Me and Storrs and Jimmy
I was a sophomore in high school, and just starting to get into bad trouble. Part of it was the crowd I ran with. My best friend was Donny Storrs, the son of a man who was sent to the chair for murder. Storrs said his old man never did it, that he was framed.
I didn’t ask the circumstances. I was getting old enough to learn how much circumstances counted. Under certain circumstances, a person is capable of almost anything, right up to and including murder.
Storrs and I were only somewhat inclined toward crimes when it was just the two of us. We’d occasionally shoplift or maybe boost a car, usually making an effort to return it to more or less the same neighborhood when we were done with it.
But then we started hanging around with Jimmy Ayup. The chemistry changed, and we started to feel different about ourselves. More dangerous.
Jimmy was quite a bit older, a reedy man with long hair pulled and combed into a stiff pompadour style that was years out of fashion. His health was poor, his chest thin and racked with coughs that he would try to smoke into submission, cigarette dangling from his mouth as he hacked and rattled.
I think he got some vicarious strength from Storrs and me, horny teenagers bursting with muscle and energy.
Jimmy made it clear to us he was a serious man, and straight away told us he thought our criminal activities were kid stuff. “So-called crimes,” is what he said.
He said he thought we had potential. If we stuck with him, he said, big things would happen. Jimmy said successful crime was all in the planning. “You think a bank robber just walks in and takes the money? No goddamned way. A good robber plans the hell out of a job.”
He told us of several major scores he’d put together, naming dollar amounts that sounded impressive.
Jimmy taught us the most important things were patience and preparation, skills he developed when he was a sickly kid laid up for weeks at a time. Jimmy said the best way to pull a job was to watch a gas station or liquor store for as long as it took to learn the patterns—the busiest days, the slack times, who did what, and when.
He said that by the time he was ready for D-day, he knew the names of the guys he’d be robbing, where they lived, all their habits. He said knowing that information kept him flexible and gave him leverage. I didn’t know what he meant by this, and asked him. He just looked sly and told me I’d see soon enough.
Jimmy had the Stop n’ Shop on Perry Street in mind. His plans involved a period of what he called “intelligence gathering,” which was Storrs and me watching the entrances and making notes of all the comings and goings—the customers coming in and out, the different employees and so forth. I watched the back, Storrs covered the front.
Jimmy’s job was to follow the different employees home and note down where they lived. He got off on it, rolling along in his crushed-up ’61 Falcon that was so rusted at the bottom it looked like a piece of charred newspaper. He followed each employee home in turn, parking outside and making notes on a metal clipboard like the inspectors at the Caterpillar factory use.
Saturday morning a couple weeks later, Jimmy called a meeting at his apartment, which he called “the place.” It was cramped and bare of furniture, newspapers taped over all the windows so the light was yellow and greasy. We sat on beat-up metal folding chairs while Jimmy paced back and forth in front of a chalkboard easel, tapping it and puffing smoke like a worn out car. After a couple hours, we had our plan.
Jimmy had learned that the manager himself dropped off the deposits, but only twice a week—on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He was a big fat guy, the manager, and walking to the bank took a lot of effort. I wondered how he stayed so fat, being on his feet all day, but I imagine he probably helped himself to the baked goods as much as he wanted.
Saturday was by far the busiest day of the week, since lots of people did their shopping not only for Sunday dinner but for the rest of the week as well—frozen dinners were popular with the factory workers and lots of people would plan the week’s menu right there in the freezer aisle.
Then he dropped it on us. D-day was tonight, Saturday. The market closed at eight, and most of the employees would be gone by nine. The fat manager would there with all the money from the past two days, including the thick Saturday stack. “You boys ready to put your money where your mouth is?” he asked.
“Hell yes,” said Storrs.
“Goddamn right,” I said.
Jimmy handed us each a pair of service station coveralls, the one-piece type with the name patch on the breast. Jimmy told us that the names would help confuse our identities and maybe direct the cops off our scent.
