Slice

“Eh?'

“The time lock doesn't disengage until seven a.m. I can't get you any money until seven.'

“What the—” the one named Monroe started to say. “Hold it, shaddup, what the fuck ya’ talkin’ about time lock?'

Donald Fields explained to them about the overnight procedures, how all monies were locked up in a vault with the time lock as a safety precaution.

“And we can't open the vault before seven.” It wasn't true, but he thought it might buy him time.

“Shit, that ain't no problem. It's almos’ seven now anyway, shithead. We gon’ innair, and jus’ waltz on inna that vault with ya, and you gon’ git us alla money ya can carry in sixty seconds. ‘At's alla time ya got. At sixty one seconds I start pullin’ the trigger.” He fired a round into the dirt beside Fields’ feet. It sounded like an eight-inch naval gun going off. Donald Fields wondered if he'd make it through the day alive and in one piece.

“How many people's innair at seven?'

“Just the night security man and the maintenance man most of the time. Then people start showing up a little after seven. It varies.'

“Fuck it. Les’ go.” They got in the front seat. The tall, thin one in the driver's seat, the other one on the passenger side, with Fields between them, his hands still bound. He thought about how to signal to a cop if he saw one; how to pantomime the word HELP with his mouth. It might be worth a try.

They pulled up on the east side of the bank at one minute before seven and the driver untied him. Fields tried to rub the circulation back into his hands and arms. His confidence was returning. He thought about what he could do. Weighed his options. The driver had been asking about his wife, wondering why he had been alone in the house. He was expert at sizing a man up and these were stupid men. He could outthink them if they gave him half a chance.

Then they were all getting out of the car. He'd been instructed on what to say and do inside. The vicious one was going to go with him into the vault. The stupid one would watch the guard and janitor. Nothing about alarms, cameras. They weren't professional bank robbers. He doubted if they were professional anythings, these hillbilly jerks.

He unlocked the east door of the bank as he'd done four or five thousand times before, but he was shaking so badly he could hardly fit the key into the lock. They came in behind him and he threw the main lights on, the way he always did, and as he hit the switch he felt a pistol jammed against his spine,

“I'm just turning the lights on.” They walked on into the main part of the bank, coming in the east door, and Fred was mopping and said, “G'morning,” like always and the stupid one motioned at him with the gun and a finger over his mouth in the shut-up sign, and the janitor dropped his mop and raised his hands just the way Fields had, only he said, “Oh, please, don't—'

“SHUT CHUR FACE” the vicious one snarled at him in a stage whisper, poking Donald Fields in the spine again for emphasis, and they all walked across the main lobby in the direction of the big vault. “MOVE GODDAMMIT,” he snarled, and they moved quicker, Fred and Donald first, the other two behind them with their guns out, looking for the security man, who for some reason was nowhere in sight.

The store burglarized the week before had decided to display a couple of handguns with the rifles in their window. It was something they almost never did but the .380 auto had been returned by a customer who nitpicked about rust on the case-hardening, and the big Colt Python had been gathering dust in the showcase for so long they thought that maybe if they moved a few pieces around a little they'd shake something loose. They shook something loose all right. Two nights later thieves broke the window and took both handguns out.

