Death by Chocolate

same time Savannah
checked inside the waistband of the flowered dress for her Beretta.
    “You don’t have to have a
piece of this,” Dirk said. “I can call for backup and wait.”
    “Maybe you can wait and
maybe you can’t.” She squinted against the late morning sunlight that was
shining on the glass door to the bank. She saw movement inside but couldn’t
make out details. “Depends on what’s going on in there,” she said. “If somebody
had time enough to write that sign and stick it in the window, it’s been going
down for a while.”
    “One thing for sure,” Dirk
said, opening his door, “we gotta stop Grandma Moses there from joining the
party.”
    Savannah saw who he was
talking about—an elderly woman shuffling toward the bank’s door with a walker.
Considering her lack of agility, she was making pretty good progress and had
nearly reached the entrance.
    But Dirk was faster. He
bounded out of the car and across the lot with Savannah right behind him.
    “Hey, lady,” he called out
to her, keeping his voice low. “Come back here. Don’t go in.... I think the
place is being—”
    “Holy shit! ” the old woman
yelled as she stood outside the door and stared inside. ‘There’s a guy in there
with a gun!” She turned, wild-eyed, to Dirk and Savannah. “There’s two guys in
there! And they’ve both got guns! Really big ones!”
    “Get away from that door.
Come back here, honey,” Savannah called to her. But the lady was already on the
move without aid of her walker, which she was holding straight out in front of
her like a lion-tamer would hold a chair.
    She ran up to Savannah, who
grabbed her by the arm to steady her. “Is that your car, ma’am?” Savannah
pointed to the Starfire.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, go get in it and
drive away as quick as you can, okay?”
    “You bet your sweet ass, I
will.”
    For the briefest moment,
Savannah thought, Since when do grandmothers say “sweet ass” and “holy shit”?
But then she heard a woman scream inside the bank, then another.
    “We’ve gotta get in there,”
she told Dirk. He nodded. Turning back to the lady, she said, “May I borrow
your walker?”
     
     
    Rodney Flynn had never
robbed a bank before. Until this morning, he had stuck to knocking over
all-night convenience stores and the occasional gas station. But his cousin,
Ferris, had convinced him that if they hit just one bank a month, they’d make
more money in ten minutes than they’d both made in the past ten years. Flipping
burgers at Joe’s Grill wasn’t particularly lucrative for Rodney, and Ferris
hadn’t actually worked a full day at a real job in his life.
    Rodney had told him he was
nuts, but then he got to thinking about how much money there was in those bank
tellers’ drawers, not to mention what they might get ahold of if they could
somehow get the safe open.
    Besides, it would be on the
news. They’d be on the news. Not their names, hopefully, but a story about the
robbery. Rodney had been disappointed that his service station knockover hadn’t
even made the newspaper. Hell, they’d probably run those little commercials on
the L.A. stations: daring bank holdup in San Carmelita... daring robbers get
away with millions... film at eleven o’clock.
    Maybe we should have worn
masks or pantyhose over our heads or something, he thought, as he stood in the
middle of the bank pointing his gun at a huddled bunch of terrified employees and
customers. In the corner of the room he spotted a little black box with a lens
sticking out of it—pointed right at him. Damn it, Ferris should have thought of
some kinda disguises. I got the car filled up with gas. I can’t do it all.
    Ferris always acted like he
was the boss, strutting around with his nose in the air, taking charge, telling
everybody what to do, when to wipe their nose and not to. But what kind of a
boss forgot something as simple as masks, huh?
    “Get that ring off her finger,
now!” Ferris yelled at him, waving his pistol in Rodney’s direction.
    “But she won’t give it to
me,” Rodney tried to explain. He’d already whacked the woman on the head with
his own gun. She’d screamed bloody murder, but she still wouldn’t surrender the
diamond on her finger.
    “Then shoot her! Goddamn
it, we ain’t got all day here!”
    Rodney looked at Ferris
hard, trying to see if he meant it. They’d already said they wouldn’t shoot
anybody, except a cop.
    He could tell Ferris meant
it. Ferris had that same