River: A Bad Boy Romance (6 page)

As the first car twists spectacularly into the air, sending huge chunks of warped metal all over the road, and finally comes down the wrong way up, on top of the other car, rendering that one as useless as the first, River calmly drives past, waving at the embarrassed officers as he does so. Harper is the only one who reacts, trying unsuccessfully to shoot his car down, until Edwards pushes his hands down to stop him, even though his bullets have all long since run out.

“Where's that fucking chopper?” Frank says, to no-one in particular. If there was one thing he hated more than incompetence, it was police incompetence. Him and Maddy would agree on that.

“It's going to be ten more minutes at least”, officer Garland tells him.

“Ten minutes? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“It wasn't classed as a priority.”

“A bank robbery isn't classed as a priority?” Frank barks at him.

“That's what they said to me sir, I did insist, but they wouldn't listen. I can call them again if you like?”

“Fuck it. Have you got hold of Edwards again yet?”

“No, sir, I haven't”, Garland says. “He's not radioed in.”

“Jesus christ. He better not have fucked this up.”

“Knowing Mark Edwards, that is highly unlikely I'm afraid sir”, Garland says, and Frank growls in agreement.

Edwards most certainly has fucked this up, and he knows it. The mess of still burning metal in front of him used to be his car, and the car he was meant to be keeping an eye on, has just driven away into the distance without further impedance. He knows he'll get his ass chewed out for this and it'll probably be a long time before he gets to catch a real bank robber again.

River pumps the air theatrically and slaps the now wonky dashboard as he pulls away, unable to contain his excitement at yet another successful raid. He's got a bag full of cash, alright not quite six million dollars, but a much better haul than he's used to, and one that he doesn't have to share with anyone. More importantly, there are no police chasing him, not until they get a chopper into the air, and until they do that, he's as free as anyone else is. Well, almost anyone else. He'll have to do something with Maddy, although he hasn't decided yet quite what that should be.

“Fuck, yeah”, he says. “Woooooooh! Did you enjoy that Maddy? Get your adrenaline pumping?”

It's dawning on Maddy that her chances of being saved have gone from slim to none. She can tell from the speed of the car and River's reaction, that no-one is chasing them anymore. River sees that she's trying to get up, and he reaches out a hand to help her, which she promptly bites. Once on her feet, she does as much as she can to try and attack River, which involves throwing herself at him and trying to headbutt and bite whatever part of his body is the most accessible. She doesn't give a fuck that he's got a gun, or she forgets about it at least, because even when he holds it into her belly, she doesn't register and certainly doesn't stop.

The Oldsmobile swings about in the road, up onto the mud, and back onto the asphalt into the path of an oncoming truck, until River finally manages to regain control, and pulls it to a stop just at the side of the highway. He wrestles Maddy onto the passenger seat and then holds the gun at her face. Finally Maddy stops. River has blood running from a bite on his neck.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” River shouts at her, dabbing at the wound.

Maddy is crying and breathing heavily.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?!” she shouts back, amazed at his arrogance. “You are the one pointing the gun at me.”

“You've just attacked me”, River says. “That fucking hurt.”

Maddy reaches behind her to the door handle. A second later the door swings open, and she falls backwards, halfway out of the car and halfway still in it.

“Help”, she shouts, but no-one is around to hear her. This is a pretty much deserted route of road, apart from the odd semi that goes hurtling past without warning.

River grabs her dress, just about where her belly button is, and pulls her back inside the car. He holds the gun flat against her forehead.

“Don't fuck around, Madeleine”, he says. “I don't have much use for you now, have you thought of that?”

“Then let me go”, she pleads with him.

“Nah, I don't think I'll do that.” River says. “Come on, you're coming with me, until you learn to behave.”

He pulls Maddy across to where he's sat, and with her practically on his lap, and the nozzle of the gun once again in her spine, he slides his way out of the car.

