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Feb-11-2009 11:40

November 5, 1934 - New York - The Tricky Mister - close to midnight

“You want me to rob a bank?!?” said Joey in surprise, suddenly realizing his voice was a little louder than he would’ve wanted to. He quickly scouted the room and was relieved to see no one seemed to have heard him. The Tricky Mister wasn’t really crowded on that late week night.

His interlocutor though didn’t seem to bother much about this situation. He was a middle age slim man in a dark pin striped suit, sitting relaxed across the table with both hands crossed in front of him. His tie was straight, his jacket fully buttoned up, his hair posed a clean arrangement on a side. A short and perfectly cut mustache was framing a slightly prankish smile, as his eyes were thoroughly scouting Bane’s reactions. Although his attitude was loose, he seemed to be the kind of man who always likes to keep himself sharp.

After a short moment of silence he slowly lowered his look, shaking his head in an almost imperceptible move, miming a disappointment gesture. “Mr. Bane” he continued in a low voice “that is…’come si dice’…” snaps his fingers “ILLEGAL!” He rose back up his eyes. “We are not asking you to do anything against the law, but only to acquire the possession of some documents that actually regard US. It just happens that these papers are currently stored in a safe deposit box inside the National Bank and since we have already attained this piece of information, we believed it would be helpful to pass it on to you, in order to make your work easier. However you will decide to retrieve these documents, it is entirely up to you.” He stopped, straightened up his back and took a sip out of the wine glass he had ordered. “Exquisite flavor, Mr. Bane, you should give it a try.”

“Ya, well…I’m more the whiskey type of man. Now…Mr…”

Feb-24-2009 15:49

“Then the deal changes. I want both me and Mona out in the clear. I’ll get you the pictures.”

“No deal. Without the books it won’t work, as they know already about everything. I’LL tell YOU what we do!” Bane noticed he was grinning. “You bring the pictures AND the books, you add Mona and we give you the little child.”

“You mean…”

“Yes! We have her. Some goon had spotted Mona earlier today. He followed her up to Maria’s and then lost her. We grabbed the little girl just to ensure of your cooperation. Now take your hands off me and be gone!”

With his heart hardened up about losing Rose once again, Bane rushed out of the restroom, leaving the chief to straighten his wet pants. He quickly got out of the local aiming towards Maria’s place.

Feb-24-2009 16:13

…

Just coming out of the restaurant Bane almost had bumped into Whispers. “You’re LATE!” he said. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I’m sorry, Joey, but I had to take care of the truck.”

“Ok…what did you do with it exactly?”

“Well…I left all the pigs at Louie’s. He makes the finest steaks there, you know? He made me a good price for them. The truck itself…I took it at the docks. I have a couple of friends there who’ll paint it and change its license. We’ll sell it afterwards, don’t worry.”

“And? Aren’t you forgetting something, Whispers?”

He thought for a bit. “Oh, yeah. Louie invited us for dinner.”

“The BODY, Whispers! Barresi! What did you do with his corpse?”

“Oh yeah, right; I completely forgot about that. I left it at Louie’s. You see…he’s got this big oven down the basement where he cremates bones and…other stuff. Don’t worry, he’s already smoke by now.”

“Damn, you’re really resourceful, Whispers. Nice. I think though I’ll pass that lunch invitation. Now, you got a pair of wheels?”

“Yeah, just down in front of the station. Moses told me you might be up here, so I just took a walk.”

“Ok, let’s be on our way. They’ve got Rose again. Let’s go check on Maria.”

…

Half an hour later they’ve managed to reach Maria’s apartment. It was already midnight. She was a bit shook up, but otherwise ok. Bane took a seat on the couch, pondering upon his next move. “I definitely have to track down Mona and J.C. But…that’ll have to wait until the morning. I’m totally beat.”

They’ve decided to spend the night at Maria’s.

Feb-25-2009 10:58

The November night air was chilled to the bone, especially if one was lurking in the shadow waiting for things to happen. JC looked at his watch again. ‘Any minute now’, he thought. He stared into the backdoor of the bank, with Djordji standing right beside him. JC was glad that it’s the quiet gypsy who’s accompanying him at the moment, and not clockwork Ronnie. The young driver was now waiting in his car, amongst many that were parked along the street, hiding out of sight and most importantly out of JC’s ear shot. If Ronnie was to stand here in the shadows, he would be asking impatient questions which would cause JC to stab him in the mouth. That, would not be a pretty sight.

