Harriet the Hostage

He approached the HVAC duct where Harriet's new acquaintance was hiding. He began to shine the light in. Suddenly there was chatter on the man's radio about a Deputy Mayor arriving.

"Okay, I'm on my way. File vault's clear." he said into his handset.

"Mmmph, I wondered why no one came to check on me. Thanks for letting me out." She zipped her purse shut and walked out ahead of the man. The door clicked shut behind them.

9

Finally on her train, Harriet took a seat, the yellow raincoat draped across her lap, as if to mask her lack of panties and the dried sperm trails on her thighs. There were hardly any other passengers on this midday run. Once home, she was happy to see her uncle was not around. She took a quick shower, mostly scrubbing her pits, feet and vagina, but didn't bother with her hair.

***

In the meantime, about when Harriet boarded the train, a young man in a security guard's uniform walked away from the bank, past a few remaining police cars. He carried a black gym bag, similar to the one used by the gang of armed criminals that morning.

"Sir!" one of the officers called out to him. His pulse raced. He knew they were interested in the bag, which drooped at its ends from the weight of its contents.

Two NYPD officers stiffened up and approached him, noting the tense look on his face.

"Can we see the contents of that bag please?" They stood by a parked patrol car, its lights flashing. The bag made a thud as Max, dressed in the spare uniform from the locker in the vault's back room, set it on the car's trunk.

"Hey, hey, looky what we got here!" The officer said after peering into the unzipped bag.

***

Harriet frantically emptied her closet, bathroom cabinet and dresser into two suitcases and a few white plastic garbage bags. She left her uncle a note that she was moving in with a girlfriend closer to work and the property and school taxes were paid through next year.

***

Back outside the bank, an NYPD officer spoke. "Oooooh, Love's Last Chance, Desire in the Desert, Lust in Laredo, Front Office Heat!" He read aloud a few of the titles of the dozens of colorful old paperbacks crammed into the black gym bag sitting on the trunk of the police car. Each had a dramatic title and a clutching couple on the front.

***

Short, curvy Harriet had changed into battered jeans and a Hofstra hoodie by the time the car was packed and backing out of the driveway. The old, maroon Chevy Lumina was a bit rusted and ugly, but ran well, well enough to get her the hell away. It was still registered in her dead mother's dead boyfriend's name and address in Babylon, so no one could trace the handicapped license plate directly back to her. Her yellow raincoat was carefully hidden under the trunk's carpet. It had been a chore carrying it from the train station, since it now weighed about thirty pounds, due to its lining having been filled with several dozen banded ten thousand dollar bundles. Within minutes she was on the Jericho Turnpike, heading west.

10

As the high sun warmed the early afternoon, she stopped for gas, coffee and a few other things. When she returned from inside the store, a man was standing by her car, nervously looking around and loosening the necktie of his ill-fitting security guard's uniform. The two young people both smiled widely, almost giddily, as their eyes met once more over the mottled roof of the car.

"Hi! Any problems?" Harriet asked Max as she pulled her seat belt across her faded red hoodie and it snuggled between her breasts. She leaned in to give her new lover a peck on the mouth.

"No. You?"

"Nope. Your scary robber outfit is in three different women's bathroom trash cans on the train. Nobody home at my house, and I emailed HR my resignation. Where's the black bag? Did they stop you?"

"I threw the bag into a construction dumpster. Yeah two cops. They laughed at me." Max said with a smirk, "Didn't even bother to check my ID, like you said. You're really smart aren't you?"

"Well, let's see if we make it out of the state first before we start high-fiving. Are you sure you wanna do this? You can never go home again. They'll put your face on a milk carton."

"Huh?" He didn't get the joke. The Lumina turned onto I-678 west.

"You need to change out of that uniform," she announced a few minutes later and motioned to a large plastic bag in the back seat. They needed to eliminate any visible connection to the bank. She had brought some old shirts and random clothes one of her mother's lovers had left in a closet. Way out of style, but all she could muster. Harriet almost lost control of the car as Max stripped out of the security guard's shirt and pants.

