The day before, they had stopped at a costume supply shop to snatch up a fake beard and a tube of scar makeup. Now, at 8:10 a.m., they pulled up to a Walgreens342 pharmacy, looking for wool caps, but they struck out. Winter hats weren’t a big seller in May.
At a contractor supply shop, DJ persuaded the kid behind the counter to retrieve a box of wool hats from the storeroom. After fishing out a New England Patriots cap and another hat, he paid for them with the last few dollars he had in his pocket.
In the parking lot, Chris told DJ, “Fuck it. I’m going to do this myself.”
DJ had been dreading even the thought of going through with a robbery. Still, he knew it wasn’t right to continue having Chris take all the risk. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Chris said. “If you get caught, I’m gonna have to live with that, and your mother is gonna fuckin’ disown me.”
DJ felt a lot better limiting his role to getaway driver. After Chris put on the fake beard, DJ helped him apply the scar makeup to his right cheek. DJ couldn’t decide if his buddy looked more like a fresh Taliban recruit or an Amish guy separated from his farm cart. “I don’t know about that beard,” he said, chuckling. “You look a little shady.”
They started driving, still not sure where they were going to go.
Sitting behind the wheel, DJ mindlessly rubbed his hands along his thighs, as if trying to iron out the wrinkles in his jeans. He took a long drag on his Marlboro Red, then mumbled, Jesus, what have I gotten myself into? The Honda was now parked in a cozy business district overlooking the Massachusetts Turnpike in Newton, not far from the Waltham line. His cell phone rang. He looked down and saw his mother’s number. She’d called several times since he slipped out of the house. He let this call, like the others, go straight to voice mail.
Wearing his winter hat, he sat waiting for Chris to emerge from the Village Bank, a brick building with arched windows and a quaint cupola. Looking to the right again, DJ spotted a Newton police cruiser on the prowl. Oh Jesus, this is over.
Moments later Chris yanked open the passenger’s door and hopped in. “Let’s go,” he said.
DJ inched the black Honda forward.
“C’mon, dude,” Chris complained. “Let’s go!”
“Wait a minute,” DJ shot back. “A fucking cop just went by. He took the right. I want to let him get up the street a little. I don’t want him to see us pulling out and get a description of our car.”
Carefully, DJ let the Honda creep toward the intersection. When he saw the cop pass Dunkin’ Donuts on the right, evidently on his way to circle back around the bank, DJ banged a left. He headed along Route 30, which trails the Charles River, to get to the Mass Pike.
Now Chris was agitated. “D, you think we’re going to be all right?”
“Yeah,” DJ said, peering into the rearview mirror. “I don’t see anybody yet, and there’s nobody behind us. Just don’t turn your head back, Chris.”
Once on the Pike, heading east toward Boston, DJ looked over to see his buddy peeling off the beard and wiping away the scar makeup. Chris tore up the beard as best he could and stuffed it into a coat pocket. He ripped up the deposit slip, the same one he had handed to the teller with “big bills” written on the back. He lowered the car window and chucked out the clump of deposit-slip bits. Instantly, the gusts along the Pike sent the clump flying back into the Honda, landing in the rear seat.
“Chris, that shit went back inside the car,” DJ said.
Chris didn’t seem worried. “Yeah,” he said. “We’ll get it later.”
DJ looked across the median strip of the divided turnpike and saw two Newton police cruisers flying along the westbound side. “Dude, we’re all set,” he said.
“You think so?” Chris asked.
“Yeah, they’re responding to the bank, and we’re already this far in the other direction. We got it. We’re good.” For the first time all morning, DJ felt the tension starting to lift.
Chris smiled and reached over to shake DJ’s hand. As he started counting the bundles of bills to determine the size of his score, he smiled again. “Oh, Jesus, I did good on this one.” When he reached $5,000, he turned to DJ and said, “Dude, there’s still a couple of thousand in here. I think we might have like seven or eight grand on this one.” He handed DJ a thousand-dollar bundle of fifties. “Here, D, this is for you.”
“Thanks, Chris,” DJ said, jamming the wad deep into the front pocket of his jeans.
“Thanks for driving.”
A few moments later, Chris peeled off another $500 in twenties. “Here, D,” he said, handing it over. “Take your mom out for Mother’s Day.”
“Really, Chris?”
“Absolutely. Your mom deserves to be taken out. We’ve put her through enough shit.”
Chris told DJ to get off the Pike at the next exit, at the Allston-Brighton tolls, and hop onto the Storrow Drive Parkway.
DJ glanced over to see Chris pulling out his cell phone and begin dialing. “I’ll be over in like ten minutes,” Chris told his dealer, then hung up.
Approaching the tollbooth, DJ grabbed one of the twenty-dollar bills Chris had just handed him and paid the $1.25 toll, fishing around the ashtray for a loose quarter so he’d get an even $19.00 back in change.
At the end of the parkway, he steered the Honda onto the expressway and then into the Callahan Tunnel, a fifty-year-old tube built under Boston Harbor and best known as a route to Logan Airport. But they wouldn’t be going that far. At the end of the tunnel, before the entrance to the airport, there is a right-turn exit leading to the heart of East Boston, a dense and tribal neighborhood mostly separated from the rest of the city by the harbor.
DJ looked over at Chris. “We gotta get some help after this,” he said. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“I know, I know,” Chris agreed.
Daylight met them near the end of the Callahan Tunnel, and DJ guided the Honda past a strip of asphalt, where a single police cruiser was routinely stationed. His stomach dropped when he noticed that instead of one, there were two Boston Police cruisers there, along with a Boston paddy wagon and a state police cruiser. Up ahead, toward the airport entrance, another statie was idling. There was nothing routine about this contingent.
Chris looked over at DJ, the color drained from his face. “Dude, that’s not for us, is it?”
DJ was panicked, too, but somehow mustered sarcasm. “No, Chris, that’s for the fucking guy who crossed the solid yellow line behind us,” he barked. “Of course it’s for us!”
Time now slowed. DJ swore he could hear his heart pounding, echoing throughout the car. Ga-boom. Ga-boom. He looked over to see a Boston cop pointing, slowly mouthing “That’s them!” He saw another cop approaching with his gun drawn and, behind him, a couple of officers holding shotguns. Blue lights were flashing, sirens were blaring.
DJ looked over at Chris and thought he could tell what he was thinking: Should we make a run for it? But DJ could see there was nowhere to go. Suddenly, he wondered if death by a barrage of bullets would be easier than the humiliation that would follow an orderly surrender.
He was scared and broken. And dumbfounded. After all I’ve survived, this is where it’s going to end?
At 2:38 p.m., the bailiff’s deep voice punctured the quiet in a bright courtroom paneled with warm English oak. “All rise.” Everyone did as they were told, watching as the judge entered. Even in his robe, Judge Mark Wolf didn’t cut an imposing figure. He was short, bald, and round-faced. But knowing how DJ’s lawyer had described the judge—that he was very smart, very serious, and often very tough—Lorraine was bracing herself for the worst.
342 (Chapter 15, note 14)
they pulled up to a Walgreens: Ibid; also, DJ, interviews by author.