The Getaway Man by Andrew Vachss Read Free Book Online Page A

door of the bank. One of them had a loudspeaker in his
    hand. He yelled at me to get out of the car and get on the ground.
    I
    waited for Tim and Virgil.
    Then the cops started shooting.
    I woke up in the hospital. There were tubes running out of me. I don’t know
    how much longer it was before I could feel the shackles around my
    ankles.
    The cops came. And men in suits. They asked me a lot of
    questions. I was so dizzy that it was easy not to answer them.
    T he
    nurse had red fingernails. She was kind of chunky, but she looked pretty in her
    white uniform.
    “Did you really rob that bank?” she asked
    me, real soft, when nobody was around.
    “Huh?” I said.
    She got a nasty look on her face. Then she picked up a big needle and gave
    me a shot.
    O ne day, a lawyer came. An old guy, with
    a lot of heavy black hair he combed straight back. “Can you tell me what
    happened?” he asked me.
    “Huh?” I said.
    T hey tried us all together. All of us that was left. The lawyer showed
    me the papers that said they were charging Tim and me, for two counts of
    capital murder and four pages of other stuff. They didn’t charge Virgil,
    because Virgil was dead.
    “That second count is felony
    murder,” the lawyer said to me. “If a person dies during the
    commission of a felony, everybody involved in the crime can be held
    responsible.”
    “I don’t understand,” I told him.
    It was the truth.
    “The prosecution’s theory is that, after
    the robbers had lined everyone up, one of them went into the cages. It was then
    that the assistant manager pulled a gun. He shot the one with the shotgun. The
    other robber then shot him, killing him instantly.
    “The robber
    with the shotgun fired a blast, but it didn’t hit anyone. Apparently, he
    was mortally wounded, and the other one wouldn’t leave him. They were
    brothers, maybe that explains it.”
    I didn’t say
    anything.
    “The reason you’re charged with the homicides is
    that you were part of the robbery attempt. The wheelman, obviously. It’s
    not clear to me why you didn’t take off before the police
    arrived.…”
    He let his words trail off, the way people do
    when they want you to finish what they’re saying. But I
    didn’t.
    I was still bandaged up by the time we started the
    trial, but they kept me ankle-cuffed anyway. Tim had a bunch of chains around
    his waist.
    All the time they were putting on one witness after
    another, Tim never looked at me. Not once.
    His lawyer never asked one
    single question. But when they started to bring me into it, my lawyer got up,
    like he had business to take care of.
    “Officer,” he asked
    the cop on the stand, “how many shots would you estimate were fired at
    the car in which my client was sitting?”
    “I couldn’t
    say. If he’d gotten out of the car when we—”
    “More than five shots, officer?”
    “I think
    so.”
    “More than ten?”
    “I don’t
    know.”
    “Well, officer, isn’t it a fact that every
    single shot fired by the State Police has to be logged in and accounted for?
    Every single bullet?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Can
    you tell us where we would find out that information, please? Where is it all
    collected?”
    “That would be with the shooting team,”
    the cop said. He was watching my lawyer like a bird on the ground watches a
    cat.
    “That team reviews all police shootings, to determine if
    they were justified, is that correct?” my lawyer asked him.
    “Yes, sir. And this one was perfectly—”
    “I’m sure,” my lawyer said. “Now if I were to tell
    you that the report of the shooting team was that seven different officers
    fired a total of thirty-one rounds at the car in which my client was sitting,
    would that surprise you?”
    “No.”
    “Thank
    you. Now, after my client was wounded and taken into custody, you examined the
    interior of the car, did you not?”
    “Yes.”
    “How many guns did you find in the car, officer?”
    “There were no weapons in the