Cop Out

Tuesday
The Payoff

“He’s gone off his trolley,” Russ Fairhouse said. “There ain’t, isn’t any precedent for a fool stunt like this, Mrs. Malone. Can’t you do something to stop him?”

“What would you suggest?” Ellen said.

They were in the First Selectman’s office at a front window diagonally across the Green from the bank. Town hall employees were crowded in other windows peering through the vanes of the Venetian blinds. It’s like the last scene in that ghastly movie On the Beach where there’s nothing left on the main street but blowing papers. Ellen had never seen the Green so depopulated, even early Sunday mornings or Saturday nights a half hour after the movies let out. Not a soul but that cordon of state troopers around the bank and they were statues not a muscle moving they didn’t look alive. He’s got to keep his word, John you’ve got to.

“How would I know?” Selectman Fairhouse said. He was a big man running to lard with beautiful hands, he got a manicure once a week at Dotty’s Beauty Salon after hours by special appointment. “All I know is this is not right, Mrs. Malone. It ain’t legal or… hell, it ain’t moral!”

“Neither is a gangster taking a little girl and threatening to kill her.”

“But there are other ways-”

“What ways?”

“Then you approve of your husband’s action?” Fairhouse asked huffily. “I remind you, Mrs. Malone, he’s a paid employee of this town, supposed to be an officer of the law to boot. It makes the whole town look bad!”

“Approve?” Ellen said. “I’ll approve of anything that gets my baby back. Thank God for my husband is what I say. And you can take your town and you know what you can do with it.”

“He’ll go to jail for this!” the selectman said. “If he doesn’t get killed by that hood first.”

She could almost hear him add and I hope he does.

“Would you please let me alone?”

Fairhouse started to say something, changed his mind, stalked back to his desk, sat down, and viciously ripped the end off a cigar. Who wants this headache anyway. Next election they can wish it on somebody else. A lousy town cop to pull a stunt like this. It will whammy the whole administration. It’s all John Secco’s fault. The roof falls in about this and over the hill with you my friend.

Ellen was grateful for his retirement. Her brain was as busy as the Green was empty. You can’t believe your own eyes sometimes, a person finds that out. Those buildings across the Green looked like falsefronts, the whole thing was taking place on a Hollywood back lot. All it needs are a camera and a director and there they come to the background music of the noon whistle from the firehouse.

The black Chrysler sedan went past the town hall at fifteen slow-motion miles an hour.

Ellen got up on her toes and strained.

The blonde woman sat in the rear wearing the Goldilocks mask. There was just the tip of Barbara’s blue hat showing she must have my baby down on the seat oh Bibby Mama’s here. The little monster was in the front seat at the right he had a gun to the head of the driver so the driver must be Loney yes it was she could never mistake the set of his shoulders. Loney was wearing the Baby Bear mask and Furia was wearing the Papa Bear mask. What are they all wearing masks for? It must be that monster’s idea of a rib, a thumb-nose at the fuzz.

I don’t care.

Just let them be safe afterward.

The Chrysler turned left at the corner.

The Chrysler turned left and rolled to a stop on Grange just past the corner of Main, headed the wrong way on the oneway street. Papa Bear got out on the curb side and waved the Colt Trooper, he had the Walther automatic in his left hand and the hunting rifle under his left arm. He was wearing his gloves. The pockets of his Brooks Brothers suit bulged with boxes of ammunition and Malone’s belt with its picket fence of cartridges was strapped about his waist over the jacket.

A sigh like an afternoon breeze off the river went through the troopers. Papa Bear glanced at them and raised the Colt to point into the car. Driver’s seat. The breeze died.

“Okay, Malone.”

Baby Bear opened the driver’s door and slid dutifully out from behind the wheel. He came round the hood of the Chrysler and stopped a yard away from Papa Bear, glancing into the car and saying something reassuring to the child.

Papa Bear waved the Colt again and Goldilocks got out on the sidewalk, she pushed the child ahead of her without letting go, then she shut the car door and backed against it. Immediately she went into a half squat with her left arm about the little girl. In this way she was protected by the body of the car from a rear attack and by the body of the child from a frontal attack. She gripped Furia’s switchblade with the point just touching the child’s throat, it made the slightest dent in the white flesh. Not for the perfidious Lady Goldie this time the gun from the royal arsenal. But the knife would serve nicely as a substitute, every trooper eye said.

