Slice

NORTH BUCKHEAD

“How ya like this jam, boy?” he said to John Monroe, meaning the car he'd borrowed.

“Fucker's tight. Cherry ride absolutely.” It was six-ten and there was already traffic inbound, but they were boogeying out Cypress Road.

“Boy, I can pick ‘em. Big ole Crown Vic. Shit. Be lookin’ for thirty-four hunnert.” He looked over at the dipshit next to him.

“This is, shit, 1900 ‘n somethin', Wend—uh, I mean Bo, they ain't got any numbers on the fuckin’ houses or nothin'."

“Whatjew call me?"

“Huh?"

“Jus’ now. Whatjew call me then?"

“Bo."

“Uh huh.” He gripped the wheel like he was strangling it. The voice starting out in almost a whisper, very softly, exaggerated sweet tone of voice, like to a baby, “Lissen up now, John, because iffn’ ya go an’ call me that when weuns inna house, or iffn’ ya go shoutin’ at me across the bank,” the voice changing to a column of steel sticking John in the ear like an ice pick, ‘HEY WENDALL I MEAN BO COMMERE ‘N KICK A COUPLE MORE HOLES IN MY DUMB SHITTER F'R ME.’ why, ya jes’ won't leave me no choice. Ya do understand that, doncha, John?"

“Sorry, man I won't—"

“I mean, there we'll be inna bank an’ shit I'll just draw down on ya and drop your goddamn fucking dumb ass right there in the fucker. DO YA GIT IT? Ya got to screw down your damn head, John, and concenfuckingtrate, all right?” Sorry cracker trash.

“Uh. That's the two thousand block so youuns goin’ in the right direction. Bo. I'm sorry, I won't forgit again."

“I'm sorry, I won't forgit again,” he mimicked him. “Man, ya can try a person's fucking soul with that shit. Ya GOT to git y'r shit together now."

“Okay."

“An’ don’ say NOTHING inna house or the bank. I'll do it. Ya just do what I tell ya."

“Right.” John Monroe nodded.

“Ya go in back and cut everything ya find like I tole ya. Jes’ like I showed ya yesterday with them bolt-cutters. Right?"

“Right."

“Cut ever’ fuckin’ thing. Phone lines, air-conditioner, the goddamn antenna thing, the fuckin’ copper water line. I don’ give a rat fuck what it is, CUT that sucker. Right?"

“Right."

“Then youuns come on back around real fast ‘n come right on inna door behind me. Got it?"

“Gotcha."

What a fuckin’ lamebrain. He looked over at the imbecile that bad luck had saddled him with in the joint. What a fuckin’ mistake.

“Twenty-one hundred block, Bo."

Shit, now the dumb fuck was a gonna call out the numbers of every goddamn block to him like it was the countdown f'r a fucking rocket. Well. Fine.

“Real good, pud. Jes’ keep callin’ out them numbers an’ thataway we might git lucky and not drive by the thirty-four hundred block, eh?"

Donald Fields had just looked at the clock. It was six-fifteen a.m. He missed Clara and little Bud. Usually he and Clara had coffee and chatted together in the breakfast nook while they woke up. He never saw the boy before he went to work because he got up so early, but with them at Earline's, he missed the kid's presence in the house and was glad they'd be home by the following night.

After Clara got her heart started, she'd make him another cup and fix them cereal and freshly squeezed orange juice all icy cold, and he'd read the paper until six-forty or so. He liked getting there about five-to-seven. Seven at the latest. Come in a full half-hour before anybody came to work. There'd be the maintenance man and the night guard there and he'd unlock and go on in and arrange his day.

He loved that time and always looked forward to that first half-hour when he'd be in his nice office and it'd be so quiet out front, and he'd sit there arranging the day, getting it all just so. Smooth and prepared. He was going to have to sit down with the boy this morning. “The boy” was what he called his top man. A young hotshot named Joe Gillespie. He was problems. Short-fused. Thought he was the only kid who knew anything about the banking business. He'd had an offer from that asshole at American Fed and he was pressuring Donald for a vice presidency and all the usual. Fields was chewing over in his mind how he'd handle it. He wanted to keep the boy. He was a killer in trust work.

