Roberto was in the wrong place at the wrong time. On his way there, he saw Sandra and her father taking hand guns from their car. He now knew they were going to raid the bank. Then they turned those guns toward him. It scared him.
"We're very sorry you saw this item," said the father, holding his gun up to Roberto. "You seem like a nice-enough person."
Sandra said, "But Daddy...If we kill him, where will we put him?"
Roberto: "So your target is the bank?"
"After we take care of you…." said the father. Then he turned away toward Sandra: "We can shoot him in the back seat, and probably no one will notice. They will think he is sleeping off a bad night drinking,"
Roberto said, "I don't mean to clash with your plans…but…Well, if I have the choice, I guess I won't get in your car."
"You'd better do it," said the father, waving the gun.
"What if I don't?" said Roberto, rejecting the demand. "You're going to shoot me anyway…Why should I make it easy?"
"He's got a point, Daddy," said Sandra. "It's not good to just execute people in public places like this. Especially not before you go to rob a bank. It would be like a big advertisement."
"I don't like this at all," said the father. "I'm just an independent businessman, and now we attach this… problem."
"On the other hand," said Roberto, "I could make it much easier for you to rob the bank. Use your brains instead of your muscles….Would you like to meet the bank president?"
"Sure," the father laughed. "We'll leave him our card and do business later. We'll need a bank to put all this money in."
"Be serious, Daddy. This way we wouldn't have to shoot him here. We could shoot him inside at some quiet place in the bank."
"Or not shoot me at all!" Roberto offered, invading their talk.
"So what is your plan, that is so much better than ours?"
"Doesn't really sound like you have a plan," said Roberto. "How would you like the bank president -- the boss of the whole place -- to take you around to where the cash is, and tell people to put it in your bags?"
"I don't like it," said the father.
"I like it a lot," said Sandra. "So now…how do we just walk past the doors of the bank without our guns being caught by the metal-sensor?"
"I tell my friend Benny to shut them off."
"Benny is who?" said the father, asking Roberto to define Benny.
"Benny is my friend the bank president, Benjamin Hammer."
"That's right Daddy. It said that on a door in the bank when I was in there yesterday."
"So how do we know he will do that?"
"I'll call on his personal phone," said Roberto, "And you can hear us -- every word."
"Then he'll know we're going to rob the bank. So what does that achieve?"
Roberto said, "Because then he'll help. We just give him part of it. You see, bank presidents don't make that much money, really, so he usually can't get his hands on the bank money because he has to account for everything. This way, you can give him -- and me -- part of what you take, and it makes it really easy for you."
“He makes sense, Daddy.”
“If we split it with them, they can’t go to the police,” said the father. “But I'm not going to like it.”
“Why, because you don’t get to shoot somebody?” said Sandra.
“Ok, Ok…You're a good kid. We’ll do it. But, I know there has to be something wrong with this,” he said. And then to Roberto: “You have the speaker on loud when you call him, so we can hear too.”
Roberto dialed Benny on the cell, and the three of them gathered around the small device. “Benny? Yeah Benny I have two people here with me…Now just listen. They are going to rob the bank in a few minutes and they will kill me if you don’t help them. So I’m going to bring them in now to your office.”
“To my office?” said Benny. “You’re bringing bank robbers to my office?”
“Right…And, Benny, I’m going to want you to disable the machine that finds metal on them, OK? I’ll explain later how this will work out OK for us, but right now I’m trying to avoid being killed. Please just say Yes, or they shoot.”
There was a pause for a few seconds. “Ok, yes. But will it be quiet. I don't want any riots.”
“No riots…We’ll wait five minutes for you to call back and say that the metal signaling machine is turned off.”
“OK, said Benny. And he called back in two minutes. “Ok, I’m ready.”
“If they have police waiting, we blow you away,” said the father.
“Daddy, they just say 'blow you away' in movies. Nobody says that now,” said Sandra.
“He knows what I mean,” said the father as they walked toward the doors of the bank.
They went through the doors and no one inspected them. The machine was turned off as promised. They went in a little parade straight to the bank president’s office. Inside, Benny shut the door. “Now, uh…Roberto could you introduce me to your ….friends.. here?
“Skip the introductions,” the father said, showing his gun. “We want you to take us around and fill up these bags with cash…no metal, all paper.”
"I'll put my bag under my coat and make my exit looking like I'm pregnant," Sandra suggested.
“I’ve got a better way,” said Benny. “You let Roberto and me out to operate for a minute, and we’ll put more money resources -- in any account you want -- than you could possibly carry away here.”
“Money resources?...I like the feel of real money,” the father said. “You bankers are full of tricks to keep people’s money. That’s why I never feel bad robbing you.”
“We’ll really need to do it right away, or we might lose the change. We need to do it before 2 o’clock. That’s ten minutes from now.”
