- Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 6
6
“Well, what do you think?”
Carl sounded smug and self satisfied, as if this was the most brilliant fucking idea since oral sex. Problem was, it made sense. You never hear about anyone knocking over that particular type of business.
“It’s definitely doable.”
“It is such a strange place. I do not understand why it is so popular here.” I think that was the most I had heard Lisette say since I met her. I was tempted to ignore her, but my cynicism and need to hear my own voice thought otherwise.
“Because, for one thing, Americans are stupid with their money and think it’s a better investment than saving for their retirement. And for another thing, to some people, bingo is a fucking religion.”
“That would explain the little Buddhas and all those troll dolls.” That was Evans. While Gus and I were getting kicked out of Harry’s, Evans, Carl, a Lisette decided to do some recon work by heading out to the bingo hall in question.
“From what I could gather,” started Carl, “it looks relatively low risk. I only saw one security guard.”
“I did not see any cameras.”
“I was only two squares away from winning five hundred bucks.”
“Why thank you Evans,” I started, “that’s very fucking helpful.”
Carl spoke up. “We know where the money is. It’s only a matter of how much they got and what time most of it will be there.”
“How are we going to do that?” asked the silent minority.
“Well, if you guys were as resourceful as me, you would have the answer to those questions.” I tried not to sound smug.
Everyone looked confused, but Evans was the only one with since enough to ask what everyone was thinking.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s that whole ask-and-ye-shall-receive thing.”
“You just asked and they told you everything?” I don’t think she believed me.
“Not exactly. I said that I was a reporter for the university paper doing a piece on the booming business of bingo in Texas.”
Social engineering works wonders. The weakest link in any security system is people. You’d be surprised what people will tell you if you give them the right impression. It’s mostly just a matter of attitude. If you look or sound like you belong or are an authority, people will just roll over for you.
Course I didn’t know what the hell that was a the time. I was just being lazy,and it seemed like the easiest way to get the info.
Sides, I wasn’t going to spend any money there. Why pay for recon? Also, before everyone came over today, I drove over to the bingo hall and took a look around.
“That’s not bad, man,” said Carl, intrigued.
“I know, they practically gave me all the info that you three spend hours trying to get. All in a matter of minutes. Go figure.”
“Ok, Sherlock, what kind of numbers are we looking at.”
“Well, they get about 600 people at $40 a pop at two sessions a night, minus the payouts to winners, you got around 43 grand.”
Everyone just kinda stared, shocked. And that wasn’t the half of it.
“But wait, there’s more. They are trying something new next weekend…”
“Right,” said Carl. “Super Saturday.”
“Yeah,” said Evans. “There were posters up all over.”
“And,” I continued. “They are going to be running all day with five sessions with the prizes getting bigger all day. So assuming that they get the same amount per session, we are talking over a hundred grand.”
“And it’s all cash,” said Evans. “They don’t take checks or plastic.”
“And they only have one guard.”
“Wow,” commented Lisette.
“Wow? All you can say is ‘Wow’? It’s probably more money than you are ever going to see in you miserable fucking shoplifting life and all you can say is ‘wow’?”
“Hey!” yelled Carl. “Lay off of her CT.”
“You know what I don’t understand?” chimed in Evans, thank God. “Don’t any of those people have a life? What’s the point of spending half of your paycheck on a stupid game of chance? They could put their kids though college, but no, mommy likes to waste our life savings on bingo.”
“That was pretty cynical dude. I think you’ve been hanging around CT too much.”
“Hey,” I chimed in,”different strokes to different folks. Y’all know how I feel about stupid people.”
“Will the money be in a safe?” asked Lisette.
“Doesn’t matter. If it is, we get them to open it.”
“OK.” said Carl. “What about getting in and out of the place.”
“Well, some one working in the office smokes.”
“How do you know that?” asked Lisette.
“Don’t you know?” said Evans. “He thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes.”
“Fuck off, Watson.” I turned to Lisette. “I did some recon work myself. There are cigarette butts scattered within throwing distance of the office door. We wait around the corner for whoever it is to go out for a smoke, grab them, and force them to let us in.”
“Sounds too easy,” said Evans.
“Then it probably is.” said Lisette.
“Speaking from experience?” I couldn’t help it, I had to take the shot.
