The End of the Dream (27 page)

There were no more hidden stashes to dig up and send to Vegas with Steve. Only nine days after the debacle of the Wallingford First Interstate Bank, Scott was
 
, 27 ! ready to move again. Not only was he stone cold broke, he could not stand the ignominy of losing his proceeds in a cloud of orange smoke. He had to hit again, and quickly.

All Scott needed was just one solid robbery and he could lay off for months maybe even for a year. He knew now that many factors influenced the success of any one mission. He could not control people outside his line of sight. For every fifty people who were frightened into submission by the rattlesnake-scary sound when he chambered a round of ammunition, there might be one who would make a run for itor for him.

Somebody like Kevin who had to be a damn hero. This time, Scott planned even more carefully. The makeup was fine, he was sure no one could identify him. The vehicle switching was working. They needed only, perhaps, to stakeout the target bank a little longer.

Scott had selected the Sea first Bank in Madison Park. Again. Third time had been the charm for the Hawthorne Hills Bank, and, although he would never admit it, Scott was superstitious. The Madison Park area attracted Seattle’s young movers and shakers. It had popular bars and restaurants, but more than that, it was close to one of the most upscale residential areas in Seattle. Some estates were gated, and there were dozens of magnificent homes fronting along quiet tree-lined streets with magnificent views of Lake Washington from back terraces and decks.

There was money in Madison Park. You could almost smell it in the air.

He had been there twice before, and neither time had ended in a memorable yield, but Scott had a feeling. The time he selected was his favorite late in the day on a Friday, Friday, January 27, 1995. Scott Scurlock and Steve Meyers had barely paused for breath after the abortive robbery on January 18. They watched the bank in Madison Park on several different days. They knew when the busy times were, who the tellers were, and, basically, who the customers were. Again, they had three vehicles. Steve never saw one of thema small Japanese-made car because Scott drove it up to Seattle and left it within a few blocks of the bank. He planned to park his Astrovan near it, and drive the little car to the bank just before the robbery. On Friday, with everything ready, they retraced their route. This time, Scott was in his old-man makeup. Steve parked to the east of the bank near some tennis courts, empty now in the dark cold of January. Indeed, it had been dark for almost two hours when Scott parked the small car in an alley behind the bank. Even though it had been two and a half years since Scott had first robbed this bank, the operations manager recognized him the minute he strode through the back door. It was Hollywood in full regalia, and he entered, shouting, “This is a robbery! “ He pulled a handgun from his jacket and raised his arm in the air so that everyone could see it. This bank had beefed up its security after the first two robberies, now the tellers were locked behind a bullet-proof enclosure. Hollywood demanded that they open the door, and one of them did.
 
Moving fluidly and efficiently, he scooped money from the tellers’ drawers into the bag he carried.

“Where’s the vault teller? “ The operations manager and the branch manager, both women, stepped forward. One had the key, the other the combination. “You don’t want me to hurt anyone in the bank, “ Scott said, “and I won’t have toas long as everyone cooperates with me.” The woman with the combination in her head fumbled slightly, and spun the lock around to begin again. He was impatient with her. “Get it open, and hurry, “ he said coldly.

“I don’t want to hurt either one of you.. .. If you’re not able to get it open .. .” The door to the vault finally swung wide, and Scott pushed both women into the vault in front of him. He was watching both of them closely while they led him to where the money was. He took it all, so much cash that he had to stuff it forcibly into the bag he carried.
 
“Now, “ he said, “all of you!

Wait twenty seconds before you activate the alarm. If you do it early, I’ll know.” He pointed to something clipped on his belt.

He was gone. Out the back door. This time, Scott and Steve had decided not to race away from the bank. They would wait as pedestriansin the neighborhood. What better place to hide than close to the cops? It was a rainy Friday night, with all the rush-hour drivers heading home to the suburbs. Rather than risk being caught in the inevitable traffic jams, they would stay put.

