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BANK JOB

JAMES HENEGHAN NORMA CHARLES

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Heneghan, James, 1930-
Bank job / written by James Heneghan and Norma Charles.

Electronic Monograph
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 9781551438597(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554694389 (epub)

I. Charles, Norma M. II. Title.

PS8565.E581B35 2009 jC813’.54 C2008-907414-9

First published in the United States, 2009
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008941144

Summary: Thirteen-year-old Nell and her friends are robbing banks to raise money for renovations in their foster home.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Design by Teresa Bubela
Typesetting by Christine Toller
Cover photographs by Getty Images & Veer
Norma Charles photo by Brian Wood

In Canada:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 5626, Station B
Victoria, BC Canada
V8R 6S4

In the United States:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer, WA USA
98240-0468

www.orcabook.com
12 11 10 09 • 4 3 2 1

To our favorite traveling companions,
Brian and Lucy.

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

ONE

APRIL 4

A wet Tuesday afternoon is as good a time as any for a bank robbery.

Or so I tried to convince myself as I watched through the slanting gray rain as my friend got ready to rob a Vancouver branch of the Bank of Montreal.

I had a front row seat.

Down the street in the doorway of Cameron’s Shoes, Tom Okada was probably cracking his knuckles while he waited.

Rush hour in Vancouver rushes for twelve hours, from six to six. The traffic on Kingsway was loud and heavy. I checked my watch. It was 2:50 PM. My hands were trembling. I stepped back into the shelter of the doorway as I waited for Billy Galloway to give the signal.

Billy’s big, with wide shoulders. He was wearing a blue ball cap, black-rimmed glasses, black mustache and a rain jacket. He tugged at his ball cap, pulling it down firmly on his head. This was the signal. It was time. Billy was going in. It was my turn to move.

My stomach lurched with dread. I felt like throwing up. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. Crazy.

Chest thumping, I hurried into the bank and stood at an atm in the bank vestibule. There was no lineup inside the bank. I counted two customers and two women tellers.

Billy headed toward the younger of the two tellers, the one closest to me. His rain jacket was zipped up over his chin.

He passed a note across the counter.

THIS IS A BANK ROBBERY. YOU WON’T GET HURT IF YOU DO AS YOU’RE TOLD.

I knew what the note said because I had written it.

The teller reading the note looked like she was in her early twenties and wore glasses. Her face paled under her makeup and her hands shook as she reached into her cash drawer and handed over a fistful of bills.

I slipped out of the bank and waited in the rain, my shopping bag ready and my heart racing.

Billy came hurtling out of the bank and crammed his ball cap, glasses, fake mustache and the money into my shopping bag. Then he cut away sharply and disappeared around the corner onto Tyne Street.

I walked quickly in the opposite direction, forcing myself to be calm. Tom Okada, still waiting in the doorway of the shoe shop, grabbed my bag without a word, stuffed it into his backpack and took off in the direction of the SkyTrain station.

I stood in the doorway of the empty shoe shop, knees trembling so much my legs could hardly support me.

The scream of a police siren pushed my panic up a notch. I abandoned the doorway and tried to walk calmly along Kingsway towards the SkyTrain station. The police car swished past me, splashing through puddles, siren wailing.

I stopped, took a few deep breaths and checked my watch: 3:05 PM. No need to hurry, I told myself. I didn’t have anything on me that connected me to the robbery. I was perfectly safe. I forced myself to walk calmly and not attract attention. Heart still thumping, I hardly noticed the rain.

There weren’t many people on the street because of the rain, but the SkyTrain station was busy. Loosely furled umbrellas dripped onto the platform in widening puddles.

I stepped onto the train and collapsed onto the closest seat with a huge sigh of relief.

It had worked! Amazing! I was stunned. We’d really pulled it off.

Eleven minutes later, at 3:16 PM, knees still watery, I got off at Patterson Station.

By 3:32 PM I was hanging my black rain jacket in the hallway at home. There were already two similar jackets there, one gray, the other green.

“Home” was Janice and Joseph Hardys’ ancient two-story house on Oliver Avenue, in Burnaby’s Patterson Hill area. It had green shingles, white trim and an old-fashioned porch. It was a foster home. Four kids lived at the Hardys’. First there was me, Nell Ford, thirteen. Most people called me Nails. Then there was Billy Galloway, the one who did the actual robbing of the bank. Billy was fourteen. Tom Okada was thirteen, same as me. The fourth kid, Lisa Connors, had been at school during the robbery. She was nine.

Patterson Hill is a good neighborhood; close to schools, close to Patterson Hill Park and close to Metrotown Mall. The neighbors are friendly. They knew that the two-story, green and white house on Oliver Avenue is a foster home.

The Hardys were not home from work yet. Janice worked part-time as a special education aide at Chaffey Burke Elementary from noon to three. She brought Lisa home with her. Joseph got home from his job in the lost property office at the Public Safety Building at six.

