Free Keeplock: A Novel of Crime by Stephen Solomita Page B

that’ll settle the shit once and for all. Either way.”
    The warmth drained from his eyes. They grew sharp and cold, as life defying as ten years of Adirondack winters. I could do the same trick, of course, go from jovial boyishness to cold killer in the blink of an eye. I used to practice the move in the mirror while I was shaving. Eddie wasn’t using it to threaten me, only to drive home the importance of his message.
    “Guys like you and me,” he continued, “got no chance in the world. It’s already over as far as we’re concerned. Pete, it was over before we got started. We never had a chance.”
    I nodded wisely, just as if it wasn’t total bullshit. Just as if it wasn’t the ultimate disrespect. I know that I’m responsible. I’m not a child or a dog. Prisoners love to blame it on the past, on hard lives and bad breaks. But what about all those kids I’d met in the course of an institutional life who’d survived the foster care system? Who’d gone out to live normal lives (relatively normal lives, anyway) in the world? I’d chosen defiance, and even if I was locked into the cops and robbers game, it was my game and nobody forced me to play it. On the other hand, blaming the past is an important part of official prison mythology and ex-cons don’t challenge that mythology. Nobody burns the flag on a battlefield.
    “You know what I had to face in Cortlandt, cuz? I had to face the fact that all my life I been a complete asshole. The wise guys ain’t gonna let me inside where the money is. They was usin’ me like a baseball team uses a player off the bench. Put me at short, put me on first, let me pinch hit when there’s nobody else left. I’m shovin’ that garbage behind me, cuz. What’d I come out, six months ago? I done four jobs for the boys, but only so’s I could get the money to set up the job I wanna do.” He leaned across the table again, his voice dropping to a prison whisper. “I’m gonna do an armored car. One time, one car, and I’m outta the life forever. You, too, cuz. You, too.”
    The door opened and Mario walked in with the two antipastos and the garlic bread. Eddie didn’t move, even after Mario left. He held me with his eyes and waited for a response.
    “You got an inside man, Eddie?” I asked. My voice was calm, but my heart was pounding.
    “Nobody.”
    “Then how will you know what’s in the truck? How do you know you won’t hijack ten thousand pounds of quarters?”
    Armored cars are the favored fantasy of hijackers. After all, they sometimes transport millions of dollars in old, untraceable bills. But they also sometimes carry coins and non-negotiable securities. Or brand-new, consecutively numbered bills, which is the problem with payrolls. Sometimes they’re empty because they’re on their way to make a pickup. Sometimes they’re empty because they’ve just dropped off a payroll. Schedules are deliberately juggled so that following individual trucks to determine their routes is useless.
    The traditional solution, from the hijacker’s point of view, is to corrupt someone inside. But the cops are well aware of this and inevitably begin their investigation by asking all employees to take a lie detector test. The inside man is rarely a professional criminal. Faced with ten years in prison, he (or she) jumps at the chance to testify in return for a light sentence.
    “Cuz,” Eddie said, finally sitting back, “you should just take my word for it. I mean it ain’t like I’m an amatcher. This part of it I got covered.”
    “You’re asking me to come in blind, Eddie.”
    He shook his head. “You don’t understand. The job is stone-cold done. I’m only lookin’ for one more piece and that’s you.”
    “I don’t wanna disrespect you, Eddie, but when you do a job on the street, you gotta take a risk. Even if it’s only that the cops’ll stumble across you while the job’s in progress. You can’t control everything.”
    He shoveled a forkful of the