Next to her was a chiseled, golden-skinned and nicely hairy welterweight frame. A few random tattoos were visible as he arose and pivoted around to crouch over the seat back to grab the bag in only the knitted white pair of briefs. His uncoiled penile shaft cast a pink hue from beneath the thin fabric, protruding and jolting around like a captured snake in a bag. The young woman damned the bridge traffic ahead that prevented her from enjoying the view.

"How's your asthma?" Max thoughtfully asked her a few minutes later, dressed in olive green plaid pants and a red and white bowling shirt.

"Oh, I don't really have asthma," she said as she looked in the mirror to change lanes.

"You faked it?"

"Yeah that inhaler was empty, just a prop from a neighbor kid. I was afraid you might have noticed it didn't hiss when I pretended to use it."

"To get away from the robbery?" Confusion began to creep into his expression. "Wow, lucky you thought of that. It's like you knew the bank was going get hit."

"I needed to get at least to the stairwell to make the switch. But you were so sweet, and you grabbed one of the bags for me."

"What switch? What are you talking about?"

"You were right about the insider. It was me. I planned the whole thing. Not bad huh?"

"Stop bullshitting me." Max said, laughing. "The robbery was botched."

"It was botched for you dolts on purpose, it went fine for me."

"You were going to kill one of us?" Max said skeptically.

"No, no no. I had a syringe with enough Morphine to knock one of you guys out cold, hidden in my shoe. My mom's hospice nurse left behind some cool stuff. Didn't you see the cork in the heel? I used an auger bit on the platform. I could reach the plug with my hands taped, and I practiced using a syringe behind my back, and using a knife also. That was why you all got issued knives."

"Shit, Harriet, come on, I know I'm stupid, but..."

"Okay, how would I know that only one of the machine guns had ammo?"

Max's expression froze. Only the assailants knew that. The gun fired into the ceiling of the lobby was convincing enough.

"Sherri didn't want anyone hurt, well, the person that Espinosa, the red armband guy, was emailing, who he thought was Sherri. Actually it was me. I wish I could have seen the look on her face when the guy walked into the locker room with an MP5 and made her walk out in her fucking bra. Another thirty seconds in the locker room and she woulda been caught naked. She always gets on the treadmill at the same time of the morning. The email said to take her to the lobby with her laptop in whatever state of dress she was in, making her look like she was just another victim, but she really was. Ha ha. "

"So, what did you hack, her email?" he asked as a New Jersey State Trooper passed them.

Harriet laughed. "No, I hacked the whole fucking bank. Sherri is a coke head, and was laundering money for a European Mob. I saw in her other emails that the bitch calls me the fat troll in the basement, or the hungry hippo."

"You're not fat!" Max interrupted.

"I know, right? Only a guy that's fucked me would know, oh wait that's you! So I set up the robbery to expose her with instructions on the day, the time, where to cut the power, the alarm codes and stuff like that, even to use those stupid fucking accents. They were supposed to leave the black bags in the stairwell, just like they did. Then when one of you guys took me to get my inhaler, while you were looking for my purse, I was going to pretend to almost pass out and get the syringe out of my shoe. Once you were knocked out, I would cut myself loose, run down switch the money in the bag for the cheap novels so it would have weight, then jam the zipper shut with plastic from one of the trash bags. Then lock myself in the vault. The big van that was supposed to come get you was fake also. The cops would have nabbed you all with no ride on the way.

"Why didn't you knock me out?" Max asked, his black hair blowing in the breeze.

"When I was faking the asthma, you were so concerned about me, so sweet, and you brought a filled gym bag with you. So, if you didn't behave in the vault I could still knock your ass out with the needle and take the money. But you were nice to me and then I wanted to play with your dick. Even if you hadn't loused up my plan I knew I wouldn't be able to leave until the cops cleared me to leave, so I knew I had a few hours to kill, locked safely inside. I had disabled everyone else in the branch's badges. so no one would have caught us fucking around anyway."

