Mo, being the only one of the four with real stick-up
experience, was responsible for planning the way it would go
down.
"Will you look at this guy?" Ed Lampier said, pouring a
couple fingers of Old Grandad in his Dr. Pepper. "Mr.
Preparation."
"How bout give me a taste of that, huh?" Teddy said.
"That-a-boy."
The gang was sitting around the rickety kitchen table in
Ed's mobile home a few miles outside Spring Valley while Mo
handed out charts and schedules and stuff that he'd printed up at
Kinkos.
"Multi-color, too," Teddy said. "I like that. See, Bug,
he got the layout of the bank on green. Map
of the getaway route on red. This here schedule on white. Yow!"
"Okay," Mo said. "Let's go over the basic stuff here.
Teddy, you did most of the scouting, why don't you go over the
town, what we got to know about that."
Teddy nodded. "First, the cops. There's three cops on
duty here during the day -- the chief, plus two officers. They
only got one car for the two officers, though, and most times
they're riding around together. They're your typical small town
cops. Losers, you know? I wasn't able to pick up any particular
pattern in terms of the routes they drove. I get the feeling the
dude that drives don't got a plan. He just lets it ride.
"There's also the sheriff's department, got jurisdiction
outside the city limits. If we get in a pursuit situation, they
come for backup. Now most of them is over on the other side of
the county where the county seat is at. But if our luck ran
wrong, there might be a couple of deputies within four, five
miles of town.
"The main street of town, that's US 146, comes up from
Columbia, eventually hits Charleston. Fifty-five zone till you
hit town, then it drops to thirty-five couple minutes after you
hit the city limits" He tapped the map with his finger. "Out
here by this little cafe, Ronnie's.
"So the important thing, what we got to do is get the cops
out of town. All of them. Including this here fucking chief of police. You want to know a
fascinating fact? The guy's a smoke."
Ed Lampier said, "The chief of police? He's a nigger?
How'd that happen?"
"Afffummive acknon," Bug said.
"Affirmative action?" Ed said. "Not in million, dude."
"I guess he's one of these retired big city cops."
"You didn't find out?" Ed said.
"What's it matter?"
Ed shrugged.
"Anyway, that's where the first part of our plan comes in.
See if you look at the map of town, there's this little thingy
that sticks out of the city limits, way out into county property.
See it? What it is, few years back they built this big richy-
rich type development out there, golf
course, so on, stretched the city limits like five miles outside
town. So what we got to do is create a diversion, get all the
Buford town cops out there.
"How you gonna do that?"
"Can't tell the ham from the spam without a program," Mo
said, holding up a white sheet of paper.
"See there," Teddy said. "8:40 a.m. That's where we
create the diversion."
"Where," Ed said. "It don't say diversion nowhere."
"Right there." Mo tapped the paper with his finger.
"Oh," Ed said. "Fire-bomb house. I thought that
was something different."
"Nah, man. That's the diversion," Teddy said. "They got
this here model home, it's empty all the time. What we do is we
fill it with about ten gallons of gas, light the sumbitch on
fire. Then we call the cops, tell them there's a terrible fire,
casualties, possibly somebody holding a hostage, whatever. If
that don't get the cops out there, ain't nothing going to."
"Dad houn lig fud," Bug said.
"It will be fun, dude," Ed said. "I always liked setting
fires, too."
"Now in terms of roads..." Teddy said. He paused. "Hey.
You listening, Bug?"
"Des."
"What we got is a nice straight shot out of town on 146.
You turn left down Polecat Creek Road, then you hang a right by
this gray barn. If for some reason you can't do it that way, I
got two alternate routes marked."
Mo jumped in: "I want you to drive all three of them
routes today, Bug. Several times. I want you to know every
fucking piece of gravel. Cause if we don't get to the split up
site, we're all going back to the penitentiary, wrassling around
with this three-strikes-your-out bidness."
Bug nodded. "Choo, mang."
"Me and Mo gonna take care of getting the two cars at the
split-up site. You and Ed gonna take the Chevy, me and Mo gonna
take the Ford. Both of them just stolen yesterday. We'll make
sure they got fresh plates tomorrow morning."
"Alright," Mo said, "Now we get to the good part. You
want to refer to the green sheets, okay?"
