Bust Read Online Free PDF Page B

might have lost his legs, but this asswipe had lost his balls.
    Bobby slurped his coffee, said, “Remember the Bowery jobs?”
    Victor smiling, suddenly looking young again, going back in time, said, “Those were real beauts, huh?”
    “You plan a job, just the way you want it all to work out, and then boom — it goes that way, without one fucking hitch.”
    “Except when that little Chink pulled the alarm and started shooting at us.”
    “That wasn’t a hitch. You gotta expect shit to happen when you’re stealing jewelry. I’m talking about everything else. Getting to the car, getting on the bridge, getting to Brooklyn, switching cars in Brooklyn, getting to Queens, switching cars in Queens, and then boom — we’re on the Island, counting the fuckin’ take. Like clockwork. We did it, what, three times? All that fucking gold. Man, that was it.”
    He felt a rush, just seeing it replay in his head. It was like he was there again — ten years younger, looking sharp and in shape. When he saw himself standing in the jewelry store, holding his Uzi, and then running out to the street, he could feel his legs, like in those dreams when it all seemed so real, then he’d wake up and still be a fucking cripple.
    “I should never’a gone out on my own,” Victor said.
    “That’s exactly what I was talking about,” Bobby said,“you can’t second-guess your life. So you fucked up, you took a fall, you’re still what, fifty, fifty-five?”
    “Forty-four,” Victor said.
    Thinking, Jeez, the fucking sad sack looks sixty , Bobby said, “See? Forty-four is like what twenty-four used to be. With vitamins, all the new shit with doctors, everybody’s gonna be living to a hundred soon.”
    Victor, looking at his watch, said, “Fuck, I gotta get back to work. So what brings you around here anyway? You just wanted to shoot the shit or what?”
    “No, it’s a little more important than that.” Bobby leaned forward, making sure the young guy reading the Daily News at the next table wasn’t listening. “I got a job to discuss.”
    “A job we did?”
    “No, a job we’re gonna do.”
    Victor stared at Bobby for a few seconds, like he was trying not to laugh, then said, “Come on you’re joking, right?”
    “Does this face look like it’s joking?
    “What’s this, April fools? Come on, Bobby, give me a fuckin’ break, all right?”
    “I’m serious, man. I came to you first because I know you’re good and I know I can trust you. But if you don’t want to hear me out I’ll go talk to somebody else.”
    Bobby wanted to reach across the table and slap him, get him focused.
    “All right, so tell me,” Victor said, trying not to crack up. “What’s this job ?”
    “I wanna knock over a liquor store,” Bobby said.
    Now Victor couldn’t hold back. He started laughing, but it quickly turned into a cigarette smoker’s hack. Finally, he recovered enough to say, “A liquor store? Jesus, you’re too much, Bobby.”
    Bobby still wasn’t laughing, or even smiling.
    “Come on, Bobby,” Victor said in that scratchy voice. “A liquor store?”
    “What’s wrong with that?” Bobby said. “That time we were shooting pool downtown what, seven, eight years ago, you said you wanted to work together again someday, right? Well, this is fuckin’ someday.”
    Victor was staring at Bobby like he felt sorry for him. Bobby had seen this look a lot from strangers on the street, usually old ladies. One time an old lady asked Bobby if she could help him carry his bags home from the supermarket. Bobby wanted to fuckin’ belt her.
    “You can’t walk,” Victor said. “You know that, right?”
    The waitress came over with Bobby’s cherry cheesecake. Bobby took four full bites of cake then said, “So? Are you with me or not?”
    “Come on, man,” Victor said. “Weren’t you just listening to me?”
    “You know,” Bobby said, chewing, “the old days you would’ve jumped if I told you I had a job to pull.”
    “The