Willow Glen Heist Read online

  “I’d never target the same bank twice and I’d select banks where I could loitered undisturbed outside. So it would be a bank usually with a coffee shop nearby. I’d sit in the shop and watch the activity. Once I saw a merchant target that I thought was good, I’d go inside the bank in a variety of costumes and watch the merchant. When I was satisfied, I’d type up my note on a computer and print it at a Fedex shop or something like that. I would have my own merchant bag stuffed with paper and I would get in line right behind the merchant. As long as the same teller called me I would proceed with robbing the bank. If I didn’t get that teller, I would approach the other teller, open my merchant cash bag and exclaim that I’d left something behind and leave. I would make two attempts and if the process failed both times, I would move on to a new bank.”

  “How long did you avoid getting caught?” Damian asked.

  “About five years,” Lilly replied.

  “What was your haul from the merchant teller?”

  “If I did my homework right, it was ten to twenty thousand.”

  “Did you move around the country or stay in one city?” Damian asked.

  “I moved around the state. It didn’t pay to establish a pattern within one police agency.”

  “I thought the FBI was involved in bank robberies?”

  “They are, but I would move around their jurisdictions as well.”

  “Two more questions? Did you use a gun or other weapon and how did you get caught?”

  “No weapons, just the note. The getting caught was entirely my fault. I found a bank where the merchants were depositing a lot more cash and the teller was so busy that she was not immediately dropping the cash into the lock box near her drawer. I thought she might have nearly one hundred thousand in her drawer if I hit it right. This bank had more security. They employed an actual guard and had three doors and were in walking distance to a police station.”

  “Sounds like the odds were stacked against you, why’d you pursue it?” Damian asked; she sounded smarter than to go after more than she could handle.

  “It was the intellectual challenge of getting it right,” Lily said simply. “Unfortunately, the partner that I needed on this heist was both dumb and inpatient and I was stupid for planning the heist with him.”

  “How did you find him? It’s not like you can take out a help wanted ad for a 'bank robber'.”

  “In my years of observation of bank exteriors, I came across two other future bank robbers doing the same thing. I collected their names and contact information and then passed on the particular bank they were casing. I used one of those contacts. He was inpatient while we planned, but I ignored it because I needed help and if the impatience was the only bad thing about him, then I could live with that. We observed and planned and named a day and time for the heist. Our target walked into the bank. My instinct at the time was to call off the robbery. I just had the sixth sense it wasn’t going to work, but my partner demanded we pursue it as planned and that was my mistake. That day they were training a new guard and so they had two of them and the younger one actually tackled me before I could get away which by the way is not bank policy.”

  “They want robbers to just leave and not hurt staff or other customers.”

  “Yes, that’s correct. My partner for the heist was caught a week later when he tried to spend the loot. He’s still serving a sentence.”

  Damian wanted to ask this woman many more questions, but Angus was right, she might be fit for his company. He didn’t know why he thought that considering her background, but her description of bank heists demonstrated three things to him: intelligence, diligence, and planning skills.

  Completely changing the subject, Damian asked, “What are you doing now and what’s your background beside the criminal one?”

  Lily looked taken aback at his questions and asked warily, “Why do you want to know?”

  Damian hesitated and then said, “I don’t know.”

  Lily hesitated and then said, “I have a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and I’m working as a waitress.”

  Wow, Damian thought, now he could see why Angus suggested that he hire her.

  “Did you ever use your degree in employment after college?”

  “Yeah I did. I used it to rob banks.”

  “How did you use math for that?” asked Damian, genuinely amused.

  “Well to count the money of course,” Lily said cheekily.” I also used it to place puts and calls in the stock market. I used the Black-Scholes for derivative pricing and made a bundle.”

  Damian was impressed that she named a math theory that had received a Nobel Prize.

  “What do you want to do employment wise in the future?”

  “You mean besides robbing banks?”

