Bank Shot

by Donald E. Westlake

  Dortmunder continued to frown at Herman. It seemed to him there was something of the dilettante about this guy. Your ordinary run-of-the-mill heavy could be a dilettante, but a lockman was supposed to be serious, he was supposed to be a man with a craft, with expertise.

  Herman glanced around the table with an ironic smile, then shrugged, sipped at his drink and said, ‘Well, last night I helped take away the Justice receipts.’

  Victor, looking startled, said, ‘From the Bureau?’

  Herman looked baffled. ‘From the bureau? It was on tables; they were counting it.’

  Kelp said, ‘That was you? I read about that in the paper.’

  So had Dortmunder. He said, ‘What locks did you open?’

  ‘None,’ Herman said. ‘It wasn’t that kind of a job.’

  Victor, still trying to work it all out, said, ‘You mean down at Foley Square?’

  This time, Herman’s frown was deep and somewhat hostile. ‘Well, the F.B.I. is down there,’ he said.

  ‘The Bureau,’ said Victor.

  Kelp said, ‘Later, Victor. You’re confused.’

  ‘They don’t have any receipts at the Bureau,’ Victor said. ‘I should know. I was an agent for twenty-one months.’

  Herman was on his feet, the chair tipping over behind him. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Kelp said, fast and soothing. He patted the air in a gesture of reassurance. ‘It’s all right. They fired him.’

  Herman, in his mistrust, was trying to look in seven directions at once; his eyes kept almost crossing. ‘If this is entrapment –’ he said.

  ‘They fired him,’ Kelp insisted. ‘Didn’t they, Victor?’

  ‘Well,’ Victor said, ‘we sort of agreed to disagree. I wasn’t exactly fired precisely, not exactly.’

  Herman had focused on Victor again, and now he said, ‘You mean it was political?’

  Before Victor could answer, Kelp said smoothly, ‘Something like that. Yeah, it was political, wasn’t it, Victor?’

  ‘Uh. Sure, yeah. You could call it … I guess you could call it that.’

  Herman shrugged his shoulders inside his sports jacket, to adjust it. Then he sat down again with a relieved smile, saying, ‘You had me going there for a minute.’

  Dortmunder had learned patience at great cost. The trial and error of life among human beings had taught him that whenever a bunch of them began to jump up and down and shout at cross-purposes, the only thing a sane man could do was sit back and let them sort it out for themselves. No matter how long it took. The alternative was to try to attract their attention, either with explanations of the misunderstanding or with a return to the original topic of conversation, and to make that attempt meant that sooner or later you too would be jumping up and down and shouting at cross-purposes. Patience, patience; at the very worst, they would finally wear themselves out.

  Now, he looked around the table at everybody smiling in new comprehension – Murch was salting his beer again – and then he said, ‘What we had in mind for this job was a lockman.’

  ‘That’s what I am,’ Herman said. ‘Last night, I was just filling in. You know, helping out. Usually I’m a lockman.’

  ‘For instance.’

  ‘For instance the People’s Co-operative Supermarket on Sutter Avenue about three weeks ago. The Lenox Avenue office of the Tender Loving Care Loan Company a couple weeks before that. Smilin Sam Tahachapee’s safe in the horse room behind the Fifth of November Bar and Grill on Linden Boulevard two days before that. The Balmy Breeze Hotel safe in Atlantic City during the Retired Congressmen’s Convention the week before that. The Open Hand Check Cashing Agency on Jerome Avenue the –’

  ‘You don’t need work,’ Kelp said. He sounded awed. ‘You got all the work you can handle.’

  ‘Not to mention money,’ Murch said.

  Herman shook his head with a bitter smile. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘I’m broke. I really need a score.’

  Dortmunder said, ‘You must run through it pretty quick.’

  ‘Those are Movement jobs,’ Herman said. ‘I don’t get to keep any of it.’

  This time Victor was the only one who understood. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re helping to finance their schemes.’

  ‘Like the free-lunch program,’ Herman said.

  Kelp said, ‘Wait a minute. These are Movement jobs, so you don’t get to keep the money. What does that mean exactly? Movement jobs. You mean they’re like for practice? You send the money back?’

