CHAPTER 17
BANK JOB
Margie Wainwright's bank was just about to close for the day when we got there: the mob hit man, the invisible giant, and me. Two of us wore white fedoras, also known as troll hats. Plus we had the damn cat, still asleep and invisible on the giant’s shoulders, as far as I knew. Real heavyweights. It's a good thing we were using Vinnie's big beefed-up Cadillac, as all that weight would have killed the Ford for sure. As it was, the caddy raised a half a foot and groaned and squeaked when Grog squeezed out of the back door.
I figured though he was invisible Grog was even bigger now, , since he had eaten more garlic before we left. For sure he smelled even worse than ever, after shoveling huge handfuls of stinking raw garlic into his big stinking mouth. He stunk but at least he had the good taste to make his ugly face invisible. Either the cat was invisible too or he had snuck off when we weren’t looking. Either way was better than being able to see him, I figured.
Vinnie wasn't invisible, and being seen publicly with a mob hit man probably wasn't especially good for my business. Sure, all in all these mob guys were OK by me, real guy-guys, guys that I wouldn’t mind sharing some brews with, but not everyone cared for them. Besides, I really like working alone better anyway, since then I can do whatever I want to. For instance if I were alone I'd have probably stopped for some good coffee and donuts on the way, a habit I developed as a cop. Or I’d drop this whole business altogether for a while and spend some quality time at the racetrack or in a bar.
As we approached the bank’s front door, it happened: I was suddenly seeing double. Besides seeing the front of the bank, I also had a vision of the inside of a dark cave or hole or someplace, and a strange little voice, THE voice, was talking to me again. "Me be here, hiding in safe place near Source. Me open gate when Source come near. Come get me, I need me," or some such shit. It was like the dreams I had had before, but a hundred times stronger.
The voice talked and talked, pounding the same words into my poor little brain over and over, so loud it almost took my head off. The vision was so strong it seemed real, right in front of me, a shimmering ghostly image mixed in with the normal stuff I was still seeing.
And this time I knew right where I had to go: into the bank. It was there, in the bank, whatever it was, whoever it was. If it was a little troll named Mick, I couldn’t tell for sure, but it was pulling me in, like a giant magnet.
I stumbled towards the bank, with my eyeballs wide and my jaw hanging open, arms reaching out like a blind man to keep myself from bumping into things that might really be there, and bitching like crazy.
Vinnie finally noticed that something was up. "You having some sort of attack Kid?" he asked. "What gives?"
"Him finding Mick," explained an excited but deep disembodied voice close behind and above us. "Is good!"
"Bull!" I said, disagreeing. "I hate this weird shit!" It was definitely NOT good. I was seeing things, hearing things! I wanted to get away from there, to hide from the voice, to stop the vision, but at the same time I felt deep in my gut that I had to find the source of it all and be done with it. No more putting off seeing Margie, no more Arizona or Hawaii; this was it. I wanted to be done with this crap so that I could get back to simple divorce cases and lost dogs. I wanted my life back, end of story.
It was time for me to earn my fifty bucks a day, I figured. Dazed and still seeing and hearing double, I entered the bank with Vinnie propping me up on the left and invisible Grog propping me up on the right. Inside there were a few people queued in a line, being waited on by three tellers behind a long counter. A typical bank set-up.
Nobody looked at us when we came in, as there was already a show going on. Behind the counter and its three busy tellers, Margie was having a heated discussion with Eric, loud enough for me to hear as we approached closer.
"But it doesn't make sense; it's extra work to do that," complained Eric. The kid was obviously not happy, even though I noticed that his hair had grown back a little.
"I don't care," said Margie angrily. She was holding her forehead like she had a really bad headache. "Close the damn thing. Now!"
Eric shrugged and then pushed the heavy bank-vault door closed. As the massive steel door swung shut, the loud voice in my head faded to nothing and the vision disappeared. What a relief! Vinnie and Grog still held me up, or I might have still fallen over just from the relief.
"Jake!" said Margie, when she saw me. “Where have you been?” She even smiled. Her pain seemed to be gone, though she still looked tired. "How's the case? Come to my office and we can talk."
"Right," I agreed, following her. Vinnie and Grog still held my arms but I shook them off, as my dizziness was gone.
"And who's your wide shouldered friend?" she asked, eyeballing Vinnie, who followed us. She couldn’t see Grog, since he was still invisible.
"This is Mr. Veracruz, an associate," I explained. "He's helping me on the case, at no extra charge to you." Vinnie gave her a slight smile and a little nod as he checked out her legs, which were pretty damn good, from where I stood.
