Читать книгу A Rock And A Hard Place - Shane Townsend - Страница 5

PROLOGUE

I stood on the second of four steps leading up to the brand-new building at the intersection of University and Lexington in St. Paul, contemplating whether or not I should follow through with my plan of action. It was a very brief contemplation, about one-tenth of a second or so, but in that short span of time, a million thoughts went through my head. Some were questioning my sanity. Most were regarding the consequences of my actions.

University and Lexington is a very busy intersection and very noisy. I heard none of the noise and saw none of the congested traffic. What had my attention as part of my brief thought process was the little devil sitting on my left shoulder. Those of you who have watched Tom and Jerry know what I am talking about.

“Come on dog, what are you waiting for?” he whispered slyly in my ear. “It’s time to handle this business and get this money!” he said more forcefully.

A little angel then appeared on my right shoulder.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “You’re messing with them white folk’s money, and you know that if they catch you—no, WHEN they catch you—they’re gonna bury your yella ass UNDER the jail, and they’re gonna throw away the key!”

In rebuttal, the little devil argued, “You done lost your job, you’ve been deathly ill, your bills are piling up, and your bitch is treating you like some random nigga off the street, talkin’ all greazy and shit. This next sixty seconds will solve all of your problems.”

That little devil then proceeded to show me a slideshow in my mind of all the pain, misery, suffering, and mistreatment I had suffered over the previous few months. Once that slideshow started, the little angel never stood a chance. Each painful image in my head was a blow to any argument the well-intentioned angel could attempt to make, and in the end, those blows were like a Mike Tyson barrage, beating the little angel down until he crumpled, quieted, and soon just disappeared. All that was left was the little devil urging me on. As I look back on it now, it amazes me how much information flashed through my mind in that one-tenth of a second.

Anyway, I proceeded up the steps and into the building where I went to the counter of an island in the center of the open floor. It was a small building, and it was not far to the windows of the cashiers straight ahead of me. I wrote the following message on the back of a deposit slip: “This is a robbery. Pass over all the loose twenties, fifties, and hundreds. No banded bills and no dye packs, and nobody will get hurt.”

After the briefest of pauses, the teller opened her drawer and began handing me the loose bills in the denominations that I had requested, acting as though it were a regular transaction. This is what she had been trained to do. When she finished that, she handed me a banded stack of five-dollar bills, the band denoting that it was worth five hundred dollars. Seeing the anomaly instantly, not as dumb as she must have thought I was, I gave her a quick mean mug, but she remained as cool, calm, and collected as she had been throughout the ordeal. Slick bitch, I thought as I tossed the dye pack back across the counter to her. I later learned that my suspicions had been correct regarding the dye pack.

“Nice try,” I spoke for the first and only time since I had entered the bank.

Paying her no more mind, I finished stuffing my pockets with cash then hastily made my way out of the bank. I crossed the street once I had made it across the bank parking lot then ran half a block to the nearest alley where I took a right. I then began to remove my top layer of clothes and tossed them into a nearby garbage can. I also removed my ball cap that I had on and my glasses. I wasn’t too worried about being observed because most people in that neighborhood would be at work during that time of day.

I was a totally different person when I exited that alley on Oxford Avenue. I headed south, back to University Avenue, where I joined a group of students from the local alternative school as they gawked at the police cars driving by at a fast pace, sirens blaring. When I spotted a number sixteen bus headed toward downtown St. Paul, and far away from the bank, I hurried across the street, hopped on it, paid my fare, and sat quietly down. I kept feeling the lumps in my pocket as we rode, amazed at the feeling after being so broke for the past couple of months and still not really believing that I had just done what I did. When I got downtown, I went to the nearest cab stand and took a cab the rest of the way home.

Sounds stupid, huh? But who’s gonna look for a bank robber on a bus? Plus, this way I didn’t have to worry about someone getting a description of my minivan or my license plate number. Think about it.