  Victor said, ‘He gives the money to the organisation he belongs to.’ Mildly, he said to Herman, ‘Which movement do you belong to, exactly?’

  ‘One of them,’ Herman said. To Kelp he said, ‘I don’t set any of those things up. These people that I believe in –’ with a glance at Victor – ‘that your nephew would know about, they set them up, and they put together the group that does the job. What we say is, we’re liberating the money.’

  ‘I think of it the other way around,’ Kelp said. ‘I think of it that I’m capturing the money.’

  Dortmunder said, ‘What was the last job you did on your own? Where you got to keep the loot?’

  ‘About a year ago,’ Herman said. ‘A bank in St. Louis.’

  ‘Who’d you work with?’

  ‘Stan Devers and Mort Kobler. George Cathcart drove.’

  ‘I know George,’ Kelp said.

  Dortmunder knew Kobler. ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘Now,’ Herman said, ‘let’s talk about you boys. Not what you’ve done, I’ll take Kelp’s word for that. What you want to do.’

  Dortmunder took a deep breath. He wasn’t happy about this moment. ‘We’re going to steal a bank,’ he said.

  Herman looked puzzled. ‘Rob a bank?’

  ‘Steal a bank.’ To Kelp he said, ‘You tell him.’

  Kelp told him. At first Herman sort of grinned, as though waiting for the punch line. Then, for a while, he frowned as though suspecting he was surrounded by mental cases. And finally he looked interested, as though the idea had caught his fancy. At the end he said, ‘So I can take my time. I can even work in daylight if I want.’

  ‘Sure,’ Kelp said.

  Herman nodded. He looked at Dortmunder and said, ‘Why is it still just a maybe?’

  ‘We don’t have any place to put it,’ Dortmunder said. ‘Also, we have to get wheels for it.’

  ‘I’m working on that,’ Murch said. ‘But I may need some help.’

  ‘A whole bank,’ Herman said. He beamed. ‘We’re gonna liberate a whole bank.’

  Kelp said, ‘We’re gonna capture a whole bank.’

  ‘It comes to the same thing,’ Herman told him. ‘Believe me, it comes to the same thing.’

  12

  Murch’s Mom stood smiling and blinking in the sunlight in front of Kresge’s holding her purse strap with both hands, arms extended down and in front of her so that the purse dangled at her knees. She was wearing a dress with horizontal green and yellow stripes which did nothing to improve her figure, and below that yellow vinyl boots with green laces all the way up. Above the dress she wore her neck brace. The purse was an ordinary beige leather affair, which went much better with the neck brace than with the dress and boots.

  Standing next to a parking meter, peering at Murch’s Mom’s image in an Instamatic camera, was May, dressed in her usual fashion. The original idea was that May would be the one in the fancy clothes and Murch’s Mom would take the pictures, but May had absolutely refused to buy the kind of dress and boots Dortmunder had in mind. It also turned out that Murch’s Mom was one of those people who always take pictures low and to the left of what they were aiming at. So the roles had been reversed.

  May kept frowning into the camera, apparently never being quite content with what she saw – which was perfectly understandable. Shoppers would come along the sidewalk, see Murch’s Mom posing there, see May with the camera, and would pause a second, not wanting to louse up the picture. But then nothing
would happen except that May would frown some more and maybe take a step to the left or right, so the shoppers would all finally murmur. ‘Excuse me,’ or something like that and duck on by.

  At last May looked up from the camera and shook her head, saying, ‘The light’s no good here. Let’s try farther down the block.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Murch’s Mom. She and May started down the sidewalk together, and Murch’s Mom said under her breath, ‘I feel like a damn fool in this get-up.’

  ‘You look real nice,’ May said.

  ‘I know what I look like,’ Murch’s Mom said grimly. ‘I look like the Good Humor flavor of the month. Lemon pistachio.’

  ‘Let’s try here,’ May said. Coincidentally, they were in front of the bank.

  ‘Okay,’ Murch’s Mom said.

  ‘You stand against the wall in the sunlight,’ May said.

  ‘Okay.’

