One Endless Hour

8

People tend to think that a bank robber does nothing else for three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I've known professionals who ran legitimate businesses in their hometowns and left them only for the quick trips necessary to bring off a job. One of the best I ever had contact with was a middle-aged funeral director in a small town.

I probably came closer than most to being full-time, but even I always took a legitimate job a couple of months each year, usually as a tree surgeon. The one infallible way to be sure of taking a bumpy ride was to be picked up on suspicion and have no visible means of support.

Except at the highest level, bank robbery is far more of an avocation than it is a vocation. As is the case with most hobbies, not enough time is given to it. I'd always avoided that pitfall. I made it my business never to make a move until I was sure I had eliminated as much of the risk in a job as possible.

By the time I left the Holiday Inn in Richmond, I knew more about the operation of the Manufacturers Trust branch bank in Thornton, Pa., than the majority of its employees did.

Dahl reached the Marriott first on Monday afternoon. My first ten minutes with him nearly put me off the whole deal.

He was good-looking, with a big, toothy smile. He was also brash, extroverted, and noisy. I didn't appreciate any of it. He walked into the motel room wearing a sixteen-millimeter movie camera of the hand-held type slung by a cord about his neck. I was to find out he never went anywhere without the thing, unless it was into the shower. Later I was able to convince myself that it wasn't wholly a bad idea. A camera-carrying bankrobber? Hardly. But at first sight it set my teeth on edge.

"What's the deal, cousin?" he demanded breezily after we'd shaken hands. "I'm a busy man. I'm shooting a movie in New York City right now. If anyone except the Schemer had called me, I wouldn't have dropped everything to come down here."

"Let's wait until Harris gets here and I won't have to go through it twice," I said to put him off.

He shrugged and sat down on the bed. His glance as he examined me was speculative. "Why the makeup, cousin?"

"I'm actually a lesbian in drag." I tried to say it lightly, but it nettled me that he had spotted the makeup so easily.

"It's not that obvious, but makeup's my business," he said. He studied me intently. "Do I know you, cousin?" he continued. "What's your passport?"

"Schemer's my passport," I retorted. "And you know me right now as well as you ever will."

His eyes narrowed. "The bossy type, huh? How'd I get on your list?"

"It was the Schemer's list. He said you had nerve."

"That's me." He said it complacently. The compliment appeared to mollify him. "Okay. Just don't try putting a ring in my nose, see?"

I didn't answer him. I picked up the telephone and ordered sandwiches and beer from room service. When the knock came at the door and I opened it to admit the boy with the tray, Dahl disappeared into the bathroom without my having to say anything. He had passed a test, and I began to feel a little better about him.

In the next two minutes he lost the ground he had gained. He paced the floor while gulping down a sandwich. Then he flicked aside the draperies pulled across the window. He seemed charged with nervous energy. "Good-lookin' head in a bikini by the pool," he announced. "Be right back."

He was out the door by the time I reached the window. He strode across the intervening courtyard, unlimbering his camera as he went. He took a slow, sweeping panoramic shot of the pool area, then the camera lingered lovingly on the mini-bikinied girl, who eventually reached self-consciously for a towel. Dahl gave her a white-toothed grin and a wave of his hand as he started back toward my room. En route he paused to take a shot of two school-teacherish-looking women who were unlocking the door to their room.

"Suppose the girl's boyfriend or husband had arrived and objected to your making free that way?" I said to Dahl when he was inside again.

"The chick would slow him down," he asserted cheerfully. "They love bein' on film, with or without clothes. Ninety-eight percent of 'em, anyway."

"What about the two older women?"

"Never know when you can blend alfresco shots like that. Cut to a pair of lesbians frolickin' on a bed an' you've saved some footage."

"You mean you'd show innocent people in the kind of stuff you film?"

"Don't get shook, cousin. There's two hundred million people in this country, an' a lot of them look like other people. I never been sued yet." He sank down into a chair. "What time's Harris gonna get here? I got to get back to New York."

