Stealing Klatzman's Diary
Kevin James Miller

Getting Klatzman's diary meant killing Klatzman and taking it off his dead body, and a whole bunch of people had tried to kill Klatzman.

Sherman and Little Tucker sat at an open-all-night donut shop. They planned jobs here. A neon sign in the window spelled "DONUTS." 

"Sherman, my faithful colleague," Little Tucker said, "Isn't there a way to get out of this job?" 

Sherman always looked sleepy, but he never took his eyes off what  interested him. "We did the bank job in Berteau's territory, didn't pay the commission." 

Sherman used to be a garbage man and Little Tucker used to teach high school. Crime didn't pay more than sanitation or education, but had more challenges.

Little Tucker looked like his name--a small, thin man with feminine features and clean. He wore a gray T-shirt, black suit coat, vanilla white sneakers, faded denim and brown leather. He had encouraged the underworld nickname of "Little Tucker" because "the Elf" sounded way too soft and cute for a professional crook. 

Sherman had the casual rough majesty of an ape. He always sat or stood with an artful slouch. His hair looked like frayed black and gray rope.

They had done the First Millennium Bank.
*
A few days after that job, a thug appeared in their apartment, a loft near the river that looked over a street of bars and antique shops. The thug had the large chest, gut and box-like build the two thieves always associated with professional wrestlers. He wore an expensive suit. 

The thug introduced himself as Snooker, said whom he worked for, and went on to describe the names and personal lives of all of Sherman and Little Tucker's relatives. No formal threats, except the last moment when Snooker said, "This has been a threat." 

"Yeah," Little Tucker said. "We picked up on that."

Little Tucker made some calls (he carried the cell phone, and stayed in touch with Sally, he and his partner's police contact), worked the streets and found out about their error. Sally had been the lover of Little Tucker, then Sherman, then both of them and then neither of them. Her brother, a drug dealer, got beaten by a cop to get a confession to two murders. Sally's brother died, the cop got away with it and Sally chose some long- term revenge. 

Berteau asked for a meeting in a neighborhood gym, a red brick building, after it closed for the day. 

Two uglies escorted Sherman and Little Tucker, inside the gym, to the pool, one of them their old friend Snooker. He had a new statement to make, that everyone present also all knew. "You're here to see Mr. Berteau."

"Thank you," Little Tucker said, trying to avoid sarcasm.

The other thug looked eighteen. The left side of his face had a dozen shiny metal studs and pins in it, plus his beige suit was too big. 

They walked through a cramped room, filled with free weight equipment.

The chlorine from the pool smelled strong. Berteau never came out of the pool. Berteau, a distinguished-looking man about sixty with a full head of steel-gray hair, had a hard, rough build. He swam and did laps.

"I control this territory. You guys did the bank and didn't give me a cut." He kicked back off the deep end.

"Sorry, sir." Little Tucker wished he had a hat to take off and hold in front of himself.

"We didn't know." Sherman took off his cowboy hat and held it in front of himself.

"Well, you know now." Berteau reached up out of the water and hung off the diving board. "How did you do the bank anyway? The media and police reports are confusing."

"We got some sort of knockout gas from an elderly manufacturer of LSD."  Little Tucker felt like he was giving a book report in primary school.  "He decided to leave the country and needed some quick cash. So we bought the gas. Sherman and I came in wearing masks, deployed the gas, spray painted the security cameras, emptied the cash drawers, left. We can get you half the haul from the bank job, in any form you want. American money, Euros, bonds...."

"Independents never understand." Berteau swam on. "I let you two pay me my cut now, you're like club members paying late fees. Then, in a month or two, any of a dozen possible guys feeds my own balls to me.  This way, I look innovative, and in charge." 

"Uh, what way, sir?" Sherman squirmed in his cowboy boots.

"To make it up, you two are going to steal Lou Klatzman's diary and give it to me."
*
So the two thieves sat in the donut shop and bought more coffee. 

Little Tucker said, "We need information!" 

They went to see Petrovich. In a converted warehouse that was now a movie theater, Petrovich, a young man, worked as a projectionist. He had a solid reputation as a source of underworld information. (He had gangster uncles.) 

