Murder in Mount Holly

9

They finally settled on a bank robbery. “It’s the logical thing to do when you stop and consider that I can’t even cash my U.S. Army pension check, the place is so loaded with coons and commies,” Mr. Gibbon explained. It would take some planning, but they would be able to do it. The robbery of a communist bank would prove to the world that old folks still had a lot of spunk left.

The robbery became all the more important after Herbie passed his army physical. He was due to leave for boot camp in four days.

“You’re a very lucky man,” Mr. Gibbon said to Herbie.

Herbie thought otherwise. He didn’t want to go. But he didn’t know why he didn’t want to go. At first he thought of Kant-Brake. The place was full of soldiers. They weren’t bad. But there was something missing, and when Herbie finally thought of what was missing, a chill shot through the holes in his bones. Death was missing from Kant-Brake. That’s what the army made him think of: death.

“This is a time for courage. This is a time when men of all races and creeds must join hands and make the world a safe place. This is not a time for us to waver. This is not a time for us to lose our nerve. This is a time for us to be strong,” the president had said in his now-legendary “This Is a Time” speech to Congress. Charlie Gibbon had wept.

For Herbie this was not a time to go into the army. Be strong? He had seen all those people carrying signs.; the boys with the bushy hair and the woollen shirts; the girls with no make-up and necklaces made out of macaroni. They didn’t want war. Herbie had seen them dragged, kicking and screaming, into police vans. They didn’t think that this was a time to be strong. But when they mentioned God, Herbie thought of nothing. He just didn’t want to go. He had no reason for refusing. He would have felt foolish with a sign. A beard would have made his face pimply.

And then, the day before he was to go to boot camp, he thought of his reason for not wanting to go into the army. I’m afraid, he thought: I don’t want to die, I don’t want to throw bombs at people and shoot guns, I don’t want to sleep in the jungle, march around in the mud and get shot at. Herbie remembered how quickly the sweet old Miss Ball had turned into an angry, cursing old bag. There was Mr. Gibbon’s buddy that didn’t say “sir” and got the living stuffings beaten out of him. There was Skeeter’s pal, the wise guy, that had to be shot because wise guys lose wars for you.

Dying is easy, Herbie thought. So I go and get killed. My mother watches television. Mr. Gibbon crawls all over her, folds his paper bags in peace. Miss Ball and Juan have their jollies without the secret police breaking down the door. I die and life goes on in Mount Holly.

Herbie didn’t hate anyone. He had even stopped wishing for his mother’s death. Mr. Gibbon was in charge now. The care and feeding of Herbie’s mother was in Mr. Gibbon’s hands. Herbie could stay at Kant-Brake a while longer and make a few extra dollars. But the thought of going into the army scared him limp. Still, he knew that he would be laughed at if he said that his reason for not wanting to go in was strictly that he was chicken-livered. Not even the bushy people that carried the signs on the sidewalk would listen to him. The soldiers certainly wouldn’t listen. Herbie pictured himself going up to a general and saying, “I can’t fight, sir. I’m scared.” The picture faded. A boy with a sign and hair curling all over his horn-rimmed glasses like weeds appeared. Herbie said to the boy, “I don’t want to go into the army either. I’m scared.” Laughter from the general behind the desk and the boy on the sidewalk spattered Herbie. If you were scared you were no good.

So he did not say he was scared. He told no one. He merely sat around the house thinking, my death will keep that television going. If I don’t die and someone else dies I’ll come back and watch it. At least I have a home to come back to.

The Kant-Brake employees gave Herbie a knife (“Get a few for us, Herbie”) and a Kant-Brake Front Lines First Aid Kit, every detail done in perfect scale. A memento. General Digby Soulless slapped Herbie on the back and said that he had gone into the army when he was half Herbie’s age. He added, “This is the real thing, boy. Get the lead out of your pants.”

On the day Herbie left for boot camp Mr. Gibbon told him how much he envied him. Beans tasted so good cooked in a foxhole. He told him how to creep under barbed wire and bursting guns, how to clean his mess kit while on bivouac (with sand), how to cure rot and so forth. He presented Herbie with a new comb and told Herbie about his aunt. He told Herbie, in a whisper, not to worry about his mom. Mr. Gibbon would take care of her. “Confidentially, she’s fat and sassy, and that’s just the way I like ’em.”

Miss Ball said it thrilled her to know that Herbie was actually going to war. She had read about so many of “our boys” going off, never to be heard from again. Now she could say that she knew one.

Everyone was happy for Herbie and wished him well. His mother was on the verge of tears. She stayed on the verge. She told Herbie very calmly to be a good boy and mind his manners when he got to the war.

Herbie, numb with fear, promised he would. He noticed at the railroad station that their cab held four suitcases instead of two.

“Half the luggage is mine,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

“Are you coming along?”

“Goodness, no!” said Mrs. Gneiss. “I’m moving into your room at Miss Ball’s. I can be near Charlie that way. I just sold the house.”

Herbie nodded goodbye, had his picture taken with the rest of the Mount Holly draftees and the chairman of the Mount Holly draft board, and then joined the mob of boys in the car reserved for them. Herbie sat next to the window and looked at the three old people on the platform waving their hankies.

“Smile, Herbie,” his mother said.

“He looks scared to death,” Mr. Gibbon said.

“It takes all kinds,” Miss Ball said.

10

A dusty twenty-five-watt bulb flickered in Miss Ball’s dining-room. The less light the better, they had all decided. The three of them sat around the large mahogany table. Mr. Gibbon was wearing his khakis. His pistol was strapped on. In the dim light of the room the faces of the three people looked even older than they were, bloodless, almost ghoulish. Mr. Gibbon was doing all the talking. Only a few of his fifteen teeth were visible and his mouth seemed latched like a dummy’s. His whole chin gabbled up and down.

“It’s all relative,” he was saying. “Even though it doesn’t look on the up and up if you say, we gotta rob a bank and we may have to shoot somebody to do it right, it’s okay in this case. The country is at stake, and we’re the only ones that realize it. Herbie’s gone now to do his bit. It’s up to us to do our bit even if the only place we can do it is right here in Mount Holly. It’s the enemy within we’re after. The ones right here grinning at us in our own backyard, as Miss Ball rightly said. It’s all relative. Why, I know what it’s like to be an American. You take your average American. He can’t find his ass with both hands, can he? Bet your life he can’t. It’s all relative. A commie bank is right here in our midst picking our pockets. And what do we do? We rob that bank right down to the last cent, and if we get any lip from the You-Know-Whos we blast ’em.”

Mrs. Gneiss interrupted. “I hate to mention this,” she said, “but won’t it be against the law to do this? I agree with you one hundred percent that something’s got to be done — why, if the communists ran this country we’d starve in two days. But there’s the law to think about. .”

“Let me remind you, Toots, that the law you’re so worried about is the law that’s made by the You-Know-Whos for the You Know-Whos. It’s not made for decent people like us. The law is made by coons. You got any objections against breaking the coon law? You don’t think decent folk should break the coon law? When we rob this bank we’ll be heroes. People will be brought to their senses. We’ll be doing our country a turn and making the world safe for good government, small government. Now anybody knows that it’s not legal to rob a bank. But is it legal for some bastard with dark skin and a party card, all niggered-up with fancy clothes, to walk into your own bank and put his fingers all over your money? If that’s legal, then what do you call it when decent people want to set an example for their country? Okay, call it illegal if you want. It’s all relative. But I’ll tell you something: it broke my heart to fight the Germans. I was in that war and, Goddamit, I couldn’t help but think that they knew what they were doing all along. I knew it in my heart. I said to myself, CharIie, it’s all relative. .”

