Having got him hard, she licked his shaft and helmet, while steadying it with her right hand. She popped it in her mouth and carried on licking and sucking while her hand now stroked his balls. A few seconds later, she was swallowing spunk. After all these years together, it was only in the last couple of months Mary Lou had found she liked the taste of Frank’s sperm.
Despite the fucking horrible time with Frank Senior, his step nephew had really grown into a proper man these last couple of months. He’d somehow worked out she needed some space after it had happened and he hadn’t pushed her or tried to force her into being intimate with him until she was ready. Until the hurting had well and truly stopped inside her groin and the pain of the night had subsided inside her head.
As she stepped into the shower, she thought how she still had nightmares on a depressingly regular basis, but Frank had come through for her. Most men would have dropped her as soon as look at her, but Frank had class.
When they both left the apartment together, she kissed him full on the mouth and then said: “Have a nice day at work, hon’”
“And you, babe,” he replied quick as a flash, squeezing her ass so she felt his finger through her knickers and then he turned away and went round the corner to get his car.
With a skip in her step, Mary Lou Belle bounced to the Lansdowne bus stop, straightened her skirt and waited for the latest installment at the First Bank of Baltimore.
27
Twenty minutes later, Mary Lou sat on the bus as it trundled its way through to Lansdowne and beyond. People got on, people got off, but her mind was more focused on last night and the prospects she might have with Carter after the job was over.
Frank was a class guy but would he still be a class guy if Carter was the one holding the haul? Carter might be a gambler, but she’d know how to spend his money without him pissing it on the World Series or whatever. Especially if it was in cash because he couldn’t spend what he couldn’t hold in his hand.
The bus bounced over a hole in the road and she realized it was turning the corner just before her stop. Lucky pothole.
Off the bus and round the corner to the bank. She walked past Carter’s desk before she reached the front door and Grimble standing there with his hand hovering over his revolver and a smile on his face. But Mary Lou had seen his disdainful snarl on the periphery of her vision almost every time she visited the bank, so she knew what he really thought of her. Two-faced shit head.
She nodded at him to acknowledge his existence and sashayed her way to Carter’s desk and sat down opposite him, just like the day they’d met. He looked up and smiled, leaning back in his chair and talking like a bank official would. Somehow he thought that made their relationship respectable in the eyes of Grimble and JH. But Mary Lou knew what they thought and she kinda agreed. He was a married man clearly playing the field with one of his customers. Her one hundred dollar deposit was not worth the amount of attention she was getting from him, but the amount of time she spent naked with him, listening to his problems was more than enough justification in his mind for a few business lunches and a regular coffee date in the late afternoon.
Small talk with Carter and another in a long line of excuses to go to the bathroom. Then she stood up and headed to the staff door. Today Theresa Galtieri was on the till, so she was buzzed into the back with a smile instead of that old crone Pieck’s scowl.
Mary Lou smiled back and placed her hand on her lower belly, over her secret rose, as if to imply her tubes were hurting her. She mouthed “Thank you,” as she pushed the door open and closed the security door behind her.
◆◆◆
The bank wasn’t taking the new security arrangements very seriously because the maintenance crew had only screwed a steel plate to the back of the same door that was there before. It made the door heavier to push open, but the lock didn’t appear any more robust. And even if it was, it was still sitting in the self-same door jamb and you could still kick it in with little effort. More to the point, Frank could still kick it in with no effort at all. True for Andrew and Brian as well.
She scuttled down the hall and looked at the exit door to the parking lot. Same door, same lock: no change there. Mary Lou looked down the corridor and sneaked down the vault stairs. Here was where the real changes had been made.
The safe door was shut. Locked shut. Carter had told her it was still left open because they were keeping less cash upstairs nowadays and it was too much hassle to have two of the managers keep coming downstairs to unlock it every time a few more bucks were needed.
Then one of his comments fell into place. He’d said when JH was out at meetings he wouldn’t allow George to hold the key so everything ground to a halt. And JH came in late when he went into Baltimore for a managers’ meeting first thing.
But the flip side of this was they needed to be certain of having JH in the building on the day of the job. She’d book an appointment with him for 9.15 to be sure he’d be there. As their protocols were to slam the safe door shut in the event of emergencies Frank and the boys could deal with that problem in their own special way.
Besides which, thought Mary Lou, when they slammed the safe door shut, the horse would already have bolted into Carter’s black case.
Back up the stairs and into the bathroom to flush the cistern, be heard to wash her hands and out again and back into the lobby area. She sat down at Carter’s desk and smiled at him.
He smiled back with eyes that yearned for her, but he’d only just got in, more or less. It was only a few minutes past ten and they both knew there was no way JH would approve of him taking an early three hour lunch with Mary Lou just because she’d deposited a Benjamin.
“Would you like us to meet up for lunch?” she asked, sitting forwards on her seat with her knees together and her arms straight and her hands on the front edge of the seat, forcing her breasts together and up: a natural uplift designed to appeal to Carter’s baser nature.
