Attempted Robbery Part III

A good reason for killing anybody

PART III

By:

Frank Elias Georgalis

 

The Prime Suspects

The Exterior and Interior of the Restaurant, where a crime was to take place

“You’re also silly,” returned the man. Both men laughed spontaneously and the man behind he bar stopped laughing and signaled something to the red-faced man who immediately pulled out his pistol and before he had time to aim or fire, Nick shot at the doorknob and jumped to his feet, holding  his revolver.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ”Now, put your gun down! The next shot will be planted between your eyes, ugly. Don’t try to run like you ran before because I’ll shoot you in the back.  I said, drop it!” shrieked Nick, looking furious and aiming his gun

Nick: “I will not ask again”

at the red face man, ready to fire. If the building they were standing in had suddenly got up and walked across the street, both men wouldn’t have been as stunned as they were seeing Nick, the hobo, standing before them ready, willing and able to shoot them down. They both realized by his words and actions that he was a serious man of business, leaving no time for foolishness and no room forplay.                                                                                            “I will not ask again!” growled Nick, verifying their impression of him.                                                                                                                                                                    “No, Mister! Don’t shoot! We only came in for a drink,” said the man petrified, sliding the gun over towards Nick with his eyes fixed on him.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     “Lover boy, if you move one inch, I will take two inches off your height, something no short man could effort to lose. Come out from behind the bar, you’ve had your day back there, and we will see just how funny I am. Still keep your hands behind your back like a whore looking for a trick. Move!” yelled Nick. At that moment the red-faced man made a run for the door but the doorknob was missing.                                                                                                                                         “No doorknob?” said Nick, seeing the man’s desperate attempt to escape and the uncomfortable scene he had created for himself                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “No door knob,” repeated the red-faced man, with a scared grin.                                                                                                                                                                                 “It’s all gone?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 “It’s all gone,” replied the man, shrugging his shoulders.                                                                                                                                                                                     means, don’t get into anything you can’t get out of. Pretty soon we’ll say the same thing about your balls. They’ve all gone. That’s the only thing you seem to have.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “No, Mister!” pleaded the red-faced man. ”That’s not all I have. I have no balls. I mean, that’s not all I have.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       “You have no money. Do you?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   “I have some money.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               “How much money do you have, ugly?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                              “About fifty dollars.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             “That’s no money.”                                                                                                                                                                     “No.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 “The only thing you seem to have is a gun and a pair of balls. That’s all you have to have to rob people. You gave me your gun and now I think I’m going to take your balls, so you’ll never rob again.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “No, Mister, please, that’s not all I have. I have a wife and three kids at home, Mister,” said the red-faced man, whose mouth was watering earlier while staring at the waitress’ large breasts. Looking at him now, much to his surprise and with fate being unkind, his eyes were watering from seeing two full drawn pistols aiming straight at him.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “You worry about your kids and wife?” asked Nick without the slightest degree of sentiment in his voice.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “Yes, yes,” cried the man.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        “You see, you are not so lucky after all, if you had met me a long time ago and if I had done then, what I’m going to do now, you wouldn’t have to worry about a wife and kids.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Do you understand, stupid?” Nick paused for one long moment, and then turned to the well dressed-man.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       “How about you, lover boy? Do you have a wife and kids?”                                                                                                                                                                                     “Yes, sir,” uttered the other man on the verge of breaking down into a sobbing fit, too. “I have the same and I love them.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    “Go, and stand by where I was sitting. No monkey business, okay monkeys?”                                                                                                                                                  “No sir, no sir! “ They kept repeating as they went and stood by the booth.                                                                                                                                                        “When I say, sit, then you sit, “ said Nick looking at them with angry eyes and pointing his pistols with a steady hand.                                                                 “Sit!” ordered Nick. They both sat facing across from each other and instead of looking at one another they put their heads down looking at the tabletop.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           “Let me go and find Pam. I’ll be right back.  I can see you from wherever I am. Pam! Come on upstairs!” he was heard saying. “I haven’t made up my mind what I want to do with you chums,” said Nick, placing the hand that was holding his gun on the table and leaning heavily on that arm, “let me see what happened to Pam and the girls,” said Nick, heading off for the kitchen. He entered the kitchen, stayed there for one long moment, he carelessly walked out and headed back to the table, but on the way back he picked up the red-faced man’s gun and put it in his pocket.                                                        