Going in Style

by Robert Grossbach

  “How do you do,” said Joe.

  “I’d like to congratulate you on your luck.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you. Thank you.”

  “It’s a beautiful place you got here,” added Al.

  The manager smiled. “Now, what seems to be the problem?”

  Joe shrugged. “No problem here.”

  “These gentlemen have a little over seventy-three thousand on deposit,” explained the cashier. “They’d like to take it with them in cash.”

  Chambers nodded. “Ah, I see. Well, of course, if you want it, we certainly will oblige.”

  “Good,” said Joe. “Then we’re all set.”

  “However,” added Chambers, “I really don’t think it’s the wisest way to go about it.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Joe. “It’s okay.” He patted the leather satchel. “We just bought this, and it’s got a lock on it, see?”

  “Is it the corporate check that’s worrying you?” said Chambers. “Because, if that’s the problem, we can arrange for a bank check tomorrow morning. It’s really—”

  “The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” said Joe. He turned to Al. “Did that bother you?”

  “Not me,” said Al.

  “What about wire?” said Chambers.

  “Wire is strong,” said Joe, “but I think the lock holds the bag shut even better.”

  “No, I mean we could wire the money direct to your bank.”

  “I don’t think ours has a wire service,” said Joe.

  Chambers lowered his voice. “There is a service the casino provides.… Usually, it’s limited to people who’ve won more than a hundred thousand, but, perhaps we could make an arrangement. It works like this. You go home with your receipt. You live in a large city?”

  “New York.”

  “Fine. At a mutually convenient time, our courier meets you in the lobby of your bank. He hands you a briefcase with the cash, you give him the receipt. You can then stash the money in your safe deposit box, or do whatever else you like with it.” Chambers grinned. “Naturally, the casino hopes you’ll return here and lose it back to us. We just want to make it as easy as possible for you to do so.” He waited, eyes listening.

  “Mr. Chambers,” said Joe slowly, “that is a very lovely offer. You’re really fine people here, absolutely terrific. But if it’s all the same to you, my friend and I would still like the cash.”

  Chambers raised his eyebrows. “Up to you.”

  “See, the main problem,” volunteered Al, “is that we don’t trust banks.”

  Back in their room, a sense of urgency drove them.

  “I don’t know why the hell we’re killin’ ourselves,” said Al, as they emptied the dresser drawers. “I mean, even the muggers would need some time to plan how to get us.”

  “It’s just instinct,” said Joe. “Same as when we were shootin’ craps. I have this intuition that if we ain’t outta here by tonight, we’ll never make it. I feel the hairs on my neck standin’ up.”

  “Mine are too thin to stand up,” said Al. “And too tired. I’m too exhausted to even collapse.”

  “Just hold on,” said Joe. “Another couple hours, we’re home free.” He unlocked the leather bag and dumped packages of hundred-dollar bills all over the bed, then stuffed a rolled-up shirt and several pairs of socks into the satchel. “This look okay?”

  “Unless they got X-ray vision, yeah,” said Al.

  Joe locked the bag and watched Al finish cramming clothing and toiletries into their old suitcase. Then both men began stuffing their underwear and pockets with the stacks of hundreds.

  “My shorts alone are worth a Cadillac,” said Al. “My undershirt could get you a mortgage on a small house.”

  “Just try to look natural,” said Joe.

  “How can I look natural when I got all this money interferin’ with my privates?” said Al.

  In the lobby, Joe carried the leather bag, his knuckles white with tension, while a bellhop walked ahead with their light suitcase. The bellhop waited while Al paid the bill at the desk, and then they all started out. They had almost reached the front door when a voice rang out behind them. “Hey, y’all, how’re ya doin’?”

  Joe looked back and saw Tiny, the Texan who’d been in the casino. He waved, but kept walking. “Get us a cab, quick,” he told the bellhop through clenched teeth. A moment later they were outside, but Tiny and an equally large friend had followed them out.

  The bellhop put their suitcase into the trunk of a waiting taxi. “Can I take this, sir?” he asked, indicating the leather satchel.

