"I'm gonna rob a bank." Owen had barely touched his fettuccini, preferring his fingernails instead.
Thor didn't look up from his plate of pasta primavera. A good man doesn't take his eyes off a good plate of food. Especially Bertolli's pasta primavera. He said to himself, "Almost as good as in Italy." His mouth half chewing.
Owen took his fingernail out of his mouth long enough to say again: "I'm gonna rob a bank." He never took his eyes off his finger.
Thor coughed on the last swallow of Bertolli's best plate. "What?" He grabbed the fabric napkin from his lap and wiped the corners of his mouth, giving his attention to his friend. "Come again?"
Finally taking the cannibalized fingernail out of his mouth, Owen leaned closer into the table. "I can't say it any louder, Thor. I'm serious." Nodding, he wanted to be sure of what he was saying. "I think I'm gonna rob a bank."
"Jesus Christ, Owen..." Thor signaled the closest waiter. "You're not gonna rob a fuckin' bank." He turned to the waiter as he approached. "Double scotch for my friend. Hold the ice." The waiter nodded and walked away.
"Thor, I don't need a drink-"
"Yes. You do. You're talking nonsense."
"I'm serious, man."
"Yeah, seriously fucked up."
Owen lowered his head a moment, then finally leaned back into his chair. "What the hell else am I suppose to do?" The waiter set the drink in front of him, briefly surprising him. "Thanks." As the waiter walked away, he leaned in close again, keeping his voice at a half whisper. "What the hell else am I supposed to do? I'm fucked, Thor. Fucked." Owen picked up his drink.
A good man never interrupts another man's drink--especially those that are as expensive as they are at Bertolli's. Thor allowed Owen that courtesy, waiting until the glass sat empty on the table. "First off, relax wouldja? I told you we'd figger this out."
"You relax-"
"Hey." Thor daggered his eyes right into Owen's, following them wherever they went, and Owen tried his best at first to escape the gaze. After a moment, believing Owen was ready to settle down, Thor said again: "Fuckin' relax." Owen threw up his hands in surrender, nodding submissively. "You good?" More nodding. "I said we'd figger this out, Owen, and I meant it. You shoulda-" His cell phone rang. He grabbed it off the table and looked at the caller ID. Someone he didn't want to talk to. He silenced the ringer and continued. "You shoulda listened to me in the first place when you came to me about this shit eight months ago."
"Hindsight."
"You wouldn't've needed it had you the foresight to listen to me."
"Still. Hindsight."
"Fuck your hindsight, Owen. Doesn't get you outta bankruptcy."
Slouching in his chair, Owen brought his hands up to rub his temples, the stress and alcohol shooting pains behind his eyes. "Thanks for pointing that out," he said through a grimace.
Thor knew that was a cheap shot. A good man doesn't take cheap shots at a good friend. But... "Like I said. You shoulda listened."
"Dammit!" Owen slammed his hands on the table. The clang of the silverware caught some of the other diners' attentions. Something Owen didn't quite want right now was the attention of strangers, but he didn't want to apologize for it either. He continued in a more controlled rage, ignoring the annoyed stares. "I don't need the 'I'm-right-you're-wrong' routine right now, Thor. It's not helping any. Ellie finds out about this, she'll chop my nuts off and then divorce me. She wasn't for this neither."
Thor shrugged, saying without words what he wanted to say.
Owen picked up on the gesture, too. "Yeah, yeah. I shoulda listened to her in the first place. You say that one more time I'm stabbing you in the eyes."
"You said it. I didn't say it."
"Fuck you, you meant to." Owen waited for the reply, his hands on a fork, practically daring Thor to say the words. Nothing but silence, giving Owen time to remember who he was (allegedly) talking to; to calm down. He let go of the fork and took a deep breath. "You're right. I know you're right. You know you're right. But right now, being right isn't fixing shit. Which, might I add, was why you had me come to this place to begin with. To fix things? Remember?"
Thor nodded through another mouthful of past primavera, finally swallowing the last of it. "You're right. I'm not helping."
"We can move to the next bit now?"
"Yeah, move on."
"The part where we help me?"
Dropping his fork, Thor gave his full attention back to Owen, though somewhat aggravated by his (understandable) attitude. "I said 'yes,' didn't I? Move on."
"Thank you."
