Johnny was a professional burglar, started at about age twelve, not because he was a bad kid, but seems his Mother had a hard time paying the rent after his Father walked out on them. She was a great lady and Johnny felt he had to help her out. Townhouses on the Upper East Side became his specialty, he couldn’t believe how many of those rich fuckers left the keys under the welcome mat and their back doors unlocked.
He discovered he was mechanically inclined the night he put his Mother’s transistor radio back together after his Father smashed it against her head in a drunken fit. By the time personal computers became commonplace he could take apart and reassemble a motherboard with his eyes closed. Johnny also taught himself how to pick locks, disable home security systems and hack into any website when need be. Probably could have worked for Apple or the Pentagon if he wanted to.
Johnny gleaned his victims from the social media websites and researched each target meticulously. He knew when, where, and for how long they would be gone on vacation, that’s when he loved to strike, while they were chilling. Busting into their home safes (always located in the bedroom or above the fireplace behind an oil portrait of their spoiled rotten kids) was easier than opening a box of Cracker Jack’s, however Johnny claimed he found more booty in lingerie drawers then anywhere else. Though they were highly desirable profitable items he was never tempted with bulky expensive electronics, safety deposit keys or personal identification documents, like passports and birth certificates. Johnny Lee Handsome wasn’t greedy and favored a lightweight exit, he only took what he could carry unobtrusively; high end jewels, watches and cash. He was so well connected he usually got rid of his payload before sun up. He worked the privileged neighborhoods of New York City for nineteen years and earned a six figure salary without ever being pinched. When his Mother died he relocated to Florida.
He paid cash for a modest condominium on 41st and Meridian Avenue, an area called “The Little Crown Heights” of Southern Florida. The neighborhood was teeming with Orthodox Jews and diamonds; piles and piles of diamonds carried haphazardly in the pockets of the long black overcoats many of the ultra observant Jews wore year round, no matter how hot it became. Johnny Lee Handsome saw nothing but easy pickings.
Johnny loved these Jews, they were so predictable. They followed the Torah down to the last lamed and when Passover rolled around every Spring they all left their homes for high end hotels for eight or more days to avoid having the lady of the house clean all of the leaven from their dwellings. This was Johnny’s high season. Three years in he became bored, his thieving became too easy. He decided to expand the perimeter of his work place.
Pine Tree Drive is a waterfront boulevard lined with monolithic mansions chock full of the goodies Johnny loved to pilfer. His first night on the clock he snagged a gold coin collection worth more than a million dollars. He took the rest of the year off and enjoyed all that South Florida had to offer; the ocean, chartered fishing trips, jet skiing, snorkeling, the casinos and of course, the beautiful women. He had himself one satisfying good time.
He returned to work and scored a satchel of diamonds big as marbles and nineteen thousand in cash, then found himself trapped by a Rhodesian Ridgeback on the roof of the pool house as he was making his exit. Johnny threw the dog the smoked pig’s ear he carried for occasions like this, but this pup wasn’t interested in the treat and kept barking. Lights came on from the residence next door and moments later Johnny heard the sirens. He tossed the cash into the air and prayed that the nannies and housekeepers and any of the other poor souls that trudged down Pine Tree Drive on their way to work for these rich bastards found the money. Johnny pitched the diamond satchel aiming for the bay; he missed by a few inches.
Johnny Lee Handsome was sentenced to eighteen months in “The Block”, the county jail in Miami that housed all sorts of criminals. The concrete building is ten stories high with twelve inch slivers of reinforced glass windows. The first and second floors housed all those convicted of misdemeanors, third, fourth and fifth housed those convicted of a felony and the remaining floors were reserved for the real badasses and crazies; murderers, rapists, gang bangers and even a few nutbags who turned cannibal while high on drugs. It was Johnny’s first arrest and incarceration and he was scared.
The harassment started as soon as the guard deposited him on the third floor pod.
“Hey, pretty boy! We gonna get you!”
It was the “sisters” , the gang found in every prison that preyed on the physically attractive inmates. They blew kisses at Johnny and rubbed their pricks. Johnny’s heart pounded and he had a difficult time breathing. He prayed.
“Johnny Lee Handsome! That you, boy?”
Prayers answered! It was Roosevelt Greenway, a kid he went to grammar school with, a kid he did book reports for, a kid he helped learn to read. Roosevelt Greenway was the houseman on the third floor pod. Contrary to what the public might believe, the guards didn’t run the jail, the prisoners did. Oh sure, the guards did the mandatory head count a few times a day and patrolled the pods once in a while , but that was it. It was Roosevelt Greenway who assigned the housekeeping tasks, made the rules and kept the peace on the third floor pod of ninety men.
