Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 9, September 2006

Twenty-Five Large by Jas. R. Petrin

“This is how I get beat up,” Benny said. “Because I try to be a nice guy.”

They were in the Rob Roy on Agricola Street. Benny was sitting at the end of the bar, just where it curved around to meet the wall by the VLT machine. The same place he always sat, so he could see what went on behind the bar, and who came in or out the door to the street. Especially who came in.

“There’s a simple solution,” Beemer said, picking the bar rag up, sniffing it, and folding it tidily over the edge of the sink: good for a few more wipes. “The solution is, don’t be so nice.”

“I can’t stop myself,” Benny said. “It’s the kind of guy I am. Somebody comes to me with a hard story, and before I know it, there I am in the middle. No different this time.”

“Yeah, but jeez, Harvey Halderson? You can see that guy coming with your eyes closed. You ought to know better.”

“I do. I know what they say about him. But he can help you out, you know? And he gives me this story about being a good citizen — me, not him — and before I know it, I’m up there in the North End handing over thick envelopes to rat-faced guys I never saw before. ‘Thank you on behalf of the party,’ I’m telling them, and that’s when the cops come outta the woodwork and arrest us.”

“But not Harvey, he doesn’t get arrested?”

“Harvey? He’s not even there. Besides, he’s a party organizer. No chance he’ll be arrested. He did pay for my lawyer, though, or at least the taxpaying citizens did, with his assistance.”

“Another fat envelope.”

“You guessed it. And now he wants it back. Plus the cash I was supposed to hand out that night, which was taken by the cops as evidence.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen thousand is what he says was in the envelopes. I have to take his word for that. And ten thousand for the lawyer. Twenty-five large, the total amount.”

“I guess he’s anxious to reimburse the taxpayers.”

Benny grunted. “Yeah, right. No chance he’d keep it. Use it to pay down that BMW he rolls around in.”

“I wouldn’t mind one of those,” Beemer said, a BMW being his dream car, something he talked about a lot, and how he got the name.

“Then you need to go into politics,” Benny said fast, before the bartender could get going on the subject. He glanced around and lowered his voice. “Or come in with me on this deal I got lined up.”

“What deal is that?” Beemer said, cocking an eyebrow. “Or should I even ask? Last time I was into something with you, I wound up getting run over and shot, all on the same night.”

Benny looked at him, narrowing his eyes. “Your big toe got run over is all, and you didn’t get shot, you got shot at. There’s a difference. And besides, you got paid, didn’t you?”

“I think I got, what was it, three hundred dollars? You said I’d get three thousand.”

“Excuse me? I said you could get up to three thousand, all depending on what the take was. The take was small. You got your share. More than your share, in fact.” He sniffed. “Hell, all you did was drive the forklift. And once I replaced that rear window that got shot out, I didn’t make nothing. I think I was short a few bucks, as a matter of fact.”

“The things you get up to,” Beemer said, “you should have bulletproof glass.” He walked down to the end of the bar to serve an elderly man wearing red earmuffs, poured him a Coke with lots of ice, then came back and leaned against the wall. “I tell you, it’s one of them nights. You’d think if a guy was that cold he’d be drinking hot rum, not soft drinks. No tip there.”

“I just gave you a tip,” Benny said, “the best tip you’re gonna get. You come in with me and drive the forklift, we go halves. You get half of my half.”

“That’s a quarter, if I remember my math.”

“Come on. You get half of what I get. The guy that planned the job, who did all the lead-in work, he gets the rest.”

“And how much is that?”

“Fifty thousand. The whole take is one hundred grand.”

Beemer didn’t say anything for a minute. He kept leaning against the wall. Then he moved to the sink, picked up the rag, swabbed the bar a few times, then replaced the rag over the edge of the sink.

“Say again?”

“One,” replied Benny, enunciating carefully. “Hundred. Grand.”

“That’s what I thought you said. So this other guy would take fifty, you and me would split the rest—”

“No. First I’d have to pay off Harvey, the twenty-five. The other twenty-five, that’s what we’d split.”

“Oh. So now I’m down to one-eighth.”

“Listen, your take would be twelve-five. For driving a forklift. You could forklift the entire stock of nine Wal-Mart stores and not make that kind of dough. And this is cash. No deductions, no taxes, no out of pocket expenses.”

