The Life of Lol (9 page)

“Where’s your cigarettes, baby?” she asked, loading up an auto dialer program.

“On the side”, he said pointing, still engrossed in his game, “it’s all take take take with you isn’t it huh?”

“Aw”, she replied, lighting a cigarette, ”you know you love me”

“Yeah”, said Baggie, “He must do.  Be cheaper him having a rubber doll huh?”

“I know”, Allen replied, “least then I’d be able to fill it’s ass.  This bitch only lets cops pack her ass”.

Lol shuddered at the thought.  He’d tried that with her only once.  Like taking a dump backwards.  Never again, she thought.

The phone rung inside the headset, and a guy answered,

“Hi there”, said Lol, all traces of her southern twang gone, “I’m calling from Microsoft customer services.  It’s about your PC.”

“What about my PC”, the man replied, “it’s fine.  I just bought stuff from you guys last week.”

“I know sir”, she lied, “I have that information in front of me at the moment, and the details of the transaction.  However there seems to be a problem with the card number you supplied.

“You’re joking”, he answered, “the card is fine, there’s money there and everything!”

“Its most likely a problem at our end”, she continued, “sadly your computer is not protected until I get this all ironed out.  I can sort it with you now, get everything back up and running for you if you’d like?”

“Sure”, he said, “I need this virus checker working.  I thought I was ok.”

“It’ll be fine sir”, she cooed, “It’ll just take a moment.   I just need to re-enter your card details and confirm the transaction.  For your trouble, I’ll add an extra three months to you for free.

“Oh wow”, he said, that’s very generous.  Thank you so much.  It’s rare to see such good customer service nowadays.”

She wrote down the credit card number, pin code and all his details on a piece of paper before they thanked each other and she rung another.  She screwed up the paper and tossed it to Allen.  When he was finished with his game, Allen would clone the card and fleece the guy.  Not for vast amounts, only dumb shmucks did that.  Just tiny amounts.  Ten dollars here, eight dollars there.  Didn’t sound a lot, but Lol could clear about twenty cards a day on the phone.  They had more than enough money rolling in.

Chapter 12.  Allen Rigby.

That was a name I hadn’t heard of in years.  He’d done a runner a week or two before I got arrested by the cops for running all sorts of scams.  The guys who he stole the Lincoln off were after him, and I think he got scared.  Anyway, here he was, seven years into my sentence and he was coming to see me.  My first visitor in the whole time I’d been locked up.  The visiting room was separated by a sheet of bulletproof glass down the room, so that the visitors had no direct contact with us.  The room was further separated into a series of booths, with a chair each side and a handset so we could speak to the visitor.  When we were all seated in our booths, they let the visitors in.  I was curious to see Allen. Though it had been years since I’d seen him, I wondered what he was up to these days.  At first I didn’t recognise him, the intervening years had treated him terribly.  He was bald now, and not so far as I could see, by choice.  His once gleaming row of pearly white teeth were missing and broken.  His skin had gone kind of a yellow colour and sunk in round the eye sockets and jowels.  He’d aged horribly, and he looked me up and down, with my pale blonde hair cut nicely across my shoulders, neatly manicured nails and clean fresh appearance and |I saw jealousy in his eyes.

He picked up the handset,

“hey babe”, he said weakly.

“Quick calling me babe you shmuck”, I retorted sharply, “You’ve got some cheek.  First you leave me to the heat, then when I’m sent to fucking jail, you don’t even have the courtesy to come visit!  What the actual fuck?”

“Babe”, he replied, “just chill, ok?  And it was you left me with the heat, remember.  That car belonged to Tony Maranzano.  He was pretty pissed.  I said you were real sorry, and that after all you were in jail and doing time anyway, so he let you off.  I took a beating for you, babe.”

I was silent.  The years had changed me.  What the fuck had I ever seen in this loser.  I realised that he must want something.  It wasn’t likely that he wanted to reconcile with me.  I know I was up for a parole hearing soon, but I wasn’t likely to get released.  Not yet, not with a twelve year sentence. 

“You look good, sweetheart, real good” he cooed.

“What d’ya want”, I said curtly,

“I don’t want nothing babe”, he replied, casting his head to the floor, “Did ya know baggie got killed?”

“No”, I replied acidly, “I’ve kind a been out of the loop, ya know?”

“Yeah well he did”, Allen said sadly, missing the sarcasm in her voice entirely, “Cops shot him in a carjacking last year.  Poor prick was just helping out.  Nothing to do with him.  His mom’s all cut up cos Baggie was paying off the loan on her house.  Now she’s homeless.”

