Dillinger's Got Nothing on Us: The Short Life and Interesting Times of the Jay Gang (2/5)
J2 RPS AU
PG-13
Part 2 of 5
Master post
Art
January-February 1933
Texas, Oklahoma
He doesn't realize it at the time, but Jensen's life starts to change on a Wednesday in the middle of January, because that is when Chris and Jennifer learn that their uncles' farm in Oklahoma, which had been homesteaded by great-grandaddy Kane, was foreclosed on and taken by the bank.
Chris is furious - at the government, at the weather, at the bank, at the Oklahoma soil, even at his uncles for sinking money they didn't have on a farm that evidently couldn't sustain it and for not telling anyone they might lose it.
"They'd never ask for help," Jensen tells him. "I don't even know them and I know that."
And the fact is, even if Chris' uncles did ask, no one has the money to help them.
"Fucking banks," Chris spits. He's pacing back and forth across the kitchen, Jensen pacing with him. They can hear Jennifer in the front room, talking to her husband on the phone. She doesn't sound any happier than Chris does.
This goes on for a good twenty minutes, Chris getting increasingly worked up and Jensen getting increasingly exhausted trying to calm him down. Turns out, twenty minutes is more than enough time for Chris to start ranting about other things that have been bothering him. (For some reason, Jensen's father's continued unemployment is one of those things.) Jennifer gets off the phone and comes into the kitchen.
And then the doorbell rings. Twice. There's a good hard knock. This is not a good time to be receiving visitors, but whoever it is clearly won't be ignored. Jensen stomps into the front room and yanks the door open.
"What, dammit?" he snaps. Jared's standing on the steps, looking surprised. "What do you want?"
"The Mummy is showing at the Texas," Jared says. "I thought you might want to go tomorrow. The matinees are cheaper than the evening shows."
Seeing Jared, and being reminded that people are still living normal lives and doing things for fun, calms Jensen down a little bit and clears his head enough for him to remember a way to get the increasing crazy out of Chris' system before he starts breaking things.
"Not today," he tells Jared apologetically. "Sorry, man, but we got some bad news and I have to make sure Chris doesn't kill anyone."
"Shit, I'm sorry, what happened?"
"Family stuff. It's not my family, I can't talk about it. Next week, maybe, ok?"
"Yeah, sure." Jared's expression is an odd combination of disappointed and worried. "Hope everything works out."
"Yeah, me too. See you later." And he shuts the door practically in Jared's face. He knows it might be rude, but there are more important things. "Chris!" he yells into the kitchen. "Don't go out the back!"
Chris and Jennifer are now sitting at the kitchen table. Jennifer is writing something on a pad of paper and holding Chris' wrist with her other hand. Chris is vibrating in his chair, obviously desperate to get up and move but caught until his sister lets him go.
"I got it," Jensen tells her. "You can let go of him." Jennifer shakes her head, her eyes on the pad of paper. She squeezes Chris' wrist. "Don't worry about him, I know what to do."
"I do too," she says. "That's why I'm holding on to him."
"You can trust Jensen," Chris says. "He keeps me out of trouble."
"Fine." She lets go of his wrist. "Don't kill anyone. I'm as upset as you are and I'm not in the mood to get you out of jail."
Because the one thing you can do for Chris in this situation is to find him a fight. And that is what Jensen is going to do.
It was easy in Dallas and it's no more difficult here, to find a find a place to drink, to maybe order something, to insult or offend or just plain piss someone off. Jensen doesn't like to start fights, but he's good enough with his fists to help end them. Or, if Chris is involved, to get out of the way and let them run their course.
Usually this kind of thing ends with people getting tossed into the street. In occasions such as these, when the boys are actively looking for someone to throw down, that usually means them.
But it also means Chris isn't breaking anything in his sister's house, and if they can plan it right, it also means he can work the violence out of his system without ending up in jail. Which, to Jensen's great relief, is what happens. Of course they're both a little beat up by the time they finally make it back to Jennifer's house, but they do make it back.
Chris is still pissed off the next day, but at least he's thinking of ways to put that anger to good use that don't involve punching people in the face. And if sometimes those ways turn out to be "taking Chad's money during poker games", well, Chris claims that he deserves to have the money and Chad deserves to lose it.
But Chad isn't all that flush, even though he likes to pretend he is, and more often than not, the boys end up playing - literally - for peanuts.
"This has to stop," Chad mutters one night, flicking a couple of peanuts towards the pile in the middle of the table. They're sitting in Jennifer's kitchen. After the news about the uncles, she has made a point of keeping an eye on her brother, and if that means he has to bring Jensen's new friends to her house, so be it. "I hate playing for peanuts. Call."
Chris shows his hand - three jacks and two eights. "Full house. Show ‘em."
"Shit." Chad drops his cards on the table and swats at Jared, who tries to steal some of his peanuts.
"Well?"
"Peanuts." He sweeps the rest of his off the table and into his hand and pops a couple in his mouth. Then he reaches for Jared's glass and takes a swig. Jared reaches across the table - it's not a very big table and he has very long arms - grabs Jensen's glass, and drains it.
"Hey!" Jensen protests. Chris pushes his drink in front of Jensen and idly flicks a peanut across the table. It hits Chad in the forehead and Chad, of course, leans forward, grabs a handful from the pot, and fires them back.
Ten minutes later there are peanuts and playing cards all over the floor, and the four boys are laughing at themselves and each other. Jennifer sticks her head in the door, sees the mess, and just reminds them to clean up before going back to the front room.
But half an hour after that, they're tired of their rinky-dink poker games and the mood of the evening has changed.
"All we ever do is play cards, slouch around town, and look for work," Jensen observes. "I need a job. I need to be making money." He needs to be paying his way. Jennifer not-so-gently suggested that he and Chris both make "Find gainful employment" their one New Year's resolution, but so far neither of them has had any luck sticking to it. Jensen doesn't want to have to go back to Dallas. He doesn't want to have to count his time in San Antonio as a failure.
"I need to play better," Chad mutters.
"You need to stop cheating," Jared tells him. "If you didn't cheat so much we could at least play for real money."
"We could if we had any real money."
"And that right there is the problem," Jensen points out. He gestures with his now-empty glass.
"Banks got money," Chris says, sounding resentful.
"Then we'll take it from the banks," Chad suggests, as if that's the most logical solution in the world.
"Banks got security," Jared says. "And vaults and... stuff."
"We'll wear handkerchiefs over our faces. Like train robbers."
"We'll need guns," Jensen adds. It sounds like a stupid idea but he's in the mood to take Chad seriously. When the other three just stare at him, he explains himself with "So the tellers know we mean business. They don't have to be loaded."
Jared looks at Chad and snickers. Chad smacks him.
