Free Hard Case Crime: Fake I.D. by Jason Starr Page A

I could, adding a new dent. I thought about hanging out until the kid went home, then going back into the store to talk to the old man again, but what good would that do? It wouldn’t get me Janene’s jewelry back.
    I still had over an hour before I had to be at work so I went downtown to the OTB Teletheater on Water Street.
    The Aqueduct card was over so they were showing races from Hollywood Park. It had to be an omen—the place I was going to wind up someday as a horse owner was on the TV screen. I bought a program. There was a horse going off at three to one, and it looked unbeatable. This was it, the spot I’d been waiting for. I bet the whole three grand, figuring when it won I’d get back twelve.
    The race went off and I thought I must’ve bet on the wrong horse. The horse I bet on always went to the lead, but this pig was dead last. Then the announcer said that the jockey had pulled my horse up on the backstretch.
    I couldn’t believe it—I was broke again. The money didn’t even have a chance to get warm in my wallet.
    When I got to work I was still numb. I had no idea what I’d say when Janene came asking about her jewelry.
    I poured a Sam Adams and sat at the bar. Jerry, one of the old cronies who came to O’Reilley’s every afternoon, was sitting next to me. He reeked of alcohol so I knew he was lit.
    “Hey, Tommy,” he slurred, just noticing me next to him, even though I’d been sitting there a couple of minutes already. “How’s it goin’?”
    The last thing I was in the mood for was to get into a conversation with some old drunk. I just nodded, staring straight ahead.
    “I’m doin’ all right,” he said. “Seen better days, but who hasn’t? I guess that’s what getting older’s all about. But I can’t complain. I’m not dead—that’s one good thing.”
    I didn’t say anything. I was still thinking about that race at Hollywood Park and how I had screwed everything up. Then Jerry said “So did you buy your box yet for the Super Bowl pool?” and I said to myself: the Super Bowl pool. Of course, the Super Bowl pool.

Seven
    Every year O’Reilley’s had a Super Bowl pool. It was the same type of pool that just about every other bar in the city had. There were two columns of numbers, 0-9—one column for the AFC team, one column for the NFC team. For X number of dollars you got a box with two numbers that had to match the last digits of the score at the end of a quarter or, for the big prize, the end of the game. At O’Reilley’s, boxes went for five hundred bucks apiece so the total prize money would be fifty thousand dollars. The Super Bowl was still over a month away, but at least half the boxes were already full. Frank was putting the money in the bank as it came in, but a bunch of guys bought boxes last week and the money was in the safe—and the safe was right behind the bar.
    As Jerry went on, talking about whatever, I was thinking about a robbery. Getting in would be easy, the only question was when I would do it. From watching Frank over the years I already knew the combination by heart. It was a good thing I always noticed things like that. I’d only seen Janene punch the code of her ATM card into the machine that one time and I still had the digits memorized.
    The best time to do it would be late at night, just before closing time. It would be the only time I could do it because there were always people around the bar at other times and I didn’t have a key to the bar to come and go in the middle of the night. When I had the chance, I’d have to move fast. I couldn’t put it off much longer either. I saw Frank going into the safe a few nights ago and saw those stacks of bills, but it was only a matter of time until he moved the cash to the bank, if he hadn’t done it already.
    The only thing that bothered me about my plan was that I’d be stealing from Frank. I knew he wouldn’t suspect me—he liked me too much to think I’d ever do something like that to him.