The kitchen door opened almost immediately and Pam appeared holding a rifle aiming it at the two bandits.                                                                                 “Here I am,” uttered Pam coming slowly while still aiming at the two characters.                                                                                                                                               “Put that away Pam! Those are not the guys the police are looking for. I mistook them and I damn near killed them” said Nick, turning to the bandits, “Sit quiet and relax all of you.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Nick, after a few minutes of silence, stood and stared at them with an angry look on his face.                                                                                                                   “You should all be ashamed of yourselves, fathers and husbands of probably nice people, who are depending on you to do the right thing. Your wives and children would rather eat live snakes than be eating food that came from a place where you could have been killed or got caught for armed robbery. Whether you are stupid or crazy or both, I don’t know. You are giving an chance for the police and prosecutors to make a name for themselves by catching you and sending you to jail, that is pure nonsense to me. I would rather scrape the surface of the earth looking for food, with my bare hands until I have no more flesh on them, than steal and give the chance to some jerky judge to pass out years in jail for me, as though he was throwing biscuits to his dogs. If you cannot find love in yourselves for your wives and children, then find hate for the people who are looking to put you away. Hate them, to the point that you will deny them the opportunity to put you away. Don’t give them the chance to live on your sickness, misery and death, stupid.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Next time the notion of robbing someone or some place enters your mind, you must consult your own conscience and your own feelings about the ones you are going to leave behind so they will be ashamed of speaking your name or revealing your link to them and if you find that favorable, then do it! Then you will know that you’re men with no conscience and no feelings. Let your wives find other husbands and other fathers for your children because you are not good enough for them. I want you chums to know that I don’t know what to do with you. If I let you go and I don’t turn you in, eventually you will be caught and be sent away and you will never breathe any air outside the prison walls for the rest of your lives. You will live there the rest of your days without any prospect of liberation. There is no disguising the fact that someday you will kill someone with the gun you carry around looking for a place to rob. Your remaining loaves of bread in the free society are numbered and few.                                                                                After saying this, Nick stopped and looked hard at them, from one to the other, for a few seconds as if he were debating some matter within himself, still resting his body with his hands on the tabletop. He then rose from the table, walked away a few paces, stopped and turned his head and said. “I am going to call the police,” directing his attention at the well-dressed man and asked sternly,  “Have you been arrested and convicted of any crime?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “No, sir” responded the man.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    “You think that I should call the police?” asked Nick.                                                                                                                                                                                                      “No. We are the police,” said the well-dressed man, getting to his feet and showing his badge to Nick who looked at it carelessly.                                               “I am Lieutenant Charles McKay,” the policeman continued, “The one you called ugly is my partner Patrick Newsome. We are investigating the disappearance of Jerry Strucker who was Pam’s second husband.”                                                                                                                                                                          Pam, numbed for a few minutes by the lieutenant’s words, then thrusting her body towards the officer, as she came close to him, said in a loud complaining voice,  “It’s about time somebody is doing something about my husband.”                                                                                                                               “You have been calling yourself a widow since the day after he disappeared,” said the lieutenant sternly.                                                                                             “I knew he was dead, the day after he didn’t come home. My husband would not have gone anywhere without telling me. He loved me. He was not a deceiver. I know he had an accident. There she stopped and a malignant scowl passed over her face as she drew closer to officer McKay, “I told the police to search but they ignored me, they ignored him as if he were not a member of the human race.” replied Pam angrily.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Having recorded her feelings in these intelligible terms, she sat on the chair, placed her head on the table and sobbed violently, while the officers looked at each other in awkward silence.                                                                                                                                                                                                                              “Did your husband carry a handgun, Mrs. Strucker?” asked McKay softly, touching her shoulder.                                                                                                                 At this inquiry, Pam raised her head and looked at McKay with a face filled with excessive surprise, then she looked at the other officer and returned her eyes back on McKay, “Why are you asking me that question?”                                                                                                                                                                          “We have found your husband in the lake not too far from here.” said the police, stopping to listen to her response                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Pam came up with a smile of sadness, then she turned pale and fainted in Nick’s arms, who was standing near had the time to come to her aid, while McKay stayed unmoved.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      “Get me a lemon!” yelled Nick, while he and officer McKay, who at last stood up, lifted and placed her on the seat of the booth helping her to stretch out.

