That’s a robbery waitin’ to happen. Chick gripped the steering wheel of the jacked Toyota at high noon, not the 10-2 taught in high school’s driver’s ed. Chick didn’t follow rules then, either.
He leaned forward, staring out the big windshield with eyes popping ‘til his nose rested against his knuckles. He couldn’t believe his luck. Not ten feet in front of him. A windfall. Better than the lottery ’cause this kind of money didn’t pay taxes.
Red lights clicked off on the Genesee School District yellow bus, but for a minute traffic didn’t move. Really good neighbors wanted to make sure the two middle-schoolers crossed the street, walked up the drive, opened the door to their friggin’ house.
Waiting for them? A half dozen cars. Waiting to be robbed.
Not the cars. The Guardian armored truck. Yeah, the armored truck. Following the rules stopping at the bus’s red blinking lights and letting the friggin’ kids cross the friggin’ road. Chick didn’t believe in rules. Until now.
***
Tatts’ inked arm wrapped around the heavy china plate to protect his two-eggs-over-easy. “No plan’s for sure, Chick.” He slurped runny yolk.
Lefty slid into the vinyl seat next to Tatts, across the booth from Chick, then wiped his sweaty face with a corner of his spotty apron. He looked at the door, the kitchen, around the place like he expected to be busted again. “I got a month left on parole, Chick.” Lefty poked the table with his southpaw finger. “One month. I stay clean, no gettin’ inta trouble an’ Julie said she’d take me back.”
“Ain’t no one gonna get hurt or caught. Ain’t no one gonna know it’s us. We wear masks.” Chick rubbed the yellow stubble on his head. “Bim, bam, boom. We done in less than five minutes.” He smiled big, bigger than he had in the year since his release from Jackson State Prison. A three to five stint, that coulda been done in two, but Chick added a year for bad behavior.
“I checked out the armored truck each Thursday for a month an’ I got the route. Two guys, they start at the big State Bank in Bay City, then they do pick-ups and drop-offs from a boatload of grocery stores, other banks, check cashin’, then head back to State Bank like a big circle. They drive down that stretch of M-54 at 3 o’clock every Thursday.” Chick’s head bobbed like one of those plastic birds dipping his beak into a glass of water. Bob, bob, bob. “It’s all farming country down that way. Twisty two lanes, houses acres apart, lots of trees, lots of cover.”
Lefty scratched his chin, Tatts picked his nose, and Chick grinned. He waited for his pals, his one-time partners, to realize the brilliance of his plan. They said nothing. Chick had to explain. “Thursday. What’s Thursday?”
Lefty took the leap. “The day between Wednesday and Friday?”
Chick jumped on it. “Right! Friday.” A look from Lefty to Tatts. “Payday!”
Tatts got it. His eyebrows rose in a ta-da realization. “Money’s delivered on Thursday so places’ll have enough cash for cashin’ checks on Friday.” He smiled showing teeth. Sitting across from Tatts, Chick wished he hadn’t. He stared at a mouth full of black rot. They’d have to get a full-face mask for Tatts. He wouldn’t be saying much anyway, according to Chick’s plan.
“Payday.” Lefty scratched his chin, looked past Chick, over the row of booths with diners slopping chili or fries or pancakes into their mouths. Someone thumped Lefty on his shoulder.
“You gonna get back to work or what? I ain’t paying you to eat all my profits.” Some bloated guy wearing a dirty apron and holding a spatula stood next to their booth. “We got orders backin’ up on the grill.”
Lefty and Tatts looked at each other, then at Chick, and both said, “I’m in.”
***
The best plans are simple, not like the movies with eight or ten or twelve guys, Maseratis, and enough fire power to take on Middle East terrorists. Too many moving pieces, too many potential screw-ups. Chick’s plan had three guys, two jacked Hondas, and a bag of kid’s toy guns that looked like the real thing from ten feet away. Okay, they had their rubber masks and two burner cell phones, but that’s all.
Tatts, Lefty, and Chick practiced with the Hondas. Practiced. Tatts followed behind the school bus to the dozen crosswalks and houses-in-the-middle-of-nowhere stops letting out kids. Chick and Lefty followed the Guardian armored truck holding the money.
Like Chick said, ‘bout 3 o’clock the yellow bus and gray truck faced off on an almost empty patch of M-15. Sweet. Last month’s scene repeated, except this time only the two getaway Hondas stood in the road. Red bus lights. Wait. Kids cross road. Wait.
Chick’s heart banged against his ribs. Sweat flowed from his palms making them slippery on the steering wheel. He stared at the Guardian lettering scrolled across the back door. He ached for inside, for the bags of payday Friday money. His payday money. Today woulda been perfect. No other cars on the road.
“Next week.” Lefty whispered. “We gots a plan. Stick with the plan.”
Chick’s head bobbed. Next week? Chick never liked sticking with the rules.
“Now! Go! Now!” Chick scrambled out the Honda, yelled into the cell, then ditched it on the seat as he pulled on his rubber mask. An old gangsta president, just like in the movies.
Lefty followed. Mask, plastic toy gun.
Tatts, standing in the road wearing Ronald Reagan, swung his plastic gun from bus to armored truck. Chick and Lefty, as white-haired smiling Jimmy Carter-‘cause no one’d knew that ex-pres-flanked the Guardian driver and passenger doors. They yelled but their words garbled through the rubber masks. No one, including them, understood their screeching. Their guns did the talking.