"If that's the case, what are you doing here at all with a job in prospect?":

"I'm here to do a quick job, cousin, an' then cut out."

"It's not that kind of a job," I began, and stopped at the sound of a knock at the motel door. Dahl did his disappearing act again while I opened it. None of us wanted to be seen together by anyone who could identify us as a pair or a group afterward.

The man at the door was tall, slim, and dapper. He had deep-set eyes, and there was a touch of gray in his brown hair. He wore a dark suit and carried a Panama with a conservative band in one hand. "I'm Harris," he said.

"Drake," I returned, letting him inside. Dahl emerged from the bathroom when I closed and chain-latched the door.

"Hiya, cousin," he greeted Harris, who nodded. "How've the dominoes an' celluloids been treatin' ya?"

"Not too well," Harris said with a faint smile. His voice was as low-keyed as his personality.

"I could use a touch, too," Dahl said promptly. He looked at me. "So how about gettin' down to business?"

"A sandwich?" I suggested to Harris.

He shook his head. "I had lunch on the plane."

Dahl was energetically shoving chairs together in the center of the room. "Let's go, cousins," he urged, plunking himself down into the easy chair and leaving straight backed chairs for Harris and me. "Time's money an' all that silt."

Harris and I seated ourselves, and I talked for ten minutes. I told them everything except the name and location of the bank. I went over in detail the Schemer's dossiers on the bank operation and the personal lives of the bank's chief officers.

"The bank manager has three children, the assistant manager none," I concluded. "If we go to the assistant manager's home at three A.M. and take him and his wife to the manager's home, we'll have the two key employees — the ones with the bank vault combination-under our thumb, plus a ready-made group of hostages in the persons of the wives and children, who will assure the two men's good behavior. We'll take the men to the bank before daylight on Thursday morning, and after that it will be-"

"Hold it," Dahl interrupted me. "Thursday morning? And today's Monday? I can't hang around here that long."

"I'm not talking about this Thursday. Or even next Thursday. It might take a month to set the job up properly."

Dahl rose to his feet. "Count me out, cousin. I've got other perch to fry."

The mild-looking Harris was apologetic when I turned to him. "I can't hold off for a month, either. Financially, I mean."

I would be shaving it close to the bone myself, but I damn well wasn't going to put my head into the lion's mouth without pulling as many teeth as possible. "Why don't we relax and go over this again and work out what we have to do to make-"

"Listen, why the horsing around?" Dahl interrupted again. "What's the matter with setting something up right now and knocking it over in the next hour?" He said it challengingly.

"Not in the next hour," Harris said after a glance at his watch. "Banks close in the next fifteen minutes. But what about tomorrow morning?"

I might not have gulped, but I felt like it. Both men were looking at me. "What about this job?" I temporized, indicating the Schemer's file folder.

"You set it up an' we'll be back in a month an' knock it over on its back, too," Dahl said confidently. Harris nodded. "We'll work out the split to cover your time," Dahl continued. His tone turned silky. "If you come in with us on a job in the mornin'."

I vibrated on the brink of flat refusal. I wanted nothing to do with a walk-in. They were always high-risk operations with uncertain returns. But there was my own empty pockets to consider. A walk-in with three men stood a better chance than a walk-in with one man. And if I said no, I lost these two prospects for the Thornton job and would have to start all over again.

"I'd want you both on the ground a week beforehand," I said at last. "For the big one, I mean."

"We're in, if you're in," Dahl said. "Right, Preacher?"

The taciturn Harris nodded.

"So we each scout a location tonight, meet here in the mornin' at eight, take a vote, get the job done, an' be halfway home by noon," Dahl declared. His eyes were focused on me. "You aboard, cousin?"

"All right," I said reluctantly. "What about a car for the job? Pick up a rental?"

