Bank Shot

28

“I hate rain,” Captain Deemer said.

“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.

“I always have hated rain,” Captain Deemer said. “But never as much as today.”

The two officers were in the back seat of the patrol car the captain was using as his mobile headquarters during the search for the elusive bank. In the front were two uniformed patrolmen, the driver on the left and a man to operate the radio on the right. The radio was the contact not only with the precinct but also with other cars and with other organizations engaged in the bank hunt. Unfortunately, what the radio was mostly contacting was static, a fuzzing and bussing and crackling that filled the car like the aural expression of the captain’s nervous system.

The captain leaned forward, resting one heavy hand on the seat-back near the driver’s head. “Can’t you do anything with that goddam radio?”

“It’s the rain, sir,” the radio man said. “The weather is doing this.”

“I know goddam well the goddam weather is doing it,” the captain said. “I asked you can’t you do anything about it.”

“Well, we get pretty good reception when we’re on a hill,” the radio man said. “Driving along the flat, though, all I get is this static.”

“I hear it,” the captain said. He poked the driver on the shoulder and said, “Find me a hill.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain leaned back and brooded at Lieutenant Hepplewhite. “A hill,” he said, as though hills were in themselves an insult.

“Yes, sir.”

“A mobile headquarters, and I can’t contact anybody unless I stand still on a hilltop. You call that mobile?”

Lieutenant Hepplewhite looked tortured as he tried to figure out whether the proper response was yes, sir or no, sir.

Neither was needed. Captain Deemer faced front again and said, “You found a hill yet?”

“I believe there’s one up ahead, sir,” said the driver. “Hard to tell in this rain.”

“I hate rain,” said the captain. He glowered out at it, and no one spoke as the mobile headquarters started up the long gradient of the hill. The radio spackled and fizzed, the windshield wipers swish-clicked, the rain drummed on the car top, and the captain’s right eyelid fluttered soundlessly.

“Shall I pull in by the diner, sir?”

The captain stared at the back of the driver’s head and considered leaning forward and biting him through the neck. “Yes,” he said.

“I guess the insurance company paid off,” the radio man said.

The captain frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The diner, sir,” the radio man said. “They had a bad fire last year, burned to the ground.”

“Well, it’s back now,” Lieutenant Hepplewhite said.

“Doesn’t look open,” the radio man said.

The captain wasn’t feeling kindly toward irrelevancies. “We’re not here to talk about the diner,” he said. “We’re here to contact headquarters.”

“Yes, sir,” everybody said.

The diner was set back from the road, fronted by a gravel parking lot, with a large sign out by the road, reading, MCKAY’S DINER. The driver parked near this sign, and the radio man went to work on contacting headquarters. After a minute, the static receded and a tinny voice was heard, as though they’d reached somebody who lived in an empty dog-food can. “I’ve got headquarters,” the radio man said.

“Good,” said the captain. “Tell them where we are. Where the hell are we?”

“McKay’s Diner, sir.”

The captain lowered his head, as though he might charge. “When I say where are we,” he said, “I do not want an answer I can read off a sign right outside the goddam window. When I say where are we, I want to know —”

“Near Sagaponack, sir,” the radio man said.

“Near Sagaponack.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell headquarters that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Find out what’s going on, if anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell them we’ll be here until further notice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Until the bank is found, or the rain stops, or I go berserk.”

The radio man blinked. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Whichever comes first.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain turned to Lieutenant Hepplewhite, who was looking very pale. “Even as a child I hated rain,” the captain said. “I used to have a Popeye doll that you could punch and it would fall over and come back up again. It was as tall as I was, with a weighted bottom. Rainy days, I used to take that Popeye doll down in the basement and kick the shit out of it.”

“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant.

The captain’s eyelid drooped. “I’m getting tired of hearing ‘Yes, sir’ all the time,” he said.

“Yessss,” said the lieutenant.

The radio man said, “Sir?”

The captain turned his heavy head.

“Sir,” the radio man said, “I told headquarters our position, and they said there’s nothing to report.”

“Of course,” said the captain.

“They say the search is being hampered by the rain.”

The captain squinted. “They took the trouble to point that out, did they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Uh,” said Lieutenant Hepplewhite warningly. The captain looked at him. “Lieutenant?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“What time is it, Lieutenant?”

“Ten-fifteen, sir.”

“I’m hungry.” The captain looked past the lieutenant at the diner. “Why don’t you go get us coffee and Danish, Lieutenant? My treat.”

“There’s a sign in the window says they’re closed, sir.”

The radio man said, “Probably not ready to open yet after the fire. Their other place got burned right to the ground.”

“Lieutenant,” said the captain, “go over there and knock on the door and see if there’s anybody in there. If there is, ask them if they can open up just enough to give us coffee and Danish.”

