Thing is in the coming days and weeks, Fat Lip and I would gradually become friends just as I had done with Jackson. Guess the old man had told him I was a square shooter and bit by bit, Fat Lip loosened up. He took to Grand Central like a duck to water.
It was during that first year he worked with Old Jackson that, bit by bit, I learned Fat Lip’s story. At first he was hesitant to talk about it, but when he realized neither Ed or I were going to give him a hard time for being an ex-con, he was okay with talking about his all too brief life of crime and subsequent incarceration. I should point out, whenever Fat Lip ever mentioned Sing Sing, he’d add that come hell or high water he was never going back. Ever. And I believed him.
One day, on entering the Main Concourse, I spotted Fat Lip over by the coffee kiosk and went over to say hi. Ed had grabbed a newspaper off the rack near the shoe shine platform and jumped into the empty chair to get a shine on his black leather shoes. It’s always good idea to look sharp for the public, and the brass.
Anyway, Fat Lip was about to hand over a buck to the girl behind the counter for two cups of coffee when I stepped in and gave her a five spot to cover his order and then placed another for me and Ed. Fat Lip smiled and thanked me and we started jawing while the girl went about getting two more paper cups filled with java.
As we talked I couldn’t help but notice how Fat Lip’s brown eyes always seemed to stray as looking past me at the throng of people moving all around us. It was something I’d seen him do lots of time, much like we’re trained to do in the police academy. So I called him on it, asking if he was looking for anyone in particular.
Of course, I should not have been surprised when he said he was looking for Charlie Atwater and Butch Levins. He went on to explain he’d heard a long time ago that eventually every single New Yorker, all eight million of them, eventually went through Grand Central some time in their lives. He was convinced that some day both Atwater and Levins would return to the city and come through the terminal. And when they did, he would spot them and turn them in. Finally getting his revenge for what they had done.
Well, it was by far one of the most insane things I’d ever heard but I didn’t say it in those terms. Rather I kidded him that it was a pipe dream and both those dudes were probably living in Brazil these days. It would be the epitome of stupidity for either to ever come back to the city where they were still wanted. But Fat Lip wouldn’t have any of that. I could tell he was obsessed with the idea and no argument would ever convince him that he was wasting his time. After all, what harm was there in his thinking it could happen some day. I guess, at some point in all of our lives, we find something to obsess about, don’t we?
Anyway, that was his story and I quit bugging him about it.
A couple of days later I put in a call to a friend of mine on the NYPD, told him about Fat Lip and asked him to keep an unofficial ear out for anything concerning those two fugitives. Who knew, maybe someday something might turn up?
About a year later, Jackson, knowing that he wasn’t getting any younger, decided to call it quits. He had a young sister who lived in South Carolina somewhere and she had invited him to come down and live his retirement years with her and her family. Fat Lip was naturally worried when Booker first told him. Then the old guy told him he was leaving him the business lock, stock, and barrel. And he’d already paid the concession fees for the next two years; his parting gift to Fat Lip. I hear Fat Lip started crying when he heard this. It had been a long, long time since anyone, other than his family, had done anything so kind to him.
Well, if you didn’t know already, those of us who work in Grand Central think of each other as a family and on Old Man Jackson’s last day, all the gang that worked the Main Concourse threw him a small going away shindig right there on the floor. Maude, who was the ticket clerk under the giant clock, had baked a huge cake, and the folks at the coffee stand provided free java to go along with it.
It really was a great little party.
The very next day, my detective pal at the precinct called me saying he’d found out some information on both the late Charlie Atwater and Butch Levins. And yes, I did say late. Both were by then six feet under. According to my friend, Levins had died in a bank robbery shootout in Chicago four years earlier. Whereas Atwater was the real surprise. It seemed he’d ended up in Southern California owning a Pawn Shop, married and raised a family all under the bogus name of Sam Durant.
About six months ago, Atwater got sick with stomach cancer and began radiation treatments at a local hospital. One of the hospital’s security staff was a former L.A. county sheriff who thought Atwater looked familiar and somehow managed to get a cup with his fingerprints on it and passed it along to the local FBI boys. Sure enough, they tagged this Durant as the fugitive, Charles Atwater. So the FBI goes to get a warrant for his arrest, but the D.A., upon hearing of Atwater’s condition, opts to have him arrested but not taken into custody. A judge okayed some kind of house arrest seeing the guy wasn’t long for this world. And sure enough he died three months after being diagnosed.
So after hearing all this, I’m all set to see Fat Lip the next day and tell him what I just learned and that he can put his silly notion of finding these bums to rest once and for all. Thing is, at breakfast the next morning, my wife, Joan, convinced me not to do that. Yeah, I know, it didn’t make any sense to me either. At first. But she thought Fat Lip had made this obsession of his some kind of anchor that had kept him going through twenty-five hard years behind bars. And now, even though he’d found himself a great new life, it was still a crucial element of that life. A purpose for him to get up every day and keep going.
Yeah, she was right. So the next day, I went in to see how Fat Lip was doing on his first day without Old Man Jackson and he was doing just fine. He had a big smile on his face as he shined some pot-bellied business guy’s shoes. There he was rapping away without a care in the world. I just didn’t want to spoil that and never told him what I’d learned about Atwater and Levins.
End of story, right? Ha. Not by a long shot, my friends, for here’s where it really gets good.
So Fat Lip continues working the shoe shine station, and remember the ticket clerk I mentioned just now, Maude. Well, Maude was a divorcee with two teen-age girls and she and Fat Lip had hit it off. After Booker Jackson left, Maude started inviting Fat Lip over to her place for dinner at least once a week and before you knew it, the two of them were an item. Ed and I got a pool going as to when Fat Lip would pop the question.
It was getting on wintertime and as ever Mother Nature began dumping on the city with both frigid temps and lots of snow. Fat Lip would come to work in a heavy winter jacket, scarf and knit cap complaining how old Jackson must be loving the warmth of Down South.
Life was going good for him until the day Pollock’s Jewelry in Greenwich got hit. The thieves broke in during the night and got away with an estimated ten million dollars in uncut diamonds. Believe me, it made all the news never mind the top of our agenda roster at control. NYPD was up in arms, sending out dispatches by the dozen and their bulls were out canvassing every known fence and snitch they could collar in hopes of getting some kind of lead to the heist.