One-Shot Deal

ONE SHOT DEAL

Gerald Petievich

Copyright © 1981 by Gerald Petievich

Smashwords Edition

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To Pam

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ONE

June 9

Larry Phillips, a diminutive man who in attire other than Leavenworth Federal Prison denims might look like a bespectacled young college professor, had been waiting in line for two hours signing forms, turning things in. He was holding a small cardboard box that contained the contents of his cell.

A hound jowled guard with a jagged scar circling one of his eye sockets stood behind a metal counter. He gave a little nod. Phillips stopped forward to a white line on the floor. The guard's lips barely moved as he spoke. Put the box down on the counter, he said. Take off your trousers and blouse and drop 'em in the hamper behind you. He slammed a plastic bag down on the counter. These are the civies you came in with. Put 'em on.

Phillips set the box on the counter and undressed.

The guard poured the contents of the box out on the counter and examined each item. He barely looked at the books: A Collector's Guide to Chinese Porcelain, Clinical Hypnosis: Fact and Fiction, and a dog eared copy of A Stock Broker's Guide to U.S. Government Securities, and tossed them back in the box. He examined the bathing-suit photograph of a strawberry blonde Melba Rivers carefully and tossed it in along with a letter with an American embassy postmark.

The letter was from Phillip's red faced mannequin of a father, the only one he had received from him during the eighteen month stretch. He knew its wishy washy phrases by heart. In his cell Phillips had visualized his father standing behind his portable mahogany bar mouthing the words in the letter, gesturing with his ever present glass-stirring rod. A diplomat, who would never refer even to an enemy with words stronger than down to earth. The glass rod tapped the edge of the martini glass like a deafening chime...

Phillips tossed the stenciled denims and shirt in the canvas hamper. He pulled a black polyester sports shirt out of the plastic bag (it was probably out of style by now) and put it on. He zipped up his pants.

The guard initialed a form and shoved it across the counter with a pen. Sign the form, first-name first, he mumbled.

Phillips signed his name and picked up the cardboard box.

Step to the door, the guard said. If you don't have a ride, there's a bus to Kansas City at the road stop in two hours. Don't loiter in front.

Phillips stepped to the door. The guard pushed a button, and the door lock made a violent snap. The door creaked open, and Phillips got goose bumps that were electric, uncomfortable. He strode out the door and along a sidewalk to the parking lot.

A car horn sounded, and a station wagon pulled up next to the curb. Melba was driving. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, though somehow he had expected her to be in a bathing suit, like the photograph. With a sort of squeal she rushed out of the car and into his arms. He dropped the box as she kissed him hungrily, her tongue flicking deeply to find his. Their mouths parted. Mercy, she said with a Texan twang. A year and a half's a long time. They hugged.

Did you bring the package? he whispered.

She lifted her head off his shoulder. Mercy, she said again. Same old Mr. Business First.

They got in the station wagon, and Melba started the engine. It's in the glove compartment, she said, accelerating onto the main highway.

Phillips opened the compartment and pulled out a package the size of a bar of soap. He tore it open and removed business cards that read INTERNATIONAL PAPER INCORPORATED, a California driver's license with his photograph, a Social Security Card, and an assortment of credit cards. Everything had the name Lawrence T. Porter.

I kept it in a safe deposit box...just like you told me to, Melba said.

He put the identification in his pocket and leaned back in the seat.

Should I stop at a motel? she said. Or, if you want, I can just pull off to the side and give you a...

Let's get some miles in, he interrupted. It's a long way to Washington, D.C. He was staring at the road.

Nothing was said for a while.

I know how you feel, she said sympathetically. You think about everything so much and then one day they set you free and you don't know whether to shit or go blind.... I felt the same way when I got out of Terminal Island.

The motel was part of a chain that guaranteed every room to be the same design from coast to coast. Thin bedspreads, thick mattresses, and water glasses in little paper bags.

Phillips stepped out of the shower and dried off. He opened the bathroom door.

Melba was sitting on the edge of the bed wearing only panties. She had put on fresh lipstick.

He walked over to the bed. I want to tell you all about the project, he said.

Melba raised her eyebrows. Now? she said.

Now.

Okay. It's up to you.

He sat next to her on the bed and described, in detail, the plan, from the beginning to the walk-away. This took at least fifteen minutes. The score will be close to a million dollars, he said as a finish to his lecture. We walk away with a mill. Does that turn you on?

I wanna use the name Melissa, she said. Melissa Diane ... I've always liked that name.

Phillips stood up naked in front of her. Now would you like to relax and be at ease? he said.

She nodded and  shut her eyes. I've been waitin' to hear those words for eighteen months.

He put his hand firmly on her forehead. Sleep, he commanded. Her neck and shoulders drooped suddenly. He pushed her back gently on the bed, and her heavy breasts sprawled to either side of her chest. Take a deep breath and let it out, he said. It's time to relax and do the things you love to do.

Without opening her eyes, Melba squirmed her panties off and tossed them on the floor. She stuck her legs straight up in the air.

