Bank Shot

25

“If you’ll put the flashlight on my work,” Herman said, “things’ll go a lot faster.”

“Sure,” Kelp said. He adjusted the beam. “I was shielding it with my body,” he said.

“Well, don’t shield it from me.”

“Okay,” Kelp said.

“And don’t breathe down the back of my neck like that.”

“Right,” Kelp said. He moved half an inch.

Suddenly into Herman’s head came the replay of a television commercial from a few years back: Sure, you’re irritable. Who wouldn’t be? But don’t take it out on him. Take. — Take what? What was the product? Sounds like it should have been pot, but it probably wasn’t.

The distraction of that chain of thought was a pleasant interlude, three or four seconds long, which calmed him perhaps as much as the forgotten product would have done. Herman took a deep, slow breath, to calm himself even more, and returned his attention to the task at hand.

He was squatting right now like a Masai warrior in front of a black metal box emerging from the ground directly in front of the hitch end of the bank. Power and water and sewer lines terminated in this box, and it was Herman’s simple job at the moment to remove the padlock from the lid and open the box. And it was taking too long.

“Normally,” Herman said, speaking more gently than before, but still with a rasp of irritation he couldn’t quite get rid of, “I’m very good at locks.”

“Sure,” Kelp said. “Naturally.”

The padlock clicked and jittered in Herman’s long, thin fingers. “It’s just that safe,” he said. “It’s shaken my self confidence.”

“You’re still the best,” Kelp said. Not in a boosting way, but conversationally, as though commenting on the weather.

The padlock skittered away from Herman’s fingers and tick-ticked against the metal lid. “I’m also very good at self-analysis,” he said. His voice quivered again with barely controlled rage. “I figure out just where I’m at. And —” his voice rising, speeding up — “it doesn’t do a goddam bit of good!”

“You’ll be fine,” Kelp said. He patted Herman on the shoulder.

Herman flinched away from the touch like a horse. “I am going to get this thing,” he said grimly and sat down on the ground in front of the box. Legs folded tailor-fashion, he leaned over the box till his nose was almost touching the lock.

“I’m having a little trouble,” Kelp said, “keeping the light on the work.”

“Shut up,” Herman said.

Kelp knelt beside him and beamed the light principally at Herman’s right eye, which was glaring at the lock.

The problem was, they didn’t want to break it. In the morning, they would tell the trailer-court owner or manager that they’d found the thing unlocked and just hooked everything up themselves. If he saw his padlock in normal condition, he probably wouldn’t raise a fuss. But if he found it broken, he might not believe the story, and then he might make trouble.

That was the problem about why the padlock had to be picked rather than plucked. The deeper problem, Herman’s continuing inability to pick it, was very simply caused by that son-of-a-bitch safe. Half a dozen small tools from his black bag were already spread across the box lid, and he was poking away at the padlock’s keyhole with yet another small tool right now — the other end of which was currently endangering his eye — and he just couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing. He’d slip the tool into the padlock and his eyes would glaze as his mind drifted back to consider once again the safe inside the bank. He had no saw or drill — including the diamond tip — that would get through that metal. He had stripped away the combination plate and mechanism, but it had led nowhere. He had tried peeling the door and had bent his favorite medium-length bar. An explosion strong enough to rip open the safe would also destroy everything inside it and would probably open the trailer up like an avocado at the same time.

What it came down to was the circular hole. For the circular hole, you attached a suction clamp to the side of the safe, with a central rod extending straight out. An L-shaped arm swung from the rod, with a handle at the elbow and a clamp at the wrist for drill bits. A bit was put in place, so that it scraped against the side of the safe, and then the handle was turned in a large circle, over and over and over again. As each bit was worn away, a new one was added. It was the slowest and most primitive kind of safe-cracking, but it was the only thing that could possibly work against that goddam bastard son of a bitch — The padlock. His mind had drifted again, and he’d just been sitting there on the ground, poking aimlessly into the keyhole with the small tool. “God damn it,” he muttered, and clenched his teeth, and gripped the padlock so hard his fingers ached.

