The Robbery

[paul vanotti]

Paul Vanotti

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This is one chapter of an unfinished novel set in San Francisco..

They’d planned to be out in four minutes, but the watch strapped over Nick Sotto’s black glove already read twenty seconds past the five minute-mark.  With his back to the wall facing the Grant Avenue door, he swung the short barrel of the machine-pistol in a slow arc past the eighteen customers who stood like store manikins on the plush carpet of the oppressively quiet bank lobby.  A middle-aged man began mouthing the Lord’s Prayer while looking up at the acoustic ceiling tiles.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Nick said quietly through clenched teeth as he turned to the open vault, scanning the frozen faces of the four tellers.  Three young men and a woman stood behind their stations, hands on the smooth wooden counter as instructed.  One engagement ring, two wedding rings and a college ring with a flashy faux emerald.  Hands too frail and soft.  The customers and employees were well behaved so far, but if his partner didn’t leave the walk-in safe soon one of the hostages might crack and try to get out of the bank.  He’d seen it go wrong before.

Finally Natalie reappeared walking calmly out of the vault past the heavy stainless steel door lined with polished cylinders, tumblers and nautical-looking locking wheels.  The black and orange Giants cap, long hair tucked into the collar of a dark sweater, her nose and mouth covered by a drab bandanna.  She was toting a large gray backpack, passing near enough so he could smell her freshly shampooed hair.  Staying with the plan she didn’t look up as she wove her way past the ranks of silent customers.  Finally stopping at the heavy glass front door she put her hand on the butt of a semiautomatic holstered at her hip.  The simple, precise gesture she was prepared to use it.

“Ready?” he asked.  Nick heard the hostages’ audible intake of breath as their bodies stiffened, their faces blank with fear.  Natalie nodded as she pulled the mask from her face, calmly checking the street, making it all seem casual.

“Now you,” he pointed at the tellers.  “Fill this with large bills.”  

Nick tossed a dark nylon bag on the counter in front of the first teller who began stuffing cash into the bag, and then signaled the other three until all were busy emptying money drawers.  He took the bag and put it under his heavy leather jacket smoothing the loose and bundled currency so it contoured to his body.  “Count to 500 and don’t fucking move.  No alarms, no heroes.”  Now Nick smiled slightly.  “Remember folks, it wasn’t your money anyway.

Cool air and the busy street had an immediate sobering effect on their pumped up bodies and for a moment they relaxed.  However the fear hit again and he couldn’t stop the flood of images, the prison mainline, rows of steel and cement cages and others just like it above, tier after tier, stifling air, men screaming.

He reined in his exhilaration and pulled his attention back as they crossed Grant.  They walked thirty feet to Washington and turned east.  It was then as they made their way down the hill to the motorcycle parked in the rear of an underground garage at Portsmouth Square, they spotted the four-door white sedan.  It swung lazily around the corner, and when it pulled to a stop the two wheels on the passenger side were up on the sidewalk.

“Cops,” he said to Natalie, and for a second he felt drained.  They immediately broke into a jog--the adrenalin now surging through both of them.  “Go ahead and hold the door open for me.”  He was struggling to compose himself knowing if this went bad it’d be the last time he would see her.

“I’m gonna see if I can bluff them back.”

The girl broke into a full run with the backpack shouldered and strapped, leaving her hands free to swing herself around the railing.  When she disappeared down the cement steps into the garage he turned to face the sedan.

The female officer was talking into a phone while her partner pushed the driver’s door open and inched his body out of the car, using the door as a shield.  He held a gun in his right hand; she pulled a shotgun from somewhere beneath the dash.  Nick grabbed the pistol he hoped he wouldn’t need to use.

Just then a gut-chilling shout erupted from an older Chinese man.  He was wearing the traditional black suit, the pajama kind you don’t see anymore standing next to a nearby cement Mah Jong table.  His scream startled the twenty or so mostly older men gathered at two large tables away from their games.  The old Chinese man pointed first in the direction of the plainclothes cops, and then at Nick crouching at the top of the stairway with gun in hand.  Sirens wailed in the near distance.  The sharp crack of a gunshot launched hundreds of pigeons into the heavy damp air of the late afternoon sky, with loud frantic beats and snapping wings.  A second blast hammered the park, and the birds twisted into a spiraling cloud like a swarm of locusts.