“She wants to get in here”, I remarked, “bed, board, three square meals a day.  I swear I’m getting fat.”

He missed her sarcasm again,

“You look great to me babe,” he cooed, then took a deep breath.  Here it comes, I thought.

“Thing is” he wheedled, “I kind of feel responsible ya know.  Baggie and I were bros.  He and I had been scoping out the neighborhood for a mark.”

“I guess then you are responsible”, I said curtly.  He blanched at my coldness.

“Yeah well”, he blustered, thing is, I was wondering….”

“Hmmm?” I prompted.

“I’m kinda short”, he said looking at the floor again, “I need a loan and was wondering if I could hit you up for a few bucks.”

“Allen”, I replied slowly, “listen to me carefully, honey”

“yeah babe, he replied?

“Look around you.  I’m in fucking jail.  I can’t exactly walk down the bank and draw you out a couple of hundred.  They kinda lock the door, ya know?”

“I know babe, I know, it’s just that…baggies mom and all, she needs to pay off her loan and…”

“Allen”, I said again, “I don’t give a living rats fuck about Baggies mom.  She’ll have to go back to turning tricks like she did when she weighed less than two hundred pounds.  Her fanny’s so well used she could probably rent it out as living accommodation to a family of polish immigrants and make money that way.  Either way, I don’t know what actual fucking planet you’re on where you think I have access to some vast fortune I can just hand you over the desk?”

“I know you have money, babe”, replied Allen shrewdly, “squirreled away.  You told me one night when you were wasted, about this fucking chest buried somewhere.”

“Allen”, I said, “I don’t know how to say this any simpler to make your tiny pea brain understand.  I’ve been in jail eight years.  I have no fucking money, apart from four dollars to buy tampons and toothpaste with”

Of course I was lying.  I had thousands, buried under that old shed in the forgotten corner of the old bus depot.  But this soft shmuck wasn’t having it.  Even if the story about Baggie’s mom were true, which I doubted, he still wasn’t getting it.  He’d probably blow through it in a  few weeks for drugs.  Fuck him.

“Babe please”, he said, “I know you’re pissed, and I’m sorry.  Don’t be such a hard ass and lend me some money.  I’ll only take what I need, I swear.  You might be out soon, and you and me can pick up where we left off, huh?”

“Allen”, I said staring at him with my cold green eyes, “I would rather be fucked up the ass by every gorilla in the fucking zoo than have your two inch dick touch me again.  I know I’m in jail, but if you call me babe again, when I get out I’ll come after you, cut your dick off and make you fucking eat it.  And no, you’re not getting any of my money.  Because I don’t have any.”

Of course the guards had heard my raised voice, and were moving towards my booth to escort me away.  It was fine. I’d already slammed down the handset and was making my own way back to the inmates area.  One of the young officers escorted me,

“You ok”, he asked?

He was a sweet boy.  I’d had him in a trance for weeks now, but he was genuinely nice, like he cared what happened to us, and not just for what we could do for him. 

“Fucking shmuck”, I snorted, “comes in here asking me for money to feed his fucking habit.”

“You can do better”, he said quietly, walking with me back to my cell.

“Thanks”, I said, “I used to think he was sexy as hell.  What the fuck was I thinking”

“Dunno”, he smiled, “you girls are all the same.  My sister Justine just broke up with a real loser, just like that bastard out there.  Worshipped the ground he walked on”

“Poor bitch”, I remarked, “what happened.”

“her brother happened”, he winked, “and for some reason he decided to leave town.  Funny that.”

“She’s a lucky girl” I said suddenly thinking of Groucho again.

“tell ya what”, he said as we reached my cell, “she runs a bar in town.  If you get parole next month, I’ll give your parole officer her number.  Might be able to get you work.”

He was a proper sweetheart, this guy, I could see that. 

“I’d be real grateful”, I said genuinely, “maybe her and me could look after each other.”

“That’s the idea”, he smiled again.

I sat in my cell alone.  For some reason, I began to think of the little apartment I had shared with Allen and how much nicer it had been after he’d left me.

The apartment was quiet now.  She’d no idea where the fuck Allen had gone, or Baggie for that matter, and she couldn’t have cared less.  Lol was happy working her scams and credit frauds, she’d applied for and got about five different credit cards all in different names, all maxed out.  The apartment was full of boxes and boxes of designer stuff and expensive electronic gear…most of this she sold to an old friend Zimo.  Zimo was a sort of cross between a fence and a drug dealer, sometimes he got her hooked up in exchange for a special order.  At this particular moment, she had a bunch of video gaming consoles in, with matching expensive looking monitors.  Lol was raking it in, and without Allen to drag her down, she was making out like a bandit.

