One Bad Job Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  Author's Notes

  Stuff

  Shameless Self Promotion SW

  ONE BAD JOB

  By Travis Hill

  Copyright April 2014

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  Cover art by: Heather Senter - www.bookcoverartistry.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ONE - Heist

  I stood at the pay phone arguing with Dave. It wasn’t a real argument, but we found something real to argue about in semi-hushed tones to make it seem real. The mall cop standing about ten feet down the hallway gave us the stink eye, and for good reason. David Pearson and I looked like trouble, though these days, most normal citizens figured we were lawyers or doctors having a midlife crisis by wearing the leather, sporting the long mustaches and goatees, and getting a shitload of tattoos to complete the part.

  Except lawyers and doctors pretending to be part of a hardcore biker gang didn’t have giant swastikas and lightning bolts on their necks, and plenty more odes to Hitler and his Gestapo crews on other visible parts like forearms and biceps. Dave and I had dressed the part perfectly, authentic enough to fool even a real Death Angel member if we should happen across one (not likely since they were mostly out in California, not here in Houston), and we acted the part perfectly as well.

  Dave was a tall, skinny but chiseled criminal in his mid thirties. I’d known him since doing a sixteen month stint for B&E at Briscoe over in Dilley. Like me, he could act almost any part. He was smart in ways that were amazing, but kind of stupid in others, the main one being his temper. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would just get pissed off and put a gun in your face, but he’d take a swing at anyone he thought was fucking him over. And if you didn’t fight like a man, if you brought a knife or a gun or a gang, he’d find you later and make you pay. On good days, payback meant a trip to the trauma ward at the closest hospital to stop the internal bleeding. On the bad days… it meant a ride in the back of the coroner’s wagon.

  He had on a do-rag with graying pig tails hanging from the bottom, big sunglasses, a huge, white, bushy mustache that seemed to cover half of his face, and a mean looking white goatee that hung down almost eight inches and ended in a sharp point. It had taken him a year to grow all of his hair out like that. The man was serious about his business. The unmistakable swastikas riding up out of his shirt and wrapping around his neck made me cringe a little, but that was the effect we were looking for. If it worked on me, and I’m the one that had Tanya airbrush them on, then they’d be even more authentic for anyone not in the know.

  “You know what, Billy? Fuck you.” Dave’s grin was hiding real anger, and I knew it. “She’s got great tits and a fantastic ass, but she’s as dumb as a broken rock. You’re the idiot for dragging her around behind you all these years.”

  I could feel real anger bubbling up as well, and tried to show just enough to make anyone looking our way, like the mall cop still was, that it was a serious argument and not to get in the middle of the two white supremacist bikers that looked like they might come to blows any second.

  “Listen, asshole,” I said through clenched teeth, “I didn’t ask for your opinion, so keep that shit to yourself.”

  “Look at this fuckin’ mall cop,” Dave said, glancing up for only a second before turning his glare back to me.

  I looked behind me and gave the rent-a-cop an eat shit scowl, then turned back when the cop’s eyes shifted to the door between us and him.

  “I think it’s time,” I said.

  “Regardless,” Dave said, reaching into his leather jacket and wrapping his hand around the butt of his .45, “you need to get rid of her. She’s going to get you caught up in some shit one day that you can’t get out of. And she’ll use your stupid puppy love against you, or whoever has you in a bind will, once they find out you can’t live without her.”

  “Fuck off and die,” I said, hearing the click of the security door behind me.

  I pulled out my own automatic and held it against my stomach. If anyone looked at me, they’d think I was texting on a mobile phone. If they looked at me twice, they’d have a third eye.

  “I’m just sayin’,” Dave growled, his face pointed at me, but I knew his eyes behind the sunglasses were watching the door like a hawk.

  “And I’m just saying ‘fuck off and die,’” I said, keeping my head down like I was texting, but my eyes were watching the scene behind me reflecting from Dave’s sunglasses.