“How much would we get?” asked Sandra.
“Here at this bank, you might get $100,000. I would give you $1,000,000 delivered to any bank you want. That's 1000 percent more. A wise investment," said Benny.
“What is this? A laboratory for simple-minded people? You say all we have to do is trust you? A banker. Is that it?” The father laughed. "You must be taking some drug…"
“But you would trust us," inserted Roberto, "Because if the authorities could demonstrate we were taking money for you, they would throw us in jail.”
“Not if it was because of our threat…So I figure there is some really high finance here. You two are exporting a lot more than that to yourselves…Is that right?”
“A little more,” said Benny.
“We’d need to get a lot more of it,” said the father, waving the gun again.
“Ok…$2,000,000.
“Daddy, that could set us up pretty well. We could get congress to vote to give us an embassy in some nice warm country. Anyway, for sure, we won't starve. That much money will buy a lot of potatoes."
“I think they’ve got even more than that…” said the father, suddenly very happy. "Maybe we can drain all the money from this bank's computers..."
Roberto stepped in. “And in about 5 minutes, maybe no one gets anything at all.”
“Or perhaps a little sooner than that,” said Mrs. Mendez, entering the room and showing her identification as a police officer. “I think I should put the brakes on this right now. I was listening at the door. You were planning with robbers to rob your own bank.”
“Not really, you see I just now met them…" said Benny, "And well…they were going to kill Roberto…”
“We only said that,” said Sandra. "We didn't mean it."
“He meant it,” said Roberto, pointing toward the father.
“And I still do. So now we have a law officer in on it. You got a gun?”
“I was just doing an undercover investigation, and didn’t want to go through the bank’s metal signal. I didn't know I might have to suppress a robbery.”
"Nothing in your boot?" asked Sandra. Mrs. Mendez shook her head.
“So we’ve got all the guns,” said the father, smiling.
“Looks like it,” said Mrs. Mendez.
Roberto stepped up. “I think I have a solution.”
“Short of daddy shooting everybody?” asked Sandra.
“Yes…In this plan, Daddy gets to shoot no one…Sorry,” he said to the father. Then to all Roberto said. “But if we can all work together on this, we can all make it out alive and rich.”
“Don't celebrate yet," said Mrs. Mendez, "You forget that I am a policewoman with a job to do.”
“Does the job pay you $2,000,000?” Roberto said. Benny was over in the corner, hitting his head against the wall.
“What’s he doing?” Sandra asked.
“Losing money,” Roberto said. “But back to the question. In the eating place, I suspected you were a police officer by the way your skin looked when you lied, Mrs. Mendez. So you can’t lie now.”
“Very interesting. You could get a job with the police with that skill.”
“Maybe yesterday,” he said, “But now, for everyone to leave here happy depends upon you taking the $2,000,000 that Mr. Hammer just offered you.”
The father stepped forward with his gun. “I believe,“ he said, “I see a perfect WIN-WIN-WIN situation here. I read about it in one of my business books. You could make that happen.”
“Except for the fact that I am a policewoman,” said Mrs. Mendez.
“That’s why we must have you involved as a part of this,” the father said. “You must take money so that we are safe from the police.”
“My job is to enforce the law. I would never do that while I live,” she said. “Never.”
Benny stepped in again, tired of hitting his head on the wall. “We can arrange exports to your accounts that the police will never find.”
“And also, we can arrange for you NOT to live. We have the gun,” said Sandra. “You are wonderful, Daddy. This is a WIN-WIN-WIN. So that’s the deal,” she turned to Mrs. Mendez. “You take $2,000,000 and let them export the money to us…OR…we just kill you and these guys transfer the money plus your $2,000,000 to us. Now please, think like an adult. Surely you don't mean 'never'”
Mrs. Mendez said slowly. “Well, maybe not ‘never’.”
“Ok, great,” Benny said, “Roberto and I will do this out on the main floor as we have planned it. Then we will come back in and import it into your accounts. This will be automatic when I put in the right codes. The police will never know. No one will ever know. Even the government will never know that it missed getting money from a dead man…We are all in this...so we know no one will go to the police."
"Come on, Benny, let’s do it,” said Roberto.
Back in the room after all the money was exported, Benny was pouring drinks for everyone. Everyone was rich. Everyone was happy. They touched their glasses together to congratulate themselves.
“Just one thing makes me not like it,” the father said, smiling. “This somehow just doesn’t FEEL like we are robbing a bank.”
Sandra said kindly to her father: “Daddy…We’ll get over it."
Ready-to-Use
a.
achieve:
achieve your goals
b.
enforce:
enforce one’s rights
c.
congratulate: congratulate
on something
d. invest: invest money in something "If you are lucky you can invest your money in a business that becomes successful.
e.
away:
far away