bank robbery

Before (Falling Apart) “It’s Bad You Know”

Isaac Moody

October 2003

It had been a summer full of energy, of new friendships and the making of art. A summer of ideas, a season of hope. Then I robbed a bank.

The first bank I robbed was The Traditional Bank in downtown Lexington. I chose The Traditional Bank in part because of my familiarity with it. I had an account there, so they were familiar with me also.

I was what you might refer to as a “freestyle” bank robber. This is a nice way of saying stupid. Inherent in the act of bank robbery-especially one that is “freestyled” or unplanned-is the element of luck and the need for on-the-fly creative thinking.

I was on foot for the robbery. After requesting and receiving five grand from the teller with a hastily written note I sauntered in a round-about way to the large Episcopal Church across the street. I had stashed my satchel and a change of clothes in a small prayer room adjacent to the main sanctuary only minutes prior to robbing the bank. By the time I changed my clothes the entire block was swarming with media, police, and the FBI. I had a front row seat to the entire scene as I was feigning prayer sneaking glances through the stained-glass windows. There were cops on bikes, cops in cars, and cops with canines. There was a reporter no more than twenty feet outside the window speaking into a microphone for a camera with the bank over her shoulder across the street.

The scene playing out before me filtered through the multi-colored window set a surreal tone. I was captivated and I suppose a bit more relaxed than what might be considered normal. Though at this stage of the proceedings “normalcy” had certainly earned a much broader range of subjective interpretation.

A noise. I pulled away from the window and looked across the wide space of the cathedral. A priest. He noticed me just as I noticed him. I smiled. He smiled. I stood with my satchel and we walked towards each other.

“Hello, father,” I greeted him. Was that correct? Calling him “father” like that I mean? I was raised a Baptist and wasn’t so sure. It felt odd. He was a youngish, pleasant fella…perhaps thirty-five. He was wearing that color that priest’s wear along with the rest of the get up.

“Hi there,” he continued to smile pleasantly. “Can I help you with anything?” he asked softly.

Yeah—I thought, got a box you can hide me in…maybe an extra costume like yours…or maybe absolving me of my transgressions would be a good idea. “Well, not really. I’m just kickin’ around downtown here—wastin’ time; really thought I’d take a look around.” I rattled something about how I was a student at the University and espoused my opinionated observations on the difference between a city church and a country church, familiar as I was with both. The priest, whose name I later learned is Morris, picked up on this line of frivolous banter and chatted it up for nearly five minutes. Then…awkward silence. We began, both of us hands folded behind our backs, to stroll towards the rear of the chapel.

“So what the heck is going on out there with all those police cars and news people?” I asked as authentically as possible. Preachers, priests, and “men of God” in general know damn well when they are being lied to. I am certain.

“That bank across the street was robbed less than a half hour ago” he replied.

“You don’t say!” I exclaimed as we continued toward the double doors at the end of the isle.

“Yeah” he continued, “the police actually came up to my office to inform me and asked me if I had seen anybody fitting the description given them by the witnesses to the robbery…” he paused. We stopped, now standing two steps away from each other next to a stand upon which sat a bowl of blessed water. I glanced at the water and then back to him.

“What did they say the bank robber looked like?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see…I believe they said that it was a white male...between the ages of 20 and 30, brown hair, about six feet tall or better. Uhhm…said he was wearing…jeans, a white button down shirt, a pair of oversized sunglasses and a hat. Also the distinguishing characteristic, they said, were the fella’s big sideburns.” All this he said smiling, as he was no doubt peering into the depths of my sordid being!

There I am…standing six foot one inch, twenty-three years old, a satchel overflowing with clothes, and although I had changed my clothes, I still had my oversized sunglasses hanging from the neck. A stretch of the imagination and an assumption of stupidity would have been the only way to say this priest was unaware based on these similarities alone. My sideburns took it beyond the level of coincidence.

The priest knew. I knew. I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew. We were both in a state of knowing, as it were, if you will, so to speak.

“So…how does this thing work?” I asked pointing to the bowl of water near the entrance/exit there at the rear of the cathedral.

Suddenly solemn, he looked from me to the water and we both approached it.

“Follow my lead” he said.

We dipped our fingers together and I followed his example as he made the sign of the cross.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”

Something seemed to have been settled with that. I think maybe we both knew at that point that we were safe. A shot at grace amidst disgrace. I shook his hand to seal the deal and bid him farewell as I stepped out the door onto the sidewalk.

