Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Yes, sir,” I said. So I was reprieved once more, both for Marian and the bank.

  If only once I could greet an event in my life without ambivalence.

  “In the meantime,” he said, “assuming you really are innocent, it might pay you to do some detective work on your own.”

  Be an informer, he meant, and I was more than willing to do so. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll be trying to find him, I promise.”

  “That’s good,” he said. He considered me, seemed to think of various other things he might say, and in the end merely shook his head slightly and said to Stoon, “Very well.”

  Outside, as Stoon and I walked down the corridor together, he said, “If it was me, I’d lock you in over in the restricted cells and throw the key away.”

  I was glad it wasn’t him.

  38

  That Saturday Andy Butler left. The day before was a very emotional experience for everybody, and especially for Andy. The cooks prepared a special meal for him, and the mess hall that evening turned into a kind of testimonial dinner on Andy’s behalf. It was a mark of his universal esteem that all eight of the tunnel insiders stayed in prison to attend that dinner.

  Although silence—or at the most a kind of semi-whispered conversation—was the order of the day in the mess hall under normal circumstances, the rules were abrogated this time sufficiently to allow particular inmates to stand up and make acclamatory speeches, which tended to make up in enthusiasm what they may have generally lacked in polish.

  Then I abruptly found that I too was making a speech. I had been sitting near Andy, watching him smile, watching him blink back tears and swallow down the emotions welling up within him, and at a moment when a speaker had finished and the applause had died down without anyone immediately leaping to his feet damned if I didn’t leap to my feet. “Gentlemen,” I said, and as the faces turned eagerly, happily toward me, I stopped dead.

  What the hell was I doing? I’d been ready to Confess All. I’d been just about to tell them the entire truth about my past as a practical joker, and how Andy’s good example, his ability to get along with all the people around him, had cured me. Good Christ, talk about sealing your own death warrant!

  They were all watching me, hundreds of faces staring up, waiting. I had to say something, I realized that, but it wasn’t going to be the thing that had driven me to my feet, not by a long shot. “Uhh,” I said, “I don’t really have much to say.” Well, that’s beautiful, I thought. “It’s just, uh, that Andy and I have been cellmates for almost three months now, and I want to say he’s the finest man I ever lived with.”

  Christ. The whole place cracked up; gales of laughter bounced off the gray walls. I stood there for a few seconds, but they weren’t going to quiet down so I could say anything more, and in any event I couldn’t think of anything rational that I could add. So finally I just sat down again, and after a while somebody else got up, and then somebody else, and gradually I began to feel that my contribution was maybe going to be forgotten after all.

  At the end Andy got to his feet. He thanked everybody, he told us he was choked up with emotion, and he said he’d never forget us. “I can only hope the people on the outside are as good as you fellows,” he said.

  He glanced my way just once, and I saw a twinkle in his eye, and I thought, Don’t do it, Andy, don’t make a joke, I don’t think I could stand it. I winced, bracing myself for it, but the moment passed, he said nothing, and at the finish he was given a standing ovation and a round of “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.”

  The next day, just before he left, he told me he’d thought of one or two comments he might make at that juncture, but that when he’d seen my stricken expression he’d decided to let it ride. “A joke wouldn’t have been worth it,” he said. “Not the way you were going to feel. And I didn’t want them razzing you for a couple months later on.”

  Another lesson for me. “Thanks, Andy,” I said. “You really are a prince.”

  He laughed, and we shook hands. “Don’t let problems worry you, Harry,” he said. “They’ll work themselves out pretty soon. Just hang in there.”

  Hang in there. Two days from now, I thought, I’m going to rob a bank. “I’ll do my best, Andy,” I said. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you, too, Harry.”

  39

  But it was going to take more than luck.

  With my mind so completely distracted by the problem of the authorship of the “help” messages, plus the further distraction of Andy Butler’s departure, I still hadn’t come up with a bank robbery stopper by Monday afternoon. So once again, for the fifth time, here I was in the luncheonette with Phil and Jerry and Billy, waiting for the red typewriter truck to arrive at five-thirty.

