When my friend Big Dirty was 17 he worked at Wendy’s. In a lot of ways he was the closest thing to a responsible employee they had. So he was put on all the closing shifts. They ended at 1 AM. He was still in high school and would have to get up every morning after he worked and make it there. The others he worked with who were his age were drop outs. There were a few older guys, 20, 21, and a 26 year old named Joe who Dirty considered ancient. Joe didn’t ever say too much to anyone else.
It was a decent place to work sometimes. Most days they would just smoke weed and cook hamburgers.
One night there was a series of mishaps and they were late closing. Dirty was working with F and M. They didn’t get out of there until after 2AM. All of them felt tired and annoyed and were ready to go home. Dirty and the other two loaded into his truck. They were going to drive over to the bank to put the night deposit in the box. The plan was for Dirty to drop the other two guys off after that.
Every night after they closed they would take all the money, count it, put it in a plastic bag that sealed shut and toss it in the deposit box. The bank was not very far from Wendy’s. Dirty often gave the other guys rides.
He started driving. They smoked some weed. It was cold and the windows were fogged up.
Dirty pulled into the bank and rolled down the window. Smoke unfurled into the night. Dirty grabbed the bag of money and reached out the window. F started yelling and ducked down. Dirty turned around and looked at him confusedly.
“Get the fuck out of here,” F said.
“What?” Said Dirty.
“Go.”
“Shit man get the fuck out of here,” it was M in the from seat this time. He was crouched down too.
Still confused Dirty turned and looked out the windshield. Not far in front of them was a man with a long hunting riffle. He was pointing it right at the truck. He was in black head to toe and wore a mask.
Dirty’s immediate reaction was to floor it. The car hit the guy. He tumbled over it and landed behind them. Dirty kept driving. He looked behind him as the guy Limped, tried to steady himself and fired at them. Dirty kept going and another shot sounded.
They were high and out of it. They only drove about 200 feet before pulling into the parking lot of a gas station. Dirty still had the money sitting in his lap.
“For all anybody knows he got the money.”
“It was dark. No one would be able to tell even if they watched the security footage.”
“Okay, we hide the money. We call the cops and tell them the fucker stole it and when it’s all done with we split it.”
“An even 3 ways.”
“No F should get 200 you and me get 600.”
“Yeah that works,” said F without irony or bitterness.
They boys agreed. Dirty had his truck set up so he could lift the upholstery on his seat and hide things there. That’s just what he did with the bag of cash.
They went into the store. Behind the counter there was a tiny old lady. Her eyes barely reached above the register.
“Somebody tried to rob us,” M said.
“What?” She said.
“Someone tried to rob us.”
“What do you mean?”
“This guy tried to rob us ma’am. Please call the police.”
After a little while a couple cops came into the store. They ambled over to the boys slowly, casually. One grabbed a SlimJim off a shelf, pealed it open, took a bite out of it.
“Okay, he said. “Okay what’s the story?” His words came out in a long unimpressed sigh.
“well-“
“So who was it? This masked rifleman, who is this mastermind?” The cop said sarcastically.
“We don’t know we just got shot at. He-“
“Yeah, you know. Come on. You were probably in on it huh?”
“We don’t fucking know the guy.”
The cops separated them and asked them their stories. Each version lined up perfectly. After all they really had just gone to the bank, someone really had come out of the woods and shot at them. After the questions they all went back to standing in a group again.
“Yeah well hopefully for your sake this all checks out,” said the second officer.
“A little strange all that money disappearing, that money from your restaurant,” the first one said.
“I don’t know what to tell you there’s some guy with a gun down the street. You should probably go check into it,” Dirty said.
The second cop started to say something but was interrupted by his radio.
“We have shots fired,” someone said through the static.
“Turn the lights off, lock the doors. We will be right back,” cop 1 said.
They both left. The woman working there turned the lights off. She, Dirty, F, and M all crouched down. Sets of blue lights sped by and lit up the packages of chips, the bottles of soda, the walls, their faces. Another set. Another. A helicopter sounded loudly over them.
“What the hell is going on,”M said.
They were there for a long time, unsure of what was happening but thinking it was probably bad.
There was a pounding on the door. The tiny lady stood up, then stretched on her tip toes and looked over a shelf. She shuffled over and unlocked the door. Two cops, two different cops, came in. They looked much more official than the first pair, much more stern.
“Get in the car,” one said.
The boys followed them out and got in the police car. They were driven to the station where they were put in a holding cell. None of them had been searched and Dirty wondered if they would find the weed he had in his pocket or the cigarettes in his other pocket, or for that matter the bag of stolen money in the seat of his car. He was exhausted. Hours went along. Hours in a holding cell are the slowest moving.
Periodically different officers would walk by, look in the cell, say things to each other. The 3 Wendy’s boys got to talking. They figured the cops had it solved, knew they were the ones with the money. They got to thinking maybe they should get ahead of it and come clean.
After a little while a cop came and got M. Then another came and got F. By the time Dirty was escorted out of the cell and had a chance to see a clock it was past 7AM.
He was sat down. The cop let him know his statement was being recorded. Dirty told the story for maybe the fifth time that night. This time when it got to the part about the money he said he had thought the guy had grabbed the bag but there was a chance it could have fallen on the floor or gotten stuck in the seat, something like that. It had happened fast he couldn’t be sure.
“Look I don’t really give a fuck,” the cop said. “What do you know about a guy you work with named Joe?”
“Huh? Yeah I work with him. He was off tonight.”
“Okay, did he tell you he was going to try to rob you tonight?”
“No. That was him?”
Joe was a strange and quiet guy. He mostly kept to himself. He was the oldest person who worked there.
Dirty and the others got a ride back to his truck after they finished having their statements recorded. That was when Dirty, by some kind of remarapkle luck, happened to find the money. It turned out it had hid itself under the upholstery in his seat. The cop who dropped them off took it and drove away.
Dirty was excused from school that day which in some ways made the night worth it. When he woke up he walked over to the couch and turned on the TV. After yawning and flipping through the channels he found the news. A little while into watching it he saw security footage of his vehicle smashing into a man with a riffle. He watched him violently roll over the hood and tumble behind it. It cut to footage of his coworker Joe limping to his arraignment. The news caster explained that after having been hit by the truck he followed the train tracks for a mile and ended up at a gas station. He demanded all the money from the register. The guy handed over everything that was in the drawer. It was 80 dollars. Joe then aimed his riffle at the man’s stomach and pulled the trigger, shot him at close range. That was what the cops had been called about over their radio. That’s what the cars and helicopter had been going to, a gas station just down the road from them, a murder by the guy they worked with, the one who had tried robbing them moments before.
Dirty turned the channel. He never found out what happened to Joe. He guessed he probably plead guilty.
Dirty did ask his bosses at Wendy’s if he could get paid for all those hours at the police station, he had after all recovered their money. They said no to paying him but did offer him a free meal.
They next week Dirty punched out for lunch and never went back. He turned his phone off, went home, and played some Crash Bandicoot.