Collected Stories

by Donald E. Westlake

Stan was astonished. “There’s jewelry stores in Astoria?”

  The cop shrugged. “Why not? Wedding rings, sorry–honeys. Your jewelry store’s your universal.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Stan said, and the cop tensed all over, like a sphincter: “He’s gonna exit!”

  Stan too had seen the Taurus’s right directional blink on. Keeping well back, he said, “I suppose these guys are armed and dangerous.”

  “Jeez, I hope not,” the cop said. “I’m on traffic detail. That’s why we don’t wanna overtake them, make them suspicious, just keep them in sight.”

  “Ten–four,” Stan said.

  “When they get stopped at a light,” the cop said, “pull up next to them, I’ll look it over, see if I can take them down without backup.”

  Stan knew he was just saying that to cover for what he’d said a minute ago, but what the hell: “You got it.”

  The cop took off his hat, to be in disguise, and sat forward, eyes tense, licking his lips.

  Never had Stan seen anybody so lucky with traffic lights. The Taurus went this way and that way on the city streets, block after block with a traffic light hanging over every intersection, the Taurus steadily trending south by east, and every last one of those traffic lights was green when the Taurus arrived. Sometimes, particularly twice when the Taurus had made a turn at an intersection, Stan had to goose it to scoot through on the yellow, but he figured, he was under cop’s orders here; he should be covered.

  It bothered him a while, knowing he was part of messing up the day of a couple of fellow mechanics, but then it didn’t bother him anymore.

  Meanwhile, the cop kept talking to his radio, giving it coordinates, progress reports, and the radio kept barfing back. Then the cop tensed again, putting on his hat as he said. “This is it. Next intersection–there!”

  They were almost a full block back, a tan Jeep Cherokee between them, the green Taurus almost to the corner, when all at once cop cars came out of everywhere, left and right and practically dropping down from overhead, surrounding the Taurus, blocking it in good and, by the way, freaking out the driver of the Cherokee no end.

  Stan slammed on the brakes. “Now what?”

  “Wait here!” the cop barked, and jumped from the car.

  Fat chance. The Taurus is a very popular car, and wishy–washy green for some reason is a very popular color. One of those moments when the cop had been busy giving coordinates and looking for street signs, Stan had managed to stop following green Taurus number one and start following green Taurus number two. Therefore, he was already backing to the corner, swinging around it, flooring that BMW out of there, even before the four little old ladies with the missiles in their hands came stumbling out of their Taurus to stare at all that firepower.

  What with one thing and another, Algy was the first to arrive at the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust. At first, he just walked past it, hands in his pockets, looking it over, trusting that nobody with a plastic bag full of loot would come hurtling out of this place.

  The car had been extracted and taken away. Guys in mustaches and blue jeans and tool belts were slowly closing the facade with sheets of plywood. Streamers of yellow Crime Scene tape were wrapped around everything in sight as though the Easter bunny had been here, bored, nothing else to do in October. And speaking of bored, that’s what the two cops were in the prowl car parked out front, the only official presence still here.

  The bank was at the corner of a two–story tan–brick structure that ran the length of the block, shops downstairs — Chinese takeout, video rental, dry cleaner, OTB — and apartments above, most of them with window air conditioner rumps mooning the traffic on the boulevard beyond the skimpy plane trees. Each apartment facade was as individual as each store, one bearing RENT STRIKE! signs, one suggesting COME TO JESUS!, one with windows painted black, one crying REMEMBER K with the rest of the paper torn off, one with what appeared to be curtains and blinds and drapes. The corner apartment, above the bank, expressed its individuality through paranoia; every window was as barred and gated as a maximum–security cell, and through those iron braces could be read NO TRESPASSING and BEWARE OF DOG and NO SOLICITING and KEEP OUT and PRIVATE PROPERTY.

