No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker Read Free Book Online Page B

remember I’m not interested.”
    â€œYou will be. I shouldn’t mention names, but I know you’re both solid. When you know who’s fingering the score you’ll know I’m not bull-shitting about how good it is. Johnny Taormina is the guy. He’s dead broke, flat on his ass and in debt. He needs bread.”
    â€œHe’s supposed to be a mafioso,” Willy said. “What happened?”
    The question mirrored my own. “Big Johnny T” was a name I’d heard since I was fifteen years old. He was supposed to be a Mafia, Cosa Nostra, Syndicate (whatever it’s called this week) semi big shot. He’d controlled the bookmaking and loan sharking in the Lincoln Heights District, and it was said that he’d made a couple of hundred thousand dollars in the black market during World War II. It was a shocking surprise to learn that he was soliciting armed robbers to rip his associates.
    â€œHe blew everything gambling,” Red said. “Half a million scoots in five years. He ain’t got a dime, but he still knows things … a dozen soft scores, crap games like this one, layoff bookies that carry big bankrolls, money drops.”
    â€œYeah,” I said, “and after three get heisted they’ll figure out who’s the finger man and string him up by his nuts.”
    â€œThat’s no sweat off your balls.”
    â€œI don’t give a fuck about the Mafia anyway … but fuck it. I don’t want any of the action.”
    Red blinked. “Man, they didn’t break you, did they?”
    My face reddened. “Call it what you like—but like you told Willy, it’s better to be a has been than a never was. And fuck Big Johnny T. He’s probably a stool pigeon like the rest of those racketeers.”
    Willy said: “You could use the bread to get on your feet, Man, I know what you think now, but I know you. You’ve been a criminal since you were born.”
    â€œI changed.”
    Red was silent, confused. He struggled through rotgut wine, marijuana, and benzedrine to understand my refusal. I wondered how he’d become Johnny Taormina’s solicitor. I’d never met the racketeer, but on the face of it Red appeared an unlikely choice. On reflection, however, it seemed more reasonable. They were from the same neighborhood and generation. Red was a drunken lecher, but he did keep his mouth closed and knew criminals outside the rackets, persons Johnny didn’t know. Nor could Johnny run a classified advertisement for a bandit. Racket and thief underworld touch borders and sometimes overlap, but they are different. My few dealings with racketeers had made me simultaneously respect and despise them. They were successful, organized, cunning; they used money to make money. Only a small percentage ever went to jail, and then it was for a short vacation. On the other hand, most of them were, by my standards, traveling under false colors, more businessman than criminal. They pander to society’s prohibited desires during business hours and live as paradigms of morality … And by comparison to the heavy criminal, who is the world’s most independent predator, they are weaklings. Many will inform to the police on the heavy criminal. Society talks about police being corrupted by racketeers, but police also corrupt racketeers. The bookie stools on the robber quite often.
    The folly of my thoughts rushed into awareness. I was thinking from the criminal view, with attitudes alien to my new goals. Decent citizens don’t speculate even momentarily on robberies and stool pigeons and the ethics of crime.
    It was 3:00 A.M. when we departed. L&L Red walked us outdoors and offered to chauffeur me around in his car until I got one of my own, providing (he laughed) that I bought the gas. He wasn’t working. The cabin lacked a phone, but he wrote the number of a pool hall where he could usually be reached during the