Thing is the day after the story broke on TV and all the papers, Fat Lip was as excited as a bull in the cow pasture. He shoved a copy of the Journal in my face the second he saw me that day and started in on how this was just the kind of job Charlie Atwater and Butch Levins would have pulled. He just kept going on and on about how he knew, deep in his gut, it was them. They were back and they had done it for sure.
God, I felt really bad for the guy. I was more than ever tempted to spill the beans and tell him what I knew, you know, about both of them being deceased and all, but I didn’t. I don’t know, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe if I had what happened next might have turned out altogether a different way.
It was three days after the robbery and Fat Lip had calmed down some. It was the height of the morning commute hours and a heavy blanket of snow was coming down on the city. People passing through the terminal were bundled up and their wet boots and galoshes left a trail of wet dirt and mud everywhere.
Ed and I had just grabbed our coffee from the little shop and were plowing our way through that wall of commuters when we heard a shout ring out. I tried to see over the heads of those around us and heard it a second time. It was Fat Lip way over on the other side of the concourse and he was pushing his way through people screaming at the top of his lungs. What he was yelling was a name – Charlie Atwater!
A cold chill went up my spine. What the hell was going on? I shoved my coffee cup in Ed’s hands and started trying to move faster toward where I’d last seen Fat Lip. Ever swim against the tide? That’s what pushing through a thousand New Yorkers is like during morning rush hours.
I caught a glimpse of Fat Lip and that sour feeling in my stomach got worse. He was holding up his wooden bristle shoe shine brush and I watched in total disbelief as he zeroed in on this young fellow in an expensive business topcoat and attacked him. Fat Lip just came up behind the poor guy and just like that whacked him along the side of the head with his brush. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The guy stumbled to one knee and Fat Lip went at him again. Now people were scattering away from what they thought was a madman going wild. I yelled for Fat Lip to stop, but there was no way he could hear me. His victim had managed to get to his feet somehow and put up an attaché case to defend himself from Fat Lip’s blows. The left side of the guys face was covered with boot polish and deep scratches.
Fat Lip kept hammering away with his brush and managed to knock the briefcase out of the guy’s hands. It hit the floor hard and the lock broke, the case springing open and its contents spilling out papers and small black cloth pouches.
And just like that the young man rips open his coat and pulls out a pistol and shoots Fat Lip at point blank range.
The shot echoed through the main concourse like a cannon had gone off and if you think there was pandemonium before, now it was a damn stampede as several women screamed, some folks dove to the floor accidentally tripping others and it was bloody chaos.
Me, I’d pulled my piece immediately and flipped off the safety the second it was in my hand.
The crowd had dispersed leaving a wide-open space around the shooter and Fat Lip now lying in a pool of his own blood.
I yelled at the guy to drop his gun. He turned to look at me and without a moment’s hesitation brought his piece up and fired. Dear sweet Jesus, all these years on the force and I’d never once felt so damn scared. It’s a miracle I didn’t piss myself. But I didn’t plan on dying that day either and I fired back. Probably not the best thing to do considering how we were all surrounded by thousands of innocent citizens.
Still, by some miracle I nailed the asshole in the leg and he went down hard. I rushed up to him and ordered him to let go his gun. He was in pain and obeyed me, clutching at his bleeding leg.
Then Ed was there, gun out and yelling for back up and an ambulance in his belt radio.
I started for Fat Lip when a little balding dude came rushing out of the crowed carrying a doctor’s bag. Said he was a doc and dropped to his knees beside Fat Lip to examine his wound. Half a second later a pretty blonde in a nurse outfit under her coat appears and is helping the doc. He directs her to the guy I shot with orders to start a tourniquet fast.
You know, it’s what makes me love this city, those two coming out of nowhere to help out like they did.
Me, I went over and using a handkerchief, picked up the automatic the shooter had dropped. As I was doing so, I looked over to the contents that had spilled out of his attaché case. There on the wet, dirty tiles, scattered everywhere, were small, clear, uncut diamonds.
Yeah, yeah. I know you’re all getting ahead of me here. Hang in there, the end will blow you away.
The ambulances did show up from the NYU Medical Center on 33rd and FDR Drive. So did a dozen or so coppers and a couple of detectives. By the afternoon, both Fat Lip and his shooter were taken care of and luckily doing well. Fat Lip had been shot through the shoulder under his collarbone and nothing vital was hit.
Meanwhile the guy he’d attacked had been identified and the jewels in his case were the stolen Pollock diamonds.
So who was the guy? The computer files identified him as one Eddie Durant of San Diego, California. Name sound familiar? You got it: his father had been Charlie Atwater, alias Sam Durant who had died of stomach cancer the year before. You see, poor Eddie had the bad luck of having grown up to look exactly like his dad had when he was that age. The age Fat Lip had last looked upon Charlie Atwater. Fat Lip had never seen an old Atwater, so when he’d seen the kid moving through the terminal that morning, his memories of Charlie did the rest. He thought he was seeing Charlie and went after him accordingly.
Of course, by the time I got off work and made it to the hospital to see Fat Lip, Maude and her girls were already there. I told them about the shooter being Charlie’s boy and Fat Lip just looked at me dumbfounded. He had every right to be.
But I saved the best for last. You see, in cases like these dealing with stolen rocks, the insurance outfits offer up a standard ten percent reward fee for anyone who helps the cops get their merchandise back. For Fat Lip that meant he would be getting a check for over a hundred thousand dollars.
No freakin’ lie.
A few months later, Fat Lip bought an old garage down in Harlem, married Maude, and they moved into together at her place. Fat Lip used the money to pay for her girls’ college tuition and then put some of toward a halfway house for ex-cons. He even went as far as to hire several of them to work in his garage. It’s a going concern and he’s really a happy man these days.
Of course he found someone else to take over the shoeshine station and things at the terminal are like always. But I have to tell you, there’s not a day I don’t walk past that station I don’t think of Fat Lip and what went down. Guess you could say, in some kind of roundabout way, he did get his revenge after all.
Fortune – by S. A. Solomon
A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. - E.A. Poe
RELAX.
We’ve time to talk now. You look nervous. Don’t be. I’m not a freak or a monster. I’m a person like any other, only with no fixed address.
This old place? It was a wreck, but it’s got great bones. I made it comfortable, real cozy. It gets damp in the winter, though. How long have you had that cough? I can pop out to the drug store for you. Or maybe another slug of whiskey?
If you know how to work it, you can go forever without leaving the terminal. You can find anything you need here. You may have to manage your expectations – isn’t that how you finance types put it, “manage expectations”? Yes, you may have to settle, but you’ll get used to it.