 

 

Linda, the bosomy waitress, ran to Nick with two lemons in her hands and he took one, scratched the peel lightly, passed it around a few inches away from Pam’s nose, who after smelling the lemon began to regain her power of speech.                                                                                                                                            “ Floating in the lake, you said?” asked Pam faintly.                                                                                                                                                                                                     The officer nodded in assent.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           “He loved fishing. I always worried about him going there, to the lake, alone, fishing,” murmured Pam as her senses faintly came back to her.                     “Do you have life insurance on him?” asked McKay.                                                                                                                                                                                                          “He didn’t believe in insurance. He thought that the insurance companies were nothing but rip offs,” responded the widow staring at the ceiling.              “Have you ever gone fishing with your husband in that lake?” inquired McKay.                                                                                                                                              “Which lake? There must be at least ten small lakes around here,” replied Pam, raising her eyes and gazing at the inquirer coldly.                                                   The officer returned Pam’s gaze of stone and out of habit proceeded to make the most he could of her answer; the most, however, was nothing at all; so after a profound silence of some seconds’ duration he asked,                                                                                                                                                                            “When did you realize that your husband was missing?” asked the same officer.                                                                                                                                                       The widow winced beneath the gaze of the officer. She made a desperate struggle to screw up some strength to reply, and although it was coming unscrewed again, she managed to respond.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “He left early in the morning to go to work, but when he didn’t come home at his normal time that was six o’clock, I began to worry and I called his job and they told me he didn’t go to work that day. Sometimes he skipped work to go fishing, but he would always tell me. He never said anything to me that day.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    At that moment, Linda, the bosomy waitress, who was standing and listening to the whole dialogue asked softly, “Can you tell how long the body had been at the bottom of the lake?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        There appeared nothing tremendous in this question, ‘At the bottom of the lake,’ but the way it was asked and the look that accompanied it, plus the fact ‘At the bottom of the lake’ was not mentioned by the police, produced a question into Nick’s mind, but he withheld it for a better time.                              The waitress question was never answered by the policeman who had his mind set in a different direction. “When did you call the police, Mrs. Strucker?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “I think the following day,” said the widow, raising her head and looking at the policeman, “Let me set the record straight,” said the woman, wiping the tears off her face with the edge of her apron. “I really thought, way down deep inside of me that he left me. I thought that he went away and started a new life for himself. I thought he meant to call me but after a while he got into some kind of accident and died before he had the chance to call. That is why I was telling everybody that my husband died in an accident; and it wasn’t right after his disappearance, it was way later when I began to refer to myself as a widow. He had a friend and only called him RDR. I never met RDR. He told me that he was a policeman in a town and he wanted to go to Australia. Linda!” said the widow, turning her attention to Linda, “You had told me that you had a policeman boyfriend, whatever happened to him?”       “That was a long time ago. I don’t want to talk about it,” replied Linda, turning her eyes towards the empty bar.                                                                                   After that answer Nick, looking at her troubled countenance, detected some fear. But fear with out basis at times is common among people who have had bad experiences with judicial authority or the police force or fear from guilty feelings unrelated to the present matter, or fear of skeletons in closets that might be exposed by police inquisitions. Some people think, whether they are right or wrong, of the police as malicious, ill disposed, spiteful, vindictive creatures with a hard hearts; Nick was unable to put his finger on the type of fear that was depicted on her face.                                     “Let me get you some coffee,” said Linda, and left without waiting for a response.                                                                                                                                                  “The other thought was,” continued the widow, “that he sold his car, he and his friend RDR went to Australia. I thought if there were a car accident his car would have been found and I would be notified. All these thoughts and ideas lingered in my head for the past two years and the police department offered me no help. I bought this place from Mr. Ritter and Linda was working here and stayed along with me and has been a tremendous help for which I thank her.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               “Who are you, sir?” asked the red face man turning to Nick.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      “My name is Nick Karas, sir,” replied Nick.                                                                                                                                                                                                                               “He is my ex-husband’s, George’s, friend,” added Pam.                                                                                                                                                                                                       “George Papas from Farmville?” inquired the same officer.                                                                                                                                                                                               “Yes, do you know him?” asked Pam with a lot of surprise.                                                                                                                                                                                         “We did our homework before we came here,” said officer McKay, then turning to the stout man, with a bad knee. “Keep the waitress behind the bar, while I am speaking to Mrs. Strucker.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Waiting for the coast to clear, McKay watched the waitress go behind the bar to prepare coffee for all.                                                                                                 “We are from the Richmond homicide department and we are investigating the murder of your husband, Mrs., Strucker,” began the officer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “Murder?’ exclaimed the widow.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    “Yes,” continued officer McKay, “We didn’t want to reveal our identity for reasons that I cannot disclose at this time, but thanks to Mr. Karas, our cover was blown. Two years ago, three days before you reported your husband’s disappearance two men snatched two bags full of money, about two hundred thousand dollars, from a payroll truck in Richmond. One of the police who guarded the payroll truck was officer Patrick Newsome, my partner with the bad knee,” said the officer pointing at the red face man, “and the other officer was Jay B. Frost. One of the bandits was your husband, Mrs. Strucker,” said officer McKay pausing and staring at Pam with a vacant look in his face, “the other man, Edward Daily, was apprehended three weeks ago and is now locked up waiting for trial on murder one.”                                                                                                                                                                                                 Nick looked at Pam who turned suddenly pale; and Pam looked at Nick, the officers looked at each other, and Linda’s hands froze on the coffee cups, and her eyes doweled directly straight ahead away from everybody while the warm blood in her body tingled up into the tips of her ears.                                Nick, noticing the waitress strange behavior, not exactly knowing what to think or say, turned his head quickly towards the bar and said loudly, “Linda!”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Linda, hearing her name being called, right after the word ‘murder’ being uttered by the officer, she was visibly startled.                                                          “Is the coffee ready, sweetheart?” said Nick, trying to avoid any further complications between the officers and the waitress.                                              “Yes,” shouted back Linda, employing her hands again, and without looking in Nick’s direction, “it will be there in a moment,” added the waitress with a softer voice.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Never mind the coffee yet,” yelled the officer, looking at Nick who added nothing.                                                                                                                                              The officer with a preparatory cough proceeded, “But I don’t believe Daly is guilty.”                                                                                                                                         Then he beckoned Nick and Pam to follow him to the next table, a little farther from the bar.                                                                                                                    “Daly said that your husband had help from another police officer who was to be given one third of the proceeds and the only name he had was RDR. The deal was, according to Daly, RDR was to arrange with one of the police guards to create a commotion once the bandits snatched the money, so the bandits could get away. One of the officers of the payroll truck was my partner Newsome and the other was Frost. RDR made the deal with Frost. That’s exactly what happened. Mr. Strucker and Daly grabbed the two bags, ran and when my partner, Newsome was close to tackling one of them, Frost shot him from the back and hit him in the knee. That’s why you see him limping. Frost’s testimony was that it was a pure accident. We, the police, believed him. Six months later he was found dead in his car with two bullets in his head. Now I believe that RDR is the killer. RDR are evidently initials of his full name. We checked and found no one in the police department with those initials. We are going to conduct the same investigation of all the police stations in the area and I am sure we are going to come up with something, now that we know that RDR is in this area.                                                                         “How do you know that my husband was murdered? He could have gone there fishing and fell in and drowned,” offered  Pam.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     “Your husband was found at the bottom of the lake, strapped behind the wheel of his car with a bullet in his head. We believe he was murdered elsewhere. We also believe that where he was murdered is where the money is hidden,” replied the officer.                                                                                  Perceiving the sound of those horrible words, the widow burst into painful sobbing, and wept with anguish. The widow’s tears continued to gush forth with great velocity, until she gained a little time to think the matter over. She then raised her head and looked at the officer from behind her tears and said, “At least my husband wasn’t a murderer, he wasn’t a violent man with hate inside of him, he was only a needy adventurer in this world who chose the wrong way to make things right for him and me. I miss him terribly and I will always miss him.”                                                                                                             When the ceremony of mourning was over, officer McKay approached the widow timidly and said, “I am truly sorry, Pamela.”                                                 “RDR killed my husband, took the money, ran away and he now lives in luxury in some country like Argentina,” said the widow with a deep sigh.     “RDR was or still is a policeman. No policeman from any station around here, or even farther out, has left or retired and lives, in or out of the country, in luxury. Like I said, we did our homework. We all believe the money is hidden where your husband was murdered.”                                                               Immediately after the officer ceased to speak, Nick, with a serious face, stepped forward towards the officer in charge and asked loudly, to put emphasis on his wish, “I beg you pardon, officer, may I have a few words in private with Mrs. Strucker?”                                                                                                 “A private conversation with Mrs. Strucker in the middle of my investigation procedure?” asked the officer in amazement.                                                           “Yes, sir, a private conversa tion with Mrs. Strucker, unless she is a target of the investigation,” replied Nick, rather firmly.