“I’m not being an old sceptic,” said Miss Ball, “but when we get the money, what do we do with it? I mean, it won’t be ours, now will it?”

Mr. Gibbon shook his head in impatience. He had the feeling he wasn’t being understood. “We’re not going to steal the damn money. We’re just going to transfer it. I suppose we could give it to our favorite charities. Personally, I’d like to see a company like Kant-Brake, a company that’s got a heart and thinks about the country, get a little of the dough. I’d like to see the V.F.W. get a little, the Boy Scouts a little, the White Citizens Council a little — spread it around, you see? Lots of people are entitled to it. We’ll be fair. .”

“I’d like to see the D. A.R. get a little bit. They deserve it. They’re dedicated.”

Mrs. Gneiss did not name her favorite charity. She had some reservations about the robbery. It sounded like a lot of work. Give the You-Know-Whos a few swift kicks. They’d learn. Why rob a bank? And, if they went through with it, it seemed only fair that they themselves should be entitled to some of the cash. She thought of truckloads of Hershey bars, gallons of vanilla ice cream, a new television and, in general, goodies in return for their pains. But she kept silent.

“So it’s settled. We knock off the bank and in the process we might have to break a few eggs — that’s how you make omelettes, eh? I’ve got my old trusty.45.”

“You mean you might shoot your gun?” Miss Ball asked, her eyebrows popping up.

“Right,” said Mr. Gibbon. “How do you like them apples?”

Information was needed. Plans had to be made. The next two months were spent poring over detective novels and thrillers, watching spy movies, preparing disguises, masks, and learning to pick up items without leaving fingerprints. Miss Ball was in charge of disguises, Mr. Gibbon had the novels, Mrs. Gneiss had television robbery-movies. Mrs. Gneiss watched all the programs on TV just the same, so it was no extra trouble. It just meant changing channels once in a while. When a detective story was over on one channel, another was starting on another channel. She flicked the knob and settled back with her food.

Mr. Gibbon continued working at Kant-Brake. He was excited about the robbery — it compared favorably with his best experiences in the army. He read the pulp thrillers during the lunch hour and earned the title of “professor” for doing so. The other employees credited the reading and contentment to “Charlie’s new lady-friend.”

At the end of two months they met again, and this time used the stump of a candle for light. They had a map of Mount Holly in front of them. The Mount Holly Trust Company was marked with an X, and an escape route plotted out on it with one of Miss Ball’s E-Z Mark crayons, which she had cleverly snatched from the kindergarten.

Plans were going well, said Mr. Gibbon. They had picked the masks they were going to use, the gloves and special shoes. And they had the escape route decided in advance. There was only one problem. They didn’t know where the safe was. They had no floor plan of the bank.

“Oh, shucks!” said Miss Ball. “How can we rob a bank if we don’t know where the money is?”

“But the employees know,” said Mr. Gibbon.

“A lot of good that does us,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

“Now just keep your shirts on,” said Mr. Gibbon. He explained his plan. What they would do was kidnap one of the bank guards, a white one, and beat the stuffings out of him unless he told them where the safe was. First, of course, they would divulge their plan. But if he didn’t want to cooperate they would have to beat him up. He would be able to tell them where the safe was, the strongboxes, the money, the keys, the emergency alarms. “We’ll have to kidnap him. It’s the only way.”

“It’s for the good of the country,” said Mrs. Gneiss.

Mr. Gibbon said that it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get one of the guards. They could lure him to Miss Ball’s house. The only thing they needed was a decoy. They had to find a decoy. .

Her face chalky with make-up, her cheeks rouged with circles, her lips gleaming with the scarlet goo of nearly one whole tube of lipstick, her hair a stiff mass of tight curls, her round body solid with corsets and fixtures, Miss Ball waddled to the back door of the Mount Holly Trust Company and looked for a bank guard to lure.

It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was very hot. This caused the make-up to run a bit and get very sticky. Beads of perspiration appeared at Miss Ball’s hair-line, behind her ears and on her neck.

There seemed to be no one to lure. She could see people walking back and forth inside the bank, accountants and tellers. They had little or nothing to do with the storing of money. They just collected it. But no one came out of the back door.

Miss Ball rather enjoyed standing there. Like a siren, she could lure anyone. It gave her a feeling of power. She knew the attraction that a woman’s flesh had for men. They couldn’t resist it. How many times had Juan, on the pretext of checking the cans of floor wax, covered her with rancid kisses in the broom closet? He couldn’t stand it any longer. She understood the urge and let him paw her and grunt. Duty meant nothing. History was full of the stories of men who had given in to the low murmur of beckoning flesh. Fortunes, whole countries had been lost, careers ruined for a few minutes of pleasure in the bed of a beautiful woman.

And then she thought, when you’re a decoy you’ve got to have something to decoy. There was nothing in the back of the Mount Holly Trust Company to lure. A dog sniffed at the hem of her dress and scuttered away, two little boys meandered by throwing spitballs at each other, and once someone peered from the second story of the bank. Miss Ball had glanced up, but before she regained presence of mind enough to wink at the person (one never knew what floor plan he had in his pocket) he turned away.

A full hour passed. Miss Ball was tired; her getup was a wreck. Her handbag felt like a large stone. She knew she didn’t look as crisp as she had when she arrived. A man likes freshness and vitality in a woman. If much more time passed Miss Ball knew that she would be able to offer none of these.

Then a man appeared at the back door. Miss Ball pressed her lips together. She trembled. The man was white, wearing a blue suit with a matching cap, rimless glasses and a badge. He looked like a bus conductor. But he was a bank guard, and he certainly had a dozen more rolls in the hay left in him. He shuffled out the door with a shopping bag, then went inside and got another bundle and put that beside the shopping bag. After one more trip inside he deposited an umbrella and a pair of rubbers beside the other bundles.

Miss Ball took one step toward the man. She eyed him, fluttered her eyelashes, and said hoarsely, “That’s an awful lot of gear for a little man.”

“Par’ me?” said the man. He squinted through his glasses and coughed. Miss Ball corrected her false impression: the man did not have a dozen rolls in the hay left in him. He had one perhaps, at the most two. Also he was down at the heel and out at the elbow. But it made no difference. He knew the bank inside out. He had the information they wanted.

“Give you a hand?”

The man took another look at Miss Ball. The look cost the man a great effort. He shrugged.

Miss Ball smiled, took the shopping bag and umbrella and led the way. The man picked up the other bundles and the rubbers and followed. Success, thought Miss Ball.

They walked along Mount Holly Boulevard and attracted considerable attention.

The man glanced at her once or twice, then cleared his throat and asked her if she minded carrying the bag.

Miss Ball said that she didn’t mind doing anything. She winked again.

The man said that he lived across town. Miss Ball said she knew a shortcut. She walked along as briskly as her little legs would move her and finally got to her house. With a sigh she dropped the bags and said that she could go no further.

“That’s okay,” said the man. “I’ll carry the stuff. I was planning to anyways.”

Then Miss Ball shrieked. The man dropped what he was carrying.

“For golly sake!” she said. “Look where we are!”

The man said he didn’t recognize the place.

“It’s my house! Well, isn’t that the limit! God help us — it’s a miracle.”

The man said that he had to be going. He had the week’s shopping in the bags, not to mention his wife’s umbrella (he called it a bumbershoot).

“You just take your brolly and your shopping and come in. We’ll have a little tea. I’m weak. I don’t think I can make it into the house.”

The man tried to carry Miss Ball into the house. He struggled and panted. Miss Ball remarked that he must have been a very strong man in his youth. The man said he was.

