Authors: Andrew Vachss
“But it’s
not like real prison,” I said. “So how come the people in those
towns, why don’t they just get in their cars and drive someplace else to
shop?”
“Things were different back then,” Tim said.
“Back when they had those company towns, if you lived there, you probably
didn’t have a car. Besides, you didn’t have any cash money. They
just paid you in scrip.”
“What’s scrip?”
“Like a piece of paper that you could use for money. But it was only
good in the stores the company owned.”
“Isn’t that
crooked?” I asked him.
“Our granny thought it was,”
Tim said. “She was the one who told me and Virgil about company
towns.”
“Because she lived in one?”
“Sure did. She and my granddad, a long time ago. She was a real old
lady when she told us about it.”
“Your granddad was a
miner?”
“Not for long, he wasn’t,” Virgil
said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He went into
business for himself,” Tim said. He was smiling, like he does when
he’s happy.
“What business?”
“Same one
we’re in, Eddie,” he said.
“What happened to
him?”
“The law got him,” Virgil said.
“He went to prison?”
“Never once,” Tim
said. “My granddad got shot down by the law. They came to take him, and
he wouldn’t go.”
T
im said the bank would be swole up
with money by noon every Thursday. That’s because Thursday was payday at
the mill, and everyone came to the bank to cash their check. The armored car
made the delivery early in the morning. The first shift at the mill ended at
three, so we had what Tim called a window—we had to get in and out while
it was still open.
“I’ve been looking at that little
bank for over a year now,” he told me and Virgil. “There’s
only one guard, and he’s about a hundred years old. Spends all his time
jawing with the customers, like it was a general store, or something.
There’s only one camera, and we can take that out with spray paint. I
guess there’s silent alarms and stuff, but all we need is about five
minutes in there, then Eddie gets us all gone.”
Tim leaned way
back in his chair, puffing on his cigarette like it was a big cigar.
“Boys,” he said, “that little bank, it’s like a
cherry on top of a chocolate cupcake. All we got to do is pluck it
off.”
I
never found out what happened inside that little bank,
not until the trial.
It was just after two in the afternoon when we
pulled up. Tim said that’s the time it was always slow in the bank,
specially on Thursdays.
Virgil had a double-barreled sawed-off. Those
are good for scaring people, Tim said. Much better than a pistol. Virgil
carried the shotgun under his coat, against his chest, held there by a loop of
rawhide around his neck. Tim had a pair of pistols, like he always used to
carry.
“Five minutes, Eddie,” Tim said to me. Then him and
Virgil went into the bank.
The clock on the dashboard was one of those
digital ones. It said 2:09.
The clock said 2:12 when I heard the crack
of a pistol. Then the boom of Virgil’s shotgun.
People started
screaming.
I started the engine and backed the car up to the front door
of the bank.
There was more gunfire. Then it got real quiet.
I
got out and opened both back doors. I jumped back in the driver’s seat
and watched the mirror to see when Tim and Virgil came out.
I heard the
sirens, off in the distance.
I put the getaway car in gear, holding it
in place with the brake.
The dashboard clock said 2:17 when the first
trooper’s car roared up. There was another right behind it. And then a
whole bunch more.
The cops piled out. They hid behind their cars,
aiming their guns at the door of the bank. One of them had a loudspeaker in his
hand. He yelled at me to get out of the car and get on the ground.
I
waited for Tim and Virgil.
Then the cops started shooting.
I
woke up in the hospital. There were tubes running out of me. I don’t know
how much longer it was before I could feel the shackles around my
ankles.
The cops came. And men in suits. They asked me a lot of
questions. I was so dizzy that it was easy not to answer them.
T
he
nurse had red fingernails. She was kind of chunky, but she looked pretty in her
white uniform.
“Did you really rob that bank?” she asked
me, real soft, when nobody was around.
“Huh?” I said.
She got a nasty look on her face. Then she picked up a big needle and gave
me a shot.
O
ne day, a lawyer came. An old guy, with
a lot of heavy black hair he combed straight back. “Can you tell me what
happened?” he asked me.
