The Banks Sisters 3 Page 17

  Mike, who was waiting in the back of the cab, opened the door. That’s when Abe shot a heavy stream of commercial-grade pepper spray into his eyes, disarmed him, and then cuffed him with plastic flex-cuffs. As rehearsed, Prince snuck up behind Teddy and cracked him across the skull with the butt of his gun. Once Mike’s limp body crumpled to the cement, Prince disarmed him.

  For the sake of the cameras, they had Ken from the club, whose birthday it had been that night, put a gun to Riccardo’s head. On cue, a white van rolled up with Tiger behind the wheel, and another masked guy walked up and had his gun held on the two guards who were both out cold.

  Abe and Prince began to fill the van with bags of cash.

  “Holy shit!” Abe said when he caught a glimpse of how full the truck was. Neither man expected there to be so many bags money, or that the bags of cash would be so heavy.

  Ken, the accomplice who had the gun on Riccardo, who was also the timekeeper, announced that they only had thirty seconds. Abe and Prince picked up the pace.

  Abe said, “We need more time.” They were loading the van as quickly as they could.

  “We don’t have it,” said Prince, “if we want to be able to spend any of it.”

  “Five seconds,” said Ken, the timekeeper. “Time to wrap this shit up.”

  Abe and Prince, with regret, each tossed their last bag into the van. The truck was still one-third full. It almost literally made them sick that they would have to walk away without it all. There was no other choice; they would have to leave it. Ken jumped into the van.

  Abe walked over to Riccardo. He had one last piece of unfinished business. He said to Riccardo, “Thanks for nothing!” and then pulled the trigger. Twice. He shot Riccardo twice in the head just for the fuck of it, since he was pissed about having to walk away with only a portion of the money.

  Before any of his accomplices knew it, he ran over to Theodore and shot him in the head, and then Mike, too, never even hearing either beg for their lives.

  “Fuck you do that for, man?” Prince snapped, “You gon’ bring the heat!”

  “Because I’m pissed the fuck off!” He spit the words out. “Fuck them dead motherfuckers! And anybody else who stand between me and this paper!”

  Chapter 33

  Gut Instincts

  When the white van pulled off, Tallhya wasn’t far behind them. She had the entire thing on video. It was their insurance policy. She texted Rydah as she followed them, already knowing their next move before they even made it.

  Tallhya: Everything good on ur end?

  Rydah: Mild hiccups but working it out.

  Tallhya:We don’t have time for no hiccups. Pls don’t f’ this up! We only have one shot!

  * * *

  HONKKKKKKKKK!

  A dump truck heading down Seventh Avenue laid on the horn and smashed the brakes in order to dodge the boy running across the street.

  The boy was actually Rydah in boy’s clothes. She was carrying a tool box. She’d done a little work on the Suburban that Prince, Abe, and their crew planned to switch into.

  The tracking device Rydah had installed on the truck gave her eyes on it. She watched from her smartphone as the fellas transferred the money from the van to the Suburban.

  The crew had taken off their masks and black jumpsuits, changing back into street clothes. On the way, they’d transferred the bags of money into colorful storage totes to conceal the bags.

  They were home free, or so they thought, when the engine in the Suburban suddenly died

  “What the fuck?” said Abe. “Shit!”

  What the fuck was right....

  Prince got out of the van and looked under the hood, searching for the problem. The truck was only a year old, with not even 10,000 miles on it.

  Frustrated, Abe kicked the wheel. “Fuckkkk!” he screamed, frustrated.

  Prince said, “It has to be something simple,” reassuring his partner, who was already on edge after taking the life of two innocent security guards, having to leave a truck full of cash, and now to have his car break down with what cash they did have in it. It was turning out to a pretty fucked up day, and he knew these kinds of days usually sent Abe off his rocker.

  “Our luck can’t be this bad,” Abe said.

  Prince spotted an Advance Auto Parts store down the street. He told Tiger to take the walk. “I think it’s the battery.

