Reacting to her agitation, he turned and saw the police. “Oh, hot damn! Let the fucking pigs come up here and I’ll blow ’em away. Too bad you have to see this, but that’s the way it goes. Ill waste ’em, and if you try anything, you’ll be next.”

Mentally, she crossed her fingers, hoping the police hadn’t seen the papers thrown out of the car. She felt certain he would shoot it out with them.

The police cruiser ignored them, and she slumped back, trembling.

“Let’s find another bank,” he said.

They tried several banks, then Kroger and Big Bear stores, all unsuccessfully. She noticed that he would become agitated and aggressive before they entered each one, but once inside he would be playful, as if it were all a game. At the Kroger store in Raintree Center, he put his arm around her and pretended he was her husband. “We really need the money,” he told the clerk. “We’re going out of town.”

Donna was finally able to cash a hundred dollars using a check-cashing machine.

“I wonder,” he said, “if all the computers are connected.”

When she told him that he seemed to know a lot about the way banks and bank machines worked, he said, “I need to know all these things because it’s useful information for my group to have. We share information. Everyone adds to the group.”

Again she assumed he was talking about the Weathermen or some other radical organization, and she decided to divert him with talk about politics and current issues. When he thumbed through a copy of Time that had been lying on the floor of the car, she asked his opinion on the voting for the Panama Canal treaty. He looked confused and flustered, and she realized after a few seconds that he knew nothing at all about something that had been in the headlines and on the TV news. He was not the political activist he had led her to believe. She decided he knew very little about what was going on in the world.

“Don’t go to the police about this,” he said suddenly, “because I or someone else will be watching, and we’ll find out. I’ll probably be in Algeria, but someone else will be watching you. That’s the way we work. We all look out for one another. The brotherhood I belong to will get you.”

She wanted to keep him talking to keep him diverted, but decided to keep away from politics. “Do you believe in God?” she asked, figuring that was a topic someone could talk about for hours.

“Well, do you think there’s a God?” he shouted, pointing the gun right at her face. “Is God helping you right now?”

“No,” she gasped. “You know, you’re right. God isn’t helping me now.”

He suddenly calmed down and stared out the window. “I guess I’m really confused about religion. You’ll never believe this, but I’m Jewish.”

“Gee,” she said, without thinking, “that’s funny, you don’t look Jewish.”