Dead Boys by RICHARD LANGE Read Free Book Online Page A

out of his car and shouts, “Stuart, I don’t want to be late.”
    “Yeah, Ma, okay,” Moriarty shouts back. “Church,” he says to me with rolling eyes. “See you Thursday.”
    “You betcha.”
    We shake hands and he jogs to his car. I take another look at the big house above me, and I can’t help it — call it jealousy, Whatever you want, but I can’t help picturing the Big One hitting and the surprise and terror on the owners’ faces when those supports snap like toothpicks and they end up riding that fancy sonofabitch down the hill and through the fence and straight to the bottom of poisonous goddamn Lake Hollywood.
    I WAS A wreck when Moriarty happened upon me, so twisted inside that at times I couldn’t even breathe deeply enough to fill my lungs. Driving along the freeway or standing in line at the supermarket I’d find myself gasping for air like an astronaut unmasked on Mars. A year earlier, after my third paycheck in a row had bounced, I’d told the contractor I’d been working for to get fucked and drawn out all of our savings to set myself up as an independent. I didn’t love painting houses, but I figured that in a short while I’d have enough capital to move into buying and renovating neglected properties and reselling them at a profit. Twelve months later, though, I’d only had four jobs, and to get those I had to bid so low that I barely broke even. One beer in the evening turned into three, then six. “What kind of idiot did you marry?” I’d ask Maria, and she’d say something nice, but that’s not what I wanted to hear, so I’d ask again, “What kind of idiot did you marry?” I’d keep asking until I brought her to tears.
    Moriarty found me at the unemployment office in Hollywood. I ignored him on his first approach, because everybody there seemed so strung out and crazy, and who knew what this blond bastard with the crooked smile was up to.
Just let me fill out my forms and be on my way
was my philosophy that morning, but he kept at me, asking to borrow some of my newspaper and following me outside to the catering truck parked at the curb, where we stood eyeing each other through the steam rising from our coffee.
    He says he could tell right then that I was the one, but I don’t know how. That first conversation, as I recall it, was nothing more than your standard two strangers shooting the shit kind of thing: a little sports, a little music, and each of us maybe trying a little too hard to convince the other that we were worth more than the three hundred bucks a week we were waiting in line for. In my version it wasn’t until later — when we retreated to a bar to wash the shame of the morning from our craws — that the truth began to come out. When Moriarty wrapped his hands around his beer like he was praying and sighed, “I’ll tell you what, getting by is killing me,” that’s when I first thought we might have something in common.
    Turned out we lived in the same part of Hollywood, so we started getting together for drinks once a week or so. Bank robbery was a running joke from the beginning, or at least I took it as a joke. Moriarty would say, “I’m serious,” and I’d laugh and say, “I know you are.” To me it was like, “Hey, let’s make a movie,” or, “Let’s open a pizza place,” one of those shared pipe dreams guys sometimes use as an excuse to keep meeting when they’re too uptight to admit they enjoy each other’s company. You know, “This isn’t just drinking; we’ve got business to discuss.” You get to fantasize together, share your plans for all the money you’re going to make, act a little foolish.
    Even when Belushi came into the picture — an old college buddy of Moriarty’s — and Moriarty got into the insurance racket, and we started meeting at his office instead of the bar because he decided we shouldn’t be seen together in public anymore, I still didn’t take it seriously. And how could I? I mean, the three of us —