He was right. It wouldn’t.

The store Beastie chose to rob was located in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn. It was a liquor store on a desolate corner of Ocean Parkway and Surf Avenue. Goldstein’s Liquor was the name of the place.

“It said so on the sign over the storefront,” Beastie told some of his gangbanger friends. “Being that Goldstein’s a Jew name, I figure a Jew family runs the store. And a Jew owner has to be a long-nosed pansy scared a his own shadow, know what I mean? So I go into the store an’ try to buy a bottle of bourbon. I can tell right away the Goldsteins are a bunch a kiss-ass kikes right off the boat if ever I seen any, know what I mean? They wouldn’t sell me anythin’ ’cause they say I’m underage. I was pissed at them cocksuckers throwin’ me outta the place like they did but I felt good about the way I was checkin’ it out. Like it’s all part of the process, know what I’m sayin’?”

Beastie’s gangbanger friends liked what he was saying, agreed he had balls, and gave Beastie a bunch of high fives.

Three days later on a Thursday evening, Beastie entered Goldstein’s Liquor store at eleven twenty in the evening. He wore a bandanna tied around his nose and mouth like an outlaw out of the Wild Wild West and an Oakland Raiders baseball hat with the brim over his right ear. He held a Saturday night special in his right hand. The special was a cheap handgun that had a tendency to explode when fired, something the smart kid from Chicago or Cleveland or wherever the hell he was from didn’t know. Beastie walked into the liquor store and confronted the Goldstein family’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, Dora, standing behind the counter. Dora, the youngest of the four Goldstein siblings, was afraid of her own shadow. Only when it was an emergency did the Goldstein family let Dora work the night shift, and rarely alone.

The night of the robbery, Dora Goldstein wasn’t working and wasn’t alone. She was keeping her oldest brother, Jacob, company. Jacob Goldstein was an ex–Delta Force fighter and a veteran of the first Gulf War (something else Beastie didn’t know). Jacob was a tough cookie and quite adept at breaking necks along with knowing how to use the double-barreled shotgun that was bracketed under the store’s cash register (more facts Beastie didn’t know). Unfortunately, Jacob Goldstein was out buying a pizza at the time of the robbery.

Beastie took a hundred and ten dollars, two cartons of Marlboro Lights, and a package of Twinkies from the sobbing, cowering Dora Goldstein. Beastie loved every minute of the robbery. He felt good about the power he held over the young Jew girl. He liked the way he scared her half to death, the way he bitch-slapped her across the face for nothing and knocked her down on the floor, bloodying her nose. Man, he thought to himself, that felt good. He also liked the way he could take whatever he wanted, including her if he wanted to, the way…well…the way he owned the fucking world. Steve Beastie liked owning the fucking world.