19280428 22:10:22

19280428 22:10:22

DV-N-7644

"What've I been up to? Well just yesterday, the two of us had one hell of a time with a visit closer to downtown, ain't that right?" Pulaski used the edge of his elbow to nudge Ridgeland into his body, which caused him to rock away in his seat and required him to regain his balance.
"Yeah, we had to find a way to g-"
"We go in there, see, and the bum's sittin there playin cards with his pals and all, and I can see that there's already a decent pot already built up, so they've been there for a while and were setting up for longer."
"How much do you figure was on the table then?" Dietrich always had his attention go directly to the figures of money whenever the stories hit upon the subject. It seemed like having the facts around this aspect established helped to give him some true understanding and appreciation for all of the other details.
"Maybe a couple hundred, even. I didn't get close enough to look it over, but at a glance there seemed to be a lot of bills piled up there and not too many of them being singles, no." Pulaski took a drag from the cigar and pursed his lips to exhale the white plume in a thin cone. "Shit, woulda been nice to just take that, heh, y'know?"
"Oh man, would thata been sweet, yeah! If I was you I woulda been thinkin of ways to just call that good there and swipe my arm off the table and take that all away - woop! Ha ha! Or hell, even sit down and join in and try to win it out of them. Man, a few hundred." Dietrich licked his lips and shook his head slowly. "That's a lot to be spending on cards."
"Right. So yeah we're there and this guy -", Pulaski turned his hand with the thumb extended to the side to indicate his partner, "- goes over and tells him that we're there to collect, and then the man walks right up to him and breathes down his throat and like towers over him, he was a big guy, yeah; and he tells him to fuck off. Now, at that point, I was thinking like you were, D, I was thinking to myself, 'Fuck this guy, we otta just rush him down and grab the pot and go', but instead, he keeps cool and stands there for a minute, and then finally asks if he's won enough from the cards to pay up. That sends him into a rage and his pals had to struggle to hold him down. Kid doesn't move a muscle the whole time, and stands there like a statue until he's back in the chair."
"Right, OK." Dietrich held a new cigar in his mouth and looked down at his chest, then began to pat his chest to remind himself where he kept his lighter. After two pats on his body, Ridgeland snapped his hand down upon Pulaski's lighter, which was on the table between them, and flicked the lighter away, causing it to slide across the table with just enough force to stop from falling over as it teetered on the edge. Dietrich blinked at the table and hesitantly nodded to Ridgeland before picking it up to light his cigar.
"So we're walking away and I'm waiting for him to say what we're gonna do, because I knew that wasn't the end of it. He says nothin, he walks over to the stairway mute like he is now, and I'm followin him and waiting to see what he does. He does this trick and makes some of the plumbing between the floors sound like it gets a knock."
"A trick?"
"Yeah, D, a trick."
"What kind of a trick?"
"Eh, y'know, he just knew where to give it a tap so the sound traveled. Y'know how hollow it is between floors there, sound just carries. But yeah, that's what he does, and I heard it rattling a ways away, then he says to me 'Follow my lead' and goes to the room one floor under where we just were. He knocks on the door and this old broad answers. He says that we're both plumbers and that we were sent to do the repairs on that pipe that just made that noise. She lets us in. We're in, and the first thing he does is get upon a chair and looks around the ceiling. The woman starts to look confused, probably thinking 'what's a plumber looking on the ceiling for?', and I see that and I pull her away and ask if she could possibly get some water, and let me watch how the tap pours. We get to the kitchen and that was all he needed. He puts his blade in place, pointing up at the ceiling, and then telescopes it upwards with such force that it breaks through and shoots all the way up to the next floor - right fucking underneath where the asshole was sitting. Soon as we hear commotion upstairs, we say that we couldn't find the problem in the woman's place and get out in a hurry. We got out of the place and waited around the corner for the other guys to clear out. Then, finally then, we went back upstairs and made the collection."
"Damn! Woo that's some crazy tale there, damn boys. What the hell kind of tool you got that can shoot through solid floors?"
"Oh, it's custom made." Ridgeland said this with a polite smile that he struggled to maintain throughout the embellished recanting.