The child was in shock or they had fed her a sedative. Her lids kept drooping as she tried to keep her father in focus. The mask he was wearing seemed to confuse her.

Papa Bear looked around. He was in no hurry. His camera eye swiveled the full 360° of emptiness like a panoramic shot. It paused briefly one after another at the empty holsters of the troopers.

When he was through with the inspection he said, “Turn around.” The angle of his masked head jeered at everything.

Baby Bear turned. Papa Bear stepped up to him and touched the muzzle of the revolver to his spine at the third vertebra.

“We go in,” Papa Bear decreed. “Hup.”

They marched as if a sergeant were chanting cadence up the eight steps of the Taugus National, one behind the other, and went into the bank.

Ellen witnessed the performance through the slats of the town hall window. She saw the Chrysler pull up at the bank the wrong way, she saw Papa Bear get out, she saw her Baby Bear get out, she saw Goldilocks push Barbara onto the walk and grab her and squat with the knife against her throat. Dear Jesus even if she comes away from this alive she’ll need a psychiatrist or at least a good psychologist maybe years of therapy oh I don’t care just let her stay living.

Ellen saw Papa Bear and Baby Bear make their single-file march into the bank.

That was the beginning of the worst. Because the filming stopped. No, that was wrong, they had already shot the film, it was the projection that stopped, cold dead in the machine. The whole scene was the film including the invisible director and cameraman, they were invisibly part of it along with the visibles. The whole picture froze on the screen outside Fairhouse’s window.

Maybe I’m part of it too. And Selectman Fairhouse. And these other people. And the troopers. And the Bears. Maybe we’re all part of it, everyone and everything, the Green, the bank, the uneven rooflines of the two-story buildings north south east and west, even the sky and that sun hanging in it like a prop.

It was all frozen on the screen.

Do the images on the frozen screen know about time? Time had simply stopped along with everything else. When she heard the shots and things began moving again she glanced at her wristwatch for the sake of her sanity and saw that thirteen minutes had passed since the two Bears had marched into the bank.

Shots.

Shots?

They had been faint but sharp reports from across the Green, like a sound effect, a drumstick on the rim of a snare drum. Shot shot-shot.

Shots no.

Why would Furia be shooting oh he wouldn’t shoot Loney why should he shoot Loney Loney went over to him John Secco told me so…

“Loney.”

As the wail came from her throat Ellen saw the man in the Brooks Brothers suit and the Papa Bear mask burst out of the bank and race down the steps. He had the revolver in his gloved right hand and a bulging canvas bank bag in his left. He ran bent over, almost double.

It was funny how the troopers remained frozen on the film. Couldn’t they see him? He was in front of their noses.

Papa Bear flung the canvas bag in the direction of Goldilocks. She threw up an arm in an instinctive grab but it sailed over her head into the rear seat of the Chrysler and she yanked the door open and scrambled in clutching for it.

Papa Bear scooped up the child as if he meant to break her back.

That was when Ellen Malone heard the casting call.

Wesley Malone in the Baby Bear Mask with Furia at his heels in the Papa Bear mask marched into the bank. The pressure on Malone’s spine increased while Furia looked the situation over. But the bank was a ghost town, he could see that at a glance, no vice-presidents behind the executive desks, no tellers at the windows, no office girls in the rear, everything put away neatly. Like for Sundays.

“Wide open like a broad,” Furia said. “They follow orders good. It’s a crime.” The muzzle prodded. “Don’t you want to know what’s a crime?”

“Whatever you say,” Malone said.

“A wide-open bank. All that bread laying around. Who needs safe deposit boxes with a sweet setup like this?”

“You won’t find any money here,” Malone said.

, “What are you, on the Board of Directors?”

“I know the big squeeze, Bagshott. And Chief Secco. They’re not about to let you walk off with the assets. The cash boxes have been emptied and all the cash is in the big vault, the one with the time-lock.”

“Stay right there.” Furia edged around and got into the tellers’ section. He opened one drawer after another. He banged the last one and came back.

“I can dream, can’t I?” Furia shrugged. “Not a plugged subway token. I’ll have to make out with that twenty-four grand. Okay, fuzz buddy, where’s the safe deposit vault?”

Their steps made lonesome sounds across the floor.

On the desk before the vault lay two keys, one to the steel-barred door, the other to the safe deposit boxes.