Miss Ball poured a large tumbler full of whisky and handed it to the man. The man drank it and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Red-eye,” he said.

“Oo! You like your tea, don’t you now?”

The man said he didn’t mind a spot now and then. He put his arm around Miss Ball and began pinching her breast.

“Not here, darling,” said Miss Ball. She tossed her head in the direction of upstairs. Then she stood up and took his hand and pulled him upstairs.

Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss tiptoed out of the kitchen and upstairs after them. They listened, their ears against the door.

Inside the room bodies fell, groans resounded, flesh met flesh with slaps and shrieks. Miss Ball squealed, the man roared. Furniture fell and glass broke.

“Lotta spunk left in her!” Mr. Gibbon whispered.

“They’re having fun!” Mrs. Gneiss said. She squeezed Mr. Gibbon’s knee.

“Clever little woman,” Mr. Gibbon said. “See, she must have learned that in one of the books. She’ll get him naked and helpless and then turn on the heat. She’ll get him talking about the bank and find out. The man goes away happy and doesn’t suspect a thing. Nice as you please.”

But there was no talking. The noise had ceased, and now Miss Ball could be heard crying softly. Mr. Gibbon wanted to go right in, but he waited five minutes, and when nothing had changed (the only sound was Miss Ball sniffing) he drew out his pistol and broke the door down.

The room was covered with blood. Sheets and curtains were torn and hanging in shreds, the mirror was shattered, and on the floor lay the bank guard, a large knife-handle sticking out of his back. Bloody handprints were smeared all over the walls and floor. In the corner, a murderous look in his eye, was Juan. His shirt was torn and bloody, his hair bristled. He glowered.

“Dobble cross me! Dat agli gringo bestid don’t know what heet heem. I been seeting that share for two jowers.”

“Warren!” screamed Miss Ball. He turned. Mr. Gibbon took aim and fired. The impact sent Juan into the wall like a swatted fly. Then he fell, his head making a loud bump on the floor.

“There’s two commies out of the way,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Get a mop! See if anyone heard! Lock the front door! This is it, boys! It’s war! We won a battle but we haven’t won the war yet! Fall to, get this mess cleaned up, load the guns!”

Neither Miss Ball nor Mrs. Gneiss moved a muscle. They looked at Mr. Gibbon with horror.

“Hurry up!” said Mr. Gibbon. “You all deef?”

11

Mrs. Gneiss’s empty suitcases came in handy for storing the dismembered bodies of Juan and the bank guard. At first, Mrs. Gneiss was all in favor of getting the bank guard’s fingerprints on the gun and calling the police. They would tell the police that there had been a terrible fight between the two men. Juan had stabbed the guard and then the guard had shot Juan for stabbing him. Tit for tat, so to speak. It made some sense. But Mr. Gibbon saw that if the guard had been stabbed he wouldn’t have been able to shoot Juan. Or if Juan were shot the guard would have survived. The murder was without precedent if it was to be believed. They gloomily hacked up the bodies with Mr. Gibbon’s hunting knife, stuffed them into Mrs. Gneiss’s suitcases and put the suitcases and the clothes into the attic. Miss Ball’s Stay-Kleen and Surfy Suds took care of the gore on the rug.

Good Old Providence had done them a turn. The neighbors had miraculously not heard “The Fracas,” as Miss Ball called the double murder. The three comrades had stayed up all night keeping a vigil over the bodies in case the police should come. Then they would have said, yes, we killed the lousy commies. But the police never came. And just as well, the two ladies thought. Mr. Gibbon thought differently: he was convinced that Juan and the bank guard were “in cahoots” (the bank guard more than anyone was a stoolie and a cheat, working for coons as he did). Mr. Gibbon was, as he put it, “pleased as punch” to have plugged Juan, a man he suspected to have been spying on him for nearly a year.

But they had to make short-range plans. The morning after the fracas the three sat around the table (the news was on, but spoke only of the gallstones and the war, both with fervor; the disappearance of a certain bank guard was not mentioned). They looked haggard and mussed, having stayed up all night keeping their vigil. They tried to think of a way to cover up the murder for the time being. They knew that afterward, when the truth about the Mount Holly Trust Company was known (a Communist Front Organization filled with black pinkoes), the murder would be laughed off and their fortune would be secure. Meanwhile, they would have to think of a way to pacify the bank guard’s wife. Unless he had been lying when he told Miss Ball that he had to take the groceries home to his wife; maybe he didn’t have a wife at all. But how could they find out?

It was Miss Ball that came up with the solution. Without a word she darted upstairs to the suitcases. She came back almost immediately, seated herself as before and dropped a blood-stained wallet on the table. Gingerly — because the plastic wallet was still sticky with the gentleman’s blood — Miss Ball picked through it. Out tumbled membership cards, wedding pictures, snapshots of little kids with beach pails, and finally the prize: a picture of the man himself and a woman — obviously his wife; she looked grim and stood apart from him — who was leaning on the very same umbrella that was now resting against the wall upstairs in Miss Ball’s attic. On the back of the photograph was printed: “Benny’s Fotoshop — Close to You in the Lobby of the Barracuda Beach Hotel,” and under that in ballpoint: “Baracuta Beach, 1962.” There was also an identification card which read:

Harold Potts, Jr.

1217 Palm Drive

Mount Holly

In case of accident please notify a priest and

Mrs. Ethel Potts

(address as above)

Harold’s blood type, a little ragged card with a picture of Jesus on the front and a prayer on the back, and a relic of a tiny piece of cloth that had “touched a piece of the True Cross” sealed in plastic, were also among the valuables. Mr. Gibbon searched in vain for a party card. He came up with a few suspicious-looking documents, but remarked, “He’d be a fool if he carried the thing around with him.”

Miss Ball paid no attention to Mr. Gibbon’s investigation. She had found what she wanted.

Dear Ethel (Miss Ball wrote),

I wonder if you remember me? We spent those lovely days together at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in ’62. We met briefly during a bridge game. (I can’t remember if we were playing, watching, or just passing by the bridge tables — goodness how the memory starts playing tricks as the years go by!)

To make a long story short I met dear old Harold just yesterday at the Mount Holly Trust Company — well, I tell you Harold just couldn’t stop talking! We came to my house for tea and just talked and talked and talked of the wonderful days we spent at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in ’62. Harold said he had a touch of gastritis and wanted to go straight to bed, couldn’t walk so he said. Well, here it is 10 in the am and he’s still sleeping like a baby! I called the bank and told them he wouldn’t be in this morning. I think his tummy needs a rest, frankly Ethel, and I just hate the thought of waking him up, so peaceful he looks. I think he should be improving in the next few days and I’ll be sure to have him call you when he wakes up.

I just wanted to let you know that he’s safe in the hands of an old friend and that there’s no need to get all flustered and call the Missing Persons Bureau! Ha-ha! And that I look forward to more happy days like the ones we spent at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in ’62.

Your old friend,

Nettie

“Perfect,” was all Mr. Gibbon said.

“I feel as if I know her,” Miss Ball said.

The letter was sent special delivery (“What’s thirty cents,” Mrs. Gneiss said), without a return address, in a plain envelope. Mr. Gibbon estimated that it would be in Ethel Potts’s hands before noon.

“What about Warren’s nearest of kin,” Mrs. Gneiss asked.

