by Max Austin
“Maybe we can keep Johnny out of the way until we’ve got the place under control,” Mick said. “Just use him to help with the heavy lifting.”
“You really think there’ll be that big a haul?”
Mick grinned. “A fellow can dream, can’t he?”
“Yeah. Prisons are full of dreamers.”
Chapter 4
Two hours later Mick Wyman stepped through the doors of the First State Bank branch. He was dressed as before, except he’d replaced the sunglasses with a blue L.A. Dodgers cap that partly shielded his face from the security cameras that looked down from every corner of the bank.
Mick nodded to the guard, who stood just inside the door, thumbs in his gun belt, which was weighed down by a clunky revolver. The guard looked Hispanic, maybe forty years old, a little lumpy, but not as fat and slow-looking as Johnny had implied. He wore a crisp blue uniform, a polished badge, and a carefully trimmed mustache that formed a narrow line over his lip.
“Say, who do I talk to about setting up a new account?”
The guard looked Mick up and down, then lifted his chin in the direction of a wooden desk off to the left. The unoccupied desk had a sign on it that plainly said: NEW ACCOUNTS.
“Ah. Thanks, man.”
Mick strode across the tiled lobby and flopped into a chair beside the desk. His eyes took in the wall-mounted video cameras, the tall wooden counter with two tellers—young, female, nobody who’d put up a fight—and the vault behind them. As the kid had promised, the thick steel door stood open. Mick could see shiny safe deposit boxes lining one wall of the vault.
The drive-through window was on the left side of the lobby, and a willowy teller swayed over there, counting bills while waiting for her next customer.
A blank door in the corner opened and a plump blonde emerged, straightening the snug skirt of her blue business suit. The room behind her was dark, and Mick figured it was a bathroom for the employees. Might come in handy later; he wondered if that door locked from the outside.
The blonde hurried over to him.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” She leaned across the desk to shake his hand. Her hand was damp. “I’m Jean Hutchins, the branch manager. How can I help you today?”
“I just moved to Albuquerque, and I’m thinking about opening an account.”
“Well, we’d love to have you as a customer.” She smiled broadly. “Are you settled in somewhere yet?”
“Still looking around. Do I need to find an apartment before I can get a checking account?”
“Afraid so,” she said. “We need proof of address. A lease agreement, utility bill, something like that. Are you looking in this area?”
“Yeah. Lots of apartment buildings around here.”
“We’re very convenient,” she said. “Drive-through window, and we’re open from nine to six every weekday and until noon on Saturdays.”
“Sounds good. Guess I should go find a place to live, then come back and see you.”
She smiled. “Are you moving here from California?”
“How’s that?”
“California. Your cap says ‘L.A.’ on the front.”
“Oh, yeah.” He chuckled. “Forgot I was wearing it. I lived in Los Angeles for a while, but I’m moving here from Arizona. Still a Dodgers fan, though.”
“Me, too. My dad has followed the Dodgers his whole life. I still read the box scores every day.”
Time for him to go. He didn’t know shit about baseball. He got to his feet and thanked the manager. She shook his hand again.
“Hope to see you back here real soon,” she said, beaming at him.
Mick turned away, keeping his chin down so the bill of his cap hid his face. He nodded at the guard on his way out but got nothing in return. Fucking guard was asleep with his eyes open.
The front door and the tall windows to either side of it were tinted to block out the desert sun. Mick paused and looked back as the door closed behind him. Nearly impossible to see inside. Perfect.
He walked along the strip mall sidewalk to where he’d left the Charger in front of the pet shop. A litter of black and white puppies slept piled together on a blanket in the store’s front window. Mick rapped a knuckle against the glass, but the puppies wouldn’t stir.
He climbed behind the wheel of the Charger and started the engine. While it idled, he leaned his head over so he could see the bank, down at the end of the row.
This branch reminded him of one in Phoenix that he and Bud had knocked over two years earlier. Easy in and out, minimal security. They’d made a decent haul, nearly fifteen thousand dollars. This one promised to be worth much more, if Johnny Muller was right about the casino money.
The kid had been right about this bank. Looked easy. Mick could practically see himself going through the motions—showing a gun, disarming the guard, bagging up the loot.
Now he only had to persuade Bud.
Chapter 5
Bud Knox had lunch ready when Linda got home from her job at Albuquerque Realty. Eating lunch at home was one way to economize during the housing slump, and Bud made the most of it, baking bread and making vegetable soups from scratch. With the girls in school, lunch together gave Bud and Linda a time for undisturbed conversation. Usually, that meant Bud listening to Linda complain about her boss and foreclosures and the economy. But today he intended to do the talking.
Linda bustled in a few minutes past noon. She wore black slacks and a silky blouse, and her sand-colored hair was pulled back into a long ponytail. She dumped her briefcase by the door and came to the table carrying her ever-present cell phone.
Bud had made gumbo from a recipe he’d clipped out of a magazine, and the house smelled of spicy sausage. He set steaming bowls on the table, little corn bread muffins—from a mix—on the side. Linda made the usual happy noises over his culinary exertions, then tucked into the meal. Bud waited until she was settled before he brought up the bank job.
