The
below crime fiction short story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.
"It’s Only a Job"
By Paul Davis
I
received a call at about eight that night from a detective I knew.
Nick
Grosso worked out of South Detectives and he often fed me cop gossip and tips that
I used in my crime column in the local paper.
I
didn’t pay him anything and he never asked for anything. He certainly didn’t
ask me to write about him favorably, as he liked being a low-key cop. He said
he talked to me because he considered me to be fair to cops. But I also think
he got a kick out of seeing something he told me in the newspaper.
I
met Grosso at a coffee shop in South Philadelphia later that evening. He was
standing outside the coffee shop with two coffees, and he handed me one. We
stood next to his car in the parking lot.
“This
guy won’t talk to you or anybody in the press, but it’s a good story that I
think you’ll like,” Grosso told me. "He's a Navy vet and he served on the
aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, just like you, only a lot later."
I
nodded, sipped my hot coffee and listened.
If
Donald Clarke had been an actor, he would have been type-casted as a villain’s
henchman or a cold professional killer. Perhaps a Western outlaw. He was of
average height, and he had a lean face and a lean body. His face was leathery
from the sun, as he liked being outdoors and would often go for long walks
during the afternoon with his dog, a German Shepard that he named
Duke.
When
he had been in the Navy years ago, a local wit on his ship remarked that he
looked like a farmer who just stepped off a tractor after plowing the lower
forty.
“A
mean pissed off farmer,” the wit added.
Clarke
just grinned. Despite his dark, hard looks, he was even-tempered, and he
possessed a sly sense of humor. Most everyone liked him once they got to know
him.
Clarke
was a taciturn and unassuming man, but he was also a proud man. He was proud of
having served in the U.S. Navy. And he was proud of his security job.
Clarke
worked as a night watchman at a warehouse along the Delaware River not far from
the old naval shipyard in South Philadelphia. The job didn’t pay well, but he
had health benefits and a pension.
Basically, a shy man, Clarke liked working alone at night and he liked that he could read
his history books in between his scheduled security rounds within the
warehouse. He also liked that he made it home in the morning in time to
see his wife and son before they left the house for work and for school.
His
wife Betty, a chubby and cheerful woman, was much more social than her husband.
She worked in a store, and she liked dealing with her customers. They had a
14-year-old son named Ronald who attended Catholic school. The Clarke family
lived together happily in a comfortable, modest South Philly row home.
On
his day off on Friday evenings, Clarke liked to go to a local bar and drink
with the neighborhood men he grew up with. He usually sipped his beer quietly
and listened to his friends argue about sports, politics and women. Clarke had
two beers every Friday evening. Never more and never anything harder.
On
one Friday evening, John Waverly sat on a stool at the other end of the bar from
Clarke. Waverly was known as “Jackie the Weasel,” as he had a pinched and
pointed face like a weasel, and he had a “weaselly” character to match. He
stood up and approached Clarke.
“Hey,
Don. I heard you’re the night man at a warehouse. Is that right?” Waverly
asked.
Clarke
nodded.
“They
got anything in there?”
“What
do you mean?”
You
know, like to steal. Anything good in that warehouse?”
“Get
away from me,” Clarke said in a low voice, almost a growl.
Rocco Matteo,
the bar’s owner and bartender heard the conversation and leaned over the bar
between the two men and told Waverly to leave Clarke alone.
“He
likes to drink in peace,” the big bartender said.
“Yeah,
fuck off,” Jimmy Longo, one of Clarke’s friends, said
to Waverly.
Waverly
slinked away from Clarke and his friends. Although Waverly liked to put on that
he was a tough guy, a crook that ran with a tough burglary crew, he was in fact
a coward - and true to his nickname - a weasel.
Later
that evening, Waverly sat in another bar down on Second Street in South Philly with his crew and told the crew leader,
Denny Ryan, that he had lined up a perfect score. Ryan, a genuine tough and
violent criminal, didn’t think much of Waverly and only half-listened as his
least-valued crew member prattle on.
“I
know this guy, a night watchman at a warehouse with all sorts of electronics,’
Waverly explained. “We won’t have to disable the alarms or even break in. This
guy will turn off the alarms and open the door for us. Hell, he’ll even give us
the keys to a truck we can use to haul the shit away.”
“How
much he want?” Ryan asked.
“Well,
he didn’t agree to help yet. I thought you could persuade him to be
helpful.”
Ryan
looked over at Waverly and told him to drive him to the warehouse to check it
out.
A
week later, Clarke had completed his security rounds and sat at his desk. He
poured coffee from his thermos into a cup and opened his book on Ancient Rome.
The phone rang and Clarke looked at the clock.
2
am.
He
picked up the phone.
“Is
this Don Clarke?” asked a high-pitched voice on the other line.
"Yeah,
who is this?”
“Wait.”
Another
voice, deeper, slower, and more assured, now spoke.
“Clarke,
say hello to your wife.”
“What?”
“Don,
I’m with Ronald they have guns on us. Please do as they say,” his wife blurted out.
“Listen
to you wife, Clarke.” the man said.
