Big Silence Read Free Page A

like niggers, but he had met some decent ones in jail. None of them had messed with Irwin. Irwin was big. Irwin was strong. Irwin didn’t mind fighting and didn’t seem to mind getting hurt. He had once taken a makeshift knife in the back and kept fighting the two Mexicans who had attacked him on a clean-up detail. When the fight was over, Antoine had removed the knife, wiped it clean, and stuffed it in his shoe. Irwin had stoically gone to Doc Mirron, an inmate and a veterinarian on the outside, who took care of the wound.
    Irwin’s rep had gone up. He hadn’t gone to the infirmary. He hadn’t complained, and though he should have been in pain, he was working and looking normal the next day.
    The fact that Antoine and Irwin got out on the same day made it easy for the two of them to just drift into a partnership. It was Antoine who hit on the idea of knocking off convenience stores. The clerks there were told to turn over their money, not fight back, and pray that they didn’t get killed.
    The two would enter a 7-Eleven or something late when no other customers were there. Irwin would go in first, walk over to the counter, reach over, grab the clerk and hit him, hard, not hard enough to kill him, but hard enough to break a nose or a jaw. Antoine would follow, show his junk gun, a Raven MP-25 he had picked up on the street for forty-five dollars, and tell the reeling clerk to put all the money in a bag and give it to him fast or die. Since the weapon was so small, Antoine sometimes had to fire a shot into the ceiling or through a glass refrigerator window to convince the clerk to cooperate.
    While the clerk was moving, Irwin would climb up to the video camera and rip it out. Then he would go in the back room where the tape was recording and remove the tape and stuff it in the bag in his pocket. Later, he would throw the tape away.
    It had worked eight times. The money wasn’t bad. The furnished room in Uptown wasn’t bad, though the neighborhood stunk with druggies and drunks looking for small action or trouble. The television worked fine. The two men visited their parole officers regularly, each not saying that he was rooming with a former convict, and went out on job interviews when they were told to do so. Each man had a job, but they both knew they would be fired. It was what they wanted.
    “The system is so up to its ass in paper, bodies, and bullshit,” Antoine said, “that they’re letting assholes who rape kids out in two years for good behavior. Shit, sure they behave. There ain’t any kids behind the bars. They’re not gonna send us back ’cause we can’t hold down a job.”
    That was all right with Irwin. Let Antoine do the thinking. Irwin sat in front of the television whenever he could. Now he was on his second sandwich. He had taken five from the store they had robbed that night. Irwin liked the tuna best. He always took Twinkies, Little Debbie cakes, and anything sweet and wrapped he had time to grab. He liked unwrapping the cellophane. It was like getting a present.
    “Will you turn that shit off?” Antoine said, pacing the floor behind the sofa.
    While chewing on his sandwich in one hand, Irwin reached over and pushed a button on the remote. He didn’t much care what he watched. Something that looked like it might be The X-Files came on.
    “Salt and Pepper,” Antoine said, sitting in the chair near the sofa and draping one leg over it. “Shit, can’t they come up with something halfway original? Racist bastards.”
    Irwin shrugged and watched the screen where a woman was turning into something that looked like a big white worm.
    “I’m goin’ out,” Antoine said.
    “Okay,” Irwin said as the white thing slithered behind an unsuspecting security guard in a blue uniform. The guard was sitting at a desk with a night-light reading a book. Irwin had never been able to finish a book. He didn’t think the guard was going to finish this one.
    The door closed. Antoine was gone. Irwin