Ben patted his head. “Good boy, Jake. Give it a try. See how it feels. Make the most of your first kill.”
Jake tried to say all right, or even cool, but his mouth could no longer accommodate the shape of the words, so he yipped, then started off, clumsily at first, but gaining balance and confidence as he hurried toward 22 Barrington Court to find out what Uncle Bob and Mom would think of him now.
The Bank Job by Gregory Frost
Iancu Svekis sat in the chair beside the bank manager’s desk. He sat still, his outward calm belying the turmoil of impatience within. He awaited word that the transfer of funds from Romania had gone through as it should have done by now; he awaited also the return of his passport. While Pascu had confirmed in a phone call that he would have as much money as he needed to continue his quest here, the bank manager-Erica Langdon was the name on her cubicle plaque-had explained that with all the antiterrorist checks and verifications nowadays, things like this took much longer than in the past. He ought to have been gone by now, and with a full wallet. Instead, tired and unshaven and hardly presentable so far as he was concerned, he was sitting unattended when the robbers showed up.
There were three of them, and one-a blonde woman-must have been in the bank awhile, in plain sight. He had no doubt looked right at her earlier. Now she wore a Wonder Woman mask and pressed a gun to the neck of the guard while her crew strode in carrying two canvas satchels and waving their weapons as if no one would notice them otherwise. One had an autoloader, a carbine with a profile that reminded Svekis of a shark. “Hands up! Everybody move!” shouted the taller robber. He sported a George Bush mask.
The guard went to his knees compliantly, but one of the tellers reacted by hitting an alarm button in her cage, and George Bush shot her. The low Plexiglas barrier on the front of her counter splintered and she fell.
People screamed then. Seventeen customers and three tellers hit the floor. Erica Langdon ran to the fallen teller, and the killer might have shot her if Wonder Woman hadn’t spun him around and punched him in the chest. “What in hell are you doing?” she yelled.
“She hit the button!”
“Yeah, and?”
When he didn’t respond, she shoved him backwards. “I wanted her to do that, you stupid shit. I told you someone would.”
She swung about and faced the robber with the carbine. He had on an imitation hockey goalie’s mask. “You and your fucking brother!” She thrust a finger at the guard. “Let’s try not to shoot the damn cop at least, okay? Just stand over him!” He nodded and took his place. “Jesus,” she snarled. She shoved a satchel into the hands of George Bush. “Go collect their cells from them.” She walked into the midst of the crouching customers. “All right, who’s the manager? Who’s in charge here?”
In the distance sirens sounded.
Svekis continued to sit, to observe, as motionless as the furniture, amazed at how quickly a plan could unravel. The thought made him wince. His wife was dead because of an unpredictable unraveling. Nothing he could have done about that, but he was here for this one.
Erica arose from behind the teller’s cage. “I’m the manager,” she answered the robber. Her terror and anger had her trembling.
“Great. Buzz me into the back now. How’s your girl?”
“Unconscious, but-but not dead. The barrier…”
“That’s good. No one else needs to get hurt here, okay? But you get it that we mean business, right?”
Erica nodded.
“Buzz me in and get the rest of your people out of there. I want ’em on the floor out here like everybody else.” She took one empty satchel the others had brought. Erica released the electronic lock, and Wonder Woman went through the doorway. The vault stood wide open, and the robber led Erica inside. Svekis studied the other two.
Beside the kneeling guard, Hockey Mask shifted back and forth on his feet, anxious. Bush the Idiot strode up and down through the trembling crowd of hostages, collecting cell phones in his bag like an oversized trick-or-treater. It wasn’t until he was walking back toward his brother that he looked at Svekis.
“Hey! Hey, you. What the hell are you doing?”
Svekis looked around himself. “Nothing,” he replied.
“Yeah? Well, you better do your nothin’ over here on the floor.” When Svekis didn’t move, he pointed his gun. “Now!”
Wonder Woman had come out of the vault. “What’s the problem, dickhead?”
Bush pointed at Svekis. “Him.”
She set the satchel on the counter. “Here, get the drawer money.”
