Joe Cocker

I'm on my feet before Sly gets a word out.  Jack's in trouble, he says, and I'm out the door with him in tow.

He tells me the rest on the way.  What he knows of it anyway.  Jack talked a lot about getting out, but Jack talked a lot about everything.  Talk is cheap, but getting out is something else.  We all know that.  That's the price you pay.  Or one of them, anyway.

Getting in's the easy part, but even that's not that easy.  You typically need to have brains if you want to make it in this business, Sly being an exception, and if you have brains you tend to stay away from this business.  There are other considerations, but a handful of brains and a willingness to turn them off when the time comes are what I would consider two prerequisites for employment in this field.  After that, a capacity for violence, loyalty, ambition, these are all good things.  But hardly necessary.

We're flying across town, headed to a brownstone on the west side by the tracks.  Sly's telling me Jack's big plan blew up, his way out fell apart, and everything's going to pieces.  The plan itself was an issue from the start, and I'm not surprised he never discussed it with me.  If you want to get out in a method that leaves you breathing and breathing free air, then a plan is fundamental.  Planning was always Jack's strong suit, so I'm surprised it went tits up until I hear the details.

That's the other thing: you typically feel the need to pull one last job, a big one, on your way out.  You need to be sure you'll never have to work again, mostly because you'll never be able to.  You won't be able to trade under your given name, so you have to figure something else out.  If you want to throw some paperwork together and pump gas under the name of Scott Peterson or something to make ends meet, be my guest.  As for me, when my time comes, I intend to disappear and whoop it up until the money runs out.  Which, if I do it right, it shouldn't.

The other issue with leaving is you'll find that interested parties might have an issue with you pulling up stakes after making yourself a nice living under their protection, or at their expense, depending.  Some of these parties might feel like you owe them something, whether that's a lifetime's worth of ill-gotten gains, or, say, all the blood in your body.  It's easy to make enemies in this business, and hard to live with them.  That's why you want to have friends, friends that'll fly out of a diner at a thousand miles an hour when they hear you're shot up on the west side after pulling some damn fool nonsense more likely to get you killed than get you a way out.

We pull up to the brownstone next to the tracks and jump out, engine running and doors open: I don't plan on being here any longer than it takes to drag Jack down here and throw him in the back seat, and Sly's wild-eyed, but I can tell he's on the same page.  We're not going to have a lot of time to get this done, not in this neighborhood, not with lookouts calling us out as soon as we crossed Wentworth.  But these are the things you do.

We take the stairs two, three at a time, calling out for Jackie Boy the whole time.Up on three the door's cracked and I crash through it, Sly right behind me.  We tear through the place (dead man on terrible green shag, another halfway out of the bathroom) and I hear Jack call my name from one of the bedrooms.

I burst into the room and stop short.  First thing I see is Jack, one foot on the windowsill, curtains blowing around him.  Second thing is Bernie, Beautiful Bernie, in bed, not moving, the girl with him hanging halfway out, head on the floor, she's not moving either.  More blood than I've seen in a while.  This was not the plan.  This is a death sentence.  You don't get to walk away after something like this.  I can't tell if there's a train coming or if it's the blood rushing in my ears, but I can hear the footsteps coming up the stairs, five, six, a hundred guys, here for vengeance.

Jack gives me a sad smile, blood on his teeth.  Don't think less of me, he says, and he's out the window and gone.

Not a bad plan.



11 November 2013