Bank Shot

by Donald E. Westlake

  ‘They say the search is being hampered by the rain.’

  The captain squinted. ‘They took the trouble to point that out, did they?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Uh,’ said Lieutenant Hepplewhite warningly.

  The captain looked at him. ‘Lieutenant?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘What time is it, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Ten-fifteen, sir.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’ The captain looked past the lieutenant at the diner. ‘Why don’t you go get us coffee and Danish, Lieutenant? My treat.’

  ‘There’s a sign in the window says they’re closed, sir.’

  The radio man said, ‘Probably not ready to open yet after the fire. Their other place got burned right to the ground.’

  ‘Lieutenant,’ said the captain, ‘go over there and knock on the door and see if there’s anybody in there. If there is, ask them if they can open up just enough to give us coffee and Danish.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the lieutenant. Then, hurriedly: ‘I mean, uh –’

  ‘And if not coffee and Danish,’ said the captain, ‘then whatever they can do for us we’ll appreciate. Will you tell them that, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Uh … I will, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the captain and leaned back in the corner to brood out the window at the rain.

  The lieutenant got out of the car and was immediately drenched right through his uniform raincoat. It was really pouring, really and truly coming down like nobody’s business. Lieutenant Hepplewhite slogged through puddles toward the diner, noting just how closed it looked. Besides the hand-lettered CLOSED sign in one window, there was the absence of any lights in there.

  The whole structure had an aura about it of being not yet ready to do business. Charred and blackened remnants of the previous diner were all around the new one, not yet cleared away. The new one was still on its wheels, with no skirting of any kind; looking through the underneath space, Lieutenant Hepplewhite could see the wheels of a car and a truck parked behind the diner, the only indication that there might be somebody around here after all.

  What struck the lieutenant most about this diner was an atmosphere of failure all around it. It was the kind of small business you looked at, and you knew at once they’d go bankrupt within six months. Partly, of course, it was the rain and the general gloom of the day that did that, and partly it was the new diner sitting on the ashes of the old; but it was also the windows. They were too small. People like a diner with big windows, the lieutenant thought, so they can look out and watch the traffic.

  There were two doors in the front of the diner, but no steps up to either one. The lieutenant splashed along to the nearest and knocked on it and anticipated no answer at all. In fact, he was just about to turn away when the door did open slightly and a thin middle-aged woman stood looking out and down at him. She had a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, which waggled as she said, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We were wondering,’ the lieutenant said, ‘if we could get some coffee and Danish.’ He had to put his head back and look up when talking to her, which was uncomfortable under the circumstances. The bill of his cap had protected his face from the rain, but now he was practically drowning in it.

  ‘We’re closed,’ the woman said.

  Another woman appeared, saying, ‘What is it, Gertrude?’ This one was shorter and wore a neck brace and looked irritable.

  ‘He wanted coffee and Danish,’ Gertrude said. ‘I told him we were closed.’

  ‘We are closed,’ the other woman said.

  ‘Well, we’re police officers,’ the lieutenant started.

  ‘I know,’ said Gertrude. ‘I could tell by your hat.’

  ‘And your car,’ said the other woman. ‘It says “Police” on the side.’

  The lieutenant turned his head and looked at the patrol car, even though he already knew what it said on its side. He quickly looked back and said, ‘Well, we’re on duty here, and we were wondering if you could maybe sell us some coffee and Danish even if you aren’t one hundred per cent open.’ He tried a winning smile, but all he got for it was a mouthful of rain.

  ‘We don’t have any Danish,’ the irritable woman in the neck brace said.

  Gertrude, being more kindly, said, ‘I’d like to help you out, but the fact is, we don’t have any electricity yet. Nothing’s hooked up at all. We just got here. I’d like a cup of coffee myself.’

  ‘It’s getting damn cold in here,’ said the irritable woman, ‘with that door open.’

  ‘Well, thanks anyway,’ said the lieutenant.