The projection room the theaters owners had slapped together from old, cheap wood and then saturated with a dozen coats of black paint. A fading yellow bulb in the ceiling lit the room. The movie Petrovich showed screamed in French. 

Petrovich was skinny, but with lots of sagging, pale hairy skin. He wore black jeans and a white T-shirt, with the faded logo of a band on it. 

Sherman sat at a corner eating popcorn. 

Little Tucker listened to Petrovich as he made reel changes. 

"Lou Klatzman is a fence." The young projectionist chewed on a finger nail. 

"Know this already, Petrovich," Little Tucker said, standing, rocking back and forth on his heels.

"You don't know what kind of fence. You steal it, he'll find a buyer."  He shook an index finger to emphasize a point, a habit Little Tucker hated in anybody.

"Example."

Petrovich smiled. "A 1987 college biology textbook."

Little Tucker shrugged. "Big deal."

"With every sixth page with a detailed pornographic drawing on it, in black ink?" He looked over his shoulder at the two of them, and adjusted the movie's sound.

This made Sherman look a little less sleepy. "What?"

"Once this buyer in, get this, Finland, looked for just such an item. It had to be every sixth page. Heard Klatzman got a million for it."

Sherman sat up straight. "Where did such an item come from? Who would buy it?"

Little Tucker shook his head. "It doesn't matter. So our man, Klatzman, records his business, numerically, porno illustrated college textbooks and all, in his diary." Petrovich nodded. "Description." 

Petrovich described what the diary looked like.

Sherman had his pocket sketch book out. He knew what his partner intended and they hadn't even discussed what the big plan might be. 

Sherman held up the new drawing. "Like this?" The drawing showed a small, hardcover book with a Florida postcard taped to the front and KLATZMAN written down the left side, also on the front cover.

Petrovich nodded. "Yeah, that's it."

The boys left. They were almost to the parking lot when a beige van appeared and stopped. Doors flew open, arms pulled them inside, and off they went down the streets of the city.

The interior of the van was a glossy sky blue. That's all the two thieves could make out, because people pressed tight around them.

These people looked young, clean, athletic and sharp. Betty Sue Janger, new head of the local FBI office, sat on a little stool. A lady about forty-five, with a thin face, she wore her long, gray-streaked hair up.  She wore, just like Petrovich had, sneakers and black jeans, but these looked shiny and new. She wore a dark blue wind breaker, every snap fastened, with the stylized image of an eagle.

Ms. Janger looked at her watch. "Good evening, boys."

"We know who you are." Sherman paused, because the woman's expression seemed a battleground for two moods: anger and patience. "Ma'am."  Sherman took off his cowboy hat.

Some of the feds smirked, and some growled at Sherman's remark. 

"Well, you're a bright young man," Ms. Betty Sue Janger said. It must have  been sarcastic, but sounded sincere. 

Little Tucker decided he didn't care if forty laid behind him. People who called you "young man" but looked like they didn't have ten years lead on you were just damned annoying.

"I know who you are." She rattled off their full legal names, and then added one word. "Thieves."

Little Tucker faked concern. "There's been some sort of mistake. My colleague and I find promising pieces of art by struggling artists and sell it for them to collectors and galleries, and take a small commission."

They needed a cover to please cops and IRS agents. Art worked.

"Listen to her," said a young fed with blond crew cut. He looked at his boss. "Oh, uh, sorry for interrupting."

"You aren't, Agent Norbert," Ms. Janger said.

Little Tucker wanted to be polite. A crook who tried to be tough with cops, especially federal cops, fell out of the game. "You look like a decent, reasonable woman."

She shifted her attention to him and him alone. "I am."

"A good wife and mother." Little Tucker had no idea why he babbled like this.

"Sure." She shrugged.

"Which is what you always wanted, even when you were a little girl."  Little Tucker paused. "Right?"

"Not always." She looked far away, then brought her attention back.  "You two are crooks. I'm FBI. I can arrest you, hand you off to the next musical chair, or you two and I can play friends. Would you like to know how?"

Little Tucker indulged in a pause. "OK." 

She touched Little Tucker on the shoulder. "You can help me put Frankie Berteau away."

Sherman said, "Well, if we were criminals, how would we go about helping you with this mission of yours?"