  “No,” said Joe. “No.” He jerked open the cab’s door, and waited while Al climbed inside. He felt a meaty hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, cuz, where you runnin’?” said Tiny. “Me and Lucas here, we’re throwin’ us a little party. Thought maybe you’d like to come.”

  “Uh, no, thanks,” said Joe. “We have a plane to catch.”

  Tiny guffawed. “Aw, you don’t gotta worry ‘bout no plane. Not with what you won today. Besides, them things run all night. Whyn’t you come back with us, an’ have yourself some fun? We’re hay-in’ booze, girls, the works. Whaddaya say?”

  “Sorry,” said Joe. He tried to step into the cab, but the hand on his shoulder was gripping tighter now. Also, he felt a strong tug on the satchel.

  “Hey, what’s this, yore winnin’s? You ain’t takin’ home all that money in this l’il ol’ bag now, is you?”

  Joe jerked himself free and scrambled into the cab. He saw Al lean out the window on the opposite side and say something to the bellhop, who then signaled the doorman. The doorman came forward, interposed himself between Tiny and the taxi, and firmly closed the door. “Have a pleasant trip,” he said, and the cab began to move.

  Joe closed his eyes and slumped against the back of the seat. He shuddered.

  “Airport, please,” Al told the driver, and the cab picked up speed.

  Joe shook his head. “Just tell me what you said to that bellhop,” he mumbled.

  “Just asked him if he’d get someone to shut the door for a tired old man,” Al said with theatrical innocence. “Anyone would’ve done the same as he did—especially for the hundred-dollar bill I handed him.”

  Joe glanced out the rear window. “Well, at least we ain’t being followed. So far, anyway. That’s a good sign.”

  Al yawned broadly. “I still think you’re exaggerate’ everything. Personally, I think maybe we should’ve spent the night. I am absolutely bushed.”

  “Believe me,” said Joe, “this is the best way.”

  “It’s the best way only if I live through it.”

  “You’ll live,” said Joe. “You can get some sleep on the plane.”

  “Are you kidding? I can sooner fall asleep on a roller coaster. I don’t like them jets.”

  “You wanna go anywhere today,” Joe told him, “you gotta adjust to modern inventions. Any country that can put a man on the moon can fly two old geezers back from Las Vegas.”

  Al looked out the window. “I don’t care. I don’t trust no plane that ain’t got propellers.”

  Forty minutes later they were airborne. Al looked down at the glowing, coruscating jewel beneath them that was nighttime Las Vegas. He sighed. “Boy, I’d like to come back here sometime. I really would.”

  “We will,” said Joe. “We can do whatever we want now. We’re free as birds.” He leaned back. He heard the steady drone of the engines, felt their slight, but steady vibration. It was actually quite relaxing if you could put aside the newness of it all, forget the fact that you were in a thin-walled metal container, thirty-five thousand feet up, hurtling at six hundred miles per hour through the rarefied, freezing night air. Eliminate those considerations and a man could nod right off, he thought. Miss the meal, the movie, and everything else….

  Joe awoke just as they touched down, the wheels bumping and screeching on the runway, bright sunlight streaming in the windows. He turned sleepily toward A
l, who was sitting bolt upright. “What time is it?”

  Al looked at him. “So… sleeping beauty awakes, huh? You missed the whole thing.”

  “What? Where are we?”

  The plane slowed and made a wide turn. “Where do you think?”

  “Kennedy?”

  “That’s right. Kennedy.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  Al shook his head. “I can’t understand how a human bein’ can just conk out the way you done. Either you got nerves of steel, or half a brain, and I’ll be damned if I can tell which.”

  In the taxi, on their way into New York City from JFK, Joe kept glancing out the rear window. “We’re still okay.” he said happily. “There ain’t no one behind us.”

  “Jesus,” said Al, “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

  “Why don’t you take some more of them vitamins?”

  Al managed a weak smile. “Yeah. “I’m sure they’d fix me right up.”

  Joe noticed that Al’s mouth seemed to be sort of hanging open, and that his eyelids were fluttering uncontrollably. “Just hold on a little while longer,” he pleaded.

