Bank Shot

11

Dortmunder at the movies was like a rock on the beach; the story kept washing over him, in wave after wave, but never had any effect. This one, called Murphy’s Madrigal, had been advertised as a tragic farce and gave the audience an opportunity to try out every emotion known to the human brain. Pratfalls, crippled children, Nazis, doomed lovers, you never knew what was going to happen next.

And Dortmunder just sat there. Beside him May roared with laughter, she sobbed, she growled with rage, she clutched his arm and cried, “Oh!” And Dortmunder just sat there.

When they got out of the movie it was ten to eight, so they had time to get a hero. They went to a Blimpie and May treated, and when they were sitting together at a table with their sandwiches under the bright lights she said, “You didn’t like it.”

“Sure I did,” he said. He pushed bread and sauerkraut in his mouth with his finger.

“You just sat there.”

“I liked it,” he said. Going to the movies had been her idea; he’d spent most of the time in the theater thinking about that mobile home bank out on Long Island and how to take it away.

“Tell me what you liked about it.”

He thought hard, trying to remember something he’d seen. “The color,” he said.

“A part of the movie.”

She was really getting irritated now, which he didn’t want to happen. He struggled and came up with a memory. “The elevator bit,” he said. The director of the movie had tied a strong elastic around a camera and dropped the camera down a brightly lighted elevator shaft. The thing had recoiled just before hitting bottom and had bounced up and down for quite a while before coming to rest. The whole sequence, forty-three seconds of it, was run without a break in the movie, and audiences had been known to throw up en masse at that point in the picture. Everybody agreed it was great, the high point of film art up to this time.

May smiled. “Okay,” she said. “That was good, wasn’t it?”

“Sure,” he said. He looked at his watch.

“You got time. Eight-thirty, right?”

“Right.”

“How does it look?”

He shrugged. “Possible. Crazy, but possible.” Then, to keep her from going back to the subject of the movie and asking him more questions about it, he said, “There’s still a lot of things to work out. But we maybe got a lockman.”

“That’s good.”

“We still don’t have anyplace to take it.”

“You’ll find a place.”

“It’s pretty big,” he said.

“So’s the world.”

He looked at her, not sure she’d just said something sensible, but decided to let it go. “There’s also financing,” he said.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“I don’t think so. Kelp saw somebody today.” He hadn’t known May very long, so this was the first time she’d watched him put together a piece of work, but he had a feeling with her as though she just naturally understood the situation. He never gave her a lot of background explanations, and she didn’t seem to need any. It was very relaxing. In a funny way, May reminded Dortmunder of his ex-wife, not because she was similar but because she was so very different. It was the contrast that did it. Until he’d started up with May, Dortmunder hadn’t even thought about his former wife for years. A show-biz performer she’d been, with the professional name of Honeybun Bazoom. Dortmunder had married her in San Diego in 1952 on his way to Korea — the only police action he’d ever been in on the side of the police — and had divorced her again in Reno in 1954 on his way out of the Army. Honeybun had mostly been interested in Honeybun, but if something outside herself did attract her attention she was immediately full of questions about it. She could ask more questions than a kid at the zoo. Dortmunder had answered the first few thousand, until he’d realized that none of the answers ever stayed inside that round head.

May couldn’t have been more different; she never asked the questions, and she always held onto the answers.

Now, they finished their heroes and left the Blimpie, and on the sidewalk May said, “I’ll take the subway.”

“Take a cab.”

She had a fresh cigarette in the corner of her mouth, having lit it after finishing eating. “Naw,” she said. “I’ll take the subway. A cab after a hero gives me heartburn.”

“You want to come along to the 0. J?”

“Naw, you go ahead.”

“The other night, Murch brought his Mom.”

“I’d rather go home.”

Dortmunder shrugged. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.”

She slopped away down the street, and Dortmunder headed the other way. He still had time, so he decided to walk, which meant going through Central Park. He walked along the cinder path alone, and under a street light a shifty-eyed stocky guy in a black turtle-neck sweater came out of nowhere and said, “Excuse me.”

