Read Online Swag by Elmore Leonard - Free Book Online Page B

comfortable and no one seemed to bother looking at him. Frank liked his pale-tan safari jacket with the epaulets. Very sharp, big in California. He liked the way the Python rested in the deep side pocket and didn’t show. Usually, after a job, they kept the guns locked in the glove compartment of the T-bird. Stick thought they should put them away somewhere, hidden. But Frank said it was better to have them handy; they saw a place they liked, they were ready. Keep them in the apartment, some inquisitive broad could be snooping around and find them. Ho ho , what’re these two business types doing with loaded firearms? Stick wasn’t convinced, but he couldn’t think of a better place to keep them.
    Speaking of rules, Stick said maybe there was one more they should add. Number Eleven. Never try and hold up an Armenian.
    They had taken in, so far, close to twenty-five thousand, spent a lot, but still had ninety-six hundred in a safe-deposit box at the Troy branch of Detroit Bank & Trust and about fifteen hundred or so spending money in the Oxydol box under the sink. They didn’t divide the money. Except for major purchases—like the car and an eight-hundred-dollar hi-fi setup Frank picked out for them—the money went from the bank safe deposit to the Oxydol box, usually a thousand at a time, where it was available to both of them for pocket money and personal expenditures. There was no rule as to how much you could take; it was whatever you needed.
    Two months ago, when they’d moved in, Stick had questioned the arrangement. He’d see Frank dipping in every day or so for fifty, a hundred, sometimes as much as two hundred. Finally he’d said, “Don’t you think it’d be better, after a job, we divvied it up?”
    Frank said, “I thought we were partners.”
    â€œEqual partners,” Stick said. “We divvy it up, then we know it’s equal.”
    â€œWait just a minute now. You saying I’m cheating you?”
    â€œI’m saying it might be better to split it each time, that’s all. Then we know where we stand, individually.”
    â€œYou know where the dough is,” Frank said, “right? Under the sink, that’s where we keep it. And you know you can go in there and take as much as you need, right? So how am I cheating you?”
    â€œI understand the arrangement,” Stick said. “I’m only asking, you think it would be better if we each took care of our own dough?”
    â€œWhat’re you, insecure? You want to hide it?”
    â€œIf half the dough’s mine, why can’t I do anything I want with it?”
    â€œJesus,” Frank said, “you sound like a little kid. Nya nya nya, I got my money hidden and I’m not gonna tell you where it is. What is this shit? We partners or not?”
    Stick let it drop.
    From then on, he took two hundred dollars a week out of the Oxydol box, over and above what he needed, and put it away in his suitcase.

7

    STICK WAS ON THE BALCONY, looking down at the empty patio. It was quiet, the pool area in shadows. He turned when he heard Frank come out of his bedroom and watched him walk over to the bar in one of his new suits and finish a drink he’d made and forgotten about.
    â€œYou taking the car?”
    â€œNo,” Frank said, “we’re going to walk. Broads love to get taken out to dinner and have to walk. You going out?”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œWhat do you mean, how? You going out?”
    â€œI mean how. What am I supposed to do, hitchhike?”
    Frank took his time. He said, “It seems to me I remember I said maybe we better get two cars. You said, Two cars? Christ, what do we need with two cars? You remember that?”
    â€œHow come you figure it’s yours?” Stick said. “Take it anytime you want.”
    â€œJesus Christ,” Frank said, “I don’t believe it. You want a car, steal one. You want it bad enough,