Tempted by Trouble (4 page)

She said, “Keep looking at me and I’ll tell Sammy to put his fist in your piehole.”

She grabbed a small duffel bag, left without saying good-bye, high heels dangling from one of her hands, her face in a deep, harsh frown despite the riding Sammy had given her. Sammy called his wife, talked with his kids, made plans to go snow skiing next week, got back on the phone with his wife, told her he loved her, then hung up, showered, and put on his business suit.

Rick came back inside and saw I had the browser open to a Web site for earthquake victims.

He said, “I don’t think she’s hiding out in Haiti.”

“I’m not looking for her.”

“Yeah, whatever. Look, nobody runs away
to
Haiti. People run away
from
Haiti.”

I gave him a short smile. “Told you, I wasn’t looking for her. I was checking the news.”

Rick put his loaded gun inside his holster, one he wore underneath his suit coat. Sammy did the same, holstered his gun before he adjusted his tie. A small version of the U.S. flag was pinned to his collar, like he was a politician. Sammy reached inside his pocket and took out a Mexican switchblade.

I asked, “Where did you get that toy?”

“Bought it yesterday afternoon when me and Jackie were in Hollywood.”

“Prop knife or the real deal?”

“This six-inch blade is sharp enough to leave your head hanging.”

A moment later I picked up my thirty-year-old black fedora and slid my silver pocket watch inside my pants pocket, eased it inside by its silver chain, then I took out my iPhone. I slipped on earphones and turned on an app that tied me into scanners for the LAPD and the Los Angeles sheriff’s department. I pulled on my suit coat and grabbed the keys to the stolen car we had left parked down the street.

Sammy asked, “Dmytryk, man, you cooking again tonight?”

I said, “Tell your mistress to put on some decent clothes, make herself useful, and cook.”

Rick chuckled. “If he can get her to stand up that long.”

Sammy said, “She thinks I’m going to leave my wife and kids to take care of her and her kid.”

I said, “You’re joking, right?”

Rick said, “Sammy, tell Dmytryk about her big scheme.”

“She’s planning on kidnapping her kid and hiding out in South America. I’ll help her get her kid, then I’m done. I worked for five years and saved enough to pay a coyote ten thousand to get me out of South America when I was seventeen, and going back would defeat the purpose of spending ten grand and walking across three deserts and sleeping in the wilderness for three months so I could get bussed up from San Diego and work in sweatshops and cut yards and build houses and wash dishes and cook and labor and send money back to bring up my brothers and sister and educate myself and get a better life than the one I had when I was a kid.”

I said, “Sammy, you and those long, run-on sentences.”

He went on. “I know how it would go and I’m not stupid. She’d get knocked up and I’d be trading problems for problems, end up having to support two households. So yeah, I’ll take her out tonight. Sure, we’ll have fun, then go balls to the walls. But at the end of the day, I’m a married man with a family.”

Rick interrupted. “Okay, boys, adjust your panties and let’s go make some money.”

Sammy said, “Two twenty. I’m betting we’re in and out in two minutes and twenty seconds.”

Rick said, “Two minutes. This feels like a two-minute job.”

“Put your money where your mouth is.” Sammy yawned. “Dmytryk, what’s your bet?”

“I’m betting on two minutes thirty seconds.”

Rick said, “You’re on. Five hundred a bet as usual and winner takes all. Anything over three minutes goes back in the pot. I’ll have both of you ladies’ monies before we eat breakfast.”

Then we left together, three men in suits and wearing the same brand of shoes—the Johnston & Murphy Bandits—and stepped out into the din and early-morning pandemonium. It was an area that had over three hundred forty thousand registered people in less than five square miles. Might have been close to a half million when the illegal immigrants were added in.

Sammy said, “
Mad Men.
We look like those cats in the TV show
Mad Men.
”

Rick said, “People trust men in suits. Especially women. It puts them at ease.”

Sammy said, “Makes their legs open like doors.”

Rick nodded. “That too.”

 

 

 

 

A stolen four-door Chevy
was waiting on us. The car was ten years old. The type of car no one would look at twice. I walked around the car like I was inspecting a private plane before takeoff. The tires were good, the lights worked, the engine ran smoothly, and we had gas.

