I only took this job to get fired, and now
this, thought Josh. He stood in his bank
teller window wearing his straight-guy blue oxford shirt and the tie with burgundy
diamonds, both from the church thrift store.
Stood there raising his hands in the air like any good citizen being
robbed.
The two robbers seemed to pop into the bank
from nowhere. Josh had no real memory of
them walking in the door but now they strutted around in white paper lab suits,
looking like big bunny rabbits pointing guns at random around the bank lobby.
The tall one did all the talking.
“Open your cash drawers, put your hands up
and shut up.”
His eyes darted from teller to teller
looking for a challenge. The young girl
in front of him just stood there. He
waved his gun at the ceiling and let off a burst and the girl screamed and
opened her drawer.
“This is a robbery.” He shouted each word loud and important, like
he was hyping a band at a rock concert.
Yeah, thought Josh, like we need a program
to tell us what’s going on here. Like
Josh needed a program to tell him that his own future was over if they got away
with this robbery.
The short one reached up with the barrel of
his AK-47 and pushed the video camera over the door away so that it saw only
the ceiling. They started at the far end
and worked their way down the long row of tellers towards Josh.
Josh watched them, curious about how they
did it. He knew plenty about small-time
scams, but he had never seen a robbery before, at least not a big-time bank
robbery like this.
The tall guy did all the talking but looked
at the silent one for something. There:
that was it. Silent shook his head, and
Tall skipped a teller. Silent knew
something; he skipped the tellers with dye packs.
Josh admired them for pulling this off, and
he admired the details: the paper lab
suits were a good touch. No one would
remember anything about the robbers except the white suits with hoods. Probably buy them cheap at some med supply
place; add a white ski mask and you can wear anything you like underneath.
Except for the shoes. That was a mistake. Tall had flashy basketball kicks, the kind
that would demand some respect on the street, what you’d expect from a robber. But Silent had a pair of black Ferragamo’s. Rich businessman shoes that cost $200 new,
except that these weren’t new. The kind
of guy who would buy these shoes either had money or worked in a job where he
has to fit in with guys with money and wouldn’t keep shoes this long. It offended Josh. Josh was a pro, sort of, in his own way, and
he respected pros. You’ve got to get the
details right.
The two guys moved the same way: pro, but
with a flaw. They looked casual, even
random, but he could tell it was rehearsed.
No one but him would remember that later, and that was good.
But the body language had a flaw. Tall moved like a bank robber in a movie, all
swagger and attitude, waving the gun around and yelling at anything. Silent faded into the background and that was
good, too, but the pose was wrong. He
hunched over and shuffled like a kicked dog.
This wasn’t a man used to demanding other people’s money. Silent begged them for it every day and hated
doing it but had to pay the rent.
Specifically, Josh knew Silent’s walk belonged to the assistant manager
of the bank, pushed around every day by the manager. Now the assistant manager was getting his
payback.
See, that was the tell, the one detail that
betrayed all your hard work because it was too much a part of who you were for you
to even know it was there. Josh knew how
to stay in character and keep the game going until you got to the payoff. Even now, when he wanted to shake his head
and grab the guys and tell them to start over, to come through the doors this
way and not that, even now he just stood there impassively with his hands in
the air.
Be a pro, he wanted to tell them. Be a pro, or be burned.
He reached over quick and took the dye pack
from Kelly’s open drawer, one of the old style packs with a timer. Kelly smiled weakly at him, chewed her gum
faster and looked away. He pressed the
timer button and put it in his own drawer.
Tall came to Josh and waved his gun. Josh scooped up the cash and dye pack and
shoveled them on top of the pile of money in the bag. He felt like saying, “sorry,” to the robber.
The best Josh could do was apologize in his
head.
Sorry, he thought, but I can’t let San
Francisco’s finest look at the personnel records and ask me questions, the kind
of questions these giant companies should ask before they hire someone but
never do. Big dogs can’t be bothered
checking on the little guys who really make up their companies.
And that’s why Josh hated these companies,
hated so much of the world: be a pro, treat people and your job with respect,
or get out.
