The End of the Dream (19 page)

He knew about the dye packs, and about the reserve money. If he knew about bait bills, marked so that he could be linked to them if he tried to spend them, he didn’t mention it. But his take was dropping, this time, he only got $5,739. On October 5, he hit in West Seattle again.

It wasn’t the end of the week, it was a Monday at 10:15 A. M. when he strode into the Great Western Bank.

He wore the blond wig and mustache, the “DARE” baseball cap, the sunglasses, but he had substituted a white shirt and wild tie for the T-shirt, and he wore a windbreaker jacket. The see-through mask was gone, replaced by skillfully applied theatrical makeup that included a large hooked nose. Instead of surgical gloves, he wore black gloves.

He had never yet left fingerprints and he apparently didn’t intend to.

He was clearly operating on the premise, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, “ as he used the same general language to demand money and to warn witnesses not to follow him. This time, he asked for the “vault teller, “ something he had never done before. When a female teller stepped nervously forward, he demanded that she take him into the vault, where he evidently knew the large amounts of cash were kept.

Once there, he instructed her to give him hundreds, fifties, and twenties only. As he ran from the bank, he carried a blue nylon duffel bag. It contained $27,423. The bank’s surveillance cameras caught it all, and FBI special agents continued to form a profile of this unknown man. They did it by carefully questioning every bank employee, every customer in the five robberies. No detail was too small since they couldn’t know which minuscule part of his pattern might help them catch him. In October of 1992, Scott Scurlock had become a star of sorts in the Seattle area though, of course, no one knew his name. The “Rat on a Rat” program featured him on one of their bulletins and offered a thousand-dollar reward for any information on a, “Male, white, 30s, 5’11”, 165 lbs. , sandy brown hair, makeup on face, black semiautomatic pistol.” The picture used was the blurred frame of a bank’s 19 camera, and despite his makeup and false hair, he looked for all the world as if he’d come straight from central casting. He would have liked that.
 
Scott’s sixth bank robbery in 1992 was so remarkably successful that it must have even stunned him. It was Thursday, a week before Thanksgiving, when the man who had become all too familiar to the Seattle Police Robbery Unit and the FBI walked into the Sea first Bank in Hawthorne Hills at 11,40 A. M. He announced, “This is a robbery. This is no joke, folks.” Then he asked the tellers to step away from their drawers and the customers to move to the center of the bank. He instructed the drive-in teller to move back from her window, and made sure that her microphone was turned off. “Who is the vault teller? “ No one answered.
 
He racked back the slide on his pistol, chambering a round. “Now, “ he said, menacingly, “who is the vault teller? “ A young female teller, whose name was Patti, stepped forward, “I am, “ she said quietly. She was frightened.

Her manager handed her the keys to the vault, and, despite her fear, Patti showed some spirit when she turned toward the man in the grotesque makeup and said, “I would like someone to go back there with me.”

“Fine, “ he said, and the woman manager of the bank moved to the teller’s side. The trio walked toward the vault, the women trembling.

Once back in the lonely stillness of the vault, the teller had trouble with the combination to the safe.

Her hands were shaking so much that her fingers kept slipping past the code stops. “Calm down, “ the robber said with a trace of humor in his deep voice. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’m sorry, “ Patti whispered. “I’m just scared to death.” Again, the robber told her she was safe, that he wouldn’t hurt her. But his voice was a little impatient now, the clock was ticking, and he had no way of knowing what they were doing out in the rest of the bank. He needed to be gone.

Patti finally got the safe open and stepped back. There was so much money inside that the bag the bank robber carried wasn’t big enough to hold it all. He ordered Patti and her manager to find him another bag.

There wasn’t one large enough in the vault area, so Patti went out into the bank and brought back a canvas bank bag. “Do you have dye packs in here? “ the robber asked abruptly. “We don’t use them here, “ the manager lied. But she could see there were no dye packs in what he was grabbing. His hand hovered for a moment over a stack of bait money as if he knew what it wa sand then he left it where it was.

Laden down with the two full bags of money, the man in the DARE cap and checked black and white pants seemed about to leave. Then he turned back. Every one froze. But he only said, “Don’t trip any alarms for thirty secondsor I’ll come back in. Now everybody get down on the floor.” And then he was gone. But the vault teller realized that this masked stranger was now a rich man.