“Yes I would, but I don’t know if I can,” he replied honestly, furtively darting his eyes left and right to see if he was drawing any attention from any of the seniors in the building.
“Oh,” said with mild disappointment.
“But we could grab a coffee immediately after work before I have to go home, if you like?”
“That’d be lovely. I’d like that,” she said quietly enough to draw Carter in.
“Our usual place?”
“For sure. See you there around six?”
“Definitely,” and she touched Carter gently on the arm as she got up and walked out the door, nodding at Grimble on the way out.
◆◆◆
Frank Lagotti spent most of his days doing what he enjoyed and what he did best. First, was his uncanny ability to find good people to turn money into more money. He could also calculate interest rates at an inconceivable speed and accuracy.
The other thing Lagotti was very good at was looking at naked women. Most days he was able to combine both talents, percentages in the morning, naked women in the afternoon. Most of these afternoons were spent using pictures, but occasional he would leave his auto shop in search of real flesh.
One such afternoon, Lagotti was sitting in the Kitkatt Club in downtown Baltimore, stirring a vodka lime. There was an Asian girl wearing a red G-string with her groin inches away from Lagotti’s face. He popped a twenty into the front of her G-string to catch a glimpse of her bush. Then she moved on to the next john in the front row. He smiled, admiring the curves of her ass and the roundness of her tits.
His step nephew sat next to him and Lagotti signaled to the semi-clad waitress, who stepped forward. He whispered in her ear and a beer appeared on the table beside Frank, who was staring at the Asian girl with the red G-string.
When the music stopped after fifteen minutes, the Asian girl had earned several hundred for the club owners. Lagotti held a fifty-one per cent stake after a previous owner found himself with an unpleasant debt problem caused by a mix of eightballs and mariju
ana.
When the music stopped, Lagotti and Frank could hear each other speak.
“Well, my boy.”
“All going fine, Uncle.”
“Good to hear, young man.”
“And we’ve got a full set of plans to deal with the new security arrangements.”
“That Mary Lou sure is a talent,” mused Lagotti, while Frank’s stomach flew around, a cold sense of dread near his heart. But he knew he could do nothing, could say nothing at this point in the job.
“Indeed. And now we know the most likely date too.”
“Excellent. And when will that be?”
“June 17 until we hear otherwise.”
“Until you hear otherwise?”
“Yeah, the dates for the big payroll runs aren’t finalized until the week before, but this is when the biggest haul is due in next.”
Frank used all his self-control to keep the conversation business-like, although he knew he needed his uncle at least until the money was laundered.
“I understand. I shall start to prepare for industrial level cleaning to take place mid-July... Anything else for me?”
“No, that’s all Uncle.”
“Good news. Stay if you want.”
“No, I’m good thanks. See y’all.”
Frank chugged the dregs of his beer, stood up and walked out, just as the music started and a blonde with long hair, large breasts and a cigarette got up on stage. Lagotti settled back into his chair and enjoyed the view.
Talking with Frank gave Lagotti a chance to think about Mary Lou for the first time since she walked out of his office and he hitched up his pants. Great piece of ass that girl. He couldn’t decide if he had a large dick or she had a small snatch. Either way, she was a tight fit but it felt good anyway, even though she whimpered all the way through, which put him off a bit. But not so much to knock him off his stride as he recalled.
If it took his fancy, Lagotti usually had his pick of the pussy at the Kitkatt Club, but sometimes he didn’t have time to go down there. And it didn’t matter to him where he got it as long as it wasn’t from Mrs. Lagotti, who he had ceased to find attractive twenty years ago or more.
The only reason they didn’t get divorced was because he was Catholic and she was the mother of his children. In any other circumstances, Lagotti would have had her clipped a long time ago - without giving it a moment’s thought. Mrs. Lagotti was a lucky woman. Of sorts.
The music in the room changed beat and a new girl appeared on stage: brunette in a black thong. Lagotti decided he’d bang her as soon as she got off stage because he liked the shape of her nipples.
28
JH held an extraordinary staff meeting once the dust had settled on the raising of the security status. When the bank closed at five, they all squeezed into his office, all but JH standing so everyone had room. Carter was one of the last to get in, so he found himself with his back to the door.
JH coughed slightly to clear his throat - he was never comfortable with public speaking - and droned on about how the bank’s biggest concern was that people would get hurt during an attack on the monies and other items they held in safety for their customers. Then he moved on to how there needed to be changes to their working practices and that, because there needed to be sacrifices, they were all in this together.
Carter thought how some of them would be in it together more than others. And sure enough, he was proved right.
“We will be instigating a new regime for distributions. While the days of the distributions will remain the same for the time being, their schedule is going to be altered. To reduce the opportunity for attacks, we will be concentrating all smaller payroll transfers together to make more significant payroll distributions.