Roosevelt was redwood big, all muscle with a weak tea complexion. He told Johnny he and his Mom moved to Florida to care for his Grandma. Hard times hit, so he hit a convenience store and got away with it. He fell in with a bad lot and settled into a life of stealing, holding up small business owners and eventually dealing in firearms, stolen of course. He figured if he took the time to do the math, he spent more time in prison than he did in the sunshine. When Johnny told him how he ended up in the Block his old friend laughed,
“I always knew you had a bit of the devil in you.”
Roosevelt took good care of Johnny on the inside, even assigned his personal crew to watch out for him and they did, had his back at every turn. Hamhead Tillis and “The Bomber” acted as bodyguards when he showered, telling him to be sure to piss on his feet, tops and soles, claimed it prevented athlete’s foot. Hamhead was a Tennessee mountain boy with an enormous powdery pink skinned head and eyes the size of lentils . He was serving time for running drugs up the line to his hillbilly homeboys and also served time when his wife went missing, but there was never a body, never any evidence he was responsible for her disappearance; the authorities had to let him go. These days when asked about his wife, he just smiles, “I took her fishin’!”
“The Bomber” wasn’t a bomber, per se. He was a construction worker, a master carpenter, who called in a bomb scare whenever the foreman on the work site sent him home for being drunk. He was well known in Miami for his antics and cost the city and the contractors millions. Bomber loved the Red Sox and for the entire baseball season he pinned more than a dozen red infant booties to his work shirt and shouted, “Red Sox nation!” to all he encountered throughout the work day. God forbid anyone claimed the New York Yankees were a better team Bomber was ready to pummel them. For all his peculiarities he was well liked. He was a captivating character with a unique sense of humor and good heart that endeared him to all those he met.
There was an orderly routine in the Block. Breakfast was served before sunup; powdered eggs, a biscuit and a cup of weak, lukewarm coffee. Johnny Lee Handsome thought the eggs weren’t half bad. Meal done, the in-house artists set up shop for anyone wanting a jailhouse tattoo. They extracted the ink from newsprint and used a sharpened paperclip inserted into an empty pen tube to puncture the skin and create all sorts of images; teardrops, hearts, crucifixes, skulls and the like. They were quite a talented bunch.
Once everyone made up their bunks and tended to their chores lunch was served; a bologna sandwich, an apple or an orange and a bright red beverage the inmates called “jungle juice”.
“Don’t drink that crap! Your dick will never get hard again it’s got so much saltpeter in it!” warned Bomber.
Johnny took to drinking “buck” the jailhouse hooch that Hamhead distilled using the fruit he collected during the week and Johnny was grateful for the buzz it gave him. Sunday was the best eating; boiled chicken, white rice with gravy and a big slab of cornbread. Johnny witnessed an inmate stab a fellow in the head with a pencil for trying to steal his hunk of cornbread and he gagged when he watched as Bomber sat near the trash can and collected chicken bones that he gnawed with relish claiming the marrow kept his strength up.
The rest of the day was spent playing gin rummy or dominoes, telling tall tales and watching television. Judge Judy was a favorite of the pod inmates and you could hear a pin drop when she announced her ruling. Lights out was at ten thirty and that’s when the concert started . The young black inmates tested out the rap lyrics they’d been composing all day long. Not the sort of lullaby he was accustomed to, Johnny eventually learned to fall asleep listening to the ghetto poetry.
Wednesdays the commissary was opened, it was the busiest day of the week on the pod and the only accepted form of tender was a honeybun; a small, iced sugary cake infused with cinnamon and raisins. Three honeybuns could get you a haircut or a tattoo. The most coveted item was a “fifi’ and that cost six honeybuns. Roosevelt and his crew controlled the fifi cartel. Hamhead and Bomber somehow managed to steal rubber gloves from the infirmary and filled them with hot water before wrapping them in small towels to dispense to all of the inmates able to pay up. Fifi’s are the sex toy of choice in any prison. The inmates would rush to their bunks with their fifi and hump it as though it was the man or woman in their most erotic fantasy and if their dick got hard enough to burst the rubber glove and send the hot water gushing between their legs they swore it was almost as good as the real thing.
“Hey, a man’s gotta take care of his self,” they claimed.