His eyes narrowed. “So what’s it all about?”

Benny cleared his throat and sat a little closer. “You know anything about pay phones?”

“I know you put a quarter in them, you can make a call.”

“That’s about what most people know. Did you also know they’re nothing short of a gold mine?”

“They only hold a few coins.”

“That’s what most people think.”

“They think that because it’s true.”

“Sure, but that’s just one phone. There’s thousands of them. On collection day it’s big money.”

“I’m listening,” Beemer said.

“You know the phone company?” Benny said. Beemer waited for it. “Well,” Benny said, “this guy I know is going to find one of their collections.”

“He’s going to find it? They’re gonna lose it, but they just don’t know it yet?”

“I don’t have the details. Anyway, he’s going to need some help.”

“Before or after he finds it?”

“After.”

“So what does he need help for?”

“To move the stuff. Coins are heavy.” Benny pointed at the till. “Got a roll of quarters there?” Beemer took a roll of quarters out of the till and set it on the bar. Benny picked it up. Hefted it. “Forty quarters. Ten bucks. What do you think this weighs?”

Beemer took the roll and hefted it a few times himself.

“I dunno. Five, six ounces.”

“Close,” Benny said. “But you’re a little light. One quarter weighs 0.567 grams. Forty of ’em is eight ounces. That adds up fast. It’ll take three guys to shift this load the guy’s gonna find.”

Beemer put the roll back in the till and slammed the drawer shut. “This isn’t no armored car robbery you’re talking about, is it? ’Cause if it is—”

“You’re asking is it Brinks?”

“Brinks or whoever else. Those guys will shoot you.”

“Well, it isn’t Brinks. It doesn’t work that way. How it works is the telco makes its own collections. They sort the coins, roll ’em, enter the proceeds on the books. Then Brinks picks up the money and delivers it to the bank.”

“Why doesn’t Brinks just pick it up from the phones in the first place and take it straight to the bank?”

“That’s what I asked. But that won’t work. Each phone is just peanuts, sending Brinks around would be too expensive. Besides, the telco has to know how much money they collected, they can’t take somebody else’s word for it. So they count it first and then make the deposit.”

Beemer didn’t say anything.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Benny said. “It’s still just a few quarters, right?”

“And dimes. And nickels.”

Benny grinned. “That’s the good part. This guy is only gonna find the quarters.”

“Oh, well then. The big money.”

“Listen, you got to look at the wider picture. I don’t know how many pay phones the telco has but they’re everywhere. Say they got five thousand of them and they average a hundred bucks a collection, each one. That’s half a million dollars.”

“Okay.”

“Cash.”

“Sure. But hold on. You said one hundred large.”

“For the whole telco, half a million. This is just one route collection.”

Beemer thought a minute. He walked down the bar, picked up some coins and the empty Coke glass left there by the old guy, put the glass on the wash rack, and came back to Benny, counting the coins in his hand.

“I was wrong. He tipped me a quarter. Prob’ly decided he won’t need a new pair of earmuffs for awhile.” He dropped the quarter in a jar by the till, and sorted the rest of the coins into the cash drawer. “So when would you need me?”

“Soon,” Benny said. “And we’ll need your brother’s truck.”

“That looks like him,” Benny said as they drove in, nodding out the windshield at a three-ton rental parked at the far end of the Tim Hortons lot. Beemer guided the Chevy pickup across the asphalt and into the next slot. As they got out, the driver of the three-ton slid out of the cab and came around the rear of the vehicle.

“Beemer, I want you to meet Metro Schalke,” Benny said, leaning his head at the driver, a tall, big-boned guy with a high forehead, a mane of thick dark hair, deep-set eyes, and pale skin that made him look like Bela Lugosi in the role of Dracula.

“Pleasedameetcha,” Beemer said.

Metro Schalke said something that sounded like “Biffle!” looked Beemer up and down, and turned back toward the three-ton.

“He don’t shake hands, this guy?” Beemer said. They watched Schalke climb back into the cab.

Benny shrugged, explaining in a low voice, “His mother was Romanian, his father was German, he’s from Uzbekistan.”

“He could be from Planet X,” Beemer said. “What he looks like is somebody I saw on a late movie. This guy that sucked the blood out of you and flew around like a bat.”