  Two suits exited through the door, standing guard in front of it until it snicked shut completely. They gave us hard looks, at least that’s how I interpreted it through the tiny, almost fish eye view I had.

  “Bullshit, you fuckin’ liar,” Dave said, a random yet angry phrase.

  The suits looked the mall cop up and down, the mall cop still staring absolute daggers at us, his hand on his two-way radio as if he were about to call for backup. The cop nodded to the Russian suits and then gestured with his chin toward us, as if to let them know he’d been keeping an eye on us. The suits glanced back one more time then walked by the mall cop. Ten feet beyond, they stopped at the double doors leading to the outside. One of the suits spoke into a mobile phone that had a two-way radio feature.

  The door behind us clicked again as the security lock disengaged, then swung open silently. Two more suits stepped out. One of them looked like a bull that had been shaved, dressed in an Armani, and told to look like he wanted to eat unborn babies right out of the womb. The other was a standard thug type as well, but he had a black briefcase in his right hand, a small duffel bag draped across his chest, the strap over his right shoulder. The mall cop gave a short nod to the two newcomers as they passed by, never taking his eyes off us.

  The instant the two Russians stepped beyond the mall cop, he raised the hand that had the two-way radio in it. Two chunks of black plastic fell away from his hand, revealing a small black .380. He fired two shots into the back of the bull, then two into the one carrying the briefcase. The two Russians at the door were caught by surprise, but the one on the left was quick. He had his pistol out and had pulled the trigger four times before clutching his stomach and rebounding off the door frame behind him. I shot him twice more, his gun falling out of his hand before he pitched forward. Dave’s Russian was down as well. Comrade Henchman hadn’t been as quick as his partner, and had died with his hand on the butt of his pistol.

  “Oh shit, you guys,” Gally cried out. He’d played the part of the mall cop so perfectly that the Russians had never suspected. It helped that he’d been a familiar face for almost six months as a real employee of the mall’s rent-a-cop team. “Oh fuck. I think I’m hit. Guys?”

  Dave shoved me forward and I ran to the suit with the briefcase. I grabbed the handle and pulled it next to me, my gun still at the ready. It took me two tries to get the duffel bag’s strap around the Russian’s head and free. The bull stirred next to the briefcase guy, and I shot him in the side of the head, the noise from the gun no longer noticeable after all the shots that had been fired. Gally was sobbing behind me, Dave whispering to him.

  “Got it,” I said, standing up.

  I looked at Gally. Blood was seeping into his shirt and through his pant leg. It looked like he’d taken one right above the knee, and another in the guts. The worst. I couldn’t imagine the pain of it. Ju
st getting slugged in the stomach could make you lose your lunch and shit blood for a week.

  “Help me up, Billy,” Gally said to me, his eyes pleading.

  “We have to go,” Dave said, standing up.

  “Billy… Dave. Help me!” Gally’ s voice rose to a shout.

  It was a pathetic, sob-filled sound that tore me up. I’d started to take a step toward Gally to help him up when Dave shot him twice, once in the face, once in the heart. Before I could say anything, Dave grabbed my arm and ran toward the double doors. We crashed through them and into the side of the waiting minivan. I pulled the sliding door closed as Kenyon calmly pulled the minivan away from the curb and signaled for a turn down one of the parking rows.

  “You motherfucker!” I screamed, my mouth less than an inch from Dave’s nose. “You murderous, insane, crazy, stupid motherfucker!”

  I reared back my fist to hit him, but he shifted his weight and drove his own fist into my stomach, following it up with another to my nose. Before I could get my hands up, he had the barrel of his .45 resting under my chin. The blood from my nose began to coat it, eventually dripping down to Dave’s fingers.

  “Before I put your brains all over the roof,” Dave said calmly, “you better listen up. Gally was a deader. He took one in the guts and one in the knee. We would have gotten killed or pinched if we’d stayed any longer trying to drag his ass out. He’d have left a trail of DNA either way. But worse, if we’d left him alive, he’d have left a trail of names when the cops got him, and then again when the Russians got him. He’d sing like a canary, Billy. You fuckin’ know this. We did him a favor.”

