by Peter Farris
“Well, good morning, Coma!” she said, then realizing her error, “Excuse me, Charlie Colquitt.”
He smiled.
“Good morning, Sunshine—pardon—Niesha Livingston.”
It was one of many inside jokes they shared at the branch. A way to maintain sanity after a day’s work with the public. Anything to keep from jumping off an overpass during rush hour.
He put the travel mug between the MICR reader and validator at his station. Walked back down the teller line to the big, floor-to-ceiling Diebold safe. Niesha followed.
“You go first, dear.”
The inch-thick carbon steel door of the vault had two wheel-combination locks. Charlie entered the combination to his assigned lock. Niesha did the same. No one teller could know the combination to both wheel locks.
The vault unlocked with a clank and Niesha swung the heavy door open. She regarded Charlie for a moment. His slouching figure accented by a jowl under the chin. Blond hair in need of a trim. An attitude of weariness wherever he happened to be. She had more or less grown accustomed to it.
Inside the vault there were eight teller lockers, a large cash locker and sealed cardboard boxes filled with rolled coins. Assorted binders and inventory logs were crammed into what available space was left. Another locker housed the consignment items. Cashier’s checks, money orders, traveler’s checks, gift cards in fancy gold envelopes.
Charlie spun the combination to his teller locker and removed the box and coin sorter. He carried them back to his terminal, the box balanced on his right hand like a meal a waiter was returning to the kitchen. Charlie cycled through his key chain until he found the one that opened the teller box. He popped off the lid, removed his cash bin and slid it into the top drawer. He placed the coin sorter on the counter next to the receipt tray and booted up his computer. Looking down, he saw a penny on the floor.
“Check the night deposit, would you, Charlie?” Niesha said.
He nodded, on automatic pilot, unaware of Niesha’s lingering stare. Thankfully the commercial deposit drop wasn’t too full. Only one bag from the pharmacy in Strumkin.
Niesha remembered when the bank had hired Charlie and she thought, What is wrong with this damn boy? He was tall, with lousy pale skin. Slumped shoulders that reinforced an impression of shyness. His face oval shaped, an enigma of blandness. She thought he might have been slightly retarded. But the human resources manager must have felt Charlie would be okay to handle other people’s money.
In a way Niesha pitied him. Never talked about friends, especially a girlfriend. Just Momma for lunch every Saturday. He was in engineering school, taking classes year-round so he could graduate early. Wanted to work for Lockheed because he loved rockets. Niesha knew he was bright, honors student smart. Also, he was good with the customers, though sometimes his demeanor could exasperate a person who had never been waited on by Charlie. At times he suffered from a peculiar aloofness, as if caught in a kind of meltdown. But just when someone might lose patience with him, Charlie snapped out of these funks to complete a transaction or laugh that hee-haw laugh of his or say something unexpectedly thoughtful and appropriate. It reminded Niesha that some people are just different but not hopeless.
Destined to be lonely and largely unnoticed.
Niesha usually picked up some donuts and coffee on Saturdays and today was no exception. She offered a coconut glaze to Charlie, leading with her right hand to show off the engagement ring courtesy of longtime boyfriend Da’Sean. Charlie shook his head, opted for chocolate with sprinkles from the to-go box. I’ll find that donut in the trash with one bite gone, she figured. As usual.
While Charlie thought to himself, Thank god Da’Sean finally asked her.
Niesha took her coffee and donut and walked back down the line. She logged on to the bank system, unlocked the drawers and mini-vault of the standing-height pedestal at her teller station. Scanned the money supply. They probably had about fifty grand between them.
The bank didn’t open for fifteen more minutes. The financial specialist and branch manager were both on vacation. A travel teller was on the schedule but had called out sick. Niesha and Charlie would be the only employees working that Saturday, abbreviated hours that ran from nine till noon.
“You need to order cash?” she said, mouth full, chasing a bite of donut with a sip of coffee.
Charlie opened his cash drawer and did a quick count.
“I should be fine,” he answered. “Maybe a couple rolls of quarters. Saturdays are slow.”
