The Get Over
Authors: Walter Dean Myers
Check out an excerpt from
Monster
Check out an excerpt from
Darius & Twig
So it's me, Bobo, Slice, and Little Willie sitting on the stoop talking. Mostly it's Bobo, Slice, and Little Willie doing the talking and me just listening. The talk was stupid, about what girls they would mess with and what they would make them do if the girls were stupid enough to fall in love with them.
“If a girl falls in love with you, it means she's weak,” Bobo, who was the oldest guy on the stoop, said. “If she's strong, she ain't going to fall in love with nobody unless they rich. That's why all those girls chasing football players and rap stars. You got the paper, you got the girl.”
“If I make it big-time, I'm just going to buy what I need straight out,” Little Willie said. “Some girl run up on me talking about some love and I'm going to slap her upside her head, slap on her ass, and then pull out my checkbook and tell her exactly what I want and what I'm willing to pay for it.”
“Love doesn't sound that bad to me,” I said.
“That's 'cause you're a punk to begin with,” Bobo said. “Ain't that right, Slice?”
“Yeah.”
“Steve Harmon, well-known punk with a camera, believes in love.” Bobo was on a roll. “What a girl need you for except a damned payday?”
“Especially Steve,” Little Willie said. “Look at the way your ears stick out, man. You get caught in a strong wind and she ain't going to see you no more.”
“And what you doing outside your house, anyway?” Bobo asked. “You got diaper rash or something, and you out here trying to cool it off?”
“Steve needs to sell that fancy camera he got and invest the money in strawberry blunts.” Little Willie turned his hat to the side of his head. “That way he could be a banker. Did you know those guys down on Wall Street sniff their money when they take a break? You pile a bunch of money up like they got, and you can actually get high on it!”
“You can't get high sniffing no money,” Bobo said.
“That 'cause you've never had enough money to make a difference,” Little Willie shot back. “You trying to rub two quarters together and get some altitude. You got to have millions and billions the way those suckers downtown got. They don't sell no Viagra down there, either. Now tell me what
that's
about!”
“Yo, man, check out who's coming down the street,” Slice said. “Arnold and JT.”
“Arnold just came off a six-month bid for aggravated assault,” Bobo said. “He was going to be his own lawyer. The woman assistant D.A. had him so confused, he was speaking in tongues and saying Hail Marys. My boy Owen was on trial with him, and he said the jury was cracking on him.”
“Hey, what's going on?” Arnold is six three, almost six four, and lean.
“What you doing running the streets?” Bobo said. “I heard you had a steady three, and a cot over at Rikers.”
“That's yesterday's news and last week's blues,” Arnold said. “I'm back on the street, back on my feet, steady sliding and riding hard!”
“Go on with your bad self!” Bobo said. I saw him nudging Slice. “What you got going on, player?”
“Me and my boy here peeped a bank delivery yesterday,” Arnold said. “It was definitely wrong. They got to be new on the gig. It's a stone get over and we're thinking of making a play, but we got to get some backup.”
“What you mean?” Slice asked.
“Can I run with it?” Arnold asked, looking at all the dudes on the stoop.
“Go on, man.”
“Who's youngblood?”
“Steve's okay,” Bobo said. “What you got?”
I felt my balls tighten up a little. Was he actually going to run his get over to me?
“Okay, it goes like this,” Arnold said. “I see this armored truck pull up to the bank on 145th Street to pick up some cash. The first guy hops out the cab and pulls his piece. Then he looks around like he's mean mugging the fucking world and spreads his legs. He thinks he's got everything under control.”
“Go on,” Slice said.
“Then the second guy gets out, but he don't have his piece out.” JT was talking now. He was short, square, brown skinned, and ugly. “The first guy is still holding his piece as the second guy goes into the bank. Two minutes later he comes out with a pouch and some boxes, which I got to think is coins.”
“Yeah, yeah.” This from Slice.
“But then me and JT are across the street, eating some pizzaâand you know that little cage they got inside the truck?”
“Yeah.” Slice.
“The first dude reaches in and pulls that mother open,” Arnold said. “He don't
unlock
the mother. He
pulls
the mother open.”
“So what does that mean?” Bobo asked.
“It means the lazy assholes don't lock up between pickups,” Arnold said. “When I saw this, right away I checked the time.”
“There's a clock right there in the window of the pizza place,” JT said.
“I see it's three o'clock, and I figure the dudes are running late so they're getting careless,” Arnold said.
“So what you going to do?” Slice asked.
“Me and JT figure we hit the truck,” Arnold said. “No big deal.
Bam! Bam!
We get the drop on the dude with the gun while the other dude is in the bank. We open the cage and snatch the pouches, and we get down the street into a car we got stashed with the motor running.”
I see the scene in my head. The camera PANS down a busy Harlem street. It goes past the armored car, then stops and pulls back. On the right side of the screen we see people in front of a pizza shop.
CLOSE-UP: A profile of Arnold. His eyes are narrowed as he walks along the sidewalk. We see ARNOLD as he speaks to the GUARD, who waves one finger to let him know that he doesn't want to talk.
