Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

22

THE LYING AWAKE was bad enough, but the nightmares were worse. I spent the rest of that night in the gym, on a cot in a room also occupied by Eddie and Phil and Jerry, and every time terror drove me up out of dreams into consciousness I could only stare in wonder at those three, sleeping soggily-and in Jerry’s case noisily- through all the bombs and fires of my imagination. In sleep I was chased by long-nosed tanks with lives and minds of their own, I was captured by soldiers who turned into policemen who turned into Joy Boys on some black roof somewhere, I was shot, blown up, set fire to, set on by dogs, set every way but loose.

At seven I was up, completely unrefreshed; I’d never been so exhausted in my life. I went through breakfast like a mule who's been hit on the back of the head with a rock, and then staggered away to my own sweet cell, far from the gym, far from the cares of the world, and there slept until one in the afternoon, deep, dreamless sleep from which I emerged in sudden brand-new terror, thinking, We rob the bank today!

Today; good God. We had the laser. Max Nolan and Joe Maslocki had found the spot right out on the street where the Twin Cities Typewriter man parked his truck every day, never later than five minutes past five, and they now had a key to fit its ignition. The typewriter had been obtained, a guard uniform for Eddie Troyn was on tap, there were more than enough guns for the whole gang, and the names and addresses and home phone numbers of the principal bank employees were all written down in a notebook in Phil’s hip pocket. A surprise prison inspection, or “shakedown” as they called it, would definitely not happen today to throw a crimp in the plans, not right afer one had been performed last night. There was nothing at all to stop the robbery from happening. Today.

At five-thirty this afternoon. Four and a half hours from now. I jittered out of bed, shaking and quaking, and scurried off to the gym.

Bob Dombey was there. He and Max would be staying in the gym, minding the store as it were, while the rest of us went out to commit our double felony. If I could somehow have wangled that assignment for myself I maybe wouldn't have minded it all as much. It was the thought of actually being in the bank, a gun in my hand, terrified customers cowering before me, that turned my knees to jelly. And my stomach to jelly. And my brain to jelly.

Bob, looking as shifty-eyed and weaselish as ever, was actually in a pretty good mood. “You haven’t met my wife yet, have you?” he said.

“Eh?” In my condition, I could hardly remember that he was married. “Oh. Wife. No.”

“She’d like to meet you,” he said. “You two ought to get along, Alice is a real reader.”

My image around the prison, I think I may have mentioned, was that of educated hood. To the illiterate, all readers share a bond, a commoness that assures they will ‘get along’ with one another, regardless of the particular thing they happen to read. It’s similar to the belief among some whites that all black people know each other. To Bob’s statement, therefore, I merely said something along the lines of, “That’s nice.” While the major portion of my brain continued desperately to chew its nails.

“We’ve been thinking of having a little get-together around Christmas,” Bob told me. “Alice loves to cook for a gang, and she doesn’t have much chance since she moved up here.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“I’ll let you know pretty soon.” Then he grinned, in his hunted-weasel way, ducking his head and looking up at me as though peering out of a hole, and added, “Maybe a celebration dinner after today, huh?”

“Aaa,” I said, wildly trying to remember how to smile. “Mmm,” I said, while my lips twitched this way and that around my head. “Well, I’ve got to-” I said, and wandered away in search of some grave to fling myself into.

Ten minutes later I was in the room where the baseball equipment was stored off-season, putting a good big dollop of Vaseline inside every glove, when salvation hit me like a paper bag full of water dropped from an upstairs window. “Ah!” I said, and lifted my head to stare in sudden wonder at the light that had appeared at the end of the tunnel. Could I? I could! Delighted, I slapped my palm to my forehead and thereby covered my face with Vaseline. Drat. After I washed the stuff off-which takes forever-I went back to chat with Bob Dombey again, and to say after a minute, very casually, “Well, I guess I’ll go on through now. See you later.’’

“Good luck,” he said.

“Thanks.”

It wasn’t yet two o’clock when I crawled through the tunnel and emerged once more in the free world. Still, there was a lot to do before the bank closed, and I left the Dombey residence at the fastest possible walk, heading downtown.

I had two stores to stop at, a pharmacy and a five-and- ten. Then I closed myself in a gas station men’s room for a while to do the assembly. I was fumble-fingered and hasty, and not absolutely sure what I was doing. How could such a thing be timed with the necessary accuracy? If it happened too soon, it probably wouldn’t help. If it happened too late-I didn’t even want to think about that.

Finally I left the men’s room, with my two small packages in my jacket pockets. I walked to the bank, wrote a check for twenty-five dollars, walked around the bank a bit looking it over, cashed the check, and went out to the street. It was ten minutes to three. I proceeded to the bar called Turk’s and gave the owner back some of the money I’d taken from him with the milk box.