David Putnam - The Replacements

The two prospects clutched at Drago’s wrists as their toes left the ground.

Mack closed the door behind us. Drago heaved and the boys tumbled to the floor and scrambled about, trying to recover.

“That’s good, boys,” said Drago. “Just do what Uncle Meat tells you, and you might be able to keep your balls where they grew and not shoved down your throats.”

The immaculate outside of the club, the false front for public consumption, did not match the inside. The place smelled of urine and beer, body odor, and thick, solidified cooking grease. Beer bottles littered the large open room that held five couches, facing each other like wagons circled to fight off Indians. There was nothing stylish about it.

Just like Drago’s motel room, take-out from many different restaurants cluttered the floor, and had been waded through, stomped, and kicked about willy-nilly. A huge plasma screen television filled nearly one entire wall. One corner hung cocked lower and had been smashed in from a thrown bottle or a head rammed into it. It still worked. A show about an outlaw motorcycle gang, Sons of Anarchy , played silently, except where a cone of darkness from the damaged corner gradually shifted into color, moving upward where the show appeared around damage.

The boys tried to stand. Drago kicked at them. “Stay down there.”

They stopped squirming. Drago pointed to the TV. “You punks getting in a little training film, are ya?” He kicked one in the side. “What’s your name, punk?”

The prospect didn’t act intimidated. He was probably used to this sort of treatment. “They call me Slim Jim.”

“What about your butt-buddy?”

The other one said, “My name is-”

Drago kicked at him, “I’m not talking to you, asshole.” Drago looked at Slim Jim. “Well?”

“Roy Boy, they call him Roy Boy.”

“Roy Boy, you go with this man,” said Drago. He pointed to me. “Help him bring in some tools from the car. Don’t do anything stupid, you understand?”

Roy Boy nodded as he got up.

I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of Drago calling the shots, but, for the moment, I’d go along. He was getting things moving and we really needed things moving.

I spun Roy Boy around and patted him down. Clean, nothing on him.

“Huh,” said Drago. “You, stand up.” Drago searched Slim Jim. The same, nothing. “What? You boys haven’t made your bones yet, so you can’t pack, is that it?”

Neither spoke. Roy Boy looked at Slim Jim, but Slim Jim didn’t look back at him.

I nudged Roy Boy and we went outside. Mack stood at the front door and hit the trunk release from the key fob. I let Roy Boy carry the two heavy canvas bags, a burden he could barely handle alone. I followed, scooped up Drago’s cuffs, and closed the front door behind us. Oddly, I felt safer inside the lair than outside under the eyes of the cops who had the ability to put me in a concrete block for the rest of my life.

The false sense of security gave me pause. I thought about Marie and Eddie, who would just be crossing the border. In another hour she’d be in Ensenada.

I put one cuff on Slim Jim and the other on Roy Boy. While we were outside, Drago had found the fridge and had already guzzled half a 40-ounce Olde English beer. He picked up the canvas bags with one hand without relinquishing his hold on the forty. He kicked Slim Jim in the ass. The momentum jerked them both. “Let’s go.”

Slim Jim scowled. “Where to?”

“You know where, asshole. The president’s office, where else?”

Mack remained by the window the entire time, watching the front through a crack in the curtains and a wedge he’d scraped out of the foil.

“You got this?” I asked Mack. He pulled a San Bernardino sheriff’s radio he had clipped to his back pocket and set it on the window sill. I hadn’t seen him with it before, and I too should’ve thought of the tactic to monitor the surveillance activity. He kept his eyes on the window and tossed a wave over his shoulder. He realized that if a threat came, it would come from the front: a biker rolling in, a patrol car responding to a call; he’d see it first from where he stood.

“Hey,” I said.

He took his eyes off the crack in the curtain.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

He smiled. “Me too. Why don’t you get in there in case your fat buddy goes psycho and kills one or both of those prospects! We don’t need a murder rap during the course of a robbery.”

I nodded and followed down the hall. Murder during the course of a felony made the suspect eligible for the death penalty. I had forgotten that Mack still thought differently than I did. I didn’t want Drago to kill anyone, and would fight him to the death to keep it from happening, but I had already made my peace with the possible consequences. I had to, or I couldn’t operate otherwise, at least not in a cogent, effective manner.

I found the two bikers in the large room that didn’t match the living room area. This one contained a nice maple desk and an expensive Asian area rug. A Remington bronze of a cowboy riding a bronc sat on the desk. Overhead, a Tiffany lamp hung from the ceiling. The room had been professionally decorated with a generous budget, money obtained through tyranny, extortion, pain, and blood. Tongue-and-groove knotty pine panels covered the walls, where pictures hung depicting Clay Warfield with public figures at dinners, charity events, and political rallies. The face, the figurehead, the leader of the SS International organization.

We were kicking a sleeping giant.

I have little or no knowledge about safes. This one took up one corner of the room. A real monster, olive green with a double door. Older looking, with twin dials. A beautiful mural on the front depicted a stagecoach with a team of black horses at a full run fleeing masked gunmen on wild-eyed steeds.

Drago set both bags down by the safe.

“Is it the same safe?” I asked. “Is it in the same position as you remember?”

He looked at me as if he had not thought of that, took a step back, and reexamined the safe. He scratched his dome. He walked back to the door where we entered, turned, raised his hands, spread them wide, looking through them gauging the space, the same as a director of a movie. He carefully paced off the distance back to the safe. “Shit. I can’t tell for sure if it’s in the same place or not, but it is for damn sure the same safe. I’m absolutely sure of that.”

“You can’t tell for sure if it’s in the same location? You’re kidding, right?”

“Well, you asked me. I’m here to tell ya, I’m not sure. And come on, man, it was a long time ago. It does seem to me that the safe’s in the right place. But maybe…I don’t know, maybe it should be another two or three feet farther that way. That wall seems closer for some reason. But man, that can’t be right.” He scratched his head. “Since I got out, I’ve been goin’ a little crazy. I notice things from before, that in my head I remember different from this time around. I was in a small concrete cell for twenty-five years and everything to me feels bigger now, huge even. That concrete box really fucked with my perspective, man.”

Drago came back and shoved the solid maple desk out of the way as if it were constructed of balsa wood. His mood changed back to all business. “You watch these two assholes close, I’m serious.” He looked at the safe, appraising it, then down at the bags we’d brought in. “I’m not gonna need all these tools like I thought. This isn’t the model I thought it was. They call this one the butter model, cuts like butter.”

He opened the bag, took out a sledgehammer, raised it high and came down on the first dial. The dial broke off and skittered away.