The titillating wisp of life, while fleeting, is still something to behold.
I like to party like there is no tomorrow. And I hang out with people that are
like-minded. We inhale life to the fullest, and for us there is no other way to live.
We empty the glass. And then the bottle.
The vagaries of life have instilled in me a desire to flaunt the moment and live it.
I like girls. I always have. I like fancy clubs. I always have. I like dining in classy restaurants that serve great food and wine. I always have. I am just like my uncle.
My uncle Don is my mom’s brother. He’s the black sheep in the family. When I was younger, and he would disappear for a few months or a year or two, my family would tell me that he was in the Army and being deployed.
As I got older, I realized that he was a criminal, and he was going back and forth to jail. He was also a jack of all trades. He didn’t specialize in any type of criminal activity. He just robbed whenever he could.
I also heard he was a low-level drug dealer. And he would also work from time to time with Mr. D’Angelis, who was a loan shark, and he collected money that people owed him.
I was afraid of my uncle’s buddies.
I was fourteen when I met Sally and Patrick. Neither guy looked like nice people. And you could tell by the way they spoke and the coarse language that they used… they weren’t choir boys.
I can still vividly recall that day my mom got home from work, and she saw the three of them sitting in her kitchen and playing cards. She went berserk. She didn’t mind putting her brother up when he needed a place to live — he was her flesh and blood — but she didn’t like his friends.
I didn’t understand it at the time. I felt my mom was very rude to my uncle’s friends and they were both always very nice and respectful toward her.
As I got older, I realized that their nice demeanor was just like the mask of a clown. Behind the mask… their true personalities hid.
And don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t because my mom was afraid of my uncle’s friends. She just didn’t want them around her son. They were a bad influence.
I remember one day coming home from a party, and it was very late at night. I was a few blocks from my home, and I saw Patrick inside Mr. Carrell’s car. I hid behind a van and watched.
The car’s hood was up.
Mr. Carrell owned the butcher shop, and he drove a Lexus. Patrick drove off with the car. He stole it.
Since the arrival of my uncle and his friends, there were all kinds of strange things happening in my neighborhood. Guys with license plates from New Jersey and even Connecticut would pull up in front of a grocery store two blocks from me. They would go inside and stay a few minutes and leave without buying any groceries.
One time I saw a cop car pull up, and the cops got out, and walked over to Patrick, and he handed them a black plastic bag. Was it money? Was it drugs?
There were also a few burglaries in the neighborhood. The richer people in the neighborhood were being targeted.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was watching a football game. I just turned nineteen a few days ago.
My uncle asked, “Do you feel like going for a ride?”
“Where to?”
“New Jersey.”
I asked, “Do you know people in Jersey? Who are we going to see?”
He abruptly asked, “Do you want to go or not.”
I went. It was a nice drive. And the area we were in had really big homes. You could tell that the people that lived there were very affluent. Instead of smelling the green grass, you could smell the money.
We stopped at this one house, and my uncle pulled the car around the back. Away from the main road. The nearest home was over 2500 feet away.
We got out of the car, and he handed me a balaclava which covers your entire face and neck. People wear them in the winter to protect them from the cold weather.
I saw enough movies, where the crooks wore the same thing. Something was about to go down.
I was surprised. I wasn’t afraid.
My heart was racing. It was exciting.
My uncle gave me a sledgehammer to carry. He had wire cutters, and he quickly disabled the alarm. He easily broke the lock on the back door, and we were in.
Once inside, he knew exactly where he was going. He climbed up the stairs like he owned the place. I was tiptoeing.
We went into a bedroom, and he took down a painting. There was a wall safe behind it. He handed me his backpack.
He told me, “Fill it up with money, jewelry, and anything that looks valuable.”
I started with the bedroom that we were in and then started searching the other rooms. While I was doing that my uncle used the sledgehammer to break the sheetrock and concrete around the wall safe.
In one of the rooms, I found a jewelry box with a mirror in it. It had all kinds of jewelry.
Chains, bracelets, watches, rings. I didn’t know if it was junk jewelry or not. I would later learn how to tell the difference.
I took everything.
My uncle called me on my cellphone. He was finished.
The both of us pulled the wall safe out of the wall and carried it to the car. That was the hardest part of the job. The wall safe was heavy.
That was my first burglary. We stole almost twenty-five thousand dollars in half an hour.
My uncle gave me four thousand dollars. And while he paid me, he crowed, “I knew you were just like me. Pretty girls, fast cars, and a carefree lifestyle.”
The story will be continued in The Burglar 2
Photo by Michael G via Unsplash
Fictional stories by John Saccone 
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