Bank Robbery

[Lightning Rod]

A Simple Misdirection of Attention

Back in the 70's as I was plying my cottage trade in banned pharmaceuticals, I attempted to forestall theft or mahem by keeping most of my inventory in a safety deposit box. I was advised by a lawyer that this was the safest way to manage the situation. This ultimately proved to be good advice, but at some points during this episode I wasn't convinced of that. I was going in and out of the bank three times a week with my hippie looking self. I remember Joey saying, "Well, Lightning Rod, who would ever guess what you were doing by the way you look?"

On the day in question Rattlesnake Brogotti came over to my place and in the spirit of sneaking around on our wives we both did a big shot of Dolophine and cocaine straight out of the hospital jugs. I was in league with a gang of burglers who specialized in going through drywall into hospital drug rooms, so I had these miles of pills in blister paks and jugs and ampules of various narcotics and cocaine.

After we had settled into our rush I asked Snake if he would drive me to the bank because my license was expired. He said sure and off we went. At the bank I did my little business in the vault and came out with dope all over me. I had a couple of ounces of reefer in my underwear, a quarter ounce of speed in my sock and in the other sock a hundered hits of Atavan. Then there were the fifteen pills of dilaudid and the grams of coke in my calculator case slipped behind the calculator.

I leave the bank and go across the street where Snakes's car is parked in a grocery store parking lot. As I get to the car I notice a cop, an off-duty DPD lobby guard from the bank, had followed me out and at this moment was attempting to hide behind a tree that was there, and his attempts were failing badly. As I got in the car I was watching him play peek-a-boo from around that tree and the whole thing struck me as so ridiculous and I was just high enough that I started playing peek-a-boo back at him over the seat of the car. Just then a squad car pulls up at the curb beside the tree and the lobby guard gets in with the patrol cop. I said, "Snake, I think we'd better go."

This was April 1, 1980. I remembered this when the squadcar pulled us over. We were on Lemmon Ave. on the sidewalk at Lee Park. Snake looked at me with a sheepish grin as we were being pulled over, seems he didn't have his drivers licence with him. This was the first link in their contrived little chain of probability. As they search Snake the lobby guard says to me, "Your name is Lightning Rod, isn't it? Bet you wanna know how I knew that."

"You've seen me play someplace?"

"I've been watching yer ass for two weeks just waitin' to kick it."

Now my mind was racing. I fast forwarded the past two weeks. From where was he watching my ass? Then I realized the sap was talking about the bank lobby where he was standing around with time on his hands and an active imagination after watching too much Starsky & Hutch.

Then they start taking me apart. On the second frisk they make me take off my boots. When the seven grams of speed hit the sidewalk the faces of those cops lit up like kids at an Easter Egg hunt. They were getting fidgety after the first frisk and now they had me. I looked around at the beautiful Spring day; the azaleas were popping out on Turtle Creek and these idiots had me by the throat. April Fool's!

Lobby cop says, "You got that safety deposit key?" So I handed him my keys.

"Why don't we go back up there and open that box?"

"Hmmm, I think we'd better talk to my lawyer before we do anything like that."

"You know we'll have it drilled open in a half-hour."

"Drill away, I'm not helping you."

I don't know how many times I've thanked my lucky stars for the ineptness of cops. This was one of them. As they put us in the squadcar Snake says to me, "This is gonna be front page, isn't it?"

"Could be," I said. I was thinking of the stash of drugs and money in that deposit box. In my mind it became a High Times centerfold. All the gleaming jugs with evil names like morphine. There were pharmaceutical drugs; there were street drugs. There was hashish and three varieties of maryjane. There was cocaine and speed fresh from underground labs; there was even codeine in pre-packed glass syringes, they would have photographed nicely. And several thousand cash.

But, have it drilled open in a half-hour? I didn't think so. Sounded like a puffed up cop riding his nuts. I didn't believe he could get a court order in thirty minutes. But his bosses might get one in thirty days, and that worried me.

After they took us to the City Jail and booked us and did that Gestapo pantomime where they offer to blow you for your connections, I came out into the squadroom where a detective sat at a desk dismantling my wallet. He went through every piece of paper in my wallet then literally turned it inside out. Next to his hand sat my calculator and through its case I could count fifteen dilaudids and three grams of coke. I thought here we go with two more felonies. But he picked up the calculator and slid it into the brown property bag without even looking at it.