“So what’s happening with my case? Am I a suspect for the cops or not?” She asked, as she closed her office door behind us. I thought for a second she had shut out Grog, but then I smelled the garlic, on top of sewer breath and garbage body odors. Margie did too; I could tell from the sour looks she gave both me and Vinnie.
“It’s sort of gone beyond that stage,” I explained. “Things are complicated. The cops and their friends the elves want me to find Henry’s missing figurine for them. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
She had pulled a can of room deodorizer from her desk drawer and was spraying it all over the room, including on the stinking invisible giant. I liked this chick; she was the straight forward and in your face type. “No, I still don't,” she answered.
“Have you had some weird things happen to you lately? Have you been hearing voices or seeing things?”
“Of course not."
"We can fix it, but to fix it you need to fess up," I told her.
"OK, a little bit maybe, for a while,” she admitted.
“Or getting dizzy or bad headaches? Like maybe every time the bank vault is opened?”
Bingo. That one got to her; I saw it in her face. She even stopped spraying the flowery deodorizer. “I have headaches and feel tired whenever that thing is opened. How did you know that? I made that connection myself only yesterday.”
“I think the figurine is inside the vault.”
“Henry's missing figurine? That’s nuts! Like I told him, I never even saw it. What would it be doing in there? How would it get in there?”
“I don’t know; maybe it hid in there itself. Why don’t we go ask it?”
"Ask it? You expect it to answer us?"
"It just might be able to."
"A talking statue?"
"A tiny talking troll that hid himself inside the safe."
She laughed. "Troll? A tiny figurine that's a troll?"
I shrugged. The concept wasn’t such a stretch for me, not anymore. After all, not long ago I had seen people shrunk to ant size. That experience had broadened my thinking quite a bit. "A small part of a big troll."
"Oh yeah? Which part?" She shook her head. "This is crazy talk! What I mostly wanted you to do for me is get the general lay of the land on this tire business and see where I stand with the cops. I don’t care about trolls. Am I in the clear legally or not?"
"None of us are. Not while we have murderers and tire slashers on the loose. We need to work out a few things. For starters, can you tell us more about the problem you have with the vault?"
"OK, I confess. I'm even seeing a therapist about it. Ever since the slashed tire day, I've been having problems whenever the vault is opened. That’s what I finally figured out."
"Headaches?"
"Not at first. I felt all charged up at certain times, and then I'd feel a big letdown and be dead-tired, like I had just run a marathon. Several time
s a day I would get all moody and fired up, and see crazy things in my head. Then suddenly I'd feel empty and tired as hell, plus have a nasty headache.”
Note to myself: I wasn’t the only one that had been getting visions.
“At first I thought it was just all the excitement here at the bank. Then I figured it was some kind of manic depression or something. I went to see a shrink and was told that it's anxiety attacks. She started me on some pills. Then yesterday, I started having really bad headaches. Plus I feel really charged up and then really, really tired. That's when I noticed that it only happened when the vault was opened. I figure it’s some sort of association deal that my shrink will be able to help me with."
"Sort of inconvenient for a bank manager," Vinnie noted.
"Not as bad as you might think,” Margie replied. “True, the vault has to be opened several times a day, but it can be kept closed most of the time. Since yesterday I've been keeping it closed as much as possible, and staying away from it. I don't even go inside it; I get the others to do that. It’s sort of bugging them, I suppose." She glanced towards Eric who was standing outside the office, watching us as he pretended to be messing with a computer terminal. I couldn’t blame the kid for being curious, not after all the nasty hair business he had been through.
"Does staying out of the bank help any?" I asked.
"Not all that much. For example, yesterday I left work early, figuring out-of-sight, out-of-mind. But my crew here opened the vault and I damn near drove off the road, even though I was miles away. I phoned the bank and had them shut the vault, and I was OK again."
"What time was that?"
"About three."
"Right. I was on an airplane at the same time, having a nightmare. Right Vinnie?"
"It adds up that way," agreed Vinnie.
Margie's shocked face paled as she looked more closely at Vinnie. "You're the mobster, Vinnie Veracruz, aren't you?"
"Some might put it that way," said Vinnie, shrugging his wide shoulders.
"What's the mob's interest in my bank?"
Vinnie smiled. "Relax. Most of the money you got here is already ours. We wouldn’t want nothing bad to happen to it. We got you protected better than the Feds do."
"Is that why you're here?"
"Let's just say I got an interest in the case. I fix things up for a living, sort of like Jake does. In this case we got a mutual interest, and I'm here to help Jake fix things."
"If you two get the little troll out of my vault, will that fix things?"
"Maybe," I said. "But I think we should consult our other partner first. What about it Grog?"
"Me say is good if you find little Mick," rumbled Grog, from behind me. “It be your job. Grog help."
