The Getaway - By Tom Barber Page 0,48

the steps and out of sight.

And wondered how she could use him and all this to her advantage.

TEN

Thursday. September 1.

10:05 am.

The bank was a Chase on 40and 7 Avenue. It was a good location, close to Times Square and convenient for all the tourists, yet also readily available for all the businesses and workers operating out of the Midtown area. It was accessible from both sides, located on the ground floor of a tall office building on the corner of the street. From the east, one would walk through a set of double doors from Broadway, through a golden lobby and over a marble floor, then turn left and pass through a doorway that led into the bank. From the west, access to the bank was a simple wide entrance on the corner of 40 and 7, right on the doorstep of Times Square. This portion of 7 was also known as Fashion Avenue and was right up there with the wealthiest areas in the city. Over three quarters of every piece of clothing in the entire United States were tailored and put together in this district, and once the garments were sold, the profits came straight back. Consequently this bank was another perfectly placed branch for Chase, right in the centre of a money-making and industriously corporate area, and when coupled with all the tourists in the neighbourhood, business thrived every single day.

That Thursday morning, the bank was busy. Customers were using ATMs, both just outside on the street and inside the bank itself, and tellers were lined up on the north wall behind bullet-proof glass, busy handling cheques and deposits and dealing with other customer requests. A queue of twelve people or so formed a line horizontal to the tellers, each waiting for their turn and for a teller to become available, some more patient than others. Against the south windows, a series of desks ran side-by-side all the way down the wall, several of them occupied with bank employees conducting private, one-on-one discussions with customers, handing out financial advice, organising loans or setting up new accounts.

There were two armed guards inside, as there were in every Chase bank in the city, and they were standing on either side of the bank, against the walls, blending into the background, yet alert and vigilant, watching everyone who walked into the branch. All things considered, they both figured they had a pretty cushy deal. Although the double entrances meant there was a constant stream of people flowing through the bank, and any one of them could be a potential thief, the NYPD had a headquarters set up on the southern edge of Times Square just two blocks away. All five tellers were protected behind bullet-proof glass with a silent alarm button by their feet, and each guard had a Glock 17 and two spare mags tucked into a holster on his hip as extra insurance. It would be foolhardy to say that a bank was impossible to hold up, but this branch was up there with the most impenetrable. Armed guards, five panic buttons, bulletproof glass, a vault as strong as a nuclear bomb shelter, and not to mention long windows on every wall revealing the interior of the bank to everyone walking outside on the sidewalk.

If anyone came in and tried to use weapons, they’d be spotted by about fifty witnesses outside in an instant, not to mention everyone else inside the bank. This was the kind of place that made bank robbers wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. In every aspect it was secure and protected. A couple of thieves had been stupid enough to try note-jobs here in the past, and had turned to find the entire south-Midtown NYPD division from Times Square rushing through the west doors, thirty seconds after the tellers had pushed the panic buttons with their toes. There were thousands of banks in Manhattan, but this was most definitely a branch that thieves would be best-served to leave well alone.

But at 10:06 am that September Thursday morning, three cops approached the west entrance to the bank.

They were two men and a woman. They were dressed in full navy-blue NYPD clothing, and each had large aviator sunglasses over their noses, sitting snugly under the police caps pulled low over their eyes. It was a bright, sunny day outside, so the sunglasses didn’t seem unusual or cause suspicion. Even cops needed protection from the sun.

As they approached the entrance