Page 12 of Tito

“Of course.”

She opened her eyes. “Tall?”

“Compared to who?”

“Me,” she said.

Mel was tall for a girl. I was five-six, and she was at least two inches taller than me. I guessed Tito was five-ten, give or take.

“He’s taller than you.” I said. “But he’s not what I would describe as tall. He doesn’t need to be, though. He’s got an…I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like he’s got an attitude that surrounds him like a force field.”

“Oh. Wow.” She grinned. “He sounds awesome.”

“He’ll be awesome for what I need him for. After that, we’ll go our separate ways. I’m sure it’s what he wants, too. He’s not looking for a relationship. He didn’t seem the type.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Because your dad will kill you if you started dating a biker.”

I laughed out loud at the thought. I’m sure there were benefits to having a father who was a cop. In thirty years, however, I had yet to find out what they were.

4

Tito

The motorcycle club I belonged to was unconventional to say the least. In fact, the motorcycles were more of a common interest between the members than a necessity for membership. In short, we were a group of criminals. Fittingly, our club was comprised of six professional thieves, all of which had an area of expertise to offer the club.

Baker, the club president, planned the crimes we committed. He was meticulous, considered every angle, and rarely made a mistake.

Ally, the only woman in the club, was our getaway car driver. She could outdrive anyone—the police included—and never cracked under pressure.

She was in a relationship with Goose, who was the club’s weapons expert. He was as good of a sniper as any military-trained equal. Possessing the wisdom of a monk, he also acted as the club’s voice of reason.

Reno was the club’s explosives expert. His extensive special forces military training gave him two areas of expertise—tactics, and explosives.

Lastly, there was Cash. He was the six-foot-six thorn in the club’s side. Always the antagonist and rarely an asset, Cash was the club’s muscle.

The problem was that we rarely needed any muscle. We were all—Ally included—capable of taking care of ourselves. This absence of necessity for Cash’s offerings caused him to throw his weight around for no other reason than to justify his existence.

I, like the other members, took him—and his excessively large attitude—with a grain of salt.

At least I tried to.

“I say we go in guns blazing and take what we’re after,” Cash said, glancing at each of us as he spoke. “Pistol whip the prick and take his load of coins out the front door. Ramona’s a fucking ghost town, anyway. I bet they’ve got one cop. If it’s lunch time, he’ll be at the local café eating pie and drinking coffee. We’ll be long gone before he gets off his fat ass.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said snidely. “Shoot the place up in broad daylight. Pistol whip the gold trader. He’s probably sixty years old. Ideas like that are the reason you’re not in charge.”

He flipped his hair out of his eyes and glared at me. “You’re not in charge because you’re too fucking short to be taken seriously, midget. Nobody’s going to argue with gunfire. It’s an effective tool. It makes old coin collectors pay attention to our demands.”

“If you think going in there in broad daylight waving guns around isn’t an unnecessary risk, maybe you need some sense beat into you,” I said, looking him up and down. “I think I’m tall enough to do just that.”

“Stop fucking arguing,” Baker snarled. “Tito’s right, Cash. It’s an unnecessary risk.”

The job in question was presented to the club by Ally, who’d learned of it while eating with Goose at a rural restaurant. The local newspaper mentioned a gold broker who was taking bids on a coin collection that was worth in excess of five million dollars.

According to the article, the offering was a small portion of his entire collection, which, as a whole, was priceless. The complete collection was to be on display at his place of business in five weeks. It was the first public viewing of the entire collection. Soon thereafter, he was accepting bids for portions of it in pre-selected lots of coins that had been separated by demonization and variety.

The job was in Ramona, a town of 20,000 residents. Downtown Ramona hadn’t changed much in the past sixty or seventy years. Pulling off the job at the right time should be an easy task, considering some of the complex jobs we’d done in the past.

Pulling it off at the wrong time would be nothing short of a disaster.