He has the seven or eight hundred dollars in cash that was in my wallet stacked by denominations in front of him. He's writing down my belongings on the property list, and I see him stop and think the way you see a dog or a chimp think and he reaches into the property bag and pulls my calculator back out. He opens it. I see the outlines of the pills and the grams. My heart is trying to pass my Adam's apple. He looks at the calculator like a puzzled terrier. I did the only thing I could think of, it's an old stage magic principle called misdirection of attention.

I reached right in front of him and pushed the calculator's ON button for him. This focused his mind on the numbers in the readout, and he added my money up and replaced the calculator in the bag. As the detective is almost finished logging my property, Lobby Guard tosses my keys onto the desk. Detective says, "You gonna give him that key back?"

"Yeah," and then daringly to me: "maybe he'll go back and try to get that stuff." Implication being he would be there in the lobby salivating with a perpetual hard-on.

So they encelled me and I spent the next couple of hours until my lawyer sprung me pondering the implications of my dilemma. I knew that eventually they would try to open that box with a court order. Plus the twenty thousand or so represented by its contents was my operating capital and I needed it in my hands not theirs.

When I got out they returned my property from the bag and I went and did a most satisfying shot from the back of my calculator.

Will Lightning Rod face further entanglements as the police try to stretch the bounds of search and siezure? Or will he find a way to outsmart the forces of stagnation and brute authority? Tune in next week.

The routine with the detective was just a small piece of sleight of hand. To extract my stash from that box I needed a full-scale escape trick. Since all my drugs were in the box, I spent the next week or ten days swigging Parapectalin and trying to figure out how to rob my own bank.

I considered everything from going in with masks and guns to burglary after dark. I knew I had to get the stash out of the bank before they could get a court order to open the box. Otherwise I would have considered taking the loss and just paying the rent on the box in perpetuity. They might have thought I was desperate enough to try and walk it out myself, I don't know.

The focus of attention is a strangely tangible thing. I have used a basketball to illustrate to band members how this focus can be passed around on stage with looks and gestures. Any illusionist or shoplifter knows how this works. A misdirection of this focus of attention gives the stage magician the opportunity to do what he doesn't want the audience to see.

After much soul searching and planning I came up with this plan which thanks to my courageous and trusting confederates was put in motion.

Step 1: O.P. goes to the bank and rents a box the same size as mine in the same section of the vault.

Step 2: My rental contract for the depostit box specified that I could authorize an agent, by means of a letter, to enter the box on my behalf. I drafted the letter and R took it to the bank. His instructions were to go with the secretary into the vault, let her open the box and then wait for her to leave and then to simply close the box and walk out. So he was ten seconds behind the girl. As he walks past her desk he reports that she is on the phone (either to the bank guard or the police.) He was in and out so fast they couldn't get a tail on him. This broke their chain of probability.

Step 3: Several days later O.P., looking like a businessman in a suit, goes in the bank and opens his box. He removes the tray and places it on the table in the vault. Three minutes later, my girlfriend, who is co-signator on the box rental thus authorized to enter, walks in and hands the key to the secretary. When the girl opens the box and leaves, she removes the tray and places it next to O.P.'s on the table.

She then picks up Ope's tray and walks out right behind the secretary to one of the small rooms where customers peruse their valuables in private. She goes in and sits. Meantime O.P. has the option of either sliding the tray back in his box or emptying it into his briefcase. Since there was nobody present in the vault he emptied the tray. And he's outta there like a cool breeze.

Of course they shake my girlfriend down but she just plays dumb and sweet. I retreived my stash thanks to the old switcheroo and a simple misdirection of attention.

[Perdida]

this is what i call a bank job! Great stuff lightning.

I work in a bank so this was quite amusing to me. *grins*

[what me worry?]

did you open another account?
spacing out when surrounded by police
always helps to become invisible
one more trip to see the man
lately the weed has been hearty
with flashes of hashish in th scent and taste

young folks are so daring, eh?
too bad your girlfriend got shaken down
but she wasn't shaken up

gee you can spell out a snippet!