The Take

by L. Brown

  This time, she obeyed.

  The rest of employees and customers were already buried in the carpet. None of them looked past the weapons in their faces. The tellers were secured behind security glass a few inches thick. They didn’t get a chance to react before Schemes had a blonde chick that was working the open floor by her hair at the Plexiglas security door.

  “Open the door,” he said calmly. The tellers behind the door hesitated. Obviously, they were safe, so they were considering whether they should open the door or not.

  Schemes became frustrated and pushed the blonde’s head up against the glass door. He put the gun to her head, and, holding it to her temple, he repeated, “Open the fucking door!”

  One of the tellers looked into the blonde’s eyes, and, without words, he could see her silent pleas for them to comply. All the blood drained from her face as she became ashen. She seemed relieved when she heard the door being unlocked. Schemes shoved her around once inside the tellers’ station. Then, he smacked the male teller, who opened the door, in the head with the gun, sending him crashing to the floor with the blonde woman.

  “Open the fucking drawers, now!” Schemes took a folded laundry bag from his waist and stuffed the money in it after the tellers opened the drawers.

  “Are there dye packs in this money?” he asked, but the money was already in the bag anyway.

  “No,” a teller cried.

  Schemes glanced at Frog, who was standing by the front door. Frog had his back against the wall, so no one could see him from outside.

  “Where’s the manager?” Schemes asked.

  An older female got up from the ground.

  “Open the vault,” he told her.

  “I can’t. It’s on a timer. It can’t open until ten o’ clock,” the manager said.

  Grabbing the woman by her collar, he told her, “Don’t fucking play with me!” He slammed her into the metal vault door and demanded, “Open the fucking vault!” Tears trickled down the woman’s face.

  “Please! I swear! I can’t! Just take what you have and go!” the lady cried.

  Schemes looked at his watch. It was 9:43 a.m. There was no way that they could stay inside the bank for twenty minutes. “Fuck!” he shouted, causing the victims to flinch.

  He shoved the manager, and she tripped over another employee who was face down on the ground. She hit the floor hard and buried her head in her palms. Schemes ran from behind the glass and nodded at Frog, who pulled out the phone and chirped Smitty.

  “Pull up. We’re ready.”

  Schemes was sick. He couldn’t believe he’d fucked up. He knew the money from the tellers’ drawers wasn’t shit, especially not split three ways.

  They watched the van pull up, and they exited the bank, hopping into the stolen getaway vehicle. As instructed, Smitty pulled off regularly to avoid tracking unwanted attention.

  Frog and Smitty sat in the front, smiling ear to ear and celebrating the take. However, Schemes knew that the job was a fuck up and that they’d only gotten away with pennies.

  A popping sound erupted, and they all looked around to find out where the sound came from. A sizzling sound seethed and suddenly a reddish smoke permeated the van’s interior. Schemes looked down and found the smoke coming from the bag of money. As if things weren’t already bad, they’d gotten worse. Schemes had made the mistake of grabbing a dye pack when he was grabbing the money.

  The billowing smoke transformed the entire interior of the van to crimson-red. The smoke burned their eyes like they had been sprayed with pepper spray. They could barely open their eyes from the overwhelming burning sensation. The smoke hindered their breathing as well.

  “Throw it out! Throw it out!” Smitty begged. He could barely see the road, so he wanted Schemes to throw the bag out. He didn’t care about the money. He couldn’t stand the burning and confusion the dye pack smoke was causing. The van swerved recklessly on the rainy tarmac. Angry horns blared, and cars weaved to avoid the wild vehicle.

  “Throw it out!” Frog shouted along with Smitty.

  “No! Drive, nigga!” Schemes demanded, refusing to throw the damaged bag of money.

  Instead, he balled the bag up in his arms like a running back carrying a football, closed his eyes, and tucked his face and the bag in his lap and shouted, “Drive, nigga! Drive!”

  CHAPTER 23

  SCHEMES, SMITTY, AND Frog finally reached the switch point without getting arrested. Staying low-key was out of the question. Once Smitty rolled down the windows to let the smoke out, the van looked like a red ball of smoke, flying down the street. As if Mother Nature sensed chaos, the rain starting coming down even harder.

  The van skidded to a stop on a small block, and the three of them jumped out the van as if it was getting ready to blow up. Smitty heard a clicking sound as he jumped out the driver’s seat. He looked down in time to see the Boost Mobile phone hit the ground, along with the umbrella that had been resting in his lap. The phone slid under a parked car, adjacent to the getaway van.

  He picked the umbrella up before looking under the car to get the phone. However, the phone was out of his reach. Sirens could be heard not far away. Without a doubt, the police had a description of the stolen van, so they needed to get out of dodge before they were spotted.

  “Come on, nigga!” Schemes yelled in frustration from the Buick Century that he and Frog were already sitting in. They saw Smitty reaching under the car, but didn’t have a clue what he was doing.

  “Fuck the phone,” Smitty said and jumped to his feet, leaving it behind.

  After diving in the backseat, he slammed the door, and they fled the scene. All of them had traces of red dye on their clothing and skin. Schemes’s beard had traces of the dye, making it look like he had red henna in it.