Dortmunder stopped. “Yeah?”

“I’m taking a survey,” the guy said. His eyes danced a little, and he seemed to be grinning and yet not to be grinning. It was the same kind of expression most of the people in the movie had had. He said, “Here you are, you’re a citizen, you’re walking along in the park at night. What would you do if somebody came along and mugged you?”

Dortmunder looked at him. “I’d beat his head in,” he said. The guy blinked, and the almost grin disappeared. He looked slightly confused, and he said, “What if he had, uh, well, what if he was …” Then he shook his head, waggled both hands and backed off, saying, “Nah, forget it. Doesn’t matter, forget it.”

“Okay,” Dortmunder said. He walked on through the park and over to Amsterdam and up to the 0. J. When he went in, Rollo was having a discussion with the only two customers, a pair of overweight commission salesmen in the auto-parts line, about whether sexual intercourse after a heavy meal was medically good or medically bad. They were supporting their arguments mostly with personal anecdotes, and Rollo obviously had trouble breaking himself free from the conversation. Dortmunder waited at the end of the bar, and finally Rollo said, “Now, hold it now, hold it a second. Don’t start that yet. I’ll be right back.” Then he came down the bar, handed Dortmunder the bottle called Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon — “Our Own Brand” plus two glasses, and said, “All that’s here so far is the draft beer and salt. His mother let him out by himself tonight.”

“There’ll be more coming,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t know how many.”

“The more the merrier,” Rollo said sourly and went back to his discussion.

In the back room, Murch was sprinkling salt in his beer to restore the head. He looked up at Dortmunder’s entrance and said, “How you doing?”

“Fine,” Dortmunder said. He put the bottle and glasses on the table and sat down.

“I made better time tonight,” Murch said. “I tried a different route.”

“Is that right?” Dortmunder opened the bottle.

“I went down Flatlands and up Remsen,” Murch said. “Not Rockaway Parkway, see? Then I went over Empire Boulevard and up Bedford Avenue all the way into Queens and took the Williamsburg Bridge over into Manhattan.”

Dortmunder poured. “Is that right?” he said. He was just waiting for Murch to stop talking, because he had something to say to him.

“Then Delancey and Allen and right up First Avenue and across town at Seventy-ninth Street. Worked like a dream.”

“Is that right?” Dortmunder said. He sipped at his drink and said, “You know, Rollo’s kind of unhappy about you.”

Murch looked surprised, but eager to please. “Why? Cause I parked out front?”

“No. A customer that comes in and nurses one beer all night long, it doesn’t do too much for his business.”

Murch glanced down at his beer, and then looked very pained. “I never thought of that,” he said.

“I just figured I’d mention it.”

“The thing is, I don’t like to drink and drive. That’s why I space it out.”

Dortmunder had nothing to say to that.

Murch pondered and finally said hopefully, “What if I bought him a drink? Would that do it?”

“Could be.”

“Let me give it a try,” Murch said, and as he got to his feet the door opened and Kelp and Victor came in. The room was very small and very full of table anyway, so it took a while to bring Kelp and Victor in while getting Murch out, and during that time Dortmunder brooded at Victor. It seemed to him that Victor was becoming more and more an accepted part of this job, which he didn’t much like but couldn’t quite find the way to stop. Kelp was doing it, but he was doing it in such a sneaky quiet fashion that Dortmunder never had a clear moment when he could say, “Okay, cut it out.” But how could anybody expect him to go steal a bank with some clown smiling at him all the time?

Murch finally shot himself out of the room, like a dollop of toothpaste squeezed out of a tube, and Kelp said, “I see Herman isn’t here yet.”

“You talked to him?”

“He’s interested.”

Dortmunder brooded some more. Kelp himself was all right, but he tended to surround himself with people and operations that were just a little off. Victor, for instance. And now bringing in some guy named Herman X. What could you hope for from somebody named Herman X? Had he ever done anything in this line? If he was going to turn out to be another smiler, Dortmunder was just going to have to put his foot down. Enough smiling is enough.