“His nearest of kin? Well, that’s me, I guess, and I know where he is!” Miss Ball said. She did not say it with regret; but there was no joy in her voice either. Miss Ball did not quite know what to think about Juan’s death. He had been very pleasant — if a bit jumpy — at first. Only lately had he been asking for more pin-money. He had also recently demanded to move in with Miss Ball, but she had discouraged that. He had a good heart. He had bought things for Miss Ball. He was constantly surprising her with little mementos like the framed picture of Clark Gable or the doilies — he adored doilies for a reason Miss Ball could not even guess at. He had “been with” Miss Ball for about ten months and had never once shown the sort of jealous rage that had prompted him to stab Harold Potts to death.

Juan would have died violently sooner or later. It’s in the blood. Better he died in the privacy of Miss Ball’s own home than in the gutter. And then maybe Mr. Gibbon was right: maybe Juan was a communist. He was certainly dark, a Puerto Rican, there was no denying that! Mr. Gibbon was more familiar with the You-Know-Whos than Miss Ball. She knew that. He knew what he was doing. So goodbye, Juan, hasta luego and sleep well, Miss Ball thought.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gibbon was getting impatient. “An itchy trigger-finger,” he said. Sooner or later Ethel Potts would start wondering who in Sam Hill was Nettie and might turn the letter over to the police. This would ruin Mr. Gibbon’s timing. Floor plan or no floor plan, they would have to rob the bank quickly — at least in the next week or so. Here Herbie was out of boot camp, on his way to the front lines — probably he had nailed a few dozen commies already. A greenhorn! And here was Mr. Gibbon with only these two rather unimportant fellow travellers to his credit.

Mrs. Gneiss agreed. She said she was getting edgy. She didn’t enjoy getting edgy. If the robbery was to be done, it should be done as speedily as possible, so that they could all relax and enjoy the rewards and fame the robbery would bring them. She for one didn’t want Ethel Potts going haywire and accusing them of killing her husband. But as usual she said nothing more. Charlie knew best. She would wait until he gave the word. The whole thing was his idea, he was the brains and should make the decisions.

“I’d just like to have a look around the bank tomorrow before we go ahead with it,” Mr. Gibbon said. Miss Ball should not come along. They didn’t want to arouse any suspicions. He and Mrs. Gneiss would just sort of mosey around the bank, seeing what they could see and getting the general layout of the place and, in short, “casing the joint.”

Miss Ball said that suited her fine. They sat around the house reading and puttering around for the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Gibbon attended to his long-neglected paper bags; Mrs. Gneiss watched TV. But Miss Ball sat and scowled. Her brow grew more and more furrowed as the afternoon wore on. By five o’clock she was genuinely distressed. Something had just occurred to her. No one took any notice of her, not even when she scribbled a little reminder on the notepad, which she always carried in her apron.

12

Miss Ball kept looking into store windows. Before each one she paused, touched at her hair, pressed her lips together and, reasonably satisfied with the reflection that stared out at her from the foundation garments or baked goods, she walked on toward the doctor’s office.

She had begun to worry. She had read of a man who woke up one morning with the beginnings of a sixth finger; she had heard of a lung ballooning to twice its normal size when it had to do the work of two. And there were tonsils, adenoids, and the appendix, which often grew back if they were not watched properly and nipped, so to speak, in the bud. It was her operation that was making her jittery. How could she be sure that her insides wouldn’t grow back when so many other things grew back?

Nature was hard to understand. You clip grass and trim bushes and pluck hairs and what do you get? More grass, stray branches and bushy eyebrows. Miss Ball found that she could not cope with nature. Nature was always ahead of her, ahead of everyone she knew.

Miss Ball had been a farm girl. She could remember seeing her father pushing whole barrows of nourishing dung across rotting boards to the fields. She had peeled potatoes, she had awakened in a musty room covered with a damp quilt. That’s how it was when you lived close to the ground. It was damp and you were always kicking plants and dirt back into place, sifting stones, building walls, rocking on the porch and watching the crops fail. This was where Miss Ball learned Mother Nature’s spiteful ways.

But her operation had cost her a pretty penny and now, with her childhood thoughts of crabgrass and her recent discovery that lungs ballooned and adenoids reappeared, and — most discouraging of all — that Juan had been extremely, shall we say, virile, and now was dead, Miss Ball could not remember if the doctor had given her a warranty.

She had gotten one with her Snooz-Alarm — it was a big green-edged one-year warranty that looked like a savings bond. And she had gotten one with her hair dryer, her mixer, her vibrator and her juicer. If anything went wrong she didn’t have to raise a fuss. She just told the clerk that it was not in working order and she would get a new one, a new dryer or juicer. But she hadn’t got a warranty from the doctor.

She had asked herself many times if she needed one and had always decided no. But she had not yet realized her power over men. She had thought she was too old for that sort of thing. She could always reassure herself that Juan was doing it for the money. Was she too old? Harold Potts didn’t think so. And that’s finally what scared her.

“You look marvellous!” the doctor said with professional enthusiasm as Miss Ball seated herself on the other side of the desk.

“That’s the outside you’re looking at. It’s the inside I’m worried about.”

“There’s not much left to worry about,” the doctor said. He was going to say ha-ha, but he changed his mind when he saw the expression on Miss Ball’s face. He decided to reassure her. “What I mean is, you’re empty. So why worry?”

“Empty? That doesn’t sound too medical to me.”

“I try to simplify things for my patients.”

“I’m not stupid, doctor. You can talk plain to me.”

“I’m talking plain, Miss Ball. Now what’s wrong?”

“I want a warranty and I want it now.”

“A what?”

“A warranty. I haven’t had a wink of sleep for the past two days. All I could think of was my things, the things you say you removed, only God knows whether you did or not.”

“Miss Ball, I’m a medical doctor. I have taken the Hippocratic Oath. Every doctor takes it — it’s part of being a doctor.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Miss Ball snapped.

“About the guarantee. .”

“Warranty.”

“As far as the warranty goes. Why, I can’t imagine why you’d want something like that.”

“I have one for my radio, my juicer and everything else.” Miss Ball laughed helplessly, hollowly, for no reason at all. “I was foolish to have the operation without getting it warranteed.”

“You want it warranteed, is that it? That’s why you came here today — so I could swear out a warranty?”

“You could have been taking me for a ride.”

“A ride?” The doctor aimed the top of his head at Miss Ball. “Do you know what you’re saying, Miss Ball? Now you’re talking about ethics. Yes you are. You’re talking about my ethics!”

“How’s a body supposed to know what’s going on? You come into the room and stab me with a needle. I fall flat and then you fiddle around for three hours. .”

“Fiddle around? I take you for a ride to fiddle around, and for this you want a warranty?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m a very busy man.”

“I lived on a farm, don’t worry.”

“Why should I worry about you living on a farm?”

“Sure,” was all Miss Ball said.

“I want to assure you that I operated on you. I did my level best, as I do with each and every patient. I have not hounded you for the money.”

“You can whistle and wait, for all I care.”

“I have nothing but your health in mind.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve seen things grow back — grass, eyebrows, adenoids. I’ve seen things go wrong — my toaster, my dryer, my mixer. .”

“That’s a doctor’s business — health. We don’t try to frighten patients. We are very busy men.”

“Busy my foot. You think you’re special, you doctors. That’s the trouble with you — you think you’re better than other people that have to work for a living. You wouldn’t know about that, would you? Hard work! Hah! Ever get your hands dirty, real dirty and filthy with hard work?”

“Not that I remember, Miss Ball. I couldn’t call myself a doctor if I went around getting. .”

“And you call yourself a man! Ever wheel a whole barrow of cow manure up a plank? Bet you think it’s easy!”

“I never said that wheeling cow manure was easy. It’s probably very hard work.”

“Probably,” said Miss Ball in the same tone of voice.

The doctor asked Miss Ball if she thought he was a quack. “You think I’m a quack, don’t you?” he asked.