Carl and Lisette shared a look with something unsaid going between them. I didn’t like it. I don’t know what it was, but there was something about her that just rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, I’m normally pretty good at reading people and it’s helped me out a lot over the years, but with Lisette, there was just something I couldn’t read.
Maybe it was a culture thing and I was just getting the wrong tells. Or maybe part of me was jealous. Not that I had a thing for Carl. I may be crooked, but I’m more or less straight.
No, I think that it was the amount of control that she had over him. Even then, it wasn’t so much that she had control and I didn’t. I just wanted him to be his own man. I mean, he had the same pressures that we all did growing up, with our folks and teachers telling us what we should do or what we should think.
I thought we were above that, certainly I was, but the thought of one of my buddies being that easy to control just freaked me out.
Carl spoke up. “CT, I think what she was saying was that we need to prepare in case something goes wrong.”
“In case what goes wrong?”
Fuck. That was my roomate, Gwen. I knew that there was a chance that she was going to come home, but I figured meeting here was safer than a public place like the Kettle.
Thankfully, I’m quick on my feet.
“We were thinking about doing a get together in Galveston. You want in? You can bring Amy.”
“Nah.”
“Oh, come on. I figure if I can’t get laid down there, I could always just jerk off watching you two.”
“Whatever.”
“So, is Amy coming over or are you going over there?”
“I’m heading to her place. I just wanted to take a shower and grab some things.”
“Cool.” I said as she headed upstairs. Time to change the subject until Gwen left. I turned to the crowd. “Speaking of things going wrong, did I tell you what happened to me and Gus yesterday?”
“Nope,” said Carl.
“You remember Trey Busch?”
“I hate that fucker.”
“Well then, you’ll love this.” So I started into my newest tale of my exploits. I hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone, so I hadn’t tested it to see if anything was boring or where I needed laugh lines. See, the guys thought my stories were bullshit, but I worked to make sure that they were entertaining.
Eventually the story ended, and I heard Gwen come out of the bathroom. I excused myself and wandered upstairs.
The reason for this was two fold. First, Gwen was a pretty heavy stoner. Not just pot either. She liked tweaking, and the occasional line of blow, but she smoked pot all the time. And I mean all the time.
Anyways, I was looking for a hookup. When we were younger, Kat and I would get stoned together and talk for hours. I hadn’t really gotten stoned since, but I figured, while Kat’s in town, we could, uh, reminisce.
Secondly, Gwen is fucking hot, and probably not dressed yet. Yeah, I’m a pig. Oink-onik, baby
I knocked as I opened the door. Too late, she had already thrown on an oversized t-shirt.
“Hey Gwen?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I need a hook-up.”
“You know I don’t like the cock,” she said as she started to brush her hair.
“Hey, a man can dream can’t he?” She laughed. “Actually hon, I need some pot.”
“Since when? I’ve only seen you smoke it the once.”
“Well, I got this old friend in town and I figured it’d grease the wheels, so to speak.”
“You’re not going gay now are you?”
“Nah, it’s a chick.”
“I hate when guys call women chicks. It’s, like, you expect us to waddle around and go “peep”.”
“Actually, I think entomologically…”
“Whatever. How much MJ you need.”
“I dunno, how much do you get for a dime now? It’s been a while.”
“I don’t have anything that small.” She moved to her dresser.
“What, you can’t break it up?”
“It’d be a shame, since all I have are these really nice buds.” She opened what looked like a jewelry box and there were three of the biggest fucking buds I had ever seen in my life.
I know she gets this shit from some limey fuck named Stones. I don’t know how he got to Texas, or how he got his cliche’d fucking name, but there he was. He’d make house calls occasionally, and he and Gwen would go up to her room and hang for a while. Personally, I don’t think she’s gay enough not to occasionally pay for her shit on her back, and if so, she must be really worth it from the quality of what was in the box.
“Wow,” I said.
“You see something you like?”
“What, besides your nipples through your shirt.”
“Fucker,” she said closing the box.
“How much you want for the small one?”
“For you? Uh, thirty.”
“Done,” I said reaching for my wallet.
“You find a job yet?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Well, you’re gonna run out of money eventually.”
“That’s my problem, sister. Thanks for the dope.”
