Two's Company

Two’s Company

By

Jamey O’Donnell

“What makes you think you can pull this off?” asked Marty. “No one has been able to rob that old man in over 45 years. What makes you so special?”

“I’ve got a secret weapon, an ace up my sleeve, you might say” replied Stiv. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it all planned out. Foolproof. There’s no way this doesn’t happen.”

Everyone on Decatur Street knew of Old Man Parisi and the riches he kept in his safe, but they also knew about all the men he had made disappear throughout the years that tried to steal from him. No one that ever planned such a thing ever came back around to talk about their success. They just vanished off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again.

Word had it that Parisi was Cosa Nostra, a Sicilian that left Sicily in the late 50’s, who came to the states to do a major hit for one of the crime families, then decided to stay. Nobody wanted to mess with him because of his reputation, but every once in a blue moon, some Einstein got it in his mush for brains that he could outsmart the old man and take what was in the old man’s safe, always culminating in the same finish.

Parisi opened up a jewelry store on Decatur Street shortly after he got here and made a name for himself in the Diamond District. He catered to the very rich, politically connected, and sometimes even those in the entertainment industry paid him a visit.

The people he did not deal with were mob connections, even though it was obvious he was mobbed up. You just never saw them.

He lived above his store and never flashed his wealth, and barely spoke broken English, but enough to get by. The only signs of his wealth was his Cadillac, always new with the year’s before traded in, and that he had a bodyguard that always drove him around.

The one everyone was really afraid of was him because he was built like a brick shithouse, and he never spoke…ever. Not a word, but if he looked at you, you felt as though you might die right then and there, so it was always best not to make any eye contact should he be outside waiting for Mr. Parisi and you happened to walk by.

Stiv had a plan alright, and it seemed to be a pretty good one.

Stiv had hooked up with a gal down by the Bowery a few months back, and they hit it off pretty good, It was an off night for her and she was sipping a scotch and soda down at the end of the bar, and when they locked eyes, it was pretty much love at first sight.

Once Stiv got past the way she earned a living, which was being a high dollar call girl, he let himself fall head over heels for her because he knew it was just routine fucking for her, that it meant nothing. What the two of them had together was different. It was special.

After a few drinks together one night, she started talking about one of her clients, an old jewelry shop owner that had more money than God, and she wished she could figure out a way to get to all of his money.

She knew where he kept it, but she also knew he was dangerous, and so was his bodyguard.

This peaked Stiv’s interest, and he wanted to know more.

Once a month, the bodyguard would pick her up in his Cadillac and take her to his apartment over the jewelry store. Once there, the bodyguard would escort her up the stairs to his apartment, then he would retire to his bedroom, leaving her with Old Man Parisi in the living room, which is also where he kept his safe.

According to her, his safe went from the floor to the ceiling, and was about 10 feet long, making it the biggest safe she had ever seen in her life, and probably the biggest that Stiv had ever seen as well.

She even got to get a glimpse of the inside once. He didn’t have enough cash to pay her, and when he opened the safe, she saw at least a hundred stacks of bills, gold bars, tons of jewelry, and sacks of what must have been coins.

She figured there had to be at least 20 million in the safe, maybe more.

His English was very poor, but he made it clear she was not to say anything about the safe or its contents to anyone.

The one odd thing about him was that she never saw him fully naked because he never took off his shirt, only his pants. Just one of the many quirks she experienced over the years with her laundry list of johns.

Stiv’s brain started working overtime. He then asked her if she was serious about wanting to take his money, and when she said yes, he started to make a plan.

The first thing he was going to do was get with his friend Marty, a guy who lived in that neighborhood, to see what kind of info he could get from him about the old man.

Marty wasn’t very helpful, except that he knew of the old man and his reputation, so Stiv came up with a plan in spite of him, but it meant he would have to put a bullet in the bodyguard, which he wasn’t all that fond of doing.

Stiv had killed a man once, but it was out of self defense, but he thought he could do it again for a payday this big.

Stiv would wait for the bodyguard to leave the jewelry store to go pick up his girlfriend, then he would wait on the side of the garage and be there when they came back and pulled up to the garage door. That would be when Stiv would walk over to the driver’s side window and put a bullet in the head of the bodyguard, using a silencer of course, then take the keys and walk up the stairs with his girlfriend, unlock the door, hold the old man at gunpoint while he opened his safe, then tie the old man up while they emptied the safe, and make off down the highway after throwing the bodyguard out of the car.