  “I’m holdin’,” said Al. “I’m holdin’.”

  “We’re almost there.”

  Joe tipped the cabbie two dollars when they came to a stop in front of their apartment building. “Funny,” he said as the taxi pulled away, “it was all I could do to stop myself from givin’ him a hundred. Amazin’ how your values change.”

  “Mmm.” Al was practically semiconscious.

  “Come on,” said Joe, picking up both the leather satchel and the suitcase. “We’ll go upstairs.”

  In the hall outside their apartment. Al leaned against a wall while Joe fumbled with his keys. At last the lock tumblers clicked, the knob was turned, and the door swung slowly open.

  “That’s it, Al,” said Joe. “We made it.”

  15

  The Sky’s the Limit

  Al lay on the bed. Next to him was a large pile of hundred-dollar bills. In a nearby chair, Joe too relaxed. They were both in their underwear.

  “You look like one of them Arab sheiks,” said Joe. “A chintzy one, of course. The real biggies would be lyin’ next to a pile of gold.”

  Al winced as he shifted position. One side of his face seemed strangely slack. “The real biggies have girls in veils massaging their tootsies. And they lay in pools of oil.”

  “Well, maybe that’s next,” said Joe. “There’s no stoppin’ us now, you know. It’s like they say: Money comes to money. The sky’s the limit.”

  Al grunted. “Jesus, I feel like I’ve been beat up.”

  Joe’s voice was dreamy. “You were great back there, Al. The best.”

  “I had a good time. I was lucky, and I took advantage of it.”

  “I betcha them guys never saw nobody roll like that before.”

  Al forced a smile. “You weren’t doin’ too bad yourself, kid.”

  “Ah, I did nothin’. The whole thing is how you throw the dice. That takes the talent, the rest is mechanical.”

  “Never mind,” said Al. “Movin’ those chips around is what got us all that money. Mechanical, my ass. That takes smarts. I could study that game for a million years and still not know the right way to play.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Joe. “On our next gamblin’ outing, you’ll do the betting and I’ll roll. Maybe we’ll try Monte Carlo, or the French Riviera. Or—hey!—how do the Bahamas strike you?”

  “I need sleep,” said Al.

  Joe nodded. “Funny, it’s like we’ve lived two lives. One before the robbery and one after.”

  Al’s eyes were closing. “I think I like the one after better.”

  “Me, too.” Joe’s own lids were drooping. “Me, too.”

  When Joe shook himself awake, it was dark outside. A blue light shone eerily into the bedroom. Al was still asleep next to the pile of money. Joe padded slowly into the kitchen. Damn, he thought. I’m missing entire days and nights out of my life, and not keeping track of where they’re going. He turned on the radio, put a teapot full of water on the stove, then went into the bathroom to rinse his face. The splash of coldness refreshed him. He toweled himself off, then returned to the kitchen, where the tea pot was already whistling. He poured hot water into two cups and dunked a teabag in one until the liquid was a deep yellow-brown. He was about to transfer the bag when he stopped. Nuts to that, he thought. That was what poor people did. He removed a fresh teabag from the box and put it into the second cup. That’s how we live from now on, he thought.

  A voice on the radio caught his attention. “Last Thursday’s senior citizen robbery of the Union Marine Bank still seems to be capturing everyone’s interest,” said the announcer. “Although the FBI is maintaining its traditional silence, a spokesman for the Police Department said today that new developments in the case would be breaking shortly, due to the abundance of traceable clues left behind.”

  “What?” Joe positioned himself directly opposite the radio. “What clues? You ain’t got no clues.”

  “Inspector Edward McClusky,” the announcer went on, “has characterized the robbers as, quote, a careless group of amateurs, unquote, and promised the investigation would quickly lead to indictments.”

  “Indictments!” Joe shouted. “You don’t even know who the hell we are or where we went.” He turned the dial abruptly to a different station. “Stupid asses,” he muttered.

  He took the two cups of tea and carried them into Al’s bedroom. “Al,” he said firmly. “Wake up. Come on, kid, you been alseep for ten hours now, that should be plenty.” He set one of the cups down on the night table and switched on the light. “Damn FBI,” he continued. “I can’t believe it. After all we done, they still call us a bunch of amateurs.”