  (It was the fifth time I was here, and the sixth time the others were here, but it was actually the seventh robbery attempt. The time of the great snowstorm, a month ago, we hadn’t bothered to come to the luncheonette at all.)

  My mind will not fail me, I thought. Four o’clock, four-fifteen, four-thirty. My mind will not fail me. I’ve come up with last-minute solutions before this, and I’ll do it again.

  But not the same solutions. I didn’t dare repeat any of those earlier ploys, for fear the repetition would click something in Phil Giffin’s mind. I was straining coincidence to the breaking point as it was, though in fact two of those instances, the bank party and the snowstorm, were simply natural occurrences that nobody could have set up in advance. But three of the remaining four had involved bombs of one sort or another—stink, smoke and scare—and that was permitting the ice to get a trifle thin.

  That’s all right, I told myself, as five o’clock came by, you’ll think of something. You’ll think of something, Harry. You always think of something.

  Not a bomb. Nothing to the truck. Not a phone call.

  Tip the police? Tell them a robbery was about to happen?

  No. They wouldn’t rush to the scene with sirens blaring, they’d sneak up and capture us the instant we made our move.

  I’ll think of something. I’ll think of something.

  Five-fifteen. Five-twenty-five.

  If I pretended a heart attack? No, they’d go on anyway, and I couldn’t afford to be taken away in an ambulance to some hospital’s emergency ward, where they’d request identification.

  Five-thirty.

  I’ll think of something.

  The typewriter repair truck arrived. It was a new truck, also a red Ford Econoline van just like the old one; I must have really done a good job on that earlier truck.

  So I can do a good job now. I’ll think of something in just a second.

  Joe got out of the truck, walked to the back door, opened it.

  Maybe the Third World War will start. Or we’ll get a visitor from outer space.

  Joe took out the typewriter, carried it over to the Fiduciary Federal door. Eddie, overcoat on over his guard uniform, climbed out of the truck and walked over to stand with Joe.

  “I don’t believe it,” Phil said. I looked at him, and his expression was awed, as though he were seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary, who was telling him how to attain Peace on Earth.

  The bank door opened. Joe and Eddie walked in.

  “Let’s go,” Phil said.

  I’ll think of something, I thought. I got to my feet with the others, and we trooped out of the luncheonette and across the street.

  I’ll think of something. Wait a second now.

  40

  Eddie Troyn opened the door to us. He’d taken off his overcoat, revealing his guard uniform, and I had to admit he looked perfect in the part. “Everything’s fine,” he assured us, and it took me a second to realize he’d said that exactly the way a bank guard would. He was calm, quiet, a bit hushed.

  There was just something about Eddie and a uniform. Whenever he put one on, he assumed the personality that went with it.

  I’ll think of something, I told myself, and the four of us stepped into the bank, and Ed
die closed and locked the door behind us. And over to the right Joe Maslocki had put down the typewriter and had taken out a gun—one of the automatics Eddie and I had stolen from Camp Quattatunk—and was holding it aimed at the real guard, who was standing without moving.

  It’s too late, I thought. I couldn’t believe it. We’re robbing the bank, I thought.

  41

  I stood and pointed a gun at the woman in the tweed skirt and the man with the red tie while the man with the sideburns phoned his wife. Phil was pointing a gun at the man with the sideburns. Joe was pointing a gun at the bank guard, who had been relieved of his own gun, which Jerry now had in his pocket. Eddie, in his guard uniform, was standing by the front door, acting precisely like a bank guard; I was sure he thought he was a bank guard, and I hoped he wouldn’t blow the whistle on us. Jerry and Billy, who would be operating the laser which Joe had brought in from the typewriter repairman’s truck, were standing around waiting for the phone calls to be made before either of them could get started.

