when you’re doing business.”
“If only all police officers were like you,” Gertrude said, “the world would be
a far better place.”
The lieutenant had often thought the same thing himself. He gave a modest
smile and scuffed his foot in a puddle and said, “Oh, well, I just try to do my
best.”
“I’m sure you do. Bless you.”
The lieutenant carried his happy smile back to the patrol car, where he found
the captain in a sour mood again, beetle-browed and grumpy. “Something go
wrong, sir?”
“I tried that anesthetic thing of yours.”
“You did, sir?”
“I keep worrying how the operation’s going to come out.”
“I make it appendicitis, sir. There’s really no danger in that.”
The captain shook his head. “It’s just not my style, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m
a man who faces reality.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I tell you this, Lieutenant. This day will end. It can’t go on forever. This
day will come to an end. Some day it will.”
“Yes, sir.”
Conversation lagged for a while after that. Even with the twelve coffees and
Danish the Lieutenant had given away, there had still been three sets for each
man in the mobile headquarters. They hadn’t drunk all the coffee, but they’d
eaten all the Danish and were now feeling somnolent and sluggish. The driver fell
into a deep sleep, the captain napped, and the lieutenant kept dropping off and
then waking up again with a start. The radio man never quite lost consciousness,
though he did take his shoes off and rest his head against the window and hold
his microphone slackly in his lap.
The morning passed slowly, with undiminished rain and no positive news in
any of the infrequent crackling radio contacts from headquarters. Noontime
came and went, and the afternoon began heavily to row past, and by two
o’clock they were all feeling restless and cramped and irritable and
uncomfortable. Their mouths tasted bad, their feet had swollen, their underwear
chafed, and it had been hours since any of them had relieved themselves.
Finally, at ten past two, the captain grunted and shifted position and said,
“Enough is enough.”
The other three tried to look alert.
“We’re not accomplishing anything out here,” the captain said. “We’re not
mobile, we’re not in contact with anybody, we’re not getting anywhere. Driver,
take us back to headquarters.”
“Yes, sir!”
As the car started forward, the lieutenant looked out at the diner one last time
and wondered if the thing would actually stay in business long enough for him to
get that free cheeseburger. He was sorry for the people trying to run the place,
but somehow he doubted it.
29
“THERE they go!” Victor shouted.
“At goddam last,” said Murch’s Mom and started at once undoing the straps
on her neck brace.
Dortmunder had been sitting at the table with May, practicing holding his
hands together as if he had the cuffs on. Now he cocked an eye toward Victor
and said, “You sure they’re leaving?”
“Gone,” Victor said. “Absolutely gone. Made a U-turn out there by the sign
and took off.”
“And about time,” May said. The floor around the chair where she was sitting
was littered with tiny cigarette ends.
Dortmunder sighed. When he got to his feet his bones creaked; he felt old and
stiff and achy all over. He shook his head, thought of adding a comment, and
decided just to let it go.
The last four hours had been hell. And yet, when he and Kelp had first seen
this spot, it had seemed like a special dispensation from Heaven. The big sign
out by the road, the empty gravel parking lot, and a blank space where the diner
should be; who could ask for anything more? They’d rushed back to the
Wanderlust Trailer Park, where Murch already had the bank attached to the
horse van, and quickly they’d brought the whole kit and caboodle over here,
except for the stolen station wagon, which they’d left in somebody’s driveway
along the way. Victor and Kelp had gone a block or so ahead in the Packard, to
watch out for cops, and Murch had followed with the horse van and the bank-his Mom and May riding with him in the cab of the van, Dortmunder and
Herman back in the bank. They’d gotten here with no trouble, positioned the
bank, parked the van and the Packard out of sight behind it, and gone back to
business as usual, the only changes being that Herman had to use battery-operated power tools again and the hearts game had been resumed by flashlight.
Also, the rainwater drenching down the metal skin of the bank quickly chilled the
interior, and made everybody feel a little stiff and rheumatic. But it hadn’t been
terrible, and they’d mostly been in a pretty good mood-even Herman, who
had regained his belief in his ability to get into any safe, if given sufficient time.
And then the cops had arrived. Kelp had seen them first, glancing out the
window and saying, “Look! Law!”
The rest of them had crowded to the windows and stared out at the police car
parked out by the sign. May had said, “What are they going to do? Are they
onto us?”
“No.” That had been Victor, always ready with an opinion based on his
experiences with the other side of the law. “They’re just on patrol,” he’d said.
“If they were interested in us, they’d handle the situation differently.”
“Like-surround the place,” Dortmunder had suggested.
“Exactly.”
Then the one cop had gotten out of the car and come over, and it had turned
out their cover was working. Still, it was hard to concentrate with that damn
police car everlastingly parked outside the bank you’d just stolen, and the hearts
game had finally just dwindled away and stopped. Everybody had sat around,
irritable and nervous, and every five minutes or so somebody would ask Victor,
“What the hell are they doing out there?” Or “When are they going to go away,
for the love of God?” And Victor would shake his head and say, “I just don’t
know. I’m baffled.”
When the other police cars started showing up, one and two at a time, the
whole crew inside the bank began to bounce around as agitated as kittens in a
sack “What are they doing” everybody asked, and Victor kept saying, “I don’t
know, I don’t know.”
It later turned Out, of course, that the other cars had all been delivering orders
of coffee and Danish When Dortmunder had finally come to that understanding,
he’d told the others and added, “Which means they’re as loused up as we are
Which gives me hope”
Still, the time had passed slowly The extra coffee and 9 Danish they were
given by the cops helped a lot-they were
all getting pretty cold and hungry by then-but as the hours went by they all
began to see themselves either starving or freezing to death, trapped in this
stupid bank forever by a bunch of cops who didn’t even know they were in the
same county.
Also, Herman was restricted in the attacks he could make on the safe while
the police car was parked out front The grinding on the circular hole could
continue, but things like explosions had to wait. This made Herman fretful, and
he tended to pace back and forth from one end of the bank to the other and
snarl at people
Then there was the business of the neck brace. Murch cared on so much
about it that his Mom finally agreed to wear it as long as the police car was out
front, but she was supposed to be testy while her head was propped up by the
thing, so that made two soreheads prowling around, which didn’t help matters
any.
And then, all at once, they left. No reason, no explanation, their departure as
abrupt and senseless as their arrival, they up and went. And suddenly everybody
was smiling, even Murch’s Mom, who had flung the neck brace into the farthest
corner of the bank.
“Now,” Herman said. “Now I get to try what I’ve wanted to do for the last
two hours. Longer. Since before noon.”
Dortmunder was walking around in a figure eight, moving his shoulders and
elbows, trying to loosen up. “What’s that?” he said.
“That circular groove,” Herman told him. “I think we’ve got it deep enough
now, so if I pack the groove with plastic explosive, it just might pop it out of
there.”
“Then let’s do it,” Dortmunder said. “Before the Health Department comes
around to inspect the kitchen and the bread man starts making deliveries, let’s
do it and get the hell out of here.”
“This’ll be a bigger explosion than before,” Herman warned. “I want you to
know that.”
Dortmunder stopped figure eighting. Voice flat, he said, “Will we survive it?”
“Oh, sure! Not that big!”
“That’s all I ask,” Dortmunder said. “My wants are simple.”