Bank Robbers (25 page)

Arthur asked Eva to open a bottle of wine, and she nodded and told Dottie how nice she looked and that it was a great improvement from that morning. And then she tripped over her words trying to say that she didn't mean that she hadn't looked good that morning. She quickly excused herself and tromped off down the hall.

Sid seemed to be frowning at Dottie when she looked up at him, and they both looked away.

The video of Dottie was playing on the television, and she froze in front of the screen.

“So this is the problem.” Sid's voice rang out behind them, and he waved.

Dottie had sunk down onto the couch and was staring at the video.

“Why don't I give myself up now?”

“You could do that,” Sid said, and looked at her, “but I say you do it Monday morning; that way we could get you out on bail.”

“So you think they'll post bail?” Arthur asked, sitting next to Dottie.

“I'd be surprised if they didn't. The only reason they might not—and this is where you come in, Arthur—is if they found some kind of connection with you.”

Dottie felt her jaw drop and she looked at Arthur, who had a scowl on his face and kept his eyes steady on Sid.

“Come on, Sid, you don't have to scare her like this—”

“I'm not scaring her, I'm being honest.”

“I haven't gotten so much as a parking ticket in seven years—”

“Look, the press gets ahold of this, they'll have a field day. First, it'll make her look even worse, because they can say you talked her into it.”

“But I hadn't seen Arthur for thirty years when I decided to do this…”

“It doesn't matter. Guilt by association. And you are guilty, and this isn't some joke. And the criminal justice system, they aren't going to be so charitable as to look upon you as a starving poor old woman, you got it? You are a felon who shot someone, got it?” His voice was harsh.

“Sid…” Arthur's voice rose in warning.

“No. Let's get things straight right now. That statue of American Justice—the
blindfolded
woman with the scales—is blindfolded for a reason. The jury is told, we are told, in deciding a verdict, is there a reasonable doubt of guilt? Period. Did you commit the crime as described in the law books? In your case the answer is yes. You did. The police have a tape showing that. And so does Channel seven, two, four, and five, and for all I know, CNN and the BBC at this point. Now I would be a fool if I walked into the courtroom and planned to defend you any less seriously than that. And I do take what you did seriously. There is a good chance you're going to jail for fifteen years as it is. You want his name brought into this? Even if a judge gave you the benefit of the doubt.…” Sid's voice was loud, and his arm shot out and pointed to Arthur.

Dottie couldn't take her eyes off this man in front of her. She was shaking, and spine-withering fear went through her as the image of him doing this in front of a judge and jury came into her head, making the whole thing frighteningly and immediately real after her day of cheery shopping in White Plains.

“You connect her to the name of a known repeat offender, the bench is not going to ignore that. And even if they say, aw, it's okay, he's probably harmless and she just had a bad day, then the press is going to pounce on them. You could get a mess of editorials about the privilege of being white and old; then you'll get the racial debate…”

“That's ridiculous—”

“Yeah, but it'll sell more papers longer, it's called building up the story. And I'd say you already have enough press.”

They were all quiet for a moment.

“I should leave here—”

“No,” Arthur said quickly.

“Yes.”

“No! I am not leaving you alone—”

“Arthur, listen to reason,” Sid began. “She can stay till Monday—providing you don't pull another stunt like this shopping trip, okay? No one can know who Dottie is. And after she turns herself in, you have to keep your distance. I'm not going to have to deal with the issue of you in the press—”

“But—”

“No buts, or you get another lawyer,” Sid said sharply, and they were all quiet for a moment. Arthur walked over to the fireplace mantel and rubbed his jaw, and glared at Sid.

“All right, but I don't like it,” he said at last.

“Good.”

“So what happens now?” Arthur shot back at him.

“I do two things. I go to my contacts in the press and give them as much sympathetic information as I can. How desperate you were, how you've been screwed by the system, that you have a disease—”

“Oh, God, no…” Dottie covered her face with her hands.

“I want to arm us with as much embarrassing stuff for the cops as I can, so when I go to negotiate for the bail and the charges, they'll want to get it over with as quickly as possible.”

“So you're going to take this to trial?” Arthur asked.

“No. I don't think so. I think you'll be better off pleading out.”

Dottie watched Sid and Arthur stare at each other in that kind of silence there is when two people are mentally arguing.

Eva appeared with a tray with the bottle of wine and some glasses, and that seemed to break the tension between the two men. They were all silent as they watched Eva pour it. Dottie had to stop herself from grabbing the glass and slugging it down.

It was really happening. How she could have possibly thought this was a good idea again seemed to elude her. She watched Arthur take a sip, and she did the same, and they both looked up at Sid, who waited until Eva left the room.

“What did you tell her?” he asked.

“That she was my wife.”

“All of a sudden you have a wife?” Sid asked testily.

“That she was an old flame and I'd been seeing her for the past couple of months and we suddenly decided to get married.”

Sid grimaced and twitched his lips back and forth.

“Anyone else know she's here?”

“No,” Arthur said, and Dottie looked at him, and they both thought about Moe. And Dottie thought about Teresa.

“Good. Now, I want to take a statement from you. I want to know every last detail. I want to know when you planned it, and why. I want to know what gave you the idea. Was anyone else involved?”

“No, no one else was involved. It was only me.”

Sid nodded and went into his briefcase on the table. He took out a pad and a pen, and a small tape recorder. Arthur was frowning in the corner as they watched him flick the tape on, take the pad up, and sit poised. Dottie knew he didn't like the idea of her pleading out, and by the way they had both stared down one another, she knew they'd been arguing about it.

“Let's start from the beginning. How did you decide to rob a bank?”