Then: We see JT open the gate. The GUARD turns, but he is face-to-face with ARNOLD's gun. Stunned, he puts down his weapon.
“Then we drive ten blocks to where we got
another
car stashed.”
“And all the while we driving the ten blocks, we're changing the jackets we had on when we made the grab,” Arnold said.
“So you need drivers?” Bobo said.
“No, man.” Arnold hunched his shoulders twice. “We got two girls who can motor their asses off. What we need is a way to turn the paper right away. We can run with the paper for a minute, but then we got to get rid of it in a hurry. We want to find somebody to take the paper right away and turn it into something useful, like some coke.
“Anybody be looking for us, they'll be looking for some guys with a bunch of hundred-dollar bills, but we'll be clean! We'll put the coke out on the street, and it's just like another shipment came in from Mexico or somewhere. Right now we need a hookup.”
“When you want to run with this thing?” Bobo asked.
“Soon as we get the hookup,” JT said.
“I can hook you up,” Slice said. “I know some Latino brothers who can deliver 24-7 if you got the cash. All it takes is a phone call.”
Arnold and JT got all excited about that and said they would contact the girl drivers right away to get ready. Then they split, headed up the hill toward Douglass Boulevard.
“Them fools ain't going to get no money,” Slice said. “They don't have enough brains between them to change their minds.”
“Yeah, but they thinking they got a get over,” Bobo said. “We can use that to get something. My brother got a sentence hearing coming up. If they score, we drop a dime in return for some slack.”
“If they do cop, we can make some money when they try to get the dope,” Slice said. “We get our hands on the money, we got to cop some of it.”
“Or all of it,” Bobo said.
“If they get a big enough taste, we can just cop the whole thing, run over to Newark for a while, and snitch from there,” Little Willie said. “Let them fools go down and look for the money from behind bars.”
“So what we going to do now?” Slice asked.
“Let the fools play it out and wait until they bring us the paper,” Little Willie said. “Then we got to be ready!”
My heart was beating a mile a minute. I thought somebody sitting on the stoop would have heard it. It was like the music was rising and my heartbeat was setting the rhythm. Cool.
The music rises as we switch to a LONG SHOT. The sound of a heartbeat raises the tension. We see LITTLE WILLIE, BOBO, and SLICE get up from the stoop and walk casually down the street. Then we see STEVE HARMON stretch out his legs and try to look as if he is not scared out of his mind. CLOSE-UP of HARMON. His eyes are wide as he knows he has just heard a major crime being planned.
CUT TO: STEVE HARMON at home. He is sitting at the dinner table. At the far end of the table, his FATHER is looking at the newspaper and shaking his head.
FATHER
Another basketball player caught with a gun! At the airport, too. What's wrong with these fools? They got all the options in the world and absolutely no common sense.
CUT TO: A montage of scenes as STEVE HARMON reviews his options.
There is the scene in which ARNOLD and JT approach the armored car. They pull open the gate and a SWAT TEAM comes out and captures them.
Or SCENE 2:
ARNOLD and JT are giving the money to BOBO, who looks around to see if anybody is watching. Then he winks at ARNOLD and hustles down the street.
We see BOBO stopping to make a phone call to the POLICE.
CUT TO: A BASKETBALL PLAYER reaching for his bag at the airport. He is startled as the SECURITY GUARD grabs him.
CUT TO: ARNOLD and JT in Burger King. They are on line when suddenly there are plainclothes cops everywhere. We see ARNOLD and JT with surprised looks on their faces.
CUT TO: A CLERK.
CLERK
If you wanted your burgers to go, you should have said something!
CUT TO: CLOSE-UPs of ARNOLD and JT. They are confused, wondering about their options.
But now I had options, too. Little Willie and Bobo were thinking about double-crossing Arnold and JT. The only thing they were worried about was how they were going to do it.
It didn't bother me that Arnold and JT were going to get in trouble. Well, it did bother me some, but I didn't know what I should do about it. I could call the police and tell them that there was going to be a holdup. But suppose they were just shooting off their mouths and didn't really plan to do anything? Guys did that all the time.
And if I did call the police, would I have to give my name? Would they ask me who else had heard the plan? Then what would I say?
If I didn't call the police and the robbery went off, then it didn't matter what happened to Arnold and JT, because they had already committed a crime. And if Bobo and Slice and Little Willie ripped them off, it would be what they deserved. Of course, if Arnold and JT did have guns, things could get hairy in a heartbeat.
FADE-IN: WILLIE, BOBO, and SLICE are sitting on my stoop.
WILLIE (with alarm in his voice)
Uh-oh!
Here comes trouble!
Camera PANS LEFT and we see ARNOLD and JT with machine guns running parallel to the building. They stop and begin firing as kids and older people scramble for cover.
I remembered an ad that said you could report crimes without giving your name. But suppose the police traced the call? I told myself not to think about it. There wasn't anything I could do, really, because I didn't know what was going to happen. I couldn't call the police and say that a crime
might
happen. But I knew the police would want to know who was going to commit the crime. If the police picked up Arnold and JT and questioned them, they would know someone from the stoop had turned them in.