"You're a bright young man, and I'm in the book." The smile dropped off her face. "Let them out."

She dropped them off back at their car. They watched as the beige van drove off.

Sherman looked at the departing van, then his partner, then the van, and back at his partner. "What do you think?

"I think she has some information on us." Little Tucker looked at his colleague. "Just some."

"Wwwwweeeellll, Frankie Berteau must have pissed off the wrong people to be drawing this much federal heat this soon. He's controlled this territory for, what? Three months?"

Little Tucker took out his cell phone and tapped it with an index finger. "Got a call from Sally. Berteau cut a deal with terrorists. He got them heavy firepower off the black market."

"Arabs?"

Little Tucker looked at the ground. "Americans. American terrorists, Sherman." 

"The Army of the Lost?" Sherman closed his eyes and pulled news stories out of his memory.

Little Tucker looked at him. "No. Those other guys. The Flaming White Sword."
*
In the next few weeks, Sherman and Little Tucker tracked Lou Klatzman and mulled over his movements and schedule. 

Part of Little Tucker felt sorry he had to do this job, because Lou Klatzman had lots of height, weight and baldness. Little Tucker had affection for the general idea of big fat bald men. All of his male relatives, including his father, had been (or were) big fat bald men. 

Klatzman spent lots of his time around booze. Klatzman had "liquor distributor" for IRS cover. It made honest criminals wonder why he needed to work the crooked path. The liquor distributorship dodge allowed much legal cash to flow one's way.

Klatzman went all places with his two bodyguards, identical twins. The two men were close to seven feet. They bleached their hair, and wore long orange coats.

Were Little Tucker and Sherman going to rob Klatzman at the roller rink?  Bowling alley? The planetarium? None of Klatzman's haunts seemed the right place to make a grab, and switch, for the diary.

Sherman, his cowboy boot shod feet up on a cheap coffee table, drew his and Little Tucker's ideas for the robbery and taped them up on the walls. "Do you want to sell out Frankie Berteau to Ms. Janger?"

"I think that she doesn't care, exactly, about following her rules. She didn't quite make a deal with us. She floated a possibility."

The week they were finishing planning the robbery, they got another phone call from Sally. Berteau didn't get those terrorists, the Flaming White Sword, guns. Then what? Sally told them Betty Sue Janger didn't know either but wanted to. (Janger now wore a silver locket on a gold chain and acted weird about it.)

The solid bones of a plan appeared.

Tuesday afternoons, Klatzman, barreling alongside his twin bodyguards with bleached hair and orange leather coats, went to a high stakes poker game in the back room of a hardware store. Klatzman and his men took the alley to the back door. Now about half way up the alley there hung an old brown door with a crack in it, leading to an empty store front.

Sherman checked the foot and traffic patterns around the entrance to the alley, moving his cowboy hat, which had been covering one of his drawings. He gave Little Tucker a verbal summary of the hand drawn map.

Little Tucker picked up his scribbled notes. "Cops have a foot patrol man who comes that time." He rapped his red pen against his notebook, lost in his thoughts.

They looked at each other and smiled.

"The Cop And The Robber," they said together.
*
Next Tuesday afternoon, Little Tucker got the foot patrol cop from behind. Nothing permanent. Knocked him on the head, and dragged him away. Tied him up and gagged him.

Klatzman, the hot afternoon sunlight gleaming off his bald head and his twin bodyguards (almost running to keep up with their boss, pulling their orange leather coats tighter) came out the hardware store and started up the concrete alley.

A pistol in each hand, Sherman appeared at the end of the alley. Sherman had replaced his usual cowboy gear with black shoes, black pants, shirt, long coat and big hat, black scarf covering his face. He shot down the two bodyguards as they reached into their long orange leather coats, and then started shooting at Klatzman, missing by inches. Sherman had lots of spare ammo. Klatzman took cover behind a garbage dumpster and had his piece out and engaged in a fire fight with Sherman.

Klatzman cracked off more than a dozen shots toward Sherman, popped the spent ammo clip out, bouncing it off the alley wall as he slammed a new clip in. Then he rationed out his shots.

Little Tucker rushed to Klatzman's "help." Little Tucker's disguise, besides the cop uniform (from the back of a closet, for jobs like this one) made him look like a tall blond guy with a mustache and 1970's sideburns. The two of them took cover behind the dumpster.

