“What if you die? You want to die in jail?” Arthur prodded.
Teresa gave a smug laugh. “I ain’t gonna die. I’m too mean.”
They were all silent, and Teresa stared at Sid.
“It doesn’t seem unreasonable, Sid,” Arthur began.
“Ain’t it okay? Now, you let me and Dottie come up with the statement, just so I know the fine details of the thing, and I’ll confess to the rafters. And that’s what I want from you, lawyer.”
They were all quiet.
Arthur cleared his throat and leaned forward. “And us, what do you want from us?” he asked firmly.
A slow, sly smile drew across Teresa’s face, and she placed her hands on her hips and looked straight at him.
“I want fifty thousand, in cash, in a safety-deposit box for when I get out, and you will never hear it cross my lips she was the one did the crime.”
Sid’s mouth dropped open, Arthur whistled low, and Dottie kept her stare.
“You’re blackmailing them on top of this?”
“Well, I gotta get something outta this, don’t I?”
“I can’t listen to any more…” Sid shook his head.
“Forty-eight,” Dottie said evenly.
“Fifty-two,” Teresa said quickly.
“You just said fifty,” Arthur interjected. “And you already confessed to the crime. What if we turn around and refute your story in the press?”
Teresa tossed her head back and gave a raspy chortle. “You ain’t ever gonna do that.”
“Why not?” Arthur asked.
“Because she’s fallen back in love with you in the past six days, and judging from the fact that you’re sitting here like a pigeon, you probably, for reasons I can’t begin to understand, have fallen back in love with her. You ain’t gonna let her confess to no crime so she can go sit in prison. That’s why she didn’t come forward two days ago.”
Arthur let out a laugh and then conceded with a shrug.
“This is insane,” Sid began, and there was a knock and they all silently watched Sid walk to the door. His secretary whispered something, and they heard Sid say, “What?” in an alarmed tone. He turned back to the others and quickly excused himself and left, shutting the door behind him. Outside they could hear the voices of Teresa’s children as they descended upon Sid. Dottie and Arthur looked back at Teresa.
“You are just unbelievable—” Dottie began.
“Hey, hey, now, I ain’t so bad. I am fully prepared to do time for you so you can go off with him,” Teresa said, blinking, and somewhat confused by Dottie not seeing what a golden opportunity she was being handed.
“So what do you get out of this? Besides a jail term?” Arthur asked.
“What do I get? A piece of the money, so when I do get out, I will have a little something. I get that the government will have picked up the tab for this breast thing. I get to be on television, I get to meet people … I had my man, and my home and my life, and that made me happy. And now that’s over, but I’m too young to just go sit in some home somewhere. I ain’t afraid of some jail in Danbury, Connecticut, for Christ’s sake, I’m afraid of spending my life sitting in some home in Florida because I ain’t got the money to do what I want, and I gave up. I need to find out what I want to do. And as crazy as it sounds, this might give me the chance. Is that so bad?”
Arthur looked at Dottie, who slowly shook her head. They were all silent again.
“So … where do you want the fifty grand deposited?” Arthur asked finally.
“Fifty-two.” Teresa said.
“Forty-nine,” Dottie bid.
“Fifty-one,” Teresa said, leaning forward, and waited for Dottie’s next bid.
The door opened and Sid walked in stiffly. He shut the door behind the prying eyes of Teresa’s children.
“Sid?” Arthur said, looking at him concerned. Dottie stared at his face, a little pale and angry-looking as he stormed over to the bookcase.
“Just be quiet and listen.” He snapped on the radio to WINS.
“—at nine forty-five this morning. An FBI spokesman issued the following statement…” There was a scant pause and then a voice with a heavy New York accent began.
“In light of these new developments, charges of robbery will be dropped against Mrs. Newhouse until such time as we can either verify Mrs. Newhouse’s role, if any, in the robbery on Friday, or until we can prove Mrs. Newhouse is shielding someone else.”
“Could the robbery this morning be a copycat crime?” A voice asked.
“With all the press coverage and publicity over the past several days, we cannot rule that out. In either case, we will be keeping a close eye on Mrs. Newhouse.”
“Is the federal government planning to file any charges of filing a false report, or, say, obstruction of justice against Mrs. Newhouse?”
“We will consider charges of filing a false report. Unless, as I said, we find out she’s shielding someone; then of course we’ll file obstruction charges.”
“What is going on?” Dottie asked, and found her eyes darting nervously at the door.
“It seems a woman wearing a blue suit and a large veiled hat held up a Citibank on Flatbush Avenue at nine forty-five this morning, while we were all in the courthouse.”
“What?”
“You’ve inspired a protégée,” Arthur quipped.
“Oh my God.”
Sid turned and furiously slammed his fist on the tabletop. “All right! I’ve had enough of all of this! Just once, one of you tell me the truth here. Now, who is this woman?”
Dottie’s shook her head and glanced at Teresa, who was just as dumbfounded.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come off it! You lied to me about her,” Sid yelled at Dottie and pointed at Teresa. “And then you lied about committing the robbery to the cops! I look like an idiot here, ladies! Now tell me, who is she?”
