The Flying Bandit Page 6

They were compatible. Janice found Robert caring and considerate; he didn’t hesitate to help around the apartment. Occasionally he could be quiet, almost sullen, but most of the time he was fun and they had lots of laughs together. Above all, he was interesting. He was terribly bright and seemed to know something about everything.

  Janice had an independent attitude that Robert found appealing. There was an aggressiveness about her that made her speak her mind and let her feelings be known. She had a quality bordering on dominance that gave her a raw sexual magnetism.

  The more time they spent together the more they recognized they were falling in love. This was a problem for Robert because he still wanted to go out to Vancouver. To make his departure less painful for Janice, he lied. He told her he had a good job waiting for him on a gas barge in Vancouver harbour. She said she understood and she wouldn’t stand in his way. But she also made it clear she loved him and would be waiting for him in Ottawa. Robert was torn. The longer he remained with Janice the more he was tempted to forget about going out west.

  When the construction company started paying him by cheque, it caused him some new problems. In order to cash his cheques without a lot of probing questions, Robert had to get an identification card from Money Mart. Using his few pieces of phoney ID he was able to procure a card from them that showed his photo and thumb print. This gave him a third piece of “legitimate” identification in the name of Robert Whiteman so that he could start saving his money in the bank. In establishing his bank account, he acquired even more personal identification in the form of a bank card. His persona as Robert Whiteman was becoming more and more firmly established.

  As his relationship with Janice blossomed Robert found himself in a dilemma. He wanted to tell Janice about his past but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He thought it would spoil things between them; he figured there was no way she could stay in love with an outlaw. He concluded that it was wiser to leave well enough alone and keep the truth to himself.

  On July 20th Janice threw Robert a small birthday party. She invited a few of her friends and bought him presents and a cake. Robert was extremely moved by her thoughtfulness and her generosity. He hadn’t had a birthday party since he was a little boy and it was astounding to him that someone could be so kind and considerate. It was the nicest thing that had happened to him in a very long time.

  He and Janice were deeply in love. In most respects, their life together was very satisfying. Sometimes Robert’s moodiness was difficult for her to handle, but other than that, they got along great.

  Then late in September, Robert was laid off work. Although this disturbed him, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Robert didn’t like his maintenance work. He felt it was demeaning and he resented taking orders. He was often late for work and frequently absent. However, it wasn’t his work performance that cost him his job. The company was downsizing and had amalgamated with their Sudbury office, and as a result, they had to let a lot of their employees go. Robert was just one of the many.

  At first he was upset, but when he thought about it, Robert realized being laid off gave him a good reason to depart for Vancouver. Even though he was ambivalent about leaving Janice, he decided the time was right for him to go.

  For Janice, his timing couldn’t have been worse. In August she learned that her father was suffering from terminal cancer. Janice and her dad had been very close and the news of his illness was unbearable for her. From the moment she heard the bad news about her dad, Robert was her primary support. Every time she asked, he drove her to Pembroke to see him. Robert sat with her for hours, listening as she released her feelings; through it all, he was completely understanding.

  Because of her father’s sickness, Robert stayed in Ottawa a little longer than he planned, but he didn’t give up on his idea of going to Vancouver. He was determined to leave once the initial shock had faded.

  Robert took her out to dinner and told her he was going. Janice tried to appear calm and reasonable but inside she was devastated. After all they had shared together she couldn’t believe he was just picking up and walking out of her life.

  “Why can’t you apply for another job here in Ottawa?” she suggested.

  Robert lied to her again.

  “Don’t you remember, I got a job waiting for me out there. A good job. I got to give it a try. I’m going to put together some real money and then come back to you.”

  Janice knew there was little to be gained by trying to change his mind. If he felt he had to go, she realized there was no sense standing in his way. Besides, she had got along fine after her split with her husband and she would get along fine when Robert left. It was important that she not let him see how painful this was to her. What made matters worse, she had good reason to suspect she was pregnant. But, since he was determined to leave, she was all the more resolved not to tell him about that.

  Towards the end of September Janice borrowed a car from a friend and drove Robert to the bus station. Although she was still angry with him for leaving, she had decided to see him off. It was a strained, unemotional departure; she wasn’t going to cry and she wasn’t going to beg him to stay. Before he got on board the bus, she gave him a kiss and said goodbye. By the time Robert got to his seat, she was gone.

  Leaving was not easy for him either. As soon as the huge bus began to move, he wanted to get off. Robert realized he was leaving one of the few people in his life that he had ever loved. But he was caught in the terrible bind of living a double life. He wanted her and needed her but staying with her made no sense. He could never tell her the truth about himself, about his past, escaping from jail and being a fugitive. If he did tell her about all that, she would probably leave him. She might even go further and turn him in to the police. He didn’t really believe she would do that but it was a possibility. On the other hand, if she accepted him as an outlaw, she would become an accomplice and could end up in deep trouble herself for harbouring a fugitive.