They drove out of the lot together, all crowded into the cab of the three-ton, Dracula at the wheel, Benny in the middle, Beemer looking annoyed with his elbow out the passenger’s window.

“This warehouse you mentioned,” Beemer said testily, “where is it?”

“Up in Burnside,” Benny told him. “Close.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Beemer said.

They took the new bridge across the harbor, which at the other end, after the toll booths, led into the Burnside business park area. The warehouse was tucked in deep between an auto impound lot and a ceramic tile company. Hard to see from the road. They drove around to the rear and backed the three-ton up to a loading door.

Dracula had a key to the place. He knew where the alarms were and how to operate them and went right to them and switched them off. The only light came from a small lamp over a desk, the big overhead fluorescents all dark. He pressed a button and the loading door rattled up.

Dracula pointed.

Off to one side of the room, against a wall, stood a white commercial-duty van with the telco logo on the side, its rear doors thrown open. Inside was a mound of black boxes. Each box was about two feet long, a foot high and a foot deep, and each was secured with a heavy padlock. Benny counted twenty of them.

“Bingo,” he said, grinning.

Beemer studied the black boxes. “So how,” he said, “did they come to be here, all the way from the telephone company, no dimes and no nickels?”

Benny shrugged. “Ask him.”

“Mizzle,” Schalke told them.

“Oh, well then, that explains it,” Beemer said. He rolled his eyes.

Beemer found a forklift somewhere far back in the darkness, an electric one that you drove by standing in a slot at the rear and steering with a small hand-wheel like a crank. It could turn on a dime. He came shooting out of the shadows on it, and in five minutes he had the small black boxes neatly stacked in the back of the three-ton.

Schalke locked up and they left, stopping by the Tim Hortons so that Beemer could pick up his brother’s truck. Then Schalke led the way to an address out on Windmill Road, Beemer trailing behind in the pickup. They left the verge of the city lights and arrived at a barn out behind a hill with lots of trees pressing up around.

“Kinda dark here,” Beemer said, getting out of the half-ton. “Now what?”

“Now,” Benny said, “we divvy up. Load our share into the pickup and we’re outta here. You’ll have to move the pickup back to back with the three-ton.”

“Fine, let’s do it,” Beemer said, “before Dracula gets hungry.”

He repositioned the smaller truck, then followed Benny up into the back of the large one. They took hold of the first of the cash boxes, each gripping one of its large steel handles. They heaved, and the box moved an inch. They both let go of it and stood back a foot.

“Jeez!” said Beemer. “I wondered why the forklift was grunting. Now I know. These things weigh a ton.”

“We’ll slide ’em,” Benny said. “Drag ’em over to the tailgate, then make a dead lift down into the pickup. That’ll work.” He signaled to Dracula, who climbed up into the box with them.

They all heaved together.

“Merg!” Dracula grunted.

“That’s what I say,” Beemer told him.

They zigzagged the box to the tailgate, hopped down into the bed of the smaller truck, braced themselves, and lowered it into the pickup. They did the same with nine more boxes, then clambered down out of the truck. Schalke then got into the three-ton and drove off without another word.

“Nice guy,” Beemer said.

Beemer turned back to the pickup, stiffened, and backed up a few paces. “Jeez!”

“What?” Benny said.

“Look at the truck.”

They looked at it. It was sagging alarmingly at the rear.

“This truck is rated for a fifteen-hunnerd pound payload,” Beemer said. “Gotta be almost twice that in those boxes. I never knew quarters weighed so much.”

“Well, I guess they have to weigh something. Just take it nice and easy over the rough spots, and it’s gonna be just fine.”

“Now, wait a minute, boys, wait just a minute here.” Harvey Halderson eased his rotund body forward. He wore his usual red tie, the party color. The neon lights of the dance club sign above them came and went on his face — blue and white, blue and white. His jaw was set in a tight grin, gazing into the back of the truck. “I don’t know about this. I know I said cash, Benny, but I meant folding money. Twenties. Hundreds. What am I going to do with this?”

“Same thing I’d do with it, I guess,” Benny said. “Buy lots of soft drinks, newspapers, go to the laundry every day.”

“No, no, Benny. Change it to paper. Then come around and see me.”

