The Lagotti Family Series

by Leopold Borstinski

  “And is there anything you are concerned about with this job?”

  “Not much. Just getting the money out of the safe. I mean, we’ve planned and planned, but knowing it could be all locked inside a vault means we won’t have much time for fucking about. Apart from that, nothing.”

  Lagotti thought to himself the fellas wouldn’t have to worry about getting the money out of the safe, simply because he knew Carter would have removed it all before they opened the door and walked into the bank in the first place.

  “You don’t have to worry about a thing,” he said with a straight face, “it’ll all work out fine, my boy.”

  Lagotti patted him on the shoulder and walked away back to Paul in the car who drove off as soon as Lagotti shut the door.

  PETE MADE SURE Lagotti was the first to leave and he waited at least ten minutes before traveling in the opposite direction. As he was relatively close to Joppa and the I-95 beckoned, he decided to pay an extra visit to luscious Lucy, his dessert delivering doll.

  He parked in the lot and headed straight for a booth so he could grab some food and take a pinch of that ass. He perused the menu slowly because reading was not his strongest skill and some of the more tricksy items didn’t come with pictures.

  “What ya havin’, lover man?” asked a pair of tits in a waitress uniform that was definitely not his Lucy.

  “Coffee. Burger. Fries. Where’s Lucy?”

  The waitress chuckled. Pete caught sight of her name badge thrusting at his face. Glenda whistled.

  “Gee, honey. It’s our Lucy’s day off. Still be wantin’ the burger and fries?”

  “Sure thing, Glenda. I’ve got a hunger on me.”

  “I’m sure you have babe. I’m sure you have,” and the rest of Glenda’s sentence trailed off into silence as she winked at him, turned and walked over to the kitchen to deliver his request to the short order chef sweating buckets by the hot plate and frying oil.

  Pete left a five buck tip for Glenda, wiped the grease from his lips and teeth and got back into his auto. Then he drove round the corner to Lucy’s trailer and saw there was a light on inside. Quietly, he closed the door of the car and tiptoed to the trailer so he could hear if Lucy had any visitors - he was turning up unannounced and there was nothing between them enough for her not to fuck other guys. But there was just the sound of the television set and the heehaw sounds of a game show host and audience.

  Pete pushed open the door of the trailer and stepped in with his back heel still holding the door ajar. He smiled and pulled his tee shirt off over his head.

  “Hi mama, I’ve come for some of your lovin’.”

  “What you doin’ at the door, papa? Close it ‘n’ come inside your mama, now.”

  Lucy pushed down on her jeans and panties until they were below her knees, let her knees separate and Pete whipped off his pants and shorts and lay on top of her, pumping hard, while she carried on watching the TV, occasionally slapping his ass and making an appropriate moan or two. It was good to keep her men happy, she found. That way, she got punched a lot less later on.

  BACK AT THE Kitkatt Club, Lagotti went to his usual table and ordered a vodka lime. There were two beauties on stage, working the room hard. One was naked except for a headscarf and a belt around her waist where the Johns could hang notes. She was bending over and slapping her ass. She had brown hair on top but her bush was black. The other blonde one was still in her knickers and was collecting a pretty penny just by walking around with her thumbs in her panties, letting the members get a glimpse of her pubes. “America is a wonderful country,” thought Lagotti, as he took a twenty from his roll and went towards the stage to give the blonde her tip. She recognized him and made sure she was at the edge of the stage by the time Lagotti had wended his way around all the tables. Unlike the other Johns, Lagotti was allowed to touch the merchandise, so he pulled at her thong, holding the greenbacks that were already there and pushing his Jackson down the front so he could give himself an excuse to have her bush brush past his hand. He smiled up at her as he patted her knickers back into position and she carried on with her performance.

  When he sat back down, he beckoned for the waitress who scurried over and he asked: “What’s the blonde’s name?”

  “August.”