She unlocked the door and came out from the back, but left the door ajar. Behind her, Erica stood in the vault doorway. She stared at him fearfully. He smiled to her.
“We got cops!” shouted Hockey Mask. Flashing, colored lights striped the side of him.
“Good, that’s what I want. You stand right there and let them see you, the guard, and that gun, so they don’t think they can rush in here,” she answered. She walked over to Svekis. “You got some nerves, Pops.”
He lowered his head. “Not really. I am too tired to react to anything today.”
“Bad week, was it?”
He thought of the strigoi he’d battled, the child and mother who would go on living because of him, the horror of that unbridled hunger he’d slain. “You would not believe.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. You want to sit here, that’s okay with me, but you don’t try to call anybody, okay?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name, in case I have to yell at you all by yourself over here.”
“Iancu.” When she continued to stare, unmoving, he added, “In your language, it’s John.”
“John.” She repeated it as if doubting it. “You give him your phone, John?”
He dug into the pocket of his raincoat and handed her his phone. “He did not ask me for it,” he said.
“Thank you.” She turned and carried his phone away, but hadn’t gone ten steps when the desk phone beside Svekis rang. She turned back to answer it. He pretended not to notice her, but he had already satisfied himself that her clothing was bulky and ill-fitting as if she was wearing extra layers against the cold. Except, it wasn’t all that cold outside.
“That’s right,” she said into the phone and gestured at Bush Mask. He went through the open security door and then walked down the line, pulling cash out of the teller drawers. “We got twenty people in here, and we want twenty people to go home tonight, right? One of them’s hurt already so we’re going to send her out. Play nice and she’ll be the only one. No. I’ll tell you what. You get us a touring bus. You know, something a rock band would like. You get the bus and you bring it up outside. Then you call us back. Bye.”
She nodded to herself, and headed back across the lobby. In the middle she stopped and asked, “What’s that smell?” She looked over the customers huddled below. “Somebody here shit himself?”
Finally, and with great hesitation, one man raised his hand. He kept his head bowed.
“Great. Well, we’re gonna be here awhile, folks, so maybe you need to go take care of your mess. And the rest of you, too. You need to pee, don’t leave it till you’re pissin’ on the floor.” She snatched the satchel from Bush. “Go out there and lead them to the bathroom,” she told him. “One at a time, got that? And don’t shoot anybody else, for Christ’s sake.”
The embarrassed man got up and walked uncomfortably across the lobby to a set of restrooms. They were locked but Erica was already holding out the keys. “They’re for employees,” she explained.
Bush Mask and the man went into the nearer bathroom. Wonder Woman went back into the vault.
When the bathroom door opened again, the man emerged first. He was wiping his sleeve across his face. It was clear that he’d broken down. He quickly sat and grabbed his knees as if he could hide from everybody. A few others raised their hands to be allowed into the bathroom. Bush Mask surveyed them all. Svekis raised his hand, too. The mask tw
itched, and Svekis heard him snort, no doubt amused that the old man he’d intimidated had finally broken. Thus it was that he let one woman into the ladies room and came back for Svekis while Wonder Woman returned to the vault and Hockey Mask watched the cops outside. “Come on, geezer,” he said, and all but prodded Svekis with the nose of the automatic.
Svekis got up heavily. He drew a deep breath, but kept his shoulders hunched, his head down. His rumpled London Fog disguised the solidity of him. He walked ahead of his captor, waited while the door was unlocked, then let himself be shoved inside. “Try not to mess the place any worse, huh?” Bush Mask said.
Inside were two urinals and a single stall. Polished chocolate brown tiles covered the walls and floor. The room reeked, the smell coming from the trash bin. No doubt the frightened customer had thrown out his soiled underwear. The window of frosted glass was wired inside and out. There was a vent in the wall past the sinks, perhaps the size of a notebook, and a narrow closet door behind which would be shelves of toilet paper, cleaners, and mops.