The name on mine was “Al.” Storrs was “Raul” and Jimmy was “Jack.” We also wore black nylon stockings on our faces. Storrs had taken these from his mother’s dresser. Storrs’ mother always dressed in mourning since her husband had been sent to the chair, so she had plenty of these and wouldn’t miss them.
Storrs also had a .38 Police Special that he said had belonged to his old man. I wondered if it was the murder weapon, but then I figured that the cops would have seized it for evidence, so it was another gun. It was beat up, the bluing worn off and the grips dark with grime, but plenty serviceable. I looked down the barrel and saw the dull round heavy shapes of the bullets in the dark cylinder, solid and menacing.
It was 8:35 when we walked through the freight doors and into the office. The fat manager was sitting behind his desk, working on an adding machine and eating from a box of crullers. It was a shabby office with close walls, dingy paint and boxes stacked high in every corner. Storrs went quick and jabbed the manager under his fat chin with the snub of the revolver.
Jimmy asked him where the safe was, using a gangster voice, calling him Fat Man. The manager turned white—if you ever saw a person go white with fear you will know what I mean by that, blood draining out of his face like water from a sink—and said in a shaky voice that he didn’t want no trouble and that the safe was in floor. Jimmy told him open it and he said it was already open. Storrs jabbed at him until he got down on his fat knees, heaved back the little rug on the floor and opened up a round barrel safe set into the concrete. He bent down with a sigh like a leaky tire and fetched up a canvas deposit bag with a leather top and handles, locked with a little brass padlock. Jimmy ordered him to open this, which he did with a little brass key he kept in his desk.
Jimmy looked down into it, nodded and told Storrs and me to tie him to the chair. We used the manager’s own necktie for this, plus some strings cut from a stack of aprons with the manager’s desk scissors.
As soon as he was secure, Jimmy told the manager that if he called the cops we would go and burn his house down for him, naming the address to show he was serious. That manger’s face started to twist at this, and his white skin turned red. He started to roar and pull at the knots. You know how strong fat men can be sometimes.
I felt panic, and I wasn’t the only one. Storrs cried “Let’s git!” and ran out of the room, snatching the bag from Jimmy as he went. I was quick after him, hearing the splintering of the chair behind me as I cleared the office. There was a sound of something heavy hitting the floor, and I saw Jimmy knocked flat by the manager.
The man got on top of him and starting smashing Jimmy in the face.
“You murdering son of a bitch!” he hollered, flailing his fists. “Arson my house, will you?”
I tell you, Jimmy never had a chance. What looked like fat must have been muscle. Plus, the man was mad as hell. Jimmy’s face was all over blood. It looked like that fat man might kill him.
I picked up a broken piece of chair leg and clopped it upside the manager’s head. He looked stunned, but kept on hitting Jimmy. I hit him again, and a third time. That one landed on his jaw and he toppled over like a bowling pin.
I looked up to see the butcher and the black kid who mopped the floors. The butcher held a big meat cleaver in his hand. He waved it at me and I dropped the chair leg. The black kid got between me and the door while the butcher dialed the cops.
The Judge sent Jimmy to Joliet for ten years. He had prior convictions, including one for sodomy. I was surprised to hear that. The service station coveralls were a bad idea, since the place where they had come from had been robbed—probably by Jimmy—and a guy had been killed. There wasn’t no proof Jimmy’d done it, but it didn’t look good to the judge.
It was only my youth that saved me from joining Jimmy in prison. I got sent up for three years to the Franklin Juvenile Facility down in Benton, which was plenty hard in its own way since the warden had been a priest before laying down his collar, or whatever they call it when a priest quits the church. Judging from how he was toward us inmates, I guess that he quit because he didn’t enjoy turning the other cheek. About this, the less said the better.
As for Storrs, he got off scot free, and with the money too. I never said nothing about it. I doubt Jimmy did, either.