Bank Shot

“When you’re looking,” Dortmunder said, “for something fifty feet long and twelve feet wide, colored blue and white, you don’t need much of a search.”

May had been silent during all this, thinking about things. She had no particular craving for money herself, and so didn’t care so much about the contents of the safe as that the job be successful. Dortmunder was gloomy enough in his natural state; life with him if this robbery failed would be about as cheerful as a soap opera. “I tell you what,” she said. “I got us an hour here.”

The lights went off. Gray and rainy illumination seeped in through the windows, depressing everyone even further.

“An hour,” Dortmunder said, “is just enough time for us all to go home and get to bed and make believe none of this ever happened.”

“We have two cars.” May said. “We can spend that hour looking for someplace to move. If we don’t find anything, we give up.”

“Fine,” Herman said. “And I’ll keep working on the safe.” He hurried back behind the partition.

“It’s getting cold in here,” Murch’s Mom said.

“You’d be warmer with the brace on,” her son said.

She gave him a look.

Dortmunder sighed. “The thing that scares me,” he said, “is that we probably will find a place.”

27

Dortmunder said, “I suppose it’s unfair to blame you for this job.”

“That’s right,” Kelp said. He was driving, and Dortmunder was in the front seat beside him.

“But I do,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp gave him an aggrieved look and faced front again. “That isn’t fair,” he said.

“Nevertheless.”

They had until nine-thirty to get back to the bank, and it was now about nine-fifteen. Kelp and Dortmunder and Murch had started out in this station wagon together, until Kelp had found a truck big enough to do the job. It said HORSES on the sides, and the interior had a slight smell of stable to it, but it was empty. Kelp had started it up and turned it over to Murch, who had taken it away to the trailer court. Now, Kelp and Dortmunder were roaming the earth looking for somewhere to move the bank. Victor and Murch’s Mom were doing the same thing in Victor’s Packard.

“We’d better get back,” Dortmunder said. “We aren’t going to find anything.”

“We might,” Kelp said. “Why be so pessimistic?”

“Because we covered all this ground last week,” Dortmunder said, “and there wasn’t any place to hide the bank then. So why would there be someplace now?”

“Just five minutes more,” Kelp said. “Then we’ll head back.”

“You can’t see anything in this rain anyway,” Dortmunder said.

“You never know,” Kelp said. “We might get lucky.”

Dortmunder looked at him, but Kelp was concentrating on his driving. Dortmunder considered several things he might say, but none of them seemed adequate, so after a while he turned his head and looked out the windshield at all the rain and listened to the wipers clicking back and forth.

“It’s really coming down,” Kelp said. “I see it.”

“You don’t usually get a rain like this on a Friday,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder looked at him again.

“No, I mean it,” Kelp said. “Usually you get this kind of a rain on a Sunday.”

Dortmunder said, “Are the five minutes up?”

“One minute to go. Keep looking for a place.”

“Sure,” Dortmunder said and looked out the windshield again.

The only good thing was the absence of cops. They’d seen a couple of patrol cars, but no more than normal; the search was obviously being hampered by the rain.

It seemed to Dortmunder, sitting there in the stolen station wagon while Kelp optimistically dragged him around through all this rain on a wild goose chase, that this was the story of his life. His luck was never all good, but it was never all bad either. It was a nice combination of the two, balanced so exactly that they canceled each other out. The same rain that washed away the green paint also loused up the police search. They stole the bank, but they couldn’t get into the safe. On and on.

Dortmunder sighed and looked at his watch. “Your minute is up,” he said.

Reluctantly, Kelp said, “Okay, I guess so.” Then he said, “I’ll take a swing around and head back that way.”

“Go straight back,” Dortmunder said.

“I don’t want to go back the same roads. What’s the point of that?”

“What’s the point of the whole thing?”

“You’re just depressed,” Kelp said. “I’ll turn right at that light up there and swing back that way.”

Dortmunder was about to tell him to make a U-turn, but memories arose and he changed his mind. “Just so we’re back by nine-thirty,” he said, though he knew they wouldn’t be.

“Oh, sure,” Kelp said. “Definitely.”

Dortmunder slumped in the corner and fantasized a return to the trailer in which May would meet him at the door by saying, “Herman opened it!” Then Herman would appear, smiling, holding handfuls of money. “Well, I got it,” he’d say. Murch’s Mom would be seen kicking her neck brace into the rain, shouting, “We don’t need that lawsuit money any more!” Victor would stand in the background, smiling, as though waiting his turn to come forward and recite “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.”

Kelp slammed on the brakes, and the station wagon skidded dangerously to the right. Dortmunder, jolted out of his daydream and practically into the glove compartment, shouted, “Hey! Hey, watch it!” He stared out front, and there was nothing in front of them; just the top of a hill they’d been driving up, a long gradual slope with nothing at the top, no reason at all for Kelp to slam his brakes on that way.

“Look at that!” Kelp shouted and pointed at nothing.

But Dortmunder looked instead out the rear window, saying, “You want another rear-end collision? That’s your trademark? What the hell are you doing?”

“All right, I’ll drive off the road. But will you take a look at that?”

Kelp drove the station wagon onto a gravel parking lot, and Dortmunder at last looked at what he was so excited about. “I see it,” he said. “So what?”

“Don’t you get it?”

“No.”

Kelp pointed again. “We put the trailer right there,” he said. “See what I mean?”

Dortmunder stared. “Well, God damn it,” he said.

“It’ll work,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder couldn’t help it; against his better judgment, he was smiling. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

“That’s right,” said Kelp. “That’s absolutely right.”

28

“I hate rain,” Captain Deemer said.

“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.

“I always have hated rain,” Captain Deemer said. “But never as much as today.”

The two officers were in the back seat of the patrol car the captain was using as his mobile headquarters during the search for the elusive bank. In the front were two uniformed patrolmen, the driver on the left and a man to operate the radio on the right. The radio was the contact not only with the precinct but also with other cars and with other organizations engaged in the bank hunt. Unfortunately, what the radio was mostly contacting was static, a fuzzing and bussing and crackling that filled the car like the aural expression of the captain’s nervous system.

The captain leaned forward, resting one heavy hand on the seat-back near the driver’s head. “Can’t you do anything with that goddam radio?”

“It’s the rain, sir,” the radio man said. “The weather is doing this.”

“I know goddam well the goddam weather is doing it,” the captain said. “I asked you can’t you do anything about it.”

“Well, we get pretty good reception when we’re on a hill,” the radio man said. “Driving along the flat, though, all I get is this static.”

“I hear it,” the captain said. He poked the driver on the shoulder and said, “Find me a hill.”