Before leaving town, I stopped by the apartment of a friend. I mixed a vodka drink in a large plastic cup, sat down to chat with my friend, and waited for the cab to arrive.

Phone rings. Cab has arrived. I picked up my satchel. It contained my sketch pads, pencils, charcoals, money, and my leather bound organizer which I keep around for laughs. I also picked up my back pack; it held my clothes, and to the bottom was tied a tent. The tent was my immediate and favorite rationalization for robbing the bank: Mary had moved to Baltimore a week earlier. I was going to Baltimore to return her tent.

I left the apartment and found the cab waiting for me in the parking lot with my favorite cabbie, Mike, leaning against it. He popped the trunk, I tossed my back pack in and closed it, keeping my satchel and my vodka drink with me.

“Cincinnati, brother!” I exclaimed.

“Right-e-o-mi-amigo” he sang in reply as the cab lurched into the street. Mike began rambling about this, about that: noting perhaps my level of agitation he paused and said, “Pardon me, Ike, for waxing philosophical before the sun has set; have you smoked yet?”

I shook my head, “Negative brother, but I have been swadgling on this fine vodka blend for the past few minutes. Feel free to wax until your heart is content, good man, as I’ve some things to organize anyway. Have a taste man!” I offered him the cup.

“Don’t mind if I do! Salante Mate! Please, you know where the stash is, feel free,” he urged as he took a healthy gulp of vodka.

I found the cigarette pack containing expertly rolled joints and searched for some fire.

“Mike,” I said.

“Yeah, buddy?” he replied.

“Do me a favor and avoid, if you can, going back through downtown, okay?” I requested.

“Sure! Good idea man, rush hour anyway” he exclaimed.

“And Mike” I said.

“Yeah, Buddy” he again replied.

“Can we turn off the C.B. and scanner?” I implored. He fell silent and turned his head to look at me. He turned off the equipment and handed me his zippo.

“Thanks man. It’s been one hell of an afternoon so far,” I sighed. I lit the spliff, took the bundled money from my satchel, and began to count.

Several days later I found myself alone at a bar in Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. By this time, I had a black eye, several shots of something strong and an even stronger feeling that it wasn’t just my imagination, as the blues man R.L. Burnside put it, “It’s bad you know.”

The night Mike dropped me off in Cincinnati I visited the “Have A Nice Day Café” in front of which I was assaulted and robbed of all my ill-gotten spoils save for the five hundred dollars I had in my shoe. That’s what you might call instant Karma.

Five hundred dollars goes a lot further in Covington than in Cincinnati. I was beginning to see why, what with the dives I found myself in, buying rounds for the house. Wearing oversized sunglasses at night to hide my freshly acquired shiner garnered me plenty of sideways glances, which only added to the out-of-place feeling I was already experiencing on more than one level.

Four days later, I pitched my tent beneath the stars in a strange little concrete maze, in the shadow of a replica of the “Big Ben” clock in the public park. Each day I stashed all but my satchel in the adjacent wooded area. All of it, including Mary’s tent, was stolen sometime during the evening of the second day. Three cheers for Karma! Or at least a golf-clap for stupidity. Pennyless.

August the seventh: seven days since leaving Lexington found me strolling languidly up the one way Main Street in Covington. I was pretty sure at this juncture that I would be robbing a bank before lunch. No hurry though. I sat on a bench situated conveniently between my options. One block up was the big, modern, National branch bank; one block down was a local branch of a smaller regional bank; older and better service; read: lower quality security system.

I pulled out my sketch pad. Doodle. Smoke. Then I noticed an old lady sitting next to me on the bench. So definitely and perfectly ancient.

“Cup of coffee for ya, ma’am?” I offered.

“Well, my…yes, I’d like that, that would be nice.” she smiles.

She spread crumbs of bread in front of her from a paper lunch bag as I ran across the street and ordered two cups of coffee. I return and there were at least a dozen pigeons be-boppin’ to the cadence of the crumbs. Some of the pigeons were white.

Rose was her name, and we chatted up the weather, politics, and the drawings in my sketch pad. Then she began to tell me a story, a story near eighty years old. Said she was twenty-one when it happened which would place it in the nineteen twenties, making her near one hundred years old.

