Bank Shot

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 40Z 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 coffin-like 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 TV, “I could’ve picked up maybe seventy bucks out there 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 gathered 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 FBI.”

“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 FBI.”

“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.