by Mike Faricy
“Hub, it’s your call, man, but this could not have been timed better.” Val crammed a mouthful of pizza into his right cheek. “Mmm-mmm, it’s almost inspired the way the timing works out here, man.” He sucked each fingertip clean. “I’m fixing to retire and head down south, and you’re looking for a new opportunity.”
“Retire? Are you kidding? You mean to tell me you can retire, Val? Holy cow! Man, you are something!”
“Well, hold on here, now,” Val said. “I’m not going to put on my pajamas and then sit around watching TV all day. I mean, a business guy like me, I’ve always got to be busy. I’ll always be an idea man, if you catch my drift?”
“Yeah, but Val, that’s fantastic, retire?”
“Well, yeah, I suppose it is. But a guy like me always has to be doing something. I’m looking at a couple of different dance schools down in Florida. I figure I’ll buy one, maybe build a chain, you know, franchise the thing out. I’m thinking of competing for National Swing Champion, build the business on my reputation. Can you see the headline? Learn from the Grand Master. Folks get turned on learning from a winner.”
Hub nodded in agreement.
“Maybe I’ll expand all over the country. I don’t know. I haven’t decided just yet. But, Hub, you should come down there with me. Drive the truck down to Florida,” Val said, setting the hook into Hub’s lip. “A guy like you, you could get work just as easy down there as up here. Most likely a lot easier. They’re always looking for guys, especially hard workers like you. You’ve got some skills, probably. Why not make it easy on yourself? Get out of Minnesota for the winter, maybe forever. Opportunity,” Val said and rapped his knuckles on the table.
After Hub bought a third pitcher, Val’s opportunity seemed to make even more sense.
“It’ll take me another week, maybe two, to wrap up some loose ends here,” Val said. “You got any contacts in Florida? Maybe someplace we could settle, just for a few nights, until things get rolling? A dance school can transfer almost anywhere. Location doesn’t matter,” Val said.
Hub racked his brain. “You remember Jimmy Conner? He played shortstop for Meagherville in that slow-pitch league for Wagenstein’s Bar. He moved to Florida a couple of years back.”
“Conner,” said Val, trying to recall. “Sort of a lanky guy, muscular, dark hair? Didn’t he marry that little blonde, Deanna what’s her name?”
“Yeah, last I heard, they had three little rug rats running around. Deanna Jansen was her name. I think I can find out where they are down there. Jimmy was always a great guy. I know he’d put us up for as long as we wanted.”
Some guy with a wife and three kids wasn’t exactly the Florida connection Val had in mind, but he kept that thought to himself. It was still better than the nothing he had come up with, and he was running out of time. Hub and his truck, truly, were a godsend.
They ate their way through Hub’s pizza coupons and drank their way through a good part of his severance pay. What with Val giving dance lessons some afternoons and most evenings, he was short on ready cash. Hub began to notice there was never much in the refrigerator at night. But then, in the morning, it would be stocked with all sorts of odds and ends on the shelves: eggs, meat, bacon, and ice cream. One morning, there was even a half-pan of lasagna.
That wasn’t the only thing unusual. Hub noticed that Val didn’t like to take a lot of phone calls. His cell was usually turned off. He also received a lot of mail, often in bright-colored envelopes stamped ‘Final Notice’ across the top.
“Don’t sweat the small shit, Hub. All that’s just ‘cause I’m winding things down around here,” Val said.
Hub guessed winding things down might be only half the story. Aside from the rear car seat, Val’s bed, and a couple of mismatched dining room chairs, the place was empty of furniture. There were five mismatched plates that looked like they could be from different restaurants and a half-dozen glasses stolen from bars.
Two weeks after Hub arrived, Val announced, “You know, Hub, I like to travel light. And, to tell you the truth, I’m looking forward to kind of reinventing myself once we get down to Florida.”
“What do you mean reinventing yourself?”