“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant. Then, hurriedly: “I mean, uh —”

“And if not coffee and Danish,” said the captain, “then whatever they can do for us we’ll appreciate. Will you tell them that, Lieutenant?”

“Uh … I will, sir.”

“Thank you,” said the captain and leaned back in the corner to brood out the window at the rain.

The lieutenant got out of the car and was immediately drenched right through his uniform raincoat. It was really pouring, really and truly coming down like nobody’s business. Lieutenant Hepplewhite slogged through puddles toward the diner, noting just how closed it looked. Besides the hand-lettered CLOSED sign in one window, there was the absence of any lights in there.

The whole structure had an aura about it of being not yet ready to do business. Charred and blackened remnants of the previous diner were all around the new one, not yet cleared away. The new one was still on its wheels, with no skirting of any kind; looking through the underneath space, Lieutenant Hepplewhite could see the wheels of a car and a truck parked behind the diner, the only indication that there might be somebody around here after all.

What struck the lieutenant most about this diner was an atmosphere of failure all around it. It was the kind of small business you looked at, and you knew at once they’d go bankrupt within six months. Partly, of course, it was the rain and the general gloom of the day that did that, and partly it was the new diner sitting on the ashes of the old; but it was also the windows. They were too small. People like a diner with big windows, the lieutenant thought, so they can look out and watch the traffic.

There were two doors in the front of the diner, but no steps up to either one. The lieutenant splashed along to the nearest and knocked on it and anticipated no answer at all. In fact, he was just about to turn away when the door did open slightly and a thin middle-aged woman stood looking out and down at him. She had a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, which waggled as she said, “What do you want?”

“We were wondering,” the lieutenant said, “if we could get some coffee and Danish.” He had to put his head back and look up when talking to her, which was uncomfortable under the circumstances. The bill of his cap had protected his face from the rain, but now he was practically drowning in it.

“We’re closed,” the woman said.

Another woman appeared, saying, “What is it, Gertrude?” This one was shorter and wore a neck brace and looked irritable.

“He wanted coffee and Danish,” Gertrude said. “I told him we were closed.”

“We are closed,” the other woman said.

“Well, we’re police officers,” the lieutenant started.

“I know,” said Gertrude. “I could tell by your hat.”

“And your car,” said the other woman. “It says ‘Police’ on the side.”

The lieutenant turned his head and looked at the patrol car, even though he already knew what it said on its side. He quickly looked back and said, “Well, we’re on duty here, and we were wondering if you could maybe sell us some coffee and Danish even if you aren’t one hundred percent open.” He tried a winning smile, but all he got for it was a mouthful of rain.

“We don’t have any Danish,” the irritable woman in the neck brace said.

Gertrude, being more kindly, said, “I’d like to help you out, but the fact is, we don’t have any electricity yet. Nothing’s hooked up at all. We just got here. I’d like a cup of coffee myself.”

“It’s getting damn cold in here,” said the irritable woman, “with that door open.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” said the lieutenant. Gertrude said, “Come around when we’re open. We’ll give you coffee and Danish on the house.”

“I’ll do that,” said the lieutenant and slogged back through the puddles to report, saying, “They don’t have any electricity, Captain. They’re not set up for anything yet.”

“We can’t even pick a hilltop right,” the captain said. To the radio man he said, “You!”

“Sir?”

“Find out if there’s any patrol cars around here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We want coffees and Danish.”

“Yes, sir. How do you like your coffee?”

“Light, three sugars.”

The radio man looked ill. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant?”

“Black, one Sweet ’n’ Low.”

“Yes, sir.”

While the radio man took the driver’s order, the captain turned to the lieutenant and said, “One sweet and what?”

“It’s a sugar substitute, sir. For people on diets.”

“You’re on a diet.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I weigh about twice as much as you, Lieutenant, but I’m not on a diet.”

The lieutenant opened his mouth, but once again no response seemed exactly right, and he didn’t say anything.

But silence, this time, was also a mistake. The captain’s brows beetled, and he said, “Just what do you mean by that, Lieutenant?”

The radio man said, “I put in the order, sir.”

It was a timely distraction. The captain thanked him and subsided again and brooded out the window for the next ten minutes, until another patrol car arrived, delivering the coffee and Danish. The captain cheered up at that, until the second patrol car arrived two minutes after the first, bringing more coffee and Danish. “I should have guessed,” the captain said.

When the third and fourth patrol cars with shipments of coffee and Danish arrived simultaneously, the captain roared at the radio man, “Tell them enough! Tell them to stop, tell them it’s enough, tell them I’m near the breaking point!”

“Yes, sir,” said the radio man and got to work on the phone.

