The bank offered extensive hours as part of its competitive edge.
Marty and Paige intended to be at the doors, with Charlotte and Emily,
when the manager unlocked for business at eight o’clock Tuesday morning.
He disliked returning to Mission Viejo, but he felt they would be able
to effect their transactions with the least difficulty at the particular
branch where they maintained their accounts. It was only eight or nine
blocks from their house. Many of the tellers would recognize him and
Paige.
The bank was in a free-standing brick building in the northwest corner
of a shopping-center parking lot, nicely landscaped and shaded by pine
trees, flanked on two sides by streets and on the other two sides by
acres of blacktop. At the far end of the parking lot, to the south and
east, was an L-shaped series of connected buildings that housed thirty
to forty businesses, including a supermarket.
Marty parked on the south side. The short walk from the BMW to the bank
door, with the kids between him and Paige, was unnerving because they
had to leave their guns in the car. He felt vulnerable.
He could imagine no way in which they might secretly bring a shotgun
inside with them, even a compact pistol-grip model like the Mossberg.
He didn’t want to risk carrying the Beretta under his ski jacket because
he wasn’t sure whether some bank-security systems included the ability
to detect a hidden handgun on anyone who walked through the door. If a
bank employee mistook him for a holdup man and the police were summoned
by a silent alarm, the cops would never give him the benefit of the
doubt–not considering the reputation he had with them after last night.
While Marty went directly to one of the teller’s windows, Paige took
Charlotte and Emily to an arrangement of two short sofas and two
armchairs at one end of the long room, where patrons waited when they
had appointments with loan officers. The bank was not a cavernous
marble-lined monument to money with massive Doric columns and vaulted
ceiling, but a comparatively small place with an acoustic-tile ceiling
and all-weather green carpet. Though Paige and the kids were only sixty
feet from him, clearly visible any time he chose to glance their way, he
didn’t like being separated from them by even that much distance.
The teller was a young woman–Lorraine Arakadian, according to the
nameplate at her window–whose round tortoise-shell glasses gave her an
owlish look. When Marty told her that he wanted to make a withdrawal of
seventy thousand dollars from their savings account–which had a balance
of more than seventy-four–she misunderstood, thinking he meant to
transfer that amount to checking.
When she put the applicable form in front of him to effect the
transaction, he corrected her misapprehension and asked for the entire
amount in hundred-dollar bills if possible.
She said, “Oh. I see. Well . . . that’s a larger transaction than I
can make on my own authority, sir. I’ll have to get permission from the
head teller or assistant manager.”
“Of course,” he said unconcernedly, as if he made large cash withdrawals
every week. “I understand.”
She went to the far end of the long teller’s cage to speak to an older
woman who was examining documents in one drawer of a large bank of
files. Marty recognized hen-Elaine Higgens, assistant manager. Mrs.
Higgens and Lorraine Arakadian glanced at Marty, then put their heads
together to confer again.
While he waited for them, Marty monitored both the south and east
entrances to the lobby, trying to look nonchalant even though he
expected The Other to walk through one door or another at any moment,
this time armed with an Uzi.
A writer’s imagination. Maybe it wasn’t a curse, after all. At least
not entirely. Maybe sometimes it was a survival tool. One thing for
sure, even the most fanciful writer’s imagination had trouble keeping up
with reality these days.
He needs more time than he expected to find plates to swap for those on
the stolen Toyota Camry. He slept too late and took far too long to
make himself presentable. Now the world is coming awake, and he hasn’t