The End of the Dream (23 page)

Anything that would make him $250,000 in one afternoon could most certainly also put him in prison. When Kevin shook his head slowly, Scott didn’t seem angry. Scott knew him well enough to know Kevin could not be persuaded when he had made his mind up.

It wasn’t long after that strangely inscrutable meeting that Kevin Meyers’ fears about what Scott was involved in were confirmed. He was in Florida, looking for a piece of property he could afford, when he stopped by to see Bobby Gray. “Bobby told me that Scott was robbing banks, “ Kevin said. “He told me Scott tried to get him into it, and how he had changed his mind at the last minute.

Maybe I knew it all along and tried to deny it. I don’t know what I thought before that. But, once Bobby told me, it all fell into place.

I couldn’t turn Scott in. How could you turn the guy who had been your best friend all those years in to the police? “ Kevin knew that danger was like a drug to Scott, it always had been. How many times had Scott repeated the creed he lived by?

“If I die, I die, Bubbabut it’s better to go out as a flame than to live as a flicker. Kevin’s concern for his brother Steve grew. Kevin had said “No, “ and Bobby had said “No.” Steve was still living in Scott’s house, and Kevin felt sick with this knowledge. He tried not to think about it but someplace inside, he knew. He was, of course, correct. Steve Meyers became Scott’s accomplice in his escalating assault on Northwest banks.

At first, it was just to be one bank. Scott asked Steve to go with him to do surveillance on the very same bank where Scott had netted a quarter of a million dollars the year before, the Hawthorne Hills branch of Sea first. Of course, he had no guarantee that there would be that much in the bank a year later.

Nevertheless, Scott and Steve made several trips from Olympia to Seattle to observe activity in and around the bank on North Fifty-fifth Street.
 
He liked the location, it was out of the way without a lot traffic but it was close to a number of businesses in the neighborhood.

All those commercial accounts probably meant that the bank kept substantial cash in the vault most of the time.

Scott insisted that they go in separate cars, so that no one would be able to link them. They would be only average looking men walking by the Hawthorne Hills Bank. Ironically, detectives and FBI agents were going over surveillance pictures with a magnifying glass at the same time Scott and Steve were doing their own surveillance. As unaware as he was of the men who hunted him, Scott may have felt a little nervous, he hadn’t robbed a bank for a year. This one had been easy the first time, but he must have suspected that they would have beefed up their security in the interim. Once again, it was Thanksgiving time. Scott was waiting for it to rain. He preferred to work on dark rainy afternoons in the autumn because there would be fewer people venturing out to do their banking. It would also be harder to identify him in his vehicle, and he felt that people in generaleven police were groggier on a rainy day, lulled by the thrumming sound of drops hitting the roof of their squad cars and the whish-whish of the windshield wipers. Scott didn’t want to use his white van this time. Nine months earlier, he had given Steve cash to buy a used yellow Renault. Steve had worn gloves during that transaction, as Scott instructed, but he hadn’t asked questions then.
 
Now, he knew why. This was the car Scott would drive in the bank robbery. Scott wanted to put his makeup on in Olympia and then drive to Seattle disguised as an older man with a mustache. Through a rain-streaked car window, he would look completely normal. Afterward, he would make use of the two plastic bags he carried one with mineral spirits to take off the fake nose, chin, and cheeks, and one with soap and water.

Although it took him almost two hours to put on his makeup, he could get it off in minutes. If anyone stopped him, he would look completely different from the “bank robber.” Scott outlined the plan to Steve.

They would drive the sixty miles to Seattle in two different vehicles.

Steve was to park near the bank with a police scanner and one of two portable Motorola radios Scott had bought.

If a silent alarm should go out and the police responded, he would hear it on the police frequency and alert Scott, who would be carrying the other radio. “When I’m through, “ Scott explained, “I’ll say I’m out’ on the portable. I’ll meet you near the freeway and we go home.” It rained hard on Wednesday, November 24 Thanksgiving Eve, 1993. They headed for Seattle, arriving about 11,30 in the morning. With Steve monitoring police calls, Scott walked briskly into the Sea first Bank, Hawthorne Hills branch, for the second November in a row. The bank manager spotted him and his first thought was that he must have been badly burned and had tried to cover his scars with makeup. Poor guy.

