Another Hot Grand by Mark Anthony Given

 

A man with a briefcase can steal more money than any man with a gun. -Don Henley

 STANDING IN LINE AT THE BANK in a little strip mall along Highway 90 in Biloxi, Mississippi, this was probably the 50th bank I robbed and I got too comfortable.  I used the same bank account I had swiped off a mailbox right next to the front door of an old historic home, in a wealthy part of Gulfport. I had already called the bank to verify a $1,000 check, pretending to be a local merchant so I knew there was that much in there.  Monday morning at 11:40, I strolled into the Main Branch of the Hancock Bank and Trust, the biggest bank on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, in downtown Gulfport, Mississippi. 

Two block from the beautiful gulf of Mexico, I parked a block away from the bank and walked into the tallest building on the Coast, and up the escalator and grabbed Another Hot Grand before breakfast. I forced down the little fear I knew was good, it keeps you on your toes, I learned long ago, that I was so sporadic and switching jurisdictions so fast, that they were not looking for me to walk into their bank, and the Show didn't start until I handed them the checks and Deposit Slip.  As long as I stayed calm, everything went well and I was able to detect any hint of cops, I would see it in their eyes.

As usual, I stopped at an island and pretended to fill out a Deposit Slip and organize my four or five checks I already had prepared, as I try and get a feel for the place.  Banks, especially Main Office Banks, are like Emergency Waiting Rooms, and all that marble and brass and Mahogany provideded a heightened sense of awareness and level of importance in the air.  Most of these Tellers were making little more than Minimum Wage, and rolling out of bed every morning they wondered if they might die for someone else’s money that day.

I took my time like I was endorsing all the Checks right there, as I was really waiting for a particular young attractive female Teller to become available.  I knew from experience I don’t want an old schoolmarm broad, no high maintenance broads with Three Hundred dollar hairdo and badly fitting expensive clothes.  I diffidently don’t want a male, young or old or in between.  I want a hot young chick bored out of her mind handing out other people’s money all day, and looking for Mr. Right Checkbook!  I timed it so I was standing there in a thousand dollar suit, expensive haircut, tanned and talented and turned on the megawatt smile the moment we made eye contact. 

She was gorgeous, probably less than three years out of high school and knew I was way out her league, but she could hope.  I slid the five personal checks all made out to the account holder, and the Bank Deposit Slip (I should have had my own if this really my Account), and I complimented her hair or eyes or smile and leaned in the window and let her get a good gander at that Ten Thousand Dollar Rolex President.  I literally seen her breath halted she was so impressed and probably would have been stuttering had she tried to talk.  Didn’t even ask for identification!  Think about it, who’s going to walk into the Main Office of the biggest bank for a hundred miles in any direction, and slap down five checks totaling thirty four hundred dollars and only wanted a thousand dollars bank, from an account that wasn’t theirs? She checked the account, verified there was plenty of money in there to cover any or all, of these checks, and the thousand dollars cash I was walking out with, what’s the problem?

As soon as she counted out the new Benjamin’s in front of me for the second time I asked her what my balance was.  They never tell you.  They always write it down on a piece of paper and slide it too you.  I never even glanced at it and tucked it into my red leather valise and spun around and floated out of there heading straight for the beach.  I was so surprised by the amount of money in the account I couldn't let it go.  No wonder she was flustered;  $76,000!  I probably walked in every bank on the Gulf Coast from Pensacola to Houston, Texas, I never had an account this fat and I couldn’t let it go.        

THIS WAS MY FIRST FALL, my worst case scenario, caught red handed right in the bank.  I always trust my sense’s I developed from hitchhiking around the country.  As soon as I meet someone I look them right in there eye and I get a sense of how this is going to go.  A lot transpires when folks first lay eyes on each other, but I had absolutely no sense of impending doom when I walked into the Guarantee Bank and Trust Edgewater Branch at noon, and got in line with a few construction workers’ cashing payroll checks.  I didn’t have any choice this time, it was luck of the draw, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered. 

I waited my turn and walked up and handed the mid 40's white female with brown hair and schoolmarm glasses a few checks and the deposit slip.  As soon as she punched in the account she got a Caution to Notify Manager on this account. She looked up at me and said, "I'll be right back," locked her drawer and walked over to who I am sure was the Branch Manager.  I seen her show him the checks and indicate to me standing at her window.  We were looking right at each other.  I walked straight toward them and as I got up to them I said, "Just go ahead and deposit that, I am in a hurry," and walked right out the bank.  I was parked way at the other end of the parking lot around the corner but I never got out of the parking lot with the Branch Manager right behind me.  "Excuse me sir," I need to talk to you.  Is your name...?” I immediately changed direction because I didn’t want to lead him to my getaway car and was heading right to a four or five bay Brake and Muffler Shop behind the bank.  The Manager had attracted their attention and they started to converge on me when I see a Biloxi City Black & White pull into the bank at a high rate of sped, sped right up to us, jumped out and grabbed me and face planted me right in the parking lot.  Scuffed up dress shoes and suit and broke the band on my Rolex Presidential. 

     ONCE I KNEW I WAS CAUGHT I went into damage control.  I never really had a backup plan for getting caught but I knew what to do.  “This is all a mistake.  Do what you have to do and I will straighten this out with my accountants, this is not what it looks like.”  They took me to Police Headquarters’ and a couple of old seasoned detective’s tried the Mutt & Jeff routine on me, where one guy is nice and the other has to be kept from crippling me.  I was hip to all that and invoked my right to counsel in front of the whole squad room before we got into an interrogation room.  I knew they only knew about the these checks, they didn’t know I was a one man crime wave and if I didn’t make bail within 24 hours the feds would place a detainer on me.  As soon as I got thru booking later that night, I called a Bail Bondsman and asked him to come talk to me.   This was a couple years before the feds would grab me in a traffic stop in upstate New York, but this arrest put a name and a face to who they were looking for. 

