“Take me about five minutes to set up,” Herman said.
It took less. Four minutes later, Herman made everybody get around on the
other side of the partition from the safe, explaining, “This might throw a little
metal around.”
“Good,” Dortmunder said. “I feel like doing the same thing myself.”
They all waited out in the main part of the bank while Herman, out of sight,
did his final bit of work. After a few seconds of silence, they watched him back
slowly into view around the end of the partition, holding a length of wire in each
hand, gently drawing the wires after him. He looked at the others over his
shoulder. “Everybody set?”
“Blow the damn thing,” Dortmunder said.
“Right.” Herman touched the exposed ends of wire together, and from the
other side of the partition came a Krack! The bank rocked, much more than
with the earlier explosions, and a stack of empty plastic coffee containers fell off
the desk over in the corner where May had left them. “Got it,” Herman said,
smiling all over his face, and a bit of gray smoke came curling around the edge of
the partition.
They all crowded around the partition to look at the safe, and damn if it didn’t
have a round hole in the side. Kelp shouted, “You did it!”
“God damn!” Herman cried, delighted with himself, and everybody
pummeled him on the back.
Dortmunder said, “Why’s the smoke coming out of there?” They all got quiet
again and looked at the wisp of smoke curling up from the hole. Herman said,
“Wait a minute now,” and stepped forward to take a quick look around on the
floor. Then he turned to Dortmunder, outraged, and said, “You know what
happened?”
“No,” Dortmunder said.
“The goddam metal fell inside,” Herman said.
Kelp had gone over to look in the hole, and now he said, “Hey. The money’s
on fire.”
That caused general panic, but Dortmunder pushed his way through the mob
and took a look inside, and it wasn’t as bad as all that. The hole in the side of
the safe was perfectly round and about a foot in diameter, and inside there was a
round piece of black metal the same size, like a midget manhole cover except
much thicker, and it was resting on stacks of money, and it was setting them on
fire. Not very much, just browning and curling them around the edge of the
circle. However, a couple of little flames had already puffed into life, and if left to
themselves they would spread and eventually all of the money would turn into
ashes.
“Okay,” Dortmunder said, partly to calm the people behind him, partly to
challenge the fates. He took off his right shoe, stuck it in through the hole and
began to slap the fire out.
“If only we had water,” Victor said.
Murch’s Mom said, “The toilet tank! We haven’t flushed since we left the
trailer park, the tank should still be full !”
That had been another problem, four hours stuck in here without toilet
facilities, but now this one too turned out to be a blessing in disguise. A coffee-container brigade was set up, and pretty soon Dortmunder could put his shoe
back on and pour water on the smoldering bills instead. It took only four
containers, and the last ember was out.
“Wet money,” Dortmunder grumbled and shook his head. “All right, where’s
the plastic bags?”
They’d brought along a box of plastic garbage-can liner bags to carry the
money in. May got them now, pulled one out of the box, and Dortmunder and
Kelp started filling it with charred bills, wet bills and good bills while May and
Victor held the bag open.
And then Murch’s Mom shouted, “We’re moving!”
Dortmunder straightened, his hands full of money. “What?”
Murch came running around the partition, looking much more agitated than
Dortmunder had ever seen him. “We’re rolling,” he said. “We’re rolling down
the goddam hill, and we’re out of control!”
30
KELP pushed the door open and watched countryside going by. “We’re
going out on the road!”
Behind him, Herman shouted, “Jump! Jump!”
How fast were they going? Probably no more than five or ten miles an hour,
but to Kelp’s eyes the pavement going by beneath his feet was just a blur.
But they had to jump. There were no windows in the front of the bank, so
they couldn’t see where they were headed, whether they were going to crash
into something or not. They weren’t going very fast yet because the slope wasn’t
at all steep here, but the bank was angling toward the road, and down a ways
farther the hill did get a lot steeper, and then they’d go too fast to jump. So it
had to be now, and at this door Kelp was first.
He jumped. Off to his right, uphill, he was aware of Victor jumping from the
other door. Then Kelp hit the pavement, lost his footing, sprawled and rolled
over twice. When he sat up, he had a new big tear in his right trouser knee, and
the rest of the gang was spread out downhill, all sitting and lying on the pavement
in the rain, with the bank rolling on away from them, on the road now and
picking up speed.
Kelp looked the other way, to see how Victor was doing, and Victor was on
his feet already and hobbling back toward the diner site. Kelp couldn’t figure
that out for a second, and then he realized Victor was going after the Packard.
To give chase, to get the bank back!
Kelp got to his feet and limped off in Victor’s wake, but hadn’t even reached
the gravel driveway yet when the Packard came tearing up and squealed to a
stop beside him. He climbed in, and Victor gunned the motor again. He was
going to stop for Dortmunder, who was next, standing there with the plastic bag
full of money in his hand, but Dortmunder urgently waved them on, and Kelp
said, “Don’t stop, Victor, they’ll come along in the van.”
“Okay,” Victor said and tromped on the accelerator.
The bank was far away down the long slope. It was rainy, it was mid-afternoon, and they were far out on Long Island, three things that helped to give
them an empty road when they needed it. The bank, whizzing down the exact
middle of the two-lane road, straddling the white line, happily met no traffic
coming the other way.
“It’s gonna go over at that curve,” Kelp said. “It’ll crash down there, but we
should have time to get the rest of the money out.”
But it didn’t go over. The curve was banked, angled properly, and the bank
rolled around it with no trouble at all-around and out of sight.
“God damn it!” yelled Kelp. “Catch up with it, Victor.”
“I will,” Victor said. Hunched over the wheel, his attention fixed on the road
ahead, he said, “You know what I think happened?”
“The bank started to roll,” Kelp said.
“Because of the explosion,” Victor said. “That’s what I think did it. You felt
the way that made it rock. It must have started it, and we were on top of a hill,
and once it was moving it just kept going.”
“It sure did.” Kelp said. He shook his head. “You can’t believe how irritated
Dortmunder is going to be,” he said.
Victor snapped a glance at the rear-view mirror. “Not behind us yet,” he said.
“They’ll be along. Let’s worry about the bank first.”
They reached the curve, spun around it, and saw the bank well out in front.
There was a small town at the base of the hill, a little fishing community, and the
bank was headed straight for it.
But Victor was gaining. Also, as the road leveled out at the bottom, the bank
began slowly to lose its momentum. When it ran the red light in the center of
town it wasn’t doing any more than twenty-five miles an hour. A woman
crossing guard blew her whistle at the bank as it went through the light, but it
didn’t stop. Victor slowed, seeing the woman in her police-like uniform and
white crossing-guard belt, and seeing the red light, but as he reached the
intersection the light turned green and he accelerated again. The woman had
whistled herself breathless, and as they went by she was standing in the rainy
gutter, panting, her shoulders heaving, her mouth open.
“It’ll stop soon,” Kelp said hopefully. “There isn’t any slope here at all.”
“That’s the ocean,” Victor said, nodding ahead.
“Oh, no!”
The end of the street was a pier, jutting out a good thirty feet into the water.
Victor caught up with the bank just before it trundled out onto the pier, but it
didn’t matter; there was no way of stopping it. One fisherman in yellow rubber
slicker and rain hat, sitting on a folding chair, looked up and saw the bank