The effect on Margie of hearing a deep loud voice coming from nowhere was predictable, I suppose. It was the first time I saw fear in her eyes, for just a second. Then she looked pissed. "What games are you playing on me now, Jake Simon? Ventriloquism?"
"No. Grog is real but he’s nothing for you to worry about. He’s invisible at the moment, but he's on our team, right Grog?"
"We all be troll friends," replied Grog, by way of explanation.
"An invisible troll friend, hah? Isn't that just dandy!” quipped Margie.
“He’s a giant, actually,” I noted for the record. “Most of the troll isn’t here, as far as we know, unless he’s invisible too.”
This was all a bit much for Margie to swallow, apparently. “Listen, all of you. I just want all of you and whatever is in that vault out of my bank and out of my life. Do that and I don't give a shit whose friend you all are. Do that and you can consider my case solved."
"OK, that sounds good to us," I agreed, though I didn’t really want to stop getting paid by her. Fifty bucks a day is fifty bucks a day. But I wanted this thing to be over with as much as she did, and maybe more. "Let's get to it then."
Margie led us to the vault and with her back to us unlocked it. Except for Eric, the other bank folks were busy with their customers, and hardly even glanced at us. They may have figured we were merely customers headed for a safe deposit box. "This better work fast," she said. "I can only take a few minutes inside this vault." The vault door must have been perfectly balanced on its hinges, because the multi-ton monstrosity swung open pretty easily for her.
She staggered and grabbed her head, but stepped into the vault anyway. She was one tough broad; I could see she was in pain. I couldn't sympathize with her much though; I had my own problems. "Let me out!" screamed the voice in my head again, and I started seeing shadows. I stumbled into the vault, supported by Vinnie.
"So where is it?" she asked me.
I looked around. We were in a small hall with both walls lined with what looked a little bit like little airport lockers. Safe deposit boxes, I figured. I had heard of them but never had anything valuable enough to use one for. At the end of the little hallway there was a closed door of steel bars that led to a dark second room, which was where the big dough was kept, I figured. You might have figured the figurine would be in there, but it wasn't. I knew it wasn’t. I stumbled to one wall and sunk to my knees and put my hands on one of the locked safe deposit boxes. The voice in my head quieted down some and changed its tune. "Yes, me be here! Me come to get me! Me soon be free!" it said. It sounded like a happy chipmunk, I realized, now that I was close enough to hear it clearly.
"Where's the keys?" asked Vinnie.
"We'll see," said Margie. She motioned to Eric, who was standing by nervously by this time, and he ran off someplace. He was back a minute later with a printout and two keys in his hands. "Nobody is assigned to that box," he said, as he handed me the keys, then retreated again to the open vault door, where he could watch us.
I unlocked the box, pulled it from the wall, put it on the small table that was the only furniture in the room, and flipped the lid open. Inside was a tiny replica of Mick, maybe eight inches tall. It looked like one of those little clay or whatever statues you see in the gift shops, painted to be life-like, with one major difference. This one was moving, and looking up at me with tiny black eyes. The little bastard was alive!
But soon it was backing into a corner of the box, cringing and pointing at me. "Trickery!" it screamed shrilly. "You not be me! You wear troll hat but not be me!" The tiny little troll also wore a tiny white fedora, I noticed.
Grog dramatically materialized next to me, complete with Elaine’s cat on his shoulder. Marge gasped but didn't faint or scream; like I said, she was one tough broad. I moved aside so that the big guy could look into the box himself. "Hello little Mick! It be Grog!" he said, grinning from ugly ear to ugly ear. “Soon you be mighty troll again!”
The tiny troll jumped up and down, waving his little arms, and shouting for joy.
“Now we go get Elaine,” added the cat. The cat talking probably should have freaked Margie out, except she was already totally freaked out.
The happy moment was brief, however. First there was the muffled sound of gunshots, obviously from somewhere outside the bank. Then from where I was I could see the door to the outside burst open as dozens of gun carrying cops, elves, and dwarves came pouring through it, upsetting the bank customers.
Oh well, I figured, at least with Vinnie and the giant, we would put up a damn good fight. And the tiny troll could maybe give these bad guys the heebie-jeebies. All in all, I figured it would be quite a battle.
Then I noticed that both Grog and the tiny troll were gone, vanished, cat and all. In moments, Vinnie, Margie and I were grabbed by dozens of strong, loudly cussing little dwarves and elves, and I noticed dozens of hard little fists beating the crap out of me. The beating got serious and my fedora disappeared in the crowd of attackers as they started using little clubs and spear-buts. I hadn’t even had a chance to think about drawing my Smith and Wesson. Then I didn’t notice anything anymore, not even pain.
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