The thing was, sometimes you had to go back to basics. Herman knew the most sophisticated ways to get into safes and vaults and had used them all at one time or another. The ELD, for instance, Electronic Listening Device; attach it to the front of the safe, put the earphones on and listen to the tumblers while you turn the combination. Or ways of putting just a little plastic explosive in two places at the edge of the door, where the hinges are on the inside, and then going next door and setting them off by radio signal and coming back to find the door lying on its face on the floor and not a sheet of paper wrinkled inside. Or — The padlock. He’d done it again. “Rrrrrrr,” Herman said.

“Here comes somebody.”

“That was me growling.”

“No. Headlights.” Kelp switched off the flashlight.

Herman looked around and saw the headlights turning in from the highway. “It can’t be Murch already,” he said.

“Well,” Kelp said doubtfully, “it is almost four o’clock.”

Herman stared at him. “Four o’clock? I’ve been at this, I’ve been here for …? Give me that light!”

“Well, we’re not sure it’s them yet.” The headlights were slowly approaching past the darkened trailers.

“I don’t need the goddam light,” Herman said, and while the headlights came up close enough to show the car behind them, and the car parked, and Murch got out, Herman picked the padlock by feel alone, and when Kelp next turned the flashlight on, Herman was putting his tools away. “It’s done,” he said.

“You got it!”

“Of course I got it.” Herman glared at him. “What do you sound so surprised for?”

“Well, I just… Uh, here’s Stan and Victor.”

But it was just Murch. He strolled over and gestured at the black box and said, “You get it open?”

“Listen,” Herman said angrily, “just because I’m having trouble with that safe …”

Murch looked startled. “I just wanted to know,” he said.

Kelp said, “Where’s Victor?”

“Here he comes now,” Murch said and gestured with his thumb toward the court entrance as another pair of headlights made the turn. “He really hangs well back,” Murch said. “I was surprised. I almost lost him a couple times.”

Dortmunder had come out of the bank and now walked over to say, “There’s a hell of a lot of talk out here. Let’s keep it down.”

“The padlock’s open,” Herman told him.

Dortmunder glanced at him and then looked at his watch. “That’s good,” he said. There was no expression in either his face or his voice.

“Look,” Herman said aggressively, but then didn’t have anything else to say and just stood there.

Victor came over, walking slightly lopsided and looking stunned. “Boy,” he said.

Dortmunder said, “Let’s go inside where we can talk. You boys be able to fix things up out here?”

Kelp and Murch would be doing the tie-in of power and water and sewer lines. Kelp said, “Sure, we’ll work it out.”

“You’ve got some bent pipes there,” Dortmunder said, “where we ripped them when we took the bank.”

“No problem,” Murch said. “I brought some pipe in the car. We’ll rig something up.”

“But quiet,” Dortmunder said.

“Sure,” Murch said.

The efficiency all around him was making Herman nervous. “I’m going in and work on that safe,” he said.

Dortmunder and Victor came along with him, and Dortmunder said to Victor, “Did Stan tell you the situation?”

“Sure. Herman’s having trouble getting the safe open, so we’re going to stay here for a while.”

Herman hunched his shoulders and glowered straight ahead, but said nothing.

As they were climbing up into the bank, Victor said, “That Stan really drives, doesn’t he?”

“That’s his job,” Dortmunder said, and Herman winced at that one, too.

“Boy,” Victor said. “You try to keep up with him boy.”

Inside the trailer, May and Murch’s Mom had set up a couple of flashlights on pieces of furniture so there was some light to work by and were now cleaning the place up a little.

“I think we’ve got a full deck of cards here,” Murch’s Mom told Dortmunder. “I just found the three of clubs over by the safe.”

“That’s fine,” Dortmunder said. He turned to Herman. “You want any help?”

“No!” Herman snapped, but a second later said, “I mean yes. Sure, of course.”

“Victor, you go with Herman.”

“Sure.”

May said to Dortmunder, “We need you to move some furniture.”

While Dortmunder went off to join the spring-cleaning brigade, Herman said to Victor, “I’ve made a decision.”

Victor looked alert.

“I am going,” Herman said, “to attack that safe by every method known to man. All at once.”

“Sure,” Victor said. “What should I do?”

“You,” Herman told him, “will turn the handle.”