And then, silence. Owen expecting Thor to come up with the golden solution; Thor expecting Owen to tell him exactly what it was he expected out of him. Back to square one, Owen needed another drink to loosen up even more. After the waiter brought it back, he slammed the double scotch down, and relaxed back in his chair, resting one arm over its back. "I'm going to rob a bank."
"Again with this?" Thor said, "Why don't you just borrow some money from me and fix it?"
This is one of the solutions that Owen was expecting out of Thor, but not one he would readily jump for. "You know how long it'd take me to pay you back?"
"We're friends," Thor said. "You think I'd have your legs broken you don't pay me back in time?"
Owen raised his eyebrows. "You heard the rumor?"
The rumor: Thor is the head of the Norwegian Mafia. It was actually more joke than rumor. It didn't help when the severed finger of a missing person was found in a plate of lutefisk at some nursing home's lutefisk feed. It further didn't help when the last time that missing person was seen was going for a ride with Thor. Last, but not least, was the fact that the company that sent the lutefisk was Thor's Norwegian Cuisine, though there was no actual connection. The full joke was: The Norwegian Mafia- giving a whole new meaning to "sleeping with the fishes." Ridiculously funny.
Oddly enough, there wasn't a great deal of... untruth to the joke. Thor knew what happened to that missing person. Whether or not he had anything to do with it, however... Well, that's something he wasn't going to confirm. Or deny. He loved letting people believe what they want. A good man always keeps a good secret. "You know why it's a rumor?"
"Yeah. 'Cause you ain't said if it's true or not."
"Just borrow the fuckin' money, wouldja?"
Owen shook his head. "Can't do it, man. Can't take the charity."
Thor pushed his unfinished plate of pasta to the center of the table. "But you think you can rob a fuckin' bank?"
"How hard can it be?"
Thor raised incredulous eyebrows. "How hard can it be?! What're you, stupid?"
Owen shrugged.
"How many successful bank robberies have you ever heard of, Owen?"
Leaning his head back, rolling his eyes up, Owen went through the "History of Bank Robberies" file in his memory. "I don't know, none?"
"None?"
"None." As if, so what?
"None," Thor chuckled and then mocked, "how hard can it be?"
Owen frowned. "Fuck you, I could do it."
Sitting back in his chair, folding his arms, Thor said, "Ok. How?"
"Well," Owen hesitated, nervously twisting his hands together, "I was hoping you would help with that. Y'know, figger out the plans and stuff. At least give me enough cash to buy a good gun."
"Help you?!" Thor ground his teeth and glared at Owen. At first, his friend's persistence was aggravating, wearing on his patience. But when he finally, actually, looked into Owen's eyes, he saw the childish desperation that was tearing Owen up. Damn his pride, all he had to do was take the damn money. Owen and his stupid fuckin' pride... Thor let out a deep sigh, the kind of sigh that only a tired man on the verge of giving up would release, deep from the lungs of an eroded patience. "Ok. I'm not gonna give you any money for any guns."
Owen slumped back in his chair.
Thor continued, "But I will help you with this bank thing."
Owen looked up, surprised. "What? You will?" He sat up straight, the way a kid does when he's told he can stay up an hour passed his bed time. "You're gonna help?"
Before Thor could reply, the waiter was at the table side. "Anything else I can get you, sir?"
Thor handed the young man his unfinished plate of pasta primavera. "Umm... Yeah, actually. That slice of lemon meringue pie still at the counter?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll take that." He turned to Owen. "You want pie?"
Owen had spaced out when the waiter arrived, dreaming up his bank heist. "Huh?"
"Pie?" Thor repeated. "They got Bavarian creme." Owen shrugged as if saying What the fuck are you talking about? Thor turned back to the waiter. "My friend will have a slice of Bavarian creme."
"Very well, sir." The waiter nodded and walked away.
"What're you asking me about pie for?" The agitation returned to Owen's voice "I wanna know what you've got."
"What I've got," said Thor, "is an urge for lemon meringue."
Owen folded his arms and slumped back in his chair, pouting.
"What I got for you," Thor continued, "is a story."
For a moment, Owen sat as stone, waiting for the punchline, but none came. "A story? You're kidding me, right?"
The waiter returned with the two desserts. Thor's eyes were only on his thick slice of lemon meringue. He quickly grabbed a fork and jammed it sideways into the slice, scooping up the first bite. "No," he said, chewing through the pie, "I'm serious. I want you to hear this story. Eat your pie."
