Earth vs. Everybody (2 page)

I went down to
the address written on the card. It was a large building for a hideout. Twenty
stories. There was a shop at street level that sold crime oriented novelties
like rubber gangster vomit, but there was no indication anywhere of what the
other nineteen stories were for. Sometimes a policeman on his beat would stop
and look up at the building and wonder, but he never went in. Going into
buildings wasn’t his job. His job was walking on sidewalks.

When I got there,
there were a couple of tough looking thugs hanging around the entrance to make
sure nobody made a mistake and accidentally went into the wrong building—like
the one they were guarding. I watched them toss out a blind man who had tapped
his way a little too close to the entrance. He landed in the gutter and started
throwing punches in all directions, while me and the thugs laughed our asses
off. Then it was my turn.

Between slaps to
my face and punches to my belly, I explained that I was here for a job
interview. One of them got on the phone and checked upstairs and apparently got
an okay from somebody. They turned me upside down and shook me a couple of
times to relieve me of any weapons or dangerous valuables I might have on me,
gave me a rather vaguely worded receipt that didn’t mention either my
possessions or them, then let me pass.

I went up to the
second floor. There was a glass door with the words: “CrimeCo (formerly Crime
& Sons)” painted on it. I went in and explained to the scarfaced
receptionist that I was here to apply for a job. She looked at me with that
bored sinister expression all receptionists have, then gave me an employment
application to fill out.

Most of the
questions on the application weren’t hard—I knew what my name was, of course,
it’s “Frank”, and my phone number was sewn into my underwear. The phone company
hadn’t wanted to do it, but I had insisted—but some of the more probing
questions required some thought. “Are you a police informant or a crybaby?”
asked Question 14. “Police informant”, I wrote. Then I scratched that out and
wrote in “crybaby”. Finally I crossed the whole question out. Maybe they
wouldn’t remember that one was in there.

I handed in my
completed application, then waited. A little while later I was called in to a
large conference room. Half a dozen criminals were seated around the table,
glancing over copies of my application.

“You look
familiar,” said the man at the head of the table. “Didn’t you break into my
office with an ax last month?”

“Well, yes,” I
admitted, “but that was back when I was an honest man. Before I went bad.”

“What are you,
some kind of cop?”

“I was a private
investigator. But I am no longer.”

“When did you
stop being one?”

“When I came in
here.”

Everybody stared
at me. I winked at them. When nobody reacted, I winked at everybody again, this
time going around the table the other way, using the other eye.

Fortunately for
me, Shifty was at the table. He stuck up for me. “He’s okay, boss. He’s
definitely not honest.” I gave him a high five.

The criminals
didn’t seem to attach too much importance to what I had done before in life.
They didn’t seem to think anything about me was very important. I was thankful
for that. Offended, too.

“Do you have any
experience in our kind of business?” asked the man at the head of the table.

I nodded. “I have
experience.”

“Have you ever
killed anyone?”

I nodded. “I have
killed everyone.”

“Is there
anything you wouldn’t say or do to get this job?”

“There is nothing
I wouldn’t say or do to get this, or any other, job.”

The criminals
looked at each other, impressed. I heard one of them mutter: “That’s the kind
of man we want.” And another said: “Where has he been all our lives?”

They asked me a
few more questions about my background, checking to make sure I was giving them
truthful answers by slapping me around a little. I didn’t mind. That’s how I
find out stuff too. It works.

After they
finished interviewing me they had me wait outside while they talked it over.
When they called me back in they told me that I was hired. In deference to my
age and experience they were going to start me out quite a ways up the criminal
ladder, as a bank robber.

“Welcome aboard,”
the man at the head of the table said. “Any questions?”

“Yes. When do I
get my vacation?”

“Not yet.”

“Shit.”

“Any other
questions?”

“About that
vacation…”

“We’ll tell you
when you get your vacation.”

“But…”

“Report to work
at nine a.m. tomorrow morning.”

“Yes sir.”

On my way out of
the building I asked the thugs at the door for my valuables, but they played
dumb.

“What wallet?”
asked one of them innocently.

“What picture of your
mother?” asked the other one.

I didn’t press
it. I had a job. That was what mattered. I could always take another picture of
my mother if I wanted one.

The next morning
I was shown around the operation and got to meet some of the guys I would be
working with. They were a colorful group, and I could tell I was going to like
them.

“Scarface here
was thrown off the most wanted list because of some nice thing he did,” I was
told when I was introduced to one man.

“Say it ain’t so,
Scarface,” I said.

“I ain’t saying
nuttin’.”

I turned to the
criminal next to Scarface. “I guess they must call you ‘Gorilla Face’, eh?”

“No…”

“They don’t? Why
not? Haven’t they seen your face?”

“Let’s go,” said
my guide, nervously.

“Okay. So long,
Gorilla Face. You too, Pig Eyes. Catch you later, Shit-For-Looks.”

I enjoyed meeting
and chatting with the men. I felt I was getting a rare insight into the inner
workings of the criminal mind. Criminals, I discovered, don’t think like we do.
They’re greedy. And selfish. Always looking out for themselves instead of the
other guy. They’re not like us at all.

The more I saw of
the operation, the more impressed I was. This was Organized Crime at its most
organized. Everything was done quickly and efficiently, to a timetable that
never varied, the criminals were always impeccably dressed, and the building
was kept spotless at all times. There were even recycling cans on every floor,
with the legs sticking out of them positioned “just so”. I could tell I was
going to fit in well here. I’m pretty organized myself.

After my
orientation tour was completed, I was taken to the office of my new
supervisor—Mr. Knuckles. He handed me a blueprint of a large building and told
me to memorize it. He said that would be my first assignment. I was to take 20
men and rob the 1
^st
National
Bank of Central City.

