The Lost Years

64

Billy Declar had been dismayed to hear that his old friend and prison cell mate, Wally Gruber, had been caught dead in the act of breaking into a house in Riverdale.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he kept muttering to himself as he shuffled around his secondhand furniture store in lower Manhattan. “He’s as dumb as they come because he thinks he’s so smart.” At seventy-two years old, having endured three separate stints in the slammer, Billy was not looking forward to going back there.

I gave him big bucks for the stuff from New Jersey, Billy thought. Four days later the greedy lowlife goes after another haul. I know Wally. He’ll rat me out to get a better deal for himself. I’d better move up my trip to Rio. I’m out of here now.

As usual there had been no customers for the tired and well-worn couches and chairs and headboards and dressers that were placed in forlorn groupings in the so-called showroom. Whenever one of the guys who had stolen jewelry came in and sold it to Billy, he’d offer them a choice of furniture. He would call it their “bonus.”

“Select any piece that you may desire to grace your home,” he would say grandly.

Their suggestions as to what he could do with his furniture made Billy roar with laughter.

But he was not laughing now. The jewelry he planned to sell in Rio was hidden under the floor in the back room of the store. It was two o’clock. I’ll put the “Closed” sign on the door, get the jewelry, and go straight to the airport, he thought. I’ve got my passport and plenty of cash. I’m ready to go. So what if I stay in Rio for a while? It’s winter there but that’s okay with me.

Billy hobbled as quickly as he could, wincing in pain from his chronically swollen left ankle. It was the result of his leap out of a second-story window, when he was sixteen years old, to avoid the police who had come to arrest him for stealing a car.

He grabbed his fully packed suitcase, which he always kept ready for any such emergency departure, from the closet. He knelt down, rolled up the rug, and lifted up the floorboards that covered the safe he kept hidden there. He punched in the code, opened the door of the safe, and pulled out the large canvas bag containing the jewelry from the Scott home. Then he quickly closed the safe and put the floorboards and rug back in place.

Scrambling to his feet, he grabbed the suitcase, flung the canvas bag over his shoulder, and turned off the light in the back room.

Billy was halfway across the showroom when the buzzer at the front entrance went off several times in quick succession. His stomach churned. Through the bars on the window of the door, he could see a cluster of men outside. One of them was holding up a shield.

“Police,” someone shouted. “We have a search warrant. Open up the door immediately.”

Billy dropped the bags on the floor with a sigh. The image in his mind of Wally’s round face, and his phony ear-to-ear smile, was as clear as if Wally was standing in front of him. Who knows? Billy asked himself, resigned to being a guest of the state of New York once more. Maybe we’ll end up bunking together again.