Bank Shot

9

Herman X spread black caviar on black bread and handed it across the coffee table to Susan. “I know I have expensive tastes,” he said, flashing his frankest smile at his guests, “but the way I think, we pass this way but once.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” George Lachine said. He and his wife Linda were the token whites at this dinner party, Susan and the other three couples all being black. George was in OEO somewhere — not in fund disbursement, unfortunately — but it was Linda that Herman had his eye on. He still hadn’t made up his mind whether he would finish this evening in bed with Linda Lachine or Rastus Sharif, whether he felt tonight straight or gay, and the suspense was delicious. Also the fact that neither of them had shared his bed before, so it would be a new adventure in any case.

Susan gave George an arch look and said, “I know your kind. Grab all you can get.” Herman thought it unlikely that Susan really wanted George; she was probably just trying to make Linda angry, since she knew Herman’s intentions in that area.

And she was succeeding. While George looked flustered and flattered, Linda gave Susan a tight-lipped look of hate. But she was too cool, Herman noticed, to say anything right now. That pleased him; people being themselves always pleased him. “A dinner party,” he had once said, “should be nothing but undercurrents.”

This one was. Of the ten people present, practically everybody had been to bed at one time or another with everybody else — excluding the Lachines, of course, who were in process of being drawn in right now.

And himself and Rastus. How had he let that fail to happen for so long? Herman glanced over at Rastus now and saw him indolently whispering something to Diane, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Rastus Sharif; he’d chosen the name himself, of course, as representative of the full range of his heritage, both slave and African, and in doing so had made himself a walking insult to practically everybody he met. Black and white alike had trouble bringing themselves to call him “Rastus.” Looking at him, Herman thought the delay had probably been caused by his own admiration and envy; how could he go to bed with the only person on earth he didn’t feel superior to?

Mrs. Olaffson suddenly appeared in the living-room doorway. “Telephone, sir.”

He sat up. “My call from the Coast?” He was aware of the conversations halting around him.

Mrs. Olaffson knew her part: “Yes, sir.”

“Be right there.” Standing, he said, “Sorry, people, this may take a while. Try to have fun without me.”

They made ribald comments in return, and he grinned as he loped from the room. He had given it out that he was employed in “communications,” sometimes making it seem as though he meant book publishing and sometimes motion pictures. Vague but glamorous, and no one ever inquired more closely.

Mrs. Olaffson had preceded him to the kitchen, and on the way through he said, “Study door locked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mind the fort.” He patted her pink cheek, went out the apartment’s rear door and down the service stairs two at a time.

As usual, Mrs. Olaffson’s timing had been perfect. Just as Herman stepped out onto the sidewalk of Central Park West the grimy green-and-white Ford rolled in to the curb by the fire hydrant. Herman pulled the rear door open and slid in beside Van; as he shut the door, Phil, the driver, started the car moving again.

“Here you go,” Van said and handed him his mask and gun.

“Thanks,” he said and held them in his lap as the Ford headed south toward midtown.

There was no conversation in the car, not even from the fourth man, Jack, who was the newest, on only his second caper. Driving along, Herman looked out the side window and thought about his dinner party, the people there, the way he would spend the latter part of the night, and the menu for dinner.

He had planned the menu with the greatest of care. The cocktails to begin had been Negronis, the power of the gin obscured by the gentleness of vermouth and Campari. The caviar and pitted black olives to nosh on while drinking. Then, at the table, the meal itself would start with black bean soup, followed by poached fillet of black sea bass and a nice bottle of Schwartzekatz. For the entree, a Black Angus steak sautéed in black butter and garnished with black truffles, plus a side dish of black rice, washed down with a good Pinot Noir. For dessert, black-bottom pie and coffee. For after dinner drinks, a choice of Black Russians or blackberry brandy, with bowls of black walnuts to munch on again in the living room.

Phil pulled to the curb on Seventh Avenue in the upper forties. Herman and Van and Jack got out and walked away around the corner. Ahead of them, the Broadway theater marquees shouldered one another to be seen.

Ahead on the right was the new rock musical Justice! It had been panned on the road, it had come into town fully expecting to be a disaster, it had opened last night, and every last New York critic had given it a rave. The line for advance sale tickets had been around the block all day; the producers hadn’t expected the cash in-flow and hadn’t prepared for it, so the day’s receipts were spending the night in the theater safe. Well, part of the night. One of the brothers in the chorus had passed the word to the Movement, and the Movement had quickly assigned Herman and Phil and Van and Jack. They’d met late this afternoon, looked over the brothers’ maps of the interior of the theater, worked out their plot, and here they were.

