Because fuck innocents.
Iris’s husband had been beaten to death in front of her eyes while she was pregnant, and her shop raided, in that bloody riot. Which could have been easily prevented had the innocents showed some balls. There were literally hundreds of people for each rioter. Forget hundreds, if just three people had stood up against one criminal, that massacre could have been prevented. But they didn’t. Instead they ran out of their neighborhoods, tails tucked between their legs. They ignored the evil happening right in front of their eyes.
Due to the inaction of these so-called innocent people, Ryatt’s dad was murdered and his shop, their livelihood, was looted. Iris was forced to borrow money from a loan shark, and everything went to shit. Ryatt became a criminal to escape that life. The innocents, Ryatt just hated their guts and couldn’t care less about spilling them on the streets.
The car stopped inside their hangout. Leo said he would later drive it far away and light it up. A few kids were getting high inside, but the place was otherwise empty. It generally was during daytime. The trio climbed down and Thomas shooed the junkies away.
Leo handed the cash bag to Ryatt. As he drew open the zipper, he thought that the key out of this miserable life was rather heavy.
Ryatt opened it and glanced at his friends. Wetting his lips, Thomas nodded and Leo twitched his neck. Ryatt upended the bag.
Wads of Benjamins and other lesser denominations fell in lumps.
Leo clucked and started doing a funky chicken dance around the mound. Thomas grabbed his temples and dropped onto his ass; a disbelieving chuckle escaped his mouth. Apparently, large volumes of cash cured guilt.
Ryatt wouldn’t know because he did not feel a sliver of such feelings.
Chapter 8
December 17, 1981. 10:41 P.M.
More than four months had passed since the bridge, but every time Ryatt’s eyelids rested, he saw the security guard’s head mottled with red blots, the sunlight swallowed by his dilated pupils, his mouth contorted in disbelief. The vile memory murdered Ryatt’s sleep.
Not that he worried about it. And he reckoned the image burned into his retina would soon dissipate. It should eventually go, right, when Ryatt replaced it with new images and fresher vile memories? His mind would then get used to the macabre and say ‘meh’ after a few times.
Now the security guard’s dead face was supplanted by disco lights that flashed around him, accentuating the graffiti on the wall. Two Aux cables ran from the Delco cassette player in their ride’s dashboard, to a pair of towering speakers that played Michael Jackson’s Beat It.
The threesome chilled on their new Cadillac Eldorado, with its top down. Ryatt lay on the backseat. Thomas and Leo had chipped in and bought the car from their share. Ryatt, being the responsible son that he was, did not squander the money on anything fancy.
He did spend a little on an extravagant birthday cake. With candles, festoons, balloons, the whole set-up. It was the best birthday party, maybe because it was the first one he’d ever had. Not only did he buy himself some new clothes and sneakers, he also bought his mom dresses and jewelry. Robbing was the best decision Ryatt had taken in his life. If something made you feel this good, then it couldn’t be wrong, could it?
Out of the $51,900 netted from the van, Lolly took $20,000 and tossed the remainder to Thomas and Leo. They didn’t raise any dispute over the uneven split because it was all Lolly, the idea, the plot, and the murder, everything. If it weren’t for his radical measures, they would have gotten nothing; so the duo acted grateful for what they received.
One of the toughest things Ryatt had to do following the robbery was lie to his mom. He told himself not to hesitate or stutter when tackling her questions, and he had built up a story that he could reiterate even if someone woke him up in the middle of the night and asked him to. The premise of the story went like this: a school in Toronto had offered Ryatt a football scholarship, and they would pay him $2,000 every month if he played for them. On top of giving Ryatt a decent excuse for the money, it also provided him a reason for his absence. Given his new profession, he decided to stay with Leo and Thomas, and visit Iris once a month. Though she was reluctant and heartbroken, they had agreed it was for the best, but for totally different reasons.
Then Iris got the money and, just like Ryatt predicted, made the first call to Bugsy. In total, he’d lent $5,000 and collected an upwards of $20,000 in return. A robbery, she had said, making Ryatt wince. Anyway, she was happy that they didn’t have to deal with Bugsy anymore. Ryatt had planned to move her to a new place next month, then buy the household items he had been longing to own.
Ryatt wanted to pay Bugsy in installments, so as not to bring attention to themselves. If Iris had settled the whole amount at once, a street-savvy fucker like Bugsy would know something didn’t add up. A little imagination, a few tips from the underworld grapevines, and Bugsy would have made the connection between the robbery and Iris’s sudden riches. In fact, many kids in their hangout idolized Badger and Buddha because the idiots had bragged about the robbery to other YBI members when drunk. But no one knew anything about them except their street names. Till now, Bugsy had no clue that Ryatt was Iris’s kid, so everything was as it should be.
Best if Ryatt stayed mysterious, though he was becoming increasingly infamous in their little part of town. The robbery had been a
