Thieving Weasels - Billy Taylor Page 0,41
looked the part. Roy didn’t want him involved with the job for some reason, but I didn’t care. I needed a warm body, and Vinny was available.
I called him to hang out, and he arrived five minutes early. Always a good sign. Our first stop was a liquor store where Vinny bought a pint of Jack Daniel’s, and I got a half pint of Jägermeister because I’d heard guys at school talking about it. I didn’t plan on drinking any, but I figured it would make me look more like an adult when I asked Vinny to do the job. Neither of us felt like going to a bar, and there weren’t any good movies playing, so we drove around until we wound up at an indoor mini golf in Deer Park. Vinny inhaled most of his Jack Daniel’s on the way, and by the time we finished the third hole his bottle was empty.
“You want a hit of this?” I asked, holding out my Jägermeister. “It’s not bad in a cough-syrupy kind of way.”
Vinny shook his head.
I slipped the bottle in my pocket and, as I lined up my shot, it occurred to me that Vinny hadn’t said a word since we had arrived.
“What’s the matter, buddy?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Vinny said, hugging himself. “It just feels wrong not having Roy with us.”
“I was just thinking the same thing myself.”
“It’s just so messed up. One minute Roy’s driving around like any other night, and the next minute Jackie’s dead. It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, why him? Why not you, or me, or the man in the moon?”
“You got me. I guess that’s why people go to church. It’s the only thing there is to explain all the crazy stuff in the world.”
Vinny nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t buying my two sentence summary of the Religion and Popular Culture class I’d taken that fall. Not that I blamed him. One of the worst things about being a criminal is you never get to feel that God is on your side. That said, every weasel I knew relied on some kind of routine or good luck charm to help keep them out of jail. Grandpa Patsy was the worst. Not only did he go to church every week to dip his lucky Irish shilling in holy water, but he never wore purple on a job, and refused to talk business during Lent—although that never stopped him from calling his bookie ten times a day to check the point spread.
Like so many things with my family, this drove me totally insane. I mean, what was the point of going to church on Sunday if you planned on robbing the poor box on Monday? My mother, naturally, had an explanation for this.
“You have to understand something, Sonny,” she said one afternoon as we walked out of a dry cleaner with another customer’s clothing. “God sees what we’re doing, and even though He’s not a hundred percent happy with it, He forgives us as long as we don’t steal from the wrong kind of people. Take these clothes for example. Do you think God would let us take them if He didn’t want us to? I mean really, what kind of woman buys a four-hundred-dollar ball gown that needs to be dry cleaned every time she wears it?”
“A woman with a lot of money?”
“Exactly. And like it says in the Bible, rich people and camels never get into heaven.”
“I’m glad to see all those years in Catholic school paid off,” I said, shaking my head.
“Hey!” someone behind Vinny and me shouted. “Are you guys gonna play golf, or what?”
We turned around, and a guy in a Celtics jacket was standing on the next green with his girlfriend.
“Give us a break,” Vinny shouted back. “We’re having a serious discussion here!”
“Then let us play through.”
Vinny looked down at his ball and kicked it to the end of the green. “There. Does that make you happy?”
“What a dickhead,” the girlfriend said.
“What was that?” Vinny growled.
“You heard what I said.”
Vinny pointed his golf club at the guy and said, “I’d put that dog on a shorter leash if I were you, pal.”
I grabbed Vinny’s arm. “Yo, chill.”
“Screw you,” the guy said.
Vinny laughed. “Screw me? Screw you! Step over here, and I’ll pound every tooth out of your mouth.”
The guy barreled toward us and when he got within striking distance Vinny swung his club at him. He missed by a mile, and before he