  I slowly leaned back against the sliding door and wiped my bloody nose on my sleeve. Dave crawled across the open space to the opposite wall of the van. We’d removed the middle seats beforehand just to make sure nothing could hinder us during a quick getaway. We’d planned the job properly, but when bullets started flying, you never knew how screwed up everything might become. It wouldn’t look good to be the cause of a big headline like “Minivan Seats Trip Up Murderous Jewelry Thieves” as a story in the crime section of the newspaper. I stared at Dave. The .45 was still pointed at me, but casually, resting on his leg, as if he’d forgotten the gun was in his hand.

  “You fuckin’ murdered him,” I said.

  I didn’t feel like shouting. I looked up at Kenyon’s face. If I hadn’t been so pissed at Dave, I would have busted a gut. Kenyon was our getaway man, and he’d always been a pro. This was his thirteenth job with our crew, which consisted of me and Dave full-time, Gally and Kenyon more often than not these days, and a few others like Stephen and Dana whenever we needed a fifth and sometimes a sixth hand. Kenyon normally sported a badass afro, which made him look like a killer African with the way his eyes would get wider and crazier than you’d think possible whenever he really got mad. He was scarier than any other brother from the hood, and then some.

  Today, Kenyon had on a wig that was mixed black and brown hair, straight, hanging down to his shoulders. The lipstick he wore was so bright it almost glowed, and the way Tanya had made up his face almost fooled me into thinking he was a pretty girl. A pretty girl that weighed a good two-fifty and had done hard time at Huntsville for an assault rap. He’d beaten the double murder charge and avoided Texas’ swift execution schedules.

  “Nice tits,” I said. He turned and gave me a frown, then noticed my eyes were looking at his chest. “Can I play with them?”

  “What the fuck happened?” he shouted, putting his eyes back on the road.

  To everyone in traffic, he’d be just another pretty black woman in a nondescript, featureless minivan. An angry, pretty black woman. I laughed, unable to help myself. I felt like I wanted to cry.

  “Gally bought it,” Dave said, scooting forward a little so he wouldn’t have to shout. He looked down, realized he still had the gun pointed at me, and gave me a sheepish grin as he engaged the safeties and tucked it in the shoulder holster under his leather jacket.

  “What the fuck you mean ‘Gally bought it’?” Kenyon shouted again. “What the fuck, man?”

  “Killer here,” I said, feeling the anger rising once again, “wasted him.”

  “I had to!” Dave shouted. I wondered if he would pull the gun back out and start waving it in my face. “They got him in the guts and the knee. He was bleeding everywhere, and we couldn’t waste time dragging him out. I had to do it.”

  The minivan pulled up to a stoplight. Kenyon looked back at me, the expression on his face sour, which was almost comical considering he looked like he was a prostitute. I shrugged. I didn’t want to deal with it at the moment.

  “You’re bleeding on my carpet,” Kenyon said. He turned back to the traffic in front of him. “I don’t like it, but you did the right thing,” he said over his shoulder to Dave.

  “Fuck you. I don’t need you telling me what I did and didn’t do right.”

  Kenyon burst into laughter. It died out after ten seconds. “He’d have given us up. To the cops, and if not them, definitely to the commies.”

  “Didn’t I just say that? You fuckin’ deaf or something?” Dave asked. No one answered. He looked over at me. “I’m sorry, Billy. I know you guys were pals outside of our thing. But I had to. You know it, or you will once you stop being pissed off at me.”

  “Okay,” I yelled. “I get it. You had to kill him. Jesus Christ, just drop it already.”

  “Seriously, Billy. I’m sorry.”

  “I said drop it.”

