Norco '80

by Peter Houlahan

  Manny Delgado did not answer, but the face of a younger Hispanic man with a wispy mustache entered Hakala’s field of vision. Jesus, he’s just a boy, thought Gary. The kid looked almost apologetic for what they were doing as he gently removed Gary’s glasses. “I’ll put them in the glove compartment for you,” the boy said. It would be the only act of kindness shown to Gary Hakala that entire day.

  Gary complained the tape was cutting off circulation to his hands. Manny told him to shut the fuck up and waved a hunting knife menacingly in front of his hostage’s throat. The van began to roll. Hakala tried to keep track of the location of each of his tormentors. The mean little Mexican still had a knee in his back and someone was driving the van. Gary could not see Russell Harven trailing them in the Matador. To him, the man he had briefly seen standing outside the cargo door seemed to have disappeared entirely.

  After a few minutes, the van stopped and Gary could feel the trailer being unchained and lifted off the hitch. They entered the on-ramp to the 57 Freeway minutes later. With his head turned sideways Gary could look out the back window and see the drivers of big semitrucks following just behind the Tradesman. One came up so close that Gary thought he had made eye contact with the driver, but the truck changed lanes and was gone.

  Manny Delgado had noticed it too. He jumped off Hakala and began smashing the shelving out of the rear side cabinet of the van with the handle end of the hunting knife. When he was done, he jerked Gary to his knees and ordered him inside the cabinet. The guy had to be joking, thought Hakala; there was no way he could fit in that. With a little extra encouragement from the hunting knife, Gary did his best to comply. Once inside, Delgado shoved a paper grocery bag over Hakala’s head and began wrapping a nylon cord around his neck. A chill went through Gary. So that’s it, Hakala figured. This punk is going to strangle me to death.

  With the cord secure, Delgado jerked it hard several times but left it loose. He pressed the knife to Gary’s stomach, screamed more threats, and then slammed the door of the cabinet closed, throwing his full weight against it to get it to latch. Gary’s hands and legs soon went numb from being so tightly bound. Exposed nails in the cabinet dug into his flesh. He was facing the back of the van, trapped in a partial standing position with his knees bent, not unlike a stress position used in torture interrogations.

  INSIDE THE MIRA LOMA HOUSE, GEORGE SMITH AND CHRIS HARVEN HAD BEEN smoking weed and working their way through a six-pack of Budweiser to keep their nerves down and their courage up. Laid out on the carpet of a back bedroom, an arsenal of weapons and survival supplies were grouped by purpose and ready to be loaded into a half dozen military duffel bags. The two yellow MacDonald walkie-talkie radios to be used between Billy in the getaway van and George inside the bank sat off to the side.

  Chris, Russ, and George would each enter the bank armed with semiautomatic assault rifles, Chris with his HK93, Russ with the Colt “Shorty” AR-15, and George with the Heckler .308. Manny would have the riot gun. The serial numbers on all the guns had been covered up with electrical tape to avoid being readable on bank surveillance tapes. Each of the men would carry at least one sidearm, George with a Browning .45 semiautomatic pistol shoulder-holstered and another at his hip. Both George and Chris had hundreds of additional rounds of ammunition in fully loaded magazines strapped across their chests. In the front seat of the getaway van, driver Billy Delgado would also have a Colt AR-15 to go along with the .45 Colt semiautomatic handgun tucked into a holster strapped around his right ankle.

  For the rifles, George and Chris had made dozens of “jungle clips” allowing them to eject an empty magazine, flip it over, and load a full one in its place in a matter of seconds. Piggybacking three forty-round magazines together up-down-up as George and Chris had done gave the weapon a devastating 120-round capacity, which they were capable of emptying on a target in a little over a minute. Chris Harven alone had seventeen forty-round magazines: 680 extra rounds in total. In addition to this, boxes of extra ammunition, more than 3,000 rounds of varying calibers, had already been packed into duffel bags.