But no one puts up an argument, so the conversation continues in that direction until Jennifer comes into the kitchen wearing her robe and shoos Jared and Chad out of her house. The idea sticks and grows and it only takes another day before it's a full-fledged - if highly criminal - plan. Jensen wants to blame it on the fact that they came up with it while they were drinking and bored. Jared wants to blame Chad. But it's Chris who strolls into the Frost Bank downtown pretending he wants to open an account, just so he can get an idea of the layout and security (or lack thereof) without arousing suspicion.
This time they meet in Jeff's apartment to make their final plans, because Jeff and his wife both work during the day and no one will be around to overhear. Chris draws a sketch of the bank layout on a piece of paper, and Jared finds a street map in one of the kitchen drawers so they can plan an escape route.
"I've been in that bank," Chad says. He sounds surprised. "I could've gone in to look it over."
"One of us will have to stay in the car," Jensen says, ignoring him.
"That can be Chad," Jared offers. When Chad gives him a look, Jared adds "You're probably the best driver."
"I'll do it," Chris says. "They've seen my face."
"Then you should go in," Jensen tells him. "I don't want all of us to be recognizable."
"You'll be disguised, remember?"
"You're probably better in a crisis than he is," Jared says, jerking his thumb in Chad's direction.
"I'm good in a crisis," Chad objects.
"I hit in a crisis," Chris says. "I'm driving, Jen. End of discussion."
Chad volunteers to acquire the getaway car, at least, and the next day he collects Jensen and Chris in a new-looking green Ford.
"Don't ask where he got it," Jared says from the back seat, as Jensen climbs in next to him and Chad scoots across the front so Chris can drive. There are a couple of burlap sacks on the floor in the back.
Chris drops them off in front of the bank. The plan is for him to drive around the corner and come right back to get them. The other three pull bandannas over their faces like Wild West stagecoach robbers before they get out of the car. There's a little blonde girl with her hair in pigtails sitting on a bench across the street. She watches the boys climb out of the car, and when Jensen glances around to make sure no one's paying attention to them, he catches her eye by accident and she waves. He thinks she's grinning, and he grins too under his bandanna as he waves back.
This doesn't seem real to him. This is like being in a play, or a movie. He can picture the plan in his head - they stride into the bank, Chad demands everyone stay put, Jensen and Jared hand the tellers the bags and demand the money, they take their ill-gotten gains and leave. Easy-peasy. Piece of cake.
But it doesn't go quite as planned.
Later, the three things Jensen will remember about his very first bank robbery are how scared the teller looks when he walks up to the counter and shoves his empty bag at the man's face, the guy in the trench coat who yells "Stop! FBI!", and the sound of a gun accidentally firing in the FBI agent's direction.
And just like that, with two words and one startled act, everything changes.
Jim Beaver, the FBI Special Agent in Charge in San Antonio, has seen better days. His house is only six years old and the ceiling in his daughter's room is already cracking, the sweet little old lady who takes care of her after school is pestering him to meet a nice woman and remarry "because little girls need a mother", one of Hoover's untested College Boy agents arrived from Chicago yesterday and Jim has no idea what to do with him, Miss McCoy, his new secretary, is a lovely girl but still losing papers in her attempts to adjust to her predecessor's idiosyncratic filing system, that damn Detective Downey is still hanging around (why the man is so interested in the Bureau, Jim will never know), and he dislikes J Edgar Hoover with a dislike bordering on active hate, which means doing his job is sometimes very difficult indeed.
And then Miss McCoy bursts into his office to tell him that Agent Tigerman has been shot trying to stop a bank robbery.
"Son of a bitch," he swears, jumping up fast enough to knock his chair over. "Where is he?" He's grabbing his coat and hat as he runs through the office, Miss McCoy jogging next to him trying to explain. He never takes his gunbelt off when he's at work, and for once he's grateful. He hears "Frost Bank" and "seven hundred" and "he didn't know".
"He wasn't killed," she adds. Jim doesn't care. No one shoots one of his boys and gets away with it.
"Lindberg! Collins!" he yells. "Get down to Frost Bank and make yourselves useful! I'm going to the hospital!"
The car is full of yelling fifteen minutes after they pull away from the bank - Chad is yelling at the FBI, Jared is yelling at Chad, Chris is yelling at Jensen, and Jensen is yelling at everyone to shut up.
He has always been proud of his ability to remain more or less calm in a crisis. This is not calm. But it's also an entirely unexpected crisis.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP," he demands, and finally everyone does. "Christ, Chad, what the hell were you thinking?"
"He wasn't," Jared says from the back seat.
"You shot someone!"
"It wasn't supposed to be loaded!" Chad protests.
"Did you check?" Chris asks pointedly.
"I didn't kill him!"
"How do you know?"
Chad stares at the back of Chris' head, panic-stricken.
"What do we do now?" Jared asks, clearly striving for calm. Well, someone has to. But he's looking at Jensen. And then Chad is looking at Jensen. And then Chris takes his eyes off the road long enough to also look at Jensen.
When did I get put in charge? Jensen wonders.
"Well, we can't go back to Jennifer's," he says. "And you really can't go home," he tells Chad. "We have to leave town, at least until we know what happened to that guy. If he's just hurt - " He thinks.
"We robbed a fucking bank, Jen," Chris says. "If they catch us, we're going to jail. I am not going to jail."
"Just... shut up and drive." They have no contingency plans. They weren't even thinking about what they'd do after they left the bank, aside from divide the money and figure out what to spend it on first. They never thought to plan for this.
They never even considered jail, which Jensen now thinks was their first and biggest mistake.
This is what comes of making plans while drunk, he thinks. This is what you get for letting desperation inform your decisions.
Jared and Chad are looking at him expectantly. Shit.
"We have to go somewhere," Jared says. "We can't keep driving around San Antonio."
"We'll go to Dallas," Jensen decides. "Chris. You want to head north."
They stop at a gas station just south of Austin looking for a phone so they can try to find out what happened to the FBI agent. Jared seems to think Sandy is their best bet for reliable information, and Chad and Jensen stay with him while he calls her. Chris waits in the car.
Jared gets as far as "Hi" before Sandy apparently takes over the conversation. His end of it is confined to "You're kidding" and "Is he ok?" and "That's good" and "Do they know who - " and "Ok, I'll talk to you later."
"What was that?" Chad demands.
"He's ok. The FBI agent. You hit him in the shoulder but he'll be fine. You kinda winged him." Chad looks relieved. Jensen probably does too. He feels relieved, at any rate. "She said they have no idea who robbed the bank but they got away with about seven hundred dollars."
"Seven hundred," Jensen repeats, stunned. For maybe five minutes' work, and they didn't even get into the vault.
"That's what she said." A grin starts creeping across Jared's face. "We got seven hundred bucks. And you didn't kill anyone after all," he says to Chad. "I bet you were never so glad your aim sucks."