“How am I gonna do that? Change it?”

“Well, I don’t know, Benny. You’ll find a way, I’m sure.”

“Take the money. Coin of the realm.”

“Can’t do that, Benny.”

“I owe you the money, I brought it to you.”

“Sure, but not coins, Benny. Paper money. Jeez.”

Benny stepped in closer. “Look, you are the guy who sent me up to the North End in the first place. You are the guy who got me the lawyer. You are the guy who put me onto Schalke when I said I might have trouble coming up with the scratch.”

Harvey Halderson forced his grin a little more. A man of logic and reason, tolerance and patience.

“But I didn’t know, did I, that he was talking about coins? He’s a hard guy to understand sometimes. I’m sorry, Benny. I can’t use this.”

Harvey locked his car with his remote, then minced off into the side door of the club, shaking his head.

Benny stood there. He looked at the trunk lock. He looked at Beemer.

“Got a car-popper on you?”

Beemer scoured his pockets, came up with a stubby ratchet handle and a socket with a short, flat screwdriver bit. He pushed the screwdriver bit into the key slot, and gave a quick hard crank on the ratchet. There was a loud snap. He pulled the bit away and the lock came with it, cylinder and all. Benny threw the trunk lid up.

“Back the truck in here and let’s get him loaded. And make sure we don’t give him one lousy quarter too much.”

They’d already decided each box had about five thousand dollars in it. Beemer figured it out, being good with money. They dragged a box out onto the tailgate and snapped the hasp off with Harvey’s tire iron. The coins were loose inside, not rolled. They tilted the box outward and let the coins spill into the trunk of the BMW. They did this five times. The trunk was completely filled.

“Okay,” Benny said, slamming the trunk lid down, “good enough.” Beemer slid the broken lock cylinder back into its barrel with his thumb.

They closed the tailgate of the truck and pulled out of the lot. As they drove off, Benny used Beemer’s untraceable tumbler phone to place a call to the cops.

Next day, back at the Rob Roy, Beemer pushed himself away from the wall, and said, “Oh dear. Here comes trouble.”

From where he was sitting, Benny could see Harvey Halderson striding in the front door, coat billowing behind him, his face as red as his tie. He spotted Benny right off, and came steaming down along the bar to where Benny was sitting. He seemed to be having trouble breathing.

“You!... You!...”

“What!” Benny said innocently. He said to Beemer, “Better bring Harvey a scotch, Beem. He don’t look good. He needs a pick-me-up, I think.”

“I’ll give you a pick-me-up!” Harvey Halderson said. Tiny drops of saliva quivered on his lips. “What did you think you were doing, dumping all that... that—” He glanced around to see who might be listening. “—that crap in my trunk? I told you—!”

“I know what you told me,” Benny said calmly. “I figured you just didn’t think it would fit in your car, you with a smaller vehicle. Your trunk lock was broken, so I thought I’d see if it would fit. It did. So I left it there.” Benny shrugged. “Now we’re square.”

“The lock was not broken. You forced it. And do you know what that damn stuff weighs? My back bumper was dragging on the ground. You broke a spring!”

“No,” Benny said, “I was very gentle. It must have been already broke.”

Beemer put the scotch on the bar. Harvey Halderson glanced at it, blinked, snatched it up, and drained it. He banged the glass back down.

“And do you know what else? The cops showed up and accused me—” His eyes bulged. “—of robbing parking meters!”

Benny laughed. “Well, they can’t prove nothing.”

“They wanted to know where I got so many quarters.”

“Tell them it’s none of their business. A guy pays you in quarters for something, you get quarters, that’s all. Coin of the realm.”

“It isn’t that easy!”

“You want a good lawyer? I can recommend one.”

“I’ve got an excellent lawyer.”

“Yeah, but he’s awful expensive.”

Harvey Halderson stood staring at Benny for several long seconds, trembling.

“I know what this is about,” he said. “I know what this is about!” He leveled his finger. “Tough guy! Okay! But you don’t get no more jobs from me!”

Harvey Halderson turned and stalked back along the bar to the door and out.

“I don’t think he likes you anymore,” Beemer said. He lifted an eyebrow. “Who’s gonna pay for the scotch?”

“My treat,” Benny said. He reached into his pocket. “How many quarters is that?”