Clarke
willed himself to remain calm, although he was frightened for his family.
“What
do you want?”
“We
want to come visit you. We want you to turn off the alarm system. We want you
to open the door for us. We want you to give us a key to one of the trucks
there. We want you to sit quietly while we load up a truck. Do all this and you
and your family won’t be harmed.
“But
know this, we’re leaving a friend here with your wife and son. He’s a
three-time loser who says he won’t never go back to prison. If you call the
cops and they show up here, he’ll kill your wife and son and then kill himself.
You understand?”
“Yeah,
I do.”
“Good.
We will be there in about a half hour. Be waiting by the door.”
Clarke
was an armed guard. He took off his holster and placed the 9mm Glock and
holster behind a cabinet, as he didn’t want the criminals to steal the gun and
use it on anyone.
He
planned to cooperate with the crooks to save his family, but he would then
quit, as he felt he was letting down the owner of the warehouse. He knew that
some thought he was only a guard, but he took his responsibility seriously.
This was his job.
A
half-hour later, a car pulled into the lot and three men got out. One was
Waverly, the man Clarke knew from the bar as “Jackie the Weasel.” He didn’t
know the other two men.
The
driver, whose name was Bill Rourke, was a tall, burly man with dark curly hair.
The other man, another tall one, had light hair and a muscular build. This was
Denny Ryan, the leader of the burglary crew. The three men ushered Clarke back
into the warehouse.
“You
look like a tough guy. Are you a tough guy?” Ryan asked Clarke.
“No.”
“You
got a look about you. Are you a retired cop?”
“No.”
“Where
you in the Army?”
“Navy.”
“What,
like a SEAL or something?"
“No.
A Boatswain's Mate.”
“What
the fuck is that?”
“A
deck guy. Line handling, anchor detail, painting, and stuff like that. I was on
an aircraft carrier.”
“Sounds
like a shitty job.”
“Sometimes.
Sometimes not. It's called pride in service. I doubt you would
understand."
Right,
I don’t. And I don’t give a fuck. Are you going to be a hero and get outta
hand?”
“No.”
“Good.
Remember, it’s only a job. It’s not your personal belongings we're stealing, and I’m sure the
owner is insured. Do as you’re told, and you could be back with your
family.”
“OK.”
“Give
me a set of keys for a truck.”
Clarke
gave him a set of keys.
“Sit
down,” Ryan ordered.” Jackie, stay with him.”
Ryan
and Rourke grabbed a forklift and drove off towards the dock.
“If
you say anything about me, I’ll come back and kill you and your whole fucking family,
believe me,” Waverly said.
Clarke
didn’t, but he believed the others would.
Waverly
was jumpy. He paced. He sweated.
Clarke
waited for his moment.
Waverly
heard a noise and looked back at the dock. Clarke jumped up and grabbed him.
Clarke held Waverly around the neck in an Indian Stranglehold and squeezed,
cutting off Waverly’s voice and his breath. Waverly passed out in Clarke’s
arms.
Using
the knots he learned as a Boatswain's Mate in the Navy, Clarke hog-tied Waverly
and placed a rag in his mouth. Clarke took Waverly’s .38 Colt revolver and
walked slowly and softly towards the dock, where Ryan and Rourke were loading
boxes into a truck.
Clarke
walked up to them and pointed Waverly’s gun at them.
“Hold
it,” Clarke said.
“What
the fuck?” Ryan said.
Rourke
pulled his gun from his waistband and Clarke shot him center mass, just as he
had been taught so many years ago in the Navy. As Rourke fell, Ryan reached for
his gun and Clarke shot him center mass as well. Ryan slipped to the ground
next to Rourke.
Clarke
walked over towards the two prone men.
Rourke
looked like he was dead, but Ryan had a strained look on his face as he held
his hands over his chest wound where blood was oozing out. He looked up at
Clarke.
“Your
wife and kid are dead, you hear me,” Ryan said. “Had to be a fucking hero? It’s
only a job, for fuck's sake."
“Not
to me,” Clarke replied. “But a bum like you wouldn’t understand.”
After
Ryan expired alongside Rourke, Clarke left Waverly tied up and walked out of the
warehouse towards Rourke's car. He thought of calling the police, but he was
afraid that Ryan’s threat was true, so he decided that he would handle this on
his own.
In
Rourke's car, Clarke stopped in front of his row home and beeped the horn. Ryan's man inside the house peaked out of the curtain at the car in the street. It was too dark
to see who was inside the car, but he recognized Rourke's car.
Clarke
beeped the horn again repeatedly, waking most of his neighbors.
The
man in his house, a short, thin criminal named Robert Jones, came rushing out
of the house. He opened the passenger’s side door and started to get in.
“I
tied them up…”
Clarke shot him in the head.
“Waverly
died from suffocation before we got there. The dumb fuck swallowed the rag Clarke put in his mouth. Clarke told us he shot and killed
the other three idiots,” Grosso told me in the parking lot. “When push came to
shove, Clarke sure was cool under pressure."
"Navy
training," I said.
©Copyright
2021 Paul Davis.
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