“Huh?” I said.
T
hey tried us all together. All of us that was left. The lawyer showed
me the papers that said they were charging Tim and me, for two counts of
capital murder and four pages of other stuff. They didn’t charge Virgil,
because Virgil was dead.
“That second count is felony
murder,” the lawyer said to me. “If a person dies during the
commission of a felony, everybody involved in the crime can be held
responsible.”
“I don’t understand,” I told him.
It was the truth.
“The prosecution’s theory is that, after
the robbers had lined everyone up, one of them went into the cages. It was then
that the assistant manager pulled a gun. He shot the one with the shotgun. The
other robber then shot him, killing him instantly.
“The robber
with the shotgun fired a blast, but it didn’t hit anyone. Apparently, he
was mortally wounded, and the other one wouldn’t leave him. They were
brothers, maybe that explains it.”
I didn’t say
anything.
“The reason you’re charged with the homicides is
that you were part of the robbery attempt. The wheelman, obviously. It’s
not clear to me why you didn’t take off before the police
arrived.…”
He let his words trail off, the way people do
when they want you to finish what they’re saying. But I
didn’t.
I
was still bandaged up by the time we started the
trial, but they kept me ankle-cuffed anyway. Tim had a bunch of chains around
his waist.
All the time they were putting on one witness after
another, Tim never looked at me. Not once.
His lawyer never asked one
single question. But when they started to bring me into it, my lawyer got up,
like he had business to take care of.
“Officer,” he asked
the cop on the stand, “how many shots would you estimate were fired at
the car in which my client was sitting?”
“I couldn’t
say. If he’d gotten out of the car when we—”
“More than five shots, officer?”
“I think
so.”
“More than ten?”
“I don’t
know.”
“Well, officer, isn’t it a fact that every
single shot fired by the State Police has to be logged in and accounted for?
Every single bullet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can
you tell us where we would find out that information, please? Where is it all
collected?”
“That would be with the shooting team,”
the cop said. He was watching my lawyer like a bird on the ground watches a
cat.
“That team reviews all police shootings, to determine if
they were justified, is that correct?” my lawyer asked him.
“Yes, sir. And this one was perfectly—”
“I’m sure,” my lawyer said. “Now if I were to tell
you that the report of the shooting team was that seven different officers
fired a total of thirty-one rounds at the car in which my client was sitting,
would that surprise you?”
“No.”
“Thank
you. Now, after my client was wounded and taken into custody, you examined the
interior of the car, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“How many guns did you find in the car, officer?”
“There were no weapons in the car.”
“By
‘weapons,’ do you mean firearms, officer? Or are you referring to
weapons of any kind, such as a knife or a club?”
“Weapons
of any kind.”
“I see. And did you search the trunk of the
car as well?”
“Yes.”
“With the same
result?”
“No weapons were found in the trunk of the
vehicle,” the cop said. His jaw was clenched so tight you could see a
knot in his cheek.
“Were any weapons found on the person of the
defendant?” my lawyer asked him.
“On … ?”
“On
my
client, officer. The young man sitting right over
there, at the counsel table. You see him, the one with all the
bandages?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t
see my client? Or, no, you didn’t find any weapons on my client after you
shot him?”
“Your
honor
!” the DA said.
The judge stared hard at my lawyer, but anyone could see he didn’t
scare him any.
There was a lot of stuff like that, but I didn’t
see what the point of it was. I saw a couple of people on the jury looking at
me, but I couldn’t tell what they were thinking.
W
hen they
called Tim’s name, it was like a shock wave hit the place. I guess nobody
expected him to get on the witness stand and talk for himself. I know my lawyer
told me he wouldn’t let
me
do it.
But Tim
didn’t act like himself up there. Tim was a man with a lot of charm.
That’s what Merleen, Tim’s girl, told me once. I wasn’t sure
exactly what it meant, although I knew it was true.
