sight of his gun. It was the same thrill he’d once felt when he walked through his office, watching the worker bees stiffen at their cubicles, knowing the room’s collective sphincter had tightened the moment he walked through the door. It was power. Control. Robbing banks filled the void while it paid off his mortgage. And nobody had figured him out.
Tomlin found a small office in Lowertown, east of downtown Saint Paul. It was an old, musty low-rise with patchy off-white walls and buzzing fluorescent lights, graffiti on the sooty façade. But Tomlin didn’t much care for looks. An office would provide cover. An easy way to launder the robbery money.
He hired a receptionist, a punk-rock college dropout he found through a classified ad. A pixie named Tricia with neon-pink hair. She came in two or three days a week, did Sudoku at her desk and answered the occasional phone call. Lent an air of legitimacy to the place.
Rydin came to visit. “Freelance,” he said, looking around. “You’ll either get very rich or go broke. Probably the latter, from the looks of this building.”
“Baby steps,” Tomlin told him. “It’s coming together.”
Rydin promised to talk to people at his office, find some work to throw Tomlin’s way. A couple other friends came through with leads, and Tomlin made up the difference hustling for contacts. Put an ad in the paper, another online. Craigslist. “Accounting Service. Your taxes done cheap.” He spent long hours hammering out income tax forms for old ladies, a hundred dollars a pop. Bored him worse than bingo, but the work kept him busy.
He slept in some mornings, ate long breakfasts, read the paper. Came home early one or two nights a week, enjoyed the home and the life he was trying to maintain. He spent hours with Becca, reading novels together and walking the dog. They holed up in the bedroom for endless afternoons, feeling like two high school kids who’d skipped out of class, emerging fresh-scrubbed from the shower just as Heather and Madeleine returned from school.
Heather came home one day and announced that her school needed someone to help coach the basketball team, and Tomlin figured,
Why the hell not?
Now he spent Tuesday afternoons in a public school gym, teaching a gaggle of teenage girls how to shoot a jump shot. Thursdays were game days.
In the evenings, he watched movies with the girls in the rec room, or stayed up late puttering with his model train setup. He cleared out the spare room in the basement and built a tabletop empire, a miniature world of mountains and cities and tiny plastic people.
He stashed the guns in the train room—the Ruger in its case under boxes of spare train cars and supplies, the assault rifle in an alcove behind a hollowed-out mountain. The shotgun he left lodged in the bracing underneath the table, and he hid the spare shells inside a factory on a spur line in the model town he’d patterned after Saint Paul. It could be a munitions factory, he decided. Schultz’s cocaine he hid at the office. Locked it away in his bottom desk drawer with the robbery money while he tried to figure out how to get rid of it.
Little by little, Tomlin rebuilt his life. Kept up with the mortgage payments, bought groceries, birthday presents, a new cell phone. Made love to his wife and went to bed happy almost every night.
And when the money started to dwindle, or he started to get bored, he dug out Schultz’s pistol and hit another bank. It worked out well, in the short term. It would work, anyway, until the accounting business started to take off.
Life seemed perfect again, almost. Until one day in January, when it all changed again.
17
H E’D COME IN TO WORK early. It was about a month after he’d robbed Tony Schultz, four or five bank heists after that first Midway job. Heather had Spirit Club before school, and Tomlin dropped her off and drove straight to the office. Walked in and found Tricia with her nose in his bottom desk drawer.
She
Tomlin found a small office in Lowertown, east of downtown Saint Paul. It was an old, musty low-rise with patchy off-white walls and buzzing fluorescent lights, graffiti on the sooty façade. But Tomlin didn’t much care for looks. An office would provide cover. An easy way to launder the robbery money.
He hired a receptionist, a punk-rock college dropout he found through a classified ad. A pixie named Tricia with neon-pink hair. She came in two or three days a week, did Sudoku at her desk and answered the occasional phone call. Lent an air of legitimacy to the place.
Rydin came to visit. “Freelance,” he said, looking around. “You’ll either get very rich or go broke. Probably the latter, from the looks of this building.”
“Baby steps,” Tomlin told him. “It’s coming together.”
Rydin promised to talk to people at his office, find some work to throw Tomlin’s way. A couple other friends came through with leads, and Tomlin made up the difference hustling for contacts. Put an ad in the paper, another online. Craigslist. “Accounting Service. Your taxes done cheap.” He spent long hours hammering out income tax forms for old ladies, a hundred dollars a pop. Bored him worse than bingo, but the work kept him busy.
He slept in some mornings, ate long breakfasts, read the paper. Came home early one or two nights a week, enjoyed the home and the life he was trying to maintain. He spent hours with Becca, reading novels together and walking the dog. They holed up in the bedroom for endless afternoons, feeling like two high school kids who’d skipped out of class, emerging fresh-scrubbed from the shower just as Heather and Madeleine returned from school.
Heather came home one day and announced that her school needed someone to help coach the basketball team, and Tomlin figured,
Why the hell not?
Now he spent Tuesday afternoons in a public school gym, teaching a gaggle of teenage girls how to shoot a jump shot. Thursdays were game days.
In the evenings, he watched movies with the girls in the rec room, or stayed up late puttering with his model train setup. He cleared out the spare room in the basement and built a tabletop empire, a miniature world of mountains and cities and tiny plastic people.
He stashed the guns in the train room—the Ruger in its case under boxes of spare train cars and supplies, the assault rifle in an alcove behind a hollowed-out mountain. The shotgun he left lodged in the bracing underneath the table, and he hid the spare shells inside a factory on a spur line in the model town he’d patterned after Saint Paul. It could be a munitions factory, he decided. Schultz’s cocaine he hid at the office. Locked it away in his bottom desk drawer with the robbery money while he tried to figure out how to get rid of it.
Little by little, Tomlin rebuilt his life. Kept up with the mortgage payments, bought groceries, birthday presents, a new cell phone. Made love to his wife and went to bed happy almost every night.
And when the money started to dwindle, or he started to get bored, he dug out Schultz’s pistol and hit another bank. It worked out well, in the short term. It would work, anyway, until the accounting business started to take off.
Life seemed perfect again, almost. Until one day in January, when it all changed again.
17
H E’D COME IN TO WORK early. It was about a month after he’d robbed Tony Schultz, four or five bank heists after that first Midway job. Heather had Spirit Club before school, and Tomlin dropped her off and drove straight to the office. Walked in and found Tricia with her nose in his bottom desk drawer.
She
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