“Who cares what I think. No one cares.”

“I care, Miss Ball. I care a great deal what you think,” the doctor said softly.

“All right, I think you’re a quack,” said Miss Ball.

The doctor bit his lip. He said he had been a doctor a long time. He had healed a lot of wounds, not all of them physical. He had seen a lot of people come and go.

Things grow, Miss Ball thought. Things kept growing and there was little or nothing you could do to stop them. It was Mother Nature’s way of getting even with the human race. Everyone suffered. Nature liked ugliness and suffering. Nature wanted fat people and failed crops. Nature wouldn’t make you lovely and light. She would keep you fat and fertile. Fertile.

Miss Ball leaned toward the doctor. She almost did not have to act scared. She was scared. But she acted scared just the same, and she shook her head from side to side and up and down, and she said very plainly, “Doctor, I want you to know I’m a very frightened person. I never get a wink of sleep any more.”

The doctor reflected and was about to speak. But it was Miss Ball that spoke.

“I think they’re growing back, and I want a warranty so they don’t.”

When all the words reached the doctor he still did not seem to understand what Miss Ball was saying.

“You think what are growing back?”

“My things.”

“You mean your fallopian tubes?”

“Yes,” Miss Ball bit her lip, “those. And the other things you said you took out.”

The doctor started to giggle.

“You think it’s funny!”

The doctor could not answer.

“You think human suffering and worry is a big laugh!” Miss Ball began to cry, loudly at first, then worked it down to a whimper. Miss Ball sniffed and dabbed at her cheek with a lace hanky. “Cruel. You’re a cruel, cruel man.”

The doctor apologized. He asked Miss Ball to explain what she meant by the warranty.

After a little hesitation Miss Ball told the whole story. She talked about Mother Nature, about weeds that grew all night and were tall in the morning, about lungs and tonsils, about how she had seen Mother Nature kill her father, about her things — how they would be back as sure as shooting. The least the doctor could do was give her a warranty so they wouldn’t grow back. She finished with, “. . I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for ages.”

The doctor said nothing. He played with his lips for a few moments and stared at the far wall. When Miss Ball thought he was going to laugh once again she started to unfold her hanky. The doctor swiveled his chair back at her and said in a low voice, “I think I understand.”

“What about it?”

“I’ll do anything you say.”

“I want you to warranty the operation.”

“I’ll do it,” said the doctor. He took out a piece of paper and wrote on it.

“Make it a five-year warranty, like my juicer. Five years is good enough. I’ll be satisfied.”

“No, I won’t hear of it, Miss Ball. I’ll give you a lifetime warranty for that operation of yours.”

“A lifetime warranty! Good God,” said Miss Ball. Her mouth hung open. She could not find the words to express her thanks. Just when he seemed about the biggest quack she had ever seen he reached into his skinny heart and came up with a lifetime warranty. It was almost too much to ask. “Golly,” she finally said, “that’s the nicest thing anyone ever did for me.”

The doctor handed Miss Ball the piece of paper. He said he had done nothing. Miss Ball protested, and felt like throwing herself at his feet.

On the way out of the office Miss Ball’s heart was full of love and life. It pulsed. She felt it thumping there under her brooch and lace like a giant Snooz-Alarm. She was a new woman. Mother Nature could do her worst, could twist nice little tissues into ugly old organs. What did it matter? The wonderful warranty was right there in her handbag.

“When God closes a door he opens a window,” Miss Ball murmured over and over again as she walked home to find out what success Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss had had with their looking around the Mount Holly Trust Company. Personally, Miss Ball felt she could rob a thousand banks single-handed.

13

“It’s all set,” Mr. Gibbon said. He and Mrs. Gneiss had found out many valuable things. They knew exactly where the vault was (it was, as a matter of fact, in full view of all the bank customers, as most vaults are) and they had plotted what movements they would make. It would be an elaborate “quarterback sneak:” the women would be standing by, Mr. Gibbon would sneak in with his gun drawn, wearing a disguise. The women would be dressed in very ordinary clothes (“Oh, gee!” Miss Ball said, and slapped the table), and would arrive early at the bank. Everyone agreed that it was a nifty little plan.

The suitcases were next on the agenda. The bodies — or the parts of the bodies — had started making a terrific reek. It was an ungodly odor, Mr. Gibbon said, and then he began telling the two ladies about how trenches smelled exactly like that — and you had to sleep, eat, load your gun and shine your brass right in the thick of it. You could cut it with a knife, in case anyone was interested.

Miss Ball said that, for goodness sake, it must have been just like what Herbie was putting up with at that very moment! The thought of the decaying limbs and trunks of the two communists in the suitcases upstairs made them all feel quite close to Herbie.

“It kind of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?” said Mrs. Gneiss.

They all stopped, sniffed at the smell that had now penetrated right down into the dining room, and agreed. It was as if Herbie was in the next room.

But what to do with those suitcases? Miss Ball suggested burying them. Mr. Gibbon suggested that they should put them, for practical reasons, into lockers at the bus terminal. Why? Because after the robbery, as they were carried on the shoulders of a screaming mob of grateful patriots, they would ask to be taken to the bus terminal. In full view of the mob and nationwide television they would produce the key and throw the locker open, expose its un-American contents to the mayor; they would exchange the locker key for the key to the city of Mount Holly.

Miss Ball called a taxi. The taxi driver was a bit under the weather.

“Nice to see some people get a chance to go away,” he muttered.

“Oh, we’re not going anywhere!” Miss Ball chirped.

Mrs. Gneiss was given the task of depositing the suitcases into the lockers. Mr. Gibbon had carefully estimated how much it would cost. He gave Mrs. Gneiss two warm dimes when they arrived at the bus terminal, and called a porter to help. “Give the little woman a hand,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He winked at Miss Ball.

They should not be seen together in public, it was decided. There was no telling who might be spying on them. Mr. Gibbon said that it was a favorite trick of spies to let you go on with your activities and then nab you at the least likely moment, red-handed, with the goods.

“Well, you just leave the goods to me,” Mrs. Gneiss said. Mr. Gibbon and Miss Ball went their separate ways after whispering that they would meet back at the “hideout,” as Miss Ball’s white-frame house, ringed by nasturtiums, came to be called.

Mrs. Gneiss carried one suitcase, the porter carried the other, heavier one. The porter remarked that it felt as if it were filled with burglar tools.

The moment Mrs. Gneiss lifted the suitcase she knew she had Juan. She felt her nice porous skin turn to gooseflesh as she hurried toward the steel lockers.

“They’ll fit right fine in this one,” the porter said as he groaned and heaved his big suitcase before a row of big lockers.

Mrs. Gneiss looked at the sign and sighed. deposit one quarter only, read a sign over a chromium tongue with a quarter-sized circle punched into it. The tongue seemed to be sticking right at Mrs. Gneiss. She examined the two dimes in her palm and said to the porter, “You got anything more reasonable?”

The porter said that at the other end of the terminal there were some cheaper ones, a little cheesier than these.

“Let’s have a look,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

They hefted the suitcases once again. Halfway across the floor, near the benches for the waiting passengers, Mrs. Gneiss heard someone say, “What’s a lady like you lugging a big suitcase like that all by your lonesome?”

The porter ignored the voice and went on ahead.

Mrs. Gneiss turned. A sailor stood before her. He was wearing a seaman’s uniform: the white inverted sand-pail hat, wide trousers, and a tight shirt. He had tattoos on his hairy forearms. He should have been young. It was the sort of uniform young sailors wear. But he wasn’t young. He was about fifty, and his potbelly pressed against his sailor shirt. He looked jolly. He lifted Mrs. Gneiss’s meaty hand off the handle and hoisted the suitcase. He asked Mrs. Gneiss if she had burglar tools in it.