“No sweat,” I
said, sweating.

I glanced at the
complicated blueprint, then asked if I could study it later, when no one was
watching me, and he said that would be okay—that was when everyone around here
did their studying. I felt I was going to like this job. These were my kind of
people. All I had to do now was rob that bank.

“This is a
robbery!” I announced menacingly the next morning, as all the children and
clowns screamed and lined up against the wall of the nursery. “Esto es un robo!
Dies ist ein Bankraub! Il s’agit d’un vol de banque! Put all the money in… is
this 425 Wells Street?”

It wasn’t, of
course. I know that now. Along with the layout to the bank, somebody should
have given me a map. I guess we must have busted into a dozen different places
that morning—including the Federal Prison twice—before we finally got the right
address. And I suppose I’ll have to take a lot of the blame for that, because I
was the one who kept saying: “This is it, everybody, let’s go.”

When we did
finally get to the 1
^st
National, it didn’t go well at all. We didn’t get any money, for one thing. The
only thing that was in the money bags we brought back were a couple members of
the gang who had gotten stuffed in there somehow during all the excitement. And
our getaway car had been stolen, so we had to hitchhike back. And I had
forgotten to do the first thing I was supposed to do when we entered the bank,
which was to disable the security cameras. So the police had about 22,000
pictures of us.

Even though the
robbery had been a failure, I felt that the important thing was that no one had
gotten hurt, and everyone had had a good time, and no banks had been robbed. My
supervisor didn’t agree. He read me the riot act when he found out how badly I
had botched the job, and warned me that I’d better shape up and fly right if I
wanted to succeed in a demanding business like this one. Blah blah blah. The
usual stuff. Why do all employers talk the same? Always giving the same boring
speech. When he had finally calmed down a little bit he said he guessed that
everyone was entitled to one mistake.

“Does this count
as my mistake?”

“Yes.”

“Crap.”

Over the next few
weeks I made at least a dozen more attempts to rob the 1
^st
National Bank. But something always
went wrong. Sometimes we forgot our guns. Sometimes we remembered our guns but
forgot what we wanted. Sometimes the bank tellers couldn’t read my holdup note.
Sometimes they wouldn’t read it—said they were busy. Sometimes I got the wrong address
and we were at that kid’s birthday party again. It was always something.

The people who
worked at the 1
^st
National got
to know me real well after awhile. “Hands up everybody, here comes Frank,”
someone would say as I came around the corner and started heading for the door.
“Hi, Stan,” I would say as I entered, waving my gun around dangerously, and
hoping this robbery would turn out better than the others. But it never did.

After a month of
this, the bank decided to reduce the number of guards they employed from six to
two, through early retirement and buyouts. They knew now that they didn’t need
so many.

Eventually, my
superiors at CrimeCo came to the conclusion that the 1
^st
National might be too tough a nut for
me to crack, so they assigned me easier banks to rob. First the 2
^nd
National, then the 3
^rd
, and so on down the line. Each one was
easier in one way or another—quieter alarms, sleepier guards, money closer to
the door, there was always something easier about them. But I never managed to
rob any of them either. I had high hopes for the 20
^th
National, that’s the one I was waiting for, but we never
got that far.

I was arrested a
number of times during this stretch. You can’t make as many blunders as I was
making without getting arrested. But the Organization’s crack legal team always
managed to get me out fast. Always on some technicality that they knew about
but the cops didn’t. You’d think society would teach policemen what the laws
are, but I guess they never think of it. Or maybe there isn’t time. Even with
the legal trickery I had going for me, I still should have been locked up for
good after awhile, because I got caught so many times. But I was saved by the
city’s controversial “3 Strikes And You’re Free” law.

Finally I was
informed that I was being demoted from bank robber to thug. My superiors were a
little embarrassed about it. They blamed themselves for starting me up too high
on the ladder in the first place. They felt it was their mistake that I
couldn’t succeed at such a high level right away, not mine. I agreed. C’mon,
everybody, I thought, let’s get our acts together here. I can’t run this place
by myself.

They started me
off, as usual, at the highest tier—1
^st
Thug. And, as usual, this was a mistake.

The 1
^st
Thug is the guy who stands closest to
the boss at all times. He’s the one who says things like: “You better listen to
what the boss is saying” and “You’re just not getting it, are you, pal?” That
part of the job was no problem for me. I can stand next to people. Easy. And I
can talk tough with the best of them. But a 1
^st
Thug also has to know when to act—when the time for talking is over and the
time for action has arrived. I couldn’t tell the difference. Still can’t. So I
would suddenly start hitting the guy the boss was talking to while the boss was
still talking to him. Or I’d hit the guy when he had just agreed to do what we
wanted. Or I’d hit the wrong person, like the boss.

Because of this
inability to think on my feet, I was quickly demoted to 2
^nd
and then 3
^rd
, or Buck, Thug. The 3
^rd
Thug is the one who piles on after the first two classes of thugs have already
gone to work and it’s certain that this is the guy to hit, and this is the time
to hit him. No thinking required for us 3
^rd
thugs. And you never have to decide when to stop pounding on the guy either.
The boss will tell you that. “Okay, that’s enough,” he’ll say, or “hey, knock
it off stupid, he’s dead”, something like that. That’s when you stop.

When you’re not
actually pounding on somebody, 3
^rd
Thugs are supposed to stand in the back looking tough and kind of chewing
something. Gum, most guys used. Sometimes I forgot my gum, so I’d just chew my
shirt tail. That worked just as well, though I guess it didn’t look as
professional.

I thought I was
basically doing a pretty good job, but one morning when I showed up for work I
was told to report to the boss’s office to meet with the higher-ups. I knew
what that meant. There weren’t any jobs in the Organization lower than the one
I had now. And evidently I had blown it again. I was going to be fired.