Outlaws really only need to observe one law: Murphy's Law.
If there's one thing you can count on in the Gutter, it's for things to go wrong.
If there's one thing you can count on in the Gutter, it's for things to go wrong.
Will Bennie Crack? by David Rachels
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When Bennie and me got laid
off from the turkey processing plant, they gave us enough severance to buy two
ski masks, one gun, and zero bullets. It was just as well about the bullets
because Bennie said he would go along with it if nobody got hurt, and that
meant we couldn’t shoot nobody, not even if we wanted to, and Bennie didn’t
want either one of us getting shot either. I told him it wouldn’t be any
problem. Banks don’t even have guards no more, so nobody would have a gun
except for our gun with no bullets, which meant everybody would be safe. I told
Bennie, these days banks are out there just begging you to rob them.
That was most of the bullshit
I needed to get Bennie into the bank wearing a ski mask. Before we went in, he
was smart enough to check that I hadn’t loaded the gun behind his back, but he
wasn’t smart enough to ask me about cameras or silent alarms or dye packs or
anything like that. All the brain stuff was up to me. We made it to the middle
of the lobby before he stopped walking. There was two customers talking to the
tellers, one guy and one girl, and by the looks of them there was no way either
one of them had a gun, so I couldn’t figure why Bennie had stopped. Nobody had
looked at us yet to see our ski masks, so everything was still normal.
I said, “Keep moving, sir.”
I had told Bennie we wouldn’t
be using our names, on account of bank robbers are easier to catch if you know
their names, and that was one more thing that made Bennie think I knew what I
was doing.
Bennie said, “I can’t move.”
“You better move,” I said.
“The money ain’t here—it’s over there.” We still had about ten paces to go.
Bennie was looking at the
male customer. He said, “That’s Master Claussen, Trent’s karate teacher. I
can’t do this, man.”
“We got a gun,” I said. “You wishing
we had some bullets now?”
“Master Claussen knows how to
take guns away from people. He’s already taught Trent how to do it. I’m
leaving.”
“No, you ain’t,” I said, and
then I yelled, “This is a robbery!” I wished I could have made my point by shooting
a bullet into the ceiling, but I just had to wave my gun around instead. I
looked at Bennie out of the corner of my eye. I thought maybe he would run, but
he didn’t.
It was a good thing Bennie
told me about Master Claussen because Master Claussen looked interested. He was
facing me now, and he was leaning forward on his feet like he was thinking
about coming for me. I pointed the gun right at him and said, “You get on the
ground right now.” He thought about it for a second, and then he must have
decided I really would shoot him because he got down on the ground.
The bank was totally quiet
now, and Bennie whispered, “He can’t hear me talk. He knows my voice.” Bennie
was shaking like he was really cold. When he was talking, his teeth was
chattering together.
I said to Bennie, “I’ll do
the talking. Come on, but keep your eye on Mr. Kung Fu. If he twitches, you
holler.”
I went to the teller who was
as far away from Master Claussen as possible. Bennie followed me, and he stood in
between me and Master Claussen, which made him shake even more like he had some
kind of shaking disease. I gave the teller a plastic bag. I said to her, “No
dye packs in there. I want to see you riffle every stack of bills before it
goes in.”
The riffling slowed things
down, of course, but a bag of ruined money wasn’t going to do us any good. I kept
telling the teller to hurry it up because one of them must have pulled an alarm
already, so we had to get going. If we stuck around to get every dime, we’d
never get away. I peeked at Bennie, and he was still staring right at Master
Claussen, but he was starting to sway like maybe he was going to fall over.
Okay, it was time to go. However much money was in the bag, it was more than we
spent on the ski masks and the gun.
“Let’s go, sir,” I said to
Bennie, and I took the bag of money from the teller. Bennie and me walked
backwards out of that bank as fast as we could, both of us staring at Master
Claussen the whole way.
Our getaway car was stolen
from the student parking lot at the high school. Bennie made me drive it, of
course. We turned right out of the bank parking lot, headed back toward the
high school, and not a minute later we saw sirens coming toward us, headed for
the bank. I looked over at Bennie, and I yelled, “Take off the ski mask!”
Bennie did it as fast as he could, and I think he may have poked himself in the
eye, his hands were shaking so bad.
There was no more talking
till we made it to the high school and I pulled the car back into the spot we
took it from. I picked up the bag of money from the floorboard between my feet.
I wanted to count it. How long was it till school was out? Did we have time to
make the split right there? Now Bennie spoke up. He said, “Hand that bag over
here.”
I looked over at Bennie. His
hands were still shaking, but now he was pointing a gun at me.
“Guess what?” Bennie said. “This
one is loaded.”
