Bank Robbers (16 page)

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.

*   *   *

“S
O 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, you'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.”

There was a silence and a smile drew across Dottie's face. “And that radio would break down every Saturday night.”

“Yeah?” Teresa said and grinned at her.

“Remember the old radios with the tubes and wires in them? Well, if you just unscrew one or two of the tubes and loosen up the screws holding the connecting wires, those radios were just worthless. So he'd come down, and he'd take the whole thing apart, like he didn't know Eileen and I had tampered with it…”

Teresa was staring straight ahead, thoughts whizzing around her head. Arthur MacGregor, the bank robber, had been Dottie Weist's lover?

That was impossible.

That was going to blow her whole image of him.

He was a legend. He was one of those mythical people, larger than life—the kind of man you read about in expensive magazines. And the stories written about him never made him sound like a low-life criminal. It was as if the press gave him the nod—maybe it was a sideways nod—but it was a nod all the same. They made him sound like a hero. Big, good-looking man, smart, fast, and generous.

Teresa had had a friend whose cousin had been in some kind of construction accident, and Arthur MacGregor had sent money for the hospital. She'd heard of him doing all kinds of things like that with the money he got from the heists. Once Arthur McGregor read an article in the newspapers about a kid with a deformed foot and sent over nine hundred dollars for the operation. She could remember the headline in the
News:
BANK ROBBER BANKROLLS OPERATION
.

And he was a funny guy. There was an incident she remembered with an FBI agent, who'd accidentally been shot by his own partner while trying to nab Arthur MacGregor. Shot in the leg. Not fatal, but he was crippled and on his back in the hospital for months and months. There were big articles about his poor family, and how the government compensation wasn't enough. Arthur'd sent five grand along with a note suggesting he get into another line of business, one with better compensation and a more understanding boss.

Boy, the press had a field day with that one.

It was even fun being robbed by him. Teresa had a friend who'd been a teller in a bank in Connecticut when he robbed it and he'd broken into song; nearly put on a whole floor show for the employees.

Teresa turned and looked at Dottie, still staring aimlessly at the kitchen table. This man could have the “Solid Citizen” as a lover?

Naw. That just was too much to believe.

The pot on the stove began to whistle, and Teresa went over to the counter. She dumped some coffee into a drip pot and poured water over it, and then another chilling thought occurred to her.

She'd always heard that rumor. That Arthur MacGregor had been ripped up by some woman early in his life and that was why he never had a woman around him for very long and why he robbed banks with such a vengeance. In some versions of the story she was a Sunday school teacher, and in some she was a housewife, or a minister's daughter. But Teresa discounted that, like all them rumors about Elvis Presley. Once you were famous, people tried to hold you up like that.

“And when I walked in last night he was just cold and mean.” Dottie blew her nose one last time and thought about what she'd just said. No, he wasn't the same man. “So I'm going to go get the bullets and tomorrow afternoon at three I'm going to rob the Chemical Bank on Sheridan Square.”

“So you could go to the same prison as Leona Helmsley.”

“Exactly.” Dottie sniffed, and set her jaw tightly.

Teresa looked back at Dottie. For a woman she had always thought of as a snobby bore, the entertainment value she'd been getting from her the last couple of days was a real eye-opener. A grateful twinge went through Teresa; she needed this distraction from her own life.

Miss Solid Citizen and the Bank Robber.

This was much better than those stupid soap operas her daughter always watched. Teresa poured out two cups of coffee, set one in front of Dottie and sat down. She lit another cigarette and grinned wickedly.

“So, you gonna tell me how you're gonna rob this bank?” Teresa asked and Dottie opened her mouth.

“No—first—tell me, Dottie, is Arthur MacGregor good in the sack?”