  “Find a room for August and me when she’s finished in a few minutes, my dear.” He pushed twenty dollars into her bra and patted her ass as she left the table.

  Ten minutes later, Lagotti and August were alone in a private members room. Lagotti had a fresh vodka lime and August was wearing a faux silk dressing gown. There was a table, a couple of chairs and a sofa. Lagotti was sat on the sofa and he placed his drink on the glass table top.

  “Sit down, my dear,” he said patting the space next to his on the sofa and August immediately obliged.

  “My what fine pale skin you have,” he added, brushing the back of his finger up and down her leg nearest to him. Then he led his fingers up her leg and up her torso until he was stroking her breast.

  He stood up at this point and undid his pants so they fell to the ground.

  “Take off your things. Let’s get this done,” he instructed and August undid her dressing gown and let it fall off her as she stood up herself and pushed her panties down until they plopped on the ground. Then she knelt down and slobbered on Lagotti’s dick until it was hard. He grabbed her by the hair and threw her onto the sofa, climbed on top of her and fucked her until he was done. He put his pants on and dropped a C note on the table and picked up his vodka lime.

  “There you go. Put your things back on, whore,” he snarled and walked out of the private members room leaving August to stop crying and to place the dressing gown back over her body.

  32

  ANDREW HAD KNOWN he was gay from the age of fourteen although later he would admit to himself he was gay from the day he was born. By the time he was sixteen, he’d had his first fumbling sexual experiences with a boy from his school.

  But he only came out when he left home at eighteen and discovered his best aptitude was stealing from gas stations, local marts, anywhere with a cash till. And he spent his first night in jail the same year.

  Now for many men away from home for the first time, this can be a traumatic time, but Andrew’s experience was quite different. Under cover of darkness, he found there were plenty of men, straight and gay, who would share a bed with him and that meant jail was more a sexual university to him than a valid deterrent for inappropriate thieving behavior.

  Andrew met Martin in jail when he served two years for attempting to rob a gas station. While Andrew was great at stealing, as a young man he was not good at thinking through the consequences of his actions. It was then he recognized the need to plan a robbery rather than just grab a gun and run to a counter and shout: “Give me all your money or I’ll shoot you in the face!”

  When he got out on probation, Martin introduced him to the idea of working with a bunch of guys and they operated as the muscle on a number of medium scale jobs. They moved in together but, because of the times in which they were living, they always rented two bed apartments.

  Later on, Brian appeared on the scene. By the time Andrew was heading towards his late twenties, he had changed his outlook quite a bit. Gone were the days of rushing in waving a gun. Now he was more concerned with being alive for the next job and not just surviving the one he was currently on.

  So Martin, the risk taker, was replaced with dependable Brian and the rest, as they say, was history. Only now, dependable had turned into dull and Andrew knew this was because he had allowed them to slide towards mediocrity as much as Brian’s fault for not evolving as fast as Andrew would have liked.

  That said, Andrew wasn’t sure he could face being alone again. He’d been with a partner all his adult life, one way or another, and he wasn’t really in the mood for the solitary life. Quite the reverse, he really wanted to find a man to settle down with. Brian simply wasn’t that man.

  Despite t
he problems with Brian, there was another issue looming over Andrew: the homophobe, Pete. Even if the man wasn’t prejudiced, he still killed Andrew’s ex-lover and that was reason enough.

  But the fact the guy was a southern bigot made the need for revenge all the more poignant. In an ideal world, Andrew would take Pete back to his auto yard, tie him up and inflict as many of his tools on his body as Andrew could get away with, before the fucker bled out.

  BUT ANDREW UNDERSTOOD, more than most, what constituted the perfect crime. It needed means, motivation and opportunity. He had plenty of motivation; motivation he was not short of. The difficulty was the opportunity. His earlier thoughts had been to hit Pete on the way out of the bank, but the more Andrew thought about this, the less convinced he became. The problem was Frank. While clipping Pete might not be the worst thing in the world to do, killing him in the middle of the job, when his role was to drive them all away from the scene of the crime, might not be seen as the smartest way to keep on Frank’s good side. And everyone knew what he’d done to his previous sidekick - and that was someone he liked, respected and admired. Andrew knew he was just a guy holding a gun to Frank and in ordinary circumstances that would have been fine. Because that was what he was going to be paid to do.

