by Joseph Pete
Here’s a peculiar story!
Clydesdale Bob slammed down his kombucha on the rickety table tottering on uneven legs in the shabby cafe where half the loitering clientele was working on a novel and the other half on a MLM scheme. Everyone was working some angle, some scam, while nursing a lukewarm cup of caffeine—a weak, diluted drug everyone was convinced was necessary for productivity in a grand collective delusion.
“Hot damn, we got ‘em,” he exclaimed. “This is an easy target.”
“Are they making the drop?”
“Damn right.”
It was 5 p.m., hours before the dispensary closed but just when all the banks did. They had to be dropping the cash off in the night deposit slot.
“Why 5, do you think?” Apple Pan Dan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe a shift change?”
“Maybe it’s when the manager gets off,” Clydesdale Bob said. “I worked retail. They probably don’t trust anyone else to handle the cash. Maybe the manager drops it off before going home?”
“That makes sense,” Apple Pan Dan conceded. “Should we wait around to see if the manager returns? To confirm that theory?”
“Sure, why not,” Clydesdale Bob said, sliding his drained bottle of kombucha across the table. “Grab me another, would you?”
Clydesdale Bob glared out the window, briefly distracted by a passerby in a flowery summer dress, while Apple Pan Dan wended his way back to the counter where a bored barista leaned back, arms folded, deeply unimpressed.
Apple Pan Dan returned.
The table creaked again as he set a bottle down.
“Ginger hibiscus mint was all they had left. That okay?”
“Hell yeah,” Clydesdale Bob said. “I don’t like coffee. It makes me jittery, makes my arms shake, and ruins my buzz. And I just read this article about how kombucha is supposed to be healthy. It’s filled with antibiotics or probiotics or something like that.”
They sat in silence, staring out of the smudged window as passersby trotted past, wholly oblivious to the storefront spectators.
“If there’s probiotics and antibiotics, is there a neutral biotics?” Apple Pan Dan ventured. “Is there like a Switzerland of biotics?”
“Hold up, wait, here he comes,” Clydesdale Bob said in a hushed tone. “No wait, that’s not him.”
Neighboring Illinois had just legalized recreational pot after years of doling out medicinal marijuana. Demand was huge. The fledgling industry was pulling in $50 million a month in profits statewide. The south suburban Potter’s Glaze specialized in glazed brownies and packed them in, with lines down the street.
Clydesdale Bob, so named because of his hobby painting Budweiser Clydesdales against various bucolic backdrops of golden wheat fields and rolling green hills while high out of his skull, an enterprise that had earned him $45 so far at summer arts fairs, took note of all the activity and figured they must be pulling in thousands of dollars a day. It’d be an easy score. Most of the employees were in their late teens and early 20s, had little connection to the place, and would put up little if any resistance while being robbed.
He recruited Apple Pan Dan, so named because he used to work at Baker’s Square in Schererville, Indiana after smoking pot in the parking lot there in high school and then congregating with his friends over mozzarella sticks, buffalo wings, and slice after slice of Dutch apple pie. The job would be easy, basically just a snatch-and-grab but they still took the trouble of doing a stakeout, to minimize risk and all that.
Together, they’d take down this place after a busy Friday. They’d stuff their pockets. The dispensary would be made whole by their insurer. Everybody would be fine in the end.
Clydesdale Bob would stuff a Saturday Night Special in the ribs of the manager ferrying that day’s cash on to the bank. Apple Pan Dan would keep lookout. They’d split the proceeds down the middle.
After the robbery in the alley, Clydesdale Bob rifled through the haul. He counted $420 in cash. He counted again, just to be sure.
“$420? $420,” he asked, incredulously. “That’s all you got? That’s all you have? This has to be a joke?”
“Look… look…”
“$420 that doesn’t event make sense. This is too staged. This had to be a frame-up.”
Clydesdale Bob whirled around and pumped three shots through a department store window, exploding the head of a mannequin.
“What are you even on, dude?” Apple Pan Dan asked.
“Mescaline, bath salts, coke,” Clydesdale Bob said.
“Not our pot?” the manger asked meekly.
“Hell no.”
“Yelp reviewers say our edibles are quite potent.”
“Shut the hell up, nobody takes your weak-arse drugs. Give us the money and shut your mouth.”
Clydesdale Bob cocked the revolver, glaring as intently as he could.
The manager yielded.
Clydesdale Bob pulled the trigger but it jammed. He raised the pistol high above his head and started to bring it down on the manager in a fury of thunderous strikes. Hammer blow after hammer blow came down until the raw meat went limp.
After the last cough of expectorated blood, Clydesdale Bob wheeled around to get a lay of the land. Apple Pan Dan was pointing his semi-automatic pistol at some lady passing by on the street.
“Did you see anything?” Clydesdale Bob asked.
“No.”
“Let her go.”
She ran off, shuddering with fear.
Apple Pan Dan suddenly fired, exploding her skull into blood mist.
“No witnesses.”
Clydesdale Bob unleashed a cri de coeur in silence, in the cobbled solitude of this forlorn alley. Everything had gone wrong and they barely made it out ahead.
He ended up spending his half of the $420 haul on kombucha, gas, painting supplies, and gift cards for his sister who just had a baby. The next time he had to shell out for coke he was already low on cash and had to stick up a bank, a Chase in a dangerous part of town that was slated to close within the month, where all the employees could care less.