  Robert was not going to turn himself in and start over because he knew he was facing revocation of his parole and a long stretch in an American prison. There was only one way out of his dilemma. He had to go away, put some distance between them so he could think this thing through.

  But it was difficult to do. As soon as the bus pulled out of the station, Robert began to miss Janice. Whenever the bus stopped for any length of time, he called her collect. Robert told her he loved her and missed her. Janice told him she loved him and missed him too. She didn’t ask him to come back to Ottawa because she knew he would have to make that decision on his own. On the third phone call, Robert promised that if the job didn’t work out, he would come back right away so they could be together. The fact that he had no job in the first place seemed like a pointless thing to mention.

  The farther west he went the more he wanted to stop the bus and get off. Janice had made his life more beautiful, more comfortable and satisfying. With her, for the first time in a long while, he had found a fragile security, living a legitimate existence, not constantly looking over his shoulder, hounded by the fear that the police were on his trail. He missed Ottawa too. It had become his home, a safe haven for him. Yet here he was on a bus, leaving behind both his beautiful woman and his new found security. What he was doing made absolutely no sense.

  All these confusing thoughts rolled around in his head as he watched the cities go by: Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary. Wherever he was, he couldn’t get Janice out of his mind.

  When he got to Vancouver, Robert took a tiny room with cooking facilities for $25 a night at the Cobalt Hotel. He paid for two weeks in advance, then went to a bar and got drunk. The next day he headed down to the unemployment office but was disturbed to discover that most of the posted jobs of any value required a union card, which, of course, he didn’t have. To make things worse, he learned the unemployment rate in the city was very high and there were few jobs of any kind available. From the unemployment office, he walked around downtown Vancouver making half-hear
ted attempts to find even a menial job. It soon became obvious that there was nothing.

  He called Janice.

  “Jesus, Janice, I miss you. I’ve made a big mistake coming out here. My job fell through and there’s no work of any kind. I’m living in a rat trap and my money’s running low. This was a stupid idea.”

  “Well, come on home.” She missed him too but wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “Yeah, well maybe I will. But I’m going to tell you something, if I do, I’m not going to take the bus. I got saddle sores from riding that goddamn thing. I thought I was going to suffocate in there.”

  “Do you want me to send you some money?”

  “No. Not right now. I’ll work something out. I’ll hitch-hike back if I have to.”

  “Well work it out any way you can. I’ll be waiting for you. Let me know what you’re doing. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “OK. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.” Then he added, “Hey!”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. C’mon home when you can.”

  The next day he went to the unemployment office again, but it was the same old story; there were very few jobs and all of them required a union card. One job offered part time work washing dishes but he wasn’t about to stoop to that.

  Trying to decide what to do, he went for a walk through Stanley Park, an immense wooded preserve where giant fir trees line the shores of the Pacific Ocean. As he walked he tried to think of a way to resolve his present situation. No work. No prospects. No money. Wanting to go home to Ottawa. How to make it all work out? What to do? Where to begin? Many thoughts went through his mind but only one seemed to make any sense to him. That one idea kept coming back and coming back. It seemed like the only thing to do.

  He decided to rob a bank.

  CHAPTER 5

  Commitment

  Robert decided to rob the Eaton Trust on Howe Street. He cased it for two days, going in several times and checking out the other buildings nearby. Then, for hours, he sat on a bench across the street from it and made mental notes of everything he saw. It was perfect – small and right in the heart of the city. There was an alleyway outside the bank that led to an unlocked door in an office building. This opened onto a hallway that led to a coffee shop in another part of the building around the corner from the bank. The layout was too good to be true.

  As Robert suspected, security inside the bank was clearly lacking. Like most Canadian banks, the Eaton Trust had no security guard and no electronic surveillance. From the day he entered the country, Robert had noticed the lack of security in Canadian financial institutions. During the short time he was in Ottawa he couldn’t believe the number of bank robberies that had taken place there. When he examined their security, he knew the reason.

  Robert spent a lot of time thinking about how to pull off the Vancouver holdup with the least risk of being caught. He figured the key to a successful bank robbery was to wear a disguise. That way, no one in the bank could identify him. After the holdup he intended to get rid of the disguise as fast as possible and blend into a crowd. Robert could see that a disguised person could walk into the Eaton Trust Company, rob it, walk outside into the alleyway and then disappear into the hallway of the nearby office building. Here he could remove his disguise in the stairwell and come out the other end of the hallway into the coffee shop which was a long, safe way from the bank. He could be out of his disguise and having coffee before the police even arrived at the scene of the crime.

  Robert had everything worked out in his mind. His only problem was, he wasn’t sure he could do it. It was a big step backward into his former way of life and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back there. Every day, after sitting on the bench in front of the trust company, he returned to his room, flopped on his bed, and opened a bottle of rye. Between sips, he stared at the ceiling and tried to think things through. His mind was torn between the prospects of robbing that bank or getting a job and slugging it out for the rest of his life. He knew there was no future in robbing banks. But the more he thought about his situation, the more he was convinced that he had no future anyway. Even if he went straight as an arrow, all he had to do was make one tiny mistake, like getting a speeding ticket, and a smart cop could check him out and have him sent back to a U.S. federal prison.