  “It sounds like you have a very good reason to avoid going to jail in your twelve year old son. To do that you need to avoid criminal activities for another six years until he’s eighteen,” Damian suggested understanding the women’s sense of humor.

  “Yeah, that’s my game plan. I’ll send Jacob off to college as I go back to prison for a longer time. As Angus will tell you, prison is a pretty horrible place. I still have nightmares about the place and the bathrooms and I have no intention of ever going back. Back to your original question, I’d love to get a job at Google or Apple, but my record stops that. I’ll probably start my own firm once I figure out what I want to create. In the meantime, I waitress as I’m required to have a job for probation since they won’t let me live on my stock market proceeds.”

  Damian wanted to hire her then and there, but he needed to be fair to Ariana. As his Chief Operating Officer, she might have some thoughts about Lily. So again he switched gears and went back to the bank robbery.

  “What tools would you have used to dig the tunnel into the bank vault?”

  Lily blinked at the rapid change in discussion and said, “I don’t know anything about tunnels, so the first thing I would do is research the area. I would request copies of plans from the city planning department. Depending on what I saw in those plans, I would either have to hire an engineer or go at tunneling on my own.”

  “How about cutting through the actual vault? Would you use this list of tools?” Damian asked handing her a piece of paper.

  She read through it, complete with pictures, then said, “No, there are more advanced tools than these. I did research about ten years ago when I was giving thought to going after a vault, and at that time I read the latest information on lasers and that is what I would have used for the metal part of the vault.”

  “What happened? Why didn’t you try breaking into a vault?”

  “I looked at the risks, the need for some engineering brains, and decided that it wasn’t worth it. You know that some boxes have nothing more than paper in them, so the only thing worth putting the time into is the cash in the vault and those serial numbers are recorded by bank computers. The money I was stealing was chump change and since I grabbed the merchant money, the vast majority of my money had not yet had the serial numbers traced. Besides where would I find a legitimate engineer?”

  “Lily, you’ve been a real help. Can I have your contact information?” Damian asked. Thinking he might be calling her tomorrow with a job offer.

  Thirty minutes later Angus and Damian were back at the company’s warehouse. Damian hadn’t talked about Lily on the drive, his mind divided into thinking about how to use Lily in the company and wanting to do work on lasers to figure out if that was the cutting tool. It had been a very enjoyable lunch.

  Chapter 13

  Damian got back to the office with just enough time to read emails and run a background search on Lily before heading to Ariana’s house for their afternoon pickup of Hermione. He opened the email from her and read with dismay her experience that morning. Someone was still after her. It was rare that she’d need to travel to Silicon Valley in the next few months as she was working with Damian to get his company off the ground. If he wasn’t able
to identify who was targeting her and Hermione by Monday, then he would hire security to keep them safe.

  He did a background search on Lily and everything seemed validated. She’d left off that she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Berkeley. Yes, she was smart. In fact she was so smart that boredom likely drove her into the bank robbery business. If he hired her, he would have to be sure that he kept her challenged. He had a few ideas to discuss with Ariana when he saw her tonight.

  There was a lot of mist on the bay and for the first time, he sped across the bay to Ariana’s with the Bimini top on the boat to stay dry. He arrived at Ariana’s in a good mood from his lunch with Lily and Angus. She gave him a zip drive with her video footage and he demonstrated the use of a GPS detector that she could use on her car. The lesson was helped by the fact that someone had already placed a detector on her car.

  “Didn’t you search for it when you scanned my car for bugs? I thought you didn’t find anything,” Ariana said.

  “I didn’t find anything. I’m guessing you were followed to the electronics store and the bug was placed then,” Damian mused.

  Damian examined the tracker to see if he could discover anything about it, but the writing was in an Asian language, so he knew he wouldn’t make head way. Then he kicked himself for touching it as there might have been fingerprints he could recover. After they returned home from retrieving Hermione, he would still try dusting it and the car to see if he could find fingerprints.

  “When we drop her off tomorrow, let’s place the bug on another car at the school; that will confuse them hopefully for a few days.”