Maddy has no desire to ride in the trunk of the car, but she also has no desire to die. She's pissed off River, and although she hasn't seen him kill anyone yet, she doesn't want to be the first. When told to climb in and keep her mouth shut, she does exactly that, even though the back of the car is absolutely filthy. River gets back into the driver's seat. He rolls himself a cigarette and lights it by striking the match on the asphalt by his feet. He twists the radio dial but there's no response. The fire has stopped and only a thin trail of smoke now remains from the molten plastic, but it's beyond repair. A police chopper'll be up in the air soon, and they'll be all over the car they're in, which means he'll have to change it. He'll also, eventually, have to do something about Maddy. He could dump her, but he kind of likes having the company, even though she seems to have some kind of attitude problem. Pretty soon she'll be having fun he figures. It's only a matter of time. And with that, when he's smoked enough of his cigarette, and is finally ready to go on, he pulls the beaten up car back onto the road, and begins to think very carefully about what to do next.

Carlos and Peters are getting edgy. Fergal pulls at his moustache more feverishly than ever. It looks like he's going to pull it right off his top lip. Carlos checks his watch.

“One minute”, he says.

As much as he hates to do it, there is no other alternative. The bank robbers have already killed one man, and Frank can't risk them shooting another, even if he's their only remaining bargaining tool. He's got the car prepared, but there is no way he's going to allow them to drive out of there. Frank just doesn't do police work that way.

With ten seconds remaining of the five minutes they've given Frank, Carlos puts the gun to Fergal's head, and walks him to the window, where several police officers can see what he's doing. They all have their guns trained on him, and are waiting for Frank to give the order, but there's no clean shot. Carlos can see the waiting car, parked with the engine running, just outside the bank. It looks like the ticket out of there it's supposed to be. Carlos can picture himself relaxing on a Mexican beach with a piña colada in his hand and a very pretty waitress attending to his every need.

Frank telephones through to the bank again, where Peters answers.

“The hostage stays”, Frank says.

“Be careful officer”, Peters counters. “You're bargaining with a man's life.”

“Your car is here, but I can't let you take the civilian with you.”

“You giving me your word you won't shoot? Fuck you”, Peters says, and slams down the phone.

“Time to go”, Peters says to Carlos.

Outside, Frank has positioned armed officers all around the entrance to the bank. From each angle, he has a shot to take them down. There is no way they are going to survive. He just hopes Fergal will, and for that matter, so does Fergal.

Carlos and Peters take two sacks of money in the hands that don't hold their guns, despite the weight of the bin bags making their escape even more difficult, while Fergal is charged with taking the other two. Greediness had made them late leaving the bank in the first place, and greediness might again be the reason for halting their exit now. A sensible man would have kept both hands free to get in and out of the car, but not Carlos, and definitely not Peters. When they saw the money in the vault, it was like their Christmases had all come at once. They had to take it all.

They descend the stairs, both men trying to use Fergal as a human shield, in the same way River had done with Maddy less than half an hour earlier. He is a barrel-chested man, but nowhere near the size of Peters, who has to crouch a little, cautiously trying to hide himself behind the Irish-American.

Fergal has to put down a sack of money to open the door, but by that point, he has already seen what awaits him, and it scares the hell out of him. There is a car just in front of him, and beyond that, a row of police officers with serious looking guns all pointing at him. Beyond that row of police officers, a wall of people have stopped to watch, including an obese African-American woman, who records everything on her mobile phone.

For the second time that day, Fergal pisses himself a little.

Carlos and Peters are understandably panicky. The car is only a short hop away from the entrance to the bank, but if they make one wrong move, they are almost certainly dead. Peters half wonders whether it's worth going out in a blaze of glory anyway, taking Fergal and as many police officers as he can with him, but with even the slimmest chance of escape, he wants to risk getting into the car and away. They are carrying a huge amount of money, and there's a hell of a lot they can do with it as soon as they are free.

They make their way outside. Bags of money, guns, and a hand each on Fergal's shivering shoulders.

“Get the fuck back”, Peters says, holding his gun out violently.