"Naaah," Dahl said disdainfully. "Not for a quickie like that. Leave the wheels to me." He tapped himself on the chest. "Dick Dahl, Boy Car Thief. I never saw a piece of iron I couldn't roll."

"Eight o'clock tomorrow morning, then," I said.

"Great!" he enthused, and went out the door like a brigantine under full sail.

In my own mind, eight o'clock committed me to nothing. If I didn't like the sound of what I heard in the morning, I'd cut out. Harris eyed me while he waited for an interval to elapse before he followed Dahl from the motel room. "You don't like it," he said in his quiet voice.

"I won't like it if one of us doesn't come up with a likely-looking opportunity."

"I scouted a bank across the District line a year ago," he said. "Near Rockville. I'll take another look at it tonight. But we'll find something." He left the room.

One thing about Preacher Harris, I reflected as I walked to the window and parted the draperies to watch him cross the motel yard: in any crowd I'd ever seen he could blend as the Invisible Man. Nothing about him clashed with his surroundings.

I went back to the armchair that Dahl had preempted and ran through the situation again. Number one, although I didn't like it, I desperately needed the cash myself. And number two, if I cancelled out and went back to the Schemer for new partners there was no guarantee I'd do any better, and I'd have lost valuable time. I tried to convince myself that I was spoiled because I'd been so used to calling all the shots myself and picking my own partners.

I certainly didn't care for a job in Rockville, though. Rockville was in the jurisdiction of the Montgomery County Police who, although not numerous, tended to react quickly over a wide area. The District cops, in contrast, were more plentiful in their ten-square-mile enclave but often got in each other's way.

Harris's suggestion reminded me of something, though. A few years ago, when Bosco Sheerin had been my partner-before an irate husband returned home unexpectedly one evening and discovered Bosco in the intimate embrace of the husband's wife and sent both Bosco and the wife to join the angels-we had cased a job in the District of Columbia. It was a branch bank located near the intersection of Piney Branch Road and Georgia Avenue. This placed it only two miles from the northern border of the District, assuring a quick crossover into Maryland if it seemed convenient. Other escape routes abounded.

I sat there trying to remember why Bosco and I had finally decided against trying it. Police patrols? It seemed unlikely that the area was any more heavily patrolled than any other section of the nation's capital. I couldn't recall why we had abandoned the project. If not too much had changed in the interval, though, it was a bank I knew something about, which was a hell of a lot better than taking on one stone-cold. I rose from my chair and checked the Yellow Pages in the phone book to make sure the branch bank was still in the same location.

It was, and I went outside to my car and drove across Key Bridge to the District. I followed M Street and Rhode Island Avenue to Logan Circle, then traveled north on Thirteenth Street. I turned eastward on Decatur and moved over onto Georgia Avenue. The area seemed very much the same. Above Brightwood, it consisted principally of used-car lots, cleaning establishments, and aging restaurants.

I looked to my left at the Piney Branch Road intersection. A filling station took up the northwest corner. Just beyond it on Georgia Avenue was the bank, not a particularly prepossessing building. The same wide alley I remembered still served as part alley, part parking lot between the bank and the neighboring A&P store. At the present hour in the afternoon the alley was congested, but it was less likely to be so in the morning.

I drove past the bank in the flow of traffic. In the first mile beyond it the area turned from commercial to seedy residential. A mile from the Maryland line I made a U-turn at the east gate of Walter Reed Army Hospital and wheeled back to the bank. It still looked all right. Alternative exits and escape routes were plentiful. It was hard to imagine being cornered by patrol cars after pulling off the job.

I turned into the alley and drove along its length, reverifying that a left turn at its upper end led out to Piney Branch, bypassing the traffic light at the Georgia Avenue intersection. There was a new warehouse-type building at the end of the alley, but nothing else appeared changed. It was hard to escape the feeling that a quick run down the alley and out onto Piney Branch would be the best way of losing pursuers in the teeming morning traffic. And if by some chance the Piney Branch exit were blocked, it was just as easy to turn right at the end of the alley, beyond the new warehouse, and double back onto Georgia Avenue, there to head north or south as the situation dictated.