Svekis went to the stall and closed the door. He took off his coat and hung it on the door hook, then followed with his shirt and trousers. Even as he stripped down, the roar of transformation filled his ears and a redness rose behind his eyes, blood becoming like acid in his veins. His body creaked like a tree about to snap in a high wind, but distantly. He was falling away from it, into pure white pain. Ribs flexed and curved in, his muscles following, reshaping. It took every last shred of conscious control not to cry out. He doubled over in the narrow space, pawing at the metal wall. His senses plunged into shadow. In shadow he was reborn.
The tall old man hadn’t come out after ten minutes. Bush Mask figured he’d had a stroke or something, and stuck his head into the restroom. “Hey, let’s go!” he shouted.
When nobody answered, he went in. He had the good sense to keep his gun leveled at the stall. Nobody stood in front of the urinal or at the sink. Except for the broom closet, there was nowhere else. He walked to the closet and checked the handle. It was locked. He turned and saw that the slats had been removed from the air vent high up in the wall, but the hole was so small that nothing bigger than somebody’s head could have fit through it.
Under the door of the nearer stall, he could see the tips of the old guy’s shoes on the floor. “Goddamit! Whadja do, have a coronary on me? She’s gonna blame me for it, you bastard.” He kicked at the stall door. It wasn’t latched, and banged wide open, revealing an undershirt, boxer shorts, and socks beside the shoes on the floor.
For a brief instant he imagined that the old man had somehow flushed himself down the toilet. Instinctively he looked behind the door and found that the rest of the old man’s clothes were hung on the hook there. “What the hell?” he said. Where could the guy have gone, naked?
The wall switch by the door clicked. The lights went out. Fear drove him then. He backed out of the stall and up against the sink. Wan light came in through the frosted glass of the window, showing the darker wire within like strands of spider webbing. He held his gun ready. He sensed movement, started to turn, and came up against orange eyes glowing in the dark, and a solid form surrounding them that was furred blue-gray in the light from the window, a snout against his cheek, the smell of its furious breath like a color. Bright red.
He opened his mouth to scream, but a sharp crack resounded off the tiles and amid searing pain he felt himself flying through the air.
One of the women finally went to Wonder Woman and said, “Please, I’ve got to use the bathroom!”
“Well, then-” She turned about, realized that Andy’s idiot brother was nowhere in sight. “Great,” she said. She went over to Andy in his hockey mask, setting the second satchel-the one full of cash-down beside the guard. “Your brother’s screwing up again. Deal with him. Now.”
Shaking his head, Andy crossed the lobby in strides of anger. She was half-hoping he’d just shoot the idiot.
He skidded at the men’s room door, slipped, and fell onto one elbow. Scrambling up, gun in hand, he shouted, “Jesus!”
Gun at the ready, he shouldered open the door to the bathroom. She could see how dark it was, but instead of going in, he backed away, all the way to the wall. The hostages were all staring. She could not let this happen.
She hauled the guard to his feet, pushed her pistol to his cheek, then walked him to the restroom.
One side of Andy’s clothes was smeared in blood. On the floor lay a puddle of it that had leaked from under the door. She cautiously nudged the door open again. Lobby light slashed across the dark room, across the simian halloween mask of George Bush.
“God damn it,” she said. She let go of the guard and reached cautiously around the wall until her fingers found the light switch. She held her gun ready to shoot. “I told him not to…” The overhead light fluttered on. A headless torso lay in the middle of the room. There was blood in sprays across the stall, all the way to the ceiling. The mask, she saw now, was still attached to the head. The gun lay in the middle of the floor.
Andy started to babble. “That’s Markie, that’s-he’s dead, oh, Christ, what the hell, what the hell-”
She backed out into him, then grabbed onto him as much to hold herself up as to shut him up. “I don’t know what the hell. Who’d he take in here, who was the last to use the bathroom?”
They turned and looked at the crowd that was looking back at them. The horrified guard gaped, too. She turned and faced the manager’s cubicle.
The old gent, John, sat exactly as before. If anything he looked more rumpled, pale, and exhausted than half an hour ago. His head hung low, but he seemed to be watching from beneath his brows, as if too tired to face things head-on.