“You know something?” Furia said. “I’m going to let you open it.” He stepped back a few feet, Colt and Walther at waist level.

Malone picked up the vault key and unlocked the steel-barred door. He swung it in and stepped aside.

“Not on your fuzz life,” Furia said. “You open the box, pal.”

Malone took the bank’s master key from the desk and went into the vault.

“You’ll need Goldie’s key, too,” Furia said. He had the key in his left glove. He holstered the automatic and jiggled the key down into his palm. He tossed the key to Malone and leaned against the entrance to the vault. “Box number 535.”

Malone began looking for Box 535.

“I’m getting a charge out of this, you know that?” Furia said. “I mean watching a cop pull a bank job. Never thought you’d be doing a no-no like this, huh, Malone? Makes you like one of the bad guys, know what I mean?”

“Here it is.” Malone inserted the bank’s key into the left keyhole and turned it. Then he used Goldie’s key in the right-hand keyhole. He pulled. The narrow door swung open. He drew out the flat black box and turned to Furia.

Furia was watching him with what was surely enjoyment. Behind Furia stood John Secco. John Secco’s arm was raised. It held a billy club.

The billy club landed over Furia’s ear with a waterlogged thunk. Everything fell, the Colt Trooper, the hunting rifle, Furia, his hat. The Colt and the rifle struck the floor first. Secco stepped over Furia’s body and picked them up. While Malone was getting his mouth in working order Secco plucked the Walther from the holster. He tossed the three weapons to the desk outside the vault and removed Furia’s mask. He took a black cloth out of his pocket, held it by opposite corners, and twirled it several times. He stuffed the fat part in Furia’s mouth and tied the ends three times at the back of Furia’s neck.

Then he straightened up and they stared at each other.

“I thought you could use some help, Wes,” the chief said. He sounded quite serious, as at morning report.

Malone tore off the Baby Bear mask. He tried to speak and failed. Finally he made it. “You know what you’ve just done with your help, John? You’ve cut Barbara’s throat. You had no right, you had no goddamned right. I ought to kill you for this.”

“Kill me later,” Secco said. “We’ve got Furia in the bag, now the problem is the woman outside, there’s a way it can be pulled off or I’d never have started this. You’re not a whole lot bigger than Furia, Wes, especially with these built-up heels he wears. Put on his clothes and mask and hat and the gun belt and the rest. The clothes will be a tight fit but with his mask on and if you run crouched over it ‘11 happen so fast the woman won’t have time to realize it isn’t him.” He stooped over the unconscious gunman. “Take your clothes off while I strip him. Don’t stand there, Wes. Get cracking.”

Malone stood there.

“You going to stand there till she gets suspicious? Undress.”

He found himself undressing at the same fast tempo at which Secco was undressing Furia. At first all he could think of was the process. The way you do it first the jacket then the pants then the shirt. Like at night but you keep your shoes on, both pairs are black, maybe she won’t notice, I pray she won’t notice. That my feet are bigger. Then the other thoughts started in, like why am I doing this and it’s all wrong. Or is it. I made my bed and I was lying in it and along comes John Secco and pulls it out from under me. I’ll kill him, I meant it, anything goes wrong. But then why do I feel groovy all of a sudden like I’m swinging for the first time in my life. Like we’re socking it to ‘em.

Hang on Bibby baby!

“We’ll take no chances, Wes,” Chief Secco was saying rapidly as he helped Malone into Furia’s clothes. “He fired three shots into Tom Howland, he fired three quick shots at Sergeant Lombard this morning and another three into Hinch, three quick shots one and two-three seem to be his style, so I’ll do it the same, three quick shots one and two-three in here when you’re ready. When this Goldie sees you in Furia’s getup running out of the bank after the shots like with the money-I’ve got a canvas bag for you stuffed with newspaper-she’s got to think Furia killed you in here, which he damn well might have. So it’ll ring true to her. Throw the fake money bag at her, over her head, she’s a greedy one, she’ll let go of Barbara and make a grab for it. Then all you have to do is snatch Barbara up and we’re home free.”

