Going in Style (11 page)

Willie nodded, as if contemplating a keen observation. After a while, he noticed the elderly man sniffing, then saw him edging
away. Willie stood up as the bus approached the Corona stop. “Tell you the truth,” the man called when Willie was halfway
to the door, “you stink too.”

The three men stood on the corner, watching the bus pull away. Al tapped the front of his
jacket to make sure his gun was still well-hidden. Joe looked around. Groups of black men congregated idly on the street.
There was a card game in progress on an overturned refrigerator.

“Bad neighborhood,” said Al.

“Nah,” said Joe. “It’s just not white, that’s all.”

“We gotta watch we don’t get mugged.”

Joe patted the bulge at his waistline. “Somehow,” he said, “I’ve never felt safer.”

They began to walk. “Couldn’t we run down the whole thing one more time?” begged Willie.

“Please,” said Al. “If we talk it through again, I’m gonna start getting confused. Enough is enough.”

“But what if I forget what to do while we’re in the bank?” said Willie. “It’ll be a disaster.”

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” said Joe. “It’s like swimming. It’ll come to you.”

“Swimming only comes to you if you done it before,” said Willie.

“Will, I’ll be watching out for you,” said Joe. “Believe me. Trust me. Stick by me and stay loose.”

“That’s what I used to tell my girl friends,” said Al. “They didn’t believe me either.”

Joe spotted a rusty looking cab with half its front bumper missing. “Gypsy,” he said. Placing two fingers in his mouth, he
produced an ear-splitting whistle. The cab made a sharp U-turn and rolled toward the curb.

“I didn’t know you could whistle like that,” said Willie, his voice filled with admiration.

“Well, I haven’t done it in a while,” said Joe, “but as I said, things come to you.”

“I used to practice at that for hours,” said Willie. “Never could get it, not even once.”

The cab came to a halt a yard ahead of them. Joe walked around to the driver’s side and leaned in. “How you doin’ today?”

The driver was a squat Puerto Rican with bloodshot eyes and yellowish skin. “You chwan a ride?”

“Yeah,” said Joe. “Me an’ my friends would like to know how much you’d charge to take us to Manhattan and back.”

“Manchattan, yes.”

“See, one of my friends gotta go to a bank on Fortieth to sign a will.”

“A will, yes…”

“We’ll only be there for about five minutes, the guy’s already waiting for us.”

The driver stuck his head out of the cab to look at Al and Willie. Al turned sideways. Willie smiled. Three senile old men,
he figures, thought Joe.

“Thirty-fi’ dollars,” said the driver.

Joe clicked his tongue. “Thirty-five,” he repeated. “Jesus, that’s a lot.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if we got that
much.”

The driver narrowed his eyes, hesitating. “Tell ju chwat. Ju look like nice people. I gonna charge ju, mmm, thirty bucks instead.
Take fi’ dollars off.”

Joe smiled and nodded. “It’ll be thirty dollars,” he told Al and Willie. Not waiting for them to respond, he said, “That’s
still a lotta money, but okay.”

They piled into the cab with surprising vigor.

They sat quietly in the back seat, the metal grating of the Queensboro Bridge humming under the taxi’s wheels. Willie looked
out at the silvery
framework of cables and girders, gleaming in the morning sun. “Did I ever tell you?” he said, “I used to swim in the water
right under here.”

“You told us,” said Joe. “You told us.”

“Well, here’s somethin’ you didn’t know,” Al chimed in. “My father helped build this bridge.” Joe looked at him skeptically.

“Yeah, yeah, he come here from County Cork, right around the Black Hills of Dakota gold rush. He wasn’t interested in gold
himself—didn’t believe there was any, he once told me. He found a job working in the sewers, but it was so damp down there
all the time that he started getting the arthritis real bad.”

“I hear that’s inherited,” said Joe.

“Sure it is,” said Al. “I got it myself.”

“I meant it didn’t have nothin’ to do with his bein’ damp. He woulda got it anyway.”