“Don’t bet on it being slow today, Charlie,” she said, finding some satisfaction in the torment of her favorite teller. “Delivery didn’t come yesterday. You should have heard me on the phone. I let that lady down at the distribution center have it. Forgetting us on payday like that! Be glad you took off to take that exam of yours. I thought we’d barely make it when those boys from H and P Construction came in with their fat checks. More of ’em will be by today. That’s why I ordered extra large bills … just in case.”
Charlie sighed, the prospect of a lobby full of check cashers was enough to ruin his morning. Paydays were the worst. Most people didn’t have an account with North Georgia S&L. In fact, hardly any at all spoke English. He looked over at Niesha blankly, tried to make a face like he’d heard and agreed with her. But sometimes he knew his expression didn’t let people know he was paying attention. As though he was only partially present for any human interaction. Niesha ignored him or was used to his distracted nature. Just talking to myself. As usual.
She just wanted to fill the air with something.
The radio was broken.
“There they are now. Late as usual,” Niesha said, nodding to the armored car pulling up to the front doors.
The guard was in and out of the bank in five minutes. Charlie helped Niesha with a quick inventory. They both initialed the log and secured the shipment. Niesha still had to verify every strap of cash, and that was going to take some time. But they had to open in five minutes. Which meant cutting corners, bending the rules and, Charlie’s favorite of all the middle-management talking points, doing more with less.
“You mind taking customers while I verify the shipment?” she said.
Charlie shrugged, knowing it had to be done. And it wasn’t worth complaining about. He kept reminding himself it was only three hours. Three hours and he could get back to that workbench, back to his models.
He settled into his pneumatic stool. The lighting in the lobby made everything look synthetic, like props on a soundstage. The ATM in the alcove emitted a series of beeps. Beyond the panels of bullet-resistant glass not a car or person showed in the parking lot. For Charlie another workday was about to begin.
I’m runnin’ out of river, I’ve seen what the water’s done to everyone and everything.
I watched Jesus pass me by.
Out here where the river can carve me, too.
He said, “Never surrender, never surrender.
Polish your guns. Polish your guns.”
TWO
Hicklin turned the car into an empty lot where there had once been a fast-food restaurant. The night before he’d boosted the Toyota Camry from an AMC 12-plex. He imagined the owner, laughing at some dumb comedy inside. His or her car vanishing into the night.
It didn’t matter.
To Hicklin, everyone was a mark. Even his own partners.
He watched the bank. Had a good angle on the intersection and entrance. He waited until the armored car disappeared down Route 20. A rural county not yet awake. Not a goddamn car or pedestrian in sight.
Hicklin pulled the sugar sack over his head. The eyelets gave good visibility, a crudely cut hole over his mouth revealing a crooked slash of bottom lip. A long-sleeve black tee bulged from the body armor beneath. He wore black gloves, combat cargos, steel-toe boots.
He drove across the cracked pavement to the employee entrance of the bank, which had no customers.
Hicklin left the engine running. Popped
the trunk. Grabbed the Mossberg.
There was also a foldout hand truck in the trunk. He lifted it out, not in a hurry.
Not yet.
* * *
Charlie was hand-counting two thousand dollars’ worth of hundreds, the bills facedown because the grip was better. Had to strap the money when he was done, lock it in his second drawer. The tellers had cash limits and he was right at his. He looked up at the sound of a glass entrance door being kicked open.
Niesha had finished initialing transfer and verification forms for about $150K worth of cash and coin. Half the cash still wrapped in the plastic from the distribution center. The vault door was wide open. She had left her coffee behind Charlie’s teller terminal and was reaching for the cup when she heard it, too.
And all she could think of in that moment of comprehension was: They don’t pay me enough.
* * *
Hicklin chucked the hand truck into the lobby of the bank. Place was as empty as he’d expected. He leveled the shotgun on a white boy behind the teller line. Charlie rose slowly from his stool, as if he might be about to ask a question. Hicklin swung the muzzle to a round black body in a flowery dress, hair done up nice. A hand crept underneath the counter.
“Let me see your fucking hands, nigger!”