Owen sat still.
Thor didn't notice, his focus still on his pie. "Was a bank in Minneapolis, one of the suburbs," Thor continued, digging his fork into another bite, "they said couldn't be robbed. There wasn't anything special about the bank's security really. Nothing super-high tech about it, I mean. It was just your every day average North American bank."
"So why couldn't it be robbed, then?" Owen was taking the bait.
Good. "It was in the middle of a mall."
"So?"
"You don't understand... It was in the middle of this mall. It wasn't like you could walk in a door off the street and bingo, you're in the bank. No, you had to go through this huge fuckin' mall to get to it. Then you had to walk up these stairs that led up to a kind of platform where the bank was. Already a difficult place to hold up. "If someone actually tried to hold up the bank and the alarms were tripped? The stores' security gates would shut to limit hostage possibilities and the malls doors would automatically lock. The glass on those doors was solid smashproof glass, so it took a bit of effort to get outta the mall. It didn't matter though, 'cause chances are mall security and undercovers would be on the robbers before they even got to the doors. There was no possible way to make a quick getaway from this bank once you robbed it. The best possible security for a bank was its location, and they advertised the shit out of it. Not that there was a bad string of robberies or anything, but people put their money where it's safe and practically every store in that mall deposited in that bank. It was loaded."
Owen finally started into his Bavarian creme. "And what? Did anyone ever try?"
"You're fuckin-a, they did." Thor nodded. "Three attempts within four years of each other. First attempt: two guys try to go in like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Going in with pistols, yelling 'Stick'em up! These guys even wore bandanas bandit style. They never even made it to the stairs, four security guys getting them down the minute they pulled their guns."
"They get killed?"
"No. Thirty-five years in prison, no parole."
Owen grabbed another bite of his pie. "Second attempt?"
"Bit more successful. Remember the movie Point Break?"
Owen nodded, chewing.
"Same premise. Four guys go in, 'cept dressed as Kiss. Man I would've loved to have seen this one. Gene, Paul, Peter, and Ace holding up a bank. They even had the platform boots." Thor chuckled, digging a bite out of his lemon meringue and putting it in his mouth. "Anyway," he said, swallowing the bite as quickly as he could, "they take a hint from Butch and Sundance, and they subdue the four security guards right away, but this gave the tellers time to trip the alarms. Now they're panicking. The four of 'em grab their money and break for the stairs. Paul's the last one that gets to the steps. Well, he forgets that his boots have heels, so as he backs to the stairs, one of his heels hover passed the edge of the top step. When he tries to put his weight back, over he goes. Stumbles down the steps, taking out the other three. Gene breaks a leg, Peter breaks an arm, Paul cracks his collarbone, and Ace spends the rest of his life in traction. Needless to say they didn't get away."
"Fuckin' Paul." Owen laughed. "How'd the get to the bank without attracting attention in the first place."
"Huh? Oh, Kiss was in town that night, so they just looked like fans getting money for the show." Thor bit into another bite of lemon meringue.
"Ah. Clever. Too bad they fucked up. And the third attempt?"
"Attempt number 3? Some serious motherfuckers, man. Hardcore career criminals. These guys never let the tellers near their counters. Guards all subdued. Customers lying still on the floor. More importantly, they carried some serious automatic weapons. Once they shot down one of the undercovers? No one was gonna fuck with these guys. They had their shit together, like the dudes in Heat. Excellent crowd control. They figgered that the best thing to do was to keep the alarms from bein' triggered. Keep those front doors open. So they sent three guys out with the money while one guy stayed in the bank. When they got the money in the getaway car, they called the guy on one of those Nextel two-way phones, told him to come on down. He throws a smoke grenade over the counter and dashes for the front doors. Trouble is, smoke grenades don't simply fill a room with smoke in an instant. One of the tellers makes it to his alarm button and sets it off, trapping the straggler in the mall."
"Oh shit." Owen had been holding a piece of pie up for the last few seconds, suspended between his plate and his mouth.
Thor nodded. "Yep. The guys in the car panic and take off, leaving their partner stranded. He gets shot, caught, and turns his buddies in for a shortened sentence, but never makes it out of prison. Killed for ratting out his partners."