Nine months in a do gooder from the community showed up looking for a crew to work on his construction projects. The deal would allow the selected inmates re-entry into society as productive, contributing citizens claimed the smiling huckster, but he didn’t mention the enormous tax breaks and other perks he’d receive from the elected officials for taking part in the program. Roosevelt Greenway, Johnny Lee Handsome, Hamhead Tillis and The Bomber were selected for the test pilot project. Roosevelt Greenway was rejected at the last minute, deemed “too dangerous” because of his firearms conviction. Johnny Lee Handsome promised his old friend that he would load up his commissary account every month and do whatever else he could for him.
“You gonna write that in stone or ice?” Roosevelt wanted to know.
“Stone. I promise you, man,” swore Johnny.
Johnny, Hamhead and Bomber were now considered parolees on work release and were assigned to a halfway house on Northwest 9th Street in downtown Miami. The rooms were shabby, but Bomber thought the location was great, what with three liquor stores within walking distance, hookers draped on the chain link fence one block over and drug dealers that delivered twenty-four seven. The director of the residence ignored the rules and curfew that was supposed to govern the lodgers, he was a pussy, terrified by them all. He was so frightened of Bomber he even went on late night beer runs for him.
Johnny, Hamhead and Bomber were issued hardhats, work boots and orange neon tee shirts emblazoned with the “Sky High Construction” company logo. The work site was located on the southernmost tip of Miami Beach. Each morning they took the “M” bus across the MacArthur Causeway and got real quiet as they watched the sun lallygag its way up over the horizon. No one that’s done time ever takes a sunrise for granted.
The work release program was one big scam. Anyone with a hardhat and a set of well developed biceps could come and go on the worksite as they pleased. After signing the time sheet they were given their work orders to be completed by day’s end. Johnny was assigned to install high tech locks in the luxury condominiums, a six a day quota; he completed eighteen. Bomber was responsible for putting up crown molding in at least one unit each day; he finished three without breaking a sweat. Hamhead Tillis was given a smartphone and told to take photos of the drywall and window frames, checking for gaps. He photographed the same window and drywall day after day for months on end and reported all was satisfactory.The foreman was a drunk who spent most of the day napping on top of an elevator car that was out of order. No one ever checked their work.
The trio ditched for the beach on 5th Street and Ocean Drive as soon as the first coffee break whistle sounded. They swam and sunned themselves and watched the bikini clad girls play volleyball. They were flush with cash and ate and drank like royalty thanks to Hamhead’s green thumb; they made bundles selling nickel bags of weed he grew out back of the halfway house. Bomber befriended a waitress originally from Boston, he called her “Jugs”. The first time Jugs served him (a double vodka with a beer chaser) he threw the ice cubes from the vodka into the sand and glared,
“I’m an alcoholic. Alcoholics don’t need ice.”
Every drink she served thereafter was sans ice, but she took to chilling the vodka for him. Bomber convinced the manager to allow Jugs to serve them exclusively.
“You’re my kind of woman, Jugs, tattoos, nice rack and a plump ass you don’t mind getting patted,” admitted Bomber.
Jugs laughed, “Don’t forget the pierced titties, Bomber.” She lifted her tee shirt and her gold nipple rings glistened in the bright sun. Bomber tipped her an extra fifty.
Friday was payday, chump change after taxes, but they always ponied up to fill Roosevelt’s commissary account to the max. On the weekend the friends worked at the job that paid them a living large wage. They cabbed it over to “Off the Rails”, a local dive bar on 71st Street on the Beach. The burners were lined up to buy their weed and claimed it was the best dope they ever smoked. Business concluded and it was party time; drinking, kibitzing, dancing. Big and lumbering best describes Bomber, but on the dance floor you’d swear he attended “The Fred Astaire Dance Academy”. All night long he had the girls pulling him onto the dance floor. The bar closed at four in the morning and that’s when the friends took their “to go” cocktails and what ever chick they hooked up with across the street to the beach to screw while they waited for the sun to rise.
Once a month they had to report to their probation officer. They all passed the mandatory piss test once they paid the attendant a “c” note each to clean up the results of their drug and alcohol addled urine specimens. A glowing report was filed by the probation officer after each visit and why wouldn’t he rave to his superiors that the test pilot program was working, he’d been conned by the best.
Bomber had Johnny and Hamhead laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe after he shared his experience with the probation official.