Niesha’s hand kept moving.
Hicklin squinted his left eye and shot her.
* * *
Charlie felt his body spasm at the noise of the shotgun. His vision dimmed for a moment. Legs barely holding him up, Charlie held his hands out to Hicklin, palms up, as if gesturing for a man to stop at a crosswalk. He heard Niesha’s body drop to the floor. Some of her head had splattered on the drive-up window behind them. Charlie raised his hands higher, eyes searching for a way out, but the masked man lunged forward, the smoking shotgun closer now.
* * *
With his left hand Hicklin hoisted the dolly over the teller line. Charlie caught it on his forearms and staggered backwards from the blow. Hicklin backed up, then bounded like a panther onto the counter, deftly keeping the shotgun trained on Charlie. He turned and gave the lobby a once-over, his focus jumping from the front entrance out toward the parking lot. All clear. The vault door was cracked open. Dead woman sprawled on the floor. Don’t think she reached that button. But she was makin’ a move. Yet anytime now someone was likely to show up. They always did. Hicklin figured he’d been in the building about a minute. He was looking to shave time.
Another two minutes. Not a second longer.
* * *
Charlie felt himself go in his pants. The training video during employee initiation hadn’t prepared him for this.
Just give the robber what they want and this will all be over.…
Don’t be a hero.
Police should be on their way.
But Niesha was dead and all he could think of was that he had left his mini-vault and the transaction drawer unlocked and there was no silent alarm alerting some remote dispatcher and I wonder if I can use this as an excuse to get out of lunch with Momma? while he stared at the 12-gauge muzzle, smelled it, saw Hicklin talking to him, and Charlie not hearing a word.
* * *
Hicklin pressed the muzzle against Charlie’s forehead.
“I said, open that fuckin’ safe!”
The muzzle burned the skin near his hairline. Dropping to his hands and knees, Charlie reached with a shaky hand and pulled the mini-vault door open.
“And the fuckin’ drawer!”
Charlie reached up and pulled the drawer open. He glanced at the panic button under the counter of his terminal. It was close enough, just within reach. A quick movement and he could push it, hold the button down long enough to trigger the alarm. But then what? Was it worth it? What was Niesha thinking? He looked up at the white mask, the dark eyelets, waiting for more instructions. There was an urgency in the man’s eyes. Violence. Capability.
Reaching into the drawer, Hicklin intuitively grabbed straps of hundreds, fifties and twenties. Ignored the loose cash. He figured the paint pack was embedded in the stack of tens but he couldn’t know for certain. He shoved Charlie aside, leaned over and took what was in the mini-vault.
Hicklin stuffed the wrapped money in a black duffel slung from one shoulder. Then, strapping the Mossberg over his other shoulder, unfolded the hand truck and began loading cardboard boxes of plastic-wrapped cash. This took less than a minute, but to Hicklin it felt like half a day. He wielded the shotgun and gestured for the boy to take the handle of the dolly and follow him out of the bank.
* * *
“Move! Move! Move!”
Charlie pulled the hand truck, struggling over a door runner and threadbare carpeting. He caught a glimpse of Niesha on her side. Blood everywhere. Fighting the urge to vomit, Charlie backed out of the rear employee entrance, where a sedan was parked, idling. He numbly began to load the vault monies into the trunk at gunpoint. Hicklin opened a backseat door and dumped the duffel bag’s worth of teller cash into the aquarium.
* * *
Hicklin thought about killing him right there in the parking lot. Leave no witnesses. But the adrenaline had Hicklin jumpy, hearing things like another car or sirens. He stared at Charlie, at his pale blue eyes, the dumpy waistline, the cowardly expression on the teller’s face, before impulsively forcing him into the passenger seat. Useful later, maybe. Hicklin had trusted his gut for too long to second-guess the move, as stupid as it seemed.
But his skin prickled with warning. The message loud and clear.
This is all wrong.
* * *
When he got into the car Hicklin punched the teller in the head. Charlie’s eyes rolled and he slumped against the window. Hicklin put the car in gear and sped off. Away from the bank and down a wooded road. Heading north into the foothills.
