The Front Read Online Free PDF Page B

baritone voice. “You giving tours? I’m outside your big-ass truck.”
    She pulls off her latex gloves, opens the tailgate. He climbs up the steps, squints in the bright lights as she lets him in, shuts the heavy doors, slam-dunks the used gloves in the trash, yanks a new pair out of a box.
    â€œHow did you know I was here?” she asks.
    â€œYou had a bank robbery today. Remember?” He moves close to the countertop where she’s working. “And let me see. You aren’t at your shop. So I called your dispatcher and asked where I might find you.”
    â€œYou’re offensive and presumptuous, and I’m not amused.” Pulling on the latex gloves, having a bit of a struggle with them.
    â€œWhat you got here?”
    If there’s one thing she detests, it’s a guy who’s so perfect, he looks like a friggin’ Calvin Klein underwear ad and, if that’s not annoying enough, assumes he can charm the birds out of the trees. Well, not this tough old bird. Besides, if she runs him off, she’s only doing him a favor.
    â€œWhat I’ve got is nothing,” she says irritably. “It’s as if he’s wearing gloves, only I know he’s not.”
    â€œYou sure? Absolutely?” He moves closer.
    She can smell him. The hint of a spicy, masculine cologne. Probably expensive, like everything else he’s got.
    â€œI’m sure this will shock you,” Stump says, “but I recognize gloves when I see them.” She rewinds the surveillance tape, says, “Help yourself.”
    The bank’s glass front door opening. White guy—or could be Hispanic—acting normal, perfectly at ease, with baggy blue sweats, sunglasses, dark hair, a Red Sox baseball cap pulled low, smart enough to know where the cameras are and to divert his face from them. No other customers inside. Three teller windows, one occupied by a young woman. Smiles as he approaches, slips her the note. She stares at it, doesn’t touch it, terror on her face. Fumbles with the cash drawer, fills a deposit bag. He runs out of the bank.
    â€œAnother look at his hands.” Win leans closer.
    She backs up the video, pausing it so he can get a good look at the robber’s hands as he’s sliding the note under the teller’s window. She can feel Win’s closeness, as if he heats up the air.
    â€œNo gloves,” he agrees. “Same thing in the other robberies?”
    â€œSo far.”
    â€œThat’s a little strange.”
    The note from this morning’s case is on clean butcher paper covering the counter, and he stares at it for a long time, as if he’s reading an entire page of print, not just the same simple ten words the robber writes on every note.
    EMPTY CASH DRAWER IN BAG. NOW! I HAVE A GUN.
    She explains, “Neatly written in pencil on a four by six-inch sheet of white paper, torn from a notepad. Same as the other three cases.”
    â€œWatertown, Somerville, now Belmont,” Win says. “All of them members of the FRONT, unlike Cambridge, which has yet to join your private club, and . . .”
    â€œAnd why do you think this is?” she interrupts. “Lamont’s headquarters is in Cambridge, and she has her own private club called Harvard, which pretty much owns Cambridge. So could that possibly have something to do with why Cambridge hasn’t joined the FRONT and probably never will?”
    â€œI was going to add that your robber also hasn’t hit Boston,” Win says. “What’s going through my mind is Watertown, Somerville, and Belmont border on Cambridge. And Boston is close by as well. Certainly there are a lot of banks in Cambridge, not to mention Boston, yet your robber’s avoided both places. Coincidental?”
    â€œMaybe they’ll be next.” She’s got no idea where he’s going with this. “If so, I guess yours truly here won’t be helping out, since Cambridge and