“Then how—?”
“Listen, will you? Every morning the two girl tellers come out the back door of the bank and walk across the parking lot to the auto teller. Nine o’clock sharp! We’ll come out tomorrow and I’ll show you. The money they’ll need for the day is sent to them through the tubes—except on Friday mornings.”
“What happens on Fridays?”
“They need lots of cash for payroll checks. And most of it’s bundled for easy handling. The bundles are too big to fit in the tubes, so the girls carry it to the unit in sacks. No guards, no guns, no nothing. Just two girls with sacks full of money. Barb says they take twenty-five thousand out every Friday morning for the payroll checks.”
“Doesn’t one of the men watch them?”
Tom shook his head. “They used to have a guard go along with them, but nothing ever happened, so they stopped. If they only knew! The whole thing’ll take about ten seconds and we’ll be gone.” Then, “How about it?”
Davy looked down at his hands. “I—I don’t know.”
“We’ll pack some clothes and leave them in the car. We’ll just take off.”
“The cops’ll be watching for the car.”
“So maybe we’ll use another one. I’ll rent one, and then we’ll switch to mine later. They won’t get us—not before we reach New York with all the money in the world.”
“I don’t know, Tom. We’ve never done anything like this.”
“You want to waste your life away in this hick town playing that lousy pinball machine? Or you want to get out and live—have girls like that blonde at Star Drug?”
“I—” All right, he decided suddenly. All right! “I’ll do it, Tom.”
“Good. We’ll drive out tomorrow morning and take a look at the girls.”
On Monday morning it rained, a light drizzle driven by a stiff westerly wind into an unpleasant downpour that emptied the streets. Tom drove the car slowly down Maple Street and turned into the big parking lot, bringing the car to rest by the supermarket at the far end.
“There are the girls,” Davy said after a moment. The rear door of the bank had opened and two girls with raincoats over their heads ran out to a waiting car.
“One of the men is driving them over,” Tom said. “But usually they walk. They’ll be walking on Friday.”
“If it doesn’t rain.”
“It won’t. I already checked the weather bureau’s five-day forecast. No more rain in sight the rest of this week.”
Davy glanced at him. “You think of everything.”
“You gotta think of everything. You gotta be watching for the big chance all the time. You know what cops look like—detectives?”
“Big guys with big feet.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not. The F.B.I. agents are usually younger and more ordinary-looking. And the secret service, when they’re walking with the President, always have their coats open so they can draw their guns.”
“Yeah?” Davy knew that Tom could teach him a great deal. He thought of how things would be for them in New York, with all that money. They’d get girls right away, and move into some swell apartment, and maybe after a while get jobs somewhere. But not right away.
“That’s enough for today,” Tom said. “We’ll check it again on Thursday and run through the whole plan.”
“Is one of those girls Barb?” Davy asked suddenly, because he’d just thought of it.
“No. She works inside. Neither of these ever laid eyes on us. Anyway, we’ll have handkerchiefs over the bottom of our faces, like in the Western movies.”
“Everything but guns, huh?” Davy said with a laugh.
Tom Hasker didn’t reply.
The blonde in the drug store called herself Candy, and by Wednesday afternoon Davy had worked up the courage to ask her for a date. “A movie, maybe? Tonight?”
She eyed him uncertainly while washing glasses. “You don’t have a car, do you?”
“We could go close by. Maybe tonight, after you finish work.”
“Tonight! Heavens, no! I only date on weekends.”
“Oh.” He didn’t know where he’d be on Friday night. “Well. I’ll ask you again.”
She smiled and went back to the glasses. He strolled over to the pinball machine but decided he didn’t really want to play it. He didn’t want to do much of anything, except get away, far away.
On Thursday morning they parked on the street and watched the two young girls—one blonde, the other a lively redhead—prancing across the asphalt lot to the auto teller unit. “I like that redhead,” Tom remarked. “Maybe when we hold them up we should just say, ‘Your money or your honor!’ and let them choose.”
He laughed, then noticed that Davy was frowning. Davy asked, “What do you mean, hold them up? I thought we were just going to grab the dough and scram.”
Tom reached over to open the glove compartment. “You grab the dough. I’ll just show them this to give them a little scare.”
“Tom!”
It was a blue-steel revolver with worn grips and a look of hard usage. “Don’t worry. It’s not loaded,” Tom said, trying to reassure him.
“But—where did you get it?”
“I found it. With my father’s things.” Tom’s father, a plant guard at a local factory, had died of a heart attack the previous year.
“You didn’t tell me anything about a gun!”
“So I’m telling you now. It’s just to scare them.”
Davy could feel his heart pounding, feel the empty yawning of his stomach. Somehow the fact of the robbery hadn’t seemed real until that moment. “No,” he said.
“What difference does an empty gun make? Maybe I won’t even use it.”
“Promise you won’t. Promise, or I’m out.”
Tom looked at him steadily. “You’re in, Davy. It’s too late to be out now.”
“All right, I’m in! But no gun!”
“I’ll have it with me. I promise I won’t use it unless I have to.”
Davy had to be content with that. He stared grimly through the windshield, watching the girls as they unlocked the auto teller unit and went inside.