JC tapped his fingers on his thigh. ‘What if I’ve already missed her?’ He thought nervously. Earlier on as their car drove by the quiet bank, JC counted four men standing on separated street corners. They had ‘cops’ written all over their faces although they weren’t wearing blue. Ronnie drove on without stopping, as JC had instructed. JC took a detour and avoided the cops. Had he missed Anastasia because of the time taken? Or had she already been caught?

Just as JC’s imagination began to run wild, the backdoor popped open quietly. JC exhaled. He didn’t even realize he was holding his breath.

Feb-25-2009 10:58

The two men scurried into the building and Anastasia bolted the door behind her. “Sorry, electric box higher than I thinked. Hard to cut wires above my head. Had to find something to stand on.’ The little Thai girl whispered apologetically.

“Did you have trouble seeing? You didn’t wave the flashlight around, I hope?” JC asked nervously. He had instructed everyone to avoid using the flashlight as much as possible. One can never tell who was looking in from the outside noticing the odd flashes.

“No. I trained in circus. Walking backstage all the time! Very dark. Good night eye.” Anastasia pointed to her large slanted eyes and smiled. As per their plan, the Thai girl stayed hidden by the backdoor while the two men headed for the vault. Along the way, they treaded carefully, avoiding the floods from the street lamps outside.

JC loved modern day technology. People believed in the false security of each new invention created. Take this new alarm system the bank had installed for instance. They no longer put watchmen at night to save a few greens, letting a bell do the watching for them. Funny. All JC needed to do was to train the intelligent little contortionist on how to cut a few wires, how tragic.

As the two men walked down the steps to the vault, JC reminded Djordji, “Down thirteen steps, turn left, then walk nine steps forward. When I am far inside enough, I will turn on the flash light.” They proceeded with the utmost concentration.

Feb-25-2009 10:59

When JC deemed that they were far down enough so light cannot be spilled onto the ground level, JC clicked his flashlight open. There, behind the iron bars of the vault, sat the guard whom JC had seen too many times during the day. The sleepy guard suddenly woke from his nap and began to grapple with his whistle. Without wasting a single second, JC grabbed his blade and threw it at the guard. The blade pierced his throat and the guard fell down with a deep thud.

“Damn!” JC said, a little too loud to his liking. Did Ruby feed him false information, or had the municipality suddenly stepped up their security? “We don’t have time. Let’s open this baby!” JC turned to Djordji. The gypsy nodded and took out his tools.

Fifteen minutes later, all doors and locks were tackled. JC was face to face with the contents in the infamous safety deposit box. He couldn’t help but smiled. There were three distinctive items: gold, accounting books, and a stack of photographs. Heavy yummy gold coins, many of them. Excellent, JC could pay his people and disband the group as soon as he was safe. The quicker everyone disappear, the better off he was. JC figured after paying off everyone, what he had left could pay for 2/3 of the operation cost.

In the dim light of the hand torch, JC examined the photos. He stifled a laugh. Djordji looked at him with curious eyes. ‘So, this was what the big commotion was all about.’ JC thought to himself. ‘Barresi, you’re a dead man. I knew exactly who I shall sell this to.’

Feb-25-2009 12:04

***A few hours later***

JC creep into Joey's flat. Not a single soul in sight. JC wonder where Joey could be.

JC helped himself to some celebration whiskey, and opened the secret safe that Joey thought was well hidden from everyone. He wondered if his old partner realized he was losing a few greens from time to time back when they were working together.

JC put into the safe the package he had prepared earlier on, and placed the note on top of it:

Dear Old Partner,
I'm gone. You will not see me for a long time, as least that's what I’m hoping for, if everything works out. Barresi set his dogs on me and I didn't like it. What I did was a revenge on them; I meant Mona no harm. There should be enough substance in the package to get you both out of hot water. I wanted no trouble, but the content of the safety box was nothing but that. I took what I needed and is leaving most of it to you, old friend. Take it as a parting gift, or curse.
~J.C.

JC locked the safe, put everything back in place and laid a Macallan single malt scotch on the table, pointing in the direction of Joey’s safe. He left from the fire escape as usual.

Daybreak hadn’t yet arrived but workers were already stacking the morning’s newspaper together. JC bought a copy of the New York Times, with the freshly inserted “Extra!” in it �" the fruit of his labour. The headline read: POLICE CHIEF IN BORDELLO. The photo showed the top half of a naked chief (the press had to cut out the good parts) with an extremely sexy women in his bosom. JC made sure Mona’s face was not recognizable before he sold the pictures to the press.

