they’d been allowed to surrender. They’d come to M City on life sentences for big bitch convictions.
There was no denying the beauty of Herman Lamm’s system. All it required was a smooth and well-disciplined team, and we knew that team was us. I think it’s safe to say it’ll be a good long while before anybody robs banks as… artfully, that’s the word for it…as artfully as we did.
I hadn’t heard a word from Mary, not that I’d expected to, since she’d told me she’d gotten married, but I never did stop thinking about her. She stayed in touch with Earl, however, and he kept me informed of how things were going for her. Almost from the start they hadn’t gone well in her marriage. It turned out that her husband, the Kinder guy, was a small-time stickup man. Yep, the son of the police sergeant. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but every now and then an apple will take a big bounce when it hits the ground and some will roll a long way down the hill. Earl said Mary hadn’t been specific, but reading between the lines he got the impression Kinder was a boozer and sometimes smacked her around. What I wouldn’t give for five minutes with that guy, Earl said. I didn’t say anything, but my gut was tight as a fist.
They hadn’t been married very long before Kinder took a fall for armed robbery and was sent to M City. Earl found out from Mary and his first impulse had been not to tell me until after he’d had first crack at the guy. But he’d been suffering for weeks from some kind of respiratory infection, coughing almost constantly, and he wasn’t sure he was in shape to give Kinder what he deserved. So he came to me and told me the news. Imagine my glee.
Red and Russell went with me to Kinder’s cell house one evening before lockdown. I wanted them along to keep away witnesses, but when the other cons on the row saw the three of us coming they all ducked into their cages and stayed there. Red positioned himself on one side of Kinder’s cell and Russell on the other, and I went in.
Kinder was on his bunk but jumped up when he saw me. His cellmate wasn’t there—maybe he’d seen us coming, maybe he was just lucky.
Who the hell are you, Kinder said, giving me a hard-guy look he’d probably picked up from the movies.
He was shorter than me but thicker and heavier. To tell the truth I wouldn’t have taken it any easier on him if he’d been a midget.
Got a message for you, I said. From Mary.
His expression got curious. My wife? What’s she want?
I gave him the first one in the solar plexus so he couldn’t yell out, then held him against the wall with one hand and punched him with the other for a while before I let him fall. I kicked him in the face until his nose was a bloody ruin and some of his teeth were on the floor and his lower jaw was turned at an angle you wouldn’t believe. I stomped on his hands until they were bloated and purple and some of the fingers pointed in different directions. See how many women he could beat up with those.
He was curled up on his side and moaning low, his breath gargly, when I bent close to his ear and said Don’t call her your wife again, you yellow son of a bitch. And don’t even dream about fingering me. You do, you’re dead.
As Red and Russ and I walked back down the row, not a con was out on the tier and nobody said a word to us as we passed the cells.
Not long after that I got a letter from Mary saying Earl had told her what I’d done, although he’d been skimpy on details. She thanked me for taking up for her. She called herself the biggest dope in the world for marrying Kinder. She’d known he wasn’t very smart but she’d had no idea he was so stupid or such a bully. Talk about stupid, she said, look how stupid she’d been to think it was so god-awful important to wait till she was married rather than indulge herself with me—that was how she put it—while she’d had the chance. I rue my mistakes, she wrote.
There was no denying the beauty of Herman Lamm’s system. All it required was a smooth and well-disciplined team, and we knew that team was us. I think it’s safe to say it’ll be a good long while before anybody robs banks as… artfully, that’s the word for it…as artfully as we did.
I hadn’t heard a word from Mary, not that I’d expected to, since she’d told me she’d gotten married, but I never did stop thinking about her. She stayed in touch with Earl, however, and he kept me informed of how things were going for her. Almost from the start they hadn’t gone well in her marriage. It turned out that her husband, the Kinder guy, was a small-time stickup man. Yep, the son of the police sergeant. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but every now and then an apple will take a big bounce when it hits the ground and some will roll a long way down the hill. Earl said Mary hadn’t been specific, but reading between the lines he got the impression Kinder was a boozer and sometimes smacked her around. What I wouldn’t give for five minutes with that guy, Earl said. I didn’t say anything, but my gut was tight as a fist.
They hadn’t been married very long before Kinder took a fall for armed robbery and was sent to M City. Earl found out from Mary and his first impulse had been not to tell me until after he’d had first crack at the guy. But he’d been suffering for weeks from some kind of respiratory infection, coughing almost constantly, and he wasn’t sure he was in shape to give Kinder what he deserved. So he came to me and told me the news. Imagine my glee.
Red and Russell went with me to Kinder’s cell house one evening before lockdown. I wanted them along to keep away witnesses, but when the other cons on the row saw the three of us coming they all ducked into their cages and stayed there. Red positioned himself on one side of Kinder’s cell and Russell on the other, and I went in.
Kinder was on his bunk but jumped up when he saw me. His cellmate wasn’t there—maybe he’d seen us coming, maybe he was just lucky.
Who the hell are you, Kinder said, giving me a hard-guy look he’d probably picked up from the movies.
He was shorter than me but thicker and heavier. To tell the truth I wouldn’t have taken it any easier on him if he’d been a midget.
Got a message for you, I said. From Mary.
His expression got curious. My wife? What’s she want?
I gave him the first one in the solar plexus so he couldn’t yell out, then held him against the wall with one hand and punched him with the other for a while before I let him fall. I kicked him in the face until his nose was a bloody ruin and some of his teeth were on the floor and his lower jaw was turned at an angle you wouldn’t believe. I stomped on his hands until they were bloated and purple and some of the fingers pointed in different directions. See how many women he could beat up with those.
He was curled up on his side and moaning low, his breath gargly, when I bent close to his ear and said Don’t call her your wife again, you yellow son of a bitch. And don’t even dream about fingering me. You do, you’re dead.
As Red and Russ and I walked back down the row, not a con was out on the tier and nobody said a word to us as we passed the cells.
Not long after that I got a letter from Mary saying Earl had told her what I’d done, although he’d been skimpy on details. She thanked me for taking up for her. She called herself the biggest dope in the world for marrying Kinder. She’d known he wasn’t very smart but she’d had no idea he was so stupid or such a bully. Talk about stupid, she said, look how stupid she’d been to think it was so god-awful important to wait till she was married rather than indulge herself with me—that was how she put it—while she’d had the chance. I rue my mistakes, she wrote.
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