Murch’s Mom put down her own coffee container, frowned at her hand and
at last gave an elaborate sigh and said, “Oh, well.” She played the jack of
diamonds and drew in the trick.
“Look out,” Murch said. “Mom’s shooting the moon.”
His mother gave him a dirty look. “Mom’s shooting the moon, Mom’s
shooting the moon. You know so much. I had to take that trick.”
“That’s okay,” Murch said calmly. “I got stoppers.”
May was sitting by the partially open door of the trailer, where she could look
out and see the blacktop street all the way down to the court entrance. It was
now ten after seven in the morning and fully light. Half a dozen seedy cars had
left here in the last half hour, as residents went off to work, but no one had as
yet arrived to question this new trailer’s presence-neither a trailer-court
manager nor the police.
While waiting, May and Murch’s Mom were running a rousing game of hearts
in the pseudo-breakfast nook they’d set up by the door toward the front end of
the trailer, farthest from the safe. Back at the other end, hidden behind a new
floor-to-ceiling partition created from sections of counter, Herman was working
away steadily at the safe, assisted by the men in groups of two. Kelp and Victor
were back there with him now, while Dortmunder and Murch were sitting in at
the card game. At eight o’clock, the men would switch.
So far, there had been two small crump sounds from the other side of the
counter as Herman had tried minor explosions which had failed to accomplish
anything, and occasionally there was the whir of a power tool or the buzz of a
saw intermixed with the steady rasp of the circular drill, but up till now very little
seemed to be happening. Ten minutes ago, when Dortmunder and Murch had
finished their six-to-seven shift, May had asked them how things were going. “I
won’t say he hasn’t made a dent in it,” Dortmunder had said. “He’s made a dent
in it.” And he’d rubbed his shoulder, having spent most of the previous hour
turning a handle in a large circle.
In the meantime, the bank had been made more livable and homelike. The
electricity and bathroom were both working, the floor had been swept, the
furniture rearranged and the curtains put up on the windows. It was only too bad
the bank hadn’t come equipped with a kitchen; the ham. burgers and doughnuts
Murch had brought back from the all-night diner were almost edible, but the
coffee was probably against the anti-pollution laws.
“Anything?” Dortmunder asked.
May had been gazing toward the street, thinking about kitchens and food and
coffee. She switched her attention to Dortmunder and said, “No, I was just
daydreaming.”
“You’re tired, that’s why,” Murch’s Mom said. “We all are, staying up all
night. I’m not as young as I used to be.” She played the ace of diamonds.
“Ho ho,” her son said. “Not shooting the moon, huh?”
“I’m too clever for you,” she told him. “While you big-mouth, I get rid of all
my dangerous winners.” She had taken her neck brace off, despite her son’s
complaints, and was now hunched over her cards like a gambling squirrel.
“Here comes somebody,” May said.
Dortmunder said, “Law?”
“No. The manager, I think.”
A blue-and-white station wagon had just turned in at the entrance and
stopped beside the small white-clapboard office shack. A smallish man in a dark
suit got out of the car, and when May saw him start to unlock the office door
she put down her cards and said, “That’s him. I’ll be back.”
Murch said, “Mom, put the brace on.”
“I will not.”
They still didn’t have steps for the trailer. May clambered awkwardly down to
the ground, flipped a cigarette ember away from the corner of her mouth and lit
a new one as she walked down the row to the office.
The man at the sloppy desk inside had the thin, nervous, dehydrated look of a
reformed drunk-the look of a man who at any instant may go back to sleeping
in alleys while clutching a pint bottle of port. He gave May a terrified stare and
said, “Yes, Miss? Yes?”
“We’re moving in for a week,” May said. “I wanted to pay you.”
“A week? A trailer?” He seemed baffled by everything. Maybe it was just the
early hour that was getting to him.
“That’s right,” May said. “How much is it for a week?”
“Twenty-seven fifty. Where’s the, uh, where do you have your trailer?”
“Back there on the right,” May said, pointing through the wall.
He frowned, bewildered. “I didn’t hear you drive in.”
“We came in last night.”
“Last night!” He leaped to his feet, knocking a pile of forms slithering from
the desk to the floor. While May watched him in some amazement, he raced out
the front door. She shook her head and stooped to pick up the fallen papers.
He was back a minute later, saying, “You’re right. I never even noticed it
when I – . . Here, you don’t have to do that.”
“All done,” May said. Straightening, she put the pile of forms back on the
desk, causing some sort of seismic disturbance, because another stack of papers
promptly toppled off the desk on the other side.
“Leave them, leave them,” the nervous man said.
“I think I will.” May moved over to let him get back to his seat behind the
desk, and then she sat in the room’s only other chair, facing him. “Anyway,” she
said, “we want to stay for a week.”
“There’s some forms to fill out.” He started opening and slamming desk
drawers, doing it far too rapidly to see any. thing inside them in the milliseconds
when they were open. “While you’re doing that,” he said, opening and closing,
opening and closing, “I’ll go hook up the utilities.”
“We already did that.”
He stopped, with a drawer open, and blinked at her. “But it’s locked,” he
said.
May took the padlock out of her sweater pocket, where it had been
stretching the material even worse than her usual cigarettes. “This was on the
ground beside it,” she said and reached forward to put it on a pile of papers in
front of him. “We thought it might be yours.”
“It wasn’t locked?” He stared at the padlock in horror, as though it were a
shrunken head.
“Nope.”
“If the boss …” He licked his lips, then stared at May in mute appeal.
“I won’t tell,” she promised. His nervousness was making her nervous, too,
and she was in a hurry to get finished with him and out of here.
“He can be very …” He shook his head, then glanced down at the open
drawer, seemed surprised to see it open, then frowned at it and drew out some
papers. “Here they are,” he said.
May spent the next ten minutes filling out forms. She wrote that the trailer had
four occupants: Mrs. Hortense Davenport (herself); her sister, Mrs. Winifred
Loomis (Murch’s Mom); and Mrs. Loomis’ two sons, Stan (Murch) and Victor
(Victor). Dortmunder and Kelp and Herman did not exist on the forms May
filled out.
The manager grew gradually calmer as time went by, as though slowly getting
used to May’s presence, and was even risking shaky little smiles when May
handed over the last of the forms and the twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents. “I
hope your stay at Wanderlust is just great,” he said.
“Thank you, I’m sure it will be,” May said, getting to her feet, and the
manager suddenly looked terrified again and moved all his extremities at once,
causing great land shifts of paper on his desk. May, baffled, looked over her
shoulder and saw the room filling with state troopers. May stifled a nervous start
of her own, but she didn’t need to; the manager’s contortions had riveted the
troopers’ attentions.
“Well, bye now,” May said and walked through the troopers-there were
only two of them after all-toward the door. The thump behind her was either
the padlock or the manager hitting the floor; she didn’t turn to see which, but
kept going, and strode hurriedly up the gravel drive toward the bank. As she
approached it, she saw it suddenly rock slightly on its wheels, and then settle
down again. Another of Herman’s explosions, she thought, and a few seconds
later a puff of white smoke came out a vent on the trailer roof. They’ve picked
a Pope, she thought.
Dortmunder was waiting in the doorway to give her a hand up. “Whoop,
thanks,” she said. “The cops are here.”
“I saw them. We’ll get back of the partition.”
“Right.”
Murch’s Mom said, “Let’s not get those cards mixed up. Everybody hold
onto your own hand.”
Murch said, “Mom, will you please put the brace on?”
“For the last time, no.”