  Downstairs, the bank had been a bit less prepared for intruders. It had been a retail store until its makeover into a branch bank — probably ladies’ better fashions — and still retained the large windows along both front and side streets for the display of the merchant’s wares; or at least had still retained them until Morry Calhoun had swung by.

  The video rental shop was next door to the bank; go in through there? But the shop was open and staffed, and its entrance was very much in the bored cops’ sight line.

  Algy walked around the corner, to the side street where the bank’s former glass had already been replaced by plywood, and at the rear of the building was a solid fence of unpainted vertical wood slats, eight feet high and six feet wide. Approaching it, Algy saw that half its width was a wood–slat door, inset into the fence, with a round metal keyhole but no handle. Behind it, from what he could see over the top of the fence, was an areaway running the length of the block. At this end, it was between the rear of the bank and the blank brick side of the nursing home that fronted on the cross street. And above, a row of fire escapes.

  Hmmm. Algy strolled on down the block, crossed the street at the corner, and strolled back again, getting a good look at the rear of the bank building, the fire escapes, the windows of the second–floor apartment, which continued the theme stated along front and side, barred gates, though without the warning notices. The interior behind those windows was dark.

  Why not? The first step was to get inside the building, so why not into the apartment above the bank? From there, maybe Morry Calhoun had loosened some structural stuff, and an agile person could come down through the ceiling. Or there’d be a staircase, so the tenant could put trash in the areaway. Or whatever.

  Algy next strolled all around the block, away from the bank, pausing on the next cross street over to sit briefly on a fire hydrant while he removed his left shoe, took a few flat flexible pieces of metal from inside the heel, put the shoe back on and resumed his walk.

  Nearing the bank again, he held the flexible metal strips tucked into both palms and zeroed in on that wooden door in the wooden wail. He’d seen that kind of lock before; they were old friends, and this one didn’t detain him long.

  Inside, as he’d expected, the concrete–floored areaway was garbage–can–strewn. There were doors spaced along the rear wall, but it looked as though the near ones were simply ground–floor access.

  On the third leap, he hooked a hand over the bottom rung of the fire escape, which his weight then brought downward, making it easier to climb. At the top, the flexible metal strips worked very nicely — to unlock the gate over the nearest window, then slip through between upper and lower sashes of the window itself to gently elbow the window lock out of the way. Slowly, silently, he lifted the window, leaned close to the opening, listened.

  Nothing. No TV, no snoring, no whistling teakettle.

  Algy slid over the sill, paused to close the gate and window behind himself, then looked around at a small, spartan bedroom. Framed photos of old–time boxers in manly stances were on the walls.

  Algy started across the bedroom toward the doorway, and was nearly there when he became aware of the eyes. They were in the hall beyond the bedroom door, they were at crotch height, and they were connected to the largest, meanest–looking, scariest dog Algy had ever seen.

  He stopped. The instant he did, the dog started. It didn’t bark, because it was more serious than that. It didn’t want to make a fuss; it merely wanted to kill Algy, slowly, with its teeth.

  Algy turned. Window closed and barred. No time.

  A shut door was to his right. He leaped to it, yanked it open, saw clothes hanging on a bar, lunged in among them, pulled the door shut; the dog thudded like a locomotive against the door.

 
Now what?

  John Rumsey’s flexible metal tools were just as efficacious as Algy’s on that wooden door, but then Rumsey chose to climb the inside of the fence, finding hand and footholds on the angle irons that held fence to building, and so reach the fire escape’s upper landing that way. (He was too short to have caught the fire escape by jumping.) He was surprised, at the top, to find that both gate and window were unlocked though shut, but he thought this meant merely that even someone as security–conscious as this tenant appeared to be might eventually grow a little slack. He entered noiselessly, shut gate and window and started across the room, getting just about as far as Algy had before making that same dreadful discovery.

  Rumsey wasn’t quite as fast as his friend had been. He made it into the closet, but left behind a triangle of trouser leg clenched between the dog’s teeth.