  “Shit.” Tiger was reluctant to go. “I don’t trust you with the bread,” Tiger said.

  Prince, still keeping his cool, said, “We go back too far to start not trusting one another now. If I was going to put any shit into the game, I would’ve laid you down back there with Riccardo.” Prince looked his friend in the eye. “Money ain’t never came between us, but if we don’t act soon, we ain’t gon’ have shit.”

  Tiger noticed Abe looking at him with frustration and knew he was a time bomb. He glanced at Ken, who was down for Tiger either way. He then thought about the bags of cash that he so desired, and how they had come too far to start bickering back and forth within the crew.

  Tiger glared at his even-tempered friend, Prince. “The deviation of the plan got me thinking crazy. It’s all good. We go back too far for this shit.”

  “Look,” Prince said, “we need to get moving before we get made.”

  “You right,” Tiger said. “I’ve never been around this much paper before. The shit got me thinking crazy.”

  Just then, a state trooper pulled up alongside the Suburban. “Everything all right, fellas?”

  “Yeah, Officer. We just need a jump. We just drew straws for who would take the walk to the store,” Prince spoke up.

  “Who lost?” the trooper asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You said that you drew straws,” the trooper said.

  “Right.” Abe pointed to Tiger. “He did.”

  On that note, Tiger started making his way down the road. The trooper smiled and tilted his hat as he drove off slowly. Everyone in the truck exhaled a sigh of relief.

  Prince said, “That shit was close as fuck.”

  Abe was feeling himself. “Close is only good in horseshoes and grenades. We can’t be stopped.”

  The moment they let their guards down for one second, two vans rolled up, and before they could blink, had them boxed in. Nowhere to run, they were caught slipping.

  “Oh, shit!”

  They were surrounded.

  “Police! Don’t move!” The police jumped out of the van quicker than a lightning bolt.

  Tallhya watched the entire thing through binoculars from a couple blocks away. Damn, she thought. They swooped in as if they’d been informed.

  Abe looked around for an escape. One of the cops said, “Don’t even think about it, motherfucker,” as if he could read Abe’s mind.

  Prince slowly put his hands up, shaking his head in disgust. “Ain’t this a bitch.”

  “Yup! Sure is! A real pretty one!” the redneck officer said.

  Prince asked, “What are the charges?”

  The Caucasian cop said, “Just shut the fuck up, motherfucker!”

  Innocent bystanders were gawking, looking for something to post on social media.

  As the police perp-walked them to the van, Abe did a double take at the crowd of onlookers and managed to meet eye-to-eye with Tallhya. She was sitting in front of the Wing Station, eating Buffalo wings and wearing an American flag scarf tied around her head.

  He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He squinted to make sure it was her. That’s when Rydah stuck her middle finger up, flashed a huge grin, and silently made him read her lips when she moved them to say, “Yeah, motherfuckerrrr!”

  But out of her peripheral vision, she saw Simone, dressed in a police uniform, jump into the Suburban and pull off.

  Chapter 34

  For the Love of Money

  “Money . . . Money . . . Moneeeeyyyyyyyy. . . .

  You wanna do things, do things, do things, good things with it.

 
Talk about cash money

  Talk about cash money—dollar bills, y’all.”

  The O’Jays’ 1973 hit single “For the Love of Money” played on repeat from Rydah’s Beats by Dre Pill.

  Rydah, Tallhya, and Simone celebrated their victory of outsmarting the guys who had caused them all types of hurt and pain by singing, dancing, and playing in more than six million dollars in cash. Being around so much money made them euphoric. The sisters were on a rush that had them riding higher than the thirty-story condo that overlooked the city of Miami.

  Tallhya lowered the volume slightly on the portable speaker. “God bless mu’fucking America,” she said, worn out from doing splits and the Roger Rabbit as she took her seat at the table. Rydah and Simone followed suit. The table was overrun with money; more money than a middle-class family made in a lifetime.