He had just walked away with $252,000. It was a week or so later almost Thanksgiving in 1992 when Mark Biggins and Traci Marsh saw Scott Scurlock again. He showed up at their door in Darby, Montana, grinning broadly. While Mark and Traci were barely getting by, Scott looked to be thriving. He told them that all of his worries were in the past, he had money again. He was not the Scott they had known during the last months before the Madison Avenue bank robbery. He was the old Scott again.
 
Confident and magnanimous. He looked around their grungy small house, peeled off a stack of bills, and handed them $5,000. Mark didn’t want to take it but Traci reached for it eagerly.

During Scott’s four-day visit at Thanksgiving 1992, they found out why he seemed on top of the world. He confided that he had robbed five more banks since they had fled Washington. And he allowed them to believe he had done it all by himself, without a partner (like Mark) or a driver (like Traci). He told them that everything just kept getting better. In fact, during his last robbery, he had carried away $250,000 a quarter of a million dollars! Mark could only stare at Scott with a mixture of wonderment and shock. He had been so revulsed by the bank robbery they had committed together that he could not imagine anyone would want to experience that level of anxiety, terror, panic, and guilt again. But Scott seemed happy and supremely confident.

They had a good evening together, picking away on their guitars while they sang their old songs, and growing more mellow with each drink.

Scott regaled Mark with anecdotes about his success as a bank robber.

Mark stared at him and felt the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Where were they all going? He had to admit that the money Scott had given him felt good in his pocket. He and Traci were living in a small mountain cabin that had fleas in the summer and cracks in the walls where the wind whistled through in the winter. Traci complained continually about their living conditions. It was a familiar feeling for Mark, being poor and a lousy provider. Christmas was coming, and he had nothing to give Lori. He didn’t even have a way to get to California to see her.

Mark was constantly worried about Lori. Sometimes, when he talked to Annie on the phone, Mark worried that she was drinking again. He had to find a way to be with Lori and look after her.

And now, here was Scott grinning at Mark, inviting him in. It was all there, ripe plums for the taking. The stupid cops didn’t know what the hell was going on. Scott was even able to philosophize about why robbing banks wasn’t much of a moral problem it wasn’t like they’d be stealing from the bank’s customers, they would get their money back from the insurance company. So what was so bad about spreading the wealth around a little? Scott was such a good talker that he made Mark dizzy. If Mark didn’t let his conscience niggle at him, it would be easy for him to view Scott as Willie-Boss. Good, solid, dependable Willie-Boss the same guy who had taken him in and given him a place to live and food to eat.
 
They had been friends for more than a decade, they’d been through a lot together. If Scott had been able to rob five banks all by himself and never been caught, it couldn’t be all that dangerous. Scott opened the door wide and Mark stepped through. This time, there was no way, ever, of going back. In time, everything that mattered to Mark would be lost to him, but it would happen so insidiously that Mark wouldn’t even realize it was gone until it was too late. Scott Scurlock was playing in the big time and he loved it.

He had stolen $302,899.50 from banks in five months. He no longer had to worry about money. He felt invincible, and he managed to persuade most of the men who had been his friends for decades that they were invincible too. In late 1992, the “Take Charge Robber” in the clear mask, makeup and DARE cap was only one of a number of bank robbers that the FBI and Seattle Police Department were tracking. The nickname Hollywood had yet to be coined.
 
And, by the New Year, he seemed to have disappeared. After a half-dozen bank jobs, and a take of more than $300,000 between late June and midnovember of 1992, he could well afford to move on or retire. He could be dead, for that matter. There had been a bank robbery in Olympia, Washington, in December of 1992 that bore some similarities to the ones the man in the mask had carried off. But this one was just different enough to confuse authorities. On Friday, December 18, a tall man wearing a wig and sunglasses had walked onto the Sea first Bank on Black Lake Boulevard outside Olympia. He had a pistol, and he ordered customers to sit on the floor while tellers filled up the two plastic bags he had brought with him. He didn’t leap on the counters, and he didn’t seem to have the dramatic flair that the Seattle bank robber had. Besides that, his physical description wasn’t the same.
 
The Olympia robber was taller and huskier, and the little tufts of his own hair that showed beneath the cheap wig were curlier and lighter.
 
