Gumshoe Rock

by Rob Leininger

  I gave him a rueful half-smile. “Of course I’ll pay whatever it costs. All of this is my fault, all my fault.”

  He was relieved about my willingness to pay but tried not to show it. He led me back to his cubicle. “These things happen, Rose. Every year we have to drill out a box or two.”

  “Oh, bless your heart. I’m getting to be such an old klutz.” I held up the bandaged hand. “Like this. I fell getting out of bed. I think it’s just a sprain. Grace, my neighbor, wrapped it for me. I’m getting to be so … so much trouble to everyone.” I put a faint note of anguish into that.

  “Really, Rose, this isn’t any trouble. But it will take a little while. We’ll have to get a locksmith in here to drill the box.”

  “Oh, I am trouble. This is terrible. I’m so sorry.” I let out a heavy sigh.

  “Don’t give it another thought. I’ll call that locksmith right away. But, first, I suppose I should see some sort of picture ID, like a driver’s license or a passport.”

  “Yes, of course.” I dug in the purse, came up with Lara’s driver’s license. “I’ve also got a Visa card with my picture on it if that would help.”

  “No need, Rose. This’ll do just fine.”

  “I hate to be a bother, but I, I haven’t eaten yet today. I saw a restaurant down the street. If you could tell me about how long it will take to open that box, I could go get a bite to eat, if that’s all right.” And get out of his hair, I didn’t say, but I knew that would suit him just fine.

  “Of course. You do that. We’ll have the box open in about an hour, maybe a little less.”

  “Oh, bless you.” An old embarrassed broad couldn’t come up with too many bless yous.

  “Do you know your box number, Rose?”

  I knew the number but appeared to give it some thought. “Well, I’m not sure. Maybe two eighty-six? Or, one sixty-six?” I looked down at my shoes. “No, that can’t be right. One sixty-six is my old address, when I used to live in Kansas City. My, that was years ago. Years! I lived on Jarboe Street, near the park.”

  “That’s okay, Rose. We’ll look it up.”

  “No, wait. I think it’s—maybe it’s two twenty-six. Or two thirty-six. One of those sounds right.”

  He put Rose’s name into a computer and looked it up. He smiled. “It’s that first one. Two twenty-six.”

  I gave him a relieved look and a smile. “I don’t know how I ever remembered that.”

  “I’ll call that locksmith, Rose. If you’re back in an hour, I’m sure we’ll be able to get you into that box.”

  “Oh, I would never fit,” I said.

  He gave me a startled look.

  “Sorry, dear,” I said. “I just couldn’t resist. You look a lot like my oldest boy, Danny.” I patted him on the shoulder, then slowly shuffled my way to the front door and out.

  Mort and Lucy sat with me in a coffee shop. No one was within twenty feet of us. We had a view of the bank at an angle across the street. Fifteen minutes later, a locksmith’s van pulled into a side street and around to the rear of the bank.

  “That’s a good sign,” Lucy said.

  “No cops,” Mort said in a nervous whisper. “If we see a cop nosing around that bank, or more than one tight-assed guy in a cheap suit, you don’t go back in.”

  “Relax,” I told him. “We’re almost there.”

  “Just remember this is bank robbery.”

  I put a hand on his arm. “If you need Pepto-Bismol, boyo, I saw a CVS pharmacy down the street.”

  “Ha, ha, Ma,” he said.

  I gave it the full hour then walked back to the bank. Andy was in his cubicle, but he saw me when I came in. He got up and hurried toward me.

  “Got it,” he said. “It’s open.”

  “Oh, bless you.”

  “If you’ll sign in, we’ll get that box for you.”

  “Please tell me what it cost to get it open. I want to pay. It was my foolishness that caused all of this.”

  “Well, the usual charge for drilling a box is a hundred forty dollars, but in this case, I suppose we can get by with, say, fifty or sixty—”

  “Oh, heavens no. I wouldn’t dream of it. This was all my fault. If it costs a hundred forty, then that’s what I’ll pay.” I gave him a look. “I do have quite a lot of money here, you know.”

