Bank Robbers Read online

  At first he’d tried; to appease her he bought the pawnshop. It wasn’t so unusual, a bank robber owning a business. One of his partners, Paul Fischbein, had taken his cut from their heists and bought himself a liquor store in Queens and retired wealthy with a whole chain of them. And now the pawnshop gave Arthur a life of ease.

  But he knew the first day he walked into that windowless office in the back of the place that in a couple of months he’d get edgy and start looking around for another job to pull.

  And that was exactly what happened.

  A fortune-teller once told him that there was some activity that he had always done, and which he’d always do because it was a part of his soul.

  So that seemed to cinch it. The monkey on his back was robbery.

  * * *

  HER SHOES and bag would be fine with the dress, she wasn’t going to sink any more money into this. It was getting late, and she had to go see Teresa on her way up to the Bronx. She was going to wear the dress out of the store.

  That made her stomach burn.

  Yesterday it had excited her, getting a new outfit. Today she hated it. She paid the money and left the store, pausing in front of the door. She looked up and down the street, and breathed a sigh of relief that the fat man was nowhere to be seen.

  She looked at her watch. Well, she might as well get this visit with Teresa over with, she thought. She turned and headed for the subway.

  It made her angry, being followed by that creep.

  * * *

  ARTHUR made sure five or six minutes went by before he made his escape from the furniture store. He hopped up Sixth Avenue and looked at Dottie crossing the next street. He slowly, doing his hobbled walk, made it to the middle of the street. He watched her walk down into the subway. He turned and walked back to Third Street, crossed over to the downtown side of the street, and made his way toward Sullivan Street.

  Arthur opened Dottie’s door as if he lived there. He walked into the small railroad apartment. He hadn’t been in one of these for many years. He remembered how little space there was compared to his house in Rye. He walked into the kitchen, the first room in the apartment.

  It was small but neat. Dottie’s coffee cup was still sitting on the old white porcelain kitchen table. He ran his hand across it.

  His mother had had the same table. She had died young, giving birth to a stillborn sister. He had a memory of a warm smiling face, of her warm arms picking him up out of the kitchen sink and toweling him off on the drainboard. And humming. Low humming. And the smell of clothes and skin washed in Fels-Naptha, and the smell of her sweat, which was not unpleasant to him.

  He must have been no more than three, in that memory. And four years later, after she was gone, that was when his father started drinking.

  The first beating had occurred not long after the wake.

  His father had sat at the kitchen table drinking vodka from a juice glass and Arthur, who hadn’t had a meal in a day, was sitting on the couch drawing a picture, trying to not look at him. And when at last he did look up he was startled to see the look on his father’s face. There was such hatred in his eyes.

  As if he were somehow responsible for his mother’s death.

  He hated his old man for that.

  And his father poured himself some more of the vodka and a look of disgust came across his face.

  “Whadda you looking at?”

  Arthur had looked back down at his drawing.

  “I said, whadda you looking at?”

  Arthur cringed and stared hard at the paper.

  “You look just like your mother.” He glowered.

  And Arthur remembered the sound of smashing glass above him on the wall and vodka raining on him from where the bottle had hit the wall and then suddenly being lifted off the couch, and just punched and punched.

  So he made himself scarce, living mostly on the streets, stealing what he could to get by.

  Once in a while he’d be sent to live in Brooklyn, out near Coney Island, with his mother’s mother. That was a treat, usually brought on by the DTs, or a jail term for brawling. So he looked forward to his father being in trouble.

  His grandmother was a wonderful woman, too ill to take on the responsibility of a boy full-time, but willing in emergencies. Then, for a few cherished weeks or months, Arthur’d be treated to sunny afternoons at the beach, a quiet, spotless apartment, clean clothes, and wonderful hot food; kreplach and kugels and apple strudel, roasted chicken and golden, crispy caramelized potatoes she called tsimmes or something like that …

  And then his father would show up again and he’d be dragged back to Rivington Street, to the noise and the filth and days of no food, and living on the streets and stealing to get by.

  Those were the hardest times, the first weeks back. He’d get himself to school in the mornings, and there, at least until three o’clock, he’d be preoccupied. Even after school, when the weather was warm, he’d play on the streets and just be a kid—until sunset. Then, longingly, he’d watch his playmates one by one run to their homes for their baths and dinners. Miserably he’d climb up the stairs of his own building, sometimes pausing in front of the Spinozas’ door. Silently he’d listen to the sounds of the family and smell the hot food, knowing that he’d go upstairs to his own apartment, and he’d be grateful beyond measure if his old man wasn’t there.

  For dinner he’d eat a candy bar or a scooter pie he’d pinched from Nicholson’s store, and then he’d lie alone in bed, staring out the window into the warm light of other windows across the street and he’d ache to be back with his grandmother …

  The fact he actually continued to show up at school until the ninth grade was a tribute to his mother. But nine grades was all he could take of living with his old man, and he managed to see him only rarely the last couple of years he lived on Rivington. His father was so far gone at that point, he probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

  Someone told him once that his father, who had immigrated from Scotland several years before Arthur’s birth, had killed a man there. Arthur’d always believed that. He’d heard his father died ten years after Arthur’d left Rivington Street, but he was far away at that point and couldn’t have cared less in any event.