"Are you OK?"

"That bastard down there is trying to kill me!"

"He's killed your two friends!"

Klatzman shrugged. "That also."

Little Tucker had the radio in his hand as Sherman and Klatzman continued to blast away at each other. "Request immediate backup at 2159 East Lang Street! " He described the whole situation, the working radio tuned to a real police dispatcher.

The dispatcher acknowledged over the radio speaker and Little Tucker, fake cop, turned off the walkie-talkie as the dispatcher started to ask for more information.

Little Tucker had his pistol out. He threw a few shots down the alley to make it all look good.

"This man might be a lot more than just a mugger, sir."

Klatzman took out his diary. "The bastard probably wants this."

Little Tucker took the book with the Florida postcard and KLATZMAN on the cover. He looked at it, front and back cover, and spine, but didn't open the book. Little Tucker scratched his head. "All this just for this book?" 

Klatzman got distracted, long enough by Sherman's shooting, not to be looking at Little Tucker for a moment. Then he looked back over his shoulder and demanded his book back. "Those are my business records," he added.

"Sorry, sir." Little Tucker gave the copy back, having switched it for the original.

Sirens in the distance, and Sherman disappeared.

"You wait here, sir." 

Sherman disappeared by the time the police patrol unit, red lights spinning on top, slammed to a halt at the end of the alley. Little Tucker ran toward the street.

He ducked into the door to the empty storefront, and made his way to the rendezvous point, leaving the cops, the real cops, to sort things out.

Little Tucker made phone calls to Ms. Betty Sue Janger and Frankie Berteau.

Sherman set up the actual logistics for phase two, making sure he wiped the book clean of their fingerprints.

He came back to the apartment. Little Tucker got off the cell phone again with Sally. Police detectives who had worked kidnaping cases had been sniffing around Klatzman's and Berteau's lives.

Kidnaping? Who did Klatzman and Berteau snatch?

Klatzman's diary rested in a safety deposit box at First Millennium Bank.

"Why didn't you two just bring the diary?" Berteau demanded when Little Tucker and Sherman went to see him again, again doing laps in that pool.  In his red swimsuit, the crime boss looked like a comic book super hero who lost his cape.

Sherman said, "Because special items like this, Mr. Berteau sir, the receiving party often likes to take the merchandise and then wrap up loose ends. None of us are going to try to hurt each other in a bank."

"Shit. I got to go into a stupid bank." He dog paddled over to them and scowled. "That breaks my rule about my accountant doing all the details involving money. In business, you have to have rules. Okay. Fine. All this gets you guys is clear with me for doing that robbery and not getting me a cut."

Near the safety deposit vault, beyond a door, ran a corridor and small rooms where safety deposit box owners, could, in privacy, go through their safety deposit boxes, putting in and taking out what they needed.  In one of these little rooms, Berteau and his bodyguards (Snooker and the kid with all the metal on half his face) and Sherman and Little Tucker stood around a table.

Five people and a table were a tight fit in that room. Light shone down from above the ceiling. Air conditioning hummed. Snooker looked like he needed drinks. The kid with metal in half his face smelled like he had objections to deodorant.

Sherman put the box on the table.

Snooker said, "The boss will now look at the object in question." Why didn't this guy just pass out programs?

Berteau wore a black and gray ensemble, with blue silk tie with large, faint blue polka dots on it, and he wore glasses with thin metal frames, shiny and yellow like gold.

Berteau opened the box and took out Klatzman's diary.

Little Tucker got a cell phone call. After the conversation, he told everyone that his and Sherman's police department contact said the cops had a warrant for their apartment. They had incriminating items to remove!

Sherman and Little Tucker walked through the bank lobby, toward the street exit. Betty Sue Janger put her tiny black and green cell phone away. Around her neck, she wore that locket Sally mentioned. It went well with the white blouse she wore with the lace collar and sleeves, and the large navy blue suit coat. She combed her gray streaked hair straight back, plastered down with hair spray, making her face look thinner than last time.

"Now why did I just call you, as you asked me?"

Sherman said, "So we're not in the way when you arrest Frankie Berteau for possessing an object from an armed robbery a few days ago--Lou Klatzman's diary."