“Yeah, later.”
So I headed back down stairs to Evans attempting to play one of my basses and Carl going through the CD collection.
“Dude,” started Carl, “Don’t you have anything besides Primus.”
“He-he,” cackled Evans in his Beavis voice, “Primus sucks.”
“You’re damned skippy,” I turned to Carl. “Dude, the new Bosstones is right on top.”
“Cool.” He grabbed the disc and put it in the player. “I love the Bosstones.” He hit play and the plunka-plunka-plunka of the drums in the opening of “Noise Brigade” came flying out of the speakers.
“CT man,” he said sitting down. “Remember when we saw the Bosstones open for Fishbone at the Stafford Opera House.”
“Do I? Motherfucker, that was the show that made me want to play music.”
“Really?” asked Evans.
“Yeah man, both bands were so fucking tight it was unreal. And they looked like they were having so much fun.”
“Yeah,” Carl agreed. “It was still one of the best concerts I’ve ever gone to. Actually made me want to play also.”
“I hate to tell you this dude, but you can’t carry a tune a bucket.”
“Well, I could be like that one dude who just danced on the stage all night.”
“I’m outta here,” said Gwen coming down the stairs. “Don’t wait up.”
“Shit, I’ll probably be out later than you. Gus is back in town and he’s got this shindig setup.”
“Cool. Well, have fun,” she said closing the door.
“So, where were we,” announced Carl.
“I figure we need three people to go in.”
“How’s that?” questioned the monkey boy.
“Well, me and Carl for crowd control, and you to bag the cash.”
“What is to keep the people from following you?”
“What, you don’t tie people up in Mexico?”
“Tie them up with what?” Carl sounded angry. I suspected that he didn’t like me giving Lisette shit.
“I dunno. How about duct tape?”
“That works good,” said Evans. “When I made my Evans Scissor-hands costume for halloween, I covered my shirt in black duct tape. I couldn’t get it off.”
“So duct tape it is,” announced Carl.
“So that leaves Lissette to keep the car running.”
“I cannot drive.”
“Ok, so what’s your job going to be.”
“She’ll be at the drop off,” started Carl. “She’ll take the cash and meet us at the hotel.”
“Fuck, Carl!” I was pissed. “Why are we going to leave the money with her?”
“Dude, I’ll be with her. It’s no big deal. Then we’ll meet back at the hotel like we talked about.”
“When did you decide all this?”
“The other day. Why?”
“Would have been nice if you discussed it with us first.”
“I didn’t think it was necessary.”
“Well I beg to fucking differ. How about you, Evans?”
“Meh, I really don’t care who does what.”
“See,” said Carl smugly.
“Fuck,” I mumbled to myself. “I’ll let this one slide, but next time, just don’t go making decisions like that without talking it through, okay? I mean, it’s not just your life riding on this. The rest of us would like to have a say in how we get shot at.”
“Yeah, ok. Sorry CT.”
“Thanks. So, who’s going to drive then?”
“I’ll drive,” said Evans helpfully.
“Fuck no,” I said, “You tried to kill me three fucking times in a car. I’m not giving you the chance. Sides, we need you inside.”
“So we need someone else?”
“Yeah.”
“How about Gus?” Carl suggested.
“I guess he’ll have to be it. I’m not inclined to trust anyone else I don’t know.”
“Speaking of Gus,” started Evans, “Shouldn’t we get going?”
“Yeah,” said Carl getting up.
“Hey,” I said, “I’ll meet you guys there.”
“You got something to do?” asked Carl.
“Yeah, Kat’s back in town. I’m gonna go pick her up.”
“Crap,” said Evans.
“What?”
“You always get weird around her.”
“I don’t think it matters any more. She’s pretty much made that clear.”
“Who is Kat?” asked Lisette.
“She’s this chick CT used to have a thing for,” said Carl.
“What thing?”
“He wanted to get into her pants,” helped Evans.
“Fuck all of you.” Not my best comeback, but this was a sore spot.
“Did you tell her how you feel?”
“Yeah,” I almost whispered, heading out the door. “She didn’t feel the same way.”
“What did you do?”
I didn’t want to answer so I just turned to leave, but Carl, ever helpful, piped up.
“He slept with her roommate.”
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