Billy headed into the bank, ball cap pulled down low over his forehead as usual. Also as usual were glasses, fake mustache, jeans, gray jacket zipped over his chin.
I moved closer and stood outside the bank. But I couldn’t wait. I followed him inside. I knew that wasn’t the plan, but I couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on. Tom wouldn’t be able to see us. His job was to wait.
I got into the bank in time to see Billy pass his note to the teller, an older woman with big hair. I edged closer so I could hear.
“Touch the silent alarm and you’re dead meat!” Billy growled at her.
She froze with fright.
“Gimme all your bills and be quick about it!”
When I saw the terrified teller reaching into her drawer, I left quickly and waited outside, holding my bag ready.
Billy came rushing out, dumped everything into my bag and took off.
A man came running out of the bank. He didn’t notice me because of all the people walking by.
“Stop thief!” he yelled.
Billy turned sharply right, into Shoppers Drug Mart. The bank man rushed in after him.
Trouble.
I hurried over to the ice-cream shop and made my handoff to Tom. He stuffed my shopping bag into his backpack and then disappeared into the crowd of shoppers, heading for the SkyTrain station.
The whole operation, from bank robbery to final handoff, took less than two minutes.
I hurried back to Shoppers Drug Mart. If the man from the bank caught Billy, we could be in real trouble. The bank man was big and athletic. I got there in time to see him leap on Billy and wrestle him to the floor. They upset a display of sunglasses, the bank man on top of Billy, yelling like crazy. I felt helpless. What could I do? I fought the urge to rush over and try to pull the bank man away from Billy.
A counter clerk, just a kid, helped the bank man to his feet. The bank man’s eyes were snapping with excitement. “He just…robbed the bank,” he panted, pointing down at Billy with a trembling finger. “Call the police.”
The store manager pushed through the gathering crowd. “What’s going on here?”
“This hoodlum just robbed the bank,” said the bank man. “Call the police.”
“Call the police,” the manager ordered the clerk.
The clerk spun away toward the phone.
Billy climbed to his feet, stunned. “I gotta go,” he said.
“You will stay right here until the police arrive,” the bank man said angrily, clamping two big hands onto Billy’s arm.
The manager, on the other side, gripped Billy’s elbow with both hands. Billy struggled, but the two men were too much for him. They led him away to the office at the back of the store. I followed at a distance, lurking by the door, pretending to check out the vitamins.
What could I do to cause a distraction so Billy could get away? Maybe knock down the vitamin display? I tested it. It was bolted to the floor.
“Sit here,” the manager said to Billy, pointing to a chair.
Billy sat, looking puzzled as he brushed his hair out of his face.
They waited.
I waited.
My heart was pounding. My mouth was dry.
A police officer finally arrived, an experienced, older man, who began by questioning the bank man. “How do you know this kid robbed your bank? Did you see him?”
“Yes, I did. Gloria—Miss Hampton—sounded the silent alarm after she handed over the cash from her station. I saw him leave the bank. I chased him— didn’t take my eyes off him for one minute—into the store here and caught him.”
The police officer took the bank man by the arm and whispered loud enough for me to hear, “But this is just a big dopey kid. Are you sure he’s the one you saw?”
“Yes, I’m sure. He was wearing a disguise, and I recognize his raincoat.”
The police officer ordered Billy to stand up.
Billy stood.
The police officer said, “How old are you, son?”
Mumble-mumble.
“Speak up.”
“Fourteen.”
The police officer turned to the bank man. “What are they feeding kids these days—dinosaur meat?” He turned back to Billy. “This man said you robbed his bank. Well? Did you rob his bank?”
Billy looked shocked. “No, sir. This man assaulted me. He is making a big mistake. The store clerk over there is a witness. Jumped on me and wrecked my back.” Billy twisted and groaned with the pain of it.
“I’m going to search you,” said the police officer. “Empty your pockets.”
