The Thief
By Michael Youngberg
This is not a happy little tale; no story is if it’s told long enough. There is no happily ever after. Everything I tell you here is true, but who really gives a shit anyway right.
My name is Johnny boy, or at least that’s what all my friends call me. I am a thief, not a crook. I want to make that perfectly clear from the get go. Thieves steal so they can live the life that all us who are smarter than the system deserve to live. Crooks do it to define their lives, they are their last job. Fuck them. I AM A THEIF, not in the
I’m gonna do this.
“So we’re really gonna do this,” I ask.
“Yeah dude, all you’ve got to do is go up to the clerk, tell him you’ve got a gun, and tell him you want all the money in the register. Forget about the safe, it’s just a ploy to get you to wait until the police arrive. ONLY TAKE THE MONEY OUT OF THE REGISTER.”
Simple
Easy
“Okay here I go,” I say hoping I sound more confident than I feel.
I checked the parking lot for cops and there were none there. I’m not getting a spot on ‘World’s Dumbest Criminals’.
I walk slowly up to the cashier, still on track. Give me all of your money. I have a gun.
Calm
Cool.
Then the cashier does the unexpected, he asks, voice cracking, “Let me see your gun.”
So I pull it out, it’s a cap gun, painted black. Luckily he was no NRA member. The smell of fresh urine starts to fill the room. His pants are getting dark; his hands shake as he gives me the money, I can taste his shame. I tell the Pussy to put his hands behind his head and kneel down.
Just as planned.
I put the cap gun to the base of his skull and tell him to never give my description to the Police. I tell him to trigger the alarm as soon as he can count to 1,000. I tell him the next customer into the store works for me, and he will be watching, and listening to his every word
Do not fuck up.
If you fuck up, you’re dead.
He has no questions for me. Amazing how a gun can make everything so clear.
I’d gone into this store almost every week for the last month, and picked up the same drink, same shitty microwave burrito, and used the same damn lotto numbers every time, he always needed to hear them like five times. Always rang up the burrito more than once and yet now, with his useless little pathetic existence on the line, the man was almost a functioning person.
Amazing
This rat-hole reeks of the poor bastard’s urine now. He starts counting, and I walk out of the store covering my nose to keep from gagging on the fear and piss smell. We make off with about $3,000 in cash. I’ve done it; I just made $3,000 for about five minutes of work.
Simple
Easy
* * *
After my first taste, I’m hopelessly addicted. I’d never work at McDonald’s again. I’ve found a way to make thousands in mere minutes. I was still in High School at this point, but who needs that when you’ve got it made in the shade for the rest of your life. I drop out. I don’t think my Mom even noticed. It’s not her fault; she’s way too busy working three jobs to support the family my bastard father left her with. Dad left us years before, had to run off and start a new family in a
My four brothers and I were all told to make successes out of ourselves. To finish school, get a good job, and support a family. I was the oldest, so all that pressure went to me first. I dealt with it, and even did well with it until I realized that I could make a lot of money now with my new ‘career’. I started bringing home a good portion of my money and Mom never really asked me any questions. She didn’t want to know, and I guess I really didn’t want to tell her either; all she cared about was that we could finally afford all we needed.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no Robin Hood. I kept most of it for myself and the stuff I wanted, After all I was the one earning the money. But it was this way that I set up college fund for all of my brothers, some of whom actually used them for college. Hell one of my brothers is a lawyer, that aught to come in handy. Any ways I kept robbing liquor stores for a few years, and made a good living at it too. But I wanted more, like moving on to harder drugs after smoking a lot of pot. I needed more of a buzz. I started knocking over banks (This is about Five years ago), now that’s a rush. You have to a whole hell of a lot more home work on it if you plan on staying free though.
Guard Schedules.
Staff members
Points of entry
Alarm Systems.
It takes about three weeks of good planning, with multiple scouts, to get ready for the hit. So we rob a lot of banks all around the country, not near home. You shouldn’t shit where you eat. The take at these banks can be vast though. Each teller can have around $10,000 dollars in all their drawers. And if you plan it right there can be up to eight tellers on the floor, in a larger bank. $80,000without breaking a sweat. Most have only two tofour on the floor on a regular day, but $40,000 aint too shabby. And with a crew the size of mine, we can hit up to four banks a month, all around the country. That’s a lot of money. It’s the best job in the world.
Simple
Easy
All of us, my group, have our own reasons for doing it. Wrench, our wheelman, has a new baby. Dom, alarms and security, is mildly addicted to coke, and women; and the latter is far more expensive. And of course, there’s Twitch, Twitch is like me. He does it for the rush and because it’s far easier than a legit job. Twitch and I are the gunmen of the group. Sounds safe having a guy named twitch as a gunman, huh? That’s actually how he got the name. It was back when we were robbing liquor stores.
You see Twitch used to drop acid every once in a while. That shit stays in your system for like twenty years or something. So we’re hitting up this stop’n’rob outside of
“Oh shit,” I think, “the shop keep has a gun. Jack (That’s his real name) is gonna die.”
So I get up out of the car and draw my gun, while running toward the store. I aim the gun at the counter but the cashier is on the floor crying while the gun continues to fire, so I look up and there’s Twitch, yelling and firing at the ceiling randomly.
“Damn, these animals, they’re everywhere!” he yells.
“What the hell are you talking about,” I shout over the din.
“The bats,” he yells, continuing to fire off his last few rounds, “they’re everywhere.”
“Dude… There’s nothing here,” I say calmly as I take the hot, empty gun out of his hands. I grab what I can out of the register as I walk him out of the store.
“Sorry about the mess kid,” I say to the sobbing cashier.
Once I get Twitch into the car to make our get away, he begins to explain what happened.