“Lower your voice—I don’t know.” Teresa snapped.
Sid glared at Dottie.
“She’s not with us.” Dottie sniffed.
“What do you think, we’ve recruited every disgruntled senior citizen in New York, Sid?” Arthur asked.
“It’s beginning to seem that way to me. So, none of you knows this woman in Brooklyn?”
Sid looked at Arthur, who shook his head. “Must be an independent bank robber.”
The muscles on Sid’s jaw tightened. He was not taking this well. “Great! Just great. Okay, that’s it then. I guess you can go. There’s nothing more to be done today. Where will I be able to get in touch with you, in case they do decide to file charges?”
Teresa was silent. Dottie glanced at Teresa for a second, then, startled, looked back at her face. Teresa’s eyes stared blankly at the tabletop. Behind the sadness, Dottie could see the desperation she knew so well. The pain of the thought, How am I going to live?
In one sentence, it was as if someone had sucked the life energy out of Teresa.
“You can contact her through me, Sid,” Arthur said, as he stood up. “We might as well settle the fees.”
“Fine,” Sid said stiffly and walked to the door, followed by Arthur. He turned to Dottie and Teresa. In the waiting room they could hear the sounds of Teresa’s children—of applause, of anger, jokes—all in reaction to the news on the radio.
“Should I let them in?” Sid asked, his hand on the doorknob.
Teresa stared dully and Dottie could see her eyes beginning to get red.
Dottie looked at him. “Give us a minute.”
Sid nodded and left. Dottie kept her eyes silently on her.
Teresa tiredly shook her head. At last her eyes rose and met Dottie’s.
“Teresa,” Dottie said gently, “it’s okay, it’s good news.”
“Yeah,” she replied wanly.
“You don’t have to go to jail now.”
“Yeah,” she murmured.
They sat in silence, and Teresa slowly shook her head.
“What am I going to
do?” she asked, her eyes forlornly searching Dottie’s.
“Well, we march down to Medicaid—”
“Aw, Christ! They’ll just throw me out again. Nobody gives a damn about some broke woman with a lump in her breast. Nobody gives a good goddamn. You know where I’m gonna wind up? Sitting in some woman’s house in Florida till I can’t sit up for myself. And then…” Her voice cut off bitterly. She stood up.
“No. No, you won’t,” Dottie said determinedly.
* * *
ARTHUR and Dottie insisted that Teresa go home with them until she decided what she wanted to do. Arthur staved off all objections from her children and, kissing Dottie in the lobby, went off to get the car.
Dottie took Teresa by the arm and led her out of the building. The day was bright and sunny, though it was the first truly chilly day of the season. Dottie shivered in the too-thin coat she’d thrown on, and felt Teresa shiver beside her. They walked to the corner, and Dottie looked for Arthur and the car.
“There she is!” someone yelled, and suddenly newspeople swarmed around them. Lights from cameras blazed, making Dottie squint and hold a hand over her eyes. Questions were shouted, as the press began to push closer and closer. Dottie nervously looked around for Arthur. At last she saw the Ford drive up and she grabbed Teresa’s arm and began to pull her through the crowd, trying her best to ignore the shouting men and women.
“Why did you confess?”
“Tell us what went through—”
“Did you think—”
Teresa and Dottie stepped off the curb.
“… some senile old woman. Who cares…” The voice cackled and laughed and came through loud and strong. The end of the snide remark echoed against Dottie’s spinal cord. She dropped Teresa’s arm and spun around.
“WHO SAID THAT?” she demanded. “Which one of you IMBECILES said that?” she barked, her hands on her hips.
She watched the men and women, so full of bravado a moment before, stand foolishly silent, hands limply holding pads or microphones or cameras. They all took a gigantic step back, giving Dottie a wide berth and leaving the two women at the hub of the circle of press.
“Come on! Step forward. Step forward, you damned coward!” Dottie challenged.
They were silent. Teresa looked stunned.
After a moment, Dottie grabbed Teresa’s hand and turned.
“Who are you?” a voice called belligerently.
Dottie turned back.
“I am Dorothy O’Malley Weist, that’s who.”
“Are you a relative of Mrs. Newhouse?” a female voice shouted from inside the press ranks.
“No,” Teresa spoke up. “This woman sent the lawyer for me.”
There was a collective “Huh?” And Dottie watched the pads rise, pencils and pens poised.
“You hired the lawyer? Are you a friend?”
“Yes, I am.” Teresa looked at Dottie, whose face remained angry.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, went pencils and pens.
“So,” a voice began, and Dottie searched for a face to match the voice. “How do you feel, now that it’s come out she lied? Do you feel like you’ve been duped for your generosity, Ms. Weist?”
“No! Absolutely not,” Dottie answered, blinking incredulously.
“But she lied—”
“God, is that all you are concerned with? I hired her a lawyer because I knew that she was broke and I knew she wouldn’t have the money for one. I also knew that her pride wouldn’t let her ask for one. It’s like that when you get to be our age and you can’t feed yourself. You should think about it sometime, maybe even write about it.”