When Scott Scurlock found out about the Olympia robbery, he was angry.
 
He had not given permission to any of his accomplices to act alone, and Scott liked to be in control. He had sent plane tickets to Mark and Traci so that they could fly to Washington in December.

He knew that things in Montana weren’t working out for them and he had flown them in, ostensibly so Mark could put insulation in the gray house. But Scott had also wanted their help with another bank robbery.

However, their arrival had coincided with a visit to Seattle by President Bill Clinton, which was not a propitious time for a bank robbery, the city was crawling with security. Scott had called off their plans, and he gave Mark and Traci a car to drive back to Montana.

Once there, Mark was frustrated and in despair. He had been disappointed when Scott canceled the December robbery. Scott didn’t need the money, but Mark did. He was right back where he had started, instead of being with his daughter for Christmas. Most of the $5,000 that Scott gave him at Thanksgiving was already gone for back bills.

Mark’s desire to show up at Christmas as a generous Santa overrode his memory of that first, horrible, goof-up bank robbery with Scott back in June. He and Traci drove back to Olympia, while Mark worried about his desperate financial situation all the way. They arrived at Overhulse Road on December 15, 1992. Scott wasn’t in the gray house or in the treehouse. Steve Meyers, who had been staying in the gray house, was gone too. They waited for three days, but Scott didn’t show up. It was typical of Scotthe never told anybody where he was going. And so, improbable as it seemed, it was Mark Biggins who had robbed the Sea first Bank on Black Lake Boulevard in Olympia, and, in doing so, he broke most of Scott’s rules. For one thing, this was the bank that Mark had patronized when he lived in Olympia. Yes, he and Scott had talked casually about robbing it, but Scott had decided that pulling a job so close to home was foolhardy. But, with Traci encouraging him, Mark took one of Scott’s pistols and set out to rob the Olympia bank.

“He was clumsy and nervous, but he got away with it.

Mark walked out of the bank with $47,000. He felt almost as nauseated and guilty as he had the first time but not quite as much. Now loaded with money and presents, Mark and Traci drove to Oxnard and spent Christmas with Lori and Annie. Lori was nine years old now. She was tall like both her parents, but she resembled Mark the most. After New Year’s Day, Mark and Traci returned to Montan abut only for a few months. At Christmas, Mark’s fears about Annie’s drinking had been confirmed. His little girl was taking care of her mother, when it should have been the other way around. He couldn’t bear for Lori to live like that.

In the spring of 1993, Mark and Traci left Montana and moved to Ojai, California. Mark was determined to get a legitimate job and to use the money from the Olympia bank robbery sparingly. It was to be a stake not a way of life. He had helped Scott bury money around the Overhulse Road property, and now he buried most of the bank money in Ojai. If he concentrated on the thought that he had done it to make Lori’s life better, it eased his conscience. He was in massive denial.

Mark got a job in a company that manufactured equipment for producing leather clothes for motorcycle riders. Traci took a paraplegic man into their home and cared for him. They immediately moved Lori in with them, and Mark saw to it that she could be a little girl again. He cooked her breakfast every morning, walked her to the bus and picked her up afterward.

It was just like old times. Mark taught Lori to play the flute and the from
 
bone. With her father helping her with her homework, it wasn’t long before Lori was getting straight A’s.

Mark also taught Lori how to play basketball. Like her dad, she was a superior athlete who played the game so well that, by the time she was in the eighth grade, she would already be courted by college recruiters.
 
Lori Biggins adored her dad as much as he did her, she was blossoming now. Whenever Annie needed a place to stay, she was welcome in Mark and Traci’s home, Mark was careful never to disparage Annie to their daughter. Of course, there was a sharp dichotomy now in Mark Biggins’ ethics, a schism that he was able to blur by drinking or using speed. He did this when his daughter was asleep or away. No one has ever argued that he wasn’t a caring, attentive father. He would have died for Lori without question, and he tried to give her everything she needed. That he partially provided for her with money he had obtained by robbing two banks was a memory he tried to bury. When Scott found out about Mark’s solo bank robbery, he was furious. If Mark had been caught, the gun would have been traced back to Scott. The whole damn operation would have been over. But after one angry phone call blasting Mark for being an idiot, Scott slipped out of Mark’s life.