Author's Note: Thank you all so much for being patient with our rocky summer. MGB is back in business! All you gangsters and gun molls can expect bi-weekly updates on Fridays. Enjoy!
On heist number three with Harold, Courtney can't take it anymore. While her crew crouches around the back of the car rehashing strategy and Harold baby talks the engine from under the hood, Courtney unlocks the passenger side door and slips out. She heads towards their target, a lone outpost on an otherwise completely empty stretch of Arkansas road.
She's halfway across the road to the grocery store before Harold's voice calls, "Bonnie? What are you doing?"
Courtney doesn't turn or break pace.
"Courtney!" Duncan hisses. "Get the fuck back here before someone sees ya!"
"Just getting a refreshment," she calls, walking up to the front door and pulling it open.
The last thing she hears before the door shuts is Duncan swearing and Heather sneering, "Let her go, Clyde. She'll learn one way or the other."
First thing Courtney does is take stock of the store. It's smaller than their last two hits. The shelves are only partially stocked, and the owner, a portly blonde man, isn't very attentive. He glances up over his magazine at her arrival, tells her to ask if she needs any help, then resumes reading.
Courtney browses the aisles, divising her plan.
"Excuse me," she says walking over to the owner, "could you help me out with something?"
"Of course," the man says with a smile, putting down his paper. "Welcome to Owen's General Store and Gas. My name's Owen. What can I do you for?"
"Well see," she starts, looking upset, "my friends and I are trying to get to Chicago and our car broke down. Could you help us repair it?"
"Sorry, miss. I would but I can't leave the register." His smile vanishes and he sighs. "These are hard times on all of us. You can't be too careful."
Courtney tilts her head slightly, trailing her fingers across the counter. "Is there anyone else that works here that could, maybe, help us out then?"
"No one else here but me," he says. "Had to let my assistant go last week since there were so few people coming through here."
Grinning smugly, Courtney reaches for her handgun. "Then you wouldn't mind-"
She freezes. Her handgun's in her suitcase in the trunk of the car.
"What wouldn't I mind?"
"Um, you, uh...wouldn't mind some help?" she recovers. "I'm sure a store like this could use a few extra hands."
The big man chuckles. "I like you, miss. I appreciate the offer, but the fact is I wouldn't be able to pay you a cent." He slumps in his seat. "We're in a hell of a depression. Hard-working folks can hardly get by these days without having to resort to thieving."
Courtney puts a hand on her waist, just above the rip in her cotton dress, and starts to rap her nails on the counter. Owen doesn't know he's being robbed yet. Courtney could bluff that she has a gun and try to steal what little the poor man has to his name. Or she could walk back out to her crew empty-handed and embarrassed and without a lick of trouble.
Or she could improvise.
"Owen," she says, straightening up, "what's your connection to this place?"
"This is my store," he says, confused.
"Was it inherited? Long line of grocers in your family?"
"No, actually, I won it in a card game." He sounds disheartened. "Cost me what little money I had left to insure it and it costs me what little money I make to keep up my taxes so the bank doesn't take it back."
Courtney rests her arms and elbows on the counter, indicating that Owen lean closer. "Owen, because I like you too, I'm going to let you in on a secret." She takes care to enunciate her next words. "My friends and I don't really have car trouble, and we aren't really going to Chicago. My name is Bonnie Jones. I'm running with Duncan Clyde and the Barrow Gang. They're waiting outside to rob your store."
Owen blinks. "That's not a funny joke, miss."
Stepping back from the counter, Courtney gestures out the window. "See for yourself."
Owen paces to the end of the counter, pulls aside the blinds, and tenses. He grabs at something under the counter and next Courtney knows, she's staring down a double barrel shotgun.
"You're not taking my store," he says, all the warmth gone from his face. He pulls the hammers back. "It's all I have left. I'm not letting you take it!"
Courtney holds up her hands, her pulse drumming deafeningly in her ears. "Owen, look at me," she says, playing calm, "I'm completely unarmed. If I was going to let my partners rob you blind and leave you in the lurch, why would I tell you about it?"
He glares. "Is that another joke?"
Despite the fact that Owen is only the third gun she's had pulled on her in the last year, something about being on the robbing end of the robbery keeps her breathing even. "I used to work at a bank. You said you had this place insured? A standard premium covers you in case of fire, flood, or natural disaster. Yes?"
"Doesn't cover robbery," he reminds her.
"No," Courtney agrees, lowering her arms slowly. "But you're right about times being tough. And hard-working folks like us gotta do what we can to survive. So here's an idea." She lets her arms rest by her side. "Hand over any cash you have left in your register, let us take some groceries for the road, and in return, we'll do you the favor of burning your place to the ground so you can collect the full insurance premium."