On the stand that
day, you would never know Tim had any charm at all. It was like he was sneering
at everyone. Like they were all nothing but bugs.
He said him and
Virgil were professional robbers. They’d robbed dozens of places and
nobody ever got hurt. “And if that punk manager hadn’t tried to be
a hero, nobody would have gotten hurt this time, either,” Tim said.
“The little asskisser was trying to show what a good boy he was, save the
boss’s money. He shot my brother in the back, like the weasel coward he
was. I wish I could kill him again.”
A woman started crying, real
loud. I guessed maybe she was the wife of the man Tim had shot. The judge had
to bang his hammer hard a few times to get people to quiet down.
Tim
told them that, after Virgil got shot, he wasn’t able to move, and Tim
couldn’t carry him and keep his gun on everyone at the same time, so he
just dug in and waited for the cops, so they could get Virgil an
ambulance.
“My brother was still alive when they took him out of
there,” Tim said. “I figure the cops took their time getting him to
the hospital.”
His lawyer tried to clean that one up.
“You’re not saying the police are responsible for your
co-defendant’s death?” he said.
“Between them and
that little weasel in the bank, they got it done,” Tim said.
“Look at his eyes!” someone whispered behind me.
“He’s a psycho.”
The judge slammed his hammer again,
until people stopped making noise.
Tim and his lawyer were staring at
each other like a pair of pit bulls on the scratch line. Finally, the lawyer
shrugged his shoulders, like there was nothing he could do about things. He
stepped back, away from Tim, and said, “You know a man was arrested
outside the bank, don’t you?”
“You mean Eddie?”
Tim answered him. “Yeah, I knew that.”
“Was he your
accomplice?”
“Accomplice?
Eddie?
Be serious.
Virgil and I always do things the same way. We plan out a job, then we find
some dummy to drive us. They usually never know what’s going on, unless
someone starts chasing us.
“Eddie, he’s not real swift in
the head. All we told him was, if he’d drive us to the bank, wait for us,
and then drive us back home, we’d pay him a couple hundred bucks. Hell,
we didn’t even tell him the car was stolen.”
“He went
too far with that one,” my lawyer whispered. “Now he’s opened
the door.”
W
hen it was the DA’s turn at Tim, he
practically jumped out of his chair.
“Are you claiming your
acts were justified?” he yelled.
“Which acts?” Tim
said, grinning at him.
“Murder!”
Tim lifted his
shackled wrists so he could point his finger at the DA. “That
wasn’t murder,” he said. “That was justice.”
Tim’s voice was like stone. “That coward killed my brother, and I
killed him.”
The DA stuck his chest out, talking real loud.
“If you and your brother hadn’t robbed that bank, this never would
have—”
“Me and Virgil robbed
plenty
of
places,” Tim cut him off. “And all that time, we never shot nobody.
Never beat anyone up. Never raped any of the women. If that punk had just kept
his hand in his pocket, he’d still be alive. And me and Virgil would be
down on the beach in Biloxi, spending that bank’s money.”
“You and Virgil and your co-defendant, you mean?”
“What co-defendant? You mean Eddie?”
“That’s right. Your poor, innocent friend Eddie. You testified
earlier that he didn’t even know the car he was found in had been stolen,
is that correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Would it surprise you to know that your friend Eddie has been to
jail for stealing cars?” the DA said. He stepped off a little, like he
had just landed a good one.
“Hell, no,” Tim laughed at him.
“Eddie’s a natural-born sucker. Fifty to one, somebody else stole
those cars, and left Eddie to take the weight.
“That boy’s
not all there in his head. He couldn’t plan to take a shower. Look at
what he did, for Christ’s sake. We tell him to wait for us, and so he
just sits there. And when the cops start blasting, he
still
sits
there, like a lump of clay.”
I could feel people looking at me. I
didn’t want to look at them, and I didn’t want to look down, like I
was afraid. For the first time, I looked at Tim.
“Eddie’s
not like other guys,” he told the jury. “He’s a retard.
Slow.” Tim’s eyes were like chips of blue ice.