Free Dog Eat Dog by Edward Bunker

walked to the London Men’s Shop, one of San Francisco’s better stores, featuring Brioni, Cornelini, Raffalo, and Hickey-Freeman suits. The shoes were Bally, Cole-Haan and Ferragamo. Men’s style had changed in Troy’s lost decade. From trim single-breasted suits and slim slacks without pleats, fashion had returned to pleated and draped pants and double-breasted suits with wide lapels and solid backs. It could have been 1950.
    “When did you start getting sharp?” Troy asked. “You were a jeans and tank top man.”
    “Hey, brother, it wasn’t that bad.”
    “It wasn’t? I’ve got pictures.” Troy laughed at Diesel’s blush and gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. “How’d you find this place?”
    “Those union guys. They love to be sharp. They try to outdress each other.”
    Troy looked through the rack of size 43 jackets. The prices had risen considerably during his absence. It was going to cost far more than he had expected to dress the way he wanted. After trying on several jackets, he selected a dark blue Italian cut (no back vent), a single-breasted cashmere blazer, and pearl gray flannel slacks. He would have them cuffed. For dress shoes he took a pair of cordovan slip-ons with tassels from Cole-Haan. He added a wool turtleneck in burgundy, plus an ecru pinpoint oxford with spread collar and a necktie that the salesman recommended. The single outfit cost sixteen hundred dollars. In the mirror, he was a handsome personification of a Princeton lithograph. Nobody would ever look at him and think he was a hoodlum. He tried his boyish smile. He’d often wondered why those outside the law often assumed a style that marked them. Even now the young thugs wore baggy pants and floppy shirts, turned cap bills backward, and left their shoelaces untied. Children of the bourgeoisie copied the fashion, but its origins came from reform school where clothes were oversized, and to the police it aroused the same hostile suspicion that zoot suits and ducktail hairdos had two generations earlier. Troy preferred to look as if he belonged in Newport, Palm Beach, or the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Anyone he wanted to know that he was a criminal knew him personally; all others he wanted to think he was a born-again Christian Republican. Or at least rich. That was what he saw in the mirror.
    When measurements for alterations were taken (he could cuff the slacks himself), Diesel pulled out a fat roll of one-hundred-dollar bills and counted out cash. The manager took the money, but he also eyed the tattoos, and Troy was sure he thought they were drug dealers. Nobody else paid that much cash. Check or credit card was how the squares did it. Troy would have to get the big green American Express card and either Visa or MasterCard. You had to have those to fulfill the façade.
    When they walked back onto the sunny street, he carried the clothes in a bag on a hanger. He would be dapper enough for anywhere they went—dressed for success, he thought with a smile. If he had nowhere else to dress so expensively, he would certainly wear the outfit on capers. A talisman? Not quite. When he was in reform school and already half-committed to crime, he saw a photograph of his idol, Legs Diamond, when the gangster was killed. Face and head were blown away, but the elegance of the three-piece Glen Plaid was plain—and the shoes were high-topped kangaroo skin. Very comfortable, very expensive. That was when Troy decided to get as sharp as possible before going on a caper. If he got busted, he wouldn’t arrive in jail looking like a bum. Very particularly he wouldn’t return wearing the “hot dog” dress-out shoes issued on release. Men who returned wearing dress-outs were ridiculed and laughed at.
    At a Macy’s, he picked up everyday clothes, twill pants and chambray shirts, sweaters and Rockport walking shoes. As they headed toward the Mission District, they pulled over and gave a homeless begger the bundle of prison issue.
    “You