The phone beside him began to ring then, and she made herself walk calmly over to the cubicle to answer it. She stared down at him while she talked, until he finally glanced up. He wasn’t as old as all that, she decided, just thin and weather-beaten, like a cowboy, someone who lived hard. It was the white hair that made him seem older.
“Glad to hear it,” she told the cop on the phone. “Outside in ten minutes. We bring out the hostages with us, so no Annie Oakley shit. I’ll tell your driver where we’re going. You don’t need to know, and you don’t follow. Anybody follows and nobody gets off the bus, understand?” Oh, he understood, all right. She hung up.
Andy came over. She told him, “The bus is ready. Pick out your group and let’s get the hell out of here. Whatever happened in there, I don’t know, okay? I’m sorry. Your brother was a dickhead but whatever’s in there is staying the hell in there. We’re not going to go in after it. Nobody else gets to go to the bathroom, period.” Andy moved off shakily.
“What happened to your friend?” John asked her. He had an accent she couldn’t place.
She faced him, stared into nearly golden irises. Something in his gaze closed around her like a steel trap, pinning her. The moment passed, and she threw off a shiver, blinked, and took a step back. Instead of answering, she found herself telling him, “You’ll be joining us on the bus.”
“Yes,” he answered, “of course.”
The transfer of hostages went smoothly. Svekis could appreciate that they’d given this a lot of thought.
The robbers split the hostages into two groups. The only one left behind was the guard, trussed up in the vault. Everybody got a Halloween mask, and each group was bound by a clothesline rope looped around their wrists and held by the robber in the middle of the group. The groups shuffled out to the bus like two bent, ungainly centipedes. They clambered up the steps and past the driver-no doubt a cop-and through a privacy curtain into the back. Wonder Woman told the driver to turn off the interior lights. Then she assigned everybody their seats. She put Svekis at the back.
Hockey Mask, meanwhile, had pulled out a knife and was cutting the rope between the rows and using each length to tie the duos together. He pushed their masks up, too, to make it harder for them to see, but Svekis couldn’t tell if that
actually had a purpose or if he just enjoyed it.
The woman returned to the front and sat down behind the driver and quietly gave him orders.
The bus lurched into gear.
She got up and walked up the aisle again. A speaker crackled to life. The woman counted off the rows as she passed them, touching the people in the aisle seats as she said their number. She came to Svekis as she said, “Eleven.” Then she passed him and said, “Twelve.” Turning back, she headed toward the front again, passing her partner as he finished tying up their hands. Her voice blared like that of a tour guide. “You all sit in your seats, and when you’re told to get off-when I call your number-you get up and get out. The bus will slow down enough for you to jump, but we’re not stopping. So try not to break something. What you do after you get out, I don’t care, but if you want to live, you’ll follow my orders. I told you your numbers. You don’t get up unless you’re called.”
The bus rolled along through the city. After ten minutes the speaker crackled again and she called out, “Three!” Two people scrambled up and ran clumsily, strung together, to the front of the bus. He heard her say to the driver, “Just slow enough that they can jump.” Svekis looked out the window. The area was deserted, full of warehouses. It would be a while before they found anyone to help them. Alternatively, they might be mugged. He sat back and waited his turn.
The bus rolled along out of the city proper and toward the western suburbs. They entered an area of tenement rowhouses, and two more were let go.
Hockey Mask had passed by him after tying his hands, and now Wonder Woman followed into the very back of the bus. He listened to the rustle of her clothes, to the sound of a zipper, to other noises. He had a good idea what they were up to.
The speaker crackled again, and the woman called out, “Twelve. Get up, get out. Now.”
Svekis watched a fashionable pair of slacks, a turquoise blouse, and dark hair pass him. The mask was different, too. She carried a small, full backpack over one shoulder. No doubt it was loaded with the contents of one satchel. She held her hands out in front of her, rope looped around her wrists and connected to the man behind her in the jeans, windbreaker, and another backpack. They walked down the aisle and through the curtain. The door hissed open and the bus slowed for a moment.
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