Stolen Me by K. Michael Washington (read with me .TXT) 📕

“Can evil be passed genetically?” I heard Mr. Johnson laugh for the first time and heard why he didn’t do it more often. He had the laugh of a mad scientist. He abruptly stopped laughing, looked into my eyes and said “Of course it can boy, but unlike greatness, it usually skips a generation.” Then he starts laughing uncontrollably. This was my last memory of home, but really my first dream abroad. I woke up from the nightmare on a greyhound headed for Iowa. I was seventeen years old, I had thirteen thousand in cash, and I was mad as hell. I was told my entire life that I didn’t have any family by my own family. Even after I made it clear to them that I was leaving, I still don’t think Judy understood that what she did was wrong. She thought she had the right to take me from my father. She thought that if I knew about him, that I would choose to go with him. She said he would turn me into a criminal. The last thing I ever said to her was that her lies had already accomplished that.

This all started with my grandfather, who unlike us had the right to pick and choose his family? At least Carl Thornton thought he did. I never found the man that took that liberty. I found a pitiful and lonely old victim of lung cancer. At seventy-seven years his ravaged body showed the ware of one hundred and death lingered over. You could smell her in the halls of Miller’s Grove, a retirement home and hospice. I stood in the doorway of his room. There he lay, choking on his humble pie. Even with all the dope being fed to him intravenously, when I leaned over him and made eye contact he knew exactly who I was. The only sound was the buzz from the cheep fluorescent lights that set the gloomy stage, flickering to remind the patients that it could go dark at any moment. By the way that he looked at me I could tell, I saw it in his eyes. He knew he was going to hell and the very reason fittingly would be the last thing that he would see. I thought I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but just seeing him human was enough to give me peace of mind. I just turned to walk a way. His faithful Margaret Louis stood in the doorway, she had aged well. Here former beauty was easily detected under her slightly wrinkled face and long silver hair.

She spoke softly. “He was waiting for you”. Although a different color, she looked at me with my eyes, love beaming from the beautiful hazel. I refused her without words and at that same moment a very low volume alarm sounded from a monitor in the room. She rushed past me to his side and I left. I walked out of Miller’s Grove smiling, not because Thornton was dead, but because I knew Judy was the ugly sister, she looked like Carl.

FATHER

When your loot only consist of cash and good jewelry, the clean up should be easy. With me though, clean up is always easy. I always use people one time or all the time. I also never refuse anything near a reasonable offer for my stuff. Why not take fifty percent, this is practically an all profit business. Get it, get rid of it. The cash doesn’t need any work unless the bills are bank wrapped or high dollar and so crisp they had to come from a bulk withdrawal. In this case just go fake gamble at the nearest casino and change it all over. If there isn’t one of those Indian casinos within a few hours from you then there’s a riverboat or Nevada, god bless America and let it ride. As for the jewelry, every decent burglar has a place to take jewels. My place was Raptor Collectibles, and just like anything else that works, it all started with a good pick.

Some people like to live secluded. They’ll build their homes in places that can’t be seen from any road that you turn on to get there. Long ranch homes built on the back slope of dome shaped hills that easily hide the two hundred-foot long facades. On the opposite side, from the interstates these home boast the owner’s wealth, exposing the walk out basement equal in length. So it was with a sense of adventure that I took all the unknown exits, all the wrong turns, all in search of a pompous man’s possessions while he toiled away at the clock. It was also with a sense of admiration that I choose him. Once, he had a small coin collection. It was elaborately cased, yet not on display, locked away in a desk drawer. I loved this because unless he obsessively checked on his stashed cash and locked away coins, he wouldn’t know he was robbed right away. Clean entry and a clean getaway. It wasn’t the only time I had heard about some of my work two and three weeks after I actually did the job. Not surprisingly, most people claim to have seen their things within a day or two of the behind schedule report.