Steve knew that Scott was safely out of the bank, he had radioed him that everything was fine. Steve locked his car and walked down Madison to the restaurant where they planned to meet. Scott abandoned the little foreign car and switched to his Astrovan. He stashed the bag with the money, and deftly removed his mask and makeup. It was Steve’s idea that they wait in the area. For an hour and a half, while sirens screeched and wailed outside and police traffic filled the streets around them, they managed to appear to be only casual diners. Then they split up as they left the cafe steve walking across the street to buy a bottle of wine, and Scott heading up the hill on Madison. When Steve got back to his car, he radioed Scott but he got no answer. He hoped that Scott had only turned his radio off. Steve Meyers arrived back in Olympia an hour before Scott did. Experience had taught him not to panic, yet when Scott finally came driving up, he felt the tension go out of his body. In the damp coolness of the cavernous barn, they began their tally of this latest bank robbery. They started to grin as they gazed at the stacks of bills. It sure looked as if their luck had finally changed. It had, indeed.

Scott Scurlock had carried $252,466 away from the Madison Park branch of the Sea first Bank. Steve had had more invested in this robbery than any before, the police bulletins now reported that there were two individuals involved in Hollywood’s robberies.

Steve had explained to Scott that, since he was in more jeopardy now, he needed to get at least ten percent of the take, not just $5,000. FBI agents located the Japanese-made car that Scott had abandoned. Indeed, they had spotted it even while Scott and Steve ate a few blocks away.
 
Shawn Johnson did not really expect to find much of evidentiary value and he was right. Every surface has been wiped clean of even a partial fingerprint. The car was pristine and it was as anonymous as a vehicle could be.

Still, Shawn felt the ghost the shade of the faceless man who had been in this car only ten minutes before. The odor of perspiration faint, but detectable was still there. For an instant, Johnson felt a presence and tried to lock onto it. But then it was gone gone like Hollywood was gone. Who was he? Why was he doing what he was doing?

Someday, somehow, Shawn Johnson hoped to ask him all those questions.

Within days of the January 27 robbery, Steve Meyers left for Reno with a large chunk of the bank loot. He stayed at the Hilton and watched the Super Bowl on a big screen TV. It was a great time to be gambling, everyone was betting on the game. He laundered money for Scott, and he put $10,000 of his own down and won $22,000 more. It was as if he couldn’t lose. Scott and his Swiss banker showed up in Reno, too.

Among them, they were able to move a good deal of the bank take through the casinos and pick it up clean.
 
Steve’s girlfriend, Sari, finished her training in Chicago, and her request to be based out of San Francisco was granted. So Steve Meyers packed up his things and drove a rental truck down I-5 back to northern California. This time, he didn’t stay, he only dropped off the furniture and appliances Sari needed.
 
Scott had told Steve he wanted him to move to New Orleans.

While Steve would recall that Scott had become more and more dependent upon him, it was actually Scott who was making all the major decision in Steve’s life. If Scott scheduled a bank robbery, Steve had to be the reno matter what other plans he might have had. All Scott had to do was pick up the phone. Steve had never planned to live in New Orleans, his girlfriend had finally returned to San Francisco, and that was where he wanted to be but if Scott wanted him in New Orleans, that was where Steve would be. Scott had been to New Orleans once for the Jazz Fest and had been intrigued by the city. He didn’t want to move from his idyllic spot in Olympiabut he liked the idea of having a kind of outpost in New Orleans. Steve drove his car to New Orleans and arrived just before Mardi Gras. He stayed at a bed and breakfast while he looked for an apartment. Despite the events of the last year in Seattle, he still thought of himself as a man whose life’s work was that of an artist. New Orleans was humid, sultry, full of flash and dazzle, but saturated with history.

The cemeteries were replete with statuary marking the above-ground graves of the city’s dead, buried high to escape flood waters.

Steve Meyers thought New Orleans might be a place where a sculptor could thrive. And something in him must have ached for an end to his constant travels. Steve found an apartment in the Lower Garden District. He paid $620 a month in rent and began to look for property where, once more, he could set up a studio. It took him three months to find what he wanted.
 
Steve paid $95,000 cash for a home in late April 1995. He wouldn’t lose this house the way he lost his Virginia rental or his Chicago studio.
 
