LITMIR.BIZ

      ONE

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       Black said that it was going to be easy.

      Black didn’t know shit. He just acted like he did, and no one questioned him.

      The plan was simple: “We’ll just go in there, and when the shit gets real, we’ll wave our guns around. Put a couple of shots into the ceiling. Shout. I mean fuckin’ shout. Make a whole fuck of a lot of noise. We want to scare the tellers and keep them scared. Scared people do what you tell them. They don’t think for themselves. And we’ll just tell them to put the money in the bags while the piss runs down their legs.”

      Pappy was cool with that. Scaring was fine. He wasn’t cool with the whole gun thing: you pulled a piece if you intended to use it, you didn’t need the whole swagger bullshit. Shooting the ceiling wasn’t a mile away from putting a cap in the girl behind the counter when she was too frightened to fill the bag fast enough for your liking. Things escalated. And Black was one unpredictable motherfucker. He was in it because of the thrill. He loved the fucking rush. Best fucking high ever, he’d said more than once. The money was just sugar. Sweet, sweet sugar, sure, but sugar just the same. Heat it up and it gets sticky and sickly and it stops being sugar. They were like that, Pappy and Black.

      Pappy was all about the money. It wasn’t about control or respect or fear, or any of those other things that fired Black’s soul. It was all about the money.

      And when the risk outweighed the reward it wasn’t a risk worth taking. There was no glory in going out in a hail of bullets. Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse behind was nowhere near as appealing as not dying young and instead leaving an old and haggard one behind. Pappy wanted to live. Really live. Suck the marrow out of the bones of life. What was the good in being beautiful if you weren’t around to fuck and sing and laugh and punch and, fuck, just all of that shit? A beautiful corpse would rot soon enough. So, no, it was about staying alive so long that he’d become the old nigga on the tenement stoop, smoking his liquorice-paper cigarette and blowing smoke rings while the kids fucked about, being kids.

      And that meant using his head.

      Loyalty was one thing, but it only went so far.

      Getting yourself perforated just because you like a guy, or because you grew up on the same streets and fucked the same girls, sometimes alone, sometimes together, didn’t make it smart.

      “If I’m gonna do this, it’s gonna be done right. No fucking around. It’s gonna be big enough to cash out, man.”

      “Last job,” Black swore, cursing it.

      But Pappy meant it; this was the end of the road, the last job. From tomorrow his life was all about making a fresh start. He was getting out before hanging around with Black meant he wound up in the ground. He had a plan. It wasn’t fully formed. He couldn’t risk thinking about it too much. Daydreaming. He needed to be on his game. Right now all he knew for sure was come the morning he’d light out for Detroit. Clean start, different city. No one knew him out there. Maybe he’d even get himself into some computer school or something, make a real life for himself.

      Black wouldn’t give up this kind of life.

      It was in his blood. Like poison.

      Even if he decided to start again somewhere else, it wouldn’t be long before he fell into the same patterns of behavior. That was just who he was.

      * * *

      “Down! On the fuckin’ floor!” Black yelled as he pushed through the glass double doors into the bank.

      He fired one shot after another into the ceiling, sending a shower of plaster drifting down like snow.

      Hysterical shouts and cries filled the silence after the shots. Someone sobbed uncontrollably. Black ignored them all.

      Pappy dumped a bag in front of one of the tellers. He looked along the counter to see another bag go down. The ski masks made them all look the same. He almost laughed at the thought. It wouldn’t be the first time a pretty white girl had been confused by color, after all.

      Black stood in the middle of the floor, acting the big man, ready to explode: “I said stop your fuckin’ noise, bitch!” Pappy glanced toward him. Black held his gun—a huge Desert Eagle—an inch from the face of an old woman. She was barely keeping it together and the gun wasn’t helping.

      “Hurry,” Pappy told the teller, willing

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