  “You don’t think they’ll harm the other parents?” Ariana asked.

  “No, once they see the other driver’s face, they’ll know they've been following the wrong car. In the best of all worlds, the car that we put the tracker on will be the same model and color as yours and the driver will have a short brunette hair style. Can you think of any other parents that fit those specifications?”

  Ariana gave it some thought and said, as they got into her car, “Maybe, let’s look in the parking lot now and then again tomorrow. It helps that we can narrow the possibilities by focusing on only white SUVs."

  Ten minutes later, Hermione opened the door and got in the back seat, hair still wet from the water polo practice, a whiff of chlorine about her.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey kiddo,” Ariana and Damian called out in unison with Damian adding, “How was practice? Are people being dropped from the team?”

  “In the end, I think there will be enough players to have a junior varsity team, so I think the coach will divide us up between the two teams.”

  “And you’ll be on the varsity?” Ariana asked.

  “I scored two goals today, one more than anyone else so yes that should secure my being on the varsity.”

  “Congratulations on the two goals,” Damian said. “Did our practice help you to play better?”

  “Swimming helps the most, but I think I'm better at getting my shoulders above the water to shoot at the net better than anyone, and trying to beat you, Damian taught me that.”

  “Great! Glad we made a difference,” Damian smiled.

  “Did you guys have any problems with intruders today?” Hermione asked.

  “You know, Hermione, Ariana and I can take care of ourselves, so don’t worry about us,” Damian said evading answering her.

  “Yeah, well that’s what Mom and Dad thought as well and look where it got them,” Hermione said bitterly.

  “I was probably followed into Cupertino today and one of my tires was slashed. Damian and I found a tracker on the car and when we get home, he’s going to try and find fingerprints,” Ariana said knowing that honesty was important when dealing with a teenager.

  “Oh no! Were you attacked by anyone?

  “No, but I scared one of my start-up advisees when I turned on him with a tire jack bar in one hand and the water pistol in the other. His presence may have run off the culprit who knifed the tire.”

  Hermione had a small smile at the vision of Ariana wielding the named weapons, than she asked, knowing they would have something in mind, “What’s next?”

  “Tomorrow, we thought we'd place the bug on someone else’s white SUV, and, it would be ideal if they had short brown hair,” Damian offered.

  Hermione was quiet then added cunningly, “Put it on Mrs. Abbott’s car. It’s white like yours and she’s a really annoying person with a bully for a daughter. Maybe a confrontation with these bad guys will scare them into better behavior.”

  Ariana and Damian laughed out loud at the kid’s assessment. “You know kiddo, you think like a devious adult too much of the time, but we’ll get there early so we can do just that,” Ariana said.

  They had dinner together and they reviewed Hermione’s schedule putting all her significant dates on their calendars. She went upstairs to begin her school work while Ariana and Damian spent a few minutes discussing their schedule in light of the attacks and the new company.

  “I met this woman named Lily today and I’d like to hire her,” Damian said. “Angus suggested her for quality control, but I think we should discuss our vision for the company with her and see where she thinks she fits in.”

  “What's her background?,” Ariana asked thinking about the projects they had underway and a potential salary of such a person.

  “She’s a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Berkeley in Mathematics working as a waitress and she did seven years for a bank robbery.”

  Ariana blinked rapidly coming to the conclusion that Damian had asked to meet her for the bank robbery case he was helping the detective with. So she asked, “Do you think you can trust someone with that background? You have technical secrets you don’t want disclosed before you submit for a patent. Has she worked in a tech firm before?”

  “I spent a lot of time talking to her to judge her trustworthiness as that’s my one concern. I think she has the brains to move the company forward and her personality will fit with the current group. She adopted a child after she was released from jail and so I think the twelve year old boy will be her motivation for staying out of anything illegal. She works as a waitress because her probation requires that she be employed. She also day trades on the stock market and has built up a tidy nest egg there.”

