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Vertical Banked

They called themselves Los Hijos del Ritmo, which was a lie because none of them had children and the rhythm mostly abused them. The band practiced in a garage that smelled like old oil and wet cardboard, the kind of place where dreams came to die slowly and complain about it. The conga player, Manny, drank beer like it was a job he hated but showed up to anyway. Tito played trumpet with a cracked lip and a mouthpiece he’d stolen from a high school band room in ’98. Rosa sang like she was bleeding out every note, hips steady, eyes bored, like she’d already heard the applause and found it wanting.

I played piano, badly. But badly with conviction, which is how most crimes get started, I suppose.

We played salsa in bars where the floor or the carpet stuck to your shoes and the audience danced because not dancing would have meant something. We got paid in crumpled bills, drink tickets, and promises that never came back. The owner of El Flamingo Azul still owed us $400 and a chair. We let the chair go.

Sometimes we played for uber eats.

It was Rosa who said it first.

“Why don’t we just rob a bank?”

She said it between songs, wiping sweat from her neck, lipstick smeared like she’d been kissing disaster all night. No one laughed. That’s how you know an idea has legs.

“Which one?” Manny asked.

She shrugged. “The big one. Bank of America.”

Tito snorted. “That’s not salsa. That’s not a choice, it’s fucking suicide.”

Rosa lit a cigarette indoors, daring God or the fire marshal to stop her. “Everything is suicide. At least this one pays.”

The thing about musicians is they’re already criminals. They steal time, money, attention. They break noise ordinances and marriages. Robbing a bank is just paperwork.

We planned it the way we planned our songs: badly, loudly, and with too much confidence. The idea was simple. We’d play in the lobby during lunch hour. Latin Heritage Month or some nonsense like that. Banks love culture as long as it’s loud enough to drown out guilt. We’d wear matching guayaberas, smiles pressed on like fake IDs so there’s not much there.

Halfway through the second song, “It is what it is”, Manny would lock the doors. Tito would pull the gun—his uncle’s old revolver that smelled like rust and bad decisions. Rosa would sing louder. I’d keep playing, because panic hates rhythm.

The day came hot and ugly. The kind of day that makes you sweat before you’ve done anything wrong. The Bank of America lobby was all glass and dead plants, air-conditioned despair. People lined up with numbers in their hands, waiting to explain their failures to someone paid to pretend to care.

We started with something fast. Congas bouncing off marble, trumpet slicing the air. People smiled. Phones came out. A security guard nodded his head like he’d forgotten his own name.

By the second song, I noticed my hands shaking. The piano keys felt like teeth. Manny’s eyes were wild. Tito looked calm, which scared me most.

Then it happened.

The doors locked with a sound like a coffin being politely closed.

Tito stood on a chair and raised the revolver. It looked smaller than I expected. Guns always do until they don’t.

“Everybody stay cool,” he said, which was funny because no one ever does.

Rosa didn’t stop singing. She never stopped singing. Her voice cut through the panic, sharp and hot, like a blade dipped in honey. People froze. A baby cried. A man pissed himself quietly near the mortgage desk.

I kept playing. I played like the notes owed me money.

Manny jumped the counter with the agility of a man who’d spent his life dodging responsibility. He stuffed cash into a duffel bag, skipping the dye packs because he’d watched a movie once and trusted it more than reality.

The manager tried to talk. Managers always try to talk. Tito fired a shot into the ceiling. Plaster rained down like white confetti. Salsa never sounded so good.

It took seven minutes. Seven minutes to do what decades of playing bars never could. When Manny came back, the bag was heavy enough to make him lean like a tired mule.

We backed out, still playing. That was Rosa’s idea. Never stop the music. The crowd parted. Fear has good manners.Write your text here...