  Zipped up in two of the bags destined for the trunk of each cold getaway car was survival gear that included map books, compass, water purification tablets, field glasses, mess kits, gas masks, emergency blankets, extra clothing, and insulin vials and three syringes for Russell Harven. Half a dozen hunting knives, a nine-inch Bowie knife, and two machetes were split among survival kits. A Remington hunting rifle with scope and hundreds of rounds of H&H .357 cartridges would go into each trunk. The H&H .357 cartridge was designed primarily for taking down large and dangerous game. In other words, an “elephant gun.”

  And then there were the bombs, a dozen twelve-ounce homemade fragmentation grenades, a half dozen sixteen-ounce shotgun-launch versions, three Blue Nun Molotov cocktails, and a curious item that consisted of a cardboard box containing six beer bottles filled with leaded gasoline surrounding a small detonation device. George would bring two of the antipersonnel grenades into the bank, shoved deep in a pocket of his military-green duster.

  When they were done loading all the weapons, bombs, ammunition, and survival gear, they moved the duffel bags to the back seat of Chris’s Z/28. George just kept adding more supplies, the last being a samurai sword with a twenty-three-inch blade sheathed in an ornate scabbard and protected by a gym sock pulled over the handle. George placed the sword in the back seat with the other weapons. Try as he might, Chris could not come up with a single reason why anyone would need a goddamn sword to rob a bank.

  “WHERE’S THE DUDE?”

  Gary Hakala did not know he was in a Kmart parking lot in Riverside County when he heard the side door of the van slide open, but he knew “the dude” they were talking about was him. He was more angry than afraid, but was nevertheless relieved when he was not immediately jerked out of the cabinet, shot in the back of the head, and dumped in an empty field.

  Hakala still had no idea what the end game was, but he knew it might include killing him somewhere along the way. So far, he had been riding on freeways and side streets for almost two hours with Manny Delgado occasionally jerking the cord around his neck and threatening to kill him while his hands and feet turned a waxy white from lack of circulation.

  Chris Harven stuck his head inside the cargo area and looked at the bulging door of the cabinet. You put him in there? he said, amazed that any human being could fit in such a small space.

  Where the fuck else was I going to put him? Manny spat, looking nervous, sweaty and jumpy, an unsheathed hunting knife beside him on the carpet. Considering Manny’s condition, Chris figured the dude was lucky to still be alive. Let’s just get this shit in here, said Chris, hoisting the first duffel bag into the back of the van.

  Russ and Billy took the Z/28 and the Matador and headed north on Hamner to drop the two cars off at the Little League field parking lot a mile and a half north of the bank at Detroit Street, the van following close behind. The Friday-afternoon traffic at Hamner and Fourth Street was heavy, the Security Pacific Bank parking lot on the southeast corner mostly full of customers coming and going. A steady line of cars streamed into the intersection from the west side of Fourth Street where the Naval Sea Systems Command base was disgorging a day shift eager to cash their weekly paychecks.

  When they got to the Little League field, Billy and Russ parked the two cars side by side in the empty lot, noses facing Hamner just a few dozen feet off the busy avenue. Manny and Billy had stolen two sets of license plates from cars parked at the Westminster Mall the night before, which had been put onto the “cold cars” that morning. If things went according to plan, George and Chris would jump in the Z/28 and head off to Vegas and the others would either go home or head up into the mountains to lay low depending on how hot the situation was after the robbery.

  For the first time that day, all five of the Norco bank robbers piled into the van to make final preparations. From inside the cabinet, Gary Hakala could hear hushed voices but could only mak
e out some of the words. Someone was using military jargon: “the mission,” “the objective,” “the diversion.” He could hear a walkie-talkie crackling, maybe even a police scanner. There was movement, unpacking of bags, the sound of people dressing, pulling on jackets, the unmistakable sounds of weapons being loaded and readied. And then the van began to move again.

  George Smith worried that it was getting dangerously late in the day. There would be much more cash walking out of the bank on a payday than there would be walking in. It was almost 2:00 p.m. and they still had one more important piece of the plan to execute before hitting the bank.

