Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 25, No. 3, March 26, 1980

The Odds Are Even by Mary Ruth Furman

They planned the bank robbery like a military operation...

“Robbing banks ain’t as easy as it looks on TV,” Bobby complained.

Little Ed nodded in gloomy agreement. Neither of them looked at the General because he was mad at them. It seemed like an easy enough operation and the hardware was no sweat: just guns, stocking masks, a grocery sack to hold the loot, and a stolen car for the getaway. They figured they could also grab a hostage if the cops got too close. Real simple — yet they had come up empty on the last three jobs. As a matter of fact, they hadn’t ever gotten through the front door of a bank.

“We’re going to get it right this time. Understand me, soldier?” The General got up from the floor, where a map was nailed down with carpet tacks, to glare at Little Ed. He wasn’t really a general, but he thought bank robberies ought to be conducted like military operations, the way he’d seen it done on TV shows.

Little Ed flushed. “That was an awful nice car I took last time.”

“Sure.” The General’s tone was unnecessarily sarcastic. “A great set of wheels. Motor ran like a dream, new tires, air-conditioning, tape deck, power-steering, power-windows — all kinds of power, plus crushed-velvet upholstery. Only one little problem. The damned gas tank was sitting on Empty.”

“I ain’t the only one who messed up,” Little Ed defended himself. “How about Tuesday, for instance?”

The General turned his glare on Bobby. “No guts,” he agreed.

Their first attempt had been on Tuesday. Monday didn’t count, because they’d only cased the bank. On the way to the robbery, Bobby had lit a cigarette to steady his nerves, smoking through his stocking mask. Somehow a hot ash had flown up and started a run. By the time they got to the bank his nose was poking clear through a ladder of nylon threads. Little Ed couldn’t stop laughing, and Bobby refused to get out of the car.

Wednesday it rained, a real gully washer, like when six inches come down in five minutes. Little Ed and Bobby wanted to give it up or at least wait an hour. “Wet streets are dangerous,” Little Ed told the General. “If we have to make a fast getaway, we could end up pasted against a light pole.” The General said it wouldn’t be any more dangerous for them than for the cops. Little Ed wasn’t worrying about the cops — after all, they were paid to take chances — but the General wouldn’t listen.

When they got to the bank, they had another problem. The General had gotten the biggest gun he could find, and it kept slipping through his waistband. “The bigger the gun,” he insisted, “the scareder the hold-upees.” The second time the gun slid out his pant leg he thrust it into the grocery bag.

Little Ed kept his foot on the gas pedal, nursing a rough idle in case there was trouble, while the other two made a wild dash through the rain. Just as the General got up to the door the wet paper bag broke and the gun clattered down on the sidewalk.

Bobby turned and made a run for the car. The General hollered “Come back here!” but Bobby just ran faster and the General had to retreat. On the way back to where their own car was stashed, he kept muttering about flagrant insubordination and desertion in the face of the enemy.

Yesterday, Thursday, was the worst. Six blocks from the bank the car Little Ed had stolen sputtered on gas fumes and died of starvation. The General cussed a spell but he was not the kind to give up easy. He made them push the car into a filling-station line that stretched three-quarters of a block. There they waited, shoving the car up a length at a time in hundred-and-five-degree heat.

When they reached the pump, Little Ed was so wrung out he would have collapsed except he was too worried. Any second he expected some cop to spot the stolen car. A person never could tell when one of them might decide to spice up the hour with something besides traffic tickets.

“Fill ’er up,” the General ordered.

Little Ed admired how calm and collected the General was until he noticed a sadistic gleam in the attendant’s eyes and went back to worrying.

“I expect you’d like the windshield wiped and the spare tire checked. While I’m at it, I could vacuum the floor mats and empty the ashtrays.” The man wiped sweat from his face with an oily rag. “Hell, Mister, where you been?”

The General rankled at his tone. The boys could see he was doing a slow burn and ordinarily would have clobbered the guy. Fortunately, the General remembered that he had more important things to do.

“Just fill it, like I said. Unleaded.”

“Well, I am just real sorry, Mister.” His grin made the words a lie. “But you’re odd and today is even. As the Governor said — odds on odd and evens on even. Now, if you’ll just push that junk heap out of the way so I can wait on my legitimate customers—”

The General might have killed him then and there, Little Ed reflected, but half of Dallas County was leaning on their horns protesting the delay and several husky beardos from a van two cars back converged on the stolen car and gave it a shove. The next car moved up to the pumps and there was no way to get back in line.

By then the temperature was a hundred and nine, and if it had been up to Little Ed they’d have ditched the car on the spot, but the General insisted they push it to a shopping center so all the people who’d seen them might forget what they looked like before the car was found.

That was yesterday, a very bad day — and tomorrow the banks would be closed. If they were going to get that bank robbed it would have to be today.

