Day of Reckoning

by John Katzenbach

  She looked at the house again. “I grew up in this town,” she said. “Just like you and Tommy have. This is our place. It always will be. Even if you two and Tommy grow up and move away, you’ll always be able to come back here and feel, I don’t know, right, maybe. At ease. No matter how much it changes and you change.”

  “Mom,” said Lauren, with a somewhat bemused tone, “you sound like Scarlett O’Hara.”

  Karen stifled a little laugh and added, “Or Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. There’s no place like—”

  She looked over at the two girls and saw them share a quick glance between themselves and inwardly she smiled. They must think I’m crazy or senile. The tension has gotten to me and I’ve stepped over the edge.

  Maybe they’re right.

  She shook her head, clearing her mind. She let the frigid air fill her lungs and seep through her body.

  She remembered her father taking her on a camping trip into the Maine woods when she was about ten. She and her mother had wandered away from the campsite, picking wild berries in a field. As they stepped through the brambles, they’d spotted a mother black bear and her two cubs, two dozen yards distant. The bear had risen up, freezing its position, staring at Megan and her mother. The two families had watched each other momentarily, sharing the same meadow, picking the same fruits. Then the bears scuttled off in an unhurried and unafraid fashion. Megan remembered her father warning them later never to get between a mother bear and her cubs, because then the she-bear would suddenly turn savage and dangerous. She recalled her own mother’s soft, matter-of-fact response: So would I.

  Megan turned to the twins and said, “You must know something. We are not going to lose it. We are not going to lose our family. I will not allow it.”

  “Mom!” Lauren said. “Of course not!”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” Karen jumped in. “We’re not going to let it happen. None of us are.”

  “You know, Mom,” Lauren said, “there’s nothing wrong with the way we live. Nothing at all. You guys tried to do what was right. You tried hard.”

  “Why should we feel guilty?” Karen asked.

  “That’s right,” Megan said. She suddenly threw her arms around the twins and hugged them close. She noticed that for the first time, Lauren’s eyes were red with the first moments of tears and Karen seemed to have set her jaw with a bulldog tenacity. She watched as the elder half-punched her sister on the arm, as if to tell her to shake loose from emotionalism and straighten up. My daughter the drill sergeant, Megan thought. And my daughter the poet. She saw Lauren stiffen and nod, and she sensed a small moment, as if the heat from the girls’ closeness had abruptly thrown back the evening cold.

  She was filled with an indefinable mother-pride and she put her arms around her daughters, and they walked back into the house linked together by the first few strands of defiance.

  Duncan sat at his desk and went over his checklist.

  I am an organized person, he thought. Even when it comes to an act of considerable desperation, I still draw up a list of items to be attended to, down to the smallest details. Be prepared. He smiled. I was a good scout, a patrol leader. I reached Star. How many merit badges did I get? A bunch. For knot-tying and canoeing and semaphore-signaling and woodsman’s skills. He shook his head at the memory. Those were the only medals I ever deserved. He looked again at his list. Would I get a merit badge for bank robbery? He smiled. Maybe this time. Certainly not for the first.

  The list was written on a yellow sheet of legal paper and was headed with: INSIDE THE BANK with subheads for ALARM SYSTEM, MAIN VAULT, AUTOMATIC TELLER MACHINES, and RED HERRINGS. He scribbled an admonition at the bottom: Destroy this paper/Destroy six sheets beneath. The FBI had spectrographic machines that could read the minuscule impressions made by the weight of his ballpoint pen on the clean sheets beneath his list.

  I make good lists, he thought.

  It was no different when the family went on vacation. It was always up to Duncan to make certain that there was a bag with dry shoes and socks and extra sweaters, that extra juice and crackers were placed in the car for the children. He was always in charge of making certain that the bills were paid on time, and on Saturday mornings he would set out for the grocery store and stock the house with fundamentals. He wondered why he took such satisfaction in preparation. He always knew what the weather report was, knew precisely whether an invitation required a jacket and tie, or jeans and a sportshirt. It was always a shock to his wife or to the children when it rained and he hadn’t packed raincoats.

  He stared again at the paper. He had a single bitter thought: I should have planned the fucking robbery in Lodi. I would have anticipated the guards’ reactions. I would have had run-throughs and trials, and spent weeks observing the bank. I would have pulled it off. Then none of us would be in this mess.

  Duncan stopped his train of thought when he realized what he was concluding: I would have made a better damn criminal than she.

  He stood up and went to his door, looking out over the bank. The inside of the main room seemed to glow with light and activity. He could see closing preparations under way. The tellers were totaling their drawers and sorting receipts and checks. Everything was routine, which is the way bankers like it, he thought.

  He watched as one of the assistant managers went to the passageway that led to the automatic tellers. Duncan knew what the man would do: He would open the back of each and check to be certain that it contained enough funds for overnight. The same man would walk the same route the next day, only this time he would ascertain that the machines were full. There were four out in the lobby. Each carried $25,000 in ten- and twenty-dollar bills. On a busy weekend, like homecoming at one of the colleges, or Labor Day or Columbus Day, each would dispense almost half that amount in small twenty-dollar to two-hundred-dollar transactions.