“ I went to the dollar store and bought three bottles of cologne made in China that smelled great, turned out it was insect repellant. I sprayed that crap on me from head to toe. I popped an oxy to steady my shakes then chewed about thirty cloves to clean up my breath and strolled into his cubicle with a plastic water bottle filled with a couple of pints of iced vodka. I sat there and told that poor slob how wonderful it was to be sober and how good it felt to be doing an honest day’s work. I drank all the vodka and was stewed to the balls before the interview was over. He shook my hand and said, “God Bless”.
The day after they paid their debt to society Johnny Lee Handsome hustled his friends and two big coolers loaded with beer, vodka and hero sandwiches to 23rd Street and Collins Avenue where he rented a boat for the day.
“Where we going, Johnny?” the guys wanted to know.
“To plan our futures,” he smiled.
Johnny motored through the canal past Allison Island trying not to create too big of a wake; manatee mating season. He cruised into Biscayne Bay and dropped anchor near a sand bar in front of Sunset Island. They ate and drank and congratulated each other for making it through the construction scam and being done with probation.
“Bomber, Hamhead, what are you going to do with the rest of your lives?” Johnny wanted to know. Bomber washed down the last bite of his sandwich with a swig of vodka,
“ Jugs invited me to move in with her. Guess I’m going to have to get a job to pay the rent and all that other responsibility crap that comes with living on the straight and narrow. We’ll see,” he laughed.
Hamhead slathered sunscreen on his head,
“I want to get enough money to go back to Tennessee. Mama and Daddy are getting on in years, I want to be home to help them anyway I can.
Johnny Lee Handsome cracked opened a beer,
“What would your future look like if you had enough money for a hundred lifetimes?”
“That’s easy,” said Bomber. Season tickets to the Red Sox, a nice place to crash and vodka, beer and Viagra delivered to my front door everyday of the week and I’d like to be able to toss hundred dollar bills to Jugs anytime she wanted a new tattoo or body piercing.”
“I’d still go home to Tennessee and the first thing I’d do is get indoor plumbing for Mama and Daddy. They been gopherin’ their whole lives. Why, one evening Daddy was gopherin’ so bad he fell and hurt his self when he was running to the outhouse. He can’t run no more, bent up with arthritis and I tell you one thing for sure, my Daddy would shoot his self before he took to wearing diapers,” said Hamhead.
“What the fuck is “gopherin’”? asked Bomber.
“You know, when you have to take a dump real bad and your business starts rearing its head out your asshole before you make it to the squat hole. That’s gopherin’ ,” explained Hamhead.
Once Johnny stopped laughing he told his friends that he had a plan that would allow them all to live their dream lives,
“ I’ve been working on this heist for more than a year. We’ll each clear about nine million each; cash. I’ve already set up off shore accounts for each of us, one for Roosevelt, too, he’s only got a year left to do in federal. With just a phone call you’ll be able to withdraw whatever you need, whenever you need it. Interested?”
“I’m in,” said Bomber unable to contain his excitement.
“Me too, I’m in, too!” squealed Hamhead Tillis.
Bomber rubbed his knuckles and that’s all it took to convince the director of the halfway house to allow Hamhead to continue living there for fifty bucks a week. Bomber set up housekeeping with Jugs and Johnny Lee Handsome signed up for computer classes at the downtown community college. There was nothing they could teach Johnny in the classes, he just needed to gain entrance to their system, you see their security cameras took in the venue he planned to rip off. It was an obstacle and he had to disable that motherfucker or all his hard work would be down the shitter.
Johnny Lee Handsome took to renting a boat every weekend and it was out in the middle of Biscayne Bay where there were no ears that he divulged his plan to his friends,
“Every winter Miami hosts the biggest art show on the planet. Millions of people fly in from all over to buy and sell what they call “art”. They’re just a pack of pretentious motherfuckers that will stand in front of a white canvas with a red dot painted in the middle and claim, “Isn’t it divine?”. A kid with a box of crayons has more talent then those so called artists. I read an article in The New York Times last year announcing that a billionaire hedge fund guy was dumping the majority of his collection worth more than one hundred million large. This asshole bought pieces just to say “it’s mine”; wouldn’t know a Rembrandt if it fell on his fucking head. Guess where this cocksucker is housing his collection? In the building we put up on the Beach, can you believe it?
Bomber was skeptical, “How the hell are we going to get out the door with all those paintings?”
“Easy peasy, big boy. His collection is all modern, everything on canvas, no board, metal or masonite. We’re going to cut the paintings right out of their fucking frames and slide them into big leather portfolio cases. Each case can hold more than a hundred canvasses. We’ll cab it over to the Eden Rock Hotel where our fence will be waiting. I’ve been doing business with him for years. I’ll check that our funds have been deposited and he’ll be winging his way across the pond in his private jet before the sun sets.”