     I gave them a phony name for sure, but the National Crime Information Computer maintained by the Department of Justice would place my fingerprints from this arrest with my real half a dozen prior arrest, and know my identity.  Before they had no more than a Key laying on the ground without a lock, and now they didn’t have the lock but they knew what lock they were looking for.  I never even dressed out into prison clothes and Buzz the Bail Bondsman from Pascagoula, Mississippi, just a few towns up the beach toward Florida showed up.  We had seen each other thru other people but didn’t know each other, and when he showed up I told him I had $5,000 in my apartment right on the beach and if he would take me there he could have it.  And he did.  Never showed up for court and never heard any more about it though when the Feds eventually captured me, I assumed it was combined with the other five or six state’s I burned.  California to New York and New Orleans to Memphis, I watched too much Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Mission Impossible when I was a kid, because to me this whole interstate conspiracy to defraud the FDIC was like a Secret Mission, and a lot more fun than flipping hamburgers.  Besides, the Customer’s never lost a Dime.  The Fed’s insured their money and that’s why they wanted a piece of my a*s when they finally got me.  But I had something for their a*s too, No Codefendants!

     I’d spend a day in town before, doing recognizance as to where the banks and interstate system was.  I had a stack of Shaklee Vitamin’s brochures lying in the back seat of the brand-new rental cars, as I discovered the better neighborhoods with mailboxes on their doors.  If no one looked like they were home across the street, I’d pull into the driveway and walk up to the door real casual and pretend to ring the door bell and swipe outgoing mail.  The Water bill was Green.  Phone bill was Yellow, Cable bill Grey, etc.  I was real smooth I wouldn’t spend Ten minutes in the neighborhood the next day, I probably looked like a insurance salesman, and as soon as I scored I was on the interstate and the other side of town before even if someone did see me, a report got inked.

     AS SOON AS THE BAIL BONDSMAN LEFT, I left.  I knew it was just a matter of hours, maybe minutes before the US Marshal’s Office in Gulfport manning the Booking Sheet of a half dozen county jails, or the NCIC itself would begin the hunt, and I didn’t want to be there.  I had just pulled out of a bank in the next town over, when I seen this sign right on the highway, “1 Br Beachfront Apartment $475 a month,” looking out over the Gulf of Mexico with the Biloxi Hard Rock Casino would be in about five years.  I drove up in there and walked to the Manager’s Office, looked at the apartment and paid cash for a few months.  Went to Edgewater Mall and stocked it floor to ceiling with anything I wanted and then walked away from it all when Buzz left.  

     I never have been attached to things.  I was making ten thousand dollars a day, which would last maybe two weeks of buying hotel rooms, w****s, dope, and generally living the Life of Riley.  If it wasn’t for the cop’s chasing me, it would have been quite boring after a while.

     When I first moved into that apartment I was warned of an eccentric rich old broad who patrolled the halls with a small cup and would knock at people’s doors at random, ask for sugar, follow them into their apartments and then squat and piss on their living room floor!  This is not a book of fiction; I could not make this up.  I wasn’t in my place an hour and I get a knock on the door and it turns out the old coot lived right next to me.  I look out the peep hole and see her and open the door and she all but bum rushed me into my apartment but I didn’t let her in. 

     I could see she was shot out, real opaque, faraway look in her eyes, dirty mousy unkempt hair,   I blew her right off, told her I had nothing and closed the door.  Wasn’t a week later after hearing her roam the halls night and day to get into someone’s apartment, I heard a racket in her apartment and her sliding glass door flung open and she swan dived off the balcony onto the parking ot directly below. I heard a sickening thud, sounded like she probably caught the bumper of a car right before impact.  It was probably 10:30 at night; I had just got to bed but without seeing a thing I knew what happened. 

     Sure enough, about 15 minutes later I see flashing emergency lights on my ceiling.  I still didn’t get up and look, I guard my visions by not seeing horror movies or anything bad period, I don’t want them images in my mind.  After I found out the old coot did not die and had been taken back to the funny farm where she was well known.  I scaled the front of the building about twenty feet over to her apartment about 4’oclock one morning after she was gone a week or so, and found a window unlocked.  She had a two bedroom apartment and had lived there for years and the place was floor to ceiling boxes of stuff she bought and never opened.  Cases of winter socks, bath towels, and toiletries you name it.  The living room looked normal but crowded.  It took me several nights to itemize everything in the place but I found her financial information and she was worth millions.  That apartment house was the first big anything on the beach, and was quite swanky even then, with an upscale restaurant, hair salon and liquor store on the ground floor.  It was built hurricane proof and looked good even after the storm.  The rumor was the owner won it in a card game.  It’s still there even after Katrina, it’s called The Palms.  I left all that behind but I didn’t care.  They had just began construction of Interstate 110 bypass down to the beach and were hammering in pilings in the for an entrance ramp right at the beach and directly in front of my apartment.  I was sick of hearing all that damn pounding and I knew the fed’s were far behind…

Reviews

[Trigorin]

This is really quite nice. You need to remember to check your spelling and grammar, but I did like the sort of mindless fun you presented with this piece, and I think there's definitely potential to expand this later if you felt the need to. Some of your language and word choice is a little stilted, but if you go back over this piece you'll probably catch most of it. I like the concept and if anything, I'd say you were too descriptive, which is much better than the alternative. Well done.

[The King of Montana]

http://www.reallifeheist.com/2012/09/dope-sick-city-by-mark-anthony-given.html