made it across the bank parking lot then ran half a block to the nearest alley where I took a right. I then began to remove my top layer of clothes and tossed them into a nearby garbage can. I also removed my ball cap that I had on and my glasses. I wasn’t too worried about being observed because most people in that neighborhood would be at work during that time of day.
I was a totally different person when I exited that alley on Oxford Avenue. I headed south, back to University Avenue, where I joined a group of students from the local alternative school as they gawked at the police cars driving by at a fast pace, sirens blaring. When I spotted a number sixteen bus headed toward downtown St. Paul, and far away from the bank, I hurried across the street, hopped on it, paid my fare, and sat quietly down. I kept feeling the lumps in my pocket as we rode, amazed at the feeling after being so broke for the past couple of months and still not really believing that I had just done what I did. When I got downtown, I went to the nearest cab stand and took a cab the rest of the way home.
Sounds stupid, huh? But who’s gonna look for a bank robber on a bus? Plus, this way I didn’t have to worry about someone getting a description of my minivan or my license plate number. Think about it.
CHAPTER 1
Not very exciting, huh? That scenario is not what you’d normally imagine when the subject of bank robbery is mentioned. There were no guns, no hostage taking, no big bags full of money, and no bang-bang, shoot-’em-up, Bonnie-and-Clyde type of shit. That was by design. My aim was to get in and get out as fast as possible with as little fanfare and attention drawn to myself as possible. Nobody but me and the teller knew what had transpired until I was a reasonable distance from that establishment.
But I had accomplished what I had set out to do. I was leaving with about five stacks for sixty seconds worth of work. Even as I left though, my subconscious mind began looking forward to the next heist, despite the fact that I had told myself before the robbery that it would be a onetime thing. Even though that had not been an action-packed event, it gave me an adrenaline rush that created an instant, unexpected addiction. It was an addiction to rival any heroin or crack addiction.
Thus began the adventure of a lifetime. This type of hustle suited me perfectly because I prefer to do my dirt solo dolo due to the fact that I had been ratted on before. And like the robberies, burglaries, and low-level drug dealings I had done previously, I knew it would be a low risk if I was careful and that many of these low-risk robberies would equal a lot of cash.
On the bus, I had replayed the robbery from beginning to end. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that a bank robbery would be so easy. And never had I felt the elation that I had felt after I had successfully pulled off that robbery. The sheer balls that it had taken to continue up those steps and follow through with my intentions amazed me. The act itself caused unbelievable levels of tension, fear, exhilaration, and excitement, and all those feelings combined to become an indescribable sensation that immediately etched itself permanently into every part of me: physical, mental, and spiritual. And yet I continued to tell myself that it would never happen again, but now that I think about it, I know that I never really believed that.
I got caught after fifteen robberies, which is a blessing because I know that if I had been able to continue, I would have escalated the degree of risk at some point or gotten greedy. Just like a heroin addict, my tolerance would have built to the point where I would need more and more to satisfy my craving. Eventually I would have ended up catching a body or being given a life sentence.
CHAPTER 2
You see, I am predisposed to addiction, both genetically and environmentally. This is why the first adrenaline rush that I experienced while robbing a bank made it impossible for me not to continue down that path, especially when things got rough. I have always turned to drugs and alcohol to cover my pain and anger, but since I had ceased doing that, this replacement was totally acceptable to and welcomed by me.
I am of a mixed race, black and white, my mother being of the Caucasian persuasion and my father being one of the many lost black souls that populate this country. My mother only messes with black men, and somewhere along the way, some black man turned her out on coke and urged her into the occasional prostitution endeavor. The coke and prostitution caused her to abandon me more than once, and I ended up in foster homes until she could convince the courts that she had changed and was competent to once again take charge of her child. I wish she would have just left me where I was. I would have been better off.
She continued to do coke occasionally after the last time she was granted custody of me, and she was a daily and frequent partaker of marijuana throughout my childhood all the way up until I left home, with its rampant and violent abuse at the hands of my stepfather. I was thirteen years old then. I decided that I would rather face the streets than continue to suffer the abuse that I had been subjected to. I don’t know about the coke these days, but I do know that she is still a pothead.
My father was a frequent visitor and guest of our state’s penal institutions. Most of my earliest memories regarding him pertain to visiting him in various prisons throughout the state with my mother. Once they were divorced when I was about four years old, I almost never saw him. If I was lucky, I would see him between incarcerations. I have never discussed with him his addiction issues, but I have heard things over the years. Add that to the fact that my mother was a cokehead, and I can only assume that my father had the same problem. His frequent trips to prison support that assumption. He just cannot stay his ass out of prison, so he must have the affliction to this day.
My predisposition, coupled with the anger I have for my mother for allowing her own seed to be so severely abused and for abandoning me and the anger that I felt toward my father for abandoning me to the abuse of my stepfather and not being the protector, guide, and mentor that I needed, was corrosive mentally and emotionally, and I became the type of person to do what needed to be done without thought to the consequence or how it affected other people. I was psychologically crippled for most of my life, so rather than seek positive solutions to my problems, I did what came naturally to me: I went out and got that paper. I had no compunctions about running up in them people’s financial institutions.
CHAPTER 3
But let me back up for a minute so I can explain what drove me to the point where I felt that I had to take such drastic and foolhardy action. I have a long history of bad choices whether they be the decisions to commit various crimes or my choices in women. I have done time for infractions or the law relating to some of them. Usually it was a choice between me enduring the struggle as a square and me taking the easy way out.
I thought that I had left all of that behind me. During my last incarceration, I had supposedly wised up. I realized that that prison shit was tired, and frankly I was sick of the shit. I knew that all the aptitude tests I had taken in prison weren’t lying and that I possessed the intelligence and potential needed to be successful in any endeavor that I wanted to pursue if I just put my mind to it. All I had to do was stop dwelling on my past, forgive others their transgressions, stop blaming “the man,” and cease my criminal, abusive, misogynistic ways. Not an easy task but definitely doable.
There was a long period of time then that I was doing everything that needed to be done to make me a better person and help me remain free. I was drug- and alcohol-free, and I was attending AA and NA on a regular basis. Thoughts of higher learning had entered my mind. I had my own place and a minivan that I had purchased. I was working a square ass gig and living a square ass life in general. I was enjoying my new life and my freedom immensely.
There were a few random women in my life at that time but nobody special. All of them were women I had been hooking up with before I had gotten locked up. Not one of them broads had maintained contact with
