Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

She and Roger drive all the routes, for the hell of it, to have it down, to get out of the safe house: W Street to Arden Plaza; Arden Plaza to the switch point; switch point to the McKinley Park rendezvous; back to W Street. Yolanda’s list is all heads and subheads and sub-subheads (§VI.A.4.d., final dry run with all drivers ), multiple indents. It’s a thing of beauty, they agree. A glimpse of the inside of her head.

Tania’s not at all sure why Teko feels confident about handing a nervous man a shotgun inside a confined space. Just say she’s glad she won’t be anywhere nearby. Still, she diligently instructs Jeff in the weapon’s use, shows him how to hold it, how to swing it in an arc. She teaches him the zone system, though she knows the gun’s sawed-off barrel makes the knowledge useless. Still, maybe her expertise and confidence will rub off. The shotgun was her first firearm; she learned it by feel in the closet. This particular gun dry fires awfully easily, though. A hair trigger, she and Jeff agree.

On the way back to W Street they pull over near Southside Park, deserted at this hour, or rather two figures are on the lakeshore, practicing tai chi with complete absorption, remote beyond the physical distance. Across the street, the freeway structure and beyond that a windswept softball field. She turns to Roger.

“OK, wheelman. Fuck me, now.”

They do it in the car. Under the trees in the park. Roger is reluctant to fuck in the house ever since awakening one night in the living room to find Teko sitting in the sagging chair opposite him and Tania, holding a submachine gun in his hands, a sign of a growing craziness he could feel but couldn’t put a name to.

One afternoon Jeff lets the muzzle cross her as he moves with the weapon. She is about to tell him, again, “Be muzzle aware,” when she hears the click. For a moment they freeze.

“Sorry,” he says, finally.

“Keep the safety on,” she advises him.

“In the bank?” he asks.

“Especially there,” she says.

Three minutes in and out. That’s all.

AFEW CARS HAVE already parked at Arden Plaza. Susan watches the Chevy turn into the lot, bouncing on its ruined shocks. Some depositors stand waiting outside Guild Savings, their hands buried in their pockets against the early-morning chill. Inside, a man in a suit bows deeply, unlocking the front door. His necktie slips out of his jacket and swings free for a moment as he works the key in the lock at the base of the door. Standing upright, he carefully straightens the tie and places it back where it belongs before opening up, waving the customers in, holding the door as they pass.

Susan has the Bee open before her, and she pretends to read it while spreading grape jelly on a buttered English. 9:01: The Chevy pulls away from the front of the bank. She smiles up at the waitress and accepts more coffee. 9:07: She hears distant sirens. 9:09: A sheriff’s cruiser enters the lot. Uniformed deputies leap from the car, leaving the doors open, and run into the bank, guns drawn. She turns over the check and puts a couple of dollars on the table, then ambles over to join the gathering of curious shoppers and store clerks assembled outside the bank. A deputy stands blocking the door, telling everyone that the bank is closed. He still holds his.38 in his hand. Susan can hear another siren’s faraway howling.

Beside the pond in McKinley Park, Tania and Yolanda sit on a bench, sharing a cigarette and watching the approach of the switch car, a green and white Plymouth. Tania holds a Styrofoam cup of tea that she sips through a small hole she’s torn in the plastic lid. The car pulls to the curb, and Jeff and Teko get out. Roger, waving, attempts to catch her eye from behind the wheel. She lifts a single finger — not now. Actually, she feels like ignoring him. In fact, she feels a mild distaste for all three of them: for their fear, excitement, and affected bravado. She can tell immediately that everything went smoothly inside the bank, that the entire incident will assume an epic contour as it is told and retold and retold still again. As Jeff and Teko begin to relate their adventure, she cuts them off sharply. Yolanda allows herself a slight smile. Chastened, the men get back into the Plymouth and continue on their way, leaving behind a hemp bag containing the weapons and disguises and a green duffel holding the money for Tania and Yolanda to carry to the bus stop. Yolanda hugs the duffel tight as they ride back to W Street with kids playing hooky and two Mexican cleaning ladies carrying their supplies in a stained plastic caddy.

GUNMEN ROB NORTH SACTO BANK

(February 25) Two men robbed the Guild Savings branch on Arden Way shortly after the bank opened on Tuesday morning. The men entered the branch, located at the Arden Plaza Shopping Center, and immediately announced the robbery, displaying guns and ordering customers and staff to the floor. One suspect acted as a lookout while the other forced a teller to fill a bag with cash and money orders. Both suspects then fled through the bank’s rear exit with an undisclosed amount. No one was injured. The suspects are described as Caucasian males in their mid-20s. At the time of the robbery both were wearing long raincoats and hats, and one covered his face with a scarf or bandanna. Eyewitnesses told sheriff’s deputies that the suspects were dropped at the bank in an older blue sedan.

This particular bakery yields an oven-fresh $3,729. They sit in a circle while Yolanda removes a small blue duffel bag from the larger green one that camouflages it and then counts up the cash, separating the folding money into neat piles of twenties, tens, fives, and ones, a skill derived from many games of Monopoly on the screened-in porch back in Clarendon Hills. Yolanda always liked to be the banker, an irony that does not occur to her now.

“ PAKES,” SAYS ONE OF the technicians. He is looking at the wrought-iron lettering, spelling out PAIX, affixed to the balcony handrail. He lights a cigarette and leans against the car. “That who owns this dump?”

“No, it’s some fireman in New York. Lafferty.” An FBI supervisor from Scranton, Silliman, is outside talking to the technician because neither of them has much to do. The technician is up from Philly to look for trace evidence, but the place is turning out to be clean. Shoe prints? No. Tire impressions? Not even theirs. No semen, saliva, sweat, vomit, or blood in drops, pools, spatters, splashes, or stains. No slugs or shells. Plenty of hair and fibers. Some of the hairs appear to be synthetic, but there’s nothing in particular that looks foreign to the scene. Fragments of broken glass here and there, chips of paint. This and that. They bag the stuff and tag it. Each day for a frigid week they’ve returned to the farm.

“You talk to him?”

“We talked to him. He rented it out to Guy Mock all right. Summer thing. He said Mock claimed to be an author who needed a nice quiet place to work.”

“Ain’t that pretty.”

“He sure got it. Christ, go nuts out here.” Viewed from the house, the pines stand plain and lonely atop the bare gray hills. Silliman slaps his gloved hands together and rubs them briskly. The air feels cold enough to slice the skin.

They’ve talked to everybody. Storekeepers, neighbors, mail carriers, the propane delivery man. Silliman’s certain that they have the right place. Everyone who’s gotten a look at it remembers Guy Mock’s face, everyone speaks of a nondescript couple, a pretty Oriental girl. Or gook, depending on who you talk to. Silliman has an inkling of who this person might be.

“How’s the garbage?”

“They burned it in a pit back of the house. The usual cans and bottles and bones. They’re trying to lift prints from them.”