The Armored Car
It was a good day.
Franklin drove along in silence, engine thrumming, the big wheels of his armored car humming on the pavement. It was early on a chilly November morning, on a back road to a small town. Generally the drivers were instructed to stick to main routes, but Franklin wasn’t all that big on instructions, and this way was the shorter route to his destination, in this case, a sizable department store.
Armored car drivers are from diverse backgrounds. All are trained to protect their cargo, but are not particularly well-paid. Average, I guess, is about fifteen bucks an hour. Franklin’s best pay was from being a route driver for UPS, a great job for the busy man. But Franklin just hadn’t been up to it, and sought something a little less active. Thus he was driving for IronWay, a smallish armored car company from a nearby city.
Suddenly, beside Franklin’s vehicle came a *THRUMP* and a teetering crash, and suddenly the armored vehicle found its progress blocked by a flaming fallen tree. A big one. To his left there was a steep bank and to his right, a deep ditch, so the only way out was back. Franklin, wide awake now, threw the truck into reverse and hit the accelerator, backing squarely into another fallen tree. This one, at least, wasn’t flaming.
So, this was a definite robbery, and Franklin, his heart in his throat, suddenly regretted his decision to work for IronWay. Surely this would be seen as his fault, because he’d been driving a secondary road.
The masked face that suddenly appeared next to him in his drivers side window was neither welcome nor a surprise.
But he really might have been, because the man behind the mask was, little doubt, more worried about the events than was Franklin. Joseph was an ordinary man, not at all the kind of man one would expect to have robbing you. But he was desperate, a man working two jobs already and still not making enough to feed his household.
Actually that wasn’t true, and Joseph knew it, but he’d fallen behind due to taxes...property taxes, sales taxes, employment taxes, per capita taxes. Taxes on grocery items and on pet food, and on fuel oil and on gasoline. And that was without even considering what the federal government carved from his paychecks. What he needed was a break, a cash infusion, but he didn’t have the credit for a loan and couldn’t afford a payment, anyway.
The robbery was the only way. He knew that too.
So this was a one-time measure, a hopeful stunt, a shot in the dark, a chance for freedom from financial fear, and ruin. All that stood between him and success was a thin sheet of bulletproof glass, which was fine, because Joseph hadn’t brought bullets. He’d come armed with a look-alike bb gun and a box of road flares duct-taped to a piece of plastic tarp. He held both of them up for the driver to see. “Open up! Or I’ll blow the door off! Shut that fuckin’ truck off!”
Franklin, looking at the road flares, suddenly felt some relief. He cracked the door open.
“I can’t roll the windows down in this truck, man, whatta ya think? Where’s the wires? Those are road flares!”
Joseph was stronger, and quicker. He grabbed the door and flung it open. “Think I’m kiddin? Hand me your weapon!”
The bb gun had an enlarged bore at the end and looked real enough. Franklin decided not to push his luck. He reached, and handed Joseph his 9 mm semi-automatic pistol.
“Look, this truck is empty. I was on my way to pickup, it’s morning, not afternoon. There’s nothing to steal.”
Joseph reddened beneath his mask, suddenly feeling stupid. He’d thought the whole thing out, but hadn’t thought about the time of day.
“Well all right then, gimme your wallet.”
“My wallet! You stopped an armored car to pick my wallet? Go home, man, call it a day!”
“Must be carrying some cash, then, right? Fork it over.”
“There’s less than a hundred bucks in it, I don’t wanna replace the cards, and my drivers license. The company’s gonna fire me as it is!”
Actually Franklin was carrying more, and he didn’t want to lose it.
“Tell you what. I lied, I’m carrying the cash for the registers, all set to place in the drawers, two hundred dollars each times ten. Would you take that, and leave me my wallet?”
Joseph thought.”Open up the back.”
“Nah I’ll bring it up here.”
“Open it!”
Franklin complied, fuming. Now this man would know about the strongboxes, loaded with cash to replenish the automated checkouts.
“So, what are those? No money, huh?”
“Strongboxes.”
“What’s in ‘em?”
“Cash. It’s the bills and change required to replenish the automated store self-checkouts. Each one is a mini-ATM. Go ahead, take ‘em. Gotta be about $170,000 in there.”
“Do you have the keys?”
“Nope. Gettin’ into them is, up to you.”
“Gimme the register reloads.”
Franklin complied.
“Now, get back in the truck. Oh and by the way? This is a bb gun.”
“That’s okay,” Franklin replied. “That Sig you took isn’t loaded.”
As he climbed back into the truck, Franklin heard a chainsaw start, then watched in surprise as Joseph cut the burnt tree out of the way. He was just as surprised that Joseph seemed to disappear, after that. The only thing that had changed was that there was still a downed tree behind him, and he was $2,000 lighter.
Franklin started the truck, amazed. He’d still lose his job, of course, for driving an alternate route and getting robbed as a result. And even if he didn’t, an opportunity had presented itself. After all, who would ever believe that the robber had made off with just two thousand dollars?
So, just two hundred feet further up the road was an abandoned railway shack, one of those octagonal concrete buildings the railroad used to put along the tracks. I don’t know what they were for, shelter for an attendant? The roof was long gone, the tracks had been removed and the railroad ties had rotted into the landscape, but the concrete octagon still stood, perhaps fifty feet from the road. Franklin stopped and hurriedly stashed the strongboxes in that shack, no doubt intending to come back for them. Then he drove on, after casting furtive looks in every direction. He saw no one.
Now on a different day I might have done differently. This was one of those odd situations that isn’t supposed to come up, but it did. Just before daybreak I had moved into a deer blind, well-hidden in the brushy woods not a hundred feet from where the truck had been stopped. I watched Joseph approach on foot, carrying a chainsaw and a backpack on his back, and then he stood and looked up and down that road. Then I watched him fashion two collars out of bedsheets around a tree, one high and one low, and he soaked them both with gasoline. Fascinated, I watched from my position across the road as he notched that tree and another one deeply, with his chainsaw. From start to finish the truck may have been there for all of five minutes. Joseph came on foot, and he left on foot.
Now I know Joseph, and I’ve always believed him to be an honest man. I suppose we all have our moments, desperate times and whatnot, but Joe never came back, having no idea the truck had been unloaded nearby. However I did, and after the cops had come and checked out the scene, I recovered those strongboxes, and I opened them, with hammer and chisel. Poor folks that lived thereabouts all enjoyed a gift of cash left, somewhere. Somewhere they would find it. Joseph was included. I didn’t need any of it, myself.
Mighta kept a bit of it, though.
I called IronWay and asked for Franklin because I knew who he was, too. They told me he got a job at FedEx. Joseph must have gotten what he needed that day, but I know for sure, he won’t run out of quarters, anytime soon. It just tickles the crap outa me that an insurance company took the hit.
God bless America, land of taxes.
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