by Max Austin
Johnny’s face lit up. “Does that mean you’re gonna do it?”
“We’re leaning that way,” Mick said. “We want to watch the bank tomorrow, see the coming and going. But if still looks good, we’ll do it on Monday.”
“That’s perfect,” Johnny said. “Monday’s my day off work. I won’t have to call in sick or anything.”
Mick looked in the rearview, met Bud’s eye.
“You still want to do this with us, huh?” he said to Johnny.
“If you’ll let me.”
They’d been traveling south on Wyoming, most of the stores already shut up tight for the night. Mick steered the Charger into a parking lot across the street from the bank. Pulled into a slot and killed the engine and the lights.
He turned to Johnny, found him staring at the darkened bank across the way. Streetlight glow spilled on his face.
“Here’s the deal,” Mick said. “Bud and I have a system. We’ve worked together before, and we’re comfortable with each other.”
“Sure, I understand that—”
“We’re less comfortable having you involved, but we think we’ve figured out a way to manage it. We’ll go in first, get everyone on the floor. You’ll wait outside, keeping a lookout, until we tell you to come in. Then you and I will load up the money while Bud handles crowd control.”
Johnny nodded.
“When you come in the bank, you’ll be wearing a ski mask, long sleeves, gloves. No way for anybody in there to identify you. You don’t get captured on film.”
“Sounds good—”
“And,” Bud said, “you don’t carry a gun.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because we’ve got enough to worry about, doing this job,” Mick said. “We don’t need to worry about getting shot.”
“I wouldn’t shoot you—”
“You wouldn’t mean to. But you might get excited.”
“Come on, man, I know how to handle myself.”
“You told me before, you don’t even own a gun. You’re not used to handling them. We’ve had lots of practice.”
Johnny frowned. Behind him, Bud said, “The guns are mostly for show anyway. Just to keep people in the bank from making a mistake.”
“Besides, we need you to keep your hands free,” Mick added. “For loading up all that money.”
The kid’s face creased into a smile.
Chapter 8
Mick spent Saturday morning watching the bank. He parked a block south and across the street, in the shade of a bedraggled pine. The drive-through window was busy, but only a few customers got out of their cars and went inside. He saw nothing that worried him.
After the bank closed at noon, he ate lunch at a Mexican café, then drove across town to a West Central Avenue storage unit he’d rented a year earlier under the name of Charles Franklin. The unit was one of thirty arranged in a horseshoe around a paved lot, all surrounded by a chain-link fence with razor wire coiled on top. An office with tinted windows fronted the place, but Mick drove past without stopping. No one came out to check on him as he drove to the units at the rear of the lot.
He backed the Charger up to his unit and got out of the car. He opened the unit’s padlock, then rolled up the door, letting daylight spill inside. A few boxes were stacked against one wall, but they were decoys.
The item that mattered was an Army-green footlocker against the back wall. Mick looked it over carefully. The wooden box was covered by a fine layer of dust, and its padlock appeared untouched. He opened the footlocker and made sure nothing inside—guns, disguises, masks—had been disturbed.
He pulled a black trash bag out of his pocket and popped it open, then began selecting the items he thought they’d need. He put them in the trash bag, one after another, then twisted the top closed and hefted the bag into the trunk of the Charger. Then he locked up the footlocker and the storage unit and drove home.
Mick lived in a furnished apartment in central Albuquerque, in an area where the streets were named after presidents. Only eight units in his quiet complex, mostly occupied by senior citizens. Across the street, a bare-dirt lot populated only by weeds. He had lived in number 6 for nearly a year, which meant he’d be moving again soon. He never stayed in one place for long, a habit picked up when he was a kid, bumming around the desert Southwest with his dad, a shiftless, violent drunk. The only family Mick had, and he was long dead now. Best day of his life had been when he buried the son of a bitch.
The only time Mick had kept the same address for long was four years in the New Mexico correctional system, starting when he was nineteen years old. He’d stuck up a gas station and walked outside right into the waiting arms of a state cop. The usual whirlwind followed: an armed robbery charge, his picture in the newspaper, a public defender, a judge with a chip on his shoulder. Next thing he knew, he was spending all his time fending off amorous cellmates. It wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat.
Once Mick got paroled, he’d quickly learned that life wasn’t much easier on the outside for an ex-con. Nobody would hire him, and most landlords slammed their doors in his face. After a year of trying to go straight, he hooked up with an old bandit named Art Durante, who taught him how to knock over banks. Art’s other apprentice had been a car thief named Bud Knox. Wasn’t long before Art retired and moved to Florida. Mick and Bud had been partners ever since. Fourteen years. Nearly thirty banks.
Bud was settled now, happy in the shady suburban house Linda picked in the Northeast Heights, but Mick kept on the move, restless, cautious. He’d lived in three apartments in the past five years, each in a different part of Albuquerque.
He liked the current place, with its quiet tenants and its well-tended flower beds. Inside, the furnished apartment looked almost exactly the same as it did the day he’d arrived. Mick kept personal possessions to a minimum; nothing there he couldn’t leave behind.
He carried the trash bag through the living room and set it on the floor inside the bedroom closet. Didn’t bother to look inside again. The rest could wait until Sunday night.