The cops who each fired a round took defensive positions behind the open doors of their patrol car and waited for help.  Adrenaline shot through him when he realized how quickly they arrived and how efficient they were, more like military than the local police on the beat.  This part was new: they’d made an instant decision to hit him--no warnings and no surrender demands.  

“Hey!” Natalie shouted at him from the door at the bottom of the stairwell.  “We gotta get the fuck out of here before they kill us!”

Her forehead creased in fear, she held the motorcycle helmet in one hand and the heavy steel door to the parking garage with the other as he bounded down the stairs, scared, too.  Yet he still managed to admire her beauty.  Locking the door behind them they sprinted past the elevator  into the rear of the garage.  She’d already started the engine.  The roar of the idling bike sent waves of concussion rumbling against cinderblock walls and concrete ceilings.  He threw on his helmet and mounted the big bike kicking the stand free with the heel of his boot.  She jumped on wrapping her arms around his waist, pressing knees, thighs, stomach and breasts against his back.  He was surprised how, despite the padded leather, he could feel all of her.  And it was good to have her that close.  Her arms, however, gripped him so hard he couldn’t breathe.  He grabbed her hands and unlocked her fingers, released the clutch and spun the rear wheel leaving a trail of burnt rubber.

Thundering up the levels they saw the exit blocked by the steel arm at the attendant’s booth.  Nick revved the Hayabusa’s1300cc engine to make a run around the tip of the barrier when he heard a shout.

“Hold on, hold on!” shouted the young African-American man who jumped from the glass booth, standing directly in front of them blocking their exit.  

“You can’t just blast out of here on that thing!”  He yelled, oblivious to any threat.  “You gotta pay just like everyone else!”

The rider twisted the throttle and was about to make a run at the attendant when she shouted in his ear.  “Don’t hit him!

“Get the fuck out of my way or I’m gonna drive through you!” 

The man hurdled himself aside just in time, almost falling back into the glass booth as they sped into the heavy traffic on Kearny.  A quick right on Montgomery, then right again, they powered toward the Financial District, speeding past the Pyramid as the roar of the four-cylinder engine reverberated off towering buildings of the urban canyon.  Nick wove the motorcycle expertly through lanes and bike messengers, looking for his next opening when he saw blue flashes in the rear views.  Natalie slapped his helmet with an open hand and pointed at the line of police vehicles forming a roadblock half a football field away as California Street shot into view.

“Hang on tight!”  He gunned the engine and pulled the bike onto the sidewalk as he laid on the horn.  The rear tire spun, smoke poured into the air and pedestrians flew--some falling--in anarchic choreography.  He finessed the U-turn, doubling back to Sacramento and hitting fifty in first gear they ripped west through Chinatown towards Nob Hill.

Accelerating and braking through the mounting congestion, Nick and Natalie threaded their way through grid-locked cars and delivery trucks before positioning themselves to turn left into the Stockton tunnel.  Nick made the turn grabbed the throttle and twisted--the sudden acceleration lifting the front wheel from the pavement under tremendous force.  In a heartbeat the speedometer needle darted past the hundred mark as they  flew around traffic.  At Union Square he locked the brakes, and the motorcycle skidded to a stop at the red light.  They were at Sutter and Stockton.                                                                         

“I’ll drop you at BART!” he shouted.  “Take the train to Berkeley and chill for a few hours then meet me back at the Wharf.  I’ll get rid of the bike.

With no police in sight and only the distant wails of sirens on the hunt, Nick released the clutch when the light turned and cruised at the speed limit past Union Square.  When he pulled to the curb at Market Street, Natalie jumped off, unsnapped her helmet and kissed him hard on the mouth.  “What time should I come back?”  She asked, squirming out of the backpack heavy with cash, wrapping the straps around her left arm, testing its heft by lifting it by the hand strap.