"So you were just going to walk out with our money?"

"No, I was going to hide the one bag of my money back in the files, nobody looks at those except during the annual federal audit in the fall. I would have kept working there and taken home a few bundles at a time for the next few weeks. I only needed some cash to tide me over until I got to Zurich or the Caymans. Luckily it was raining this morning and I thought of the extra security guard's uniform in the locker."

"Can't they find out who made the fake email?" he asked, amazed at what he was hearing.

"Maybe, but we'll be in Europe by then with new identities"

"We?"

"Yeah we. Don't you want to spend the summer fucking in nice hotels all over Europe? We can hit the nude beaches on Mykonos. I've never had a tan before. You'll have to help me shave puss-puss."

"Yes!" Max responded. "Shit, you're like that Dragon Tattoo chick."

"I don't have as much money as her, but I did manage to siphon off most of Sherri's accounts into my own."

"What's siphon mean?

"Drain...steal." she replied as Max nodded.

"Where are we going? An airport?"

"Not yet Need to get you a new identity. You have to start calling me Brandy, by the way."

Suddenly several police cars came up behind them, flashing lights were everywhere. No matter how hard she pressed the accelerator, the car was just slower, and slower.

11

"Harriet? Ma'am?" A nurse with a Hispanic accent held her shoulder gently. Harriet could feel gauze bandages around her head and wires stuck to her across her chest. She was naked beneath the hospital gown. The room was dark.

Harriet had awakened from her long, very elaborate and dirty dream. There had been a bank robbery, but she hadn't hacked into the bank's computers and planned it. She hadn't surreptitiously given a footjob and lost her virginity to one of the robbers. There was no syringe of morphine, no Swiss bank account. No driving that piece of crap Lumina. Damn, no wealth and no escape to Europe. Shit, the asthma was real. But on the plus side, no cops were after her. Or were there? A uniformed officer sat in the room's chair, he was asleep, as it was after two in the morning. His hat was down over his face.

"Where the hell am I?" she asked groggily.

"Presbyterian Hospital. It's Sunday night. There was a robbery at your bank Friday morning, and you had an asthma attack and fell and hit your head. Don't you remember? "

"Yeah, now." Harriet took a sip of water offered by the nurse. Her ID badge said Brandy Diaz.

"This officer found you in the stairwell, and has been here on his off duty time all weekend, to make sure you're okay. That's very nice of him, no?" Then she whispered to Harriet, "I think he's sweet on you, chica. I wouldn't throw him out of bed for eating churros, know what I mean?"

The officer stirred and arose, leaving his hat in the chair. The nurse left and turned the room lights on. As he walked toward her she could see his olive skin, chiseled, Mediterranean-descended features and crystal blue eyes. His black hair was short and neat, no beard. It was the Max from her dream, cleaned up. She must have been at least partially conscious during her ordeal.

Harriet giggled at the irony of the criminal Max of her dream actually being a cop.

"Hello, good to see you awake. You gave us a scare. Is there anyone I can call for you? Parents? Husband? Significant Other? The bank's records had no emergency contact listed."

"No one. I'm on my own." She shrugged, which made her unsupported breasts shake below the sheet.

"Looks like your feeling better?" He gently asked. "Wow, you were really having some crazy dreams there, mumbling, kicking and one time it seemed like you were, um, ah, never mind."

"Having sex?" she asked.

"Well, yes ma'am," he said, looking down in embarrassment.

"Are you Max?"

"Yes! You do remember me!"

"Yeah in a way. Are you single, officer Max?" Harriet asked as he nodded. "Take me out to dinner and tell me what I was doing in here while I slept and I'll show, I mean tell, you all about my dream. You were in it, you know."

"Really? Was..I...the one...that was..." His blue eyes flashed with hope.

"Uh, uh, uh! Dinner first."