  Not this weekend, he thought.

  As he watched, the assistant manager returned from the corridor and walked into the president’s office. There was a drawer there where keys were kept. Just about everyone in the bank knew about the duplicates in the office and that was the beauty in Duncan’s plan. Just about everyone in the bank knew how it operated, knew where the alarm system shutoff was located, knew where the master keys were kept. We are still a small, friendly organization, he thought. That is what makes us vulnerable.

  The security here is designed to prevent three things: someone breaking into the computer system from within or without; someone, a stranger, breaking into the bank after everyone has left; some wild-eyed bank robber walking through the front door and pulling out a gun.

  He remembered when the bank officers had talked things over with the security analysts who’d put the alarms in, and who had programmed the computers to recognize the most common kinds of frauds. It had been the major concession to the larcenous nature within everyone, bank managers included. It had never been contemplated that someone who knew the bank would rob it like some Jesse James or even Willie Sutton.

  He went back to his list and looked at it carefully. He added a cate­gory: CLOTHING. Under this he wrote: Gloves. Sneakers. Jeans. Sweatshirt. At the Mall.

  His secretary knocked on the door and walked into his office. He did not try to hide the list. Instead, he picked it up, fingered a pencil, and rocked back in his chair, so that she couldn’t see what he was writing.

  “Mr. Richards, I’m taking off now. Anything I can do before I go?”

  “Thanks, Doris, but I’m leaving in a minute myself.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “No, not really. It just sort of comes and goes. Could be a virus of sorts, I guess. I’ve been running a little temperature all day.”

  “You should stay home.”

  “Well, tomorrow’s Friday, so maybe I’ll take off early and spend the weekend in bed.”

  “Doesn�
�t sound like much fun.”

  “Well, Doris, when you get as old as I am, you don’t think of the weekends for fun as much as to recuperate, anyway.”

  “Oh, Mr. Richards, you’re not so old . . .”

  “Thanks, Doris. Flattery will always get you ahead in this organization.”

  She laughed and gave a little wave, and left.

  How old am I getting? Duncan considered. Closer to the end than to the beginning? He thought of his own parents; they were old when I was born, older still as I grew up alone in that quiet, stolid house. They were forever tired and slowed by life. He tried to remember some moment of unencumbered happiness, some Christmas-morning childish joy and abandon, some birthday awakening that was without care and caution, but he could not. It was always a house where everything was in place, where all times were set and all moments planned. I took that with me forever. I became a man of numbers. Did I hate that? he asked himself. Was that why I sought out the spontaneity of revolution? Olivia was always so vibrant. She took ideals and actions and rubbed them together and they became a sort of combustible mass in her hands. The rhetoric, the enthusiasm, the struggle; he remembered how intoxicating the entire time had been. I was really alive.

  Duncan hesitated and thought: I was also terrified.

  He looked outside, through his window, and saw some of the bank workers walking down a pathway toward the parking lot. They were laughing, but walking quickly, with their coats pulled tightly around them. He wondered what was so amusing. As he watched, he saw them march past the first row of cars in the office’s parking lot, where he and the other officers had marked spaces. His stomach clenched with tension, as he recognized an omission. He immediately grabbed at his planning pad of paper and wrote: CAR.

  When he looked up again, the group was gone. Purple-blue light from the streetlamp frustrated the darkness.

  He realized abruptly how much he owed his own children. I could have become just as quiet and steady and boring as my own parents, but I didn’t, and they are the reasons why. It was as if I traded a revolution of ideals for a revolution of responsibility.

  And now, am I old? he wondered again. Do I still remember how to fight?

  He did not know the answer to this question for certain, but he was absolutely sure he was going to find out in the next days.

  The mother and two daughters stripped off their outerwear and headed toward the kitchen. The girls were chatting about the cold and wondering whether it would snow soon, and getting ready to make some hot chocolate, which sent a hook through Megan’s heart when she remembered how much Tommy loved it. She paused to replace the telephone receiver in the hallway, in case Duncan wanted to call. She glanced at her watch and guessed that he would be heading home soon. She tried to relax, but couldn’t.

  Tommy should be here, she thought. It has been forty-eight hours now that I haven’t been able to hold him.

  “Mom! Do you want a cup?” Lauren called.

  “It’s good,” Karen added editorially.

  Megan did not trust her voice to answer, but she swallowed hard and replied: “Sure. Why not?”

  As Karen handed her mother the cocoa, the telephone buzzed.

  “That’s our line,” Lauren said. “I’ll get it.”

  She went over to the wall phone and punched a button and lifted the receiver.

  “Hello,” she said. “This is Lauren.”

  “And where is your equally beautiful sister?” Olivia Barrow asked, without introduction.

  For an instant, Lauren thought she couldn’t breathe.

  She knew who it was, but forced herself to answer:

  “She’s right here next to me. Who is this, please?”