  “Yo! What the fuck was you doing under the car?” Schemes asked, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “I dropped the phone when I got out the car.” “You what?” Schemes couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Man, that shit was on my lap, and it slid under the car when I hopped out. I was tryna get it, but I couldn’t reach it, so I said fuck it,” Smitty responded.

  The phone was subscribed to Schemes’s name, so he was infuriated by what Smitty was telling him. First, the safe. Second, the dye pack. And lastly, the phone had been left at the scene. If found by the authorities, the phone would definitely be a solid lead for them.

  Schemes’s conscience was killing him. His intuition had told him over and over not to do a robbery outside the crew. But they had left him hanging, and his pride wouldn’t allow him to accept that, so he had recruited Frog and Smitty. Now, he was paying for it.

  Now, he knew he had to lay low because the feds would be coming.

  Ghost and Kia stood in the window of the cabin, enjoying the panoramic view of the mountains. The cabin was stationed at the top of the mountains, so they could see the cabins, trees, and roadways below. Ghost felt like he was on top of the world.

  He held Kia in his arms as he gazed over her shoulder out the window. Life had been going great for him over the last few months. He had everything he wanted. The thought of leaving the game alone played heavily on his mind lately.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Kia asked.

  “Not as beautiful as my baby,” he said, planting a kiss on her neck.

  She smiled from the compliment. “Wish we could live like this forever.”

  “We can,” Ghost assured her.

  She chuckled and responded, “We can’t live off Shareef forever.”

  Ghost was a bit appalled by her response, but he still hadn’t told her he was a millionaire. “We don’t have to, baby. I told you I would always make sure you and Kha were all right.”

  “I know, Ghost, but I want you here with us. None of this means anything if you’re not here with us.”

  “Baby, I’m done,” he told her. “We are set for the rest of our lives. I will never leave your side again.”

  “You promise?�
� Kia asked, as she looked down at the five-carat ring on her finger. She had waited her whole life for the day she got married, and that day would be coming soon.

  Ghost promised her that he would never leave her again and that he was done with the game. Little did he know, the game loved no one, and trouble was waiting for him back at home.

  Terry laid in the hospital bed, irritated by the sounds of the machines. He had an IV in his arm, and his side was killing him. He had been hit three times and was lucky to still be alive. Despite his injuries, he would have left the hospital on his own if it wasn’t for the handcuffs holding his arms to the bed’s side rail. A uniformed officer guarded his room to prevent his escape. He knew he was in a jam because he’d been charged with the homicide of Tough Guy.

  Two plain-clothes detectives walked in the room.

  “How are you, son?” one of them asked. Terry just nodded. “As you know, things aren’t looking too good for you.” The officer let that sink in before continuing. “Now, you can help yourself out here if you give us your side of the story.” After taking Terry’s silence as reluctance to cooperate, he said, “We know there were others with you the other night. Obviously, this was a case of self-defense because you were shot at the scene, but your partners left you for dead. Help us identify them, so we can ask them a few questions.”

  “So, if I let you know what you want to know, you’re going to help me?” Terry asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Terry paused as if he was considering the option. “I only know their nicknames,” he told them.

  “Okay, that’s a start,” one of the detectives said, pulling his pen and pad out. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Hairy,” Terry told him.

  “H-a-r-r-y?” he asked.

  “No, H-a-i-r-y.” Terry spelled it out for clarification. Then, he gave a brief description of him.

  “All right. Who’s the other one?”

  “Balls,” Terry said, telling on his other accomplice and giving another physical description.

  In return for his cooperation, the detectives turned the hospital television on for him before leaving to go find the two others involved.

  These two dick heads really left looking for Hairy Balls?

  CHAPTER 24

  THE RAIN STARTED TO dry up from the late morning sun. A sea of red and blue lights were at the scene of the bank robbery. FBI agents Vito Boselli and John Graham were among the authorities investigating at the scene. Actually, the two agents were at the scene where the stolen getaway van was discovered. There weren’t many clues back at the bank, so they left to investigate the van.

  The agents knew bank robberies were a repetitive crime, so it was likely that the suspects behind this job were responsible for others previously done or would commit more in the future. Still, they needed a break that would lead them to the suspects.

  “This one looks like some amateurs, Vito,” John told his partner, looking at the candy-red-coated insides of the stolen van.

  “What’s the report on the van?” Vito asked.

  “Still not reported stolen. But the ignition is damaged, so we’re pretty sure it’s hot. They probably got it late last night, so the owner may not even realize it’s gone yet. The plates are registered to a John Lee.”

  “Sounds like an Asian name. Has anyone tried to contact Mr. Lee yet?”

  “Yeah, but no luck reaching him,” John grimaced.

  “The victims back at the bank said the men were using phones which sounded like walkie-talkies,” Vito said.

  “Sounds like they had Nextel phones.”

  “Fuck! We’re at another fucking standstill!” Vito snapped. He was a very moody agent. One second, he was calm, and then, out of nowhere, he was flipping out. He was renowned at FBI Headquarters for his fifteen years on the job. Specializing in robberies and kidnappings, he was the best in the field. However, robberies typically yielded little to no evidence. Most robbers wore masks and gloves, making it almost impossible to identify them.