“Mick and I went to see that kid this morning. The one I was telling you about.”
Linda frowned and set down her spoon, as if the topic had killed her appetite.
“I wore a mask,” Bud said quickly. “He never saw my face.”
“Still,” she said, “that’s taking an awful chance. What if he’s a cop?”
“Nah, he’s exactly what Mick said he was, a young man with a big dream and no idea how to accomplish it.”
“That’s where you come in?”
“Maybe. Mick’s checking the place out some more, but I have to tell you, hon, it looks pretty sweet.”
Her eyes didn’t blink as she studied him. Those brown eyes are what hooked him, thirteen years ago, when they’d first met. Linda had been waiting tables, working her way through college, and he’d become a regular customer, trying to get her attention, trying to make contact with those big brown eyes. Now he felt they could see right through him.
“You’re bored,” she said. “You need some excitement in your life, so you’re falling into this.”
“You’re describing Mick, not me.”
“You two are more alike than you care to admit,” she said.
Bud ate in silence for a minute, wondering if that were true. He and Mick had worked together a long time, longer than he and Linda had been together. He’d never lied to her about his unconventional life. It was one reason she insisted on having her own career, insurance against the day when he finally got caught.
Linda sipped her iced tea, still watching him, waiting.
“Have you looked at the bank account lately?” he said finally. “We need money.”
“We’re doing okay. And the market’s beginning to pick up. I think that house on Wellesley is about to sell.”
“That’s great, hon, but still. We could use a bunch of cash. If I don’t do this local job, then I’ll have to go out of town to do one. You know how much harder that makes things around here. Picking up the girls from school, all that.”
“It worries me, Bud. You�
�re breaking your own rules, working so close to home. You never would’ve considered that in the past.”
“It’s a onetime deal,” he said. “If the kid is right about the size of the haul, it could be enough to set us up for retirement, college for the girls, you name it.”
She turned her attention back to her meal. That was so Linda. She’d had her say. Now she was done. The rest was up to him.
“Come on, hon,” he said. “Try not to worry. I won’t do this thing unless I’m sure we’ll get away clean. I’d never do anything that could blow back on our family.”
She nodded but didn’t look at him.
Bud sighed, then spooned more gumbo into his mouth. The stew had gone cold, and it seemed bitter now.
Chapter 6
Johnny Muller kept looking at the clock on the showroom wall. The hands crept ever slower toward quitting time. No customers for the past hour, which left him with way too much time to think.
Johnny was the top salesman at Big Blast Audio, but even with his ten percent commission, he barely scraped by. His boss, an old-timer named David Herrera, raked in all the profits, drove a Cadillac, lived in a big house in the South Valley. As long as Johnny worked for someone else, he’d get the scraps and nothing more.
He wanted to open his own business, a car stereo shop that carried only high-end brands like Blaupunkt and Alpine, a prestigious shop that would run Herrera out of business. Up-to-date decor, cute babes behind the counter, Europop over the sound system. Johnny had the know-how, and he had youth and energy on his side. All he needed was a stake, enough money to get him through the first year. Then he’d be the one raking in the dough.
Faced with such success, Johnny’s father would have to get down off his high horse, stop bitching all the time about how he’d decided to skip college. Johnny had moved to Albuquerque from Dallas, trying to escape his old man’s noise, but he still caught it over the phone, his father’s Texas twang wheedling like a goddamn buzz saw. Nothing would shut him up short of a big wad of money.
It was stuffy in the store, as usual, and Johnny longed to go outside into the spring breeze. He checked the clock again. Two minutes had passed. Shit.
He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, trying to cool off. The boss always wanted him in long sleeves, covering up the tattoo on the inside of his left wrist. It was a simple tattoo, a star inside a circle, didn’t even mean anything. But Herrera thought tattoos looked trashy, and he regularly ragged Johnny about his.
As if three-quarters of the customers who came into this place didn’t have tattoos of their own. The old man had no complaints about all the cholos in their bandanas, the prison ink crawling up their necks, in here pricing the biggest speakers they could fit into their shitty cars. Long as their money was green.
Herrera came out of his office in the back, and Johnny got busy dusting off a display case of CD players. The old man bent over behind the cash register, came up with receipts, then tottered back to his office and closed the door. Probably spent the afternoon counting his money and jerking off.
Johnny tossed aside the dust rag and went to the front of the shop. He watched the traffic go by on San Mateo Boulevard, car windows reflecting the afternoon sun.
He wondered whether the robbers were scoping out the bank, his bank, as he now thought of it. What did they need to see? He wished they would take him into their confidence, explain to him about the security cameras and the guard and how the robbery would go.
Would they burst into the little bank, guns bristling, forcing everyone to the floor? Or would it be quieter than that, one of the robbers slipping a note to a teller? Johnny thought about a movie he’d seen where bandits kidnapped a bank manager’s family and forced him to open the vault. Would these guys pull something like that? He didn’t want any part of kidnapping.
Johnny was no criminal. Other than smoking a little weed occasionally, he never broke the law. He’d told the bank robbers he wanted to learn from them, trying to appeal to their egos, but really he just wanted one big score. Enough to set him up in a new life.
