For the fourth time in as many minutes Jill Roth glanced at the clock on the wall. “Hmmm, 2:52” she thought. “I don’t think I’m any closer to the tellers than I was five minutes ago.” There’s really nothing you can do but to stand quietly when you are in a bank line. People don’t talk to each other. Usually they stare straight ahead or at their feet. “Why didn’t I bring a newspaper?”
As dull as it may be, going to the bank is usually the most interesting part of her day. Jill is a bookkeeper for a large insurance agency. Her job consists of making entries in books. She volunteered for the daily task of depositing the days receipts in the bank just to get away from the books for a little while.
She had been with the agency for nearly 3 years. It was her first job out of high school. She only did a so-so job at bookkeeping. The firm kept her around though because the sales agents liked to ogel her. She had no illusions about this. She happened to be a very pretty girl. She was short, only about 5 foot 1 and fairly petit. She only weighed 95 pounds. No matter what she ate, she couldn’t gain weight, she had one of those fast matabolisims. She also wore a size 32C bra.
This size isn’t too big overall, but she had such a small frame, they seemed much bigger than they were. The men at work always made cracks about her size and shape. They would say things like ‘How can you stand up being so top heavy?’
It was all just petty annoyance to her. She never gave it a second thought. Sex was not big deal to her. If anything, it was an annoyance she put up with for her boyfriend.
She always remained business like. She made a particular effort not to appear too sexy at work because she did not want to give any of her male co- workers the wrong signals. Today she wore a gray suit with a matching jacket and skirt. Her hair was dirty blond and fell just below her shoulders, but, today, as usual, she had it pinned up. It was hard to concentrate on her books with hair falling in front of her face.
She took another glance at the clock. It was now 2:53. Suddenly the calm was broken briefly by a small child who was in line with his mother behind her. He was complaining that he wanted to get hamburgers and seemed to be growing impatient with the wait. Jill and other bank customers turned to stare for a few moments. The mother did what she could to calm her child.
Jill still lived with her mother. She didn’t go out too much. She really didn’t have any girl friends. She did have a boy friend though. She had been seeing Roy for nearly 2 years. He is a bit older than her. Actually, he is 37. He is an accountant. He has 2 children from a previous marriage.
Jill and Roy had a routine. Every other weekend Roy spends his time with his kids. On the off weekends, he spends the time with her. On Saturday nights, they usually see a movie or go to a party then end up in Roy’s bed. They make love for about 20 minutes and go to bed. Sundays they read the paper together, go out to brunch and then she usually goes home. The routine had been pretty much the same for a while. She often wondered if the relationship would ever grow beyond that, but dismissed the idea when she realized she was only 22 years old and shouldn’t really be in such a big hurry.
Suddenly the calm was broken again. For a moment she thought the small child was acting out again. But this sound was different. Louder. She turned with annoyance to see what was happening. What she saw caused her to gasp.
Three men with guns had entered the bank. Each were dressed similarly. Jeans, black sweat shirts, work books and work gloves. They wore black ski masks and dark goggles over their eyes. You couldn’t see one inch of skin on any of the men. They looked very ominous. Even though they were dressed alike, they did look different in that one man was short and thin, one about average height with a round beer belly and one very tall and lanky.
The man with the beer belly was standing behind the bank guard near the door. He had his left arm around the guards across his chest and was holding his gun in his right hand to the mans head. The other two men were walking quickly toward the line and the tellers.
Beer belly spoke aloud “This is a stickup! No body will get hurt if you simply co-operate. Everyone but the tellers please lay face down on the floor.” People continued to stand, too much in shock to move. Beer belly added louder and angrier “NOW!”
Jill noticed people around her began to follow the instructions of the robber. She followed suit and got down on the floor also, face down. The short man went into the tellers cages with a garbage bag while the tall man stood the cage and stood directly over Jill and the other customers.
A moment later the small child who had made noise a few minutes ago jolted everyone by crying out again. Everyone including the robbers jumped a bit before the childs mother was able to quiet the child.
The bank guard decided to take advantage of the brief disturbance and went for his gun. The tall robber spotted the attempt and quickly drew his gun and shot at the guard. Fortunately the man was some distance away and not a great shot, so the bullet hit the man in the upper thigh. The guard fell to the ground in pain. At the same moment a loud alarm started to ring.