“What exactly were your reasons for confessing to this crime, Mrs. Newhouse?”
Teresa stared at Dottie, grimacing.
“I … I got a lump in my breast, and I don’t have any money or medical insurance.”
“Aren’t you eligible for Medicaid?” a tall man with curly brown hair challenged.
“Oh, sure!” Teresa smirked. “You ever tried to deal with them? My husband was dying from cancer, and they gave us a hard time about painkillers, for Christ’s sake. I couldn’t get anyone on the phone—you know, if you have AIDS, Medicaid has seven numbers you could call. You got a lump in your breast, and they don’t got one number you can call. So I went to the office. And when I went down there to ask if I could get an experimental procedure for this thing—”
“What procedure?”
“It’s a way they can just radiate the lump and not cut your whole breast off. It might not seem like much to you, but it is if you got the breast they’re gonna cut off.”
“And what happened?”
“They threw me out on the street.”
“So, why’d you confess?” another voice asked.
“So I could go to jail. Because they gotta take care of you when you’re in jail, they gotta feed you, they gotta clothe you, and they gotta get you good medical care, and you don’t have to go and beg. It seems like in this country, except for being in the army, jail is the only time the government gotta take care of you. Being honest don’t matter, being a good citizen don’t matter. But if you’re a criminal—”
“But you’re not. You didn’t do the crime.”
“So?” Dottie cut in. “She’s like millions of American women in this country today, and whether I committed it or she committed it, or some woman in Brooklyn committed it, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that someone wake up. We better start fixing this. And we better start fixing it fast. Because you’re all going to be this age one day—that means you and you and you—you’re all going to be in this position one day, and there are going be even more senior citizens and most of them are going to be women. And maybe, like her, those women didn’t work in some fancy job that gave them a nice fat pension and nice expensive medical coverage, and then what? How the hell are they supposed to survive? You think anyone hires people our age? Would your newspaper hire me? Go on, give me a name, I’ll call,” Dottie said to the tall reporter with the brown hair. He looked down at his pad.
“Oh, no! We don’t discriminate, but … and if you think she’s just going to die soon, or I am going to, think again. We’re not dying at sixty-three or sixty-five anymore. I read in your paper I’m most likely to die at seventy-eight. That’s twenty more years, and my mother died a full ten years after that! Teresa contributed just as much as the cop on the beat, as the fireman down the block.”
“Yeah, like what?” the reporter asked.
“Teresa contributed two full-fledged taxpayers, Charlie, that’s what she contributed. That has to be good for at least twenty grand a year for the government. But because that job has no official title or paycheck stub or pension fund, the system can’t measure it, so they treat us like we have no value. Well, it doesn’t mean that her life has no value. It is the Teresas of this country that keep it going. She raised two good, strong children, she bought from stores in this city, she bought American, she paid her taxes, and she wanted something back. She deserves something back. So no, I am not upset because she didn’t do it.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Is this true?”
Teresa stared at the reporter and her eyes narrowed.
“What? You don’t believe that things could get this bad out here for women like me? I saw a straw, I grabbed it, and I’d do it again. I got no money, I got no insurance, and no one out there is listening.”
Dottie and Teresa locked arms and began to push their way through the reporters.
“Would you testify in Washington to what you’ve just said?” a voice asked, and Teresa turned around.
“Testify to who?”
“The Senate’s holding hearings on the plight of senior citizens next month in Washington,” the tall, curly-haired reporter said.
“Mister, I would tell this to the president’s face if I thought any of them in Washington would listen. But they just say it’s too complicated for them to do anything about. You know w
hat I think? I think if their wives and their daughters and their mothers didn’t have no coverage, things would get uncomplicated pretty fast.”
Teresa and Dottie, their arms still linked, stared at them all. Silently, the circle opened up, and with great dignity the two women walked through the throng.
Arthur grinned and held the door open, first for Teresa, then for Dottie. They began their drive back to Rye.
“So, how about Hawaii?” Arthur asked, glancing at Dottie.
“After you give me my money,” Teresa piped up.
Dottie and Arthur turned around and stared at her.
“But they dropped the charges—”
“Only until they either get that other woman, or”—Teresa gave a big smile—“until they find out if I’m shielding anybody.”
Dottie’s eyes narrowed. “You are just—”
“Aw, come on! What do I got now? I got nothing. I got no place to live, I got this damn lump—”
“Monday you go to a doctor, a real doctor. We’ll take care of that.”
“Uh-huh, so you’ll help me with this breast thing, get me all cured, and for what? Then what am I gonna do?”
Dottie looked perplexed for a moment and then a grin spread across her face.
“Like the man said: Let’s go to Washington, Teresa.”
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Wiseguys in Love
BANK ROBBERS. Copyright © 1995 by C. Clark Criscuolo. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
First Edition: February 1995
eISBN 9781466889477
Bank Robbers Page 25