He turned away from the window. Rosita, the cow of a cashier, was the only other person in the showroom. She sat on a stool, flipping through a parts catalog, slowly chewing gum.
God, he couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Make a pile of dough, open his own business, give his dad the finger.
His phone tweedled inside his pocket, and he turned back to the windows. The boss didn’t like him taking personal calls at work, but Johnny was in no mood to obey the rules. He stabbed the phone with his thumb and held it up to his ear.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.” The bank robber’s voice. The tough guy with the mustache. “You free tonight?”
“Tonight? Sure. After I get off work—”
“We’ll pick you up at your place at eight.”
Click.
Johnny felt a thrill in his belly as he stuffed the phone back in his pocket. Another meeting with the robbers. They must be planning to pull the job, or they wouldn’t have called. They’d had time to check out the bank, and now they were on board.
Rosita looked up at him and a frown creased her fat face. Johnny realized he was grinning. He gave her a wink. She rolled her eyes and went back to her catalog.
He checked the clock again. Another hour here. Three hours until his meet with the robbers. He could barely wait to hear their plans for the bank.
Johnny knew he’d need to be on guard. There was still the possibility these guys would try to cut him out. Now that they knew about the bank, they didn’t need him. They pick him up tonight, after dark, seen by no one. What’s to keep them from driving him out into the desert, putting a bullet in his head?
He turned back to the windows, saw his reflection there. He wasn’t grinning anymore.
Chapter 7
Mick Wyman knocked promptly at eight. Johnny answered the door, black leather jacket in hand, ready to go.
“Invite me in,” Mick said.
“Huh? Oh, okay. Come on in.”
Mick closed the door behind him, then said, “Let me see that jacket.”
The kid looked puzzled, but he handed over the jacket and Mick went through the pockets, finding nothing but lint. He felt the jacket all over, trying to see if anything was hidden in the lining.
“What’s this about?” Johnny asked as Mick dropped the jacket onto a gray sofa that stood in the center of the room, facing a flat-screen TV.
“All right. Now you. Hands in the air.”
“You’re gonna frisk me?”
“That’s right.”
“Come on, man. You think I’m carrying a gun? I don’t even own a gun.”
Mick lifted his faded denim shirt and showed Johnny the .45 stuck in his belt.
“I’ve got one. Now put your fucking hands in the air.”
“Jesus, man. Okay.”
Johnny wore a starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, and loafers. Mick went over him carefully, feeling for wires and recording devices. Came up with nothing.
“Empty your pockets onto that coffee table.”
Shaking his head and muttering, Johnny did as he was told. Mick looked through the wallet (a hundred bucks in twenties, the usual credit cards and ID), the keys, even opened his little bone-handled penknife.
“Okay,” Mick said. “You’re clean. Get your stuff and let’s go.”
Johnny’s face was flushed, and Mick wasn’t surprised when he erupted in indignation. “I’m clean? You still think I’m a cop or something? Is this the way you always treat your partners?”
Mick stepped close to him, so they were practically nose to nose. “We’re not partners. I don’t know you. We’re about to go down to my car and talk business. I want to be sure no one else is listening.”
Johnny stuffed his wallet and keys in his pockets, still muttering under his breath.
“Let’s go,” Mick said.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
/> The Charger was around the corner, in the shadow of the apartment building, the parking lot’s darkest spot. This time the kid looked inside before he climbed in. He spoke to Bud in the backseat.
“No mask this time?”
“No need,” Bud said. “If our friend here were worried, he wouldn’t have brought you downstairs.”
As Mick slid in behind the wheel, the .45 jabbed him in the stomach. He pulled it out and passed it back to Bud.
“Hold on to that for me, will you?” he said casually.
“Sure.” Bud pointed the gun at the back of the kid’s bucket seat, ready to drill him if he made the wrong move.
Nobody said anything until the Charger was on the road, headed into town. Then Johnny, still steaming, said, “You guys don’t trust anybody, do you?”
“Nope,” Mick said.
“I brought you this job,” he reminded them. “Without me, you wouldn’t even be considering this bank.”
“That’s right,” Bud said. “So far, all we’ve done is listen to you and look around the bank. We’ve broken no laws.”
Johnny sighed and shook his head. “Man, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not a cop. I’m not a crook. I’m just a guy who noticed those armored cars.”
“But you have ambitions,” Mick said. “You want to make something of yourself.”
“That’s right. I want to start my own business.”
“I thought you wanted to be a bank robber.”
“No, man. You’ve got me wrong. I want to participate, want to make sure I get what’s coming to me. I’m up for this thing. But I’m not making a career of it. I’ll leave that to you guys.”
“Wise decision,” Bud said from the backseat. “A life of crime isn’t for most people. It wears on the nerves. Makes it hard for you to trust other people.”
“No shit,” Johnny said. “I don’t even know your names.”
“You can call me Mick. That’s Bud in the backseat.”
Johnny gave him a sour look. “Your real names.”
“They’re close enough. We’re not building a long-term relationship here, kid. We’re doing business together for a few days. After it’s done, you’d better forget you ever met us.”