“Man, so I was standing there, doing everything right, ya know, like we planned. And then outta nowhere I hear this loud screeching, And I look all around and these monster bats start flying all around me and I’m thinking, “I’m gonna Die, These bats are gonna eat me.” That clerk’s got balls though dude, he didn’t even flinch until I started shooting at the beasts. Then he freaked and hit the deck. Then I ran outta bullets and you came in and rescued me… we, we got the money right?”
“Yeah man, we got the money.”
Ever since that we’ve called him twitch. He also has I tick where his hands are all jittery because of a decade of drug abuse, but he’s clean now. That’s why he still works with us; you’ve got to be sharp in this line of work. Any ways, Fuck Twitch, he’s the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.
Bastard
Narc
Anyways, back to the op; basically we go in, steal everything we can, and get the hell out of there before the po-po shows up. Smash and grab job. After each heist, whatever we choose to do with the money is up to our own discretion, as long as it doesn’t : A, Get you caught, B, get you killed, or C, get you so screwed up that there is no way you can do the next job. It’s not easy to find good safe criminals these days. Everyone is so fucked up on drugs or booze or women that you can’t trust ‘em any more. After all, a junkie will do whatever they can to get their next fix. That can lead to getting caught.
Lawyers
Jail
Ass Rape
Not exactly an option. So, no junkies. Now I know what you’re thinking, what about Dom and Twitch. Well, Dom is just an occasional user, he doesn’t live to use. Twitch on the other hand; he used to be a junkie. He had it really bad, but we all helped him kick the habit. That was the longest month of my life. That bastard kept trying to escape to find his next hit. And when he wasn’t attempting escape he was clawing at imaginary assailants, and vomiting. I thought he would die. I didn’t get much sleep then, I know he didn’t. Had to be done, it’s just so hard to find good criminals these days. He was just that, a good criminal; that is until last week.
Alright, I think its time we got to why I’m writing the story of my life. My lawyer, my brother Marcos (told you it would come in handy), asked me to write this story so he could see if there was anything he could use to spin the jury in my favor. You see, we got caught, and I’m facing hard time.
Federal Pen
Ass Rape
Thirty consecutive sentences of ten to twenty years, (with good behavior I could be out for my 400th birthday.)
Now, I say we got caught but that’s not exactly true. Twitch got caught. Caught in a routine DUI stop. He was Three times the legal limit, I do admire his style. That’s when he did something really stupid. He tried to bribe a cop out of a DUI ticket with $10,000, with a 2.4% Blood alcohol level.
$10,000
Stolen money
Recent bank Robbery
Ding! A little alarm goes off in the pig’s head. Now how does a man in a 15 year old beater car have $10,000 in cash, in hand?
Hmmm…
Well…
Gee, it doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out. So twitch gets taken downtown and gets put in a holding cell. He sings like a canary. He gets promised less time, only five to ten years for: assault with a deadly weapon, DUI, Driving without a license, tax evasion, attempting to bribe an officer of the peace, possession, and over thirty counts of armed robbery, and grand larceny, and unlawful discharge of a firearm. Hell of a deal. The next day the rest of the crew was picked up, they tore Wrench away from his family, Dom was a little coked out so he shot it out with the pigs, He lost; hard. And that leaves me…
I got picked up in a very rude way. I was on the john, of all places, making, well… you know, and this pig knocks my down and yells, “Get down on the ground!”
So I’m like, “What the fuck are you doing, This is my home, asshole, get the fuck out.”
“GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, PUNK!” He yells again.
“I speak English you dumb-ass, I’m a little busy, come back in five minutes. It’s not like I can escape, No windows, dip-shit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me shit-dick, now run along now, I’m bus…”
That was as far as I got, a billy-club makes one hell of a silencer. When I woke up I was in the Interrogation room. They started to question me soon after-wards. All the usual stuff, did I do It, Why Did I do it, How they know it was me, telling me sob stories about the people that I robbed, how I ruined their lives. All that crap. I simply smile and say, “Don’t I get a phone call?”
Of course I call my brother Marcos, the Lawyer. He shows up playing everything from the race card to police brutality to god knows what else. Damn I’m glad I paid for his college. He bails me out.
Make a break for it?
No, that would be way too easy. We go back to his office and spend the night getting my story straight. My grand jury is set for the next week. Luckily all the bastards have on me is the word of a convicted multiple felon. With any type of luck, I’ll be let off the hook after the meeting. Who knows?
My brothers been on he phone for a long time now, he left the room about an hour ago when I started writing this. When he comes back I was about to ask who he was on he phone with, but he’s way ahead of me.
“John, I’ve got some great news, That was the prosecutor, he’s offered us, ten years, with possibility for parole after five. They’ve got nothing on you. However, I suggest you take it. It’s just about the best deal I’ve ever brokered.”
“Bro, that’s ten years, that’s a long fucking time,” I say.
“It’s a lot shorter than life, don’t you think. It’s the best you’ll ever get. I can’t promise to get you off. They’ve got about 500 tapes of you and your crew, all over the country. Even though I can get the judge to dismiss the most of them, not all will be thrown out, we get one guy on the jury who thinks he can make you out, you’re screwed, all the sentences.”
“You’re my brother, What would you do?”
“Take the deal, If not for you do it for mom. You know she doesn’t want to see you behind bars for the rest of your life. Take the deal.”
“Fine, I’ll take it, but not in maximum security. Get me minimum, or at least medium, I don’t feel like being surrounded by guys who I can’t take.”
So I take the deal, hey I did do it after all, it’s only right that I serve a little time. I just hate the way I got nipped. I’d a rather got caught red handed.
Hand in the cookie jar.
Egg on my face.
You can never choose the way you go. So I’ll serve my time, and when I get out, right back to work,
Fuck the law.
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