The Devil Wears Wings

by Harry Whittington

  The young banker moved slowly forward in the lobby. The women worked swiftly filling the cloth sacks. As fast as they filled them, they shoved them through the wickets and let them fall on the floor outside. The bags plopped against the terrazzo with a plump, full-bellied sound. I moved forward and gathered up each sack.

  I could hear Sid's wild laughter behind me.

  The young executive must have decided Sid wasn't watching him. He lunged toward Sid, going off both feet in a standing tackle. Sid's laughter rocked against the ceiling. He whipped the butt of his gun down and the crunching sound it made against the banker's skull was the loudest noise in the town.

  The young banker struck the terrazzo flooring on his face. For some seconds he did not move.

  "You stinking hicks seem to think I'm kidding." Sid shook the fat man by the belt. The constable staggered and almost fell. He was almost unconscious. "Fool around with me, and find out."

  The man on the floor stirred, tried to crawl away from Sid. He was lying now with his head near the doorway.

  I gathered in the fourth bag, watching the banker. I wanted to yell at him that he needed only to keep trying to be a hero to make Sid kill him. Beyond him through the glass doors, I saw a farmer standing motionless on the walk. He was peering inside the bank, face blank.

  The banker raised his head, speaking to the man beyond the glass doors.

  "We-we're being robbed."

  The farmer did not move. He stood there staring at the man on the floor. I saw Sid watching them and knew he was going to shoot the banker. I yelled at the man on the floor: "Shut up. Haven't you sense enough to keep your mouth shut?"

  The banker turned slightly, blinking up at Sid's gun. For the first time he appeared to realize how nearly dead he was.

  He slumped back to the floor and Sid laughed. For a moment the banker stared at the expressionless face of the farmer through the glass doors. At last he spoke, his voice dead: "Go on. Get away from here."

  The farmer did not move.

  "We got to get out of here," I told Sid.

  I had collected all the tight-stuffed bags now. My arms were loaded with them. All the money I had dreamed about all these weeks. All the things I wanted. And all I had to do now was get Sid out of here before the whole caper came unglued.

  I backed away from the tellers' counter, going toward the door, back-pedaling, watching the women.

  "Let's get out of here," I told Sid again. "Let's scram before our luck runs out."

  I glanced at a wall clock. We had now been inside the bank for seven minutes.

  I was at the door. But Sid did not move. He did not want to relinquish his sweet hot excitement and sense of power. He stood there waving that gun, working himself up to a climax of painful pleasure that he would never experience again. It seemed as if he could not leave until it ran its course. He cursed the women tellers, warned them not to move.

  He released Gill's belt. He shoved and the lawman sprawled forward, slipping on the floor. He struck his head against the tellers' counter and sagged to his knees. He stayed there with his arms covering his head. Maybe he expected to die and did not want to hear the sound of the gun.

  "Come on." I pushed at the glass doors. "You got to put on a show for them?"

  Sid laughed, a wild, distorted sound. He backed across the foyer to the doors. One of the women moved and he screamed at her. She gasped and froze where she was.

  Sid glanced down at the banker on the floor at his feet. The man tried to crawl out of his reach.

  "You people stay where you are."

  He jerked up the gun and fired across the top of the tellers' counter.

  The women screamed and ducked down behind the counter. And then, abruptly, from the street, I heard the wail of a siren.

  Somebody had called the sheriff.

  I did not wait for anything else. I spoke once more to Sid. I ran out on the walk, carrying the bags pressed against my chest. Above the tops of angle-parked cars I could see a black police sedan like Gill's speeding on Main toward us from the highway intersection.

  "There he comes," I yelled at Sid.

  Sid stared at the speeding cruiser. He laughed. I ran past him and went around the corner. He followed, ran around Gill's car and got in behind the wheel.

  He was ripping off the stocking mask as he ran.

  I landed on the car seat, slammed the door behind me. Sid thrust the key into the ignition, turned it. The engine whined into life. I sat there hugging the bags of money.

