New Beginning 967

Chuck Truett watched from behind dark sunglasses as people streamed in and out of the bank. He sat at a table on the patio of a coffee shop across the street, holding the sports page of the local daily. He folded the paper to an article on the upcoming college football season and slowly sipped his coffee as he alternated reading, scanning traffic, and eyeing the bank.

The sun crashed down without mercy, shattering off cars and pavement. A slight breeze pushed the heat around. Even in the shade of the table’s umbrella, he felt like he might spontaneously combust.

He looked south down San Pablo. There’s a cop, coming north. He glanced at his watch. Three twenty-two. He checked the notepad sitting on the table in front of him, frowned, and made a notation. In five afternoons over the last two weeks, he’d detected no pattern to the passing of the patrol cars at this intersection, other than they did so with some regularity.

A sardonic grin played briefly on his face. Casing a bank. Never in all his life, not even as recently as a month ago, would he have imagined he’d be casing a bank. But desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.

Three twenty-seven. He looked away from the bank, and down at his newspaper. WTF?! His alma mater, Indiana University, predicted to finish eleventh in the Big Ten Conference?! Behind even perennial doormat Northwestern?!
Three Thirty. His eyes shot back to the bank. Time for that teller with the cleavage to come out for her cigarette break. There she is! Right on time, like clockwork. Wabba! Hot hot hot!

Suddenly, a Toyota sedan whipped to the curb in front of the bank. Three men carrying guns and pulling masks over their faces leaped out and rushed inside. Moments later, they rushed out carrying canvas bags with dollar signs on the sides, jumped in the car, and sped away.

Drat. Truett ripped the pages from his notebook and tore them into tiny pieces. He rose, pulled his own mask over his face, and went back in the coffee shop. Desperate measures indeed. 


Opening: Wonderwood.....Continuation: Evil Editor/anon.