A fine drizzle started. I liked the feel of it. Trees bucked and branches swept to and fro, the lake showing small whitecaps.
“I might have a job for you,” Butch said.
“A job?”
“Yeah. I can’t say too much about it now, not until I get all the details. It’s not a bank or anything. A jewelry store. Family-owned. We take it a week from Tuesday.”
Now I understood what he meant about hitting three or four states in a couple of days. All the highways and exits. He was fantasizing about a crime spree, taking down scores across America, being a real outlaw. Like you didn’t have to plan as much. Like it was easier to escape the cops on the I-25 in the middle of Wyoming, twenty miles to the nearest exit, than it was dodging the staties on the Wantagh Parkway. I realized why he smelled like oil. It was gun oil.
My mother had good instincts. She knew a criminal when she saw one. This kid stank of trouble. I should’ve been sharper.
“I’ve got three men already,” Butch went on. “We need another for crowd control. It’s a small shop, but they’ve got a lot of employees. Like I said, family-owned, so they’ve got Mom and Dad in back, a couple of uncles doing inventory, sisters and cousins up front working the counters. The hardware will be clean, untraceable. Unless you’ve got your own piece you’d rather use. In and out in under four minutes.”
“I don’t do that,” I said.
He frowned. “You don’t do what?”
“That.”
“Hit jewelry stores?”
“I don’t carry a gun.”
He smiled like I’d just told a joke that hadn’t quite comew undere off. “Since when?”
“Since always.”
“But you’re a Rand.”
“And we don’t do that,” I said.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not.”
For some reason I was suddenly offended by the fact that he was standing here without a shirt. That scrawny chest on exhibit. His naked nipples steered toward me.
He bounced like he was being tickled and let out a small burp of a giggle. “You’re old-school thieves. You’re famous. Everybody knows what you’re all about.”
“No armed robbery.”
He cocked his head. “No exceptions, huh?”
“None.”
“Not even for a big enough payday? Let’s say, six figures?”
The kid was a fucking idiot. Jewelry was always the hardest thing to unload on a fence. Some pieces could be identified as readily as fingerprints. It had to pass through a lot of hands before anyone could turn it into cash. You saw maybe a dime off every dollar. For a five-man crew to see a hundred grand each you had to pull down a five-mil score. This mook would never be involved with that kind of a major haul.
In this town he wouldn’t even think about it unless he was in the good graces of the Thompson syndicate.
I asked the obvious question. “You do any work for Danny Thompson?”
“A little of this and that,” Butch said.
“What kind of this and that?”
“You know-things. Stuff.”
I watched Dale across the way, returning with a couple of beers. She could make it only a few steps before someone stopped her, chatted her up, got her laughing. She was pretty and popular and shouldn’t be hooked up with a twenty-year-old hood talking armed robbery. The rest of them looked like punks and assholes but at least they weren’t getting ready to take a five-to-seven rap.
I wondered if she was drawn to Butch because he was a thief like her brothers and father. If she felt more comfortable with him than some straight-A joe working at the Walmart and putting himself through night school. If she liked the smell of gun oil on him. I thought of this mutt on top of my sister. My fists tightened and my knuckles cracked. The pounding bass from his radio beat into my feet and moved up my legs, into my chest, and up through my brain.
I got in close, went nose-to-nose with Butch as he backed up and became trapped against the Chevy’s grille. He turned his hip to me as if to climb away.
He frowned and said, “Hey, man, hey-”
A little of this and that. Butch was one of the hangers-on. Back in Big Dan’s day I watched them come and go, guys trying to mob up who Dan would take advantage of for as long as he could. Get them to do some extra dirty work, the stuff he didn’t want to lay out on his own crew. But he’d always pay them something for the risk and trouble, even if they didn’t get any of the respect they were hoping for. Danny, though, I could see him running guys like Butch out to do everything from shining shoes to cleaning his rain gutters to pulling heists, just so he could skim off the top, paying them nothing and letting them drop wherever they fell.
“Stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Because he uses guys like you.”
“You shouldn’t talk about Mr. Thompson that way, it’s not healthy. He’s got a lot of ears, even out here, you know what I’m saying?”
“I know what you’re saying.”
He hissed a laugh. He thought he was on the inside track, hip to the action, impervious to injury. I considered proving him wrong, chopping him in the throat or shattering that already ugly nose, but it would hurt Dale, and I couldn’t make my sister suffer any more than I already had.
It took him a few more seconds to realize how badly he’d fucked up. He’d presumed too much, spilled too much. His smarmy expression froze.
“Hey, man, hey. It’s cool, right? We’re cool?”
“Sure.”
“You’re a Rand. It’s not like you’re going to cause any trouble, am I right? Tell me if I’m wrong.”
I was a Rand. “Old school, Butch. I don’t blow anyone else’s scores.”
“Righteous.”
I backed away from his car, let the throbbing hum ease out of me, taking some of the agitation with it.
Dale returned and handed me a beer even though I hadn’t asked for one. What the hell. I drank quickly while Dale discussed how she and Butch met. It was my story. It was the same story as most of the kids here and the ones from my day and before, going back to my old man and my uncles and maybe to the Indians who’d originally owned the land. You hung around and eyed one another until someone eyed you back and then you decided if it was worth your time to launch ahead.
She hugged him. She mothered him. She cared about him. When the drizzle grew a bit harder, she got in the backseat and pulled out a shirt for him. He put it on reluctantly. She fixed the collar for him. I wasn’t going to be able to talk dirt with her.
“I’ve got to run,” I said.
Butch and I shook again. I looked at him like he was already in the can, his head shaved, tattooed with swastikas, on his knees for the Aryans.
“Good meeting you,” he said.
“You too.”
Dale took my hand and walked me back to my car. I found myself almost unconsciously studying the texture of her palms and the pads of her fingers. Had Dad sent her scurrying up drainpipes too? Could she pull a five-card lift?
She gave me a hug. “I’m glad you came out here to see me.”
“I am too.”
“What are you going to tell Ma?”
“That of all the things there are for her to worry about, you’re not one of them.”
“That’s sweet, but do you believe it?”
“I believe you’re smart and sharp. It won’t help, though. You know she’ll keep on her course.”
“I don’t expect anything different from her. That’s what we all do. Stay our course.”
I wanted to ask, And you? How are you handling everything?
“Love you,” she said, and spun away.
I got in behind the wheel and snapped the dome light on. I opened Butch’s wallet. I’d picked his pocket when he’d turned his hip to me. I hadn’t even intended to. It was as if he’d offered me the chance and my body had reacted.
I found out that his real name was Joe Cassidy. Now I knew where the Butch came from and probably where the crime-spree fantasies had originated too. He had six dollars in singles. A suspended driver’s license with a Freehold address. No condoms. That’s why Dale made sure she always kept a pack on her, because our good friend Butch here just didn’t give a shit about protection.