  Sid whipped the car around on the side street, bumping over the far curb.

  The sheriff's car was almost at the bank when we turned right and speeded west toward the railroad.

  The police car slowed at the bank. People ran out yelling at the sheriff. We got a break because evidently the sheriff thought Gill was driving his car.

  But the sheriff's car didn't pause in front of the bank for more than a few seconds. I glanced back. It was speeding after us.

  "Rich man!" Sid raged at me. "You hate being a rich man now, you bastard?"

  We rumbled across the railroad tracks, the car shimmying crazily. It skidded sideways almost across the street before Sid could straighten it out.

  "He's right back there, Sid."

  "Hell with him."

  "Sid!"

  "What's wrong, rich man?"

  "There's the beer tavern. Slow down. That's the turn. You can't make it."

  "My God. I didn't know it was this close."

  Sid stood up on the brakes, twisting the steering wheel at the same time. The car seemed to tilt on two wheels. Rubber screeched, burning long black streaks across the pavement.

  The tavern door slapped open and Old Nosey ran out to the gas ramp and stood there staring at us.

  We missed the turn by a good six feet. The car skidded into the mud and clay at the edge of the pavement. I felt the front wheels sink into the ooze.

  Sid shoved the gears into reverse. The car screamed in protest a moment and then lunged backward from the mud. Sid shifted into forward drive and stomped the accelerator in one movement.

  "My God," he yelled. "My God. I need a drink."

  I glanced over my shoulder at the sheriff's car. For the second time, we got a break in time. We raced into the side road and I watched the other car.

  Sid whooped and yelled with glee. He jerked his head toward the beer tavern. "I oughta take a shot at Old Nosey."

  "You keep driving. The cop back there couldn't slow down enough to make the turn, either."

  "Man. We're rich. That's why."

  I could see our plane parked in the vacant field to our right. Sid stepped on the brakes. The car skidded off the narrow macadam and rolled a few feet into the ditch. Sid didn't even bother cutting the ignition. We scrambled out of the car before it stopped. I saw the break in the fence I had stomped down. Using both arms to hug our money, I ran through the break and across the weeds.

  The field was rough when I tried to run through it. Every weed and every abandoned furrow seemed to have been put there to delay me.

  Sid was behind me. He had his gun drawn. I did not slow down. The sheriff's siren whined down to a whimper as he skidded to a stop behind Constable Gill's car. Another car stopped behind the sheriff's.

  When the sheriff and the men in the second car moved to get out, Sid snapped off two quick shots at them. One shot smashed into the windshield of the sheriff's cruiser. The next sang across the hood of the other car, and the men in them paused.

  Sid's crazy laughter and his shooting made those men cautious. They crouched low to get out of the cars, careful now to keep the cars between them and Sid's gun.

  Sid was loping toward the plane at an angle, half-turned to watch the road.

  I scrambled into the plane, dumping the bags on the floor ahead of me. I slid into the seat, slapped at the ignition and felt the instant response of the plane motors.

  With the sound of the engine, the whole mad crazy pace slowed for me. I was all right
now. Even with the bags of money on the floor, I recognized a truth: I wasn't a robber, I was a pilot. We were going to succeed now. Once I was in a plane, nobody could stop me.

  Sid ran toward me.

  The cops had crouched low and dived into the hedgerow.

  Somebody fired through the fence. A bullet splatted into the Aeronca windshield. They had some idea of putting the plane out, stopping us before we could take off. Sid returned their fire and they ducked close to the ground. I got the plane in motion, the cabin door hanging open.

  Sid fired one more time and lunged toward the plane door. His hands caught, slipped, and I was moving past him.

  He jerked his face up, staring at me. I heard another crack of gunfire. Another bullet slapped into the plane glass. I leaned over, reached out as far as I could and snagged at Sid's coveralls' collar.

  He slid his gun into the cockpit, caught at the plane seat and I held on to him, gunning the motor, moving faster. I heard the men yelling from the hedgerow, the muffled crack of gunfire.