I pulled off my wet shoes and climbed the stairs. Billy and Tom had taken earlier trains and were waiting for me in their room. I sashayed in like a movie star about to take a bow before an adoring audience. They grinned at me, eyes wobbling with excitement.

I felt fine now. My heart was still speeding a bit but the trembling had stopped.

No one said anything until I’d closed the door.

“We did it!” My grin was huge.

“We did it!” yelled Billy, hooting as he bashed Tom with a pillow.

Tom jumped wildly on his bed, doing an excited chimpanzee routine, half crouching, fists dangling at the knees, gibbering and whooping. He grabbed a pillow and walloped Billy over the head. “We friggin’ did it!” he cried.

I watched them proudly.

When the boys were tired of the pillow fight, we all huddled together, arms around one another’s shoulders, and did a wild victory dance between the two beds. There wasn’t much room.

We were the Three Musketeers.

“All for one and one for all,” we sang. “All for one and one for all…”

We collapsed onto Billy’s bed in hysterics, hooting and laughing.

“Show me the money,” Billy said at last, sitting up.

I grabbed the shopping bag from the foot of the bed and emptied it. We knelt on the floor and counted the money on Billy’s bed, separating the bills into tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds.

The total came to fourteen hundred and fifty dollars.

An astounding success!

Tom cracked his knuckles.

Billy shoved Tom playfully with his shoulder. Tom shoved him back.

We were totally stoked.

The front door slammed. The sound of Janice’s voice came up the stairs. “Nell? Boys? Are you up there? I need help bringing the groceries in from the car.”

The stolen bills were on Billy’s bed. We had to get rid of them fast.

“Be right down,” Tom yelled back.

Billy scooped up the money and stuffed it into the shopping bag. “We gotta hide this.”

I grabbed the bag. “I’ve got a place.”

“Where?” Tom cracked his knuckles anxiously.

“It’s a good safe place. Don’t worry.”

“You should tell us in case something happens to you,” Tom said. “We should know.”

I sighed. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. Or to the money. We’re all in this together. All for one and one for all. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” I gave them a two-handed closed-fist salute. Then I carried the shopping bag to the room I shared with Lisa. I turned on the light. The Chinese paper lampshade swayed in the draft from the window. Rain peppered the glass.

I shut the bedroom door.

It was easy to tell which side of the room was mine and which was Lisa’s. Lisa was a neat freak, and she was cat-crazy. The design on her duvet cover was cats of all colors playing with balls of wool. Her pillow was a white kitten. A cat-shaped lamp sat on her night table. Also on the table was The Encyclopedia of Cats. Lisa studied it almost every night like it was the Bible.

My side of the room might have been a bit on the messy side. But it was a comfy mess. I hardly ever made my bed, although Janice kept bugging me about it. Janice had even tried to bribe me by buying me black sheets and pillows and a black and white striped duvet cover. The bribe didn’t work though. I didn’t see the point of making a bed every day when it just got all rumpled and messed up every night anyway.

One thing Lisa and I had in common was books. I had my battered copy of Anne of Green Gables that had been with me since I-don’t-remember-when and one or two others, but Lisa had a lot. Her shelves were tidy, her books lined up like soldiers. Even though I didn’t own many books, I loved to read. I borrowed some from the library at least once a week.

I had recently read Pride and Prejudice. I loved all the old-fashioned language. The girl in the book, Elizabeth Bennet, always said things like, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” or “I have not had the pleasure of his acquaintance.” And if a friend asks her what she thinks of someone she likes, she usually answers, “He is most amiable.” Amiable! It just breaks me up. Or she will say an acquaintance is “agreeable,” meaning he or she is okay but not quite as good as “amiable.” Amiable seems to be top-ofthe-line. Third in line is “tolerable.” Of course there’s always at least one character—the villain—who is “despicable.” After taking P&P back to the library, I started reading Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen rules.

On my night table I had a card that read, Neatness is the first sign of insanity. I got the idea when I saw the card on Tom’s night table. His card read, I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure. The cards summed up our characters pretty well, I thought.

I liked my roommate a lot in spite of her tidiness. I would say Lisa is most amiable. Besides, she’s the closest thing to a sister I will ever have.

I opened the closet. Lisa’s side was pastel pants and shirts, tidy on their hangers. My side was a jumble of dark sweats, hoodies and jeans from my favorite fashion shop, Value Village.

I knelt on the wooden floor and rummaged under the mound of clothes—mine of course, thrown out of sight until laundry time—for the shoe box I’d been saving. You never knew when a shoe box would come in handy. Now I had the perfect use for it.

“Nell!” Lisa burst into the room. “Guess what I’ve got!”

I jumped. I hadn’t had time to hide the money. I shoved the bag under the mound of clothing.

Lisa was holding a tiny orange kitten.