  When the man with the sideburns finished telling his wife about the sudden unexpected audit that might keep him at work in the bank all night—he’d had to keep assuring her that there was no suspicion that he himself was an embezzler—he came over and took the place of the woman in the tweed skirt. That is, he became one of the two people I was pointing a gun at, and the woman in the tweed skirt became the person Phil was pointing a gun at, in the course of which she made a phone call to her husband explaining the business about the audit. In her case, the suspicion evinced at the other end seemed to have nothing to do with embezzlement: “You can call me right here at the bank any time you want,” she said, with some asperity, “all night long.” She seemed quite annoyed when she hung up and came back to be gun-pointed at by me again, while the man with the red tie took her place in front of Phil and at the phone.

  None of the employees seemed more than annoyed or perhaps slightly worried by our presence, in fact, except the bank guard, who had been just about petrified with fear until he’d been disarmed, after which he calmed down considerably. But he still did twitch from time to time, and lick his lips, and look around nervously for somebody to appease.

  Once we had all entered the bank and moved behind the partition to the area which held the private offices and the vault, we had immediately put on the black masks from the five-and-ten that Phil had bought back in December. They were ordinary domino masks, of the type the Lone Ranger wears. I don’t know what I looked like, but the others looked like characters from nineteen-thirties comic strips rather than the Lone Ranger. Rough clothing, masks. Only the fact that we were all clean-shaven and had no speech balloons over our heads saved us from out-and-out obsolescence.

  The man with the red tie, on the phone with his wife, had to follow up the story of the audit with a rather weary defense of his choice of banking as an occupation. “You knew I worked in a bank when you married me,” he said at one point. Some sort of dinner party involving members of his wife’s family had apparently been scheduled for this evening, and his wife was clearly of a mind that he was using the audit as an excuse for non-attendance. He denied this consistently, and ultimately with some vehemence, but I noticed that when he finished the call and came back over to be gun-pointed at by me again he did seem to have a faint smile hovering in the general vicinity of his lips.

  Finally the guard, a somewhat pudgy elderly man with a red roll of fat around his neck, was escorted by Joe over to the telephone, and therefore made his phone call under the watchful guns of two tough guys with masks on. It did seem a bit excessive.

  That is, he made his phone calls. First he had to call his wife and tell her not to hold dinner because of the audit, etc., etc. Then he had to call his daughter-in-law and tell her he couldn’t babysit for her and her husband that evening because of the audit, etc., etc. Then he had to call somebody named Jim and tell him not to come over for checkers at his, the guard’s, daughter-in-law’s house this evening because he, the guard, would not be present because of the audit, etc., etc. It seemed a complicated social life for such an old man.

  Finally, though, the bank guard’s arrangements for the evening had been thoroughly rearranged and he left the phone and came over to stand with the woman in the tweed skirt and the man with the red tie and the man with the sideburns, all of whom had guns pointed at them by Joe and me, while Phil sat near the phone in case of problems, Eddie stayed up front doing his bank guard imitation, and Jerry and Billy took the laser into the vault to go to work.

  All of this was what was happening on the surface. What was happening inside me was:

  EEEEEE!!!

  42

  For those who have never tried it, let me say right now that bank robbery is a very boring occupation. So boring, in fact, that by six-thirty, a scant hour into the job, I had been bored completely out of terror, moral qualms and legal considerations, and dulled down into a torpid state of acceptability. So we were robbing a bank; what else was new?

  The phone calling and other pre-arrangements had taken about half an hour, so it was just after six when Billy and Jerry started to work with the laser. Phil remained seated at the desk by the phone, the gun lying handy to his hand. Joe and I sat in swivel chairs, our guns resting in our laps as we continued to watch our four prisoners, who were sitting on the floor against a side wall. Eddie stayed up front, moving around like any bank guard.