My personal automobile was parked half a block away. I owned a Buick Wildcat. It had been my father’s car. Like my father, I kept the car’s exterior looking top-shelf. I’d used money from the first two jobs and made the Wildcat look the way it had looked when my father drove it off of the lot in Michigan. Only a fool would drive his own car to go rob a bank.

After I finished looking over the stolen Chevy, I climbed inside and took to the wheel while Rick took the backseat. Sammy always rode up front with me. He had that Mexican switchblade in his hand. He kept opening and closing it, made the blade click out, that sound like the click of death.

From Koreatown, across Wilshire Boulevard and over to Crenshaw Boulevard, the radio was off. My ears were tuned in to the scanner. It was almost Christmastime, and during morning rush hour in Los Angeles people wore Lakers baseball caps and scarves and drove around with the tops dropped on their convertibles. Back east and in the Midwest everyone was shoveling snow and bundled like Eskimos, but out here the people stood at bus stops dressed in T-shirts and gloves. A few women were dressed in shorts that barely covered their backsides, shorts that were highlighted by fashionable, furry, knee-high boots; a few of the others wore sandals that matched their gloves, scarves, and sunglasses. We looked at the strangeness as we rode to our destination.

There were no smiles. There were no jokes. Our game faces were on.

Rick and Sammy were professionals. All jobs had been walk in and walk out, not a shot fired, people terrified, but not a person injured. They’d made a lot of tax-free money over the last decade, but not enough to rival Wall Street. Family and women on the side were expenses that required a man to have deep pockets. Soon the quick money was gone and it was time to make a few more withdrawals.

I’d worked with Eddie and his crew on five jobs. I was in an unwanted and dangerous occupation that was a long way from the simple life I had planned for myself back in Detroit. In high school, I’d mapped my life out to the other side of grad school.

But as they said, man planned and God laughed.

God must’ve been sipping a Corona, doubled over and slapping his knees right about then.

Baldwin Hills appeared on our right, behind one billboard for a local radio station and another billboard for
The Leonard DuBois Story
on HBO. The area didn’t look like much, but Rick and Sammy had said this neighborhood had million-dollar homes. What a man got for a million dollars out there in Botoxville was nothing to brag about. Thousands of L.A.’s hyperinflated properties were being foreclosed on. Every man who had been inspired by free enterprise and greed was tumbling down the hill like Jack, dragging Jill and their tofu-eating rug rats along with them, silver spoons flying from mouths as they busted their crowns on oil- and urine-stained streets populated with the poor and the unknown. The rich had the most to lose, and the people at the bottom of the hills probably took joy in watching all the Goliaths fall.

I entered the parking lot on Santa Rosalia, just as we had planned. The street ran parallel to Crenshaw at this end but curved and gave us a great escape route. I parked outside the bank and watched the flow of traffic between there and the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza.

Sammy stepped out first, adjusted his suit coat and tie, then put on his killer smile.

He tossed me his Mexican switchblade. “Hang on to this for me, Dmytryk.”

I dropped his souvenir inside my suit pocket.

Rick nodded, then he stood next to Sammy and took in the surroundings.

All was clear. Everything was perfect. This small crime would be over in a few minutes.

Rick and Sammy didn’t walk inside the bank like they were the Sons of Anarchy. They entered the bank at a casual pace, heads up high and confidence strong—not stick-up men, but businessmen making an early-morning transaction, two chisel-chinned CEOs stepping into a Fortune 500 meeting. They walked in like gentlemen and would exit the same way.

Anxiety moved up my spine like ice, gave me a chill that rivaled the coldness I had felt in Detroit.

I whispered, “Two minutes.”

Twenty seconds had passed
since Rick Bielshowsky and Sammy Luis Sanchez eased out of our stolen Chevy and strolled inside the Wells Fargo bank.