  Slamming the door, hearing the dog slam into it from the other side, Rumsey became horribly aware that he wasn’t alone in here. Someone — or something — rustled and slurfed right next to him. “What?” he called. Wham, went the dog against the door.

  “I’m not here!” cried a voice. “I can explain!”

  A familiar voice. Hardly believing it, Rumsey said, “Algy?”

  A little pause. “John?”

  Wham, went the dog.

  Stan, being a driver, took a slightly different approach. That is, he looked for a means of access that would, in its early phases, include a car. He drove around the block, noted the storefronts, the varied second–floor window treatments, the workmen applying plywood, the bored cops in their cruiser, then the nursing home (barely glancing at the wooden door in the wooden fence); on around the block, coming up at last to the far end of the building holding the bank.

  On this block, the space equivalent to the nursing home at the other end was occupied by an open–sided four–story parking garage. Stan made note of that, turned at the corner, drove on down past the cops and the bank and the workmen, took that next turn, and pulled to a stop just short of the wooden fence.

  Plywood now covered the former windows on the side of the bank, but the blue police sawhorses were still there, swathed in gay yellow Crime Scene tape. Stan got out of the BMW; opened the trunk, and leaned in to open the small pass–through door between trunk and backseat, placed there because the kind of people who own this kind of car usually also own skis.

  The sawhorses came in three parts: two A–shaped sets of legs and the ten–foot–long crossbar, a two–by–six plank. Stan rescued two of these planks from their legs and the yellow tape and wrestled them into the BMW having to fold the front passenger seat down as well to ootch them in all the way. Then he drove around the block again, turned in at the parking garage, and took his ticket from the machine.

  He found a useful parking slot on the sloping third level, backed into it so the rear of the BMW was close to the waist–high concrete–block barrier that was all the building had for exterior walls, and slid the sawhorse planks out of the car and across the intervening space between parking garage and bank building roof, though down the block from the bank, closer to the middle of the building. The planks fit very nicely, with good overhang at each end. Stan went across on all fours — two per plank — then walked briskly along the roof to the final fire escape. He went down that, found the unlocked window, climbed in, saw the dog, the dog saw him, Stan bolted for the closet, and soon another reunion took place, though not an entirely happy one.

  Big knew he was a memorable guy, and so shouldn’t walk past those cops in the cruiser, no matter how bored they were, more than once. He strolled down the block, took in the scene, turned down the side street, saw a couple of blue sawhorse leg sets lying on the sidewalk, remarked to himself that cops were usually neater than that, and noticed that where the next to last sheet of plywood overlapped the last sheet of plywood, there was a bit of a gap where the plywood might have been screwed down a bit more securely but was not.

  With a quick glance around to note that he was alone out here, he stepped to the plywood, inserted a hand in the space, and tugged. He had to tug three times, finally, and then be a little careful of jutting screws, but with a small pivot like the hippopotami in Fantasia he curled around the opening he’d made, and entered the bank. Two tugs were sufficient to pull the plywood back to its original position, or at least to look as though it were in its original position, and then Big went for a stroll through the empty, and rather messy, bank.

  Morry Calhoun and his Infiniti had done a pretty complete job in here. He’d come angling through the plate glass, so that just by showing up he’d pretty well cleared out the front of the place, but then the Infiniti had also hit a couple of tables where people could fill out deposit slips and the like, and bounced them deeper into the bank, which is what took out the side windows as well as parts of the tellers’ cages and all the frosted glass fronting the loan officer’s separate cubicle. Shards of glass, slivers of wood, pens with chains attached, wheeled swivel chairs and wrinkled loan applications were scattered everywhere, all of it a bit hard to see, since Morry and his car had also taken out the electricity.

  Big picked his way through the debris to the tellers’ cages, where unfortunately there was no cash, since the bank had been closed when Morry arrived and all the money was in the vault for the night. The vault, when Big reached it, was undented but also unopened. It had a time lock, which Big had been hoping for, but with the electricity out, the vault thought it was still one–thirty in the morning, so forget that.