  Murch’s Mom backed up slowly across the brick rubble toward the trailer, and May backed up against the car parked there. This time, Murch’s Mom held the purse at her side, and her back was against the trailer wall. May took a fast picture, then stepped forward two paces and took a second one. With the third, she was at the inner edge of the sidewalk – too close to get all of Murch’s Mom in the picture and with the camera angled too low to include her head.

  ‘There,’ May said. ‘I think that’s got it.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ Murch’s Mom said, smiling, and the two ladies walked around the block.

  13

  Dortmunder and Kelp quartered around the remoter bits of Long Island like a bird dog who’s lost his bird. Today’s car was an orange Datsun 240Z with the usual MD plates. They drove around under a sky that kept threatening rain but never quite delivered, and after a while Dortmunder began to grouse. ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I’m not making any income.’

  ‘You’ve got May.’

  ‘I don’t like living on the earnings of a woman,’ Dortmunder said. ‘It isn’t in my makeup.’

  ‘The earnings of a woman? She’s not a hooker, she’s a cashier.’

  ‘The principle’s the same.’

  ‘The interest isn’t. What’s that over there?’

  ‘Looks like a barn,’ Dortmunder said, squinting.

  ‘Abandoned?’

  ‘How the hell do I know?’

  ‘Let’s take a look.’

  They looked that day at seven barns, none of them abandoned. They also looked at a quonset hut that had most recently contained a computer-parts factory which had gone broke, but the interior was a jumble of desks and machinery and parts and junk, too crowded and filthy to be useful. They also looked at an airplane hangar in front of a pock-marked blacktop landing strip-a onetime flying school, now abandoned, but occupied by a hippie commune, as Dortmunder and Kelp discovered when they parked out front. The hippies had mistaken them for representatives of the sheriff’s office and right away began shouting about squatters’ rights and demonstrations and all and didn’t stop shouting until after Dortmunder and Kelp got back in the car and drove away again.

  This was the third day of the search. Days one and two had been similar.

  Victor’s car was a black 1938 Packard limousine, with the bulky trunk and the divided rear window and the long coffinlike hood and the headlights sitting up on top of the arrogant broad fenders. The upholstery was scratchy gray plush, and there were leather thongs to hold onto next to the doors on the inside and small green vases containing artificial flowers hanging in little wire racks between the doors.

  Victor drove, and Herman sat beside him and stared out at the countryside. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘There’s got to be something you can hide a trailer in.’

  Casually, Victor said. ‘What newspapers do you read mostly, Herman?’

  Dortmunder walked into the apartment and sat down on the sofa and stared moodily at the turned-off television set. May, the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, slopped in from the kitchen. ‘Anything?’

  ‘With the encyclopedias,’ Dortmunder said, staring at the T.V., ‘I could’ve picked up maybe seventy bucks out diere today. Maybe a hundred.’

  ‘I’ll get you a beer,’ May said. She went back to the kitchen.

  Murch’s Mom brooded over the pictures. ‘I never looked so foolish in my life,’ she said.

  ‘That isn’t the point, Mom.’

  She tapped the one in which she appeared headless. ‘At least there you can’t tell it’s me.’

  Her son was hunched over the three color photographs on the dining-room table, counting. The lace holes in the boots and the stripes on the dress made a ruler. Murch counted, added, compared, got totals for each of the three pictures, and at last said, ‘Thirty-seven and a half inches high.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive. Thirty-seven and a half inches high.’

  ‘Can I burn those pictures now?’

  ‘Sure,’ Murch said. She garnered up the pictures, and as she hurried from the room he called, ‘Did you get rid of that dress?’

  ‘You know it!’ she sang out. She sounded almost gay.

  ‘The way I figure it,’ Herman said, riding along in Victor’s car, scanning the countryside for large abandoned buildings, ‘what we got to deal with here is three hundred years of slavery.’

  ‘Myself,’ Victor said, pushing the Packard slowly toward Montauk Point, ‘I’ve never really been political.’

  ‘You were in the F.B.I.’

  ‘That wasn’t for politics. I always thought of myself as being involved in adventure. You know what I mean?’