  He did know. I could tell that he’d checked the account and probably been surprised to find that Rose had over a hundred eighty thousand dollars in savings. I might be a bit dotty, but I wasn’t poor. “Even so,” he said. “I—I’ll let you know. For now, I’ll turn you over to Miss Nichols, Amy, in the safe deposit area. I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  I went over, didn’t have to wait ten seconds before Amy was there. “You’re the one whose box we had drilled, ma’am?” she said, smiling.

  “Yes. This has been so embarrassing.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve never seen it done before. I had to be there to watch. Bank policy. It was actually kind of exciting.”

  It would be exciting. Amy was about twenty years old.

  “Well, I’m glad some good came of it,” I said. “So, I need to sign in now, don’t I, dear?”

  “Right here, if you would.” She slid a card across the desk toward me, previous signatures covered by a blank sheet.

  I took the pen she offered, held it in my bandaged hand, gave it an awkward flip that sent it skittering off the edge of the desk to the floor. I accidently bumped the cover sheet when she bent down to pick up the pen. That gave me a quick peek at the most recent signature. Esther signed it Lara Donndin, no Rose, no initial. Small, a bit cramped, no flourishes, tilted backward a little. After a two-second look I slid the blank sheet back over Lara’s signature.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ve gotten so clumsy lately.” “No worries,” Amy said, sitting up again. She handed me the pen.

  I produced a slow, awkward signature with the bandaged hand, small, no flourishes, tilted backward, then offered Amy a faint smile. “It’s been one of those weeks,” I said with a sigh.

  Amy barely glanced at the signature. She didn’t bat an eye, clearly didn’t want to embarrass the old lady, which wouldn’t be PC and was probably against bank rules in any case. She tucked the card back in a wooden file box, then stood up. “All set. If you’ll come this way, ma’am.”

  She buzzed me through the waist-high door, and I followed her into the safe deposit vault. Number 226 was still in its slot, but it had had a bad day.

  “Oh, my,” I said when I saw it. “I did that?” A fine, dotty comment. I’d been at breakfast when the box was drilled so, no, I hadn’t done it.

  “It’s okay. Do you want to pull it out, or shall I?”

  “Would you mind? With this silly hand of mine …”

  “Of course.” She zipped it out and held it across her chest. “Would you like a private room?”

  “I suppose I should. My feet are tired. I’d like to sit to go through it.”

  “No problem at all.”

  She showed me to a small room, set the box on a table, shut the door behind her as she went out.

  I opened it.

  Cash.

  Bundles of bills held together by paper bands. The bands were plain white paper, obviously handmade, with the amount printed in ink in Esther’s handwriting. I thumbed a bundle. All hundreds. The figure 10,000 was written on the paper, but I was only going to get one shot at this so I had to be sure. A quick count told me it really was ten thousand dollars. I pulled out all the bundles. Some were fifties. A few were twenties. No loose bills. I pressed on the stacks and checked their thickness against the stack I’d counted. All were the same, so it was likely that each contained a hundred bills.

  I needed a quick total. This bank had rolled over for me. No telling what I would run into at the Mutual of Omaha branch if I had to go there, so I needed to know how close I’d gotten to a hundred grand. A hundred grand and quite a bit more, actually. We might be doing this pro bono for Volker, but I wa
sn’t about to rob a bank just for the fun of it.

  Six bundles of hundreds, six of fifties, three of twenties. In all, I’d gotten my hands on ninety-six thousand dollars.

  That might be a reasonable amount to return to Volker. It would certainly ease his pain. But I’d shelled out eight grand to Doc for the IDs and this trip would cost another grand, easy, and none of that paid us for our time. So … raiding Lara Donndin’s safe deposit box was bank robbery of one kind. Why not go for another?

