I’m Fixin’ To Play Dead (Part 62)

Monday morning came and it found me sitting inside the Jeep in the parking lot of the bank where Sissy had helped me set up a checking account, get a Visa card and put the leather case containing my money in one of their safe deposit boxes. The case should have a little over half a million dollars in it. I had skimmed off fifty thousand and had it stashed in my duffle bag. I also had around twenty thousand in my money belt that I had stolen from myself out of the safe back at VegX in Atlanta. And there was the five thousand I had deposited into a checking account.

When I observed them unlocking the doors I drained my coffee cup, got out of the Jeep and walked inside. I spotted Neil Campbell in his cubicle right away and walked directly to his desk.

When he looked up at me it seemed that he was a little startled to see me. But he quickly composed himself and said, “Mister Cooper! How nice to see you again. I – I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon. May I be of some service?”

I was fresh out of politeness. “I need to get the brief case of documents out of the safe deposit box I rented on Friday morning,” I told him.

“But-but-but, sir,” he stammered, “Miss Sessions picked up the case on Saturday morning!”

“How could she do that when I have the key?” I asked him.

“Because of the papers you signed. It was a joint account. She had a key also. Either of you could remove it at anytime.”

I stood there and just soaked it all in, and now I knew for dead sure that it had all been a scam, the whole time. It had probably all started when Louise made the phone call from the Wal-Mart just before she stole the cars. She had told Sissy about the money then, and Sissy and Bobby had begun scheming and planning.

It would have happened sooner if not for Red. He was real and they were afraid of him and had used me to get rid of him. Once he was eliminated they had staged the arrest of Louise to play on my sympathy and seal my trust in them. Then Sissy had seduced me and sent me off to Atlanta on a useless errand while they made off with the money.

It was brilliant. Leon and Red had simply been thieves and chasing them down had been simple, but I didn’t think I would be so fortunate the third time. These people were professionals and so far I had absolutely no trail to follow.

“Mister Cooper, are you all right?” the banker asked.

I forced my thoughts back to the present and said, “Uh, yeah, I’m fine.”

Then I stood up and turned to leave, but thought about one little remnant that might be left. “How about the five thousand in my checking account? Is it still there?”

The banker punched a few buttons on his computer and said, “Your checking account is in tact, sir, with a balance of five thousand.”

“Well bless her cheating heart,” I thought to myself, “she left me a few crumbs.”

I wrote a check and closed out the checking account and collected the five thousand in $50 bills.

As I drove away from the bank I began to wonder why she had left me with the five thousand.

Probably pity, I thought, but I wagered she wouldn’t have done it if she had known that I had stashed some of it in my duffel bag before we went to the bank. I laughed to think that when they counted it, it would be fifty-thousand short of what they were expecting.

I was still in possession of a little over seventy-five thousand dollars, so I wasn’t exactly broke, and I was driving around in a very nice vehicle, which was beginning to worry me a little.

When Tuesday morning came I had my mind right and was packed and ready to move. The sun was shinning brightly through the gap in the drapes. I spread them wide and welcomed the light and the warmth. Below me, in the parking lot, the Jeep sat with a bright reflection of the sun off its red roof, which caused the movement around it to be blurred at first.

But when I shaded my eyes with my hand I saw that there were two of them. They were both wearing dark suits. One of them was at the rear of the vehicle looking closely at the license plate, while the other one was looking through the door window into the inside.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that some of my former friends had planned for me to be fixin’ to get arrested for auto theft.