Nevertheless, two more patrol cars arrived with coffee and Danish in the next five minutes. It was the captain’s belief that discipline was best maintained by never letting the ranks know when things louse up, so they had to accept and pay for and say thank you for each and every shipment, and gradually the mobile headquarters was filling up with plastic cups of coffee and brown paper bags full of Danish. The smell of the lieutenant’s wet uniform combined with the steam of diner coffee was becoming very strong and fogging up the windows.

The lieutenant pushed several wooden stirrers off his lap and said, “Captain, I have an idea.”

“God protect me,” said the captain.

“The people working in that diner don’t have any electricity or heat, sir. Frankly, they strike me as born losers. Why don’t we give them some of our extra coffee and Danish?”

The Captain considered. “I suppose,” he said judiciously, “it’s better than me getting out of the car and stamping all this stuff into the gravel. Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The lieutenant gathered up one carton — four coffees, four Danish — and carried them from the car over to the diner. He knocked on the door, and it was opened immediately by Gertrude, who still had a cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth. The lieutenant said, “We got more food delivered than we wanted. I thought maybe you could use some of —”

“We sure could,” Gertrude said. “That’s really sweet of you.”

The lieutenant handed up the carton. “If you need any more,” he said, “we’ve got plenty.”

Gertrude looked hesitant. “Well, uh …”

“Are there more than four of you? I mean it, we’re loaded down with the stuff.”

Gertrude seemed reluctant to say how many of them were in the diner — probably because she didn’t want to strain the lieutenant’s generosity. But finally she said, “There’s, uh, there’s seven of us.”

“Seven! Wow, you must really be working in there.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “We really are.”

“You must be in a hurry to open up.”

“We really want to open it up,” Gertrude said, nodding, the cigarette waggling in the corner of her mouth. “You couldn’t be more right about that.”

“I’ll get you some more,” the lieutenant said. “Be right back.”

“You’re really very kind,” she said.

The lieutenant went back to the patrol car and opened the rear door. “They can use some more,” he said and assembled two more cartons.

The captain gave him a cynical look. He said, “You’re delivering coffee and Danish to a diner, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“It doesn’t strike you as strange?”

The lieutenant paused in his shuffling of coffee containers.

“Sir,” he said, “my basic feeling about this whole business is that I’m actually in a hospital somewhere, undergoing major surgery, and this day is a dream I’m having while under the anesthetic.”

The captain looked interested. “I imagine that’s a very comforting thought,” he said.

“It is, sir.”

“Hmmmmm,” said the captain.

The lieutenant carried more coffee and Danish to the diner, and Gertrude met him at the door. “How much do we owe you?”

“Oh, forget it,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll take a free cheeseburger some time when you’re doing business.”

“If only all police officers were like you,” Gertrude said, “the world would be a far better place.”

The lieutenant had often thought the same thing himself. He gave a modest smile and scuffed his foot in a puddle and said, “Oh, well, I just try to do my best.”

“I’m sure you do. Bless you.”

The lieutenant carried his happy smile back to the patrol car, where he found the captain in a sour mood again, beetle-browed and grumpy. “Something go wrong, sir?”

“I tried that anesthetic thing of yours.”

“You did, sir?”

“I keep worrying how the operation’s going to come out.”

“I make it appendicitis, sir. There’s really no danger in that.”

The captain shook his head. “It’s just not my style, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m a man who faces reality.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I tell you this, Lieutenant. This day will end. It can’t go on forever. This day will come to an end. Some day it will.”

“Yes, sir.”

Conversation lagged for a while after that. Even with the twelve coffees and Danish the Lieutenant had given away, there had still been three sets for each man in the mobile headquarters. They hadn’t drunk all the coffee, but they’d eaten all the Danish and were now feeling somnolent and sluggish. The driver fell into a deep sleep, the captain napped, and the lieutenant kept dropping off and then waking up again with a start. The radio man never quite lost consciousness, though he did take his shoes off and rest his head against the window and hold his microphone slackly in his lap.

The morning passed slowly, with undiminished rain and no positive news in any of the infrequent crackling radio contacts from headquarters. Noontime came and went, and the afternoon began heavily to row past, and by two o’clock they were all feeling restless and cramped and irritable and uncomfortable. Their mouths tasted bad, their feet had swollen, their underwear chafed, and it had been hours since any of them had relieved themselves.

Finally, at ten past two, the captain grunted and shifted position and said, “Enough is enough.”

The other three tried to look alert.

“We’re not accomplishing anything out here,” the captain said. “We’re not mobile, we’re not in contact with anybody, we’re not getting anywhere. Driver, take us back to headquarters.”

“Yes, sir!”

As the car started forward, the lieutenant looked out at the diner one last time and wondered if the thing would actually stay in business long enough for him to get that free cheeseburger. He was sorry for the people trying to run the place, but somehow he doubted it.