  But shooting Pete in the head while the guy is sat in the getaway vehicle is not a great way to leave a robbery and Andrew could see tremendous downside to this plan of his.

  So maybe it would be better for him to hit Pete just before they split up. That would remove the risk of Frank thinking Pete still had value to the group when, to all intents and purposes, his work would be done. And it would also mean Andrew and Brian would be more likely to reach the separation point alive. An important consideration in any bank job.

  This would mean he’d need to make it clear to Frank in a matter of seconds he wasn’t about to rip off the guys for the money, just deal with Pete for whacking Martin. Not easy.

  Perhaps Andrew should revert to his original plan but make sure Frank knew beforehand that Andrew could be a wheelman too - to de-risk the whole dead-Pete situation in Frank’s eyes.

  The reality was no matter what Andrew thought, no matter how he tried to rationalize the situation to himself, the basic rule of bank jobs was for members of the crew not to shoot each other until they’ve at least got away from the crime scene safely. Any attempt to derail that basic, undeniable piece of the plan would be met with short shrift from the leader of the crew. But Andrew’s desire for revenge clouded his judgment; a terrible character flaw.

  ANDREW SNAPPED OUT of his reverie and saw he was still on the sofa next to Brian, who was reading a magazine, flipping from one picture to another until something caught his fancy.

  “Martin’s dead,” said Andrew under his breath.

  “I know,” said Brian, softly, continuing to flip, “but they’ll get equal rights some day, probably before we do.” A profound statement for a man who claimed not to follow politics and be more concerned with keeping a good shooting eye than national rights and laws.

  Andrew turned his head to look at Brian, the most confused expression on his face he had ever mustered.

  “What the fuck... What the fuck are you on about?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are you on about?”

  “Me? You brought it up. What are you talking about?”

  Andrew sighed. “I’m talking about Martin.”

  “Me, too. I’m talking about Martin Luther King.”

  Silent beat.

  Andrew slapped his forehand with the fleshy bit of his hand to make a loud clapping noise.

  “No, darling. I meant our Martin. King might only be dead a month, but our Martin’s been gone a lot longer.”

  Brian smiled.

  “Oops, sorry.”

  “Da nada.”

  Andrew threw an arm around Brian’s chest and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Silly boy,” he murmured and draped a leg onto Brian’s lap, who put his arm around Andrew and they stayed that way for a spell. Both basking in the comfort they received from each other amid the ongoing sadness of Martin’s loss.

  Andrew thought about the first time he met Martin, in a cell in Baltimore Penitentiary the first month of his arrival there. Andrew had the bottom bunk and Martin was above him. He heard Andrew’s whimpering and popped down beside him. He held him and hugged him and eventually he kissed him and that was the start of their beautiful friendship.

  The summer of ‘62, they spent in San Francisco. Free love might not have been declared yet, but they sure had an amazing time, fucking their way from club to club, night after night. Andrew came of age that season.

  When they moved back east, Martin wanted to carry on partying his way through life and there was nothing wrong with that. But Andrew didn’t. He figured out he wanted more than just sex with strangers in the same room as his partner. He wanted the love of a good man and Martin could have been that man, but instead he got into some bad drugs and poor dependency and Andrew had to have the strength to let him go. You have to trust the one you’re with and Martin was stealing from them to feed his habit.

  Andrew’s tough love worked and Martin used the opportunity away from him to clean up his act, kicking the heroin and working hard again. But by this time, Brian was on the scene and inside Andrew’s heart, so there was no going back.

