“No,” snapped the manager. “We have to do what they say. If we try to screw around with this, they will kill us.”
“They’ve already killed one person,” said Stone. “They may not want to leave any witnesses behind.”
“We haven’t seen their faces,” countered the bank manager as the customer tied to him nodded in agreement. “So we can’t identify them.”
“Seeing someone’s face is not the only way to ID them,” Robie pointed out.
“We’re not doing anything,” barked the manager. “Nothing.”
He sat down in a corner, forcing the woman tied to him to do the same. He studied his hands and avoided their gazes.
Stone and Robie moved away and looked around the room. There had been a phone in here but it had been removed, as had a fax. There were a few pieces of furniture, and two cheap prints on the wall, and a pitcher of water and some glasses on a credenza. On the wall were some outlets and USB ports and a phone line and port for the fax.
Robie said, “They were thorough.”
“They obviously had plans of the bank layout beforehand.”
Robie nodded. “And they knew the bank protocols. With the closing of the vault and all.”
“Good prep all around. But they didn’t have to kill Charlie. That’s going to cost them.” Stone turned to one of the female bank tellers. “What could they want that’s not in the vault?” he asked in a low voice out of earshot of the bank manager.
She looked nervously over at her boss.
Stone said, “He’s entitled to his opinion, but it doesn’t mean he’s correct. I have some experience in these matters and I find it highly unlikely that they will leave here with us still alive.”
She said in a low, quavering voice, “We received a shipment of blank credit cards, about ten thousand of them.”
“Aren’t they in the vault?” asked Robie.
“Not yet. They just arrived today. We were going to load them into the vault after we closed. They’re in the storage room in cardboard boxes.”
“Blank credit cards,” said Stone.
The teller nodded. “You can steal them and then sell them. Criminals can input stolen IDs on them and they can be used as legit cards.”
“But if the bank knows they’ve been stolen won’t they simply put a stop on all of them?” asked Stone.
“If they can get the cards operational before the bank finds out, they can run up a lot of charges. They can also reencode the magnetic strip on the back with stolen account data. The bank has had problems with that in the past. They lose millions of dollars that way.”
Stone did not look convinced by this. “What else?”
“Well, we have customer account data on our computers. They could download that and sell it or use it to encode either homemade credit or debit cards or reencode stolen ones.”
“That might be it,” said Stone.
Now Robie did not look convinced. “But can’t they hack into the bank’s computer systems and do the same thing? Why come here and kill somebody? Now they’ve got a murder charge against them.”
“I have no idea,” said the woman, who started to shake and looked like she might be sick.
“Here, have some water,” said Stone. He crossed the room with Robie and filled up a glass with water and brought it back to the woman.
She thanked him and drank it down.
Stone and Robie walked off and stood in a corner.
“Do you hear that?” Stone asked.
Robie nodded.
Stone said, “Sounds like someone sawing.”
“And I don’t think they’re cutting into the vault. Not with a hand saw.”
“And if they were going to rob the vault they wouldn’t have closed it.”
Robie added, “And the blank credit cards are in cardboard boxes. You don’t need a saw to open cardboard.”
“Which means they are trying to go from here to somewhere else,” reasoned Stone. “And I wonder where that ‘somewhere else’ could be.”
CHAPTER 3
Stone looked at Robie. “Know the configuration of this mall well?”
“Not really, no.”
“I do. I’ve been coming to this bank for years. And while I don’t really have the financial means to shop at the stores here, I have walked around this mall many times.”
“So what’s in the vicinity?” asked Robie. “What’s the possible target?”
“There’s a jewelry store on the floor above. A fur shop next to it.”
“Jewels are easier to get away with than furs. But aren’t the stores open now?”
“The fur shop is closed on Saturdays. The jewelry shop closes at two today.”
“So it could be either one,” said Robie. He looked over at the door. “You think they plan to kill us?”
“I don’t want to wait to find out,” replied Stone. He peered closely at Robie. “You like your job?”
Robie stared back at him. “My job?”
“When were you assigned it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? I thought it was obvious.”
“What do you mean?”
“You just picked today to do some banking?”
“Saturday is errand day.”
“But you claimed you’d never been here before.”
“No, I said I didn’t know the configuration of the mall.”
Stone smiled. “My mistake.”
But in that look it seemed that Robie could sense that he was the one who had made the mistake.
Stone looked away when the door to the room opened. It was Chase.
He said, “Just to reiterate, if you cause no trouble, you will not be harmed. The reverse of that is also true.” He glanced over at Robie and Stone when he said this. Then he looked at the bank manager. “You, come with me.”
The color drained from the manager’s face. “But I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve just been sitting here.”
“Now.” Chase pointed his pistol and the manager hastily rose to his feet. “And just remember, I don’t need a reason to kill you,” added Chase. He cut him loose from the woman he was tethered to, put his arm around the man’s shoulders, and propelled him out of the room. The door shut and locked behind them.
Robie said, “What do you think that was about?”
Stone shrugged. “Possibly he’s recruiting an informant. Or else the man has some more security codes that they need.”
“If they want him to be an informant I think he’ll finger us pretty quickly. The head guy is suspicious of us already.”
“Which means we probably should act with some urgency.”
Stone looked over at the fax and communications port.
“Got a way to turn that into a working phone?” asked Robie.
“Actually, I might,” replied Stone cryptically.
He took the pitcher of water and poured it into the slots of the electrical outlet. There was a loud pop, a flash of electrical current, the smell of smoke, and the lights went out.
There were screams and a few seconds later the door burst open.
Stone had by then set down the pitcher of water and stepped far away from the outlet.
A flashlight beam cut across them.
“What the hell is going on?” barked a voice. It was Chase.
Stone called out. “We don’t know. The lights just went out.”
Robie added, “And we smell smoke. There might be a fire. Did you guys hit something out there?”
They heard Chase mutter, “Shit.” Then he said, “Out this way, now. Follow the beam of my light.”
They did so and were soon back in the main bank area. It was dark out here as well. Stone couldn’t tell if the lights were still on outside in the mall or not.
One of the other men sidled up to Chase and whispered, “This is not good. We tried the circuit breaker but something got fried. Maybe we cut a line with the saw.”