Chapter 23

Word had reached Stretch that his son, Alex, had been brought in for questioning. Stretch was kicking himself because he’d been lazy and stolen Alex’s plans for the marijuana truck heist and the failed chip forgery at the casino. His problem was that Alex was one of the best planners he’d ever come across, and he wasn’t saying that because Alex was his progeny.

Alex had grown up helping Stretch plan for the South Philly Crew. It wasn’t until his son was seven or eight that Stretch realized the kid was a natural. That belief crystallized when he’d planned to rob a series of ATMs in North Philly. In the old neighborhoods, ATMs were not built into walls but were standalone units outside storefronts.

His proposal called for hitting several on a Friday night by either dragging them off or, if that wasn’t practical, using explosives to crack them open to access the money.

He remembered Alex saying, clear as day, “You should sell this plan and not have our crew do it.”

Stretch had asked him why, and Alex laughed.

“Because those idiots will blow off a hand or something worse.”

Based on what Alex said, he’d convinced Sonny to sell it to a crew in North Philly.

Saturday morning, it was all over the news. People had heard explosions all night until 6:15 in the morning when the North Philly crew blew one machine outside a sports bar on North 2nd Street. The police found one of the robbers laid out with upper body trauma, and by the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead.

That was when Sonny started calling Alex their lucky charm. At first, it was a joke to make Alex feel important. But he grew into the role when he spotted flaws in plans or recommended they pass them on. He seemed to have an instinct that saved their butts on numerous occasions.

Toward the end, Stretch switched roles with Alex. He would let his son write the plan, and he would check it. So, when he found all these plans in Alex’s cloud account, he stole them.

The job where the sheriff’s deputy got caught passing counterfeit chips wasn’t Alex’s fault. Stretch had read Alex’s plan, and it was a moneymaker that would earn a crew a good income on an ongoing basis. Steve Calhoun had decided that forging lower denomination chips was a waste of time. His crew was hurting for cash, so he’d sent his guy in with 20 one-thousand-dollar chips. They didn’t know that the higher denomination chips had electronic safeguards embedded in them. When the counterfeit ones didn’t register when scanned, it was game over.

Thankfully, Steve recognized it was his error and didn’t blame Stretch. What the episode did do was bring the heat on the ex-sheriff’s organization. Stretch was sure the rest of Steve’s crew in the sheriff’s department would soon be uncovered. As a matter of fact, new deputies were being hired.

Stretch foresaw that his association with Steve Calhoun and his people was coming to an end. Nothing made that more evident than the unintended fallout. Hearing that the police had brought his son in for questioning made him regret ever working with the ex-sheriff.

It also made Stretch do something he’d avoided to this point: he’d driven to Conclave to put eyes on Alex to ensure he was okay. Stretch knew this was a considerable risk, but his actions had brought trouble to his son, and he had to know Alex was okay.

Alex entered the church basement and found a chair in the corner where he could lean back and let the food coma take him. He was amazed that he and the sheriff had been able to eat five pounds of meat between them.

He noted that he should’ve worn a baseball cap or, like Sheriff Conly, a cowboy hat because the sheriff tilted his down and was sound asleep. Without that cap in place, people thought Alex was willing to talk to them.

“What are you doing, hiding in the corner?” Decker asked as he sat down.

“I ate so much I think I know what it’s like to be pregnant.”

“I hear that’s a thing now.”

“What are you talking about?” Alex asked.

“Dudes getting pregnant.”

“Get out of here,” Alex said as he waved his hand in dismissal of the idea.

“No, really. I saw it on the news. There’s this big brouhaha about how to refer to pregnant people and how men can get preggers. It’s no longer allowed to say a woman’s ‘knocked up,’ ‘in a fix,’ or ‘out of circulation,’ as those terms can make it seem you’re objectifying them. Another no-no is to say stuff like ‘she’s in the family way’ or ‘in a delicate condition.’ Those sound like they have a disability.

“We kind of submit from a very early age to the idea that men’s perspectives are the most worth listening to, so we grow up using sexist metaphors. Consciously or not, women surrender to this terminology because it’s what’s in general use,” Decker shared.

Alex raised one eyebrow and wondered if he would start talking like this now that he was outnumbered at home. It seemed the Aldrich woman had trained Decker well.

“Good to know. But what do you call a pregnant man?” Alex asked.

“Fuck if I know. It probably has to do with what’s now described as a ‘man.’ But they were clear that men can have babies. My dad said it had to be some chick with a bad sex-change operation, but he’s old and hasn’t embraced the culture change.”

“In my case, I’m having a ‘food baby.’”

“You ate before the potluck? Are you crazy? I heard your foster mom made fried chicken again,” Decker said in disbelief.

“Sheriff Conly brought something better than bacon.”

Decker scrunched up his face and waved his hands to call a foul.

“I call bullshit.”

“He ordered five pounds of pork belly from that new place, Thai One On. Hand to God, it’s better than bacon. I have the food-baby because we ate the first five pounds in the truck before we got here. We had to get another five for the potluck.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Decker said before going off on another tangent. “The girls are all worried about you.”

“Because the cops nabbed me today?”

“Well, yeah, about that: they all think it was funny. What they’re apprehensive about is now that Kate’s out of the picture, who do you plan to date?” Decker asked.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, sir. My grandpa used to say, ‘Never wrestle with a pig because you’ll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.’”

Alex woofed out a laugh. If he ever needed proof he was on another planet in Conclave, it was sayings like this. What made it even more funny was that he had no idea why wrestling pigs was even relevant.

“Is that some kind of metaphor that I’ll be wrestling off the girls’ advances in the coming weeks?” Alex asked.

“Not if you pick the right girl,” Decker sagely advised.

“Well, don’t hold back. Who should I pick?” Alex asked.

Decker shrugged.

“They haven’t come to a consensus yet, but when they do, they’ll tell me, and then you’ll ask that girl out,” Decker said.

“This is another one of those times when the guy’s opinion no longer matters, isn’t it?” Alex asked.