Fields was putting his pocket items in his trousers when he heard the noise downstairs. It didn't startle him that much because he was always bearing noises in the damn house ever since they bought it two years before. There was something wrong with the dining-room lighting fixtures, big white globes that fit into metal retainers on the ceiling. About once a week, BANG, one of the globes would drop down out of the retainer, never dropping all the way out, but good Christ it always scared them to death, because when the globe would catch on the outer metal lip it sounded like glass breaking. He wondered when the damn thing would fall on them during dinner one evening. He'd looked at it a dozen times but the globes looked identical to the ones in the kitchen. He was no handyman. He could barely change the bulbs in them, and he just told Clara to call somebody and see if she could get them fixed so they wouldn't drop out, and this is the prosaic and mundane and trivial thought he could recall going through his mind as he started downstairs to make sure the glass hadn't fallen out and a tall thin vicious-looking stranger was there on the stairs with a gun pointed out at him, saying, “Youuns jes’ be sweet now an’ turn aroun'.” As though in a dream he held his hands up just the way they do on TV and turned and felt one of his hands being pulled back and something going tight around him. Then the other hand went back and—OUCH—it was tight. He heard the door slam. Someone else was coming in. He thought, OH GOD, a whole gang of them, coming in to rob and assault and kill him, and thank God Clara was gone. The other one telling him not to move or try anything and was racing around him and up the stairs. Footsteps were coming up behind him, and a stench, and he heard another voice snarl as it pulled him back down the stairs,

“Yessireesir. Git y'r faggot ass down them stairs, ya’ lily-white pussy boy. Ya’ don’ wanna make me HURT ya,” and on the word “HURT” he felt all the wind shoot out of him and he was down on the carpet with an intense and awful pain in his kidneys and he could feel tears of anger about to well up in his eyes and fear as he wondered what these madmen wanted. If he could just get to the alarm in the front hall, he thought, but he was on his face with his hands behind him, and doors were slamming and he heard the tall, thin man saying to another one, “Pull the car up to the door. Go on.” And he was being rolled and something heavy and bad-smelling was around him and he realized he was being rolled up in a throw rug. Why were they doing this? And then doors slammed and he was lifted up from the floor, and he said, “Please just tell me what you want,” and one of them snarled a response, but he couldn't hear it through the rug. Then he was afraid he was going to suffocate, he was being crammed into something tight and he couldn't breathe and he thought he was being kidnapped and these insane men were going to make Clara pay to get him alive and he never connected it with the bank until several minutes later when the car stopped and they took him out in an open field and explained to him what it was they wanted.

“Now youuns lissen up real good, heah?"

Fields nodded. His hands were bound but he was otherwise unhurt. He wondered how far he'd get if he tried to kick the one in the groin and run. Just take off running into the nearby trees.

“We gonna untie ya, and weuns gonna all go downta the bank. An’ ya'll gonna go in and get me a lotta money, unnerstan'? ‘N iffn’ ya fuck us over we'll drop you right there like a DEAD ROACH, ya git it?"

“Yes.” He nodded that he comprehended.

“We gonna go now."

“Uh, sir?"

“Eh?"

“The time lock doesn't disengage until seven a.m. I can't get you any money until seven."

“What the—” the one named Monroe started to say. “Hold it, shaddup, what the fuck ya’ talkin’ about time lock?"

Donald Fields explained to them about the overnight procedures, how all monies were locked up in a vault with the time lock as a safety precaution.

“And we can't open the vault before seven.” It wasn't true, but he thought it might buy him time.

“Shit, that ain't no problem. It's almos’ seven now anyway, shithead. We gon’ innair, and jus’ waltz on inna that vault with ya, and you gon’ git us alla money ya can carry in sixty seconds. ‘At's alla time ya got. At sixty one seconds I start pullin’ the trigger.” He fired a round into the dirt beside Fields’ feet. It sounded like an eight-inch naval gun going off. Donald Fields wondered if he'd make it through the day alive and in one piece.

“How many people's innair at seven?"

“Just the night security man and the maintenance man most of the time. Then people start showing up a little after seven. It varies."

“Fuck it. Les’ go.” They got in the front seat. The tall, thin one in the driver's seat, the other one on the passenger side, with Fields between them, his hands still bound. He thought about how to signal to a cop if he saw one; how to pantomime the word HELP with his mouth. It might be worth a try.

They pulled up on the east side of the bank at one minute before seven and the driver untied him. Fields tried to rub the circulation back into his hands and arms. His confidence was returning. He thought about what he could do. Weighed his options. The driver had been asking about his wife, wondering why he had been alone in the house. He was expert at sizing a man up and these were stupid men. He could outthink them if they gave him half a chance.

Then they were all getting out of the car. He'd been instructed on what to say and do inside. The vicious one was going to go with him into the vault. The stupid one would watch the guard and janitor. Nothing about alarms, cameras. They weren't professional bank robbers. He doubted if they were professional anythings, these hillbilly jerks.

