Nickels

Cary’s is just past Western on Devon, down where the Indian restaurants are crowded together, and the streets are choked with empty cabs at three in the morning. You can get a shawarma parm, but you can’t get a ride. Two Franks and Nickels walk out under the dim light of a streetlamp into the howling snow.

“Fuck me.” Nickels lights a smoke, sinks deeper into his coat. He fiddles with his fedora while Two Frank—Franklin Wilbert Franklin to his ma—wraps his mind around the job.

“Get in,” Two Franks walks around the 53 Dodge. Nickels can barely open the heavy side door, crammed full of old telephone books. Cheap-ass bulletproof car.

“Fucking Lightner. I never knew.”

“Nobody knew,” Two Franks pulls out onto Devon behind a salt truck.

“We was just at Rico Bennie’s last Wednesday,” Nickels drags deep. Stares out the

window.

“Crack it, will you?”

“He’s not a bad guy.”

“We’re all bad guys,” Two Frank turns left onto Western, drives right by a cop parked under a streetlamp who watches them crawl by.

“Yeah, but Lightner. Are we sure?”

“We pulled the job. We do the job.”

“Listen, I owe him paper. Lemme pay him before we do the job.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Come on, Franks, don’t do me like that.”

“Get your head in the job. Check your gun.”

Two Franks parks around the corner from Lightner’s Essentials. They get out and stand by the car. Snow sticks to their faces.

“You check your gun?”

Nickel's pistol rattles in his hand as he wipes it clean from snow.

“My gun is good, Franks.”

Two Frank steps around the corner into a bright cube of whirling snow illuminated by Lightner’s front window. Nickels grabs his sleeve and hangs back.

“Franks, come on. This job is all squirrels. I think something stinks.”

Two Franks had enough. He turns on Nickels and walks into him, pushing him back around the corner. “You think? You think—with what, Nickels? You know why we call you Nickels? Cause you don’t make a dime—”

“Why’re you so fucking mad, Franks?”

Two Frank glares at his apprentice. Turns around and takes one step toward the door.

“Franks! Fuck! Come on, man. It’s Lightner! It’s Carl Lightner. We know him. He’s crew. We can’t just blow his brains out. I won’t do it. I won’t, Franks. It’s bullshit. Let’s go back and talk them out of it.”

Two Frank hides his pistol behind his back and swings the glass door open. He shoves Nickels through.

“Do your job, Nickels.”

Nickels skids to a stop at the counter, and there’s Lightner, Carl Lightner, with a Luger he stole off a kraut in the war. Nickels can count the veins in his nose. He knows exactly how many packs of cigarettes are on the wall. The barrel of the Luger is crisp and perfect.

“Oh,” he says, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Oh, ok.”

Lightner puts one through his eye, and Nickels falls backward into a display of Barbasol safety razors. Two Franks looks at him with his gun hanging at his side. The cop comes in.

“Guy was tryin’a rob me, Gary. I had no choice,” like it’s a script.

“Sure, looks like a robbery to me.” Two Franks grabs a pack of Chesterfields from Lightner, gives them to the cop, bulging with fifties. The cop leaves. Frank looks away from his dead friend, looks at Lightner.

Lightner says softly, “You pull the job. You do the job.”