Chapter 5

Closing the accounts was easy enough, including the transfer of cold, hard cash to the hands of each account holder, but there were complications. For one thing, the bank manager didn’t want to catch the heat for the loss of six good accounts, so he emptied his account and resigned as well, not even bothering to go home to his wife. He was tired of her and her constant nagging, anyway, so he took up with one of the tellers, who also quit and decided to leave New Jersey with him. Leland Ramsey was done running the bank and this seemed like a sign from God or the Gods or the Cosmos or Mother Earth or whatever to leave his old life behind. His secret mistress, Chantal West, was more than ready to drop her annoying, immature boyfriend for a real man like her boss. She was done with idiots and overgrown boys.

“Wait until Darley learns that you’ve left her for a black girl like me!” Chantal teased Leland about his notoriously racist wife, being quite pleased that he returned her affections.

“Well, we’ve talked about starting over and leaving our significant others, but now we can! You guys can leave for Haven. Chantal and I are headed south!” Leland told David Howard as his party and he prepared to take off for the next stop on their day of errands before skipping town.

“Yep, and in our case, no stopping at home to get a thing. We just replace what we must, but keep going, right, babe?” Chantal encouraged her lover as he prepared for David’s sloppy seconds and she did the same for Jenny’s after trying their customers out, “I’m in no mood for Tyler’s bullshit!”

“My sentiments exactly!” Leland chuckled while waving goodbye to David, Jenny, Denise, Amanda, Melanie, and Kyle.

“It’s been a pleasure. Nice to meet you guys,” David chuckled as he drove off with his bevy of concubines (and the husband of one of them).

“Same to you. I think that I’m going to get a bike or chopper, some saddlebags, and some helmets before we go. We can get those at the bike shop down the street. Dale’s Biker Gear,” Leland reminded his companion.

“Works for me, hon,” Chantal grinned at the thought of putting her arms around Leland’s waist as they rode away on a Harley, Honda, or whatever.

“Someone has watched Pulp Fiction too many times, but at least they’re only fleeing their partners, not a crime lord. I get the feeling that in this town, that wouldn’t go too far,” Amanda remarked with some dark amusement at the way that the manager and teller had carried on back at the bank.

“Yeah, that’s Hollywood. Gianni Falcone isn’t Marsellus Wallace. He wouldn’t forgive for nothing, trust me. Marsellus was far nicer about things than Gianni would be. He wouldn’t send a washed-up has been like Vincent and a disgruntled hitman like Jules to do his dirty work for him, either. He’d execute the son of a bitch in person! That’s just how Gianni is. The personal touch. Plus he’s a control freak. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw the bullet-riddled corpse himself, in person and stinking up his nostrils. And he would never let someone talk to him the way that Jules did that one time. No way, Jose!

“I’ve met the guy. I know what he’s like, got a good feel for him. He fucked my wife. Trust me, I know how his mind works. He has to be in charge and in control at all times. Period. And his code of honor is far more important to him than any that Marsellus had in that film, either. No disrespect to Ving Rhames and the Marsellus character, of course. They’re just two very different men, and unlike Marsellus, Gianni is a real, live, flesh and blood human being, not a movie character,” David shuddered at the thought of Gianni would have done to him if he hadn’t left in time, and David was no pushover, so that said a lot about Falcone.

“I loved Bruce Willis in that role, in fact. If Maria de Medeiros didn’t fuck him off camera, that was her loss. He was sexy as hell in Pulp Fiction, though admittedly, so was Samuel L. Jackson as Jules, John Travolta as Vincent, and Harvey Keitel as Winston Wolf. Those are iconic roles, if you ask me,” Denise confessed.

“You got that right, babe. Of course, the idea of sticking it in someone like Maria de Medeiros is more than enough to turn me on! Or Uma Thurman, for that matter! And that cabbie was pretty damn sweet, too!” David admitted aloud as they turned on the radio and listened to some Ray Charles ... David loved that man’s cover of “You Don’t Know Me,” though Mickey Gilley had a great version, too.

“Don’t forget Julia Sweeney,” Jenny noted.

“Well said. She was cute as hell in her own way, obviously lovestruck by the Wolf as she was,” David agreed with a grin.

“Your old boss Steven kind of looks like Tim Roth, come to think of it,” Amanda pointed out.