  Megan saw the color flee from her daughter’s face and dropped her cup to the floor. The cup broke with a crack that was lost in the sudden smothering tension that filled the room. The chocolate spread quickly across the floor, forgotten.

  Karen seemed to hesitate, her own cup posed halfway between table and lip, then she whispered to Lauren: “I’m coming!” and dashed to the hallway, grabbing that telephone from its cradle.

  “Who is it?” Karen demanded.

  “Ah,” said Olivia. “I can hear your father’s voice. You have his tones, his inflections. Are you like him in other ways, as well?”

  Karen didn’t reply, but nodded her head.

  “What do you want from us?” Lauren asked. She was struggling hard to control the quavering tones in her voice. She looked about wildly, first for her mother, then for her sister.

  “I just wanted to hear your voices,” Olivia said. “I just needed to know what you sound like.”

  Karen could not control herself. She thought it was as if she could see the words forming in her head, then bursting out from between clenched jaws.

  “Give them back!” she near-shouted, her voice a quivering octave higher than usual. “We want them back! We want them back!”

  Olivia simply laughed.

  “All in good time, children. All in good time. Isn’t that what the wicked witch is supposed to say?”

  Megan felt the strength of Karen’s loud demand and the ice within her shattered. She seized the phone from Lauren’s hands.

  “I’m here, goddammit.”

  “And Megan—good to hear your voice again.”

  “What is it, Olivia?”

  “It’s been so long, you know, and I’ve been thinking about you so hard. I just knew you would turn into the perfect little surburban matron, Megan. You always had that written all over you.”

  “What is it, Olivia?”

  “And here I’d spent so much time talking with your squeeze, and neglecting you. But he’s become such a nice fellow,” she said. “Everything has become so nice.”

  “Olivia, please. Why are you doing this?”

  “I would think that would be abundantly clear by this point.”

  Megan was silent for an instant.

  “You think that revenge will make you feel better? You think that by torturing us you can restore all those years? You really think you can get some peace by doing this?”

  Megan was shocked at the words that plummeted from her mouth. Lauren stepped back, looking oddly at her mother. She gave a small whoop, made a power fist and shook it in the air, and then charged to the downstairs library to pick up the telephone there. The questions surprised Olivia, and she hesitated before replying:

  “Well, Megan, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps revenge is a silly and inadequate way of dealing with this—”

  Then she cackled.

  “—but it sure beats whatever is in second place.”

  Olivia laughed and Megan swallowed hard.

  Both women grew quiet for an instant. Olivia finally spoke.

  “You got away with everything, didn’t you? You got away with your life perfectly intact. Without ruffles, without creases. Your life wasn’t bent, folded, spindled, or mutilated, was it? No way. You escaped, scot-free, just like it was some little kid’s game. Only it wasn’t, was it?”

  “No.”

  “I was the one who remained true,” Olivia said. “I was the one who never wavered. And look what we have today. A government that can’t follow its own laws. A nation that lets people wander about mad and hungry on its city streets. Where getting rich is a religion. The ghettos are just as bad today as they were twenty years ago! You’ve done a helluva job with social change, Megan. A helluva job! You’re just another complacent, what’s-in-it-for-me suburban bitch.”

  Megan started to protest, but stopped.

  “You think I’m evil and criminal,” Olivia said. “But I’m not. That hasn’t changed, Megan, and it never will. One person’s commitment is another person’s crime.”

  “Please,” said Megan. “Please give them back.”<
br />
  “Win them back,” Olivia said. “If you’re brave enough.”

  Then she added: “Buy them back. That’s the way you people think now, isn’t it? Everything has a price. So, buy them back. What can you afford?”

  “Anything.”

  Olivia didn’t reply.

  “What do you want?” Megan asked, after a moment.

  “I told you. I wanted to hear your voice. I wanted to hear the twins’ voices.”

  “You’ve heard them. What else?”

  “A little message.”

  “Well, give it to me, then. You’ve already shown you can terrify old men and little boys. Now leave my daughters alone!”

  She surprised herself with her vehemence.

  Olivia was slightly taken aback as well.

  She allowed the silence to grow on the line, before replying pedantically, “Terror is the most legitimate expression of anger. That has been shown over and over again.”

  “Old men and little boys,” Megan repeated.

  “And why should they be immune?” Olivia suddenly demanded. “Are they really so innocent?”

  Megan was silent, but Karen jumped into the vacuum.

  “They are! They never did anything to hurt anyone!”

  “Karen!” Megan shouted. She had forgotten that both girls were listening. “Get off the line! I’ll—”

  “No! Let them stay on,” Olivia said. “They should hear as well. Is Lauren there, too?”

  “Yes,” came her younger daughter’s voice. It seemed a bit smaller than her sister’s. “I’m right here.”

  Megan was about to interject something, but stopped herself. Olivia took a deep breath and asked:

  “How is Duncan proceeding?”

  “On schedule,” Megan replied briskly.

  “Good. It’s always wisest to keep to a timetable,” Olivia said. “Leaves less room for screw-ups.”