Sitting down next to Dortmunder and reaching for the bourbon bottle, Kelp said, “We got the financing set.”

Victor had taken the spot directly across from Dortmunder. He was smiling. Shading his eyes with his hand, Dortmunder ducked his head a little and said to Kelp, “You got the full four grand?”

“Every penny. The light too bright for you?”

“I just went to a movie.”

“Oh, yeah? What’d you see?”

Dortmunder had forgotten the title. “It was in color,” he said.

“That narrows it. Probably a pretty recent one, then.”

“Yeah.”

Victor said, “I’m drinking tonight.” He sounded very pleased.

Dortmunder ducked his head a little more and looked at Victor under his fingers. He was smiling, of course, and holding up a tall glass. It was pink. Dortmunder said, “Oh, yeah?”

“A sloe-gin fizz,” Victor said.

“Is that right?” Dortmunder readjusted head and fingers — it was like putting down venetian blinds — and turned firmly back to Kelp. “So you got the whole four thousand,” he said.

“Yeah. A funny thing about that.”

The door opened and Murch came back in. “It’s all set,” he said. He was smiling, too, but it was easier to live with than Victor’s. “Thanks for setting me straight,” he said.

“Glad it worked out,” Dortmunder said.

Murch sat down in front of his beer and carefully salted it. “Rollo’s okay when you get to know him,” he said.

“Sure he is.”

“Drives a Saab.”

Dortmunder had known Rollo for years but hadn’t known about the Saab. “Is that right?” he said.

“Used to drive a Borg-Ward. Sold it because he couldn’t get parts when they stopped making the car.”

Kelp said, “What kind of car is that?”

“Borg-Ward. German. Same company that makes Norge refrigerators.”

“They’re American.”

“The refrigerators, yeah. The cars were German.”

Dortmunder finished his drink and reached for the bottle, and Rollo opened the door and stuck his head in to say, “There’s an Old Crow on the rocks out here asking for Kelp.”

“That’s him now,” Kelp said.

“A darkish fella.”

“That’s him,” Kelp said. “Send him on in.”

“Right.” Rollo gave a bartender’s glance around the table. “Everybody set?”

They all murmured.

Rollo cocked an eye at Murch. “Stan, you got enough salt?”

“Oh, sure,” Murch said. “Thanks a lot, Rollo.”

“Any time, Stan.”

Rollo went away. Dortmunder glanced at Murch, but didn’t say anything, and a minute later a tall lean guy with dark-brown complexion and a very modest Afro came into the room. What he looked most like was an Army second lieutenant on leave. He was nodding slightly and grinning slightly as he came in and shut the door, and Dortmunder wondered at first if he was on something; then he realized it was just the self-protective cool of somebody meeting a group of people for the first time.

“Hey, Herman,” Kelp said.

“Hey,” agreed Herman quietly. He closed the door behind him and stood there jiggling ice in his old-fashioned glass, like an early arrival at a cocktail party.

Kelp made the introductions: “Herman X, this is Dortmunder, that’s Stan Murch, that’s my nephew Victor.”

“How are ya.”

“Hello, Mr. X.”

Dortmunder watched Herman frown slightly at Victor and then glance at Kelp. Kelp, however, was busy being host, saying, “Take a seat, Herman. We were just talking about the situation.”

“That’s what I want to hear about,” Herman said. He sat down to Dortmunder’s right. “The situation.”

Dortmunder said, “I’m surprised I don’t know you.”

Herman gave him a grin. “We probably travel in different circles.”

“I was just wondering what your experience is.”

Herman’s grin broadened into a smile. “Well, now,” he said. “One doesn’t like to talk about one’s experiences in front of a whole room of witnesses.”

Kelp said, “Everybody’s okay in here. But, Dortmunder, Herman really does know his business.”

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 FBI 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 organization 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.”