  He sat down and sipped his tea, waiting for Al to awaken. “I suppose you gotta knock off a bank every other week in order to get some respect from those jerks.” He shook his head. “Hey, Al, come on.”

  Al remained motionless. His mouth was agape, his body rigid.

  “Al, your tea’s gonna get cold.”

  A heaviness began to spread through Joe’s chest. “If you keep sleeping,” he said hesitantly, “your whole schedule will get all turned around.” He forced himself to take another sip of tea. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  Joe rose, his jaws tightening until he thought the muscles would burst. “Al?” He approached the bed and reached out to touch his friend’s shoulder. “Al, come on now.”

  Still no movement.

  “Come on now, wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP! YOU HEAR ME? WAKE UP!” Joe felt his throat constrict from the effort of his shouting. He bent and placed his ear to Al’s chest. He could hear nothing. He probed without success for a pulse in Al’s wrist, then his temple. There was no sign of respiration, no rise and fall of the rib cage.

  Joe felt his own head become light; it seemed to detach itself and float away. He stumbled back to the chair and cradled his forehead in one gnarled hand.

  “It’s just not fair,” he said aloud. “I mean, what’s going on here? Everytime I turn my back, one of you guys is dropping dead on me.”

  He watched Al for a long time, perhaps as much as a half hour. Then he leaned forward and pulled the cover over his friend’s head.

  After two more cups of tea, Joe felt he’d regained sufficient composure. Life had to go on. No sense losing everything they’d worked for. Besides, he had both Willie and Al looking down and watching him now. If he screwed up, there’d be hell to pay when it came time to join them.

  Joe collected all the money from Al’s bed and put it in a paper shopping bag. Then he called Ryan’s Funeral Home and told them about Al. Ryan was more expensive than Bender, but at least he’d spare you the crap about his father being buried in cherrywood. A Mr. Longwood answered the phone, and explained that Ryan had gone home for the night.

  “My friend is dead,” said Joe. “Does that mean I gotta wait for tomo
rrow before someone picks up the body?”

  “No, no, not at all,” said Longwood. “Just give me the address, we’ll send a man over.”

  Joe gave him the address.

  “You’ll have the doctor there with the death certificate?” Longwood asked.

  Joe was taken aback. “Uh, no, there is no… Well, I mean, a doctor hasn’t seen him.”

  “You gotta have a doctor,” said Longwood.

  “Well, we don’t use anyone steady,” said Joe. “And besides, who’s gonna come to the house?”

  “I’ll arrange something,” said Longwood. “We have some medical people who work with us.”

  An hour later, three men knocked on Joe’s door. Two of them were curly-haired and Italian-looking; the third was tiny, bald, and abrupt. “Dr. Feigenbaum,” he said briskly, offering Joe a limp hand. “Where’s the deceased?”

  “Inside,” said Joe.

  They all walked into Al’s bedroom. Feigenbaum pulled a stethoscope from his black bag and checked various points on Al’s body. After two minutes, he looked up. “This man is dead,” he declared crisply.

  “I know that,” said Joe.

  Feigenbaum withdrew a sheet of paper from his bag. “Happened about an hour ago, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll put time of death at, mmm, nine-twenty-three,” said the doctor, peering at his watch before he wrote. “Cause could be anything. Hard to tell. He have any immediate family?”

  “Immediate? No,” said Joe.

  Feigenbaum shrugged. “Then it doesn’t matter. We’ll put down heart failure.”

  “His face was sort of saggin’ on one side before he fell asleep,” said Joe. “That mean somethin’?”

  Feigenbaum shrugged. “Could be. Could be a stroke. Who knows? We’ll leave the heart failure, though. I don’t like to erase or cross out.”

  They returned to the kitchen, where Joe had to sign some papers authorizing the funeral home to remove the body. Then the two curly-haired men brought in a stretcher and carried out Al’s remains.

  “My condolences,” said Feigenbaum without feeling, at the door.