  All these thoughts from a kitchen table, he thought, and continued his snooping.

  The cupboards were poorly stocked.

  The contents of the refrigerator nearly broke his heart.

  She had so little.

  He wondered how much of a dent in her money the gun had made.

  He opened the kitchen drawers, half hoping to find some sort of bankbook with a nice fat balance. He knew that would make her crazy, but it would lighten his conscience about selling her the gun.

  All he found was silverware and expired coupons, cut carefully out of the paper.

  And the gun. She’d chosen the metal-utensil drawer for it, he noted with a certain amount of amusement.

  The orderliness of women.

  He walked out of the kitchen and into the connecting room.

  She was sleeping on the couch.

  With the television on, he knew it in his heart.

  He knew the loneliness that makes you run the television day and night, so it gives the illusion you are not alone.

  He knew that trick.

  He walked into her bedroom. The king-sized bed, squeezed into the little room so there was barely any floor space left, annoyed him badly.

  He turned to the dresser. A snapshot of a skinny, droopy-nosed Nathan smiled back at him. It was in a five-and-dime frame.

  You self-centered bastard, Arthur thought. Anytime you were ahead of the game you probably took it all to the track and blew it.

  The next photo stopped him.

  It was the son in uniform, barely more than a child in the photo. And it was eerie, there was no trace of Dottie in him. He looked around the bedroom and realized that there was no trace of a son, period. So, Arthur concluded, either the kid was dead or he’d turned ou
t to be just like the father. He stared at the boy’s face and somehow knew he was dead, and probably had been for a while.

  He walked over to the closet, opened it and stared at the ragged old dresses, neatly cleaned and pressed and hung on hangers, and sizes too big.

  He closed the door. He’d seen more than enough to give him a clear picture of what had happened to Dottie.

  He walked back into the living room and stood for a long time trying to decide if he should just take the gun with him.

  If he did, he was afraid she’d be out there again, finding someone else to buy from.

  She wouldn’t chance buying another gun from him; she was too proud and stubborn for that.

  Witness the trouble she must have gone to to get all dolled up to come and see him, to pretend she was fine and everything was all right.

  Because it seemed clear to Arthur what was going on now.

  Dottie O’Malley was planning to kill herself.

  And she was going to do it with the gun he’d sold her.

  No, no, no. He needed a plan about the bullets.

  He’d hated her for so many years, and deep down he’d always imagined how good he would feel if she came to some miserable end.

  And now it didn’t give him any comfort.

  It made him queasy.

  Especially since he seemed to be playing such an unwitting role in her self-destruction.

  He needed a plan. He needed her to confess to him what she was up to. Because if she would tell him, then he could jump in and stop her and she’d listen to him, because that would mean she’d been willing to have him save her.

  Probably that was the goal of the nice clothes and the hair and the prideful and scared way she’d appeared at his darkened shop door the night before. And he’d just hurt her.

  He would go back up to the shop and wait for her again tonight.

  He walked to the door, gave one last look at the apartment, and stepped into the hallway.

  As he closed Dottie’s front door, the sound of people walking up the stairs made his ears itch.

  “Molly! Don’t run ahead, wait for us.”

  They were on the landing below.

  He turned and walked up the next flight of stairs.

  Arthur pressed himself against the opposite wall as he caught sight of a small girl walking up the stairs toward him. The child was walking one riser at a time, and was nearing the top of the stairs.

  Come on, come on, he thought silently to himself, realizing there were no more landings in the building for him to escape to.

  And that would be a kick in the head. Being caught by a toddler.

  “Molly! Come back here this instant. Do not make me come and get you!” The mother’s voice sounded annoyed.

  His heart fell. That was practically a challenge to a child of her age.

  “But I gotta!”

  Arthur braced himself for discovery. He saw a tiny arm on the railing, and a face behind it, and he put on as menacing a smile as he could and leaned right into the child’s face.

  “Get out of here, kid, you bother me,” he said gruesomely, and watched the child’s face grow pale and startled.

  “Ma-a-a-a!” she yelled as she bounced down the steps.

  “When I tell you to do something, you damn well do it!”

  “But I was going—”

  “No!”

  A door was opened, and he heard them walk into the apartment.

  In a second, he was hopping down the white stone steps, taking them two at a time, down past the landing and down to the first floor.

  He startled a small woman, who was holding an infant, and who had turned in time to see him jump down the last two steps and land on the first floor.

  He looked at her, and pasted an odd smile on his face.

  “Ah, Nautilus machines, it’s a miracle! Afternoon,” He said, tipping his hat to her. Arthur walked out onto the street, leaving her there in puzzled silence.

  * * *

  “SO LET ME get this straight,” Teresa began. Dottie finished the glass of water and handed it to Teresa. “You went to buy the gun and it turns out it’s from a guy you dumped thirty years ago.”

  Dottie closed her eyes and blew out a breath. “I didn’t dump him—”

  “You promised to wait till he got out of jail. And instead you got married and had a kid. That’s dumping.”