“WHO HIT THE GODDAM ALARM?” screamed the beer belly man.
One of the tellers sputtered out answer, “The gunshot. . . it’s automatic.”
“OK”, said beer belly to his associates, “Lets get out of here NOW.”
“Just a minute”, said short man, “Lemme finish!” He tried to speed up his job of emptying the tellers trays.
“C’mon man,” said tall man to his colleague, “the cops will be here any minute. Move it!”
“Yeah, yeah, you wanna give me a goddam hand here?” short man said back to tall man. Tall man went into the tellers cage to try to help his friend stuff as much money as possible into his bag.
Now beer belly was getting really angry. He shouted to his friends, “You got enough, move out NOW!” As he spoke he was watching out the window scanning the area for any police cars. He was sure he could hear sirens in the distance getting louder.
The other 2 men finally decided to heed their friend and began to run out of the tellers cage. The short man was carrying the garbage bag full of money while the tall man was now holding 2 guns (his and short mans) on the crowd in the bank. They were all 3 running toward the door. Beer belly decided to address the crowd one more time, “OK folks, stay down and count to 100 before anyone moves.” With that, all 3 men ran out the door.
They were heading for their van thinking they were home free but, there was definitely the sound of sirens in the air. The moment they hit the sidewalk, two blue and white police cars came barreling around a corner toward them. The quickly reversed direction but was confronted by 3 more police cars heading toward them from that direction. At that moment, they had no choice but to return to the bank.
After they reentered, beer belly shouted to the crowd who was starting to get up, “OK folks, It’s about to get a bit more complicated. Stay on the floor and follow our directions to the letter and no one will get hurt.”
“What are we going to do now?” asked tall man to Beer Belly.
“You’re going to shut up and listen to everything I say, you hear!” he answered. Tall and short man nodded in compliance. “We can either wait here until they wear us down or we can make our move now and get out of here.” continued beer belly. “Everyone grab a hostage. Get females, they’re easier to handle. We’re going right out the door!”
The three men walked directly to group of customers, most of which was starting to get up. Beer belly roughly grabbed a thin old woman who seemed to go into shock. Tall man grabbed a chunky middle aged woman with bleach blond hair. Short man grabbed Jill Roth.
All three woman began to vocally protest until the 3 men put their guns right up to the three womens temples. “C’mon.” said Beer Belly. The six people moved hurriedly out the door.
At this point the police was just starting to settle in around in a parameter around the bank. They were not expecting a move so quickly and wasn’t quite prepared. A female officer spotted them first and yelled, “They’re out!” The officer plus several of her colleagues crouched behind their cars and drew their guns.
The policeman who was in charge shouted out, “Hold your fire! They have hostages!” For a split moment everyone froze.
Then Beer Belly shouted to the police “WE DON’T WANNA HURT NO ONE. JUST LET US BE NOW, AND NO ONE WILL GET HURT!” The group started moving toward the van that was parked just outside the perimeter. No one fired at the group but the police kept their guns trained on the men. They opened the side door of the van. Beer belly got in first leaving his hostage on the sidewalk. He went directly do the drivers seat and began to start the van.
Tall man jumped in next also leaving his hostage on the sidewalk. “C’mon man,” Tall man said to short man who still had his arm around Jill Roth’s waist, holding her tighly against his body and pointing his gun against her temple. Short man jumped into the van too. He did one thing differently, he dragged Jill along with him. Once inside he slammed the door.
The moment the door was shut, Beer Belly hit the gas and sped out. He was a good 2 blocks away before the police could get in their cars trying to pursue them. Tall Man spoke, “Hey man, why did you bring the bitch!” Beer Belly heard the remark and glanced over his shoulder and saw Jill in the van next to Short Man.
“Damn boy, what the fuck is wrong with you!” shouted Beer Belly.
“I dunno,” said short man, “We might still need her, you know, in case the cops catch up.” “Besides,” he added, “I kind of like her. I think we had a special moment out there”. Disregarding the gun, Jill gave the short man a dirty look.
“Damn,” said Beer Belly, “You are a fucking idiot. You better hope the cops don’t catch us, because you just added kidnapping to our armed robbery charges. We’re probably going to have to kill the bitch too.”
-To be continued…-