“The troopers, they’ll think I’m Furia-”

“No, they won’t. They won’t interfere till you’ve got Barbara in your arms. Then they’ll jump the woman. The troopers have their orders about this, they know my plan, they’re carrying concealed weapons. It’ll be rough on Ellen, Wes, she’s watching from Fairhouse’s office, I did my best but I couldn’t keep her away, for a few minutes she’s going to think you’re shot. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s going to have to be. It’s got to look right.” He yanked Furia’s arms around to his back and snapped handcuffs on the slim wrists. “Just so our hood friend doesn’t come to and spoil it. Let me look at you.”

Malone adjusted the Papa Bear mask.

“You’ll make it. All set?”

He nodded and they left the vault. Malone slapped the Walther into his holster and picked up his Colt Trooper, welcome home. Secco went into a drawer of the desk and dug out a fat canvas bag. Malone took it.

“We go,” Malone said in his old voice, and he sprinted for the door.

The man in the Brooks Brothers suit and the Papa Bear mask burst out of the bank and raced down the steps. He had the revolver in his gloved right hand and a bulging canvas bank bag in his left. He ran bent over, almost double.

The troopers did not move.

Papa Bear tossed the canvas bag at Goldilocks. She flung up an arm in an instinctive grab but the bag sailed over her head into the rear seat of the Chrysler and she yanked the door open and scrambled in clutching for it.

Malone scooped up his child and the troopers came un-glued. Six of them leaped up the steps of the bank and vanished. The rest swarmed over the car. Each man had materialized a hand gun, Malone did not know from where and he did not care. He was too busy making a fuss over Barbara and wondering why she was shrinking from him, he had forgotten that he was wearing the Papa Bear mask. “It’s all right, baby, it’s me, daddy, don’t you remember?”-a stupid thing to say but it was a time for stupidities like that, at least Barbara seemed to think so. At the familiar voice she stopped staring the unbelieving stare he had come to dread and made a pleased sound and slipped her arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder as she always did when he carried her up to bed.

Goldie Vorshek was staring at him just as Barbara had, unbelievingly, but as if she could not trust her ears.

She put up no resistance when they took Furia’s switchblade away from her. But when they pulled her out of the Chrysler and reached for the still-closed money bag Goldie hugged it to her breast with both arms like a little girl protecting her dollie and tried to kick and knee every trooper within range. She had two of them writhing on the sidewalk before she was subdued.

Malone watched her capture like the Great Stone Face.

She’s the one fed a nine-year-old the booze.

I hope you burn.

That was when the Rams’ defensive line hit him.

Ellen tore her child from his grasp as he staggered and transferred Bibby to the other arm and with her small fist dealt him a blow on the chest that landed like a sledge. Before he could yelp uncle she closed in on him again and made a vicious swipe at his mask. The mask ripped and it fell apart.

“Loney?”

She began to cry.

“It’s all right for heaven’s sake,” Malone said peevishly, “I forgot about the mask. Wait till I catch my breath. You hit like Rosey Grier.”

“I made you bleed blood” Ellen wept, “I’ve got to cut my nails. Let’s go into Sampson’s and get it cleaned. Oh, hell, they’re closed, aren’t they? I left my purse in the town hall like an idiot. Don’t you have a hanky? What are you doing in the monster’s clothes, you look ridiculous. When I saw you run out like that… in his mask… How did you do it, Loney? It was wonderful. Was it John’s idea? I’ll bet it was John’s idea. Oh, there’s John, it was. But you were wonderful too, Loney… “

“And don’t call me Loney!” Malone shouted. “I don’t like that goddam name! I never liked it!”

“Why, Loney, I mean-Wes? You never told me.”

“I’m telling you now! I hate it.”

“Yes, Loney, I mean… Bibby darling, it’s all right. Mama and daddy aren’t fighting.”

She mothered her child while he stripped off the fragments of Papa Bear mask and threw them away in disgust. He felt around in Furia’s pockets until he located a handkerchief. It looked antiseptically clean. For some reason this riled Malone. He applied the handkerchief to his wound still churned up.

