Bank Shot

by Donald E. Westlake

  ‘Who is it?’ Dortmunder asked.

  ‘I don’t think you know him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ When dealing with Kelp, Dortmunder just got more and more patient as time went along.

  ‘Herman X.’

  ‘Herman X?’

  ‘The only thing,’ Kelp said, ‘he’s a spade. I don’t know if you’re prejudiced or not.’

  ‘Herman X?’

  Victor said primly, ‘Sounds like a Black Muslim.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Kelp said. ‘He’s like in an offshoot. I don’t know what they call themselves. His bunch is mad at the people that were mad at the people that were mad at the people that went off with Malcolm X. I think that’s right.’

  Victor frowned into space. ‘I haven’t kept up with that area of subversion,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be the Pan-African Panthers, would it?’

  ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘The Sons Of Marcus Garvey?’

  ‘No, that’s not right.’

  ‘The Black Barons?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Sam Spades?’

  Kelp frowned for a second, then shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Probably a new splinter,’ Victor said. ‘They keep fractionalising, makes it extremely difficult to maintain proper surveillance. No co-operation at all. I can remember how upset the agents used to get about that.’

  A little silence fell. Dortmunder sat there holding the glass and looking at Kelp, who was mooning away at the opposite wall. Dortmunder’s expression was patient, but not pleased. Eventually, Kelp sighed and shifted and glanced at Dortmunder and then frowned, obviously trying to figure out what Dortmunder was staring at him for. Then all at once he cried, ‘Oh! The lockman!’

  ‘The lockman,’ Dortmunder agreed.

  ‘Herman X.’

  Dortmunder nodded. ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Well,’ Kelp said, ‘do you care about him being black?’

  Patiently Dortmunder shook his head. He said, ‘Why should I care about him being black? All I want him to do is open a safe.’

  ‘It’s just you never know about people,’ Kelp explained. ‘Herman says so himself.’

  Dortmunder poured more bourbon.

  ‘Should I give him a call?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Kelp nodded. ‘I’ll give him a call,’ he said, and the door opened and Murch came in, followed by his Mom, wearing her neck brace. They were both carrying glasses of beer, and Murch was also carrying a salt shaker. ‘Hey, Stan!’ Kelp said. ‘Come on in.’

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ Murch said. ‘Usually, coming back from the Island, I’d take the Northern State and Grand Central and Queens Boulevard to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, but figuring the time of day it was, and I was coming uptown – sit down, Mom.’

  ‘Victor,’ Kelp said, ‘this is Stan Murch, and this is Murch’s Mom.’

  ‘What happened to your neck, Mrs Murch?’

  ‘A lawyer,’ she said. She was in a bad mood.

  ‘So I figured,’ Murch said, once he and his Mom were both seated, ‘I’d just stick with Grand Central and take the Triborough Bridge to a hundred and twenty-fifth Street and over to Columbus Avenue and straight down. Only what happened –’

  His Mom said, ‘Can I take this damn thing off anyway in here?’

  ‘Mom, if you’d leave it on you’d get used to it. You take it off all the time, that’s why you don’t like it.’

  ‘Wrong,’ she said. ‘I have to put it on all the time. That’s why I don’t like it.’

  Kelp said, ‘Well, Stan, did you go take a look at the bank?’

  ‘Let me tell you what happened,’ Murch said. ‘Just leave it on, okay, Mom? So we came across Grand Central, and there was a mess this side of La Guardia. Some kind of collision.’

  ‘We got there just too late to see it,’ his Mom said. She was keeping the neck brace on.

  ‘So I had to go along the shoulder and push a cop car out of the way at one point, so I could get off at Thirty-first Street and go down to Jackson Avenue and then Queens Boulevard and the bridge and the regular way after that. So that’s why we’re late.’

  ‘No problem,’ Kelp said.

  ‘If I’d done my regular route, it wouldn’t have happened.’

  Dortmunder sighed. ‘You’re here now,’ he said. ‘That’s the important thing. Did you look at the bank?’ He wanted to know the worst and get it over with.

  Murch’s Mom said, ‘It was a beautiful day for a drive.’

