Bank Shot (6 page)

The third one, the gloomiest of them, shouted, ‘I run over a rat the other day, down by Kingston-Throop, this big.' And knocked over his beer.

Dortmunder strolled on down to the end of the bar while Rollo sopped up the spilled beer and drew a new one. The motormen started shouting about other animals that were or weren't in the subway tunnels, and Rollo came heavily along the bar toward Dortmunder. He was a tall, meaty, balding, blue-jawed gent in a dirty white shirt and dirty white apron, and when he reached Dortmunder he said, ‘Long time no see.'

‘You know how it is,' Dortmunder said. ‘I been living with a woman.'

Rollo nodded sympathetically. ‘That's death on the bar business,' he said. ‘What you want to do is get married, then you'll start coming out at night.'

Dortmunder nodded his head toward the back room. ‘Anybody there?'

‘Your friend, the other bourbon,' Rollo said. ‘Along with a no-proof-of-age ginger ale. They got your glass.'

‘Thanks.'

Dortmunder left the bar and headed for the rear, past the two doors with the dog silhouettes on them and the sign on one door
POINTERS
and on the other door
SETTERS
and past the phone booth and through the green door at the back and into a small square room with a concrete floor. None of the walls were visible because practically the whole room was taken up floor to ceiling with beer cases and liquor cases, leaving only a small opening in the middle big enough for a battered old table with a green felt top, half a dozen chairs and one bare bulb with a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire.

Kelp and Victor were seated at the table side by side, as though waiting for a big-stakes poker game to start. A bottle of bourbon and a half-empty glass stood in front of Kelp, and a glass with ice cubes and something sparkly and amber stood in front of Victor.

Kelp, cheerful and optimistic, said, ‘Hi! Murch isn't here yet.'

‘So I see.' Dortmunder sat down in front of the other glass on the table, which was still empty.

‘Hello, Mr. Dortmunder.'

Dortmunder looked across the table. Victor's smile made him squint, like too much sunlight. ‘Hello, Victor,' he said.

‘I'm glad we'll be working together.'

Dortmunder's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile, and he gazed down at his big-knuckled hands on the green felt of the table.

Kelp pushed the bottle toward him. ‘Have one.'

The bottle claimed to be Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon – ‘Our Own Brand'. Dortmunder splashed some in his glass, sipped, made a face and said, ‘Stan's late. That isn't like him.'

Kelp said, ‘While we wait, why don't we work out some of the details on this thing?'

‘Just like it was really going to happen,' Dortmunder said.

‘Of course it's going to happen,' Kelp said.

Victor managed to look worried while still smiling. ‘Don't you think it'll happen, Mr. Dortmunder?'

Kelp said, ‘Of course it'll happen.' To Dortmunder he said, ‘What about the string?'

Victor said, ‘String?'

‘The crew,' Kelp told him. ‘The group engaged in the operation.'

‘Oh.'

‘We don't have the job planned out yet,' Dortmunder said.

‘What plan?' Kelp asked. ‘We back up a truck, hook on, drive the thing away. Dump the guards at our leisure, take it someplace else, bust into the safe, go on about our business.'

‘I think you skipped over a few spots,' Dortmunder said.

‘Oh, well,' Kelp said airily, ‘there's details to be worked out.'

‘One or two,' Dortmunder said.

‘But we have the general outline. And what I figure, we here can handle it, plus Stan to do the driving and a good lockman to get into the safe.'

‘We here?' Dortmunder asked. He gave Kelp a meaningful look, glanced at Victor, looked back at Kelp again.

Kelp patted the air in a secretive way, hiding it from Victor. ‘We can talk about all that,' he said. ‘The question now is the lockman. We know we'll need one.'

‘How about Chefwick? The model-train nut.'

Kelp shook his head. ‘No,' he said, ‘he isn't around any more. He hijacked a subway car to Cuba.'

Dortmunder looked at him. ‘Don't start,' he said.

‘Start what? I didn't do anything; Chefwick did. He got to run that locomotive that job with us, and he must've flipped out or something.'

‘All right,' Dortmunder said.

‘So he and his wife went to Mexico on vacation, and at Vera Cruz there were these used subway cars that were going on a boat to Cuba, and Chefwick –'

‘I said all right.'