Hamhead protested, “Johnny, they got security cameras everywhere; parking lot, elevators, hallways, every fuckin’ where!”
“And I can disable them all!” laughed Johnny. By the way, Hamhead, I made duplicate keys for every lock I installed in that building, so we’re not going to have to bother with any of that “breaking and entering” crap, we’ll waltz in like we own the joint.”
Johnny armed his friends with box cutters and had them practice removing canvasses from frames for the entire summer. He purchased khakis and black polo shirts for them to wear as uniforms, complete with those silly i.d. tags that every conventioneer wears around their neck. Johnny drummed the heist itinerary into his buddies heads until they had it down pat. On Sunday, February 5th, 2016 the deed was done; perfectly.
The trio agreed to meet the following year at the boat rental dock on 23rd Street and Collins Avenue, no communication whatsoever until then. Hamhead drove home to Tennessee, Bomber and Jugs flew into Boston to buy their season tickets to the Red Sox. Johnny Lee Handsome hopped a jet to Europe, there were places he wanted to see that he’d only read about. The heist made the international news. The pundits and law enforcement authorities claimed it was the work of a sophisticated robbery ring, adding that at least a dozen persons were needed to pull it off. They focused on the owner of the art collection because he was so heavily insured.
Johnny Lee Handsome laughed to himself, “Assholes!”.
They met the following year as agreed and learned that Roosevelt Greenway had been shanked to death with only weeks to go before his release. They were heartbroken and got good and drunk reminiscing about their old friend. They agreed to anonymously donate his share of the kick to the “Innocence Project” a group that defended prison inmates pro bono, many of them on death row.
They continued to meet once a year for the next fifteen years and had a grand time getting drunk and catching up. Hamhead remarried and his wife had twin boys that they named Johnny Lee and Roosevelt. Bomber and Jugs married in Las Vegas and couldn’t be happier. Johnny Lee Handsome travelled the world. They were living life the way it should be lived. Their luck ran dry before their twentieth reunion, Hamhead was diagnosed with late stage dementia, didn’t recognize his wife or kids and lost control of all his faculties. He died in less than a year. Bomber attended the sixth game of the world series that the Red Sox was playing in against the New York Yankees. The Red Sox won, the series was tied. He took Jugs out for a steak dinner to celebrate, went home, fell asleep on the couch and never woke up. The Red Sox won the series in game seven, eight to five.
Johnny Lee Handsome got the bad news from his doctor soon after,
“Inoperable, although there are treatments, chemo, radiation, stem cells,” offered the doctor.
Johnny nixed his advice, “Thanks Doc, but I’m old school, when your number’s up it’s up. How long have I got?”
“A year, eighteen months, tops,” he replied.
Johnny put his affairs in order, leaving everything to Jugs and Hamhead’s wife and kids then he packed and boarded a jet. He had one last thing to do.
Johnny Lee Handsome took a room in a bed and breakfast on Old Compton Road. He spent a week familiarizing himself with the area and the local pubs. Once he was comfortable that he could find his way back to his lodging with his eyes closed he headed for “Hannah’s Hideway” the pub he favored. He knocked back a few shots of vodka with a pint chaser and thought about Bomber and Hamhead and wished his old friends were here with him for this last caper. He paid his tab and headed for the pier where he boarded one of those riverboats that carried tourists up the Thames. He disembarked and stood on line with the hoards to buy his admission ticket to tour the Tower of London.
As the guide enlightened the group on the history of the Tower Johnny mentally photographed the security setup and thought,
“Jesus Christ Almighty! This system is at least fifty years old! He smiled and thought to himself, “This is doable. Definitely doable.”
Johnny returned to “Hannah’s Hideway” to drink and think. He laughed out loud when an oldie “Crazy” by Cee Lo Green blared from the jukebox,
“Yes, sir! I’m crazy! Aren’t we all a little fucking crazy? But I know in my heart it’s doable, definitley doable!” he shouted.
The barkeep rushed up, “You alright, mate?”
Johnny apologized, “Yeah, sorry, just thinking out loud.”
The barkeep was curious and asked, “What’s doable, mate, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Johnny Lee Handsome smiled, “Anything in life is doable. You just got to get out there and do it.”
Johnny got piss assed drunk, settled up and made his way back to the bed and breakfast in the dark, eyes barely opened.
Coreen Falco
© 2011 Coreen Falco
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