I was still sour on the idea of a hit-and-run job with so little advance preparation, but I had to admit that for the first time in a long time I had little choice.

I drove back to Virginia and the motel room, made a couple of sketches of escape routes from the bank, and went to bed although it was still daylight.

I was glad that Preacher Harris arrived at the motel in the morning before Dick Dahl. "What about it?" I asked him bluntly. "Is this your usual style of operation?"

"No, it isn't." Harris had on a fresh shirt and tie and looked even more conservative than he had the previous day, if that were possible. "But I need the cash." It was his turn to become blunt. "You're afraid of it?"

"Not as much as I was last night. I went out and scouted one I'd looked over some time ago."

"You liked it for today?"

I handed him my sketches and a large-scale map of the District. "Take a look at this. It'll go like a player piano," I said, turning on the hard sell.

He sounded relieved. "Good. I took another look at the setup in Rockville and didn't think as well of it."

So I hadn't needed the hard sell. Harris sat down in a chair and spread the map and sketches on his knees. He was still studying them when Dahl arrived. Dahl carried a briefcase, which he tossed onto the bed. "Everything set?" he inquired breezily after I chain-latched the door. He opened the briefcase and took out three Halloween masks. "Greatest little deceivers in the world, boys." He looked at Harris in his chair. "What'cha got there?"

"Drake sized up a job after we left here yesterday" Harris said. "It looks good."

"Fine with me," Dahl said. He looked and sounded completely indifferent as to which job it was. "So long's I'm out of town by noon. With the kind of operation I've got in New York, things tend to go to pieces if I'm not there to keep my finger on the button. Where do we take our shot?"

I let Harris tell him as a means of checking Preacher's absorption of the details. Watching Dahl, I got the impression he wasn't even listening closely. He kept nodding his head and glancing at his watch. "All right," he interrupted Harris's very sound explanation of the elements involved. "Let's put it on the road."

"Do we split up right after the job?" Harris asked me.

"We sure as hell do," Dahl replied before I could say anything. Since his statement echoed my own sentiment, I kept my mouth shut. I picked up the map of the District and showed it to Dahl. "We'll park my car on Military Road, halfway between Georgia Avenue and Thirteenth Street so we can approach it from either direction if there's pursuit. We'll meet-"

"There won't be no pursuit," Dahl said confidently. "We'll be gone like big birds. I'll go into the bank first an' herd the customers away from the cages an' the tellers out of them. Either one of you can come in next an' stand by the entrance to control the action. The third man in cleans out the cages an' is first man out an' the getaway driver."

I looked at Harris, who shrugged as much as to say it was simple enough to work. "What about a weapon for the man at the entrance who's controlling the action?" I asked. "A handgun won't do it."

"There's a riot gun in the trunk of my car," Dahl said.

"Bring it along." I marked an "X" on the District map. "Harris will ride with me, and we'll park here on Military Road, a mile beyond the viaduct where it drops down off Georgia Avenue. Dahl, you park in Brightwood, steal a car and pick us up, and we'll return you to your car after the stolen car gets us from the bank to my car on Military Road."

"Nothin' to it," Dahl said. "Let's go, cousins. You bring the briefcase. I'll bring the riot gun in the stolen car."

"Pick us up at nine fifteen," I told Dahl. "You leave here first."

"Like I've already gone," he said. He walked to the door, took off the latch, opened the door a crack and peered out, gave us a wave of his hand behind his back without looking around, and went out.

"Well, the Schemer said he had nerve," I said.

Harris didn't reply. He went to the bed, stripped a pillowcase from a pillow, folded it neatly, and tucked it into the briefcase. "I'll take the cages," he said. "You take the entrance."

"Fine with me. Walk out to the highway now while I check out of the motel."