  Gertrude said, ‘Come around when we’re open. We’ll give you coffee and Danish on the house.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said the lieutenant and slogged back through the puddles to report, saying, ‘They don’t have any electricity, Captain. They’re not set up for anything yet.’

  ‘We can’t even pick a hilltop right,’ the captain said. To the radio man he said, ‘You!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Find out if there’s any patrol cars around here.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We want coffees and Danish.’

  ‘Yes, sir. How do you like your coffee?’

  ‘Light, three sugars.’

  The radio man looked ill. ‘Yes, sir. Lieutenant?’

  ‘Black, one Sweet ’n Low.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  While the radio man took the driver’s order, the captain turned to the lieutenant and said, ‘One sweet and what?’

  ‘It’s a sugar substitute, sir. For people on diets.’

  ‘You’re on a diet.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I weigh about twice as much as you, Lieutenant, but I’m not on a diet.’

  The lieutenant opened his mouth, but once again no response seemed exactly right, and he didn’t say anything.

  But silence, this time, was also a mistake. The captain’s brows beetled, and he said, ‘Just what do you mean by that, Lieutenant?’

  The radio man said, ‘I put in the order, sir.’

  It was a timely distraction. The captain thanked him and subsided again and brooded out the window for the next ten minutes, until another patrol car arrived, delivering the coffee and Danish. The captain cheered up at that, until the second patrol car arrived two minutes after the first, bringing more coffee and Danish. ‘I should have guessed,’ the captain said.

  When the third and fourth patrol cars with shipments of coffee and Danish arrived simultaneously, the captain roared at the radio man, ‘Tell them enough! Tell them to stop, tell them it’s enough, tell them I’m near the breaking point!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the radio man and got to work on the phone.

  Nevertheless, two more patrol cars arrived with coffee and Danish in the next five minutes. It was the captain’s belief that discipline was best maintained by never letting the ranks know when things louse up, so they had to accept and pay for and say thank you for each and every shipment, and gradually the mobile headquarters was filling up with plastic cups of coffee and brown paper bags full of Danish. The smell of the lieutenant’s wet uniform combined with the steam of diner coffee was becoming very strong and fogging up the windows.

  The lieutenant pushed several wooden stirrers off his lap and said, ‘Captain, I have an idea.’

  ‘God protect me,’ said the captain.

  ‘The people working in that diner don’t have any electricity or heat, sir. Frankly, they strike me as born losers. Why don’t we give them some of our extra coffee and Danish?’

  The captain considered. ‘I suppose,’ he said judiciously, ‘it’s better than me getting out of the car and stamping all this stuff into the gravel. Go ahead, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The lieutenant gathered up one carton – four coffees, four Danish – and carried them from the car over to the diner. He knocked on the door, and it was opened immediately by Gertrude, who still had a cigarette stuck
in the corner of her mouth. The lieutenant said, ‘We got more food delivered than we wanted. I thought maybe you could use some of –’

  ‘We sure could,’ Gertrude said. ‘That’s really sweet of you.’

  The lieutenant handed up the carton. ‘If you need any more,’ he said, ‘we’ve got plenty.’

  Gertrude looked hesitant. ‘Well, uh …’

  ‘Are there more than four of you? I mean it, we’re loaded down with the stuff.’

  Gertrude seemed reluctant to say how many of them were in the diner – probably because she didn’t want to strain the lieutenant’s generosity. But finally she said, ‘There’s uh, there’s seven of us.’

  ‘Seven! Wow, you must really be working in there.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘We really are.’

  ‘You must be in a hurry to open up.’

  ‘We really want to open it up,’ Gertrude said, nodding, the cigarette waggling in the corner of her mouth. ‘You couldn’t be more right about that.’

  ‘I’ll get you some more,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Be right back.’

  ‘You’re really very kind,’ she said.

  The lieutenant went back to the patrol car and opened the rear door. ‘They can use some more,’ he said and assembled two more cartons.