  ‘I looked at it,’ Murch said. He was being very business-like all of a sudden. ‘I looked it over very carefully, and I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’

  Dortmunder said, ‘The bad news first.’

  ‘No,’ Kelp said. ‘The good news first.’

  ‘Okay,’ Murch said. ‘The good news is it has a trailer hitch.’

  Dortmunder said, ‘What’s the bad news?’

  ‘It doesn’t have any wheels.’

  ‘Been nice talking to you,’ Dortmunder said.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Kelp. ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. What do you mean it doesn’t have any wheels?’

  ‘Underneath,’ Murch said.

  ‘But it’s a trailer, it’s a mobile home. It’s got to have wheels.’

  ‘What they did,’ Murch said, ‘they put it in position, and jacked it up, and took the wheels off. Wheels and axles both.’

  ‘But it had wheels,’ Kelp said.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Murch said. ‘Every trailer has wheels.’

  ‘So what the hell did they do with them?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe the company that owns the trailer has them.’

  Victor suddenly snapped his fingers and said, ‘Of course! I’ve seen the same thing at construction sites. They use trailers for field offices, and if it’s a long-term job they build foundation walls underneath and remove the wheels.’

  ‘What the hell for?’ Kelp asked. He sounded affronted.

  ‘Maybe save strain on the tires. Maybe give it more stability.’

  Murch said, ‘The point is, it doesn’t have wheels.’

  A little silence fell on the group. Dortmunder, who had just been sitting there letting the conversation wash over him while he basted in his own pessimism, sighed and shook his head and reached for the bourbon bottle again. He knew that May believed that planning even an idiot job that wouldn’t ever happen was better than doing nothing at all, and he supposed she was right, but what he wouldn’t give for news right now about a factory that still paid cash.

  All right. He was the planner – that was his function – so it was up to him to think about the details as they came along. No wheels. He sighed and said to Murch, ‘The thing is sitting on those concrete block walls, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Murch said. ‘What they must have done, they jacked it up, took the wheels off, put the concrete blocks in place, and lowered the trailer down onto them.’

  ‘The concrete blocks are cemented to each other,’ Dortmunder said. ‘The question is, are they cemented to the bottom of the trailer?’

  Murch shook his head. ‘Definitely not. The trailer’s just resting there.’

  ‘With concrete block all around underneath.’

  ‘Not on the ends, just along the two sides.’

  A tiny flicker of interest made Dortmunder frown. ‘Not at the ends?’

  ‘No,’ Murch said. ‘The one end is against the Kresge’s next door, and the other end they’ve just got a wooden lattice across it. So they can get in at it, I guess.’

  Dortmunder turned his head to look at Victor. For a wonder, Victor wasn’t smiling; instead, he was watching Dortmunder with such intensity he looked paralysed. It wasn’t much of an improvement. Squinting, Dortmunder said, ‘Is there ever any time when the bank is empty? No guards at all?’

  ‘Every night,’ Victor said. ‘Except Thursday, when the cash is in it.’

  ‘They don’t have a night watchman in there?�
�

  ‘They don’t keep any cash there at all,’ Victor said, ‘except on Thursdays. Otherwise, there’s nothing to steal. And they’ve got all the normal burglar alarms. And the police patrol the business streets pretty often out there.’

  ‘What about weekends?’

  ‘They patrol weekends, too.’

  ‘No,’ Dortmunder said. ‘What about guards on the weekends? Saturday afternoon, for instance. The thing’s empty then?’

  ‘Sure,’ Victor said. ‘With so many shoppers going by on Saturday, what do they need with guards?’

  ‘All right,’ Dortmunder said. He turned back to Murch and said, ‘Can we get wheels someplace?’

  ‘Sure,’ Murch said. No hesitation at all.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely positive. There is totally nothing in the automotive line that I can’t get you.’

  Dortmunder said, ‘Good. Can we get wheels that will lift the damn thing up off those concrete blocks?’

  ‘We may have to rig something,’ Murch said. ‘They’ve got those walls up pretty high. There may not be any wheels-and-axle combination that big. But we could attach the axle to a kind of platform and then attach the platform to the bottom of the trailer.’

  ‘What about jacks?’

  Murch shook his head. ‘What about them?’

  ‘We can get heavy enough jacks to lift that thing?’