Chapter 9
Bud waited until his daughters were in bed on Sunday before calling Mick and giving him the all-clear. As he hung up the phone, Linda said behind him, “Are you sure about this?”
He plastered a smile on his face as he turned to her. “It’ll be fine. Try not to worry. By this time tomorrow it’ll be over, and we’ll be sitting on a nice fat retirement fund.”
She frowned. “I don’t know, Bud. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”
“Don’t say that, hon. You don’t want to jinx us.”
“You always say you don’t believe in luck, good or bad.”
“True. I believe in preparation. We’ve got everything in place. Right on schedule.”
“But why do you need to spend the night with Mick?”
“Last minute stuff. And we’ve got to be ready when the bank opens tomorrow.”
He looked past her, down the hall, to make sure one of the girls hadn’t sneaked within earshot.
“We don’t want the girls to see me putting on a disguise in the morning,” he said.
Linda frowned at him.
“I’ll call you as soon as we’re clear,” he said.
“I’ve got to see a client at nine-thirty.”
“I’ll leave a message. Try not to fret. We’ll be done before your meeting is finished.”
She nodded, but he knew she would worry until long after the heist was over. She always did.
Bud opened a coat closet near the front door and got out an overnight bag he’d packed earlier, as well as a plastic trash sack that held five folded nylon duffels he’d bought the day before.
Linda still stood watching. He gave her a kiss, then told her he’d wait for Mick outside. He turned off the exterior lights before he stepped out onto the porch.
Mick pulled up a minute later, the Charger’s engine growling. He killed the headlights, then popped the trunk so Bud could stow his stuff ba
ck there. Bud noticed that he’d disconnected the light inside the trunk. Already fully in stealth mode.
Bud slipped into the passenger seat and found Mick grinning at him, his mustache a dark slash above gleaming teeth.
“Ready to roll?”
“Always.”
Mick steered the car out of the cul-de-sac, and waited until he was away from the house before flicking on the headlights.
“Linda okay?”
“She will be,” Bud said. “You know how she is.”
They drove in silence for a while, Mick lucking onto three green lights in a row. Bud took that as a good sign.
“We took the girls up to Santa Fe yesterday,” he said. “While Linda was showing them around an art museum, I went to a sporting goods store on Cerrillos Road and bought the duffel bags.”
“Out of town is good. You paid cash?”
“Of course. They’re heavy-duty bags, designed to hold baseball bats and gloves. I had a story ready about how I was coaching Little League, but nobody asked.”
Mick wheeled the Charger around a corner, then said, “I got the stuff out of the footlocker, so we’re all set except for a van. That’s where we’re headed now. Car lot on East Central. I scoped it out earlier. You can work your magic with the Slim Jim, then we’ll park the van near my place so it’s ready in the morning.”
Bud smiled. Boosting cars, just like when he was a kid.
“I may be a little rusty. I haven’t hot-wired a car in a year.”
“You can take your time. This place doesn’t even have security cameras. Owner must be too cheap to spring for them.”
“On East Central?”
Mick shrugged. “Must have good insurance.”
Chapter 10
Monday morning, Johnny Muller was in front of his bathroom mirror, wearing the black ski mask, trying to look menacing, when he heard someone knock twice. He yanked the mask off his head and hurried to the door.
The big bank robber, Mick, was standing there when he opened up, but it took Johnny a second to recognize him. His thick mustache was gray, for one thing, some kind of powder in it to lighten it up, and his hair had gotten the same treatment. His face was much darker than before, and his skin seemed smoother.
“Is that makeup?”
“It’s a disguise. You ready?”
“Sure. Let me get my jacket.”
Johnny had spent much of the weekend contemplating how to dress. The robbers had told him he’d need to trash whatever clothes he wore to the bank. He’d decided on faded jeans, black sneakers, a long-sleeved gray sweatshirt. The beat-up denim jacket had been left behind by a former roommate.
He compared his garb to what the professional was wearing—sunglasses, a plain black baseball cap, a gray windbreaker that hung to his hips, thin leather gloves, jeans, and work boots—and decided he’d chosen well.
Mick was looking him over as Johnny shrugged into the denim jacket.
“What?”
“You didn’t get cute over the weekend and decide to get a gun?”
“No, man. All I bought was this ski mask, and I got that at a thrift store.” Johnny lifted his sweatshirt to show his bare chest. “No wire, either. Okay?”
“Put on your gloves. Don’t take ’em off until it’s all over.”
Johnny followed Mick downstairs to a white van idling at the curb. Bud was behind the wheel. As Johnny climbed into the backseat, he could see Bud also wore dark makeup and had a gray mustache pasted to his face. Same kind of black sunglasses, and a black cap over what appeared to be a gray wig. His coat was gray, too, but it was longer, a trench coat that covered his legs to the knees.
“You guys always dress alike for these jobs?”
“Throws the tellers off,” Bud said. “They get us mixed up in their minds. One tall, one short, but that’s all they remember.”
Johnny nodded. He sat with his elbows on his knees, the ski mask in his hands. It was stuffy in the van, and perspiration prickled his skin under the sweatshirt.