Her dark eyes sparkled behind her thick glasses. “His name’s Pumpkin. Isn’t he the most beautiful? Just feel how soft he is.”

I stroked the kitten’s tiny head with a finger. It shut its eyes and purred. “Where did you get him?”

“Janice got him from someone at school. You can hold him if you like.”

“Hey, you guys,” Janice yelled from below. “I said I need help down here. These groceries won’t walk in from the car all by themselves you know.”

“Okay, we’re coming,” I yelled back. “Look, Lisa, how about you go and show Pumpkin to Billy and Tom? And tell those guys to go help Janice.”

Lisa left. I pulled the bag from under the mound of clothes and transferred the loot from the holdup into the shoe box. Then I grabbed a pen from my desk and wrote the day’s score on the lid: $1,450.00.

I burrowed under the mound of clothes again, feeling for the loose board. I pried it up and dropped the box into my secret hiding place.

There. It was safe.

I heaved a sigh of relief and threw myself onto my bed trying to relax the tension in my muscles. Let Billy and Tom go downstairs and help Janice bring in the groceries. Janice didn’t need all three of us. I was exhausted. The emotional strain of the last few hours had taken a lot out of me.

I sighed. What had I done? I was a bank robber. A real bank robber! There was no way to avoid that fact. I was a criminal.

So much had changed in only one month.

TWO

MARCH 2—ONE MONTH EARLIER

The social worker’s name was Rhoda Mills. She was a cheerful woman who seemed to love her work. She visited us a couple of times a year, always remembering our names. She was in her thirties maybe, with brown hair and glasses that kept sliding down her nose. She kept pushing them back up with one finger.

It was just after four o’clock. Joseph had taken time off work. It was an important meeting. We all had to be there.

Rhoda bustled in and shook hands with Joseph and hugged Janice. Then Janice led Rhoda upstairs and let her take a look at our bedrooms, especially neat and tidy for her visit. We stayed out of the way downstairs. A few minutes later, I heard them talking in the bathroom, also tidied up for the visit.

Inspection over, Rhoda quickly made herself at home. She fetched her bulging briefcase from the hallway and dropped it on the floor beside her chair as she sat at the kitchen table. Soon her papers were strewn all over the table, competing for space with Janice’s tea and cookies.

“How are things with you kids?” Rhoda asked, looking mainly at me. “Nell?”

“Things are good,” I said.

“How’s your mother?” asked Rhoda. “You still see her regularly?”

“Of course,” I said. “Weekends, whenever I can. She’s fine.”

“Billy? Tom? Lisa? Anything new? You kids okay?”

Billy grinned. Tom nodded. “We’re great,” said Billy. “Right, Tom?”

“Right,” said Tom. “We’re great.”

“Great,” Lisa echoed, her face serious.

“Help yourself to more tea, Rhoda,” said Janice, nudging the pot toward her.

“Thanks, Janice.”

After a minute or two of general chatter, Rhoda looked at me. “Feel free to go, kids. Unless there’s anything you want to talk about. Nell?” She raised her eyebrows at us and gave her glasses a push.

“No. Everything’s good,” I said. We got up from the table.

“That’s fine,” said Rhoda. “I need to talk with Janice and Joseph for a minute.”

“It’s so weird hearing someone other than Janice or Joseph call you Nell,” Tom said as we headed upstairs.

Janice always called me by my proper name. “Nell is a lovely name,” she told me the first day I met her. “And that is what Joseph and I will call you.”

“How did you get the nickname Nails anyways?” Tom asked.

“How? You really want to know? You want to hear the story of my life?”

“Not really,” said Tom. “Just the Nails part.”

“Well…” I took a deep breath. “If you really want to know…I’ve lived in fosters all my life…”

“All your life? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s true. Ever since I was a baby. Most were okay, but the one before I came to the Hardys’ was gruesome…”

“Gruesome?”

“Gruesome. Are you gonna keep repeating everything I say?”

“Sorry.”

Lisa went to our room to read while the boys and I headed into their room. I settled into the beanbag chair and Tom and Billy lounged on their beds.

“It was run by an old cow named Mrs. Osberg— the kids called her Iceberg—who beat us with a cane—”

“She beat you with—”

“With a cane, yes. If you interrupt me one more—”

“Sorry. I’ll shut up. Promise.”

“She beat us if we did anything she didn’t like. She was new at fostering. It was obvious she wouldn’t last long. Once the social worker found out what was going on, that would be the end for her. I was always in trouble with the old bag and got most of the canings. On the backs of my legs usually.”

Tom nodded. “So it wouldn’t show.”

“Huh? Right. Anyway, I refused to do Iceberg’s laundry one day. ‘Do your own filthy laundry!’ I told her. She got mad, grabbed me by the arm and beat me with her cane. I didn’t cry. ‘You little trollop!’ she yelled at me. ‘You’re hard as bloody nails.’”

“She sounds like a monster,” said Tom.