*   *   *

T
ERESA
sat on the bench and stared out over what once had been a baseball field and was now a dust bowl. She'd been sitting on the bench for over two hours, looking at the park on 114th Street. Twilight had come, and she knew she'd better start back home. It was not a good thing to be out past nightfall anymore. She felt another wave of sadness come over her.

They were going to win, she knew that, and she hated it.

Okay, she hated what the neighborhood had become. But to leave it, well, that was like giving up, and Teresa was no quitter.

She slowly stood up and, clutching her bag, she began walking toward First Avenue. When she was a little girl, she used to look out over this park, with all her friends playing in it, and she always imagined the day that she would leave the neighborhood. But it wasn't to go and be a baby-sitter in Florida. No. When she left the neighborhood it was gonna be because she was moving up in the world, not down.

There would be a big black limousine that would slide right up to the front of the building, and for one small moment, all the kids and the mothers and the wise guys on the corner would stop, and they would strain their necks out just to catch a glimpse of her when she passed from the building to the car. And people would call to her and tell her that they loved her and they would ask for her autograph. And her car would drive off, to some fancy house somewhere, and maybe she'd come back for visits from time to time to the neighborhood.

A small chill went through her, and she realized how old that fantasy was.

And as odd as it seemed, that was the thing that stuck most in her craw about being shipped off down to Florida. To be driven in a beat-up old car to the airport, and then where?

Oblivion.

She turned down First Avenue and walked unseeing toward 106th street. It was always safer not to see too much of what went on on these streets.

Her eyes stopped at a television in the window of an appliance shop. Even though the shop was closed and a heavy gate was across the windows, she could still see a big color television set that had been left on. She stared at a picture of an anchorman, his lips moving silently. She stopped in front of it.

The videotape of Dottie rolled onto the screen.

Now
she
was famous and no one even knew it, Teresa thought. And it seemed odd that she, Teresa, who had always dreamed about fame, should stand here and actually, secretly, know someone who was famous.

She watched Dottie hold the gun up to the guard, the way she'd said she was gonna, and for some reason it suddenly seemed like a waste that no one would ever know it was Dottie who pulled the job.

No, Dottie was probably a million miles from this lousy city, and all the cops knew was that they had another unsolved crime on their hands.

Teresa exhaled loudly and began walking again.

And she couldn't even tell anyone it was Dottie, that was worse. She couldn't even brag that she knew all the details and she knew all the circumstances and she knew … Teresa stopped short.

Oh, God! That was it. It had been staring her right in the face all this time! It was the answer to everything. She let out a loud laugh, set her sights down First Avenue and began walking quickly.

She climbed the stairs of her tenement building, gasping by the last flight. She heard people moving around inside her apartment and pushed the door open, which was unlocked, and stood gaping at her children.

Cardboard boxes were sitting on all the surfaces, and her things were being packed. No one noticed her for a moment, and then suddenly Tracy yelled out.

“Mom!” Where the hell have you been? You had us scared to death—”

“Are you all right? We have the cops out looking for you everywhere.”

Teresa softened her face, and looked tired. She shuffled over to the chair at the kitchen table and sank down into it.

“Honey, get Mom some water! Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. I'm fine,” she said in a weak voice.

“Now will you listen to us?” Tracy said, and placed the glass of water on the tabletop so forcefully it slopped over the top.

Teresa took a long drink of the water.

“Now do you see that you're going to Florida?”

Teresa sat still and looked over at them and a big screw-you grin eased itself across her face.

CHAPTER SIX

A
RTHUR
rolled over and stared at Dottie. Her eyes were open and she was looking at the ceiling. He crossed his hands on top of the blanket and lay there listening to the sound of her breathing.

Everything Sid had said kept running through his head, and he guessed it was running through hers as well, the way she was staring up at the ceiling. There was the press problem, and the videotape problem and the jail-term problem—about the only problem Sid didn't have with the whole thing was his fee. His eyes slid back over to Dottie.

This legal nonsense was not going to work. Pleading out.

He knew what that meant. The press was already going crazy with this. The minute she gave herself up it was going to be like a feeding frenzy; the pushing and the shoving and the twenty zillion stupid, embarrassing questions, and even after all of that, a quick conviction and then what? He knew what. Sentencing. If there was more than a fifty-fifty chance Sid could get her off on probation, Arthur MacGregor would have gone along with it. But Sid wasn't saying there was more than a fifty-fifty chance of that.

If only she hadn't grazed the guard.

“What?” her voice asked, as though she had been reading his thoughts.

“There is another choice,” he said.

He could feel her body next to his. She turned sideways, propped her head up on the pillow, and looked at him.

“What if we took the money and ran?”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous.”

“Why not?”

“I'm too old to spend the rest of my life running from the police. Moving every couple of weeks—what an absurd idea.”

“You've been seeing too many movies. It's not as complicated as you think.”

“Arthur, that's not even the point. It's that—”

“You don't have to move all that often—unless, of course, you're planning on sticking up more banks.”

Dottie pursed her lips and gave him a wry smile.

“No, I didn't think so. Anyway, it's really not complicated. I know guys stayed at the same address for years, and the cops never found them. Look, we get on a plane—”

“No. Why should I compound it with more lies?” she asked and he stared up at the ceiling and exhaled loudly.

“But what if we leave and you never get caught?”

“I'll get caught. I know me. And besides, what about your business and your son?”

“I don't give a damn about the business, and my son—well, it's not like he needs me around. He'd probably like the fact I was gone. I know his wife would.”

“She doesn't like you?”

“She doesn't trust me with her children.”

“What?”

He shrugged and exhaled.

“It's a long story. I say we get outta here. I say we take the next plane for Hawaii, and try it.”