Tomorrow. So soon—tomorrow.
Davy didn’t sleep well that night. He tossed in the humid darkness and thought about it—his last time in this bed, in this house. What would New York be like? What would the girls be like there? Were they all like in the magazines, with short skirts and big smiles, posing against traffic signs in the latest fashions?
He got out of bed early, at the first hint of daylight, and took a shower. He went over again in his mind the plan that Tom had outlined the night before, picturing the details as they would take place. It was a good plan—foolproof.
Tom would use a rented car and park it near the exit. Then he would follow the girls from the bank, while Davy approached from the other direction. The whole thing would take less than a minute. He wondered abstractedly, as he had before, whether Tom had told the girl, Barb, what he planned. But that didn’t really matter. They’d be far away before she or anyone could spread the alarm.
He mumbled something to his mother at breakfast, trying to avoid a conversation. “Really, Davy, the summer’s almost gone and you don’t have a job or anything. I wouldn’t mind so much if you were going to summer school and learning something.”
“I’m learning,” he answered, his mouth full of toast.
“Where? At the Star Drug? And I want you staying away from those girls around there, you hear? They’re nothing but—”
He got up and left the table, not hearing any more of it. After today he’d never have to listen to any more of it.
Already the day was warming, and he knew as he hurried along the sidewalk that by noon the temperature would hit ninety. There’d be one more visit home, to pick up the overnight bag he’d carefully packed the night before and hidden in his room. Then, away. Tom would abandon the rented car somewhere and they’d meet again at the convertible, which would be parked near the high s
chool stadium.
Easy. A cinch. Foolproof.
But his heart was beating fast when he neared the bank. He felt in his pocket for the handkerchief he’d use as a mask, glanced around for a sign of Tom and the rented car.
Did they rent cars to eighteen-year-olds that easily? And this early in the morning? And wouldn’t Tom have to make a deposit on it?
As he turned it over in his mind, Davy knew suddenly and clearly that Tom had no intention of renting a car. The car would be stolen, as would the money. He wondered why the sudden realization bothered him somehow.
A horn honked, and he turned to see Tom at the wheel of a green sedan, passing him and pulling into the parking area behind the bank. The time was 8:46.
Davy walked past the car and nodded slightly to Tom. There was no need to speak—they both knew what had to be done.
At exactly five minutes to nine Tom left the car by the lot exit and walked around to the front of the bank. He was wearing a jacket despite the heat, and Davy could see the sagging of the gun in its righthand pocket.
Then Tom disappeared around the back of the bank and Davy started walking across the parking lot, very slowly, with plenty of room between himself and the auto teller unit. The rear door of the bank opened, and the same two girls appeared, each carrying a white canvas sack.
Davy’s legs were beginning to tremble, but he kept on walking, gauging his speed by the girls’. He saw Tom round the corner of the bank building and start after them, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.
It was the lively redheaded girl who happened to turn and see Tom, when they’d covered half the distance to the auto teller unit. She gasped something and put a sudden hand to her mouth.
His face already masked by the handkerchief, Tom pulled the blue-steel revolver from his jacket pocket and pointed it at the two girls. “The money!” he barked out.
Davy started to run toward them, forgetting his own handkerchief in the excitement. The two girls stood as if petrified, still holding their bags of currency as they faced the gun in Tom’s hand.
Then came the sudden crack of a pistol shot, and for a split second Davy thought that Tom had fired at the girls. He thought it until he saw Tom start to fold and crumple like an autumn leaf. Then he saw the bank manager in the doorway the girls had just left; the manager was holding a smoking gun in his hand.
Tom Hasker was dead by the time the ambulance arrived. He died without speaking, though in the final instant of life his eyelids might have flickered toward Davy, who stood above him with the others, trying not to see the bloody pool forming on the asphalt.
“Just a kid,” the bank manager said, his voice barely a whisper. “Just a kid and I killed him.”
“He was trying to rob you, wasn’t he?” one of the officers said. “Don’t let it worry you.” Then he turned to Davy once more. “What about this kid?”
“He was trying to help us,” the redhaired girl volunteered. “He came running up when the other one drew his gun.”
They questioned Davy for a time and then released him. He looked around for the girl, to thank her, but both girls had already been sent home by the manager.
Davy headed for home, walking quickly in the heat but not even noticing it, thinking only of Tom dying there in the parking lot for a crazy dream that could never come true. He wondered what would happen when the police found out that Tom had been a friend of his.
He remembered Tom’s car parked at the high school stadium and headed for it, not knowing exactly what he intended to do. When he reached it, standing alone in the noonday heat, he found that it was locked. Tom had a small suitcase in the back seat, and there was another suitcase on the floor, almost out of sight. It looked like a girl’s weekend bag.
“Hello,” a voice said behind him very softly.
He turned, startled, the fear building in him once more, and saw that it was the redhaired girl from the bank, the one who had gotten him off. “I—What are you doing here?”
She smiled at him, at his confusion, perhaps at his fear. “I’m Barb. I was Tom’s girl. That didn’t work out so well this morning. But don’t worry, we’ll do better next time. Won’t we?”
