“You don’t got to shoot anybody,” Bill said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. It’s just for show.”
“I might shoot somebody, it’s worth the money,” Chaplin said.
“It’s a firecracker stand,” Bill said. “I figure they take in several thousand a day. I’m sayin’ we split it three ways.”
“How many guys run the stand?” Fat Boy asked.
“One most of the time. Sometimes two. We hit it at closing time, take the money and run. Piece of cake. We’ll need to heist a car to do the job, ditch it somewhere, have our own waitin’. We wear masks. We don’t say much. We wave a pistol around. We get the money and we’re gone.”
“Them firecracker stands,” Fat Boy said, “they’re out of the city, easy targets.”
“It’d be a whole lot easier than a convenience store,” Chaplin said.
“That’s right,” Bill said. “This one is across from my house. Easy pickin’s.”
Two
And so it came to pass that on the Fourth of July, minutes before ten o’clock at night, which was when the stand closed, Fat Boy at the wheel of a stolen white Chevy, Bill to his right, and Chaplin in the back seat, arrived at the firecracker stand.
Fat Boy stayed in the car. Bill and Chaplin got out and went over to the stand wearing Lone Ranger style masks. A fat woman in a muumuu big enough to make a bedspread for most of Bangladesh to lie down on and wrestle a little bit, was buying some Roman candles, some punks, and some matches.
“I just love these here Roman candles,” she said. “You get out where it’s real dark and set ’em off, they’re just as pretty as stars.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the stand worker. The stand worker was a skinny fellow with an Adam’s apple that moved a lot and made him look like a snake trying to swallow a live gopher. When he spoke to the fat lady he seemed about as sincere as a hooker swearing she’d never let anyone come in her mouth before.