  “Let’s get the van down to headquarters to get it dusted for prints and vacuumed for hair samples. We’ll probably come up empty, but do it anyway,” Vito instructed another agent on the scene.

  “We need a break,” John said.

  “They’ll make a mistake. Trust me. They always do.”

  Vito was a cocky asshole. He knew the robbers would fuck up and, when they did, he’d be right there, waiting to bust them. Just as John nodded in agreement, they heard a phone ringing, but didn’t recognize the ringtone as any of theirs.

  Once they realized the ringing wasn’t coming from either of their phones, they looked around in confusion. The ringing was close by, so they immediately started searching the van again. They’d already combed the van, but didn’t find a phone, but they searched again.

  The ringing stopped, but they didn’t stop looking.

  “I’m not fucking crazy! I heard something ringing,” John said, frustrated that he couldn’t find it.

  “I heard it, too.”

  Just as they were about to give up, the phone came back to life. John desperately ripped the van apart. Vito dropped to his knees and looked under the van.

  Nothing.

  About to climb to his feet, Vito turned his head to look under the parked car next to the stolen van. The bottom of the car was lighting up from the phone’s light. Vito dropped to his belly, not caring about his cheap suit and grabbed the phone.

  He got his pudgy ass up and stared at John. He wasn’t sure if he should answer it. John nodded, giving his approval for him to answer the phone before it stopped ringing. Vito shrugged and answered, “Hello.”

  “Damn! This nigga ain’t answering his phone,” Reem said to himself. “Baby, have you spoken to Rita today?” he asked Toya, who was in the car with him.

  “I spoke to her a little earlier.”

  “Was Schemes with her?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t ask, but I doubt it ‘cause she was on her way to get her hair done when I talked to her.”

  Reem had called Schemes’s phone several times throughout the morning, but wasn’t getting an answer. He’d had a premonition. For some reason, he knew something was wrong. It wasn’t like Schemes not to answer the phone.

  Reem even tried Frog’s phone, but got the answering machine right away. He tried Schemes’s phone one last time. To his surprise, he finally got an answer.

  “Hello.”

  “Yo! Who is this?” Reem didn’t recognize the voice on the other end.

  “This is Special Agent Vito Boselli.” Vito let his title sink in before continuing, “Reem, we have your partner down here at the FBI headquarters.” He lied. “He fucked up big time, and, from the looks of things, he’s not biting the bullet.” Vito knew the person calling was Reem because it popped up on the screen when he called. He, also, knew Reem couldn’t know he was lying about having his man in custody because if he knew his man had lost his phone, he wouldn’t even be calling it.

  Vito knew Reem was silent because, besides breath, there was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Why don’t you come on down and have a little chat with us?” Vito tried his hand.

  Still silence.

  “Are you there?”

  “Eat a dick!” Reem asserted before hanging on him.

  Schemes, Frog, and Smitty made it back safely to Smitty’s spot. They agreed to go there after the robbery because it was closest to the bank they took down.

  Frog and Smitty broke their phones to pieces because Smitty had dropped Schemes’s phone at the scene. Although Smitty didn’t have a chirp phone, he had used his phone to call Schemes, so he had to get rid of his phone, too. They knew the feds would check the calls and locations of the phones that were in contact with the recovered phone. It would be easy for the feds to get the phone company to give them the cell tower information to pinpoint the location of any phones that were in contact with the phone Smitty had dropped.

  “How the fuck di
d you drop the phone, dick head?” Schemes snapped.

  “It was on my lap, man. When I got out, it fell. That fucking smoke and rain had me discombobulated. I tried to get it, but I couldn’t reach it.”

  Schemes just shook his head. He still couldn’t believe Smitty had dropped his phone. He knew the feds would find it at the scene and come for him. It was time for him to get low.

  They took the money out the bag and saw that it was ruined. The majority of the money was covered with the red dye. They tried several tricks trying to get the dye off the money but to no avail. They counted it anyway. It only totaled a small nine grand. Even worse, only a good two grand wasn’t destroyed by the red dye.

  “We gotta burn this shit,” Schemes said.

  “What? We ain’t burning no paper!” Frog retorted.

  Smitty agreed, but he was in a shell, so he didn’t say shit. He was upset with himself. Here it was he finally got put down, and he had messed up big time.

  “We can use the money for something,” Frog insisted. Schemes just huffed and puffed. Honestly, he didn’t want to

  get rid of the money either. However, the decision to get rid of the money was a bit easier for him because he had more than both Frog and Smitty put together. Greed kicked in, and he had done the worse robbery yet.

  “Come on, y’all. Let’s get outta here,” Schemes said.

  “Where are we going?” Frog asked, knowing they had to get low before the feds came.

  “Anywhere but here,” Schemes told him. He shot Smitty an angry glare and shook his head again. “Smitty, where are you going to go?”

  “Shit, I don’t know.” The nervousness could be seen all over his face. “Where y’all gonna go?” Smitty asked.