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“Well, Rich. There was a reason. I don’t usually just go around shooting
mooks. Especially not while they’re enjoying a nap. You see, I had to shoot this
man. And now that I have, I might as well go back to the joint. They could inject
me for all I care and I’d still die with a smile on my face, knowing justice was done.”
“What do you mean?” Meeks said, “This fella owe you money?”
“Far From it” Orange Julius said “Even if he did, he’d have used it for smack.
Someone told me he’d been on the narcotic for about seven years. No, I didn’t do it
for money. Just retribution, my friends. I did it for Lizzy Canton. Who brought me
back to life in a way.”
“Retribution?” Meeks said, “I don’t get it Pops”
“Well if you boys got a second, I can tell you the whole story. It all goes back
a good decade ago when I was still with the Long Beach 5. We were making a killing
on the citrus circuit up in California’s Central Valley. We’d watch and wait for the
payroll to come in to all the banks. Money from the truckloads of oranges, fruits, and
even vegetables that stretch from one side of the valley to the other.
“Multinational conglomerates and organizations ship produce from the
central valley all across the country and all over the world. Nearly a two billion dollar
industry. Whenever a company had a deposit to make at any of the major banks in a
50-mile radius of Fresno, we’d be there to make a withdrawal. They’d add more
personnel, more armored trucks, more decoys, more dye packs, more marked bills,
more men with uzi’s in the bank and none of it mattered. We’d wait a week, watch
the new way they went about guarding the scratch and then respond with a new trick
of our own. It’s as if they kept changing their locks with bigger and better locks and
all we had to do was get bigger and better keys.
“Business was going swell until we tried to sack a Bank of America near
Coalinga. It was all working like clockwork as usual. It looked like we’d be in and out
all within six minutes.
“Three of the Long Beach Five attacked an armored car since it was a day a
new shipment of fresh cash was coming in. While the guards outside by the truck
were ziptied, the other two of us dealt with clearing all the money in the bank’s vault.
I played point, getting lock combos from the managers, while Trey Vikram held up
the rest of the bank.
“You see, Vikram wasn’t an original member of The Long Beach 5. He was
something of a stand-in as Sagebrush Sandy tried to wiggle out of a 5-10 up in
Alameda County. I didn’t know Vikram from a water buffalo but the rest of the guys
said Vikram was an OK kind of guy. We could trust him they said. We’d have to go a
little bit slower but he was on the level they said.
“I went along with it, but I didn’t like him from the start. He’s the kind of guy
who talks too much. Had some attitude on him too. He wouldn’t take a word of
advice. I told him how it was going to go down and he told me, ‘This ain’t Rocket
Science,’ not listening to a word I had to say. To make matters worse, I saw him take a
bump in the car on our way over to the bank.
Changing lives
one book at a
time!
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THE CONE - ISSUE #15 - 2018