Easy peasy.

“Ok man, if you say so, but I would still be very careful. That old man seems to be smarter than anyone else that’s tried to rob him.” said Marty.

“I gotta get over there now. That bodyguard is going to leave to go get her soon.” said Stiv as he left walking down the boulevard, carrying several burlap sacks to haul out the loot and into the car that would be downstairs in front of the garage.

In his left breast pocket was his pistol and compressor, to silence the shots fired.

It was dark now, and after waiting about 10 minutes outside of the coffee shop across the street, he saw the Cadillac back out of the driveway from the side of the jewelry store, and head down Decatur Street toward the Bowery to pick up his girlfriend.

He figured he had about 20 minutes before they would return.

After walking across the street, he sidled up alongside the jewelry store, down the driveway to the garage where he was almost in complete darkness, and stood in a nook on the side of the garage and behind the store, completely camouflaged from the street.

Standing in the darkness, he could see that someone was upstairs walking around by their sporadic obstruction of light coming out of the window, so he knew the old man didn’t decide to go along for the ride at the last minute to pick up his girlfriend. So far, so good, and all according to plan.

After what seemed an eternity, the Cadillac finally pulled into the driveway and parked right in front of the garage door.

Stiv would have to time this perfectly, because he wasn’t going to make his move toward the car door until the car was off and the drivers door had opened, turning on the inside light, enabling Stiv to hit his target and not miss, and not shoot his girlfriend in the back seat.

As soon as the car shut off, Stiv made his move and waited for the car door to open, and when it did, the light came on and Stiv put a bullet square in the temple of the bodyguard, spraying blood from the kill shot, dropping him to his side. For good measure, Stiv squeezed off a couple more rounds into him to make sure he was deader than a doornail, which he was.

He reached to grab the car keys from his hand, then motioned for his girlfriend to get out of the car to lead him to the stairwell door that led to the apartment upstairs.

Stiv went up first, keys in one hand and his pistol in the other, with his girlfriend carrying the burlap sacks. He then put the key in the door and turned the lock, then opened the door, swinging it wide open to find the old man on the couch with a very surprised look on his face.

There was a pistol on the end table of the couch and the old man began to eyeball it, but Stiv walked over to him and pointed his weapon directly in the face of Old Man Parisi.

“I wouldn’t if I were you!’ said Stiv as he picked up the gun and put it in his pocket.

“Get the fuck up!”

His girlfriend wasn’t saying a word, but the old man was saying plenty to her with his eyes.

“I know you understand what I’m saying to you. Go over there and open that safe. NOW! Just unlock it, don’t open it. I’ll do that. If you do exactly what I tell you to do, the only thing you’ll lose here is your money. If not, you’ll end up like your bodyguard downstairs, Capiche?”

The old man then walked over to the safe and began turning the combination lock, 4 turns to the left, 3 turns to the right, 2 turns to the left, then turned the lock to the right until it would go no further, meaning the safe was unlocked.

“Ok…get back from the safe and turn around!” said Stiv.

The old man took a step back from the safe, turned around, and was actually smiling at Stiv, which was highly unnerving to him, and then the old man did a very curious thing.

He outstretched his hand toward Stiv, opened his hand, and revealed a single marigold flower in the palm of his hand, capturing Stiv’s attention.

In the blink of an eye, the old man’s button up shirt ripped open at the chest, and out popped the upper torso of a small dwarfish man holding a 38 special pointed at Stiv’s chest, and he blasted a hole right through Stiv’s heart, killing him instantly and dropping him to the ground, with his gun sliding across the floor to his girlfriend.

She screamed, then looked at the gun.

“Don’t even think about it beetch” said the tiny man, his English a little better than his bigger conjoined twin brother, as he pointed his gun in her direction.

Stiv’s secret weapon may have been his girlfriend, but Old Man Parisi’s secret weapon proved to be much more deadlier.

“Get out of here now before I keel you!” said the little man.

She didn’t need to be told twice, and she almost fell down the stairs trying to make her escape.