  "Buz." Terror squeezed Sid's voice thin. I tightened my grip on him. I felt him using his arms to propel himself into the plane. His legs were dragging through the grass. And then suddenly his legs were free. He thrust upward, landing inside the plane on top of the cloth bags of money. He twisted around, caught the door and slammed it.

  At that moment, after the shortest run of my career, I put the plane into the air. I did not even know if we were flying into the wind. I knew only one thing. I had to get aloft and I did, pulling that Aeronca off the ground by sheer frantic will.

  Then there was only the wind around us and under us. The shouting of the Fort Dale men receded, and we could no longer hear the sound of their guns.

  On my right I saw the steel strands of the high-power wires. We were close, too close. But I didn't really worry. I was moving and I was in the air.

  Sid gasped noisily through his mouth. He lay with his head back, a man physically and emotionally exhausted. "My God, Buz, I didn't realize a man could handle a plane like this. Any man."

  "Rich man," I said.

  Oh, it felt good up there, all right. I was breathing, it seemed to me, for the first time since we had landed in Fort Dale.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The cars looked like toys below us down there beside that field. The men resembled ugly little animals, growing smaller every instant, crouched in the hedgerow and then running out into the field as if reaching for us. I looked back and could not see their guns any more. They could not touch me now.

  The road was filling with cars that raced in from the town and from the fertilizer plant south across the oak and pine hammock. The cars sped to the field, parked on the shoulders, spilling men. They all ran out into the field and then stood there, impotently, staring up after us.

  "Head out of here," Sid yelled. He reached behind him, opened his suitcase and got another fifth of whisky.

  "You still need that stuff?"

  "Man. I don't need it now. What I'm doing now is celebrating."

  "You better wait until you got something to celebrate."

  Sid took a long pull at the bottle. He shivered. "Celebrate or not, man, I had to have that." He offered me the bottle. I shook my head. "I'm all sucked out, whipped. I never felt like that before, Buz."

  "Yeah. You were wild."

  He nodded. "I had those people by the short hairs, Buz. You just don't know. I felt like God. I felt stronger than God. I could look at those bastards and decide if they went on living or not."

  "My God."

  He drank again. "That's the trouble with you, Buz. You didn't get your kicks from that job. That's because you haven't been pushed around like I have. Every new school they put me in, I was on probation. They didn't say so. They didn't have to. They had my record from the last school. They knew how many schools had fired me. I had to take it. They rubbed my face in it, and I had to take it, and then when I couldn't take it any more, they never asked why, or who started it, they fired me. And the whole dirty business started all over again. But nobody kicked me around today. Nobody. I told them to move. By hell they moved." He roared with laughter and then laid his head back as if he were emotionally depleted.

  He held the bottle up, gazing at it. He took another long drink. Then he reached behind him, lifted one of the suitcases forward, opened it across his knees. He untied one of the cloth bags and for a moment we stared at the tight packs of green, forgetting everything else. He emptied the bag into the suitcase and those fresh, crisp bills gleamed and caught all the light in the cabin.

  He counted the money, loudly, rubbing it against his hands, washing his hands in it and pretending to use it to pat dry the perspiration rings under his arms. He rocked with laughter. He would not quiet down; perhaps he could not. He counted the money aloud, and finally, when he reached the upper thousands, I fell under the spell of it, I began to be hypnotized by that much tax-free money.

  He stacked it tightly and neatly in the suitcase, still counting.

  As he emptied each bag, he turned it inside out and then tossed it from the plane. We would watch it waver and flutter and then disappear behind us. When I checked the sky, I saw no sign of thunderheads, but I tried not to think about this. We had come this far. Just a little bit more and we had it made. We were rich men. I tried to think about the things I wanted, the things I was sick with wanting.

  "Seventy-eight five." I listened to the chant of Sid's voice. His counting mixed with his laughter. It seemed to me the act of robbery was the end of it for Sid. He might spend the money, but standing in that bank, threatening those people, actually holding their lives in his hand, scaring the wits out of them, ordering them around, yelling and cursing and getting away with a robbery-this was what Sid really wanted, what he had been looking forward to all the time. The money was gravy. Perhaps he had never even really dreamed ahead to the possession of all this money.