Owen remained still. Then, as if someone had flicked an "on" switch, he dropped his fork on his plate, Bavarian creme pie still on the tines. "I see. I see what you're doin'. You think... fuck." Some of the creme had splattered off the plate and landed on his shirt. He grabbed his fabric napkin and dabbed at the spots. "You think you can scare me outta this bank thing by telling me about these failures. It's not going to work, Thor. Those guys made stupid errors. I'm sure with a little planning-"
"Ah!" Thor interrupted, holding up his finger. "I haven't finished yet. You see, that bank was successfully robbed."
Owen scowled. "You said three attempts in four years."
"I couldn't give the ending away, Owen. I want you to understand fully what you're getting into." Thor finished the last of his lemon meringue and wiped his mouth with his napkin, then placed the napkin on the empty dessert plate. "You say with a little planning, you could rob a bank, right?"
"Yeah."
Thor thought it was funny how sure Owen was of himself. "Ok. There was three guys that figured out how to rob that bank. They spent time planning this shit out. They studied how the bank operates. They got accounts there. Watched what happens over different periods of the day. Got to know the habits of the security guards. Kept an eye on some of the key employees, managers and such, and what they do outside of the bank. Last, but not least, they studied, over and over again, what went wrong on those three attempts. You know what they found out?"
Owen shook his head.
"It was suicidal to rob that bank during the day. The human factor simply made things too difficult. In order to rob that bank, you'd need to have time. Something like two and a half hours. They figgered, with just the three of them and the right timing, they could do it. Besides, trying to take that bank at night would give them a crack at the vault, which had all the money."
The waiter came by again. "Anything else for you, gentleman?"
"Nope." Thor said. "The check'll do."
"Very well." The waiter pulled the receipt from his pocket and set it in front of Thor.
Thor reached into a pocket on the inside of his sports jacked and pulled out a fifty. "We may be here a little longer, so you take that and keep it. Give us a little privacy and you'll get more when I pay the tab."
The waiter nodded, smiling. "Very well, sir." He walked off, quickly pocketing the fifty.
"Now," Thor continued, "the vault was the tricky part. You know anything about vaults?"
Owen thought about it, then shook his head.
"Well, forget that shit you see in the movies. You ain't gonna torch through the doors, there's four feet of steel reinforced concrete there. High quality concrete meant to withstand your average Joe torches. You'd have to have money to buy the kind of torch you'd need. And if you had that kind of money, you wouldn't necessarily have any need to rob a bank. And you can't simply break the combination--least not with a stethoscope like in the movies. Even if you could break the combination, the vault won't open during certain hours on account of the time lock. Which would mean, in order to get into the vault, you'd have to rob the place during business hours."
"Which they decided was a bad idea." Owen was following along well.
Good. "Right. However, they had never actually seen the vault. You could only get to it by taking a slow elevator ride forty feet down. To use that elevator, you needed an ID card, a key, and a passcode. You get all that? You still have to get through the vault's security. The vault itself is a class two vault, meaning it would take a good crook at least an hour to get into it. With the good tools, mind you. Without seeing the inside of the vault, you don't know if it's got sound sensors, where the cameras are, or when are the alarms gonna go. They did know that when the alarms went off, the elevator stopped working, leaving any potential crooks trapped. The whole thing was a fuckin' mouse trap. So the tech guy, the guy in charge of figgering out how they get into the vault, does the only thing he can do."
Owen was leaning into the table, getting as close as he could to Thor now, engrossed in the tale. "What'd he do?"
Thor waited a moment. Wanted the suspense as high as possible. Then, "He got a job."
"You serious?"
"Yep," Thor said. "Vault technician."
"At the bank?"
"No no. They get jobs all over. Hotels, Casinos, small safes—the electronic kinds rich folks use."
"Doesn't that take some kind of special training?"
"Nope." Thor shook his head, smiling. "They train you for the job. It doesn't hurt if you have a bit of computer knowledge and a good mechanical background. The job was easy for him to get. He had the knowledge and a clean criminal record. All he had to do was learn a little, and in time he'd have knowledge of every vault in the area. You know what the best part is?"
Owen shook his head. "Huh-uh."
"It's not all that uncommon for someone to accidentally reset a time lock." Thor remained silent, letting Owen absorb that tasty little tidbit. He watched as the hamster in Owen's head began spinning the wheel. "Yep. Eventually, it happened at our little mall bank, and he got the call."