  The captain gave him a cynical look. He said, ‘You’re delivering coffee and Danish to a diner, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I know.’

  ‘It doesn’t strike you as strange?’

  The lieutenant paused in his shuffling of coffee containers. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘my basic feeling about this whole business is that I’m actually in a hospital somewhere, undergoing major surgery, and this day is a dream I’m having while under the anesthetic’

  The captain looked interested. ‘I imagine that’s a very comforting thought,’ he said.

  ‘It is, sir.’

  ‘Hmmmmm,’ said the captain.

  The lieutenant carried more coffee and Danish to the diner, and Gertrude met him at the door. ‘How much do we owe you?’

  ‘Oh, forget it,’ the lieutenant said, ‘I’ll take a free cheeseburger some time when you’re doing business.’

  ‘If only all police officers were like you,’ Gertrude said, ‘the world would be a far better place.’

  The lieutenant had often thought the same thing himself. He gave a modest smile and scuffed his foot in a puddle and said, ‘Oh, well, I just try to do my best.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. Bless you.’

  The lieutenant carried his happy smile back to the patrol car, where he found the captain in a sour mood again, beetle-browed and grumpy. ‘Something go wrong, sir?’

  ‘I tried that anesthetic thing of yours.’

  ‘You did, sir?’

  ‘I keep worrying how the operation’s going to come out.’

  ‘I make it appendicitis, sir. There’s really no danger in that.’

  The captain shook his head. ‘It’s just not my style, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I’m a man who faces reality.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And I tell you this, Lieutenant. This day will end. It can’t go on forever. This day will come to an end. Some day it will.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Conversation lagged for a while after that. Even with the twelve coffees and Danish the lieutenant had given away, there had still been three sets for each man in the mobile headquarters. They hadn’t drunk all the coffee, but they’d eaten all the Danish and were now feeling somnolent and sluggish. The driver fell into a deep sleep, the captain napped, and the lieutenant kept dropping off and then waking up again with a start. The radio man never quite lost consciousness, though he did take his shoes off and rest his head against the window and hold his microphone slackly in his lap.

  The morning passed slowly, with undiminished rain and no positive news in any of the infrequent crackling radio contacts from headquarters. Noontime came and went, and the afternoon began heavily to row past, and by two o’clock they were all feeling restless and cramped and irritable and uncomfortable. Their mouths tasted bad, their feet had swollen, their underwear chafed, and it had been hours since any of them had relieved themselves.

  Finally, at ten past two, the captain grunted and shifted position and said, ‘Enough is enough.’

  The other three tried to look alert.

  ‘We’re not accomplishing anything out here,’ the captain said. ‘We’re not mobile, we’re not in contact with anybody, we’re not getting anywhere. Driver, take us back to head-quarters.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  As the car started forward, the lieutenant looked out at the diner one last time and wondered if the thing would actually stay in business long enough for him to get that free cheeseburger. He was sorry for the people trying to run the place, but somehow he doubted it.

  29

  ‘There they go!’ Victor shouted.

  ‘At goddam last,’ said Murch’s Mom and started at once undoing the straps on her neck brace.

  Dortmunder had been sitting at the table with May, practicing holding his hands together as if he had the cuffs on. Now he cocked an eye toward Victor and said, ‘You sure they’re leaving?’

  ‘Gone,’ Victor said. ‘Absolutely gone. Made a U-turn out there by the sign and took off.’

  ‘And about time,’ May said. The floor around the chair where she was sitting was littered with tiny cigarette ends.

  Dortmunder sighed. When he got to his feet his bones creaked; he felt old and stiff and achey all over. He shook his head, thought of adding a comment, and decided just to let it go.