This house was his. The money came from Steve’s personal bank account not Scott’s every cent he had saved from his bank robbery proceeds, his gambling winnings, and the few thousand dollars he’d received for his artwork. Back in Seattle, Mike Magan had come aboard the Violent Crimes Task Force. Shawn Johnson, the BRA (the Bank Robbery Agent) was the principal special agent working the Hollywood case. Every one on the task force knew about Hollywood now.

He had crept insidiously up the list of their most-wanted felons in Seattle. But he had disappeared once again. They assumed he didn’t need money for a while since his last robbery had netted him a good quarter of a million dollars in cash. None of the task force members were going to find much satisfaction in the spring of 1995. There were bank robberies all right, and all manner of other violent crimes, but the bank robberies were “ordinary, “ if such a thing could be. They were the kind where guys walked in and handed tellers a clumsy note.

They were not take-over robberies like Holly wood’s. The task force worked some difficult cases and some not so difficult, they caught the bad guys, closed the cases. And waited. All during the summer of 1995, through the autumn, the Puget Sound Violent Crimes Task Force investigators waited to hear word of another Hollywood bank hit. But none came. They didn’t allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security. Somewhere out there, circling, planning, there was a man who was picking his spots. Sometime, on some rainy evening at the end of a week, he was going to surface again. If they were very lucky, he might just hit at the bank where one of them was watching, slumped down in a car behind a tree or sitting on a bench reading a newspaper and “waiting” for a bus. With just the right synchronicity, they would have him.

Shawn Johnson read over all the reports, all the witness statements from each bank that Hollywood had hit. He saw that the slippery robber was smart and inordinately lucky. There were times when he had come closer to being caught than even he realized. “On one occasion, “ Johnson said, “there was someone in the bank who had a loaded gun pointed at Hollywood but the man decided not to use it for fear of endangering the other people there. And Hollywood never knew.” Judging from the amount of money taken in each robbery, it seemed to him that Hollywood’s standard of living and/or his pattern of spending required approximately $20,000 a month. Johnson also felt that it had to be more than just the money that drove this particular bank robber.

“I thought that, over time, he had become addicted to the adrenaline rush that came with the act of robbing, “ Johnson recalled. “He was learning a lot as he went along starting from the first robbery where he and his accomplice actually depended on a stolen car for their getaway.
 
That was what an amateur might do, but he wasn’t an amateur any longer.”

Shawn Johnson added up figures, trying to establish Hollywood’s budget.
 
“Going on the assumption that Hollywood was spending $20,000 a month, and deducting that sum for each of the months after his last robbery on January 24, 1995, “ he said, “I picked three dates when I believed he was going to hit again. One of them was January 25, 1996.” Throughout 1995, Scott Scurlock was traveling, and shedding parts of his life. The Swiss banker, who endured her nickname of Swiss Cheese, was really named Sandra. Scott’s friends noticed that she was no longer in residence in Olympia, nor did she commute from Europe to see him. She had left her home, her family, and her country to be with Scott. But he had often disappeared for a day or two or more without even telling her where he was going. Without Scott there, the night shadows crept in on her. She was lonely and frightened, especially because she couldn’t speak English well. She felt terribly isolated on the treehouse property and she was desperately homesick. Her relationship with Scott had finally come to a point where it either had to move forward or end, and it ended.

Perhaps they had shared too much shady history for a lasting love to survive, but he grew tired of her. One day Sandra was there, the next, she was gone.

If Scott experienced pure friendship with any woman, it was with Ellen.

Ellen was lovely to look at and innately good, and when Scott was frightened, he turned to her. She didn’t know what it was that was haunting him, although she was smart enough to perceive that he had to be involved in something on the dark side of the law. He never seemed to work, and he always had enough money to do whatever he wanted. But, like Marge Violette before her, Ellen could not picture Scott doing anything beyond fraud or drugs. She knew from Kevin that Scott had occasional outbursts of anger. But violence? No. If Scott was involved in something violent, Ellen was sure she would know. When she asked Kevin what was going on, he always just changed the subject.