  The box also held papers and certificates, none of which interested me since there was nothing I could do with them. Lara did have three Royal Canadian Mint .9999 one-ounce gold bars tucked into the back of the box. They were pretty, but not quite four thousand dollars’ worth, not enough to end this. I took one as a souvenir of my first and last bank robbery, left the rest, then exited the room with the cash and a gold bar tucked into my purse. Soranden’s name had been turned into five anagrams and those bogus names had been in his possession along with bank account numbers, in code. I took all of that to be sufficient proof that this money hadn’t been obtained by legal means. We knew one rightful owner, Michael Volker, though the IRS would argue the point. The others, and there had to be others, had very likely disappeared into the mists of extortion. It was possible the FBI could locate them, but I didn’t know how to do that without setting the IRS dogs on Volker, and Volker was the client. It would also set those same dogs on the former extortionees and it wasn’t likely they would thank me if I blew the whistle on Soranden’s scam and put them back in the IRS’s sights, with the attendant back taxes, interest, and fines.

  Amy was waiting for me at the safe deposit desk. I ambled over with the box held awkwardly under an arm, my purse slung over a shoulder. “What, uh, do you do with this? There are still things inside I need to keep safe.”

  “I asked Mr. Zimmerman about that. The box is okay. It’s the lock they had to drill. We’ll put the box in a new slot, assign you a new number, and give you the keys for it.”

  I gave her a relieved look. “Well, that doesn’t sound too difficult.”

  Amy gave me box number 193. Lara’s papers and the two gold bars got tucked away, and Amy handed me the keys. I had to sign a new card with the new number. All of this would come as an unpleasant surprise to Esther the next time she came down to open Lara Rose’s box. I would like to be a fly on the wall when Lara discovered she no longer had box 226, and especially when she opened 193, if she got that far.

  “Bless you,” I said to Amy. “And you,” I said to Andy. He had come over to ensure that the transition had gone smoothly. “I was so worried about this, but you made it all so easy. This is such a nice bank.”

  “Not a problem,” Andy murmured.

  “Now I need to withdraw a bit from savings,” I said. “I’ll just get back in line to see a teller about that.”

  “No need,” Andy said. “Amy can help you right here at this end window.”

  As I’d hoped. Another “bless you” might be tiresome so I said, “Thank you. You’ve both been very kind.”

  At the window, Amy asked me for my passbook.

  “Oh, my. I, I was so upset I didn’t think to bring it. But you can look up my account on the computer, can’t you?” I gave her my driver’s license and got out a card with my account number on it. I also spelled Donndin for her because I was a fussy old woman, a bit scatterbrained but trying to be helpful. “I’ve been able to trace my ancestry back nine generations,” I said proudly. “Donndin is Irish, you know.”

  She didn’t know and neither did I, but she smiled and typed my name into the computer, came up with an amount that caused her eyes to widen ever so slightly.

  “If I remember correctly,” I said, giving her what would amount to another subtle form of identification, “I’ve got a little over a hundred eighty-six thousand in the account.”

  “That’s right. One eighty-six, one twenty-two. And, uh, it says here I’m supposed to ask for a code word in order to make any withdrawals.” She gave me an expectant look.

  This was the iffiest part of this deal, but Ronald and Esther were brother and sister and would use the same code word, most likely their mother’s maiden name. If not, I might have to fake a fainting spell or heart attack.

  “Connor,” I said. “Last two letters are O-R, not E-R.”

  Amy smiled. “Okay, now what can I get you?”

  I blessed that genealogy website, then said, “I need three cashier’s checks, each of them for eight thousand, if that’s okay. Made out to me. And if I could get a fourth one for a hundred forty dollars made out to the bank here to pay for the box you had to break into.”

  “No problem. I have to get Mr. Zimmerman’s signature for those larger amounts. I’ll just be a minute.” She locked her cash drawer, then went off to Andy’s cubicle.

  Good. Andy would be helpful, wanting to keep me happy, but also to get me on my way.

  Which is what happened. Amy came back, whipped out the three cashier’s checks for Lara Rose Donndin, one to the bank, and ten minutes later I was on my way, with a little finger wave to Andy who was at his desk with a customer. He gave me a nod and a smile, and I was out the door.

  Walking counterclockwise around the block, I pulled out the burner phone and said, “I’m out, boyo, where are you?”

  “Lucy’s got this rotation. Keep walking. She’ll be along in less than a minute.”

  Lucy rounded the corner, headed my way. She stopped the Impala in the middle of the street and I hopped in. Didn’t take six seconds and no one was behind her at the time, so as bank robberies go, it was letter perfect. I felt I’d earned that gold bar. And a gin and tonic, but that would have to wait.