Toward a refuge where the living were few and far between.
Put out the fire. There’s men in the trees.
THREE
Tommy Lang had just poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos when he heard the call on his unit radio.
“All units, be advised, signal forty-four, signal fifty, possible signal five issued for North Georgia Savings and Loan, Peach Creek Circle, just off Twenty.”
He put his coffee in the cup holder and responded.
“Sixty-six-eleven code eight. Sure that’s right, Terry?”
Lang already was backing the Crown Vic to the end of his driveway. He gunned it down a long, flat road that ran parallel to a field of sassafras and alfalfa often visited by white-tailed deer and other browsers. The bucks would be growing back antlers shed in February. Some Saturday mornings Lang sat on the front porch, Remington Woodsmaster across his lap, coffee topped with a splash of Gentleman Jack, thinking of the reddish-brown coat of a healthy twelve-point buck. But not today.
The radio crackled.
“Oh, hey, Sheriff?”
“Ten-four. What’s the deal?”
“Yeah, Sheriff. It’s bad. Someone killed a teller.”
“Copy that, Terry. Who’s there?”
“Hansbrough. Deputy Bower is en route.”
Lang eased off the gas entering a bend, past a cemetery where the road began to rise and fall. Lang glimpsed the highway, but it was soon out of sight as the Crown Vic drove deeper into the county.
“Tell them not to touch a goddamn thing till I get there.”
“Ten-four, Sheriff.”
Lang glanced at the driver’s side of his squad car, at the posse box full of paperwork, the clipboard, then at the empty mount on the floor. He’d forgotten his shotgun. Left it at home.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
* * *
Lang parked beside Hansbrough’s and Bower’s units in front of the bank, their flashing light bars signaling big trouble to any passersby. Bower, a lanky nicotine stain of a man, was kneeling by an elderly woman on the walkway. She wore overalls and a big straw hat. A red bandana around her neck darkened with perspiration. She trembled as she roc
ked, breathing hard, stuttering.
“I j-just come to get my quarters … c-cash my pension c-check. Like ever o’er Saturday.”
She repeated herself, as if the words were a mantra. Her face was pale and wrinkled. Strands of gray hair drifted from beneath the hat and stuck to her sweaty forehead. The skin under her arms hung from the bones and seemed to tremble with each beat of her heart. Bower regarded Lang wearily.
“Like this since we got here,” he said. “Name’s Anabelle Walnut. Lives in that big old white house with the horses. Yonder where the creek splits.”
“Yeah, I know her,” Lang said, looking around. He squatted next to Anabelle.
“Anabelle? It’s Tommy. You see what happened?”
She looked up at Lang. Eyes empty. Nobody home.
“Told me before this started,” Bower said, gesturing to the rocking woman. “Manager’s name was Neisha Livingston. Always worked Saturdays. Other teller was usually a guy named Charlie.”
“Where’s the manager?”
Deputy Bower grimaced, nodded toward the bank. He leaned over and patted the old woman on the back. She’d settled into a gentle sway, hands clutching her knees, eyes focused on a mysterious space that must have held some sanctuary for her
Lang left them and walked into the bank. Lobby door was busted open. Shards of glass on the carpet sparkled in the sunlight.
Deputy Hansbrough stood near the teller line, a crew-cut head cocked to one side like a puppy hearing its name for the first time. He was the son of a judge who’d had a heart attack in court, dying with his fingers taut around the gavel. The kid was taller than Lang, broad shouldered, a tight end on a state championship team his senior year. Lang liked Hansbrough, but when he saw the rookie’s hand on the counter he lost his temper.
“Put your hands in your pockets, goddammit!”
Hansbrough jolted to attention. Then he looked at the counter and the glossy finger- and palm print he’d left there.
“Don’t touch nothing in here!” Lang said, his eyes finding the blood spray on the drive-up window. He approached the line, stepping around an expended shotgun shell, as a red-faced Hansbrough backed away. Lang looked over the counter at Niesha Livingston’s body. She had pretty rings on a couple of fingers.