"We need to count this properly," Chris says when they go back to the car, "but it looks like about five-fifty, five-sixty in here."
"Seven hundred," Jared tells him, still grinning.
"No shit. Get in the car. We oughta go."
"And I didn't kill anyone," Chad adds proudly. "I just winged the guy."
"And they don't have any leads for who robbed the bank," Jensen says, climbing into the passenger seat. He has to shove the bags of money onto the floor. "I think we're ok."
"But we still can't go home yet," Jared says. "Sandy said the FBI's pissed that one of their agents got shot, even if they have no idea who did it. The guy walked in on us - he didn't know anyone was robbing the bank and we weren't watching the door."
"I was just surprised," Chad interrupts.
"Next time we need to put someone on the door so this doesn't happen again."
And because no one contradicts him about the possibility of doing this again, they spend the rest of the drive to Jensen's parents' house discussing plans for the next robbery that will make it less of a disaster than the first, including where they could go, how long they should wait before trying again, and (briefly) how long they plan to keep doing it. They also talk about how long they should stay in Dallas and what should they tell Jensen's parents, not to mention whether or not Chris and Chad and Jared should call their respective families tonight or wait until tomorrow and what should they say.
"Your sister's going to kill us," Jensen tells Chris. "You know that, right? It doesn't matter what lie you tell her - she'll think we're going to Dallas so you can find people to hit for money." It occurs to him that worrying about Jennifer's reaction is a little stupid, considering the circumstances.
"I was gonna tell her we're going to Houston," Chris says. "I got a friend there."
"Can I use that excuse?" Chad asks.
"Do you have friends in Houston?"
"No. I thought I could use yours." He grins. Jared smacks him on the side of the head. Jensen resists the urge to reach over the seat and do the same.
They get briefly lost driving into Dallas - Jensen has never driven this route from this direction - and then stop for food because Jared is apparently starving. They make it to the Ackles family home a little after dinnertime, surprising the hell out of Jensen's parents and grandparents, not the least because Jensen brought three friends with him, only one of whom anyone knows.
His mom tries to feed them and the boys spin a story about taking a road trip to get out of Jennifer's hair, and maybe going to Oklahoma or possibly Houston to look for work. Jensen is sure his mother knows he's lying but is too polite to say so in front of his friends. Jared charms Jensen's grandmother, who is suspicious of boys whose families she doesn't know, and gets Jensen's grandfather to tell the story of his distant relative who fought under William Travis and was killed at the Alamo. Even Chad is on his best behavior.
Jensen learns that his sister was shipped off to stay with their aunt and uncle in Corpus Christi right after New Year's, to get her away from a boy.
"I didn't like him," Jensen's dad says. "And your mother didn't trust him."
This means that come bedtime, Jared ends up in her room, and Chad gets the couch. Jared wants to see Jensen's room, which Jensen thinks is weird, but he doesn't have anything to hide and he really doesn't mind.
Chad keeps teasing Jared about sleeping in a girl's room until Jared tackles him to the floor, sits on him, and makes him beg for mercy. Chris thinks Jared should just suffocate Chad and leave him there. Jensen suggests they maybe not do that where his mom will have to clean up their mess.
After everyone else has gone to bed, Jensen and Chris bring the two sacks of money in from the car, dump them out on Jensen's bed, and count their theft.
"I'm sitting in my room in my childhood home counting money I stole from a bank in San Antonio," Jensen says. He jiggles a handful of silver dollars. "My parents are asleep right across the hall. This is crazy."
He and Chris count twice, and then Jensen sneaks out to wake Jared up so he can count as well. The final tally comes to $714.77.
"You can't divide that evenly by four," Jared says, yawning.
"We can try," Chris tells him, starting to sort the money into piles.
"Do that in the morning," Jensen suggests. "We don't have anything to separate it into. You can go back to bed." He pats Jared on the shoulder, and Jared heaves himself to his feet and shuffles out.
Jensen does not sleep well. He doesn't think they should stay in Dallas that long. He doesn't think they should stay in Texas at all. And he needs to think up a good reason for why he's about to give his parents a hundred and thirty bucks, when they know he hasn't been working.
First thing in the morning, Chris calls his sister to lie about where he is and to let her know he won't be home for a while.
"Did I tell you about my friend David?" he asks her. "He's in Houston. We thought.... Me and Jen. That we.... No, I'm not looking for fights." He rolls his eyes. "We thought we'd see if there was work there. It's really last minute, I know.... Yeah, we heard. That's some crazy shit. Do they have any idea who it was?" He covers the receiver with his hand and hisses "She's telling me about the robbery" at Jensen.
"What's she saying?" Jensen hisses back.
"What?" Chris says into the phone. "I'm telling Jensen you're worried about us. Yeah, we'll be fine. I'll call you in a couple days." He hangs up.
"And what are you gonna tell her when you call her in a couple days?"
Chris shrugs. "I'll figure it out. Oh, she told me the papers are calling us the Jay Gang. Someone in the bank heard Chad yell 'Jay!' so that's the name they're going with."
Chad looks pleased with himself when they tell him, but then admits he's disappointed they're not the Murray Gang.
"Buck up," Jared says. "We'll give you credit for firing the first shot."
Jensen doesn't want to hang around his parents' house all day, and the four boys need clothes and toiletries and Jared, for some insane reason, is curious to see the place Jensen and Chris came from. So they spend the day tooling around Dallas, driving by Jensen's high school and the gym where Chris learned to box and the apartment Jensen's parents were living in when he was born. They shop for clothes and Chad stops at a barber's for a haircut and Jared walks into a drugstore to buy a razor and soap and walks out with a paper sack full of Cherry Mash candy.
They divide up the Frost Bank money back at the house. Jensen waits until after dinner to corner his mom in the kitchen and give her his share, explaining that he won it playing numbers. She doesn't believe him. He's not surprised.
"Don't lie to your mother," she scolds. "I taught you better than that."
"I'm not lying," he insists. "Why would I lie about playing numbers?"
"I don't know. But there's a reason you don't want me to know where this came from." She shakes the wad of bills at him.
"As long as you take it, it doesn't matter. You need it more than I do, Mom."
His father hasn't had work in six months and spends most of his days at the Elks Lodge. His mother has to look after his grandparents, despite his grandfather's pension, and she has even less help now that Jensen's sister has been packed off to Corpus Christi.
She looks old and tired and pinched, more so than before Jensen left for San Antonio. He hates lying to her, he hates that he has to, but she and his father and even his sister are the reason he walked into Frost Bank with a bandanna over his face and a pistol in his hand.
"Don't argue with me," he says, taking the bills from his mother and stuffing them in the pocket of her apron. He kisses her on the cheek. "Let me take care of you for once, ok?"