One usher stood in the outer lobby. He was short and stocky and wore a dark-blue uniform. He gave Herman and Van and Jack a supercilious look as they came in through the outer doors and said, “Can I help you?”

“You can turn around,” Van said and showed him a gun. “Or I can blow your head off.”

“Good Christ,” the usher said and stepped back into the doors. He also put his hand to his mouth and blanched.

“Now, that’s what I call white,” Herman said. His own gun remained in his pocket, but he had taken out the mask and was putting it on. It was a simple black mask, the kind the Lone Ranger wears.

“Turn around”, Van said.

“Better do it,” Herman said. “I’m gentle, but he’s mean.”

The usher turned around. “What do you want? Do you want my wallet? You don’t have to hurt me. I won’t do any —”

“Oh, be quiet,” Van said. “We’re all going inside and turn left and go up the stairs. You first. Don’t be cute, because we’re right behind you.”

“I won’t be cute. I don’t want to be —”

“Just walk,” Van said. He gave off such an aura of weary professionalism that his victims almost always fell all over themselves to do what he wanted; not wanting to expose themselves as amateurs to his jaundiced eye.

The usher walked. Van put away his gun and donned his mask. Jack and Herman were already masked, but a casual observer watching them walk across the dark rear of the theater behind the usher wouldn’t have realized they had masks on.

A herd of people onstage were shouting a song: “Freedom means I got to be, I got to be, I got to be, Freedom means I got to be. Freedom means you got to be, you got to be …”

The stairs were carpeted in dark red and curved to the right. At the top was the loge, and Van poked the usher to make him move to the right, behind the seats and through another door and up a narrow flight of stairs that wasn’t carpeted at all.

In the room were six people. Two women and a man were counting money at tables with adding machines. Three men were wearing the uniform of a private protective service, including holstered pistols. Van stuck his foot around the usher’s and gave him a shove as they entered the room, so the usher cried out and went sprawling. It distracted everyone long enough for Van and Jack and Herman to line up in a row inside the door, guns in their hands and masks on their faces, establishing that they were already in control.

“Hands up,” Van said. “That means you, Grandpa,” to one of the guards. “I haven’t shot a senior citizen in three months. Don’t make me spoil my record.”

It sometimes seemed to Herman that Van leaned on people because he wanted them to give him an excuse to shoot them, but most of the time he realized that Van was playing a deeper game than that. He leaned hard so people would think he was trying to goad them, so they would think he was a bad-ass killer just barely in control of himself, and the result was that they were always just as nice as pie. Herman didn’t know Van’s entire history, but he did know there’d never been any shooting on any job the two of them had done together.

Nor would there be on this one. The three guards gave each other sheepish looks and put their hands up, and Jack came around to take their pistols away from them. Van produced two shopping bags from under his jacket, and while he held a gun on the seven civilians in the room — the usher had come up holding his nose, but it wasn’t bleeding — Herman and Jack dumped cash money into the two bags. They put crumpled paper on top, and Herman glanced almost longingly at the safe in the corner. He was a lockman — that was his specialty — he could open safes better than Jimmy Valentine. But this safe was already standing open, and there was nothing in it of any value anyway. He was along simply as a yegg this time, part of the team.

Well, it was for the Cause. Still, it would have been nice if there’d been a safe around to open.

Using the victims’ ties and socks and shoelaces and belts, all seven were quickly tied up and left in a neat row on the floor. Then Jack unscrewed the phone from its connection on the wall.

Van said, “What the hell you doing? Just yank the cord out of the wall. Didn’t you ever see any movies?”

“I need an extension in the bedroom,” Jack said. He put the phone on top of the crumpled papers in one of the shopping bags.

Van shook his head, but didn’t say anything.

When they left, they locked the door behind themselves and trotted down the narrow stairs to pause for a second behind the door leading to the loge. They could hear the chorus ripping through another song: “I hate bigots! Dig it! Dig it!”

“The line we’re waiting for,” Van said, “is ‘Love everybody, you bastards.’”

Herman nodded, and all three listened some more. When the line sounded, they pushed the door open, walked through, turned left and headed back downstairs.

The timing was perfect. As they came to the foot of the stairs the curtain came down on Act One, and people started up the aisle for a smoke break. The three men pulled their masks off and went through the lobby doors just ahead of the theatergoers. They crossed the lobby, went out to the sidewalk, and the Ford was half a block away to their left, coming along behind a slow-cruising cab.

“God damn it,” Van said. “What’s the matter with Phil’s timing?”

“He probably got stuck at a red light,” Herman said.

The Ford slipped by the cab and stopped at their feet. They slid in, the sidewalk behind them filled with smokers, and Phil drove them casually but firmly away from there.