  BRIAN CONTINUED LEAFING through a gun magazine, many articles about the latest firearms and many close-up photos of them too. He admired the intricacy of their design and the beauty of their construction. Despite Andrew flopped on top of him, he managed to place the glossy on his lap and flip the pages with one free hand.

  Brian wasn’t as dense as he appeared, but he wasn’t one for book learning. Instead, he found out about the world through doing. He’d known his sexuality was different from most of the kids in his class when he gallantly tried to have sex with Anne Schuster. She wasn’t the most attractive girl in eleventh grade, but she was certainly the most available. And while mechanically, there were no problems, Brian knew he didn’t want to repeat the experience either.

  So began Brian’s real education. Like Andrew, his time spent in jail proved an invaluable source of sexual learning and yearning. And he also managed to hone his skills in two other key areas: the use of firearms and handling the public. Brian found he had a knack for scaring Joe Citizen into doing what he asked of them, without the use of too much violence. This gave him a competitive advantage over other men in his field because cash tills and safes were opened faster and jobs ended sooner and more effectively too.

  Brian turned over a couple more pages of his magazine. Andrew had rested his body on Brian’s and, while it wasn’t uncomfortable, the situation was limiting Brian’s ability to read his own magazine.

  He thought about Andrew and his inability to deal with change. The man just couldn’t deal with the idea things don’t stay set in concrete. Times change, people change, people move on. Andrew was able to extricate himself from Martin and take up with him, but it seemed as though that was the last time in his life Andrew would do anything close to make a change. Since he forced Martin out of his home, Andrew had tried to create the perfect living environment and once each element of perfection was discovered, nothing about it was allowed to be altered. From the color of the drapes to the pattern on the cushions. Nothing.

  Needless to say, Brian wanted a little more out of his life than an atrophied relationship in an atrophied apartment. He wanted excitement, danger and the comfort of a good man at home once the adrenalin stopped pumping.

  On the other hand, he’d never really had any trouble out of Andrew either. Safe really did mean safe, so while there were not many surprises, there were very few tantrums pulled in return. Sometimes in life you get what you ask for and then realize you’ve asked for the wrong thing.

  BIZARRE, TO BRIAN’S point of view, was the near obsession Andrew had gained with Martin’s death. Obviously, Brian was never going to rush to defend Mart
in, given how he and Martin ended, his ongoing drug habit and the fact Martin permanently resented Brian’s presence in Andrew’s life. All quite normal for an ex-boyfriend, really.

  Andrew was a sucker for injustice and thought of himself as a far less promiscuous Errol Flynn in some Robin Hood movie. But he’d been brooding on Pete’s guilt for the best part of six months now without doing anything concrete about it. As far as Brian was concerned, he was pretty much certain Pete had whacked Martin, but the guy was a dope fiend and a shit heel and probably had it coming to him, although he wouldn’t admit those thoughts to Andrew. Criticizing your partner’s ex is quite normal but being happy to see their murderer walk free probably did overstep the bounds of forgiveness.

  Brian was conflicted. He was in two minds whether to clip Pete when on the job to make Andrew happy or to clip Andrew because the man was dull and not going to go away. He’d take any shit from him and instead of walking or throwing Brian out, Andrew’d suck it in and think of the good times they had - mainly because he’d used up all his real emotional energy dealing with Martin, caring for Martin and mourning for Martin. And that pissed off Brian even though he was quite an easy-going guy - for a hired killer and thug.

  The biggest problem hitting Pete during the job was the plain and simple fact he was the wheelman. So no-one would appreciate Pete’s brains dripping onto the sidewalk before they’d left the vicinity of the bank. And even then, the only real opportunity would be just after they’d pulled the winnings and before they split for a month. But Brian knew at that point, everyone would be completely stoked, adrenal pushing through every vein. And that meant any slight deviation from plan would cause a major disruption to everyone’s day and there’d be lots of guys with lots of guns and itchy trigger fingers. Never a good time to despatch one of your own to God’s Kingdom without at least some warning, if not an actual trial by a jury of his peers.