They leave the next day. Jensen promises his parents he'll call when he finds work. He tries not to think about the fact that if everything goes according to plan, the work he'll find will be stealing.
Ten minutes outside Dallas, Chris announces "We're going to Oklahoma."
"What's in Oklahoma?" Jared asks.
"Chris - " Jensen start to say. He knows where this is going.
"Indians?" Chad guesses. "Wheat?"
"The Kane family farm."
"I thought you were from Dallas," Jared says.
"It's my great-granddaddy's homestead," Chris explains. "My uncles were working it until the bank took it." He still looks pissed about that. Jensen can't blame him.
"So you want to get back at the bank," Chad says. "We can do that."
"I want to give them the money."
"All of it??" Chad looks a little panicked.
"You can keep your share of the loot," Jared says reassuringly, patting Chad on the shoulder. Chad looks only mildly placated.
"You gave most of your quarter of the Frost money to your folks," Chris tells Jensen. "How is this different?"
He's right - it isn't.
"How do you know they're even still there?" Jensen asks. "The bank's not going to take the farm and then let the farmers stay there."
Chris doesn't have an answer for that. But he doesn't change course.
They cruise through Davis, Oklahoma, in the middle of the day, find a motor court just outside town, and plan their next move. Davis isn't very big but there's a likely-looking bank in the center of town. Chris and Jensen look for a road atlas and a place where Chris can try to call his uncles. Their first quest is successful, the second less so - they call the farm from a drugstore, but no one answers the phone.
They go out for dinner, eat chicken and mashed potatoes and pie, talk about inconsequential things, joke around. Chad makes a pass at the waitress. Jared calms her down when she tries to dump the pot of coffee she's carrying over Chad's head.
Jensen, much to his surprise, sleeps like a baby.
In the morning, while Jared is out finding breakfast, Chad empties his handgun under Chris and Jensen's watchful gaze, and then puts the bullets in his coat pocket. They use their shiny new atlas to trace a route out of town. Chris volunteers to drive again.
"Storm's coming," he says, as they head out under a cloudy sky.
"Smells like snow," Jared adds, and when Jensen gives him a curious look, he explains "Snow has a smell, you didn't know? Doesn't it snow in Dallas?" He grins, teasing. Jensen just rolls his eyes. He knows for a fact that it hardly ever snows in San Antonio either.
Either by virtue of their new and improved planning, or because the bank isn't crowded, or just due to sheer luck, this robbery goes off without a hitch. The only snag, if it can even be called that, is that Chad stops to yell "You've just been robbed by the Murray Gang!" as they dash out. Jared smacks him on the side of the head and hauls him backwards through the door. Chad is unrepentant.
They're just south of Oklahoma City when the snow starts.
"Told you," Jared says to no one in particular. He looks smug.
"Maybe we should stop," Chad suggests. "In case it gets worse."
"I can drive in the snow," Chris says, but Jensen notices his hands tightening on the steering wheel and his concentration sharpening on the road.
They swing around Oklahoma City in the growing storm and make it as far as Enid before Chris admits defeat and they stop at a motel to wait for the snow to let up.
They get stuck in Enid for three days.
By the end of day two Chris wants to strangle Chad and Jensen wants to strangle both of them and Jared has befriended the motel manager to the point she lets Chris borrow her phone five times so he can call his uncles. They never answer. He calls his sister. She tells him the uncles are in Amarillo, the farm is gone, he needs to let it go.
Jensen agrees with her. "We'll hit a couple more banks, you'll keep the money for a new farm. But they lost the old one. I'm sorry, man."
Chad "trades" their car for another one - an inconspicuous black Chevrolet with Oklahoma license plates - and they leave Enid for Tulsa, where four days later they interrupt late morning business at the Exchange National Bank and coax bills and coins out of four startled tellers.
This is our third robbery in two weeks, Jensen realizes, as he and Chad back away from the counters and towards the front door with bags of money in their hands. It can't be this easy.
And it's not. Someone must have alerted the police, or a patrolman just happened to cruise past the bank, because as Jensen and Chad and Jared hustle out the front door and into the waiting car, the policeman starts shooting at them. Chad leans out the back window and attempts to shoot back, apparently forgetting that he took the bullets out of his gun. He swears a blue streak as Chris slams on the gas and rockets through a red light.
"What the fuck was that?" Chad demands.
"A red light?" Chris answers. "A patrolman with a gun?"
"Watch the road," Jensen snaps. "We need to ditch the car."
"We need to get out of Oklahoma."
"We can go to Missouri!" Jared says excitedly. "My dad has a cousin in Springfield!"
"Go east," Jensen tells Chris, who tells him to shut up.
In a tiny town called Vinita, Jared steals a Ford out of someone's driveway and they abandon the black Chevrolet by the side of the road. They continue on until they get to Springfield, and when Jared's father's cousin isn't home, the boys settle into a motel to count their money, calm themselves down, and figure out what to do next.
"What to do next" turns out to be "Go to St Louis". They can wait out the winter, lay low, hope any investigations into their robberies die down, and maybe see some of the city.
It's a brilliant plan. They stay in St Louis for three months. Their ill-gotten gains allow them to become men of leisure - they rent an apartment, cruise around town, go to the movies, eat out, wine and dine the occasional pretty girl, and have several serious discussions about turning to bank robbery as a profession. Who would've guessed that it was something they'd be good at? Especially since Sandy tells Jared over the phone that there have been no leads on the Jay Gang that robbed the Frost Bank back in January, and the police have just about given up.
The FBI hasn't quite stopped investigating, she adds, but there's really nothing left to investigate.
Jensen asks Jared how Sandy knows so much about the FBI, and Jared just shrugs and says she's always known the good gossip.
"Maybe we can go home now," Jared says. But he's voted down.
The boys start writing home, rather than calling all the time, and tell their folks that Houston was a bust so they went to St Louis. ("My dad looks at postmarks," Jared explains. "He likes to try and time the mail.") Old habits die hard and Jensen finds himself looking at want ads and checking for help wanted signs around the city. He and Jared both get library cards - Jared, it turns out, is a voracious reader. Chad buys true crime magazines to read for professional tips. Chris picks up a guitar at a music store and teaches himself how to play. The four of them pool their money for a car and Chad and Jared buy a used 1929 Model A Ford, which they both spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time tinkering with. Jensen learns what a disassembled Ford engine looks like. Chris learns how hard it is to get motor oil out of one's hair.
Late one night Jared takes the car they stole in Vinita, drives an hour south, abandons it, and calls the Vinita police station to leave an anonymous tip. Later he tells Jensen he felt bad that they stole someone's car out of the person's driveway, and he wanted them to get their car back.
And then one afternoon in May, Chris walks out of a soda fountain to find a cop writing down the license plate of their (legally parked, officially stickered) new-used Ford, and the boys decide maybe they should think about moving on.