"Organization man," Ed said. "Mister
Organization." Mo was not sure if Ed was fucking with him or if
he was impressed. It was hard to tell with a guy like that.
"Bank layout's pretty simple. One
door in front, one in back. Back door's locked, of course.
Counter runs along the back wall, facing the front door. Got the
vault in the back left corner, three offices and a bathroom
running along the back wall behind the counter.
"Okay, Bug, we'll drive up at five minutes past nine.
Park in the lot right here where you can see the front door.
Plenty of time for us to get here after firebombing that house.
That'll give the bank people time to let in anybody that might be
standing around waiting for the bank to open. Once the coast is
clear, we go in, we hang this closed sign up over the door so
nobody can peep in. Bug, you'll remain in the vehicle, which is
gonna be a van. Ed, you'll have the shotgun. You run across the
room, jump over the counter, make sure nobody's hanging around
back in the offices where they can be setting off silent alarms.
"We'll all start screaming, the usual stuff, put the fear
of God in them, get them down on the floor. Then we wait."
Ed Lampier's eyes narrowed. "Say what?"
"We wait. We could clean out the registers, that'd get us
maybe eight, ten grand. But what we need is the whole dose,
everything they got in the safe. But the safe is most likely is
on a time lock, see. They keep about an hour worth of cash in
the tills, and the safe opens every half hour."
"You know this for a fact?" Ed said.
"Nope. Standard practice, though," Mo said.
"How you know this?"
Teddy jumped in. "From my cell-mate at
that Federal camp in Alabama that I was telling you about.
He used to work in a bank. Then he robbed them for almost
eighteen months before he got caught. I mean this guy knew his
shit cold."
"So how come he was in jail?"
Teddy gave him a defensive look. "Bad luck, that's all.
A little bad luck."
"Anyway," Mo said. "Point is, we're gonna have to contend
with a time lock most likely. Naturally we'll shove a gun in the
manager's face, all that shit, tell him to open it up. The
money's insured, right? So if he can open it, he will. If he
does, we clean it out and we book.
"Now we'll all be dressed in uniforms, carrying duffle
bags that say National Security Systems on them. We fill
the bags with the bills. At that point in time Ed and me will
holster our pistols and exit the building. We'll all be wearing
visible holsters for our pistols, like we're totally on the up
and up. All carrying the same gun, a Glock with the pre-'94
clips. Most likely if we had to wait there's gonna be people
standing around. We'll tell them there's a security system
malfunction which we're clearing up momentarily, be another
fifteen minutes or so, be patient folks, big smiles, maybe stand
around jawing for thirty seconds. No appearance of hurry, right?
"Then Teddy will exit the bank and at that point we walk
in a nice brisk fashion back to the van. At which time we get
the fuck out of there."
"Brisk," Ed said. "I like that." Again, Mo couldn't tell
if Ed was fucking with him or not."
"Let me tell you something about stick-ups," Mo said.
"The key aspect here is you got to control the situation from
jump street. If you blow the first ten seconds, you're dead."
Teddy said, "That part's falling on you, Ed. Soon as you
get through that door, you motherfucking sprint over that
counter. And at that point in time, nobody moves."
"As long as nobody moves, no silent alarms go off."
"Second point, we do not -- I repeat -- we do not
get the money from the cash drawers. They got them things
rigged: you got to go through a certain procedure or the silent
alarm goes off. Addition to which, they always got dye packs in
there. There's gonna be a hundred grand plus in the vault. We
can afford to leave ten grand on the table."
"Ten grand? You gonna leave ten grand spending money
lying on the table."
"Damn straight," Mo said. "That ten grand won't spend so
good from Leavenworth."
He looked around the table. Everybody clear what they got
to do?"
Nods all around.
"Okay," Teddy said. "We're gonna go out to the shed now,
walk through this, just like we on the SWAT team."
Mo held up the different colored xeroxes, waved them
around. "I want everybody to memorize this shit, detail for
detail. Memorize it cold. Then burn the papers."
"Can I eat mine?" Ed Lampier said, licking his lips like
he was saying something sly as hell.
Mo said, "I don't give a shit, as long as it's not sitting
in the fucking car when some cop pulls you over for speeding the
day after we pull this job. We got to act like professionals
here."
"Bond," Ed Lampier said, trying out a terrible English
accent. "James Bond."