‘Don't blame me,' Kelp said. ‘I'm just telling you what happened.' He brightened suddenly, saying, ‘That reminds me, did you hear what happened to Greenwood?'

‘Leave me alone,' Dortmunder said.

‘He got his own television series.'

‘I said leave me alone!'

Victor said, ‘You know someone with his own television series?'

‘Sure,' Kelp said. ‘He was on a job with Dortmunder and me one time.'

‘You wanted to talk about a lockman,' Dortmunder said. Somehow his glass was empty. He splashed in some more of the Amsterdam Liquor Store's Own Brand of bourbon.

‘I have a suggestion,' Kelp said. He sounded doubtful. ‘He's a good man, but I don't know …'

‘Who is it?' Dortmunder asked.

‘I don't think you know him.'

‘What's his name?' When dealing with Kelp, Dortmunder just got more and more patient as time went along.

‘Herman X.'

‘Herman X?'

‘The only thing,' Kelp said, ‘he's a spade. I don't know if you're prejudiced or not.'

‘Herman X?'

Victor said primly, ‘Sounds like a Black Muslim.'

‘Not exactly,' Kelp said. ‘He's like in an offshoot. I don't know what they call themselves. His bunch is mad at the people that were mad at the people that were mad at the people that went off with Malcolm X. I think that's right.'

Victor frowned into space. ‘I haven't kept up with that area of subversion,' he said. ‘It wouldn't be the Pan-African Panthers, would it?'

‘Doesn't ring a bell.'

‘The Sons Of Marcus Garvey?'

‘No, that's not right.'

‘The Black Barons?'

‘No.'

‘The Sam Spades?'

Kelp frowned for a second, then shook his head. ‘No.'

‘Probably a new splinter,' Victor said. ‘They keep fractionalising, makes it extremely difficult to maintain proper surveillance. No co-operation at all. I can remember how upset the agents used to get about that.'

A little silence fell. Dortmunder sat there holding the glass and looking at Kelp, who was mooning away at the opposite wall. Dortmunder's expression was patient, but not pleased. Eventually, Kelp sighed and shifted and glanced at Dortmunder and then frowned, obviously trying to figure out what Dortmunder was staring at him for. Then all at once he cried, ‘Oh! The lockman!'

‘The lockman,' Dortmunder agreed.

‘Herman X.'

Dortmunder nodded. ‘That's the one.'

‘Well,' Kelp said, ‘do you care about him being black?'

Patiently Dortmunder shook his head. He said, ‘Why should I care about him being black? All I want him to do is open a safe.'

‘It's just you never know about people,' Kelp explained. ‘Herman says so himself.'

Dortmunder poured more bourbon.

‘Should I give him a call?'

‘Why not?'

Kelp nodded. ‘I'll give him a call,' he said, and the door opened and Murch came in, followed by his Mom, wearing her neck brace. They were both carrying glasses of beer, and Murch was also carrying a salt shaker. ‘Hey, Stan!' Kelp said. ‘Come on in.'

‘Sorry we're late,' Murch said. ‘Usually, coming back from the Island, I'd take the Northern State and Grand Central and Queens Boulevard to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, but figuring the time of day it was, and I was coming uptown – sit down, Mom.'

‘Victor,' Kelp said, ‘this is Stan Murch, and this is Murch's Mom.'

‘What happened to your neck, Mrs Murch?'

‘A lawyer,' she said. She was in a bad mood.

‘So I figured,' Murch said, once he and his Mom were both seated, ‘I'd just stick with Grand Central and take the Triborough Bridge to a hundred and twenty-fifth Street and over to Columbus Avenue and straight down. Only what happened –'

His Mom said, ‘Can I take this damn thing off anyway in here?'

‘Mom, if you'd leave it on you'd get used to it. You take it off all the time, that's why you don't like it.'

‘Wrong,' she said. ‘I have to put it on all the time.
That's
why I don't like it.'

Kelp said, ‘Well, Stan, did you go take a look at the bank?'

‘Let me tell you what happened,' Murch said. ‘Just leave it on, okay, Mom? So we came across Grand Central, and there was a mess this side of La Guardia. Some kind of collision.'