He alone laughed at his joke. He asked Mrs. Gneiss where she was going. He said that he was going to Minneapolis. Mrs. Gneiss said that she was going to the lockers at the other end of the terminal. This sent the old salt into gales of laughter.

“I hope you don’t mind doing this,” Mrs. Gneiss said, trying to get an impish smile on her fat face. “My Herbie’s in the army.”

“Don’t say?” the sailor said, interested. “Is he stateside?”

“I don’t think so. He’s in the front lines as far as I know.”

The sailor whistled. “What’s he wanna do a thing like that fer? Get hissel’ hurt that way if he doesn’ watch it.”

“Not my Herbie,” said Mrs. Gneiss. It hadn’t dawned on her that Herbie would get hurt. Now, as she said Not my Herbie, it occurred to her that Herbie might get his little brain blown off. She blotted out the thought and grinned at the sailor.

The porter had walked all the way to the end of the terminal and now was walking back to where Mrs. Gneiss stood with the sailor. He looked peeved. “I been waiting for you for about an hour,” he said.

“Don’t get yer dander up for nothing,” the sailor said.

“Where’s my suitcase?” Mrs. Gneiss asked.

“Back there. You think I’m gonna cart that around all day you’re nuts,” he said.

Mrs. Gneiss told the sailor she was in a big rush. She had to get the suitcases into the locker and go right back home (she almost said “to the hideout”).

When they reached the lockers at the other end the porter held his mouth open in astonishment. “’At’s funny,” he finally said. “I coulda sworn I left the thing right here. .”

Mrs. Gneiss wrinkled up her nose. She did not think it was a great loss. The body that was in the suitcase was not only dismembered — it was dead as well. She was, after all, trying to get rid of it. “Someone must have filched it,” she said simply.

The sailor suddenly let loose a wild hoot. He seized the shrugging porter by the shirt and began beating him with his free hand. “Now look what you’ve gone and done!” he puffed. He shoved the porter up against the lockers with a clang and screamed, “Look what you’re making me do!”

Mrs. Gneiss stood quietly and watched. She knew that the sailor would soon get it out of his system. A policeman came by and asked what was going on.

The sailor stopped beating the porter. He was out of breath and could not speak. He shook the porter in the policeman’s face.

Mrs. Gneiss explained what had happened. She finished by saying, “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. There was nothing very valuable in it.”

“Valuable or not,” the policeman said, “we don’t like this sort of thing happening in Mount Holly. Now you just sit tight and I’ll round up that suitcase of yours in a jiffy. The culprit couldn’t be far away.” He asked for a description of the suitcase and its contents.

Mrs. Gneiss said that it was old, brownish-greenish, and had some personal effects locked in it.

The policeman deputized the sailor and the porter. The three ran out the back door of the bus terminal in search of the suitcase.

Mrs. Gneiss quietly placed the small suitcase (Juan) in a dime-locker and went into the bus terminal Koffee Shoppe and swilled down a huge hot-fudge sundae.

Less than ten minutes later the policeman was back with a rat-faced little bum in one hand and the suitcase (Harold Potts, Jr) in the other. The policeman handcuffed the bum to a post and joined Mrs. Gneiss in another sundae. Afterward, he insisted on having his picture taken with Mrs. Gneiss: he presenting the lost suitcase to her, she thanking him. It took an hour for the press photographer to arrive, but finally Mrs. Gneiss got the second suitcase into the locker. The policeman did the heaving and pushing. He remarked as he was doing it that the suitcase felt as if it were filled with burglar tools.

The sailor and the porter were nowhere to be seen. They were, presumably, still looking for the thief.

“I think I’ll just toddle off,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

The policeman wouldn’t hear of it. He said he’d give her a lift in the squad car. His pal didn’t mind. They were both tired of passing out parking tickets. “The jig’s up,” Mr. Gibbon said, when he saw the police squad car arrive with Mrs. Gneiss in the backseat.

“Gosh, the police!” Miss Ball said. She skipped into the kitchen and slammed the door.

Mr. Gibbon pulled out his pistol and flattened himself against the wall behind the front door.

“. . But just for a sec,” the policeman said as he entered. “Gotta get back to the station house.”

Mr. Gibbon had carefully unloaded his pistol. Now, as the policeman shuffled in and closed the door, he raised the pistol and brought it down on the top part of the policeman’s cap where the bulge of his head showed through. Mr. Gibbon had expected a bone-flaking crunch. There was not a sound like that. Instead there was a soft splok and the policeman slumped to the floor.

“Charlie!” Mrs. Gneiss said.

“Rope!” Mr. Gibbon hissed.

Mrs. Gneiss looked at the policeman lying spread-eagled on the floor grinning up at her. “You killed the cop, Charlie, and for no good reason at all, you know that?”

“Get some rope, Mrs. Gneiss, and stop sassing me!”

Mrs. Gneiss rummaged through her knitting basket looking for rope. She sighed and mumbled, “I thought it was a bank we were after. .”

Mr. Gibbon peeked out the little window at the top of the door and spied another policeman in the car. He yelled for Miss Ball.

The kitchen door opened a crack. “Is it okay to come out?”

“Sure, sure,” Mr. Gibbon said.

Miss Ball clapped her hand to her mouth when she saw the policeman on the floor. Her eyes popped over the top of her hand. Mr. Gibbon leaped in back of her and started to tickle her. On the left side he tickled and held her fast; on the right — where most of the tickling was done — he used his pistol. He slipped the ice-cold gun barrel under her blouse and scrubbed her kidneys with it.

“Stoooooop! Paaaalllleeeeeeeeze! Stoooooop it! You’re awful, Charlie Gibbon! Stooooo. .”

Her glee found its way through the door and down the walk, past the nasturtiums and into the front seat of the squad car where another policeman sat reading a magazine.

The policeman blew and whistled, fumbled with the magazine, glanced toward the door, shifted in his seat, and then got out of the car, adjusted his tie in the side-window and hurried up the walk.

During the night another policeman came and asked Mrs. Gneiss if she had seen the two policemen. He described them and gave her the license number of the squad car.

Mrs. Gneiss said yes, indeed, she had seen those nice policemen — they had given her a lift home. But they couldn’t stay, they said. They drove off in the direction of Holly Junction to give parking tickets.

When the inquiring policeman returned to his car his partner asked him what he had found out.

“Nothing,” was the answer, “just a nice old lady that doesn’t know a thing.”

Mr. Gibbon saw the car leave as he sat upstairs in the darkness and looked through a slit in the curtains. He waited a half-hour and tiptoed out of the house to check the squad car that he had driven around back and covered with lilac branches and heavy canvas.

As he sneaked through the nasturtiums he heard, “Hey, you!” Mr. Gibbon froze. He did not move a muscle, did not even brush at a fly that was strafing his wedge-shaped head. He had forgotten his pistol.

A uniformed man came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

Mr. Gibbon thought of kneeing the uniformed man and making a run for it. But he knew he didn’t have a chance. He started to say something when the man spoke.

“Lady by the name of Gneiss live here?”

“Who wants to know?” asked Mr. Gibbon, finding his tongue.

“Western Union. Got a telegram for her.”

It might be a trick, thought Mr. Gibbon. “I’ll take it. She’s inside.”

“Okay, okay. As long as she lives here. Just sign the book.”

Mr. Gibbon made every effort to write illegibly in the book. He took the envelope and stayed in the nasturtiums while the Western Union man walked away, glancing back at intervals until he was out of sight.

