The End of the Dream (18 page)

“Boys .. . Boys, she’s a Rosary Hill Dominican nun! “ Their grandfather implored. “Well, “ Jake said, jumping into the joke, “I’ll try not to say **&&%%%but I don’t know if I can @*+++%% help myself .. . I might forget.” After they’d blurted out every swear word they could think of, they began to laugh and he realized it was a joke.

No matter how they tormented their grandfather, they loved him fiercely.
 
And, of course, they were on their best behavior when Sister Agnes came to visit, never saying so much as “darn” in front of her.

Mike made good use of his time as he waited to become a Seattle Police Officer. He graduated from O’De High School, and went to college at the University of Washington, where he played offensive guard on the Washington Huskies’ Rose Bowl-winning football team in 1982. He had a number of jobs to pay his way through school, one of them driving a Coor’s beer truck. Like everyone else who became involved in this case of intertwined lives, 1987 was a watershed year for Mike Magan, too.

While Shawn Johnson was preparing to graduate from law school and join the FBI, Mike became a Seattle police recruit. He was a member of the 307
^th
class of Washington State’s Basic Law Enforcement Training, and he graduated on February 25, 1987, from the Criminal Justice Training Center. His grandfather Frank was there to proudly pin on Mike’s badge.
 
When Frank II was eighty-eight, he became terribly ill. He had faced death innumerable times as a cop and a fireman. Back in New York, he and his partner, Barney Kelly, once fell several stories down an elevator shaft in a burning building. Now, in the hospital, he asked his son how bad off he was, and Frank III said, “This is worse than that time in the elevator shaft with Barney.” It was.

Mike Magan said his good-byes to his grandfather. The old man smiled at the end, gazed around his hospital room and gave individual advice to everyone gathered there. Then he murmured, “It’s payday, “ and died.
 
Mike Magan’s serial number was 5094, and there was never a rookie policeman more excited about hitting the streets as a full-fledged officer. The Seattle Police Department made no mistake when they hired Mike Magan. He was twenty-four years old, still in the peak of condition necessary to play college football, and possessed of that instinctual “gut feeling” and computerlike memory that every superior cop has. All he needed was experience, and he was about to get plenty of it.

The first time Mike’s name hit the Seattle papers was at Christmas, 1987. He and his partner, David Lishner, were called to a downtown hotel at 10 P. M. on Christmas Eve, where a distraught and depressed thirty-one-year-old man was poised to jump from a fourth-floor window.

He wouldn’t let them in the room, but when Mike and Dave heard glass shattering inside, they broke down the door. From that point on, they moved with agonizing slowness and kept their voices soft and nonthreatening. The man had cut himself on his face and arms and was bleeding heavily as he perched precariously outside the window in the icy rain. Mike Magan crept as close as he could, talking quietly, “There are better things to live for” he said. It took him several minutes to convince the would-be suicide to come back toward the window. When he did, the two officers grabbed him and pulled him to safety. Assigned to the North Precinct, Mike Magan worked everything from purse snatchings and home burglaries to accidents and rapes. In April 1989, he spotted a driver who was known to be a black tar heroin dealer. A “wants and warrants” check showed an active warrant for the man, and a search of the car turned up $22,000 hidden in the car.

Mike’s elation at finding the drug money which was held for evidence was matched by his frustration when no drugs were found.

The driver laughed as he said, “You lost. I’m going to California to buy drugs, but you didn’t find drugs in my car or the rest of the cash.

“ Mike had to let the dealer go, but minus almost $23,000. In 1990, Magan was assigned to work at the Goodwill Games in Seattle. He was also moved to a Community Police Team and to bicycle patrol. The Seattle Police Department was discovering that the immediate and visible presence of officers on bikes had a powerful impact on prostitution and drug trafficking that had infiltrated family neighborhoods in the north end. Mike and his new partner, Chris Gough, teamed up with local residents to rake and sweep up drug paraphernalia and other detritus left by dealers and prostitutes. The sight of officers working alongside residents impressed citizens who had almost given up. Backed by police interest, neighbors turned out to take back their streets. In 1991, Mike Magan was nominated for the annual Jefferson Awards, which are given out by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer . These awards go to six Washingtonians who have “most enriched the lives of their neighbors and helped communities through voluntary public service.” Mike’s nomination read, Innovative Seattle police officer who conceived the project to close North Seattle’s Nesbit Street in Licton Springs from 6 P. M. to A.
 
