Bank Shot

What he was looking at was the weedy driveway beside his house, with its two narrow ribbons of old cracked concrete leading down to the sidewalk and the street. This was an older section of Long Island than either Ranch Cove Estates or Elm Valley Heights. It was called Belle Vista; the streets were all straight, and the houses ran mostly to two-story, one-family affairs with front porches.

Down at the sidewalk Victor saw a man. He was walking slowly back and forth, he was looking down, and he was taking occasional quick puffs on a stub of cigarette he held in his cupped hand. Victor nodded, pleased at what he saw. Dortmunder was tall and lean and tired-looking; he had the worn look of Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra. Victor did a Bogart twitch with the left side of his mouth, leaned back, and lowered the movie poster again. “That’s fine,” he said amiably. “Let’s go out and meet him.”

“Sure,” Kelp said.

Victor opened the bookcase and bowed Kelp through ahead of him. On the other side, the bookcase was an ordinary door, with a dusty window in it covered by a chintz curtain. Victor pulled the door shut and walked with Kelp around to the front of the garage and down the driveway toward Dortmunder.

Victor couldn’t help looking back, when he was halfway down the drive, and admiring his handiwork. From the outside it looked like a perfectly ordinary garage, except that it was more old-fashioned than most, with its pair of side-hinged doors padlocked in the middle. Anybody who went up to those doors and looked through the small dusty windows would see nothing but blackness; it was black felt against plywood six inches from the glass, but he wouldn’t know that. He’d think it was simply dark in there. Victor had tried rigging up a blow-up photograph of a 1933 Ford in there, but he just couldn’t ever get the perspective right, so he’d settled for darkness instead.

He faced front again, smiling, and walked with Kelp the rest of the way to meet Dortmunder, who stopped on the sidewalk, gave them both a sour look and flicked his cigarette butt away.

Kelp made introductions: “Dortmunder, this is Victor.”

“Hello,” Dortmunder said.

“Hello, Mr. Dortmunder,” Victor said eagerly and stuck his hand out. “I’ve sure heard a lot about you,” he said admiringly.

Dortmunder looked at the hand, then at Victor, and finally shook hands with him, suddenly saying, “You heard a lot about me?”

“From my uncle,” Victor said proudly.

Dortmunder gave Kelp a look that wasn’t easy to define and said, “Is that right?”

“General things,” Kelp said. “You know, just general things.”

“This and that,” Dortmunder suggested.

“That kind of thing, yeah.”

Victor smiled at both of them. Dortmunder was just fine, in appearance and voice and attitude and everything. Just fine. After the disappointment of the Bureau, he hadn’t known exactly what to expect, but so far Dortmunder was everything Victor could have hoped for.

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Well,” he said happily, “shall we go take a look at it?”

5

The three of them sat in the front seat, with Dortmunder on the right. Every time he turned his head slightly to the left he saw Victor, sitting in the middle, smiling at him, as though Victor were a fisherman and Dortmunder was the biggest fish he’d ever caught. It made Dortmunder very nervous, particularly since this Victor used to be an FBI man, so he kept his head turned to the right most of the time and watched the houses go by. Suburbs, suburbs. All these millions of bedrooms.

After a while Victor said, “Well, we certainly do have a nice day for it.”

Dortmunder turned his head, and Victor was smiling at him. “Yes,” Dortmunder said and turned away again.

“Tell me, Mr. Dortmunder,” Victor said, “do you read newspapers much?”

What kind of question was that? Dortmunder kept his head turned to the right and mumbled, “Sometimes.”

“Any paper in particular?” It was asked in a careless sort of tone, as though Victor were just making conversation. But it was a weird conversation.

“The Times sometimes,” Dortmunder said. He watched an intersection go by.

“That’s sort of a liberal paper, isn’t it? Is that what you’d say your politics were? Sort of liberal?”

Dortmunder couldn’t help turning and looking at him again, but Victor was still smiling that same smile, so Dortmunder quick looked away again, saying, “Sometimes I read the News.”

“Ah,” said Victor. “I see. Do you find yourself in agreement more often with one paper than the other?”

On Victor’s other side, Kelp said, “Lay off, Victor. You quit that job, remember?”

“What? I’m just talking.”

“I know what you’re just doing,” Kelp told him. “But it comes over like a third degree.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Victor said. He sounded as though he meant it. “It’s just a habit you get into. You’d be surprised how hard it is to break.”

Neither Kelp nor Dortmunder commented.

Victor said, “Mr. Dortmunder, I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Dortmunder sneaked another look at him, and for once he wasn’t smiling; he was looking concerned and penitent instead. Dortmunder faced him more securely and said, “That’s okay. Think nothing of it.”

And Victor smiled again. To the back of Dortmunder’s head he said, “I’m sure glad you didn’t take offense, Mr. Dortmunder.”

Dortmunder grunted, watching houses go by.

“After all, if you don’t want to tell me your politics, there’s no reason why you should have to.”

“Victor,” said Kelp warningly.

“What?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“By golly, so I am. Hey, you’re supposed to turn there.”

Dortmunder watched the intersection go by and felt the car slowing.

Kelp said, “I’ll just make a U-turn.”

“Go around the block,” Dortmunder said.

“It’s just as easy,” Kelp said, bringing the car to a stop, “to make a U-turn.”

Dortmunder moved his head and gave Kelp a look past Victor’s smile. “Go around the block,” he said.

Victor, not seeming to notice any tension in the air, pointed out front and said, “Why not just go down there and turn right? Comes out the same place.”

“Sure,” Kelp said, shrugging, as though it didn’t matter one way or the other. The Toronado started forward again, and Dortmunder turned away from Victor’s smile once more and watched suburban houses go by. They went through a couple of small shopping areas, each with its own record store and Chinese restaurant, and stopped at last in front of a bank. “There it is,” Kelp said.

It was an old-fashioned bank, done in stone that had turned dark gray over the years. Like many banks built in the Northeast in the Twenties, it tried its best to look like a Greek temple, the Twenties being the last decade that Americans actually worshipped money. Like many suburban banks, the Greek-temple motif really wasn’t suitable to the size of this building; the four gray stone pillars across the front of it were crammed so close together it was barely possible to get between them to the front door.

Dortmunder spent a few seconds studying that front door, and the pillars, and the sidewalk, and the storefronts on both sides, and then the front door opened and two men in work clothes and construction-crew helmets came out, carrying a tall wooden writing stand, the pens at the end of their chains dangling like remnants of fringe. “We’re too late,” Dortmunder said.

“Not that bank,” Kelp said. “That bank.”

Dortmunder turned his head again, looking at Kelp past Victor’s smile. Kelp motioned across the street, and Dortmunder ducked his head a little bit — for one awful second he thought Victor was going to kiss him on the cheek, but he didn’t — and looked across the way at the other bank.