was Murch who found the guards. “Here they are,” he said. “Behind the
counter.”
And there they were, all seven of them, stuffed away on the floor behind the
counter, jammed in amid filing cabinets and desks, sound asleep. Murch said, “I
heard that one snoring, that’s how I knew.”
“Don’t they look peaceful,” Kelp said, looking over the counter at them. “It
makes me woozy myself just to look at them.”
Dortmunder too had been feeling a certain heaviness, thinking it was the
physical and emotional letdown after a successful job, but all at once he roused
himself and cried, “Murch!”
Murch was half draped over the counter; it was hard to tell if he was looking
at the guards or joining them. He straightened, startled by Dortmunder’s shout,
and said, “What? What?”
“Is the motor still on?”
“My God, so it is,” Murch said. He reeled toward the door. “I’ll go turn it
off.”
“No no,” Dortmunder said. “Just get that damn hose out of the ventilator.” He
gestured with the flashlight toward the front of the trailer, where the hose had
been pumping truck exhaust into the trailer for the last twenty minutes. There
was a strong smell of garage inside the bank, but it hadn’t been enough to warn
them right away not to fall into their own trap. The guards had been put to sleep
by carbon monoxide, and their captors had almost just done the same thing to
themselves.
Murch staggered out into the fresh air, and Dortmunder said to Kelp, who
was yawning like a whale, “Come on, let’s get these birds out of here.”
“Right, right, right.” Knuckling his eyes, Kelp followed Dortmunder around
the counter, and they spent the next few minutes carrying guards outside and
depositing them in the grass by the side of the road. When they were finished
with that, they hooked the door open, propped the trailer windows open, and
got back into the cab, where they found Murch asleep.
“Oh, come on,” Dortmunder said, and joggled Murch’s shoulder hard enough
to bump his head into the door.
“Ow,” Murch said and looked around, blinking. “What now?” he said,
obviously trying to remember what situation he was in.
“Onward,” Kelp said.
“Right,” Dortmunder said and slammed the cab door.
21
AT FIVE past two, Murch’s Mom said, “I hear them coming!” and raced to
the car for her neck brace. She barely had it on and fastened when the
headlights appeared at the end of the stadium, and the cab and bank drove
across the football field and stopped on the drop cloth. Meanwhile, Herman and
Victor and May were standing by with their equipment ready. This high-school
football stadium was open at one end, so that at this time of night it was both
accessible and untenanted. The stands on three sides, and the school building
beyond the open side, shielded them from curious eyes on any of the
neighborhood roads.
Murch had barely stopped the cab when Victor was setting up the ladder at
the back and Herman was climbing the ladder with his roller in one hand and
paint tray in the other. Meanwhile, May and Murch’s Mom had started, with
newspapers and masking tape, to cover all sections on the sides that wouldn’t
get painted-windows, chrome trim, door handles.
There were more rollers and ladders and paint trays. While Victor and Murch
helped the ladies mask the sides, Kelp and Dortmunder started painting. They
were using a pale-green water-base paint, the kind people use on their living-room walls, the kind you can clean up afterward with plain water. They were
using this because it was the fastest and neatest to apply, it was guaranteed to
cover in one coat, and it would dry very quickly. Particularly in the open air.
In five minutes, the bank wasn’t a bank any more. It had lost its “Just watch
us GROW!” sign somewhere along the way and was now a pleasing soft green
color instead of its former blue and white. It had also gained Michigan license
plates appropriate to a mobile home. Murch drove forward till it was off the
drop cloth, and then the drop cloth was folded up and put into the paint-company truck that had been stolen this afternoon for just this purpose. The
ladders and rollers and paint trays were stowed away in there, too. Then
Herman and May and Dortmunder and Murch’s Mom climbed up into the
trailer, the ladies both carrying packages, and Kelp drove away in the paint-company truck, followed by Victor in the Packard. Victor had brought the
ladies out here and would take Kelp home after he ditched the truck.
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
running back and forth, scribbling messages, slamming doors, making phone
calls, developing heartburn and acid indigestion. Beyond that window, a massive
bank hunt was already under way, with every available car and man from both
the Nassau County police and the Suffolk County police. The New York City
police in both Queens and Brooklyn had been alerted, and every street and road
and highway crossing the twelve-mile long border into the city was being
watched. There was no land exit from Long Island except through New York
City, no bridges or tunnels to any other part of the world. The ferries to
Connecticut from Port Jefferson and Orient Point didn’t run at this time of night
and would be watched from the time they opened for business in the morning.
The local police and harbor authorities at every spot on the Island with facilities
big enough to handle a ship that could load an entire mobile home on it had also
been alerted and were ready. Macarthur Airport was being watched.
“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