“That, I don’t know,” said Al, “but, regardless, he got himself work layin’ brick on the Brooklyn Bridge. Later on he helped
build this here one. He was number two-oh-six in the Bricklayer’s Union. Even after he saved up enough to buy the luncheonette
in Jersey, he still enjoyed layin’ the bricks. He added walls all over the place.” Al stared at the bridge’s massive towers,
following their lines upward to the cerulean sky. “Boy…” he whispered, “he’s been dead a long time.”

Ten minutes later they were creeping crosstown on the congested streets of Manhattan. “So how you guys feelin’?” asked Joe.

“Like I was goin’ to my weddin’,” said Al.

“Is that good or bad?”

“You’re askin’ me?” said Al. “I never did make it
to my own, you know that. Couple of times I was ‘in transit,’ as they say, but about halfway there I had a little change of
heart.”

“And that’s how you’re feeling now?”

Al smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You ain’t gonna catch me leapin’ out of the cab, if that’s what you were thinkin’.”

“Never crossed my mind,” said Joe. He turned to Willie. “And you?”

“I,” said Willie slowly, “feel like a million bucks.” He was beaming.

Joe raised his eyebrows. “Maybe we should’ve taken a bigger bag.”

The cab eased into Fortieth Street and cruised about halfway down the block before double-parking in front of the bank. The
driver swiveled in the seat. “This chwhere jus wanna go, ri’?”

“Right,” said Joe. “You wait for us here, okay? We’ll be only two minutes.”

The driver looked skeptical. “I try,” he said, “bu’ the cops, they don’ like to see ju double park. Son-tines they make trouble,
chase ju away.”

“Tell anyone who gives you trouble that you’re waiting for a fare,” said Joe. “Tell them we’ll be right out.” He paused. “Say
that if they bother you, you’ll take it up with the Taxi Commission.”

“Chwa’s the Taxi Commission?”

Joe tried to keep the grin off his face, but did not quite succeed. “Look, don’t worry about anything,” he counseled. “Just
wait for us.”

“Okay,” said the cabbie, “bu’ if ju don’ see me chwhen ju come out, it means I cruise aroun’ the block, an’ I be ri’ back.”

Joe’s gaze was unwavering. “Try not to,” he said. He turned to Willie and Al. “Ready?”

They nodded.

“Let’s go!”

They scrambled out of the cab and headed toward the bank’s entrance. There, sheltered by the overhang, they quickly put on
the disguises they’d kept in their pockets. Joe and Al, hands on the bulges at the front of their coats, scarcely heard the
tiny snap of plastic as they moved toward the revolving door. They were inside the bank before Willie’s cry reached them.

“These won’t stay on!”

Joe, his hand already gripping his pistol, glanced around. He saw Willie outside on the street, struggling to position his
Groucho glasses—one of the temple pieces had broken off.

“Just hold them on!” said Joe urgently. He turned to scan the bank. There were perhaps a dozen customers present in addition
to the tellers and executives. The guard had not stirred from his chair in the corner. Calmly, Joe nudged Al in the guard’s
direction. The man was facing away from them, staring at a woman customer on one of the lines. Joe cleared his throat. When
the guard turned, he found himself staring directly into the muzzle of Al’s gun.

“What? What’re you—”

Al moved the pistol so that the barrel pressed against the man’s temple. “Let him feel cold steel,” Joe had counseled earlier.
“Be it the twentieth century or the tenth, that’s always been a sure way to put fear into somebody’s heart.”

Joe unbuttoned the guard’s holster and withdrew the gun. “You so much as blink too fast and, so help me,” he said ominously,
“my friend here will splatter your brains all over the wall.”

Al’s eyes widened at Joe’s harshness; the threat
was more vicious than he’d expected. Still, when the guard’s gaze swung slowly toward the gun at his head, his expression
all terror, Al managed to keep his own look cool. “Look professional,” Joe had said. “Like you don’t really mean to kill,
but would if you had to.”

Joe started toward the counter, gun out ahead of him, airline bag at his side. He saw Willie just inside the door. With his
left hand he was pressing the Groucho glasses against his face; his right waved a pistol in the general direction of the guard.

Joe stopped at the rear of one of the lines of customers. “All right,” he shouted, “this is a stickup!”