  It was just too hard to see in here. Would the branch manager have a flashlight in his office? Why not?

  The manager’s office had also, at one time, been sheathed in frosted glass, which now went crunch–crunch beneath Big’s feet. He opened desk drawers, pawed around, and in the bottom right found a small flashlight with a dying battery. By its dim light he saw there was nothing else of interest in the desk, but what was that underneath it?

  The night deposit box. Morry’s Infiniti had drop–kicked it across the bank, through the frosted glass, and into the manager’s office, where it had come to rest partially under the desk.

  And totally cracked open. In the flashlight’s wan beam, Big saw the thick envelopes inside that metal box with the twisted–open door, and when he withdrew the envelopes every one of them was full of money. Only some of the money was cash, the rest being checks or travelers’ checks or credit card slips (all of which Big left behind), but the cash was a nice amount, enough to make him look around the office for something to carry it all in.

  And what have we here? A gray canvas bag, about a foot long and four inches deep, with a lockable zippered top. An actual money bag — what better for carrying money? Big filled it with the cash from the night deposit, then filled his pockets with the leftover, then decided to leave.

  But. As he came out of the office, the flashlight weakly glimmering its last in his fist, he heard a sudden nasty whirring sound. It seemed to come from where he’d made entry, between the plywoods.

  Yes. Apparently, the workmen were just about finished, and in making one last double–check of their work they’d noticed the same inefficient gap that had drawn Big’s attention, which they were now correcting, with another complete sheet of plywood. The whirring sounds were their portable drills, and every whirr produced another screw spinning through sheets of plywood and into the bank, a full inch of leftover screw sticking through plywood every foot or so all around this area.

  Never get through that. Big didn’t like the concept of being able to get in without being able to get out, but this was looking very much like the concept he’d been dealt.

  The whirring stopped. The workmen were gone. Outside, it was still a bright and sunny fall morning, while inside, in the dying of the light, Big paced the perimeter of his prison, looking for a way out.

  When he reached the front of the bank, where the entrance door used to be, he looked up, and the ceiling looked funny. Damn this flashlight. But wasn’t that a gap
up there, between ceiling and wall?

  What this required was to move a desk under that bit of ceiling, then put a second desk on top of it, then carry a chair — non–wheeled, non–swivel — up onto the top of the second desk, climb from desk to desk to chair, and there it was.

  At this spot, directly above the original point of impact, the front wall had sagged down away from the ceiling, pulling a piece of ceiling after it. Big could reach that Sheetrock ceiling from here, and when he tugged, a big, irregular chunk of it fell away, missed him, hit both desks, and smacked onto the floor.

  What was above? A two–by–six beam, also sagging down at this end, since the wall it had always been attached to wasn’t in the right place any more. Big tugged tentatively at the beam, not wanting the whole place to come crashing down on him, and the beam moved in a spongy way, still firmly attached at other spots along its length but willing to angle down now if Big insisted.

  He did. The floorboards above the beam popped free, not wanting to come down, but then, they would push up. And now Big needed more height.

  The loan officer’s four–drawer filing cabinet. He pulled out the drawers, dragged the cabinet to his desk–and–chair construction, lifted it up onto the second desk, then put the chair on top of the cabinet, climbed the open front of the cabinet, where the drawers used to be, climbed the chair, pushed some floorboards and some rug out of the way, then tossed the money bag up there. When it didn’t come back, he used the dangling beam and the front wall of the building for leverage and worked his way up through ceiling/floor into a small, austere living room with not much more than a narrow sofa, a small TV and reproductions of race horse paintings on the walls.

  A back way out. Big picked up the money bag, walked through the apartment to the bedroom, and there he saw a big, ugly dog seated in front of a closed closet door. The dog saw Big, curled his upper lip back over his teeth, turned and hurled himself at Big, who sidestepped, grabbed the hurtling dog by the throat, spun him around, opened the closet door, tossed the dog in, shut the door.