Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
So it went with Sheila. I came back to town late one night and let myself in the back door to find Sheila in the living room with her lips wrapped around the cock of one of her regulars. It was some consolation to learn he paid double what I did for that pleasure. She tried to convince me that it was just business, but that didn't make me feel much better about the situation. As I figured it the guy hadn't really done anything wrong, at least nothing that I couldn't see myself doing were our roles reversed. So all I did was force him out the front door at gun point, without his pants or his briefs. But I did throw him his wallet, once I emptied the cash. I had really come to care about Sheila, and what I'd just seen made me want to press her face against a belt sander, but I don't hold with doing violence to a woman, unless you need to, for purposes of self-preservation or business. So I put her back on her knees and put the barrel of my gun in her mouth, I might have said a few things that I'm not particularly proud of anymore, but she's just going to have to forgive me my moment of anger. Once she was crying good and hard I went ahead and left the same way I had come in, I took with me the exact amount of money I had spent on her that first night, so I figured we were about as square as I could ask for.
I should have known better than trying to make any sort of home for myself in a place like Vegas, it just doesn't work, inhospitable climate. The town does have advantages though, even Disneyfied as the strip has gotten anymore there are still plenty of guys hanging around town who are looking for a little action. You've just got to know a few people to connect you, and you're set. From drugs to murder for hire there's someone for everything, I ended up working with Charlie that way, he knew a guy that sent him to a certain bar where I used to shoot pool, and made our introduction. I figured the same guy could put me in touch with a few guys that weren't afraid of holding a gun in a public place.
Charlie knew a lot, if the guy weren't such a fucking prick he'd be the best partner I ever had, hands down. We always did good together, in a business that wasn't always particularly friendly, and Charlie always said it was because he ran shit like a business. No one got any real responsibility until they had proven they weren't a fuck-up on some unimportant shit. There were no negotiations, we set the terms and the price and if they wouldn't meet them then we didn't work with them. This chapped my ass a bit and we lost a lot of money that I still figure was on the level, but we didn't go to prison, and in retrospect that counts for a lot.
So I did my best to do like I figured that Charlie would have. I didn't just get some names and numbers and go to business I did some background checks. I didn't work with anyone that had been to prison recently for anything big, no one that the cops might still be looking at. I didn't work with anyone that did hard drugs, and I didn't tell anyone anything about myself that they didn't really need to know to do the job. In about a week I picked three guys that I figured could cut it. You don't really know someone until you've worked with them for awhile, but these guys seemed decent enough to work with if I was careful.
I picked the bank, a franchise, I cased the place myself once, real casual in a walk through, cashed a check that I had a friend of mine draw for me, and left. Something else Charlie always said was to start small, make sure the job was safe enough before you went all out. Sneak one Mexican across the border to find out what the difficulties will be, rob the cash drawers before you try getting into a vault to find out what sort of response you can expect. I picked the day, in the morning, and we went. One guy stayed in the car outside with the engine running, the other three of us walked in wearing black beanies, aviator glasses, and a variety of fake facial hair. I was on crowd control while the other two emptied the cash drawers, all save the bottom bill of each stack, I'd been told the bottom bill was marked or monitored in some way, and I figured, why risk it? The door to the safe was open, but I told the other guys not to even think about it.