The two shopping bags were in the back with Herman and Jack — Van was up front now — and every time they went over a pothole the damn phone tinkled, which began to drive Herman up the wall. He was a compulsive phone answerer, and there was no way to answer this phone.

Also, the money was getting to him. He was glad to give his expertise to the Movement, help the Movement cover its expenses in the time-honored fashion of the IRA, but at times he could feel his palm itching to hold onto some of the cash he got for them this way. As he’d told his guests a little earlier tonight, he had expensive tastes.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he had some private scores going, but it had been almost a year since he’d been involved in a non-political robbery, and the money from that last caper was just about gone. He needed something soon, or he’d be eating that black bread without the caviar.

They were heading up Central Park West when Phil said, “Do I hear a phone? I keep thinking I hear a phone.”

Van said, “Jack stole their phone.”

Herman could see Phil frowning as he drove. “He stole their phone? Why? Just to be mean?”

“I need an extension for my bedroom,” Jack said. “Lemme see if I can get it to be quiet.” He took it out of the bag and held it in his lap, and it didn’t tinkle as much after that.

Jack having moved the phone had dislodged some of the crumpled paper, and Herman could see green down in there. A hundred dollars, he thought, for expenses. But there was no point in it; a hundred dollars wouldn’t come near his expenses.

They let him off across the street from his building. They headed on uptown, and Herman sprinted across the street and inside. He went around to the service elevator, rode it up to his floor, and pushed the 1 button to send it back down again when he got off. He entered his kitchen and Mrs. Olaffson said, “Everything’s all right.”

“Good.”

“They’re getting drunk.”

“Very good. You can serve any time.”

“Yes, sir.”

He walked through the apartment to the living room and noted the shifts that had taken place in his absence. Several of them, but primarily involving George and Linda Lachine.

George and Susan were sitting together now, George with a rather fatuous smile on his face while Susan talked to him, and Linda was standing over on the opposite side of the room, trying to look as though she were admiring the W. C. Fields print.

Rastus and Diane were still together, Rastus now with his hand on Diane’s leg. The tinkling telephone and the reminder of his money worries had put Herman in a bad mood and left him feeling unable to cope with the complexities that Rastus would have to offer. So it was heterosexual time; why not?

First he had to make some general comments to the general group, who greeted his return with comments about how long he’d been away. “You know those people,” he said with a dismissing wave of the hand. “They can’t do anything on their own, not a thing.”

“Problems?” Foster asked. He had come with Diane but seemed uninterested in leaving with her.

“Nothing they can’t handle by themselves,” he said and gave everybody a brisk grin as he rounded the coffee table and headed for Linda.

But he didn’t get there. Mrs. Olaffson appeared again, in a rerun, complete with the same dialogue: “Telephone, sir.”

Herman looked at her, for just a second too bewildered to speak. He couldn’t say, “My call from the Coast?” because that was all over now. He very nearly said, “We’ve done that bit,” but stopped himself in time. Finally, out of desperation, he said, “Who is it?”

“He just said it was a friend, sir.”

“Listen,” Rastus drawled in that Southern-cracker voice he liked to use when irritated, “ain’t we never gonna eat?”

“All right,” Herman said. To Rastus, to Mrs. Olaffson, to everybody. “I’ll make this one fast,” he promised grimly, strode from the room, went down the hall, and bashed his nose painfully when he turned the knob on the study door without stopping and the door turned out still to be locked. “God damn!” he said, his eyes tearing and his nose smarting. Holding his nose — he reminded himself of that usher — he trotted around through the kitchen and into the study that way. Dropping into the director’s chair, he picked up the receiver and said, “Yes!”

“Hello, Herman?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Who’s this?”

“Kelp.”

Herman’s spirits suddenly lifted. “Well, hello,” he said.

“Been a long time.”

“You sound like you got a cold.”

“No, I just hit my nose.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Herman said. “What’s happening?”

“Depends,” Kelp said. “You available?”

“Never better.”

“This is still a maybe.”

“Which is better than a nothing,” Herman said.

“That’s true,” Kelp said with some surprise, as though he’d never thought that out before. “You know the 0. J. Bar?”

“Sure.”

“Tomorrow night, eight-thirty.”

Herman frowned. There was a screening he’d been invited to … No. As he’d told his guests, he had expensive tastes, and as he’d told Kelp, a maybe was better than a nothing. “I'll be there,” he said.

“See you.”

Herman hung up and reached for a Kleenex. Smiling, he wiped the tears from his eyes, then carefully unlocked the study door and went out to the hall, where Mrs. Olaffson greeted him with “Dinner is ready, sir.”

“And so am I,” he said.