Bank Shot

There were floodlights mounted on fairly high poles around and about, but they were so broadly scattered that most of the interior was in a kind of fitful semi-darkness. However, there was enough light to see the paths through the rubble, and Dortmunder had been here with Murch yesterday afternoon, so he knew what spot to head for. The others followed him as he walked straight up the main road, gravel crunching under their feet, and then made a right turn at a pile of chrome window frames and headed straight for a mountain of wheels.

Victor suddenly said, “You know what this is like?” When nobody responded, he answered his own question, saying, “It’s like those stories where people suddenly shrink and get very small. And here we are on the toymaker’s bench.”

Undercarriages. Stacked up higher than their heads, and spreading out sloppily to left and right, were dozens of undercarriages salvaged from defunct mobile homes. Over to the right was another pile of separate wheels, without their tires — to follow Victor’s toymaker analogy, the stack of round metal wheels looked like markers in some board game similar to checkers — but it was the complete undercarriages that Dortmunder had in mind. These too were minus tires but were otherwise complete — the two wheels, the axle, the metal framework to attach the whole thing to the bottom of a trailer.

Dortmunder was wearing his leather jacket now, and from the pocket he took a metal tape measure. Murch had given him minimum and maximum dimensions, both in width and height, and Dortmunder started with the easiest undercarriages, the ones off to the side of the main heap.

Most, it turned out, were too small, generally in the way of being too narrow, though Dortmunder did find one good set among those just lying on the ground. Kelp and Herman rolled that one away from the rest, so they could keep track of it, and then all four of them started dismantling the hill of undercarriages, Dortmunder measuring each one as they got it down. The damn things were very heavy, being totally metal, and for the same reason made a lot of noise.

Finally another set came within the usable range of measurements, and that too was set aside. Then they rebuilt the hill — aside from being heavy and loud, the undercarriages were also all dirty and grimy, so that by now all four men were heavily grease-smeared — and when they were done Dortmunder stepped back, panting, and surveyed their work. It looked just about the same as before, the removal of two sets of wheels not changing the appearance of the pile in any significant way.

All that remained now was to roll the undercarriages down to the gate and out. They pushed them along, Dortmunder and Kelp on one and Victor and Herman on the other, and they clattered and banged and made one hell of a lot of noise. It disturbed the dogs, who groaned and moved around in their sleep but didn’t quite wake up.

Murch was standing by the open rear of the truck when they came out. He had the flashlight in his hand again, but tucked it away in his jacket pocket when he saw them. “I heard you coming,” he said.

They were still rolling the wheels over from the gate to the truck. “What?” shouted Dortmunder, over the racket.

“Forget it,” Murch said.

“What?”

“Forget it!”

Dortmunder nodded.

They loaded the wheels into the back of the truck, and then Dortmunder said to Murch, “I’ll ride up front with you.”

“So will I,” Herman said very fast.

“We all will,” Kelp said, and Victor said, “Darn right.” Murch looked at them all. “You can’t fit five people up there,” he said.

“We’re going to,” Dortmunder said.

“It’s a floor shift.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kelp said.

Herman said, “We’ll manage.”

“It’s against the law,” Murch said. “Two people in the front seat of a floor-shift vehicle, no more. That’s the law. What if a cop stops us?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dortmunder said. He and the others turned and headed for the cab, leaving Murch to shut the rear doors. Murch did and came around to the left side of the cab to find the other four all jammed into the passenger seat like college students in a phone booth. He shook his head, made no comment, and stepped up behind the wheel.

The only real problem was when he tried to shift into fourth; there seemed to be six or seven knees in that spot. “I have to shift into fourth now,” he said, speaking with the even patience of somebody who has decided he isn’t going to run amok after all, and a lot of grunting and grumbling took place from the mass beside him as it retracted all its knees, leaving him just enough room to move the shift lever into high.

Fortunately, there weren’t many traffic lights on the route he’d worked out, so he didn’t have to change gears very often. But the jumble beside him gave a four-throated groan every time they went over a bad bump.

“I am trying to figure out,” Murch said conversationally at one point, frowning out the windshield as he spoke, “how this up here can be better than that back there.” But he wasn’t surprised when no one answered him, and he didn’t repeat the remark.

The bankrupt computer-parts factory that Dortmunder and Kelp had found was at last up ahead on the left. Murch drove in there and around to the loading platform at the back, and they all got out again. Herman got his bag of tools from the interior of the truck, unlocked the loading platform door, and by the light of Murch’s flashlight they cleared enough space in the rubble for the two sets of wheels. Then Herman locked the place up again.

When it was time to go, they found Murch walking around the interior of the truck, shining his flashlight in the corners. “We’re ready,” Kelp told him.

Murch frowned at them, all four standing on the loading platform looking in at him. “What’s that fu

“Whiskey,” Kelp said.

“Canadian whiskey,” Herman said.

Murch gave them a long look. “I see,” he said very coldly. He switched off the flashlight, came out onto the platform and shut the rear doors. Then they all got into the cab again, Murch on the left and everybody else on the right, and headed back for where they’d left their cars. Kelp would bring the truck back to where he’d picked it up.

They drove for ten minutes of grunting silence, and then Murch said, “You didn’t offer me any.”

“What?” said the hodgepodge beside him.

“Never mind,” Murch said, aiming at a pothole. “It doesn’t matter.”

15

At twenty after four on Sunday morning, the world still dark with Saturday night, a police patrol car drove slowly past the temporary headquarters of the local branch of the Capitalists’ & Immigrants’ Trust. The two uniformed patrolmen in the car barely glanced at the trailer containing the bank. Lights were always kept on in there at night and could be seen through the slats of the venetian blinds over all the windows, but the patrolmen knew there was no money inside the trailer, not a dime. They also knew that any burglar who thought there was money in there would be sure to trip the alarm when he tried to get in, no matter what method he chose; the alarm would sound down at the station house, and the dispatcher would inform them on their car radio. Since the dispatcher had not so informed them, they knew as they drove by that the C&I Trust trailer was empty, and therefore hardly looked at it at all.

Their confidence was well placed. The entire trailer was wired against burglary. If an amateur were to jimmy open a door or smash the glass in a window, that would naturally sound the alarm, but even a more experienced man would be in trouble if he tried breaking and entering around here. For instance, the entire floor of the trailer was wired; should a man cut a hole in the bottom to come in that way, he too would trip the alarm. Same with the roof and all four walls. A sparrow couldn’t have gotten into that mobile home without alerting the people down at the station house.