  “I still can’t believe we really did this shit.” Tallhya shook her head in disbelief. “We actually pulled this shit off.”

  Rydah said, “I told you that there was more than one way to skin a cat, didn’t I?”

  “We are waaaay smarter than those motherfuckers, and it had to be a better way to do it than us doing it.”

  “You sure did.” Tallhya had to admit it. “That shit was easy.”

  “We literally made them bozos do all our dirty work for us, and we just collected on the back end.”

  “Pimps up, hoes down! We pimped the hell out of them,” Rydah said.

  “We sure did,” Tallhya said. “You should’ve seen that nigga’s look on his face. I think he shitted a brick after he made eye contact with me.”

  The girls laughed.

  “And the driver, that was the guy named Tiger, the guy who was trying to holla at me and I shot him down. And the other guy was Ken. The girl Charlotte that Buffy knew from church, Ken was supposed to be her boyfriend, but it was all larceny. All that shit was one big scam.”

  “And that’s why we came up,” Tallhya said with a funny face.

  “And we deserve every penny of this cash,” Simone said, looking at the all the cash on the table. There was still, what seemed to be countless more bags in the corner, waiting to be opened and counted. “This is it, sisters! We are set for life, and we can do what we want. But most importantly, we can live happily ever after.”

  In the bliss of everything, Rydah happened to look up, and she couldn’t help but notice the words Breaking News flashing across the 80-inch flat-screen television.

  “Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Rydah said, grabbing the remote and turning up the volume.

  “This is Lisa Sanchez from WYGH-Action News, Miami, reporting live from outside a bank on Seventh Avenue, where a murder and armored truck robbery took place early this afternoon on this hot, Miami day.” The reporter was standing in front of the yellow crime scene tape in front of the bank.

  “This morning, Theodore ‘Teddy’ Solomon kissed his wife good-bye and left for work, as he had done for the last thirty years. When he got off, he’d planned to stop and pick up a rental tux for his retirement party. The party would include his loving wife of forty years, his three biological children, and the twenty-seven foster kids he had taken into his home over the years. The retirement party was planned for tomorrow evening, celebrating his thirty years of devoted service to the Cashmore Armored Truck Company. However, those plans, along with his life, were both highjacked at the hands of what authorities believe to be four dangerous, masked men.”

  Lisa took a dramatic pause, looking at the notes on her phone.

  “Now,” she continued, “the video you are about to see is very graphic, and should not be viewed by children or anyone with a weak stomach to violence.”

  Lisa looked into the camera with a sympathetic face as she proceeded with the news.

  “Mayhem and madness started this afternoon when Truck 651 was making its final pick up at the First National Republic Bank, when Mr. Solomon took his final walk out of the building. He was only two steps away from the truck and the rest of his life when it went down. When Michael Fuqua opened the door to let Mr. Solomon back inside, a masked man assaulted him with high-grade pepper spray. Then, the assailants shot Mr. Fuqua in the head, which then gave them full control over the truck carrying millions of dollars.”

  Surveillance footage from the area cameras ran across the screen, showing the masked suspects murder the guards and load a white van with the stolen money.

  “If you look to the left of the screen you can see the man driving the van monitoring a stopwatch. When they reached the designated time, they stopped, leaving more than three million dollars behind. Then they shot the driver of the truck, Riccardo Santana, in the head, and drove off.”

  “Oh, shit!” Tallhya jumped up from the table.

  Her sisters paid her no mind.

  Simone fanned her quiet, while Rydah turned the volume on the television up a few more notches.

  “Don’t shush me!” said Tallhya

  “Three honorable men are dead. An undisclosed amount of money is missing. Such a sad day for the devoted security officers and the people of Miami.” The reporter lowered her eyes, shaking her head as if she herself were in mourning. “Our condolences go out to the families of these three men. Back to you, John.”

  The screen shot back to a camera inside the studio to the male news anchor.

  “So sad, Lisa.”