A blue duffel bag sat on the floorboard between the bucket seats up front. He peeked into a black plastic trash bag on the seat beside him and saw more of the nylon duffels.
“You bring those when you come in,” Mick said. “We’ll use them to carry away the money.”
Johnny nodded again. He was feeling nervous, didn’t trust his voice.
As they reached the bank, he saw the armored truck pulling out of the parking lot, headed in the other direction.
“Perfect timing.” Bud steered the van into the parking lot and pulled into a space close to the bank’s front door.
“Hey,” he said to Johnny. “See this here?”
He pointed to the steering column, and Johnny noticed for the first time that a stubby screwdriver was jammed in the ignition where a key should fit.
“Don’t touch it. I’ll leave the motor running. I don’t want to fuck around with hotwiring this van again when we come out.”
“Right.” Johnny’s voice cracked, just as he’d feared, and he cleared his throat.
“Stay where you are,” Mick said. “Watch the door. If anybody starts to come in the bank, reach up here and toot the horn to give us a heads-up. Soon as we get things squared away inside, I’ll give you a signal to come in.”
“Okay.”
Bud unzipped the duffel between the seats. Johnny gulped when he saw the guns inside. A couple of handguns and a sawed-off shotgun with a pistol grip. Bud took the shotgun and a small revolver. He put the revolver in the pocket of his trench coat and held the shotgun in his lap while his partner took the bigger pistol, a military-style semiautomatic. Mick also pulled a can of spray paint out of the duffel and gave it a good shaking. The pinging ball inside the can seemed loud in the confines of the van. He popped the black lid off the paint can and dropped it into the duffel.
He nodded to Bud, who looked back at Johnny.
“You good?”
Johnny managed to nod.
“Let’s do it.”
Chapter 11
Mick met Bud at the door of the bank. Bud had the shotgun tucked inside his trench coat. Mick held his .45-caliber Colt behind his back.
The tinted doors showed their reflections, two guys in matching clothes, sunglasses, and billed caps. Bud’s jaw was clenched. Mick noted the smile on his own face before he snatched open the door.
No customers, which was always better. The same blue-uniformed guard, Hispanic guy with a pencil-thin mustache, stood just inside the door, facing the tellers, and Bud walked past him like he wasn’t there. Bud swung the shotgun out from under his coat and racked the slide, the sound freezing everyone in place.
“Hands up!” Bud yelled. “This is a robbery!”
Before the guard could make a move, Mick stuck the barrel of the Colt into the back of his neck. Standing behind the guard, his mouth next to the man’s ear, Mick said, “You don’t want to die today.”
He yanked the revolver from the guard’s holster and gave him a shove, just as Bud was yelling for the others—two women tellers and the blond manager, who was in the vault—to come get on the floor by his feet. The guard went facedown on the floor without being asked, midway between the counter and the front door, Mick standing over him.
The women did what they were told, their manicured hands up, their mouths and eyes round with shock. The manager’s tight skirt made it difficult for her to get down on the tile floor, but she managed.
“Faces to the floor,” Mick said as he pocketed the guard’s revolver. “Close your eyes until we tell you to open them.”
He knew he couldn’t count on that. It was human nature to peek. But every second they weren’t looking at him and Bud made it that much harder to identify them later.
“We’re only here for the money,” Bud shouted. “Be smart, and you all get to go home to your families today.”
He stepped over to the teller windows and stood facing the front of the bank, so he could cover the employees and the entrance.
Mick quickly checked behind the counter, making sure no one was hiding back there. Then he went around the bank, reaching high to spray black paint on the lenses of the security cameras. He ended up back at the front door as he tucked the paint can inside his jacket.
He opened the door a crack and waved Johnny inside. He didn’t wait for the kid, but turned and crossed the room again, stepping around the prone guard.
Mick ducked inside the open vault door. Safe deposit boxes lined one wall, but they held no interest for him. The opposite wall was all steel shelves, stacked with documents and currency and canvas bags of cash. In the center of the vault stood a clear plastic box on wheels, the money cart from the casino, full of stacks of greenbacks. It had padlocks at each end of its lid, but they were hanging open. Already unlocked by the blond manager, who’d begun the daily count immediately after the box arrived. A lucky break, Mick thought, save us some time.
The kid came through the front door of the bank, ski mask in place. He carried the black trash bag full of duffels.
Johnny froze for a second as he saw the employees on the floor, Bud standing watch over them with the shotgun. Then the kid remembered what he was supposed to be doing and hurried around the counter.
When he reached the vault, he hesitated again, and Mick saw his blue eyes widen in the holes of the ski mask.
“Holy shit,” Johnny said. “Look at all that money!”
“Don’t just stare at it,” Mick growled. “Start bagging it up.”
He looked out the door of the vault once more, making sure Bud had everything under control, then he stuck the Colt in his belt and took a duffel from Johnny, who was pulling the blue nylon bags from the trash sack. The long duffels were already unzipped, and Mick held one next to a shelf and raked money off into it.
Johnny got busy with the cash in the lockbox, quickly lifting out bricks of cash and dropping them into a duffel bag on the floor.