According to plan, Tatts, Lefty, and Chick waved their pretend weapons back and forth never letting the guards get a good look at the black plastic and made in China stamp on the barrel. Chick wasn’t stupid. He didn’t want to shoot anyone, just scare the crap out of the guards. The plan worked.
Both guards scampered to the back, unlocked the door, then loaded canvas bags into the Honda’s trunk. Sweet. Chick and Lefty yelled at the guards as they ran back and forth.
Tatts yelled, jumped up and down, waved his gun, twirled around in the street eyeing oncoming traffic. The middle schoolers on the bus stared at him, the bus driver stared at him, the kids walking home stared at him. A former president doing the chicken dance in the road wasn’t what anyone expected on the day before the last day of the school week. Facebook would be humming Friday.
Chick shoved the guards to the front. He climbed into the cab, grabbed the keys then threw them across the road. He did the same with the school bus. He could’ve pocketed the keys, but tossing them into the bushes felt so good. No one’ll find them. A screw-you to the system and rules.
“Car! Car Car!” Chick grabbed Tatts’ arm and jerked him to the waiting Honda. Tatts dove into the back, Chick into the passenger seat. “Go! Go! Go!”
Lefty hairpinned the Honda, spun the tires, roared down the blacktop, swerving the curves as much as a four-cylinder Civic could.
Chick pulled his rubber Nixon off and checked the rear window. “Ha! Ha! Told ya it was a great plan!”
Tatts spread-eagled his arms across the back and laughed. Sweat rolled down his cheeks and dripped from his chin onto his Leo’s Coney Island t-shirt, the diner where Lefty formerly flipped burgers.
Chick’s head swiveled front to back to front. “Slow down, Lefty.”
Lefty eased off the gas as he slid into Otisville’s downtown, a blinking light intersection with Subway, post office, Speedy Gas, Arlene’s Restaurant, and no other cars.
“We got a dozen bags of cash!” Chick thumped the dash. “Twelve bags, an’ there’s three of us, that’s…” Let me think. “Whatever. We’ll figure it out later.” Chick settled into his seat smiling bigger than a fat turkey the day after Thanksgiving. No more jackin’ Camrys at $200 a pop, no more liftin’ little old ladies’ purses from their grocery carts. Chick would get himself a Mustang, maybe move to Florida or California, get satellite TV.
Tatts’ next question dissolved Chick’s soaring fantasy. “Where we dumpin’ the masks and stuff?”
Chick smacked his forehead. Good question. A month of planning, using stolen credit cards to buy masks and toys online, but he forgot to plan where to dump the evidence after the job.
“Chick?” Lefty turned to him.
“I’m thinkin’.” Chick bit his fingernails. He waved Lefty through the green light. Otisville blurred into farm fields on both sides of two-lane M-15, with an occasional beer-wine-gas-lottery store cozied next to the gravel shoulder. Then, another brilliant idea.
Chick rolled down his window, pitched his toy gun out onto the gravel shoulder. “Woo-hoo!” He reached for Nixon.
Tatts came forward, leaning his forearms on the front seats. “You shouldn’t do that, Chick. Litterin’s bad for the environment.”
“Litterin’? I don’t care about no litterin’!” Chick released Nixon into the wind.
Lefty put in his two-cents. “Tatts is right. You’re not supposed to throw stuff out like that.”
“Ha! I don’t care!” Chick pitched Reagan and another toy gun onto the asphalt. “We got money! Keep goin’ Lefty!” Chick rode his high. They got thousands, maybe millions of bucks in the trunk waiting to be spent on booze and women and maybe a good haircut. All because of his great planning. Chick smiled.
Then he heard the whooping siren of a Blue Goose Michigan State Police patrol car. The bubble on the roof twirled red while headlights strobed yellow and white, disco signaling their Honda to pull over. Lefty obeyed.
“What we do now, Chick?” Lefty slid his arms through the wheel, putting his hands on the dash. They knew the drill. Next came the pat down, then the handcuffs.
Chick hoped for another brilliant plan to pop into his head. No go.
Sgt Riker, according to the name on his silver badge, stood next to Lefty’s door. The other one, Chick eyed in the rear view, stood at the back of the Honda, maybe running the plates. Their blue uniforms sparkled. Shiny buttons, buckles, guns. Really shiny guns.
“Boys, I’ve been watching you throw junk out of your car for a quarter mile.” Riker hooked one thumb in his duty belt. “You know there’s a fine for littering, don’t you?” Riker pointed to the square white sign not five feet from where Lefty’d pulled over: Michigan Law: No littering. $500 fine and/or one year in jail.
“Uhhhh, umm.” Lefty’s fast answer. Chick’s insides dropped into his Nike’s. He hoped for a bolt of lightning idea that would pull ‘em out of this hole, like in the movies. He got snap, crackle and pop, but it came from Riker’s radio. Chick watched the cop in the rear view back up, pull his gun, yell at them in the Honda. Riker did a repeat. Backed up, pulled his gun, yelled. “Hands where I can see them!”
A flock of blue goose red light flaring MSP Ford’s and Chevy’s flew at them from front and behind, skittering to a stop a few feet away. The whole friggin’ Genesee County detail.
Chick looked at the friggin’ square white sign again. Done in by the rules.
[Image Credit : Photo by Nick Design on Unsplash]
by 
J.T. Macek
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