"So he got access to the elevator, the vault, and the time lock in one visit?"
"Yep. And all its securities. Cameras, sound sensors, alarms, you name it. All he had to do was 'run into a small glitch' and he could set the whole thing to his benefit. Pick a time and date, copy the security codes into his laptop, and set the time lock to open that one time."
"Wait a second." Owen scratch his chin. "What about the elevator. You said he needed an ID card, a key, and a security code?"
"All of which was provided to him when he went to reset the time lock. See, there's no…risk…per se in giving a vault technician access to the vault. If the vault gets robbed, they look at the employees and vault technicians first."
"Yeah, but wouldn't his code and ID card be entered into some kind of log?"
Thor waved a hand. "That shit can be altered easy if you have the knowledge. Which the tech guy had. It was all so simple it was pretty. And he was smart about it, too. He set the time for a much later date. Three months. That way there'd be less suspicion on him when they did the job."
"Three months?" Owen grimaced. Thought about it a moment. "I can fake three months before Ellie finds out.
Persistent bastard, Owen was. Thor continued, "K. So the time comes. They get into the mall via a ceiling vent, like they do in the movies. The vent had an alarm, but our guy took care of that. They get in the elevator, open the vault, and begin collecting. No alarms. No sensors. Cameras didn't matter, they were wearing ski masks. Two and a half hours later, they were loading into the elevator and beginning the slow ride up. As they ride up, two of the guys get excited. They'd done it. High fiveing, talking about Disneyland. Dumb shit. In their excitement, they take off their masks. The tech guy, he's kneeling down, zipping up his laptop when he looks up and sees the two with their masks off. That's when it hits him."
"What?" Owen couldn't even blink now.
"Cameras in the elevator. Those two morons had just shown their faces. Fucked the whole damn thing. So he does what he's gotta do."
"No."
"Yep. Pulls his gun and shoots them." Thor stuck his finger out, miming. "Pop. Pop." Thor watched a static Owen for a bit. "This wasn't a part of his plan, Owen. Now he's gotta face the aftermath on his own. For a whole month, he stays in town, keeps all that money hidden away so he doesn't spend it right away, they'll trace serial numbers. He continues going to work, and worse yet, he's gotta face questions from the FBI. It's not just him. As I said, they'll question everyone who's had access to the vaults. He wasn't worried about that. He was more worried that someone would connect him with the two dead guys. But, he bides his time, puts on the best acting he's ever done, and does his best to keep his cool. Sure, he can't sleep, but that'll prove to be helpful in the end. After a month is up, and he's pretty much cleared, he quits his job due to the stress. Says he's gonna take a vacation. Go to Europe and relax. No one sees through it. Say he deserves the vacation. When he comes back and feels up to it, he can go back to work for them. Two days later, he's gone."
Owen remained still.
"He takes all that money—which took a little more disguising to get on the plane, mind you—he takes it all and deposits it in a Swiss bank account, knowing they don't ask questions. Spends three years living in odd places. Lucerne, Munich, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Lyons, Venice, Rome."
"Lucerne?"
"It's in Switzerland. Beautiful town."
Owen nodded.
"Three years away from home. You think Ellie would understand that?"
"If I took her along, she would."
Thor didn't think of that. But he did have one last shot. "You know how long all this planning took?"
Owen shook his head.
"A year. Thirteen months. And it still went wrong."
Owen frowned. "You said three months."
"That was how long they waited once they had access. They still had to plan it all before then… You have thirteen months, Owen?"
Leaning back in his chair, Owen lowered his head and began biting at his fingernails again. Finally, he raised his eyes to look up at his friend and said, "No."
Deep in his mind, Thor took a deep breath. "Look. Borrow the money from me. Change the place. Do that Italian restaurant thing I told you to do. I can get you the right kind of help that would put Bertolli out of business. You can pay me back on your own time." He smiled and added. "Trust me, I don't see lutefisk in your future."
Owen snorted through a chuckle, smiling and shaking his head. "Okay."
Thor held his smile. "Okay."
Standing up and putting on his jacket, Owen looked down at Thor. "There's just one thing I wanna know."
"What's that?" Thor was looking at the bill, digging in his pocket for more cash.
"How do you know what happened with all that bank stuff?"
Thor paused a moment, then looked up and smiled again at his friend. A good man always keeps a good secret…