  “No, you’re mixing it all up. He came back after I was married—”

  “So you dumped him twice?”

  “I didn’t dump him once! He lied to me about where he was getting the money.” Dottie’s voice rose, exasperated.

  “Yeah, but he was getting the money.”

  “So?” Dottie’s voice was hostile.

  “So, it ain’t none of your business where he was getting the money.”

  “Of course it was. I said—”

  “You said,” Teresa interrupted, “that you were in his room and you were crying about how you were going to burn in hell because you were sleeping with him and had no wedding ring on your finger, and that he had to get the money to get married. Period.” Teresa kept her eyes on her.

  Dottie narrowed her eyes and looked at Teresa. “You lead a very simple life, don’t you?”

  “Aay, don’t patronize me. I lead a very complicated life. I live by my words.”

  “But don’t you think it was wrong of him to steal—especially knowing that we were going to get married and that—”

  “Excuse me! Excuse me!” Teresa singsonged, and took a puff on her cigarette. “Did you or did you not say, ‘Let’s get the money to get an apartment of our own and get married’?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You did not say, ‘Get the money by being a lawyer or get the money by being a goddamn Nobel chemist,’ you just said, ‘Get the money.’ You gave him a goal, he went out and got it. I don’t see what the problem was.”

  “Is this the way you and Fred would talk? This is a semantical nightmare.”

  “Whatever. You gotta be crystal-clear with men, my mother taught me that when I was a little girl, and I always lived by that. You can’t just give them half the instructions and think they’re gonna be able to guess the rest. Naw-aw. No, you gotta say, ‘I want you to do this, in the order in which I say do this’ otherwise, it’s up to them and you can’t say nothing. And as my mother said, ‘I guarantee, you leave it up to a man to try and think it through, he’s gonna make the one choice is gonna drive you crazy.’ That’s when you have trouble. Didn’t your mother never tell you this?” Dottie shook her head. “Well, she should have. I was happily married almost forty years with this advice.”

  Dottie was wincing and shaking her head.

  “No. He should have known. You got it all turned around—he was a locksmith, he could have … it was just that…” The words were getting all tangled up in her throat.

  “So maybe locksmithing couldn’t bring in enough money fast enough. Maybe he panicked, maybe he thought he was going to lose you.”

  Dottie took a deep breath. “What he did was wrong, and even though he’d been in prison, he started again—and I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It was a long time ago and I don’t care.”

  Teresa took a step back, her eyebrows rose and puckered and she gave Dottie a good look up and down, and then gave her a ‘What, are you kidding?’ look.

  “Well, maybe you’re right and it don’t matter and you don’t care anymore … but you got some awful fancy clothes on for buying bullets.”

  “I just want to … to look presentable.”

  “For some guy who’s fencing a gun to you? Like I said, you sure you just going up there for bullets?” She was dragging out the word “bullets” so it almost sounded obscene.

  “Why else would I go up there?” Dottie’s voice was icy.

  “Sex?”

  “Why is everybody saying that to me!” Dottie stood up and threw two ten-dollar bills on the table.

  “Ah, come on, Dottie, Jeez, yo
u’re always so touchy about these things. Look, so what if you’re dating a guy who sold you a gun—”

  “I’m not dating him. He hates me!” Dottie screamed and burst into tears.

  Teresa stopped, and looked at this poor woman. She was falling apart right in front of her. She felt bad now about the jokes.

  “Look, I was just having a little fun. Here, let me get you a tissue.” She walked over to the refrigerator and reached up into a box and pulled out a tissue, handed it to Dottie, and watched her blow her nose.

  “Let me make you a cup of coffee. I got real,” Teresa offered.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Dottie was sobbing into her arms on the table.

  Teresa turned around and began to fill a kettle with water. She waited for Dottie to calm down. She put the kettle on the stove and turned on the fire under it. She turned around and looked at her.

  “Look, what are you so upset about?”

  “I was in love with him. Maybe you’re right, maybe I should have trusted him maybe…”

  “Look, different people got different things they can live with. I mean, look, you got all bent out of shape because you were sleeping with someone and had no wedding ring—wouldn’t have bothered me in the least, and I’m Catholic.”

  “Did you and Fred…”

  “Not without a ring and a ceremony—but I would’ve. And the fencing and hijacking and robbery never bothered me neither, but not everyone’s like that … So, this guy was trouble and you got away from him.”

  Dottie gave a sniff and nodded up and down, almost grateful to Teresa for saying it out loud.

  “So, what’s this guy’s name?” Teresa sat down into the chair, pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

  “Arthur MacGregor.”

  Teresa dropped her cigarette, and her eyes bulged.

  “The bank robber?” she said in an awed tone usually reserved for the likes of Frank Sinatra.

  “Yes.”

  Teresa’s eyes narrowed. “You’re pulling my leg.” She got up and went over to the cabinet and began taking out the coffee cups.

  “No, I’m not. I met him on Rivington Street. I used to be best friends with a girl who lived in his building. He used to repair things for people, he had a job at a repair shop. He used to come to their apartment when Mrs. Spinoza’s radio broke down.”