Roses Are Red

of the Mastermind making very real but idle-
sounding
threats, but someone even better. Scarier.
    “Betsy, it’s Steve. There’s a man here in our house. He has a gun pointed at me. He says that unless the woman in your office leaves the bank with the money by eight-ten exactly, Tommy, Anna, and I will be killed.
    “It’s eight-oh-four.”
    The phone line suddenly went dead. Her husband’s voice was gone.
    “Steve? Steve!” Tears flowed into Betsy Buccieri’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She stared at the masked woman and couldn’t believe this was happening. “Don’t hurt them. Please. I’ll open the vault for you. I’ll do it now. Don’t hurt anyone.”
    Brianne repeated the message the bank manager had already heard. “Eight-ten exactly. Not one second later. And no stupid bank tricks. No silent alarms. No dye packs.”
    “Follow me. No alarms,” Betsy Buccieri promised. She almost couldn’t think.
Steve, Tommy, Anna.
The names rang loudly in her head.
    They arrived at the door of the bank’s Mosler vault. It was 8:05.
    “Open the door, Betsy. We are on the clock. We’re losing time. Your family is losing time. Steve, Anna, little Tommy, they could all die.”
    It took a little less than two minutes for Betsy Buccieri to get into the vault, which was a polished steel thing of beauty with pistons like a locomotive. Stacks of money were plainly visible on nearly all the shelves — more money than Brianne had ever seen in her life. She snapped open two canvas duffel bags and began filling them with the cash. Mrs. Buccieri and Jeanne Galetta watched her take the money in silence. She liked seeing the fear and respect for her on their faces.
    As she’d been instructed to, Brianne counted off the minutes as she filled the duffel bags.
“Eight-oh-seven . . . eight-oh-eight . . .”
Finally, she was finished with her part in the vault.
    “I’m locking you both inside the vault. Don’t say one word or I’ll shoot you, then lock your dead bodies up.”
    She hoisted the black duffel bags.
    “Don’t hurt my husband or my baby,” Betsy Buccieri begged. “We did what you —”
    Brianne slammed the heavy metal door on Betsy Buccieri’s desperate plea. She yanked her President Clinton mask from her sweaty face.
    She was running
late.
She walked across the lobby, unlocked the front door with plastic-gloved hands, and went outside. She felt like running as fast as she could to her car, but she walked calmly, as if she didn’t have a care in the world on this fine spring morning. She was tempted to pull out her six-shooter and put a hole into the big Egg McShit staring down on her. Yeah, she had an attitude, all right.
    When she got to the Acura, she checked her watch: 52 seconds past 8:10. And counting. She was late — but that was the way it was supposed to be. She smiled.
    She didn’t call Errol at the Buccieri house where Steve, Tommy, and the nanny, Anna, were being held. She didn’t tell him she had the money and she was safely in the Acura.
    She had been told not to by the Mastermind.
    The hostages were supposed to die.

Part One
    THE ROBBERY-MURDERS

Chapter 3
    THERE’S AN OLD SAYING that I’ve learned to believe in my time as a detective:
Don’t think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
    The water was certainly lovely and calm that day. My young and irrepressible daughter, Jannie, had Rosie the Cat up on her hind legs and she was holding Rosie’s front paws in her hands. She and
“la chatte rouge”
were dancing, as they often did.
    “Roses are red, violets are blue,” Jannie sang in a sweet, lilting voice. It was a moment and an image I wouldn’t forget. Friends, relatives, and neighbors had begun to arrive for the christening party at our house on Fifth Street. I was in a hugely celebratory mood.
    Nana Mama had prepared an amazing meal for the special occasion. There was cilantro-marinated shrimp, roasted mussels, fresh ham, Vidalia onions, and summer squash. The aroma of chicken with garlic, pork ribs, and four kinds of homemade bread filled the air. I’d even made my specialty that night, my contribution, a creamy cheesecake with fresh raspberries on top.
    One of Nana’s refrigerator notes was posted on the door of the GE. It read: “‘There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But
everybody has tried.
’ — Toni Morrison.” I smiled at the magic and feistiness of my