Owen eyes her through the sights, then lowers the shotgun slightly. "...How much money are we talking?"
"You signed a standard insurance plan with the state?"
Owen nods. Courtney does the math in her head and smirks.
"You're looking to triple whatever you paid for it in your card game."
With the shotgun still pointed in Courtney's direction, Owen surveys the dilapidated shelves, the partly rotten fruit, and the cracked soda dispenser in the back.
"So you're offering to help me commit insurance fraud," he states. "Which is illegal."
"It's only insurance fraud if you do it to your own property. And it's only illegal if ya get caught," she adds in a Duncan impersonation.
Owen shifts in place. "...None of this will come back to me helping you? Or conspiring with you or something?" He glances around. "I've never... If my mama ever found out I broke the law..."
"You'll be nothing but the victim," Courtney assures him. "In fact, call your former employee. Call any friends you have. Tell them you need help with the store and that they should come on by. They'll be witnesses that your store was robbed, looted, and burned to the ground by Bonnie and Clyde and the Barrow Gang and there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it."
Courtney waits, watching the dust floating by the window as Owen considers. "What did you say your name was again?"
"Bonnie Jones, with an I E," she says. "And I work for...that is, my partner is Duncan Clyde, with a Y. For when the papers ask."
With a chuckle, Owen releases the hammers and puts his shotgun down on the counter.
"Well, Miss Jones," he says, "you have yourself a mighty fine deal." Courtney breathes a sigh of relief as Owen puts his shotgun back under the counter. "I'll go make those phone calls you suggested. You help yourself to anything left in the store."
"I'll have my team come in at the twenty minute mark," she tells him,
Courtney peruses the aisles while Owen makes his calls. She picks up a newspaper from the stand and flips through it. She pockets a pack of bubble gum and two cartons of cigarettes. When Owen comes back out and gives her an all clear, Courtney pulls a nickel from her change purse, grabs a coke, and walks out to the car.
Her crew sits, waiting. Harold looks worried, Heather annoyed. Al's playing with his lighter and Duncan is seemingly asleep. He wakes up with a snort when she gets in the passenger seat and slams the door.
"Well?" he asks.
Courtney grabs his wrist to check the time, crosses her legs, and sips her coke. "You're clear to go in and do your thing in about five minutes."
"What the fuck does that mean we're 'clear' to go in?" Heather asks.
Just as she does, Owen emerges from the store and walks over to the car. Duncan reaches for the scattergun in his lap but Courtney puts her hand over his.
"Here you go, Miss Jones," Owen says, handing her a minuscule roll of bills through the window, "that's all she wrote." He tips an imaginary hat at the gentlemen and Heather. "Ready whenever you are."
"They'll be right in," Courtney says and Owen goes back inside the store, whistling.
Duncan, Heather, Harold, and Al stare at her.
"What are you waiting for?" she says. "Go on. Go rob him. Get whatever groceries we need and burn the place to the ground when you're done."
Al and Heather exchange a look. Al shrugs, says something noncommittal in Spanish, and gets out of the car. Heather follows warily.
Duncan stays observing her. Courtney finishes her refreshment, tosses it out the window without looking at him, and lights up one of her new cigarettes. Finally, from the corner of her eye, she sees him smirk. He opens the door and follows Al and Heather out to the store without another word.
"...What did you do?" Harold whispers.
"My job," Courtney says, counting the handful of bills Owen had handed over to her. As a very theatrical ruckus starts up inside the store, she takes a five and sticks it in her bra before putting the rest of it in the glove compartment.
Other cars begin to arrive a few minutes later, just as Duncan and company emerge from the smoking store, laden down with groceries and dragging a wailing Owen. "My store! Oh, my store! You fiends! You children of the devil!"
They drop him off at the front steps as the other cars open and Owen's friends come to his aid. Al and Heather jump in the backseat with their groceries and Duncan slides in beside Courtney. Harold peels off.
After a mile down the road in total silence, Al says, "Ten years of doing what I do, and that was the damn strangest heist I've ever seen."
"I got lucky," Courtney admits, looking over the scratches in the dashboard. "I left my gun in the trunk."
"Ya got smart," Duncan says, putting an arm around her. He steals her cigarette for a drag. "You should be in moving pictures, doll."
Courtney leans against his side and snatches back her cigarette. "I bet you say that to all your gun molls."
Grinning, Duncan kisses her with a mouth full of smoke. "Not Heather."
From the backseat, Heather makes a disgusted sound. "Get a goddamn room."