Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

“Balls, Jeffrey, balls. That’s what counts in this world. I came to this country five years ago with three words of English and these,” Avi would say, grabbing his own crotch. “Look at me. I am a plain-looking bastard with a high school education. I even got kicked out of the IDF. Not easy getting kicked out of the Israeli army, but I did it. And here I am. Do you have the balls to make good, Jeffrey? Do you have them?”

That was a question J-Zig sometimes asked himself until it was the only thing in his head. Still, as much as J-Zig yearned for Avi’s approval, he hated being muscle. Well, except when it came to gamblers.

He had no respect for gamblers. They’d borrow the money and blow it that day and then, when J-Zig would come to collect, they’d squeal and beg like little girls. He liked to hear them scream when he snapped their bones like breadsticks. It was the business types he felt sorry for. All sorts of people borrowed money from Avi, but as broke as he could be at times, J-Zig knew better than to dip into a loan shark’s well. Once they had you, they had you by the balls and then they squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until they milked you dry. Thing was, Ben-Levi didn’t do the milking himself. It was always left to the muscle like J-Zig. It had been a few months since he’d worked for Ben-Levi because the Israeli had wounded J-Zig’s pride. Isn’t it always the way: the people whose love you want hurt you the most? He’d come to the loan shark with an excellent idea about how to streamline Ben-Levi’s business.

“What, are you a mastermind all of a sudden? Listen, Jeffrey, never confuse muscle with balls, okay? You are good muscle, but show me your balls. Until you do, just do your job, get paid, and shut up.” He’d waved his hand in front of J-Zig’s face. “This ring and watch are worth more money than you will ever see in your life, so please, either go to Wharton or keep your genius ideas to yourself.”

Mastermind . The word had been stuck in J-Zig’s head ever since. He burned to prove the Israeli wrong, to repay Avi for mocking him. He wanted to shove Avi’s sarcasm so far up his ass that they’d be able to see it in Tel Aviv. It didn’t seem to matter what J-Zig did or how hard he tried to please, because his father du jour would always shit on him. He could never remember a time when his real dad had anything but disdain for him. His dad’s pet name for J-Zig was the Little Idiot, as in, Where the fuck is that little idiot? or What did the little idiot get on his report card this term? That’s how J-Zig still saw himself—a little idiot. Then there were all the other men who had passed through J-Zig’s front door on the way to his mother’s bed. Most of them ignored him. The ones who didn’t treated him like a case of the crabs. Hey, can’t you ditch the kid? I can’t fuck if I know the kid’s listening to you squeal through the wall . Compared to them, O’Keefe was a fucking prince among men. But it was Avi more than any of them he burned to prove wrong.

But J-Zig couldn’t figure out how to do it. He hadn’t hit upon the right idea just yet, though he knew the right idea was out there waiting for him to find it. He could feel it sometimes like an itch on the bottom of his foot that he couldn’t quite get to. If he could only reach it, J-Zig was sure he could finally escape the weight of the gravity that had held him down his entire miserable life.

Then it happened in a flash: the idea hit him like a Taser. When he retraced his steps that day, he even understood the genesis of it. This in itself was a near miracle. Deductive reasoning and introspection weren’t usually dishes on J-Zig’s menu. The day had started out like most others. Maybe a little better than recent days because he’d fallen into some stolen airbags at dirt-cheap prices. God love tweakers. Meth heads didn’t haggle, they just wanted enough cash to keep themselves buzzing for the next few weeks. Sometimes they got a little violent, but violence was something J-Zig could handle. He was better at it than most anyone stupid enough to take him on. He was empathetic to the tweakers’ plight. Shit, who wouldn’t get edgy when his world was spinning that much faster than everyone else’s? Who wouldn’t get wound up tight after not sleeping for days on end?

J-Zig had found a body shop in Selden willing to buy the boosted airbags at a fair price. Getting goods cheap didn’t mean dick if you couldn’t find someone to take them off your hands. The exchange of the airbags for cash went smoothly and the gelt in his pocket meant his expenses were covered for the next two months with a little something left over. Mick, his connection at the body shop, told J-Zig that they could handle as much merchandise as he could bring in. In a tough economy everyone was looking to cut corners. This new connection and the cash were cool, but it wasn’t his way to prove himself. What it was, was a big weight off his shoulders and that helped clear his head.

For the first time in a long while, he had a little mad money and room to breathe. He decided to head a few miles west, straight down Middle Country Road, for the Smith Haven Mall. In Saudi Arabia, they have Mecca and Medina. On Long Island they have Roosevelt Field and the Smith Haven Mall. Who needs God when you’ve got the Gap? Everybody on the island, even lowlife mutts like Jeff Ziegfeld, prayed at the temple of conspicuous consumption. Say hallelujah . Say amen .

The second piece of the grand scheme planted its seed in J-Zig’s brain as he turned left out of the body shop’s driveway and toward the mall. A commercial came on the radio for Island World Gold and Jewelry Exchange—Long Island’s biggest and most generous gold and jewelry exchange, so the announcer claimed, with branches in Floral Park, Bethpage, Massapequa, Mastic, Selden, Yaphank, and Riverhead. Selden! And there it was right in front of him, directly across Middle Country Road from the body shop—Island World Gold and Jewelry Exchange. Funny how he never noticed it before. A sign in the window read: MORE CASH ON HAND THAN ANY THREE OF OUR COMPETITORS COMBINED . Still, it didn’t quite register. The only thing he was thinking about was checking out the high school girls parading around the mall in skintight pants cut so low you could see the waistbands of their thongs peeking out the back. J-Zig was pretty successful with high school girls who had a thing for bad boys with good bodies. But when he got close to the mall, thoughts of teenage girls and their silky thongs went right out of his head.

There were two white-and-blue Suffolk County Police cruisers blocking the Middle Country Road entrances to the mall. The cops were out of their units, motioning for approaching cars to turn around and leave. J-Zig noticed the vast parking lots were empty and that there were Suffolk County PD cars all over the place, their cherry tops lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. There were fire engines and ambulances too.

“Excuse me, officer, what’s going on?” he asked one of the cops, slowing his car to a crawl. J-Zig’s tone was utterly respectful. He’d learned the hard way how to talk to cops. If you kissed their asses and licked their boots a little, they might tell you what you wanted to know.

“Prank,” the cop said. “Some stupid kid called in a bomb threat. Okay, now let’s keep it moving.”

That’s when it all clicked. Eu - fucking - reka!

It was week seven of his master plan and so far everything was going smoothly. If everything continued going that way—and he had no reason to think it wouldn’t—he would hit Island World Gold and Jewelry Exchange in Selden that coming Thursday at two p.m. J-Zig got stiff just thinking about what he’d been able to manage completely on his own. He was proudest of exhibiting three qualities he wasn’t exactly known for: diligence, patience, and calm. He had written out the entire plan, step by step. He’d made a list of the equipment he needed and the research he had to do before even thinking about pulling the job. He went over the lists again and again and again.