“This time we’re going to do it right,” the General repeated. “Just like in the military. Map, synchronized watches, strategy, all that kind of stuff. You hear me, soldier?”

Both Little Ed and Bobby nodded and squatted on the floor beside an old Humble Oil Company map of Dallas. Bobby’s stubby fingers combed through his sun-bleached hair as he looked at it. Then he gave the General a pained look, his pale blue eyes narrowing with disbelief.

“Hell, General. That old thing don’t even have the LBJ Freeway on it.”

“Don’t make no difference.” The General’s voice was firm and commanding. “We ain’t gonna use the LBJ anyhow.” He pointed to an ‘X’ on the map with the busted billiard cue he used as his swagger stick. “We’re going to hit this here bank at thirteen hundred hours.”

Little Ed nodded. He had watched enough old war movies to know the General meant one o’clock.

“Thirteen is unlucky,” Bobby argued. “Couldn’t we go at eleven — or what’s wrong with two o’clock? They’d probably have more money.”

The General glared at Bobby. “I’m getting pretty tired of your insubordination, soldier. We go in at thirteen hundred. I got my reasons. This time we don’t make no mistakes like we did before. I got one of them department-store shopping bags, plastic so it don’t come apart, and we got ski masks instead of ladies’ stockings, so that’s all taken care of. What we have to do next is steal another car.” The General s dark beady eyes drilled into Little Ed. “Do I got to tell you to make sure it has gas?”

Little Ed shook his head, being meek and as obedient as he could.

“So, O.K.” The General’s stick skipped across the surface of the map to a spot marked ‘Y.’ “I want you to have the car here by 0930 or ten hundred — no later. It’s a supermarket parking lot. We switch license plates with something that looks a lot like our new wheels, so’s if the cops spot the car and run it we come up clean. You got that?”

Bobby grunted and Little Ed tried looking intelligent.

“Next we go to position ‘Z.’ ” His stick wavered uncertainly as he squinted at the map.

“It’s over there where the big North Park Shopping Mall is now,” Bobby pointed helpfully.

“Right,” the General boomed. “Just testing to see if you was paying attention. We stash our own car at North Park and pick up an extra set of plates.”

“Why do we need all them license plates?” Bobby asked.

“I’ll get to that. Stop interrupting when I’m giving you your orders, soldier.”

Bobby gave him a salute that twisted down with his thumb against his nose.

“I got this planned down to the last detail,” the General continued, ignoring Bobby’s latest mutiny. “Includin’ the smartest getaway anybody ever did. It’ll be a classic.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bobby said. “Only if it don’t work this time I’m going in for something easy, like stealing plans for the latest nuke warhead out of a Pentagon wastebasket, or from the files of one of them newspapers.”

The General snorted and made Bobby repeat every move he was supposed to make inside the bank until he could recite it without taking a breath.

“That brings us to the getaway,” the General said, beaming with pride. “There’s a filling station four blocks away. I checked, and they start pumping gas the same time we’re going to hit the bank. What we do is pull into the first alley, which is back of two stores, with no windows for people to snoop. There we’ll switch license plates again. That way if somebody happens to take down the numbers of the first set at the bank — and I hope they do — the cops’ll be looking for some other car. Meanwhile we go on up and get in line for gasoline just like we been there all morning, see? In a couple of minutes, half a dozen cars will pull in behind us, bumper-to-bumper like, and the cops won’t give us a second look. By the time we get up to the pumps, those police cars will be clear to Waxahachie.”

Little Ed gaped at the General, admiration mixing with the amazement on his face.

Bobby wasn’t nearly so impressed.

“On TV the bank robbers always get away from the scene of the crime as fast as they can,” he objected.

The General was scornful. “I seen that too. But if you’ll remember, the cops are always chasing right in behind them with their sirens on and lights flashing, the crooks run themselves into a roadblock, and the rest is commercials.”

With a dramatic jerk, the General raised his left wrist in front of his nose and watched the second hand sweep around the dial for several minutes. “Now, men. synchronize your watches. I’ll count down from ten and when I get to zero it will be 0800 hours. Ten... nine... eight...”

Little Ed shook his watch to make sure it was running and pulled out the stem, turning the big hand forward two minutes.

“...three... two... one. Blast off!”

“You were going to say zero,” Bobby reminded him.

“It don’t matter none, Bobby,” Little Ed assured him, anxious to get going so he would have plenty of time to find the right car. “I got the time. Let’s start cruisin’ for those wheels.”

An hour and a half later. Little Ed pulled into position ‘Y,’ the supermarket parking lot. He noted with satisfaction that the fuel gauge still registered two needles above the full mark. This time the General wasn’t going to be able to find one thing wrong with the car.

Bobby parked beside him and the General disappeared with his shopping bag.

Minutes later he reappeared. “I got the plates,” he whispered loudly. “You guys shield me while I make the switch.”