“You know, wipe the slate clean, come out with an all-new Val Harwood. This year’s new luxury model, the retired Val. Hey, don’t worry man. I’ve done this sort of thing before. I’ll still be cool, no sweat. But I’m thinking I can start out clean. No strings attached. I think it might not be a bad idea if I had an estate sale. Sell all my furniture, just about everything I own. I’m even thinking of selling the Chevy. Start out fresh, brand new, down in Florida. Focus on the new business and winning that National Swing Competition.”
“What do you mean, estate sale?”
“That’s what they call it, man. All that stuff I’ve inherited, jewelry and things from my mom, her sister, all that stuff is my estate. I’m thinking just cut the strings. Use it to finance my next adventure since most of my retirement funds are tied up.”
* * *
Val Harwood was nothing if not a schemer and scammer. He had learned a long time ago that his dancing led to dating. He had danced his way into and out of his last two marriages. He learned, if he could dance in a different venue every night, he could work on four or five different women at a time. Dance them around all night then take them home exhausted. Once in their home, he could exhaust them a bit more in the bedroom, and then, while they slept, he helped himself.
It began a year or so back, tiptoeing out in the middle of the night and grabbing a couple of bucks from a purse before slipping out the door. At first, he grabbed a ten or twenty, once-in-a-while maybe forty bucks if she seemed really loaded. Then, he added a bottle or two of wine, maybe a couple of steaks from the freezer, the sort of things someone wouldn’t really miss.
One night, he landed on jewelry and silver, literally. He had stepped on a pair of diamond earrings on the bedroom floor as he was about to tiptoe out of the bedroom. They were diamond posts, a pair of the damn things. Both of them had gone right into his heel.
“God!” he had groaned and sat down on the floor in his boxer shorts. He pulled the earrings out of his heel, looked at the diamonds, listened to his date snoring, and realized he might be on to something. He figured he wouldn’t take it all, just enough for a little taste, a little personal reward.
From that night on, he took the diamond earrings they’d think were misplaced. He might grab a silver tray, not the best one, but one they’d think may have been lent to a sister-in-law and not yet returned. He’d grab a string of pearls or an heirloom ring if he had time to rummage around.
About the time Hub moved in, Val was stepping things up. Not only was he dancing more, but he was grabbing more as well, twelve place settings of sterling silver in a polished mahogany box from under a bed. Two nights later, he had a pair of silver candlesticks and a crystal flower vase.
Night after night, while Hub slept soundly in front of a flickering TV on the rear seat from the ‘57 Chevy, Val continued to acquire and store his late night acquisitions in the back of his closet. He stuffed the steaks, the half-pan of lasagna, and wine in his refrigerator.
Chapter 5
According to Val’s calculations, he was either out of time or already on borrowed time. He hadn’t picked up any flak from women missing things, but it was bound to happen. He had pressed his luck way too far. On Wednesday, he arranged to sell the ’57 Chevy for thirty-five hundred to a guy he knew. On Thursday, he arranged a dealer’s preview for his estate sale, hoping to move most of his midnight acquisitions. On Friday and Saturday, he planned to drink some beer while he sold the rest of his furniture, his bed, lava lamps, a signed and numbered ‘Dogs Playing Cards’ print, all of his winter clothes, and his mismatched chairs. Then he’d toss a suitcase in the back of Hub’s Ford Ranger on Sunday, drive south out of town and with any luck, down the road before the landlord figured out they were gone.
They’d drive straight through, taking
turns, all the way down to Tampa-St. Pete, spend a couple of nights with Hub’s pal, Jimmy Conner, and his family. For the first time in a couple of years, he’d have some real money in his pocket. It didn’t cost much to open up a dance school, and he had an idea that could make it even more lucrative. He just had to convince Hub, and he’d have plenty of time to do that on the drive down to Florida.
Val’s dealer preview on Thursday went better than he had expected. Much better. He cleared almost nine grand, plus another thirty-five hundred from his car on Wednesday. Add another five hundred for his furniture and things, and he would be sitting pretty damn good. Good enough to last a couple of months, at least, if he played it carefully. And that didn’t include whatever Hub was going to bring to the deal.
