Bank Shot

Murch, alone in the cab now, made a sweeping U-turn and drove out of the football field. He drove more slowly and carefully now, both because the urgency was gone and because his Mom and some other people were in the back.

What they were doing in the back, May was putting up on the windows the curtains she’d been making all week. Murch’s Mom was holding the two flashlights that were their only illumination, and Dortmunder was cleaning up the mess a bit while Herman was squatting on the floor in front of the safe, looking it over and saying, “Hmmmmm.” He didn’t look pleased.

22

“A bank doesn’t just disappear,” Captain Deemer said.

“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.

Captain Deemer extended his arms out at the sides as though he would do calisthenics and wiggled his hands. “It doesn’t just fly away,” he said.

“No, sir,” said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.

“So we have to be able to find it, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

They were alone in the captain’s office, a small and deceptively quiet life raft in a sea of chaos — the eye of the storm, as it were. Beyond that door, men were ru

“We have them bottled up,” Captain Deemer said grimly, bringing his hands slowly together as though to strangle somebody.

“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.

“Now all we have to do is tighten the net!” And Captain Deemer squeezed his hands shut and twisted them together, as though snapping the neck off a chicken.

Lieutenant Hepplewhite winced. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“And get those sons of bitches,” Captain Deemer said, shaking his head from side to side, “that woke me up out of bed.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Hepplewhite said and flashed a sickly grin.

Because it had been Lieutenant Hepplewhite who had awakened Captain Deemer out of his bed. It had been the only thing to do, the proper thing to do, and the lieutenant knew the captain didn’t blame him personally for it, but nevertheless the act had made Lieutenant Hepplewhite very nervous, and nothing that had happened since had served to calm him down.

The lieutenant and the captain were different in almost every respect — the lieutenant young, slender, hesitant, quiet and a reader, the captain fiftyish, heavyset, bullheaded, loud and illiterate — but they did have one trait they shared in common: Neither of them liked trouble. It was the one area in which they even used the same language: “I want things quiet, men,” the captain would tell his men at the morning shape-up, and at the night shape-up the lieutenant would say, “Let’s keep things quiet, men, so I don’t have to wake the captain.” They were both death on police corruption, because it might tend to endanger the quiet.

If they’d wanted noise, after all, New York City was right next door, and its police force was always looking for recruits.

But it was noise they had tonight, whether they liked it or not. Captain Deemer turned away from the lieutenant, muttering, “It’s just a goddam good thing I was home,” and went over to brood at the map of the Island on the side wall.

“Sir?”

“Never mind, Lieutenant,” said the captain.

“Yes, sir.”

The phone rang.

“Get that, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hepplewhite spoke briefly into the phone — he stood beside the desk, not wanting to sit at it in the captain’s presence — and then put the caller on hold and said, “Captain, the people from the bank are here.”

“Have ’em come in.” The captain kept brooding at the map, and his lips moved without sound. “Tighten the net,” he seemed to be saying.

The three men who entered the office looked like some sort of statistical sampling, a cross-section of America perhaps; the mind boggled at the attempt to see them as a group co

The first in was portly, distinguished, with iron-gray hair and black suit and conservative narrow tie. He carried a black attaché case, and fat cigar tips protruded from his breast pocket. He looked to be about fifty-five, prosperous, and used to giving orders.

The second was stocky, short, wearing a tan sports jacket, dark-brown slacks and a bow tie. He had crewcut sandy hair, horn-rimmed glasses, leather patches on the elbows of his jacket, and carried a brown briefcase. He was about forty and looked thoughtful and competent in some specialty.

The third was very tall and very thin, with shoulder-length hair, deep sideburns and Western-sheriff mustache. He was no more than twenty-five and wore a yellow pullover polo shirt, tie-dye blue jeans and white basketball sneakers. He carried a gray cloth bag of the kind plumbers use, which clanked when he put it down on a chair. He gri

The portly man looked around with a tentative smile. “Captain Deemer?”

The captain remained by the map but looked over with brooding eyes and said, “That’s me.”

“I am George Gelding, of C and L.”

The captain gave an irritated frown. “Seeing-eye?”

“Capitalists’ and Immigrants’ Trust,” said Gelding. “The bank you lost.”

The captain grunted, as though he’d been hit in the chest with an arrow, and lowered his head like a bull deciding to get mad.

Gelding gestured to the man with the bow tie and leather elbow patches. “This is Mr. Albert Docent,” he said, “of the company which provided the safe employed in that particular branch of our bank.”

Deemer and Docent nodded at each other, the captain sourly, the safe man with a thoughtful smile.

“And this,” Gelding said, gesturing to the young man with the hair, “is Mr. Gary Wallah, of Roamerica Corporation, the company which provided the trailer in which the bank has recently been housed.”

“Mobile home,” Wallah said. He gri

“Mobile, at any rate,” Gelding said and turned back to the captain, saying, “We are here to offer you whatever information and expertise may be of help to you.”

“Thank you.”

“And to ask if there have been any further developments.”

“We have them bottled up,” the captain said grimly.

“Have you really?” said Gelding, smiling broadly and taking a step forward, “Where?”

“Here,” the captain said and thumped the map with the back of one meaty hand. “It’s only a question of time.”

“You mean you still don’t know exactly where they are.”

“They’re on the Island.”

“But you don’t know where.”

“It’s only a question of time!”

“It is approximately one hundred miles,” Gelding said, with no attempt to soften his tone, “from the New York City line across Long Island to Montauk Point. In spots, the island is twenty miles wide. In land area, it is larger than Rhode Island. This is the area in which you have them bottled up?”

In moments of stress, the captain’s left eye tended to close, and then open again, and then slowly close again, then pop open once more, and so on. It made him look as though he were winking, and in his youth he had inadvertently picked up more than one young lady that way; in fact, it still did pretty well for him.