Several people turned to stare, more out of curiosity or annoyance than fear, while others seemed not to have heard. A few
of the tellers looked up.

“It’s a stick-up!” repeated Joe. He moved toward one of the cages. All the tellers had now gone rigid. “Touch them buzzers
and we start blasting!” he barked.

The customers conversations ceased. The bank was absolutely silent. “I want everyone out here to get down on the floor!” ordered
Joe. He swept the gun around expansively.

A few of the customers knelt, but most remained rigidly erect. “I said down!” yelled Joe fiercely. Six women and three men
flattened themselves against the floor. Two people didn’t. One of these, a black man, squatted on hands and knees; the other,
an old woman, simply remained erect. Joe addressed the man. “You hard of hearing?”

The man looked at him sullenly. “Ah down as much as Ah gittin’.”

“No, you ain’t,” said Joe. He aimed the gun carefully at the man’s broad face. “Either you kiss that floor or I give you a
third eye.”

Slowly, his resentment palpable, the man complied. Joe turned to the elderly lady, who was resting heavily on a wooden cane.

“I kent get down, so you vanna shoot, you shoot,” she said. “And I’ll tell you somethink else, don’t think you’ll frighten
me by givink a third eye. The other two don’t work as it is—I got glaucoma on the left side—so for me an extra one vould be
a gift.”

“All right, just stand still,” said Joe. “Now—”

“I’ll do what I ken,” interrupted the old woman. “I’d like to see you stend still if you had what I got.”

Joe knew he’d better ignore her. The slightest display of sympathy or even humanity would result in an hour-long medical report
complete with operative history and doctor bills. Instead, he addressed the tellers. “All you back there! Start pushing that
money through them windows!”

No one moved. One teller, a young woman, look over at a co-worker, rolled her eyes, and shrugged. Joe became worried; they
were not taking him seriously. He whirled at a squeaking sound behind him, saw a young, annoyed-looking executive heading
briskly in his direction.

“What is this?” said the man. “I’m the manager here.”

“Shut the hell up!” shouted Joe. “Get down on the floor!”

The executive squinted. “Who are you?”

“I said, ‘Get down!’ ”

The man dropped to his knees. “Do you have an account here?” he asked stupidly.

Joe cocked the hammer. “Mister, this is a robbery. One more wise-aleck remark and your head will be a bowling ball.”

The executive still seemed skeptical. Possibly he’s just reluctant to get his suit dirty, thought Joe. The manager looked
up at him sternly. “Are you kidding?” he said. “Is this some kind of joke? Because if it—”

Joe fired at a large wall clock behind the counter. The shot echoed deafeningly around the vaulted interior. Broken glass
sprayed the desktop calculators; the minute hand landed intact on somebody’s deposit slip. The net effect, however, was salutary;
everyone, including Al and Willie, snapped to attention. Quickly, the tellers began to pile money on the counters. The executives
and customers—except for the old woman—lay flat on the floor.

“That’s better,” said Joe. “No nonsense and no one gets hurt.” He turned to Willie, saw that he was okay, and turned back.
The stacks of bills in front of the windows were growing substantially. “Keep it coming,” said Joe. “Keep it coming.” He switched
to his Edward G. Robinson voice. “And I mean
all
of it. You hear? All of it.”

Suddenly, behind him, there was the sound of laughter. He spun, saw two businessmen push through the revolving doors. So absorbed
were they in conversation that they seemed oblivious to what was going on.

“Hey!” shouted Willie.

One of the men glanced over at him.

“Yeah, you, fathead!”

Joe was amazed at Willie’s aggressiveness. Willie
approached the two businessmen and waved his gun in front of their astonished faces. “Both of you! First thing, shut your
goddamn mouths. Second, get over there with the others and lie down.”

One of the men turned to the other, as if his companion would confirm this was actually happening.

“C’mon,” yelled Willie. “Get over there!”

The men walked stiffly to the line of customers and lay down at the end, seemingly determined to maintain their proper place
in the queue even under these trying circumstances.

“Yeah,” said Willie, still brandishng the pistol theatrically. “That’s right. Just lay there and don’t get any bright ideas.
No one needs a dead hero, understand?”