"Deposit box privacy room three," Little Tucker added.

Ms. Janger smiled, and went to the BOX OWNER PRIVACY ROOMS door, taking out her FBI identification and pistol.

The two thieves stepped outside. Petrovich appeared, gun in hand and over coat over gun, with an eighth of an inch of barrel showing. The projectionist wore a gray suit coat and pink silk tie. His lose, pale flesh on his young face didn't help the look of knowing sophistication he tried to pull off.

Sherman said, "That's a new look for you isn't it, Petrovich?"

"Let me guess," Little Tucker said. "You were Berteau's back up just in case."

Petrovich said, "Go back into the bank."

Under the persuasive power of Petrovich's gun, they walked back into the bank, wearing wide smiles of stiff insincerity.

Back in deposit box privacy room three, Berteau played generous host.  Betty Sue Janger still had her pistol out and held it level. "These are the two gentlemen I told you about. I am a legitimate independent consultant to securities and investment firms. I wanted to invest into gallery art. These two represented themselves to me as legitimate art dealers. They said the book is sketches of an artist I want to invest in. However, it seems a record of activity by some criminal named Lou Klatzman."

Janger turned to the two thieves. "What do you two have to say?"

Little Tucker said, "You won't find our fingerprints on it."

Ms. Janger cell phone rang. She took out her phone and answered it.  "Janger. Go ahead.... Are you sure? OK. Stay there. I might need the team in a moment." She put the phone away. 

"The Army of the Lost assassinated Lou Klatzman three hours ago." The criminals in the room looked at each other. "I'm sure you're all wondering why a left-wing terrorist group would kill a fence. Oh wait.  You're all law-abiding citizens and you don't know Lou Klatzman was a fence. Right?"

Berteau said, "My lawyers and I will be happy to explain."

Agent Norbert came in. 

"Uh, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

Ms. Janger said, "What is it?"

"I finally got a straight answer from the Ant-Terrorism Unit," Agent Norbert said.

"So?"

Agent Norbert looked at Berteau and his bodyguards. "Our colleagues allege that, per the request of the Flaming White Sword, Mr. Berteau and his men kidnaped an African-American, a Hispanic, a Lesbian, a Muslim and a Jew, sold them to Lou Klatzman, and Klatzman sold them to the Flaming White Sword, who tortured them to death."

It got quiet.

Ms. Janger took off the necklace and opened the locket. Inside were two photographs of a pretty redheaded woman. She showed it to Agent Norbert. "Is this one of the people they killed?" She held her breath.

Agent Norbert looked right into her eyes and hesitated. "Yes."

She breathed again, and gave the locket to Agent Norbert. "Keep that for me for now."

"'Not always,'" Sherman said, echoing the conversation in the van, pushing back his cowboy hat.

"Not what you always wanted, Ms. Janger," Little Tucker added, starting to rock back and forth on his heels in tiny movements.

Agent Norbert pocketed the locket.

Berteau flicked a speck of dirt off his golden framed glasses. "If everyone is finished framing me and making outrageous accusations, my associates and I would like to leave."

Ms. Janger's grey streaked hair gleamed. "You aren't going anywhere."

Berteau made a tight little grim. His small teeth were very white. "You have nothing to hold me on."

The lace at the FBI station's chief collar and sleeves bristled. "This is isn't about the law anymore." 

Agent Norbert's blond crew cut looked sweaty. "Uh, Ms. Janger."

"Be quiet, Agent Norbert," she replied.

Not in a bank, Little Tucker thought. My list of places where I don't have to worry about my safety is too small already.

Sherman thought, Little Tucker and I must get out of the city. Berteau will want our skins. Might be a good idea to see about leaving the country?

Ms. Janger said, "I'm going to ignore that little pipsqueak covering the two thieves with the little girl's gun."

Petrovich said, "Hey!"

"Then I'm going to kill your two thugs, then you, Mr. Berteau."

Berteau laughed.

Which Ms. Janger took in stride. "Why are you laughing, little boy?"

Berteau, surprised by the "little boy" crack, stayed with the matter at hand. "Because you're a federal cop."

"You're something worse than a criminal," Ms. Janger replied. "You service the needs of monsters."