Part Three
PG-13
Part 2 of 5
Master post
Art
January-February 1933
Texas, Oklahoma
He doesn't realize it at the time, but Jensen's life starts to change on a Wednesday in the middle of January, because that is when Chris and Jennifer learn that their uncles' farm in Oklahoma, which had been homesteaded by great-grandaddy Kane, was foreclosed on and taken by the bank.
Chris is furious - at the government, at the weather, at the bank, at the Oklahoma soil, even at his uncles for sinking money they didn't have on a farm that evidently couldn't sustain it and for not telling anyone they might lose it.
"They'd never ask for help," Jensen tells him. "I don't even know them and I know that."
And the fact is, even if Chris' uncles did ask, no one has the money to help them.
"Fucking banks," Chris spits. He's pacing back and forth across the kitchen, Jensen pacing with him. They can hear Jennifer in the front room, talking to her husband on the phone. She doesn't sound any happier than Chris does.
This goes on for a good twenty minutes, Chris getting increasingly worked up and Jensen getting increasingly exhausted trying to calm him down. Turns out, twenty minutes is more than enough time for Chris to start ranting about other things that have been bothering him. (For some reason, Jensen's father's continued unemployment is one of those things.) Jennifer gets off the phone and comes into the kitchen.
And then the doorbell rings. Twice. There's a good hard knock. This is not a good time to be receiving visitors, but whoever it is clearly won't be ignored. Jensen stomps into the front room and yanks the door open.
"What, dammit?" he snaps. Jared's standing on the steps, looking surprised. "What do you want?"
"The Mummy is showing at the Texas," Jared says. "I thought you might want to go tomorrow. The matinees are cheaper than the evening shows."
Seeing Jared, and being reminded that people are still living normal lives and doing things for fun, calms Jensen down a little bit and clears his head enough for him to remember a way to get the increasing crazy out of Chris' system before he starts breaking things.
"Not today," he tells Jared apologetically. "Sorry, man, but we got some bad news and I have to make sure Chris doesn't kill anyone."
"Shit, I'm sorry, what happened?"
"Family stuff. It's not my family, I can't talk about it. Next week, maybe, ok?"
"Yeah, sure." Jared's expression is an odd combination of disappointed and worried. "Hope everything works out."
"Yeah, me too. See you later." And he shuts the door practically in Jared's face. He knows it might be rude, but there are more important things. "Chris!" he yells into the kitchen. "Don't go out the back!"
Chris and Jennifer are now sitting at the kitchen table. Jennifer is writing something on a pad of paper and holding Chris' wrist with her other hand. Chris is vibrating in his chair, obviously desperate to get up and move but caught until his sister lets him go.
"I got it," Jensen tells her. "You can let go of him." Jennifer shakes her head, her eyes on the pad of paper. She squeezes Chris' wrist. "Don't worry about him, I know what to do."
"I do too," she says. "That's why I'm holding on to him."
"You can trust Jensen," Chris says. "He keeps me out of trouble."
"Fine." She lets go of his wrist. "Don't kill anyone. I'm as upset as you are and I'm not in the mood to get you out of jail."
Because the one thing you can do for Chris in this situation is to find him a fight. And that is what Jensen is going to do.
It was easy in Dallas and it's no more difficult here, to find a find a place to drink, to maybe order something, to insult or offend or just plain piss someone off. Jensen doesn't like to start fights, but he's good enough with his fists to help end them. Or, if Chris is involved, to get out of the way and let them run their course.
Usually this kind of thing ends with people getting tossed into the street. In occasions such as these, when the boys are actively looking for someone to throw down, that usually means them.
But it also means Chris isn't breaking anything in his sister's house, and if they can plan it right, it also means he can work the violence out of his system without ending up in jail. Which, to Jensen's great relief, is what happens. Of course they're both a little beat up by the time they finally make it back to Jennifer's house, but they do make it back.
Chris is still pissed off the next day, but at least he's thinking of ways to put that anger to good use that don't involve punching people in the face. And if sometimes those ways turn out to be "taking Chad's money during poker games", well, Chris claims that he deserves to have the money and Chad deserves to lose it.
But Chad isn't all that flush, even though he likes to pretend he is, and more often than not, the boys end up playing - literally - for peanuts.
"This has to stop," Chad mutters one night, flicking a couple of peanuts towards the pile in the middle of the table. They're sitting in Jennifer's kitchen. After the news about the uncles, she has made a point of keeping an eye on her brother, and if that means he has to bring Jensen's new friends to her house, so be it. "I hate playing for peanuts. Call."
Chris shows his hand - three jacks and two eights. "Full house. Show ‘em."
"Shit." Chad drops his cards on the table and swats at Jared, who tries to steal some of his peanuts.
"Well?"
"Peanuts." He sweeps the rest of his off the table and into his hand and pops a couple in his mouth. Then he reaches for Jared's glass and takes a swig. Jared reaches across the table - it's not a very big table and he has very long arms - grabs Jensen's glass, and drains it.
"Hey!" Jensen protests. Chris pushes his drink in front of Jensen and idly flicks a peanut across the table. It hits Chad in the forehead and Chad, of course, leans forward, grabs a handful from the pot, and fires them back.
Ten minutes later there are peanuts and playing cards all over the floor, and the four boys are laughing at themselves and each other. Jennifer sticks her head in the door, sees the mess, and just reminds them to clean up before going back to the front room.
But half an hour after that, they're tired of their rinky-dink poker games and the mood of the evening has changed.
"All we ever do is play cards, slouch around town, and look for work," Jensen observes. "I need a job. I need to be making money." He needs to be paying his way. Jennifer not-so-gently suggested that he and Chris both make "Find gainful employment" their one New Year's resolution, but so far neither of them has had any luck sticking to it. Jensen doesn't want to have to go back to Dallas. He doesn't want to have to count his time in San Antonio as a failure.
"I need to play better," Chad mutters.
"You need to stop cheating," Jared tells him. "If you didn't cheat so much we could at least play for real money."
"We could if we had any real money."
"And that right there is the problem," Jensen points out. He gestures with his now-empty glass.
"Banks got money," Chris says, sounding resentful.
"Then we'll take it from the banks," Chad suggests, as if that's the most logical solution in the world.
"Banks got security," Jared says. "And vaults and... stuff."
"We'll wear handkerchiefs over our faces. Like train robbers."
"We'll need guns," Jensen adds. It sounds like a stupid idea but he's in the mood to take Chad seriously. When the other three just stare at him, he explains himself with "So the tellers know we mean business. They don't have to be loaded."
Jared looks at Chad and snickers. Chad smacks him.