  Chris got behind the wheel and they rolled south on Corona Avenue parallel to Hamner back in the direction of the Kmart. Edging the van down an alley just off Hamner and a mile south of the bank, Chris brought it to a stop behind a strip mall under construction at 1780 Commerce Street. A few minutes after two o’clock in the afternoon, George opened the side door of the van and jumped out carrying the cardboard box containing six beer bottles filled with leaded gasoline. Hurrying to the back of the building near a wooden shed, George set the box beneath the meter regulating the main source of natural gas to the structure. Using the Zippo, he lit the delay fuse of the detonator and ran back to the van. Let’s get the fuck out of here, he said.

  Chris drove off as a spiral of black smoke began to curl up into the air. In a few minutes, the detonator would go off, starting a gasoline fire that would heat the gas main until it exploded. Every emergency vehicle, including the cops, would be at the scene of a gas main explosion at least a mile south of the bank.

  What occurred behind the building at 1780 Commerce Street just about the time the van was pulling into the Stater Bros. parking lot at Fourth and Hamner was something different than planned. At 2:11 p.m., William Clark looked out the window of his cabinet shop to see black smoke rising from the construction site just across the alley. Clark observed a small flame coming from a box containing what looked like a six-pack of beer placed next to the back wall of the building. And then he saw the gas main. While Clark might not have fully comprehended what he was looking at, he certainly understood the severity of a fire burning directly below a gas main. And then one of the bottles exploded with a loud pop, throwing flames ten feet into the air, igniting the wall above it.

  While Clark ran to warn everyone at the construction site, a passing motorist saw the flames too, grabbed a fire extinguisher from his truck, and quickly put the whole thing out. By 2:15, a critical part of George Smith’s master plan had ended in a fizzle. It was the first sign that things were about to go very wrong.

  THE MEN IN THE VAN PARKED ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE SECURITY PACIFIC Bank pulled on their matching drab-green military ponchos, readied black ski masks on their heads, checked their weapons one more time, and waited for the blaring of sirens and the procession of emergency vehicles heading south on Hamner to begin. By 2:45, Chris and George began to bicker over who was responsible for the failure of the bomb to blow up the gas main. They waited some more. About 3:00, they sent Billy over to the Carl’s Jr. to grab a few drinks. They argued among themselves about whether they should call the whole thing off. But what about the fucking dude in the cabinet? They were already guilty of a crime that could send them to prison for life.

  By 3:15 p.m., George Smith had decided he was no longer running a democracy. He wanted to make one last surveillance of “the objective.” They drove to the far edge of the Stater Bros. lot, the nose of the van just a dozen feet from Hamner Avenue, facing the bank. As customers left the bank, George knew that each was leaving with cash that could have, should have, already been his. George gave the order to make final preparations. And then somebody spotted deputy Andy Delgado pulling into the Stater Bros. parking lot for his 1087 meetup with deputy Chuck Hille.

  Fucking cop, right there.

  They waited breathlessly, their eyes shifting from one to another. In the passenger seat, George leaned forward and took a sip of soda, trying to look as casual as possible. Just a couple of drive-through customers pausing to eat their burgers and fries. The sheriff’s car drove within twenty feet of them, swung around, and stopped fifty feet away, angled across several empty parking spots facing the van. The guy looked like he was waiting for backup. They could have been spotted at the site of the diversion bomb, after all. They would not be all that hard to find with that giant cup of cappuccino painted on both sides of the van.

  Keep your guns ready.

  When a second sheriff’s car entered the parking lot, the situation grew even tenser. The second cruiser pulled up next to the other and the two deputies sat talking to each other through the driver’s-side windows. George let out a long breath while eyeing the two cruisers in the side mirror. I don’t know about this shit, someone whispered in the back. Nobody answered. They waited. The cop cars headed for the exit, one after the other, turned left onto Hamner, and sped north until they were out of sight. At least now we know where all the cops in Norco are, George said.

  But George Smith was wrong. He did not know about the RSO “cover shift” that placed an additional deputy in Norco during the transition between day and evening shifts. An hour earlier, deputy Glyn Bolasky had changed into his uniform at Riverside HQ, checked out a shotgun and radio, and picked up a Chevy Impala cruiser. On his way to Norco he stopped at the 7-Eleven to buy a ginger ale and pack of sour apple bubble gum, and was at that very moment headed south on Hamner Avenue in the direction of Fourth Street.