M. , an area of high crime, drugs and prostitution, to all but 18 residents.

It works. Magan is available to everyone, 24 hours a day, or off duty, to counsel teens, parents, or anyone else. Mike was still only twenty-eight, although his hair had turned completely gray. This was a genetic trait not a result of his four years on the force. His gray hair was deceptive, however, he and Chris Gough were chasing down suspect cars on their bicycles. Between February 25 and March 31, 1992, they made four arrests for suspicion of narcotics, one for fraud, one for theft, five warrant arrests, two for drinking in public, two for criminal trespass, one for concealed weapon, one DWI, one for obstructing, one reckless endangerment, two for shoplifting, one violation of court order, two for investigation of child neglect, and six for “stay out of areas of prostitution” in the Aurora Avenue corridor alone. And this exhaustive list didn’t include the other neighborhoods where the two officers in bicycle shorts and helmets had become a familiar sight. They were so good at what they did that they were nominated twice by their supervisor sergeant Howard Montafor the Officer(s) of the Month Award. If the community along the Aurora Avenue corridor had had their way, Mike Magan and Chris Gough would have been patrolling on their mountain bikes (and in a patrol car when Seattle’s rains were too drenching) until they retired from the force.

The bikes made them approachable and available. Chris and Mike even became something of a tourist attraction, posing patiently for the cameras of visitors to Seattle. Their legs were like steel and their lung capacity was phenomenal. No one would ever have imagined that Mike was once a little boy whose doctors feared for his lungs.

Mike Magan wouldn’t have been honest if he said he was totally satisfied staying on bike patrol. Although patrol officers in cars, on foot, and on bicycles are almost always the first on the scene of a crime, even a homicide, they ultimately have to hand it over to the detectives to investigate. Some are quite content to do that. Others feel a sense of frustration because they cannot follow a case through to arrest and trial.

Magan was one who hoped one day to be in a detective unit preferably Homicide and Robbery. By the early 1990s, there were an inordinate number of bank robbers working the Seattle area so many that Seattle had jumped to the fourth spot in the country in terms of the number of bank robberies, an incredible fact given that there are many cities with much larger populations.

Special Agent Shawn Johnson knew why. “Where Marie and I came from minnesota and Wisconsin there are taverns on every corner.

Most big cities have a 7-Eleven or a gas station on the corners but Seattle has a bank branch on almost every corner.” In early summer 1992, Scott Scurlock had pulled off a single successful bank robbery, and it had only whetted his appetite for more. He realized early on that he would have to do it better. He had replayed the bank robbery over and over in his mind, looking for flaws. Trusting that he and Mark could steal a getaway car hadn’t been clever. What if the guy had fought giving them the keys?

What if the blue Cadillac hadn’t started at all? And Mark sure hadn’t turned out to be the ideal accomplice, he’d been terrified while they were in the bank, and so full of angst when it was over. Scott’s first bank robbery had showed him that there were more variables than he had visualized. He could see that robbing banks was going to be a lot like laying chess. He would simply have to anticipate any eventuality.

Most of all, he had to be sure that he was anonymous, that no one in a bank would ever know what he really looked like. Since his initial bank heist had worked so well, Scott had the audacity to return to the very same bank two months later. On August 20, 1992, late on a Friday afternoon, he walked into the Madison Park branch of the Sea first Bank alone. One of the tellers who had handed money to him in June recognized him almost at once as the same man who had robbed her before. But no one else made the connection. Once again, the bank witnesses all estimated his age differently, one thought he was forty-five, another guessed he was in his fifties. Every one agreed he had graying blond hair and a blond-gray mustache. Some thought it was his real hair, others suspected it was a wig. He wore a dark green baseball cap and a gray sports jacket. The “aging” robber had ordered everyone to lie on the floor, and warned them not to follow him. He had apparently been doing his homework because this time he ordered the teller, “Don’t put any dye packs in.” (Any bank robber who survives for long knows that tellers keep stacks of money with a hidden pack of bright orangey-red dye stuck between a packet of bills in the drawer where they have their cash. The dye packs activate when they are carried beyond a certain point in the bank, and they explode covering the robber and his loot with dye that will not wash off for more than a week. ) The bank surveillance camera didn’t activate in time, and none of the tellers managed to slip in any marked bills or any dye packs.

