Harvey Robber Case

Two weeks before he was supposed to start at a firm in Boston, Harvey’s best friend was in an accident in Virginia. Harvey broke land speed records getting to the hospital in Staunton. His friend was okay, banged up, bruised, and suffering two broken ribs, a concussion, and a sprained wrist. His wife was sore and bruised, as were his two young daughters that had gratefully been asleep at the time of the wreck and hadn’t processed what happened until much later. Pacing about the hospital waiting area, Harvey had seen five attorneys all waiting for his friend to be released so they could begin a lawsuit against the tractor trailer driver who had nicked them and sent them into the guardrail. That’s when Harvey had decided not to be a lawyer.

He thought about all of this for two reasons.

One, he knew guns very well, and having used them extensively in service of his country, he also knew the people comfortable with them. The Bank Robber was not one of them. And two, he also knew the shoes.
He had seen the shoes once before, only the laces had been black and the idiot wearing them had been a dark haired punk with enough metal in his head to transmit a wireless signal. His father had brought him in to see one of the partners about a sexual assault charge, something the father felt would ruin the chances for his son to attend Yale in the fall. Harvey was required to do the research on the case, not to find evidence of the young man’s innocence, but to find everything that would ruin the police officer’s credibility. Preferably, his career too, said the partner.
Harvey had found nothing, and what he did find, he shredded and buried electronically so that even a former colleague in special projects would have had trouble finding it. It wasn’t that the officer was above reproach. Like any individual in a position of responsibility, he had cut a few corners and bent a few rules to get where he wanted to be in life. It was just that the boy in the shoes had really pissed him off, and knowing what he did about life and having seen some of the dark side of it, he couldn’t justify letting the little punk get away free while a relatively good man was punished for doing his job. There were some crimes Harvey struggled

to forgive and sexual assault was one of them. He knew he played a little at being God that day, but he never lost sleep over it.
Now, thinking about those moments, he realized that playing God was just another aspect of being human. And well-trained by government operations. He knew how much the shoes cost, which had him wondering how a young kid disguised as a bank robber could afford them, especially one unfamiliar with vault procedures and weapons protocols.
Shrugging, Harvey stood up.
“Hey! Hey! What the (chartreuse) do you think you’re doing, Stick Man?”
“Stretching my legs,” Harvey replied calmly.
“Well, stretch ‘em on the ground, Stick Man, or I’ll rearrange them for you.”
Harvey shrugged again and approached The Bank Robber. There was an audible gasp from some of the tellers and an unflattering comparison to a donkey from the businessman. The robber raised the gun and pointed it directly at Harvey’s chest.
“What the (lavender) do you think you are doing?”
“I was just thinking,” Harvey said.
“Probably not such a good idea, (taupe).”
Harvey ignored the robber and reached over to the safety mechanism on the gun.
“The name, boy, is Harvey, and I was just thinking,” he said again softly. “It’s more effective to hold a bank hostage when the safety is off.”
With that, Harvey slid the mechanism over with a gentle click.
The robber reacted the way any predator animal caught in an uncompromising cage reacts.
He started screaming.
A lot.
And he used words Harvey had never even heard of before.
But as the storm passed, the robber stared at Harvey in wild-eyed fear. He didn’t like the gun apparently, or the idea of actually shooting someone. As his fellow hostages hit the floor flat on their bellies and arms akimbo, Harvey refused to obey the robber’s screams.
“If you want me to lie down on that floor,” he said softly. “You’re going to have to shoot me dead.”
The robber’s fingers twitched and Harvey felt his throat thicken, but the fear in the robber’s face was more telling than anything else.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” he said in a voice only Harvey could hear. “Please, man, don’t ruin this. What do you want?”
“I like your shoes,” Harvey blurted.
“That’s not exactly apropos, man, but if it gets you to go the (gold) away, you can have ‘em.”
“Apropos?”
“Yeah. It’s like related to the conversation, or something. Just because I’m a bank robber, doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
“Clearly.” Harvey cocked his head. “Maybe you should lower the gun. Looks like your arm is getting tired.”
The kid snorted, “You think you know (violet), don’t you, Stick Man?”
Harvey shrugged, “I know how much those shoes cost, and I know you’ve never shot that gun, and I know you aren’t a fucking bank robber, so don’t kid a kidder.”
The kid’s jaw dropped and Harvey took the moment to push the gun down. The risk was the kid panicking. This would mean the kid hitting the trigger by accident and Harvey dying slowly from a gut shot. The hope was that he startled the kid into some mind numbing sense of calm. When he didn’t feel the burn of a bullet, he figured he was good to go.
“Now,” Harvey said softly. “Why don’t we talk?”
Before the robber could open his mouth to respond, the audible wail of sirens pierced the uncomfortable stillness. Harvey looked over his shoulder. In the time Harvey had had with the robber, one of the tellers had broken free of her paralysis and scooted over enough to reach under the lip of the counter to the emergency button.
“Bitch!” The robber screamed, jumping up from the deposit slips. “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know what you’ve done? You are mine, whore! Get up!”
Harvey slid over so that the loaded gun was pointed back again at his chest.
The robber scowled, “You really should move, Stick Man.”
“If I move,” Harvey said softly. “And you take that woman hostage, they will kill you.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Stick Man.”
Harvey swallowed and blurted out, “Before I came here I was on a train from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.”
“Okay. Why do I care?”
“I had no intention of getting to Los Angeles.”
The boy’s eyes widened and the intelligence there told Harvey he understood exactly what Harvey was trying to tell him. As the sirens blared outside, the snap and pop of police car doors led to emotional pandemonium at the bank. Harvey felt, rather than saw, the arrival of SWAT. Four years with special projects had given him a sixth sense about law enforcement, and the telltale itch around him usually meant there were more eyes on them than the ones in control were letting on.
On cue, a disembodied voice filtered through a megaphone burst into the bank.
“Attention, You-In-There, we are willing to listen to your demands. Let the hostages go.”
The Robber swallowed hard and looked at Harvey.
“I have to finish this.”
“There’s more than one ending here, kid. This isn’t exactly set in stone.”
“You don’t understand, Stick Man.

I’m looking at life in prison for this shit. There’s no way a guy like me can survive prison, you know what I mean?”
Harvey shook his head, “There has to be something or someone worth living for.”
“There’s nothing, Stick Man.”
“Then someone,” he insisted.
The Robber’s eyes clouded. “I thought there was. I loved him like my own, understand? But she says that he isn’t and it was all a mistake.”
The police officers called again over the megaphone. Harvey felt the telltale twitch increase in his skin. SWAT was closing in.
“Come out with your hands raised and release the hostages. The district attorney is willing to work with you.”
Harvey snorted. To his surprise, The Robber’s lips quirked upwards at the corners.
“What? You don’t believe him?”
Harvey shook his head, “I’d rather talk to you a little more. How’d you get the shoes?”
The Robber shrugged, “Gift, from my parents. They’re big money, but after this, I’m pretty sure I can kiss my inheritance good-bye. Unfortunately, that is the only thing they are good for. Told you, Stick Man. There’s nobody.”
“There’s me,” Harvey said.
The Robber backed away a step and pointed the gun at Harvey’s chest.
“You bat for the other team, Stick

Man?”