They loaded their suitcases plus two green trash bags stuffed with Val’s clothes in the back of Hub’s Ford Ranger early Sunday morning. Val said he wanted to beat the traffic, not that there was much traffic coming into St. Paul on a Sunday morning. He figured it would be a lot safer to sneak off in the dark before the apartment supervisor saw them packing up.
“If we head out around 4:30 Sunday morning we can really make tracks, miss all the traffic,” Val said.
“Val, there’s no traffic on Sunday morning to miss,” Hub replied.
They were both right. They really made tracks, and there was no traffic Sunday morning. Heading south, Hub was sitting on just a little over seven hundred bucks in his back pocket, plus a Visa card. He’d have to find something pretty fast once they got down to Florida to get some money coming in. He knew they couldn’t stay with Jimmy for more than a few days, and he’d need cash to stay afloat.
Driving south, he was starting to get that nagging feeling it may have been a mistake to hitch his wagon to Val’s star. Maybe it was just the breakfast sitting funny, making him feel a little under the weather. But watching Val in action, selling all his stuff, schmoozing with folks, Hub knew bullshit when he heard it. If Val had said much more, they were gonna need boots and a shovel. It had been okay to a point, but that just seemed to encourage Val to really turn it on.
When Val told a woman he was selling family heirlooms to pay for an elderly aunt’s hip replacement, Hub was a little surprised. Val didn’t have an aunt. When Val shed a tear over placing his mother in a rest home, Hub thought, Val’s mom had been dead for almost twenty-five years. He loved Val, but it would be best to hang onto your wallet when he was around. Maybe idea guys were like that, always moving just a little too fast and a little too slick.
For his part, Val was wondering how he was going to broach the subject of his plan, such as it was, with Hub. In its current state, it was pretty simple. Val would open a dance studio, become National Swing Champion, and when people lined up to pay for lessons, Hub would rob their homes.
Val would establish which home to rob— making sure it would be worth the effort. He planned to aim for the lonely widow or divorcee, and make sure they had something worth taking. Hub would go for the under-the-bed sort of things, taking a page from Val’s book, silver trays that wouldn’t be missed for months, jewelry that was easy to misplace. Val didn’t think of it so much as robbing them. He was merely acquiring items.
He calculated, on a conservative basis, they could clear maybe a grand a night in jewelry, silver trays, and the like. Hub’s experience installing alarms and security systems would provide them with a nice little edge. As far as Val was concerned, the hard part was already done. He had conceived of the plan, done all the brain work, and would find their targets. Now, all he had to do was convince Hub to join him and not get caught.
Sometime after midnight, maybe a hundred miles north of Atlanta, Hub felt and then heard the first indications of what could only be the power steering pump going out on his truck. It came across as a high-pitched not so funny whine drowning out Val’s snoring.
“This is the last thing we need,” Hub said, not quite under his breath. At the same time, off in the distance, he saw the interstate sign for a Ford dealership. He was left with little option but to pull in at the dealership and wait for daylight.
Curled up against the passenger door, Val remained asleep. He woke somewhere around sunrise in the parking lot of a Ford dealership. He shook Hub and asked, “What in the hell are we doing here?”
Hub gave him the short version and went back to sleep. The service department opened at 6:45. Not surprisingly, they were first in line.
By 4:00 that afternoon, they were back on the road, with a new power steering pump. Hub’s wallet was four hundred and fifty dollars lighter, and they weren’t talking. Hub’s temper was slowly working up toward a burn. After about thirty minutes of silence, he erupted, “Damn it, Val. You just had to go to the men’s room when it came time to pay the bill. Didn’t you?”
“What?” said Val, sounding more than a little offended. “Is that what this little tantrum is about? The fact that I drank too much car dealership coffee. I end up cooling my heels all day because your truck falls apart on my trip. Excuse me. Sorry I had to use the bathroom. There! Happy?”
“First of all, you didn’t even bother to ask what the damage was, or how far it set me back. Secondly, I saw you peeking your worthless, brainless head out the door of the men’s room to make sure I had already paid the bill so it was safe for you to come out. So don’t tell me about ruining your trip.”