  “Anyone coming after you?” Lucy asked.

  “Nope. We can head back home right away.” Mort was still on the phone. “We’re out,” I told him. “We’ll see you where we said we would. You can end the call now.”

  “Gotcha, Ma.”

  Forty-five minutes later, we were out of Phoenix at a café in a town called Buckeye, ordering food, and the keys to the new safe deposit box were in a ditch at the side of a two-lane road, twenty-some miles from Torrey Pines Bank.

  “How’d you do, Ma?” Mort whispered even though no one was within twenty feet of us.

  “Hornswoggled ’em,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I GAVE HER a look. “Hornswoggled, Ma?”

  “You need to pick up on the lingo,” Lucy told me. “I have a grandfather who said that a lot when he was talking politics with either one of my uncles. He got it from his grandfather.”

  “Doesn’t sound PI noir, though. It sounds rocking chair. I doubt Hammer or Spade ever used it.” I turned to Ma. “How did you do in dollars, which is what we were after.”

  “Got a total of a hundred twenty grand. And this.” She slid a gold bar to me across the table. “I’m keepin’ it as a souvenir.”

  “Groovy,” I said, beating Lucy to her favorite word. I slid the bar back to Ma. She was a brick. Count on her to rob a bank of a hundred twenty thousand dollars and a gold bar and make it look easy. It was unlikely that Esther would report the theft. Folks don’t generally report their stolen money when it’s stolen. Only a guess on my part.

  From Buckeye we caravanned west on I-10 to Blythe, then north on U.S. 95 to Vegas where we stayed the night at the Bellagio. We got two rooms, no suites. Lucy was cooling it with roulette and her luck, nor did we need the money.

  We got back to Reno the next day at four twenty p.m., returned the cars to their respective agencies. Ma took a taxi downtown to Harrah’s Casino, then another one to the house she shared with two women about her age. Lucy and I took a cab to the Golden Goose and walked home from there.

  “It’s official,” Lucy said when we were inside, up in the bedroom.

  “What’s official?”

  “We’re bank robbers.”

  “Technically, we’re only getaway drivers, doll. Wheelmen, to be precise. Ma
’s the moll in this family.”

  Lucy wrapped me up in a hot kiss, then said, “Doll and moll. How nineteen thirties. How ’bout we get frisky?”

  “We could do that.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Could?”

  “I misspoke. Here, allow me to help you outta that shirt. It needs washing anyway. Not wearing a bra, are you? I wouldn’t want to embarrass you when I whip this off you, kiddo.”

  “A bra? Like do I ever?”

  She almost never did, and she wasn’t then, and she wasn’t embarrassed when the shirt got whipped off and flung across the room where it landed on a bedside lamp.

  * * *

  My heart rate was still above a hundred and Lucy was flat on her back, eyes closed, when my cell phone rang.

  “You should get that,” she breathed.

  “It’s way over there on the nightstand, sweetheart.”

  “Which is on your side of the bed and only three feet from you.”

  “Closer to four. I tried, but my arm fell short. I know what you’re gonna say about that, but you’re wrong.”

  “So now what?” she asked.

  “Dunno. If I could actually get to the phone I might call 911 to get someone over here with a crash cart and maybe one of those epinephrine injections like you see on TV.”

  “It was kinda aerobic this time, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes it was. You look slender and very feminine and even breakable with hard use, but that’s only an illu—”

  “You gonna get that phone, Mort?”

  I rolled to my right, managed to get the phone on its fourth and final ring, right before it went to voice mail. “Yo,” I said.

  “Huh. You out jogging again, Mort?”

  “Hell of a guess, Ma.”

  “Luce with you?”

  “Right here, yup.”

  “You two eaten yet?”

  “We don’t eat on the run. We sit down to eat like proper folks.”

  “Well, how ’bout we meet at the Goose, grab a bite, then go powwow in the Green Room? Say, in an hour?”

  “Powwow, Ma? Like we did last year?”

  “Got to figure out where to go from here. Mostly how to deal with a client and bits of paper.”