Raptor Collectibles was the place I first settled on to move some of the coins, one coin in particular. The one that my uneducated eye said was worth the least money. The place is set up so that the display cases make a large U in a square room with two doors behind the cases, one leading to a back office and the other to a restroom. The cases displayed more than coins. Stamps, rare sports memorabilia, old comics, and even jewelry laced the militantly cleaned glass cases. The shop keep was with the stores only other customer, but he looked up long enough to smile. I got my eyes full on all the expensive things being shown off while I waited. When he had a moment away from his customer who even after driving here was still struggling with the fact that he was going to sale what must have been his favorite baseball card, the shop keep who was actually the owner asked in his Brooklyn accent what I wanted. I pulled out the coin. Without even batting an eyelash at it he points to a magazine rack. Then he goes back to the customer and snaps “Look pal you gonna sale it or not!” The poor slob hands over the card. Brooklyn reaches in his pocked and counts out four hundred dollars then has the guy initial a receipt and sends him on his way. He then reaches in his other pocket takes out a display case with a four hundred twenty-dollar price tag on it and slips the card in. This guy was only making a twenty-dollar turn around on a piece of merchandise he paid four hundred for. I liked his pricing before I even did business with him. I asked him why he only made the twenty and he tells me. “I don’t talk my business wit one customa, wit a nudda.” Even with the accent this was music to my ears. Over the next two hours, he pulled out every coin book he had and we researched all nine of the coins from the house on the hill. Then he gave me on the dollar what the pricing guide said a retailer should pay. Brooklyn and I made a lot of money together that winter I spent in Nebraska. The best part about doing business with him was, even though he was an honest businessman, he still did business with a lot of people who weren’t so honest. All of my best shit that I took to him never even went on display. This guy always had somebody to call if I found something rich. He only imported from Hastings Nebraska, but he exported all over the East Coast. He knew just about every serious collector in every high money collectable community. One night after a huge score, we shared a bottle of seventy-five year old scotch that came with the heist. The scotch loosened him up enough to tell me why he buys and sales at suggested prices and how he ended up in Hastings Nebraska. Because of whom he knew he was able to buy baseball cards at bottom barrel prices. So he did. Any and every card he could get his hands on. He said he went through tens of millions of cards in two years. He would go to card shows and use his influence and business savvy to buy any card he could. He counted multiple buys together as one. If you broke it down he lost money on some cards, but made a lot on others. He never knew what was what though. All he knew was he spent two hundred thousand on cards over this course of time, and then sold all cards bought for three hundred thousand. He was doing it all the time. Before he knew it baseball cards weren’t worth squat. He looked like he had accidentally run over somebody’s dog when he told me “I single handedly ruined a huge part of our Great American Pastime.” I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to blame player strikes for America’s sagging interest in baseball, but I think just laughing so hard helped to ease some of his burden. Brooklyn was the best fence I ever had. If all middlemen could manage to ignore greed, we’d have to give “the black market” a new name.

After fencing your merchandise comes a time when a man can choose to succeed or concede. Even though I didn’t have to worry about what I did since I did it right. I did still have to fight temptation. These temptations came in the form of girls, drugs, alcohol, fake friends and any situation involving the police. I’m not saying I didn’t chase pussy. I’m just saying that when I was running around with my dick in one hand, I never was waving my money in the air with the other. I’m not saying don’t get high either. Drugs aren’t a problem, addicts are. Just look at how you spend your money. If you’re buying your drug of choice more often than three times a week it’s a good sign that you’ve lost control. If you can’t save some for tomorrow then you’re in trouble. The trouble is, an over whelming majority of people committing burglaries do so to feed a drug habit. This only adds to the heinousness of the crime. That’s why it’s so important to fit in. You get strung out you now fit the profile. If you live the right life and do your work professionally, you’ll never even be a suspect. Alcohol works the same way, but it brings several more pitfalls, the DUI and superman syndrome to name a few. Drinking loosens everybody up. Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been drinking, or how much you can drink. It doesn’t loosen up the same things about everybody. It may open one girl’s legs while it opens another’s mouth. Drinking can help a man find his sense of humor, while another may loose his mind. Don’t drink more than three days out of the week, and only one of those days should be spent in a tavern of any sort. Barflies ask too many questions and give to many answers. As for fake friends, shake them off. Not because they can hold you back, a real man does what he does by his own mind. You get rid of them because you need as few people as possible knowing that you were anywhere at any time. So anyone who isn’t near and dear to your heart, you can only be friends with