But no one puts up an argument, so the conversation continues in that direction until Jennifer comes into the kitchen wearing her robe and shoos Jared and Chad out of her house. The idea sticks and grows and it only takes another day before it's a full-fledged - if highly criminal - plan. Jensen wants to blame it on the fact that they came up with it while they were drinking and bored. Jared wants to blame Chad. But it's Chris who strolls into the Frost Bank downtown pretending he wants to open an account, just so he can get an idea of the layout and security (or lack thereof) without arousing suspicion.
This time they meet in Jeff's apartment to make their final plans, because Jeff and his wife both work during the day and no one will be around to overhear. Chris draws a sketch of the bank layout on a piece of paper, and Jared finds a street map in one of the kitchen drawers so they can plan an escape route.
"I've been in that bank," Chad says. He sounds surprised. "I could've gone in to look it over."
"One of us will have to stay in the car," Jensen says, ignoring him.
"That can be Chad," Jared offers. When Chad gives him a look, Jared adds "You're probably the best driver."
"I'll do it," Chris says. "They've seen my face."
"Then you should go in," Jensen tells him. "I don't want all of us to be recognizable."
"You'll be disguised, remember?"
"You're probably better in a crisis than he is," Jared says, jerking his thumb in Chad's direction.
"I'm good in a crisis," Chad objects.
"I hit in a crisis," Chris says. "I'm driving, Jen. End of discussion."
Chad volunteers to acquire the getaway car, at least, and the next day he collects Jensen and Chris in a new-looking green Ford.
"Don't ask where he got it," Jared says from the back seat, as Jensen climbs in next to him and Chad scoots across the front so Chris can drive. There are a couple of burlap sacks on the floor in the back.
Chris drops them off in front of the bank. The plan is for him to drive around the corner and come right back to get them. The other three pull bandannas over their faces like Wild West stagecoach robbers before they get out of the car. There's a little blonde girl with her hair in pigtails sitting on a bench across the street. She watches the boys climb out of the car, and when Jensen glances around to make sure no one's paying attention to them, he catches her eye by accident and she waves. He thinks she's grinning, and he grins too under his bandanna as he waves back.
This doesn't seem real to him. This is like being in a play, or a movie. He can picture the plan in his head - they stride into the bank, Chad demands everyone stay put, Jensen and Jared hand the tellers the bags and demand the money, they take their ill-gotten gains and leave. Easy-peasy. Piece of cake.
But it doesn't go quite as planned.
Later, the three things Jensen will remember about his very first bank robbery are how scared the teller looks when he walks up to the counter and shoves his empty bag at the man's face, the guy in the trench coat who yells "Stop! FBI!", and the sound of a gun accidentally firing in the FBI agent's direction.
And just like that, with two words and one startled act, everything changes.
Jim Beaver, the FBI Special Agent in Charge in San Antonio, has seen better days. His house is only six years old and the ceiling in his daughter's room is already cracking, the sweet little old lady who takes care of her after school is pestering him to meet a nice woman and remarry "because little girls need a mother", one of Hoover's untested College Boy agents arrived from Chicago yesterday and Jim has no idea what to do with him, Miss McCoy, his new secretary, is a lovely girl but still losing papers in her attempts to adjust to her predecessor's idiosyncratic filing system, that damn Detective Downey is still hanging around (why the man is so interested in the Bureau, Jim will never know), and he dislikes J Edgar Hoover with a dislike bordering on active hate, which means doing his job is sometimes very difficult indeed.
And then Miss McCoy bursts into his office to tell him that Agent Tigerman has been shot trying to stop a bank robbery.
"Son of a bitch," he swears, jumping up fast enough to knock his chair over. "Where is he?" He's grabbing his coat and hat as he runs through the office, Miss McCoy jogging next to him trying to explain. He never takes his gunbelt off when he's at work, and for once he's grateful. He hears "Frost Bank" and "seven hundred" and "he didn't know".
"He wasn't killed," she adds. Jim doesn't care. No one shoots one of his boys and gets away with it.
"Lindberg! Collins!" he yells. "Get down to Frost Bank and make yourselves useful! I'm going to the hospital!"
The car is full of yelling fifteen minutes after they pull away from the bank - Chad is yelling at the FBI, Jared is yelling at Chad, Chris is yelling at Jensen, and Jensen is yelling at everyone to shut up.
He has always been proud of his ability to remain more or less calm in a crisis. This is not calm. But it's also an entirely unexpected crisis.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP," he demands, and finally everyone does. "Christ, Chad, what the hell were you thinking?"
"He wasn't," Jared says from the back seat.
"You shot someone!"
"It wasn't supposed to be loaded!" Chad protests.
"Did you check?" Chris asks pointedly.
"I didn't kill him!"
"How do you know?"
Chad stares at the back of Chris' head, panic-stricken.
"What do we do now?" Jared asks, clearly striving for calm. Well, someone has to. But he's looking at Jensen. And then Chad is looking at Jensen. And then Chris takes his eyes off the road long enough to also look at Jensen.
When did I get put in charge? Jensen wonders.
"Well, we can't go back to Jennifer's," he says. "And you really can't go home," he tells Chad. "We have to leave town, at least until we know what happened to that guy. If he's just hurt - " He thinks.
"We robbed a fucking bank, Jen," Chris says. "If they catch us, we're going to jail. I am not going to jail."
"Just... shut up and drive." They have no contingency plans. They weren't even thinking about what they'd do after they left the bank, aside from divide the money and figure out what to spend it on first. They never thought to plan for this.
They never even considered jail, which Jensen now thinks was their first and biggest mistake.
This is what comes of making plans while drunk, he thinks. This is what you get for letting desperation inform your decisions.
Jared and Chad are looking at him expectantly. Shit.
"We have to go somewhere," Jared says. "We can't keep driving around San Antonio."
"We'll go to Dallas," Jensen decides. "Chris. You want to head north."
They stop at a gas station just south of Austin looking for a phone so they can try to find out what happened to the FBI agent. Jared seems to think Sandy is their best bet for reliable information, and Chad and Jensen stay with him while he calls her. Chris waits in the car.
Jared gets as far as "Hi" before Sandy apparently takes over the conversation. His end of it is confined to "You're kidding" and "Is he ok?" and "That's good" and "Do they know who - " and "Ok, I'll talk to you later."
"What was that?" Chad demands.
"He's ok. The FBI agent. You hit him in the shoulder but he'll be fine. You kinda winged him." Chad looks relieved. Jensen probably does too. He feels relieved, at any rate. "She said they have no idea who robbed the bank but they got away with about seven hundred dollars."
"Seven hundred," Jensen repeats, stunned. For maybe five minutes' work, and they didn't even get into the vault.
"That's what she said." A grin starts creeping across Jared's face. "We got seven hundred bucks. And you didn't kill anyone after all," he says to Chad. "I bet you were never so glad your aim sucks."