So far, so good but he didn’t get as much money as he had the first time, only $8,124.50. The FBI was charting the gray-haired bank robber’s movements, and they didn’t have to wait as long for him to hit again. On September 3only two weeks latera man burst into the U. S.

Bank in West Seattle at 12:30 P. M. He moved with a certain fluid grace toward the teller counter, pointing his black handgun at the bank employees and customers. “This is a robbery. Keep calm. Everybody keep quiet.

Don’t move. I want all the tellers to put the money on the counters.

“ This time, the dozen witnesses described a younger manin his thirties.
 
He had worn jeans, a light colored T-shirt, and a pale blue sport jacket. And, incongruously, high-top red sneakers. Some had seen only the blond wig, while one observant teller saw the curly dark brown hair beneath it and even the razor burn on his neck from a recent shave. But everyone remembered the surgical gloves he wore, and the baseball cap that said “DARE” on it. That was an ironic touch, those hats were handed out by police to promote their “Dare to keep off drugs” program for kids.

Nobody could really see the robber’s face, some recalled only thick makeup, while others thought he wore a translucent mask over makeup.

He wore opaque sunglasses that obscured his eyes. Once the money was on the counter, he moved quickly, sweeping stacks of bills into a black vinyl bag. He seemed to know his stuff.

When he saw that a teller had given him only one stack of bills, he ordered her to produce the money from a second drawer. She did.

Still, one of the tellers had surreptitiously activated the bank’s camera and silent alarm and another had pushed a stack of marked bills toward the lone robber. He was in and out of the bank rapidly. As he walked toward the double doors, he called back, “Every one lie down on the floor. Nobody look out the windows, or I’ll come back and shoot.

“ Believing him, no one moved. A teller managed to peek under her arm and saw the bank robber turn left outside the doors. But then he was gone. And he had taken $9,613 of the bank’s money with him, some of it in “bait” bills. It was, of course, Scott. He had now made a mistake, a small one, yes, but he carried away the marked packet of bills. The fourth bank robbery by a slender, remarkably fit man happened only eight days later. On September 11, he was back in the northeastern part of the city at the University Savings Bank in the Laurelhurst neighborhood.
 
Again, it was at the end of the week Friday and around noon, 12:10 to be exact. His MO and his outfit were virtually the same as the last time.
 
This time, his image was caught on the bank’s cameras in excellent detail, the funky gray blond wig and mustache didn’t match the lithe, muscular body and he definitely moved like an athletic younger man.

His voice was described as harsh and deep, but that could have been influenced by what he was saying. “It’s a robbery. Get the money out.

Put the money on the counter! “ When one teller hesitated, he turned to him and said, “You too. I don’t want any dye packs. I want your backup money, too.” The man with the black gun asked again for “backup money.”

“That’s all I have, “ the Customer Service Teller said, as he emptied his second drawer, deftly slipping bills into the stack of money. The man in the strange, translucent mask said, “Look at it this way. If I was going to cash a five-thousand-dollar check, where would you get the cash? “ He leapt effortlessly onto the counter so that he could watch the tellers closely. The male bank officer had no choice but to take out a reserve box of cash and put it on a back counter.

The robber grabbed the box and vaulted back over the counter. He was ready to leave, but first he forced everyone to move to the center of the bank and lie facedown on the floor. “You guys lay down on the floor, “ he said. “And don’t look up for twenty seconds or I’ll come back and shoot someone.” The bank robber was gone within those twenty seconds. He had sounded deadly serious about shooting and everyone obeyed his time limit. They didn’t know if he had someone outside the bank, watching. He had seemed supremely confident, and well informed, a professional.