The morning rush was starting. The street began to fill with people. JC was still very much surprised at how much he had negotiated from those few photos, as he disappeared into the crowd.

Feb-26-2009 02:05

“Wake up, Bane! We got company!” Whispers was shaking Joey hard.

“What…? Who…? What’s happening?” He was still half asleep, trying to focus. He sat up.

“Three apes in dark suits coming up. We need to go!”

Bane looked around. Everything was fuzzy. He shook his head in an attempt of clearing his mind. Suddenly everything came back to him. “Maria?”

“She must’ve left already to work. She ain’t here…MOVE!”

The door burst open at that point making a vivid cracking noise. Two men were standing in its frame, one holding in his hand a baseball bat as the other was reaching his chest pocket. They stepped inside and the one with the bat attempted to hit Whispers. No luck! With a quick move Whispers put both his hands around his throat and practically barged his head into his face. The man went down dropping the bat, shaking his hands in a futile attempt to grab on something. Whispers then pointed his eyes onto the second attacker. He strongly grabbed him by the collar and then delivered a knee blow right between the man’s legs. This strike made the goon crouch in pain. Whispers then saw the third man coming up the stairs. He grabbed the rail for balance and then smote a powerful kick with his leg right into the goon’s chest. He watched him rolling back down on the steps and then remaining still upon finally reaching the lower level floor. He then looked down through the space in the middle of the stairs. “Two more are coming up, Bane! What do you wanna do?”

Bane reached the door step trying to come out. He stopped with a shot moan of pain as the first goon attached himself right onto his wounded leg. Bane turned to him, picked up the bat and stroke him right into the face with a powerful swing. Blood splattered everything around as the man finally dropped unconscious.

“Quit playing, Bane! What do we do? There may be more of them downstairs.”

“The fire exit! Come!”

Feb-26-2009 02:06

…

Upon exiting through the window and reaching the back alley’s pavement, it was just a matter of minutes until they managed to lose their tracks. On his way Joey noticed a morning paper that someone had dropped, with a big title screaming out about the sins of the chief of police. “Damn, Whispers…” he said. “This ain’t good. Ain’t good at all! Let’s go! Next stop is my apartment.”

Feb-27-2009 17:07

In about half hour they’ve managed to reach the back alley to Joey’s apartment. “Hold it right here, Whispers!” said Bane dragging him back by his arm. “Look there!” A goon was guarding the back stairway, standing right in the middle of the alley and looking around suspicious. “I guess they got here too” Bane continued. “We still need to reach the apartment though. I have to pick up a few things and some cash.” He thought for a bit and went on. “Now here’s what we do: I step into the alley, let him see me and then I step out. You grab him as he reaches the corner and…do what you usually do.”

And so it went down. The man started running like crazy upon noticing Bane. Whispers just had to wait until he reached his position. He grabbed the goon strong by the back of his collar and practically slammed him into the wall. He then slammed him once more with his head on the edge of a nearby trash container. The man just fell down after that like a rag.

“Now what do we do with this guy?” Whispers asked, looking with a sadistically satisfied face at his ‘work’. “We can’t just leave him here. Someone might see him.”

“Just throw him in there” pointed Bane to the trash can.

Feb-27-2009 17:08

…

Upon reaching the apartment’s window it seemed there was nothing inside. The door was though just slightly cracked. “I guess they’re expecting us in the front. Ok…let’s go in. It’s good I didn’t have time for fixing this window…”

Upon stepping inside Bane noticed a bottle of whiskey placed in a quite strange position. “That’s strange…” he mumbled. “I don’t recollect leaving that there.” He picked it up slowly noticing it was pointed straight towards his safe. “Macallan…single malt… J.C.’s favorite brand…NO, it can’t be!” He then rushed to the safe as Whispers was checking the hallway. Bane was relieved when he found that all his cash was still there. He also found a letter and…a couple of notebooks dressed in black leather covers. Upon reading the letter he smiled. “J.C….you old fox. I guess I should thank you for this…although I may never get to actually do it.” He then turned towards Whispers. “Change of plans, mate. We’ll negotiate with the mob. We have what they want.”

“Well…I don’t know…” Whispers answered. “That’s kinda dangerous, Bane.”

“Agreed, only…I don’t think that otherwise we have much of a choice. We have an advantage though, big guy: we have what they want. We just need find some neutral ground for this.”

“Let’s go to Big Benny then” Whispers said.

They went back down on the fire escape and headed for Big Benny’s club.