And then he noticed the black gun in the man’s right hand. Scott no longer bothered with the tellers’ money. He knew exactly where the real money was now. He announced, “This is a robbery. Who’s the vault teller?

“

“He’s on vacation, “ the manager said, and the bank robber seemed to accept this. “I have the keys, but it’s only my second day here, “ he lied, “and I don’t have the codes.”

“Then open up the teller drawers.” The Sea first manager thought rapidly, trying to thwart the robber. “I’m sorry, “ he said, “I don’t have the keys to that area either.” But, as luck would have it, two bank employees, unaware that a robbery was in progress, walked out of the vault where they had been counting money. They carried stacks of bills in their arms. The man with the grotesque makeup on his face couldn’t smile, but there was a grin in his voice as he spotted them and said, “What do we have here? “ Scott Scurlock’s phenomenal luck had held. It was almost like the card games in Hawaii and the football parlays in Las Vegas. Once more, he had stumbled onto the mother lode.

He ordered the bank manager and the two tellers back into the vault.

He pulled a lime green bag out of his tan parka. He stuffed it full of money. Every few moments, he darted a look out into the bank itself to check on what was happening there. “Who has access to the money in the ATM? “ The bank manager shook his head. “No one does.” Apparently satisfied, Scott prepared to leave. But first he motioned to a bank courier who had just walked in, unaware, and he put the courier into the vault with the other employees. Then he told the customers in the lobby to stay where they were for a full minute. “If I hear an alarm, “ he warned, convincingly, “I’ll come back and someone will get hurt.

“ Once again, nobody disobeyed his orders. By the time the bank employees emerged from the vault and called corporate security, Scott had vanished. Scott parked next to Steve at a prearranged location ten blocks from the bank. He quickly removed his makeup and then he tailed Steve’s car as he zoomed onto the freeway entrance there. It was a piece of cake. They stayed on I-5 until they took the off-ramp just south of Olympia that was only minutes from the treehouse property.

Scott and Steve drove both their cars into the barn, closed the doors behind them and counted out the money there. Scott may have been a little disappointed, he hadn’t gotten as much as he had the year before.
 
But it sure wasn’t bad, $98,571. He handed Steve his share, $5,000.
 
Scott explained that this was a fair split. He was the one who took all the chances. He planned everything, and it was he who had gone into the bank. He was the one who risked getting shot or arrested or recognized.
 
They were exhausted more from the tension of the day than any physical effort and they saved the clean-up for the next day, when they pitched out or burned the clothes and other items that they felt were too recognizable to use again. Back in the bank, the FBI reviewed the tape from the bank’s cameras, the frames showing a now familiar if bizarre face with a grotesque mask and false chin and nose, topped by a blondish red wig. There was something about the robber’s stance, something that marked him as an athlete even in the grainy bank footage.
 
But try as they might, they could not see beneath the mask and the makeup. Taking $15,000 to launder, Steve Meyers left for Las Vegas a few days after the robbery. Back on Overhulse Road, Scott filled his plastic buckets, and reburied them on his land. Now there was enough cash for many, many rainy days. Steve moved to San Francisco before Christmas to live with the new woman in his life. She was a flight attendant whom he’d met on one of his many flights between Seattle and Nevada. Her name was Sari* and she was originally from Croatia. The plain fact was that Steve didn’t want to live in Washington State any longer. Like Mark Biggins, he sought a geographical solution in an attempt to avoid Scott’s plans. Except for Kevin Meyers and Bobby Gray, no one seemed able to flat out tell Scott “No” and make it stick. Neither Steve nor Mark were truly weak men but circumstances and fate had made them both susceptible to Scott’s persuasive arguments.
 
Steve Meyers had no plan to participate in another bank robbery, but he didn’t plan not to, either. He had deluded himself into believing that the man on the other end of the Motorola short-wave radio wasn’t really a professional bank robber.

Scott wasn’t going to do it forever, and Steve tried to tell himself that he had been there only to look out for a friend. Once in California, Steve began to sell some of his art again, and looked around for a studio. If he could only get established there. But the fact was, everything moved too slowly, Steve was soon out of money, the $5,000 Scott had given him hadn’t lasted very long, so when Scott called and asked Steve to meet him in Reno to talk about the next robbery, Steve went. He gambled with the money Scott gave him. Steve was becoming addicted to gambling, exhilarated by the ambiance of the smoky casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe. Scott?