She’d heard nothing about the escapade with the stolen car with the guy in the trunk.  Like she’d surmised, the car had been stolen anyway, so in Lol’s eyes, she’d done nothing wrong.

Today was quieter than usual.  She was working on the phone and didn’t notice the men marching up to her open front door.  She panicked as she saw them, thinking at first they were thugs sent to beat her up.  They were not.  They were cops.  Lol ran, but barely got to the back door, before she was stopped by a female officer who twisted her arm behind her back.  With a scream of pain, she twisted and wriggled in an attempt to get free, but after a moment, the officer managed to get the handcuffs on.  Lol began to feel a small knot of fear in her stomach.  Caught.  The next few weeks were to be a flurry of new experiences involving police, jail cells, uniforms and court rooms.  It didn’t help that her fear soon dissipated, and she began to try to work the system.  The judge saw her as a game player, with her don’t care attitude.  When he told her she had relied upon looking innocent and angelic to perpetrate her crimes, she had replied,

“I ain’t no angel baby”, she laughed, “and I didn’t drop from heaven.  I dug my way up from hell”

That hadn’t impressed.  As well, they had produced a raft of damning evidence, which resulted in Lol getting sentenced to serious prison time. 

The voice droned on,

“…all seems to be in order here; you have several letters of recommendation as to your behavior, a recommendation for a job, good behavior…”

Taylor shut the voice off.  She’d been out of prison for three days now, and had been settling into a prisoners hostel.  It was kind of like released, but not quite released, as they were eyes on her all the time.  The hostel was worse than the home had been, having to check in and sign out and jump through all kind of fucking hoops.  Now the [parole officer droning on and on about what a fucking girl scout she’d been. 

As luck would have it, the parole board had somehow approved her application for parole.  The young prison officer had sorted out a job in the bar his sister Justine worked in, and now here she was.  The city had changed a lot in the time she’d been away.  The old quarter had mostly been torn down and replaced with grey office buildings and yuppie bullshit; she hadn’t had the time or the freedom to properly look around yet so she didn’t know if any of her old haunts were still even there.  Now, the commercial district, with its high street shops and sidewalk bars had gotten more run down, as the money moved away into the new smart clubs and bars that had replaced the old quarter, and the old alleys.  They must’ve gone too.  She thought of Groucho.
Justine worked in an old fashioned bar, owned by a nice quiet guy whose family was connected to politics.  The parole officer loved it, and when he’d signed all the shit he had to sign, he let her go.  She paused on the steps of the parole office.  It would have been so easy just to do a runner, and go make some money someplace else, turn her old tricks.  Then there was the matter of the stash in the old bus depot.  That at least was there, or at the very least the shed was there.  She’d seen that from the window of the cab when she’d been driving by on the way here.  It needed to be investigated.  But, somehow she didn’t want to do a runner yet.  She wanted to explore this whole bar job thing, see what happened.  The freedom, in a way, scared her. So much freedom, so much choice.  The true American fucking dream.  One nation under god worshiping the dollar.  A hundred thousand shmucks and rubes ready to be parted from their cash.  The bar would provide a nice base of operations for whatever she decided to do. 

                       ***

Chapter 13.  Jack Mason

The bar was a basement bar.  At one time, it had been a high class place, but now the money was moving away.  It was dark inside, and decorated with polished oak wood and green leather.  A kind of old time place that had a vague smell of spilt beer and mustiness.  It certainly wasn’t high class any more.  Jack mason hadn’t wanted high class.  With his family all involved in politics, jack wanted a quiet bar with one or two regulars that would sit at the bare.  And a back room for him to organise his more shadowy business affairs.  Jack Mason was a small time gangster, with connections up the chain to the local ruling mobster Vincent Maranzano.  These days Jack liked the quiet life, and often had reluctance to get involved in things that clearly didn’t concern him.  Like with the jailbird friend of Justine’s.  She didn’t seem like someone he would ever want to know, or even trust.  Still, the girl was quiet and got on with her work, although she seemed a little confrontational with his clients at times.  He had to admit that sometimes she amused him.  He remembered their first meeting.  She was wiping up the bar top with a rag, Justine having already hired her, and he strolled down the entrance stairs and sat at the bar.  She looked at him with a filthy look,