What neither of the not particularly bright bank robbers have noticed as they shuffle slowly towards the safety of the waiting car, are the two police officers that have hidden themselves behind the pillars at the entrance to the bank and are waiting for the robbers to turn their backs appropriately, so they can fire at them without risking harm to Fergal. And to their surprise, they don't have to wait long, because that opportunity comes as easily as Frank had explained it would.

Believing themselves to be safe behind the stout ginger haired hostage, they had not thought that anything would follow them out of the bank, which is almost exactly what does happen.

In an instant, that happens so quickly it makes absolutely no sense to Fergal, Carlos and Peters, with their hands practically on the car doors, a grin of freedom across their ignorant faces while Frank Giamatti watches on, hands on hips, cursing them under his breath and head shaking slightly, drop like a sack of potatoes, categorically dead. Their attempts to steal six million, seven hundred and seventy five thousand, four hundred and six dollars have come quite instantly, to a rather unsuccessful close, bullets placed by well trained officers in each of their cerebral cortices.

Fergal looks at the bodies around him, blood melting into the gutter and then bursts into tears. He is eventually helped to somewhere a bit further away from the bleeding corpses by one of the several now spare police officers, and can't quite believe he isn't being zipped up into a black body bag too.

“Find out who these amateur fucks are”, Frank huffs, to no-one in particular, while staring down at what's left of Peters's head. “And get me that fuck Edwards.”

M
ark Edwards, although somewhat reluctantly, finally makes the call to his superior, and Frank is understandably outraged by what the young police officer has done. He orders Edwards back to the crime scene, walking if need be, and tells him the cost for the destroyed police cars will be coming out of his wages, and then out of his pension when he retires. If he makes it there of course, after Frank has beaten the living shit out of him for being so stupid. He returns to the crime scene, not on foot, but in the back of a pickup truck, that has been used for transporting pigs. When he gets there, Frank tells him to get back to the station to do something useful, on foot, if necessary.

Twenty seven minutes after requesting the police helicopter, it finally gets into the air, far too late to be of any real use at all. It hovers above interstate five where several people have gathered to watch the police cars burn, and moves out across the New Mexico desert, unable to find the lime green Oldsmobile, with the back window blown out and the balaclava clad robber (and his uptight hostage) inside.

A news team has gathered outside the crime scene and the footage is being broadcast live, watched by a huge amount of people across the nation, including everyone, staff and office workers alike, in Madeleine Parker's stationery store. As soon as the obese African-American woman's grainy mobile phone footage is broadcast, and the identity of the only hostage is revealed, the office erupts in a volley of hoorays and cheers. They can't believe their luck.

Frank pushes the cameras away, and orders them away from the bank and as far back from the police cordon as he is able to push them. This is his crime scene, and he's not going to share it with any hawk like reporters, especially not ones with too much gel in their hair.

“There's nothing”, Garland tells him. “They're bringing it down.”

Frank and Garland are the only two officers who remain at the bank. The rest have been sent off to chase down the lime green Oldsmobile that River is already in the process of dumping. The police helicopter has been in the air for eight minutes and is needed elsewhere. Frank and his officers are on their own. With a description of the car, a clear image of the hostage, and the little lead time they have, Frank is convinced he'll have the hostage back where she belongs, and the robber either dead or behind bars by dinner time. Especially now that Mark Edwards isn't involved. Frank has sent cars in every direction away from the city, there is no way he'll be able to outrun them in an Oldsmobile, even if he's stupid enough to try and do so. He was stupid enough to be working with the three dead bodies that are now on their way to the morgue for examination, although he wasn't quite as stupid to hang around to wait for the police to show up. He doesn't need the helicopter in the air now, it's too late for what it could have been useful for. The only thing that could complicate matters would be if the bank robber switched cars, but even then, he would still have the problem of the hostage. Frank wants as much information on Maddy as possible, and gets Garland to radio back to base to get a heart breaking appeal sent out, preferably recorded by her family.