In the heavy silence that followed, Hub calculated he had about three hundred and some change, just barely enough to get back to Minnesota if he turned around now. He drove on another 30 or 40 minutes, but by the time he had taken the bypass around Atlanta, he was really steaming. Heading south on I-75, he took the exit for Georgia State Highway 138 and immediately saw, like a beacon for a safe harbor, the Southcrest liquor store.
About 600 feet off the interstate, gleaming like the Emerald City, Oz, the Southcrest liquor store had a sign over the front door offering ‘Chilled Beer’. Hub wasn’t too sure a cold beer would actually help him just now, but he knew it couldn’t hurt. He slowed down just enough to not roll the truck as he rocketed into the liquor store parking lot.
Chapter 6
Lamont Robinson was finally ready to make his move into the big time. He had been watching the Southcrest liquor store for a couple of weeks. He had a pretty tight handle on their schedules, the staffing, where the office was, and security cameras. With the Atlanta Braves playing tonight and about to make it into the series, the store would be doing a pretty brisk business, folks getting their beverages for the evening, settling down for the night with a twelve-pack and the tomahawk chop.
Lamont knew that, at 7:00, an off-duty Georgia State Trooper would stop in, stand around in his uniform just to keep things civil and safe until closing time. Lamont figured he would calmly go in there a little after 6:30, lock the front door, herd customers and clerks into the cooler, and lock them in. That way, no one would get hurt. He’d empty the cash register, clean out the office receipts, take his time calmly going out the backdoor, over the fence, and head home.
He had a big old chrome .45 tucked in the back of his jeans, underneath his sweatshirt. The gun wasn’t loaded. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but he didn’t want anyone getting in the way during the robbery. At the first sign of trouble, Lamont figured he could drag the .45 out and wave it around as a bit of an incentive.
He also had two foil, Happy Birthday, helium balloons. That was the simple part of his plan. Just walk into the store, lock the door, and turn off the neon ‘open’ sign in the front window. Then casually walk in front of the two security cameras and release the balloons. They would float up and sit in front of the cameras because, and here was the beautiful part, each balloon was tied to a magnet. He just had to stick the magnet on the metal shelf below the security camera, and the balloon would do the rest.
He had practiced with the balloons, and he had practiced his route in the store. He had paced it off, clocked himself in the store without the balloons, four separate times. He had it d
own to a reliable minute and thirty-five seconds. That allowed for turning off the open sign and covering the first camera. Then he would take a bottle of Captain Morgan off the shelf, walk to the check-out lane, place the bottle leisurely on the counter, and attach the second magnet to the shelf directly below the camera. He’d pull out the .45 to get the clerk’s attention, and after that, the only thing left to do would be to count his money.
He wore a pair of $3 sunglasses, a navy-blue wool watch cap, jeans four times too large, and a baggy, dark, hooded sweatshirt. He looked like any other kid on the street. It was simple, and no one had to get hurt. Just help himself to the money, walk out the backdoor, hop the fence, and go home.
He had started across the parking lot toward the front entrance twice and changed his mind both times. Every time a car pulled into the lot and shined its lights on him, he tried to look busy. It was now 6:40. He had wanted to be rich and home by 6:45, damn.
“Now or never,” Lamont said to himself as he screwed up the courage to move across the parking lot toward the front door. He concentrated on the door, so focused that he narrowly missed getting clipped as a black Ford Ranger screeched to a stop next to the entrance. A stocky blonde guy slammed the driver’s door and barreled into the liquor store.
Hub was steaming. Forty miles back, he had finally asked Val about helping out with the car bill. Val acted as if he didn’t hear him, and things had quickly gone downhill from there. They began to argue back and forth for the next thirty-eight miles. Hub gripped the wheel with both hands so he wouldn’t reach over and strangle Val.
“Come on, Val,” he said at one point. “Look, I’m just about tapped out. I didn’t plan for the damn pump to go out. I just figured it would be fair if you paid for half. I know you’ve been buying the gas, but without this truck, how are we gonna get down to Florida?”