  ‘We don’t have to,’ Murch said. ‘It has its own jacks, four of them, built up into the undercarriage.’

  Victor said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Murch, but how did you –’

  ‘Call me Stan.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m Victor. How did you –’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello. How did you find out about the jacks? Did you crawl under the bank and look?’

  Murch grinned and said, ‘Naw. Down in the corner there’s the company name that built the thing. Roamerica. Didn’t you notice that?’

  ‘I never did,’ Victor said. He sounded impressed.

  ‘It’s a little silver plate near the back,’ Murch said. ‘Near Kresge’s.’

  His Mom said, ‘Stan has a wonderful eye for detail.’

  ‘So we went to a place that sells them,’ Murch said, ‘and I took a look at the same kind of model.’

  ‘With wheels,’ Kelp said. He was still taking the business of the wheels as a personal insult.

  Murch nodded. ‘With wheels.’

  ‘They’re really very nice inside,’ his Mom said. ‘More roomy than you’d think. I liked the one with the French Provincial motif.’

  ‘I like where we live now,’ Murch said.

  ‘I’m not saying buy one. I just said I liked it. Very clean, very nice. And you know what I thought of that kitchen.’

  Dortmunder said, ‘If we got wheels on it, could you drive it away from there?’

  Murch’s beer was only half gone, but the head was gone entirely. Musing, he shook a little salt into the glass, which restored some head, and passed the shaker to his mom. ‘Not with a car,’ he said. ‘It’s too heavy for that. With a truck. The cab of a tractor-trailer – that would be best.’

  ‘But it could be done.’

  ‘Oh, sure. I’d have to stick to main streets, though. You’ve got a twelve-foot width. That’s pretty wide for going down back roads. Cuts your possibilities for a getaway route.’

  Dortmunder nodded. ‘I figured that.’

  ‘Also time of day,’ Murch said. ‘Late at night would be best, when there’s not so much traffic around.’

  ‘Well, we’d figure to do it then anyway,’ Dortmunder said.

  ‘A lot depends,’ Murch said, ‘on where you want to take it.’

  Dortmunder glanced at Kelp, who looked very defensive and said, ‘We can work that out, we can work it out. Victor and me.’

  Dortmunder grimaced and looked back at Murch. ‘Would you be willing to try it?’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘Driving the bank away.’

  ‘Sure! Naturally, that’s what I’m here for.’

  Dortmunder nodded and sat back in his chair. He didn’t look specifically at anybody, but brooded at the green felt tabletop. Nobody spoke for half a minute or so, and then Victor said, ‘Do you think we can do it, Mr Dortmunder?’

  Dortmunder glanced at him, and the intense look was still there. This was originally Victor’s notion, of course, so it was only natural he wanted to know if he had a workable idea or not. Dortmunder said, ‘I don’t know yet. It begins to look as though we can take the thing away, but there’s still a lot of problems.’

  Kelp said, ‘But we can go forward, right?’

  Dortmunder said, ‘You and Victor can look for a place to stash the bank while …’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘A place to stash the bank. I can’t believe I’m saying a thing like that. Anyway, you two do that, Murch sets up wheels and a truck or whatever, and –’

  ‘There’s the question of money,’ Murch said. ‘We’re gonna need some deep financing on this job.’

  ‘That’s my department,’ Kelp said. ‘I’ll take care of that.’

  ‘Good,’ Dortmunder said.

  Murch’s Mom said, ‘Is this meeting over? I got to get home and get this brace off.’

  ‘We’ll be in touch with each other,’ Dortmunder said.

  Kelp said, ‘You want me to call Herman X?’

  Murch said, ‘Herman X?’

  ‘Sure,’ Dortmunder said. ‘Give him a call. But tell him it isn’t a definite set-up yet.’

  Murch said, ‘Herman X?’

  ‘You know him?’ Kelp said. ‘A lockman, one of the best.’

  Victor suddenly jumped to his feet and extended his ginger-ale glass over the table. ‘A toast!’ he cried. ‘One for all and all for one!’

  There was a stunned silence, and then Kelp gave a panicky smile and said, ‘Oh, yeah, sure.’ He got to his feet with his bourbon glass.