Billy, bent in pain, emptied his pockets.
The police officer searched him. Then he shook his head and looked at the bank man and the store manager. “No cash. No disguise. Did you see the kid with anyone, a partner?”
I held my breath. Had the bank man seen me outside the bank with my shopping bag?
But the bank man looked bewildered. And so did the manager. One shrugged. The other shook his head. The manager said, “Sam might’ve seen something.”
“Get him in here,” growled the police officer.
The manager called the clerk in. Was this kid alone when he came into the store”?
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t see him running in. I didn’t see nothing. All I seen was this guy”—he pointed at the bank man—“jump this guy.” He pointed at Billy. “And knock over the sunglasses display.”
“You’re my witness,” Billy said to Sam. “You saw this man deliberately attack me, right?”
Sam stared up at Billy nervously. “I…I dunno.”
The police officer turned to the bank man. “How can you be sure the thief came into the store? How do you know he didn’t just keep running and get lost in the crowd?”
The bank man frowned. Before he could answer, the police officer said, “Did you lose sight of the thief at any time? Between the time he left the bank and the time it took you to get out into the mall? Did you have him out of sight, even for one second?”
The bank man said, “No, I told you. I didn’t take my eyes off him.” But he was beginning to look worried.
“Could you be mistaken? The kid here, well, you can see for yourself. He’s got no money, no disguise. Could the real thief have got away?”
The bank man said, “But…”
I had seen and heard enough. Billy would be okay. He didn’t need any help from me. I headed for the train station.
“They let me go,” Billy explained later to Tom and me in their room. “I gave them a false name and address. Then they let me go.”
I asked, “What name and address did you give?”
Billy chuckled. “Thomas Cruise, 1408 Magnolia Street.”
“I felt awful watching them question you,” I said, “and not able to help. How is your poor back? Are you still in pain?”
“Nothing wrong with my back. I just wanted to freak out the guy from the bank.”
“No more holdups,” Tom said firmly. “That’s it for me. You guys want to rob friggin’ banks, well, you go right ahead, but count me out. I quit!” He cracked his knuckles. “Thomas Cruise, Magnolia Street! Was that dumb or what? You were almost caught! And if they get you then they get us too. I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life in prison.”
Billy shrugged. “I already told you. They don’t send kids to prison.”
I said, “Stop it, you two. How much did we take this time?” I pulled the shopping bag out of Tom’s backpack, emptied it onto his bed and counted the bills. There weren’t many. “A hundred and fifty dollars.”
“One-fifty,” moaned Tom, disgusted. He snatched the bills and threw them to the floor. “All that stress and all we get is hundred and fifty friggin’ bucks!”
We always expected thousands, many thousands. In gangster movies, bank robbers were always counting huge stacks of crisp hundred dollar bills. A hundred and fifty dollars didn’t even come close. A hundred and fifty dollars, in the opinion of Tom Okada, was a joke.
>
I agreed with him, but I didn’t say anything.
“I quit!” he said again. “The whole idea is friggin’ stupid!”
“It’s not stupid!” I said. “We’re the Three Musketeers, remember?”
“The Three Musketeers is stupid and you’re friggin’ stupid too!” Tom left, slamming the door.
Later that night Tom and I were in the kitchen doing the dishes. He said angrily, “Billy talks us into it. We do whatever he says. It’s like we’re his puppets. He pulls the strings and we jump.”
“Not me,” I said. “Nobody pulls my strings. I go along with him because he’s right. It’s the only way we can ever get our hands on that kind of money.”
Tom snarled, “You look into his big blue eyes and listen to his voice and you’re lost. It’s like hypnosis. He’s charismatic, that’s what he is. Well I can resist him. It’s not a problem for me. But you, you’re…”
I didn’t listen to the rest. I didn’t need any more of Tom’s criticism. Turning my back on him, I buried my hands in the suds and scrubbed the pots hard. I finished the dishes, and I was out of there.