Phillip's hands grasped her ankles. They felt smooth, perhaps slightly oiled. I want you to concentrate on the pleasure thoughts. I know you haven't forgotten how, he said softly.

She moaned.

First, you will imagine the thousand velvety hands massaging and enveloping your toes and feet and crawling slowly down the ladder of your legs.... You are going deeper and deeper into relaxation with each and every breath you take....

He felt her legs start to sway, no more than an inch. His power had not diminished. Even prison had not affected his mastery.

Once again, by marshaling full and complete concentration, he would will events.

August 18

The stubby man with a black mustache pinned on his employee ID before passing the warehouse guard booth. The laminated card read:

U.S. Treasury Department Of Engraving And Printing Washington, D.C.

Warehouse Fork lift Truck Operator All Access Ralph T. Smith (Midnight   8 A.M. shift)

He carried a metal lunch pail, which contained a pair of wire cutters and three sandwiches.

Melissa Diane (he loved the sound of the name) had been on his mind all day.

At his locker, Smith peeked at the picture in his wallet, as he had done before leaving his apartment. In the color photo she was dressed casually, in a beige tank top and jeans. He looked at the outline of her nipples; her healthy, strawberry blonde hair; complexion clean, scrubbed, vital; brooding mouth; hips more bone than flesh. And she had been naked for him and taken him into her and done things he could never have asked her to do. She had given herself to him as a woman and called him Honeybunch, with the lilt of her full fledged stewardess's Southern accent.

The work buzzer sounded. He stuffed the photo in his back pocket and the wire cutters under his shirt into the Firmo belt. He had worn the Firmo belt since meeting Melissa. He needed to lose the spare tire. It was guaranteed to make fat simply fall off without resorting to diet or exercise. When he told her he was wearing it, she had kissed him and stopped his embarrassment.

He had told her everything, even about the toupee. A love relationship should be built on a house of love, not a house of cards, as Dear Abby might say.

He walked from the smelly locker room onto the vast concrete and steel warehouse floor. The foreman, a gaunt, middle aged man with a protruding Adam's apple, was standing next to a yellow fork lift truck, reading his clipboard.

Ralphie, me boy, he said without looking up, one hundred seventy two pallets on the dock. They go to rotary press one, another twelve to the letterpress machine. That should do 'er for the shift. He made a mark on the clipboard. Hear you're gettin' married, he said, tapping his nose with the pencil.

Smith smiled and hopped up behind the wheel of the yellow fork lift.

Glad to hear it. We worry about you guys over forty that don't take the plunge. The foreman laughed violently, forming his mouth into an 0. He handed Smith the work sheet and loped across the warehouse to the office.

Why don't you jump in the lake, you big jerk? thought Smith. The foreman was a good example of why he didn't talk to the other workers very much. They were jerks, like the foreman. Big on jokes about other people. Ha ha ha.

When Melissa had introduced him to her brother Larry, he had enjoyed his jokes. Larry had class, like Melissa. Good family. And what he was going to do tonight was going to help them both. Larry would soon be his brother in law and his new boss in the new company.

All Larry needed was some genuine currency paper. A few sheets from one stack, out of the one-hundred seventy two giant stacks that were on the dock. He remembered Larry's exact words: The paper they make money out of comes from a couple of private companies that have a monopoly on its production. They sell to the government, and no one else can enter the field. If I had a few sheets of the paper, I could analyze it and put it into production myself. I could make a bid for a portion of the Treasury Department's business. His remark had been strictly off the wall. No pressure.

It wasn't like Larry was some crook. Far from it. He stayed at the Hilton and dressed like a movie star. His business card said, International Paper Incorporated, London, Los Angeles, Paris, and New York, and he paid for everything with a gold American Express card. He was a businessman with European frame eyeglasses.

Smith drove the fork lift across to the dock, as he had done for the past seven years, and scooped up a wooden pallet of paper. He pulled back the lift handle. The paper sheets were three by three and in stacks a foot high banded with baling wire.

Across the parking lot was his pickup truck, parked next to the security fence. The streetlight next to it had been out for a week.

He looked at his watch. He had worked alone in the warehouse for years, and prided himself on the fact that he could judge time by how many pallets he had moved to the press area. He was halfway through. Three fifty seven exactly. Three minutes to the guard's shift change. The foreman would be in the press area for the first run.

It was time.

Smith thought of the picture in his wallet as he climbed off the fork lift. He pulled sheets of paper from the middle of the pallet. He rolled them together and fastened them with rubber bands he took from his pocket. Trotting, he went down the loading dock steps into the darkness. At the fence, he crawled onto a stack of empty wooden pallets and dropped the paper over into the bed of his pickup truck. The thud was deafening.

He jumped down and ran back into the warehouse. His heart slamming back and forth inside his chest, he looked back to the parking lot. No guards. Everything okay. So far.

Removing the wire cutters from his Firmo girdle, he snapped the baling wire on the pallet and got back on the fork lift. He lifted the pallet neatly, both forks even as possible, being careful not to spill the loose stack of paper. He drove slowly across the cement warehouse floor and into the press area. The presses were grinding awake. He moved along the giant rotary press to the paper intake, where loose stacks of paper