  Whenever any of our prisoners had to go to the toilet, it was my job to escort them, and to wait outside the door, once it had been established that neither bathroom had any windows large enough to permit an escape. And whenever one of them had to go, it was usually the guard. That man had kidneys every bit as bad as his nerves. Up and down, up and down; he punctuated my boredom with intervals of irritation.

  Still, I suppose it would have been even worse just to sit there hour after hour, with no excuse at all for getting to my feet. What I really minded about all those trips to the men’s room, I must admit, was the weight of the gun. I was toting one of the Colt .45 automatics Eddie and I had stolen from the Army, and it was amazing just how much that gun weighed. Or maybe it wasn’t; the thing was, after all, made out of solid metal. Still, in movies people ran around with guns in their hands as though the things weigh no more than a soft drink straw. This automatic was the first handgun it had ever been my misfortune to hold, and it was heavy. Particularly because I didn’t feel it was psychologically proper to let it hang straight down from the end of my arm, not with the prisoners watching. So whenever I walked around at all, following the bank guard or whoever on a potty run, I always made sure to keep the gun pointing fiercely at the person I was guarding. The strain on my wrist and thumb was really grinding after a while.

  Then there was the mask. I don’t mean it itched or anything as specific as that, but it was foreign, it was not a natural part of me. It pressed on the bridge of my nose, the eye-holes weren’t absolutely aligned with my eyes, and every time I fussed with it the elastic band around the back of my head shifted around and started pulling hairs out. That can hurt.

  All in all it was a very discomforting business, robbing banks, and I was looking forward to it being over just as rapidly as possible.

  Which wasn’t going to be all that rapid. Billy and Jerry were taking turns with the laser, spending five minutes on and five off, and they were evidently having slow going. They’d started at six, and by six-thirty they’d both stripped down to their jockey shorts. It was apparently getting very hot in there, in a fairly confined and mostly metal space, running a laser which was in essence melting a hole through the metal.

  Through a lot of metal. A line of locked storage boxes, all containing stock certificates, covered the rear wall of the vault. First the doors of several of these had to be burned off and the smoking metal remnants carried out to cool in the anteroom. Then the partitions had to be burned away in further smoking chunks—enough partitions to make it possible for a man to move through there. After that t
he wall itself had to be burned through, leading to the wall of the Western National vault, plus God alone knew what further cabinets or other obstructions we’d find on the other side of that second wall.

  Originally the idea had been to cut completely through into the second vault before assembling any of the money, but when the storage box doors were all burned away the leading edges of the exposed partitions were all too hot to touch. The air-conditioning system in the vault was working full blast, but not making much headway, and it was impossible for either Billy or Jerry to reach in among the partitions to do the work with the laser. So, while waiting for the metal to cool off, they began to fill the empty liquor store cartons that Joe and I brought in from the typewriter truck. Jerry and Billy, standing there in their masks and underpants, sweating like a metal bucket on a hot day and beginning to look a bit red, not unlike lobsters, held our guns pointed at the man in the red tie and the man with the sideburns and the bank guard with the kidneys and the woman in the tweed suit while Joe and I went out to the truck and got the cartons. Six of them that first time, three apiece. Eddie held the door for us, exactly like a real bank guard.

  This happened a little after seven. Jerry and Billy loaded stacks of bills into the cartons until seven-thirty, and then went back to work with the laser again, cutting away the partitions.

  That took until nearly eleven. Before that, around nine o’clock, the man with the sideburns said to me, “May I speak?” Until then, except for murmured conversation among themselves, the prisoners had all been very quiet, none of them talking to us at all. Not even to tell us we wouldn’t get away with it, or any of the stock lines in this situation that they all surely must have heard enough times on television to be letter perfect in them.

  But now one of them had spoken to one of us—the man in the sideburns to me, requesting permission to speak. “Sure,” I said, though I did glance sidelong at Joe, sitting near me. I thought of myself as merely an apprentice in this operation after all, maybe an auxiliary; the real pros should do any of the talking required.