“Buy some new clothes and another backpack!  Hang-out on the campus like you’re back in school,” he said quickly.  “Then get a cab to the hotel, but change everything you’re wearing.”

He tipped back the helmet and kissed her gently.  “Come back at ten o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.” She was still looking at him as she backed toward the station entrance.  “Please be careful, Nicky.”  

As Natalie disappeared down the escalator to the underground train  Nick pulled onto Market feeling calmer knowing she was safe.  He eyed the street then checked the mirrors.  He told himself he couldn’t be caught, but there were would be freedom either way because they’d have to kill him to stop him.  He wasn’t going to federal prison for twenty years.

He was nearing his safe-house on the fringes of North Beach near the Embaracdaro approaching Broadway when the first patrol car ran the light intent on smashing into his side.  The cruiser caught the edge of his rear wheel spinning him sideways.  The second black and white missed him entirely, skidding past him into the intersection.  He fishtailed and accelerated hard, becoming airborne as he cleared the next hill and intersection before landing hard on his rear wheel and nearly losing control.  Squealing rubber and sirens converged behind and to his right.  When he finally found an opening, he was able to blow through the signal to Columbus where rush-hour congestion and startled pedestrians blocked his path.  In the mirrors he could see police running on foot in the grid-lock.  They were about to overtake him.  They weren’t alone.  He counted five--the plainclothes cops who’d shot at him, along with two others in baseball hats, who rushed toward him from both corners of his periphery.  Nick knew that among them would be at least one shooter, somebody with skill and experience.  And there he was, waving his hand at a group of people standing at the corner of Broadway and Columbus and pointing a long barreled revolver dead at him, debating whether he could get off a shot without hitting a civilian.

Nick knew he had to move…now.  But where?  Or how?  The intersection remained blocked, penning him in.  Suddenly he spied a small opening between a breaking squad car and an old lady dressed entirely in black with a matching floppy hat who wandered from the curb into the melee.  As he heard a burst of gunfire, he ducked behind the instrument panel and accelerated through the gap ready to run the next red light.  A swarm of unmarked black & whites charged toward him, sirens screaming and lights blazing.

Traffic was heavy when he entered the Broadway Tunnel, but he poured it on tearing between cars in the two-lane tunnel until the yellow tiles lining the sides and roof melted into his vision.  As he hit 160 miles an hour, the cycle’s deafening roar consumed all other sound.  It was all he could hear now.  His head throbbed and he couldn’t be sure he was hearing anything anymore.  The narrow path down the center lane between the slower cars was disorientating as he saw the end of the half-mile tunnel and stood slightly on the bikes foot-pegs.  Suddenly things stopped happening in their correct order.  First he felt a pain in his knee.  Only later, he believed, did he see the bike clipping the flank of a white Land Rover.  He saw blood as everything turned into vivid slow motion images.  An out-of-control sensation took over like jumping from a plane--free falling unfettered by objects--waiting to pull the cord and open the chute.  He rolled and slid on his back over an impossible distance as his jacket ripped from his body and paper currency flew into the air trailing behind him like confetti.   

Nick wouldn’t remember rolling to a stop at the mouth of the tunnel, but he knew he had to jump, clearing the motorcycle as it skidded past him in a ball of sparks and flames marveling as the air caught fire from the fuel in the tank.  He scrambled to his feet and waited for the cars to overtake him, but none did.  Shaking his head like a wet dog he could finally hear again: shouts and sirens.  He scooped a handful of hundred dollar bills that floated gently out of the tunnel with him from the pavement.  Inside the tunnel thirty or forty men and women, most of them in the dark suit uniforms of downtown workers, fought for thousands of dollars in fifties and hundreds.  Enraged and frantic, the cops, blocked by the cash-frenzied commuters who abandoned their cars, tried at first to push the civilians aside.  Several brawls erupted, and from where they stood, a quarter-mile into the Broadway Tunnel, the cops were helpless to stop him as he hobbled to Polk Street and disappeared into a taxi.