Twenty-one years old she left Covington, for the first time. She moved to Chicago. She danced, she said, a flapper in Chi-town during the roaring twenties. She lived with a cousin. She met a fellow who wined her and dined her and showed her the town. One year this lasted: the greatest and happiest year of her life, she insisted. One year and her mother somehow forced her to return home to Covington. Biggest regret of my life, she said. She went on to suggest that I move on, leave town, get out while the gettin’ was still to be got. She said there was too much drugs, to much bad stuff, and not near enough good.

I agreed with her, trying to convince her that just as soon as I met my buddy (that’s how I referred to the caper—twisted I know) and take care of some business I would be on the first thing smokin’.

She suggested I skip the business. “Go now,” she said, “or you’ll regret it.”

I mused that there was something rather odd about this old lady. I looked around for something else to talk about—to change the subject.

Then she was gone. I might not even have noticed had it not been for the birds which left in a flutter as quickly and as mysteriously as they had appeared.

I chose the hometown bank down the block. At the opposite end of the block was an army surplus store.

Inside an old grumpy, bumpy vet was runnin’ the place. He looked suspiciously over the rims of his reading glasses, but made no comment about my yet-to-fade shiner. He yelled for Bob. Bob must have been lower in rank as he was ordered to help me. Bob followed me around and guided me through the miasma of cool stuff, helping me pick out some things I needed and more that I didn’t: new back pack, new clothes, and pointless gadgets and extras such as rope, a compass, rain gear, etc. I set all that next to the register, told them to tally it up, and said, “I’m going to cash a check; give me about ten minutes.” “Will do capt’n,” came the reply. I walked around the back of the block: shining sun, soft breeze, beautiful day. At the bank I held the door for a fella. “Thank you kindly, young man” he smiled.

I chose an open window with no line, handed the note to the teller, and tried to give her a reassuring smile. The charm of which was probably lost what with a barely hidden hideous black eye and the automatic implication of possible violence inherent in even the gentlest of bank robberies. She got a little shaky but did okay. I left the bank with $1,800, walked straight up the front of the block and dipped into the army surplus store. I peeled off three crisp one hundred dollar bills, asked Bob if he would call a cab, changed into my new clothes, packed everything into the new back pack, stepped out the front door, lit a smoke and waited for my cab. I watched as one, two, and then three police cars pull up to the bank not five hundred feet from me.

The cab arrived just as the scene began to feel a little sticky. I hopped in the back.

“Cincinnati, brother!” I shouted so he could hear me through the glass separating the front and back seats.

Apparently the cabbie was a genius: he made a wrong turn, forcing us to circle back down the one way street right past the scene of the crime, at which point he honks his horn to wave to the cops.

“Looks like that bank just got robbed, man!” he squeeked. I was a bit agitated.

I made it to a hotel and used a fake ID to get a room on the twenty-first floor at the Regal Hotel. I ordered a fruit and cheese tray and two Heinekens to wash it down.

I nibbled on the cheese, sipped the brew, got naked, drew a bath, lit a smoke, and was just about to let Calgon do its thing when there was a gentle rap on my door.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Room service,” came the reply.

“No…I’m all set, thanks” I said, taking a long slow drag from my smoke; again a knock! knock! knock—a bit more stronger than the first.

“Uh-Oh” I mused. I took a gander through the peep hole. BAM! BAM! BAM!

“Open the (explicit) door! This is the police!” a squeaky angry man barked.

“Relax man—give me a second--everything is cool—I just need to put on some clothes.”

“Open the door! Now” Squeek, Sqwak, Bark.

I pulled the dead bolt and unlocked the door. They opened the door. It was an awkward moment of silence; the female hotel staff and all taking in my complete nakedness, save for a cigarette in one hand and a bar of soap in the other.

I was cuffed and read my rights by an officer. I was unreasonably, abnormally relaxed and quite cool…Oh,! I said to myself, I’m naked as a jaybird!

“Would it be too much to get a pair of boxer shorts?” I asked.

As I was escorted from the hotel the cops stopped me; they turned me this way, and that way; they told me to look straight ahead at the man, who earlier at the bank, had thanked me for holding the door.

“Yes, officer, I’m sure, that’s him.” He identified yours truly as the big bad bank robber. Well…can’t hardly blame him, doin’ his duty I suppose…doin’ what he’s expected to do. What can I say. He ain’t no priest.