Billy talked to Tom. Charmed him. We were walking to the bus stop on our way to school.
Billy looped one big arm round Tom’s skinny shoulder like Tom was the best pal he ever had. “You know, Tom, a hundred and fifty bucks isn’t all that bad. It’s more lettuce than I ever saw before we started this caper.”
“Billy’s right, Tom,” I said.
Billy said, “I know it’s a small amount compared to the ten thousand we need, but we’ll get there eventually. If we keep at it. If we don’t give up.”
“Sure we will,” I said.
“But…,” said Tom.
Billy cut in. “It’s like playing in the top of the seventh and you’re a run down and the other side’s got all the bases loaded. What do you do? You don’t give up. You get in there and pitch, that’s what you do. You get in there and you pitch until you drop. It’s never over till it’s over.”
Tom said, “Yeah?”
“You’re a good buddy, Tom. The kind of buddy I’d want on my side if things ever went wrong. You’re like a brother. All I want is for us all to stay together at the Hardys’, you and Lisa and me and Nails. We’re a family, right? The only family any of us has, right?”
Tom said, “I guess…”
“I believe it’s worth fighting for. You can’t let us down.”
“Well, uh…”
“Tom?”
Tom was back with us. The Three Musketeers once more.
There’s charisma for you.
FOURTEEN
APRIL 16
Sunday afternoon brought a thin spring rain, the kind that came down like a mist and kept you indoors when you would rather be outside. Lisa had been busy all morning, painting with her watercolors and playing with Pumpkin, but now, just as I was about to join the boys for a meeting, she wanted me to play Scrabble with her.
“How come you’re always having meetings with the guys in their room? What are the meetings about? Why don’t you ever let me come?” She twisted a lock of her dark hair into a ringlet and blinked at me from behind her glasses.
“I’ll try not to be too long. We’ll play Scrabble later, okay?” I grabbed my math book.
They were waiting for me, Billy lounging on his bed and Tom working on a Sudoku puzzle on the floor. The window was open a few inches, and I could hear the whoosh and clatter of a SkyTrain on the tracks below. The noise never bothered the boys. They always slept through it. So they said.
After our last bank disaster, Billy had come up with a new idea.
That was what the meeting was all about.
“It’s a new MO,” he said and then waited for us to digest this information.
Billy likes fancy crime words. MO means modus operandi, he’d explained to us, which is police language for method of operation. Billy said that criminals usually stuck with the same MO when they committed crimes, and only ever changed their MO when it stopped working for them.
“Why do we need a new MO?” asked Tom. “Because you were caught in the drug store?”
Billy shook his head, smiling at Tom. “As I’ve said before, being caught is not important when they don’t find the loot on you. No loot, no case. No, what I’m getting at is the miserable take last time. A measly hundred and fifty bucks. Not good enough. It’ll take us years to reach our goal at this rate.”
That’s exactly what I’d been thinking. “So what’s your plan, Billy?” I asked.
Billy relaxed into his usual pose, lounging back against his headboard, hands behind his head, eyes swiveling from Tom, up to the ceiling and down to me on the beanbag near the door.
Tom put down his Sudoku and cracked his knuckles.
Billy flinched.
“So what’s the plan?” Tom asked.
“We hit harder. Instead of robbing from just one teller we rob from all of them.”
Tom and I were stunned into silence.
Tom was the first to speak. “And how do you propose to do that?”
“Simple. This is how I see it shaking down. Tom, you’re still our handoff man. You wait in your usual spot down the street. But this time Nails and I go in together a few minutes before closing time. She’s got a disguise too. As soon as we’re in disguise we go into action. I yell for the tellers to put all their money on the counter. I pretend I’ve got a gun. Nell goes along the counter with her shopping bag and scoops up all the loot. Then we both run for it. The cash and disguises go into Tom’s backpack. We all separate. SkyTrain escape as usual.”