The car had not been touched. Mr. Gibbon put some more branches on it and then went in the house and gave the telegram to Mrs. Gneiss.

Mrs. Gneiss opened it and read it. When she was through reading it she reached across the table, took a handful of cream-filled chocolates and put them in her mouth. Her mouth bulged and juice ran from the corners of her mouth.

She chewed and did not stop chewing until the whole box of cream-filled chocolates was empty. And when it was, and she looked worried, she handed the telegram to Mr. Gibbon.

regret to inform you of your sons death stop killed gallantly in action today stop gave his life for his country stop that others may live stop deepest sympathy stop personal. effects forwarded first class mail to new address mount holly.

14

Dressed in authentic policeman’s garb, Mr. Gibbon and Miss Ball stood before the full-length mirror in the hall. Miss Ball had insisted on “being a policeman.” It took nearly the entire night to alter the jacket and trousers, but by morning — and a beautiful morning it was, the sun shining, the nasturtiums about ready to burst and bleed they were so full of color and sun — she was finished, and just in time for the robbery.

“We’re cops!” Miss Ball said. “How I wish my kindergarten could see me!” She brushed the sleeve and adjusted the cap and said, “Isn’t it a humdinger?”

Mr. Gibbon straightened Miss Ball’s tie and said, “Get them shoes shined and make it snappy, sojer.”

Mr. Gibbon had never felt more patriotic. He turned on the radio hoping for the Anthem. The news was on. “. . Tomorrow will be a national holiday in memory of our boys who have given their lives to preserve our way of life at home and abroad, said the president yesterday. The president is now up and around. He brushed his teeth while sitting on the side of his bed this morning and received scores of well-wishing messages from a host of world leaders. He has also been showered with dozens of floral arrangements and directed that some of them be sent to the front lines to remind the soldiers that the country was with them all the way. This morning, with the help of doctors and nurses, he signed his first piece of legislation. Now for the local news. Mount Holly will celebrate tomorrow with a parade through the business districts. Wreaths will be placed and Troop 45 of the Mount Holly Boy Scouts will carry flags. All are welcome to. .”

“A holiday tomorrow and all on account of Herbie!” Mrs. Gneiss said. “I knew he had it in him! And isn’t that thoughtful of the president?”

“We’re gonna march, by God!” said Mr. Gibbon.

“You’re darn tootin’ we are,” Miss Ball said.

And then they remembered that it was Friday, a working day. Mr. Gibbon called Kant-Brake and said he was in sick bay. Miss Ball called the school committee and said she was feeling sluggish and headachey. “A white lie never hurt a soul,” said Miss Ball.

A last check of the two tied-up and gagged (and nearly naked) policemen in the cellar showed one to be still unconscious from the conk on the head the day before. The other was hopping up and down, struggling to get free. He was stooped over because of the high-backed chair Mr. Gibbon had tied him to.

“You worried about your pal?” Mr. Gibbon said to the hopping man.

The man continued to hop, trying to get loose. Mr. Gibbon took this hopping up and down for a “yes.” “Don’t you worry a bit, he’ll be fit as a fiddle in a day or two,” Mr. Gibbon said heartily.

Then Mr. Gibbon pulled out his pistol. The hopping man’s eyes bugged out when they lighted on the pistol. Mr. Gibbon tossed his head in a I-know-what’s-best manner and said, “You’ll thank me for this someday.” He bopped the man on the head.

When Mr. Gibbon came upstairs he said it was zero hour.

“Those two nice policemen are going to catch a death in their undies. It’s mighty chilly in that cellar,” said Miss Ball.

Mr. Gibbon told Miss Ball to stop worrying her head about little things. There was a country at stake. He went around back, threw off the lilac branches and the canvas from the car, and then proceeded to test each item: the horn, the brakes, the oil, the gas, the siren, the water, and even the windshield wipers. Mrs. Gneiss had told him about TV movie robberies that had failed because the getaway car had run out of gas, or the lights had failed, or it wouldn’t start. In one of the movies a man had been gunned down as he pressed the starter and got only an aw-aw-aw from the engine. Mr. Gibbon reflected: what is more humiliating than dashing out of a bank after a successful robbery and getting into an ornery car? It must be damned discouraging.

They had started down the street in high spirits when Mr. Gibbon suddenly spun the car around and drove back to the house. He parked around back and said that he’d changed his mind.

“Good,” said Mrs. Gneiss. She extracted a handful of jelly beans from her purse and began munching.

“We can’t both be policemen,” he said, looking at Miss Ball.

Miss Ball started to pout.

“I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun,” Mr. Gibbon said, calmly. “What I said was, we can’t both be policemen. That’s all I said.”

“But you’re the big cheese, Charlie. You can play policeman if you want. Me and Mrs. Gneiss are nothing. You’re the one who makes the rules!”

Mr. Gibbon stretched his lips. He was deep in thought. Finally he said, “No, you’re right. You be the policeman. But remember to follow orders or I’ll give you the business.”

“Hot dog!” said Miss Ball. She rolled her eyes and spoofed a face.

“Let’s get the show on the road,” Mrs. Gneiss said, between mouthfuls of jelly beans.

Mr. Gibbon got out of the car and went into the house. He returned dressed in his sneakers (“for quick take-off”), flapping fatigues and wearing a felt hat with the brim turned down all around. He also had a shopping bag with him. He showed the ladies that Old Trusty was inside. He handed both Miss Ball and Mrs. Gneiss police pistols.

He had another idea, he said. He had gotten it as they were driving down the street. He would explain it by and by. They were abandoning the “Quarterback Sneak” plan. They should have scrapped it long ago.

In the meantime he had a few things to do. He made several more trips into the house and came back with some cans of whitewash and a big brush. He looked at the doors. mount holly police was written on the front doors, together with a facsimile of a policeman’s badge and the telephone number of the police headquarters. With careful strokes Mr. Gibbon painted the front doors white. Then he removed the large chrome searchlight from the right front fender and the long antenna from the back. These he handed to Miss Ball.

“Give you four seconds to put them back,” he said. “Okay, go!”

Miss Ball scrambled to the rear of the car and stuck the antenna in the hole. When she started for the front of the car she glanced back and saw the antenna start to topple — she ran back just in time to save it. But by then she had used up five seconds and still held the chrome searchlight in her hand.

“Criminy sakes,” said Miss Ball. “I can’t do it for the life of me!” She prepared to pout.

“Now I’m going to show you how to do it proper,” said Mr. Gibbon. He whizzed to the back of the car and jammed in the antenna, then huffed to the front fender and, with a little grunt, fixed the searchlight into its socket.

“Think you can do that? Or have I got a real clinker in my platoon?”

After six tries Miss Ball did the same. She managed it in slightly over six seconds. “How’s that for an old bag? Clinker indeed!”

Mr. Gibbon stood at some distance from the car and looked at it, closing first one eye and then the other. Finally he took the antenna and searchlight off and put them in the back seat. On the floor of the back he put two buckets of water. A last look at the car, blue and white like a taxi; “Pretty snazzy,” he said.

They all squeezed into the front seat, and Mr. Gibbon explained his new plan in detail. He said they should all be shot for not thinking of this plan before. It was surefire. It couldn’t miss.

“Oh, botheration!” said Miss Ball. “How can I drive the getaway car if I can’t drive?”

Mr. Gibbon told her to pipe down and listen. When he was through talking they synchronized their watches.

It was a little after ten o’clock when Mr. Gibbon drove down Holly Boulevard and turned on to Main Street. Apparently many other people had heard about the holiday and had decided to do their weekend shopping. The traffic was heavy; Mr. Gibbon leaned on his horn and swore.

