Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I Otta Not
CLIFF
Two weeks earlier, on a searing hot day fueled by Santa Ana winds, Cliff met Melvyn Ott at Flores Pool Hall, a gritty billiards room in the grimy part of Wilmington, which prided itself on serving the more villainous part of the community.
It was one of the few places in Los Angeles that flouted the rules on smoking cigarettes inside and selling dope in the bathrooms. The linoleum floors were filthy, but the felt on the pool tables was pristine.
Hustlers mixed with long-haul truckers and dock rats while cheap beer and shots of whiskey lined the bar.
Through a blue haze of cigarette and weed smoke, he could make out the short, stocky frame of Melvyn Ott as he sat on a black leather barstool surrounded by three massive men, broad as refrigerators, wearing leather coats despite the autumn heat.
Cliff took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and walked over.
One of the three men stepped in front of Ott as Cliff approached. Ott leaned over, saw Cliff, and whispered something to his muscle, who then moved aside.
“If it ain’t my old buddy, Cliff ‘Mastermind’ Weston,” Ott said warmly, but with an edge in his voice.
Cliff nodded curtly. “Melvyn. Good to see you. Nice place. I used to come here a lot but then they changed chefs, so…”
“Always cracking wise, Weston. Sit down, take a load off.”
One of his gorillas-for-hire vacated the seat next to Ott and Cliff sat down.
“Drink?” Ott asked, as he held a finger up for the barkeep.
“Maybe later. You said you had some business you wanted to discuss.”
“You’re not much for foreplay, are you, Weston? What’s the rush?” Ott let out a short cackle. Then he clapped Cliff on the back and Cliff tensed up. “All right, the man means business. Let’s get down to it.”
Cliff swore he would never work with Ott again. However, to go against Melvyn Ott was a dangerous game. Ott wasn’t that smart, but he was incredibly volatile. He calculated, trying to think of how to turn him down.
“I need you to help me with a safe. Some fat cat in Manhattan Beach has a rare antiquity in a safe beneath the master bathroom floor. I have inside information that allows me to relieve him of it. Of course, I thought of you first. You’re the best in our line of work.” Ott winked.
“A dubious honor,” Cliff retorted. Manhattan Beach was his neighborhood. Melvyn Ott, to Cliff’s knowledge, had never been anywhere near that beach, or any beach for that matter. Cliff was instantly suspicious. “How’d you hear about this gig?”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Ott said in his nasally New Jersey accent.
Cliff frowned. Nothing about this sounded good. “Melvyn, I thought you stuck to bank jobs. Especially since the last one we did together landed us both on ice upstate. This sounds like a whole different game, and no offense, Melvyn, but isn’t this a little out of your pay grade?”
“I’m branching out. My investment adviser says I should diversify.” Melvyn’s black eyes darted back and forth. “And no offense taken, but if you do it again, Tony here will blow out your left knee cap.”
Cliff sighed and put his hands out as a last gesture of good faith. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Weston, you’re not the only thief who can make a plan. I told you, I got an inside line on this. Almost foolproof.”
“It’s the almost that worries me,” Cliff said.
He weighed his options. If he said no, there was a good chance Ott would have one of his gorillas knife him in the back in the parking lot.
If he said yes, he’d be back in prison in the time it took Melvyn to finish his smoke.
There was no way Ott had the intelligence to pull off a job like this.
“Ott, I just got out. I’m trying to go legit. I can’t be part of your crew.”
“Point taken. You won’t be part of the actual crew, which means you will also get no payment upon my operation’s success.” Melvyn Ott leaned in close to Cliff and said just above a whisper, “But you still owe me. Plus, aren’t you even a little curious?”
Cliff held his breath and weighed his options. He was more than a little curious. He was thirsty. He looked over to the barkeep and, not for the last time, Cliff broke parole. “Shot of bourbon?”
The bartender came over with a shot glass and the bottle. He poured it out while Cliff stared at the brown liquid filling the glass. Ott pulled out another smoke and lit it up, a rare show of patience.
Cliff downed the bourbon, savoring the sweet oaky flavor, gritted his teeth as it slid over his tongue.
He held the empty shot glass to his lips while he looked up at the rafters above.
He could break this cycle, he knew he could, if he could only get far enough away from his old life so he could disappear.
Finally, Cliff looked Ott in the eye and said quietly, “What do you need?”
One week later, Cliff stood in the shadows of his own garage, arms crossed, a stopwatch in one hand. A sour sweat permeated the dank air. Cliff waved at the odor and finally said, “Time.” He clicked his stopwatch.
“Fuck!” One of Ott’s gorillas rolled away from a small, sturdy safe, a failure.
“Not good enough. You’ve got to get in it in under forty-two seconds,” Cliff said. He turned his attention to Ott, who was sitting right next to him. “He’s not great at this.”
Ott rolled his eyes. “Leonard, Tony, let’s take a break. Go out to the car. I need a few minutes.” Leonard and Tony left Cliff and Ott alone in the garage.
Cliff walked over to the dart board, pulled three darts out of the cork, walked back and aimed for the bullseye. He missed. But only by a little.
Ott ambled over, lit a smoke, and said, “There’s nobody better than you, Weston.”
Cliff threw another dart. This time he hit the green ring outside the bullseye. “I think he’ll get it.”
Ott exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “Remember our last gig?”
Cliff remembered it all too well. Everything was going according to plan. They got in, got the loot, and got out, until Melvyn decided to leave a signature. He set the place on fire.
“I still don’t know how that psychologist figured me out.”
“Who?”
“That little hot number, worked at the LA Superior Court. You didn’t meet with her?”
Cliff squinted in the distance. “I never met with any psychologist.”
“Ah, that’s right, you cut a deal before you went to trial. Must have been why. Anyway, she’s the reason I got pinned.”
Cliff knew that this was not true; they had plenty on Ott to put him away for the heist and the fire he set that burned the building to the ground, but he acquiesced and let Ott tell him the rest of his story. “You let the shrink into your head?”
“That’s the thing, I didn’t think I did.
But she figured me out, saw something in me, she said.
Testified to it.” Melvyn took a drag and then chuckled.
“But she got hers. I crawled in that bedroom window and I had her, I had her! One more tight squeeze, and she would have been at the gates of Saint Peter.” Melvyn raised his right hand and squeezed it hard.
Cliff stopped throwing the darts and turned around to face Ott. “Are you telling me you nearly strangled a forensic psychologist to death who worked for the court?”
“Almost is the key word there.” Melvyn looked down at the floor and under his breath he said, so quietly Cliff almost didn’t hear it, “I’ll tie up that little loose end as soon as this gig’s over.”
Cliff turned back toward the dart board, fiddled with the dart in his hand. “Melvyn, why don’t you give the safe a try.”
“Why don’t you do it, Clifford,” Ott said.
“I could easily, but so can you. I suspect you have hidden talents, my friend.”
Cliff knew that Ott was a sucker for flattery. Ott seemed to brighten at Cliff’s compliments. He shrugged, seeming to weigh the pros and cons of the opportunity.
Ott started nodding and finally said, “Not a bad idea. I’ll give it a shot. But if I can’t pull this off, and my guy can’t pull this off, someone’s going to. And that somebody’s you.”
Cliff grimaced and threw the last dart.
He missed.