second chance

If you didn’t read the first installment of Second Chance you might want to start there.

Sandy couldn’t tell me a thing about Walter, all she knew was his last name, Solonik.  She didn’t know where he lived, and wasn’t sure what he did for a living!  “Wait a minute,” I said, “Didn’t you say he was a Wall Street broker?”  “Well,” she said, “he has a sexy accent, is rich as hell, loves spending money on me, and he once said something about Wall Street.  What else do I need to know about him?” 

My last job was as a bartender at the “Whole Lee Kow.”  A tavern/dump downtown that had a clientele that was one-step removed from being homeless.  I know, sounds like a great place to work, right?  Well, they paid in cash, and didn’t demand that you work on a regular schedule.  If you’re wondering how I was fired from such a great job, I’ll tell you, I have a slight anger management problem.  Ok, so maybe slight is an exaggeration.  It doesn’t take much to set me off.  Selby is a regular at the Kow and he loves to push my buttons, and he’s good at it.  The other night he was on a roll, bragging to me about some girl he met, and how he really messed with her head.  He somehow got her to believe that he was a big shot golf pro at the country club and had promised her that he could get her a job working in the restaurant there.  Well, to make a long story short, he ended up leaving her, half-naked and stoned, out on some country road in the middle of the night to find her own way home.  I was just getting ready to serve him another bottle of Bud when he was telling the story, instead, I jumped over the bar, hit him with the bottle and ended up getting a couple of good licks before I was hauled out of there, and fired by Wong Kow.

The one thing about the kind of people that hang out at the Kow is that they know what’s going on around town.  So, I went there to talk to a couple of the regulars about Walter.  It ended up being a lot easier than I thought it’d be.  It seems that Walter Solonik was a rich man, a very rich man.  And how he came by his money wasn’t hard to find out either, he was a thief, not an ordinary, run of the mill thief that would break into people’s homes while they slept.  He’s a Russian mobster who lives in the U.S. and is active in all types of white collar crime.  “This is not someone you want to be messin’ with,” Sergio said while he glanced around the room nervously.  Sergio was once a Wall Street broker before the market crashed.  Now he lived in the back of the bar and cleaned up the place for beer.  “I heard that once a guy accidentally stepped on Walter’s foot in a crowed bar and the next day he was jumped in an alley and his foot was chopped off!”   

Maybe I should re-think taking this second chance.

Second Chance 4.

If you didn’t read the first installment of Second Chance you might want to start there.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat.  I am not a killer.  Sure, I’ve done some crazy things, some that were pretty cruel.  Like one time Sandy got a job at the 7-11 and had me come in at 3 a.m. to stage a robbery.  I ended up being a lot tougher on the guy running the place than we had planned.  But, it was his own fault for trying to be a hero.  My advice to anyone who cares to listen, don’t be a hero for someone else’s money.  It’s not worth it.  You could end up like Jake, out of work and missing two front teeth. 

“So, when will you kill her?”  That was just like Sandy.  Take it for granted that she’ll get her way, and start making the plans.  “Look,” I said, “This isn’t like rolling a drunk and taking his money, this is pretty serious shit.”  “Why would I risk everything I have for a measly $1400?”  Sandy rolled her eyes in that way she had that always got to me and said, “It’s $1200, and what do you have that you’re afraid of losing?”  She had a point there, and she knew it.  Everything that I owned could fit into the trunk of my car, a car that was barely running.  “There really isn’t any risk anyway; we’re going to make it look like an accident, so how could you get in trouble?” 

The rest of the evening, Sandy would come up with ideas of how to make “the wife’s” death look like an accident, and I would come up with reasons why it wouldn’t work.  “You could turn off the furnace while she was asleep and then when the house filled up with gas, you could light it.”  “Ok,” I said, “so you don’t care if Walter is killed too?”  “Oh yeah,” she said, “We should try to avoid that.”  “How about if you sneak into her house and push her down the stairs?” she said, “You could leave a toy at the top of the stairs and it would look like she tripped on it?”  “They have kids?”  I asked.  “No, they don’t have kids; it doesn’t have to be a toy dammit!”  We had started drinking a couple of hours ago and I could tell that she was starting to get mad, and when Sandy was mad and drunk, it could get ugly fast! 