  One by one the others also stood. Nobody wanted to embarrass Victor. They clinked their glasses together over the middle of the table, and again Victor said, loud and clear, ‘One for all and all for one!’

  ‘One for all and all for one,’ everybody mumbled.

  9

  Herman X spread black caviar on black bread and handed it across the coffee table to Susan. ‘I know I have expensive tastes,’ he said, flashing his frankest smile at his guests, ‘but the way I think, we pass this way but once.’

  ‘Truer words were never spoken,’ George Lachine said. He and his wife Linda were the token whites at this dinner party, Susan and the other three couples all being black. George was on O.E.O. somewhere – not in fund disbursement, unfortunately – but it was Linda that Herman had his eyes on. He still hadn’t made up his mind whether he would finish this evening in bed with Linda Lachine or Rastus Sharif, whether he felt tonight straight or gay, and the suspense was delicious. Also the fact that neither of them had shared his bed before, so it would be a new adventure in any case.

  Susan gave George an arch look and said, ‘I know your kind. Grab all you can get.’ Herman thought it unlikely that Susan really wanted George; she was probably just trying to make Linda angry, since she knew Herman’s intentions in that area.

  And she was succeeding. While George looked flustered and flattered, Linda gave Susan a tight-lipped look of hate. But she was too cool, Herman noticed, to say anything right now. That pleased him; people being themselves always pleased him. ‘A dinner party,’ he had once said, ‘should be nothing but undercurrents.’

  This one was. Of the ten people present, practically everybody had been to bed at one time or another with everybody else – excluding the Lachines, of course, who were in process of being drawn in right now.

  And himself and Rastus. How had he let that fail to happen for so long? Herman glanced over at Rastus now and saw him indolently whispering something to Diane, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Rastus Sharif; he’d chosen the name himself, of course, as representative of the full r
ange of his heritage, both slave and African, and in doing so had made himself a walking insult to practically everybody he met. Black and white alike had trouble bringing themselves to call him ‘Rastus’. Looking at him, Herman thought the delay had probably been caused by his own admiration and envy; how could he go to bed with the only person on earth he didn’t feel superior to?

  Mrs Olaffson suddenly appeared in the living-room door-way. ‘Telephone, sir.’

  He sat up. ‘My call from the Coast?’ He was aware of the conversations halting around him.

  Mrs Olaffson knew her part: ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Be right there.’ Standing, he said, ‘Sorry, people, this may take a while. Try to have fun without me.’

  They made ribald comments in return, and he grinned as he loped from the room. He had given it out that he was employed in ‘communications’, sometimes making it seem as though he meant book publishing and sometimes motion pictures. Vague but glamorous, and no one ever inquired more closely.

  Mrs Olaffson had preceded him to the kitchen, and on the way through he said, ‘Study door locked?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Mind the fort.’ He patted her pink cheek, went out the apartment’s rear door and down the service stairs two at a time.

  As usual, Mrs. Olaffson’s timing had been perfect. Just as Herman stepped out onto the sidewalk of Central Park West the grimy green-and-white Ford rolled in to the curb by the fire hydrant. Herman pulled the rear door open and slid in beside Van; as he shut the door, Phil, the driver, started the car moving again.

  ‘Here you go,’ Van said and handed him his mask and gun.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said and held them in his lap as the Ford headed south toward midtown.

  There was no conversation in the car, not even from the fourth man, Jack, who was the newest, on only his second caper. Driving along, Herman looked out the side window and thought about his dinner party, the people there, the way he would spend the latter part of the night, and the menu for dinner.

  He had planned the menu with the greatest of care. The cocktails to begin had been Negronis, the power of the gin obscured by the gentleness of vermouth and Campari. The caviar and pitted black olives to nosh on while drinking. Then, at the table, the meal itself would start with black bean soup, followed by poached fillet of black sea bass and a nice bottle of Schwartzekatz. For the entree, a Black Angus steak sauteed in black butter and garnished with black truffles, plus a side dish of black rice, washed down with a good Pinot Noir. For dessert, black-button pie and coffee. For after-dinner drinks, a choice of Black Russians or blackberry brandy, with bowls of black walnuts to munch on again in the living room.