb. “What’d that van say, Johnny? Naramore Locksmith Company?”

  “Yeah, somethin’ like that.” No Nuts turned around to make sure there was no traffic coming up behind them while Sid was on his phone. “Clear,” he said. Sid got over.

  “Well, well, what do you make of this? There’s no bloody Naramore Locksmith I can find.” He turned the screen toward No Nuts.

  “What’s this mean, Sid?”

  “I’m not sure what it means yet but I think I might’ve just seen this cocksucker in the elevator.”

  “This guy in the van?”

  “Maybe. Whoever I saw was sweatin’ his ass off. He looked nervous.” Sid remembered the bulging fanny pack around Doyle’s waist, could’ve been anything in there.

  “Sid, the light!”

  Sid was lost in thought. He blazed through a red light, got hit hard in the back passenger side by a ¾ ton GMC. It spun the car around four times. Sid slammed into a few trashcans and sent them out into the street. The front of the Lexus knocked down a wooden privacy fence and one of the boards broke free and shattered the windshield.

  “Bloody fuck!” Sid said. Everything happened fast. He looked down to find the car still running. He put it in reverse and it made a horrible sound, but it went. Sid cut the wheel hard to the left, shoved it up into drive and hammered the accelerator, throwing snow all over the young couple who stopped to help. No one climbed out of the GMC, the front windshield spiderwebbed.

  No Nuts moved slowly. He’d been out cold for a minute, maybe two. Sid asked him if he was all right.

  “My head’s killin’ me, Sid.”

  Sid took a look at him. “You’ll be fine Johnny.”

  The Lexus was fucked, but Sid didn’t care anymore. All he cared about was the stolen money and the cocksucker who’d re-stolen it
from them. As hard as he tried, he could only make a single connection. The credit union manager, the one Bruiser and Telly took care of.

  “My fuckin’ heads killin’ me Sid.”

  “Toughen up, Johnny. Would ya look at my bloody Lexus fer fuck’s sake?”

  No Nuts rubbed the knot on the side of his head and told Sid fuck his Lexus.

  “What should we do about Parker, Johnny? We call him, tell him he’s been robbed, or let him find out on his own? We could just tell him we grabbed the paper off the table and we don’t say shit about the robbery. He ain’t gonna know when he got hit anyway.”

  No Nuts said that was a great idea.

  “Fuck it, we’re not tellin’ him them then. Far as we know, if he asks us we don’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Sid lost track of the van and the Lexus was making unhealthy noises. He pulled over into the parking lot of a grocery store to call Parker. He’d tell him they had the paper, but there’d been a slight fender-bender. They’d be there soon as they could.

  “What about that locksmith?”

  Sid smiled devilishly, said he shouldn’t be too hard to find. He was pretty sure he’d seen him around over at Cowboy Roy’s Fantasyland.

  •••••

  Big Tony sat in his favorite booth at Cowboy Roy’s and sipped expensive cognac while he dreamed of a woman he could never have. She moved slowly, with purpose. More in love with herself than she could ever love anyone else. But that was okay with him. He wanted to watch her dance. Watch her body speak to him as he sipped Remy Martin. The good shit.

  When she finished touching herself and grinding on the pole, the crowd of losers gathered around her pulled crumpled dollar bills from their shallow pockets and tossed them down on the stage. Big Tony thought that was unacceptable.

  He walked up to the stage like a hot shot and threw her a handful of stiff twenties. It was a bold move but he was now a high roller. He was about to make an extravagant score; he was feeling flush. He’d lure her in, ensnare her with the Jackson’s and get her out to the Lincoln. He’d break out the Columbian nasal therapy and he was guaranteed a blowjob. Or at least a quick tug.