“The other change is the timing of the arrival of these Pooled Deposit distributions to the satellite offices, such as ours. We are instigating a programme where we receive distributions at oh seven hundred hours.
“Naturally, this means we will start a roster for everyone to participate in the distribution receipts. There will be three of us needed each time and we will post the roster on the staff notice board. The precise dates for each distribution will be confirmed no more than seven days in advance, but they will be monthly and the prospective first date is June 16.”
And then JH kept talking for another lifetime or five minutes, all the while using the same monotone drone. As soon as he had let them go, Carter and the others went to the notice board to see if they were going to be hit with the first early rise. George had been given the task of figuring out the schedule so it was hardly a surprise his least favorite people were the first to have the honor of waking up early to make the bank a safer place. Of course, Carter’s name was there for the June drop.
Carter was far from a morning person and really could do without this intrusion into his personal life, especially as this was going to put a crimp in his weekends with Mary Lou. Fuckers.
This reflected his overall mood when, having been forced to work late to hear the bad news about the Pooled Deposit drops, he arrived back at his house with Rita and her casserole getting cold in the kitchen.
Carter found Rita sat in the dining room in front of her plate, long since emptied with just a thin film of gravy left on its surface. His plate was there, waiting for him, congealed in a beef and potato sculpture.
◆◆◆
He sat down opposite her and, before he could say anything, she barked: “You’re late.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You’ve made me sit here and eat on my own. You’ve made me waste my time cooking for you for it to go to waste.” Beat.
“Why didn’t you phone?”
Carter sighed. He really didn’t have the energy for an argument with Rita tonight. He was pissed off having to deal with the Pooled Deposit drop and her moaning at him was doing him no good at all.
“I was busy at work,” he hammered out these words, staccato and stood up realizing he hadn’t poured himself a much needed scotch yet. He could sense Rita fuming as he scuffed out of the dining room, into the living room to get to the glass and bottle and returned back to his seat.
“I find it hard to believe you couldn’t spare two precious minutes to tell me you were going to be late.”
“Well, that’s exactly the case. We were called into a meeting after hours and then I came home. It’s not like I went out partying ‘till the small hours.”
“Chance’d be a fine thing,” she snorted. Carter looked at her with steely eyes. He had no time for this shit, and besides, Rita was normally far more accepting of little things like this.
“What?”
“If you’d told me you were going to be late, I could’ve spent some more time with a friend of mine in the afternoon.”
“Friend? What friend?” Carter had always worked on the assumption Rita was at home during the day. He’d never spent a single moment of his life wondering what she did when he wasn’t in the house. Carter worked on the basis she was somehow frozen until he reanimated her by getting back into their home. An unrealistic belief if he’d ever bothered to pay attention to it.
“I have friends, bucko. Good friends I like to spend time with.”
“Where d'you go to meet your friend?” said with a sneer in his voice
“We had lunch in the Baltimore Regal Hotel just out of town. If I’d known you were going to be late, we wouldn’t have had to rush.”
“Rush? Lunch would have been over hours before I knew I was going to be late. Anyway, I wouldn’t have been able to get in touch with you if you weren’t at home.”
“Yes, we had to rush because of you,” she said, still a pile of anger at the back of her voice, but a stillness and calmness was present too. She stood up from the table. “We had to rush afterwards.” The last word was spoken slowly, clearly, drawing all the life out of it and as she uttered it, she moved one hand over her groin and mimed massaging herself, so he could see the contours of her thighs through her dress a
nd the shape of her groin.
“We had to rush because of you... Clear the dishes, boy. I’m going to bed.” And while still massaging herself, Rita floated out of the room and up the stairs. Carter heard the bedroom door slam shut.
“Bitch! She’s fucking someone else,” he thought as he took the dishes into the kitchen to soak before he did as he was bid and washed the crockery. “Who the fuck is fucking my wife?”
By the time he left the house some twenty minutes later, the cutlery was sparkly clean, he’d knocked back half a bottle of hard liquor and his anger had seeped into moroseness.
◆◆◆
Mary Lou got back to Lansdowne that evening in good time given it was her only appointment of the day. Mary Lou sat in the Dolce Caffe for about ten minutes before Carter appeared. He sat down next to her at their booth at the back and ordered a coffee with milk.
“How was your day?” she enquired.
“Same old, same old,” Carter replied, but Mary Lou sensed that wasn’t the whole story.
“Yeah...?”
“Well, the new payroll roster is being rolled out and they’re changing the drop times at our branch. Now, the money’s going to get delivered to us before the bank opens instead of during the day when there are more people around. But that doesn’t matter...” A gulp of coffee.
“... as much as I’ve been co-opted onto the roster. When there’s a Pooled Deposit I’m going to be one of the staff who take it in and get it into the safe. Once a month I’m going to have to be in at six in the morning, for Christ’s sake.”
Mary Lou let this information hang in the air. Pooled Deposit simply meant a payroll worth over half a million - this was what they’d been waiting for all these months.
The Heist Page 13