He unlocked the east door of the bank as he'd done four or five thousand times before, but he was shaking so badly he could hardly fit the key into the lock. They came in behind him and he threw the main lights on, the way he always did, and as he hit the switch he felt a pistol jammed against his spine,

“I'm just turning the lights on.” They walked on into the main part of the bank, coming in the east door, and Fred was mopping and said, “G'morning,” like always and the stupid one motioned at him with the gun and a finger over his mouth in the shut-up sign, and the janitor dropped his mop and raised his hands just the way Fields had, only he said, “Oh, please, don't—"

“SHUT CHUR FACE” the vicious one snarled at him in a stage whisper, poking Donald Fields in the spine again for emphasis, and they all walked across the main lobby in the direction of the big vault. “MOVE GODDAMMIT,” he snarled, and they moved quicker, Fred and Donald first, the other two behind them with their guns out, looking for the security man, who for some reason was nowhere in sight.

The store burglarized the week before had decided to display a couple of handguns with the rifles in their window. It was something they almost never did but the .380 auto had been returned by a customer who nitpicked about rust on the case-hardening, and the big Colt Python had been gathering dust in the showcase for so long they thought that maybe if they moved a few pieces around a little they'd shake something loose. They shook something loose all right. Two nights later thieves broke the window and took both handguns out.

“Hurry,” the mean one whispered in Fields’ ear, bathing him in a foul mouth odor, “ya’ got fifty-nine seconds to MOVE!” And it seemed to take forever to unlock the gate and swing the big, heavy door back, and they walked in over the wire grate that of course Fields hadn't disengaged, and the silent alarm was thrown for the second time. Fields gathered up the seven zippered teller pouches with the bait money, taking as much time about it as he could. The vicious one ripped the pouches from his hand and took off running screaming across the lobby at the stupid one, who was standing there with his gun on Fred the maintenance man, “LE'S GO!” Which is when the night security guy, Floyd Coleman, stepped out from behind one of the pillars with his .357 Magnum revolver just like Clint Eastwood in the movies only instead of saying, Make my day, he started to say, Drop those guns or drop your pants or drop something, but only the dr came out because John Monroe had pulled the trigger of the .380 auto, shooting him smack dead bang in the ticker and knocking him back like he'd been punched in the stomach by a heavyweight and he sat back and the four of them watched him die with his gun in his hand, dead as he sat there with his eyes still open, going slowly back, toppling over backward almost as an afterthought, the gun firmly in his hand but pointed over to the side, and Monroe and De Witt shagging ass with the teller pouches full of money and almost out the north doorway. But somebody opening the door, a girl named Kelly Pierce who'd only been with the bank for two years, who Donald Fields suspected the boy was secretly poking, Kelly with the famous low-cut dresses and the nice cleavage, Kelly was coming in as they were running out. Bam-BOOM, everybody knocking one another ass over teakettle, money flying every whichway, the pouches unzippered, bait money in the air like autumn leaves, Kelly knocked on her pretty tush, the vicious one and the stupid one scrambling for money like contestants in a mad quiz show, one of them firing the big Colt back into the bank putting Fields and the man Fred flat on the floor as the thieves snatched and grabbed and jumped into the car that Fields would describe to police as a “dark-blue or midnight-blue Crown Victoria—maybe a year or two old, not sure of the model year.” And two uniformed cops coming on the scene and doors being locked and people being herded into offices and interrogated, and cops everywhere.

And at 07:04:10 the dispatcher gave a coded “robbery” at an address that everybody obviously made as Buckhead Mercantile Bank and Trust, and at 07:06:00 Bureau cops picked up a “robbery-in-progress” changed to “robbery with shooting” and they gave it in the clear to homicide, who of course only take over if there is a dead body on the scene, and the five detectives working the midnight-to-eight graveyard tour were all in-house and rolled on it en masse: Bill Brows, Marv Peletier, fat Dana Tuny, Jimmie Lee, and Harry Ecklemeyer.

At 07:21:00, there were fifteen cops by the crime scene. Two uniformed officers, Ramirez and Jones. Four agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation led by SAC Howard Krug. Five Buckhead detectives, with Detective Sgt. Lee in charge of securing and seizing and protecting and preserving intact the evidence of the crime scene. Lee was in charge, as there had been a homicide committed in the course of the robbery, but he was working “with” the Federal Bureau of Investigation—plus the captain himself no less, in person, and two two-man teams of backup uniforms, all with the light bars and the sirens and the hoo-hah and the evidence van and the ambulance and employees showing up and milling around everywhere as general chaos prevailed.