I adjusted my earphones so I could hear the broadcast from the police scanner, then inhaled the arid and sweet fetor of Poverty and her traveling companion Desperation. John Dillinger. That criminal knew that there were only two ways to get money in the land of free enterprise: You earned it, or you took it at gunpoint. That was about as American as a man could get in the land of red, white, and the blues.

Inside Wells Fargo, the teller would be terrified. She’d be afraid to look in Rick’s eyes, afraid that he would blow her brains out. She had been trained to surrender the cash on demand. The girl was probably pretty. Rick loved sexy women. He would go to a sexy woman’s window before he went to rob an ugly woman. And a few of the tellers he’d robbed actually had a smile that told him they loved the bad boys, had grins that said they were stimulated by the crime.

Cars stopped in front of the bank. People too arrogant or too lazy to park and walk ten feet blocked the exit that led to Stocker. Fifty yards beyond that was the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and one of its anchor stores, Walmart. Beyond the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza was a strip of vanity shops and low-end businesses that lined this end of the Crenshaw District, the land of the underpaid hardworking man and woman, the people who went to bed with aching backs and swollen feet, then woke up before the sun warmed the palm trees.

The wail of sirens jarred me from distraction. LAPD blared down Crenshaw Boulevard, sped toward a different crime scene.

One minute and thirty seconds. They should have had the money in the bag by now. The people should have been facedown on the floor, following Sammy’s instructions. Sammy would give the instructions in English and in Spanish, the languages of America. The bank managers should have been following procedures and surrendering every dime without hesitation. Sammy should have had everything under control while Rick loaded up the cash. Twenty more seconds went by, each tick of my watch reverberating like a mallet striking a gong. There was a popping sound, like a firecracker exploding. Then there was another popping sound. There was a commotion at the entrance to the bank. People who were about to walk inside looked startled at first, then two older Asian men became terrified and backed away from whatever horror they saw.

Rick hurried out of Wells Fargo first and Sammy was right next to him. I saw Rick’s black three-button suit, then caught a better view and saw his crisp white shirt open at the collar. He had taken off his golden tie since he’d stepped inside. Rick had the bag in his left hand, but he was damn near carrying Sammy, and Sammy had his loaded .38 down at his side, exposed to the public. A bright red spot had opened up in Sammy’s chest. My breath shortened and my heart enlarged, drummed against my chest.

Customers queued at the ATM witnessed what was happening. A few reacted immediately, some ducked, but it took most of the crowd seconds to register that they were standing in the back end of a bank robbery. We were eight miles from Hollywood. Some probably thought they were watching a Tinseltown blockbuster being filmed. People craned their necks like they were expecting to catch a glimpse of Robert De Niro or Brad Pitt.

Car in drive, teeth clenched, I knew we had to get the hell out of there before we ended up in hell.

Rick dragged blood-soaked Sammy toward the car, but too many cars had pulled between us. Sammy held on to Rick like he was lost at sea and gripping a life preserver.

A Latino security guard staggered out of the bank. He was overweight, wore a dingy white shirt and pants that were as dark as this situation. His white shirt was covered with blood, new holes in his left shoulder and stomach. The loyal employee yelled, stumbled after my coworkers, raised his gun, and fired. Sammy fired back at him. The security guard returned fire like he wanted to prove he could dish it out as good as the next man. People ducked behind stucco columns. Traffic screeched and cars stopped. Horns blared. The guard used the stucco wall to hold himself up. Sammy fired again. The wounded guard grimaced, made a determined and diabolical face, then he fired another round. Sammy’s head opened up like a watermelon being smashed with a sledgehammer.

His face erupted. Half of his face was gone, blood and gray matter all over the pavement.

It was a nightmare.

Rick let Sammy’s body slam to the ground, two hundred pounds of warm flesh that had become dead weight. The security guard kept firing. Rick reached to pull his .38 from underneath his suit coat.

The bag with the money exploded and shot bright red dye all over Rick’s hands, suit, and face.

The root of all evil took wings and flew into the sky, went as close to heaven as it could, then, like Icarus when he flew too close to the sun, began to fall, rained down like confetti at the Thanksgiving Day parade. Rick stood in the middle of a crimson cloud of money being blown away by a gentle L.A. breeze.