“Hurry,” the mean one whispered in Fields’ ear, bathing him in a foul mouth odor, “ya’ got fifty-nine seconds to MOVE!” And it seemed to take forever to unlock the gate and swing the big, heavy door back, and they walked in over the wire grate that of course Fields hadn't disengaged, and the silent alarm was thrown for the second time. Fields gathered up the seven zippered teller pouches with the bait money, taking as much time about it as he could. The vicious one ripped the pouches from his hand and took off running screaming across the lobby at the stupid one, who was standing there with his gun on Fred the maintenance man, “LE'S GO!” Which is when the night security guy, Floyd Coleman, stepped out from behind one of the pillars with his .357 Magnum revolver just like Clint Eastwood in the movies only instead of saying, Make my day, he started to say, Drop those guns or drop your pants or drop something, but only the dr came out because John Monroe had pulled the trigger of the .380 auto, shooting him smack dead bang in the ticker and knocking him back like he'd been punched in the stomach by a heavyweight and he sat back and the four of them watched him die with his gun in his hand, dead as he sat there with his eyes still open, going slowly back, toppling over backward almost as an afterthought, the gun firmly in his hand but pointed over to the side, and Monroe and De Witt shagging ass with the teller pouches full of money and almost out the north doorway. But somebody opening the door, a girl named Kelly Pierce who'd only been with the bank for two years, who Donald Fields suspected the boy was secretly poking, Kelly with the famous low-cut dresses and the nice cleavage, Kelly was coming in as they were running out. Bam-BOOM, everybody knocking one another ass over teakettle, money flying every whichway, the pouches unzippered, bait money in the air like autumn leaves, Kelly knocked on her pretty tush, the vicious one and the stupid one scrambling for money like contestants in a mad quiz show, one of them firing the big Colt back into the bank putting Fields and the man Fred flat on the floor as the thieves snatched and grabbed and jumped into the car that Fields would describe to police as a “dark-blue or midnight-blue Crown Victoria—maybe a year or two old, not sure of the model year.” And two uniformed cops coming on the scene and doors being locked and people being herded into offices and interrogated, and cops everywhere.

And at 07:04:10 the dispatcher gave a coded “robbery” at an address that everybody obviously made as Buckhead Mercantile Bank and Trust, and at 07:06:00 Bureau cops picked up a “robbery-in-progress” changed to “robbery with shooting” and they gave it in the clear to homicide, who of course only take over if there is a dead body on the scene, and the five detectives working the midnight-to-eight graveyard tour were all in-house and rolled on it en masse: Bill Brows, Marv Peletier, fat Dana Tuny, Jimmie Lee, and Harry Ecklemeyer.

At 07:21:00, there were fifteen cops by the crime scene. Two uniformed officers, Ramirez and Jones. Four agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation led by SAC Howard Krug. Five Buckhead detectives, with Detective Sgt. Lee in charge of securing and seizing and protecting and preserving intact the evidence of the crime scene. Lee was in charge, as there had been a homicide committed in the course of the robbery, but he was working “with” the Federal Bureau of Investigation—plus the captain himself no less, in person, and two two-man teams of backup uniforms, all with the light bars and the sirens and the hoo-hah and the evidence van and the ambulance and employees showing up and milling around everywhere as general chaos prevailed.

But it had already happened by the time the feebs arrived with their high tech and higher self-esteem, imbued as they were with a mandate from the Lord on High Himself. It had happened long before the captain had arrived in a cloud of Gordon's and toothpaste. (Christ, the fat son of a buck must use the stuff for a mouth-wash.) It had happened when what is usually called “opportunity” presented itself, when the detective sergeant in charge had put his people to work measuring body position, taking the money measurements, searching for spent bullets, processing the crime scene, protecting the evidence, seizing ... especially the seizing part.

Lee'd gone through the doors where the bills were scattered everywhere—these deliciously crisp green rectangles of spendable, dependable, expendable lettuce leaves with TEN and TWENTY printed on them. These collectible, delectable, beautifully minted, verdantly tinted photographs of dead presidents that he was WALKING through, STEPPING on, this schlemazel cop who didn't get ten cents walking through this newly mown field of crisp twenties, and intoxicated by promise he opens the door and there's some more of the tellers’ pouches and that's when James Lee saw the opportunity and that's when he crossed over the line.

You draw a line somewhere. Right? Right. Draw one. Draw it wherever it makes you comfortable. It looks like any other line—right? It's just a line.

* * *

Wrong. It's your line. If you cross it, you put yourself on the other side of the line and at first, because it's only a line, it looks the same from the wrong side as it did before you crossed over. Right? Right.