Berteau smirked. "Isn't that just a little too politically correct?"

Janger, who had been holding her gun level all this time, let it dangle at her side. "You want to spend your last moments of life ridiculing me? I'm your executioner. Interesting tactic."

Berteau's bodyguards began to reach into their coats. "No, you morons!  You draw first she can fake self defense!"

Ms. Janger said, "You're a lousy conversationalist. Better a corpse."

Janger snapped her Glock 17 up and Agent Norbert yanked out his, and Snooker and the kid with all the metal in half his face started to take out Beretta 92s, and Snooker's enormous gut and chest seemed to roll right off his body, and Berteau pulled out his Beretta 92 one second faster than his men, and the two thieves dived toward the floor together, and while they were doing that the shooting started, and by the time the thieves got to the floor to cower, the eliminated Snooker and the kid with all the metal in half his face, now corpses, part of their skulls gone, hit the floor with Sherman and Little Tucker, along with Petrovich, who never fired, just collapsed into a ball and pissed in his pants, and two seconds into the shooting, cowering on the floor, pressed up against two dead men, and a fellow coward, who at least had a gun, the two got glimpses of running and scrambling, intense but not going very far in the cramped room, and the flashing of gunshots, and the stench of gunpowder, and the stupid animal banging and booming of the weapons, and the two thieves half understood that Berteau must have avoided the first couple of rounds from Ms. Janger and Agent Norbert, and so the crime boss must have got off two or three or maybe five shots, and then he got shot eight or nine or ten times and how many rounds does a Glock 17 hold again oh isn't this bastard dead yet, and finally Berteau took a hint and died.

When they heard five seconds of silence, the two thieves let out breaths they didn't know they were holding. 

On the floor, they took their hands away from their eyes. The three slaughtered gangsters, and the gore that dripped away from them, piled up in one corner of the room. Together, Little Tucker and Sherman rolled the whimpering Petrovich, who still hadn't fired and still had his coat over his gun, off themselves, and stood up into a lingering cloud of gun smoke.

Uniformed bank security appeared at the door, large men in black uniforms. Ms. Janger flashed her ID. "FBI station chief! No one in this room until I say so!" The bank guys disappeared.

Ms. Janger looked at the thieves. "As far as you two are concerned, this never happened. You were never here."

Little Tucker said, "Are you sure you wouldn't want to shoot us also and cover that up as well?"

"You two just got thrown a bone. Take it and leave town. I want what happened in this room always to be a little fuzzy."
*
Later, as they packed, to leave town, Sherman said, "I thought we could plan for everything."

Little Tucker finished packing a suitcase. He sat on in it. "I guess that's just about it. Oh yeah, I almost forgot." He took out a piece of bluish white paper and tossed it over to Sherman. Sherman looked at it. "Another goodie from Sally. Copy of the autopsy report on one of Berteau's thugs."

"Snooker?"

"No. The kid with all the metal in half his face. He had partly digested paper in his stomach."

"So Berteau had him eat the part of the diary with the kidnappings recorded on it after we left the room and before Ms. Janger walked in," Sherman said.

Little Tucker shrugged. "I'm trying to decide how much she suspected, about what Berteau and Klatzman did."

"Bet she still doesn't think she's a criminal. Even after what she did in that room."

"No," Little Tucker disagreed. "She knows she's one of us now. Even if she never does anything illegal again. Guys like Berteau and Klatzman know that jokers like you and I will do anything to win. People like Ms. Janger are supposed to be by the book and steady as a rock. Anybody can be pushed too far, even people who are supposed to hold everything together."

"God help the Flaming White Sword, for whoever tracks them down."

"Partner, they are totally, completely worthless shits."

"I know. God help them anyway."

Kevin James Miller's <mailto:kjamesmiller@juno.com> stories have appeared in Alchemie, AntipodeanSF, McCann's Planet Magazine, The Door to Worlds Imagined, Morella, Curiosity's Escape, The Cafe Irreal, Shadow Voices and The Dream People. He has worked as a factory worker, carnival ride operator, petting zoo guide, movie house usher and door-to-door salesman. Currently, he's a college English teacher. He dreams in color, adores cats and would like to marry a good woman and escape with her to a better planet, or at least to Canada.