But it had already happened by the time the feebs arrived with their high tech and higher self-esteem, imbued as they were with a mandate from the Lord on High Himself. It had happened long before the captain had arrived in a cloud of Gordon's and toothpaste. (Christ, the fat son of a buck must use the stuff for a mouth-wash.) It had happened when what is usually called “opportunity” presented itself, when the detective sergeant in charge had put his people to work measuring body position, taking the money measurements, searching for spent bullets, processing the crime scene, protecting the evidence, seizing ... especially the seizing part.

Lee'd gone through the doors where the bills were scattered everywhere—these deliciously crisp green rectangles of spendable, dependable, expendable lettuce leaves with TEN and TWENTY printed on them. These collectible, delectable, beautifully minted, verdantly tinted photographs of dead presidents that he was WALKING through, STEPPING on, this schlemazel cop who didn't get ten cents walking through this newly mown field of crisp twenties, and intoxicated by promise he opens the door and there's some more of the tellers’ pouches and that's when James Lee saw the opportunity and that's when he crossed over the line.

You draw a line somewhere. Right? Right. Draw one. Draw it wherever it makes you comfortable. It looks like any other line—right? It's just a line.

* * *

Wrong. It's your line. If you cross it, you put yourself on the other side of the line and at first, because it's only a line, it looks the same from the wrong side as it did before you crossed over. Right? Right.

Every night at Buckhead Mercantile, after the federal people make their pickup, whatever was there from the afternoon's business generally went into the seven zippered tellers’ pouches. At close of business there'd been $28,000 and change on the premises. That put a nice, round $4,000 in each of the teller's drawers, not counting the $500 in bait money that each of them always set aside in the special “grab” tray inside their drawer. It was what went in the sack first when a man stuck that Saturday-night special in the girl's face with a note that read, “Put all the money in the sack, this is a robbery,” while the hidden surveillance cameras took some charming shots of him for posterity. The bait numbers were on file with law-enforcement agencies for such a contingency.

Just one of the hassles of a robbery/shooting like this was that they'd have to sit there working late putting all those bills back in order, figuring out which were the bait bills and which were the regular bills, making all those neat rectangular stacks, thumbing through those crisp lettuce leaves fast and sure, the way only a bank teller can do, stacking up all those green dreams.

And what Lee saw when he let the door close behind him was three teller pouches and small bills scattered all over. There was one big stack by itself, like somebody had a fistful of cabbage crammed together and it had been knocked loose, but when it hit the floor the tens and twenties and fifties had somehow stayed together. Lee just swooped the stack up, not thinking, bent over with nobody looking and took it. He was a little hot along the ears the way he got sometimes when he was uptight, but he was ready to explain it, like somebody caught shoplifting a candy bar. He just dropped that great big handful of bucks into a deep, inside jacket pocket, out of range of prying eyes, hidden surveillance cameras, the FBI, and his fat partner. Only James Lee and his maker saw him take the step. And just that easily, he stepped over the line. And by definition he was now one of the bad guys.

And he about exploded with joy. He was so happy. He knew it was wrong, but good GOD, it felt good that little bulge of bills, that happy weight of paper in his pocket. Untraceable, embraceable, irreplaceable pounds and saw-bucks and cee notes. Smiling faces. It was all he could do not to hurry as they wrapped up the initial processing and seizure work and made their way back to the station.

Lee had an envelope always ready in the trunk for whatever might come up—not like he'd anticipated this—but hell, sometimes it helped if one could flog a little coke sample off a dealer for an emergency holdback. A man never knew when it would come in handy—just tuck it down behind the seat of a car for a probable-cause swindle. Something to lay on a snitch as a thank-you for the Big One. A little taste just in case.

He just put the money in the big, thick manila envelope and dropped it into the first corner mail depository he came to. He mailed it to himself care of that post-office box that was always such a cheap insurance policy. And sure enough, that's where the money went. He couldn't even count it. He tried and hit a big stack of solid twenties. A hundred double-saws in a tight stack. Two thousand dollars just in that half-inch or so of money, so he knew he had some serious bucks in there. All those fifties he'd seen had made his ears flaming red, he was sure, but when he glanced up into the rearview mirror they were still the color of yellow jaundice. He was too nervous to count it now. All he could think about was those asshole feebs and IAD and what they'd do to him if they caught him dirty, but as much as it scared him he wasn't about to go give it back. He was glad he'd picked up the lovely green stack of dirty money. The line looked the same from either side.