  “How many banks did she rob before being caught?”

  “She never actually said but I’m guessing maybe thirty or forty based on time and her approach.”

  “Why’d she do it?” asked Ariana, puzzled as to why a person with her background would resort to criminal activity.

  “My guess was for the intellectual challenge. She never used a weapon, just a note and the planning and execution were the intellectual challenge. Now that she was caught, I think the game is over for her.”

  “You mentioned Angus, how did he know her? It’s not like they house males and females together in jail.”

  “They both volunteer at some agency that helps ex-cons get their life in order. Why don’t I ask her to meet us and we can discuss a job opportunity with her? I believe I have computer skills to track her behavior; skills I don’t believe she has. So we’ll be able to verify that she stays straight.”

  “Okay,” Ariana said, thinking about all the odd people she’d met in Silicon Valley who turned out to be excellent for a particular company. Maybe this Lily would be one of those. She knew that Damian like to surround himself with very smart people and that was likely what caught his attention.

  After discussing a few other details, Damian got ready to head for the dock to begin his boat ride home. As he was untying the boat and pushing it away from the dock, he blindly steered home toward his island thinking about how his life had changed since he met Ariana and Hermione. Six months ago, he had such a small and distant, by his choice, set of friends, that he could have been dead for two months before anyone might have possibly noticed. If he had come to that end, his deceased wife, Jen, would have smacked him upside t
he head the moment he showed up at the pearly gates. As he did on occasion when out on the bay, he thought about his wife and children.

  “Jen, I hope you would be proud of me at the moment. I’ve made sure since your death that no inmate has been mistakenly released, and I’ve formed a family unit with Ariana and Hermione. I hope you and the girls are at peace as I seem to be at the moment.”

  He was grateful he was driving across the bay and the noise of the wind and waves whipped the words out his mouth before even a listening device could have heard them spoken aloud. Then he put his head out the side of the boat catching the cold and wet breeze, wondering after an excellent day, what had made him so melancholy? He continued pondering that question off and off until sleep finally shut down his mind later that evening.

  Chapter 14

  Again it was quiet at Ariana’s overnight and they pondered why no one was attempting to get at her or Hermione while at home. They were grateful for the peace and quiet, but Damian and Ariana couldn’t think of the criminal strategy that had her followed on the freeway, but left her alone at home. They arrived at the school early and Hermione suggested where Damian could stand while waiting for Mrs. Abbott to arrive. He’d be close enough to the vehicle to place the tracker on it before her car turned away. He was texted the moment Hermione spotted the car and while Mrs. Abbott’s daughter was getting out, Damian attached the tracker device under the rear bumper after pretending to drop something on the pavement. No sooner did he have his hand out of the way, when Mrs. Abbott floored the car away from the school. He wished he could be a fly on the wall when the owners of the tracking device confronted Mrs. Abbott, thinking they had Ariana.

  He walked over and opened the door for Hermione to get out for school, kissing her on the forehead, then said, “Fun’s over for the day, be a good student and a better water polo player! And remember that as an adult, I just set a bad example for you, Hermione.”

  She turned and gave him the thumbs’ up; secretly thrilled that Mrs. Abbott was now going to be harassed by the men that had been following Ariana. Walking over to some friends, she had a small grin on her face that stayed with her most of the day at school. Ariana and Damian headed for her house and then in turn departed in Damian’s boat back across the bay to his Richmond. Halfway across he let the boat cost at a low speed so he and Ariana could discuss Lily. He wanted to share Lily’s background with Ariana not in earshot of his other employees. He gave her his thoughts on salary and knew Ariana would do the rest of the employment stuff. A short time later, he increased the boat's speed as they headed to the marina and his truck and then on to the warehouse. Damian had arranged an interview with Lily and the two of them to discuss opportunities. After a brief discussion, they decided there was no other way to explain their plans than to have her see the interior of the building so she and they would have to suffer the glances from Haley, Chris, and Angus. Of course Angus would guess what was going on.