  George was done waiting. From inside his cabinet prison, Gary Hakala heard a shouted command. “It’s on. Go, go, go!” When the van began to move, Hakala knew that whatever was going to happen to him was about to happen right then. The van came to a sharp stop less than a minute later. The voice called out “Go, go, go!” one more time and the side door swung open hard. The van bounced and rocked from the weight of the men piling out. A child screamed. And then that voice again, this time from outside the van: “Everyone hit the fucking floor or I’m going to blow your fucking heads off!”

  OUTSIDE THE ENTRANCE TO THE SECURITY PACIFIC BANK, TWO MOTHERS AND their Cub Scouts were selling magazine subscriptions when four men in military ponchos and black ski masks carrying assault rifles exploded out the side doors of the green van directly in front them. As George Smith leapt from the van, he shoved one of the young Scouts out of the way. The boy screamed as Smith and the others charged into the bank.

  Eighteen-year-old James Kirkland had just come from work and was filling out a deposit slip in the middle of the bank when he heard someone threaten to blow his fucking head off. When he turned to look, Chris Harven stepped in front of him, pulled an assault rifle out from under a green military poncho, and aimed it straight at his head. Kirkland hit the fucking floor.

  “Everyone down,” George Smith commanded, swinging his HK91 from one terrified customer to the next until all dozen or so had complied. “This is a robbery, everyone down!”

  Customer Beverly Beam was seated in a chair against the wall next to the entrance waiting for the new accounts manager when the masked men burst through the door. With all four men only steps away with their backs turned to her, she was afraid any movement would surprise the gunmen and get her killed. She froze. George Smith caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, whirled and aimed the Heckler at her. “Do you want your fucking head blown off?” he shouted. She shook her head, no. “Then get on the floor.” Beam went down onto her stomach.

  Seated at her desk, assistant branch manager Sharon Higman saw an opportunity to trigger the silent alarm mounted just below the edge of the desktop. But the moment she began to move her hand, Chris Harven had the assault rifle trained on her from twenty feet away. “If you hit that fucking alarm, I will shoot your fucking head off,” he growled. Seeing the eyes through the hole in the ski mask, Higman had no doubt that the man meant it. She put her hands back where he could see them and sat down on the floor beside her desk.

  “If there are any alarms o
r anything,” Smith barked, roaming between customers flattened out on the marble floor, “there are going to be a lot of dead people here. We have explosives. We won’t be afraid to use them.”

  Manny Delgado crossed the bank lobby holding the riot gun at his hip and then vaulted the teller line. Standing atop the counter, he swept the barrel of his shotgun along the row of four cashiers manning their windows below. “You heard him, hit the fucking floor!” he bellowed.

  Standing behind the teller line sorting checks, proof operator Denise DeMarco was so frightened at the sight of the shotgun that she began to back away rather than sit down as ordered. “Get down on the floor!” Delgado exploded, lifting the shotgun in her direction. The petrified DeMarco continued to back away as Delgado screamed at her over and over to get down. “Please get down, Denise,” one of the tellers begged. DeMarco reached the rear wall of the bank. Terrified, but unable to retreat any further, she slid down the wall and took a seat on the floor.

  “Cashiers, stand up!” Delgado ordered the four line tellers. The women glanced at each other before getting back to their feet. Delgado threw a blue drawstring bag onto the counter in front of the closest teller, Janet Harper. “Put the fucking money in it!”

  With her face just feet from the end of a shotgun in the hands of a very jittery man, Harper froze, too frightened to reach for the bag. Standing beside Harper at window 2 was lead teller Sharon Marzolf, a fearless and commanding former security guard whose previous job had been apprehending shoplifters at a local department store. Marzolf calmly took the bag and held it open for Harper. “Go ahead Janet, empty your bus,” Marzolf said, referring to the teller’s cash drawer. Harper did. Next Marzolf emptied her own drawer and handed the bag to the third teller, Teresa DeRuyter. DeRuyter was careful to add her traceable bait money to the contents of the bag before passing it on to the last teller in the line.