  “Yes it is, John”

  “Now, Lisa, we know that you devote your life to being the first to deliver the latest and most accurate news stories.”

  “I truly do, John.”

  Tallhya said, “You bitches better not shut me down. I think we may be in real fucking trouble.”

  Rydah hushed her sister. “Let’s hear the entire piece before we jump to any conclusions. This is where the story gets good. This chick right here always has some shit for yo’ ass. She always gets the low down on everything and takes pride in delivering the tea before anybody else.”

  The camera shot back to Lisa. “Now there’s something,” she said, “that I found quite interesting, and so did the authorities.” Lisa worked the viewers as she confidently sucked the camera in with her ocean-blue eyes. “What most people don’t know is that armored trucks are used to move much more than just money. Although we usually assume the trucks are carrying cash, these vehicles may be transporting anything of significant value, and this was the case here today.” She used her hands to express herself, putting up one finger.

  Tallhya said, “Y’all listening to this bitch when I’m trying to tell you that we are fucked. Fucked in the ass with no lube. No Vaseline. No nothing!”

  Lisa Sanchez went on to say, “I happen to find it mind-boggling that this particular armored vehicle, Truck 651, was carrying highly sensitive and classified electronic files of the FBI’s undercover operatives, witness protection lists, and some of the FBI’s top informants’ relocation addresses and pictures, along with more top secret and very sensitive, highly classified information.”

  Lisa looked into the camera and put up another finger to try to make her point. “Now, the fact that millions of dollars were left behind makes me think that the money wasn’t the motive, but the information was. And the money was just a perk.”

  Then, Lisa looked into the camera, threw up her hands, and shrugged her shoulders. “This is just my own personal theory and observation, which does not reflect the views or opinions of the powers that be here at WYGH-Action News, Miami.”

  After the brief disclaimer she said, “I haven’t been able to get the authorities or police to confirm or deny that the information was removed from the truck. However, I have a source that is absolutely positive that Truck 651’s manifest did indeed indicate that such files had been picked up and were being transporting to the Federal Reserve Bank to be held overnight, and were then to be moved to the Pentagon on Monday. Again,” she said, proudly breaking the news story, “it is not confirmed that this information was stolen. This is just my two cents, and as always, it’s my du
ty to keep you abreast of all info as it becomes available.

  “This is Lisa Sanchez, and do note that I’m the first and only anchor on scene here, allowed behind the yellow tape. Until next time . . .” She smiled. “Back to you, John.”

  Rydah was already up from the table, going through the other bags that they hadn’t counted yet, looking for the jump drives that Lisa had spoken about.

  “You think we have that too?” Simone asked as she got up from the table, standing nearby, anxious to see if they had it.

  Tallhya came over, standing between the two sisters. “Why y’all over here searching for damn rats and shit? The same way they got that footage from outside the bank, they can get footage from one of the buildings where we jacked the Suburban.”

  Rydah looked up from the bags of money she was searching through. “Bitch, that’s what your ass been whining and throwing a tantrum for?”

  Tallhya looked at Rydah like she wanted to smack her. “For once, when I need you to be fucking serious, you all relaxed. This is the shit that can send our asses to the pen for fucking life, bitch! And usually you are the more mature one, and you are taking this shit lightly.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Rydah said nonchalantly. “I disarmed every camera within half a mile of there.”

  “What?” Tallhya knew nothing about disarming no cameras. “When? And how you know to do that shit?”

  “That’s why I was running a few minutes behind schedule, because I was setting up a device that distorts digital cameras for up to a half mile. If a bitch was in the vicinity and wanted to make a Snapchat on her phone, she was shit out of luck. Equipment and towers were down.”

  Tallhya wasn’t sure how something like that worked, but she was glad that it did. She said, “You the best, sis.”

  “Awww, hell,” Simone said. “You two bitches done drove me to smoke.” Her phone rang. “I’m going on the balcony to take a smoke and talk to Chase.”