"We need to count this properly," Chris says when they go back to the car, "but it looks like about five-fifty, five-sixty in here."
"Seven hundred," Jared tells him, still grinning.
"No shit. Get in the car. We oughta go."
"And I didn't kill anyone," Chad adds proudly. "I just winged the guy."
"And they don't have any leads for who robbed the bank," Jensen says, climbing into the passenger seat. He has to shove the bags of money onto the floor. "I think we're ok."
"But we still can't go home yet," Jared says. "Sandy said the FBI's pissed that one of their agents got shot, even if they have no idea who did it. The guy walked in on us - he didn't know anyone was robbing the bank and we weren't watching the door."
"I was just surprised," Chad interrupts.
"Next time we need to put someone on the door so this doesn't happen again."
And because no one contradicts him about the possibility of doing this again, they spend the rest of the drive to Jensen's parents' house discussing plans for the next robbery that will make it less of a disaster than the first, including where they could go, how long they should wait before trying again, and (briefly) how long they plan to keep doing it. They also talk about how long they should stay in Dallas and what should they tell Jensen's parents, not to mention whether or not Chris and Chad and Jared should call their respective families tonight or wait until tomorrow and what should they say.
"Your sister's going to kill us," Jensen tells Chris. "You know that, right? It doesn't matter what lie you tell her - she'll think we're going to Dallas so you can find people to hit for money." It occurs to him that worrying about Jennifer's reaction is a little stupid, considering the circumstances.
"I was gonna tell her we're going to Houston," Chris says. "I got a friend there."
"Can I use that excuse?" Chad asks.
"Do you have friends in Houston?"
"No. I thought I could use yours." He grins. Jared smacks him on the side of the head. Jensen resists the urge to reach over the seat and do the same.
They get briefly lost driving into Dallas - Jensen has never driven this route from this direction - and then stop for food because Jared is apparently starving. They make it to the Ackles family home a little after dinnertime, surprising the hell out of Jensen's parents and grandparents, not the least because Jensen brought three friends with him, only one of whom anyone knows.
His mom tries to feed them and the boys spin a story about taking a road trip to get out of Jennifer's hair, and maybe going to Oklahoma or possibly Houston to look for work. Jensen is sure his mother knows he's lying but is too polite to say so in front of his friends. Jared charms Jensen's grandmother, who is suspicious of boys whose families she doesn't know, and gets Jensen's grandfather to tell the story of his distant relative who fought under William Travis and was killed at the Alamo. Even Chad is on his best behavior.
Jensen learns that his sister was shipped off to stay with their aunt and uncle in Corpus Christi right after New Year's, to get her away from a boy.
"I didn't like him," Jensen's dad says. "And your mother didn't trust him."
This means that come bedtime, Jared ends up in her room, and Chad gets the couch. Jared wants to see Jensen's room, which Jensen thinks is weird, but he doesn't have anything to hide and he really doesn't mind.
Chad keeps teasing Jared about sleeping in a girl's room until Jared tackles him to the floor, sits on him, and makes him beg for mercy. Chris thinks Jared should just suffocate Chad and leave him there. Jensen suggests they maybe not do that where his mom will have to clean up their mess.
After everyone else has gone to bed, Jensen and Chris bring the two sacks of money in from the car, dump them out on Jensen's bed, and count their theft.
"I'm sitting in my room in my childhood home counting money I stole from a bank in San Antonio," Jensen says. He jiggles a handful of silver dollars. "My parents are asleep right across the hall. This is crazy."
He and Chris count twice, and then Jensen sneaks out to wake Jared up so he can count as well. The final tally comes to $714.77.
"You can't divide that evenly by four," Jared says, yawning.
"We can try," Chris tells him, starting to sort the money into piles.
"Do that in the morning," Jensen suggests. "We don't have anything to separate it into. You can go back to bed." He pats Jared on the shoulder, and Jared heaves himself to his feet and shuffles out.
Jensen does not sleep well. He doesn't think they should stay in Dallas that long. He doesn't think they should stay in Texas at all. And he needs to think up a good reason for why he's about to give his parents a hundred and thirty bucks, when they know he hasn't been working.
First thing in the morning, Chris calls his sister to lie about where he is and to let her know he won't be home for a while.
"Did I tell you about my friend David?" he asks her. "He's in Houston. We thought.... Me and Jen. That we.... No, I'm not looking for fights." He rolls his eyes. "We thought we'd see if there was work there. It's really last minute, I know.... Yeah, we heard. That's some crazy shit. Do they have any idea who it was?" He covers the receiver with his hand and hisses "She's telling me about the robbery" at Jensen.
"What's she saying?" Jensen hisses back.
"What?" Chris says into the phone. "I'm telling Jensen you're worried about us. Yeah, we'll be fine. I'll call you in a couple days." He hangs up.
"And what are you gonna tell her when you call her in a couple days?"
Chris shrugs. "I'll figure it out. Oh, she told me the papers are calling us the Jay Gang. Someone in the bank heard Chad yell 'Jay!' so that's the name they're going with."
Chad looks pleased with himself when they tell him, but then admits he's disappointed they're not the Murray Gang.
"Buck up," Jared says. "We'll give you credit for firing the first shot."
Jensen doesn't want to hang around his parents' house all day, and the four boys need clothes and toiletries and Jared, for some insane reason, is curious to see the place Jensen and Chris came from. So they spend the day tooling around Dallas, driving by Jensen's high school and the gym where Chris learned to box and the apartment Jensen's parents were living in when he was born. They shop for clothes and Chad stops at a barber's for a haircut and Jared walks into a drugstore to buy a razor and soap and walks out with a paper sack full of Cherry Mash candy.
They divide up the Frost Bank money back at the house. Jensen waits until after dinner to corner his mom in the kitchen and give her his share, explaining that he won it playing numbers. She doesn't believe him. He's not surprised.
"Don't lie to your mother," she scolds. "I taught you better than that."
"I'm not lying," he insists. "Why would I lie about playing numbers?"
"I don't know. But there's a reason you don't want me to know where this came from." She shakes the wad of bills at him.
"As long as you take it, it doesn't matter. You need it more than I do, Mom."
His father hasn't had work in six months and spends most of his days at the Elks Lodge. His mother has to look after his grandparents, despite his grandfather's pension, and she has even less help now that Jensen's sister has been packed off to Corpus Christi.
She looks old and tired and pinched, more so than before Jensen left for San Antonio. He hates lying to her, he hates that he has to, but she and his father and even his sister are the reason he walked into Frost Bank with a bandanna over his face and a pistol in his hand.
"Don't argue with me," he says, taking the bills from his mother and stuffing them in the pocket of her apron. He kisses her on the cheek. "Let me take care of you for once, ok?"
They leave the next day. Jensen promises his parents he'll call when he finds work. He tries not to think about the fact that if everything goes according to plan, the work he'll find will be stealing.