Harris looked like any businessman on his way to work, briefcase in hand, when I picked him up ten minutes later. We had plenty of time. I drove slowly. Harris sat quietly, eyes straight ahead. I had no idea whether he was thinking about the job or the next whirl of the roulette wheel.

We had eight minutes to spare when I parked on Military Road. There was no conversation. Tension pressed downward from the roof of the car like something tangible. Harris took a package of gum from his pocket, peeled off a wrapper, and crammed a stick into his mouth. He offered the package to me, but I shook my head. It was a long eight minutes.

In the rearview mirror I saw a sleek white Oldsmobile draw up behind us. Dahl waved from behind the wheel. Harris and I got out of the VW and walked to the Olds. "Didn't even have to jump the switch," Dahl said cheerfully. "Found two in a row with the keys still in 'em. I took the one with the most horses."

Harris was staring at a blanket-wrapped bundle on the front seat beside Dahl. Alongside it was a bright-checked sport coat with one red sleeve and one blue one. "What the hell is that thing?" Harris demanded, pointing at the coat. "Camouflage," Dahl grunted. "It gives the animals somethin' to look at besides my height, weight, an' peculiar arrangement of molecules." He picked up the coat and began to struggle into it while still seated behind the wheel.

"You sit in back," I said to Harris. I got into the front seat with Dahl. The blanket-wrapped bundle was the riot gun. A half dozen loose shells were in the blanket, too. While I was loading the short-barreled, pump-type shotgun, Harris leaned over the front seat and placed two Halloween masks between us. I watched the road until no cars were corning toward us, then tried on the mask to make sure I could breathe properly. It wasn't too bad. There were sticky tabs at the temples-almost at the same place as my hairpiece tabs-and one under the chin to hold the mask in place.

I removed the mask. When I looked toward Dahl, he was grinning broadly. "What's the good word, cousin?" he asked. He was a bizarre-looking figure in the outrageously flamboyant jacket and the ever-present movie camera once again slung around his neck.

"Roll it," I told him. I gave him directions that would bring us into the bank alley from the Piney Branch Road exit. It was a short run. We turned smoothly into the exit when I pointed it out and headed up the alley the wrong way. Without my saying anything, Dahl turned the Olds around and headed it in the direction from which we'd come. There were only two cars in the alley. No chance of getting hemmed in by a car pulling in too tightly.

We put on our masks. Dahl was first out of the car. With the psychedelic jacket, the mask, and the camera, he looked like a freak pitchman for a carnival show. I carried the riot gun beneath the blanket draped over my left arm. My watch said nine twenty-two A.M. as we walked single file toward the bank's front entrance. There wasn't a soul in sight in the alley.

Dahl pushed on the revolving glass door and entered. Harris and I were right behind him. I took up a station just inside where I could watch the entrance and the bank's interior, including the offices on the mezzanine. I looked for a guard but couldn't see one. I let the blanket drop to the floor, exposing the riot gun.

There were half a dozen women tellers in the cages, plus three customers on the bank floor, a man and two women. A single man was visible on the mezzanine. Beyond the line of tellers' cages a low railing separated a row of bookkeeping machines from the bank lobby. "Everybody inside the railing!" Dahl's voice boomed out.

For an instant there was a hush, broken by two or three stifled shrieks as his role was recognized. "You, up there!" I called to the man on the mezzanine. "Don't move!" He didn't. There were gasps and another shriek as my voice called attention to me and to the riot gun. Dahl drove the three customers through a gate in the low railing, then herded them and the women tellers away from the cages, which were so high they hid him from my view.

Harris was already inside the railing. Steel clattered and banged as he opened, emptied, and slammed cash drawers. The man on the mezzanine remained wide-eyed and motionless. I had looked at the large wall clock at the back of the bank when we entered. Now I looked again. A minute and a half had gone by.

The revolving glass door pivoted and the bank guard walked in from the street. He was carrying a tray with eight or ten cups of coffee on it. He saw me and flinched. He tried to react so rapidly that the coffee cups sailed off the tray and spilled all over the floor. "Keep moving," I told the guard. "Inside the gate." He did as he was told.