  The only way he could have a future was to give himself up, do his time and start over. That was out of the question. He had 2,161 days remaining on his U.S. sentence, almost six years. He knew one thing for sure: he wasn’t going to give himself up.

  Maybe he could stay in Canada and work things out. Get a job, be with Janice, keep his nose clean. He realized that his chances of staying out of trouble were slim. Over the years, he’d been given a lot of opportunities, but every single time he had blown his chances and gone back to crime. People tried to make a big deal out of his mangled childhood and his psychological problems, but to him that was all baloney. He knew exactly what his problem was. He wanted money, lots of it, and he wanted to make it fast and easy. He had no intention of working an eight-to-five job; that was not his way of doing business. Where money was concerned, he had always chosen the easy way out. Robbing banks was an easy way to make a comfortable living. And robbing this little Canadian bank would be the easiest of all. He knew from experience that doing a robbery was hard on him. It would be stressful, but that was a small price to pay. He knew he could rob this bank and no one would ever catch him. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that this was his only way to go.

  Robert got off his bed and left the room. He went to a theatrical supply shop that rented costumes for theatre productions and masquerade occasions. While the clerk wasn’t looking, he stole a bushy moustache and left the store.

  Then he called Janice. Among other things, he told her, “I want to come home. I can’t find any work. I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

  “Well that’s fine. C’mon home. You know that I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Yeah, but I feel like such a jerk, coming all the way out here and then going right back.”

  “Don’t worry about that. The important thing is that we’ll be together. We can work out anything together.”

  “Yeah, I know but ... “

  “Do you need some money to pay for the trip home?”

  “No, I think I’ll be alright. I’ll let you know if I need some help. I should be coming home in a few days.”

  “Robert, I wasn’t going to tell you this but now that you’re coming back, there’s something you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Really!” he shouted. “For sure?”

  “For definitely sure,” she said with a smile in her voice. “How do you feel about that?”

  Robert was surprised at her sudden news but he convinced her he was delighted. He was very reassuring and that was just what she wanted to hear. Both of them laughed and carried on in the high spirits of their happiness. He ended the call by telling her he would let her know when he was flying in.

  Now he was even more resolute in his decision. A baby was coming, he wanted to go home, and he had no money; he had to rob that bank. At the same time, he knew that when he did, he was starting down a road that could only lead to heartache. He loved Janice and he was positive that he’d love the new baby, but he suspected that his time with them would not be long.

  It was difficult working up enough nerve to rob the bank. For three days in a row he took the plastic bag containing his disguise and went down to the Eaton Trust. He stood in front of it for hours, unable to summon the courage to rob it. He knew he was going to do it, he knew how he was going to do it, he knew he’d be satisfied once he did it, but he just couldn’t seem to take those first irreversible steps to get the job started.

  To break the impasse, he walked over to the Hotel Georgia and sat at the bar for over an hour. He didn’t drink, he just sat t
here thinking: Maybe he should call Janice and tell her he’s not coming back. Maybe he should call her and ask her to send out some money so he could fly home. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Finally, he got up, walked into the washroom, put on his exterior baggy clothes, glued on the moustache, and headed for the bank. When he walked in it was 12:20 p.m. He approached the customer counter, pretended to fill out a deposit slip, then took it to the teller nearest the front door. He could barely breathe. His chest felt as if there was a heavy weight on it. His throat felt as if it was clogged. He tried to cough but couldn’t. With his heart thumping in his chest, he passed the woman a note which read: “DO NOT PANIC. DO NOT PULL THE ALARM. GIVE ME THE MONEY IN YOUR DRAWER. I HAVE A GUN.”

  When the teller looked up into his face he showed her the bulge in his jacket pocket. She assumed he had a gun and followed his instructions. The whole thing was over in twenty seconds.

  As planned, once he left the bank Robert shed his disguise and went through the office building to the coffee shop. He knew he had gotten away with the robbery when no one followed him out into the alleyway. He also knew if the police didn’t catch him in the first minute after the robbery, they never would. From the coffee shop he walked a block towards the harbour to board the sea-bus that would take him across the bay to North Vancouver. As soon as he got on the ferry he raced to the washroom to urinate. His relief was so prolonged that by the time he was finished, they had almost reached the other side.

  After disembarking, he went to a fancy restaurant and treated himself to the most sumptuous meal he’d had since coming to Canada. While it was being prepared, he went to the washroom and sat in a cubicle to count his take. He had stolen a grand total of $650. Considering the anxiety he’d been through, it was disappointing, barely enough to get him home. More than anything, it represented a commitment. Whatever the consequences, he had made his decision. He was going to make his living robbing banks. He could see that with the paltry sum he had in hand he would have to rob another bank before he returned to Ottawa.