"Bank Robbers"
"Did I ever tell you about the time. . . . ."
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Rather like the idea of writing this book, Bobby got taken in with the messianic idea of "chiseling cars", or buying an automobile with problems and spending a minimum amount of money, then turning around and selling it for a profit. However, as everyone chasing after the fast buck will learn-- the work is hard and the spoils elusive-- like splashing your hand in a pond to grab a-hold of a goldfish that slips in between your fingers with a desultory flick of its tail.
But Hayes could not be deterred as he stood over the pond, so-to-speak, with a samurai sword he picked up at a flea market poised to stab in a double-grip and waxed poetic about that old 1970's t.v. show, "Kung-Fu".
"It all comes down to the power of the mind", he'd lecture philosophically, even as his sweatpants fell down around his ankles. Matters weren't helped when he dropped the sword in the water and scared the fish away. The fact is, no one wanted the junk cars he could dredge up for next-to-nothing off the free ads circulating around the bulletin board at the local grocery store. No fish were biting on Bobby's latest acquisition, and it sat in the parking lot for weeks. The apartment office would not allow junk cars to sit without license plates, so Bobby lifted a license plate from somewhere as camouflage and kept his fingers crossed.
Finally, one afternoon a big, fat fish swam right up to him-- a neighbor in his early '20s with an offer too good to be true. The kid offered to pay half up front and "borrow" the car to check it out with a mechanic. Hayes was no sooner licking his finger and counting the bills when about six police cars converged on "Brandy Station" with lights revolving and sirens wailing.
A giant black cop hammered on the musk-rat's door door and demanded to know if that was his car that a tow-truck was just hauling into Brandy Station with a whine. Apparently, the young man and his accomplice-- who swabbed the floor of the bank in question-- stuck up the place and planned to speed down to Florida in a get-away car and live like bandits with their girlfriends in tow, tagging along for the ride and snapping gum like a sinister-looking pair of Britney Spears sisters.
You see, they thought they were smart-- they robbed the bank in a red car but then switched into Bobby's chiseled car which was white, and didn't even feel the need to put on masks as they robbed the bank at gunpoint and smiled & waved for the security cameras, high on cocaine. They threw their gun out the window and sped away at 90 miles an hour. A state trooper pulled them over for speeding and realized that their vehicle had only one license plate. . . . . that didn't match the car.
Bobby, in his slovenliness, was an unlikely public hero and a begrudging asset to law enforcement.
"Dustin, you idiot! You fucking idiot!" one of the girlfriends bawled with mascara streaking down her cheeks, handcuffed in the back of a squad car.
About only half of the money was recovered, and the police were scouring the bushes with dogs for the remaining $2500 or so. A helicopter was thumping overhead looking for clues, if the bank robbers had stashed it somewhere on the property.
As the afternoon gradually wound down, Hayes found himself out on Paul Tumber's porch-- checking out the scene with his grizzled neighbor. All typical talk of stop-a-crime/cut-off-balls vigilantism had turned lily-white with "the boys in blue" talking into their radios, the dispatcher's crackling voice coming over the receiver.
"No, Bobby, don't let us look at them at the same or else they're going to think we're both guilty!"
Life went back to its usual "red state chaos", though about two weeks later the $8/hour maintenance man often seen unobtrusively pushing around a mop n' bucket on wheels bought himself a $2500 bass boat. "The Brandy Station Brigade" had been bush-whacked.
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