  Herman gave him a quizzical look and then a slow grin. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

  ‘For me, adventure meant the F.B.I.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right! See, for me, it was the Movement.’

  ‘Sure,’ Victor said.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Herman.

  ‘I don’t like that sound,’ Murch said. Sitting there behind the wheel, head cocked, listening to the engine, he looked like a squirrel driving a car.

  ‘You’re supposed to be looking for abandoned buildings,’ his Mom said. She herself was turning her head slowly back and forth, like a Navy pilot looking for shipwreck survivors.

  ‘You hear it? Ting, ting, ting. You hear it?’

  ‘What’s that over there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said what’s that over there?’

  ‘Looks like some kind of church.’

  ‘Let’s go look at it.’

  Murch turned in that direction. ‘Keep your eye peeled for a gas station,’ he said.

  This current car – he’d had it seven months – had started life as an American Motors Javelin, but since he’d owned it Murch had changed some things. By now, looks aside, it bore about as much similarity to a Javelin as to a javelin. It growled like some very large and savage but sleepy beast as Murch steered it through bumpy streets of prewar one-family housing toward the church with the sagging roof.

  They stopped out front. The lawn was weedy, the wooden walls needed painting very badly, and a few of the window panes were broken. ‘Let’s take a look,’ Murch’s Mom said.

  Murch shut off the ignition and listened attentively to the silence for a few seconds, as though that too could tell him something. Then he said, ‘Okay,’ and he and his Mom got out of the car.

  Inside, the church was very dim; nevertheless, the priest sweeping the central aisle saw them at once and hurried toward them, clutching his broom at port arms. ‘Yes? Yes? Can I help you?’

  Murch said, ‘Never mind,’ and turned away.

  His Mom explained, ‘We were wondering if this place was abandoned.’

  The priest nodded. ‘Almost,’ he said, looking around. ‘Almost.’

  ‘I think I have an idea,’ May said.

  Kelp said, ‘Excuse me, Miss. I wanted to open an account.’

  The girl, her head bent beneath a towering bouffant hairdo, didn’t pause in her typing.
‘Have a seat, and an officer will be right with you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kelp said. He sat down and glanced around the interior of the bank, as a bored man will do while waiting.

  The safe was down at the Kresge end and more impressive-looking than Victor had implied. It filled practically the whole width of the trailer down there at the end, and the door – which was ajar – was admirably large and thick.

  The customer portion of the bank was separated from the rest by a chest-high partition, with here and there an entrance door through it. If one were to take the top off the trailer and look inside, this chest-high partition would form a letter C, long and thin and with right angles instead of curves. The customer area was the part enclosed by the C – the right half of the middle of the trailer. At the top of the C was the safe, down along the side of the C were the tellers, and the thick bottom of the C contained the desks of the three bank officers. The girl in the bouffant hairdo was at a smaller desk outside the C; she and the elderly bank guard were the only employees in the customer section.

  Kelp cased the joint, and then he memorized it, and then he got up and read the pamphlets for auto loans and credit cards, and then he looked around the place again to be sure he remembered it all, and he remembered it all. He’d planned on actually opening an account, but finally that seemed superfluous, so he got to his feet and told the girl, ‘I’ll come back after lunch.’

  The hairdo nodded. She kept typing.

  ‘Why,’ Herman said, ‘from the outside it looks like any other garage.’

  Victor nodded, smiling. ‘I thought you’d like it,’ he said.

  Dortmunder came out of the bedroom wearing black sneakers, black trousers and a long-sleeved black shirt. In one hand he was holding a black cap, and over his forearm hung a black leather jacket. May, who was hemming curtains, looked up and said, ‘You off?’

  ‘Be back pretty soon.’

  ‘Break a leg,’ May said and went back to her sewing.

  14

  The railroad-station parking lot had cars in it all night long on weekends, and this was Friday night, so there was no problem. Victor and Herman arrived in Victor’s Packard, parked it and strolled over to the waiting room. This was the Long Island Railroad, which had been the best in the world since November of 1969. The waiting room was open and lit, since late trains came out here from the city on Friday nights, but the ticket office was closed. Victor and Herman wandered around the empty waiting room reading the notices until they saw headlights; then they went back outside.