Earth vs. Everybody Read Free Page A

said that would be okay—that was when everyone around here
did their studying. I felt I was going to like this job. These were my kind of
people. All I had to do now was rob that bank.
    “This is a
robbery!” I announced menacingly the next morning, as all the children and
clowns screamed and lined up against the wall of the nursery. “Esto es un robo!
Dies ist ein Bankraub! Il s’agit d’un vol de banque! Put all the money in… is
this 425 Wells Street?”
    It wasn’t, of
course. I know that now. Along with the layout to the bank, somebody should
have given me a map. I guess we must have busted into a dozen different places
that morning—including the Federal Prison twice—before we finally got the right
address. And I suppose I’ll have to take a lot of the blame for that, because I
was the one who kept saying: “This is it, everybody, let’s go.”
    When we did
finally get to the 1 st National, it didn’t go well at all. We didn’t get any money, for one thing. The
only thing that was in the money bags we brought back were a couple members of
the gang who had gotten stuffed in there somehow during all the excitement. And
our getaway car had been stolen, so we had to hitchhike back. And I had
forgotten to do the first thing I was supposed to do when we entered the bank,
which was to disable the security cameras. So the police had about 22,000
pictures of us.
    Even though the
robbery had been a failure, I felt that the important thing was that no one had
gotten hurt, and everyone had had a good time, and no banks had been robbed. My
supervisor didn’t agree. He read me the riot act when he found out how badly I
had botched the job, and warned me that I’d better shape up and fly right if I
wanted to succeed in a demanding business like this one. Blah blah blah. The
usual stuff. Why do all employers talk the same? Always giving the same boring
speech. When he had finally calmed down a little bit he said he guessed that
everyone was entitled to one mistake.
    “Does this count
as my mistake?”
    “Yes.”
    “Crap.”
    Over the next few
weeks I made at least a dozen more attempts to rob the 1 st National Bank. But something always
went wrong. Sometimes we forgot our guns. Sometimes we remembered our guns but
forgot what we wanted. Sometimes the bank tellers couldn’t read my holdup note.
Sometimes they wouldn’t read it—said they were busy. Sometimes I got the wrong address
and we were at that kid’s birthday party again. It was always something.
    The people who
worked at the 1 st National got
to know me real well after awhile. “Hands up everybody, here comes Frank,”
someone would say as I came around the corner and started heading for the door.
“Hi, Stan,” I would say as I entered, waving my gun around dangerously, and
hoping this robbery would turn out better than the others. But it never did.
    After a month of
this, the bank decided to reduce the number of guards they employed from six to
two, through early retirement and buyouts. They knew now that they didn’t need
so many.
    Eventually, my
superiors at CrimeCo came to the conclusion that the 1 st National might be too tough a nut for
me to crack, so they assigned me easier banks to rob. First the 2 nd National, then the 3 rd , and so on down the line. Each one was
easier in one way or another—quieter alarms, sleepier guards, money closer to
the door, there was always something easier about them. But I never managed to
rob any of them either. I had high hopes for the 20 th National, that’s the one I was waiting for, but we never
got that far.
    I was arrested a
number of times during this stretch. You can’t make as many blunders as I was
making without getting arrested. But the Organization’s crack legal team always
managed to get me out fast. Always on some technicality that they knew about
but the cops didn’t. You’d think society would teach policemen what the laws
are, but I guess they never think of it. Or maybe there isn’t