A chorus of twittering feminine protests rose from behind the tellers' cages. Dahl's menacing voice drowned them out. Then it was quiet again. All of a sudden a soft bright light was glowing, its source invisible to me. I could see Harris looking in that direction, and I moved in a step from the door. Then Harris went back to rifling cash drawers. I relaxed and moved back to my former position. Outside, cars went by in a steady stream along Georgia Avenue.

I was sweating under the mask. I hoped my makeup was holding together. Harris ran for the railing, the laden pillowcase dangling from his left hand. He placed his right hand on the railing and started to vault over it. I could hear the squeak as his sweating palm slipped on the smooth surface. He turned over in the air and landed on his stomach in the longest slide since Pepper Martin stole third base in the World Series. Harris scrambled erect and ran past me to the door.

He was already out in the parking lot when Dahl appeared behind the railing, retracing Harris's route except that with his superior height Dahl stepped over the railing. A gun dangled loosely in his right hand. I picked up the blanket and re-covered the riot gun as Dahl's coat-of-many-colors went through the revolving door, the camera dangling from the cord around his neck. I swung the gun in a final semicircle to freeze all movement, then backed out the door.

I was halfway through the hundred-and-eighty-degree swing of the door to the parking lot when Dahl charged in on the other side, heading back into the bank. I froze. I couldn't imagine what he was up to. From my position with my back to the exit I could see the bank guard coming across the floor of the bank at a dead run. He shoved his foot into the protruding edge of the section of revolving door inside the lobby, and Dahl and I couldn't go anywhere. We were locked inside the revolving door.

I raised the riot gun, but before I could draw a bead Dahl fired three times from his compartment inside the door. Shattering glass crashed in massive quantities. The guard ducked to one side, unhurt but shaken. The sudden acceleration of the door as his foot was removed thrust me out into the alley. In a second Dahl came winging out as the door completed the circuit. "What the hell were you doing?" I panted as we ran for the car.

"Thought you might need help."

"When I need help I'll ask for it!"

Harris was under the wheel of the Olds with the motor running. Dahl and I piled into the back seat. We were moving down the alley by the time I got the door closed. Dahl jerked off his loose-fitting red-and-blue-sleeved jacket and threw it on the floor. "Masks off!" I rasped as Preacher made the turn at the end of the alley onto Piney Branch. The fresh air felt cold against the perspiration on my face when I pulled mine off.

Dahl reached over the back of the front seat and lifted the pillowcase into the back seat. I half turned on the seat so I could watch him and still keep an eye out the back window for possible pursuit. We were headed south in a traffic flow that seemed ordinary. Dahl dumped the contents of the pillowcase onto the floor and began sorting it into three piles. "Damn, damn, damn!" he swore softly. "Small stuff."

"I know," Harris said without turning around. There were no red fights behind us and no sirens. "What's the take look like?" His voice sounded husky.

"Less'n twenty thousand," Dahl grumbled. Harris's grunt was eloquent of disgust. I refrained from saying that a properly planned job would have guaranteed that the amount of cash available made the risk worthwhile. "Check it," Dahl said to me, pointing to the piles of money at his feet.

"Watch the rear," I said. I went through the cash quickly. I checked by packages of banded bills, not by counting. "It looks all right." Dahl reached down to the stack nearest him and began stuffing packages of bills into various pockets.

I did the same. We had reached Military Road by the time I looked around. Still no sign of police pursuit. Dahl picked up the third pile of money in both hands and dropped it on the front seat beside Preacher. "This'll hardly keep me goin' three weeks," he said gloomily.

"That's right," Harris chimed in. "Unless my system takes hold real quick this time." He looked belligerently at Dahl. "That was the most stupid thing I ever saw done on a job!"