  The last four hours had been hell. And yet, when he and Kelp had first seen this spot, it had seemed like a special dispensation from Heaven. The big sign out by the road, the empty gravel parking lot, and a blank space where the diner should be; who could ask for anything more? They’d rushed back to the Wanderlust Trailer Park, where Murch already had the bank attached to the horse van, and quickly they’d brought the whole kit and caboodle over here, except for the stolen station wagon, which they’d left in somebody’s drive-way along the way. Victor and Kelp had gone a block or so ahead in the Packard, to watch out for cops, and Murch had followed with the horse van and the bank – his Mom and May riding with him in the cab of the van, Dortmunder and Herman back in the bank. They’d gotten here with no trouble, positioned the bank, parked the van and the Packard out of sight behind it, and gone back to business as usual, the only changes being that Herman had to use battery-operated power tools again and the hearts game had been resumed by flashlight. Also, the rainwater drenching down the metal skins of the bank quickly chilled the interior, and made everybody feel a little stiff and rheumatic. But it hadn’t been terrible, and they’d mostly been in a pretty good mood – even Herman, who had regained his belief in his ability to get into any safe, if given sufficient time.

  And then the cops had arrived. Kelp had seen them first, glancing out the window and saying, ‘Look! Law!’

  The rest of them had crowded to the windows and stared out at the police car parked out by the sign. May had said, ‘What are they going to do? Are they onto us?’

  ‘No.’ That had been Victor, always ready with an opinion based on his experiences with the other side of the law. ‘They’re just on patrol,’ he’d said. ‘If they were interested in us, they’d handle the situation differently.’

  ‘Like surround the place,’ Dortmunder had suggested.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Then the one cop had gotten out of the car and come over, and it had turned out their cover was working. Still, it was hard to concentrate with that damn police car everlastingly parked outside the bank you’d just stolen, and the hearts game had finally just dwindled away and stopped. Everybody had sat around, irritable and nervous, and every five minutes or so somebody would ask Victor, ‘What the hell are they doing out there?’ Or ‘When are they going to go away, for the love of God?’ And Victor would shake his head and say, ‘I just don’t know.
I’m baffled.’

  When the other police cars started showing up, one and two at a time, the whole crew inside the bank began to bounce around as agitated kittens in a sack. ‘What are they doing?’ everybody asked, and Victor kept saying, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

  It later turned out, of course, that the other cars had all been delivering orders of coffee and Danish. When Dortmunder had finally come to that understanding, he’d told the other and added, ‘Which means they’re loused up as we are. Which gives me hope.’

  Still, the time had passed slowly. The extra coffee and Danish they were given by the cops helped a lot – they were all getting pretty cold and hungry by then – but as the hours went by they all began to see themselves either starving or freezing to death, trapped in this stupid bank forever by a bunch of cops who didn’t even know they were in the same county.

  Also, Herman was restricted in the attacks he could make on the safe while the police car was parked out front. The grinding on the circular hole could continue, but things like explosions had to wait. This made Herman fretful, and he tended to pace back and forth from one end of the bank to the other and snarl at people.

  Then there was the business of the neck brace. Murch carried on so much about it that his Mom finally agreed to wear it as long as the police car was out front, but she was disposed to be testy while her head was propped up by the thing, so that made two soreheads prowling around, which didn’t help matters any.

  And then, all at once, they left. No reason, no explanation, their departure as abrupt and senseless as their arrival, they up and went. And suddenly everybody was smiling, even Murch’s Mom, who had flung the neck brace into the farthest coiner of the bank.

  ‘Now,’ Herman said. ‘Now I get to try what I’ve wanted to do for the last two hours. Longer. Since before noon.’

  Dortmunder was walking around in a figure eight, moving his shoulders and elbows, trying to loosen up. ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘That circular groove,’ Herman told him. ‘I think we’ve got it deep enough now, so if I pack the groove with plastic explosive, it just might pop it out of there.’

  ‘Then let’s do it,’ Dortmunder said. ‘Before the Health Department comes around to inspect the kitchen and the bread man starts making deliveries, let’s do it and get the hell out of here.’