Ten minutes outside Dallas, Chris announces "We're going to Oklahoma."
"What's in Oklahoma?" Jared asks.
"Chris - " Jensen start to say. He knows where this is going.
"Indians?" Chad guesses. "Wheat?"
"The Kane family farm."
"I thought you were from Dallas," Jared says.
"It's my great-granddaddy's homestead," Chris explains. "My uncles were working it until the bank took it." He still looks pissed about that. Jensen can't blame him.
"So you want to get back at the bank," Chad says. "We can do that."
"I want to give them the money."
"All of it??" Chad looks a little panicked.
"You can keep your share of the loot," Jared says reassuringly, patting Chad on the shoulder. Chad looks only mildly placated.
"You gave most of your quarter of the Frost money to your folks," Chris tells Jensen. "How is this different?"
He's right - it isn't.
"How do you know they're even still there?" Jensen asks. "The bank's not going to take the farm and then let the farmers stay there."
Chris doesn't have an answer for that. But he doesn't change course.
They cruise through Davis, Oklahoma, in the middle of the day, find a motor court just outside town, and plan their next move. Davis isn't very big but there's a likely-looking bank in the center of town. Chris and Jensen look for a road atlas and a place where Chris can try to call his uncles. Their first quest is successful, the second less so - they call the farm from a drugstore, but no one answers the phone.
They go out for dinner, eat chicken and mashed potatoes and pie, talk about inconsequential things, joke around. Chad makes a pass at the waitress. Jared calms her down when she tries to dump the pot of coffee she's carrying over Chad's head.
Jensen, much to his surprise, sleeps like a baby.
In the morning, while Jared is out finding breakfast, Chad empties his handgun under Chris and Jensen's watchful gaze, and then puts the bullets in his coat pocket. They use their shiny new atlas to trace a route out of town. Chris volunteers to drive again.
"Storm's coming," he says, as they head out under a cloudy sky.
"Smells like snow," Jared adds, and when Jensen gives him a curious look, he explains "Snow has a smell, you didn't know? Doesn't it snow in Dallas?" He grins, teasing. Jensen just rolls his eyes. He knows for a fact that it hardly ever snows in San Antonio either.
Either by virtue of their new and improved planning, or because the bank isn't crowded, or just due to sheer luck, this robbery goes off without a hitch. The only snag, if it can even be called that, is that Chad stops to yell "You've just been robbed by the Murray Gang!" as they dash out. Jared smacks him on the side of the head and hauls him backwards through the door. Chad is unrepentant.
They're just south of Oklahoma City when the snow starts.
"Told you," Jared says to no one in particular. He looks smug.
"Maybe we should stop," Chad suggests. "In case it gets worse."
"I can drive in the snow," Chris says, but Jensen notices his hands tightening on the steering wheel and his concentration sharpening on the road.
They swing around Oklahoma City in the growing storm and make it as far as Enid before Chris admits defeat and they stop at a motel to wait for the snow to let up.
They get stuck in Enid for three days.
By the end of day two Chris wants to strangle Chad and Jensen wants to strangle both of them and Jared has befriended the motel manager to the point she lets Chris borrow her phone five times so he can call his uncles. They never answer. He calls his sister. She tells him the uncles are in Amarillo, the farm is gone, he needs to let it go.
Jensen agrees with her. "We'll hit a couple more banks, you'll keep the money for a new farm. But they lost the old one. I'm sorry, man."
Chad "trades" their car for another one - an inconspicuous black Chevrolet with Oklahoma license plates - and they leave Enid for Tulsa, where four days later they interrupt late morning business at the Exchange National Bank and coax bills and coins out of four startled tellers.
This is our third robbery in two weeks, Jensen realizes, as he and Chad back away from the counters and towards the front door with bags of money in their hands. It can't be this easy.
And it's not. Someone must have alerted the police, or a patrolman just happened to cruise past the bank, because as Jensen and Chad and Jared hustle out the front door and into the waiting car, the policeman starts shooting at them. Chad leans out the back window and attempts to shoot back, apparently forgetting that he took the bullets out of his gun. He swears a blue streak as Chris slams on the gas and rockets through a red light.
"What the fuck was that?" Chad demands.
"A red light?" Chris answers. "A patrolman with a gun?"
"Watch the road," Jensen snaps. "We need to ditch the car."
"We need to get out of Oklahoma."
"We can go to Missouri!" Jared says excitedly. "My dad has a cousin in Springfield!"
"Go east," Jensen tells Chris, who tells him to shut up.
In a tiny town called Vinita, Jared steals a Ford out of someone's driveway and they abandon the black Chevrolet by the side of the road. They continue on until they get to Springfield, and when Jared's father's cousin isn't home, the boys settle into a motel to count their money, calm themselves down, and figure out what to do next.
"What to do next" turns out to be "Go to St Louis". They can wait out the winter, lay low, hope any investigations into their robberies die down, and maybe see some of the city.
It's a brilliant plan. They stay in St Louis for three months. Their ill-gotten gains allow them to become men of leisure - they rent an apartment, cruise around town, go to the movies, eat out, wine and dine the occasional pretty girl, and have several serious discussions about turning to bank robbery as a profession. Who would've guessed that it was something they'd be good at? Especially since Sandy tells Jared over the phone that there have been no leads on the Jay Gang that robbed the Frost Bank back in January, and the police have just about given up.
The FBI hasn't quite stopped investigating, she adds, but there's really nothing left to investigate.
Jensen asks Jared how Sandy knows so much about the FBI, and Jared just shrugs and says she's always known the good gossip.
"Maybe we can go home now," Jared says. But he's voted down.
The boys start writing home, rather than calling all the time, and tell their folks that Houston was a bust so they went to St Louis. ("My dad looks at postmarks," Jared explains. "He likes to try and time the mail.") Old habits die hard and Jensen finds himself looking at want ads and checking for help wanted signs around the city. He and Jared both get library cards - Jared, it turns out, is a voracious reader. Chad buys true crime magazines to read for professional tips. Chris picks up a guitar at a music store and teaches himself how to play. The four of them pool their money for a car and Chad and Jared buy a used 1929 Model A Ford, which they both spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time tinkering with. Jensen learns what a disassembled Ford engine looks like. Chris learns how hard it is to get motor oil out of one's hair.
Late one night Jared takes the car they stole in Vinita, drives an hour south, abandons it, and calls the Vinita police station to leave an anonymous tip. Later he tells Jensen he felt bad that they stole someone's car out of the person's driveway, and he wanted them to get their car back.
And then one afternoon in May, Chris walks out of a soda fountain to find a cop writing down the license plate of their (legally parked, officially stickered) new-used Ford, and the boys decide maybe they should think about moving on.
Part Three