Chinga wasn't, though. He seemed miffed that I had stolen his thunder. Apparently he planned to compensate for the perceived loss of prestige by being especially obnoxious.
"Get me the money, baldy," he snarled to the whimpering tub of a man who was apparently the bank manager, "or I'll shoot your balls off – if you've got any."
The manager had made enough loans to be able to read a person's eyes. He was smart enough to know that Chinga's meant business, and quickly and efficiently excused himself into the vault. Once he had realized he could give up the bank's money in lieu of his life, his spirits had improved remarkably.
Chinga, however, remained the same. While the manager was in the vault scooping up the loot, Chinga was busy terrorizing the school teacher. First he made her come out of her hiding place; then, at gunpoint, he forced her to strip.
It was a grotesque scene. The children couldn't stop tittering as their teacher became nude. The novelty of her nakedness made them oblivious to her degrading and desperate plight forced to strip in public by a madman with a gun.
She was a real beauty, too. She hadn't looked like much when she was dressed, but with her clothes off all that changed. To keep such a gorgeous body under wraps, I reasoned she must be a terribly modest, possibly religious, woman. This had to be a terribly excruciating experience for her.
"Look, Scott," I overheard one kid say to another, "you can see Miss Turner's bush."
"You mean her cunt?"
"Yes!"
"I don't believe it."
"Look over your shoulder."
When he did he was joined by about ten other kids who had over heard the conversation. All of them looked straight at their teacher's sleek beaver being probed by the barrel of a pistol. Yes, Chinga was sticking his gun into the frightened woman's pussy.
Just when things really could have gotten ugly, the bank manager fortunately appeared with a dolly piled high with numerous canvas sacks of money. "There's no more where this came from," he cheerfully announced. "I'm afraid your withdrawal just about wipes us out."
Although he sounded like a cowardly jerk, the little guy was really doing everybody else a big favor. The manager's eagerness to turn over the bank's money was the only thing keeping Chinga from going nuts and shooting up the place.
"All right, Angie," he called to me, stupidly blurting my name in public, "you take the money out to the car."
"What are you going to do?" I asked suspiciously.
"Listen, bitch," he suddenly exploded, "who do you think is running this caper?"
When I saw his trigger finger twitch and the gun was still pointed at the school teacher's snatch I shut up and did what he said. Anything could set him off now.
I tried to lift the sacks manually from the dolly, but couldn't budge them. When Chinga hissed impatiently at me to hurry, I decided to steal the dolly along with the money and began wheeling our plunder toward the door. The last I looked, before I left the building, Chinga had the barrel of his gun back in the teacher's crotch.
I had a tough time trying to get the money into the car. I couldn't seem to budge a single sack without a great deal of effort.
Finally I got interested enough to look inside of one of them. It was filled with money all right, but it was made of copper and packaged fifty at a time in red wrappers instead of printed on green paper.
"Jesus, pennies!" I heedlessly blurted in the center of the parking lot. "We just stole the bank's supply of pennies!"
Nobody heard me anyway. Because just as I finished speaking all attention in the shopping center was abruptly riveted to the gunfire reverberating from the bank.
I closed my eyes, imagining the potential carnage of innocent people. When I opened them here came Chinga, pushing in front of him a couple of the kids and the naked schoolteacher.
"Hostages!" he proudly informed me as his entourage reached the Camaro. "If we don't get a clean getaway, we blow their fucking heads off. Got any objections?"
I wasn't about to argue with him. I just hoped he didn't ask me about the money.
He did, though. After he'd herded his captives into the back seat at prodding gunpoint, he noticed that the bank sacks were still piled on the dolly.
"What the hell is going on?" he thundered, actually pointing the gun at me in the blindness of frustration. "Why isn't this shit in the car?"
"It's pennies, Chinga, pennies," I woefully informed him. "We robbed the bank of all its pennies."
"I don't believe you!" he shrieked. However, when he furiously kicked one, of the sacks, he changed his mind. He acknowledged over and over again, that they were "Goddamn fuckin' pennies" all right, as he hopped in pain from his stubbed toe.
"Come on, let's get out of here," I finally took charge. "We can't go back to the bank, and the pennies aren't worth the trouble of loading into the car. The cops are probably already on their way, and they don't care if we robbed pennies or millions."
So he'd get the point, I got in behind the wheel and started the motor running. When he still hadn't come, I gunned the engine like I was going to leave him hopping and swearing in the parking lot.
That brought him around, and he slipped into the passenger's side just before the rubber of the rear tires bit into the pavement and we took off. As we careened onto the freeway at over 70, he protested that he wanted to drive, but I paid no attention to him. I wanted to see if I could hit a hundred.
The law enforcement in that area must have been even more inept than we were as crooks, because, with an inexperienced woman at the wheel, we completely eluded them. I didn't even know in which direction we were headed – and didn't care as long as I didn't see any cops.
Our hostages had done a lot of screaming at first, but had finally settled down. The teacher put on some of the cum-stained jeans and an equally crusty sweater, and the concealment of her body seemed to improve her spirits from hysteria to merely glum. The kids – a boy and a girl about ten – had begun to play license plate games with the passing cars.
Finally, when everybody had to piss and was starving to death, we had to stop. Still rejecting Chinga's advice, I decided on a nice, clean, out-of-the-way motel. "Even if we are on the run," I told him, "I'm tired of sleeping on the ground."
When we'd checked in, I sent Chinga out to a fast-food place I'd seen nearby for hamburgers and fries. He was still so stunned by the way I'd taken over that he was putty in my hands. "And bring back a lot of catsup," I sort of rubbed it in. "You know how I love it."
Alone in the motel room with the hostages, I tried to get acquainted with them so they'd be less likely to panic. "I'm Angie," I said, "and believe me, I don't want to hurt you. I'm your friend now, what are your names?"
There was a pause, and then the little girl went first. "My name is Robin and I'm ten." With a lithe, young body that had not yet turned into adolescent gawkiness, and an angelic fate, she was an adorable child.
"And I'm Chuck," the boy said. He was a rugged specimen, but still young enough to have a face full of freckles.
The teacher just stood there. Drooping in the baggy sweater and jeans, she was back to being homely again.
"And I already know your name, of course, Miss Turner," I tried to alleviate the damper she put on the situation.
It was no use. The sound of her name had apparently triggered a relapse, and she was back in hysteria. Without Chinga's gun monitoring everything, I responded to her grief by softly embracing her.
"Don't worry," I soothed her as I put her weeping head on my shoulder. "Everything's going to be all right."
"But that man is such a beast!" she wailed.
"Don't worry, I won't let him hurt you," I assured her.