‘We got there just too late to see it,' his Mom said. She was keeping the neck brace on.

‘So I had to go along the shoulder and push a cop car out of the way at one point, so I could get off at Thirty-first Street and go down to Jackson Avenue and then Queens Boulevard and the bridge and the regular way after that. So that's why we're late.'

‘No problem,' Kelp said.

‘If I'd done my regular route, it wouldn't have happened.'

Dortmunder sighed. ‘You're here now,' he said. ‘That's the important thing. Did you look at the bank?' He wanted to know the worst and get it over with.

Murch's Mom said, ‘It was a beautiful day for a drive.'

‘I looked at it,' Murch said. He was being very business-like all of a sudden. ‘I looked it over very carefully, and I've got some good news and some bad news.'

Dortmunder said, ‘The bad news first.'

‘No,' Kelp said. ‘The good news first.'

‘Okay,' Murch said. ‘The good news is it has a trailer hitch.'

Dortmunder said, ‘What's the bad news?'

‘It doesn't have any wheels.'

‘Been nice talking to you,' Dortmunder said.

‘Wait a minute,' said Kelp. ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. What do you mean it doesn't have any wheels?'

‘Underneath,' Murch said.

‘But it's a trailer, it's a mobile home. It's got to have wheels.'

‘What they did,' Murch said, ‘they put it in position, and jacked it up, and took the wheels off. Wheels and axles both.'

‘But it
had
wheels,' Kelp said.

‘Oh, sure,' Murch said. ‘Every trailer has wheels.'

‘So what the hell did they do with them?'

‘I don't know. Maybe the company that owns the trailer has them.'

Victor suddenly snapped his fingers and said, ‘Of course! I've seen the same thing at construction sites. They use trailers for field offices, and if it's a long-term job they build foundation walls underneath and remove the wheels.'

‘What the hell for?' Kelp asked. He sounded affronted.

‘Maybe save strain on the tires. Maybe give it more stability.'

Murch said, ‘The point is, it doesn't have wheels.'

A little silence fell on the group. Dortmunder, who had just been sitting there letting the conversation wash over him while he basted in his own pessimism, sighed and shook his head and reached for the bourbon bottle again. He knew that May believed that planning even an idiot job that wouldn't ever happen was better than doing nothing at all, and he supposed she was right, but what he wouldn't give for news right now about a factory that still paid cash.

All right. He was the planner – that was his function – so it was up to him to think about the details as they came along. No wheels. He sighed and said to Murch, ‘The thing is sitting on those concrete block walls, right?'

‘That's right,' Murch said. ‘What they must have done, they jacked it up, took the wheels off, put the concrete blocks in place, and lowered the trailer down onto them.'

‘The concrete blocks are cemented to each other,' Dortmunder said. ‘The question is, are they cemented to the bottom of the trailer?'

Murch shook his head. ‘Definitely not. The trailer's just resting there.'

‘With concrete block all around underneath.'

‘Not on the ends, just along the two sides.'

A tiny flicker of interest made Dortmunder frown. ‘Not at the ends?'

‘No,' Murch said. ‘The one end is against the Kresge's next door, and the other end they've just got a wooden lattice across it. So they can get in at it, I guess.'

Dortmunder turned his head to look at Victor. For a wonder, Victor wasn't smiling; instead, he was watching Dortmunder with such intensity he looked paralysed. It wasn't much of an improvement. Squinting, Dortmunder said, ‘Is there ever any time when the bank is empty? No guards at all?'

‘Every night,' Victor said. ‘Except Thursday, when the cash is in it.'

‘They don't have a night watchman in there?'

‘They don't keep any cash there at all,' Victor said, ‘except on Thursdays. Otherwise, there's nothing to steal. And they've got all the normal burglar alarms. And the police patrol the business streets pretty often out there.'

‘What about weekends?'

‘They patrol weekends, too.'

‘No,' Dortmunder said. ‘What about guards on the weekends? Saturday afternoon, for instance. The thing's empty then?'

‘Sure,' Victor said. ‘With so many shoppers going by on Saturday, what do they need with guards?'

‘All right,' Dortmunder said. He turned back to Murch and said, ‘Can we get wheels someplace?'