They were running well ahead of schedule when they got to North Park Mall. “All right, Bobby — you steal the other plates,” the General ordered. “And, damn it, make sure they’re odd. This is an odd day, remember — we don’t want no hassle when we get up to the gas pump.”

“Right, General,” Bobby said.

He was back by a quarter after ten with the plates. “What we going to do until one o’clock. General?” he wanted to know. “Sit in a car that’s all kinds of hot?”

The General looked momentarily confused. “Well... uh... that’s part of the strategy. We separate and shop around like we don’t know each other. I’ll go to a radio shop and get them to show me one of those jobs with the police bands so we can reconnoiter the enemy. Then we meet back here at twelve thirty-five hundred hours on the dot.” He got out and sauntered casually toward the entrance of the shopping mall.

Bobby looked at Little Ed. “I suppose it’s too early for a beer.”

“I don’t think the General would like us drinking on the job.” Little Ed slid out of the car. “See you around.”

Little Ed had shopped with Bobby before and always lost him by the second aisle — but this time, when they were trying to avoid each other, every store he went into Bobby was the first guy he saw. Finally they settled down together and had some enchiladas with draft beer to wash it down. “After all,” Bobby pointed out, “we ain’t robbed the bank yet.”

When they got back to the car, the General was waiting impatiently. “It is twelve thirty-eight hundred hours,” he grumbled.

“No sweat,” Bobby said, ignoring the perspiration dripping from the General’s chin. “We’ll make it in plenty of time.”

The bank job went down smoother than anything they’d seen on TV. They skinned off their ski masks and threw them in the back seat with the loot as Little Ed turned into the alley. There Bobby and the General switched plates and they were pulling into line for gas before they heard the first siren.

As two police cars whipped by with their rhythmic hoots, the General slapped Bobby and Little Ed on their backs. “What d I tell you?” he crowed exuberantly. “Strategy! They never gave us a second glance.”

By then they were sandwiched in, the car behind practically crawling over their rear bumper and three more back of that. As the minutes crept by and police cars continued to scream past them, Little Ed began to worry. Being trapped in a long line of cars, all sitting on empty and forcing every inch of progress, didn’t seem quite as brilliant as it had earlier.

“How much did we get?” he asked, trying to distract his thoughts from the idea that BANK ROBBER was printed on his forehead and any second someone was going to point at him, yelling for the cops.

“I didn’t take the time to count,” the General drawled. “Do you think we should drag it out and let everybody get a peek?”

“No!” Little Ed’s legs started to shake and he was having trouble holding his foot steady on the brake. The car ahead moved up and the car behind honked. He jerked, his foot slipped off the brake onto the accelerator, and the car jumped like a rabbit. He managed to get his foot back on the brake just in time to avoid hooking bumpers and the car rocked alarmingly before hunkering down on its shocks.

“Blast it!” Bobby yelled. “All we need is to hit somebody with cops all over the place! Can’t you be more careful?”

The more Little Ed tried to control the twitching in his leg muscles, the more he shook. The General told him to put it in Park so they could switch drivers, and took over the wheel himself.

When they got to the pumps, the gas jockey said, “Fill it up?”

The General nodded.

“Say, ain’t you the guys who come in for gas yesterday? The ones with the wrong number on your tags?”

The General looked up, opened and then closed his mouth, unable to find anything to say.

“But you don’t work here,” Little Ed managed to protest. “You work down the street.”

The guy nodded. “Work there mornings, here afternoons. None of these stations got enough gas to pump all day. But it’s O.K. You got the right kind of number on your plates today. Different car though.”

The General found his voice. “Just fill it up! Unleaded, like before.”

“Sure, fella.”

Whistling cheerfully, he pulled off the gas cap, stuck in the nozzle, and started the pump. Then he walked back. “I guess I was pretty hard on you guys yesterday. We have to take a lot of bull, you know — people hollering about phony shortages and stuff. Hell, we can’t do nothin’ about it, and sometimes my temper gets a little short. Just to show there’s no hard feelings I’ll check under the hood and wash your windshield.”

Before the General could assure him he didn’t expect any special treatment, the attendant was raising the hood. Just then the pump cut off and the guy’s head came up like he’d been shot.

“What the hell!” he yelled. “That’s less than three bucks, Mister! You think this is some kind of game? There’s a six-dollar minimum. All them other cars sittin’ on Empty and you take up space in the line!” His shout reached a full block. “These guys — first they come in odd when they’re supposed to be even, next they top off their tank when it ain’t a quarter empty! It’s guys like them that cause all the trouble!”

Little Ed looked back at the mob forming behind them and wondered where the little old lady with the silvery blue hair had found the rope she was knotting into a noose.

“Let’s get out of here,” he pleaded, but it was too late. A police car pulled in, blocking them at the pump.

“You got a violator?”

“That’s right, Officer,” the pump jockey said. “Second-time offense, no less.”