Scott’s whole life was a gamble against long odds. Early in January 1994, Steve capitulated and drove back to Olympia. A few weeks later, he took part in his second bank robbery. On January 21, 1994, he and Scott headed for a U. S. Bank the Wedgwood branch which was in the same neighborhood as the bank they’d robbed only two months earlier. It was a Friday. It was raining. It was 11,2A. M. Everything was going according to plan. A day earlier, Scott had left a car parked in Seattle with a key under the bumper, ready for him to drive to the Wedgwood district.
 
He had sent Steve out to buy it from someone who had placed a small ad in a local paper, and it was as plain as peanut butter. But it now had a brand new battery and good tires. Scott drove it to a parking lot a block north of the bank. Steve parked his car a block south, and listened to his police scanner as Scott entered the bank. In a very short time, he heard Scott on the Motorola, “I’m out.. .

. Let’s go! “ Steve pulled out and headed for their meeting location, but the little hairs on the back of his neck stood up when he heard the police scanner crackle out the address of the bank Scott had just robbed. He realized how close they had shaved their time. In only a few minutes, Scott would have been trapped coming out of the bank. But everything seemed to be OK, he saw Scott’s car accelerate up ahead and disappear around a corner.

But then Steve lost radio contact with Scott. All the way back to Olympia, he wondered if Scott would be there when he turned into the Overhulse Road property. Scott wasn’t there. Steve’s heart pounded.

If the police had Scott, it would only be a matter of time before they knew about him. It wasn’t long, however, before Scott’s van came up the driveway. Steve could see that he was not happy. Nothing had worked right. Scott said he hadn’t been able to get into the vault because the teller with the combination wasn’t there. And then, some wise guy teller had tripped the alarm and had had the balls to tell Scott so. Scott rarely got upset but Steve saw that he was, now. They counted the money he did get in the barn. There was only $15,803 and Scott gave Steve $5,000 of that. They might as well not have bothered.

The chances are that Scott might not have scheduled another bank robbery so soon if the take had been better. As it was, Scott was anxious to go to Seattle and chose another, more profitable, location.

But there was another reason, Scott didn’t want to let a near-failure stay on his record. It was more than just the money. How could the investigators who were trying to stop the bank robber know which bank he was going to hit next? When the FBI agents reread all the witness interviews and reports, they could see that he had established a pattern which was becoming easy to chart. He liked the northeast part of Seattle with only two forays into West Seattle. But there were so many banks in the north end of Seattle. Where would he go next? The best strategy seemed to be to wait for the physical evidence he would leave behind the next time, or the next. Fingerprints. A car license plate number. A clear photo that someone might recognize. One thing seemed likely. The robber vanished so quickly after each incident that he probably lived in the north end of Seattle and was able to return to the safety of his home almost immediately. If this were true, somebody in the neighborhood was sure to notice certain repetitive activity and connect it to the bank robberies. On February 17, 1994, Scott Scurlock pulled off a foolhardy bank robbery. He returned for the third time to the Hawthorne Hills branch of the Sea first 24Bank. He had always found gratifying stacks of money there. But he was also a familiar face or rather, a familiar maskin the beleaguered bank. Once again, it was a Thursday. It was snowing, weather rare enough in Seattle that locals who don’t have to drive in it usually stay home. He changed his MO only by going in earlier. The bank was barely open for business at 9:40 A.M. when Pattithe same vault teller whom he had terrified in November looked up to see a nightmare returning. She recognized him, almost with disbelief, saw again the way he moved like an athlete or a graceful animal. How could he chance coming back for a third time to the same bank? He strode toward the teller’s counter, protected now by a bandit barrier. His eyes swept the bank and he saw that one teller was on the phone. He turned to Patti and told her to make the other woman hang up. Then he looked at the drive-in window teller and barked, “Get her out of the window! “ He wanted the vault teller, but Patti told him that the new vault teller was the woman who’d been on the phone. He herded them both toward the vault. Patti could smell his acrid sweat, and she knew, for all his calm demeanor, that he was nervous. He cleaned out one vault, and then instructed them to open “the lower vault.” Funny how familiarity diminishes fear. Patti wasn’t as frightened this time, and she looked at the man’s strange face, curious about what he looked like beneath the puttylike makeup.