They had all digested the plan and were impatient to get down to brass tacks. But now the car was stuck at a red light. Mr. Gibbon shut off the engine when he saw no signs of movement in the congestion.

“Tarnation,” Mr. Gibbon said. “We’ll be here all day in this traffic. Now you can see perfectly well what a godawful headache it must be to run a country. No wonder the president has to have his gall removed. Why, if he didn’t he’d be up tightern’a duck’s ass from morning to night. Here we are doing our damnedest to help out the country and we’re hamstrung from top to bottom with this traffic.” He smacked his lips and looked around. “This traffic’s thicker’n gumbo.”

There was a dark family in the next car. They smiled at Mr. Gibbon. Mr. Gibbon grinned back pleasantly and showed all fifteen of his teeth. He turned to Mrs. Gneiss, who was sitting in the middle. “Don’t look now, but there are some You-Know-Whos next door. Hear their radio?” He sighed. “Those spooks sure need their bongo music.”

The traffic started again. As soon as the cars began moving Mr. Gibbon shouted, “Did you see the nerve of those bastards? Grinning at me like damn fools. Felt like spitting in their eyes!”

Rage had taken possession of Mr. Gibbon by the time they approached the Mount Holly Trust Company. He was panting, and wetting his lips. He discovered that he could barely speak. He had made it a cardinal rule that everyone should be cool as cucumbers, but Miss Ball (smiling out the window, hoping to catch the eye of one of her hooky-playing kindergarteners who, skipping by, would see their own teacher in her adorable little cop suit) and Mrs. Gneiss (munching dolefully on a Nougat Delite) were the only cool ones in the car.

Mr. Gibbon looked over and said in a tone of voice that neither Miss Ball nor Mrs. Gneiss recognized as Charlie’s, “Get that fool hat off! You wanna wreck everything?”

Miss Ball took her hat off and smiled. Mr. Gibbon at that moment developed a facial tic that stayed with him for the rest of his life.

He drove by the bank and then up a side street to the back. Here he pointed the car in the direction of the front of the bank, a little hill, and said, “This is it, boys. You know what to do.” He wrenched his hat down over his ears, and got out of the car and told Mrs. Gneiss to hurry up. Then he felt in his shopping bag for his pistol and started down the little hill which led to the front door of the Mount Holly Trust Company.

Mrs. Gneiss put her Nougat Delite into her purse with her pistol, snapped the purse shut and waddled after Mr. Gibbon.

They entered the bank and went immediately to a side table. Mr. Gibbon put his head down and muttered, “You know what to do.”

Mrs. Gneiss ambled to the entrance and stood next to the guard. He wore a brand new uniform and looked rather young. Harold Potts’s replacement, thought Mrs. Gneiss. He smiled at Mrs. Gneiss. She smiled back and clutched her purse.

Out back, Miss Ball checked her watch. She stared at it for a full minute, and then took the antenna, the searchlight and the two buckets of water from the back seat. These she put some distance from the car in a little pile together with her policeman’s hat. She walked about twenty-five feet away from the pile, which was now be-tween her and the car. She checked her watch again and smiled. Keep cool, she thought.

Mr. Gibbon walked toward the teller’s cage.

“White folks move aside,” he said.

There were some protests. “Aw, let the old coot have his own way,” someone grumbled.

Mr. Gibbon looked hard at the teller and said, “Okay, hand over the money.”

The man behind the counter cocked his head and then smiled, “Have you filled out a withdrawal slip, sir?”

Mr. Gibbon put his face up against the bars of the teller’s cage so that his nose and chin stuck through. “Hand over the money, all of it, you hear? This is a stickup.”

“Beg pardon?”

“A stickup,” said Mr. Gibbon. “You’re being stuckup. By me. Understand?”

“Perhaps you’d like to have a word with the manager,” the teller said.

Miss Ball checked her watch again. It was almost time. She edged over to the pile of equipment, the hat, the light, the bucket. A man appeared next to her. “Got a fare?” he asked. Miss Ball smiled, but did not answer. The man got into the back of the car and opened his newspaper.

Mrs. Gneiss sneaked a look at Harold Potts’s replacement and felt in her purse. As soon as she did so Harold Potts’s replacement looked inside, almost involuntarily. Mrs. Gneiss quickly took out her Nougat Delite and, grinning, offered him some. “Much obliged,” he said, “but no thanks.”

“This is the last time I’m gonna tell you. This is a stickup, now hand over the cash!”

The people who had been in line in back of Mr. Gibbon started backing away. They looked at him with the kind of nervous puzzlement that arrives as a smirk. The smirks vanished when Mr. Gibbon pulled Old Trusty from his shopping bag and flashed it around. Some people started for the door, but Mrs. Gneiss stepped away from the guard and took aim with her Nougat Delite. “Don’t move,” she said.

She heard laughter, and then she heard very plainly, “Just a couple of old cranks. Might as well humor them — they don’t mean any harm. Just two old farts.”

Mrs. Gneiss dropped her Nougat Delite into her purse and yanked out the policeman’s.38 caliber Colt, looked for the source of the voice, and dropped him in his tracks with one shot.

She waved Harold Potts’s replacement away from the door and gestured for the people to back up against the wall.

Oddly, the moment Mrs. Gneiss fired her gun everyone in the bank raised their arms over their head; even the girls sitting at typewriters many feet away did so. All talking ceased. Just like on television, thought Mrs. Gneiss.

Mr. Gibbon pushed his shopping bag over the counter to the teller. The teller stuffed it with big bundles of money wrapped with paper bands and gave the bulging sack back to him.

At this moment a little brown man shuffled around front and, with his hands high above his head, said, “Don’t anyone panic. Just do what the man says. We’re insured against theft.”

Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of the rock-hard heroism that is smack in the belly of every good bank manager, the little brown man smiled and nodded obligingly to Mr. Gibbon.

Mr. Gibbon sucked in air and snarled, “I don’t want any of your cheap lip!” And he shot the little brown man dead. Like a toy the man gurgled, flapped his dry little hands and went down.

The people in the bank straightened their arms and held them higher.

It was time. Miss Ball picked up a bucket of water and splashed it against the left front door of the car. mount holly police complete with telephone number and badge appeared from under the running whitewash. She did the same with the right front, and on this trip around the car popped the antenna and the searchlight in place. Then she snatched the hat and put it on, pushed up the knot of her tie, got into the car, released the brake, flicked on the siren and started rolling down the little hill to the front of the bank.

The man in the backseat did not look up. He said, “Oak Street,” and kept on with his paper.

Mr. Gibbon was standing next to a huge pile of bills when Miss Ball pushed through the door and said with stage gruffness, “Okay, don’t anyone move. Drop your guns and get your hands up.”

With a clang the guns hit the marble floor of the Mount Holly Trust Company.

“What happened to him?” asked Miss Ball, gesturing toward the little brown bank manager curled up in his own blood.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” said Mr. Gibbon.

“Tell that to his widow,” Miss Ball said, in a good imitation of Broderick Crawford. She motioned for Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss to move on. “Take the money,” she said to Harold Potts’s replacement. “We’ll need it for evidence.”

Harold Potts’s replacement put the stack of money in the backseat and then got in to guard Mr. Gibbon. The man with the newspaper murmured and made room. Mrs. Gneiss got in front.

Miss Ball released the emergency brake, flicked on the siren again and, as Mr. Gibbon said “Easy does it,” the car began rolling faster and faster and then coasting at a good rate away from the bank and down the long slope which gave the little burg of Mount Holly its name.