  "I think I'll take about three weeks in Bermuda," Sid yelled. "While I make up my mind where to go on my vacation."

  "Vacation?"

  "Man. We've worked hard. We must have worked hard. Look at this loot. We're rich. And all my life my sainted father has told me that you never get rich unless you work hard. Little man, we've had a busy day. We've worked hard. And now we have earned a nice, long rest."

  He spilled out the last bag of greenbacks, rubbing the flat of his palms against the hard, tight packs.

  "What you plan to do, Buz?"

  I was looking forward to the difference this money was going to make between Judy and me, the way it would make it possible to go to South America as an equal with Greenie. My whole life was going to be different.

  I shrugged. "Who knows?" I said. "Hell, I'm too rich to plan anything."

  He laughed. "That's the way to talk. Remember that fool stuff you talked about before we got this money? Marriage. Some kind of job in South America. I let you talk then. But man, even you must see it's all different now. You can buy babes by the dozen. And work? What you want to work for? There's plenty more where this came from, ain't there?"

  "You mean you'd go through this again?"

  "Man, that's what I mean. This is living. Baby, this is habit forming."

  I studied the hazy sky. I shivered, thinking that I hadn't had a drink all day, simply because I was working at something that took all my powers of concentration. I had to have something I really wanted to do or this money wouldn't change a thing. I would drink myself into something like a wet bar rag.

  "I still know what I want," I said. "The only difference is, now I can buy what I want. Now I can live the way I want to live."

  "That's what I said." Sid was caressing the stacks of money. "No use to get married and go to work. Not now. Now that you can live the way you want to."

  I didn't answer him. He was blowing spit bubbles as he counted the last stack of money. His face pulled in and out of shape like overheated plastic. I could not keep my gaze off the sky, and I kept praying for that cold f
ront with its rough winds.

  I snapped on the radio. "I'll see what I can get on the weather."

  "If you can't get the kind of weather to suit you, we'll buy you some weather. Just what you want." Sid giggled at this wonderful new idea.

  The music came in on the standard band. It ceased abruptly. A coolcat voice purred, "A news bulletin from Spring Haven. At noon today Ron Harver of River Grove Estates reported the loss of his Aeronca, pocketed at Greta Airfield, Spring Haven. Aw, come on, fellows, bring back Ron's plane."

  Sid laughed until he had to wipe away the tears.

  "They're looking for an Aeronca-this one," I told him. "And they've been doing it for the last hour and forty minutes. Laugh about that."

  "Man, I'm laughed out."

  "The Coast Guard, the Forest Service and the police can put planes in the air. We've got to junk this thing."

  I checked the mileage indicator. We seemed to be floating in a lazy way through the haze, getting nowhere, though I was pushing the Aeronca so hard that it had developed an engine knock. Now it seemed an infinite distance to that Berry Town strip where we'd parked the Cessna.

  "You got it all in the suitcases?" I asked Sid.

  "Ninety thousand bucks," he said, voice awed.

  "Ninety thousand bucks." I felt the sweet saliva fill my mouth. I swallowed.

  "You know what half that is?"

  "It's a nice day's pay."

  "Man, I can live a month on this. A month. I don't have to worry about money for a month."

  The music ceased again. The announcer said, "Shortly before noon today, a daylight robbery cost the National Bank at Fort Dale almost a hundred thousand dollars in cash. The two robbers wore stocking masks and coveralls, and according to the Fort Dale police they escaped in an airplane. Within minutes, word of the strange air robbery and amazing getaway was radioed throughout the state. All law enforcement agencies including the FBI are converging on Fort Dale."

  Sid snickered. "Yeah, all you fellows. Run down to Fort Dale." He stopped cackling. "Hell, Buz, what's the FBI want in this for?"

  "Something you should have looked up while you were casing that job. Robbing a bank, that's a federal offense."