Thank You Marty

Shards of glass were spread about the black linoleum floor. My manager was sweeping it up until a few officers yelled at him. I felt bad for the guy. I could easily tell he hated the job, and certainly did not sign up to get robbed. Still for some reason he always gave everything he could, even when he didn’t have to. Though admirable, I pitied such a thing, I mean - what has this place done for him?

I looked around. Desks and chairs busted, papers scattered everywhere. Mine survived the robbery, thankfully. I couldn’t say the same about Robert, a fifty-something guy whose nose had been broken by one of the perps. Not only that, but they threw his computer on the ground. Mary’s too, except she was pulled out from her desk by her hair, which apparently gave her a concussion. The West Heights Bank had its first robbery.

There were investigators everywhere I looked. They all had on similar outfits, plain two-piece suits and trench coats, holding the same little black notebooks. I overheard a few conversations, and no one seemed able to identify the robbers. All they knew was that there were eight of them, they had on black clothes with white ski masks, but that was it, other than their voices, which were barely audible - they pulled the job off without hardly saying a word. It would only be a matter of time though, I thought, until one of these cops came to question me. Then, like I summoned them myself, two detectives made their way over. They were frank.

“The others told us that you were the one to assist them in entering the vault. We need your help.”

I had to go along with it.

“Yes, that was me. From what I could tell there were eight of them. They had on these white ski masks.”

“We heard about that,” one detective looked at the other. “We were hoping you could give a little more information.”

“Like what?”

“We were told that you were recently given access to the vault.”

Wow. Someone was placing me in question already.

“Yes, I was promoted to a supervising role about three months ago. Since then, I perform the occasional transaction in the vault, but that transaction is usually a deposit.”

“That’s funny,” the other one said, “It doesn’t seem that way today.” They chuckled. I unconvincingly followed suit.

“Yeah. I never would have thought it’d happen here,” I looked around at the destruction, “or anywhere for that matter.”

“It’s normal to be in shock after a traumatic experience like this. The fact is though, that it did happen, and we need to know who did it.”

“I don’t know-”

“Don’t play that with us.”

“What?”

“You were the latest one to get access to the vault. That points only to you,” he pointed at me.

“Either way it goes, you’re leaving here in cuffs.”

“That’s for cert-”

“Woah, officers, officers,” my manager ran to my rescue, “Steven had nothing to do with this. If anything, he’s the victim.”

“We were-”

“No. You will not speak to one of my employees like that, after he had a damn gun pointed at his head,” he pointed towards the entrance “Leave him alone.”

The cops, dumbfounded, apologized and said they would follow up.

“Thanks Marty,” I said, “It’s been a long day.”

“Yes it has, kid. We’ll be out of here soon. We probably won’t open fully for a week, so get ready to work the drive-thru window.”

“Okay Marty.”

He walked away to check on the others.

We were in fact out of there soon after. The two detectives didn’t ask me anything else, thanks to Marty.

Thank you Marty.

And now that I’m home free, without a bunch of cops breathing down my neck, I’ll tell you what happened.

Yes, they robbed the place. No, I had nothing to do with the planning or action of that robbery, besides of course opening the vault, following the coercive directions of their semi-automatics. Yes, they took a LOT of money. And no. They did not take all of the money.

They did the job in under three minutes. The cops arrived in four. In that spare minute, I managed to smuggle the money into the bathroom under the guise of throwing-up. No one questioned it - we had just been robbed and everyone was still in shock. I hid the money away and got out before anyone noticed anything. I even made loud gagging sounds to sell the bit.

And from the look of things, it worked.

How I would get the money out of the bathroom trash can, but more importantly how I would even get into the bank, I did not know.

I'll give Marty a call.