  I hung my head between my knees and cried. I’m not usually emotional, but Gally and I had been good friends. Gally and his various girlfriends had hung out with Tanya and me more than just a lot. We’d all been roommates for a while, and even after, we were dope buddies. He could score some of the best weed and smack coming out of Mexico. The weed was great, but even the best Mexi weed was like smoking cow shit compared to the indoor trees that came out of all the medical marijuana states. The heroin, however, was potent enough to kill you if you weren’t paranoid enough.

  Dave scooted over next to me, put his arm around me, and pulled me close. I dried up when we finally made it to our safe house, a place out in Jersey Village on the northwest side. We’d hole up here for a week or so, check the temperature daily as to how hot we might be, divvy up the cash, and let Dave take care of fencing the jewelry. I’d been so torn up that I hadn’t even looked in the briefcase or duffel to see what our score was.

  The garage door rumbled down and Dave scooted away from me so I could open the sliding door. He gave me a grim smile then climbed out and made his way into the house. Kenyon was staring at me from the front seat, his hand still on the keys in the ignition.

  “I wasn’t there, Billy,” he said, his face sad, “and I know you and Gally was like brothers, but you know what would’ve happened.”

  “It doesn’t make it any easier to swallow,” I said, hoping I wasn’t about to start crying again.

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t. I don’t want to sound shitty, but it’s the nature of our business. It’s the risk we take. And just to sound shittier, the only real question is do we give whoever Gally was fucking his share of the take?”

  “No, but we’ll give it to Lana so she can maybe give his kids a better life.”

  Kenyon nodded, his fond memories of Lana the same as mine, no doubt. Not that we’d slept with her, but she’d been a real rock, a proper anchor for Gally that kept him from doing even crazier shit. I guess it was fitting that without her in his life to ground him, he went and got himself killed during a risky jewelry heist that only the most daring would attempt.

  Or stupid. I couldn’t help feeling like Gally dying was just the beginning of a string of bad luck.

  TWO - Cooldown

  Tanya ran to me the instant I came through the door from the garage. I tried to hug her with a briefcase in one hand, a duffel bag in the other, but I only ended up jamming a corner of the briefcase into her spine. I kissed her on the cheek and kept walking,
deciding right then and there that if Dave said so much as a single snide comment, I’d clock him, gun or no gun. Kenyon followed me in and got a peck on the cheek from Tanya, both following me into the living room.

  The safe house was sparsely furnished, but it had a decent sectional, a flatscreen TV, and fridge full of food, thanks to Tanya. We never really talked about what I did for a living, but she wasn’t so dense as to not notice the bags of money or drugs, or both, that showed up every so often. I spent enough of it on her to keep her happy, but I also did the same for myself, which is why I had to keep pulling jobs like this. The difference these days was that we had graduated from small-time shit to the big leagues.

  We weren’t knocking over armored cars that had twenty million in cash or ganking ten million in furs and antiques, but the old days of robbing liquor stores and street dealers were over. We’d progressed to pawn shops, a pretty risky thing to do, to be honest, but whatever. We were good at it. From there we knocked over a few small jewelry stores, a car dealership that foolishly kept almost six figures in cash on hand, and a lot of business owners taking the nightly deposit bag to the bank.

  Until one night, when we robbed a dry cleaner that we knew was involved in the meth trade. Turns out, the dry cleaner guy was the nephew of Juan Carlos Alvarado, head of the Zaragoza Cartel in Monterrey, Mexico. This was good in the sense that Mr. Dry Clean had been sitting on almost $300,000 in cash. That was on top of the fifty or so kilos of what looked to be top-notch crystal meth. I didn’t delve into the crystal, so I didn’t know, but the guys we sold it to in Wisconsin practically begged us to get more of it.

  We sat on the dope for over a year until we’d burned up the cash, then found a connection as far away from the Mexican network as we could. I suppose we could have sold it up in Maine, but Maine isn’t a big hotbed of tweakers beating up old women for money to get their next fix. Wisconsin wasn’t a huge mecca for crystal either, but our contacts loved it for exactly that fact. They moved it right back out and into the northeast corridor, even farther away from the Mexican cartels in the West and Midwest.