When I first met Sandy, we were just teenagers.  A group  of us were jumping off the railroad trestle that crossed the river and she came by and watched us.  After a while she said, “When the next train comes by, the last one to jump off gets to tell everyone else what to do for the rest of the day.”  This could be interesting, I thought that I could come up with a few things that I would like her to do.  Well, not only was she the last one to jump off, but I was already in the water watching her wait till the last possible second before she jumped!  With the conductor blowing the train whistle and waving like crazy at her, she jumped off, and I swear she reached behind her and touched the train as it passed!  She told everyone to split and the rest of the afternoon we spent under the bridge with her telling me what to do and how long to do it.

But that was then and right now I was looking at her getting madder and drunker so I decided to try to calm her down.  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, and she looked at me suspiciously.  Her look told me that I better be serious if I knew what was good for me.  “How about if I follow her around and see what opportunities come up?”  I knew that this was way too vague to keep Sandy happy for long, but she seemed to accept the fact that I was at least thinking seriously about committing the murder.  But I wasn’t thinking seriously about it, I was still trying to figure out a way to get back together with Sandy.  At least this way I could be around when Walter finally kicked her out of the apartment.  Maybe I would get my second chance, if I could talk her into moving in with me. 

Second Chance 3.

Seldom in life do we get a second chance.  So, when I got a phone call from an ex-girlfriend that had dumped me 3 years ago and wanted to get a drink, I accepted.  What did I have to lose?  I had just lost my job, the rent was 3 months overdue and my 99 Camry was pretty much on it’s last leg, just like me.  “I’ve got a proposition for you, Sam,” she said.   “How would you like to make $1200 for a half hour of your time?” 

When I first met Sandy I was running with a rough crowd, and she was looking for someone to keep her amused, which wasn’t easy.  Sandy’s idea of entertainment was shoplifting clothes from Bloomingdale’s and then leaving them in a box in the back seat of her unlocked car.  Then she would wait for someone to steal the box, and then follow them until she got a chance to take it back.  Another one of her “fun ideas” was to sit in a bar and let someone buy her a couple of drinks.  When she found a guy that had a nice amount of cash in his wallet, she would say that she lived nearby and suggest they go for a walk.  I would be waiting for them, and we would rob him.

Sandy looked pretty good.  She had lost some weight and was wearing what looked like expensive clothes and jewelry.  “I’m not going to beat around the bush here, Sam.  I’ve got a problem, and I think that you can help me.”  I should have known better, this isn’t a second chance to get back together; she wanted someone to do her dirty work for her.  If I weren’t in such a bad way, I would have turned around and walked away.  But, I needed the money, and, to be honest, my life has been pretty boring lately.  “Who do I have to kill?” I joked, but she wasn’t laughing.  “Let’s go for a walk,” she said, “so we can talk.”  I have to admit that while walking to her house I kept expecting someone to jump me.

Sandy’s apartment was the size of small ballroom!  “How can you afford this place?  “It must cost a fortune!”  She winked at me, and said, “Let’s just say my boyfriend likes to keep me comfortable, at least he did.”  Before she turned her head, I saw a tear in her eye.  This can’t be the Sandy that I knew!  Sandy would drop a boyfriend like a bad habit if he did something to piss her off.  What in the hell was going on here?  “So, are you serious about the $1500?”  I asked.  She smiled and said, “It was $1200, and yes, I’m serious.” 

Sandy told me that her boyfriend was a Wall Street broker and was taking care of her living expenses until he got divorced.  That was the story he’d told her.  Things changed when his wife found out about the affair and threatened to take him for everything he had, if he didn’t break it off right away!  So, Walter told her that she had 24 hours to clear out of his life, at least until he got his wife calmed down.  But Sandy had a different plan.  She wanted to kill “the wife.”  Well, she wanted me to kill her.   

Second Chance 2.