After John Secco came the troopers, out of the bank, bringing Furia. Blood was still coming down Furia’s face and he was stumbling along like a robot with a gasket missing, they had to half carry him. His underwear was too big for him and his hairy shanks and bandylegs were pimpled with cold. A trooper came running up with something that looked like a horse blanket and threw it around him. Furia clutched it to him, shivering. His bugged eyes passed over Malone, Ellen, Barbara without recognition, it was Goldie Vorshek they were hunting. They located her in the grip of three troopers in the Chrysler and in a flash he became Man-Mountain Furia, hero of his dreams, too-big underwear, skinniness, goose pimples and all, in a last struggle for status. He kicked and bit and butted and threw himself from side to side with troopers hanging on to his arms and legs, spinning out an endless line of dirty words, the spin whirled up to a screech, it was laughable and somehow sad, too. A trooper finally ended his nonsense with a well-placed sap and they pushed a cooled-off bad man into a state police car, threw the blanket in after him, and sped off. Another police car pulled up and they transferred a sullen Goldie Vorshek to it and then they were gone, too, along with Chief Secco, who gave the Malones a neighborly wave.

Leaving Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Malone and daughter on the empty corner of the empty street facing the empty Green. It never looked so empty, not even when the film stopped cold.

But then Wallace L. Bagshott creeps through the entrance to the upper floor of the bank building into the lobby, he’s been hiding upstairs in Judge Trudeau’s law office. He peers out at the Malones, shakes his head, hurries into his bank, and locks the doors. He’s headed straight for the bottle of Canadian Club parked in the bottom drawer of his desk that he thinks nobody knows about.

Jerry Sampson opens the doors of his drug store and sticks his head out timidly. He’s been hiding behind his prescription counter. He waves over at the Malone family and then wipes his balding head as though it were an August day.

Arthur McArthur Sanford in his Nehru jacket and oriental carpet slippers reopens the stationery and book store, he keeps a running stock of at least three dozen books on display behind an amber translucency, Arthur is a one-man committee to push culture in New Bradford and not getting very far.

Lew Adams with his Theodore Roosevelt mustache preceding him comes out of nowhere and begins taking down the ironwork in front of his jewelry shop. He keeps looking over his shoulder.

On Grange Street running all the way down to Freight stores are reopening, the proprietors were on the premises all the time.

Beyond the Green First Selectman Russ Fairhouse bursts out of the town hall followed by a crowd, they stream over the grass past the bandstand that hasn’t heard a tootle in forty years but it’s kept in a nice dress of paint for old times’ sake, ditto the World War I tank.

Toward the Malone family.

A herd of cars comes running down Main Street from the north alongside the Green to the accompaniment of bawling horns. Cars shoot up to curbs, people pile out even on the Positively No Parking At Any Time side.

Headed for the Malones.

Racing across the bridge from the other side of the Tone-keneke come Young Tru (Hyatt), Edie Golub, old Ave El-wood, and Marie Griggs (she’s Ave’s night countergirl but she’s been filling in today for a day girl who called in sick).

Seems like the whole town’s massing, all sizes and shapes and ages (including the Don James family and New Bradford’s nine other families of color, they’re beginning to move in and some people are getting worried). Including Joe Barron of the Army-Navy Store who’s been trying to organize a Human Relations group, he’s pretty new in town, and Marie’s boy friend Jimmy Wyckoff, and fat Dotty from the beauty salon, and Father Weil striding along in his cassock and collar (there’s really nothing going on at the Romish church this time of day on a Tuesday but the good Father has a flair for drama, it keeps the Church in the public eye, like that’s why clergymen in films are always Roman or at least Episcopalian, the Episcoloopians’ high church boys wear turned-around collars too, the Prottier ministers are the forgotten clergy)… the whole town has come out for the tar-and-feathering or the bazaar or the auction or whatever it is that’s going on. And they’re all bearing down on ex-Officer or is it still Officer Wesley Malone and his girls asking questions, how did they find out so fast, you can’t keep anything hushed up in New Bradford but this one breaks all the speed records, while Ellen drinks it up like a thirsty grunt after a dry duty and Malone watches her with wonder, to listen to Ellen chattering away you’d never know what she’s just been through.

And Malone is feeling a sneaky glow himself. Like when he took a couple too many belts at the wedding and they spent the first three hours of their honeymoon night in the motel bathroom while Ellen held his head over the toilet bowl. Malone is feeling the sneaky glow that you feel like when you have first dug the Sermon on the Mount or some of that Golden Rule stuff the priests and ministers and rabbis are always spouting on the desert air, or learned about no man being an island or however it was the guy said it, or in other words when you have joined the human race.

It is not late enough in the day for old Sol to be going down over the People which would sort of symbolize Wes Malone’s sneaky glow, it is still barely past the halfway mark between sunrise and sunset.

So we just count our blessings and fade out.