Hawk in the Valley
PERHAPS YOU’VE PASSED THIS way before. The valley is sleepy in the summertime, but very beautiful, with lush fields of corn and oats rising against a backdrop of wooded hills that stretch for miles toward the horizon. Sometimes, especially in the late afternoons, a hawk or two will come circling overhead, looking for the evening meal or perhaps only for a place to light.
Tucker Baines passed this way, and sometimes on a summer’s night they still tell his story in the valley.
June is the warmest month, even warmer than July for some reason, maybe because on a July afternoon the heat is often broken by a blowing thunderstorm that comes in low over the hills. June, especially late June, is something else again; hot and humid without a chance of relief, when the big flies buzz around over the fields and roads, and even the hawks are listless in their circling. It was on such a day that Tucker Baines came into the valley.
He was, first of all, a wanderer. Born in the swampy Everglades of Florida to parents who ran a roadside alligator farm with a marked indifference to his upbringing, Tuck had learned early to shift for himself. He’d left them to their reptiles and each other at the age of sixteen, and headed nebulously north toward a world he knew only from comic books and movies which he saw infrequently.
Tucker was also a musician of sorts, always had been since the age of seven when a drunken uncle made him a present of a shiny silver-plated harmonica. It had grown up with him, serving at times as his only link to the more settled joys of boyhood in the dismal swamp-side house.
So he wandered north with his harmonica, working by day in dusty gas stations that sat by the side of the highways like bulbous tumors, waiting to pump new life into the pipeline; life, and sometimes death. He remembered the time a tractor trailer had jackknifed on a curve down the highway, and taken a carload of vacationers with it down a grassy slope.
In many ways he hated the highways, hated especially the odor and clang of the gas stations where he worked. Perhaps that was why he started working nights with his harmonica, playing for his supper at the little greasy truck stops on the road north. When he was eighteen he was playing for drinks, even though he was still under age by most state laws, but he was not really a drinking man. One night he’d had too much and ran his jackknife into a man’s gut outside a roadhouse in North Carolina. He didn’t like to drink or fight or get into trouble, but sometimes it happened. Sometimes he moved out in a hurry, carrying only his harmonica and a few meager articles of clothing.
Gradually the harmonica became the center of his life. The tavern owners liked him, because he was a clean-shaven young man who could play Night Train as easily as Greensleeves, and because he worked cheap and always showed up. The customers liked him, too, liked the sounds which he coaxed from the instrument, hunched over it on a plain wooden stool with the single spotlight riveting their attention. Perhaps he could have made it all the way to Nashville or New York with that sound, but he was too much of a wanderer to be happy in the city. There was always a dirt road to be followed off the main highway, and that was how he happened into the sleepy valley so far from home.
The first person to see Tucker Baines as he wandered down the center of the road with his harmonica and jackknife and paperboard suitcase was Mariam Coty, the postmaster’s daughter. She had lived all of her life in the valley, venturing out only on occasional shopping trips to the big plaza beyond the river. Some spoke of her as a strange, shy girl, but in fact she was only lonely, bored with the sameness of the tassel-haired farm boys who were her only acquaintances. This boy coming down the road now, who surely was no more than nineteen or twenty, was a new face, a new interest.
“Lookin’ for somebody?” she asked, coming out of the mowed field to intercept him. “This is the Cory place.”
“I… no
, not really.” He paused to rest his suitcase, and she saw that he was indeed handsome, with a firm, suntanned face and deep blue eyes that sparkled when he spoke. “I’m looking for a place to stay, I guess.” He glanced uncertainly toward the western horizon, as if calculating the remaining hours of daylight.
“A hotel? We don’t have any in the valley.”
“No, maybe just a drinking place, where they got a cot in back.” He pulled something from his pocket. “I play the harmonica, see? People pay me to play.”
She stared, entranced, at the shiny metal instrument with its double line of holes. No one in the valley was very musical except Miss Gordon, the piano teacher, and Mariam knew of only one other person in the whole area who played a harmonica. “I suppose you could play at the River Bend,” she said, speaking softly. “It’s the only night spot in the whole valley, if you could call it that. They’ve got a big new stereo jukebox, and the kids go dancing there on weekends. But I don’t know if they’d let you sleep there.”
“Could you show me where it is?” he asked, picking up the battered suitcase once more. “If it’s not too far.”
She fell into step beside him. “It’s not far.”
He liked the girl from that first moment, liked the valley and the tiny village that seemed to form its core. She introduced him to her father, and to a big man named Hark who seemed to be the sheriff. Then she took him to the River Bend, where a few farmhands stood by a rough plank bar, drinking beer with a self-conscious air of guilt. It was early, not yet supper time, and perhaps they felt they should still have been in the fields.
The place itself was almost gloomy in the afternoon sun, and the odor of beer was heavy in the air. In the evening, when the lights came on and darkness settled outside, it would be better. Tuck knew these places. He’d seen so many of them in the past three years.
“The kids dance in here,” the girl told him, leading the way to a bare back room where an unplugged juke box was the only adornment. “Not tonight, though. Just weekends,” she apologized.
Night My Friend Page 30