Dahl started to laugh. "You're jealous, cousin. I-"

"What was this stupid thing?" I asked Harris, interrupting Dahl.

"This mongoloid had the women tellers bare-assed on the floor, taking movies of them."

"All but one who wouldn't pull her pants down even when my gun was an inch and a half from her twitch," Dahl affirmed in high good humor. "Must've had the rag on. You never know when you can use a little good pussy footage, cousins."

I wondered how much of the bank area the camera had covered. "If I ever hear that you've used that film commercially, I'll find you and nail your ears to the nearest telephone pole," I threatened Dahl.

Harris pulled the Olds onto the shoulder of the road before Dahl could reply. "What do we want to take?" he asked.

"Nothin' but the gun," Dahl said sullenly. "Leave the masks."

Harris was scooping money into his pockets… "Let's keep moving," he urged. His voice was husky. He sounded as though the strain was beginning to catch up to him. We walked across the wide highway to my car and I slid into the driver's seat. Harris got in with me, Dahl in back.

I handed the blanketed gun to Dahl. "Wipe it clean."

He was already working on it when I swung the VW around in a U-turn and headed toward Brightwood and Dahl's parked car. The final look I took in the rearview mirror showed the white Olds glistening on the shoulder of the road. Harris broke the silence. "This touch wasn't much of a stake," he said.

"It's enough to get us together again for proper planning on the Schemer's job," I said. "And that time I think we should remember that we do just as long a bit for ten thousand as we'd do for Fort Knox. Let's make sure the cash is there."

Dahl spoke right up. "Suits me," he said. "When?"

"How about next week?"

"Make it two weeks," he said. "I've still got a movie to shoot. You in, Preacher?"

"I guess so," Harris said unenthusiastically.

"I'll drive to Philadelphia and get set up," I said. "I've let the Schemer know where I am, and when we're ready to go you can call him to find out where to meet me."

"Let's make the meeting two weeks from today," Dahl said.

"Fine."

"All right," Preacher Harris said a tick later.

We were approaching Brightwood. "Where are you parked?" I asked Dahl.

"In the middle of the first block, across from the post office," he replied. "Pull in anywhere." He was carefully rewrapping the riot gun in the blanket. "So long, cousins," he said when I double-parked momentarily alongside a line of cars parked at the metered curb. "Don't spend it all in one place." He stepped out, slammed the door, waved, and jogged across the street.

"I don't ever want to work on a job with him again!" Harris burst forth as I pulled away.

I knew what he meant. I wasn't happy about the botched aspects of the job myself, but I didn't want Harris too unhappy with it. I knew how long it would take to recruit new partners. "Now that we know he's a kook, we'll keep our fingers closer to the button next time," I said soothingly. "And you have to admit that nothing fazes him."

"No brains, no feeling," Harris snorted, but he subsided. "Let me out at the next cab stand," he said a minute later. "I'll take a cab to the airport."

"Take one to Fourteenth Street and then another to the airport," I advised him. "The police are sure to check cab sheets from this area for riders to Union Station and National Airport."

"Yeah, good idea," he admitted.

"Here we are," I said, easing in behind a two-cab stand. We weren't more than five blocks from the bank we'd taken. "The next one will be a piece of cake too, and we'll all get well on the proceeds. Don't forget to call the Schemer."

Harris's smile was wan as he got out of my car. As I drove off I had the feeling that whether he called the Schemer or not depended very much upon how his luck ran at Vegas's dice and card tables for the next two weeks.

I headed over to Bladensburg Road in northeast Washington and had lunch. Then I went to a neighborhood movie where I watched the Redskins lose again. When I came out of the theater, the 4:30 P.M. homeward traffic was just starting to thicken up. I joined it, moved along to New York Avenue, and-eventually-to the Washington-Baltimore Expressway.

There were no roadblocks or car inspections barring exit from the District of Columbia.

If there had been earlier, the police had decided that the hit-and-run bank robbers were long gone.

I settled down for the drive to Philadelphia.