Silence. My heart went numb. I would have to go right in there, into the bank, and scoop up the money.
“Won’t work,” Tom said after a while.
Billy’s eyebrows shot up one sixty-fourth of a centimeter. “Why not?”
“I dunno. It just seems crazy. Way riskier too, with more people in the bank knowing there’s a robbery happening. Before, only the one teller knew it was a robbery. With this new idea there’s way more chance of being caught. And I don’t like the idea of a gun.”
Billy blinked. “But there won’t be a gun.”
Crack-crack. “I know, but I don’t even like the idea of a pretend gun.”
Billy looked over at me. “What do you think, Nails?”
It was hard to think with a numb heart. “It could work, I guess,” I said after a few seconds.
Billy smiled.
I was astonished. Those words came out of my mouth? What was happening to me? Was I catching Billy’s buccaneer fever? Was I becoming addicted to excitement? Was it because I would do anything for us to stay together? Or was I just trying to please Billy?
I thought I knew the answer. I said quickly, “But I agree with Tom.”
Billy’s smile disappeared. “You do?”
“Tom’s right. It’s too risky. We could get caught. And I don’t like the idea of a gun either, even if it’s not real. What if someone in the bank has a gun and they think we have guns? Wouldn’t they shoot us? If we’re disguised, they won’t know we’re just kids. They would just shoot us, thinking I’m a disguised dwarf. Besides, I couldn’t do a thing like that, scooping up the money. I’d have a heart attack.”
Billy shrugged, disappointed. “Okay, forget about it.”
I hated letting him down.
Tom said, “I’ve got a suggestion for improving our getaway. It’s the handoffs. I think I should be waiting round a corner instead of on the same street as the bank.”
Billy mumbled, “Oh yeah?”
Tom said to Billy, “Right now, if someone sees you put the money and disguise in Nails’ shopping bag, they will watch where she goes and then see me. The whole idea of having a second handoff is so that won’t happen.”
“So what do you suggest?” Billy asked.
“That I be hidden from sight around the corner from the bank. Nails leaves the bank, walks to the end of the block, turns the corner, makes the handoff. Anyone wat
ching from the bank won’t see anything.”
“Good idea, Tom,” said Billy. “Nails?”
I thought for a second or two. “I like it, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of taking big risks for small amounts of money.”
“I say we carry on,” said Billy. “Small amounts will add up to big amounts. We’ve just gotta keep going.”
“We’ve made almost three thousand so far,” said Tom. “That’s an average of almost a thousand dollars on each holdup.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong, Tom. If you count the holdup where the teller screamed and we got a big fat zero, the average is only about—what?”
“Okay, you’re right, Nails. That would make it seven hundred for each holdup.” Tom nodded. “I forgot we did four.”
“All the more reason to try my new MO,” argued Billy. “Our average would skyrocket if we robbed two or three tellers at the same time.”
“Count me out,” said Tom.
“Me too,” I said. “Too risky. Holdups number one and three were good, over twenty-five hundred total.” I had the numbers memorized. “I say let’s continue as we are. No changes. No new MO. Just Tom’s idea, the change in the handoff.”
“Agreed,” said Tom.
Billy shrugged. “Okay.”
FIFTEEN
APRIL 17
We chose our next bank by studying the phone book and a street map.
It would be a small Bank of Hong Kong in Vancouver’s Eastside . Billy planned the holdup for Thursday the twentieth. He thought that ten minutes before three o’clock would be a good time. We skipped out of school an hour early on Monday and took the SkyTrain to check everything out. We checked the bank, front and back. We checked the layout inside. We decided where the handoffs would be made— Tom around the corner this time, away from the bank sightlines and me right outside the bank entrance, as usual.
It was a nice little bank.
The SkyTrain station was only two blocks away.
“It’s going to be a real pleasure knocking this one over,” said Billy.
Bank Job Page 6
